#'what if the oppressed person was the REAL bad guy and went Too Far' type deals. at least that's not my intention

[irregularbillcipher]

DO YOU KNOW WHAT SPAWNED YOUR EXISTENCE?

[ID: Two lineless, digital paintings, both with warm, dark gray backgrounds. Both canvases are shaped like exact squares.

Painting one shows an adult Bill Cipher, a bright yellow triangle with a top hat, bow tie, cane, singular eye, and long lashes, reaching out to shake hands with the Axolotl, a pink axolotl with an electric blue tail. Bill is looking at the Axolotl casually, and his outstretched hand is engulfed in blue flames, while the Axolotl is smiling at Bill gently, reaching out to take his hand. There are stylized stars, similar to sparkles, in the top right and bottom lefthand corners of the painting. The painting is textured so that you can see the gray of the canvas very faintly through the brush strokes.

Painting two consists mostly of a short passage from Edwin Abbott Abbot's Flatland, written in light gray over the dark background. The passage is the beginning of chapter 7, and reads as follows:

"7. Concerning Irregular Figures

I for my part have never known and Irregular who was not also what Nature evidently intended him to be-- a hypocrite, a misanthropist, and, up to the limits of his power, a perpetrator of all manner of mischief..."

Below the quote, near the very bottom of the page, is a tiny illustration of a very young Bill Cipher. He is drawn completely in grayscale, and is looking down at the ground angrily, fists clenched. He is wearing a pauper's cap and has bandages wrapped around his rightmost angle, which is noticeably longer and more acute than his other angles.

End ID]

[writingwithcolor]

Gingerbread man as golem

@yaronata asked:

I would like to write a character who is Jewish and uses a Golem. She's based on the D&D class of the artificer which looks magic but isn't, because they produce all their effects with inventions, like the "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" quote. Her story is that her very Jewish town was under attack from a terrible monster when she was little. Her Rabbis made a Golem to protect the town, and it succeeded but was torn to pieces in the process. She was fascinated by the Golem and as a kid didn't see a big difference between it's sentience and person's so was really thankful for its sacrifice like you would a person's sacrificing their life for you. They thought all the pieces had been devoured by the monster before it died, but she went looking and found the piece used to animate the Golem, which she, kinda misunderstanding called its "heart". She kept the piece and grew up to be an incredibly skilled cook, specialising as a baker in the town. I imagine she would make a lot of really good food for the Jewish holidays, or to break fasts on ones like Yom Kippur or Tish'abav. But she also made a town specific holiday to honour the Golem's sacrifice and the town still being alive, because I feel "we are not dead woo" is a big theme for Jewish holidays from my research, so it could fit, for which she invented ginger bread men to be the golem, and gave them little "hearts" of fruit or honey, and you're meant to eat them limb by limb like the beast did before eating the heart. This would be the inspiration for using the "heart" piece later to make her own giant gingerbread Golem to help her save the world.

These are my questions 1) would it be considered bad or disrespectful for someone who isn't a Rabbi to make a Golem, or is this method of taking an animating piece someone else made disrespectful? 2) Her journey will take her far from her town and her Jewish family and friends and she will likely travel with gentiles. Would it be disrespectful for a Golem to be used to protect a lot of gentiles and one Jew in the course of saving the world? I don't want to fall into the stereotype of someone putting all their effort into valuing and protecting very specifically the group that in real life is oppressive to them. 3) While she is not using magic and is actually mimicking its effects with technology she invents, is this drawing too close to the line of "magical Jew"? 4) I like to "play test" my characters in ttrpgs to really get a feel for them before I write. Would it be disrespectful to play a Jewish character when I am a gentile, and would it be disrespectful to play a Jewish character in a setting where there are demonstrably real gods other than the one of Judaism?

I really like this character idea and I think it's cute and fun and rooted in Jewish culture but I really want to make sure it's respectful and as good as I, a gentile researching on the internet, thinks it is. Thanks so much! Have a nice day!

My answer to this is very complicated because there are things I both like and do not like about this premise. First of all, I love the idea of a cookie golem, and I'm even imagining the magic word that brings him to life (EMET/truth) would be written in icing. And I'm okay with the part about how she found a piece of the old golem and used it to build a new golem, because that makes sense for a golem made from a baked good when you think about how people use sourdough starter to make a new batch of sourdough.

However, here are the thing that make me cock my head to the side like my little sister's German shepherd:

1. re: "magical Jew" - that's not a trope I've ever heard of. Remember, marginalized groups don't receive identical disrespect across the board. It is indeed a trope to use Black people or disabled people as supernatural plot devices who exist only to further the stories of white main characters or able-bodied main characters. But I can't say as I've ever seen anyone using Jewishness that way. Usually if we are someone's one-dimensional plot device it's as someone's lawyer, fixer, "money guy", etc, not a supernatural force. So this isn't something you have to worry about.

2. I have a certain level of discomfort with you playing as a Jewish character just because playacting as a marginalized culture you're not part of strikes me as off, but I understand that that's how you gain insight into a character you're about to write so it's more of a writing exercise than anything else. (I wonder if D&D regulars from marginalized groups have written about this -- I've only played a few times casually with family so if I did run into this type of discussion in my social justice reading I wouldn't have absorbed it. If anyone is curious I played first as Captain Werewolf, and then switched to playing as Cinnamon Blade because lawful good was too hard. :P )

3. I would prefer you omit the detail about eating the cookies piece by piece symbolically, for two reasons: a. it unintentionally evokes Communion by having appreciative people consume a baked good symbolic of an entity who sacrificed his life for theirs, and b. focusing on the details of flesh consumption reminds me too much of Blood Libel (yes, a gingerbread man is in the shape of a person but how many of us actually think about it literally, the way this act would cause?)

As to your first question: I'm fine with her making a golem even though she's just a rando. Second question: I see what you're saying and maybe it could be more okay if it's really clear how well these gentile folks are treating her? And questions three and four are answered above.

I really do love the idea of a giant gingerbread man golem. Cookie golem T_T <3

--Shira

I would like to second Shira’s point about not ripping apart the gingerbread cookies. I honestly would prefer they were used as decoration, and other cookies eaten instead, since that part just feels so not-Jewish to me, but I don’t have golem-specific issues other than that. It seems like you have already been doing a lot of research, which is appreciated.

As far as the ttrpg/DnD aspect… I bounce back and forth on the topic of playing characters that are so very different from our experiences, other than in fantasy-related ways. However, I am aware that a lot of people will play with, and experiment with gender in game, and learn something about themselves in the process (the number of trans players of ttrpgs who tried out their gender in game before they were out is high). It’s different with Judaism, and even more significantly different when it comes to things you can’t convert into, like various actual, real-world races. But because people do sometimes experience growth from experiences like this, I’m hesitant to dissuade players completely. I do urge you to, at a minimum, bring the same care, research, and willingness to learn, that you brought to this question.

--Dierdra

This sounds like a creative storyline that you could have lots of fun with 😊

At first I was confused by this part:

She also made a town specific holiday to honour the Golem's sacrifice

But then you really got me thinking about different types of Jewish holidays and how they come about, so thank you for that!

Because it’s often the little details that either make a story super powerful or kind of nonsensical, I think it would be a good idea to decide what type of holiday is being created here:

A full-blown chag with restrictions on labour and halachic obligations? These are commanded in Torah and new ones can’t be added.

A minor yom tov with halachic obligations but no restrictions? These were instituted by the rabbis prior to the destruction of the Temple, so again new ones can’t be added.

A public holiday or equivalent? This would usually be declared by the Knesset in Israel, and filter to the rest of the Jewish world from there.

A community-based yom tov with specific customs only for people in the know, such as certain Chasidic groups celebrating the birthdays of their deceased leaders? I asked around, but no one can really tell me how these holidays get started, which is probably a good indication that they arise quite organically from a group of people who all just feel that it should be celebrated. Probably not created by a single person, as such.

Something she runs from her bakery, not religion-based, but more like a day of doing special products and deals the way many small businesses do on their anniversary?

Now, if the people of a modern-day town were actually saved by a real live Golem, that would arguably be the most overt miracle for many generations, so there would be a decent chance of options 3 and/or 4 happening. It’s entirely plausible that there could be special foods for this day that become a tradition, including Golem cookies. People who directly benefited might also return to the site where the Golem fought the monster and recite the prayer, ‘Blessed is Hashem, Master of the Universe, Who performed a miracle for me in this place.’

Alternatively, if it’s important that your MC created the holiday, something like option 5 might be the best. Hopefully this will still fulfil what you need: you describe her as incredibly skilled, so I can imagine the day when she goes all out on the Golem cookies being one of the most exciting events of the year for the townspeople, just because her baking is that good. Plus, they already have a personal stake in the Golem’s sacrifice, so I definitely think it could be a thing without being an official holiday. Also, if she is outside of an all-Jewish environment, don’t forget that she would have to decide whether to commemorate the anniversary in the Hebrew calendar or the local one.

Coming back to the cookies, sorry if we’re getting a little repetitive on this point! But I don’t see the cookies being torn limb from limb as part of a celebration. First of all, this doesn’t sound like a very celebratory thing to do, to say the least. Can you imagine explaining that to a three-year-old on their first Yom HaGolem? They would be terrified! (I don’t read this suggestion as accidental anti-Semitism so much as getting carried away with a metaphor, which I’m sure as writers we have all done!)

But also, it’s worth pointing out that our commemorative foods aren’t usually that literal. If you think about hamantaschen, maror, or apple in honey, they’re all symbols. That’s not to say that having Golem-shaped cookies is a problem, as this sounds like just a bit of fun that the MC is having and not something that is directly at odds with Judaism or Jewish culture. But it’s worth bearing in mind that the more literal you go from there in terms of tying the cookies to the event they commemorate, the less culturally aligned your holiday food becomes.

Finally, about the Golem protecting non-Jewish people: I like this idea! There’s a stereotype that we only use whatever is at our disposal to help ourselves and other Jewish people, so a Golem being created by Jews but helping others as well is a big plus for me. Of course, as has already been pointed out, this would be an odd choice if her Saving The World team were anti-Semitic or otherwise disrespectful to her/her community, but I don’t think you were headed that way!

-Shoshi

I have to come back in here just to squee over the phrase “Yom HaGolem.” Well done :D

--Shira

[gone-daddy-gone]

｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈•ﾟ｡｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈•ﾟ｡｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈•ﾟ｡｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈•ﾟ｡｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈•ﾟ｡

TW: yandre, toxic relationships, abuse (emotional, some physical stuff but they don’t outright hit you), coercion, mentions of blood, spanking, twins are kinky

｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈•ﾟ｡｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈•ﾟ｡｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈•ﾟ｡｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈•ﾟ｡｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈•ﾟ｡

❝ 𝒢𝑒𝑜𝓇𝑔𝑒 𝒲𝑒𝒶𝓈𝓁𝑒𝓎 ❞

let’s start with the type of yandere he is

i think he is an unholy combination of obsessive, protective, and delusional 

lets unpack this shall we

he, just like his brother would be the type to obsess and obsess about their darling day in and day out

making jokes about what classes they could be in (for the explicit purpose of finding out from their peers which one they actually are in)

picking at his finger nails as he mauls over what you could be doing at that exact moment, who you could be talking to

he goes to the bathroom at least once in every class just so he could walk past your class and catch even just a glimpse of you

scrawls your name on every paper he can, whispers your name to himself when he...has his privacy 

if he is in a relationship with his darling or not, he is over protective 

we all know what he did to draco for calling his mother a name, just imagine what he’s willing to do for someone he’s in love with

one time he over heard a group of boys detailing what they want to do to your body 

and he lost it

he felt his fingers curl, and his face twitch, before he turned around and knocked a kids head into another kid

at the sight of their blood, he felt a rush of encouragement 

as if the blood was some form of physical proof to his devotion to you

needless to say he beat them to a bloody pulp before finally coming out of his angered state

a very concerned fred behind him

fred knows his twin though, he knows he can get a little, rowdy sometimes 

he’s seen him do this before, and fred wasn’t exactly a saint himself 

he’s also a bonfide stalker

mascaraing his dark intentions by vehemently swearing that he’s only lurking in the dark hallways near your dorm to plant some of his pranks for everyone to enjoy in the morning 

fred eating up every lie his twin said 

because he says it with so much enthusiasm he just can’t help but go along

if you two are dating this is only made worse

for both you and he offender

he follows you everywhere

a firm hand on your hip making you think he was gonna crack your hip bone in those slender fingers of his

every single person who talks to gets some weird kind of vague threat about waking up with spiders crawling out of their eyes

or about how well he can truly swing his beater bat

slowly but surely the only people that talk to you become the teachers

every student (besides the weasley family) far too scared to even look in your direction

it was isolating 

so much so that you needed to end it

and that goes horrible 

him telling you that you can’t leave him

and that he can’t live without you

you’re his everything!

but you’re not having it, and you tell him to stay away

all is well

for a few days

you don’t see george hanging around anymore

some students have started talking to you again

you can finally breathe 

you feel so confident that you resign to throw yourself into your work alone in the library 

its a quiet night, not a single kid is in sight 

probably all partying in some house dorm on campus 

you’re just so wrapped up in your little studying that you don’t even feel georgies presence behind you

“did you miss me love?” is the last thing you hear as goose bumps cover your flesh and black clouds your vision

when you do happen to come to, you’re in some small white room bound and gagged

finding yourself staring at your ex boyfriend who currently wrapped himself around you like an anaconda 

you make a shrill scream through your gag prompting he sleeping giant to awake from his slumber 

this is when his delusional side truly sets in

when you cry to him and beg to home he chuckles and runs his fingers through your hair, telling you that you are home silly!

reciting all the “conversations” you two had about running away together 

about how sick of school you are 

how you can’t wait to finish school and two months, you need to get out now

of course you tried to convince him otherwise 

but he wouldn’t listen 

only saying how much he loves you and how much you two were meant to be together 

one can only stay in his fictional world for so long 

and with your insistent telling him you hate him, crying, begging, and hitting...well it could make a man snap

he never puts his hands on you

opting to throw things at you for crying when he enters the room

screaming at the top of his lungs terrible terrible things he wants to do to you, plans to do to you 

then he starts crying because he’s never been good enough for anyone

how hes unlovable, always the second choice 

before he starts screaming insults at you for crying in terror at his mood swings

saying that if you would just love him back you could of stopped all of this

eventually he collapses in your arms, whispering sweet nothings as tears leak out of his eyes as his fit had finally wore him out

if you want to avoid his punishments, you best figure out how to make him feel loved

his punishments are on the less extreme side, at least compared to his brother 

he’ll tie you completely down, to the point where you can’t move any joints at all

this serves as a means for him to feed you 

almost like a lover

allows him to cuddle you without you biting him again

sometimes he spanks you till you can’t sit down anymore

getting a rather sick pleasure out of seeing your plump ass black and blue

isolation, so bad that he won’t see you face to face or feed you for days, and on one occasion, a week long 

you began to give in to him rather quickly 

giving him sexual favors in turn for food

cuddling with his so he’ll let you walk around outside in the sunlight

calling him daddy like he asked so you could see pictures of your old friends and family

all in all having george as your yandere could be an amazing time, with him making you home made meals

singing you to sleep

him praising you for every correct action

so long as it’s the correct, action after all

❝𝓕𝓻𝓮𝓭 𝓦𝓮𝓪𝓼𝓵𝓮𝔂❞

his type is protective and obsessive 

it starts out small

maybe him just glaring at kids who talk about you

telling them to keep your name out of their mouth or he might just wash it out with soap

all said with a smile on his face of course

so no one really takes him seriously 

that is until he starts putting a curse on students who said your name that etched some vile things into their skin 

they kept quiet of course 

not wanting whatever else the sick red head had up his sleeve to be perpetuated on them

so when he made it increasingly obvious that he had a liking to you

you were nothing less than thrilled 

he was on the Gryffindoor quidditch team after all 

and quiet handsome to boot 

and at first everything is grand

he writes you love letters

sings to you

lets you wear his jersey

has you hang on his arm everywhere you go 

and honestly, he starts out as perfect gentleman

but that is until the cracks beigin to appear 

and you start to see his cute protective side turn into his obsessive and selfish side 

it started off with him not wanting you to talk to other guys

which was a dramatic request, but still in the realm of reality 

then it went from just boys to everyone

he said that everyone in all your classes talked trash about you

saying that it was best to just shut out those fake people

to rely on him and his family

they were real, wholesome people afterall

then when you’re isolation wasn’t enough for him he would get angry at you for looking too long at anyone really

you would receive long lectures about how you don’t truly love him because you have your eyes on other people  

you would swear up and down that you do love him

only for him to respond to prove it

if that wasn’t enough, he had to be with you at all times, he would wait outside your class room with his brother and his darling escorting you to your next class

he would stay with you up until the very last moment he could

sometimes he would force you to sneak into his dorm, or let you into yours

if you’re a trooper and can take all of this pressure with a smile, then you get to keep your life at hogwarts under his oppressive thumb

but if you decide it’s too much...

well just like his brother, you end up in a cold white room

although unlike his brother, he has a grip on reality and knows just what he’s doing

he’s heard of Stockholm syndrome before...and you already loved him before 

how hard could making you fall in love again be?

he’s still a perfect gentlemen, but this time when you don’t do what he wants 

he doesn’t hold back

he does try his hardest not to lay his hands on you

his mother taught him better after all 

but sometimes he finds himself grabbing at the strands of hair in your scalp and yanking them at a force no person should have to feel

or other unfortunate occasions he would slam you full force into a wall when you got a little mouthy and told him those lies about how you don’t love him

how no one kidnaps the ones they love 

he would always apologize and kiss you all over, detailing about how sorry he is

how if you would just be a good girl he could treat you how he prefers to

aside from that another form of his punishments is making you get through one of his traps he set up, he calls it the whipping machine

if you can get past all the lashings that cause welts and sometimes blood to from your skin

then you get to eat for the night

and if you don’t well then you get to sit there all night and the next morning without food and until you can complete his tasks 

if he’s in a more cheerful mood when you misbehave he gives you one of his new inventions to try out 

you shutter to think about what happened to your skin the last time he gave you one

he doesn’t force himself onto you

but he lets you know that if you give him what he wants then he’ll give you a new privileged

your latest privilege was getting a book to read while he went off to go work on the shop

fred much like his brother, isn’t all that bad

if you can stand the whipping tree

and his outburts

↷𝔻𝕠𝕦𝕓𝕝𝕖 𝕋𝕣𝕠𝕦𝕓𝕝𝕖↶ (mostly sex- choking, slapping, not vanilla)

having both the twins as yandere’s is by far the worse outcome

god do they feed on each other

usually, they compliment each other in the best ways 

but yandere twins,,,not so much

fred feeding into george’s insecurity 

george feeding into fred’s whole they belong to us mentality 

and between the two of them, there’s nowhere in the school you could escape from them

somehow someway they always find you

pestering you until you oblige them

with them having someone else to feed into their obsessions they both detonate at a faster rate than individually 

it would be george would decided that they needed to kidnap you

and fred was the one that planned it all out

the room they kept you in as a collective was much better than it would be if it was one on one

far more things to do

far better blankets 

more time time outside what with the two of them being there to stop you

the doors were all enchanted to spray some weird liquid at you that would make you drop down as the alarm was set off 

they would come running and laughing

going back and forth about how silly you are to think you can get away from them

they would pick you up and tell you that it was time for your punishment now

which almost always tended to be sexual

which you endured if only for the sake of your future 

this included over-stimulation 

spankings

choking 

slapping you around

and your eventual begging for forgiveness 

the twins are rather kinky in bed

the more obvious ones being double penetration

they liked to be refereed to as daddy or sir

nipple clamps

bondage

hair pulling

flogging

sensory deprivation

they want to do it all to you

they just can’t help it with how beautiful you are

and he worst part is, you like it

you like being treated like an object in bed

you knew it

the twins knew it

its rather hard to fake disdain for them when they make you cum over and over again during sex

maybe that’s what helped you to slowly begin to break 

slowly start to believe yourself when you said you loved them

after all, when you just love them and do what they say...it isn’t all that bad

[thevindicativevordan]

Any thoughts on Grant Morrison's Action Comics run? Beyond T shirt-and-jeans Superman being great.

