#Also I love how diverse the cast of Saints Row is

[sanpatron]

Anonymous asked:

so uh.... thoughts on Saints Row 2022? heard its uh.

its bad. really bad. "You butchered everything" kind of bad

I don’t wanna turn this into a full-fledged review sorta deal, but I feel like as your resident Sai/nts Row man, I should at least talk about my thoughts a little bit. Though before I get into anything, I wanna say two things.

First; despite my feelings towards the reboot, I really don’t hate it. I was super disappointed by it in a lot of areas, but I’m not like “oh my god this is the worst thing in the world, I can’t believe the developers broke into my home, kicked my dog, and then set my place on fire”. A lot of reviews have been crazy harsh and I just think that kind of attitude is tiring. But again, that’s just me.

Second; I feel like I might have to reevaluate everything given the recent announcement on how they’ll be fixing up a lot of things. For anyone curious you can learn more about it here. Not entirely sure how substantial any of the fixes are gonna be (I mean it ain’t like they can redo the story), but I guess we’ll just wait and see.

Anyway, my thoughts will be under the read more!

So to basically summarize everything, I think at the very least the gameplay is like mid to decent at best. There’s a lot of weird shit involving the combat where it doesn’t feel as good as it might have in previous entries (I’m sure we all know about gameplay feel and etc). But I don’t think it’s bad enough to make me not want to go around the map and fuck around, And once co-op has been fixed, I’m sure that’ll help substantially too.

The activities can be fun, but they don’t feel as integral to the story as they should be. They’re more like blatant padding cause the story is so weirdly short for whatever reason. Like in the first two games you didn’t even have to complete them all in their entirety to continue the main missions, just do enough to earn the Respect you need to unlock more. Not only that, but they’d let you earn Respect through other methods as well; stunts, diversions, buying stuff, etc.

The map is a step up from Steelport TREMENDOUSLY. There’s a lot more character and variety to the city, but it’s still missing a certain sort of something that made me really fall in love with Stilwater. Probably the grime? I think it might be a bit too clean in some aspects. Also if you’re gonna have a big corpo faction in the game, then you definitely need to make them feel a lot more oppressive than they’re depicted. Like ULTOR had their hands in everything compared to Marshall.

Now my biggest issues are regarding the plot and the new cast. The plot is way too short. Like ridiculously so. It feels like some basically had an outline or a draft of what they wanted the story to be, and wound up just using that while totally forgetting to beef it up. The stakes aren’t really there, we don’t have much to see when it comes to the rival gangs, the tone is frankly all over the place, and for a game that was marketed as an origin story, it really doesn’t feel like much of one. Especially for the main four because they’re already so close with each other when you start the game.

Also I don’t hate the new group entirely. Like in theory they could work out well. But the biggest problem is that I think they play it too safe with them. For a bunch of career criminals who decide to form a gang cause of really uninteresting reasons, the writers REALLY wanted to portray them as good people. And I know that’s a bit rich given what I’ve been doing with Boss here, but I always make it a point to say that he’s more than capable of starting shit whenever he feels like it. He just sees no reason to.

If you’re going to write about a gang then don’t hesitate in making them assholes! Like I’m sorry, but there is no way in hell this weird sanitized version of them is going to work out or even be remotely interesting. It feels like the misconception of what “morally grey” characters are. Honestly “sanitized” is they key word here; from the gang, to the tone, to even the violence that’s played out. All of it feels way too clean for my liking.

Anyway, I could go into further details about stuff like them trying to go for spaghetti western themes at literally the end of the game, or some gameplay choices that I don’t agree with, but like I said, I don’t want this to be a full-on review of SRR. Just wanted to get some thoughts out there.

Hope this answers your question well enough!

[imitationpersonne]

Get to Know the Blogger

Can be used for RP and non-RP blogs to get to know a bit about the person behind the screen! Repost, don’t reblog!

1. FIRST NAME:  My alias is KumaraDosha, and you can call me that, Kumara, Mara, or something else you have learned I go by. :3c

2. STRANGE FACT ABOUT YOURSELF: I have an extra half a vertebra in my lumbar spine, bigger on the left side, that makes my back less stable and more susceptible to pain and injury, and part of the reason I had to change my career from being a surgical technologist was because of that wear and tear.

