#(not like french people need representation though... no hate i just think its there for no reason)

[teeto-peteto]

Sometimes I think about how Fiora and get house are apparently the only ones in Demacia with French accents. And that just makes me think, why? Why is there this one house with French accents, are they an older house? This is what keeps me awake, why is there French?

I think about that a LOT because i see no actual sense of that. Like i actually thought demacians were french in this fantasy world context just like Ionians are (not specificated) asians. Some Ixtal champions are hispanic. There's a lot of nationalities and cultures scattered around WICH is marbelous cause hey, representation, but its still a bit silly when you think about it.

Like, if Fiora is from Demacia, and she has french accent... then whats... Garen, for example?

american??????

[opalspring]

Kotoko's justice and her motivations theory

While Kotoko is still pretty mysterious, there are some parts in Milgram that could hint at her inner workings and why she does the things she does. Here mostly content from her mvs will be discussed. Be careful as this theory discusses sensitive topics.

CW: discussion of kidnapping and SA

The wolf imagery and its possible multiple meanings

Before Deep Cover came out, one theory regarding the wolves in Harrow is that they represented Kotoko’s allies in her actions. 

Now that it’s out, it seems more likely Kotoko was acting entirely alone for her actions (so more of a lone wolf image rather than hunting with a pack).

Kotoko has strong ties with both regular wolves and also werewolves, with distinct symbolism for each.

Jacques Roulet was the name of a French man who was accused of being a werewolf in the late XVIth century (source: https://www.historydefined.net/the-french-werewolf-panic/).

The wolf imagery seems to be associated with Kotoko’s sense of justice and her preference for working alone, unlike the werewolf imagery that represents her excesses of violence (imo). This is seen mostly in Harrow, featuring wolves and an overall positive view of Kotoko, then in DC which has her more questionable sides and the whole werewolf image.

Still, I feel like there’s more to the wolves regarding Kotoko’s case.

This article  (https://www.psychologies.com/Therapies/Psychanalyse/Dictionnaire-des-reves/Loup) talks about some of the symbolisms of wolves, including violence, aggressivity, etc. This is psychoanalysis so take it with a grain of salt though.

One passage that struck me in particular was this one:

“Most of the time, in dreams, the wolf is a representation of a masculine sexual predator. Like in fairy tales, the wolf is an amateur of fresh meat (Little Red riding hood). Its presence in dreams can signify that the dreamer was exposed to disturbing sexual behaviors, abusive or pedophilic.” (translation)

This is what I think could be the hidden symbolism of the wolf in Kotoko’s mvs: maybe she was sexually abused as a child and developed her vigilante persona/obsession with punishing criminals as a coping mechanism to her trauma.

This part of Kotoko’s past might be hinted at with the flashbacks she gets at two points in Harrow, as she could be the little girl with the pink shirt we see (though this is still just a theory).

I feel like she’d need a very strong reason to go the lengths she goes for her hunt of criminals, unlike someone like Fuuta who also hates injustice, but takes much “lazier” actions for his beliefs for example.

In my opinion, wolves for Kotoko represent both her determination to hunt criminals, and werewolves her childhood trauma and her tendencies for violence depending on the scene/situation.

The wolf (both childhood trauma reminder and a representation of her violence here imo) haunting Kotoko. She also became the aggressor she hates so much like a lot of people pointed out, though in her case it's physical violence.

Kotoko doesn’t understand why she’s still not satisfied after dealing with all the criminals on her list and beating up the guilty prisoners. It could be because her trauma is still occupying her thoughts.

Many people have theorized that the girl with a pink shirt in Harrow could be Kotoko as a child. I completely agree with this, and it could be that Kotoko beat up Takao (the child kidnapper) to the point he died, because the orange dress girl’s situation reminded her so much of her past that she lost all control and killed him in the emotion (unlike the guy in the alley who she just beat up (iirc)).

Kotoko’s flashbacks while killing Takao (the car incident seems to have had an effect on her too).

A detail that’s a little strange is how the man in Kotoko’s flashback looks exactly the same as Takao (he’s even in the same outfit). It’s strange because Deep Cover confirms he’s 24 at the time Kotoko kills him, so he couldn’t be an adult if he was the one who hurt Kotoko as a child. Maybe she sees him as a stand-in for the person who traumatized her in the past?

As a side note, I think both the girl in a dress and the one in a pink shirt are Kotoko in the flashback. Maybe she changed clothes if she was kept captive for multiple days, and the floorboards look identical in both frames.

Some lyrics from Harrow that could refer to Kotoko’s past are these ones imo:

-I’ll teach you the pain you caused

→ as in the pain she suffered herself, hence why she feels like she has to punish criminals

- Becoming light-headed again, it all becomes crazy

The normalcy sought for, Fading away, Everytime death comes

The soul moves forward

and

Newly born “HARROW” “HARROW”

It’s ok to dislike, right?

Losing it, losing it, What should I hope for

Goodnight “HARROW” “HARROW”

Laugh and I can get to like myself

→ this could highlight how Kotoko constantly has something on her mind which makes her day to day life difficult (and that punishing criminals helps with it somewhat)

Kotoko’s self-hatred

If the theory about Kotoko’s childhood trauma is true, I feel like it could explain her general aggressiveness and dissatisfaction with life. Some lines in her mvs hint at her disliking herself too (“Feeding on food so I don’t burn out” etc).

“The feeling of being "cut-off" from peers and "emotional numbness" are both results of CSA and highly inhibit proper social functioning.” (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse) 

(Since wikipedia isn’t always super reliable and I’m not an expert on the subject feel free to correct me if this is incorrect.)

Of course there are other explanations for this kind of behavior, but this info could potentially explain some things about Kotoko. 

One thing is how Kotoko keeps her distance from the other prisoners in Milgram and isn’t really close with anybody, not even Kazui for example, who has the same hobby as her (training).

Other prisoners try to get to know her in timeline conversations , but she always stays placid and cuts the conversation short.

Mahiru: Hey, Kotoko-chan. There’s something that’s really been bugging me, so do you mind if I ask?

……how do you style yourself so well? Have you always dressed like that? But it also looks like something you’d wear for training. Do you play sport? Ah, or maybe some kind of martial arts?

Kotoko: ……you really are carefree. Everyone in here is a “murderer” right?

Is this really the time to be asking questions like that? 

(tl by Rochisama)

Mikoto: Hey, hey, Koto-chan.

I’ve been thinking this ever since I first heard your name, but...

Don’t you think the names “Mikoto” and “Kotoko” kinda sound like siblings? 

Kotoko: No. 

Mikoto: Don’t say that!

Let’s get along well from here on as the Koto-Koto combo! 

Kotoko: I’m not doing that. 

(tl by Rochisama)

She could also just have an aloof personality by nature, but still wanted to point this out.

During Deep Cover, I feel like Kotoko’s diss on the other prisoners is mostly meant to show  her own self-hatred rather than her dislike of the other prisoners (though this is definitely true as well).

It’s perfectly normal for someone to dislike some people, or a specific kind of people (like how she mentions disliking Mikoto because he’s loud). However, Kotoko goes well over all that and goes on a rant about each prisoner and their supposed faults in her eyes. In my opinion, it’s very strange that Kotoko dislikes All the other prisoners without exception, and to that degree.

Like said earlier, I think Kotoko’s obsession with justice and punishing “evildoers”, including people like Yuno, is not so much her caring about justice but a way for her to cope with her childhood trauma (Fuuta and his justice-seeking is also similar imo, though in his case my theory is that he was bullied in the past).

We see her beat up multiple people throughout Milgram, but so far her only confirmed victim is Takao. With the emphasis on her flashbacks when thinking about him in Harrow, Kotoko could have killed him instead of beating him up like said above, as his crimes were directly linked to her past experiences, and she couldn’t bring herself to stop before killing him.

I think Kotoko doesn’t really care about the other prisoners cases’ specifics in the end, she might be just searching for an excuse to prove to herself that she’s one of the “strong ones” who protect the weak, like she mentions to Es in her second vd and in a distorted line in one of the trailers:

“From the beginning I've never asked for your understanding! My actions, one by one, are bringing earth closer to peace. Useless Weaklings should just shut up and let me protect them!" (tl by milgram_en)

As in, she’s trying to prove all that to herself most and foremost.

Why does Kotoko look so restless here? Of course she’s happy to rescue the girl, but why is she sweating so hard and grabbing the girl by the collar? In my opinion, this could be because she’s still shaken up from Takao’s killing (in the sense that she just killed the equivalent of the person who hurt her as a child, if we go with that theory). Maybe Kotoko sees herself in the orange dress girl, and she wishes someone had been there to save her too when it happened to her in the past. 

It could be why she instinctively pushes the girl away (?) when she hugs her (though later in the mv we see they get along).

Another detail in Deep Cover that’s pretty interesting is the last line in the lyrics:

“They’re still here, still here, it grates me”

From the previous lines it’s implied she’s talking about the other prisoners, more specifically the innocent ones in T1. So they get on her nerves because they were incorrectly judged and couldn’t be punished by her (imo).

The Japanese line however is a lot more vague:

“ほら残ってさ　残ってさ　鬱雑いね”

The line means the same thing, except the subject isn’t made clear. So a literal translation could be like “X is still here, X is still here, it grates me”

The English translations are official so maybe I’m overthinking this, but maybe Kotoko could be talking about her thoughts here? This is a reach, but “X” might refer to flashbacks of her childhood trauma, especially if we go along with the theory that the wolf at the end of DC= Kotoko’s trauma personified. This is just speculation though.

I feel like the subject in the last line being the wolf/Kotoko’s trauma could explain why she looks so distressed here, despite just having finished insulting the prisoners. 

Plus, the next frame shows Kotoko’s chess piece being covered in blood/marked guilty like the other prisoners’. Imo this shows both Kotoko’s realization that she went too far with her “justice”, and that even after enacting it, she’s still not satisfied (because the real cause of her justice-seeking could be her trauma).

[whetstonefires]

As I understand it, in the Star Wars sequels the Don't Shoot All The War Criminals faction won out in the New Republic, leading to most of the fascists reintegrating due to lack of proper denazification campaigns, allowing them to rise to political offices and cripple the New Republic from within as a fascist Fifth Column. And that's why the New Republic is a nonentity in the sequels.

Hmmmm I think that’s giving Disney way too much credit for justifying their shitty writing because like.

Yeah I’m pretty sure the New Republic didn’t clean house as thoroughly as it might have, and may even have leaned too hard to the American Civil War Reconstruction side in the effort to avoid hitting the French Revolution Zone. But the fact that the First Order is introduced as a power in the Outer Rim specifically shows that a significant fraction of Imperial loyalists didn’t like their chances of reintegrating successfully into the society they had previously ruled.

And they hate the New Republic.

Why? Well, because it’s not the Empire presumably. Their ambition was to use the power of a sun to blow up multiple prominent Republic worlds, not including Coruscant because in a very promising gesture of not letting the status quo stand, the New Republic rotates its capital. And the First Order probably aspires to get Imperial Center back. (I couldn’t actually tell that planet we got shown the government blowing up on wasn’t Coruscant, mind you, but hey.)

Their intention with Starkiller, like Tarkin’s with the Death Star a generation previously, was to demonstrate its power and then use that to threaten the New Republic into acceding to nonspecific political goals. (This is Star Wars, the aspecific goals are traditional; that part’s not really a complaint it’s just funny. I think it contributed to the failure of narrative followthrough tho.) However our leads destroyed the superweapon! Like in A New Hope! So the crime has been committed but the threat no longer remains! 

Except it’s very different from the situation in ANH despite mirroring it, because rather than an established empire with its huge military infrastructure already imposing itself over the galaxy having overreached itself very publicly and thus emboldened the antiestablishment faction...a relatively small fascist organization that has previously been dismissed by the mainstream as a minor terrorist group that doesn’t impinge much on anywhere important has just kicked over a hornet’s nest.

They don’t have their planet laser anymore. And they only destroyed five out of thousands of worlds that now have every reason to hate them.

There was so much cool stuff you could have done right there! Both in story-itself terms and in terms of the meta interaction with the original trilogy!

Disney just decided they were too lazy/cowardly to try to write actual politics and a serious space opera rather than sticking with a simple ooooh-big-bad-empire formula, just as they weren’t willing to pursue any of the potential personal narratives attached to their actual leads. So instead of the New Republic mobilizing after this horrific mass serial genocide they just folded like a house of cards.

And that can’t be easily blamed on not denazifying enough--people with Imperial ideology who were willing and/or able to fold themselves back into the New Republic and retain influence would normally be prominent among the warhawks calling for reprisals, after a thing like that.

They aren’t in a position to gain from the Republic falling apart--if they have power, it’s their power base, and they have no assurance they’d be favored by the extremists whom they chose not to throw in with. There’s good odds people like Phasma would see them executed as traitors, given the chance.

Unweeded fascists could have mucked up a lot of things, but very few of them had any motive to militarily hamstring the New Republic.

Please note that unlike our current American right-wing movement, Star Wars Imperialists are very into centralized Big Government exerting itself upon subunits of the polity. What we see of the way Palpatine established and maintained his power base revolves around the idea that external enemies will destroy everything if enough force is not gathered together and used to crush them.

Imperialists who hadn’t been sufficiently removed from power--and frankly that would be very difficult to complete without developing an entirely new system of representation, since Senators are selected at a planetary level and some rich, powerful, Human-majority worlds probably enjoyed the Empire quite a lot and resented other people getting more rights back and so elected fascist Senators--definitely most likely contributed to Leia’s inability to get more active Republic support in her border war leading up to TFA. There are a lot of ways the First Order existing but unable to really threaten the Republic could have served their needs.

But after that point, they explain nothing. The movies are just bad.

It could have been interesting to see something done with planets that prospered under the Empire having done a hypocritical pivot to insisting that principles of sovereignty mean the New Republic should stay out of their business, but that’s kind of out of the scope of a Star Wars film. You could fit it into a cartoon.