That whole run reinvigorated my love of the character.

There have been numerous thoughtpieces about New 52 Superman, how he worked and how he didn't but these two entries really do a great job of summing up why Morrison's take on Superman was great. Morrison laid the foundation for a new generational Superman that DC completely fucked up and ran into the ground. I'll always be bitter about that, even if I had tapped out of reading the New 52 Superman books by the end due to how bad they got. Editorial and their idiotic mandates were what screwed over the potential of this take in my eyes.

Now I get that it wasn't to everyone's taste, but I cannot fathom how anyone could ever claim that Pre-Flashpoint Superman was better. If you liked Byrne's reboot better, your guy already got rebooted after Infinite Crisis. For someone like me who really enjoyed the Johns/Busiek era, that era's potential got spoiled after Johns & Busiek left, with New Krypton imploding and the awful Grounded taking it's place. When you get to the point where the best Superman book is the one starring Lex Luthor, it's time to reassess the franchise and figure out where the hell it went wrong.

Which is exactly what Morrison did. For this new Superman, Morrison mined all the best ideas of every Superman era to really give what I consider the ideal "base" for Superman. They also took pains to address common criticisms about Superman, working to correct his pop culture image. People have been complaining that Superman is "too perfect", "too unrelatable" for a long time, so Morrison addressed that. They gave Superman his balls back, and let him reacquire that Golden Age edge he had originally.

There are a lot of complaints you can make about Morrison's Superman, but I don't see how you could accuse this guy of being "flawless" or "bland". He definitely had a personality that you could describe, love him or hate him. Compassionate, but not a pushover. Clearly holding himself back, but unafraid to occasionally let loose. Flaws that were patently obvious, Clark had a temper here that could get him into trouble. There was a real showcase of anger here, of Superman being furious at the way people were treated by the rich and powerful, then doing something about it that I ate up.

I read this run just as I was coming into my teens and it hit perfectly for where I was in life. Did not want a Superman who would smile and tell me it gets better, I wanted a Superman who looked you in the eye and told you he felt that same anger, and then encouraged you to go out and do something about how you felt. That was what this run delivered in spades, and it expanded what I believed could be done with Superman.

While it totally blew my mind to see Superman acting this way the first time I read Morrison's Action Comics run, in retrospect it really isn't that different from how Superman has acted even under Byrne. One of the few traits I've seen carry across Superman incarnations in the comics is that he has a temper underneath that affable nature. "Don't tug on Superman's cape" as the old song goes. This run simply elevated that to the forefront of the character again, for the better in my eyes given I believe "Wrath" is Superman's Deadly Sin.

In fact, one of the strongest features of this run is that Superman gets actual character development over the course of the run, analogous to what Batman underwent in Morrison's Bat-Epic. While the Bat-Epic was merely Morrison re-canonizing Batman's entire history, and applying a retroactive character development storyline that culminated in Morrison's current Batman work, their Action Comics run had them attempt to craft something similar for Superman from scratch. What that meant was Morrison attempting to draw on the most important traits of every Superman era and incorporate those into this new take. So Superman had the Golden Age temper, compassion for the oppressed, and cockiness. The Silver Age supergenuis, proud scion of Krypton who cherished his Kryptonian nature, member of the Legion of Superheroes, and participant in stories that weren't afraid to get weird. Superman's wrestling with his place in the world, the importance of Clark Kent, and making journalism a key part of the character strike me as all being hallmarks of the Bronze Age. From Post-Crisis we got that Clark views himself as human and loves his adopted parents, considering them as equal to his birth ones.

One of the big frustrations for me with the endless origin stories for Superman, is that so many of them follow a predictable and stale formula where Clark puts on the suit and is essentially ready to go. Doesn't interfere with human affairs, is modest and humble, restrained in usage of his powers, it's like Clark has meta knowledge of what he "should" be, despite that he shouldn't have any foreknowledge of what a "superhero" should look like. He operates the same way at the start as he does in the modern day, and that's really boring to me. This Superman, because of the difference in powers and attitude, operated extremely different from his "present day" incarnation. Dangling Glenmorgan over the edge of a building isn't something a fully powered and mature Superman should do, but it works great to make his early days different and exciting to read about, it makes returning to that era something you can do different storytelling with. This run is the only time where I really cared that Superman is "supposed" to be the first superhero, because figuring out what that means here is a big part of how he develops.

We all know the common complaint that Superman is "too powerful" and that "nothing can hurt him" (funny how Thor never gets hit with those accusations), so Morrison made sure to show that this take on Superman could be beaten even if he could never be defeated. Events conspired to force Clark to use his brains as well as his powers to overcome the challenges in front of him.

Examples include him using his heat vision to fry Lex's equipment and escape the military, using his rocket ship to defeat Brainiac, and rallying the population of Metropolis to banish Vyndktvx. Not to say that Clark never used his brains before to win, but this run was very upfront and in your face about how important Clark's intellect is to triumphing over his foes. Can't take seriously the complaint that Superman is too overpowered when Morrison constantly showcased how even a very powerful Superman could get his shit wrecked by his Rogues.

Another example of Morrison addressing criticisms is Kryptonite. A lot of people poke fun at how convenient it is that pieces of Superman's homeworld follow him all the way to Earth. Isn't that a bit of an asspull? So Morrison made Kryptonite the power source of Superman's rocket, giving it a perfectly natural and believable reason both for it to end up on Earth, and for Lex & the military to get a hold of it since Pa Kent gave the military the rocket. That's still my preferred explanation for how Kryptonite ended up on Earth.

It also provides a better explanation for all the different Kryptonite variants. DC can handwave away the different types as a result of Lex experimenting or the different "forces" on Earth such as magic or the Speed Force or whatever creating the different variants. That to me is much more believable than Kryptonite travelling all across the galaxy yet still ending up on Earth somehow.

There have also been a lot of complaints about Superman's villains, and Morrison diligently set about reworking them. By far one of my favorite aspects of the run, was the villain revamps. Nimrod felt like a clean revamp of Terra-Man, making him into Superman's Kraven the Hunter struck me as a patently obvious route to go, wild no one has followed up on that or used him since. Metallo felt like a good synthesis of Johns take of him as an Anti-Superman weapon, and the sympathetic aspects of Corben's origin that are always there, I liked that Morrison didn't make him a total bastard before his transformation like Johns did. Brainiac got some sympathy added to him in that the collected worlds that were already marked for damnation, thus he was "saving" them in a fashion. Clay Ramses embodied toxicity as a wife-beater even before becoming Kryptonite Man, and I thought his backstory was a great way for Clark to still deal with "real" issues via a manner he could punch. Ramses is still the best take on Kryptonite Man. Vyndktvx felt like the greatest realization of the threat Mr. Mxyzptlk could pose should he decide to get serious since Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, plus I'm a sucker for stories where superheroes fight the Devil. Drekken and Superdoom took the only interesting aspects of Doomsday (his ability to evolve and that he can kill Superman respectively), and were much more interesting characters.

And oh my God, speaking of Superdoom, that part of Morrison's Action run has aged like fine wine. I don't know if they caught wind of DC's plans for the character, or if they were just prescient, but everything that Superdoom is playing on is still sadly all too present. What Superdoom is as a character is a condemnation of what DC keeps doing with Superman: killing him off or making him evil.

When you realize what Superdoom (demand for a more violent and "realistic" Superman) and Vyn (WB/DC) stand in for, it makes the frustration Morrison is channeling much more palpable. Those two plotlines are all DC can think of to do with the character, returning to those again and again. Endlessly attempting to recapture the high of Batman and Doomsday beating the shit out of Supes in The Dark Knight Returns and Death of Superman. Overcoming these two obstacles is Superman's greatest challenge as conceived by Morrison, because both are out to corrupt and ruin the very idea of him. It's not just a physical death he faces, but a metaphysical one as well. Sadly it's a threat Superman just can't seem to lick in the real world, with more and more takes on "Evil Superman" coming.

Lois and Jimmy are great here, because Morrison actually made the investigative journalism aspect of Superman important. Lois is an active participant in the story, trying to break in to the base where Clark is being held by her father, competing with Clark for stories (I love how Morrison writes the banter between the two of them), and generally being classic Lois. Jimmy though benefitted from being positioned as a peer rather than as a kid in comparison to the two, something I wish the comics had carried forward. It looks like My Adventures With Superman is going with that interpretation at least, so I hope others do as well. Jimmy being Clark's roommate really adds to their bond, and I wish we had gotten more stories with that status quo.

Investigative reporter Clark Kent was so actively used here that it feels jarring reading other Superman runs where they tend to downplay and ignore it. Following Clark as he travels to different areas of Metropolis and actually interacts with people, instead of hovering above them as Superman, makes him feel human. Watching Clark actively pursue stories aimed at bettering peoples livelihoods, and seeing how those stories crossed with the superheroics, was one of my favorite aspects of the run. It's one unfortunately few other writers seem all that interested in, especially the New 52 writers who followed Morrison (I know editorial probably bears a lot of blame for that though).

Besides all that, this run was a lot of fun! The Legion of Superheroes showed up, their connection to Clark restored, and they got to play a big role in Clark's adventures! Krypto the Superdog! Martian colonies! Memorizing all of medicine, Superman performs a lifesaving operation! Lex using a "bullet train" to knock Clark out! 5-D imps! Rampaging robots from beyond! A Phantom Zone Halloween story! John Henry Irons suits up as Steel and kicks ass alongside Clark! Every Superman Rogue teams up to try to kill him, but Lex Luthor saves his life because that's a privilege he reserves for himself! Showcasing their trademark love for the Supermythos, Morrison took us on a tour of Superlore that demonstrated the depth and width of what could be done with Superman. Meanwhile the backups by Sholly Fisch excelled at giving us smaller, more human stories about Superman (the one where Clark meets Pa again via time travel "after" Pa has died always gives me a lump in my throat to read).

Ultimately this didn't get to be the foundation for the next generation of Superman stories as it deserved. Johns made New 52 Superman the scapegoat in Doomsday Clock for a lot of storytelling choices he did over in Justice League, something that pisses me off to no end. You want to tell me that this guy "didn't relate" to people, didn't inspire "hope"?

Like hell he didn't. This guy was Superman in every way that mattered and he deserved better than to be framed as the scapegoat for all the stupid decisions DC made about what to do with him. Greg Pak was able to do some great work with this version after Morrison, and just like how Gene Yang got a redemption work starring Superman, I hope to one day see Pak return to the character. Would love to read a Black Label Superman story by Pak that follows his take on young Superman.

All wasn't lost however. Against all odds, and Rebirth trying it's damndest to sweep everything under the rug, it looks like parts of this era have actually survived to the current Infinite Frontier era. With Morrison being heavily involved no less, both as an ideas guy and as an actual writer.

Superman & the Authority is explicitly Superman coming full circle back to the attitude displayed by his young counterpart under Morrison. Janin has outright said that the costume Clark wears here is reminiscent of the t-shirt and jeans era of Superman, and this book so far feels saturated with an energy level from Morrison I haven't seen in their work for hire since they left Action. Reaching old age and realizing he never really delivered on the high ideals of his beginnings, it's Superman putting together a team to hopefully succeed where he couldn't alone. Scathing in how it criticizes the superhero status quo, this has been extremely entertaining to read. Wish Morrison was writing 12 issues with this team, and that ultimately it will be up to PKJ to deliver on the potential is a drawback (although I've loved PKJ's Action run so far), but I'm glad to see DC finally treating Morrison and their ideas with more respect than was shown during Rebirth.

Jon meanwhile feels like an even more explicit attempt at redoing New 52 Superman. There's the updated new suit, designed to appeal to a new generation with it's streamlined look. Positioning Jon as a Superman who wants to tackle the "real" issues, with Taylor explicitly comparing him to Golden Age Superman which as I mentioned was an era Morrison tried to reincorporate into their reboot. There's the Legion of Superheroes connection which played an important role in Morrison's reboot. The rumors about Jon's sexuality are interesting, hinting that DC is willing to go outside the box with him in a way they never would with Clark. I'm excited to see what kind of Superman Jon ends up becoming, if he can deliver on the promise of the New 52 Superman all the better.

This run deserves to be remembered and to have the lessons it tried to teach respected. Probably my favorite mainline run on Superman, I hope more people come around to liking it as time goes on.

[mizmatched]

please tell me about the wild shit. i am far too busy riding the high off of sheep tubbo canon to sit through that bullshit myself

the c!dream apologist doc, a summary:

-the author basically says that the phrase  “Character Dream has done nothing wrong ever,” isn’t correct before immediately calling themselves ‘ a genuine apologist of his character.‘

-the author states that he is not really as bad as every one makes him up to be

-the author says that their are no real villains in the dream smp and that makes it unique. they then immediately call schaltt ‘a greasy bastard who showed no appreciation even towards his most loyal servants‘ and offered no explaination on why schaltt was ever a not a villain, directly contradicting themselves.

-they say that because dream does not stream, we can’t see his perspective and therefore there are way more people against him. the direct quote is ‘The issue with this system is that characters who don't stream don't get to represent themselves properly to an audience.‘ however the author fails to realize that this is the entire point of dream not streaming. 

-’Dream, on the other hand, was an incredibly attentive friend. when he hurt George by dethroning him, he did it not with malice, but with the genuine consideration that he would be making his best friend both happier and safer. However, this was twisted on him: “just say you hate me” made Dream look like the bad guy of a situation he’d started to help, not hurt. Sapnap also doubled down on defending George, which only entrenched a villain narrative further for Dream’s character. ‘ this quote speaks for itself. this is literally undermining the entirety of sapnaps character arc into villainizing dream. 

-the author then says that george was dethroned because cc!george asked cc!dream to dethrone him, and there was no actual malice involved. 

-The author claims that dream treated both sam and punz well, even though they were ‘hired, subordinates that would have received very different treatment under Schlatt.‘

- The author then asks why the audience gives wilbur and techno a ‘pass’ after they manipulated tommy, but not dream.

-' Once again I have to believe that this is due in part to Wilbur and Techno being SMP streamers. If Dream were to show an audience his point of view, I have no doubt in my mind that more people would show his character understanding. ‘ 

That. is. the. entire. point.

-’ For example, let’s talk about Tommy apologists. A lot of Tommy apologists are newer fans of the SMP who don’t understand that he was the primary cause of most of the conflict on the SMP. When Tommy acts violently or irrationally, it can be attributed to his age, the stress that he is under, and the circumstances that bring the SMP to a constant state of war. I don’t fault Tommy’s character for this, but what I dislike is the idea that he can’t then face consequences for his actions. No matter how understandable he is as a person, he is also a political pin. He represents a threat to the peace on the SMP, and a nation that has caused nothing but problems since its conception. ‘ 

this person is starting to sound exactly like how c!dream talks and its disgusting. this is scary

-the author then proceeds to explain that dream ‘can do nothing’ but destroy tommy’s power. dream needs to tear down tommy as he has been ‘falsey built up as a hero’

-the author then proceeds to dis on l’manberg a bit calling it ‘ built upon division, raised by war, and causes even those uninvolved in the original foundation of the nation to partake in or be caught in dangerous, unnecessary, war and bloodshed. ‘

-the author then ‘debunks’ the theories that dream represents any sort of oppressive government, by saying that he is for the abolition of states and an anarchist

-author even argues that dream cannot be authoritarian-left because he is pro religion, as he founded the church of prime

-author goes into further detail about the types of government dream cannot be but that one was the funniest excuse

-’ Dream is not a ruler, a government, or any kind of authority figure in this sense. What he is, is tired and jaded. I’ve described my opinion on this in a previous video and I will do so again. Prior to Tommy’s whitelisting, the SMP was (mostly) peaceful—people were gathering resources, the anarchy was well-maintained, and people were progressing well. Even when conflict arose, Tommy was the one who continued aggressing further—this isn’t the point of this portion of the document, but I recommend rewatching “So I Started a Minecraft War VS Dream” on Tommy’s channel to understand what I mean. Dream’s intention has always been peacekeeping. Yes, by force, if necessary, but this doesn’t make him an authoritarian. If he is personally connected to the world, then he understands the history of nations, and how quickly they fall into violence. We saw it with L’Manburg and we saw it much earlier with The Village That Went Mad. Nations have never and will never find a peaceful resolution, and Dream isn’t required to allow them to sprout up just because the temporary guests of the world want them to. He’s the one, in the end, that watches them crumble. Dismantling them is an act of peace ‘

this is the furthest i got. might continue later, but the doc is SO LONG and my brain can only handle the stupidity for so long. i would like to go into further detail about why this doc is wrong, not only because of the takes but the nature of its evidence, but i am so tired man. 

