#I posted this as a thread on Twitter and it's getting suppressed to hell and back but

[yourblackhearts]

So You Want To Learn More About Palestine

Yes, the news is scary. Yes, there is a lot going on. Yes it can be very overwhelming. But we live in the information age and knowing what the heck is going on always helps when dealing with misinformation. "I don't know enough about what's going on to say anything about Palestine" is a fair response to have - but not a reason to stop there. So! Here's a short list of reading resources to get you started 💜

Edward W. Said was a Palestinian-American academic, literary critic and political activist who has written countless books on the subject. Any of his works would be a good place to start, but I recommend The Question of Palestine (1992) along with his memoir, Out of Place (1999)

2. Rashid Khalidi is another Palestinian-American academic and historian with MANY books on Palestine and its struggles. For him I recommend Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1998) and The Hundred Years' War on Palestine (2020)

3. On a more personal note - and as a recommendation for someone who may not be super big on dense non-fiction, I recommend Joe Sacco's graphic novel Palestine (2001) where he writes about his experiences in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in December 1991 and January 1992. I read this for my Rhetoric of Human Rights class and really enjoyed it, and it's easy to help you get your foot in the door.

4. Ilan Pappé is an expatriate Israeli historian and political scientist who has also written a few books on the subject. I recommend The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006) and A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (2003)

5. This last one is less Palestine-centric and more about the global struggle against violence and oppression. Angela Davis' Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (2016)

Do you want to dive deeper? Find more resources? Deconstruct a few myths you may or may not have heard through social media and otherwise? May I kindly direct you to decolonizepalestine - which is where I found a good number of these book recommendations myself!

"But Gaby, I don't wanna buy all these books!" Dude I'm not asking you to. I will, however ask you to:

Get a library card and check your local library

Take a look at academic databases like JSTOR if you're in college

Check archive.org for some of the older books

Try

I don't want there to be any mistake: Palestinians are victims of settler-colonialism. What they're facing right now is a genocide, with a long-standing history behind it enabled by some of the most powerful countries in the world. Learn about it. Speak about it.

It's still Free Palestine.

[autismserenity]

Palestinians to platform, part 1

مؤمن الناطور / Moumen Al-Natour

@MoumALnatour

رئيس الشباب الفلسطيني للتنمية / President of Palestinian Youth for Development

Moumen Al-Natour is amazing. Not only does he run a Palestinian youth organization that is doing great work in Gaza, but he's also one of the organizers of the 2019 anti-Hamas protests.

Even to criticize Hamas, in Gaza, means to be interrogated, and potentially jailed, tortured, and/or killed. To actively protest Hamas is many times more dangerous.

To have survived that work and continued doing it? I cannot imagine the emotional strength this dude has.

Here's what Center for Peace Communications (another great organization) has said about him:

So many Palestinians, in or from Palestine, are out there talking about what everyday life in Gaza is like. About Hamas, about Israel, about what they want and what they need, about their struggles and their interests and their families.

My goal, in finding people for you to follow and platform, is to help more voices get out of Gaza after years of suppression, and to help more outsiders (like me) connect with them.

People care SO MUCH about Palestine. But frequently, all there is to share is outrage, semi-accurate news, and more outrage. Frequently, we're not calling for the same things they are. We call for a ceasefire; they demand Hamas return the hostages and surrender. We call for Israel to let aid in; they say Israel is letting the aid in, but it's being stolen, and call for air drops rather than trucks. We call for Israel to stop fighting; they say they hope Israel takes Hamas out first.

We aren't centering their voices and experiences. We aren't lending our reach and our strength to their demands.

I want to make that possible.

Ala Mushtaha, the son of this imam, evidently said, “On Saturday December 30, our front door was busted down and twenty masked men barged in and took my father, a widely respected and deeply learned imam here in Gaza."

“One dragged him by his head and another grabbed him by his beard. My younger brother tried to intervene and reason with the kidnappers, but they beat him. I have a medical condition that makes it hard for me to breathe, so all I could do was watch as the horror unfolded.

“He wouldn’t preach what Hamas told him to. He refused to tell Gazans that violent resistance and obedience to Hamas, is the best way out of our current hell.”

ok this dude needs his own post honestly, he goes on to say so much intense stuff about their lives.

OMG his dad was actually released!

This is what I'm talking about. This is effective activism. Imagine what all these people could do if they had the entire global pro-Palestinian movement behind them.

Al-Natour posts a fair amount of political commentary.

The "we want to live" hashtag is a callback to the amazing "We Want To Live" protests he co-organized against Hamas, in Gaza in 2019, and again in the summer of 2023. Activist Hamida Howidzy (who will also be getting a separate post) wrote about them in Newsweek recently.

Some things he posts in Arabic and then in English. Some of his posts are in Arabic only. In the thread above, he actually posted a couple more that were just in Arabic, presumably aimed at Arabic-language comments.

What I like about Twitter is that you can whack the "translate post" button and get a pretty decent translation most of the time.

Translation:

"I saw all the responses... What is wrong and forbidden in reuniting the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem through elections in which the people choose who will represent them??!?? Why are all the responses offensive...a collaborator, a traitor, and contain insults that indicate that whoever wrote them needs restructuring?! What prevents us, after ending the war, from returning our choice and choice to the Palestinian people?!+

"Everyone wrote that I opened??!! how did you know???!! Stopping the war is the most important thing now... Whoever sees the condition of the people and feels all this is easy for him does not have humanity, and is not a human being... Whoever, after the destruction of more than 80% of Gaza and the North, and still writing in a way that wants the war to continue while he lives abroad, should reconsider. He accepted to live the same suffering!++"

Note: I copied the "I opened" bit and threw it into Google Translate separately, because that cannot be right. It still insisted that it meant "I opened".... but it gave me the transliterated words, "ani fatah."

Everyone wrote that he's Fatah -- the party that runs the West Bank, the one Hamas violently kicked out of Gaza in 2007-08.

"The end of my speech... I know... whoever is not with you is a traitor and an agent... shameful... by God, by God, by God... there will be an account[ing] for all of this talk... so that you understand the word agent... and the account will be through a government of law... It is clear that there are many who benefit from the poverty and destruction of Gaza, and they must be held accountable according to the law.

"Have mercy on people with your tongues"

The comment on that one is noteworthy:

"Yes, whoever is not with the resistance is indeed a traitor, and those who must be held accountable are the traitors, agents, hypocrites, liars, and racists who slander the resistance and who want to hold it accountable only because it fights the enemy of humanity and defends truth and the oppressed. If you want to apply the law, apply it to yourselves first."

It highlights how much of what we hear in the West is Hamas propaganda. That's a whole other post too. But Hamas claims to be "the resistance," to "defend truth and the oppressed," while arresting people who refuse to preach its propaganda. While jailing and torturing someone 20 times for organizing a protest.

Which are the exact tactics that make it so easy for their propaganda to reach us . And so hard for us to even know that there has been an entire protest movement against Hamas in Gaza, much less to support its activists.

I'll just cut and paste the translations from his most recent thread, above. All emphasis is mine:

"When demonstrations took place in Israel demanding that Netanyahu stop the war and free the hostages, Al Jazeera and Hamas considered it a victory and an achievement, and that the Israeli government was under pressure. But what is striking is that these demonstrations were not suppressed. They were secured. The hostage issue and public pressure were dealt with professionally.

"The demonstrations that took place in Gaza demanding an end to the war and the return of the displaced...they were classified as suspicious [by Al Jazeera etc] ...even though the displaced Israeli lives in a 5-star hotel and has the privileges of the displaced, and when the Palestinian displaced in Gaza receives help, he needs a mediator, and if he wants a tent, he needs leadership intervention, and if he does not have the mediator And the intervention wants to scratch his pocket..+++

"Why did Israel allow demonstrations and look pressured, always trying to contain everything... while we have a displaced person lost, homeless, and no one is trying to contain him, and when he talks, they call him a fifth column???"

Last month, he posted about pregnancy in wartime. Note the cost of the tent later in this thread! Numerous Palestinians have posted about humanitarian aid getting stolen -- by Hamas, by NGOs, by others -- and sold on the black market. Food and tents especially get mentioned a lot. Everyone mentions the tents are being sold for more than (the equivalent of) $700, even though they were supposed to be free.

I'll leave you with this one for now:

You can read all the posts in this series in my "platform gaza" tag.

[hjeojeo]

thinking about how on twitter a lot of us held our breath for it to implode and just die as a site like cghub did but

the current development honestly..yeah it makes sense =__=

basically everyone who doesn't pay for the bluecheckmark's posts are suppressed as hell

so the only way to get the same amount of reach we used to have is by paying the billionaire baby for it. (i personally shant but i cant judge other artists for doing so cause, it's scary having your livelihood threatened like that. im scared but..hoping i can make do by being diligent with multiple social medias)

im just musing over how it feels like we got the end result we all expected (twitter turning into the an inhospitable place for communities and indie/small artists especially commission artists), but not in the way a lot of us expected

a weird limbo feeling of both i guess im glad the main place i get business from is still hanging on by a thread, but also feels like it's not really too different from if it died ? //idk maybe im viewing it too smallmindedly

[cyarskj1899]

Yup they can miss me with being pro-black when we know who will get harmed first.