Anyway the way I wanted to see Lando turn up was as Senator Calrissian, one of the fraction of the Senate who was offworld when the capital blew up, and appointed interim Chancellor because he’s the only one who was a General of the Alliance and that suddenly seems very important.

Chancellor of the Republic with emergency powers Lando Calrissian.

Him telling Leia exactly how far he won’t go even though he technically could and it would serve the war effort, because the last guy standing in this spot declared the Galactic Empire and he’s going to do this right. 👌

[tiny-tigers]

prompt anon again! if you’d feel so inclined you can call me ivan :)

i loved the animagus idea!! maybe a deer for george? ive always thought he looks a bit like one XD

i had already headcanoned george as being really good in most subjects, i could totally see owen copying his homework off of george while they’re prefects together 😳 i love love love the legilimens idea!!

also ✨ the werewolf backstory ✨

i feel like it could be common knowledge that ben’s a werewolf (im not big on the whole werewolf discrimination thing in the jkr books, very much because she said it was apparently a metaphor for people suffering from HIV and AIDS :| and yknow. people with a debilitating disease arent subhuman- im looking at you, jkr-so im making the choice to have it be a well-known and accepted phenomenon), and he takes wolfsbane when he needs to- i love the idea of distinguishing facial scars though :O

(random hc for ben- i feel like he would be top-notch in quidditch)

but i do also feel like the attack and subsequent incidents of ben pre-wolfsbane could contribute to some issues with tom (ie- he’s super clingy and constantly worried about ben- ben resents tom’s constant worrying to a reasonable extent), and sam sort of provides a sense of comfort to tom in regards to his worry (?) not exactly as angsty as werewolf tom, but who knows 🤷‍♀️ i loved your idea, let me know what you think!

ever since i saw the gifset (!!) i want something angsty for sam but i just can’t think of what! its a shame dragonborn arent canon in hp, i feel like it fits him and itd be so neat for sam to have some sort of arc regarding that :(

Hi, Ivan ☆!

It's the eyelashes !!! 👁👄👁

At one point I also wanted Jess to be from a veela family because I thought it would suits her well as an influencer, also I support bisexual george but I don't want him to be only infatuated with her for her beauty or make him choose between her and owen so nevermind forget it! <- Also it would be a bad representation of bisexuality and I Don't want that, but I want to let this example here so we can all see an example of an idea that turn out disastreous haha and my mind doing :nope

He copied his french homeworks as teenagers so why not !!! George totally studies ancient runes....

Yeaaaah like a twin supersense ! Tom feels when something is up about ben. We hate JKR and her views and together we stand 🤝.

Maybe Sam could have been burned as a child ? And as a result he is fascinated as well as afraid of dragons but a lot of people don't know because it's a secret scar that he hides? But you know at some point... tom sees him naked 😎 and he is so afraid of rejection ? He thinks he is uggly but we know that tom is in awe... 😌

[welcometocaritas]

Elise + Eryka [The Tunnel] // Whenever You're Ready 

my twitters: bonnielextra, tocaritas

my instas: bonnielextra, yumagnas.home

So I made this for Round 2 of the #WLWContest hosted by the amazing Sil. The theme was taking a canon ship that wasn't endgame and changing their ending so that they did end up together. I actually had a lot of manips already ready for this ship (because I've been planning to do a video that gives them a happy ending for quite some time) but I wasn't 100% certain how much we were allowed to use from other shows, so I ended up only using two or three scenes Mostly, I just took clips from the actual show and changed the context of them or used photoshop to edit the text, email and letter so that they showed the poem from Pablo Neruda.

In the show, Eryka disappears after saving Elise's life and we never hear from her again. But in this, I've had Eryka start contacting Elise by sending her poems by Pablo Neruda (which fit because the last books Eryka gives to Elise are poetry books by Pablo Neruda, and the voiceover of her reading the poem is from their final scene together on the show). It takes time but when Elise is ready to let Eryka back into her life, she sends her a letter with the final  verse of the poem "I want to do to you what spring does to cherry trees", to let her know that she's ready. They meet up, have a talk about things, including Eryka's betrayal, and Elise lets her know that she wants them to be family (which is something that neither of them have anymore). It ends with them at the beach, happy together.  If I was writing the fanfic, it would be a lot more complicated than this, as there's clearly a lot the two need to workout and discuss, and a lot that stands in the way of them getting back together, but for the purposes of a video I just wanted to keep it as simple as possible.

I actually really, really hate this edit. I realized once I'd done the style that I hated the style - it looked too clumsy and weird - but by then it was too late to change anything.  To be honest, I had a hard time finishing this edit. My heart wasn't in it. I've been having a really rough time physically and mentally and then Naya died and then it was the anniversary of my dog's death, so editing for a ship that I wasn't passionate about at the present time was just making me feel worse. And then windows updated my computer and, like always, has caused so many problems so a lot of my programs aren't working properly (like sony vegas) and it's been so stressful. But because I'd started it beforehand and spent a lot of time on it, I didn't want to abandon it or not get it done in time for the contest because then it would have felt like a waste. But I'm honestly so relieved it's over with right now, even if I do hate the final product, because I just want to move on and edit something that will make me happy.

Eryka and Elise are one of my all time favorite canon wlw ships. Their relationship is just so beautifully written and I love each character so much.  They're fully developed characters in their own right, and extremely interesting. Eryka and Elise are the definition of two people who are perfect for each other, but whose lives aren't compatible. If they met in another universe, or if their circumstances were different,  I could see them being very happy together. I think if soulmates exist, these two are it.  They just didn't meet at the right time, and their opposing views and moralities (not to mention lifestyles) create an uncrossable divide between them.  Still I love them so much, I'm also a sucker for accents so Clemence and Laura had me so weak lol.   As someone who loved the original series, The Bridge, I also really loved The Tunnel (particularity s2) and I thought like it managed to become its own show, away from the source material.  (we're just gonna ignore what happened in s3, where they basically ruined Elise's life and emotional well-being and then killed her off. I don't accept that, nope. Especially since it happened after a change in writers. You could really see the change in the show)

Being autistic, I also related a lot to Elise’s character, same with Saga in The Bridge (though the two characters are quite different). I've read articles from people on the show that say she's autistic and then others saying she isn't. I'm going with the fact that she is. Because she has so many of the behaviors and thought patterns and honest to god we need more representation out there for women on the spectrum, and seeing one on tv who is also queer that I could relate to made me feel really happy. The fact of the matter is that she's written in a way that's heavily autistic coded, so stepping away and denying that doesn't really seem fair when there's so little representation out there.

Characters: Elise Wassermann + Eryka Klein Show: The Tunnel (French/English version of The Bridge) Actors: Clémence Poésy, Laura de Boer Coloring: shining dust

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: I enjoyed reading your answer about your very British Conservatism being influenced by the ideas Edmund Burke and of course Burke became famous for his opposition to the French Revolution and the ideas therein. Given that you are a British conservative living in Paris and Bastille Day is soon upon France (July 14) was the French Revolution really a revolution or just a changing of the guard ie removing one elite (the nobility) to make room for another elite (the bourgeois)? Was it just Burke who thought that or other prominent philosophers?

I will have to say more about the conservative beliefs I hold at another time because it’s more than just following the ideas of Edmund Burke, great though he was. Because while certainly he is good bench mark to understand Conservative ideas and he has become a standard bearer for modern political conservatism, his ideas and legacy remains fiercely debated and the question of whether he was a philosopher at all in the traditional sense of the term is also hotly discussed by scholars.

What we can say with somewhat more certainty is that he was arguably the first one who was ‘forced’ to articulate Conservative principles and ideas on paper. But Conservatism didn’t begin with Burke because he was articulating what was already known to past generations and to his contemporary peers. There was no need to systemise a way of thinking and get it down onto paper. So at heart conservatism isn’t a rigid set of ideological beliefs but a state of being rooted in experience, common wisdom, custom, and what Burke called ‘the nature of things’. For Burke the so-called French Revolution went against the nature of things.

According to the standard narrative, the French celebrate their National Day each year on July 14 by remembering the storming of the Bastille, the hated symbol of the antiquated ancien regime. It was at this key point that the united people took the law in its own hands and gave birth to modern France in a heroic revolution.

But was it a revolution?

In Burke’s time opinion was divided all across Europe to interpret the seismic upheaval in France. It really depended on where you were living and under what particular regime.

I can’t go into a whole survey of thinkers and their thought and opinions they held but let me settle on one interesting one figure only because he’s such a fascinating thinker whose ideas continue to influence our moral and political philosophy. I’m talking about Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), the famous German philosopher and prominent thinker of his time.

In the view of Immanuel Kant there was no real revolution. He understood it as an unlawful and violent toppling of the old regime. Writing in the wake of the events, he concluded that the King, by a very serious error in judgment had unintentionally abdicated and left the power to the people. Kant agnostically asked: was it really a revolution, or not?

Every thinker writes within the context of his times and Kant is no different. Kant’s view has often been derided as a sneaky way to justify the revolution without being seen in public as doing so. Defending the revolution publicly could attract the King’s ire. The Prussian king, like all Europe’s sovereigns, feared the advancement of the revolution, and endorsements by opinion leaders might hasten that outcome. Kant, who was a professor at Königsberg, was Germany’s premier philosopher. He had many followers and defended a highly idealistic moral theory with clear affinities to the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Thus, fear of censorship could have been Kant’s reason for misrepresenting the event as something else than a revolution.

But perhaps Kant’s interpretation was quite sincere?

If we explore Kant’s politics in context the first thing to notice is the scope of his argument: it was about the events of 1789, not the various (and bloody) transformations of the next decade. Moreover, the events he had in mind resembled a fairly orderly democratic transition. King Louis XVI was facing a disastrous debt crisis and his juridical institutions were recalcitrant to establish new taxes to make up for the debt. To solve the situation, the absolute monarch invited all male taxpayers over 25 years of age to elect deputies to a representative assembly (called the Estates-General), which was to deliberate about solutions to the debt and on how to improve the state’s wellbeing in general. This proto-democratic assembly met at Versailles on May 5, 1789.

Almost immediately, it became apparent that this archaic arrangement - the group had last been assembled in 1614 - would not sit well with its present members. Although Louis XVI granted the Third Estate greater numerical representation, the Parlement Of Paris stepped in and invoked an old rule mandating that each estate receive one vote, regardless of size. As a result, though the Third Estate was vastly larger than the clergy and nobility, each estate had the same representation - one vote. Inevitably, the Third Estate’s vote was overridden by the combined votes of the clergy and nobility.

The fact that the Estates-General hadn’t been summoned in nearly 200 years probably says a thing or two about its effectiveness. The First and Second Estates - clergy and nobility, respectively - were too closely related in many matters. Both were linked intrinsically to the royalty and shared many similar privileges. As a result, their votes often went the same way, automatically neutralising any effort by the Third Estate.

Additionally, in a country as secularised as France at the time, giving the church a full third of the vote was ill-advised: although France’s citizens would ultimately have their revenge, at the time the church’s voting power just fostered more animosity. There were numerous philosophers in France speaking out against religion and the mindless following that it supposedly demanded, and many resented being forced to follow the decisions of the church on a national scale.

Beyond the chasm that existed between it and the other estates, the Third Estate itself varied greatly in socioeconomic status: some members were peasants and labourers, whereas others had the bourgeois occupations, wealth, and lifestyles of nobility. These disparities between members of the Third Estate made it difficult for the wealthy bourgeois members to relate to the peasants with whom they were grouped.

Because of these rifts, the Estates-General, though organised to reach a peaceful solution, remained in a prolonged internal feud. It was only through the efforts of men such as Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès (1748-1836) that the members of the Third Estate finally realised that fighting among themselves was fruitless and that if they took advantage of the estate’s massive size, they would be a force that could not be ignored.

The summoning of the Estates General assembly was usually thought of as a revolutionary act, since the King had not intended to relinquish his absolute power. He had just asked for advice on how to run the country. But according to Kant, the King’s intentions were of no consequence. Once he had committed the error of setting up a representative organ he was no longer the sovereign ruler. Absolutism relied on the notion of the monarch as the sole representative of the people (which otherwise would be a disorderly multitude). Once the monarch abandoned that task he could no longer claim to be the ruler, and his sovereignty automatically “passed to the people”. So while the Estates General assembly was rigged to give veto power to the nobility and the clergy – the defenders of the old regime – the Third Estate acted in concert and asserted its power upon the assembly. Asserting its sovereignty, the assembly started preparations for a new constitution enshrining the values of liberté, égalité, and fraternité.

Kant’s view was not so controversial at the time. Edmund Burke (1729-1797) too thought the King had abandoned absolute sovereignty, something that pleased the conservative publicist, who was sceptical to absolute power whether in the hands of the king or the people. But Burke and Kant disagreed on what came in its stead. Burke concluded that power reverted to the ancient constitution of the feudal society that existed prior to royal absolutism. That society had dispersed power among the church, the nobility, the commoners, and the king. Kant, however, did not consider government of such mixed nature to be a real government at all, but just a collection of groups and persons pursuing their private interests.

Moreover, the representative assembly Louis XVI had convoked was elected by the people (or at least the propertied males) and was to represent not just special groups but also the nation as a whole. This was perfectly in line with Kant’s view of popular sovereignty as the ultimate source of justice in any government. He shared this view with Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès  who was not just the most influential French popular leader but also an admirer of Kant. Like Sieyès, Kant did not hate monarchy. He simply considered that once the popular assembly had been set up, the King was reduced to a constitutional monarch, with no right to reverse the process. The popular uprising that followed in the summer of 1789 and that culminated with the storming of the Bastille was not a revolution since sovereignty was already with the people. It was just the result of popular fears that the monarch would claw back the power he had abandoned.