[vaguely-concerned]

Any tips for a TF POV fic? I want to write one because I too went through a time in my life when I let feelings bounce off cuz that was easier, but I feel like that's not quite on point for him 🤔

God I have SO MANY THOUGHTS about this and they’re all so wordless and frustratingly evasive to me yet (I am in the process of writing a looooooong T.F. POV fic and it gives me much more trouble than Graves POV, probably because as a person I’m quite a lot more like the T.F. Type in real life lol). But yes, here we go, let me try to express some of what I personally try to have as my hm ‘anchor points’ for his perspective. (Heavy disclaimer that these are just my personal & disorganized little musings and by no means the only or ‘correct’ way to read the character!)

- First of all I agree, the image of ‘bouncing off’ doesn’t feel quiteright -- it’s in the right neighbourhood but the wrong address sort of thing, but it’s really hard to come up with a way to explain how I feel the nuance here.

*insert three hours later spongebob meme here* Okay, so the metaphor I came up with is: T.F.’s relationship to emotions is a direct parallel to his relationship to water/the ocean: it’s scary down there, it’s dark, it’s dangerous, and if he should ever be dumb enough to try to go in too deep it’ll kill him dead because boy oh boy on so many levels this man just did not learn how to swim. As far as he’s concerned any sensible person would simply bob along on the surface in a sturdily built boat and try not to think too much about the weird shit that lives down there in the depths. (In this metaphor the layer of artifice and performance so habitual it’s basically integrated into the fabric of his soul is the boat. Y’know, the part that’s Twisted Fate and not just plain ol’ Tobias. I’ll hasten to add that I think both parts of his identity are equally ‘real’ and equally him, but the Twisted Fate part is like… protecting the Tobias part. Keeping him from drowning, as it were. I’m not sure he’d think of it like that himself for the longest time, though, I suspect he has more of a ‘that man is dead’ attitude towards the Tobias part after Graves is gone)

I think what I’m trying to get at is the idea that to him, raw emotion is as hostile and unknowable and unnavigable an ‘environment’ as the deep ocean. (And the only time we see him willingly go there, physically and otherwise, is for Graves, so you know let’s jot that down first of all lol.)

- He seems to genuinely quite like and be interested in people – how they think, what moves and motivates them, their secrets and foibles. So I tend to try to keep the uh ‘detail work’ in his POV focused in that direction. Priority going like 1) people 2) people’s valuables 3) the relative availability of people’s valuables at this moment if you have clever hands and a very charming smile haha

- One of my favourite things about T.F. is that he seems, I don’t know… quite genuinely good-natured beneath it all? If you back him into a corner some sharp and dangerous things peek out (he has survived in his line of heh ‘business’ for like thirty years, and a lot of it on his own), but for the most part and when unthreatened he has a sort of mildly amused and intrigued live-and-let-live attitude to the world even as he’s conning it that I find deeply charming. Which to me ties in with:

- T.F.’s first instinctive reaction to danger (perceived or real) the majority of the time seems to be ‘Flight’. Confrontation and violence are basically his ‘when literally everything else has failed’ options. (As seen prominently in Burning Tides, where he just keeps running and running and the only time he actually starts throwing punches is when he has to because Graves is in immediate danger and they’re backed into a corner. Which feels like it means something huh lol, I often think about what could actually make T.F. angry enough that he would openly express it and that seems to be the most likely angle for it in my eyes.)

- My take on one of the fundamental differences between Graves and T.F. is that Graves has A LOT of feelings but doesn’t quite know it (or more like can’t quite conceptualize it I should say) – he has a hard time identifying or finding vocabulary for feelings that aren’t some shade of anger. Meanwhile T.F. KNOWS he has feelings, he just doesn’t like it, ardently wishes he didn’t, and will do pretty much anything to run away and not have to engage with them haha.

Another important difference: when brought out of equilibrium Graves gets angry, and T.F. gets scared. I have the feeling that beneath it all he’s scared a lot, and it’s why his persona is so oriented towards gaining control in ways where people don’t realize it enough to even think try to take that control away from him until he’s already long gone. Misdirection as a way of life babEY

- This might be too deep in the ‘my WIP/process specific’ territory to really count as general analysis, but I think it’s there in canon too – there’s almost a feeling that he implicitly feels like he has to make up for some fundamental flaw or lack he has at the core? (Not a weird thing for him to end up feeling, considering what happened to him as a kid.) All the rest of him, all the cleverness and style and charm, is there to ‘make up’ for how at the end of the day he’s… wrong somehow. As Graves, who knows him better than anyone, focuses right in on, a coward. And that is CERTAINLY not the whole truth and even Graves in a full rage relents when he sees the effect the accusation has on him and once he gets the actual facts of what happened. But I think that sense of deep unworthiness is what’s stuck with him emotionally. His people left him because there’s something fundamentally lacking and immoral about him. He lost Graves because he’s not good enough, because he’s a coward who leaves people behind. He deserves to be alone. Mix in a ton of survivor’s guilt to taste, and I think you have the like… core emotional wound he’s constructed around.

There’s also something here about fear of profound powerlessness specifically in situations where words, generally his strongest card that’s not a literal card (har har har oh we do have fun here), simply don’t work right at the moment when he needs them to the most – he tried to beg for his people not to leave him behind, he tried to convince Graves to get the hell out with the rest of the crew… and it didn’t work. (In Burning Tides you see he’s given up even trying to explain himself, he just wants Out in whatever way leaves both him and Graves tolerably in one piece, even if he won’t be understood or heard or less alone afterwards. It takes him until like half way through the entire chase to even THINK about just telling Graves the truth. In all fairness to T.F. it probably wouldn’t have worked at that moment, but it does vaguely crack me up that he didn’t even consider it until all of Bilgewater harbor was already burning merrily behind them fhsajkfa)

- He has a little bit of a (perfectly justified considering his background honestly) chip on his shoulder, especially when it comes to powerful or arrogant people. There seems to be a special satisfaction in outsmarting and robbing specifically rich assholes (which would also be the people who have the most to steal, so y’know good times all round). From his short stories and few places in his bio you almost get the feeling that he has a funny sort of Robin Hood-esque sense of lopsided justice about it. (Robin Hood-esque only so far as to define ‘the poor’ as the eternally hard-strapped ‘T.F. & Graves Waistcoats and Cigars Fund’, of course lol)

I think T.F. both has a mind that tends more towards analyzing the big picture and also has more direct experience with like… structural/systemic powerlessness and oppression. So the cons they pull are probably partly how he channels the emotions that arise out of that (and the rest he just represses, like the relatable guy he is haha)

- Graves being back would cause some IMMENSE internal conflict in him, I feel – of course all the feelings of relief and attachment and love, but also… so much of who he is now came about specifically to find a way to deal with Graves being gone, with seemingly just shutting down the entirety of his need for real human companionship or closeness for like a decade, things that are suddenly starting to be brought online again and must be tremendously stressful to deal with when you’ve had it completely suppressed and deadened for so long. He’s put so much into trying to be fundamentally unattached to anything, anywhere, anyone (and there are some things here about perpetually being an outsider his whole life that I can’t quite put into words, but that’s a dimension too.) That sort of psychological self defense mechanism doesn’t just contentedly nod its head and go away just because something good happened one time haha. Probably a work in progress there huh (at least he’s not alone in it now <3)

PLUS some bonus Graves POV observations because man. I love writing him, he’s just a marvel of a man

- I know I call him a dumbass all the time, but in a street smart way I think he’s actually quite clever haha, he just has a bad tendency to get hung up on an idea and get tunnel sight. (I’ve based this a lot on the short stories but see also more recently his Sentinel skin voice lines for good examples: he’s incredibly straightforward in that ‘well obviously if it doesn’t affect me personally I ain’t gonna give it that much thought’ way, but you also have glimpses of surprising insight/shrewdness and… I don’t quite know how to put it, but something like an ability to get to the bottom line of something without getting caught up in the details. (I suspect T.F. does find himself lost in the details quite frequently, he’s much more attached to the decorative curlicues of the world.) Graves clearly & frequently has no idea what’s going on, but he strips things down to the essentials very quick: Lucian’s story as a direct thematic mirror to Viego’s, Is There A Sun Lady – Oh, I See, all of this is weird and creepy and needs shooting, and maybe most crucial of all: Isolde doesn’t want to be with her husband anymore so what he’s doing is just like. Extra shitty. He gets what he needs to get and then just barges ahead heedlessly with that. Icon.)

- He’s actually pretty darn eloquent in a gruff sort of way and uses some quite sophisticated vocabulary! And the way this is contrasted with the tendency to slip into blunter coarser language just as readily -- like when he takes the time to describe the monster that takes down the Prince’s ship in such poetic terms as ‘gargantuan’ and ‘the behemoth’s immense, distended jaw’ and it having ‘pallid dead eyes the size of the moon’, and meanwhile during his swim at the beginning of the story we get bastard cold and bastard dark and full of bastard jellyfish and crabs – brings me such immense and unending delight

- He’s more eloquent in his internal voice than he is when speaking (especially noticeable in Destiny and Fate; he does have a tendency to fumble his words when talking lol), and he gets quite easily lost in his own meandering reflective musings in a way I find incredibly endearing. I’d almost call it whimsical at times, honestly, hilarious as that is? Like when he’s literally so absorbed in a line of thought he forgets which way they’re rowing and T.F. has to remind him. (I think T.F. generally has more of a grip of what’s going on around them than Graves does lol)

- There’s an important distinction to be made that Graves actually does, by and large, read T.F: very closely and seemingly also pretty damn accurately. He’s good at (and clearly very interested in) reading his moods, spotting what tactics he’s using interpersonally, when he’s being genuine and when he’s being dissembling.

What Graves is actually bad at is understanding his own emotions, and to not bleed those emotions into other people’s motivations and behavior, especially when he’s upset or in heightened states of feeling, like he is all the way through Burning Tides. He can only name his own feelings in a vocabulary of anger, when it’s pretty clear from the subtext that there’s a whole bunch of other stuff going on there, and he has incredible trouble divorcing those feelings from what other people’s got going on with them right then. He feels hurt, betrayed, and undone by everything that’s happened to him, so the intention to hurt, betray and undo must live in the other person who he feels caused it. In less drastic cases you see him do this a bit when he feels like T.F. is being evasive with him – taking it as a form of rejection rather than realizing T.F. is just lost in his own thoughts, sort of thing. There’s a real improvement in this one between Burning Tides and Destiny and Fate, though, so maybe he’ll have an easier time of it with some time and practice.

Sorry it took so long to get back to you on this and that it’s a bit of a rambling mess, words have been real hard recently. Or rather I have too many words, all the time, left and right, I just can’t put them into the right orders to make any sense hahaha, I hope there’s some useful point in this somewhere for you at least!

[kitkatopinions]

Accidentally deleted my Tyrian and Watts asks while I was trying to fix a mistake so... Sorry about that, everyone! Here they are! Tyrian and Watts for the RWBY character asks!

Let’s do Tyrian first, because I have less to say about him, I feel like.

My top three ships for the character

Tyrian/Watts. Dysfunctional villainous romance of the century, no one knows how they’ve managed to make it to their tenth anniversary without killing each other, including them. Tyrian/Salem is my second top ship for him. Major Bellatrix/Voldy vibes with this one, but I could see it. Tyrian/Hazel is my third ship for lack of options. Does this one make sense? No. But I can at least see Tyrian being super flirty and Hazel being endlessly tired, but never really stopping it. (Also I hate Hazel so much lol.)

My three least favorite ships for the character

Tyrian/Qrow sucks for me. Like... I kinda feel like two people fighting each other just gets shippers, which is fine and totally understandable. But for me, Tyrian poisoning Qrow and almost killing him and calling his beloved niece a bitch and then killing Clover is a big no from me, dog. On that note! Tyrian/Clover is also one big no from me, since Clover murdered him. And Tyrian/Ozpin is another really big no from me. Tyrian and his crazy Salem worship can stay five hundred and fifty feet away from my son.

My biggest criticism for the character

They went a little too much on the crazy in the fourth and fifth season and it made him feel annoying. Like, I don’t mind the Bellatrix vibes, but I do mind the movie version Bellatrix vibes, sometimes. It just got kinda annoying. I wish his crazy was always more on the dangerous side and less on the kooky side, but that’s just personal opinions.

My favorite thing about the character

The way people are so uncomfortable around him. Whenever Tyrian talks to Emerald or Mercury, he’s honestly freaky. Like both me and the characters are waiting for him to snap. That’s a great quality in a villain that we’re meant to hate or love to hate. He has a real presence and it’s enjoyable.

A headcanon I have about them

Tyrian doesn’t often try to act normal, but he can, and he’s got a great ‘respectable, cool guy’ act that’s actually a little reminiscent of Qrow or Clover. He’s even passed himself as a Huntsman here and there.

What I would change about them if I was making a re-write

More involvement in volumes 4 and 5, and I’d treat him a bit more seriously and make him a bit more dangerous. Maybe I’d have him wound a member of Team RNJR in his attack as well as poison Qrow (maybe give Jaune a reason to unlock his semblance in season 4 and in response to the pain of a member of his team. Also, his ‘Tyrian purple’ color should be more than just the color of his eyes. Like, how come so many RWBY characters season 4 and onward have such boring colors? I’d give Tyrian some strong purple and pink.

What I I think of their character allusion and what (if anything) I would change about it

Tyrian alludes to the animal fable ‘the Scorpion and the Frog,’ and that’s... really in name only, I think. A part of me wants to give them some kind of points for having Qrow work with him against Clover, only for Tyrian to kill Clover, which lines up with his ‘its just my nature’ scorpion stinging the frog so that they’ll both drown and die. But they didn’t mean for Qrow to really be wrong! They didn’t mean for the lesson to be ‘Qrow shouldn’t have trusted the poisonous villain’ it was ‘wowza does Qrow’s semblance hurt him. :( Too bad Clover got himself killed.’ Which makes the whole allusion kind of suck.

Now for Watts, the single best villain in my opinion.

My top three ships for the character

Tyrian/Watts. See above. This ship would be a dysfunctional mess, but it’d be a wild ride. Watts/Villain!Ironwood. I kind of hate this ship when it’s ‘fallen hero turned villain’ Ironwood. But if he actually had been written as a secret villain or obviously headed that way from the start, I can see him and Watts also being a dysfunctional mess of a wild ride ship, only with way more ‘evil power couple’ vibes than Tyrian and Watts would have. Also my favorite version of this features Watts having been the one to build Penny (maybe by stealing the plans from Pietro) and him and Ironwood raising a still bright and cheerful, still innocent and trusting, villain Penny who will attack to kill with a smile on her face and a ‘it was nice meeting you!’ And this is very weird and niche but Watts/Evil Stepsister (specifically the one with the sharp bangs and highlights.) Someone sent me an ask saying the Evil Stepmother and stepsisters should’ve been connected to Salem and gotten Cinder involved and I totally agree with this. I then started envisioning a world where the step sisters competed with Cinder and all three of them were raised in Salem’s circle. In this version of things, I could totally picture one of the step sisters having a romantic tension driven connection with Watts and the two of them subtly flirting sometimes (and bonding over their mutual hatred of Cinder.) I picked the sister with bangs for no real reason except that I like her look more.

My three least favorite ships for the character

Watts/Cinder. Watts thinks of her like a bratty little girl, and Cinder kills him. Watts/Lionheart. Kinda really hate this one because of how clearly Lionheart was terrified of him. Just a bit uncomfortable for me to see that in a relationship. Watts/Hero!Ironwood or Watts/HeroTurnedVillain/Ironwood. Sorry, but Ironwood in canon got such a bad, bad portrayal in season 8 and the end of season 7, and I just can’t help but blame Watts for quite a bit of it. I only like them as a ship if Ironwood is an antagonist from the start.

My biggest criticism for the character

They shouldn’t have killed him! He was one of Salem’s best followers and one of the best villains and it was such a big mistake to kill literally one of the only actual loyal followers. It threw off any character development for Cinder and it was a big mistake. I really wanted the Cinder / Watts / Neo team up to keep going! I’m so disappointed it got thrown away.

My favorite thing about the character

Watts is an entitled, petty bastard, and I think that’s so good for a villain that isn’t meant to be social commentary (because tbh, RWBY never should’ve tried to be social commentary.) Watts isn’t sympathetic, he’s an Atlas born and raised guy in a three piece suit, he’s posh, he’s upset because he wasn’t given exactly what he wanted. Most of the villains in RWBY are either victims of abuse, systemic oppression, or poverty, and that’s... Not fun in a show that’s never handled social commentary well and is about magical girls destroying Voldemort/Satan with the power of friendship (Ruby literally never says anything about Faunus rights iirc.) Watts is refreshing because he’s exactly the type of villain that you can expect in a show like what RWBY should’ve been, and he flourishes as that. Why would we be sympathetic to Watts when he’s just doing this all because he wasn’t picked first for his tech? Why would we feel soured towards conflicts with Watts and Team RWBY? He’s just a petty bastard being evil because he was snubbed. Why would we be frustrated that incredibly significant problems are being shoved to the side with Watts? He’s a fun villain, he’s not meant to be more, he’s not meant to make you emotionally invested only to then be gutted for it. You can hate to love him without it feeling bad. Maybe that’s why he’s just my favorite non-kid villain (other than Roman.)