Hey TikTok Influencers: You Can’t Be Pro-Black and Anti-Voting

Myron Clifton

The speed at which TikTok “influencers” & social justice warriors, movie reviewers, and makeup artists reflexively and in unison turned Anti-Biden saying they won’t vote, then started repeating Russian propaganda is making me rethink laughing at the gop for wanting to ban TikTok.

So many of them have posts calling out white supremacy, advocating for Black folk, indigenous folk, and the lgbtqi community… but the war between Israel and Hamas is their “launch point” for harmful anti-Biden rhetoric.

Pro Tip: You can’t be pro-Black and Anti-Voting. Anti-Voting cancels any and all advocacy.

Anti-Voting specifically harms Black people and Black communities. It harms our seniors, children, schools, healthcare, and finances.

Anti-Voting is a targeted attack on Black people. It is digital voter suppression and gerrymandering.

And of course Anti-Voting is anti-lgbtqi, anti-indigenous, anti-immigrant, and in this environment anti-Jewish and anti-Palestinian.

It’s anti-woman and it is anti-social media. That’s how dumb those calling for not voting are. They’re advocating for their own silencing.

Like Twitter and Facebook, TikTok has national and global reach. But unlike Twitter and Facebook, TikTok has extremely large accounts run by everyday folk who have followers that number in the hundreds of thousands.

The Biden administration demands that TikTok be sold, or risk a nationwide ban

TikTok officials say they are "disappointed in the outcome," but will remain focused on implementing a plan to keep the…

Your little Twitter following of 5k, 10k, 20k, 50k or hell, 200k, are nothing compared to what you’ll see on TikTok from a person who does makeup tutorials, cooks, organizes refrigerators, or talk over videos made by other creators. Their total views and comments are often in the millions.

A TikToc influencer will have 400k-1m followers. A look at their content shows that it is all basic stuff that would equal 20–40k on Twitter and even fewer followers on Threads, Spoutible, or Facebook.

But now those shockingly large accounts have been weaponized against democrats, democracy, President Biden, and, by extension, Black people.

Just in the time for the 2024 election.

The Chinese owned company, notoriously “fickle” when it comes to minimizing views and content monetization of Black creators, suddenly has no problem pushing anti-voting messages all users, but especially to Black users.

What is new isn’t new.

Just like at Twitter when notorious racist Elon Musk took over, or at Facebook when Mark Zuckerberg allowed foreign and domestic voter suppression groups to target Black voters, what we are seeing isn’t new, unique, or particularly creative. The tactics are as old as gerrymandering, voter suppression, poll taxes, voter intimidation, and other American-born efforts designed to prevent Black people from voting.

And yet, I don’t think people should flee from TikTok. Knowledgeable users have to counter the anti-voting propaganda.

And quickly.

We saw what Facebook did in 2016 & 2020 with surgical targeting of Black voters, led by Russia, Steve Bannon, Trump, and Cambridge Analytica. They worked twenty-four hours a day to depress and siphon Black male voters — with some success.

We have a year until the 2024 election. But we don’t have a year to counter the anti-Biden and anti-voting, anti-democratic party, and the anti-democracy movement that’s rapidly growing on TikTok.

The latest attack on Black voters from TikTok surfaced after Hamas attacked Israel and Israel responded.

The misinformation, old videos, and planted disinformation of course made its way to the Chinese-owned fast growing social media site. Influencers who built large following by joining with Black people to call out racism — including by the TikTok app — and social injustice.

As soon as the war started they pivoted with alarming quickness to condemning President Biden and advocating not voting for him/not voting.

They’ve turned their advocacy for Black people to advocacy against Black people voting.

These influencers apparently aren’t worried about Trump saying he will immediately implement a ban on Muslims, extend the war against Palestine, Iran, Syria, and block any Palestinians from coming to America.

They aren’t worried about regaining the Senate, retaining the House, installing more judges, or the next Supreme Court appointments. They aren’t worried about women’s right to an abortion, public school funding, more student debt eliminated, or stopping Russia from expanding its war beyond Ukraine. They do not care about healthcare, unions, the environment, sanity at the border, or fairness in the tax code.

No, they think that the people who should be punished for the Israel versus Hamas war are… Black Americans.

Sorry World, Black Americans aren’t your Saviors

The most recent Middle East killing show/war/genocide/conflict/resistence/sovereign exercise of defense — whatever you…

TikTok influencers are good at making entertaining videos on a wide range of topics, of creating new dances, and launching musical sounds. They help writers and authors, showcase small brands and small creators, and they provide a space for people to creatively interact, teach, make laugh, and clarify on short videos.

That is the strength of the app. But if that strength is now being weaponized against Black voters leading many to call for the banning of the app. The influence the Chinese government on the app and thus on US elections is a growing concern that is showing itself even more so than it had during the last election.

People who have no real interest in Black lives, who have no knowledge or care of the centuries of work our ancestors and families undertook to gain the right to vote, to be able to vote in safety, and to have our votes counted equally with white votes, should never be listened to when they tell us not to vote.

The influencers do not care about the harm we will endure with another republican president — Trump or any other republican.

All they care about are views, clicks, and sponsorships.

What we care about is the health and wellbeing of our lives, the lives of our family and friends, and about the protection of democracy.

The Biden-Harris Record | The White House

President Biden and Vice President Harris ran for office on the promise to move quickly to deliver results for working…

Sent from my iPhone

[cyarsk52-20]

31m ago

View on Twitter

Yup they can miss me with being pro-black when we know who will get harmed first.

Hey TikTok Influencers: You Can’t Be Pro-Black and Anti-Voting

The speed at which TikTok “influencers” & social justice warriors, movie reviewers, and makeup artists reflexively and in unison turned Anti

MEDIUM

Hey TikTok Influencers: You Can’t Be Pro-Black and Anti-Voting

Myron Clifton

The speed at which TikTok “influencers” & social justice warriors, movie reviewers, and makeup artists reflexively and in unison turned Anti-Biden saying they won’t vote, then started repeating Russian propaganda is making me rethink laughing at the gop for wanting to ban TikTok.

So many of them have posts calling out white supremacy, advocating for Black folk, indigenous folk, and the lgbtqi community… but the war between Israel and Hamas is their “launch point” for harmful anti-Biden rhetoric.

Pro Tip: You can’t be pro-Black and Anti-Voting. Anti-Voting cancels any and all advocacy.

Anti-Voting specifically harms Black people and Black communities. It harms our seniors, children, schools, healthcare, and finances.

Anti-Voting is a targeted attack on Black people. It is digital voter suppression and gerrymandering.

And of course Anti-Voting is anti-lgbtqi, anti-indigenous, anti-immigrant, and in this environment anti-Jewish and anti-Palestinian.

It’s anti-woman and it is anti-social media. That’s how dumb those calling for not voting are. They’re advocating for their own silencing.

Like Twitter and Facebook, TikTok has national and global reach. But unlike Twitter and Facebook, TikTok has extremely large accounts run by everyday folk who have followers that number in the hundreds of thousands.

The Biden administration demands that TikTok be sold, or risk a nationwide ban

TikTok officials say they are "disappointed in the outcome," but will remain focused on implementing a plan to keep the…

Your little Twitter following of 5k, 10k, 20k, 50k or hell, 200k, are nothing compared to what you’ll see on TikTok from a person who does makeup tutorials, cooks, organizes refrigerators, or talk over videos made by other creators. Their total views and comments are often in the millions.

A TikToc influencer will have 400k-1m followers. A look at their content shows that it is all basic stuff that would equal 20–40k on Twitter and even fewer followers on Threads, Spoutible, or Facebook.

But now those shockingly large accounts have been weaponized against democrats, democracy, President Biden, and, by extension, Black people.

Just in the time for the 2024 election.

The Chinese owned company, notoriously “fickle” when it comes to minimizing views and content monetization of Black creators, suddenly has no problem pushing anti-voting messages all users, but especially to Black users.

What is new isn’t new.

Just like at Twitter when notorious racist Elon Musk took over, or at Facebook when Mark Zuckerberg allowed foreign and domestic voter suppression groups to target Black voters, what we are seeing isn’t new, unique, or particularly creative. The tactics are as old as gerrymandering, voter suppression, poll taxes, voter intimidation, and other American-born efforts designed to prevent Black people from voting.

And yet, I don’t think people should flee from TikTok. Knowledgeable users have to counter the anti-voting propaganda.

And quickly.

We saw what Facebook did in 2016 & 2020 with surgical targeting of Black voters, led by Russia, Steve Bannon, Trump, and Cambridge Analytica. They worked twenty-four hours a day to depress and siphon Black male voters — with some success.

miro.medium.com

We have a year until the 2024 election. But we don’t have a year to counter the anti-Biden and anti-voting, anti-democratic party, and the anti-democracy movement that’s rapidly growing on TikTok.

The latest attack on Black voters from TikTok surfaced after Hamas attacked Israel and Israel responded.

The misinformation, old videos, and planted disinformation of course made its way to the Chinese-owned fast growing social media site. Influencers who built large following by joining with Black people to call out racism — including by the TikTok app — and social injustice.

