#third world often just means exploited though

[ladyshinga]

[sonicasura]

Nobody Like You

I figured everyone needs something sweet after the latest chapter of the manga. Thus here's a childhood sweethearts Kafhoshi AU but with a little twist. It does contain some elements from my Always A Kaiju idea. Let's get started. Part 2 can be found here! Alternate Route Beast Tamer can be found here!

Forgot to add this but here's a link to @noodlesbf-blog version on Ao3. They asked permission btw.

Soshiro was quite the lonely child at a young age. Due to his family's status, people never really saw the real him. Only a member of a powerful family to respect or avoid. His own kin weren't that much help either.

Soshiro's parents always held high expectations and his brother's attempts at trying to bring him down led little room in trust. Thus the young boy often found solace outside amongst nature. Particularly a hidden little clearing which bear a sole cherry blossom in the forest that stood around his home.

One day, Soshiro would come across quite the surprise waiting for him at his special place. A hole stood before the trunk of the tree. From sheer curiosity, the young Hoshina looked into the apparent burrow. His confused violet eyes immediately met a glowing pair of slitted greenish teal ones. On that day Soshiro encountered someone that would be his first friend but also future lover: a peculiar Kaiju whelp known as Kafka.

Although if the two screamed at each other in fright first then it's understandable. Not all romance starts with love at first sight. Sometimes it's a scream, a backwards fall, and maybe a punch out of fright. (On rarer occasions, it's all three.) Especially for childhood sweethearts like these two.

Upon realizing that Kafka didn't mean any harm, Soshiro began to visit the strange Kaiju. At first he would just talk to him about various things like how his day has been and such. Sometimes Soshiro brings over a snack for the Kaiju to try.

Although Kafka had a tendency to not be in the same spot. Sometimes he would pop up in other places like a bush at the public park. Or outside his bedroom door much to Soshiro's horror. There were some days where Kafka didn't show up at all. He often marked those by the small pretty stones the Kaiju left behind at his window.

Soon things begin to change between the two over time. The first sign was Kafka's attempts to say Soshiro's name. Despite the surprise, the young Hoshina helped teach his friend how to not only speak but even read and write. It did help answer some of the questions Soshiro had for him.

The days Kafka didn't appear? Apparently he was visiting his foster mother, a kind lady by the name of Sakuya Hibino. She rarely gets visitors so Kafka often visited her when no one was around.

The second sign happened on one of the days where the Kaiju asked Soshiro to come over instead. As time went by, Kafka got bigger and the young Hoshina had to exploit some opportunities that came with age like more freedom to see him. Something good to keep when his friend gets bigger than a bus.

Now imagine his confusion seeing an older human boy at their favorite spot. Something that only doubled when the stranger sneezed and 'poofs' into the Kaiju. Kafka had taught himself to become human. It wasn't always perfect since a good enough distraction would poof him back into his Kaiju self.

Yet the ability to introduce Kafka to his world made things worth the risk for both of them. The third sign came when Soshiro attended university. It was required if he wishes to join the Defense Force despite it cutting the little time he could spend with Kafka.

This is also the age where the time he spent alongside his Kaiju friend looked different. Despite being bigger than a building, Kafka was quite crafty when it came to keeping himself human sized. It kept the various activities they could do together not become limited whether by a Kaiju alert or size issues.

Though Kafka's interests had taken strange routes. Places he wanted to try eating at were looking a bit fancy. Sometimes Kafka would beg Soshiro for them to go check out a festival or any rare events happening in town. The latest one involved dancing of all things.

It eventually hits Soshiro once he hears people talking about the upcoming school dance and dates. Kafka had been trying to court him like humans do. Soshiro felt pretty stupid that he didn't realize it sooner but he'd be a liar if he said the feeling wasn't mutual.

That school dance became the day both began to start dating. Kafka would propose on the night after Soshiro took the Entrance Exams. And the two happily married a year before Hoshina was promoted to Vice Captain of the Third Division.

Both lovers kept Kafka's Kaiju nature a secret even when Soshiro reached such a high status. If someone would accidentally spot his lover, then the Hoshina always intercepted so he could flee. Kafka helps by using a decoy like a kaiju they have missed or using a dummy of sorts made from his old shedded skin. There was always a romantic and often spicy apology date the next night afterwards.

A status quo the Hoshina-Hibino couple enjoyed keeping as Soshiro rather wait before he has to defend his lover. He will raise a heavy blade for Kafka against the Defense Force should the truth come out. Sadly their luck would begin to run out.

It all started when Kafka's newest coworker discovered his secret. And it only goes downhill from there as a new breed of kaiju threatens to turn everything upside down. Though the couple will stand by each other's side when their peace begins to crumple.

Nobody was gonna tear Soshiro and Kafka apart so easily.

That's all I have for now. Please enjoy this little song that came to mind writing this.

@oxandthorn @yehehbd @nightfal1n @terra-sketches @iceclew @neo0w0 @discoknack @drmarune @renard-dartigue @giantgoblin @somnidraws @elephantthbig

[racke7]

Generative AI, or LLM

So, I've been wanting to summarize the many and varied problems that LLMs have.

What is an LLM?

Copyright

Ideological / Propaganda

Security

Environmental impact

Economical

What is an LLM?

Do you remember that fun challenge of writing a single word and then just pressing auto-complete five dozen times? Producing a tangled and mostly incomprehensible mess?

LLMs are basically that auto-complete on steroids.

The biggest difference (beyond the sheer volume of processing-power and data) is that an LLM takes into account your prompt. So if you prompt it to do a certain thing, it'll go looking for "words and sentences" that are somehow associated with that thing.

If you ask an LLM a question like "what is X" it'll go looking for various sentences and words that claim to have an answer to that, and then perform a statistical guess as to which of these answers are the most likely.

It doesn't know anything, it's basically just looking up a bunch of "X is"-sentences and then using an auto-complete feature on its results. So if there's a wide-spread misconception, the odds are pretty good that it'll push this misconception (more people talk about it as if it's true than not, even if reputable sources might actively disagree).

This is also true for images, obviously.

An image-generating LLM takes a picture filled with static and then "auto-completes" it over and over (based on your prompt) until there's no more static to "guess" about anymore.

Which in turn means that if you get a picture that's almost what you want, you'll need to either manually edit it yourself, or you need to go back and generate an entirely new picture and hope that it's closer to your desired result.

Copyright

Anything created by an LLM is impossible to copyright.

This means that any movies/pictures/books/games/applications you make with an LLM? Someone can upload them to be available for free and you legally can't do anything to stop them, because you don't own them either.

Ideological / Propaganda

It's been said that the ideology behind LLMs is to not have to learn things yourself (creating art/solutions without bothering to spend the time and effort to actually learn how to make/solve it yourself). Whether that's true or not, I don't think I'm qualified to judge.

However, as proven by multiple people asking LLMs to provide them with facts, there are some very blatant risks associated with it.

As mentioned above about wide-spread misconceptions being something of an Achilles' heel for LLMs, this can in fact be actively exploited by people with agendas.

Say that someone wants to make sure that a truth is buried. In a world where people rely on LLMs for facts (instead of on journalists), all someone would need to do is make sure that the truth is buried by having lots and lots of text that claims otherwise. No needing to try and bribe journalists or news-outlets, just pay a bot-farm a couple of bucks to fill the internet with this counter-fact and call it a day.

And that's not accounting for the fact that the LLM is effectively a black-box, and doesn't actually need to look things up, if the one in charge of it instead gives it a hard-coded answer to a question. So somebody could feed an LLM-user deliberately false information. But let's put a pin in that for now.

Security

There are a few different levels of this, though they're mostly relevant for coding.

The first is that an LLM doesn't actually know things like "best practices" when it comes to security-implementation, especially not recent such.

The second is that the prompts you send in go into a black box somewhere. You don't know that those servers are "safe", and you don't know that the black box isn't keeping track of you.

The third is that the LLM often "hallucinates" in specific ways, and that it will often ask for certain things. A situation which can and has been exploited by people creating those "hallucinated" things and turning them into malware to catch the unwary.

Environmental impact

An LLM requires a lot of electricity and processing-power. On a yearly basis it's calculated that ChatGPT (a single LLM) uses as much electricity as the 117 lowest energy-countries combined. And this is likely going to grow.

As many of these servers are reliant on water-cooling, this also pushes up the demand for fresh water. Which could be detrimental to the local environment of those places, depending on water-accessibility.

Economical

Let's not get into the weeds of Microsoft claiming that their "independent study" (of their own workers with their own tool that they themselves are actively selling) is showing "incredibly efficiency gains".

Let's instead look at different economical incentives.

See, none of these LLMs are actually profitable. They're built and maintained with investor-capital, and if those investors decide that they can't make money off of the "hype" (buying low and selling high) but instead need actual returns on investment (profit)? The situation as it is will change very quickly.

Currently, there's a subscription-model for most of these LLMs, but as mentioned those aren't profitable, which means that something will need to change.

They can raise prices

They can lower costs (somehow)

They can find different investors

They can start selling customer-data

Raising prices would mean that a lot of people would suddenly no longer consider it cost-beneficial to continue relying on LLMs, which means that it's not necessarily a good way to increase revenue.

Lowering costs would be fantastic for these companies, but a lot of this is already as streamlined as they can imagine, so assuming that this is plausible is... perhaps rather optimistic.

With "new investors" the point is to not target profit-interested individuals, but instead aim for people who'd be willing to pay for more non-monetary results. Such as paying the LLM-companies directly to spread slanted information.

Selling customer-data is very common in the current landscape, and having access to "context code" that's fed into the LLM for good prompt-results would likely be incredibly valuable for anything from further LLM-development to corporate espionage.

Conclusions

There are many different reasons someone might wish to avoid LLMs. Some of these are ideological, some are economical, and some are a combination of both.

How far this current "AI-bubble" carries us is up for debate (until it isn't), but I don't think that LLMs will ever entirely disappear now that they exist. Because there is power in information-control, and in many ways that's exactly what LLMs are.