A headcanon I have about them

Watts has been trying to build his own AI robot like Penny, in his spare time. He wanted it to be done in time to become a Maiden, but it wasn’t, and Salem gave that slot to Cinder and got after Watts for not contributing enough. He of course thought this was deeply unfair (especially after being made to contribute a lot to Cinder’s Beacon success without getting any credit for it.) And this just fueled his hatred of Cinder, his hatred of Pietro and Ironwood, and by extension, his hatred of Penny.

What I would change about them if I was making a re-write

I would keep him freaking alive and keep up the pair up he had going on with Cinder and Neo! But also I’d increase his relationships with Emerald, Mercury, Tyrian, Hazel... Just some more Salem’s Inner Circle moments to flesh out their characters. Other than that, I wouldn’t change much. He’s a pretty good character.

What I I think of their character allusion and what (if anything) I would change about it

Okay, I’ve talked about his character allusion in a very long post awhile ago, but I’m not scrolling down that far to tag it. To sum it up... I hate his allusion. XD I loved the Sherlock Holmes books and read most of them, and I didn’t realize he was supposed to allude to John Watson until I read someone else’s post saying so, and I started freaking out about how awful it was. Watts has so little in common with Watson, he’s essentially the anti-Watson. Which basically means he’s Sherlock Holmes, the opposite of Watson in almost every way, up to and including freaking faking his death which is one of the most iconic Sherlock Holmes thing ever. Watts is everything Sherlock Holmes is on his worst days, arrogant, callous, consumed with his projects, petty, smug, over the top - as well as being hyper intelligent and a genius who often just gets passed over. He has rivalries with his colleagues like Holmes did. And like I said, he faked his death, only to reveal himself to an old friend later on the cusp of carrying out a scheme. He’s evil Holmes! He has nothing to do with John Watson - caring, humble, down to earth, not brilliant like his friend but content to be ordinary and special because of his emotional depth and devoted heart, medical former doctor who spends quite a lot of time chronicling the successes of someone else because he’s content to live in the background. Don’t get me wrong, a ‘Watson’ character who is evil could work - Watson himself indulged in crime for the sake of Holmes sometimes in the original works and if he worshipped Salem or one of her followers and did everything for her while still being a more humble, more friendly, not brilliant person he could be good - but Watts is not that person. Even the gimmicks Watts is given are stupid and don’t make it obvious he’s Watson. Boy’s got a moustache and a revolver and they thought that’d be enough. Idk why they thought 'we’ll make him Watson’ when he’s clearly a Holmes! Also, he’s supposed to be ‘Watson if he’d met Moriarty instead of Holmes,’ and to that I say boo! Watson wouldn’t turn into a super genius just because he meets a different mastermind!

...That’s summing up my feelings, yeah. Because I have so many feelings about his warped, weird character allusion. If I was changing it, I’d just make him Holmes like I think he was clearly supposed to be.

[todaydreambelieversfic]

Author Spotlight: Coffeegleek Day 3

Author : @coffeegleek​

How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?

At least a few revisions. Then multiple editing passes, and even with my spouse as my proofreader for the past 25+ years, and doing more editing passes before posting to AO3, I still find annoying little typos, sometimes large ones.

If you were to revise one of your older fics from start to finish, which would it be and why?

There was a crack fic I stopped writing years ago. It was a self-challenge during one of those tumblr trope challenges. I was trying to combine all of the tropes into the same fic as they were announced. It got zero traction though so I gave up. I'd love to go back and complete it, make it better. I had the whole thing outlined too.

What do you look for in a beta?

My spouse. We've been together for decades. He's been proofreading my original science fiction work and various fandoms' fanfics since before we were married. He even proofreads my Klaine smut and doesn't blink an eye. (He's a Glee fan too and on tumblr.) He knows what I'm trying to say when I can't find the right words and supplies them. He catches things I don't. What I love the most is for my original work, he's written his own fanfic. It's BAD. It truly is, but it's so heartfelt and earnest. He even came up with a soundtrack should I ever publish my sci-fi novel and the movie or show rights be bought. You really can't get a better beta than that. <3

There’s a number of friends on tumblr that I bounce ideas off of and who give me advice for topics they know far more about than me and google. I try to thank them in my fics.

If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?

I’m going to steal another author’s recent answer and say that I could never do someone else’s work justice. However, I would love to see the author’s ideas for their fics even if they couldn’t write a prequel or sequel.

I suck at remembering titles and author names. There were two political fics that I would love to read more of should their authors ever decide to write in those verses again. One was where Kurt and Blaine's dads were running for president and Kurt and Blaine were along for the ride, staying in the same hotels at time (where they first met,) having to do school remotely, having to be the perfect sons for the press and Blaine being fed up because his parents were conservative Republicans. Then there was another fic where Burt was president and Kurt was the First Son living in the White House, along with Finn, and it was hard to date when your every move is watched by the press.

Do you take liberties with canon or are you very strict about your fic being canon compliant?

I write AU, so canon is only a word often misspelled by me. :) Seriously though, I try to incorporate as many canon elements and characters into my AU fics as I can. It's the kind of AU I like to read as well. What draws me to read and write AUs is taking canon characters, putting them into a different setting, and seeing how they'll react. At their core, they still need to remain the same in principle and have many of the same traits. Like Kurt will always love fashion and be headstrong no matter what. Blaine is always going to have that spark within himself, no matter how depressed or oppressed he gets. Burt and Carole are always going to be loving and nurturing parents at heart. Even in fics where Burt isn't woke, there's a part of him that means well. (Not one of my own fics, but one I read a long time ago.) Different circumstances will change the canon characters and make them react in different ways though. Like, Kurt could end up more withdrawn and hide his love of fashion as a matter of survival and self preservation. He or Blaine could turn into "bad boys." Coach Beiste will always have a heart of gold. Miss Pillsbury will always have a problem with messes. Things like that. I know canon. Give me all the alternate universe versions of it and I will be a happy camper.

Talk about a review that made your day.

I haven't checked for reviews on my fics in ages (because I'm an insecure chicken) so I don't remember any specifically. I do remember there were many that made my day. There are those who take the time to review every chapter. Ones who write only a short note to thank me for writing the fic - both the angsty ones and the cracky fun ones. I love it when someone mentions something that no one else has that I was hoping someone would notice because I was proud of it. I'm not a popular author and don't get a lot of kudos or comments or reblogs compared to many. So each comment and kudos means a lot to me and I'd like to publicly thank every single person who wrote one or hit that kudos button.

Do you ever get rude reviews and how do you deal with them?

I once got a troll who decided it was his job to complain that I had misspelled hors d'oeuvres in one sentence out of an entire verse where the word was written multiple times correctly. It was a series of Klaine Advent one shots for the Empty Nest verse. At first I was shocked and replied with an apology. Then I was, "F this. The person is a troll who didn't read any other part of the fic or verse, just this one quickly written one shot entry, and if all they had to say was that I'd misspelled a commonly misspelled word, then they aren't worth my time." I deleted the comment. There's concrit and trolling. It wasn't concrit.

What advice do you have for people just starting to write?

Have fun writing, even the hard stuff. Know that it's okay to take breaks. Try your best and know you'll get better the more you write and the more you read. Pronouns are your friend and free. Don't put, "I know this is going to suck, so whatever," in your fic description. We all suck at times. It's a part of writing. But if you want folks to read it, using that as your fic's summary isn't the way to go. Just my opinions, which won't even buy you a cup of coffee.

Which fic do you most like to discuss with other people? Why?  

I think it’s pretty obvious from all of my rambling that I enjoy talking about both of my series - Empty Nest verse and A Very Hallmark Christmas verse.  I'm not a popular author and I know my fics, especially the Empty Nest verse ones, aren’t everyone’s thing, so I never get to really discuss them except with friends that I bug to death in private and via long replies to comments on AO3. (You all are saints blessed by all of the good and patient gods.) I have so much to say about them - the process of writing them, the world building, research, and character decisions that went into every single one. I know they’re not perfect. I know the Empty Nest verse grew miles beyond the ficlette about Burt and Carole that it was meant to be. I know my sense of humor in the Hallmark verse isn’t everyone’s thing either. I still worked really hard on them and am glad that I did. Empty Nest let me release a lot of the fear and anxiety I had for my Hispanic and gay son after the 2016 election. The Hallmark ones were a needed break to put some humor into my life. If others enjoyed them, great. If folks want to know more, my inbox is always open.

What's one aspect of writing fic that gets you really excited?

Writing humor even if I'm the only one that finds it funny. As I said above, writing the Hallmark Christmas movie dialogue and plot and the actors as they were filming it was a blast. Writing the commercials was fun and exciting. In my angsty fics, knowing I wrote a good scene, line, or moment that brought out all the feels. That's more of “satisfaction of a job well done” than excited.

***

Check out Coffeegleek’s Fics

Humorous Spooky Drabbles -  Humorous drabbles to spookish type prompts based on a tumblr post called October Drabble Prompts #1 by hallofceleano. The parts in bold and italic are from those prompts. Characters include Kurt, Blaine, Burt, Carole, and Finn. All fun; only #4 has some mild angst. #4 is for snarkyhag and regarding #5 - I know next to nothing about Twilight and had to look up Taylor Lautner on imdb. The liberties I took are my own.

A Very Sloppy Christmas - lucy8675309 posted to tumblr a series of gifs with Kurt dressed up as an elf. It inspired me to write the following prompt, which CoffeeAddict80 encouraged me to write as a fic:

I now want a fic where real Santa’s elf!Kurt gets drunk and vents to Blaine about all the woes of working for Santa. He’s over 100 years old and the outfits are terrible. Why couldn’t they wear clothes like the elves did in that one movie? Drunk elf Kurt has no idea he’s venting to Santa’s son.

Bonus if he wakes up and realizes he just had a drunken one night stand. He isn’t sure who it was with. Only that he’s naked, the guy in the bed beside him is naked and showing off a really great ass. Then said guy turns over and after Kurt’s done staring at his dick, he looks at the guy’s face and realizes who it is.

It’s a Twisted World -  I decided to challenge myself by combining the posted 5 weekly Klaine AU Friday themes and adding another one of my own. So that means: Farm, Fairytale, Vintage (1900’s,) Super Powers, Zombie Apocalypse, and Harry Potter World Klaine with a splash of a fic idea I thought of while in the produce section of the grocery store. Each week, the story will continue, though each part stands alone. This is not a brilliant work of perfectly composed fan fiction. What it is, is fast-paced, cracky fun, with a large dose of innuendo. At least it had my son laughing his ass off. I hope y'all enjoy it too. :)

[unmotivated-cosmere-nerd]

Why Worm is the Perfect Gateway from YA to Fantasy/Sci-fi

I’m going to start off by saying I first read worm when I was 14 and while I thought it was cool I didn’t read past the leviathan arc and I didn’t go back until I was 17 where I started reading it again and loved every second of it. There’s a reason for this, I think, and because worms start off as a YA thing before becoming so much more with a solid foundation.

I was originally going to make a post that basically said: “Hot take: The thing that stops worm from being YA is the fact that characters “Good or Badness” is not determined by whether they agree with the main character or not” but its more than that and so I’m Going to make this post.

1. It starts off as a YA

Worm begins by giving the reader a lot of YA tropes, bullied at school, oppressive system, having a secret you are keeping from the rest of the group, Hypocritical authority figures(I’m coming back to this one), Not being handsome or pretty, Low Self-esteem, Characters called bad by the system being cool or secretly good and misunderstood(Coming back to this as well).

These tropes work because a lot of young adults see themselves in these charters because a lot of people feel like outsiders in these years see themselves as misunderstood and it's great, I'm not disparaging YA but YA isn’t made to challenge a reader (past Levi I felt legitimate anxiety reading Worm) it's made to entertain a reader and it does that by making truly care about characters. However, in Worm, it makes a character based off of those tropes and that is Taylor this doesn't mean much till we get past Levi but it is noticeable on rereads where you see her go out un-ready because, as it seems to me, she wants to go down in a blaze of glory, not some heroic ideal

Point is Worm starts off by being really appealing to YA readers.

2. Levi Arc / A break from YA / Violence in YA

Worms Un-YA-vacation actually starts a chapter before Levi. This is the point where a YA begins its conclusion, Threats have been faced they have grown together as a team and think they've got through the worst of it, now the true villain is revealed, there's a betrayal a twist happens and the heroes rally to prove themselves over whatever weird morality the villain has(Coming back to this as well)

In Worm, the Twist is Dinah Alcott, however, there is no betrayal, no secret villain, just villains doing villain things, only now Taylor (and by extension the reader) sees the victims to her crimes and the secret villain was Taylor. At this point, Tayor and her friends would come together and save Dinah and prove they were the real good guys all along except they don't the rest of the Undersiders are ok with it and that's a big break from YA plot. The character and her friends are supposed to be, unless they were deceiving the protagonist, “good.” Taylor freaks and runs but before we can deal with that (and we will) Levi attacks.

These days a lot of YA is “edgy” but that death is used for a reason, A Lot of times you'll hear something like “All these people died except him” or “She’s an elite assassin who killed all these people” another use of death in YA is to set stakes killing a whole bunch of named characters during the aforementioned betrayal to set stakes or to cause a character to unlock a new ability through grief. In either scenario, the Protag either avenges these deaths or is a main player in a battle the protagonist. In Worm, Taylor plays damage control, takes a stab and leviathan and Phoom! Broken spine. She is insignificant and that made me so afraid that I'd hear the words “Grue - deceased” that I put down the book for three years. It's real and it's scary.

Violence and Death aren’t trivialised or given lip service, it's real, it's respected and it's a theme and it makes you take it seriously. Fighting stops seeming cool.

3.Ensamble and Morality.

In my mind, you can split a YA protag into two types: A brave idealist in a world of cruel realists or in more edgy YA smart realist in a world where others are idiotic Idealists, in either the protags world view is the right one. Now It's hardly a groundbreaking idea that Taylor isn’t justified in doing bad things but I'm going to address how this idea is given to the audience.

I think it's fair to describe Taylor as a member of group two, In her mind, she's doing what should be done whilst her antagonists are trying to uphold a system that does not work, at least as far as she thinks. In a YA this would make those who are on her side good and those who oppose her bad, that's not the case in the Worm. A lot of the Undersiders are arguably bad people; they aren’t sanitised. More so the people who oppose Taylor are legitimately heroic and you know this because you got to see through the eyes of the BB Wards and you know they aren’t fake. You buy into the idea of them being Heros which makes you question it when Taylor opposes them but more so you feel conflicted. In YA you might feel bad for the antagonist who had a sad backstory which is why they are doing a “bad” thing but you don't in Worm (Because those are our protagonists) instead you're conflicted because the antagonist has a Solid argument for why they oppose Taylor that can’t be written off.

Basically, a YA would decide a character's Morality by whether they are on Taylor's side or not and worm takes a good look and subverts that specific trope in a way that's hard to ignore

It's worth noting that whilst other fantasy/sci-fi novels don’t really work with these tropes Worm takes them and morphs them to a point where you the reader become conflicted and unsure on what you think about Taylor by using established YA tropes you would only really buy into if you read a lot of YA (Which I did)

4. Fighting the System

The idea of an oppressive system and unfair authority is a big theme in YA and that's because it's relatable. Here's a quick sketch of a regime in YA it's full of hypocrites(Armsmaster) and Unfair and Malicious leaders who are either incapable if the MC is a realist or too brutal if the MC is an idealist (Alexandria and Eidolon) and when the organization is overturned (normally by the protag) the good members(Miss Militia, Chevalier, Legend) come into control and say that the MC was right the whole time and change their policies to suit the MC.

There's a problem however both Taylor and the System are Realists and Utilitarians, they have the same moral code. Not a new idea, but it challenges that specific Idea of what an Antagonistic organization is supposed to be.

The Hypocrite (Armsmaster) takes stock, and in a YA would realize he's been criticizing the MC for doing the same stuff he is and then stop criticizing and supporting the MC, but here he takes a good look at himself realizes he's been a hypocrite and changes his behaviour! Armsmaster straight up criticizes the way he behaves in the past, becomes a better person and that makes him even more of an antagonist for Taylor which makes you question her even more.

Finally, When The good guys get in charge of the organization they remain Taylors antagonists Chev and MM still have an issue with the way Taylor operates and tell her if she doesn't comply she gets prison

5.Conclusion

I used to read a lot of YA back in the and I think it's worth noting Worms interaction with YA because it takes YA tropes and dynamics that someone who reads YA automatically assumes and then twists them breaking your assumed ideas about things in a way that makes you question things. And the reason I think this is important is because as I said Earlier YA exists to entertain it is safe, comfortable and fun. But Literature can be more engaging if you want it to be.

The best works of Fantasy/ Sci-fi Drag of those comfort zones. The Way of Kings makes you think about coping with depression and dealing with systems that keep the disadvantaged and exploited docile, I-Robot makes you question what defines personhood, except those works can be daunting. Worm takes a YA reader and gives them what they want for a bit until things start to descend into the groundwork of morality and make you look at it. In a YA novel, utilitarianism and trauma would be character traits used to define a character. In Worm you are forced to question it, to examine it and then come to your own decision, yes the world was ultimately saved through utilitarianism but it could have been done better. Trauma was weaponized, but it was a trauma Taylor had too.

When I reached the end of Worm, I found that YA just wasn't as engaging, and I went looking for a book that felt more real and had real themes, stuff that Worm showed me and that's why I think is a great gateway into Fantasy and Sci-Fi

[brokemylegflippingthefirewall]

*This is absolutely a fic promotion, but plz hear me out on the discourse part too

So, self inserts and original characters, the worst fanfic catgeory (fanfiction.net literally says that in one of its fic groupings, and I'm pretty sure the number of views on any fanfic website says the same).