For Burke, he undoubtedly did see it as a revolution. But interestingly he described the Revolution as a ‘democratic revolution’. Indeed he called this “new democracy” a “monstrous tragicomic scene” – monstrous because it was deforming the body politic, tragicomic because in its attempts to establish democracy it was undermining democracy’s own principles. At first, Burke seems to claim that the revolutionary government is democratic only in facade. “I do not know under what description to class the present ruling authority in France… It affects to be a pure democracy, though I think it is in a direct train of becoming shortly a mischievous and ignoble oligarchy.” Burke here seems to suggest that democracy is a cover for an oligarchic class rule in France (the bourgeois). But he doesn’t stop there because he is also quick to acknowledge almost immediately that democracy is emerging in France, and it is quickly on its way to degenerating into a tyrannical government of the masses. “If I recollect rightly, Aristotle observes that a democracy has many striking points of resemblance with a tyranny. Of this I am certain, that in a democracy the majority of citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority whenever strong divisions prevail in that kind of polity.” Thus, Burke presents the revolutionary government as, on the one hand, an oligarchy pretending to be a democracy, and, on the other hand, a true democracy, in which the masses exercise tyranny through “popular persecution.”

For Kant it can be argued that he saw the French Revolution as not a violent revolution by the courageous masses, but a democratic transition. Burke would of course disagree. But I think both would agree for different reasons that the events that led to the French Revolution was set in motion by the king himself.

So perhaps one can agree with both that the real French Revolution began not on 14 July but 5 May 1789 when King Louis XVI summoned the Estates-General for its first meeting since 1614.

Thanks for your question.

[greatchaosgentlemen]

I think that its great to enjoy the characters and the stories that are told within the Skamverse. Discovered the OG in 2017 and was like whoah this shit is really  cool. Coming from the UK we already had the tales of Skins (great show check it out for British teenage life) but Skam is like life Monday-Friday and then Skins is more like the intense crazy weekend experience. Sorry if no one gets that analogy.

But basically I just think sure it is fine to comment on the shows and say what your liking and what you most definitely don't. It’s all art and I feel like we should all expect and accept that. But just don't stress out too much guys, sometimes I see so much anger and like i don't know if you guys are actually that angry irl but I don't know i hope not because that shit must be so bad. Skamverse is great but hey remember that these are just fictional characters and we shouldn't be loosing ourselves to them and forget to live our own lives. and of course some versions are better than others with their storytelling, acting, cinematography, score, representation etc. and some are just cringy af. Don't know if that to do with translations (shoutout to all the translators out there, Skam is one big reason that I've gotten in other language films and tv, you all do such an amazing job so thanks). But i just want to say I hope that we all remember that we can be the change and work towards creating the right dialogue in which any tom, dick and harry can feel happy and discover an art form (film, tv, book, poem etc) where they feel represented. 

just basically im just like saying A LOT MORE RESPECT NEEDS TO BE GIVEN PARTICUARLY TO THE ACTORS because some of y’all are T-H-I-R-S-T-Y and it ain’t cute. and like there's a difference being critiquing and being annoyed or being angry and expressing that normally; whereas some of you are just really dam rude to people. 

basically i think we all should just be happy that such a good show exists, and take all the positive and negatives that come from living at such a time where the Skamverse exists ( albeit this time is weird because CORONA !!!! Hope that everyone is safe and is practicing social distancing. We will eventually defeat this). We are all so talented and no matter what I want to reinforce that belief that truly you are loved no matter what your race, skin colour, sexuality, belief in religion, whether you forgot when your uni assignment was due and thought you had a weekend but actually it was due on the Friday so you had to spend 12 hours in the library (whoops just me ?!), thoughts on climate change (im just saying that to be inclusive because the science is there and if you don't believe that well im sorry your being ridiculous and i think you should be concerned about mother nature and that we should be fighting the 1% who truly control everything, your academic prowess and a million more things that frankly i can't be bothered to write down but the intention is there

and heck if you want to vent your frustrations just let them out of course because they shouldn't be bottled in, in my opinion. go and talk to someone irl and say how ridiculous you think this thing is that you think happen. or if you don't feel like you have one then hell message me because i LOVE to talk and in particular at this point in the world i got all the time in the world. personally i also like making my own retellings and writings of the Skam stories where i make it better (hahah ;)) and if you want to do that then heck do that and ill be more than happy to read it 

basically those are just some thoughts i had and because my fingers are beginning to hurt im just going to list what im feeling about the shows 

sidenote - i think capitalism sucks and that money and views have to be taken into account by companies etc because i really think all of the four og stories should just be told automatically by all versions. let them stories and actors shine babyyyy

skam usa - bro like being a fellow english speaker yours is the one i can follow obviously the easiest so why are you just so kinda i don't know different and blah. is skam really just an european thing ? i don't know but i think an argument could be made 

skam og - nei vilde. what a ride and what a vibe. your basically iron man and have spewed the Skamverse. in my opinion great actors and great stories, in particular for me my first introduction to someone who follows Islam. also your soundtrack is smashing. though who is perfect ya know and obviously would have loved for you to have continue up to graduation 

skam france - oooo la la la. i do like the french language so its cool to help me learn and stuff but i really feel like you guys have got hit with a lot of bts drama and rules and order so i just don't know. your original seasons i don't know yet. still its only a story so i mean it is what it is. but like also people around this cast need to be a hella more respective of the actors *sips tea*

skam espana- hola amigos. you the edgy one that got everyone on their toes. I like that and i tip my hat to you. just i don't know sometimes i feel it sometimes i don't. shout out for so far being the only wlw representation (don't know if that's the right acronym, so please don't hate me. but i hope that women found some positives there) and with norando i like totally get it with the story told there but still i love to love and just like sad to miss out on the on screen growth of the relationship but still its cool

skam italia - ciao bella - some of you is hot some of you is not. i think the story is good but i don't know i just want more italian flavour. still thats from a foreigner view and in fact maybe it is very italian. hopefully your season 4 will be good, exciting with all this Netflix additions ooooo 

druck - danke- you cool bro just going powering on through. like your a bit of juggernaut really and im like whoah. actually do like a lot of your vibe and stylistic choices. its tres cool. also very exciting about this new season etc that has broken, really vibing a possible skins similarity with the set up. fingers crossed 

skam nl - eskild you crossover legend - ticking all my boxes just so sad for your premature closure. didn't know much about netherlands so cool to experience language and culture. maybe you'll come back to the skamverse again like Hawkeye as he buggered off for first of infinity war. sending you good vibes 

wtfock- yes yes yes. not going to lie so far you are my favourite.overall good vibes and everything. hopefully its good vibes and the proper belgian kids like it. just good stuff and so innovative to discuss lockdown and everything. exciting times and exciting for season 4 when it drops 

basically all of this came from one beer so yolo, still out here living my best life and one day hoping that the UK gets a Skam version. so many ideas so many possibilities

and like if ive offended anyone then i am sorry wasn't my intention. just writing down my thoughts and im sure you will get over it because were all amazing. Just keep it chill and honestly like i wont give any negative stuff the time of day anyway so don't waste your time heheh *sips tea* 

also most importantly i am very sorry for my grammar and punctuation and everything. honestly i am just being lazy and cannot be bothered to go over and rectify it. also sorry for making a very confusing message that probably really doesn't make sense at all. haha 

still alt er love everyone 

*renegades away from the computer*

[potagepotiron]

Hate crime

Season 3 of WTFock has ended, Robbe & Sander have found love and everyone is eagerly awaiting Christmas. It is a time to be happy. Well I’m not. I’m not happy because of how WTFock handled an important event that could have been a gamechanger for LGBTQ fiction. I’m talking about the hate crime that ended episode 28. The way in which this plot line was conceived, handled and received, tells you a lot of how our society views minorities.

Fist and foremost, I am a SKAM fan. I watched every clip and every remake. My favourite is Season 3. Because I’m a gay man. I also know this series can change people’s minds. How different crews made it into their own and are very proud about the result. So I had high hopes when a Flemish version of Season 3 was announced.

So I was watching season 3, had a few remarks here and there, and then came that slur. I’ve written about it earlier. To a gay man like me, familiar with internalized homophobia, the concept of using a terrible slur and throwing accusations at Sander like Robbe just seemed baffling. Do not do unto others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you. You wouldn’t subject another human being to such hate, because you know how it feels. Pure and simple. And then, the hate crime happened.

Let’s be honest, WTFock failed in handling the hate crime, from the absence of trigger warnings before the clip, to the immediate aftermath, right until the very end of the series. There was no middle ground, it either had to commit to its choice and be brilliant or fail. It failed miserably. It chose to portray Robbe & Sander as victims and refused to show any form of queer resilience. And even when it became clear, near the end, that they decided to have the attack trigger other major events in the story, the writers opted to not address the hate crime. And to the optimists stating that the attack could be dealt with in Season 4, I say this: too late.

Personally, I wouldn’t have included graphic violence in the first place. To me there is no value in showing violence. I seriously doubt its inclusion in a series aimed at a teenage audience, because the negatives (trauma and copycat behaviour) far outweigh the learning opportunities, even when handled perfectly. I couldn’t finish the clip. That night, I, a grown man of 35 years of age, was wide awake in my bed until 4 in the morning. I couldn’t sleep, knowing that a number of LGBTQ youth saw that clip and became afraid. Decided to hide in the closet for a bit longer, maybe. The scene simply is not worth it.

And despite my sentiments, the reactions online seemed to disagree: “we needed to show this. We needed to be shown this. People need to know.” I couldn’t understand. Trust me, I know about gay bashing. And so should you. I read all the articles in newspapers about the atrocious hatecrimes in Belgium and elsewhere. I know who Ihsane Jarfi is. Friends of mine who are in a relationship have been scared to go out late at night. I’ve been called names in the street myself. I know. The quesion is, why do I need to see two boys being beaten and left in the street?

I don’t think the depiction of a gay bashing had its place in WTFock. However, I do think that a discussion of homophobia should be included, albeit in another way. Gay violence and intolerance could have been a part of the talk that Robbe & Milan had. I’m not demanding to turn a blind eye to homophobia or to sugarcoat a story. Also, I myself am not blind to homophobia. On the contrary, I have encountered more of it this year than ever before. Belgian football, for example, is still rife with homophobic chants. And recently far right politicians have stressed the need to clearly define norms and abnormality with regard to sexual orientation and the rights to adopt or to get married.

The real question is what kind of homophobia the show chooses, wants to or needs to battle. Gay bashing is a radical example of hate, but hate has many forms. And all hate is the result of a much more complex undercurrent in Flemish society. Hate stems from fear of the unknown, indifference or lack of knowledge. And that is why Flemish LGBT interest group çavaria remains committed to eradicating homophobia in schools. This behaviour can be unlearned. Education is key. And that is why it was a good decision for WTFock to zoom in on the reactions of friends after a coming out. They could have gone the extra mile, though. Homophobia is far more varied and widespread than WTFock shows you.

Back to the hate crime. I wonder why the WTFock writing team missed the mark. Norwegian SKAM director Julie Andem demanded that research into the local youth culture should precede any adaptation of the original content. I’m finding it hard to believe that the gay community was on board with the decision to show a gay bashing. I consulted among my gay friends and all thought it was a bad idea. I also wonder whether or not anti-gay violence is a problem that is typical of Flanders. It’s hard to find reliable data on hate crimes and to interpret it because there could be a reluctance to report incidents, but there seems to be no significant difference between Belgium and its neighbouring countries, nor is there a statistically significant rise in homophobic attacks during the last years. There has been a rise, but that could be due to a higher percentage of people reporting incidents.

I’ve argued that the choices the writers made are bad, and that there is little or no claim to say that hate crimes are typical of Flanders, no more than anywhere else in Western Europe or Scandinavia, where the series originated and where gay bashing wasn’t included. But do I believe that the writers knowingly sabotaged their own writing efforts? Surely not. Yet, it’s hard to pinpoint why the series was developed the way it was without hearing from the makers. Chances are we’ll never know. Unlike their French or Norwegian counterparts, the screenwriters have, up to now, chosen not to communicate on the series. It is my perception that indifference to its LGBTQ audience, an appetite for drama and shock value and a degree of ignorance manifested itself throughout the series. That may or may not have been the intention of the makers, we can’t know, but it certainly had that effect on me as a viewer.

As always, a part of me that says I’m being too harsh. I can imagine it’s a lot less difficult and a lot more relaxed to write series on superheroes then it is navigating your way through the pitfalls of minority representation or gay televised fiction, a genre that exists less than 30 years and of which the rules are being rewritten constantly. It’s also not easy to have a number of militant gays like myself looking over your shoulders constantly, scrutinizing every line and every motive and picking on the one detail that got overlooked.

And should we dismiss the entire series because of this one incident? Let’s move on, Sander and Robbe are happy. Isn’t that a heartwarming prospect to gay kids? But this relativity is the problem. Silencing a hate crime not a detail. Showing violence on tv has repercussions, and they can’t be undone by having a cute gay couple smooch underneath a Christmas tree. A SKAM remake has a responsibility towards its audience. And it’s not that a chance like this comes around often. Budget cuts in locally produced fiction will mean it will take years before there’s another chance to see local gay fiction on screen. So every chance we get needs to be perfect. Because it will affect a new generation of young people.

Ultimately, the question is why it is so hard to have good quality gay stories, made by queer creators for a queer audience? Why was this series made by three white middle-aged men with a background in marketing, with only one of them with proven credentials in screenwriting? Why is it so hard to hire gay actors or to find authentic gay voices? Is it really necessary that a series like SKAM S3 contains “learning moments for the straight community”? Can’t we, for once, make a tv series without taking into account the heterosexual majority? It might be a bit tentative of me to say this, but I’m sure Niels Rahou, the writer of Season 3 of SkamFrance, wouldn’t have included a gay bashing scene. He has commented frequently on his scenarios, he is openly gay and he stated he would have benefited from a similar series during his adolescence. I don’t think the Belgian writing team wrote with the same sense of urgency or treated SKAM as a passion project.

