#... so you can fuck off with your 'cult of therapy' gaslighting!

[book-extravagance]

1. For me, by far the biggest takeaway from Spare was Harry's claim that it was Clarence House that did most of the leaking against him and Meghan—and, too, that it was Charles and Camilla also fed the press the story about Will's alleged affair with Rose Hanbury.

As someone who had previously thought William was behind most of the Sussex-related leaking, that was... interesting.

2. Another great point of interest for me is Harry coming to William's defense on the issue of his "laziness"? Harry claimed it was unfair that the papers ragged on William for being "work-shy" when in fact Will could only do the work that Charles funded.

I find claim #1 pretty plausible. I think Harry is still very biased in favor of his brother when it comes to #2 (but I'm keeping an open mind as I continue my royal studies, perhaps he is right. Certainly it's a factor to keep in mind.)

[wyrdify]

Will my brain let me write today? That’d be fabulous. Going to try to do some writing on Riza today if I can get my brain to cooperate, but it’s still kind of off because my family is a thing that exists.

Guess who’s going to see their family this Sunday because it’s my mother’s 60th birthday this weekend? And some of the cult is gonna be there too, particularly the cult leader.

The TLDR on my family for those who haven’t been with me for a long while: narcissistic abusers. Gaslighting, emotional abuse, medical neglect---those were their top things. The cult they are a part of is led by a psychologist, and that’s another long story.

So, I’m trying to build myself some armor in preparation. Right now, that includes making a playlist since music is essentially my lifeblood, and it’s helped me power through so much shit. It’s literally called “fuck it”, and you can find it here on spotify: link. Feel free to send me songs to add to it. Sharing music is a love language.

Another thing I’m going to do is write out some reminders to myself and put them here. I tend to fawn a lot with my parents and their community, and I tend to not argue back or stand up for myself. So, with that:

My pronouns are they/them, not she/her. It is okay for me to correct you when you use the wrong ones. My gender identity is just that: mine. No one else gets to dictate what it is.

No, I cannot have any alcohol. It does not cook out of food completely, and I will trust the science backing this up. I am not risking my health and safety for anyone.

I am making the best career choices for me at a pace that works for me and my health.

No, I am not having children. You are not entitled to grandchildren, and I do not have to answer questions regarding why I chose this path.

I do not need the therapy you and your community offer. I am perfectly content with my current therapist and my new med manager.

No, I will never move back to (the state my family lives in). I have friends and a life in (my current state), and I am doing well for myself.

Some petty things I won’t end up saying, but I want to type them down to make myself feel better:

Hey, it turns out that my depression was real after all, and that medication actually helped!

I would only choose to move back to the same state as you if it was a choice between here, Florida, or Texas.

You know, if you want to see me more often, you can also drive the 3.5 hours up to see me instead of it always being the other way around. Oh, right...

Some reminders for myself:

I will not go in looking to start a fight. I’m going there to celebrate my mother’s birthday and nothing else.

I do not have to hug anyone I don’t want to.

I do not have to stay too long.

I think the caffeine kicked in, y’all.

I’m going to shower and then do some Genshin stuff. See you!

[tibby]

If you have the time can you please please please recap season 4 of riverdale. I was going to binge it on Netflix but things happen and then I saw your post about the graduation episode and HAD to watch that happen and now I’m recommitted to the cause and need to know what happened while I was gone