3. TOP THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU FIND ATTRACTIVE ON A PERSON: ...I really don’t know how to answer this. Attraction is so finicky for me, and “aesthetically pleasing” really just depends on the person. I guess all I can say is the most identifiable “type” of person I’d be attracted to are sort of...waifish women? Maybe Scandinavian features, IDK. Something vaguely similar to Anya Taylor-Joy’s soft looks, any hair color.

4. A FOOD YOU COULD EAT FOREVER AND NOT GET BORED OF: Ice cream/shakes.

5. A FOOD YOU HATE: Olives.

6. GUILTY PLEASURE: Assigning characters of different fandoms Homestuck godtier classes and aspects.

7. WHAT DO YOU SLEEP IN: Usually an old, big shirt and pajama pants.

8. SERIOUS RELATIONSHIPS OR FLINGS: Serious relationships only, if not neither.

9. IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN THE PAST AND CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT YOUR LIFE, WOULD YOU AND WHAT WOULD IT BE: I might go back and pick sonography as my major first, instead of trying nursing school, getting psychologically abused and mistreated by nursing teachers, having a breakdown and quitting, getting a surgical technology degree after being treated poorly by teachers/students/staff, quitting surgical tech work after 3 years due to depression/anxiety and physical strain, then coming back to school for a third time with past healthcare-school trauma and trying to get a bachelor’s in sonography. Then again, I learned a whole lot--educationally, about life, about the behaviors and cultures of healthcare workers, and about how people are--in those other schools/professions, so I’m not sure that’s worth giving up? I’d be very much richer right now, though, and not dependent on family or in debt. Plus, surgical technology is actually really cool (and still very much a passion of mine), and I don’t want to give those experiences and memories up. So maybe I’d just nix the nursing school, do surgical tech for a few years, and then go for sonography. Who knows, man; life and its consequences are so unpredictable.

10. ARE YOU AN AFFECTIONATE PERSON: Probably not. I am very sensitive to rejection if I’ve been honest or vulnerable, so I usually only gush over people I trust and honestly feel that way about.

11. A MOVIE YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER AGAIN: I really don’t know if there’s any like that for me?? But I guess The Signal is a movie I like to show people and watch with them, because many haven’t seen it, and I find it fascinating. I also love Tron Legacy a whole lot.

13. YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO KEEP ANY ANIMAL AS A PET, WHAT DO YOU CHOOSE: I would choose a Samoyed dog, if I were able to have it well-taken-care-of (which I can’t do at this point, which is why I don’t have one).

14. TOP FIVE FICTIONAL SHIPS: Oh boy, uh. At the moment? It’s hard for me to give any ultimate lists, because they can all be terribly mishandled or cringe depending on how they’re portrayed, which often somehow turns out to be popular in the fandom, and that spoils it for me a little bit... You know what, screw the rules; I’ma throw out a bunch--six from BNHA that I favor atm and then a diverse cast of some oldies I still like that will be more than five. Not particularly in order of rank...

From BNHA, Monoma Neito x Shinsou Hitoshi; Monoma Neito x Midoriya Izuku; Monoma Neito x Kuroiro Shihai (there may or may not be huge RP bias here); Bakugou Katsuki x Uraraka Ochaco; Bakugou Katsuki x Todoroki Shouto; Shigaraki Tomura x Dabi.

From other fandoms... Kuja x Terra (Dissidia Final Fantasy), Genos x Sonic (One Punch Man), Akabane Karma x Asano Gakushu (Assassination Classroom), Beyond Birthday x L Lawliet (Death Note, but ONLY from an epic-long series of canon-divergent fanfictions that nobody’s going to have heard of), Yami Bakura x Yami Yugi (Yu-Gi-Oh!), Aoba x Noiz (Dramatical Murder), Matsuoka Rin x Nanase Haruka (Free!), Eridan Ampora x Sollux Captor (Homestuck), Caliborn x Dirk Strider (Homestuck), The Batter x Zacharie (OFF), Sniper x Spy (Team Fortress 2). ...The hate/enemies/rivals ships are kind of a theme, aren’t they.

15. PIE OR CAKE: Cake.

16. FAVORITE SCENT: At the moment, I really like the Snowflakes and Cashmere body wash at Bath and Body Works. Also Butterfly Flower. Also give me baking cookies or blueberry muffins.

17. CELEBRITY CRUSH: They all disappoint me. They’re just human beings, often not very good ones.

18. IF YOU COULD TRAVEL ANYWHERE, WHERE WOULD YOU GO: Heaven, bitch. (Okay, maybe an island resort or a cruise or something.)