TLDR- Yes, I agree that this stereotype carries truth, but I do think SIs and OCs have more potential to be explored, and the stigma surrounding these labels is blocking that. And oh god I just want to know so badly if this is the deal with the work I'm currently writing or if I genuinely just can't write well.

The longer version- (this was written quite late into the night/ I'm in Singapore/, and might not be so well organized, I apologize for that.)

To what extent is this stigma "justified"? I mostly use AO3 for reading fics, and when I see the OC/SI tag, the thing is....I came to look for fics about canon characters and might not have the wish to invest my time in taking in a new character. I understand that most people who read fanfiction would feel the same. This, I think, is more or less justified. If you came to look for a certain canon character/relationship, and you don't want to get invested in any OCs, then of course the OC/SI tag isn't for you.

But... I think that's about it. Bcs here's the thing,

1. Using the OC/SI format does NOT automatically make the fic worse in quality. Hell, I'm not even sure if the statistical "fact" that these tags generate the worst fics is true. Judging from what I've read in the tma fandom and my other past fandoms, the stuff with OC/SI isn't inherently worse or better than the rest of the fics. There are ones that are pretty normal in writing quality, and the ones where the prose is rly good, others where plot design stands out etc. Of course, there is a lot of wish fulfillment and the like, but... there's also a lot of that in fics that write about canon characters.

2. I can't really say whether a wish fulfillment "I just want to write cool scenes/fluff" fic is better or worse than a more serious fic that explores some characterization or plot point. I think stories (all stories, books, fanfic, myths, everything) exist to entertain us and make us feel things. I am not sure if writing a feel good story is any less meaningful than writing a story that brings people "deeper" thoughts and makes them feel good in some other way. And this isn't even the issue at hand, because fundamentally, writing an OC/SI or not doesn't determine what the content is about. I agree that a larger proportion of OC/SI fics tend to be more on the lighthearted side, but... so is most of the content consumed in the other tags. Readers don't seem to have a problem with feel good stories/fix it fics etc when there is no OC or SI, so I don't see why that type of fic paired with an OC/SI should be considered any less "meaningful".

3. Guys/gals, what is an OC/SI?

Yes, it is very personal, and it is very wish fulfillment, but... isn't that like a common literature thing...like in general? Look at the works that "real writers" publish, from contemporary to the classics, which writer doesn't write about themselves? Like, just off the top of my head, Les Miserables, Marius? Um, Dante's Inferno? (and that guy did not self insert into some random thing he straightup went for the Christian Canon😂 used his real name too, so Jonny I guess if you feel awkward about your MCs name you can think of Dante//Jk). But seriously, self insert and wish fulfillment is a big part of literature itself, and while there are things to be said about these tropes, if people don't have that much of a problem with them in other literature, I don't see why fanfic OC/SIs shouldn't be treated the same.

4. in relation to the last point. More specifically...

I do think that a lot of fanfiction which write about the original characters are also OC/SIs to different extents. I've read fics that depict pairings where the author and readers project heavily onto one (or more) of the characters. I've read stuff where the author uses a minor character to explore the established world building/character dynamics and it's clear that it's an SI but with the appearance of being a canon character (and yes it gets tons more views than one that's written as SI). How do I know this? Because I am one of those readers who project onto those characters, and I know why I read those fics, I know why I like them. It's because I can self insert, and feel like I am part of the story, part of the world. Isn't that something most people want to do? I mean, Universal Studios? Specific franchise themed museums? COSPLAY??? Of course that's not all there is to engaging with a story, but what's the shame in wanting to be a part of an already established world building, or want to love a wonderfully designed character? (slight tangent, but if u feel like it's bcs ur not as interesting/cool as the story's world or other characters appear to be then I can tell you with certainty that's not true. You are very interesting and cool and absolutely deserve to be part of a fantasy world.) Isn't that a big part of why "real literature" is written and read as well? So... what's the problem with being like, okay, I'm just gonna insert myself into the world now, through this original character? Of course, I'm not asking for people who prefer to write strictly in canon characters to change that. What I mean to say is, writing it in the form of an OC/SI, doesn't make it a lot different from other fics, or hell, from classic literature even.

I think a potential problem might be the feeling that you are taking too much creative liberty with something that is established canon, by having your own character directly interact with it. But, um, can't the same thing be said if you take a canon character, and then proceed to project heavily onto them? Like, a big part of why I don't feel comfortable writing just canon characters is that I know I'm clearly projecting and it feels awkward to rewrite an already established character to explore my own thoughts/desires. I would rather just straightup design a new character. (this is all just personal feelings, I haven't thought enough about this to make any kind of argument here. And of course, the main reason is I can't trust myself to write canon characters that don't ooc in some way so having one as my protag might kill me with my own awkwardness. )

5. the potential.

Now this is looking far ahead because I'm not sure how much our current system for distribution of knowledge & copyright can allow it. But damn. The OC/SI thing has a lot of potential. There is one thing that makes it different from writing in canon characters, and that is the way it opens up a clear space for you to add your own experience into the story. When exploring your own world view through the lense of an already established world, or vice versa, so much can be revealed about both, perhaps even bringing to light aspects of the narrative the author hadn't previously seen. We all know this feeling, it's when we ramble on about one of our stories or worlds to a friend, and they point something out, and we're like ooooh that makes a lot of sense but I hadn't thought about it before. Yea, like those moments. Stories are generally made more interesting by their interaction with many different perspectives/experiences. With OC/SI it straightup allows you to be like, okay, I'm going to engage my own experience with this fictional world/character now. I mean, isnt that also a large part of how fanfics work in general? Readers/writers bouncing symbols and experiences off each other in the form of stories? Reading about the various interpretations of canon stuff? Whats the problem with tagging it as it is? I'm just thinking about the fics that could have been written as OC/SI and explored the story in some fascinating way which weren't written at all or were discontinued bcs the number of views discouraged those authors. (I feel that with my current work as well, though I have already written half of it and the remaining half is too juicy to give up so I'll probably be completing it)

6. conclusion, sorta

I guess what I want for OC/SO fics is just the same treatment as everything else. Saw it in the tags you were searching for? Look at the teaser. Do you find it interesting? No, then very well. Yes, then click in and take a look. Do you like the writing style? Are you getting into the narrative?... etc. You know, like, same standards you would have for any other kind of fic. Not feeling like you want to read about a new character? Cool, no problem at all, click away. But I do not think that the current difference in number of views is just based on whether readers are interested in reading about a new character or not. In fact, that's what I want it to be. Show me that "true" difference, the one without the stigma behind it, because, as the same goes for every kind of stigmatized community, you're not receiving the proportionate amount of positive feedback, but what's worse is you can't even trust the criticism you receive. If no one engages, or someone gives a negative feedback, how am I supposed to know if it's because my writing is bad? or my teaser wasn't interesting? or my character was badly written/designed? Or if it was to a certain extent, bcs of the stigma? I do want criticism, of course I do, it's the first step to every improvement, and I would love it if I could get feedback that I can trust. (and this brings us to the truely "oppressed" community of the fanfic world, the people who write very good but cant write interesting teasers//jk)

7. the entirely skippable straw man rant part, also the expression of my love for The Magnus Archives.

some straw man: if you like writing your own characters so much, why not just write your own story entirely? and publish it?

You think I'm not annoyed about that? Here's the thing, I LIKE THIS WORLD I READ FROM THIS BOOK/SOME OTHER FORM OF MEDIA OR WHATEVER, I like it, it's brilliant, I want to write for it, about it, be in it, think about it, read about it, engage in whatever way I can. I CAN'T just "go write my own." And who do you think is more annoyed about not being able to publish the stuff? (According to you) I have written something that is potentially publishable (thank you btw I know you don't exist and is a strawman I invented just now but I've gotta get my compliments where I can//Jk), and I can't publish it in any potentially big way (and rightfully not) because I have no copyright over the characters. I worked hard to design my character, to make the plot meaningful, and to study the original canon plot and characters so that it would all fit together (I mean, partially bcs I can't force myself to sit down and write sth that is any less complex), and I can't actually publish it where more people will read it. And of course, on top of that, even less people will feel like reading once that "original character" tag is up. Does it look like I would be here if I could "just write my own"?

(slight tangent but come on what even is "your own"? how many classic European lit books were just fanfics of each other which were all just fanfics of the Bible or Greek mythology or sth? Stories and symbols have no boundaries it's the economic system that drew those.)

Damn this got way longer than I thought and it's morning now😂 guess I ran out of space to actually promote my fic, might have to do that in a seperate post then. But to anyone who actually read up to here, I'm so sorry for wasting your time no but srsly thanks for reading all of these jumbled thoughts, and good luck with whatever you are working on at the moment, I know you're probably working on something if you're reading through these tags. And of course good luck to the tma folk we're gonna face the end together🙏. good night (I should rly go to sleep now😂)

[things2mustdo]

I went to visit my family for Thanksgiving, and as usual, I was confronted with numerous blue pill beliefs. While I’m no longer annoyed by these things, because I’ve gone through the “Return Journey” phase of swallowing the red pill, I did notice something that was extremely disturbing.

As I grew tired of arguing over basic political, economic, and gender points, I meandered downstairs to my family’s recreation room. There was a group of my younger relatives, aged 16-20, watching some show on Netflix about trans-gendered individuals.

I don’t know what the show was called, but one thing that really struck me was the show’s uncanny ability to use emotionally charged scenes and drama to elicit a feeling of compassion for the characters. In other words, numerous TV shows are now starting to take advantage of our natural empathy, and using it to sway our political and social opinions.

Emotionally Gripping

As I stood behind the couch watching a few minutes of this transgender show, I saw a very heart wrenching scene take place. Although the nuances of the story line were lost to me, I gathered enough information to see what was going on.

Basically, some guy was getting surgery to turn into a woman. As he was in the operating room, something went terribly wrong, and despite the surgeons’ desperate attempts to save him, he ended up perishing.

The following scene was comprised of extremely grief-inducing piano music played to various clips of the man’s children all mourning their loss. While this may seem innocuous, or like it’s just “creative, dramatic television,” I believe that it’s actually something far more sinister.

What’s going on here, is that the elites (because remember, this is a top down operation) are trying to traumatize the average American youth with images of the “horrors that transgender people go through!” They’re using television to create these emotional “triggers,” if you will, that will be ignited anytime someone says something against transgenders.

In other words, the trauma that occurs from becoming engrossed in this TV show (in our example) leaves an emotional residue of sorts, so that whenever the topic of transgenderism is brought up in conversation, the viewer subconsciously remembers the emotions associated with the topic which the TV show implanted into his mind.

Emotional Triggers

This became abundantly clear to me as I was arguing with a friend from the West Coast over transgenderism. I very calmly said that I believe it’s a mental illness, and should be treated as such. I said that these people need help, and we shouldn’t encourage them. I backed my assertion by referencing how the chief psychologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital has vehemently called out doctors who perform transgender surgeries as “collaborating with a mental illness for profit.”

Despite my calm and collected assertions, she grew EXTREMELY emotional and automatically assumed a whole host of things about me:

I’m a disgusting, careless sociopath

I have no sympathy for others’ suffering and I’m a cold-hearted bastard

I vehemently hate anyone who’s different than me

Despite the fact that none of these things are true, it became clear to me why she automatically believed this about me: the TV shows that she watches had been subtly implanting little emotional biases into her brain. This is how manipulative our “real” media is.

What happened, in psychological terms, was that as I was calmly explaining my perspective on transgenderism, her subconscious was flooded with all of the EMOTIONS that she associates with the topic:

All of the pain and grief she experienced from TV shows depicting transgender “issues”

How Bruce Jenner is a “hero,” and how much mainstream “opposition” he encountered when coming out

All of the anger she experienced when the token “anti-transgender person” in each show was a huge dick to the main character (more on this in the next section)

All rational thought was completely stopped, as she had literally been trained to elicit a certain response whenever the topic of transgenderism is brought up. Do you see my point? By repeatedly exposing people to scenes that elicit sympathy for transgenders, the media is engineering a widespread social response in favor of it.

Token Characters

As I alluded to before, another underhanded tactic that mainstream TV shows use is that they never have a rational, level-headed man who supports traditional marriage and normal heterosexuality. Any time someone in mainstream media doesn’t support the main character’s disorder, he’s always portrayed as a complete asshole.

This can take the form of him beating up the main character, bullying the main character, or what have you. I recall several years ago there was ample talk at the work place over some “anti-homosexual” character in glee that smothered a smoothie onto a guy just because he was homosexual, or something ridiculous like that.

Despite the fact that NOBODY I know would do something like this, the elite-sponsored TV utilizes token characters in order to implant a certain idea into our heads—the idea that everyone who opposes deviant sexual orientations is a cold-hearted bully. I recall that this was pointed out to me by a Catholic high school teacher, and it didn’t make any sense to me back then (before homosexuality was normal).

Now, in retrospect, I’m extremely thankful that he planted that seed in my class’s mind. The more that I look at television through this lens, the more I see what he was talking about. There’s never a level-headed, confident, genuine man that has game, either. It’s always either a completely meek beta male, or a chauvinistic “bad boy” Hank-Moody type character (although I do love me some Hank Moody).

This phenomena is taken even further as the transgender or homosexual person in mainstream TV is almost always portrayed as some brave, sweet, sensitive soul, with a hard life. In other words, the elites are engineering a dichotomy as Roosh has referenced before.

The dichotomy is that you’re either a sweet, empathetic, gentle-hearted person who supports transgenderism and deviant sexual preferences, or you’re a complete asshole who bullies and berates people just because “you’re mean.” This use of labeling brainwashes others into IMMEDIATELY putting you into the “sociopathic jerk” category if you don’t support transgenderism, making any and all rational discourse folly.

Subtle Desensitization

Another terrifying event that comes to mind of the media’s disgusting methods was when I was watching a popular kid’s TV show known as “Adventure Time,” a year or two ago. Again, I was with my family for some holiday event (I can’t remember which), and recall some of the kids watching this show.

Despite the fact that it’s labeled as a kid’s show, I saw an insidious little dialogue take place that was meant to desensitize children to pedophilia. In the show, there was some ball going on (I assume it was like a “prom” type deal), and the old wizard was looking for a partner.

He ended up going with some underage girl, who was probably 60 years his prior, and when the main character pointed this out, the old wizard simply stated: “Age…is nothing but a number!” Upon which the characters started dancing and doing comical things to prevent any sort of rational thought occurring after this was said.

After seeing this I became extremely disgusted and turned off the television, but that’s beyond the point. Why is this type of dribble being used to brainwash our youth? Anyone with half a brain can see that the point behind this scene was to start subtly implanting the seeds of pedophilia into a child’s mind.

Again, the words of my wise old Catholic high school teacher come to mind. I’ll never forget when he told me that “in 15 years, pedophilia will become normal.” My entire class was shocked, and couldn’t comprehend such a thing happening. He said this in 2009, and it seems that his prediction is coming true.

“First it will start with the media,” he said. “They’ll have some show where they make jokes about it and they’ll keep the humor very lighthearted, never showing the actual act. They’ll begin the process of desensitizing you, then eventually some politician will bring it up, and it will be an official stance that other politicians will be forced to take. This will begin the process of slowly normalizing it.”

My God was this man spot on, because this is EXACTLY how the media sways our opinions.

Keep in mind that their methods are SUBTLE, and that’s the point—they want to keep it below the level of thought so that you never question what they’re teaching you. Any time a strange or ridiculous belief is asserted, they very quickly move into a joyful scene or celebration to not only prevent you from thinking too much about the ridiculous belief, but to have you associate happiness with it, as well, which brings me to my next point.

Association And Correlation Bias

There’s a very powerful phenomena in psychology known as association; this is sometimes also called the correlation bias, or “Illusory Correlation.” This is basically your mind’s tendency to look for relationships where there aren’t any.

For example, why do you think most modern girls aren’t girlfriend material? Why do you think that the average man is weak, pathetic, and emasculated? It’s because of the media’s tendency to slowly create illusory associations within your mind.

The media causes women to associate happiness and a successful life with the following:

Being a man-hating feminist, who can’t submit to a strong, confident man

Not cooking or cleaning, because that’s “sexist”

Riding the alpha male cock carousel, and not getting married, because marriage is “oppressive”

The media creates a false correlation in women’s minds by constantly portraying bitchy, overly-masculine, slutty women as being empowered, sought-after, and happy. As any man who’s been learning game knows, this is absolute nonsense.

It doesn’t matter, though—once your brain has an association, it’s extremely difficult to get rid of it. This is why so many men are emasculated nowadays. It teaches us to associate:

Being a weak bitch with getting a hot girlfriend

Being a feminist and leftist with having girls think you’re noble and heroic

Courting a slut with being a gentleman

As any modern man who reads the manosphere knows, these are completely fallacious beliefs. Being a weak, low-testosterone man will not in fact land you the girls. Being a screaming leftist who holds those “I’m a feminist because,” signs will not get you the approval of women, and courting a washed up slut does not make you a gentleman (it makes you stupid).

Despite the obvious illogical nature of these beliefs, because the mainstream media has 8 hours a day to indoctrinate us, most men end up buying into them wholeheartedly, and will even berate you for having game when you CLEARLY get more women than them.

“So What Can I Do?”

First things first, stop watching mainstream media. In case you haven’t noticed, the MSM is starting to feel the effects of men waking up; in fact, they’ve recently gone on a long, drawn-out tirade about “fake news,” or in other words, news that is red-pilled.

I haven’t watched mainstream media EVER—the only time that I ever watch MSM is if they’re interviewing a pickup artist, a manosphere blogger, or if I’m trying to debunk their ludicrous reporting. I get almost all of my news from sites like ROK, Danger And Play, Info Wars, Natural News, and the people that I follow on Twitter.