sure. okay so the season sadly starts with the death of fred andrews in a very sentimental and moving episode that’s kind of seperate from the rest of the show so it’s not really until episode two that things kick off. the riverteens are kind of thriving in a parentless world because milf alice was kidnapped by a cult, dilf hiram and milf hermione are in prison, milf penelope is in hiding after killing a bunch of people, milf mary is kind of just There, milf gladys went back to toledo after her drug empire failed, god knows what milf sierra and gay kevin’s straight former cop dad are off doing, and dilf fp is the sheriff but because it’s fp he’s kind of bad at it. so the riverteens are horrified when their new principal mr honey expects them to be at school on time and disapproves of them throwing school dances because students keep getting murdered at them. cheryl, who an episode prior never wanted anyone in riverdale to celebrate the 4th of july ever again because of her brother’s death, considers this an act of oppression and throws a party at her house. however, as she is keeping her brother’s mummified corpse in the basement, she gets angry when reggie tries to sneak down there. meanwhile gay kevin is trying to make amends with betty for the time he tried to have her lobotomised because of the cult led by chad michael murray. betty uses this to her advantage to find out where the cult is, teaming up with her half brother, charles (not to be confused with chic, who was only PRETENDING to be charles back in season two). archie gets munroe, his prison buddy, to attend riverdale high, and reggie is weirdly jealous about it. archie discovers that this is because reggie is being abused by his father, so they smash in his car and apparently this solves everything. jughead starts attending stonewall prep, where he meets bret weston wallis, donna sweett, joan berkeley, and jonathan. he also reunites with moose, who disappeared in mid s3 after cheryl outed him to the whole school including his homophobic dad, and then his homophobic dad dressed up as the gargoyle to try and stop moose and gay kevin hooking up in the sex bunker they stole from dilton doiley after he killed himself, but it turns out that his homophobic dad was just angry HE never got to fuck gay kevin’s straight cop dad back in the day. it was this whole thing. anyway, moose is like “i’m going by my real name, marmaduke now, so people don’t find out about my dad” but everyone does anyway and so moose mysteriously disappears again. betty finds out where the cult is (after disarming a bomb attached to her sister polly using a bobby pin) and goes to rescue her mother. milf alice reveals that chad michael murray is using the cult money to build a rocket, and his wife/fake daughter evelyn is going to drive a bus full of cultists off a cliff. the day is saved! veronica finds out that her father’s real surname is luna and decides to start going by that as an act of rebellion because he keeps leaving the prison that he owns to fuck with her after she had him arrested. archie decides to turn his gym into a community centre with munroe’s help. cheryl, who, for unknown reasons, obtained custody of polly’s twins, immediately fires the nanny that toni hired because he said there were probably rats in the walls and went into the basement. cheryl goes to make sure that the nanny didn’t interfere with her brother’s mummified corpse, and toni walks in on her stitching him up. videotapes start arriving at the homes of the riverdale residents of said homes being filmed for hours. onto halloween! toni tells cheryl they can’t have a dead body in the horse and makes her rebury jason, at which point cheryl claims she is being haunted by a doll named julian, who is supposedly possessed by the spirit of her other brother that she ate in utero, but the haunting will stop if they unbury jason. toni agrees, but the doll continues to appear in weird places, and cheryl is forced to confess that while she WAS gaslighting her before, she isn’t right now. betty bonds with charles while receiving prank phone calls from polly, who is now in a mental institution. archie and munroe try to throw a halloween party at their community centre for the troubled youths but it’s interrupted by a drug dealing gang trying to start shit in the parking lot, thus giving archie a new enemy. reggie destroys mr honey’s office for the joke but mr honey catches him and is like “you do this because your dad hits you.” jughead uncovers mysteries surrounding strange disappearances of prep students known as “the stonewall four,” and donna drugs him so she and bretjoanjonathan can lock him in a coffin overnight as a bit. meanwhile, veronica burns a man alive in her basement. archie becomes a teen vigilante for the millionth time in the series, jughead and the other stonewall stags go into the running to be the ghostwriter for the baxter brothers franchise, veronica