19. INTROVERT OR EXTROVERT:  Introvert who can appear extremely extrovert in comfortable company. I guess ambivert fits better.

20. DO YOU SCARE EASILY: Depends. In real life, I’d say not really, but if you can find a way to trigger my imaginative paranoia, then maybe. I can’t play scary video games, because they make me way too tense, but I absolutely love watching other people play them, and I get very scared, especially by jumpscares (but in a fun way, LOL). I also love watching horror movies (though most are embarrassingly un-scary). I do not like jumpscares in movies. Cheap. I also love reading/hearing creepy stories that are presumably true (that’s usually what triggers my imaginative paranoia and puts me in a bad headspace, but whoops, still interesting to me).

21. IPHONE OR ANDROID: I’ve only ever had iPhone.

22. DO YOU PLAY ANY VIDEO GAMES: Yeah. I wish I played more, but I seem to procrastinate a lot on playing games for some reason, and I’m not that good besides. I prefer PC to consoles, and I have tons and tons of games on Steam (many that I haven’t gotten around to trying yet), but I also have a PS4 and Nintendo Switch. Games of note that I have played a decent bit are Zelda Breath of the Wild, Fallout 4, Skyrim, Darkest Dungeon, Smash, Saints Row 3 and 4, many of the Final Fantasy games... And a heck ton more, uh.

24. WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH A MILLION DOLLARS: Pay off debts, share with family/friends, charity, invest in rich people stocks or whatever, and also live a nice-ass life. Honestly not sure if I’d quit working entirely...? I tend to get depressed if my life doesn’t have meaning like that. I have to give something back to the world. Besides, a million dollars literally lasts like under 20 years in normal circumstances...? That’s not something you retire on as a young person, unless you’re investing well...which I would need help figuring out how to do. I hate managing money.

25. FICTIONAL CHARACTER YOU HATE: Off the top of my head, probably Jane Crocker and Aranea from Homestuck.

26. FANDOM THAT YOU WERE ONCE A PART OF BUT AREN’T ANY LONGER: Trigun fandom! I still love that series...!

tagged by: @galaxythixf

tagging: You, but only if you like me, even if from afar. :3c

[aion-rsa]

Saints Row Fans Are Already Calling Reboot Too “Woke”

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It’s only been a couple of days since the Saints Row reboot trailer debuted during the Gamescom opening night ceremony, but that’s all the time it took for some of the franchise’s fans to wage an online campaign against the title that’s largely based on their belief that the upcoming reboot is too woke, hipster, and, ultimately, too different from the previous games in the series.

It started on YouTube where the reboot’s debut trailer quickly garnered 22k dislikes vs 16k likes (as of the time of this writing). If you haven’t watched that trailer yet, I highly recommend that you give it a look and (if you dare) check out the comments below when you’re done.

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There’s certainly some variation in terms of the specific complaints people have about this trailer, but they tend to focus on the ways that this upcoming reboot will seemingly alter the theme and tone of the original Saints Row games. While some are simply upset that this upcoming game will seemingly abandon many of the series’ famous characters and locations, the most vocal complaints so far tend to focus on the idea that the Saints Row reboot is aiming for the “Gen Z” crowd by incorporating “woke” characters, “hipster” themes, and a more youthful and playful overall vibe that some say is at odds with the dark undertones of previous games in the series.

Actually, a lot of the complaints so far tend to focus on the reboot’s cast of characters. Some are calling them a forced attempt at diversity (again, we’ll get to that in a bit), but the most common criticisms so far revolve around the perception that they’re cleaner, younger, “hipper” protagonists who somehow don’t belong in a Saints Row game. Others just say that they don’t seem to be particularly interesting.

You should also know that this discourse isn’t limited to the comments section of that debut trailer. In fact, it really took off on Twitter when the Saints Row Twitter team began responding to critical fans in some surprisingly direct ways.

pic.twitter.com/SLcoK801vL

— Saints Row (@SaintsRow) August 26, 2021

pic.twitter.com/pJb2QSSfJ2

— Saints Row (@SaintsRow) August 26, 2021

We wanted to do something brand new

— Saints Row (@SaintsRow) August 25, 2021

As you can see, the Saints Row development team at Volition is not hiding from these complaints. In fact, they’re really leaning into the idea that they are, in many ways, taking a look at the franchise’s past and altering things that they simply wouldn’t put into a game today. Here’s what studio development director Jim Boone had to say to PC Gamer on the subject:

“We love [the old Saints Row games], but we also recognize those are games of a time. They made sense within that era, and we were able to do things that felt good back then. But that tone is not something that we feel like we want to do today. We had a different kind of story that we wanted to tell.”