To end, let’s go back to the original version of Skam Norway. The reason why the format was so revolutionary is precisely because being gay or coming out wasn’t a big deal. Jonas didn’t bat an eyelid when Isak told him he’d been with a boy. His friends were fine with it, and so were his parents. Isak faced an internal struggle, gradually coming to terms with and being the result of living in a heteronormative society. But ultimately the mopey kid with a love of sleeping waged a bigger war with his eternally overflowing locker. He just accepted his sexuality. In the end, though, Isak had grown as a person and showed serious committment to his boyfriend Even. But the eye-opener of the series was the way in which same-sex attraction was treated as something not to worry about.

As a reaction to the way in which homosexuality was depicted as part of mundane everyday life, people rightfully complained that this story was a bit too rosy. And it’s true, there is white middle class privilege in this story. Among certain communities, coming out still isn’t evident and living a gay life is considered unsafe for some people. Yet, Julie Andem would rather show her viewers with a vision of an ideal world, in order to help and comfort a LGBT audience, than care about what the public would think of the season. I think WTFock could have been more attentive to that message.

Luckily, for most of us, being gay doesn’t lead us to being the victim of a hate crime. That doesn’t mean we can turn away from the reality of such violence. But almost all of my gay friends have, one way or another, been confronted with various examples of homophobic behavior. More often than not, these instances are based on ignorance and are more small-scale in nature. Being called names in the street. A supposedly witty remark made by a drunk uncle at a Christmas party. Or take the well-known Flemish tv personality who, in all his innocence, made a plea for abolishing the Antwerp gay pride parade during a televised comedy show in june. He was applauded by the audience and genuinely seemed impressed by his clever, seemingly inclusive reasoning. More often than not, the threats the homosexual community face consist not of the raw violence of the physical attack, but of vulgarity, stupidity or ignorance. It is a potentially dangerous to narrow down homophobia to physical attacks and take the risk to have your audience believe that they’re in the clear as long as they don’t punch someone to death.

The only way things will change for the better is when the heterosexual majority steps up its game. This means they have to change, they have to start questioning their accepted beliefs, or how they educate their kids. Ultimately, they themselves won’t benefit from these changes, on the contrary, society as a whole will be a bit less tailored to them when heteronormativity is eradicated.  Inclusivity is about the majority caring about the minority. So this is my advice to the WTFock team. Don’t care about clicks, controversy or drama. Don’t perpetuate the representation of LGBT individuals as victims of a harsh outside world. Dare to shake up old, established narratives. Show that homophobia is far more pervasive and far more subtle than the large-scale evil of a hate crime. And if you’re going down that route anyway, commit to it. Don’t brush it off. Status quo is no longer an option.

[wherearemyglassesbro]

Hetalia night at the museum AU

I have made time to do this! I have no idea why I immediately fell in love with this AU but I did and now I an hopelessly invested lol

strap in this is gonna be LONG

I must tag @gsnkhurray because they’re the one who posted about this originally! :)

So to start this all off, Ive kinda thought about each of the characters having their own elaborate exhibits. Yao would probably have the nicest one of all. He’d be set up in a very detailed scene, probably sitting on the floor with parchment laid out in front of him as if he as writing. He would be wearing traditional Chinese clothing, something like this:

I know that this photo isn’t the best photo but the guy is standing up and he shows it off the best! Yao would probably be surrounded by all sorts of artifacts, jewelry and weapons! You can go around his exhibit and read all sots of things about ancient China

Francis was made in a Canadian wax figure factory and the lady who painted his face was French too! But of course, the wax figures in the museum have all adapted to the era they are supposed to be from. I imagine him in something pretty like this:

Personally I like the pink one better, I think it suits him more! Anything from the Rococo/Baroque era works! French fashion has always been beautiful really. His exhibit isn’t that big and it has a velvet rope out in front so no one can touch anything. He’s stood in a room that fits the 1700s, holding his powdered wig as if he’s about to put it on, his hair pulled into a low ponytail with a ribbon to match his waistcoat. You can tell he’s pretentious just staring at him in his little room full of expensive things, a fake window that shines light behind him so he kinda look a like he glows. There’s a description of clothing from the 1700s outside his exhibit with flyers that anyone can take with sewing patterns so you can learn to make your own waistcoat. The only thing wrong with his exhibit is that it hasn’t been dusted in a few weeks…

Antonio’s display is across the hall from Fran’s since the ‘fashion throughout history’ exhibits are small and are all in one long hallway on the way to the World War One & World War Two displays, just to give people something to look at on their way there.

Toni had probably got some beautiful pantaloons on cause why not. I’m not too sure what the origin of pic is it might be Italy not Spain but that’s okay though. I just needed something like this! It looks a bit ridiculous but Toni thinks he looks great and will show off for the ladies from other displays. He’s seen himself in the bathroom mirror before while exploring museum when he was first was shipped in. His display is meant to look like he’s standing outside on a dirt path with little stones embedded into walls beside him, like he’s standing between two houses. The only thing he has next to his display is a plaque with the era his outfit it from and what country he’s from.

Lovi & Feli will be kinda dressed like this! With puffy sleeves from the renaissance era. I know for a fact that this is Italian cause it literally says ‘Italian Gentleman’ on it.

Doesn't he just look spiffy? The two of them will share a display, one of them wearing an outfit more like this and the other will have the cape and hat too to top it all off. Their display will kinda look like one of those ballrooms from Romeo and Juliet but much smaller. They’ll have sewing patterns available along with a plaque outside their display too! I cant imagine that they like sharing their display cause not only is it crowded with both of them there but Lovino will probably want the most attention he can get. Lovi finds many of the kids that go by to be repulsive, he hates how they laugh at his clothes but Feliciano is very accepting, wishing he could move for the little ones.

Y’all thought Ivan was gonna be in some state-of-the-art space suit but no ma’am. This here is one of the first space suits ever:

Does this look safe to you? Nope. But this is what he wears. He’ll have a speaker on the inside that makes it seem like he’s talking in Russian to those watching him as he stands in a ‘space station’. For the kids, there’s an interactive display with touch screens an buttons so they can design their own ship and launch it! Ivan is a favorite among the kiddos and adults but when he comes alive, he finds it very difficult to move in his stiff suit. When he talks, he has to take the helmet off too otherwise his voice is all muffled and strange sounding.

Mattie is part of the WW1 exhibit! He will be sharing his display with ten others! They’re all standing to model uniforms or sitting in model planes. Matt’s would probably be the uniform on the far left, top row.

He kinda stays in his own exhibit at night but otherwise, he likes being around Artie. There’s a screen by his exhibit to show how his plane flew and some other video clips of soldiers running on foot or waving to the camera. Matt thought one of the soldiers in the video was actually him once when he was first brought to the museum. Honestly? He loves being there. He was brought in from a smaller Canadian museum to the US with the other models. 

Kiku’s display would be super cool I think, with all kinds of old swords or katanas along with other models to show off traditional dresses and armor.

I think it’d be great if  Kiku was the main guy in the display, the middle of the room, showing off an outfit like this. There would be a voice recording of a woman explaining what the samurai did and how they fought echoing through the room and people could o around and look at artifacts from this time. Kiku would still be soft spoken of course but he does like how the kids, teens and adults all look at him in awe

Artie’s a model for the British navy. There’s a really cool boat exhibit in a museum I went to about 4 months ago so he’d fit in there pretty well! He’s gonna be wearing the one in the middle since that one seems to be the most formal:

His exhibit is actually pretty cool, it has a movie playing at all times, showing the successes of the British navy and little facts about things like how many ships they have or battles won by the navy alone. Do kids get anything here? not really, maybe just a pamphlet showing off diagrams of the inside of some of the ships. There are boats that people can go inside but Arthur’s isn't one of them.

I couldn't do a night at the museum post and NOT include the Nordics guys! They’d be in traditional viking wear like this:

I know it is just a cosplay and not legit but its the best I could find okay? In their exhibit, its meant to look like a big boat, the floors and walls are made of old wood! There’s a projection of the sky on the ceiling too. The Nordics are set up on a stage all together, showing off what was common to wear back then. Their whole exhibit room is a ‘History of Vikings’ thing so its full of old shields, flags, helmets, etc.

Alfred’s display is pretty cool too. He and maybe six others would be set up to look like they're planning for battle in uniforms like these!

He gets really excited about kids at his display. There are old maps for people to see and battle plans hung on the walls with old muskets and a canon in the center of the room that has a speaker and smoke machine inside so it makes a soft ‘boom’ with smoke blowing out every twenty minutes or so

HCs:

•Alfred tries to ride different animals, like the dinosaurs and lions

•Mattie hates how he looks like Al

•Al doesn’t like Artie too much cause he’s British. The first time they met, Al screamed and tried to shoot him “Taxation without representation!”

•Francis loves the animals that come alive, he lets the birds sit on his shoulders

•Ivan always has trouble taking his space helmet off and needs assistance. Occasionally, the speaker in his suit will go off but there’s nothing he can do about that

•Yao made the security guard teach him how to play the acoustic guitar since all of the traditional Chinese instruments are locked up. He’s doing very good! He wants to teach other people do play like him

•Arthur laughs at Antonio’s clothes all the time “Ha! Balloon thighs!” “¡Puta!”

•Kiku doesn’t talk much but he likes being around the others. He hates when they touch him though so he smacks their hands away

•Fran and Artie fence for fun

•Artie sword fought with Kiku once. Never again. Artie wasn’t ready

•Alfred really loves pranking the security guards, hiding their stuff in random places and blasting loud music over the museum speakers

•^^Ivan hates this music, he says that’s it hurts his ears but no one understands

•The was figures are doing their best to learn English since it’s the dominant language in the museum burn it isn’t going too well since they’re all stubborn

•The Italian twins bicker frequently and everyone knows to just leave them alone cause of you get too close, you might get smacked from the hand gestures

•Everyone gets jealous when they see the security guard eating

•Yao laughed when he saw himself in the mirror for the first time. He liked it a lot cause he didn’t know how he looked for the longest time

•^^Francis would spend all of eternity in front of a mirror, he loves it

•Matthew loves hanging around the other WW1 figures cause they’re from the same era and the same exhibit so they have more to talk about “Did you see that girl with the pigtails earlier? She stuck her gum to the wall!”

•They’ll all get together and gamble sometimes with the change they find on the ground in the halls

•If you’re the security guard, watch out cause you’ll be in for a ride

[benbarnesescape]

A Taste for Danger

Part 2 - Crossed Paths

Logan Rossi is a Sicilian Mob Boss that is known to the world as a top CEO in cyber security. You are a PR Coordinator for one of England’s top agencies. What happens when both your paths cross and you are pulled into his world? Will you both choose safety or will you choose love?

Rating: M

This story will be written from the readers and Logan’s perspective - it will be noted at the beginning of each chapter

A/N: Pardon my french but that photo of Ben as Billy Russo has me all kinds of fucked up. Goddamn. So you’re going to get powerhouse stories about Ben playing bad men that you wish you could fuck tonight. Because who doesn’t like a bad boy - especially when they’re played by Ben

Permanent Tags: @la-fille-en-aiguilles, @ladyblablabla, @starless-skyox @livelearnandtravel @@sci-fi-and-funny @thelagunabitches

Logan POV

I took in the bustling city of Monaco, a cup of coffee in my hand that had been long forgotten about as my brain tried to process the past 24 hours.

You left me.

Last night had been…..different. I hadn’t expected to take you back to my room. I never took women back to my room. I had mastered coaxing them back to their room, waiting until I knew there were fast asleep after a fun night before I slipped out unnoticed.

But you were different.

You were beautiful but I’ve slept with beautiful woman before. Beauty didn’t really matter to me in all honesty - it was a superficial vice that people invested too much time in. It was your personality that I was more curious to know. When you walked into the room you had a different energy to you. Confident yet uncertain. You obviously didn’t come from money or if you did it wasn’t a major factor in your life. Obviously didn’t care for attention or you would have been bathing in it the way men were practically tripping to ogle at you. Prideful for sure. Independent. A fiery spirit that drove me nearly sideways last night.

You were just - different.

When I woke up that morning, it was to empty sheets. No note, no goodbye. Not even regret sex. Just an empty indenture in the comforter with the remnants of your scent lingering on my hotel pillow.

I didn’t know why but I was unsettled by the idea of you being gone.

There’s a sudden light rap on the door, followed by the soft squeal of the door opening and I keep my eyes focused on the sparkling Atlantic ocean. I ignore the sound of soft soles entering the room, or the way they carry towards me.

“You’re meeting is in ten minutes. You sure you want to go through with this after your little disappearing act last night?”

I give an offhanded glance to Antoine, my right hand man and longtime est friend before returning my eyes out the window.

“You managed without me.”

Antoine smirks, standing beside me as he looks out the window.

“Yes because I thought you were taking care of the situation with a certain Mr. Dirick. I didn’t expect you to go MIA for your night of honor for pussy.”

The sharp accent hits my ear and I flinch, looking over at him.

“Is that what you think happened?”

“That’s what I know happened,” he chuckles turning toward me. “Never knew you to bring a woman back to your room. Or for a woman to want to leave you as quickly as she did this morning.”

I raise an eyebrow and he stuffs his hands in his pockets, returning his eyes outside.

“Its my job to know your whereabouts at all time. And, I ran into her this morning as she was dodging out. I get why you left with her - she’s a beauty - just curious on why you ignored two important, vital meetings for a dame.”

He looks back at me with that same stare of curiosity and I roll my eyes, taking a long sip of the cold coffee in my hands, flinching at the bitter way it mingles on my tongue. When I pull back I shrug.

“You have never had the pleasure of being with a woman Antoine so I doubt you’ll understand. Besides - Mr. Dirick and I had a fantastic conversation this morning over coffee. And I ran into the committee chair afterwards - seems like you gave a solid explanation for my absence at my honorary dinner.”

Antoine looks at me long and hard before shaking his head sighing.

“You’re not understanding Logan. Your men are curious to why you have been missing. People are asking questions. When humans get restless, some form of war unfolds. And that’s the last thing we need.”

I smirk, turning on my heel and walking to my desk.