gets her mother out of prison but then finds out that her half sister, hermosa the PI, got their father out of prison, and he is now mayor again. betty and gay kevin start an fbi training course in which betty realises the serial killer gene is a real thing and she does have it, and remembers when she killed her childhood cat. jughead finds out that his grandfather who drunk himself to death but also abandoned fp but is also just some guy ACTUALLY wrote the baxter brothers franchise and is like “i have to reveal this!” so he takes it to his english teacher mr chipping but then mr chipping jumps out of a window before anything can come of it, and jughead is horrified when the stonewall stags have no reaction. cheryl is still convinced she is being haunted by a doll and things are further complicated when her extended family shows up. her uncle discovers jason’s body in the basement, threatens to send cheryl away, and is killed by toni. speaking of death, archie is still on his vigilante shit and asks hiram for help, at which point the near dead body of the gang leader, dodger shows up wrapped in carpet outside of the community centre. betty visits chic in prison to find out more about charles, and when chic threatens to reveal where milf alice buried the man she killed back in season two, charles and fp go to dig it up again and move it somewhere else. to get her family away from her and also in the spirit of thanksgiving, cheryl makes them think that they ate her uncle. dodger’s family show up at the community centre thanksgiving for revenge and there’s almost a shoot out, but thankfully the deep fryer explodes and chaos is avoided! milf mary later suggests the deep fryer exploding was archie’s dead dad’s ghost. betty and jughead spend the weekend at stonewall prep, where they play a homoerotic game of never have i ever with bret and donna. donna says that she and mr chipping were having an affair. now it’s time for the gang to go to therapy: archie gets diagnosed with gay but is also just suffering from an insane guilt complex, betty has mommy issues, veronica has daddy issues, cheryl is being gaslit but did NOT eat her brother in utero, jughead is just some guy. jughead finds out where his abusive alcoholic grandfather has been hiding out, and meanwhile his dad gets shot. veronica decides to fight back against her father by starting a rival rum business. polly rips off a nurse’s face and betty finds out that everyone in her family has a trigger word instilled in them by the cult, so she imagines herself going back in time to STOP her child self killing her cat to learn how to control it. cheryl uncovers her gaslighter by literally gassing her house, and it’s revealed that milf penelope was living in the walls and mad that cheryl had jason’s body. cheryl reburies jason and imprisons her mother in the sex bunker. archie’s uncle shows up, just in time for football season! the riverteens are playing stonewall prep, and reggie reveals that the preppies fight dirty, just in time for them to tonya harding munroe’s knees as he is their star player. archie’s uncle gives munroe steroids so he can play anyway, and riverdale loses but munroe gets a scholarship. cheryl feuds with her new cheerleading coach and locks her in her office so she has a panic attack. hiram threatens to sue veronica for stealing his rum recipe, so she teams up with cheryl (maple syrup queen) to create a new type. jughead joins the stonewall prep secret society, the quill and skull, and reveals that he watched a homeless man die. also, the cheerleading team performs cherry bomb. betty starts feuding with bret and decides to stand off against him in a quiz show, and although she wins, she is accused of cheating and is forced to give it up. she also wanted to use this to try and get into yale because apparently “cooper” is an uncommon name and people associate it with her serial killer father. veronica and cheryl enlist milf penelope and her former brothel in a hotel to run their underground rum dealership after hiram kept fucking shit up at veronica’s speakeasy. jughead is forced to come up with new stories for his baxter brother books, and so he writes about betty’s serial killer father (uh oh!) archie tries to restart his father’s construction company but his uncle’s shenanigans make it hard and gay kevin’s straight former cop dad has HAD IT. fangs is back from cult recovery, but gay kevin has gotten into non sexual tickle porn. toni and fangs get in on this they use this to blackmail nick st clair after he returns and understandably upsets cheryl, his would be rape victim. archie is attacked in the bathrooms at school because his uncle can’t mind his own business, but this plot was fucking boring so i don’t remember most of it. jughead and bret decided to duel, because of course, and betty uses this as a chance to investigate the preppies further. she finds out that bret films sex tapes