[finalgirlminamurray]

finally got around to watching coralie fargeat's first feature revenge, which i'd been meaning to do ever since the substance came out. i'd been aware of it but never got the chance to sit down and watch it, even though it is by all accounts an extremely good film and one of the best modern takes on the rape-revenge genre

turns out it is all that. i felt like this was one i had to watch on the big screen (of the tv) and not on my laptop because the cinematography is gorgeous and very often really artistically done. fargeat wanted to put a lot of phantasmagorical hallucinatory visual symbolism into it and she certainly succeeded. this was a real experience to watch

further discussion of the subject of sexual assault in film under the cut

what i really want to talk about regarding this film is the genre it sits in, because the rape-revenge subgenre is one i've...not exactly avoided but thought i probably didn't need to and wouldn't want to watch as i caught up on various horror films. i don't think anyone would say that i spit on your grave or the last house on the left are really must-watch movies unless you're specifically focusing on that genre, and you're not even going to know about most of the other films in it unless you're really in the weeds of the exploitation film world. so i hadn't watched anything like that before. it's certainly not that i find the genre inherently distasteful or anything - i think everyone's feelings on whether a given rape-revenge film is exploitative or not are going to be different and personal, and i don't have any personal connection to the material, thankfully, so i'd never tell anyone else how to feel about them. they're interesting in how they so openly confront and portray - often in graphic detail, always as a central and inextricable part of their stories - a subject matter that a lot of other films, no matter how violent they get, don't want to touch. not only that, but coming down hard on the stance that this is one of the most horrific, traumatic things that can happen to a person and that it fully warrants this kind of furious, violent, murderous revenge. (in fact, it might be the only thing that warrants it.) and they don't even have to explicitly acknowledge that their heroines are doing this because the law will not help them.

you can't advocate for always taking vigilante justice into your own hands in real life, for a myriad of reasons, but you can fully understand why watching it on screen would feel so cathartic.

i think revenge (the movie) films its rape scene as "tastefully" as it could, given the precedents before it; in fact, most of it isn't even seen by the audience, just overheard from the point of view of the character who saw it about to happen and chose to ignore it. it's very effective just as it is. i can't speak for whether or not the more graphic scenes in films like the aforementioned i spit on your grave work for or against the overall themes, but i do also understand why the filmmakers would feel the need to make it graphic; you have to make the audience feel what the character is feeling so that her revenge will feel especially satisfying, or justified. of course this approach tends to presume both creator and audience are cishet men who have never experienced sexual violence or felt the possibility as a threat to them, which is why different approaches like this are so welcome. i especially liked fargeat's deliberate choice to show jen as openly sexual and flirtatious with the men before her rape, to emphasize that it is never the victim's fault no matter her behavior or history of promiscuity, and to make her the mistress of a married man rather than a virginal single woman or in a faithful monogamous relationship of her own. there's also the escalation that leads to her revenge; one man rapes her, one man chooses to ignore it, a third tries to cover it up and blames her for it, and then he outright kills her rather than risk her saying anything. so it's also a murder revenge plot, except the murder victim is also able to do her own revenging.

i think it's also really interesting to look at the tropes and definition of the rape-revenge genre and see how many other stories that aren't considered part of it could fit. the last house on the left is usually counted as one of the first in this genre, and that one has the victim's parents avenging her on her behalf - how many action films have the basic plot of a man going on a revenge quest against someone who wronged his wife or daughter (usually by murder, but rape is often involved as well)? is taken a rape-revenge film? is sweeney todd a rape-revenge story? carol clover's chapter on the genre in men women and chainsaws is super interesting and while i've never seen the film the accused, her analysis of it as a rape-revenge film in which the revenge is taken in court (the very avenue implicitly denied to most heroines of the genre) really made me think. i also haven't seen promising young woman but i feel like i probably should just to form my own opinion on it, but i recall a lot of the criticism essentially calling it a rape-revenge film toned down and made palatable to the mainstream and being a weaker film for it. but then again a lot of people surprised me by liking it, so i don't know how it would play if i watched it.

i think i'd be more receptive to trying out some of these films now than i used to be, when i just assumed they would be way too uncomfortable and realistically disturbing for me to want to watch, but if something's not actively triggering to me (i don't even think i have anything like that) i can handle it. i'd be at least willing to watch the last house on the left even if i've heard the film itself is not very good, and i have heard good things about abel ferrara's ms. 45. what i really want to watch at some point is deliverance because it's one of the few films i can think of with male victims that fits the genre, and you could write a whole essay or several on how the rape of men is treated in film and wider pop culture. (the youtube channel pop culture detectives, which i think coined the term "born sexy yesterday" and also did a popular two-part series unpacking the misogyny of the big bang theory, had a two-parter on the ways sexual assault of men is played for laughs, one on situations with female perpetrators and one on situations with male perpetrators, and it was striking to realize just how many jokes there are in pop culture, whenever the subject of being sent to prison comes up, that probably don't even read as rape jokes because they're so ingrained. and i think, because of certain audiences' instincts to laugh or make a joke out of something that makes them uncomfortable, there's a whole fascinating set of implications to unpack in how iconic scenes of male-on-male rape that are treated seriously - deliverance, pulp fiction, etc. - become stock dark-joke references when similar situations come up. this parenthetical got away from me i think.) there's also the class politics that so often get tied up in films like this, which clover's chapter on them also heavily discusses, and which revenge largely avoids with the men being privileged enough to go out on an annual hunting trip at a nice vacation home, at least. all we really know about jen is that she's hoping to make it in la and richard thinks he can keep her quiet by offering her a job in canada, and if she's an aspiring actress that might lead us right back into the substance.

i did think jen was named in homage to the lead of i spit on your grave (also a jennifer and arguable the first actionized victim-heroine of the subgenre), but i believe fargeat said she hadn't seen that film before making hers. still, great movie. lots to unpack. see it if you can handle it (the sexual violence is not very explicit when it's there, the physical violence very much is.)

[othcrside]

❀ *◦ millie bobby brown. genderfae. she/her. asexual grayromantic. ⇝ hey, isn’t that knives kittlová? i think that the ( twenty - two ) year old from prague, czech republic works as waitstaff at the milk bar + research expert for the midnight thrillers mystery buster gang, but outside of that people describe them as making something just for the sake of creation, death inside a cylindrical glass, expressing yourself but never finding quite the right words, sublime confusion, always feeling watched, bright fire / fast burnout, screaming into a pillow as loud as you can, the loneliness in a crowded room. i hear they are withdrawn & circumspect, but they are also known to be inquisitive & seraphic. consider giving them a visit at their home in winterwood estates and get to know why they’re called the favorite crime

tw: drugs, addiction, crime, murder/suicide

i feel for your every little issue, i know just what you mean.

born in the smoky grey haze that covered the earth after the fall of the soviet union, kirya nováková was the third child and first daughter of a criminal and a seamstress. she didn't know any of the danger that she was in, but she knew that no one was happy in her home. with her father away for work often and mostly absent and her mother perpetually sick, her oldest brother dominik took over the mantle. for the entire duration of her childhood, kirya remained blissfully ignorant of the world she had been born into, acting as a dutiful eldest daughter and taking care of her seven younger siblings. the domestic life, cooking dinners and bathing squirmy little creatures, mitigating their playtime; that all ended the moment she got her first good mark in chemistry.

she always had a penchant for destruction; obsessed with fire and gasoline and heat and invention from a young age, it didn't take much reading for kirya to realize that she adored science. as a child, she could often be found conducting an experiment in her bedroom or one of their spare bathrooms. had she accidentally set their house cat on fire once? yes, actually. but she threw the cat in the bathtub after, so really, it was fine.

and i make light of the darkness, i've got sun in my motherfuckin' pocket, best believe

drugs were scary but incredibly fun to make, kirya thought. while she didn’t oversee the entire process, and really while she hardly even had an input besides the measurements, she was always the first one up in the morning to see what was happening. it had kind of felt nice, if she was honest. like they were a complete family, one whose dirty laundry she picked up without complaint. dominik noticed this and wasn’t shy about exploiting it, which is why he told her one morning to try what she had made. apprehensive at first, she tried to say no — cooking and consuming were entirely different, and she knew what path she’d be taking if she said yes.

it didn’t matter, though, because he made her anyway. after that she was hooked. she must have been fucking good, hell, she was the fucking best for making something so addictive. what made it all the better was that she didn’t even have to buy it herself, she could have it anywhere, anytime. dominik didn’t want their cover blown, so he threw a couple grand at her and told her to go to university. you’re a superhero now, he said, you need a secret identity. she figured he was right, so she went to university, where she met her first husband, jack starling.

yeah, you know me, i forgive, and i forget, i know my age and I act like it, got what you can't resist, i'm a perfect all-american—

a grad student, very much so kinder, and a helluva lot more patient than kirya, it was difficult for her not to love him immediately. the only complication was that he was a foreign exchange student coming from england. this didn't stop kirya from making advances anyway, which, much to her surprise, actually wound up working. their romance was a whirlwind, beginning with late night study sessions and ending in elopement. she had even gotten him hooked on her supply. she spent her eighteenth birthday in a villa on the coast of spain while all her classmates were getting trashed over winter break, and she didn't think life could get any better than this.

but when dominik found out about the marriage, he was quick to suggest nullification. kirya was against the idea, pushing back for the rest of her time at school. after graduation, she had figured the situation resolved itself — until she walked into their shared apartment in prague and discovered a note left by her husband, explaining why he had left and where she could identify his body once it was found. shortly after, her brother's friends emerged from the shadows and dragged kirya all the way back to her childhood home, confirming everything she already knew about her husband's sudden death. she was to remain on the property at all times, her only purpose now since receiving an education to help their business as much as she possibly could.

i am light as a feather, i'm as fresh as the air, coca-cola bottles that i only use to curl my hair

she was lonely at first. her brother would try and strike up conversation, forcing her to respond if she didn't want to be the subject of his wrath. he liked doing that, kicking her around, reminding her how much of a fuck up she was. it had escalated to the point where she could always feel an ache in her side from where he frequently struck her, walking sideways half the time like she was wandering around with half a brain.