As soon as the war started they pivoted with alarming quickness to condemning President Biden and advocating not voting for him/not voting.

They’ve turned their advocacy for Black people to advocacy against Black people voting.

miro.medium.com

These influencers apparently aren’t worried about Trump saying he will immediately implement a ban on Muslims, extend the war against Palestine, Iran, Syria, and block any Palestinians from coming to America.

They aren’t worried about regaining the Senate, retaining the House, installing more judges, or the next Supreme Court appointments. They aren’t worried about women’s right to an abortion, public school funding, more student debt eliminated, or stopping Russia from expanding its war beyond Ukraine. They do not care about healthcare, unions, the environment, sanity at the border, or fairness in the tax code.

No, they think that the people who should be punished for the Israel versus Hamas war are… Black Americans.

Sorry World, Black Americans aren’t your Saviors

The most recent Middle East killing show/war/genocide/conflict/resistence/sovereign exercise of defense — whatever you…

TikTok influencers are good at making entertaining videos on a wide range of topics, of creating new dances, and launching musical sounds. They help writers and authors, showcase small brands and small creators, and they provide a space for people to creatively interact, teach, make laugh, and clarify on short videos.

That is the strength of the app. But if that strength is now being weaponized against Black voters leading many to call for the banning of the app. The influence the Chinese government on the app and thus on US elections is a growing concern that is showing itself even more so than it had during the last election.

People who have no real interest in Black lives, who have no knowledge or care of the centuries of work our ancestors and families undertook to gain the right to vote, to be able to vote in safety, and to have our votes counted equally with white votes, should never be listened to when they tell us not to vote.

The influencers do not care about the harm we will endure with another republican president — Trump or any other republican.

All they care about are views, clicks, and sponsorships.

What we care about is the health and wellbeing of our lives, the lives of our family and friends, and about the protection of democracy.

The Biden-Harris Record | The White House

President Biden and Vice President Harris ran for office on the promise to move quickly to deliver results for working…

Sent from my iPhone

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Laundering torturers' reputations with copyfraud

The wildest forensic stories are the ones where you pull at a loose thread and discover that you've got hold of a the tip of the tentacle of some kind of cthulhoid monster from the depths of hell. That's the story of Eliminalia, global fraudsters for hire.

The story starts with Qurium, a secure hosting provider that focuses on at-risk civil society groups, the kinds of people who piss off dictators with their own snatch-squads they can use against their enemies.

Two of Qurium's clients are Maka Angola and The Elephant, who had done extensive reporting on corruption in Angola related to Isabel dos Santos ("Africa's richest woman") and Vincent Miclet ("the Gatsby of Africa").

https://www.qurium.org/forensics/dark-ops-undercovered-episode-i-eliminalia/

These articles attracted a flood of fraudulent copyright notices claiming the articles were infringing, as well as fraudulent GDPR notices claiming they violated EU privacy law. The letters were signed by fake lawyers, with whom Qurium struck up quite a correspondence.

Qirium also engaged in digital forensics. They found that the fraudsters had created lookalike websites that purported to be news sites, had plagiarized the real sites' articles, back-dating them so they looked like the real sites had copied THEM.

This is an exotic, but not unheard-of, tactic for censoring the internet, and it's the kind of thing that generally works well.

"Notice-and-takedown" laws like Section 512 of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act exempt web-hosts from copyright liability if they "expeditiously remove" content upon notification.

Web-hosts *might* do a little sleuthing to make sure the notice passes the giggle-test (checking to see if there's an earlier, identical article, say) but they're unlikely to do any real forensic work before removing content, and if there's any doubt, they'll take it down.

This back-dating scam was augmented by filing false registrations with Safe Creative, a Spanish copyright registry, to give the fraudulent representations a sturdiness that would survive secondary investigations.

Qurium is exceptional in its censorship-resistance specifically because they host high-risk content for NGOs and civil society groups whom ruthless, powerful people want to censor in order to protect their reputations.

In fact, Qurium is doubly exceptional, because they didn't just ignore the takedown demands - they also dug through the headers of the emails and found themselves tugging at a thread that turned out to be a tentacle of a horrific monster.

Specifically, they found themselves unraveling the "Eliminalia" network, a grid of 300+ fake newspaper sites that exist entirely as part of a commercial reputation-laundering service that purges the web of damning evidence of terrible crimes.

Exploring this collection of fake sites, Qurium was able to group Eliminalia's clients into six thematic areas:

I. People who committed business and financial fraud, including surgeons who maimed their patients and fake universities who suckered would-be students.

II. Finance corruption, including money laundering.

III. Sexual abusers and harassers.

IV. Organized crime figures and groups.

V. Environmental crimes.

VI. Human rights violations.

Naturally, the Eliminalia fraud service also operates a vast botnet of Twitter and other social media accounts that help to suppress certain news stories for their clients.

All this begs the question, who is behind Eliminalia? Its corporate entities are registered in Spain (Eliminalia 2013 SLU), Maidan Holding/Eliminalia USA LLC in Florida and in Ukraine. All of these entities list "Diego (Didac) Sanchez Jimenez/Gimenez" as a director.

A separate entity called "World Intelligence Ltd" - a UK company also registered to Sanchez - runs the 300+ cloned news websites with plagiarized articles sporting doctored timestamps.

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11095218/officers

The syndicate's fraudulent legal demands are sometimes signed by "Raul Soto" of "Legal Department of the Brussels EU Commission" (the address given is a "virtual office" location near a real EU Commission building).

They send these fraudulent emails using ohv.fr servers, from the "abuse-report.eu" domain.

But that's just for starters. Things really get gnarly in Qurium's followup post:

https://www.qurium.org/forensics/dark-ops-undercovered-episode-ii-eliminalia-analysis-of-fake-dmca-complaints/

That's where the investigators describe what they found when they plugged all this intel into the Lumen Database of takedown notices and legal threats. These are pretty hair-raising.

For example, Eliminalia worked to remove articles from a Chilean website that identified doctors who worked in the dictator Augusto Pinochet's torture program.

Advocates for strong copyright and privacy protection have pointed to notice-and-takedown as a workable compromise, an alternative to the lengthy court processes that would be required to get content removed from an offline source, such as a bookstore.

But while notice-and-takedown may work well, it fails very, very badly. Torturers, mafiosi, corrupt officials and scammers can use these same expedited, low-evidence systems to remove material that truthfully describes their crimes.

This was - and is - the utterly foreseeable outcome of a "streamlined" process for censoring content without due process. It's a lucrative business that produces enough surplus capital to support full-time professionals who do nothing but find ways to game the system.

Today, we hear calls for an expansion of notice-and-takedown, often to remove content that I personally want to see obliterated: Holocaust denial, hate speech, etc.

But each one of these exceptions to hard-fought-for due process protections for speech inevitable ends up swallowing the rule. Full-time Nazis have all day to figure out how to use these rules to get evidence of their bad acts removed.

While the survivors of their bad acts struggle to master the arcane process for having their truth restored to the internet.

[anoutlandishfanfic]

The Alaskan Endeavor: Ch1 - The Ballad of Roger Mac

This lovely wee fic has been clattering around in my brain for some time, earning the accurate nickname of The Balto!Frasers— so bestowed by beta @thefraserwitch. Thanks to Beta Fish @walkinginland for helping me solidify the title and generally being wonderful.

A little back story as to WHY THE HECK SLED DOGS: I grew up around them and was familiar with them, even though they were my cousin’s team. CousinPaul had spent a couple years up in Kotzebue, AK — yes, it’s a real place! — between his residency and being employed as the wonderful physician he is in a regular hospital AND FELL IN LOVE WITH SLED DOGS. Wisconsin, specifically NORTHERN WI where I’m from, is a great place to have sled dogs as it gets nice and cold but has pretty mild summers.

That’s the history — but RECENTLY, I stumbled upon musher Blair Braverman on Twitter and caught the Sled Doggo bug again. She’s from WI and qualified and RACED in the Iditarod last year. Give her a follow: @BlairBraverman on Twitter.

Also, the chapter posting is in honor of the FIRST FEMALE WINNER of the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon since 1998! I feel like Claire would’ve be doin’ a lil dance.

--------------------------

June 11th, 2013 Kotzebue, Alaska.

Roger Wakefield.

I blinked down at the clipboard in my hand, then tentatively read the name aloud to the vet clinic’s packed waiting room.

Someone named their golden retriever Roger Wakefield?!

Looking up, I found a petite brunette making her way towards me with an expression of annoyance mingled with completely founded exasperation. The adolescent pup she was tugging along had absolutely no intention of leaving the new friend he had made and let out a series of trilling barks that kept up his end of the conversation… almost as if in song. I bit my lip in an effort to suppress a smile as I watched their labored progress — no pun intended as the woman was very obviously pregnant — and shook my head as Roger finally gave up, leaving his furry friend behind.

“Ah, yes,” I nodded and gestured for them to enter through the open doorway beside me, skillfully dodging the wet nose Roger tried to plunge between my legs in eager greeting.

“But, please, call me Claire.”