“I’m not worried about some quiet murmurs. They’ll dissipate by noon. Mr. Dirick’s physical condition will set those things straight. I can keep my affairs in order Antoine - it's your job to make sure that my image isn’t tarnished.”

I lean against the marble desk in the large space as I quirk an eyebrow at him and he clears his throat, shaking his head.

“I’m just telling you as your friend. I know you can handle your shit.”

“Then you’ll let my 11 o’clock appointment. Its their job to maintain my image to the public and right now - according to you - that's what I should be focusing on.”

I throw my cup of coffee in the trash can, turning and Antoine gives a low chuckle shaking his head.

“Whatever you say Logan. Whatever you say.”

He’s only gone five minutes as I sit at my desk, opening up my computer and scrolling through my endless emails. Sorting out what the rest of my day will look like and how I can find out more information about her without Antoine knowing.

Because even though I hated being lectured, he was right. I couldn’t afford to get distracted. Not now - not after all the hard work I had put in.

It's the laughter that snaps me from my trance. It rings high mingled with the darker chuckles. When the doors are opened up and Antoine walks in, his face smug and amused, I should know that its her. Instead I have to wait for her to walk in beside her colleague, the navy dress she’s wearing hugging her soft curves as her eyebrows fly up in surprise and I know I’m in as much trouble as she feels.

Why the hell did she have to be different?

The silence in the room is deafening. It consumes the space, ignoring the soft whirl of my desktop or the faint sounds of traffic from the street below. Her eyes are locked on mine, trying to read me and it's only when Antoine clears his throat that she pulls away to look at him, things registering in her brain and she gives  low, awkward laugh. The man beside her is watching her amused curiosity, confusion playing over his defined features before he turns to me and says,

“I’m Luke Jordan. This is my colleague Y/N Y/L/N. We’re here on behalf of Sweetwater Relations.”

Everyone knew Sweetwater Relations. If you needed good representation - representation that could get you out of an sticky situation with fidelity - they were your people. Presidents of countries even had paid to have them advise their relations team. They only worked with the best - the primary reason why I flew two of their top agents out to meet me.

Of course, she had to be one of them.

I stand, buttoning the front of my jacket before walking toward her. Her eyes drink me in, her bottom lip tugging into her mouth and I have to bite back my internal groan as I stick out my hand to Luke.

“Ms. Y/L/N, Mr. Jordan. Pleasure to finally meet you. Thank you for meeting me in Monaco - I figured it would be a nice vacation for the top agents at Sweetwater Relations.”

I turn toward her, my hand enveloping hers in a tight squeeze before I turn on my heel, walking toward my balcony.

“I’ve prepared a light brunch for us to have while talking business. Please, join me on the terrace.”

I don’t turn to look at her but I know there’s a hesitance in the way her heels click against the tile, before they are all following me.

I was going to kill Antoine. He knows it, watching me with mild amusement as I sit at the head of the table, my dark eyes watching them her carefully.

The table is small, intimate, and she’s forced to sit to my right as her partner sits to my left, still watching her in amusement as she places a folder portfolio in front of me.

“Normally I’d urge our potential business partners to read over the materials of our company but,” her eyes flint over to me, a quiet anger boiling behind her soft lashes, “you seem like the type of man whose done his research and already knows what he wants. So tell me, Mr. Rossi, why is it that you asked for Sweetwater’s help.”

Its tactical and bold her ask. Its also obvious that its not part of their strategy, Luke’s eyes barreling into her own but she doesn’t move as she leans back in her chair, her arms resting easily on the armrest. Antoine smirks, sitting back in his chair watching the interaction unfold.  

“I’m a man of fortune. My cyber company has launched off the roof and as I grow, so do my enemies. I need someone - people - who understand the importance of being discreet and transparent. Someone who knows the tango of giving the world what they want to see while proving to the kings in power that I’m a worthy opponent.” I lean into her, expecting her to backpedal. Instead she stands her ground, never flinching from her seat as I get closer.

“I need an equal to make sure that I stay clean while I get my hands dirty.”

She gives a smirk, before chuckling lowly and grabbing the mimosa that is placed in front of her. She takes a slow sip before turning to Luke.

“Luke, do you want to assure Mr. Rossi how efficient of a job our team can guarantee him.”

Luke, who had been watching in fascination waits a beat before nodding enthusiastically, flipping open the folder and stumbling out his sale. She had thrown him off guard and he was sloppy but she knows it doesn’t matter. Knows it doesn’t matter because she knows that I’m going to hire them. She’s shaking her head, her eyes looking out in the distance as I try to stay interested in the pitch.

When he’s done, he’s looking over at her as if to save him. She doesn’t. She keeps her eyes firmly on the city skyline, only moving to take long slow sips of her drink.

The anger she was trying to contain was radiating off of her strongly and I’m reminded again of the way she felt underneath me, the way her body moved against mine. All that energy that she gave to me and I want, need more. 

But she left me.

“I’d like to have a conversation with Ms. Y/L/N,” her head snaps at me as I continue. “Alone. About all of this nonsense. Of course, only if she’d allow me.”

She places her drink on the table and looks at Luke and nods.

He clears his throat, standing as he grabs his drink as Antoine pushes his chair back.

“We will leave you to it. Tell me, Mr. Jordan, what else do you envision for Delos Technologies rebranding?”

He throws his arm over the man's shoulders, giving me one last warning glance before the doors of the terrace are closed behind him. She pivots her head slightly, trying to gauge how far they are to the glass windows before she hisses,

“Were you ever going to tell me you were Logan fucking Rossi?”

The words aren’t unexpected but the venom takes me off guard and I lean into the table to grab a grape, popping it in my mouth as she watches me. She shifts obviously suddenly uncomfortable and I grin, sitting back. Knowing that she was affected by me as I was to her.

“Were you ever going to tell me why you left this morning without a goodbye?”

She snorts, crossing her arms and I try to ignore the way her arms push up her cleavage.

“You hardly seem like the type of man who needs reassurance. especially from a woman.”

“Perhaps I enjoyed your company.”

I can already tell by the way her face shifts that I’ve chosen the wrong words for the situation.

“Are you saying my fucking you got us the meeting.” the ice behind her whisper can be felt and it does something inside me. Stirs me.

I could never resist a woman of passion.

“While I would say that last night's fucking session was worth at least twenty one on one meetings with me, I’m afraid you’re wrong there doll.”

Her eyes narrow at the pet name and I know how I’m going to spend the next couple of months getting under her skin.

“I had no idea you worked for Sweetwater but makes sense. Of the pair, you seem the most intelligent and competent. And you’re not afraid to stand your ground. All admirable traits that I look for in my close employees.”

She raises an eyebrow and I smile, standing up and looking out at the horizon.

“That’s right doll,” I stress the last word as I glance over at her. “You and your friend are hired. You start today.”

Present Day

Logan barrels out of the parking garage and you clutch the door as he drifts down the narrow street, distinctive of the old Spaniard town you were in. You try to ignore the weight of the gun that you have in your other hand, hoping to any and all the Gods you don’t have to use it.

You had used a gun before, in a range alongside your uncle who was a retired cop. You weren’t unfamiliar with the small, metal machine. You just never had to use it against human life - never wanted that burden. Neither did your uncle but he also believed that as a woman who tangoed to dangerously with shifty humans it couldn’t hurt to know how to use one.

How Uncle Liam would be so proud to know his paranoia would pay off.

Logan suddenly slams on his breaks and your thrust folder, the seat belt barely keeping you in your seat. He’s looking at the police car that has halted in front of you, his sirens blowing wildly as pedestrians watch on in curiosity and fear.

Logan takes in the landscape, noting the sidewalk to the left of the opposite vehicle that's clearing up before grabbing his seatbelt and clicking in.

He looks at you and for the first time gives you a playful grin, the kind that usually had your stomach dropping and you give him a shaky one back.

“Do you trust me?”

The words are useless you both know. Of course you did. That was how you got in this mess to begin with.

Instead you give a nod and he returns his eyes to the front of the road.

“Then you might want to hold on. It's about to get very interesting.”

He shifts the gear of the car and you hold your breath, knowing what he’s up to.

Why the hell did you have to fall in love with Logan Rossi?

[abbynormaled]

Summoning Myself

I don't know who needs to hear this today (well, maybe that's a wee bit of a stretch... I could name some people), but it is often too easy to focus on the difficulties and struggles that have come with openly transitioning over the past 5 months (is that all?), when the positives far outweigh the negatives.

N.B., I understand that much of the threats, negativity, and consequences of my circumstances are mitigated by my privilege. This post does not seek to negate either the struggles I have faced, nor those of transgender people who face so much more, but rather to shine a light on the joy that comes from stepping into the spotlight on the stage of your own Truth.

In no particular order, here are some of the radical and personally profound changes that have occurred since becoming Abby.

1. I smile at my reflection in the mirror.

To be sure, not every day and not that there aren't things I wish were different about my appearance. But...BUT I lived for so long having to look at myself as a chore, a necessary but unpleasant aspect of Looking Presentable.

Now I don't approach the mirror with a resigned spirit. I enjoy the time I spend with me. I take in the little features that make my face unique. I see, finally, what perhaps my loved ones see when they look at me.

I am no longer at odds with my representation.

It's no secret that Mulan is my favorite Disney film ever, and has been since it came out. I didn't always fully understand why, but what a joyful thing it is to have your reflection show who you are inside.

...

I lied.

That was, in fact, #1. Now proceeding with un-ordinated (though numbered) thoughts...

2. I used to hate clothes. 

I mean, truly. I hated clothes the way Trump hates the truth, the Game of Thrones writers hate satisfying conclusions, and Facebook hates showing posts in chronological order.

Used to be, the worst thing I could get as a gift was clothes, no matter how nice they were or how much I needed it. Picking out clothes was a daily grind.

These days, I enjoy my wardrobe (smallish as it is). I like picking out what to wear, I even enjoy the act of getting dressed! "Want to stop by Plato's Closet?" Yes, please!

3. Movement. 

I used to not move very much. I didn't really understand this until after I had started my transition. I felt like moving my body was strictly functional, or sometimes performative. But mostly, I didn't move it that much.

I'm still working on this one, but I've started just moving more. Ironically, I feel like it's OK for me to take up space, both in the physical world and also in the visual one. I think that before, moving my body was an egotistical thing to do (I know, weird, huh?).

It's now a thing I do for me, moving my body, because I enjoy having it and letting it do its thing: My lips, my arms, my hands, my hips. My eyebrows still need some coaxing, but they're coming around.

4. Touch used to make me very, very uncomfortable with everyone except my immediate family. 

Not that I didn't enjoy or want to be touched... I did. But I didn't feel comfortable emotionally or socially receiving it.

That's definitely changed for me. It's the most natural thing in the world for me now to accept warmly the hugs and hand holds and little affections that I receive from my glorious, wonderful friends.

I'm still working on giving it better, but it's progress!

4a. The Wall

Fen has always said that I seem to project an aura that I don't really want to be close, that I have a wall around me keeping people at arm's length. I certainly didn't want that wall, and in fact have spent much of my adult life trying to tear it down with little success.

Most of that comes from the autism, without a doubt. I don't give the correct non-verbal signals that indicate "I'm an open person; feel free to be warm with me."

But it definitely feels like things have changed. I don't know for sure whether that the wall is starting to crack, or if it's that my friends are making an extra effort to scale the wall (or a little of each), but my interactions among my friends have felt so much closer and meaningful and energizing.

(So, just to be clear my friends, even though it may not always look like I'm basking in your attention and company, I definitely am. Don't let the autistic demeanor fool you!)

5. I don't bite my nails. 

OK, I haven't stopped completely yet, but I used to shred my nails to the quick. Now I have long, sculpted nails that I enjoy painting.

6. Walking 

How I walked was not something I even thought about before transitioning, unless something occurred to get in the way of it. It was strictly utilitarian. The way Puritans think of sex: you just do the thing, you don't really DWELL ON IT.

I like walking now. Not in the "it's nice outside I'll go for a walk" sense, but that I enjoy the feeling of my body as it walks. I consider how each leg swings ever so slightly inward as it steps forward, creating a subtle yet graceful bounce in my step.

I remember the first time I spent time walking as myself. It was July in Asheville. Fen had taken me there for a long weekend of hanging out as Abby, and it was amazing. On our last night there, strolling down the crowded street headed to no place in particular, I said to her, "I feel so powerful!"

We use walking as a metaphor for the experience of being who we choose to be: walking our own path, etc. And I know why.

7. Conflict

Dealing with conflict has always been an issue with me, but I've found that, although I still shy away from it, when a tough discussion needs to be had, I'll have it. That's new!

8. Saying YES to myself. 

I used to get incredibly caught up in saying yes to too many things and getting overwhelmed and overburdened. I started stepping away from obligation I don't want or can't take on before transitioning, but I've felt way more comfortable with that stance since.

9. Weeping

I can count on my hands the number of times I've cried since graduating high school and prior to coming out. That's not healthy, to say the least. I still find myself trying to stifle it on reflex, but I've gotten better about just letting it out. And that's taken a lot of stress and tension out of me, both bodily and emotionally.

10. Uprightedness

My posture is much better. I'm still working on it, but it helps to feel good and strong in your body.

11. Emotional Management

Dealing with other people's emotions has always been a challenge, given the autism. But it's easier now, and I'm glad to be able to be more emotionally there for my loved ones (and I'll continue to work on it). It still takes more spoons for me than for most, I think, but I'm digging it.

12. French Fries

My willpower is getting stronger! I've lost 25 pounds since mid-July. I've made some very conscious choices to screw my diet for emotional health weeks, but the rest of the time I've found it easier to follow the diet plan. It helps that I have a reason to care about the results beyond a vague sense of being healthy!

13. I take selfies!

14. Community

I've often felt like George Bailey from "It's a Wonderful Life," wondering whether I really existed for other people beyond my immediate presence. I don't wonder that any more.

Like the townsfolk gathering around George with their contributions to rescue the Savings & Loan, the response of my community has been overwhelming! Whether it's the small messages I receive when friends know I have had a trying day, or genuine bright smiles I see when they greet me, I am encircled in love.