she felt like a shell of the girl she once was, and with the traumatic end of her ruined childhood she had also felt as if her first husband had truly gone away forever, leaving her in the world alone. enter: archibald dewitt, a wall street banker visiting prague for business. she stumbled across him in their living room buying from dominik. whenever her brother left the room, kirya approached archibald and batted her eyelashes at him, finding herself charmed by his american accent and two-piece suit. by the end of their meeting, archibald, much like with jack, was wrapped around her finger in less than a day.

i forgive and i forget, i know my age and i act like it, i know my place, i know my place and this is it!

she was on a plane to america within the month. archibald wasn't all that bad; he hadn't even sought her out sexually, being a widower himself who only cared for a young companion. however, archibald was almost three decades her senior, and most definitely susceptible to health issues. while she was enjoying the splendor of his newly purchased upper east side penthouse, she heard the phone ring. she could feel something rotted in her gut, then, as the phone hardly ever rang. she walked up, picked it off the receiver on the last ring. ms. starr, is it? we have your partner here, it may be wise to get his affairs in ord— and then she hung up again. she didn't ask any questions, she knew the answers would be too horrific to bear. she packed up all her belongings, old and new, and before he even went cold in that hospital bed she emptied out her bank account and ran.

when she'd decided to take the first flight to the furthest place away she could imagine, which was anchorage, alaska, she reconnected with an old friend and aspired to acquire citizenship ( and the tax benefits ) through marriage, wherein she found a new, real name for a new, real life: knives kittlová. in this life, she wants to be different. yes, she is married again, this time to her best friend, but she only wears the ring to ward others off. the only thing impeding on her happiness? a stranger from beyond the grave. for some reason, ever since arriving in anchorage, she's accrued the attention of a poltergeist. it leaves her mentally and physically drained, a vacant husk of the girl she was hoping she could become. her therapist says it's dissociation disorder, but knives is the one person who knows the truth: she's being haunted, karma is clearly very real, and no amount of smarts can save her from either this time.

i don't get angry when i'm pissed, i'm the eternal optimist, i scream inside to deal with it, like, "AAAAAA"

— tidbits !!

still speaks broken english and has a thick czech accent that's difficult to understand at times.

looks like a cinnamon roll, could actually kill you (but chooses not to.)

picked the name knives out of a desire to sound formidable; doesn't want to be betrayed or double-crossed, so it's best to be unapproachable from the get go. kittlová is in honor of her mother's maiden name.

currently being relentlessly haunted by the ghost of monique jackson; seems spaced out most the time, dissociates a lot and tends to be the last one to get the joke.

is comically bad at driving cars and has accrued a lot of tickets in both europe and america.

has a pet skunk named zuzanna or 'zuzie' that is deodorized and very well-loved by knives who thinks she is the perfect deterrent for unworthy men.

cut out drugs and alcohol and replaced it with video games; current favorites are diablo ii and the elder scrolls iii: morrowind.

has her first wedding band hanging from a chain around her neck, hasn't explained what it is to anyone.

alexa play vampire by olivia rodrigo

[krihmuh]

"Get Out: Unmasking the Deeper Horrors"

What's good, horror buffs! Let's talk about a film that not only shook the movie world but also had everyone buzzing about race, privilege, and society. Yup, you guessed it - Jordan Peele's incredible debut, "Get Out," which hit theaters in 2017. Now, stay woke because we're diving deep into this cinematic gem, unpacking its layers and uncovering the profound themes that make it so groundbreaking. 

Imagine this: you're watching the movie, and you start to realize that it's not just about the fear of the unknown lurking in the dark. No, it's about racial objectification, cultural appropriation, and the subtle nuances of privilege that often go unnoticed. "Get Out" brilliantly portrays the struggles faced by black people like me in a society where we’re often treated as commodities, our culture exploited and our voices silenced. But hey, we're not just here to scratch the surface, we're delving deep into the heart of the matter, dissecting some significant themes that Peele skillfully wove into this film. This isn't just a horror movie; it's a thought-provoking, eye-opening masterpiece that challenges our perspectives and sparks essential conversations. So, grab your popcorn, get comfy, and join me as we unravel the layers of "Get Out," because trust me, there's so much more to this movie than meets the eye. 

So, this movie definitely requires (and deserves) several rewatches to really understand the pretty heavy topics embedded within it, like you know, the whole “appropriating/coveting of black bodies” thing? The Armitage family's creepy plan? Swapping the minds of older white folks into young, healthy black bodies. It's not just a horror plot twist; it's a powerful yet subtle message. Peele uses the body snatching and kidnapping ring as an element of fantasy in the horror genre. That is to say that since we know that white people aren't actually going around and mind swapping into black bodies, it feels less in your face. However, the concept is still horrific especially when commenting on the black experience because it speaks on something much deeper. We can still relate with the idea from afar due to generations of appropriation and fetishization experienced from non people of color to us. Peele crafted a chilling metaphor for how black lives have been dehumanized and turned into commodities. Essentially, it's like saying, "Hey, look at how society has treated us black individuals as vessels for someone else's existence."

Now onto that cringe-worthy party scene in "Get Out." You know, the one where Chris is stuck in a whirlwind of microaggressions and well-meaning but totally clueless comments. It's not just a random moment; it's a peek into the sneaky world of cultural appropriation. "Get Out" dives headfirst into this tricky topic, showing how black culture often gets picked apart and repackaged for mainstream consumption. And that party? Oh man, this is a perfect example. Chris finds himself bombarded with remarks that might seem innocent but are actually pretty darn insensitive. It's like his identity is being erased, and his cultural heritage is reduced to nothing more than a passing trend. Jordan Peele brilliantly uses this scene to shed light on how casually people can appropriate black culture, treating it like a cool “I would vote for Obama for a third term” type of accessory without understanding its significance. Though this was an obvious commentary that I observed during the first watch, the implications of these scenes hit deeper and deeper with subsequent screenings.

We also can't forget about the eerie yet incredibly powerful "sunken place" in the film. It is imagined as this nightmarish void where people are trapped and silenced, unable to escape. Now, why is it so significant? It's not just a frightening scene to watch, especially when Chris sinks into the chair; it's a brilliant metaphor for the way black voices are marginalized in our society. This horrifying concept is Peele's way of shedding light on the systemic suppression of black stories and experiences. It's like saying, “Hey, look at how society pushes black narratives to the sidelines, keeping them quiet and invisible." And the way he visualizes it – this nightmarish void – makes you confront the harsh reality of social silencing. So, when you're watching those scenes in the "sunken place," it's not just a cinematic choice; it's a call to recognize the voices that have been muted for far too long.

Now to a pretty bold move by "Get Out" – it takes on something called white liberal racism. Now, you might think that progressive folks are immune to racist attitudes, right? Well, not at all. The movie shows us that even seemingly well-meaning, progressive families like the Armitages can have some serious issues beneath the surface.

So, here’s the four-one-one: the Armitage family appears all open-minded and accepting, but they're actually a prime example of what we call performative allyship. You know, where people act like they're supportive but their actions tell a different story. Jordan Peele brilliantly peels back the layers, revealing the subtle, underlying racism that can exist within these circles.

In the film, the Armitages showcase how racism isn't just about blatant hatred. Nope, it can sneak in through small, seemingly harmless comments – those sneaky and derogatory little things we call microaggressions – and even through cultural appropriation. Peele's characters serve as a sharp reminder that racism can hide behind a facade of progressivism, catching us off guard when we least expect it.

Jordan Peele’s “Get Out”, definitely grabs you by the shoulders and violently shakes those who have been kind of living under a rock when it comes to what the film is trying to portray. Think of it as a wake-up call wrapped in a suspenseful story. Yes, it terrifies us, but it does something even more profound – it makes us question our beliefs and biases. It challenges our perspectives and makes us reevaluate societal norms that we might have taken for granted.

This film, to me, is a catalyst for change. It sparks conversations we desperately need to have. When we dissect and analyze the layers of meaning in "Get Out," we're not just watching a movie; we're taking a journey toward understanding and empathy. It compels us to confront our own prejudices, biases, and blind spots. And that’s where the real power of "Get Out" lies – in its ability to inspire change, one uncomfortable conversation at a time. So, the next time you watch it, sit in the discomfort each scene makes you feel. Because it’s in that discomfort that real change starts to happen.

[nottootypical]

lately I’ve been thinking about the postmodern sensibility of deconstructing terms vis-à-vis the names that we use for groups that have faced oppression. I’ve heard arguments around retiring phrases like “third world,” “global south,” and even the term “middle east,” usually to the effect of “these terms define and restrict groups of people relative to their oppression/exploitation rather than by any trait inherent to that group of people.” Which, great! Fair argument! I have also lived my whole life in the USA, so it’s not even really my place to weigh in on the debate, and therefor I generally just take my cues from the people typically encompassed by said definitions.

I do, however, wonder about how this reasoning squares with the fact that it’s genuinely useful to have terminology that allows us to analyze power structures and to name the parties exercising and subject to power. I most often hear the term “global south,” for example, when people are directly discussing the relationship to power (and to oppressive national actors) that people in the “global south” have experienced. To my mind, that seems like a reasonable use of the term — we’re discussing the way that one group of people exercises power over another, ergo it’s helpful to identify which end of the power dynamic we’re discussing in this sentence. By no means do I think this should be the only way we define people who have experienced oppression (after all, they each have their own unique cultural and national identities with unique histories), but it certainly seems like a useful way to define people sometimes.

I can think of an analogy in something like the term “domestic abuse victim.” Is that the only way we should refer to someone who has experienced domestic abuse? Of course not! They’re a whole person with a wealth of experiences outside of domestic abuse, and their unique identity may even impact the specific relationship they have to their experience of domestic abuse. But it is sometimes useful to speak about victims of domestic abuse as a category, precisely because the thing that they each have in common with one another is the experience of their place in an unbalanced power dynamic.

Are these things comparable? Am I saying something that makes sense? As much as this post is structured as though I’m making an argument, I’m truly not. I just see discourse that appears (to me! in my current perspective!) inconsistent, and I would genuinely love some input on how to square the circle.