She stood there for half a moment, tipping her head to one side as if examining me. I did feel like I was being scrutinized, but it was rather mitigated somehow by the fact that the top of the messy bun piled high atop her head barely reached the top of my shoulders.

All of this was gone again in a second and she patted my arm on her way past, chuckling, “Aye, you’ll do just fine, Dr Claire.”

…

Roger nearly wriggled out of my arms in his effort to lick my face clean off as I tried to extricate him from my exam table.

“Yes, thank you,” I commented dryly, finally setting him down on all fours.

“He’s a bit of a lover, I’m afraid,” Jenny sighed, barely hiding a grin and taking no small amount of delight in my discomfort. “I don’t think my brother has quite forgiven him yet for impregnating one of his lead dogs.”

I stretched, taking a moment to shed my gloves and dry off my face, “Oh?”

“Mhmm,” she wrangled the dog back into a sitting position. “It was right before they started training this season and, of course, she can’t race if she’s whelping.”

I nodded, but didn’t comment, scrambling to gather the threads of what I knew about dog racing.

She can’t possibly be talking about greyhounds, Beauchamp.

Sled dogs.

Huskies.

I made an effort to shove aside my prejudice against dogs working in and being exposed to ridiculously low temperatures, forced to pull a heavy load and run on icy trails, but I apparently failed as Jenny interrupted this train of thought.

“You don’t approve of mushing, then?” her voice changed, dropped lower and became more guarded.

I hedged, trying out the new term, “Mushing?”

“Aye, that’s what sled dog racing is called,” Jenny clarified, not impatiently. “You’re against it?”

I sighed heavily, cursing my glass face.

“I’m not sure I know enough about it to be against it,” I confessed. “It’s just the concept seems terribly unfair to the dogs.”

A smile began to tug at one corner of Jenny’s mouth, “On the surface, aye, maybe it would seem so.”

I let out a sigh of relief, having seemed to have diffused the situation, and turned to resume my post-exam routine. I froze in place, however, my hands hovering over restocking some trivial item when she changed topics completely.

“Do you have dinner plans for tonight, Dr Claire?”

Where in the bloody hell did THAT come from?

Peering over my shoulder at her, I gaped, “Excuse me?”

“I’d like you to meet my family,” she explained, a full grin now on display. “To get a feel of how Kotzebue and Alaska really is… to see for yourself how a musher — a good one — treats his dogs.”

“I see,” I commented lamely, turning back around and sagging into my work counter, my mind still reeling.

“Can we expect you at, say, six o’clock?”

I took a good look at her then, her face awash with eager excitement. It made her eyes dance and hands tap nervously at her side.

I didn’t think they’d abduct me… hold me hostage somewhere until Joe — my business partner in the clinic — paid my ransom… and, actually, he’d been encouraging me just this morning to get to know more of the community members…

Why not, Beauchamp?

Oh, what the hell.

Geronimo, as they say.

“Of course,” I swallowed hard, accepting her invitation. “Can I bring anything?”

Jenny shook her head vigorously, beaming as she insisted, “Just yourself.”

[burnedbyshoto]

i’d like to preface this with this is my opinion and only my opinion. you are free to agree and disagree with what I say and point out my idiot takes too. I also do very much love uraraka though, she’s a cutie.

uraraka ochako is an interesting character. she’s definitely not one of a kind, never seen or done before, but if hori is taking her character in the direction where im assuming it’s going, I think it’ll be fucking sick as hell. after all, I don’t want female characters who are physically strong — that’s easy to write and easier to write off — I want emotionally and internally complex female characters and this added element is definitely a way to get her there.

her biggest character complexes are revealed and can stem off of a single relationship of hers. that with himiko toga.

there are a lot of parallels between uraraka and toga. from the get go, the most obvious one being their feelings towards izuku. their crush, their obsession with him. 

I do apologize now about the frantic scatteredness of this because I am no meta writer, but im trying to piece this together in a logical way.

himiko toga’s background was revealed to us in the war between the LOV and the MLA. she was someone who, most likely due to the influence of her quirk, lusted over the blood of people she liked. now, through the horrors and need to be normal, togas family forced her to be “normal,” to hide her true self and feelings from the rest of the world because it wasn’t accepted. she does not hesitate to speak about how she hated having to keep her true feelings in, how she was deceived by the world into being someone she’s not. so now, she gives into her crushes, her obsessions, her wants, and her needs. himiko toga’s most memorable traits is her admittance to wanting to become the person she loves the most.

how does this parallel to uraraka???

easy.

who does uraraka want to become :)

upon uraraka’s initial introduction she was brought as a character who held nothing back, someone who was to become a hero because of the paycheck, not because she wanted to save people. she didn’t care so much as other people, she cared more about her family. 

now, there’s nothing wrong with this of course! shes 16 -- 15 then -- years old, and possesses the ability to do as she pleases. no one in bnha is quite as ambitious and self-sacrificing and heroic as izuku is (which is a whole other problem but thats for another time), and that’s okay. you’re not supposed to have the integrity to throw your life away for strangers at 15, it’s okay to be selfish.

however, where things start taking the twist with uraraka is the simple question brought forward by aoyama. a simple question if she likes him.

its interesting already that he asks her this, especially given what uraraka is thinking when asked. at this moment, she’s trapped and is thinking of what izuku would do in this situation. this occurs right after the sports festival arc where uraraka denied izuku’s help in facing off bakugou, where she watched izuku break his entire body to save shouto, and where she began to develop some sort of feelings and emotions for izuku during the calvary battle.

now, why does this matter? well, the turn down of izuku’s help and her ability to perform soundly against bakugou tells me that she probably didn’t ever need to wonder just what izuku would do against her battle with thirteen. the beginning of her feelings (whether they are true feelings or just straight up obsession) towards izuku gives her that tie with toga, and just for lols, toga enjoys seeing a beat up, busted izuku and well, uraraka got to see him busted up post shouto fight.

so when aoyama asks his simple question, suddenly uraraka is vividly aware of her feelings towards izuku and loses her concentration and flies straight towards thirteen and etc. while I don’t mean to be like,,,, there’s only one way to do things, but I find it hard to believe a 15/16 yo girl couldn’t tell that her feelings for izuku were romantic at that point... so yeah lol.

I did say true feelings or obsession in a previous paragraph, and I will now dive into them.

as uraraka continues to progress as a character she also changes the reason why she’s a hero. it becomes identical to that of izuku who becomes a hero to save everyone, and similarly, uraraka says the same. but, in order to do so, she must suppress her emotions/feelings/obsession for izuku in the time being because shes not an idiot and knows she doesn’t have time for that relationship and midoriya ‘I-have-a-death-wish’ izuku doesn’t either.

we see from togas experience that suppressing and hiding your true self/form only does you wrong in the end too.

interestingly, uraraka also changes a bit of her hero costume to imitate that of izuku. again, there’s nothing wrong with imitation because izuku’s entire career is based on imitation and making others original moves his own, but uraraka’s is always focal to that of izuku. 

izuku this. izuku that. what about izuku.

he’s a common name to her thoughts, which can be normal to that of a highschool girl with a crush, her suppression of her feelings and desire and clouded judgment for izuku is her undoing, and her crazy parallel to toga.

toga used to suppress her blood lust for the sake of appearing and being normal.

uraraka suppresses her crush on izuku for the sake of appearing and being normal.

toga loves to imitate, replicate, and become her crush.

uraraka imitates, replicates, and wants to be like her crush.

togas use of imitation is seen as a bad thing.

urarakas use of imitation is seen as a good thing.

toga is no longer trying to be someone she’s not (minus her use of her quirk).

uraraka is trying to be someone she’s not (her want to be like izuku).

in chapter 289 we see their interactions, how toga dances and weaves around uraraka as we try to get an answer about why uraraka believes in the things that she does, and while she’s honestly not wrong in her explanations (again she’s 16 and by no means should be perfect. toga’s overall convoluted approach on her entire question wouldve confused me too) she’s emulating and mimicking midoriya izuku. 

urakaka has grown complacent, she has become someone she isn’t and in her daze to be something she’s not, she’s suppressed and frantic. she’s become a character that people are questioning because where on earth did the girl we once knew go?

I can’t say much about her true feelings and whether or not how she feels for izuku are real, but I firmly believe that if hori is doing what im thinking, there’s going to be a lot of self-reflection and possible realizations that uraraka might not truly have a one-sided crush on izuku and for the meantime become someone she wants to be, much like toga is finally someone she wants to be too.

but thats just me lol.