and blackmailed moose with one, and also has one of her and jughead. she also finds a video suggesting donna lied about her affair with mr chipping. veronica goes to new york to visit katy keene, played by lucy hale of fantasy island fame, who tells her that her mother is dying. veronica returns home just in time to hear that hiram has a mysterious disease and decides to make amends. jughead is accused of plagiarism, meanwhile veronica realises her father thrives off war, and continues their rum battle. archie is now drinking at school and veronica accuses mr honey of being a fascist for having a problem with it. BUT. MOST IMPORTANTLY. ALL SEASON WE HAVE BEEN TEASED WITH DEADHEAD. AND IT IS FINALLY HAPPENING. IDES OF MARCH PARTY AT STONEWALL PREP. AND BETTY BASHES JUGHEAD’S HEAD IN WITH A ROCK. betty tries to prove that the stonewall stags did it instead but donna is an insane lesbian and thrives off gaslighting and fucking with her. because jughead died, betty gets his spot at yale. the core four are accused of murder but cleared of everything. jughead has a funeral, and bret’s attempt of proving jughead isn’t in the casket are thwarted by the sweet pea, the sweetest pea in the room. hiram shows up just to fire fp as sheriff. betty kisses archie to help with her grief, and veronica ends things with them both. but donna is not convinced, and goes around stalking betty, saying she watched her sex tape and knows that betty couldn’t last so long without sex with jughead. and she is right! because lo and behold, jughead is alive and hiding in the sex bunker, despite donna’s best attempts to catch them out. donna knows they’re up to something and implies she killed jonathan when bret doubts her. betty and archie are like “yeah we only dated for the bit :/” but their texting implies it was...more. betty and jughead return to stonewall and expose the preppies, but they decide not to interview jonathan because he “has food poisoning.” or he’s dead. their other teacher kills himself, and fp reunites with his abusive father. betty discovers that donna’s grandmother was one of the people killed for the rights to the baxter brothers/tracy true franchise, and the entire scheme was a complicated revenge plot by donna to get back at their teacher for killing her grandmother. betty blackmails her with this information so donna can’t have the tracy true contract, and everything is “wrapped up” just in time for gay kevin to announce he’s doing a variety show. gay kevin’s intentions of performing hedwig are destroyed when mr honey is like “no, this is inappropriate for high schoolers,” and so the riverteens decide to band together and have everyone perform hedwig songs as an act of protest. meanwhile, betty and jughead fight because jughead didn’t do his homework because he was too busy watching the stalker vhs tapes, and veronica and archie fight because he lied about her father working out at his gym, given that hiram has tried to kill him multiple times and doesn’t really care about his health. betty and archie use this as an opportunity to kiss during origin of love. the variety show is cancelled, but the core four and gay kevin perform midnight radio on the roof, and jughead watches a stalker vhs tape of someone in a betty mask killing someone in a jughead mask. tickle porn shenanigans continue, and gay kevin is threatened over cheating his original tickle porn handler out of money. mr honey then forces them to shut the website down. cheryl leaves the rum business after her mother is threatened because of goons that were mad at hiram. hiram decides to deal with this by going after said goons. archie writes a song for betty, they explore their relationship further, but she picks jughead over him even when he says he’ll dump veronica for her. jughead discovers that ethel watched his and betty’s sex tape, and he and charles uncover blue velvet video, which houses sexy films and snuff films, and jughead is like “oh this is connected to the whole vhs stalker thing.” cheryl is sent a video of someone dressed up as her father killing someone dressed up as her brother. the riverteens turn their focus to the fact that all of them except archie and jughead have been banned from prom for various reasons, and betty suggests they kill mr honey as punishment. jughead writes an elaborate murder fantasy about them doing so, and also kills off reggie and drives cheryl insane for the bit i guess. the riverteens conclude that mr honey was behind the vhs stalker tapes and have him fired, and he tells them they’re all deranged before going to teach at stonewall prep. the school secretary tells them all the wonderful things mr honey did for the school and hands jughead a recommendation letter he wrote him for college. jughead realises they fucked up and rewrites his story so mr honey lives, but uh oh! he and betty uncover a vhs tape of their fictional murder of mr honey, much like the others.