This circle of love and support is not a metaphor.

It's a magic circle.

It was made strong by each and every one of you in all the various ways you have supported me.

You have summoned for me a powerful space for becoming: a pocket universe of love for me to claim as my own.

[theliterarywolf]

Providing you've seen that 'stages of fandom chart', are there any good media that have a presence on tumblr but haven't gotten toxic yet? seems like its happening faster and faster these days...

The Hunie franchise (both Pop and Cam) - Outside of someone on here hating the game so much that they were talking about ‘wanting to kill everyone who was involved with it’ (and even they were only exposed to the game through a Markiplier LP), the fandom on here is microscopic because ‘ew, icky porn game obviously made for the male gaze (even though half of the development team for Pop were lesbians, but okay)’.

The Ancient Magus’s Bride - As far as I’ve seen, this anime has been lucky enough to have a corner of shade under the ‘Don’t bring your bullshit in here’ barrier of tumblr’s teratophile community. So that one’s safe

Gankutsuou - The Count of Monte Cristo - You know, despite bearing quite a few LGBT characters (Albert, Franz, Eugenie, Peppo, and even the Count himself), this anime hasn’t had any exposure to the bullshit meter. Maybe tumblr children don’t have the time for any adaptation of classic French literature that isn’t Les Mis, who knows?

Full Service - The game has yet to come out (the devs are shooting for September) but, really, with this game I am ironically A-OK with it having, what, 3% presence on tumblr? Because, fuck it, I don’t need any discourse about the massage parlor hunks, okay?

Night in the Woods - Yeah, the game that everyone was saying was going to be ‘the next Undertale when it comes to fandom cringe, ohmahgawd’ has pretty much been under the radar when it comes to tumblr. I mean, the worst thing I remember seeing when NitW hit its peak on this site was people getting upset that people were shipping Greg and Mae (which, I mean, I can understand a little; you actually have a gay couple in the form of Angus and Greg and yet you still want to ship Greg and Mae, who are sooooo bad for each other, oh my God) – 

Okay, bit of a tangent: the more I think about NitW, the more I just feel so damn sorry for Angus and Bea for having to deal with Greg and Mae, just… my God 

–

But, other that, haven’t seen discourse. Maybe because people don’t want to go for a media where the main character, despite being pansexual and representation being awesome, is such a fucking trainwreck.

And… yeah, those are the only things fandom-wise that I can think of that are Discourse-Free on this hellsite. Because even things like The Shape of Water (a movie that should have that ‘Don’t Bring Your Bullshit in Here’ protection from the teratophile community is still being hit with ‘ugh, who cares if it’s an unconventional romance between a mute protagonist who uses sign language and a monster – it’s still Het and she’s still white, myeh~’ posts in the tag and even obscure ships that have been left alone for years are now having little worms come into the tag to post the typical anti messages (’oh, the age-gaps make me uncomfortable’, ‘oh, you’re skirting on pedophilia~’

[kendrixtermina]

So I’ve seen the first episode with Picard

This is the first thing since before the Reboot that actually FELT like Star Trek

Confession time: I hatedhatedhated Discovery. 

So we all know that there has been an epidemic of soulless remakes in the last decade, that much is indisputable. At some point they figured out that they could sell/ disguise those as something relevant (or at least deflect criticism) by casting women. I’m all for representation don’t get me wrong id even say that it has value all on its own even in a bad film - But it does not replace writing. You still have to write. 

That’s also why I hate the word ”diversity” like I hated all phony euphemisms since I could think. Say representation if that’s what you mean, you could have a cast accurately representing the earth’s demographics and still have them be boring samey and predictable as characters. It can certainly LEAD to interestingness if this leads to the discussion of experiences that dont get enough attention or different POVs,  and bias toward giving acclaim to “tried and true” things (or a racism-tinged conception thereof) can LEAD to boring sameyness but they’re not the same things. 

First I was super exited about it including because of the diverse casting because that is a) needed in our times b) realistic for the far future and c) very much in the spirit of Star Trek. They didn’t always succeed, much looks dated now, but they tried. Also it was a super interesting time period of the setting to explore. But rather than building on it and expanding they ignored everything pretty much. Even that they were going to try a different POV other than the captain excited me - they did something like that with DS9 and it was great. 

First it’s this 12 year old writing their first fanfiction thing where the new MC is the fan favorite’s secret little sister like I could have written a better Mary Sue as a teenager, and they undermine the casting by tying her to the popularity of a white man character and not giving her like her own story and background. Remember Benjamin Sisko? He was from new Orleans, his father and son featured prominently etc there was a recognizeable cultural background just like Picard is French and Kirk was ‘merrican. Why not go afrofuturist?   Same thing with the androgynous name - they do it and then they immediately undermine it by having the people in the setting react to it like its weird. 

But what I really cannot forgive them is that they turned something that was always so deeply about humanism into a generic war flic. That the MC is a misunderstood visionary because she advocated for violence. The Klingons are basically Orks. Why not have a new baddie and call them something else? 

They completely forgot that it was supposed to be an utopian vision, a different, future society. A big central plot point, the emotional crux, is that everyone snubs Michael because she’s a convict, and pacifism is universally accepted. Starfleet sees itself primarily as explorers and diplomats though it socially fills the role of a military.  This is supposed to be a future world where the justice system is reparative, criminals get to see shrinks and reintegrated and people are less prejudiced and socially evolved - it can’t all be perfect because there would be no plot, but it still represents the idea that we CAN be better, and the characters try to choose that, or wrestle with the idea of that, when confronted with their own flaws and those of their society. Has the world come to a place where we can we no longer even imagine that? 

I often felt this would be better served by making ripoffs (predictability, which is what they want, plus room for creativity) instead of remakes (bound to piss off the original fans, cheap grab for free publicity) - A Sci Fi war movie about someone who is snubbed for being a convict absolutely could be good and valid on its own and touch on relevant themes, especially given the social problems in the USA where ex-cons can’t get jobs and racism leads to wrongful convictions. But the execution is plain bad!

So, By contrast, Picard

The old star treks had plenty of bad wonky episodes that everyone now rolls their eyes at but the thing is they always at least TRIED to be high-concept, classic-literature like. That took itself seriously when talking about politics, science, ideals and the human condition, and tried to be thought provoking

Something that’s been lost in modern anti/purity culture that acts like there is One Obvious Right Opinion and everything else gets loaded labels, is that something doesn’t need to be perfect to make the audience think about a concept or topic. I don’t expect it to be perfect but I do expect them to TRY. 

It’s only the first episode, I wouldn’t say that I’m blown away by genius, but it’s trying. 

Humanitarian actions are a theme again as well as integrity and utopia. He resigned in Protest.  etc because he felt society shifting away from that utopia

The relevant politcs is there - Refugee crisis, the sense that we’re in a dark place in history where ppl have become cautious stopped daring and trying

but the speculative is also there with the androids

Referencing Sci Fi classics. I see a lot of asimov there, a bit of blade runner. high-Concept sci fi has always assumed a well-read audience since Mary Shelley invented the genre

Picard is really written like Picard. I guess it helps to have the original actor. His dialogues were beautiful and everything that star trek is about. The orchid one is so pretty

It’s also original-like just in simple flavor things without over the top intertextuality/references, like the inclusion of paintings, mysterious beauty, the french countryside, the observation-riddled poker game , the theme of coming back from retirement, recalling the chess game at the opening of TOS etc. 

There was a war involving genetic augmentation and then it was banned forever in a WWII like traumatic reaction so this IS “in character” for that society for all that its always been characterized as neophillic

I already ship Soji with that Romulan. or im just glad to have some romulan MCs really regardless of ship. 

[theinsatiables]

WATCHING TOKYO THROUGH THE EYES OF OUTSIDERS

I grew up watching foreigners film Tokyo. Every morning, on my way to school, I met my friends in front of Shibuya Crossing, the city’s notoriously crowded intersection. Each time the lights changed and the car-clogged expanse cleared, Tokyo stretched ahead like a catwalk. We would strut forth, flanked by tourists, until people pummelled us from five directions. By the time we reached the far sidewalk, most of us looked shipwrecked. I liked seeing white men sprinting past us to film the scene. Some would hold cameras on their foreheads, following actors through the swarm of black hair. Others would plant a ladder in the middle of the intersection, as though our city was the moon. Once, I heard shouts and saw a ladder keel over with the slow, graceful arc of a monument toppling during a revolution.

The list of auteurs who have trekked to Tokyo is long: Wim Wenders, Chris Marker, Bong Joon-ho, Leos Carax, Werner Herzog, Sofia Coppola, and Abbas Kiarostami, among others. During the past month, I saw much of their work at the Japan Society, which hosted a film series, “Tokyo Stories,” that studied the city’s place in the global imagination. Three modes seemed to emerge onscreen: the foreign filmmaker who goes to Japan as a tourist; the foreign filmmaker who resists being a tourist; and the foreign filmmaker who goes to Japan and doesn’t make a film about foreigners at all. After some of the films, a friend would elbow me, whispering, “Was that your Tokyo?” Sometimes Tokyo seemed to be made out of cardboard, such as in Max Ophüls’s “Yoshiwara,” from 1937, a “Madame Butterfly” homage shot in a Japanese garden in Paris. Despite the film’s yellowface, I couldn’t help but like its blunt honesty. In one scene, a group of Russian officers head out to visit the red-light district, and a short, hammy man asks his friend if he speaks Japanese. His friend laughs: “You think you need to speak to geishas?”

Speaking Japanese is not required in the Tokyo-tourist film, a genre that includes Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation,” Justin Lin’s “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,” and wryer works such as Doris Dörrie’s “Cherry Blossoms” and Alain Corneau’s “Fear and Trembling.” These films act almost as brochures, and their narrative beats are as predictable as those in a romantic comedy. Their protagonists are usually white and, at some juncture in their lives, go to Tokyo. They are either positioned very low, down in the street, feeling swallowed by the city, or very high, on an expensive floor, staring at the urban forest. The Japanese people they meet are either sterile, or soapy and naked, or satirized as types: a bowing suit, a kimono clutching a designer handbag. This new Japan is chased with extracts of the old—Mt. Fuji, Kyoto, bonsai, ikebana. Finally, there’s a chance encounter with another foreigner, who is more seasoned, more cynical; together, they turn Tokyo into a playground and leave when the fantasy fades. When I talk to my friends from home about this kind of movie, we tend to return to “Lost in Translation,” which we both love and hate. Despite the film’s tropes, Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson’s sense of loneliness is so finely drawn, the relief they find in each other so palpable, that we, too, long to see the city as they do.

If this first type of Tokyo film functions as a guidebook, reverential and rote, Chris Marker’s “Sans Soleil” embodies a second type, in which the filmmaker pursues something more than spectacle. Marker looks for Tokyo when it yawns, when no one else is looking. The narrator reads letters from a fictional cameraman visiting Japan. “One could get lost in the great orchestral masses and the accumulation of details,” she says. “But that yielded the cheapest image of Tokyo— overcrowded, megalomaniac, inhuman. He thought he saw more subtle cycles there.” For Marker, Tokyo is full of familiar places—he made several films about Japan—but he’s interested in how even the familiar can shift, revealing strange new patterns. He tracks the syntax of the city: the nods of a salesgirl, the sway of wrists on a train, boys bowing as they mourn at a memorial for a dead panda. “Sans Soleil” wouldn’t satisfy the often blunt metrics of representation: Japanese people don’t talk in the film. Yet this feels like a deliberate choice, one meant to acknowledge the limits of a foreigner’s gaze. Marker sticks to observing surfaces—the expressions on Japanese faces that are walking, browsing, or waiting for a light to change—because he doesn’t presume to speak for what lies beneath. He understands how easily love can become predatory.

And must every film about Tokyo be a love letter? Marker is also willing to confront the city’s darkness, its difference. Some of his first shots of Tokyo are of Koreans, whom the film marks as outcasts. Throughout “Sans Soleil,” Marker returns to footage of extreme right-wing nationalists spewing imperialist rhetoric on megaphones, their words drawing on Japan’s history of colonial and racial violence. Leos Carax, another French filmmaker, sharpens this critique in his short film “Merde,” which is a story of a green-suited, red-haired creature that emerges from the sewers to wreak havoc on pedestrians in Ginza. The creature slips down a manhole and finds, in the bowels of Tokyo, a tattered imperial flag, grenades from the Sino-Japanese War, and a sign supporting the imperial forces of Nanking. He climbs up into Shibuya’s bright night and hurls the grenades into hordes of unsuspecting—and un-remembering—Japanese faces. Both Marker and Carax depict a public that can walk unfazed through a legacy of injustice. They ask us to look at Tokyo and its people without thinking of them as the enchanted, the exceptional.

As these two Tokyos—one neon and innocent, the other shaded, more implicated—slipped before me, I fought a strange urge to claim a place in these films. What would it be like, I wondered, to let the Japanese speak in a foreign film about Tokyo? One answer came from “Like Someone in Love,” one of the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s last feature films. In an interview, Kiarostami said that he made a single promise to his producer—“My film won’t show that it’s been made by a foreigner or by an outsider in Japan.” To make good on his word, he hired an entirely Japanese cast. Other foreign directors have done this—Bong Joon-ho with hikikomori, or social recluses; Werner Herzog with Japan’s rent-a-family industry—but their films often turn Japanese characters into allegories for social issues. Kiarostami is interested in more intimate questions. His characters aren’t problems as people; they’re people with problems. The film follows a newcomer to the city, Akiko, a college student who is a sex worker on the side, and a lonely, retired professor who books her, not for sex but for conversation. Kiarostami, in other words, understood that not all outsiders in Tokyo look foreign.