~

twitter thread I read. I don’t agree with all of it, but most of it!!!!

i do apologize if none of this made sense, i’m not quite good at explaining my rationale ;-;

[shuuen-no-cimory]

Disgusting Gratitude (An FGO Ashiya Douman fanfic)

This was a fanfic I wrote after lurking on twitter for so long just to find threads about Douman (the historical person). And yeah, find a real nice stuff on an account specifically created to post the stuff (real kudos for DOUMANFAN_ on twitter. Using machine translate is hard but I’m glad I can find stories of him). This is a what-if story if Alter Ego was summoned on Chaldea but instead by already experienced Ritsuka, it was Ritsuka when she was about to start her Grand Order. There might be some OOC but I hope it wasn’t too much ;w;

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chaldea's ever white walls stand tall and firm as far as he can see. It's rather empty, only the tapping sound of his boots bounces around as he swiftly walk. As storm raging madly behind the closed-off glass, the Onmyoji eyeing the unending hallway as he make his way to his Master's room. His Master,

Fujimaru Ritsuka, the supposedly last master of Chaldea at the time. The 'savior' who saved the world from Goetia's annihilation of humanity. The one who went through four Remnants and slayed him on Shimousa. The one who later, ironically enough, turn into the exterminator of Lostbelts, all for the sake of Pan-human history. The one who tore down his Mandala Hell Tree. Such titles his Master has,

Or that's what his Master supposed to be.

Right now Ritsuka is just a child who just experienced her first Singularity, whose fire on her eyes still burning with hope and passion. So green, so naive, that's the Master that command him right now. He's already ready to serve under her the time he was registered into Throne of Heroes, yet he never prepared to meet her in such state of her life.

If there's something more laughable than his repetitive defeats, then it is the fact that he was summoned by Master of Chaldea who was yet tainted by the harsh future.

Of course his appearance was making some curious uproar. An Alter Ego? Ashiya Douman? Even the Director can't believe it at first and had to rechecked multiple times to make sure the system didn't make any mistake. His tiny Master was even more curious than anyone else, for she was never heard of a servant with an Alter Ego class. He can remember how she tilted her head in confusion, "Huh... Alter Ego? Not a Caster?" My condolence to her, what a woe she has to face in the distant future once he understand why such form of him ever exist.

Nonetheless, this is a great opportunity indeed. With no one ever experience, so much to remember what he yet to do in the future, he can deceive them perfectly. By presenting himself as the mere Ashiya Douman, one of the renowned Onmyoji, the rival of Abe no Seimei, yes, his disguise is perfect.

But really, dealing with such a green Master was such a hassle. According to her, it was the director's advice for her to get to know her servants for a better teamwork on future mission. Since then, she'd come to Douman and talk about various thing with him. Sometimes she'd just ask him about the mission they had done, sometimes it is just some idle chats about what he likes, how he felt about being in Chaldea, what does he thinks about the other servants. Among those talk, he can remember one that quite piqued his interest.

"Douman-sensei," she called his name as he poured tea to her glass. He replied with an everchanging smile, "What can I help my Master with today?" As she thanked him after receiving her glass, she calmly spoke, "When I was small, my granpa used to tell me stories about you and the Onmyojis a lot," her eyes filled with tender reminiscence, "He would tell stories about you quite often too, but how was the life of Onmyoji like?"

Douman who was about to sip his tea stopped for a moment, "Nnnn, you sure a curious one, aren't you, Master?" he was silent as he sips the tea calmly, "But are you sure you want to hear the story of this humble servant of yours?"

"Of course!" she excitedly bounce on her seat, but quickly she cleared her throat and bring her calm demeanor which fits the tea drinking atmosphere back. "I-I mean, sure, Douman-sensei. It will be a p-pleasure to hear it from you," trying her best to suppress her excitement, Ritsuka was turned groggy instead. How cute, he said in silence. That afternoon, he attend his Master much like a teacher to their pupil. Stories from a distant past, as he recalled story after story, he saw her face filled with so much expressions. Sometimes she'd shine with awe, sometimes she'd knit her eyebrows in sympathy, sometimes she'd laugh heartfully.  That afternoon was exhausting indeed, but it was quite a remarkable memory for him.

As he finished reminiscing his time on Chaldea, his feet stopped in front of his Master's room. He was asked by a Vinci to checked on her, although the light-haired director seemed to despise the idea at first. Of course, Douman is well aware thar Romani Archaman must've been wary of him, an extremely strange servant summoned by Chaldea system. Even so, Da vinci still let him carry the request on and thus, here he is.

Gently, he knocked the door, "Master," he called her, "May I come in?"

Just as he knock it, the door opened by itself. A vulnerably clumsy Master she is, letting her room unlocked like this.

When he enter the room, she was on her work desk, head buried by various books and notes. Her back raise and drop in a steady rhythm as she breathe calmly. The monitor of her computer lit up her unmoving figure. She's asleep in her table just like that in her shirt and short pants. Truly, truly vulnerable... A tiny flicker ignite inside him, flame that asked for her destruction in such state. But of course he had to control himself, it is not the time yet. A reward for fortitude will be fruitful in the end, thus he needs to wait.

To suppress the raging feelings, he walk toward with the only wish to wake her up. His hand reached out to her, but then his eyes trails off from her. Without shrinking his hand away, he blinks silently at the heaps of books, specifically the words that written on top of it. Words that re just.... extremely familiar to him. His sharp nails trailed from one book to another. "The Guide of Harima Kuni", "The story of Abe-no-Seimei", "The Record of Heian Era", and to his surprise, "Ashiya Douman: the Story of Renowned Onmyoji." Of course he can recall them, of course. It was all the books that talks about him and his stories, his past. At the opened books, he can see some scribbles and tapped notes all over. He picked one and inspect it. The notes were mostly filled with questions and reviews. There, he can read something like 'Is he really like that?', or 'So this is what happen!' written with some emojis and doodles. The scribbles on the other hand were meant to highlight some points of the books that seemed to interest her. Moving his eyes from her table, he saw her monitor shows a map that was marked in various places. There he read on top of it was the name 'Kishi, Nishikanki-Cho'. Accompanied the map was some websites that was filled with stories and talks about his hometown, specifically about the history of Onmyoji. He can't help but smile, a genuine smile that he wasn't so acquainted with. 'This Master truly was not joking when she said she wanted to know more about this Douman,' he thoughts as the fire of hatred that reside in him for the moment has gone. In a spur of moment, he felt a little pity for her who had to work hard just to know more about him. The least he can do for her was to spare her some proper sleep by lay the girl on her bed. Gently while making sure she won't woken up, he picked her off her seat. The tiny body on his arm felt way different than the person he saw back in Heian-kyo Lostbelt. The girl that stopped him back then was way sterner and rougher, here the lady on his arm is amicably powerless like a sitting duck.

As he laid her down, she suddenly grabbed her clothes. Douman was about to jump until he hears her slow breathe was still the same as before. Ah, sure, she's probably did it unconsciously. Slowly, he hold the hand that clutched onto him and release it. The owner in question meekly murmur in her sleep when she's completely laid down on her bed, "Granpa... Can you... Tell me Douman-sensei... story again..." she said. He can't help but laughed a bit at how childlike his Master act right now. Tucked her comfortably, he left her to clean up her table. That's when he found something,

Seems like the book was covered by her face when she asleep then, but there was written in a side of her notebook, a tiny note. Douman picks her book and slowly read it. It was unmistakably her handwriting, complete with her little doodles.

"Granpa, I found Douman-sensei! He's so cool just like you told me. I will work hard too so I can be as awesome like him. I promise you!"

There was a little drop of water on the notes, but it didn't bother him much. It was... what a disgusting note it is.

Wanted to be like him? Why? To be like a complete failure of an Onmyoji like him... That is truly a laughable notion. How pitiful for someone ever wanted to be an underdog like him. Someone, who is renown for his villainy over his rival that he was never able to usurp... He reads more notes and books that lays on her table as he clean it up. All those books... Some of them said of how he was a beloved for his own people, some said how he was a pride for his hometown, some said how they are grateful for his achievement.

His heart swells, he turned off the light on his master room. His heart swells. He stroked Ritsuka's fair hair as he made his way out of the room. His heart swells. He closed the door and make sure it was secured.

His heart swells, for all those emotion he feels gobbled him up.

Is all alien to him. All that gratefulness are nothing he ever heard.

It was disgusting,

Disgusting,

But he is unmistakably feels warm.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

End note: Ngl I feel like Grand Order Guda calling Douman as Douman-sensei sounds awesome and fits nicely. She was pretty new to this stuff so she might be still rather meek with her servants. And then, Douman himself was still a pretty renowned Onmyoji thus giving him some respect sounds just right

[windandwater]

so I started adderall and hoo boy. lemme tell you. what a wild feeling, in so many ways, but especially right now where I’m like “I’m not doing anything shouldn’t I be panicking” and my brain is like “no. you have a lot to do. but you’ve also been working really hard. so it’s okay to take a break for a few minutes” and I BELIEVE MYSELF??