and that’s what you missed on riverdale!

[crossdreamers]

This trans woman supported the “gender critical” TERFs. Then she realized that she had joined a transphobic cult.

Sometimes trans people end up supporting the ones that that belittle and marginalize transgender people. This is not as strange as it sounds. They might have grown up in the same transphobic culture as,  let’s say,  religious fundamentalist fanatics or the trans-exclusionary, “gender critical”,  radical feminists (TERFs). Even “normal” culture reflects the fear of sex and gender variation. Do they internalize the transphobia and/or the homophobia of the surrounding society. 

This twitter thread of @Kinsys gives us one such story.

//I'm having this massive *duh* moment right now. When I first started becoming popular with the GC [Gender Critical/Trans-exclusionary radical feminist] crowd, a lot of trans people tried to sway me away from it. They called me bootlicker, quisling, TERF, truscum, and more. Some of the more compassionate ones tried to warn me.

"They'll turn on you eventually", they said. I didn't think so. At the time, I was still wet behind the ears and confident that I could good faith my way into solving the problems. I didn't see prejudice, I saw legitimate concerns and people frustrated by their inability to speak.

I realized that they needed a voice, someone who could stand up and speak The Truth, and on whom the accusations of transphobia would sound utterly absurd. 

 After all, I am trans. 

 After all, I was defending Reality. 

 But looking back, it turns out I was joining a cult.

It's suddenly clear to me that I was, in fact, bootlicking. I just couldn't see it because it wasn't GC boots I found so tasty. It was an entire lifetime of internalized homophobia and transphobia. I was driven to justify my existence to facsimiles of my family.

It wasn't just that, though. It's not as if I didn't, and don't, genuinely care about women's rights. In fact I cared very much and still do. But there are many perspectives on women's rights, and I chose to defend the one that most closely mimicked the values of The Cult.

It was, on some level, a subconscious attempt at putting myself through another unorthodox round of conversion therapy. I wanted to agree with their views on trans people, because if I could then it might be possible to redefine myself by them. I wanted to fix my transness.

Earlier, reading a long, cathartically ranty blog post linked by @surfacingwater, I began to realize a rather pesky truth I've been trying to hide beneath an attractive labyrinth of nuance: I have never truly accepted that I'm LGBT.

Alongside my love affair with GC ideas, I was also busy exploring Blanchardism [this is a reference to the transphobic autogynephilia theory]. If GC ideology represented my mother's perspective (I was a small child when she became the first to tell me, bitterly, that trans women were mutilated men), then Blanchardism represented my father.

It was cold observation, and required unflinching reflection. It was a new echo of so many moments in which my father grabbed my jaw and forced me to look him in the eye, admit I wasn't telling him the truth, and open my soul to him or else Hell.

GC ideology wanted me to believe that trans women are all just mutilated men, and fuck our pain, our effort. Especially if you're one of those fetishists Blanchard was kinder but no less firm: it's cool you are who you are, he said. Just admit that you're a perverted fetishist.

It's easy to see why this eventually created a mental health crisis. But while I was in it, being torn three ways, it made it possible for me to entertain the notion that I was actually Cis. It let me gaslight myself into believing I could actually be a straight man.

But I was never a straight man. I was always a queer. In high school, people identified me as a "faggot" and it didn't matter how much I protested. They bullied me just the same. And I knew on some level they were right. I knew I was different. I knew it showed.

So I worked to fix it. I spent years learning unnatural body language. I learned to pass for straight, most of the time, anyway. "Why do you look like you're posing all the time?" People would ask. "I'm not!!!" I would snap, while double-checking that I wasn't sitting wrong.

I've tried to hash this out a thousand times, invalidate it over and over but the truth is that I'm a really feminine human. I was a feminine kid, a really, really scared one. I wanted to be anything other than who and what I was.