[everygame]

Guardians of the Galaxy (PS4)

Developed/Published by: Eidos Montreal / Eidos Released: 26/10/2021 Completed: 23/04/2023 Completion: Beat it. Trophies / Achievements: n/a

It sounds like a weird thing to say about a video game that is more correctly described as IP exploitation rather than a genuine creative work, but I was hoping for more from this.

I mean, I’m not sure why? I mean, I do know why, I’d heard the classic siren song of “it’s not as bad as people say” and for some reason that always makes me interested to play something. But Marvel’s video game output is inconsistent like the MCU never happened (well, because as far as the video games are concerned, it hasn’t) with different studios doing different things, like Square Enix bafflingly deciding the Avengers should have a games-as-a-service loot shooter, and because despite what the video games want to have you believe the MCU did happen, so an Avengers games-as-a-service loot shooter features a cast that look like they should be be standing outside Mann’s Chinese Theatre having their picture taken with tourists because all the actors were clever enough to not sign away their likeness rights.

Surprisingly–or perhaps, luckily–this doesn’t affect Guardians of the Galaxy too much, because most of the cast are aliens and everyone is sick of fucking Chris Pratt, so having another jerky looking white guy in the role barely matters. And I do think the design team made a genuinely good decision to just try and make a straight forward third-person shooter with a linear narrative and levels rather than giving in to the temptation to make some sort of open-world thing, even if the Guardians of the Galaxy’s wacky adventures might have suited more of a Mass Effect metagame, though that the game does try and include meaningful dialogue choices and Mass Effect-y squad combat mechanics.

It’s just that… It’s boring.

The team dynamic works–there’s constant chatter, and it’s honestly not that annoying. The needle drops are often funny (or at least, I was easily amused by them). But the pacing is all off, with long segments of what feels like just walking slowly from cut-scene to cut-scene, and then when you actually get to the combat it’s never, ever satisfying. I eventually gave up and bumped it down to the absolute easiest it could be and every enemy was still an insane bullet sponge, and the fact that you need to be constantly directing the other guardians to do things to make them cause any damage at all means there’s absolutely no flow. It’s entirely possible that the game’s stagger and elemental damage mechanics make killing enemies easier, but they’re poorly explained and as much as I thought I was using them correctly, maybe I wasn’t?

The game’s economy/upgrade system also doesn’t work; your upgrades for Star Lord are underwhelming and you will have them all by three quarters of the way through the game, meaning you can ignore the rest of the currency you find lying around the levels, and though there’s a limited number of guardian upgrades, you don’t really want more considering you can only use one at a time with cooldowns; you end up spamming a few favourites through the whole game anyway.

It’s all a bit of a bummer, because you can sort of feel that the team are trying to do something, it just doesn’t work. Maybe it was scheduling, pressure from the top or demands of the IP, but every little spark of fun in the writing or twists in the design are hammered down by the lengthy tedium of just grinding through the game, especially as the story is extremely underwhelming, suffering not just from some pretty picked over cliches but also really baffling character motivations at points.

Ironically, it’s only really that I have residual fondness for the characters/”IP” that carried me through this, which is a sorry state of affairs. Still, I’ve learned my lesson, even if it is being delisted I’m not touching The Avengers with a ten-foot barge pole.

Will I ever play it again? Why does a game like this have a New Game Plus, really? You unlock everything before you’ve even finished it! I’ll never look at this again, I doubt I’ll even think about it. Final Thought: The question is of course, is sitting through this worse than sitting through things like Ms. Marvel or She-Hulk? Trick question, you can look at your phone while those are on.

Support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi! You can pick up a digital copy of exp. 2600, a zine featuring all-exclusive writing at my shop, or join as a supporter at just $1 a month and get articles like this a week early.

[leolistcanada]

Escorting in Canada: What’s Legal, What’s Not, and What You Should Know

In Canada, escorting sits in a unique legal gray area—selling sex isn’t illegal, but many activities around it can be. The result? A confusing mix of laws, loopholes, and real-world practices that can be tricky to navigate for both clients and sex workers.

Whether you're curious, considering getting involved, or just want to understand the legal side of things, here’s what you need to know about the legality of escorting in Canada.

🇨🇦 Is Escorting Legal in Canada?

Yes—and no.

Technically, it is legal to sell sexual services in Canada. A sex worker offering services independently and consensually isn’t breaking the law by doing so.

But... a number of surrounding activities are criminalized, especially under the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA), introduced in 2014.

🚫 What’s Illegal Under Current Laws?

Here’s a breakdown of what’s not allowed:

Buying sexual services is illegal. Yes, it’s a little ironic—but under PCEPA, it's the buyer, not the seller, who’s criminalized. This means clients can technically be arrested or charged for paying for sexual services, even if it’s between consenting adults.

Advertising someone else's services is illegal. If a third party posts an ad for an escort, that could be considered illegal. But self-posted ads by the worker themselves are generally tolerated.

Profiting off someone else’s sex work (pimping) is illegal. Anyone who profits from another person’s sex work—such as a manager or agency—can face criminal charges. This includes landlords or hotel owners knowingly renting space for sex work.

Public communication for the purpose of selling sex is restricted. Approaching people in public or communicating for the purpose of a transaction in certain public areas (like near schools or playgrounds) is prohibited.

✅ What’s Legal?

Providing sexual services independently An adult selling their own services, by choice, and without third-party involvement, is not breaking the law.

Advertising your own services If a sex worker advertises their own services, it is typically allowed—hence why escort ads exist online.

Private arrangements in private spaces As long as the transaction isn’t solicited in a public space and no third party is involved, private meetings are generally not prosecuted.

🔍 How Is This Enforced in Practice?

Enforcement varies by province and city. Some areas may have more aggressive policing of escorting and sex work, especially when it's visible or linked to human trafficking concerns. Others may take a more harm-reduction or tolerant approach, focusing on safety and health.

For example:

Toronto and Vancouver tend to take a less punitive approach toward independent sex workers.

Smaller cities or rural areas may enforce the laws more strictly.

🔐 Privacy and Safety

Because of the blurry legal boundaries, many escorts in Canada work discreetly and screen clients carefully. Communication is often done through encrypted apps (like Telegram or Signal), and meeting places are kept private.

For clients, discretion is also crucial—since paying for sexual services is technically illegal under federal law, there’s always a risk involved, even if enforcement is rare.

⚖️ Is the Law Changing?

There’s ongoing debate in Canada about the effectiveness and fairness of PCEPA. Critics argue that criminalizing clients still puts sex workers at risk, pushing the industry underground and making it less safe. Advocates for sex workers' rights have been calling for decriminalization, which would make both buying and selling legal—similar to the New Zealand model.

As of now, though, PCEPA remains the law of the land.

📝 In Summary:

Selling sex: Legal

Buying sex: Illegal

Advertising your own services: Generally allowed

Third-party involvement or profiting: Illegal

Public communication or solicitation: Restricted

Escorting in Canada operates in a legally complex and evolving space. Anyone involved—client or worker—should take time to understand their rights, risks, and how to stay safe.

[iliketheinternetbutimnotfamous]

↳ Teen Titan: I low-key hate Scooter Braun.

Even though I grew up as a die-hard Believer and probably had around thirty posters on my bedroom walls, I never knew much about Scooter. I LOVED Justin Bieber until I attended his first concert in Chilean territories in 2011, and the moment he started singing, I flashed a skeptical yet comical look at my parents and expressed, "This is not how he sounds in his songs" —anyways, what will you say to a seven-year-old regarding playback. Years passed, my taste changed utterly, and my vague knowledge of Scooter Braun became non-existent. I heard some things here and there, and to be fair, before I read Teen Titan, my emotions toward his image were primarily negative. 

But now, I am a 20-year-old who is pursuing a major in Film and frequently wonders if she will end up living comfortably in Beverly Hills with a pair of expensive Pomeranians, walk-in closets or will be returning to her third-world country to be miserable and live off jobs that are not related to the audiovisual field. 

Scooter Braun is a genius, and that's what I was trying to get to. The truth is that profiting off art and entertainment is horrible yet brilliant. But I also firmly believe Braun's luck was present because taking as a reference the business model of Basketball is risky, merely because sports and arts are different and attract publics that really differ from each other. I mean, yeah, we do have the SuperBowl and the FIFA WorldCup, but how often do we see sports fanatics acting like a 2012 Justin Bieber, 2013 One Direction, or 2014 5 Seconds of Summer fangirl trying to get noticed by their faves? That's what I thought. 

What stood out for me the most was Braun's shark mentality. He didn't want to be perceived as a one-hit wonder, and that's fine; I doubt anyone would. But he worked towards it. Hard. He got The Wanted, Rae Jepsen, who might be nearly irrelevant nowadays, but Jesus, they did their thing for a good couple of years. And I know Scooter Braun also worked with stars like Ariana Grande and Demi Lovato, so that wasn't the end for him. The hitmaker mentality worked amazingly for him, and I acknowledge he is —besides maybe a little lucky— an intelligent man who didn't get twisted between loving art and making people love art. 

On the other hand, it is interesting to read an article from 2012, considering that, as of 2024, Braun has retired, and people like Justin Bieber are no longer in his life —sad, to be honest. And as a conspiracy theory, I think retiring and working with HYBE shouldn't have meant drifting away from people I assume held emotionally substantial ties with him. One explanation is money. It is public knowledge that Bieber is one of these artists who have had enough multiple times, presumably from becoming too famous at a young age. Maybe, just maybe, some mixed feelings related to occasional borderline exploitation from Braun pushed Bieber to not remain friends with Braun. I guess we will never know.

[stargazing-zani]

I love love love the energy analogies of mako!! God I love it so much. It’s fascinating. Its unsubtle. It’s a flexible stand-in that highlights different issues depending on the player’s experiences!

As a Japanese game, ff7’s aesthetics and conflicts (which you described) are VERY nuclear. High risk, high reward, people on the underbelly get the worst of it. Long-term poisons linger. If your country has a history of nuclear disasters, mako can read as a very obvious tie-in that hits painfully close to home.

But if you have experience with fossil-fuel imperialism (like many Americans do — in an upper plate kinda way), Shinra exemplifies that too! Industry and expansion in Midgar and beyond poisons the environment and people, just like the systems of extraction here do.