WOW

anyway here’s some stuff under the cut about it because I can’t believe how well this is working out.

background: I’m hypoglycemic. one big reason I decided to do this was, I was having this issue where I get depressed if I don’t eat sugar. I was eating sugar to feel joy. I am at risk for diabetes but even if I wasn’t this is not...great. I’ve always had to watch my blood sugar and I’ve always been careful about what I eat but in recent years, the amount of actual dessert/candy I eat has gotten mildly out of control and my doctors have told me to watch my sugar and I just...wasn’t able to.

one of my coworkers who is also not-neurotypical and as such knows her shit, told me that this whole “sugar to feel joy” thing is an ADHD symptom. I knew I had ADHD (I’d been diagnosed in high school) but wasn’t being treated for it, but had never been told this was a symptom, and at that point I was like, you know what, fuck this, I can’t get my health under control on my own if I’m not being treated for my mental health as well. I’m talking to my psychiatrist about this.

so I did. enter adderall. and now I wanna talk about it because it’s been FASCINATING and I am all about brain medication when you need it. so here goes!

also I live-tweeted my first 24 hours on adderall because it was SO WILD and I’m so glad I did even though I have three (3) followers, more on that in a minute

(me: I can’t tell if it’s working, it’s supposed to kick in in 30 minutes but--wait I think my brain just went bOOP

coworker: is bOOP good?

me: it’s WEIRD)

the good

Y’ALL THE SUGAR THING WORKED IMMEDIATELY. oh my god I was stunned. absolutely stunned. I still absolutely have a sweet tooth and enjoy eating sweets but I can eat a normal amount, at normal times, and not because I need to feel something. it’s because I want to eat something sweet. I can’t believe in 24 hours I went from complete inability to control myself to just...not having to. brains!! who knew!!!

I focused on an entire conversation the entire time. the entire time. I was even very stressed because my blood sugar was low and I needed to eat, but I was able to put that aside because I knew I could deal with it when the conversation was over! WHAT THE HELL!

since then it hasn’t been that easy because conversations are, quite frankly, often very boring, especially for work. but it’s easier to focus when I need to, and not zone out halfway through or have to do something else in order to focus. or start stressing/thinking about other shit that doesn’t matter. I can listen to what people are saying!!! for an hour! it’s crazy!!!

I wasn’t tired all day! this is also part of the bad. you’ll see.

I feel more in control of my days now, and less like time is speeding by at a rate I don’t and can’t comprehend. I’ve gotten fairly good at planning out and prioritizing my time anyway, but now it’s like...better. and easier.

executive function is online, and as I alluded to, no more self-guilt-tripping if it takes me a minute to get to things. they’ll still get done! it’s okay! if I don’t do something right away I will still do the thing! I have years of experience parceling tasks into small pieces so I do them, but less so with not still getting on my own case about not doing them right away.

if I don’t have music or a podcast playing at all times, I can still focus on work. it’s still pretty nice, it’s just not absolutely necessary. this is throwing me off hardcore but it’s kind of nice to be able to be in silence occasionally.

I can still multitask but if I’m NOT multitasking I don’t feel like I’m going insane, and also, I don’t feel like my brain is hanging by a thread at all times that might break and cause everything to explode.

a tweet I made: “I was researching something and when I got frustrated I kept at it and didn't have to go take a break to do something equally frustrating and pinball back and forth between them until they both got done. I might have just been weaponized? “

it’s true. researching/looking stuff up is one of my skillsets and...I’ve been weaponized.

the bad

my appetite is allll fucked up. we’re adjusting the type of medication I’m on to try and mitigate this but wow it’s an appetite suppressant and wow that’s not okay when you’re hypoglycemic and have to keep your blood sugar up.

my sleep is also fucked up. anxiety keeps me from falling asleep and I’d gotten to a good place re: falling asleep at night. however I was also in a very bad place re: sleeping constantly (sleep apnea? quarantine depression? who knows!). but waking up constantly during the night ain’t the solution, chief. so we’re also adjusting to see if we can do something about that.

regarding that: the first night, I literally just did not get tired. it was very upsetting. if I hadn’t tweeted about it I would’ve had an out and out panic attack, but one of my friends talked me off the ledge, telling me she had the same experience when she first went on it. I was not warned and I wish I had been. I was still able to sleep (she wasn’t, when it happened to her) but hoo boy. no thank you.

pharmacies like to babysit you when you’re on controlled substances. ugh.

more shit to keep track of. ughhhhhhhhhhhh

unfortunately, I had a hard time finding mainstream resources for this stuff online. I’ve read a lot from tumblr and heard from other people’s experiences, but when I went looking for, say, information on adderall & sleep...a lot of it is related to addiction. I had a similar problem with ADHD & sleep: I wanted to know more about whether ADHD can make you really tired like I was, or whether it was just an insomnia type of thing, and there just wasn’t a lot out there. this isn’t really a problem with the drug, but like...it’s a pain when you really want to learn more about something, aren’t in a place to talk to your doctor yet, and are just left to the wind with the mainstream internet assuming you’re abusing a substance.

definitely also felt like I had to lay the groundwork with my doctor...I had been planning to talk to her about this for a while, so I mentioned my ADHD diagnosis early on so I could bring it up at some point and not just out of the blue ask her for meth. this stuff is hard.

(not making a statement of any kind of recreational drug use/addiction, just...I hate the US medical system. a lot. everybody loses.)

so that’s how it’s going! sorry for the long post, but I did want to document this somewhere besides twitter, and maybe some of y’all are interested.

oh also, my other favorite thing that happened is my doctor said to try to keep track of when I take the medication and it wears off, and I literally told her that that would also be a good marker of whether or not it’s doing its job, because in my natural state I literally cannot remember to do that, with anything, ever. and I did! I managed! WILD

anyway end the stigma. ♥️

[fatenumberfor]

@dreamaux​ replied to your post “dreamaux replied to your post “where’s that thread about some...”

i feel your frustration matt with your dad TT and i’m still very much in the learning phase too! about the laws thing — i think the big thing w police/prison abolition is that we need to rethink not just how legality (and the designation of “crime”) has always been conditional, but also how we see “enforcement of laws” as even protecting.... anyone! esp in pertaining to survivors of rape

law enforcement and prison have never been about stopping or lessening societal harm, while police+prison abolition focuses on actual community rehabilitation, accountability, and welfare, which would actually mitigate harm from the start and stop the cycle of retraumutization for survivors

even the pro-law enforcement argument about “what about the bad few” fails to account for how the current system doesn’t rehabilitate anyone or prevent “the bad few” from existing in the first place. help tldr; you’re totally right in that white supremacy/capitalism needs to be upended because it’s capitalism’s failure to address societal ills that fosters a never-ending cycle of violence rather than mitigating anything

ofc you already know angela davis for suggested readings! @/queersocialism on twitter’s article is a really good current articulation https://www.hamptonthink.org/read/understanding-the-role-of-police-towards-abolitionism-on-black-death-as-an-american-necessity-abolition-non-violence-and-whiteness

also idk if you’ve seen this doc making the rounds but it is helpful as a guide and resource! https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1kwDGZFH2-jFr4xZ2ynxQkihYwIVh_uZlp1-Q73uXzso/mobilebasic

yes to all of this! I was ready as hell to detail how police neither validate nor alleviate victims’ traumas, while either coddling (cos they’re 1 of their abuser or white supremacist own) or literally pushing aside the responsibility of redressing the societal issue by simply incarcerating the perpetrator. but I think my dad knows all this already- like that’s why he was like “defund and disband ALL police right now because these current ones don’t do jack SHIT to help us”

instead, the example he gave to justify having a New set of police “from scratch” was: “who, if not people in a community whose job is to enforce laws, would keep speeders in check on a road with a speed limit?” like, people who joyride cos they got a need for speed. my first reaction to this specific example was that I think it matters what comes after the hypothetical New Police stop the speeder from speeding. I spent a bit explaining that the whole ticket + court process is plain classist, and jail/prison literally uproots people from their communities to isolate them + worsen their physical + mental health, etc. so punitive systems of law enforcement don’t work (I hope that I made that point w/ my dad lol).

however if we assume that the New Police prioritise community care + accountability, would they simply remind the speeder that their speeding could directly harm or even kill others in their community? if people call in violators instead of punishing them right there, does the community need to designate people specifically to enforce the laws at all? I think the prerequisite for this, though, is trust + a social safety net in your community to even have these non-punitive conversations. his follow up question was: “what if the speeder just shows that they don’t care?” that might be what’s holding my dad up- given his affinity for surveillance, I got a feeling that he doesn’t trust anybody with anything lmfao. that’s definitely a conversation that I’m incrementally having w/ him

traffic safety prob constitutes a small fraction of “public safety”, but speed limits seem like rules instated to keep everyone safe, like genuinely? maybe speed limits got a history that I don’t know about. but, as most know, it’s the enforcement of traffic laws that is undeniably racist + oppressive: police disproportionately pull over, intimidate, + charge BIPOC for traffic safety violations. and I really think that as long as white supremacy exists, then any New Police From Scratch can still suppress + oppress. which is why my rebuttal to my dad was more like “why get anyone to enforce laws at all?” and I guess my question of, “what would it take for a community to not need anyone to enforce laws?” is a whole world-building conversation that probably requires more transformative justice readings for me lol

but ANYWAY

thank you for this article + the readings doc! i’ve always liked queersocialism’s tweets (even though sometimes they can be jargon soup) + now I can follow them as an author

[ryouverua]

Trial 6 -  ”hello, world!” (6)

Time to pick up the fallen torch.

Trial: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

K.... K1-b0? This - this must be you, right?

I’ve been waiting for this moment since the beginning of the chapter 3 trial! Finally, the explanation I’ve been craving! If - if the inner voice is coming into play now - it might actually be a benevolent force, right? Maybe? At this point we just need something to keep us moving forward...

Yes!!!

..... Oops.