But reading that long post was like a reflection of everything I spent my entire life trying to avoid. I wanted to be liked, because if people like you they don't abuse you, and in my world abuse was the default. So much so I couldn't understand why trans people fought back.

It was, and has always been, a desperate attempt to generate an illusion of control. But we can't control it. And I can't stop existing as myself any more than anyone else can. I *am* everything I was ever afraid I'd be: Trans, Homosexual, Fetishist, Irrational.

And I finally just realized that I don't need to justify my fucking existence. I don't need to tell you the contents of my soul, father. They're mine. I can keep them, I can love them, and if society hates me for them that's on them. It's not me, society, it's you.

And with this I finally understand what I should have figured out long ago: Justification isn't possible. We have a right to exist. We have a right to exist exactly as we are, without needing to justify it, without needing to prove our value.

And all these people bitching about "biology" can fuck right the fuck off, because this *is* my biology and it's not a joke. Most importantly, our suffering isn't about you. That's the whole GC problem: they're actually narcissistic enough to believe we're about them.

As for Blanchard, maybe he's right, maybe he's not. Maybe he's sometimes right, maybe not. Maybe he was then and isn't now. I don't know. The truth is I don't care. I don't see how on earth it matters. What matters is how we treat people. What matters is how we treat ourselves.

And no one is going to give us a space. We spend our childhoods rejected by boys and kicked across the yard by men loudly wondering why we don't hurry up and stand. Then these supposed women's rights groups accuse us of trying to infiltrate as if they're the center of our world.

And god forbid anyone come out as an enby: all of society will join in on the mockery. Sections of society shuffle us around endlessly like hotels that have only just happened to fill up, sorry. Try the next one, they'll take you.

So we have to fight for rights. We have to. Because being nice won't work. Being nice just means you get to be privy to 1001 conversations about how horrible people like you are. Every word indirectly slicing your self-esteem to ribbons. But at least they aren't calling you a man.

The fight isn't about what we always were. It's about creating a new way to look at the world that includes us as normal. It's about preventing further abuse. It's about solving the problem for future generations. That's what rights activism is about. That's why it matters.

And to all the actual TERFs out there bitching about how "the mask has fallen" and how I'm "showing my true colors": It's cause for celebration, no?//

Thread and comments here.

Top illustration by Henry James Garrett @henryjgarrett.

[trbl-will-find-me]

Media Matters: ADVENT and monoculture hell

Hello, friends. It’s time to yell about XCOM again.

Today, we’re yelling about human culture, alien monoculture, and questions that need answering.

As always, what we have from the game: -ADVENT seems to have done its best to create this new world monoculture. Food architecture, iconography, hell, even language. They’re all standardized now, no matter where you’re operating in the globe. They’ve worked to demonize the world that was, with all of its distinctive cultural features, and work to elevate this bland monolith they’ve got going on. Some of this is the nature of game design, I know, but christ.

- They’ve tied themselves (and this manufactured culture) to the “improvements” of life under the Elders. To be fair, some of these improvements are pretty great. If gene therapy has eliminated things like MS, ALS, DIPG, then that’s pretty amazing --- the cost is just so high.

- It goes beyond just secular culture, though. The churches we see feature ADVENT imagery. Concept art shows megachurch like facilities prosthelytizing the Elders. This is ... creepy, to say the least.

- By imposing this monoculture, they’ve created a culture of what they call ‘unity’ --- but might more accurately be labeled conformity.

Now, we jump off a little bit.

Havens are a rejection of the ADVENT ethos. They are small, messy, and ramshackle. They are also likely some of the last vestiges of individual cultures. We see havens with XCOM posters, including the original anti-alien decal from the Skyranger. They are growing their own food. While the writing we see is in English, it is definitely not the writing system we see in the city centers, and one could assume (reasonably) that writing is still localized to the language of the region.