I tend to read it as oil most often because of petroleum’s ever-presence. It’s so all-encompassing in our world today. The idea of mako being used to create fuels, medicine, construction materials, clothing, toys, cosmetics, fertilizer —! It plays into Shinra’s all-dominating atmosphere terrifyingly well, and I like toying with it.

But it’s not the what of mako that makes it compelling — even though I am FASCINATED with the glow goo — it’s the why and how. It’s how the pieces go together and what the ultimate cost is.

Maybe our future, or in an alternate earthen timeline, mako won’t mean nuclear or oil energy anymore. Maybe they’ll be some kind of bizarre future fuel that equally exploitative, just from a different angle with different outcomes (asteroid mining, anyone?). Maybe we’ll be greener, but the lesser of two evils will still feel kind of mako-y in comparison.

Maybe there’s a secret third energy analogy irl. (Please tell me!)

I know the popular comparison mako gets is to oil because of how destructive the extraction of it is and how Shinra’s attitude towards it can be read as a stand-in for american colonialism in the pursuit of oil, but the way mako actually works reminds me more of radiation and nuclear energy.

Large concentrations of mako in an area is toxic to breathe. It’s refined in reactors. When the reactors fail, it leads do devastating destruction of the enviroment around it, making surrounding areas unliveable and monsters more agressive. Mako poisoning and mako addictions are common afflictions in Midgar, the city of mako.

Obviously Mako is not going to fit in a 1:1 comparison to real life energy sources, but I think comparing it to nuclear energy is just as interesting as comparing it to oil

[jacensolodjo]

A lot of people point to Birobidzhan as proof of the Soviet Union not being antisemitic after all. But the fact of the matter is, while Birobidzhan was partially the brain child of a hopeful Jewish population, it was in fact a place they were allowed simply because it meant fewer Jews in the more populated areas of the Soviet Union.

Also don't get me wrong, Birobidzhan is not a ghost town. A bunch of Jews still live there (though honestly only 1% of the population now is actually Jewish). But it is a dying town. As Israel became a much more viable option for 'Soviet' Jews, the more Jews left for it. Or to the United States or Canada or wherever else. Birobidzhan's highest population numbers hit 80k in 1989, just before the Wall fell. It now hosts approximately 75k people, 1% of them Jewish. But there are also Gentile Koreans, Chinese, Ukrainians, Cossacks, Mongolians, etc.,

Birobidzhan was considered to some a compromise over going to Israel. The problem of course is that Birobidzhan was still in the USSR. However, you would not get blacklisted just by whispering its name like you would when talking of Israel. Because if Jews weren't dying in pogroms or giving up their 'Jewishness', having them leave the Soviet Union to instead be citizens of Israel was unacceptable. How DARE these Jews claim to not be Soviets? How DARE they leave behind the glorious Soviet Union? Even if we treat them like crap how DARE they leave!!

The area they were given for this new 'Jewish Autonomous Zone' was pretty much a desert. Jews were essentially being sent to wander the fucking desert again. Nothing really grew in Birobidzhan that could sustain such a population increase in the 1930s and anything that started to manage it often died off. Through a lot of hard work, they have greenery going on but not necessarily food. To say nothing of the infrastructure already there and just how isolated it really was. At least half of the Jews who arrived at Birobidzhan returned to whence they came because of just how difficult it was to live there.

By the way, did I mention that Birobidzhan was a place already occupied and the original population were told to pack up and get out if they didn't want to be around *gasp horror* jews?

While many Jews left for Birobidzhan of their own free will, many more fled there after being the target of pogroms and other antisemitic attacks in the rest of the USSR. It became a place that the powers that be (in a system that was supposed to give power to the people but didn't) knew they could find Jews to either exploit or kill anytime they fucking felt like it. Think Kristallnacht but many nights and many whims. You know, pogroms against people who had just fucking fled pogroms.

In this once upon a time in so called Jew Utopia, it was illegal to not only study the Torah (and the Talmud and everything else) it was also illegal to learn Hebrew or Yiddish (frequent visitors to my blog or just ppl who know will be aware this was true of basically every language that wasn't Russian which says a lot but i digress. But that does not mean everyone ONLY knew Russian because of course people will take the risk to learn a new language if they feel they must). Birobidzhan became a place eventually where they had a newspaper written in Yiddish (Birobidzhaner Shtern, meaning Birobidzhan Star in Yiddish appropriately enough) for a population that probably didn't even have it as a third language much less 2nd or 1st. It did however get the distinction of being the largest Yiddish language newspaper in the entire Soviet Union but as mentioned earlier that doesn't say much when the people of Biro barely got away with having Birobidzhaner Shtern in the first place.

It continues to publish to the present day so it can be considered one of the longest running Yiddish newspapers in the Eastern world (though not uninterrupted. There were many interruptions). It was also written in Russian, for all those Jews who never learned Yiddish (Not just because it was illegal. It sometimes wasn't viewed as necessary to know. Hebrew was used for worship and Yiddish for a long time was considered a lesser language when you already had German, Polish, Russian, etc., but many did still use it for everyday discussion. I have seen some people even now make fun of Yiddish which is... not cool. There is a difference between making jokes and making fun.)

Essentially, having any kind of proud Jewish soul was next to impossible in the Soviet Union. Worship was illegal, the language of our ancestors was illegal, our books were illegal. Yes, many still did all that stuff anyway but that doesn't erase it being illegal. If you were caught you could be executed for it same as many were executed for speaking or learning Ukrainian in the same time frame. Again, doing all this in Birobidzhan was basically living on borrowed time. At any moment the powers that be could decide they also could not stand having Jews in the ass end of nowhere being Jews.

Those living in Birobidzhan from the 1930s onward (remember, it was already settled when the Jews got there after a very trying journey) were all too aware that they weren't hidden. The powers that be knew exactly where Birobidzhan was, many Jews had actually been sent there from places like Ukraine and Belarus for being annoying about Russian settlement in their lands but not enough to send them to gulag. So they still lived in fear of the pogroms following them. They were also on the border with China and thus served as a low key deterrent for Chinese expansion. The Soviet Union even called the mass settlement operation the Birobidzhan Experiment.

In 1948, Stalin enacted a 'campaign against rootless cosmopolitans'. Cosmopolitan was almost always an antisemitic dogwhistle. 1948 is also when Birobidzhan was nearly bulldozed entirely. It had outlived its usefulness but managed to survive just barely.

Following this, 4 years later, in August 1952 came the Night (isn't it always for tragedies affecting Jews?) of the Murdered Poets. ALL 13 victims were poets who were Jewish and wrote predominantly in Yiddish. Some had a connection to Birobidzhan. Including a man who had the strongest connection to Birobidzhan, David Bergelson who came from a Ukrainian stetl before settling in Birobidzhan. Mere months later that same year, in November, St*lin erased all doubt about whether Jews were welcome anymore (and had never really been anyway): they weren't. He used the term Jewish Nationalist (basically any Jew that didn't consider themselves only Soviet) as well as a recorded use of the phrase "eat the rich" (again an antisemitic dogwhistle in that time frame; not saying it is now. it was also used against Ukrainian 'kulaks/kurkuls' to justify the Holodomor) in a speech to the Politburo.

It also continued his campaign for the Doctors' Plot, as that same speech had him railing about his belief that many doctors were 'Jewish nationalists'. From 1951 to 1953, any doctor was suspect even if they weren't at all Jewish (this was a belief shared by many nazis as well). With all of this going on, everything Jewish culture was closed down in Birobidzhan, just as in the rest of the Soviet Union. The mask had finally fully fallen approximately 30 years before the Iron Curtain fell and only 20 years after Birobidzhan was founded as a Jewish Autonomous Zone. Birobidzhan was never a true safe haven, nor had been the Soviet Union as a whole. The Soviet Union had always had the power to shut it down, it barely tolerated such a concentration of Jews simply because it was in fact so far away from 'civilization'.

Things only got marginally better for Jews in the Soviet Union when the Purim Miracle of 1953 happened: the death of St*lin. He had been ready to give the green light on a far reaching campaign that could have seen more than 75% of the remaining 'Soviet' Jewish population eradicated but, as the mention of Perum implies, this was stopped in its tracks with the death of St*lin. Even without St*lin, however, any Jew that so much as whispered about going to Israel was, again, blacklisted (which meant losing their jobs and homes) and given the title of the very thing Soviets hated: leeches aka people who relied on welfare (because remember they didn't practice what they preached about everyone deserving to have a life worth living no matter their ability or who they were).

Birobidzhan, while still populated, stands as a cautionary tale and proof positive that the Soviet Union lied for its entire existence about Jewish treatment and that russia has inherited this tendency. If it sounds too good to be true (especially for Jews), then it probably is.

TL; DR: there has never been a fucking Jewish utopia in the Soviet Union and anyone saying as such is a liar who has gaslit themselves into believing otherwise. With often the 'but there were SO MANY Soviet Jews' line being proof while forgetting (conveniently) that the USSR was a HUGE place to begin with that swallowed many countries that already had a well established Jewish population (Ukraine, for instance). And no points are given for pointing out 'marx was a Jew'. He was self-hating (and his entire family had converted away anyway) and led the charge in insisting Jews give up their Jewishness for the sake of communism. And Marxist Jews are deluding themselves.