In addition to only consuming a red-pilled information diet, ensure that your children don’t watch TV unarmed. I saw a phenomenal post recently on “How to Raise Red-Pilled Daughters,” and the ROK author talks about how he doesn’t flat out ban TV, but rather teaches his daughters to think rationally and learn to see the foolishness of MSM.

Aside from not watching MSM and raising your family to be skeptical of it, you can also support alternative media sites by simply tuning in. You don’t have to buy any of their products (although it helps); simply giving them your attention and leaving a thoughtful comment or two is enough to generate interest.

All in all, we’re facing extremely tumultuous times. More and more people are starting to break free of the MSM’s grip on their mind, but the men who get left behind end up more brainwashed than ever. Eventually, once the MSM dies, we can begin the long and arduous process of reclaiming our country—and this, my friends, is something I believe is worth fighting for.

Read More: Fact Checking Emotional Propaganda

When I was making a purchase at my local bookstore last week, the cashier solicited me for a donation. This donation was for a charity dealing with sick children or something. I told cashier I came here to buy a book not make donations. I guess she realized I am not one to be guilt tripped into doing things and told me that many people do not have the courage to say no. This pressure to comply due to emotional appeal has run rampant in America. When people make decisions on how they feel or manipulated by their feelings, not many good things can come of it.

Usually I do not delve into the details of the various schemes and manipulations that powerful people do in order to influence people’s behaviors. Someone actually fact checked one sales pitch for the limitation of guns. This exercise in breaking down an argument outside of the emotional shows that emotion is all it has. While the premise is guns, the method is pure emotional appeal.

The Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg has decided to throw his hat in, as well as his capital, in a political fight against the NRA by spending an estimated fifty million dollars to start up Everytown for Gun Safety @ Everytown.org. If you go to his website, one of the articles pops out on the front page is an “analysis” of the over sixty “school shootings” that have taken place since the Newtown massacre on December 12th, 2012.

In this era of political rhetoric and ideological echo-chambers, there is little in the way of fact-checking and realism with statistical data. The media is off  panicking the masses of soccer moms and metrosexual dads that mass shootings are a growing epidemic, apparently none of whom look at the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports of homicides every year. Of the sixty-two incidents on Everytown’s “analysis”, only one can be classified as a mass murder. The FBI is quite clear that a “mass murder” involves the homicide of four or more individuals with no cooling off period between the murders. The article would lead readers to believe that there have been sixty-two incidents of similar scope as the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. But this is simply not the case.

With a total combined death toll between the sixty-two “school shootings” of 39, it’s hard to match them up to Newtown, which in one incident saw 28 deaths, including the perpetrator, Adam Lanza. Despite what the media might portray for politics, ratings, or profit, such shootings are exceptionally rare. Of course, a large amount of the focus is on the AR-15 reportedly used,the  gun control advocates would like gullible Americans to think without which Adam Lanza would not have been capable of such carnage. But if you remember the Virginia Tech shooting on April 16th, 2007. Seung-Hui Cho managed to kill 32 people, then himself, with nothing more than a .22LR caliber Walther P22 and 9mm Glock 19; the Walther with a magazine capacity of ten rounds and the Glock a bit more at fifteen. There is little discussion of firearms in the Everytown analysis, probably because they are virtually all handguns or the suggested firearm for home defense of Vice President Joe Biden, a shotgun.

Let’s look at that the lack of analysis this “analysis” gives us, as it’s little more than a picture of a crying woman and a list of schools at which a firearm was discharged on or nearby campus grounds since December 2012. Thirty-nine people dead, because of school shootings, between December 13th, 2012 and mid-April 2014. It’s hard to find statistics for causes of death even near that number. The United States averages roughly 51 deaths due to lightning strikes per year, over the last 20 years; according to NOAA. According to the CDC, there was an average of 3,533 unintentional drownings per year for the years of 2005-2009. Yet where is a politically motivated and affluent billionaire to launch a safety campaign outlining the dangers of pools or thunderstorms?

The fact that Mayor Bloomberg has taken Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s now infamous quote “never let a good crisis go to waste” to heart, is no surprise. But who thinks about the political realities of why someone is making moves against one of the GOP’s biggest political lobbies, using a tragedy like Newtown as the crest on their flag; when they are busy being emotionally compromised by the idea of children being gunned down in their school classrooms?

Among the 39 deaths, there is a justified case of self-defense, a possible case of self-defense, and seven cases of nothing more then suicides by firearm. The biggest trend among these “school shootings” is the shooters and victims are young black men. This reality is in stark contrast to the media image of upper-class white elementary school kids gunned down by socially awkward psychopaths with AR-15’s or other “assault weapons”. Few if any of the mainstream gun safety campaigns reflect the reality of gun violence. Remember, you are more likely to be killed by bee stings than you are to be shot on or around a school campus.

In conclusion, this emotional appeal by Mr. Bloomberg seems to be all about coercing a population into following his politics through emotional appeal. His advocacy gives them an audience of motivated people controlled by their emotions. What could a powerful person do with this audience aside from campaign against guns. I signed up at this website to get the newsletter. This newsletter only talks about political activism for those that seem to not be able to make up their own mind. Be aware of those that appeal to your emotion, because they may not appeal to your interests.

Note: The author received help from “Glocktopus”, a member of the notorious “Donk Chat” in writing this article.

[grim-faux]

4 - Committed to Survival

Rather fix the camera in its hoister now, I’d wait until I wasn’t around the water.  The path out of this place felt long and oppressive, the sharp smell of mildew at this point drilling a painful ache in my head.  I shut the mesh door behind me and trudged up the stairs to the first landing, where a tolerable light source awaited.

MKULTRA program, CIA document no. 190691, p. 1, excerpt  To: File  Subject: Hypnotic Experimentation and Research, Febuary 10, 1954  On Wednesday, 10 Febuary, 1954, hypnotic experimentation and research work was continued in Building 13 of the Mount Massive Preserve in Colorado using the following subjects.

  <material abridged> 

1. A posthypnotic of the night before (pointed finger, you will sleep) was enacted. Misses Jackson and Pierce immediately progressed to a deep hypnotic state with no further suggestion.  Miss Pierce was then instructed (having previously expressed a fear of firearms in any fashion) that she would use every method at her disposal to awaken miss Jackson (now in a deep hypnotic sleep), and failing this, she would pick up a nearby pistol and fire it at Miss Jackson. She was instructed that her rage would be so great that she would not hesitate to “kill” Jackson for failing to awaken. 

2. Miss Pierce carried out these suggestions to the letter including firing the (unloaded pneumatic pistol) gun at Jackson and then proceeding to fall into a deep sleep. After proper suggestions were made, both were awakened and expressed complete amnesia for the entire sequence. Miss Pierce was again handed the gun, which she refused (in an awakened state) to pick up or accept from the operator.  She expressed absolute denial that the foregoing sequence had happened.” In the least my little souvenir was interesting.  Hypnoses to cure fears, or force a person to perform a desired function.  I read files on this but the fancy didn’t strike me, people liked to read those sorts of articles but I wasn’t prime on reporting them. I left the file on the landing and made the ground floor.  I exhaled a breath of relief to see my surroundings unchanged, whether good or bad.  At least the big fucker had left most of the building intact.  I made my uneventful trek back to the Security room, I didn’t like the idea of a gaping hole behind me at this point, but I wasn’t about to prop that heavy metal door up with that little rolling chair. Call me lazy, I just wanted to get the doors open and put a fuck lot of distance between here, and the remnants of my healthy psyche.  I wasn’t going to be normal after this, alright? The terminal looked like it would still function, some of the monitors seemed to be spazing out from the abrupt shut down.  The main root, system controls, was up and ready to go. I managed to type in the first half of Security before someone crashed into me from behind, I didn’t even hear them enter.  I tried to push back and throw them off but they had braced a knee into the back of my leg, the edge of the terminal bit into my bruised thigh.  I already knew who it was even before he braced his arms over my chest, pain rippled up my side as he wrenched my head up.  Something metal flashed across my vision.  A needle! It was jammed into the base of my neck, my vision flashed as whatever the hypodermic was filled with drowned my senses.  He released me and I collapsed against the desk, my forehead started to tingle and I immediately worried over what was in that needle.  I leaned against my arms struggling to drag my failing strength back, but it was impossible.  The blue chair rolled over the clean portion of the floor as he nudged it aside, and moved close beside me.  I turned my head to watch his movement, his foul black robe swelled along my peripheral vision.  Getting hard to focus.  Felt like my legs were turning into jello. “I’m sorry, my son, I didn’t want to have to do this to you.”  He revealed the needle and grasped my hand.  “But you can’t leave, not yet.”  I jerked my hand away from his clammy grasp and brushed him off.  I tried to turn, push him away.  I want nothing to do with you.  Nothing!  Just let me Leave!   Without the support of the desk my legs gave out.  The Priest caught me under the arms and lowered me to my knees.  My shoulder pressed into the side of the metal desk as I stared up into his face.  He was bald, with wild eyes that frightened me.  “There is so much yet for you to witness.”   Oh god. “Will you see it?  Can you?”  With one arm latched to my side, he used the other hand to turn my head towards a gray video feed.  My thoughts were muddled, it was a room.  Camera looking down in a room, with a desk, wall with windows.  Bright windows.  Everything in that room was bright.  A symbol.  Rings on the floor.  Sharp ovals.  People in the room.  Holding guns.  Looked like MHS cops.  The guy I watched die.  I tried to get out…. “Our lord the Walrider, tearing His truth into the unbelievers.”  They were dying.  My eyes drooped but I fought to keep focus, what was killing them?  Dragging them off, throttling them, blood everywhere.  This place was turning red, full of blood.  Blood up to my knees, I was running from my shadow.  What did they see?  What was killing them?  What did he put into me? “The only way out of this place is the truth.”  My head rolled back to him.  The drugs made me weak and heavy, and I couldn’t care less for what he was saying.  The lights dimmed and I sank to my side.  His last words rang through my mind.   “Accept the gospel and all doors will open before you.” The dark. There was safety in the dark.  There was comfort in the dark.  The dark was the unknown.  The dark was all encompassing.  The dark was unmovable. Unless there was light.  That terrible light. I awoke once, enveloped in white, everything was bright and painful to bear.  By my side was a dark shape, the Priest.  I blinked and he was outside the door, it looked like he was speaking to a man with ants crawling on his face. Maybe it was a dream.  The road was very long, and it was already night.  It didn’t matter what time visiting hours ended, I planned to snoop around the grounds anyway and pick up whatever looked incriminating.  But I had to film something concrete, or my contacts would just scoff. When I arrived, the patients were wandering the front lawn in white shrouds.  Something without form was tearing through them, tossing their bodies like broken toys against the walls, muscle and lungs were tangled in the barbed wire.  Amidst them was Chris Walker, the other patients had bowed before him.  It didn’t look like he cared.  His face was splint back in a cruel grin, but his eyes were milky and dead. Once I had gotten away from the Asylum, I collapsed in the woods.  Everything hurt, my body was broken.  Death wasn’t the punishment anymore.  I didn’t have to worry about paying the bills, a boyfriend, my next job - nothing mattered.  The fight was over.  I curled up in the wet leaves and sank into a deep sleep, the dead of winter closed in, but not even the cold could reach me.  There was just the indiscriminate black that awaited at the end of it all. A soft groan escaped me as I roused, clearing the short rest from my stiff lungs.  I opened my eyes to view murky shapes, odd lines in the white walls.  The damn light was too bright, I turned my head and felt the dull pain in my neck reminding me of the previous events.  Everything felt muggy and pointless to my mind, but at least I was alone.    It felt like I had slept on the world’s hardest substance, the material crinkled nastily as I shifted.  Smelt like a retirement homes bad day, but at this point I didn’t give a damn.  Same scenario if you were drunk off your ass, you didn’t give a damn where you passed out.  I put a hand to my collar and brought it back.  No blood.  Probably bruised like hell, but otherwise fine.  My brain was still working out the crap that guy injected me with, should probably be the least of my worries.   For a while I lay on that stiff cot, staring at the walls until they came into focus.  Crosses and words scrawled everywhere.  Some of it in blood.  I took it this was His cell. I didn’t feel ready to resume my personal vendetta for freedom, but options were a luxury I feared I was now banned from.  Time was my worst enemy, and my chances of walking out alive dwindled the longer I wavered.  Either way, I didn’t want to be here when He returned. Slowly I sat up, making mental note of the injuries that had set into my body.  I coughed a bit of blood onto my sleeve, but that didn’t alarm me.  But I would check in to the hospital first chance I had.  A real hospital. Very considerate of the Priest to leave the camera, but he had reinforced his desires into me that I was to be his Apostle.  I flipped the visor open and raised it to the walls. “The priest, FATHER MARTIN brought me here to show me something. Thinks I’m going to be a witness for whatever batshit crazy he’s trying to sell me. This DR. WERNICKE is at the center of whatever went wrong here. But he died more than ten years ago. ‘Rest in Peace,’ says the blood on the wall.“ Fuck the story, when I get out of here I was going to write a New York Times best seller.  “How I Survived the Worst Tip in my Career.”  By Miles Upshur.  In your face, Oprah. The door had no visible lock or latch mechanism.  How did I get out?  Maybe if I pushed. That didn’t seem to work, but as I peered out of the small window a face shot into the lens of my camera startling me.  A click echoed, and the figure darted off.  Though the door was now wide open, I waited.  I had no idea what was out there, let alone where the hell I was NOW.  I hadn’t seen much before he unlocked the cell.  But the question I needed answered immediately, where was I in this god awful place?  Far from the safest exit, of course! Tentatively, I crept forward, but what was I going to do if someone decided to come in next?  I wasn’t hiding in here. This was better than Disney land.  I think every ghost hunter in the world would donate a kidney, just to spend a night in this place.  It was the main ward of the asylum, its heart, where all the crazies hung out.   Below, I saw a few of the frequents.  One man patrolling, smashing his skull into blood stained concrete with bone cracking force.  I winced with each impact. “Back!  Get back!”  To my right a man lunged at a segregation gate rattling at the bars, shrieking his lungs out.  “Get the fuck away from me!  Rrah!  Huh…don’t look at me.  Don’t you dare….” I whirled away from him, relying fully on the doors capacity to withstand his violence, even if fate did not favor me this hour.  I walked along the bland and gray wall, glancing down to the people on the lower floor.  Had they been this messed up before Murkoff got ahold of them?  They were using dream therapy to alter their higher cognitive functions of the mind, didn’t look like these people had that treatment.  Even if they had, I still wouldn’t be able to distinguish them from your typical lunatic. I shuddered to think if Murkoff had been trying to cure their mental deficiency in order to use them for further experimentation later on. The smell.  Like all the filthy alley ways and slums in every city in the world.  I could hardly breathe without gaging, filth was everywhere.  It was a miracle these people weren’t dead from contamination.  Or maybe it was some sort of curse.  This was no sort of life for a human. The window parallel to my face burst open and a hand shot out, grabbing for my head as I ducked.  I smashed against the rail and stared up as the arm continued to grope blindly for nothing, then withdrew.  The shock wore off quickly and I stood up to gaze on the face that met mine. Skin had been cut and moved, tacked down in cruel areas.  It looked like his right eyelid had been removed, the eye now a shriveled sack in the socket.  Despite his earlier ‘attack,’ I think I felt sorry for him. I was still glad his door was locked. The next door was open, but I could change that. “Said he shouldn’t hurt you,” a voiced hummed from within. Inside, opposite to a blood splashed corner, stood a man pawing at his face.  He too had been mutualized by some form of surgery, one eye stitched shut and his face scarred by malpractice.  “Is what he said.” I glanced around, then turned back to him and raised the camera.  “Father Martin?” “Our Father,” he corrected.  “Told him not to hurt you.  But when the cat’s away….Hmmmm….Mmmmm.” Everything in me screamed, slam that door now.  But I didn’t.  Quietly, I backed away and left him as he was.  If he was a danger, he was the least of my concerns.  Shutting the door might agitate him, and there were people on the floor below that seemed to not have noticed my presence yet. I slipped around the pillar of the next corner and walked towards the metal door on this side of the level. “Who’s this?” I stopped in my tracks and stared at the speaker, cloaked by shadow.  That was all they were cloaked by. “Maybe…Farther Martin’s man.” “Maybe.”  The first seemed excited by my presence.  My hair stood on end and I knew without a doubt, I should not be near them. The thick metal gate stood between us and presumably was locked, but I couldn’t make that gamble.  Even without the NV I could distinguish their lack of apparel, their shapes were tall and sinewy, and they appeared to be identical twins.  Splattered with blood. “He looks nervous.” “I would like to kill him.” I hid behind the pillar a little more. “As would I…”  His voice made the task sound tedious.  I really didn’t want to be here at this particular moment. “The preacher asked us not to.” “It would be impolite.” “Not here.” They paused. “We give him a running start?” “There’s an idea.” “And when we kill him, we kill him slow.” “Such patience.” I was done.  I was gone.  I was staggering down the steps searching for a way out of this mad house.  “I want his tongue.  And liver.” “They are yours.” Was there a way out?  Not from down here, the only route I could see had the camera shy freak and my new fan club.  They were giving me a running start.  What the FUCK did that mean?! “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”  Said the man staring at a pillar.  I decided from this point on, for the safety of my psyche and my body parts I did NOT need to speak with ANYONE.  They could talk to me, I was not going to converse back. Someone darted from the group into an open door, and slammed it.  One less to worry over.  Two men still roamed, there was a third sitting in a wheelchair.  I didn’t trust anyone in a wheelchair anymore. The two rooms on either side of the stairs had nothing to offer, no tools or messages, or items of interest.  I had a fear of standing in the doorways, unless someone opened the door from the outside I could be locked in.  The man staring at his pillar, he had been the one to let me out in the first place.  I didn’t want to ask if there was a way out of this area. The Priest had brought me here, how the hell did he get out?  Unless, he was still here…. “Don’t trust them.”  I jerked away from the man in the wheelchair, I had given him his distance though it was doubtful he could do much.  His mutilation went beyond the laws of humanity, scars and broken flesh healed over.   I raised my camera and knelt down, but I refused to get too close.  “They’ll tell you it’s science but it’s not.  They were…waiting for us.  In this place.  Billy understood.  They’ve always been here.” I wanted to ask him about Billy.  About the experiments and the Walrider, and what he meant by ‘they.’  But I was frightened by what he might say.  If he said any more.  Uttering this information had seemed to exhaust him, and his head wilted to his shoulder.  Briefly, I wondered if he had fallen asleep or had he finally escaped this place. I shivered and stood.  A way out that involved my body and I escaping together, and in one piece.  That seemed like a naive dream. I didn’t bother with the door behind him, or the one after that.  Though, as I passed by a face appeared in the glass.  I stared, and ‘he’ stared back.  My mind was attempting to fathom how someone without a mouth could survive, unless there was a tube in his nose, but even his nostrils were compromised.  It looked like there was an opening in his throat, reminiscent to smokers that suffered cancer and had their larynx removed. This place was god awful.  I had to keep reminding myself that, the more I looked around, the more I felt.  Even for a clutch of crazy people, murderers, whatever.  I think the worst ones were the men and women that consciously decided they were going to mangle the part of them that wasn’t broken beyond function.  Then, crack their minds open and figure out to what extent they could fuck their thoughts up even more. I was between feeling terrible and feeling like bitter justice was served.  Everything was a whirling mess of gray with globs of black. One room I entered on the far side had a patient curled up on his cot, trembling.  I knelt down to film him through the nightvision feed, taking in the details of his misshapen face.  Many of the patients I had encountered thus far had scars or wounds of unknown origin, from experiments Murkoff was performing on them.  It was briefly mentioned in Chris Walker’s file, many of his injuries were self-inflicted, but the report indicated not all.  Were the patient’s the one mutilating their bodies, prior to Murkoff’s fall?  Not all of them shared these injuries, some appeared almost normal or unharmed.   It must have been a part of the process Murkoff was putting them through.  But what sort of process I couldn’t begin to imagine.  Some of the scars appeared almost like chemical burns in theory.  What sort of monster would give an order to maim humans? “Too many voices.  They followed me back.”  He stumbled into me as I swayed to get out of his way.  “No more sleep.”  He grabbed my collar and forced me aside, and then continued on toward a bloody spot on the wall without pause.  Wack. Smack! Crack! Clack! “They’re in my blood and they want to get out.  Can feel….” I continued to back away until I was a safe distance, concealed in shadows.  My back pressed against the cold wall and I slid down to sit. “We angered Him with our science.  He only wanted faith.” The voice sounded very close, but when I turned my camera to find him, he was a few feet away curled up tightly in a corner.  I sat there for what felt like a long time observing the habits of these people, lost in madness.  Eventually the man whom stared at pillar did move, at first leaning on his subject matter, then slipping down until he was on his side facing the cold concrete structure.  I turned my attention back to the man in wheelchair, but he had not yet moved since he spoke.  I wondered if he did indeed die.  It made no difference to me, not at this time, but I did feel a unique chill in my veins at the thought.  How many people have I watched die today? “Voices in my head follow me back!”  When the head banger made his third round, I decided it was time to find a way out. Without a word of farewell to the squatter, I crossed to the other side of the wall to doors that had not been examined.  I was beginning to despair, surrendering resolve to the idea of returning to the upper level, to the twins. It was very likely they would open the door only to murder me.  There was no place for me to run, or hide.  Especially with the two of them, they’d corner me with little effort if I tried.  My heart thudded against the stress, and that persistent pain in my chest.  I needed a doctor. A door I opened finally offered some promise, the back of the room was shattered revealing a crack into an open work space.  A shred of concern did remain in me to enter a room in which I could not open from the inside, but I didn’t give a damn at this point.  I squeezed through the gap and pulled up the nightvision, it sounded like someone was struggling. I wasn’t confident in facing the source, if I had someplace to run I might felt more assured.  Truth was safety was an illusion in Mount Massive, my only hope for survival was my capacity to elude danger.   There wasn’t much to see in the work hall, pipes for water, pipes for gas, I couldn’t tell which from the static green NV feed.  The noises were muffled but grew louder as I moved through the work space.  I didn’t like the sound of them.  Overhead the cement had been torn out, where the debris was removed to remained a mystery but it was a direction to take. I climbed onto a crate and made sure it was sturdy before leaping up to an overhead ledge.  For a span I was completely blind in the dark, the camera strap I stuck in my mouth rather the case so I could reach it quicker.  Once I had pulled myself onto the floor I knelt and took it up, looking immediately into the visor. A face covered in ants stared back. I gave a sharp yelp and toppled sideways, catching the jagged edge with my elbows before I fell through, my legs swung beneath me and I struggled not to drop the camera in my hand.  Groaning, I pulled myself back up and crawled away before checking once more. “Agh!  God damnit!  What the fuck is the matter with you?”  One of the patients had plastered himself against a wall and was fixing his shirt.  He wasn’t wearing pants.  On the floor across from him was a bloodied and decapitated body, nude, in a…suggestive position. “You weren’t invited to this, you god damned sicko.” Just….This place needed to go to hell.  Some of the people here did deserve what they got. “What, you like to watch?”  He pointed directly at me and reaffirmed his diagnosis.  “It’s sick.  You’re sick.” And thus my pledge, not to speak to any of these people, was solidified.  You couldn’t stage better propaganda. “Fuck this place. Seriously, just fuck this place. Dying keeps moving lower on the list of the worst things that could happen to me here.” I jogged down the hall, an otherwise good mood literally—No, no.  I needed to forget.  Positive thoughts, healthy thoughts.  I was terribly fucking lost, had no map, two naked men were admitted into my fan club, and dying was no longer top of the list of shitty ways to ruin this day. Or night.  I had no fucking idea. “Hey!  Hey!”  I stopped in an intersecting hall when someone called for me, and rattled a gate.  He was on the other side, which made me happy.  “You… Oh.  I….”  By the time I had my camera zoomed in he had already spun about and was running away.  The small event had me smirking despite everything, who did he think I was?  A friend? Lord give me strength, I was just mistaken for a loony.  And I thought it was funny.