So, it turns out that some of Saints Row‘s early critics aren’t being entirely paranoid. The Saints Row team is aiming to change the tone of the series somewhat with this reboot, and they are looking to reexamine certain aspects of previous games that they’re not entirely comfortable with today. From there, it’s really just a matter of what you think about that change in philosophy.

Personally, I think that some of these early criticisms are odd and are perhaps based on issues that are much more serious than the Saints Row reboot. Having said that, some of the concerns about this game may not be entirely unwarranted, even at this early stage.

The thing that I can’t get past is the idea that there’s somehow a sacred theme that the Saints Row series has stuck to up until this point. The first Saint’s Row game was basically a more outlandish GTA game that honestly did emphasize a style, tone, story, and characters that you probably wouldn’t want to put in a game today, and for good reasons. At worst, it was occasionally offensive, and at best, it was all pretty basic.

From there, the Saints Row games just got wilder. Saints Row 2 tried to keep things slightly more grounded (although the insanity was absolutely getting turned up at that point), but Saints Row 3 just threw all attempts at logic out of the window in favor of embracing its predecessor’s wildest concepts and upping the ante. By the time we got to Saints Row 4, we were playing as superpowered gangsters tasked with defending the universe.

If there is one thing that all of those Saints Row games had that this reboot seems to be lacking in these very early stages, it’s an “edge.” The Saints Row games often combined over-the-top violence with over-the-top sex and used all of it to accentuate over-the-top moments. It was always a bit more South Park than Goodfellas, and while that’s part of the reason a lot of people fell in love with the Saints Row series in the first place, Saints Row 4 certainly left many wondering how the series was possibly going to raise the bar. It’s not that Saints Row 4 was a disaster (it was occasionally a lot of fun), but it definitely felt like we were starting to reach the point of diminishing returns and stylistic awkwardness. There certainly may be a bit of “absence makes the heart grow fonder” in play here, though many of these criticisms seem to be coming from those who never grew tired of the series’ edgy absurdity in the first place.

So while I suspect that some fans were hoping that this reboot would bring this series back to the Saints Row 2 style (which honestly probably came closest to properly balancing absurdity and open-world crime drama), it’s honestly hard to fault the Saints Row reboot team for coming to the conclusion that it’s time to mix things up. It probably is time to mix things up, and given that Saints Row is usually at its best when it’s doing things differently than the competition (which honestly includes moments of character diversity and sex-positivity spread throughout the series that shouldn’t be overlooked if we’re having a fair discussion about this franchise), I’m not willing to buy into the argument that this is inherently a bad idea. I’m just not convinced that the best things about the original Saints Row games are somehow being completely abandoned here, based on what we’ve seen so far.

Having said all of that, the debut Saints Row trailer did leave a lot to be desired. The popularity of CG debut trailers that don’t showcase gameplay is generally annoying, but in this particular instance, I think it’s safe to say that Saints Row maybe didn’t put its best foot forward when it came to selling everyone on these new ideas, new characters, and a new world while also establishing how this game will tap into the series’ best qualities. Thankfully, the game’s latest trailer already looks like a big step in the right direction:

The discourse about Saints Row‘s tone, style, messages, and characters will go on, but it’s ultimately up to developer Volition to sell us on the idea that the path they’ve chosen is the best one for this series moving forward. I do think that there’s a strong argument to be made for changing things up, and I think that the team might be on the right track when it comes to non-gameplay-related ways to do just that. It really comes down to whether or not they’re moving beyond their edgy past because they’ve grown and learned better ways to do things, of whether this change in style is more about them being embarrassed by aspects of those older games but not entirely sure at this time what the best alternative is.

We’ll find out if it all comes together when Saints Row is released on February 25, 2022.

The post Saints Row Fans Are Already Calling Reboot Too “Woke” appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[nikolinaboldero]

Dover Street Market, designer research.