[spanishskulduggery]

Do you know of any fossil words in Spanish, words that used to be common but fell out of use and are now only preserved in idioms? I tried looking on Google but all the results were English-only examples

I'll try and think of some others but here are the ones that come to mind; and I’m not sure all of these will be what you’re looking for.

si fuere menester = "in the event of" el menester used to be fairly common especially in the Medieval period, where it was another word for "need" or "necessity". Today you only see menester in si fuere menester which is an unusual construction as it is, since fuere is the future subjunctive - which is an obsolete tense - and so it literally means "should it be necessary". This expression only now shows up in contracts and legal contexts normally as "in the event of"

donde fueres haz lo que vieres = "when in Rome... (do as the Romans do)" Again, this is future subjunctive; literally "wherever you go, do what you see".. but in a more obtuse future subjunctive way "wherever you should happen to go, do whatever you may happen to see"

la urdimbre y trama = "warp and weft" The idea of this is related to "weaving", and though this phrase is rather antiquated or particular, it occasionally shows up as something like la urdimbre y trama de la sociedad or something where that's "the fabric of society". It's not the way you say that so much now [el tejido or la tela are more common], but urdir "to warp" was related to working a loom. You still do use tramar but it's not often that you see it related to weaving anymore... tramar is "to plot" or "to hatch a scheme", but you can see how "weaving" would go into "plotting"

so pena de = "under pain of" You don't often see so used in Spanish today, since it's a more direct link to Latin and Italian. And today la pena rarely means "pain" in the physical sense, it usually means "sorrow" or "anguish"... but again in legal cases, so pena de muerte is "under pain/penalty of death"

a diestra y siniestra = "all over the place" This expression literally means "to the right and left". The word diestro/a is still "right-handed" (also means "skillful" or "dexterous"), but siniestro/a used to mean "left-handed"... the idea that the left hand was more evil and "sinister", and "under-handed". In older contexts, siniestro/a means "left-handed", but in modern contexts you say zurdo/a for "left-handed"

al tuntún = "impromptu", "improvise", "on the fly", "by ear" This expression is derived from Latin, ad vultum tuum which is literally "to your face" in Latin. You never see tuntún anymore unless something is done al tuntún but it might be more regional; it just means you're making it up as you go

dormir como un ceporro = "to sleep like a log" Most people today say dormir como un tronco which is the same idea; el ceporro is a variation but it's extremely unusual to see it. Most people will use tronco if they have to

tuerto/a = one-eyed I'm actually not sure if people use tuerto/a still, since there are other ways to say "blind in one eye" or "one-eyed". In older Spanish, tuerto could show up as a "grievance", but in the expression en el reino de ciegos el tuerto es rey is still used sometimes, literally "in the kingdom of blind people, the one-eyed man is the king"

(el) haba = bean [technically haba is feminine] Not common to see el haba used much anymore except in certain contexts, and it's the root of la habichuela "bean". In Spain, sometimes haba is "idiot" so if you see el tonto del haba it's like "the biggest idiot that ever lived"

Vuestra Merced = "Your Lordship/Ladyship" This is the original form of it, but it eventually turned into usted "you" used for polite things. The title was Vuestra Merced and it was how you addressed someone without knowing their title, so it became very polite. In older Spanish you'd abbreviate it as Vd. which eventually became Ud. as the abbreviation for usted. Keep in mind that at a certain point in time, Spanish wrote the U sound as a V, and it followed more of the Latin pronunciation where the V had a softer U/W sound at times. Outside of Spain and works set in older time periods, you're unlikely to use vuestro/a - it even became informal plural "you all" in Spain - but you rarely ever see merced used. Chances are you're only going to see it was vuestra in front of it. But just know that vos has a very different meaning today than it did in the Middle Ages

meter/sembrar cizaña = "to sow discord" You're never going to see cizaña used in any other context unless you happen upon some botanical book. The literal translation is "darnel" which is sometimes called "false wheat"; basically la cizaña looks like trigo "wheat", and it grows close to wheat but it often has a fungus that's poisonous so you need to separate it. The idea behind it is that if you're deliberately planting cizaña you're actively trying to poison someone or make things worse

la celestina = "a go-between, a mediator" This word comes directly from La Celestina a novel written in Spain's Golden Age by Fernando de Rojas. In it there's a woman named Celestina who sets up meetings between women living in convents (who weren't always nuns) and men; acting as a go-between and chaperone for love affairs basically. The term was also la alcahueta but became celestina after the character in the book. Certain characters in literature are considered celestinas like the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet; basically the girl/woman can't risk her reputation so she has her maid or chaperone working to arrange things, and they're often the catalyst for things going wrong. In other contexts, celestina or una alcahueta is a "pimp" or "madame", or sometimes "a gossip"

pardo/a = brown, brownish-gray Today you’re only really going to see pardo/a used with animals. Specifically, el oso pardo is a “grizzly bear”, and pardo/a can be used with horses as “dun”. I don’t know if “grizzly bear” counts as an expression but anyway. In older Spanish pardo/a was another word for “brown” when it came to people too. Today, if you’re describing hair color as “brown/brunette” you’re using castaño which is literally “chestnut”, either castaño claro “light brown” or castaño oscuro “dark brown”. When it comes to things that are brown, the typical word is now marrón or sometimes you see it as color café which is “coffee-colored”

ser un caco = to be a thief Not commonly used as ladrón, ladrona “thief”, but un caco literally means “a Cacus”. Basically, Cacus was a mythological figure who stole some cattle and Hercules killed him. In some places people use un caco to mean “thief” as a euphemism

la Parca = the Grim Reaper Orginally, las Parcas were the Parcae in Roman (originally Greek) mythology. They were the sisters of fate who would measure someone’s life and eventually cut the thread. Today, it’s just one Parca and it’s typically a male figure, skeletal, with a scythe as the “Grim Reaper”, rather than it being a woman with scissors. That’s because during the Plague, people thought of Death as being a skeletal figure that held a scythe, the symbol for “reaping” wheat that was ripe.

manjar de los dioses = “nectar of the gods” / a delicacy el manjar is used in some places in certain contexts but it originally came from Italian as “food” or something “to eat”. Today, manjar is usually a “snack”, or in some cases it’s dulce de leche, but most of the Spanish-speaking world doesn’t use manjar so much. It is sometimes “delicacy”, but in older contexts it was code for “ambrosia”, the thing that the Greek gods couldn’t get enough of. The world manjar still feels very antiquated to me, but when it’s used it’s some kind of good food or eating a lot of food

valer un potosí = “to be worth a fortune” un potosí is pretty antiquated, but it came from the city Potosí in Bolivia which was famous for its silver mines that the conquistadores exploited. There are still some places that will use potosí as “something of great value”, though it’s not so common anymore unless you’re talking about the actual city.

moros y cristianos = “beans and rice” Usually it’s black beans and white rice, though this is literally “Moors and Christians”. You still use cristiano/a today but typically you only use moro/a in a historical sense

Also there’s the expression más sordo/a que una tapia where it means someone is really hard of hearing; literally “as deaf as a garden wall”, but I’ve never seen people use tapia ...only a muro or a cerca as “wall” or “fence”. The idea of tapiar is related to “mortar” and “masonry”

There are also some expressions related to metal and older words for it. For example, saturnino/a is an older word for “gloomy”, though it now refers to “lead-poisoning”. Saturn was linked to “moodiness” in alchemical society, and the symbol for Saturn was the older symbol for “lead”. 

This is similar to how áureo/a is “gold” but also linked to the “sun” because the Sun and gold are linked.

Another is el azogue which is the older word for mercury so it’d be “quicksilver”. You may see azogarse in some texts where it means “to be fidgetty” and it’s related both to mercury-poisoning, and probably to the idea of Mercury/Hermes being the messenger god so always on the move. 

There is also hidalgo/a which doesn’t have quite the same meaning it did originally. Today, hidalgo/a is sort of like “having noble blood”. It literally means “son of something/someone”, where originally in Spain hidalgos were the children of nobles - specifically, it tended to refer to the children of nobles who weren’t the firstborn male. Firstborn sons often got about 2/3 of the money and were expected to run the estates. The second or third or fourth children were usually on their own. It became a running joke that the firstborn became the lord, and the others would either join the army or the clergy. In Cervantes’s time, hidalgos could be among the poorest of society, even poorer than slaves in some cases. They were still “noble” in terms of blood though, and hidalgos couldn’t be tortured by the Inquisition because of it. So they were afforded certain rights, but usually tended to be poor or lower than you’d expect a noble to be. Today it just means “of nobility”, but in Cervantes’s time a hidalgo was the symbol of Spain under the Holy Roman Empire - wealthy and noble and glorious in theory, much poorer in reality.

I'd also add the phrases levar ancla "to raise anchor" or "anchors aweigh/away", where levar is rarely used today aside from nautical terms. Similarly, izar la bandera is "to hoist the flag"... not a lot of chances to use izar if it's not related to "flags" or la vela "a sail"

I also would say errar is less common today in Spanish. It's still used, but you normally say cometer un error "to make a mistake". Still, errar es humano, perdonar es divino "to err is human, to forgive divine". Also errar is weirdly irregular at times, it turns into yerro as present tense yo

And I’m also going to include when la manzana means a “city block”. Today manzana is not rare, it means “apple”. But manzana as a “city block” was originally mansana where it meant a “collection of manses/houses arranged in a block on a grid”. So there’s that. If you ever see manzana used for blocks in a city, it’s technically a separate word

Also depending on context el mar “sea” will be la mar with the feminine article. That’s usually more particular, usually meaning “open water” or deeper waters like alta mar “high seas”. The more poetic or open the water is, the more likely it is to be feminine, and so la mar isn’t quite so antiquated but it’s a little special

[othcrside]

❀ *◦ madelyn cline. genderfae. she/her. asexual grayromantic. ⇝ hey, isn’t that paige petras? i think that the ( twenty - eight ) year old from prague, czech republic works as waitstaff at the milk bar + research expert for the midnight thrillers mystery buster gang, but outside of that people describe them as making something just for the sake of creation, death inside a cylindrical glass, expressing yourself but never finding quite the right words, sublime confusion, eureka moments, bright fire, fast burnout, screaming into a pillow as loud as you can, the loneliness in a crowded room. i hear they are apathetic & cynical, but they are also known to be mellow & droll. consider giving them a visit at their home in winterwood estates and get to know why they’re called the all-american bitch.