[imadethisblogfor1post]

What is gender? Please send help

Content warning: ignorance about transgender issues, discussion of sexism, well-meaning-ally-who-doesn’t-quite-get-it-ism. Callouts welcome and encouraged.

.

.

.

.

.

.

I want to start by saying that despite my profound lack of understanding about what gender is, I don’t want to invalidate anyone. I want so badly to be a supportive ally to trans and nonbinary folks, and at first I did a lot of reading to try to understand, but no matter how much I read, I stayed confused. So eventually, I gave up. After all, I don’t have to have a deep understanding of an identity to know that people are deserving of respect. If calling someone a particular name or using a particular set of pronouns will help them know that I love and respect them, then of course, of course, I will do that. Nothing I am about to say changes that.

The only problem is, not understanding makes it really hard to call out bigotry, because I don’t always see it. This post was triggered by a recent transphobic tweetstorm by JK Rowling, and I think I get why most of those were bad, but with some I’m still more sympathetic than I’m comfortable with. This continues a trend I’ve seen for a while: some of the most helpful pieces of reading material have been posts from radical feminists that I found myself nodding along to, only to find that the point of the post my friend was sharing was the attached comment and call-out. These served as huge wake-up calls, but it still wasn’t enough to explain to me what I wasn’t getting. More than that, even after the call outs, even after knowing that some of the points of the original post were transphobic, I sometimes can’t help feeling that some part of it rang true. Therefore, my problems as an ally come in two parts. One, I deeply lack the understanding to call out bigotry in others and myself, and two, there are some real conflicts between the feminism I subscribe to and certain aspects of trans ideology (ideology is not a good word to use here, but I’m at a loss for what else to call it)(sorry).

I’ll start with the second— it’s the worse one anyhow. The crux of the problem is this: there are distinct consequences to being assigned female at birth. We are treated differently, we are socialized differently, and no matter how progressive your parents are, it’s impossible to completely escape. Put simply, cis women and trans women do not experience 100% the same types of oppression. This is not to say either experiences more or less pain, this is not to say either is more or less deserving of support, this is not to say that we as feminists should not strive to be intersectional (we should). All I am saying is that inclusion cannot come at the expense of erasing or silencing the experiences of people who were assigned female at birth.

I have a few specific concerns on this matter - these are the points that make me sympathetic to radical feminism (even when I see them called terfs, as ashamed as I am to admit it).

One, we need to be allowed to use words about female anatomy without being called terfs. It’s not okay to exclude people and imply that all women have uteri and all people with uteri are women, but it needs to be okay to talk about uteri.This one comes up less often, but when it does come up I find myself extremely indignant. I am sincerely sorry that talking about anatomy triggers dysphoria, but in a world where female anatomy is treated as inherently explicit, and people have been silenced in legislative settings simply for using those anatomical terms, we can’t afford to be silenced within our own communities. 

Two, it’s not okay to shout people down for how they experience attraction. I really shouldn’t have to say this, but too often I’ve seen lesbians pressured or called transphobic for not being interested in being with someone with a penis. It’s not uncommon for lesbians to experience compulsory attraction to men before recognizing their sexuality. That, combined with the prevalence of sexual violence against women and people who are assigned female at birth, makes me extremely skeptical of anyone whose response to rejection is to attempt to shame them into changing their mind. Again, I’m sorry, and it sucks that it causes dysphoria, but no one is entitled to anyone else’s attraction. It is not okay to pressure anyone else into a relationship or sex, regardless of the circumstances. I myself am gray-ace and panromantic - suffice to say I don’t really get how being attracted to genitals works, but if that’s how it works for them, then that’s how it works for them. If we need different words for “hi I’m attracted to the gender of woman” and “hi I’m attracted to female anatomy” then so be it, but honestly people probably shouldn’t have to disclose that much information right out the gates, and both should be allowed to call themselves lesbians. There’s a balance to be struck here, but I’m sick of seeing lesbians alienated for this, and it needs to be addressed.

Three, there need to be spaces for people who were assigned female at birth, without people who were assigned male at birth (unless they are invited as a guest). As mentioned above, sexual and gender based violence against AFAB people is incredibly common. A lot of us have trauma around it. We need spaces where we can talk about those experiences without being shouted down, the same way trans people need spaces to talk about their experiences. This is a bit of a slippery slope - obviously there need to be intersectional spaces as well, and it’s not okay to exclude people, as long as everyone is being respectful. But it’s important to make space for all of us, and understand that our experiences are not uniformly the same.

I’m not sure why this has been such an issue. Some part of me that I hate to acknowledge suggests that part of the problem is that people who are assigned male at birth tend to be more entitled than people who are assigned female at birth, simply because that’s how they were taught and socialized when they were younger, but that brings up a whole slew of other issues, and I’d hate to paint with too broad a brush. Perhaps it’s just that the fight for inclusion needs to be fierce and thorough, and any space where one isn’t included is treated as an attack, even if that isn’t the intent. No matter the reason, we need to understand that we are not all the same, and that’s not a bad thing. 

In a roundabout way, this brings me to my other barrier to being a good ally: I just don’t *get* gender. It’s not that I haven’t tried. As I mentioned early on in this post, when I first realized how much I didn’t understand about gender I did so much reading. I watched videos. I listened to podcasts. I went to a workshop (though truth be told the workshop did more harm than good). And what I got is this: it sounds like there’s a common experience, some strong internal certainty that composes gender identity, that says “I am a woman”, or “I am a man”, or “I am neither”, as the case may be. I have never felt this certainty. There is no emotion that tells me I am a woman, there is no internal compass, there is no sense of “no, that’s not right” when I imagine myself as a man, except a sense of unfamiliarity with the idea. As far as I’m concerned, I’m a woman because that’s what I’ve always been, and that’s how I’ve always been treated. It would be odd to use he/him pronouns for me because no one’s ever done that, and it would cause confusion, but that’s about the end of my issue with it.

This is, of course, directly in conflict with much of the narrative around gender these days. There must be something I’m missing, but I can never seem to pin down what gender actually *is* and every analogy and metaphor seems to confuse me even more.

Gender must not be biological sex, because trans people exist. Nonbinary people exist. Both are valid, and for all that I’m not a very good ally, I know that much.

Gender must not be personality traits, because, that’s personality. There are people on all areas of the gender spectrum with all types of personality traits. Don’t tell me that women can’t be brash, that men can’t be sweet.They are.

Gender must not be how you dress, because hey, we should all be able to dress however we want! How you dress doesn’t change your identity. (This part is gender expression though I think, if I’ve followed the articles correctly) Butch women exist, feminine men exist, androgynous people exist, all are valid.

Gender must not be gender roles, because honestly, fuck that. Gender roles are a tool of patriarchal oppression, and I’m not about to sit here and that be all there is to gender identity. If it helps you feel more at home in your skin then more power to ya, but that can’t be all there is.

So then, what is it? What is left? This isn’t a rhetorical question. I have genuinely tried to find answers to this and I have never been more lost. When I went to the trans allyship workshop mentioned above, I was told by the others at my table that to them being a woman was being nurturing, valuing family, being empathetic, being a caretaker. I was so relieved that we ran out of time before it was my turn. I don’t know what being a woman is to me, it’s just what I’ve always been. The only thing it has ever meant was shame about my body, shame about my period, enduring r*pe jokes and kitchen jokes from my guy friends, always having to be the one to “seduce the guard” when we played d&d, and other, darker things I don’t want to mention. It’s only ever been painful, and fearful, and ashamed. On the one hand, it means I’m inclined to believe trans women when they say that gender isn’t a choice— after all, who would choose this? But on the other, I know there must be more to this, something that I’m missing because my identity is too deeply rooted in oppression. I am ripping those roots out one by one, but they go deep, and I’m scared that without them I won’t have any point of reference left.

I want to understand gender, but even if I never do, I will always respect the identity and pronouns that people claim as their own. It is never my intent to dehumanize, or exclude. I want to be able to call out bigotry, I want to be able to stand up for my trans and nonbinary friends, I want to be sure that I don’t say something to them that causes them harm. 

But at its core: I don’t get it. What is gender? What makes a gender what it is?

Again, this is non-rhetorical. If you have the time and energy, I welcome any information, any resources, any anecdotes, anything at all to help me understand. I’ve looked, hard, but I won’t pretend to have read anywhere near the full lexicon of literature on this subject. If I’ve said something that upset or angered you, please don’t hesitate to call me out. Yell at me, if that’s what this post inspires, and I’ll do my best to learn from it, or at the very least maybe it will serve as a wake-up call for someone else. Or, if you agree, I’d be grateful to know that too. It can get pretty lonely feeling like there’s some manual to gender that everyone else has that somehow I never got.

TL;DR: What is gender? I want to learn but I’m hella lost and struggling to be both a trans ally and a radical feminist, and I was so afraid of offending anyone that I literally made a blog just for this post, which is silly because I don’t even really use my main blog. I just know that if you’re looking for callouts, this is where you go.

[whatznewz]

Anonymous Has Joined The Fight

After a recent video uploading on Facebook from the famous Anonymous, the “Black Lives Matter Movement” has a new ally.

By now we might’ve all heard about it: the group of hacktivists known as Anonymous has joined the #blacklivesmatter movement and protests that are occurring in the present day.  Who are they?  Where are they?  What are they? How are they going to help the movement against the American police and military forces?                                                                                                      

Let’s rewind all the way back to 2003.  A website by the name of 4chan, basically a cruder version of Reddit, was semi-popular.  This website, however, did not require its users to form an account, so everything was anonymous and people could generally post what they wanted without any backlash due to not having a designated username.  The anonymity of the website is perhaps what sparked up the given name Anonymous.

Originally, they started as a trolling group, a sort of joke.  Things that the group of trollers started to do in the beginning included sending unpaid pizzas to houses, posting humiliating information about public figures or other 4chan users, DDoSing different websites (method used to take down websites from the inside), and occasionally prank calls or private chats on other networks.   In 2008, what was meant to be a private video of Tom Cruise praising scientology made it online.  It was suspected to be uploaded by the trolling anonymous users that originated from 4chan.  When the video was taken down, the anon users seemed to have been angered.  This started a wave of trolling against the organization that had taken the video down.  This provoked protesting outside of the Church of Scientology.  However, the protesting eventually calmed down and the anon users went back to their regularly scheduled trolls.

Essentially, this “group” of hackers isn’t really an organized group.  While there is technically a team of anonymous hackers, they only make up a very small percentage of the people that continue to support the group and hack for similar causes to that of Anonymous.  

In the past they’ve hacked their way through recognition with some controversial issues like “Operation Tunisia” (2011), “Operation DarkNet” (2011), “Operation Russia” (2012), and many other big activism events throughout the years of 2010-2012.  This form of activism can prove to be very powerful when a group of people is experiencing social injustice and needs something to be done. ______ The infamous Guy Fawkes mask that can has been used as a sort of face for Anonymous originates from the comic and movie adaptation V For Vendetta.  V For Vendetta, summarized, follows the story of a young woman who is “rescued from a life situation by a masked guy known as ‘V’.” (V For Vendetta (2005) - Plot Summary - IMDb).

Guy Fawkes, however, is not fictional.  Fawkes is a historical figure who had attempted to blow up Parliament (1604) in hopes of destroying the British government and instating catholic domination.  He failed at his mission, but perhaps this act of rebellion is what inspired Anonymous to wear the Guy Fawkes mask.

In addition to the mask and the movie, Anonymous also has their own slogan: “Knowledge is free. We are Anonymous.  We are Legion.  We do not forget.”

As far as we know, Anonymous communicates through 4chan (though I would not recommend searching the website), image board wiki forums, and IRC networks.  Although Anonymous claims to not have any set leaders and, like I mentioned before, has only a small group of legit Anonymous hackers, it does have a way of targeting specific organizations all at once.