“And please choose the right answer this time.”

Okay okay, jeez -

K1... K1-b0? W-Why not - ?

...... remedy the situation. Not save... but fix...???

Voices??? It’s plural now? Does that include me, the player?

K1-b0! Your moment has finally come, with no more lasers or explosions required! hopefully

WAIT

WE’RE OFFICIALLY IN HIS POV NOW???

This is incredibly late game for a protagonist switch b-but okay! also oh god what does that say about Sweetcheeks’s condition -

I’m glad we haven’t completely lost Shuichi. ): He really does look like he’s not with us, though. How can we help him? I joke about how much I love this sprite, but it’s awful seeing him like this.

But apparently Shuichi’s been relegated to the sidelines entirely now, because K1-b0 is entirely focused on Jun - Tsumugi. Oh boy, I almost started thinking of her as Junko. I will not let her hide behind her characters, damn it!

Yes! Yes, exactly! She can’t have it both ways!

YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO BE ANNOYED YOU APPARENTLY WROTE HIM TO BE THIS WAY!!!

Ooh? Yeah, the text is changing at the bottom...

U U H   I’M SORRY YOU CAN’T JUST DROP A BOMB LIKE THAT SO ABRUPTLY -

TSUMUGI LET HIM HAVE HIS COOL MOMENT

HE LITERALLY JUST GOT HIS MOMENT IN THE SUN DON’T JUST UNDERCUT HIM OUT OF NOWHERE 

no seriously she didn’t even give him a chance to build up momentum

The way she’s able to just dismiss him so casually like that, just completely trivializing him, is absolutely brutal. also what plotline lol -

I-I mean I’m joking, he has had a ‘coming to terms with his status as a robot amongst humans and accepting himself’ plotline! Sorta! It’s just been pretty.... well, behind the scenes. I just wished we got to see more of you and Miu together at the very least.

Wait -

He’s been the actual audience’s surrogate? That.... that means his ahoge....... really is the connection to the outside... but also, the only thing holding him back from going kamikaze??? It’s basically an outside force that’s been suppressing his free will?

Oh shit... is that why the game switched us to this POV, for that reveal? Well-damn-played, DRV3!

.....

wow this is getting worse and worse, huh

ALSO OH NO WAY TO SMASH HIS FRAGILE SELF-ESTEEM INTO PIECES

“You know all those hi~lar~ious asides everyone had at your expense about you being no more important than your average kitchen appliance? Guess what - ! They were r i g h t!”

Somehow I wonder if it would have been better if it was the mastermind’s will. At least it would assign him some sense of importance, even if that stinging feeling of betraying his friends would be there. At least he wouldn’t literally just be the subject of some nameless audiences’ whims - as it is, he’s basically been relegated to the status of ‘plaything’.

From Chapter 3 onward, when I was thinking about it, I wasn’t sure originally if I should consider it a force for good or evil - it seemed to be generally benevolent and since he didn’t take any actions against anyone, it was generally okay for me to discard it as an extension of ‘a mastermind whose goal was for everyone to be at odds with each other/kill each other’. He was always one of the most willing to cooperate with the others, too! I even considered if any of his actions had indirectly caused tension or murder, and I couldn’t find any instances where he did. But if he’s been at the beck and call of a third party, who’s been directing him for the sake of entertainment? Well, that’s a completely different story. In that context... everything makes... a lot more sense...

.... Except for his Chapter 5 actions??? He nearly got Shuichi to take him out twice??

Wait, actually - oh, this does change how I might look at him from this point on. How often would he consult the voice? Do the decisions override his own every time? Does that mean he can only make a move at the behest of the audience????

THE WAY HE PUT IT IS EVEN MORE DEMEANING

fhgh I guess that answers one of my questions

THE GIMMICK....

every production buzzword thrown in makes my stomach drop more

S-Shit the last time he had his ‘short-circuiting’ sprite was when Kokichi did his mastermind reveal in tandem with the ‘outside world’ reveal - D:

A.... Are you trying to make them feel bad for you, because I don’t think it’s working -

omg I just realized there would totally be twitter threads and reddit posts and stuff dedicated to this, and I’m trying to imagine the rage!posts that would swarm them as users ran to the internet to bitch about how ‘the robot totally isn’t responding to us anymore!’ and ‘I bet they’re rigging it so the ending goes the way they want! What a cop out ending!’ and hell, one of those more topical ‘let 👏 us 👏 control 👏 the 👏 robot 👏 you 👏 cowards 👏’

K1-B0 WAS THE CAMERA?!?!

..................................

glances at my computer monitor, then back here

ahahaha I am officially part of the outside world!mastermind tomfoolery oh god I’m so sorry everyone

Wait.... wait. Wait! So the Nanokumas’ footage is for the mastermind’s exclusive use? Really?

I... I was under the impression that if this audience was watching everyone, they’d have access to everything....

Then how different would this all look from only K1-b0′s eyes?! Did he know about Kaito’s training, for example? About Kaede and Shuichi’s practical inseparability in the first chapter? Wow, how different would this entire thing look from K1-b0′s exclusive POV?

I’m sorry what?

okay okay she’s going off on a despair rant which is - y’know, great, you do you and whatever - but I think it just turned my brain off a little bit. Like I just got catapulted back to DR1.

A-Are we really turning back to the whole ‘Junko persona’ idea? That she took on that role specifically, and by taking on the role as ‘Junko Enoshima’ she feels obligated to follow it through to the end? B-But...... but??? For a show??? That’s... no, that can’t be right, that’s weird, that’s stupid, that can’t be right....

You gotta admire her dedication to the craft I-I MEAN NO

WHAT THE HELL TSUMUGI

THAT IS NOT A GOOD ENOUGH MOTIVE

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT KIND OF REASON

SHUT THE FUCK UP KOMAEDA AND DON’T LOOK SO HAPPY ABOUT THIS oh that actually felt pretty good

i say this as someone whose previous favourite was komaeda it was very love/hate don’t @ me

Oh hey, the opening music is on! Is this the big turnabout we’ve been waiting for? It’s.... so.... weird that it’s coming from K1b0 now? Also wasn’t this sort of the plot of the DR3 anime via the Ultimate Animator or -

I??? I guess??? Weren’t they all just screaming DESPAIR at Shuichi a minute ago??? Isn’t it their comments on the screen???

Inspirational and all but -

I’m GoINg to cHOkE anD DiE

ULTIMATE HOPE ROBOT

FJKGHSDKLFJ

WHAT ARE YOU KIDDING ME

oh shit well there’s text saying Hope now so I guess something has changed out there

I believe it’s called déjà vu.

No seriously, am I hallucinating? Is this not what led to the whole final vote in DR1 or am I going crazy? Is this... what is.... happening........???? And Shuichi has just completely BSoDed in the corner??? Like, is he disassociating right now? Where is he?

It’s interesting that she looks happy here compared to angry Junko. She looked excited earlier when K1-b0 challenged her too (her new jazz-hands!sprite, lol) too, and her voice is on the brink of. Uh. I’m just going to say it’s getting very.... passionate. Is she just that confident or...?

Oh hey their sprites mirror each other. Parallels. :D

I like how Tsumugi is having Makoto say this part ~

But this brings up a good question... how exactly is this so-called final battle going to work? If they can’t fight for the right to leave, then what can they do?

alksdfj Himiko and Maki have also been so quiet this so time - I almost forgot they were there. K1-b0 and Tsumugi are basically the only ones doing the talking and between all the cosplays it feels like there are way more people here than there actually are - which is the point, I think? It really adds to that oppressive, ‘everyone is against you four’ atmosphere.

“- DETAILS DETAILS anyway it’s happening I don’t really care, now about that special vote ~”

This -

This is literally DR1?!?!

This.... this is strange. There has to be incentive to vote one way or the other. Is she going to tie ‘vote for K1-b0’ and ‘you’ll be forced into a world where you can’t/shouldn’t exist’ together vs ‘Vote for Tsumugi′ and ‘stay inside forever’? That’s.... what happened in the others, right?

Shuichi, mentally clocked out but occasionally checking back in so he doesn’t miss anything important: Wow this is absolute bullshit

Yeah... there’s no way they weren’t going to find a way to tempt you to vote for K1-b0. Okay, lay it on us.

YOU’RE GOING TO MAKE THEM KEEP GOING?!?!

“Ugh why did I let myself get lured back into the conversation by my bitchin’ ‘Lazy Parallel World’ theme song I’m going to mentally check out again because everything hurts and I want to die -”

There.... there aren’t....??

THAT’S NOT ENCOURAGING omg I missed that catchphrase it always made me laugh

I??? I don’t know if I can trust that??? If you can literally make flashback lights to override their old memories - if you can force it on them, whether they’re willing or not - if you can delete the last 24 hours, you could make them do something again??? T-Though if Tsumugi is gone... but then again, there’s a whole team of people behind this apparently! Her being gone means nothing!