╰ * STATS + PINTEREST.

tw: drugs, addiction, crime, murder/suicide + miscarriage mention

i feel for your every little issue, i know just what you mean.

born in the smoky grey haze that covered the earth after the fall of the soviet union, kirya nováková was the third child and first daughter of a criminal and a seamstress. she didn't know any of the danger that she was in, but she knew that no one was happy in her home. with her father away for work often and mostly absent and her mother perpetually sick, her oldest brother dominik took over the mantle. for the entire duration of her childhood, kirya remained blissfully ignorant of the world she had been born into, acting as a dutiful eldest daughter and taking care of her six younger siblings. the domestic life, cooking dinners and bathing squirmy little creatures, mitigating their playtime; that all ended the moment she got her first good mark in chemistry.

she always had a penchant for destruction; obsessed with fire and gasoline and heat and invention from a young age, it didn't take much reading for kirya to realize that she adored science. as a child, she could often be found conducting an experiment in her bedroom or one of their spare bathrooms. had she accidentally set their house cat on fire once? yes, actually. but she threw the cat in the bathtub after, so really, it was fine.

and i make light of the darkness, i've got sun in my motherfuckin' pocket, best believe

drugs were scary but incredibly fun to make, kirya thought. while she didn’t oversee the entire process, she was always the first one up in the morning to see their progress. it had kind of felt nice, if she was honest. like they were bonding as a real family, one whose dirty laundry she always picked up without complaint. dominik noticed this and wasn’t shy about exploiting it, which is why he told her one morning, when kirya was just a week shy of her eighteenth birthday, to try what she had made. apprehensive at first, she tried to say no — cooking and consuming were entirely different, and she knew what path she’d be taking if she said yes.

it didn’t matter, though, because he made her anyway. after that she was hooked. she must have been fucking good, hell, she was the fucking best for making something so addictive. what made it all the better was that she didn’t even have to buy it herself, she could have it anywhere, anytime. dominik didn’t want their cover blown, so he threw a couple grand at her and told her to go to university. you’re a superhero now, he said, you need a secret identity. she figured he was right, so she went to university, where she met her first husband, jack starling.

yeah, you know me, i forgive, and i forget, i know my age and I act like it, got what you can't resist, i'm a perfect all-american—

a grad student, very much so kinder, and a helluva lot more patient than kirya, it was difficult for her not to love him immediately. the only complication was that he was a foreign exchange student, coming from england. this didn't stop kirya from making advances anyway, which, much to her surprise, actually wound up working. their romance was a whirlwind, beginning with late night study sessions and ending in elopement. she had even gotten him hooked on her supply. she spent her nineteenth birthday in a villa on the coast of spain while all her classmates were getting trashed over winter break, and she didn't think life could get any better than this.

but when dominik found out about the marriage, he was quick to suggest nullification. kirya was against the idea, pushing back for the rest of her time at school. after graduation, she had figured the situation resolved itself — until she walked into their shared apartment in prague and discovered a note left by her husband, explaining why he had left and where she could identify his body once it was found. shortly after, her brother's friends emerged from the shadows and dragged kirya all the way back to her childhood home, confirming everything she already knew about her husband's sudden death. she was to remain on the property at all times, her only purpose now since receiving an education to cook as much as she possibly could.

i am light as a feather, i'm as fresh as the air, coca-cola bottles that i only use to curl my hair

she was lonely at first. her brother would try and strike up conversation, forcing her to respond if she didn't want to be the subject of his wrath. he liked doing that, kicking her around, reminding her how much of a fuck up she was. the only thing that seemed to stop him in his tracks was when kirya uttered the words, i'm pregnant. furious, she was worried he would drag her to the nearest hospital for an abortion — but the alternative was even worse. he held her down, syringe between his teeth, jabbing the needle into the crux of her arm. she sobbed and wailed, thrashing around until the dope melted in her bloodstream and she went weak, then started to smile.

kirya met her second husband shortly after miscarrying. she felt like a shell of the girl she once was, and with the traumatic end of her pregnancy she had also felt as if her first husband had truly gone away forever, leaving her in the world alone. enter: archibald dewitt. a wall street banker visiting prague for business, she stumbled across him in their living room buying a couple grams of cocaine from dominik. whenever her brother left the room, kirya approached archibald and batted her eyelashes at him, finding herself charmed by his american accent and two-piece suit. by the end of their meeting, archibald was paying extra for a night alone with kirya, and, much like with jack, she had him wrapped around her finger in less than twelve hours.

i forgive and i forget, i know my age and i act like it, i know my place, i know my place and this is it! she was on a plane to america within the month. archibald had told her that she could have anything she wanted now, so she chose a new name for her a new life. starr. she didn't know what to pick as a last name, but she didn't have to worry about that as she looked over and saw archibald bent on one knee. she would be his trophy wife, starr dewitt, and at last, she would live happily ever after in the heart of new york city as an american citizen. life doesn't nearly go as well as planned, however, so it wasn't too long before kirya found herself in yet another tragedy.

archibald was almost three decades her senior and most definitely susceptible to health issues. while she was enjoying the splendor of their newly purchased upper side penthouse, she heard the phone ring. she could feel something rotted in her gut, then, as their phone hardly ever rang. she walked up, picked it off the receiver on the last ring. ms. starr, is it? we have your partner here, it may be wise to get his affairs in ord— and then she hung up again. she didn't ask any questions, she knew the answers would be too horrific to face. she packed up all her belongings, old and new, and before he even went cold in that hospital bed she emptied out their bank account and ran.

i don't get angry when i'm pissed, i'm the eternal optimist, i scream inside to deal with it, like, "AAAAAA"

in anchorage, she found a new name and a new purpose to go with it: mosley 'mozie' wilder, your everyday worker and bartender, plus a mischievous decoder that specialized in the science of investigation. she also may or may not know how to build a bomb, you know, if the other mystery busters need one. but this time, this life, she wants to be different. she's sober from drugs and alcohol and thinking about entering the chemistry field for real — and yes, she is married again, this time to her best friend. but she only wears the ring to ward other men off. that's what she tells herself, anyway.

the only thing impeding on her happiness is a stranger from beyond the grave. for some reason, ever since arriving in anchorage, she's accrued the attention of a poltergeist. it leaves her mentally and physically drained, a vacant husk of the girl she was hoping she could become. her therapist says it's dissociation disorder, but mosley is the one person who knows the truth: she's being haunted, and no amount of smarts can save her from it this time.

oh, all the time, i'm grateful all the fucking time, i'm sexy and i'm kind, i'm pretty when i cry.

— tidbits !!

still speaks broken english and has a thick czech accent that's difficult to understand at times.

looks like a cinnamon roll, could actually kill you (but chooses not to.)

picked the name mosley bc she thought it sounded very american, wants to try and embody it but fails repeatedly. cannot banish the feral girl that lives within her.

currently being relentlessly haunted by the ghost of monique jackson; seems spaced out most the time, dissociates a lot and tends to be the last one to get the joke.

is comically bad at driving cars and has accrued a lot of tickets in both europe and america.

has a pet skunk named zuzanna or 'zuzie' that is deodorized and very well-loved by paige who thinks she is the perfect deterrent for unworthy men.

cut out drugs and alcohol and replaced it with video games; current favorites are diablo ii and the elder scrolls iii: morrowind.

has her first wedding band hanging from a chain around her neck, hasn't explained what it is to anyone except her current best friend/spouse.

sexually and romantically confused; knows she doesn't feel sexual attraction but still kinda likes the idea of sex, and the one person who she's ever felt any romantic attraction towards was her first husband. can be defined simply as: "who's to say?"

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

I've seldom seen it put so eloquently. The additions as well add a lot.

Fact is, there is a difference between "Leftists" and people who are are on the Left.

Leftism is a cult like following and obsession of being on the left and following anything and everything under it's banner no matter how FAR to the left it goes.

Being ON the Left just means, well....you happen to be on the Left.

But just to add a little to what was said above, Woke can mean a plethora of things in general. But to the point of "Oh well look at how cringe conservatives are" is kinda stupid. Jeremy's chocolate, and initiative by the Daily Wire, was in response to the weird marketing done by Hershey's. As to what woke marketing looks like?

-Belittle Whites -Prop up "PoC" at all costs (because it's fine to shit on others because of race apparently) -Be nauseatingly pro LGBT to the point all your adds feature gay couples and or shit on straight couples (while changing your same marketing in middle eastern and eastern cultures because you don't ACTUALLY give a damn) -Scream about the environment (all the while doing zero about it in the third world countries you exploit)

Or as Drudgery put it, performatively obeying the cult. Not because they believe in any of it (most of the time anyways). But because they can convince you they care enough to buy their products, or convince you to leave them alone to make money rather than burning them down with everyone else.

Jeremy's Chocolate, I BELIEVE is as ethically sourced as if can be. And their slogan is this in the commercial. "Why buy chocolate from a company that hates you. We love you. Well ok that's a lie, we don't love you, we don't even know you, but we certainly don't hate you". < Or something very similar to this. This isn't them being performative. They ARE conservatives. And while their goal is to make money they still wish to keep up with their values as much as they can.

Where as most companies are SO profit driven they will ignore that most normies don't actually like "woke" crap, but keep pumping it out anyways for 2 reasons.

1 is because ESG is a real thing and larger companies, LIKE BLACK ROCK, who abide by the ESG narrative will invest in woke companies because their "ESG" score is good. But also because they all hired late Gen Y/Early Gen Z marketing teams, who look at what Twitter was, which censored a lot of conservatives and normies off the platform for BS reasons, and all that left was LARGE names most of who were Neo Liberals and Far Leftists. Many of whom are also performatively woke. Sure some believe in the cult doctrine but it's more a self perpetuating machine of people that all act in accordance with what "Woke" is supposed to be. Except it keeps changing and getting more and more extreme.

Which is a reason you hear laughs from moderates and the right so often with phrases like, "Let the left eat themselves". Because Wokeness aside from being performative is based on Marxism, and is akin to a theology. Just one without a god. Unless you place Marxism in the slot of "god" for these people. Which would fit to some degree. For others that god would be "inclusivity and diversity".

However to further the point on how the Daily Wire and other conservative companies view this, it's easy. "We want to buy from companies that share our values". Simple concept no? For DW, it's, "Hey we don't hate you for being white. We don't hate you for being conservative. We don't hate you for being Christian, We don't hate you for being American. We also believe that men and women are distinctly different and not 'identical in every way' like the other side claims".