23/11/18

On one of my days off from college I decided to visit Dover Street Market. Starting my knit workshop, I thought that it was important to gain some more inspiration, looking at different types of young artists. When I visited the exhibition, I wasn’t just looking for knit garments I was also looking for ideas and certain techniques which could be transformed into a knit. For example, Molly Goddard uses the rouging technique a lot in her work and I think that you could try and represent this with knit, if you knit some lines very close together and then allow more space for the other rows. This distancing between the knits can create this beautiful lace pattern similar to the patterns Molly Goddard is able to achieve with embroidery on tulle.

 Designer Research: Molly Goddard.

Molly Goddard is a British fashion designer who graduated from Central Saint Martins. Dover Street Market introduced Molly Goddard into the world of fashion by buying 86 of her tulle garments. Her distinctive, odd and imaginative style captivated the designers. I first saw her work on Pinterest, I loved her beautiful bright tulle garments she made. The reason why I took so much interest into her style of fashion design was because she uses a lot of stitch and I think that this might be my chosen pathway. Her collection at Dover Street Market also included these knitted gingham style dresses. They were similar tones to that of the tulle dresses, therefore it was still evident that they were part of the Molly Goddard collection. The thing I most admire about her work is how she manages to make such statement, unique pieces, she is such a defined fashion designer, she hasn’t tried to replicate any other designers work. She has managed to have so much success with going with her own idea and individual take on fashion.

‘There's something quite romantic at the heart of Molly's work, something that sweeps you up along with it; an honesty that keeps its most dramatic elements real rather than ridiculous. It helps that her casting is rooted in reality, diverse and happy, an under-appreciated statement among the big drama of fashion’.  

[republicstandard]

Why is there no room for Asia Bibi in Britain’s Intersectional Inn?

Asia Bibi, the world’s most identifiably oppressed woman, has been disqualified from the International Olympics of Oppression 2018. A month before Theresa May -Britain’s Christian PM- celebrates Christmas, her government is replaying the Nativity by slamming the door of Britain’s Intersectional Inn in the face of a woman who is arguably the most deserving refugee on the planet.

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Intersectionality is the nomenclature for Leftism’s taxonomy of oppression. It refers to how different forms of discrimination (like racism or sexism) overlap. So, according to Kimberle Crenshaw, who coined the term “intersectionality”, black women have a higher status on the hierarchy of victimhood because they are black and women and these two experiences of marginalization intersect and their “intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism”.

Your value as a human being depends on how many victim groups you belong to. Consequently, a one-eyed, black, lesbian, Palestinian, Muslim woman gets the Olympic gold medal, while, a heterosexual, black, woman, is awarded silver, and a white, homosexual, American male is at the bottom with a bronze medal.

The religion of identity politics not only has a hierarchical creed; it also has a great commandment—love your neighbor based on their position on the totem pole of intersectionality. Thus, a female bishop in the male-dominated Church of England must make alliances with other oppressed folks—Muslims, Palestinians, Native Americans, and every noodle in the LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP alphabet soup, depending on the degree of overlapping categories of oppression

This is the one, unholy, apostate and cultic faith that unites Theresa May’s government, Leftists and the Church of England (and liberal denominations). Its high priests are innkeepers holding the keys to opening or shutting the doors to Cool Britannia’s Intersectional Inn—where the world’s huddled masses yearning to breathe free and indulge in LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP sexual congress—may be welcomed like Joseph and Mary fleeing the genocidal lunacy of King Herod.

It follows that, on merit alone, Asia Bibi should win the gold in the Oppression Olympics and be accorded a red carpet state welcome by the innkeepers of the Intersectional Inn. Asia Bibi is a colored (20 points) woman (20 points), who has been brutalized by Pakistan’s patriarchy (25 points). She is a low-class (10 points) and low-caste (20 points) farm laborer (15 points). She has rotted on death row facing the death penalty (30 points) for eight years for a crime she did not commit (15 points).

That’s a whopping 155 points on Bibi’s scorecard. A victim can get into the Intersectional Inn with as few as 20 points—being a woman is enough (even better a man who self-identifies as a woman). Taking a leaf from the Jim Acosta School of Journalism, the Messiahs of Migration should be snatching media megaphones and demanding open borders for Asia Bibi and her family.

So why has Britain so dishonorably refused Asia Bibi asylum? The Home Office has reportedly told Pakistani Christians campaigning on her behalf that Bibi’s “moving to the UK would cause security concerns and unrest among certain sections of the community and would also be a security threat to British embassies abroad which might be targeted by Islamist terrorists”.