Early in the film, Akiko gets into a taxi at night, planning to meet the professor. When she puts in her earbuds, there are seven messages on her phone. In the first, which was left in the early morning, we learn that her grandmother is visiting from their rural home town and trying to reach her. “Aki-chan, I’ll be leaving on the 11 p.m. train,” the grandmother says. “I’ll be sitting and waiting for you at the benches near the entrance. I hope I’ll get to see you today.” The rest of the messages follow, each left several hours apart, and through them we hear her grandmother’s experience of Tokyo: at first from a bench at the station, then from a soba shop, and then from a telephone booth with advertisements for call girls taped on the door. A girl in a photograph, she says, looks just like Akiko, but it can’t be, can it? Onscreen, Ginza and Shinjuku slip past, leaving slats of neon-blue light on Akiko’s face.

One sees a lot of Tokyo through taxis in these movies—foreigners like to take cabs, unlike the locals—but in Kiarostami’s hands the Tokyo we see isn’t Tokyo-as-style. This city is not a site of escape or irony; it is simply what a girl is concentrating on, what she needs to hold back her tears. When we hear the last message, Akiko’s grandmother is waiting in front of a bronze statue near the entrance of Tokyo Station. Akiko asks the driver if it’s on the way. It’s close, he says. A minute passes, and through Akiko’s window we see a little old woman, using a suitcase as a cane, eagerly checking the faces of the strangers walking by. Akiko must make a choice: to get out of the car and face her grandmother, or to slip away unseen. Kiarostami holds the shot on her face. The driver’s going too fast, and a van blocks her view of her grandmother. Here, finally, we hear a Japanese girl speak—not as type, not as allegory, but as herself: “I’m sorry, do you mind going around it once more?” Her voice is cracked, desperate. In it, we hear the tale of outsiders to Tokyo—those who can’t stop seeing, in the city, all the selves they thought they could be, and all that they have left behind.

-Moeko Fujii

[fourteenacross]

For the fic summary meme: 'We Get The Job Done', Lams.

This is a sort of detective noir pastiche, but since I know me and my obsessive need to research, if I were to write it, it would lean heavy on the pastiche. It would have a sort of 1940s/50s flair and the vague trappings of that time period, but there would be a long author’s note at the beginning about how this was supposed to be half-farcical and not necessarily period accurate.

Alexander Hamilton is a private eye trying to establish himself in a city that seems to be full of equal thirds lowlifes, aspiring good guys, and people who want nothing to do with any of it. He was a promising young patrol officer under the old Police Commissioner, George Washington, but after Washington retired unexpectedly, his successor made it clear that he was no great fan of Alex’s. After two months of desk duty, he got sick of the inactivity and corruption and quit. He thought he could get more done on his own then by working under Commissioner Adams, who was barely hiding the fact that he was taking bribes from half the crime bosses in town.

He set up his own office with the help of John Laurens, his partner in every sense of the word (yes, this is established relationship, because it’s my bread and butter), a former public defender who now spends most of his time and his father’s money working with Alex after quitting his own job for similar reasons. (Though not necessarily in a similar manner–John’s exit from civic employment involved his fist and Assistant District Attorney Lee’s face.)

So, that’s all in the past. At the real start of our story, it’s been about a year since they started this venture and business has been…okay. They have a steady stream of clients, mostly the ignored and underserved, people turned away by the more expensive PIs. Alex is a sucker for a sweet face and a sob story and is willing to take on clients who can’t exactly pay them their day rate. Plus, John’s not hurting as far as money goes, and while Alex might have spurned his gifts and help at the start of their courtship, he’s pretty much living in John’s penthouse when he’s not sleeping at the office at this point, so money’s not necessarily a huge issue. They have a good reputation for working tirelessly until the investigation is complete, getting results for their clients and then helping them with their next steps. (John swore up and down when Alex bailed him out of lock-up after he punched Lee that he was never setting foot in a courtroom again, but it turns out he’s a soft touch for a sweet face and a sob story too–he’s usually quick to offer legal advice and representation to their clients who need it.)

They’re doing okay, is the point, getting by, but Alex is sure they’re just one high profile case away from notoriety, from a steady stream of actually profitable cases, more high-profile legitimacy, and maybe the ability to hire someone to do the paperwork they both hate so much. That case walks into their office in the form of George Washington, Alex’s former boss. Alex is sure it’s a social call, at first, until Washington admits that he’s there on business: his ward has been kidnapped.

Alex and John are both shocked–they knew Washington’s ward, an orphaned French aristocrat who went cheerfully by his surname, Lafayette, and passed more than one boring police charity ball drinking in the corner with Alex and John. Washington tells them that he’s been missing for a week, now, and the ransom came yesterday–he’s to bring a sizable amount of money to a particular warehouse in three days’ time. He’s sure that someone from the force is involved, so he’s hesitant to go to the police, but he trusts Alex and John. He’s willing to pay well, too–half the ransom demanded by Lafayette’s captors if they bring him home unharmed.

Once Washington leaves, they get to work. Alexander is positive that Thomas Jefferson, his one-time fellow officer who’s been promoted to Head Detective under Adams, is behind it. He’s always been a little too interested in Lafayette and discussing his French heritage. John reminds Alex that he blames Jefferson for everything, from corruption in the police force to his expired milk.

“That doesn’t mean he’s not guilty,” Alex mutters, but rips out that page of his notebook and starts fresh anyway.

Their first stop is Mulligan’s, a bar downtown known for its scandalous clientele. It’s just seedy enough to attract the upper echelons of the crime world, but just legitimate enough to be safe for uptown trustfund rebels looking for a thrill. The owner, Mulligan, knows everything about everyone’s business and is always willing to throw Alex and John a bone, thanks to a few personal cases they’ve solved for him. Mulligan admits he hasn’t heard much, but Jefferson, Adams, Deputy Mayor James Madison, and a few other suspicious parties were in last week in a private room. He sends them to talk to Maria Reynolds, the waitress who was working that room that night, for some more information.

From here, the rest of the story is them hunting down leads. Maria tells the that the men assembled that night kept talking about the “package” being delivered to the warehouse district in three days’ time, but they think she’s acting suspicious, so they add her to a list of possible accomplices. They talk to Lafayette’s girlfriend, who doesn’t remember much about the night he was taken, except that one of the men had a silver-tipped cane. Jefferson sometimes uses a cane as an affectation, so Alex is fucking over the moon and John tries to reign him in, but things keep making him look bad. 

Blah blah blah, a bunch of other leads that I would put a lot of thought and careful plotting into that would make it look more and more like Jefferson was the one who did it, but he’s obviously the red herring here. Along the way, they keep crossing paths with Angelica Schuyler, another PI who’s on a different case that keeps intersecting with theirs. Eventually, at the urging of Angelica’s sister and secretary, the three of them sit down to talk about their different purposes and suspects and such.

It’s during this meeting that things start to become clear. Angelica is working on behalf of Maria Reynolds, who thinks that her abusive husband is cheating on her. She wants evidence, which would give her grounds for divorce. But James Reynolds seems to be involved with something deeper (although he’s also totes cheating on her), which is what Angelica has been digging into. He’s been having a lot of meetings with people at town hall after hours. Town hall is where the police headquarters is located, which is why she’s been looking into Jefferson and Adams, since they seem shady as fuck.

Eventually they put enough pieces together that they are SURE that Jefferson and Adams must be behind this. Alex has Washington set up a fake ransom drop and he, John, and Angelica go to the warehouse early to try and intercept the delivery of Lafayette.

Except that “package” they intercept isn’t Lafayette. Jefferson and Adams are there, sure, but it’s drugs that they’re smuggling in, not Lafayette. They tie Jefferson and Adams up and confront them, but they claim to have no evidence as to where Lafayette is. Alex throws the cane thing and a few other seemingly obvious “it’s Jefferson!” bits of evidence at them, but Jefferson refutes them–his cane isn’t silver tipped and he has a passing familiarity with whatever other evidence, but the only reason he does is because his best friend, Deputy Mayor James Madison, likes them. He also uses a silver-tipped cane when his various illnesses are flaring up and making it difficult for him to move about easily.

So, then it’s a race for the three of them to get to Madison before he figures out the ransom drop was fake and does something to Lafayette. They get there just in time and save him and Madison does some “and I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!” monologuing at them, explaining that the whole thing was a ploy to discredit Adams and Jefferson, while also seeking revenge on Washington, who wronged him for plot reasons. Something something, bringing them down would disgrace the current mayor, Madison would come out strongly against him and become mayor in his place, blah blah blah power, whatever. Also, James Reynolds was working for him, thus going to Town Hall, etc.

So, case solved, Lafayette returned to the Washingtons, Alex only slightly annoyed that he wasn’t right about Jefferson being behind everything (but mostly overjoyed that he was being arrested for something else), etc. The boys are flush and hire Angelica’s other sister, Eliza, as their secretary, leaving everything open for a sequel where something something the boys get kidnapped and Eliza does the sleuthing, everyone lives happily ever after.

The end!

[blasianangrymom]

What do white people dream about: the struggle for representation

What do rich white people dream about?

Putting overtime in the unconscious to fight the battle to be considered human, as I am.

I like to imagine that out there is some person who is spending their precious time asleep dreaming relaxing, fanciful dreams.

This morning I dreamt of a brown person (sometimes he was South Asian but then sometimes he was Black, as dream characters can shape-shift without any reason or problem within the dream) with a mustache who was wrongfully imprisoned for about twenty-three years according to NPR.

I remember wondering what crime he was accused of. It turned out that I knew somehow that his mother was killed and he was wrongfully imprisoned; his father had his life upturned because he was under suspicion as well. The Wrongfully Imprisoned Brown Person went into the slammer when there was no internet or ATMs. He was seventeen, and he came out a middle-aged man.

In the dream, I meet him again and pour him some special whisky I got from Canada. We sit down together with friends in my living roothis My tall Nordic friend Stacey is here. I have a tiny glass cup from Hokkaido with lilies etched on it that I usually serve my daughter water or milk in. There’s some leftover whiskey in it. There are several glasses of whiskey, enough for the whole crowd of a few close, yet, for now, faceless white friends standing in my dining room, and we drink to the Wrongfully Imprisoned Brown Person. Right now, he presents as a striking South Asian, maybe  E. Indian, jet-black hair with a part and a barely-there wave to it, rather long. He has an intense set of eyes that stare deep and is mustachioed with an almost-comically bushy (it’s shaped hipster- or 19th century person-like, but not quite handlebar as the ends don’t curl up) ’stache.  I offer Stacey my baby’s water cup with the little bit of golden whiskey to drink to the Wrongfully Imprisoned Brown Person. She shrugs when I give her the leftover baby whiskey and plops it in her drink. Now, the whiskey in the cup has magically turned into milk. She makes a face (we all do). I’m sure her milk/whiskey-Jaeger-bomb (did she plop it in a beer? I’ll never know.) was nasty as hell. The white woman on NPR interviewing Wrongfully Imprisoned Brown Person says, “How do you deal with anger?” He begins to answer, a vague, polite, canned response, I cynically think. The dream ends.

When I was fed a steady diet of U.S. media growing up, I used to dream in racist. After all, it was what was around me and being ingested by me at least three to four hours a day and upwards of thirty or more hours a week. I remember in one instance, there was a tiny leathery-skinned Mexican mini-man who was about to shoot me with a revolver bigger than he was as I hung crucified on a cross between two other crosses at the edge of a cliff. He was obviously a pseudo-person modelled off of America’s favorite Mexican, the mouse Speedy Gonzales. I did not question the strange Mexican at the time; it was about 1993 and I was under ten years old. I just remember feeling terror at the prospect of being shot.

Now that I deal in anti-racist work as a full-time, compulsory position, balancing that with writing and working full time as contributor to the economy+mom+wife+daughter+friend and erstwhile art-scenester, I put in overtime during my dreams.

I had the Stay at Home Mom-privilege  of attending white anti-racist notable Robin DiAngelo’s daytime workshop on Understanding Structural and Institutional Racism about a year ago. Though it was heartening to have my perspectives and feelings validated as a person of color, i.e. “you’re not crazy in thinking that white people as a social order do not acknowledge or care that you exist, because the current wave of racism is that of white isolation,” it was also re-triggering to re-live all the ways in which our society, government, business, and media are racist. She provided AV slides of the ways in which even the Donkey (its black afro-puff, brown fur, and Black male voice Eddie Murphy) from Shrek supports White Supremacy in that he dreams of his best self being a white horse with a straight, flowing white mane. Ah, Racial Purity.

After attending the workshop, that night my dreams were again colonized by racism. I dreamt that my great-grandfather had a soymilk factory in the 1800s. I was transported to a seaside ghost resort town with little commerce other than a giant gymnasium that was the former site of a world’s fair. I walked around in the giant gymnasium and upon stepping into my great-grandfather’s circular novelty soymilk wave machine (it used to contain a shit ton of soymilk and could fit probably 3-4 people at a time), I suddenly had a vision of the past. The black-and-white relics--neon signs and old machines, etc. all around me suddenly turned to a burnt sepia, with a scratchy phonographic soundtrack to match. I saw that the one Asian and possibly the only person of color (though, what would They have called us back then? Mongol-savage-oriento-afroloids?) exhibiting at the fair was my great-grandfather. He might have even had on a bowler hat or top hat and suit and tie with coattails. Although nothing major actually happened in this within-a-dream flashback, I witnessed my great-grandfather, a proud soymilk-factory-owning man and successful entrepreneur, walking along the boardwalk by himself. The other business stands, white people, sniggered, jeered, and/or glared at him as he walked by them. I saw his pride melt away as they reduced his self-image to that of a buck-toothed, queue-having yellow Oriental with slanted eyes. He had to go back to his particular corner--which it turns out wasn’t with the entrepreneurs selling their wares and promoting industry--it was the circus area alongside the naked Filipinos who were supposed cannibals or dog-eaters or whatever “savage” act the fair organizers had them on display for. As in the dream, I woke up crying.

--

the TICKING TIME BOMB to infinity

So much of my short (or long) 31 years has been spent unlearning self-hate. So, much of my motherhood (13 months) is seeking the tools to prevent self-hate from being inculcated in my daughter. I’ve tried the following tactics in the past few years:

1. Educating white folks about racism by explaining how POC are affected (failed; work in progress).

2. Encouraging white folks to think about their own racism by explaining how they enact the white Gaze of Normalcy (meh, like pulling teeth; work in progress)

And my new tactic is?