Though this is funny all things considered when you look at the woke companies. As explained by iteratedextras. These companies do NOT believe in what they preach. Ever notice the lack of a "Rainbow" image in the Middle Eastern and Asian markets during "Pride Month". A company who's morals were, "Be an ally to the lgbt" would never market in places that opposed those values. And yet, they do. Like in China, when they do their best to remove LGBT themes and Black people in movies. Because China is opposed to those things. Hell most movies coming out of Hollywood have a "China Cut". Why? Hollywood doesn't give a shit how "LGBT" you are. Those slimy assholes care about one color and that's green.

Yet the woke don't REALLY care if a company is opposed to their morals. So long as they PREFORM as if they do. Frankly speaking it's a circus show. Hopefully however this has been a welcome addition to the post.

[ascalonianpicnic]

so the twisted marionette is back and it seems like a good time for this~ @mystery-salad requested I do an essay on Scarlet and discrimination in STEM so~

Warning: discussions of sexism, racism, and ableism. If I got anything wrong (in terms of real world issues) or was disrespectful in any way about certain subjects please let me know

Hey, let's talk about Scarlet Briar. 

More specifically, I wanna talk about Ceara, and how she became Scarlet Briar. Because I'm a gay mathematician and former computer science major, and I think Scarlet is cool.

So let's start here. STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) is a heavily male dominated set of fields and career paths. A few decades back in the real world, there was this deep set societal belief, at least in western society, that cis women were just "worse" at STEM related things like math and chemistry. It's not as visible of an issue now, but, like I said, STEM fields are still really male dominated, and that's because STEM fields still have a massive issue with sexism. Women have full on left the field due to the sexism they faced in workplaces in just the last decade. Trans women in STEM share really interesting and important personal accounts about how before transitioning, they were treated with respect, offered high level jobs, and entrusted with loads of responsibility, and how post transition, despite having even more experience, are offered significantly lower level jobs, worse pay, and are all around treated like they know less. STEM has a sexism problem. 

So, why is this important to Scarlet? Well, her backstory and her life before Omadd's Machine actually tie in to this real world issue in a really fascinating way. It's about Respect. And Scarlet's story is about how she was denied respect over and over, because she was a sylvari, because she was a woman, and because she was neurodivergent. Let's talk about Ceara. 

Ceara was a sylvari secondborn, and an engineer from the start. She emerged from the Pale Tree when her race was still brand new to the world and largely unknown. She spent 8 years of her life studying all the Grove had to offer her about mechanics and nature and the universe. She was born curious and as such, was determined to learn everything and anything she could get her hands on. After her time in the Grove, Ceara left, off to find new teachers and extend her knowledge further. After the Grove cane Beigarth, a famed norn smith. He gladly took Ceara under his wing, seeing her genius and potential. For a year, she trained under him, his best student. Then, much to his dismay, she left, feeling she had learned all he could offer about what she wanted to know. She moved south, going to study under iron legion gladium and demolitionist Asagai. Asagai was an old charr, and it took some convincing on Ceara's end, but she eventually took the sylvari in and taught her about gunsmithing and artillery. And after two years, Ceara moved on again, this time heading for Rata Sum and its colleges. 

The asura of Rata Sum did Not like Ceara. She had to fight to be allowed to study at the colleges. She won in the end, being admitted into the college of Dynamics. Within a year, she finished the course work, and, feeling like she was finally getting somewhere, she applied again, this time getting admitted to Statics. Two years and two colleges down, at the top of her class both times, Scarlet still wanted more. The Arcane council was curious now if she could keep this streak up, so they let her enter Synergetics. This was what she had been looking for, and she got deep into her studies, taking her time. The Arcane council was unimpressed with her work at best. While not driven from the colleges, she found herself being walked off and looked down on more and more, so she sought other sources. These other sources, both of knowledge and support, came from the inquest, and it wasn't long before she fell in deep. It didn't last, however. When the krewe she was working with ran into trouble, she was abandoned as a scapegoat, and thrown out of the asuran colleges. She wandered on her own for a while, taking the time to study alchemy with the michotl hylek, but mostly keeping to herself. Until Omadd found her, pulled her back into his personal research, and, with her help, built Omadd's machine. Once it was finished, Ceara walked in, and Scarlet walked out. 

Sexism in STEM means that people perceived as female are often perceived as knowing or understanding less than they actually do. It's because of this that you'll find young cis male students in STEM classes trying to correct or speak over their female presenting professors. It's why you'll find men at science conferences telling the women presenting for certain topics that they don't seem to understand the topic they're covering or grasp the basics that well, and then recommending or referencing books and research papers written by these women. It means that women will often be overlooked for internships, research positions, and grants. And that is the sort of thing Scarlet faced as a young woman trying to learn everything she could. She had to work for the apprenticeships she could get, and with Beigarth, despite how highly he thought of her, she had to work harder to prove she was ready for more each step of the way. Finding anyone to teach her at all among the charr was a struggle, until an older woman took her in. And no one in Rata Sum took her seriously. 

There was more than just the fact that Scarlet was a woman at play with Rata Sum though. As stated, STEM has a bad sexism problem. But that's not all. STEM isn't just mostly men, but also mostly white men, and as such, the fields have a bit of a racism problem as well. Personally, I can only speak so much to this as I myself am white, have never faced racism, and never will face racism. I do know that the intelligence, skill, and effort of people of color goes largely unacknowledged. They will be denied the same opportunities and respect that their white peers receive, and their work and contributions will be ignored, exploited, and stolen. 

Racism in Tyria isn't the same as it is in the real world, though it is still present there, and prevalent. And it is something Scarlet has to face and struggle with repeatedly as a sylvari. The sylvari are young and new to Tyria. Because of this, the other prominent groups all tend to think of sylvari as innocent, ignorant, and overly naive. The asura are especially bad about this. They already think of themselves as the smartest of Tyria's inhabitants, above everyone else. And when they first encounter the sylvari, the asura refuse to believe this new group could even be sentient. So, when 11 year old Ceara shows up at the colleges, the Arcane Council and the asura in general doubt she could possibly understand asuran studies. She's a sylvari, after all, and just a girl on top of that. There's surely no way she could keep up. 

So when this young sylvari girl finishes at the top of her class in just a year, not once but twice, the Arcane council is intrigued. They don't respect her. They don't hold her work in high esteem. But they do want to know if this is some sort of fluke or if she can do it again. So she's admitted into the third and final college, and when she gets caught up in her studies, genuinely interested and invested in what she's learning and wanting to take her time to take it all in, the Council is disappointed. Never mind that Scarlet has already done what no other non-asura has. She took too long doing what she loved, learning, so the Council dismisses her, and dismisses her hard work. Her theories are looked down upon and ignored, and she is left with only support from Omadd, who can use her and her theories for his own gain, and the inquest. Omadd and the inquest make her feel valued and respected. The inquest let's her try anything she wants, it lets her really explore the fields of study she's most drawn to. The inquest makes sure to profit off her hard work and, when it comes down to it, the inquest leaves her to take the fall for everything. It's easy, after all, to pin the blame on someone already so looked down on by the society she's in. Scarlet is kicked out of the colleges and the city. She loses her access to information, her belongings, and even her own research and findings. All her hard work, taken from her because the inquest was more than glad to use a sylvari. 

And then of course, there's Omadd. He was glad to have Scarlet as a lab assistant, and endlessly fascinated by and supportive of her work. So once she's gone from Rata Sum, he leaves too, taking her research and starting on his own personal project. He gets stuck, he seeks Scarlet out, and he convinces her to help him again. Once Scarlet is back on board, the project goes smoothly and the two construct Omadd's Machine. Omadd's. Despite being built off Scarlet's theories and research, despite her being integral to the construction of this machine, it's Omadd's and it carries his name. Funny how that happens, isn't it? And once the machine is up and running, he thinks Scarlet should test it first. Who knows what could happen in there, better to leave it up to the assistant to try it out, and frame it as her getting the honor of the first try. As we all know, it goes poorly. Scarlet learns so much more, all the knowledge she had been seeking for over a decade, but in return, the seeds of Mordremoth are planted in her mind and slowly take over, destroying her. 

Now Scarlet, who has been used and devalued and disrespected and infantilized every step of the way, her whole life, is going to start tearing down the things that held her back for so long. She just needs a plan, and with the help of a certain sleeping dragon, one begins to form. 

There's something I glossed over earlier that is so important to note, and that's how Scarlet was treated in the Grove. Now, it's been stated explicitly by Scott McGough, a narrative designer for the fame, that Scarlet emerged with lacking empathy. Low empathy doesn't make Scarlet, or anyone, a bad person. It's sometimes a symptom of autism, as well as some personality disorders, and it does affect how Scarlet is treated. As an autistic person myself, Scarlet very much reads as autistic to me, between low empathy, a one track mind, and an intense special interest in the universe and its mechanics. She has a hard time connecting with others, is easily bored by subjects that don't relate back to her special interest, can focus intently on and get caught up in her work, and doesn't really get social graces or expectations. Regardless of any diagnosis she would have if she existed in our world, Scarlet is treated differently due to her low empathy, a trait she cannot help about herself. 

From the moment she emerges in the Grove, she is treated differently. She is talked down to. Her desire to take in her first sights and how it overwhelms her is dismissed as overconfidence and rudeness. Her own brother, barely older than her, talks like he knows so much more than her. Scarlet is an outsider among her own people. How does it feel to have low empathy among a race connected to each other deeply through empathy? Probably not great. Her studies in the Grove are limited, she is treated as rude and prideful for wanting to be independent and needing space. Rather than being accommodated, rather than being understood, Scarlet is infantilized, dismissed, and disregarded. She isn't neurotypical. She was born different. She's punished for it. 

When she emerges from Omadd's Machine, made from her own hard work and creativity, Scarlet Briar is a young woman who has frequently been overlooked and rarely understood. All these thoughts and ideas, all this passion, and the only people who have ever even seemed to understand her have used and betrayed her so thoroughly. Scarlet Briar has always had to look out for and take care of herself, as a woman, as a sylvari, as someone who is neurodivergent and is in a field that doesn't respect a single aspect of her identity. The world won't accommodate her and the world won't take her seriously. So why shouldn't she show the world what she can do? Why not force everyone to recognize her for who she is? Why not give in just a little to that voice that has been calling to her in her nightmares since she left the machine? After all, it promises power and recognition and a sense of belonging.