Islam is a religion of peace, no? Why, then, is our Islamophiliac Home Office so terrified? Is it because protestors in Pakistan have already caused damage in the region of £900 million, bringing the country to a standstill? Or is it because a Chamberlain, not a Churchill, heads our government? Elsewhere, I have written about May’s cowardly capitulation to Salafist Islam. History will remember Mrs. May as an appeaser—the antipodean opposite to Mrs. Thatcher.

When Fiona Bruce MP asked Mrs. May about Pakistan’s Supreme Court verdict overturning Bibi’s death sentence, with adroit subterfuge the PM replied that the UK was committed to the global abolition of the death penalty. Note, she did not say we were committed to the abolition of Islam’s reprehensible blasphemy law.

Because May, a globalist, favors the European Court of Human Rights, which recently maintained it was a crime to call Muhammad a pedophile. Traitor Theresa is a female Faust who trades what is left of Britain’s Christian soul with the Muslim Mephistopheles in exchange for her political survival. She’d rather sign Bibi’s death warrant than offer Bibi asylum in Britain’s Intersectional Inn.

What then, of the progressive brigade and their first cousins in the Church of England? Do we see feminists wearing ‘pussy hats’ and demanding justice for Asia Bibi? Do we see hashtags #ArrestMeToo and #JeSuisAsiaBibi trending on Twitter? The hordes funded by Patron Saint of Open Borders St George Soros and caterwauling in support of Honduran migrant caravans are selling Asia Bibi T-shirts on college campuses, no?

Why has Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, not flung open his cottage at Lambeth Palace to this Christian refugee? A couple of years ago Welby persuaded the Home Office to get a Muslim Syrian refugee family into his studio flat, yeah? Welby called the Syrian migrant problem a “wicked crisis”. We “cannot turn our backs on this crisis”, Archie thundered. “Jesus was a refugee!” bellowed Welby. Cat got your tongue now, Archbishop?

Disgracefully, in 2016, the Home Office gave visas to Muslim clerics Muhammad Naqib ur Rehman and Hassan Haseeb ur Rehman who began their tour by visiting Welby at Lambeth Palace for “interfaith relations”. In Pakistan, the duo is infamous for promoting Mumtaz Qadri, the murderer of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer. Taseer wanted to end Pakistan’s blasphemy law. He specifically opposed Asia Bibi’s execution. Maybe Judas Iscariot could take correspondence courses from you, eh Archbishop?

And why have Jayne Ozanne and her chums like Paul Bayes, Bishop of Liverpool, not rushed to Bibi’s advocacy? The Ozanne Foundation works “with religious organizations around the world to eliminate discrimination based on sexuality or gender in order to celebrate the equality and diversity of all”. It’s because Asia Bibi is not a lesbian, no, Jayne?

Bayes is proud to march for Gay Pride. When it comes being proud of persecuted Christians we haven’t heard a dicky bird from this valiant social justice warrior. The only person proud to be a Christian in this comedy of intersectional errors is Asia Bibi. “I will not convert. I believe in my religion and Jesus Christ. And why should I be the one to convert and not you?” Asia Bibi boldly asks, staring her executioners in the face.

You dig? Capiche? Now you can understand why the Left doesn’t want Bibi in the Intersectional Inn. Bibi believes in Jesus Christ. She is a conservative Christian. She confesses Jesus as the only way to salvation. For Bibi, Jesus and Muhammad are not interchangeable. For Bibi, Jesus is God’s Son; Muhammad is a mere man.

Her exclusive belief in Jesus as her Saviour excludes her from the hierarchy of intersectionality. It automatically excommunicates her latae sententiae from the blessed communion of victim-saints. Why? First, the belief that all religions are basically the same and one religion is no better than another is a cardinal doctrine of progressivism. Asia Bibi must be blamed for her stubbornness in not converting to the religion of peace!

Second, Muslims are at peak of the pyramid in the hierarchy of intersectionality. Not surprisingly, Britain was quick to offer asylum to Malala Yousufzai, the teenage Muslim girl shot by the Taliban. The world now believes the Big Lie that Muslims are the real victims and Christians are the oppressors. Since it was wicked Western missionaries who took the gospel to Pakistanis—Asia Bibi must renounce her Christianity and return to Islam.

Third, being a Christian is equivalent to having white privilege. This is a dogma—(all Leftist dogmas must be accepted by faith, not reason, because Leftism is a religion) which stands on feet of clay because, (a) Christianity is originally an Asian religion, and, (b) the truth is that the persecution facing Christians is the largest human rights violation issue today.