1. Expressing among people of color groups how we can unite together and work on our own inter-ethnic and internalized racism (total fucking failure; work in progress), without white people around.

I pore over the internet looking for baby books featuring children of color so Ruby can see that her absence does not mean she is deficient in some way. There are books out there, but few with characters that look like her Blasian, beautiful self. The best we can shoot for is Latina in terms of a skin color similarity. What well-intentioned folks saying “just read a book with animals in it” don’t understand is the negation of the self through absence.

I can’t say for men of color, specifically Asian-American males, what it means to be constantly invisible, but in a society where women and girls are judged and valued for their beauty--their image--I assume that there is an extra urgency for little girls to see themselves reflected back at them in a sea of images of white girls as the ideal--blonde thin pretty ones.

ways the struggle exacerbates the time confetti experience of ladiez

*community

*education to self affirm

*carving space

*fighting self-hate

*getting hated on

The multilayer cake to eat and have (not). I. The Need.

Fake it til you make it?

Picture perfect? Minivans and soccer?

Clean House? Therapy? (Do you KNOW how many choices of therapists there are that are people of color let alone women of color?)

Happy Marriage?

Adjusted baby?

When your early childhood experiences have the sting of you being the butt end of some racial shit--white people hating on your special i.e. otherness, you spend a lot of time trying to prevent that for your own child. When you are the sole actor of color in an ensemble of whites only, burnout is inevitable.

*CARVING SPACE

*COMMUNITY *EDUCATION *ACTIVISM *ART?

The cycle of hate, anger and release

The Asian mom way of parenting based upon fear and trepidation -- probably has some merit to it. Considering the way that parents of color have a different set of concerns than white parents - i.e. will my child be racially targeted, racially objectified, along with the worry of some kind of sexual violence. Who has time to be in the struggle, be a picturesque lady (whatever the fuck that entails), a loving partner and co-parent, be a feminist revolutionary? And have dinner, a clean house, and a put-together sense of calm?

In the same way la French Madame Louise Bourgeois carves things--makes sculptures from raw materials--because she’s not happy with the way things are---I will be

CARVING A FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE.

Carving a fortress of solitude involves twisting time’s masculinist arm to your will. A feminist has to block out messages of inferiority due to X unfinished business (manicure-less hands? Messy hair? Messy kitchen? No food hot, ready, and lovingly made from scratch?).

Here’s the thing though. A mother of color has to strategically choose from which stone to carve her time for RELAXATION and DECOMPRESSION and it is unlikely she will ever have a truly freed space without the use of heavy intoxicants.

Should she take time away from her precious family to soothe herself? Well she’s been has taught her to self-sacrifice as a woman, and likely culturally as well. My mom ate leftovers and she ate last if at all with the family, leaving the best for everyone else. She worked so hard to scrimp and save and to this day gives me a mountain of um, “useful” items like the 1980s “Can Crusher” or the acne-reduction face wash from circa 1995, In order if just to save the environment from waste and to save me a little money. Squeezing fractions of pennies from thrift shop finds like squeezing blood from a stone.

The thing about carving time is it feels like the easiest option is not to do it. Should I carve from that sparkly gem, the sleep stone? Be extra-productive by not sleeping? Okay, my (insert task) can be accomplished but then I feel like shit all day.

In the hyper-connected social media activist age where we SAHMs (stay at home moms) are underemployed if at all by the current economic system, Angry POC groups or blogs can serve as a therapeutic source of community. If I have time after deigning to attempt to keep all the beings of the house fed, watered, and diapered , I can then put on my volunteer/do gooder/activist/get knowledge hat.

My Baby broke my glasses while I was riveted by an interethnic race relations article. I assume this means something.

Is the question of either a Do I need to choose between a productive life OR a peaceful life OR an activist life OR a wife and Mom life?

The Madonna-Whore complex and Momcat Can you be a sexy, mom, activist, feminist, aesthete professional wife-partner? Do you have the energy to do so?

The Bechdel test for moms

STEREOTYPE THREAT.

Carving space from: -sleep -baby -relationship -self -idealism -volunteering -achieving professional goals -writing -art -house -eating

Every mom becomes a pragmatist. Ideals? What are/were those? Moments to breathe not filled with the drudgery of daily tasks? I can no longer fathom without much ___

SPACE TO BREATHE

giving yourself permission to be okay, say that you’re okay, in a space where clearly you are not okay. A suspension of the social order. A brief moment in time. Upsetting the social order. And not feeling bad about it. Women are in the caring industry. Do we become callous to the needs of others in order to care for ourselves? Is our pain and suffering and struggle REQUISITE to the order of society and is the corollary of this true?

CARVING SPACE for healing. In the fortress of solitude -- we set aside and get away from the din of the roar of inferiority, the voices in our own heads, hearts, that we’ve absorbed from around us. There are frequent breaks that create more fissures to patch up -- getting hated on (WHEN YOUR OWN PEOPLE hate on your daughter or your dude for being non-anglo-featured or non-light-skinned--it is a non-revolutionary betrayal and yet another fissure in the romantic idea that all POC want the same thing--equality, empowerment, self-acceptance + reminds me how much the struggle is of liberating our own colonized hearts and minds.)--

FIGHTING SELF HATE -- This society thrives on our invisibility and availability as willing participants + Free/low wage/slave labor, as women, as mothers. Our pursuits and perspectives are not valued monetarily because they are assumed. The feminine is not productive - yet our wombs (apologies to those for whom this is not true) and the work of our hands are fertile fecund as fuck. Recognizing our own power and strength is only one piece of empowerment.

I wasn’t a feminist until now; good job ma.

The struggle to accept femininity was due to my hatred of all the weakness associated with said concept. Now that I’ve birthed a human I can truly see the sheer strength and invisible struggle of women, the policing of our bodies, and the insurmountable tasks set before us to be considered normal, let alone good, members of society. It’s crippling and I cannot believe my immigrant mom with my dad's assistance did this raising kids business for so long with three kids and yet instilled a keen sense of identity and ethnic pride (along with the unhealthy self-hate and self-sacrifice to a fault).

What will it take for us to be integrated human beings? Not just a vagina and tits but a whole human person who has those parts (if they identify with those parts)? Good!!

The Momcat and Imperfection revolution

The White woman

It's been said that theis white woman is a good example of feminism or this one or that one in the u.s. white man heavy media. But so often the trope is a trope of utter perfection in looks, business, relationship, skills, sexiness, and/or motherhood, meaning all women fall short of the glory of Motherhood.

What does it mean to have an equitable society where men pick up some of the slack? Letting go of perfection. You're never going to be the whitest thinnest blondest mommiest superfreak with the hottest wife or husband and best kids. It's not going to happen.

If l stopped chasing a strangely pervasive ideal of a singular form of femininity and motherhood (overwhelmingly white middle class and upholding the Madonna/whore complex), that of perfection in self spouse house and children would I…

Write an opera?

Learn an instrument?

Take up diving?

Perhaps it is for this reason the acknowledgment that children take time and housekeeping takes time that I have thought “when my husband and I retire we can go to theology school together.” “when I retire I'll play surf rock, nirvana covers, and fix 1960s cars.”

I'm no fool. Kids take time, energy, and stress. They also create a crushing environment of sacrificial love and pure elation. Does driving perfectionism for child rearing necessitate death of self or putting your dreams on hold? Does it for men? Is having professional or creative goals impossible with children?

It's taken time to unlearn my regular mode of constant guilt or shame around failures of any kind. I went from working barely five hours a week to five jobs and forty hours, so that I could have my own earned income, stay on top of debt, but most importantly, designated non-working time (i.e. leisure). In motherhood at home, there is no such thing. Life is a constant hum of things to be done, unless you want someone to drown in poopy diapers or starve. I still wonder whether women or people of color really have ever had such a thing as leisure time…is sabbath for all or only the elite? Who was God talking to when God commanded rest?

After over a year of waking up every single night to feed Ruby, I thought since I'm working now I get some relief from that duty. I was wrong.

It's not enough that I stayed with Ruby for a year, because apparently I was lazily lounging around then (I was not); and now that I'm taking her to daycare as a daycare teacher, plus the other jobs, now I'm doing too much. It's never enough. I'm never enough. Our ideal woman does everything without complaint, effort, or any consternation whatsoever.

Why do we set ourselves up for failure?

Is there an alternative to this impossible, idealized vision of motherhood?trope to these ideas of sahmomming?

-Madonna whore complex

-ugly clothes

-your vagina is over!!!

All are middle class upper white woman?

Very unhealthy view of sex

Feel tired

Give up and be asexual or spend massive amounts of time on beauty

Double standard

What colors do mixed babies dream of?

I'd like to imagine my daughter, Ruby dreams of herself reposed and in power, served by variously hued men and breasts flowing with milk. There are so few portraits in u.s. pop culture of ANY women of color, let alone powerful ones, that it is hard at this point to imagine she will continue to dream in such grandeur without grand interludes of racism and whiteness.

Contrast that with the treatment every male but most especially cis het able bodied middle class white ones, gets on every front: divine worship, centrality, agency, prominence, the expectation of service, excellence, exceptionalism, normalcy, individuality, the benefit of the doubt, the assumption of ability and strength, AND no need to:

-be empathetic

-f with poc esp female trans lgbtq differently abled poor Black ones

-disprove any number of stereotypes about belonging or competence

What a difference a brother makes

In my private life I've wavered from being an egotistical fashionista to complete iconoclast-ascetic. I'd always admired those with swag. I never knew whether I had the “right” to have or own any swagger as the nerdy Asian model minority, so I erred on the side of caution.

However, as time wore on in my beautiful interracial marriage to a young black man, I got my “(married to a) n* wake up call.”

If we weren't being hated upon or micro-aggressed by my classist and racist family, there was always the young white male yelling “FUCKING NIGGER!!!!!” from a pickup truck, or the passing over for promotions coupled with Obama-ing (“there's something about him. I just don't trust him!”) and other beautiful stereotype quoting (“lazy, white woman stealer, crack seller, sketchy, deserving to be shot by police,” etc.) by the ridiculous white racists at work.

What do you call a patient kind loving Black dad in argyle sweaters who is a Early childhood educator and critical race theorist preschool teacher and so church worker, for christ sake? I'll give you a hint: it means Black and is a racial epithet. It doesn't matter how much white posturing this good man does because ultimately the problem is white people and their psychotic issues around identity, sexuality, racism, and fear of a Black planet. Their issues get projected onto people of color especially Black folks, and we’re blamed for them.

Every time some shit goes down and we have a n wake up call, I want to shave my head, put on expressive eyeliner, don bright colors--turn mourning into dancing. The thing white people complimenting such boldness don't understand is where the swag comes from and the fact that they can't have or take it from us (But this is a great line!). Speaking only from my personal experience, I think when a white woman who is literally oppressing me with her good intentions to be color blind and preserve the status quo of white power compliments my manicure, “yeah well it's not FOR you even though it is in response to you. You don't get this and you don't get to and you don't own me.”

The power that comes from self-expression through fashion has never been more potent when at a time women are unvalued unsexy and made to feel like “you had a baby your life is over and you're not useful as a sexual being anymore” and yet the fashion available for breastfeeding is: all made for white Christian soccer moms. Have you ever seen a couture nursing shirt or dress that doesn't make you gag with its complete lack of spirit, thrill, or pizzazz?

I haven't, unless it's out of my price range. So I've spent the last year or two wearing the ugliest clothes ever and making do with bright pink lipstick and bold blue eyeliner. White women don't have the additional burden of proving that they are sexual beings (unless they're moms), because they y'all are portrayed as the standard and ideal (although it is tough to speak for all white women). So when I'm putting on my anti oppression armor makeup and you go to PCC in your jammies sans any effort I am thinking, ok, well I look good, but it's from a place of pain, and you look schloopy but it's from a place of resignation, defeat to misogyny, or ignorant white privilege, I suppose.

The white upper to middle class woman soccer mom ideal is so pervasive and monopolizing a view of the feminine ideal that I've often distanced myself from it. As. Far. As. Possible. This is the genius of Kool AD (of “Bitch I'm Madonna” obscurity) and his parenting column in Vice (add link). Not only is he spinning an alternately gendered narrative of parenthood, it is antithetical to every white woman ideal in diction (hip-hop) and philosophy (Young Jeezy). Perhaps the closer one is to white woman idealism the more you try to be a perfectionist. The opposite is true. (Why is the opposite true?)

It's not that I think being a good mom is a terrible ideal, I think a gendered raced and patently inequitable and unachievable narrative is destructive to all, white people included. Or especially?

I can't help but think that “proper” “appropriate” parenting involves whiteness, and everything else, especially Blackness, is patently inappropriate, shameful, or harmful. If I want Ruby to be ready for her future n word wake up call, which is a horrible constituency to plan for, she's going to experiment  with  different modes of expression, which do not inherently have Shame around body, sex, and movement and propriety. It's like all white women were taught to look Victorian with their hands obediently crossed or in a cross stitch and stayed in that seated position with a high necked ridiculous turtleneck, but the white men went out of their way historically to rape and pillage women of color.

An old white man at the racist church my husband worked at once told me and my husband: “you are children. Children should be seen and not heard.” Ooh, was I pissed about the racial connotations. At least he didn't call Jasen boy or Negro, or me oriental hooker whore…

In response to that comment is the end note here.

No. I'm not a child for challenging your racist bullshit.

No. I will be seen.

No. I will be heard.

And Ruby the beautiful child my progeny will be too. First in her power trippin’ dreams of men serving her and mama’s flowing titty milk, then in her swaggy response to some white sexist racist bullshit. And, we will design some better pregnancy and maternity clothes for our people in the next twenty years. We can share the look but not the swag with poor tired and resigned white mommies too.

Love,

Concerned Mother of Color