For example, a wide-range of people have strong opinions on something that’s unjust in the world.  If the subject at hand seems to have a big enough impact on the world, Anonymous has stepped in to reveal classified files, expose authoritative figures, or to hack their way into private institutions (may it be the government or a corporation) to fix the problem or assist people in their activism. Because of their efficiency, they are considered a legitimate threat to the government or shady companies. ______

Anonymous is back?

Recently, on May 28th, the Anonymous Facebook account posted a video regarding the recent events of George Floyd’s death, the unfair power of Minneapolis police, and the protests that are now happening all over America. In the video, Anonymous said the following:

“Greetings citizens of the United States.  This is a message from Anonymous, to the Minneapolis Police Department.  

“Police brutality and murder is a widespread problem in the United States, which has undoubtedly infected nearly every jurisdiction in the country, but the Minneapolis Police Department is among the worst and has a horrific track record of violence and corruption.  This week’s brutal killing of George Floyd, which has sparked protests and national outrage, is nearly the tip of the iceberg in a long list of high-profile cases of wrongful death at the hands of officers in your state.  In fact, in the past two decades, 193 people have been killed by police in Minnesota.  

“In recent years, we have seen numerous high profile killings in the area, including the deaths of Jamar Clark, Philando Castile, Justine Damond, Thurman Blevins, and Brian Quinones.  These are only the cases to catch the headlines., where videos or other evidence proves that the police are lying.  Sadly, in the vast majority of police killings, the only one left alive to tell the story is the officer who took the person’s life, and thus the cycle is able to continue because none of these murderers ever face any justice for their actions.  This travesty has gone on for far too long, and now the people have had enough.  

“In the most recent case of George Floyd, the blatant disregard for human life exhibited by the officers is undeniable and all evidence that has been released so far has shown that Floyd was being entirely compliant with the officers, which contradict earlier claims from police that he was resisting arrest.  Furthermore, our initial investigation of the offending officers has revealed a criminal pattern of violence on the job.  At least two of the officers involved in Floyd’s arrest, Derek Chauvin and Tou Thao, have a history of on the job shootings and excessive force complaints.  The Star Tribune reported this week that Chauvin, the officer most directly responsible for Floyd’s death, has been involved in numerous on the job shootings where suspects were killed.  There were four officers on the scene at the time of the incident, one who kept the gathering crowds away, and three who were forcefully holding Floyd down.  Onlookers warned the officer that he was crushing the man to death, but none of the police on the scene seemed to have any concern for Floyd’s condition.  You may have fired these officers to save face, but it is obvious that this type of behavior is condoned, if not encouraged within your police department, as it is in others.  Officers who kill people and commit crimes need to be held accountable just like the rest of us, otherwise, they will believe that they have a license to do whatever they want.

“You will claim that this is the work of just ‘a few bad apples’, but what of the officers that stand by and do nothing while they commit offenses against the people they encounter, and the police departments like yours who refuse to prosecute these criminals as they would one of the citizens that they are sworn to protect.  

“People have had enough of this corruption and violence from an organization that promises to keep them safe.  After the events of the past few years, many people are now beginning to learn that you are not here to save us, but rather, you are here to oppress and carry out the will of the criminal ruling class.  You are here to keep order for the people in control, not to provide safety for the people who are being controlled.  In fact, you are the very mechanism that elites use to continue their global system of oppression, and the world is finally starting to wake up to this, and they are becoming increasingly angry every time they see blood needlessly spilled without consequence.  

“These officers must face criminal charges, and officer Chauvin especially should face murder charges.  Unfortunately, we do not trust your corrupt organization to carry out justice, so we will be exposing your many crimes to the world.  We are Legion!  Expect us.”

As you may be able to see, this is not any form of a warning to the Minneapolis Police Department and the government, but more of a declaration of action.

Over the weekend, the Minneapolis Police Department and the city were both kicked offline, but it’s undecided yet whether this was an accident or the work of Anonymous.  Real records of President Trump’s past with sexual assault of a child has been “leaked” by this hacktivist group.  I say “leaked”, because these reports were actually shown to the public years ago, but still kept quiet by supporters of Trump.  Additionally, names of other police brutality victims have also been released to the public by the hand of Anonymous.  Lastly, police radios have been reportedly hacked in the midst of protests and riots, playing either polka music or “Fuck the police”.

Overall, Anonymous joins the fight against police brutality and black social injustice, and the protesting continues.

________________________________________________________________

Follow for more news and send requests for updates on current events.  Check the next post for pictures on this article.

[sumukhcomedy]

The Duke Lacrosse Case: A Generation’s Example of Systemic Racism

In March 2006, I was a couple months away from graduating from Miami University. This is when the event known as “the Duke lacrosse case” began. I was in college just like these players were. I was on a campus a lot like Duke University (and that probably wishes it was Duke University). Now, 14 years later, I can look back and know that my fascination and frustration with the case at the time was based off something I can describe now a lot better than I could then: systemic racism.

For ease, if you would like to read up on a summary of the case, the Wikipedia article will suffice.

In the wake of the news of this story and how much press it was getting, Black and Brown people across the country reacted in anger and frustration. We saw this as an example of rich white young men wielding their power to violate a young Black woman’s body. This is a practice as old as the start of the slave trade and it was now on the front pages of every newspaper. As a result, there was a desperation for justice to be served in this case much like the desperation we see now with the many Black lives that have been killed.

But the great failing of the Duke lacrosse case was of course its fabrications. The story by the accuser, Crystal Mangum, was not accurate. These young men did not rape her. These young men were subjected to months of scrutiny and their reputations tarnished as a result. Sure, if I hear the name, “Reade Seligmann,” I’ll think “Duke lacrosse case” or “rape” immediately. It’s certainly unfair but it’s how we became to be programmed.

But how all of us became to be programmed is why the Duke lacrosse case is such a fine example of systemic racism, an example of Black Lives Matter years before it existed, and an example of how racism works hand in hand with class oppression and the patriarchy.

We must first understand that our entire interaction with the case was based off the optics presented to us of it and even to this day those optics have been skewed. At the time, we looked at it pretty simply: rich, young, drunk white kids rape poor Black stripper. Our reactions and our anger were affected by however we may react to that sentence. We separated not just by race but also by class and even by our judgment of the profession of exotic dancing.

When it became apparent that Ms. Mangum’s story had too many discrepancies and the case was dropped, the attention now turned to Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong. Nifong, possibly for political motives to ensure his re-election, was disbarred for the various ethics violations he committed in handling this case. Whatever Nifong’s underlying reasons may have been, he used the media and the feelings of Black people victimized their entire lives by systemic racism in an attempt to benefit himself.

When we look back at the Duke lacrosse case, our reactions are likely very simplistic and not focused on the systemic racism that pulsates through the whole story. Even the 2016 30 for 30 ESPN documentary, Fantastic Lies, did not capture it properly. Much like the documentary, our reaction is to focus in on how bad it must have been for the white players to go through such a false accusation. It focuses in on how terrible of a district attorney Nifong was. It focuses in on the racial dynamic on the campus as compared to Durham. It focuses in perhaps, in a small way, on Mangum’s mental illness. But we have never actually cut to the depths of this case and how it is perhaps my generation’s finest and most accessible example of systemic racism.

First, we must ask ourselves why our primary focus is on the Duke lacrosse players? Yes, they were not deserving of being falsely accused. No one should have to go through that. But do we focus and feel bad for them because they are white and privileged? Even in the documentary, a player says, “Not a month goes by when I am not reminded of the damage those accusations have had on my reputation and the public's perception of my character.” That’s true and that’s terrible but the accused have gone on to formidable lives. They’ve gotten advanced degrees in law school or Wharton Business School. While they endure a lot for the accusation, their lives were able to progress on the same trajectory as would have likely happened without the case and they still have the same privileges.

How do we then look at Nifong? Simply a power-hungry, media-obsessed District Attorney? Why don’t we actually look at him as yet another white man in the system who used Black people and, in particular, one Black woman for his own advancement? There has been no criticism of Nifong on that aspect nor any culpability on his part for those issues.

Mangum is now serving time in prison for killing her ex-boyfriend. She claimed she did it in self-defense. We look back at Mangum as simply a tragic tale. She is a woman who has mental health issues and was an exotic dancer. She could not get herself out of those issues and ultimately ended up in prison. For some, it’s a sad tale. For others, she is a liar and the sadness should only be assigned to the lacrosse players who were accused of rape.

But, as we begin to examine ourselves and how we interact with systemic racism, we should use the Duke lacrosse rape case and its 14 years in our lives to retrospectively and currently examine how we felt and how we analyzed it.

I can say that, at age 21, I immediately assumed these lacrosse players were guilty and I wanted to see justice for this young woman. Why did I feel that way? Because I also have been a victim of systemic racism. Because I also was of Brown skin on a predominantly white, upper middle class campus. I saw guys on my campus just like the Duke lacrosse players every day. I certainly knew that those type of men were capable of such behavior. So I reacted emotionally and presumed guilt. Once I was made aware that the story had holes, I accepted that this was unfair to these young men and that they were innocent and I accepted that it was unfair because I believe in proper justice. I agree that they didn’t deserve to go through what they did. Even my look at Nifong has progressed over the years. I went from thinking “Why would he do this?” to realizing he is yet another white man wielding his power for his own gain and the feelings and the lives of Black people in his process to do that did not matter.

As for Mangum, there’s nothing to do but to feel bad. Her life to begin with was subject not just to systemic racism but also to the patriarchy. She had whatever reasons for becoming an exotic dancer, but that occupation in our society also subjects an individual to even more heightened levels of systemic racism and the patriarchy. As a result, it only could have intensified her already present mental health issues. Now she is yet another Black person that is incarcerated.

If we want to accept racism’s existence in our society then we must accept the fact that while the young white men involved in the Duke lacrosse case were innocent of rape, they were not innocent of systemic racism. None of us know what truly happened on that night at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. in Durham. But, just understanding the party was filled with white upper middle class men, the fact they shared emails referencing American Psycho, their age, their consumption of alcohol, and the fact they ordered strippers, the behavior was not perfect. The power dynamics involved touch issues of potential racism, classism, and sexism. So, yes, even though I was not there, I believe some insulting things were likely said by these men to these women. I’ve heard insulting things in my life under far less difficult circumstances and I’m a middle-class Brown man. And, once you heave enough insults at an individual at one of the lowest realms of systemic racism, classism, and the patriarchy, it’s unclear what the possibilities could be. In this case, it was an accusation of rape. It later sadly became her incarceration.

If my generation truly wants to think deeper on race, then we must reflect back on the Duke lacrosse case. Think about what you thought about then. Think about what you think about it now. But, most importantly, ask yourself this question: who is the real victim here? Your answer could help you understand your place in systemic racism and systemic racism’s place in our society.

[weia-yo]

Alright, so typically for the secret santa I draw something but I’m very excited for the chance this year to write a fanfic. This is for Winter @frankpanioncube who requested an Asgore/Reader fic; as someone who also loves Asgore I’m more than happy to oblige. This is only the first planned chapter of the fic, I’ll make sure to upload the next chapters over the coming days/weeks but in the meantime I wanted the first chapter to feel complete on it’s own. I hope you like it!

And I wanted to give an extra thank-you to @undertalesecretsanta for hosting this event once again, it’s always a fun experience. Thank you so much!

Make Our Garden Grow

It's a nice sunny day, and you look over at the pile of crumpled paper. You have a few talents, you can admit that. This wasn't one of them, and you’re a bit out of your depth here.

Unfortunately as much as you’d rather admit defeat and foist the task onto someone else that wasn’t much of an option; according to your boss there already was a florist who quit with no notice. As her personal secretary (however often that changes depending on who needs more assistance that month) the task fell to you.

It's not that you hate flowers, as some of the more eccentric coworkers assumed when you didn't jump for joy at the opportunity, it's just. You figured when you went to work at the Embassy that you'd get a shot at really getting to help. Even the menial tasks like photocopying documents or filing things or even getting coffee had a demonstrable benefit for the people who actually did Important work for monster-human relations.

This? Designing and arranging bouquets for an office party?

Flowers are alright, even awesome sometimes, but you have a hard time seeing this as really being all that worth it when there are so many other things you were sure needed to get done.

Oh well. It's not like your boss is wrong, this is still a task that needs to be done and you are available.

But that doesn't solve the problem of not knowing what you're doing. You're gonna need some help.

A quick internet search later, past some options that seemed entirely too extravagant and beyond your non-existent skill level, you found a blog that had some fairly simple arrangements. Still a bit out of your league and knowing your tendencies to cut corners, you could go for some advice.

The blogger seemed friendly when you were going through his posts, you could only hope he was just as friendly in direct conversation.

aaaaa: excuse me, i hope i'm not bugging but i'm trying to make a flower arrangement for a party at work and i have no idea what i'm doing, can you give me some advice?

Gar-Dad-ner: Howdy! of course, I'd be more than happy to help!

Wow, fast! This guy (well, probably guy if the username is any indication) sure seems dedicated to this thing. Or maybe he just has a lot of free time? Oh how you wish you could still relate to-there's another message, Focus.

Gar-Dad-ner: A good place to start is knowing what colors you're going to use. you'll find you don't tend to need that many different types of flowers to make a good arrangement. Gar-Dad-ner: If it's an office party this will especially help, in my experience their taste tends to lean to the professional, less fun and colorful side. Gar-Dad-ner: Of course i mean no offense! It's not my personal taste but to each their own!

You had to laugh. The Embassy is actually one of the least oppressive work environments you've been employed at, but even the best workplaces seem to have a minimum requirement for a stifling and overbearing upper caste. Still...

aaaaa: XD aaaaa: honestly, they're not That bad. i think my coworkers can handle a little fun :D

Gar-Dad-ner: That's good to know! Gar-Dad-ner: Well, you could mix in a more obvious flower, especially as a pop to whatever colors you decide to go with. Gar-Dad-ner: I'm rather biased but my favorite flower to add is the Golden Flower. Gar-Dad-ner: Ooh, my favorite arrangement would have to be one made with golden flowers and lavender! Gar-Dad-ner: I never had the chance to work with lavender until recently, it’s quite a gorgeous flower. Gar-Dad-ner: They just seem to work so well together, don’t you think?

A bit much to take in at once but you aren’t about to complain. And that arrangement itself might actually be perfect for what you need; of course a Golden Flower would be a good match for a party celebrating The Embassy's work, far more subtle than your initial disaster-in-waiting plan to use Echo Flowers. Huh, Golden Flowers. Is he a-?

Gar-Dad-ner: Ah, forgive me, I can sometimes get over-excited.

aaaaa: what? dude, no, that's nothing to apologize for! aaaaa: this is already a lot of help, i don't know dick about flowers- *Backspace.* aaaaa: this is already a lot of help, you seem to really know your stuff! aaaaa: if you don't mind is it alright for me to use this design? i can credit you.

Gar-Dad-ner: Oh that won't be necessary, it's quite a simple arrangement and i can hardly claim ownership! I'm honestly just flattered you want my help, and if you'd like I'd be more than happy to give you more advice on it.

aaaaa: deal, but i'm not about to pretend i'm good at this so you're getting all the credit.

This is nice. You still aren’t super into the whole project, but if it means getting to keep talking to this guy who seems like a total sweetheart (ok maybe a little too early to call that, you've talked for maybe 5 minutes max but Still), you think maybe this can be a good experience.

Asgore strode through the halls of The Embassy on his way to yet another meeting, already stressed by the day's events. His assistant, a short blue dragonoid covered in what Asgore assumed was the latest MTT-Brand Perfume based on the thick layer of glitter, traveled alongside and rattled off a report penned by Ambassador Frisk and Co-Ambassador Papyrus he'll need to relay in a few short minutes.

He was trying to listen, it was important for his duty, but he felt like his head was going to explode. His time Underground was filled with more than his fair share of hardships and he was glad to have it be far behind him, but never in that cave did he Ever have to deal with someone So Rude and Stubborn and-

Asgore stopped, his assistant running full-speed into the back of his legs before falling straight back in a rather impressive pratfall and a startled yelp. Asgore paused for a moment before blinking out of his daze.

"Oh no, I am So sorry, Clawdio!" He reached down to help Clawdio up. As he did so, he glanced to the vase of purple and yellow-no, Golden Flowers.

Delicately placed among sprigs of lavender, baby's breath and lemon leaf, carefully selected and arranged. Whoever made this seemed to have put in quite a bit of effort to make something so precious, so perfect it was like it was made for him...

The thought brought a smile to Asgore for the first time that day though he quickly pushed it away. Just a pleasant turn of fate. A nice stroke of luck that he was able to see on this day.

"Erm... Your Majesty?"

"Hmm? Oh! Sorry, Friend. Again. It has... been quite the day."

Asgore looked over Clawdio once more to ensure they were truly unhurt before being shoved back down the hall towards the meeting room he was now dangerously close to being late for. And yet, he couldn't stop smiling even if he tried. His thoughts drifted to the pleasant conversation he had earlier in the week.

"Clawdio, I'm afraid I'm not quite as eloquent as I'd like to be, and if it's not too much to ask I would like you to keep an open ear in case I start veering off topic."

He wondered if he would ever speak to that person again. Asgore had interacted with many people through his gardening web page (how long would it take for him to get used to the word Blog?) and aside from the odd vulgarity they were typically cordial, even friendly. But 'aaaaa,’ whatever their real name was, seemed different. He hoped he wasn't projecting but they seemed to actually Want to talk with him.

They didn't just tolerate when he'd ramble, they encouraged it. They cared enough to want to do a good job and Asgore suspected it had very little to do with an actual interest in the subject and only partly had to do with wanting to fulfill a workplace obligation.

Ah well. There wasn't much he could truly do about it. If they never spoke to him again, if they really were only interested in their job... he'd be a little hurt, of course, but he'd appreciate the time nonetheless.

They stop for real in front of the room where Asgore's next meeting will be. With his smile unwavered he opens the door and walks in.