Fourthly, by definition, a biblical Christian betrays the fraternity of victimhood. Unlike Jayne Ozanne, Asia Bibi does not regard herself a victim. She believes she is a victor in Christ because by his death and resurrection Christ has conquered Satan, sin, and death. No wonder she’s holding firm to her faith for eight years while languishing in a Pakistani prison where even the guards are waiting to poison her food.

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Fifthly, the cult of cultural Marxism, which includes progressive Christians, hates orthodox Christianity as much as Lucifer hates God. That’s why it has structured its Olympics of Oppression to exclude Christianity by default. Written into its rulebook is the statue: Christianity cannot be a category of oppression. You may be black or brown or blind but coming out of the closet as a confessing Christian disqualifies you by default. It’s like taking steroids to boost your performance in the Olympics.

Persecuted Christians, be they black or brown, will never be accepted in Britain’s Intersectional Inn—which stands exposed and denounced by Bibi’s exclusion as one gigantic fraud. The only Western leaders to welcome them are so-called far right, racist, nationalist, white supremacist, anti-immigrant, anti-open border, populists like Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who has offered Asia Bibi asylum in Italy.

God bless Matteo Salvini! God bless the populists and may they become even more popular!

from Republic Standard | Conservative Thought & Culture Magazine https://ift.tt/2DlsOhY via IFTTT

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Pubic hairs, fag butts, and rubber tools: a new edge for male fashion | Fashion

Just when you think you have seen everything in British men’s fashion, a model walks down the catwalk wearing a shrunken version of an inflatable fancy-dress costume depicting the grotesque Austin Powers character Fat Bastard.

That is the plan, anyway, when Rottingdean Bazaar – one of the standout stars of London Fashion Week: Men’s, which kicked off on Saturday – presents its autumn/winter 2018 collection on Sunday.

British menswear is well known for eccentric design – this is, after all, where Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren made bondage trousers with bum flaps a fashion consideration – but Rottingdean Bazaar pushes the boundaries by any standards. The label is a fitting highlight of this season’s London menswear shows, which the British Fashion Council have billed as “a celebration of creative diversity”.

In three seasons the label, which is designed by James Theseus Buck and Luke Brooks, has built up a surreal and witty back catalogue. They have covered models in rubber recreations of pliers, scissors, nails and spanners. They have celebrated the modest romance of the laundry basket, heat-pressing sports socks and tights on to T-shirts and dresses. They have created life-sized replicas of garden implements, and stitched them on to dresses. They have even recreated Che Guevara in pubic hair on a T-shirt.

‘The modest romance of the laundry basket’ – socks and other undergarments are heat-pressed onto clothes Photograph: Rottingdean Bazaar

Sunday’s show centres on the improbable idea of “boiling down” giant inflatable fancy-dress costumes to create shrunken garments, a technique Brooks compares to “putting a packet of crisps in the oven”. So Fat Bastard becomes “shrivelled and antique-ish,” while a cylindrical football-shaped costume, designed to cover the whole body, is withered to the size of a jumper.

Further inflatable costumes under consideration include a T-Rex, a bodybuilder and a skeleton. There is also a costume which “looks like a granny is carrying you. We are about to boil that one now”, says Brooks, speaking on the phone from the brand’s namesake home of Rottingdean, East Sussex, a week before the show. “It’s a process we find really interesting,” he adds. “Quite a simple technique, which could be applied as a system, in which the technique dictates the outcome.”

Clearly, this is a long way from the pin-sharp Savile Row tailoring that made British menswear famous. But while Rottingdean Bazaar might appear destined for life as a cult fascination, the label has begun to attract mainstream attention.

In November Rita Ora wore a Rottingdean Bazaar dress decorated with a replica garden rake on stage at the MTV Europe Music awards. This baffled the Daily Mail, which ran the headline: “‘When you’re hosting but need to dig up your potatoes straight after’: Rita Ora confuses fans by wearing a gardening tool as a necklace”.

Brooks’s analysis of the look isn’t markedly different: “I grew up in a few different villages and it reminded me of summer fairs and parades.”