Havens are, to some extent, growing their own food. Crops vary wildly by biome, so havens are also likely a holdout of regional, traditional foods. #locavore

Havens also still, I would wager, have human religions. I flat out refuse to believe that, especially in cases of persecuted religions like Judaism, everyone was collectively Fine And Dandy with their beliefs being supplanted by the weird alien cult. Just, no. Preservation and continued observation of earth’s religions in havens should be A Thing. I would like to believe that they are also a place where traditional art forms, music and the like are still practiced when feasible. Anything that is productive and demonstrative of the cultures of the area that was? Yeah, I’d like to believe that still goes on. Now, we get to the questions I can’t answer, the things that are driving me bonkers: - The fuck happened to earth’s existing media? Have aliens wiped it our or is it allowed to exist for its ability to demonstrate the “mistakes of the Old World?” I’d really like to know, because man, the sci fi fans should have realized something was up. Alien, Soylent Green, and all five seasons of The Twilight Zone exist on DVD and all have some Pointed Thoughts About Shit ADVENT Is Doing. There were WARNINGS. -Did ADVENT just ... hit the internet quickly? Because even if the mainstream news media was reporting ADVENT as our saviors, I’m pretty sure citizen journalism (even with all of its problems) would have been able to provide some pretty compelling evidence to the contrary. Nobody looks at a video of a chryssalid ripping a person to ribbons and thinks ‘yeah, this seems totally benevolent.’ But, if they knocked out the internet, it’s harder to get word to travel quickly.

-Also, losing the internet would probably be the modern equivalent of the Library at Alexandria burning. There is so much information that is easily accessible there that is much much more difficult to access in other forms, if not impossible for large swaths of the population. If you were trying to warp and control the narrative, though, you’d have to get rid of the easy ways to find information that contradicts your version. -Hey, speaking of warnings, what happened to books? Actual books. Because, again, we had a sample of Red Flags to draw from. War of the Worlds, 1984 and Brave New World come to mind as works that should have been a good tip off that Hey, Something Is Not Right. But seriously, so many YA dystopias. Did none of them survive? Did ADVENT burn everything? And anyone who knew about these works? What happened here? I have the uncomfortable feeling that, as ADVENT warped history, books went in the burn pile because HOW ELSE DO YOU GASLIGHT THE ENTIRE WORLD. -This is less pressing, but where are the art museums? Where are the great artworks of the world that was? All we see is ADVENT’s weird abstract paintings and their (admittedly, pretty good) propaganda. We see some stencil graffiti, so apparently that survived but, uh. Where is everything else? Did ADVENT burn Starry Night? Because if ADVENT burned Starry Night, I am Going To Be Unhappy.

-Also, less pressing, but important: What is the state of music? Do we still have rock’n’roll? Is it about things that are not ADVENT and our Benevolent Alien Saviors? Can someone still lay in the dark and blare David Bowie’s Space Oddity? W H A T  H A P P E N E D,  F I R A X I S?

-Media that HAS survived: what form is it in? I have a terrible feeling paper books would fall prey to kindling during cold winters, but maybe not. Are we looking at dvds? Zip drives? Secret caches on the ADVENT network? How is it accessed? Is it preserved? Who’s preserving it? I need to know. I need to know if Central made Menace team watch a pirated copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark after they were all confused why the Commander lost it at “Vipers. Why did it have to be vipers?” I need to know if the Commander, upon crossing the psionic gateway, informed Central that they had a feeling they were “not in Kansas anymore” and if the rest of the team got the joke.

-Not a question, but more a for your consideration: Havens in living history museums. The buildings are there. They have fireplaces. They are not usually in densely populated areas. They are comparatively resource-rich. They are sometimes really, really cool. Ship-based haven at Mystic Seaport in CT. Cross-time period havens in Strawberry Banke, NH and Greenfield Village in MI. It could be great.