Rottingdean Bazaar’s pressed flower sweatshirt sold well in Selfridges. Photograph: Rottingdean Bazaar

The label has sold well in Selfridges (a collection of pressed flowers sealed on to sweatshirts showed how wearable it can be), and has a collaboration with Melissa shoes in the offing. It has even been featured in a publication not known for its appreciation of the esoteric, Now magazine. “That was one of our favourite moments,” says Brooks. “We got a full page on the model Max Allen covered in rubber pieces. We were really happy about that. They said funny things about it – ‘babe magnet’ and ‘fashion gets freaky’.”

Brooks, who is 31, grew up in Hertfordshire. Buck, 28, grew up in Rottingdean and Brighton. They met while studying at Central Saint Martins in London, and got together properly when they were both cast in a video by the artist Julie Verhoeven (“she needed hairy people,” says Brooks. “We are both really hairy.”) For a while, after graduation, Buck worked for Kanye West’s label, Yeezy, in LA, “which was funny,” says Buck, “but while I was there I thought ‘we should be working together’” so he left LA and moved to Rottingdean with Brooks, to a tiny studio flat bought by Buck’s mother in the 90s, which was “the only option, because neither of us had any money and we didn’t know what we were doing”.

Buck’s grandmother ran a gift shop on the Rottingdean high street which inspired the “local” shop in The League of Gentlemen. “There’s a clip from Comedy Map of Britain on YouTube,” says Brooks, “when the writer comes back to her shop and talks about feeling really unwelcome.” Their own slightly League of Gentlemen-ish focus on the bizarre and eerie may suggest that their interest in Rottingdean is fetishistic, but the truth is much broader than that.

The ketchup badge from Rottingdean Bazaar’s Badge Taste collection. Photograph: Rottingdean Bazaar

Though born out of necessity, their Rottingdean base has become the centre of their design ethos. “Working from home in a small domestic setting, where the surrounding is very suburban, affects how the work is. It is modest, scale-wise,” says Brooks. An early project, Badge Taste, was a case in point: a collection of badges, featuring squashed cigarette butts, ketchup packets and pubic hair encased in plastic (the pubic hair version, says Brooks, reminded them of “the lockets of hair in Victorian times”).

The village has also provided direct inspiration. The press release for Sunday’s show will be stapled inside a copy of the monthly circular Rottingdean Village News, with whom the pair are in talks for a monthly style page; they are also talking about doing a fashion film with their local zumba class. “There is all sorts of interesting local history about this village,” says Brooks, who talks about the waxworks in the library museum and alumni such as Rudyard Kipling and Edward Burne-Jones.

Buck and Brooks represent a growing movement of artists and designers – including their former classmate, the much-celebrated womenswear designer Matty Bovan, based in York – who do not buy the received wisdom that creative types must work in London.

Brooks puts this shift down to the internet, as much as soaring rents and ever more perilous student finances. “The internet is taking us back to a hamlet state, even if just on a personal level,” he says, “where you can be in a little tribe in the middle of nowhere.”

Buck talks about meeting collaborators on Instagram, rather than having to be in an urban centre to make contacts. In the Amazon Prime era, it doesn’t much matter what time your local Tesco shuts.

Rottingdean Bazaar co-founders Luke Brooks and James Theseus Buck. Photograph: Lily Bertrand-Webb

The internet has also bred a hyper-authentic aesthetic into which Rottingdean Bazaar’s approach sits. The pair also work as stylists, and the images they create are raw and extraordinary. Typical shoots have featured Andrew Knox, a pole dancing enthusiast from Suffolk, wearing a Balenciaga trench or on the pole in knee-high black patent Fiorucci boots.

“There has been a massive shift that has really affected catwalk fashion. Pre-internet, you would see interesting, vivid visual characters in films and pop music – elusive fantastical people – which gave rise to a more epic, stylised view. Whereas now the most elusive and fantastical are often those who pop up on Instagram and look amazing, but not necessarily luxurious,” says Brooks.

They say their politics is a work in progress, but they are egalitarian in their approach. Brooks says the duo have no plans for growth, only for collaboration (they proudly say they have “never even hired an intern”). Rather than build an empire, they plan to collaborate with other brands and designers. For the most part they eschew luxury fashion for something that can look very DIY, even if it isn’t, of which Brooks says: “We love the idea of sending out the message that it’s good to DIY yourself, of promoting creativity in general, not just trying to sell stuff, but participating in fashion in an academic way.”

Which isn’t to say that they can’t sell fashion items, from time to time, too. Their biggest commercial hit so far? The pubic hair badge, of course.

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