“So you cannot leave this place.” Is it? Is it literally, physically impossible to leave this place? That’s the real question. the impossible is possible all you gotta do is make it so... s o b

HOW EVIL CAN YOU GET

HOW COULD YOU NOT EVEN GIVE THEM A POSSIBILITY OF RETURNING TO THEIR ORIGINAL SELVES

WHY WOULD ANYONE MAKE SOMETHING LIKE THAT WHY WOULD THAT BE OKAY FOR A PUBLICLY TELEVISED TV SHOW

For that matter this whole damn series sounds like a snuff film, if actually people are involved. Dear lord, even if they are actually adults - and I desperately hope that if this is true, that the outside world is actually like this, and watches this for fun, then they have a ‘18+’ rule for auditions (actually considering the love hotel exists they must be at least 18 ggh) - even the survivors.... have been killed, in a sense. Their previous selves have been killed. They were dead the moment they entered the world...

So either 16 people consented to ‘dying’ in an existential sense as well as possibly a physical sense, or 16 people were kidnapped and ‘killed’ for the entertainment of the world. I.... I actually... do at least believe, no matter what, that there is a depraved audience viewing this from somewhere. There’s no way there isn’t - this feedback via comments, the scene with that kid Makoto watching this at the beginning of this chapter - those are true. And they were more than okay with the idea of these people dying for their entertainment, even the so-called winners.

You can only create new identities, not recover them... I, I dunno. Somehow that’s so much more soul-crushing than a lot of the other things that have come up this trial.

t-the way his voice is breaking skdlfjgh -

W HA T!?

WHAT THE FU -

WHY?! WHY?! WHY MUST IT ONLY BE TWO, EVERY TIME?! WHY HAVE YOU BEEN SO DETERMINED TO ONLY HAVE TWO PEOPLE SURVIVE TO THE END?!

H.... How the hell.... are they supposed to do that?! Is that how you’re doing it?! Putting the burden of the decision on them, in order to break them?!

H-HE LITERALLY SOUNDS LIKE HE’S GOING TO BREAK DOWN SOBBING ANY SECOND I CAN’T TAKE MUCH MORE OF THIS

She is really trying to push that point, huh... but there it is. They can escape to the ‘outside world’. That is a cold comfort at this point, but...

They...... I don’t. I don’t know. I wouldn’t be able to do this - look my classmates in the eyes and condemn them. I guess this somehow managed to be worse than DR1.

K1-B0 NO

fml of course the only potential option would be students choosing self-sacrifice

I... I’m glad Shuichi is showing concern. I’ve noticed it a few times, how finally in the last chapter or so that he’s been observant of K1-b0′s well-being where the others haven’t been.

But I’m getting distracted - that’s not the point! FML I know he’s been shown those extremist tendencies towards the vague ideal of hope and destroying the despair, I - between this and the ‘destroying the school’ rampage he went on - what is he aiming for? You’re saying that you’re trying to defeat despair, but what is that? Is hope just the opposite of despair? Is despair just whatever Tsumugi says it is, so we’re immediately opposed to it, as the representatives of hope? Are you fighting for them to escape? Why is everyone surviving together ‘living despairful lives’ if Tsumugi is gone and they aren’t trying to kill each other anymore? What makes it that way? Why is this considered ‘defeating despair’? What does that even mean?

I... I guess K1-b0 would be punished anyway if they voted for him, but.... still....

Ugh, I get it. I get that kibou is hope, and that K1-b0 is therefore hope, and that we’re fighting for him to win or... something.... uhghghgh

DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE SHUICHI

This was such an uncomfortable parade of ~ideal waifus~ sdlkfjsdf especially when we were getting into the ‘super tiny/cute’ territory because I have absolutely no interest in that whatsoever also I accidentally deleted Mahiru’s cameo sorry -

.... I wonder if this would’ve been more effective if I was the target audience for this? Either way, ending on Junko was still an offsetting choice, right? Right??

..........

Wait for that matter, who was this aimed for? Who out of Maki, Himiko or Shuichi would have fallen for that? Even if you believe that Maki or Himiko have an interest in women, nothing about the types they showed or may have shown interest in the game (Maki @  Kaito, Himiko @ Angie, Tenko and hell, even Kokichi) would lend them to the girls Tsumugi just cosplayed as? And even Shuichi’s strongest interest were in Kaede and Kaito - so who is Tsumugi trying to appeal to here?!

Oh shit we’re going into a mass panic debate! Okay, okay okay - !

.... Oh. Oh boy, I have to shoot down every mention of despair. Uh, okay -

OMFG I missed the screenshot but Monokuma started shilling their merch and their website I cannot even deal with how they’ll occasionally devolve into corporate shilling it’s so good -

But!!! We’ve got better things to do than get caught up in Monokuma’s commercializing of the class trial!

MAKI

NO MAKI WHY

ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE UP FOR LAST CHAPTER IS THAT WHAT’S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW

omg

are you telling me

you’re not even doing this out of guilt

it

it’s spite

you’re doing this out of spite

you’re sacrificing yourself purely ou t of spite

MAKI HOW MANY TIMES ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE

“FOR FUCK’S SAKE MAKI, AGAIN??? AGAIN?!?!?!”

“LET ME KILL SOMEONE SAIHARA IT’S MY DAMN TALENT FFS -”

DOES THIS SCREENSHOT SAY ‘SHUICHI LOOKS YUMMY <3′ YOU’RE RUINING THE MOMENT

okay I’m not going to feel right until I write down the new set of comments

Makiiii

my darling assassin T_T

Hope lives on!

Shuichi looks yummy <3

Well said!

Another hope loop?

Hope is contagious!

Two steps forward...

Don’t lose to despair!

Don’t tempt Maki’s fate...

That’s my Maki.

Hope must go on!

Maki, darling...

;_; I’m gonna cry...

Hope vs despair!

one vote for Keebo!

tfw you’re in despair

ALL OF THESE TEARS

Assassiiiiiiiin

I am living for these comments and I would have killed to see the comments for the Chapter 5 trial - hell, the Chapter 4 trial. that’s what let’s plays and YT comments are for I suppose -

tbh I think if that one that keeps lusting after Shuichi comes to help we’re going to need a restraining order

o

o-oh?!

AAAAAAH

NO DON’T

MAKE ME FIGHT HIM

MY ACTUAL SOUL BRO

is............... Is that -

Clair de Lune playing......?!

[sharedheadspace]

a copy/paste of [this] twitter thread on the fawning response to abuse, found through [this] tumblr post encouraging clicking through to read the whole thing

because when i come back to this i know im not going to be in the brainspace to bother clicking through, and nobody wants to fucking read eight thousand twitter screenshots. ever

[bolding added by me, in pieces i know im going to want to look at]

I want to share what has been, in the last year or so, one of the most important things I've realized about my own trauma history — something that has been massively important for my own healing.

Let's talk about the link between people-pleasers and emotional abuse.

Confession: I am a people-pleaser. It took me a long time to realize this, though. Because I'm opinionated! And I speak my mind! I'm an "open book" about a lot of what I've been through. Clearly I don't care what people think... right?

But people-pleasing is a lot more complex than that. It's actually part of a trauma response. Most people know about fight, flight, and freeze — but another response, "fawn," is at the core of what people-pleasing is actually about.

To avoid conflict, negative emotions, and retraumatization, people who "fawn" when triggered will go out of their way to mirror someone's opinions and appease them in order to deescalate situations (or potential issues).

For me, this meant that the more invested I was in an emotional connection, the less likely I was to criticize that person, vocalize when my boundaries were crossed, express unhappiness with their behavior, or share anything that I felt might damage that relationship.

This could come across as being excessively nice and complimentary, overly-concerned with another person's happiness, and waiting for cues in conversation to determine if something was "safe" to share or disclose. People-pleasers are often considered "emotional chameleons."

People-pleasers are often really warm, encouraging, and generous people. They tend to overextend themselves and say "yes" to everything and everyone, eager to make those they care about happy and comfortable.

They often grow up in very controlling and chaotic environments, and internalized the idea that if they were perfectly good or well-behaved, they could minimize conflict and secure love and attachment. 

And. When you have this tendency to defer, make yourself subordinate, try to become smaller, ignore your boundaries and intuition, and minimize your own needs... you are profoundly vulnerable to emotional abuse.

When you are excessively concerned with pleasing others, you learn that in order to be effective at this, you have to shut down your gut instincts, your values, your emotions — bc being an individual, rather than a mirror, doesn't serve you in securing the love that you want.

People-pleasers can become drawn to abusive relationships, and repelled from relationships that are abundantly loving — because love has to feel "earned" in order to feel secure. In other words? If love is given too freely or easily, it doesn't feel safe.

This means people-pleasers can be drawn to relationships that are controlling (they feel safest when they defer to others), emotionally-withholding (they are driven by the need to "secure" affection/elated when they do), and even abusive (their lack of boundaries is exploited).

Another part of being vulnerable to abuse is that people-pleasers are so easily gaslit, because when they are inclined to suppress their own instincts, values, and beliefs, they're infinitely more likely to defer to an abuser's version of events or narrative.

This also means that "fawn" types often go through cycles of restricting emotionally (I can't be "too much" for others) & then purging emotionally ("unloading" onto a trusted person bc the expectation to be perfect gets to be too much).

(I think this is why so many of us have eating disorders — just an anecdotal observation, but I digress...)

People-pleasers (the "fawn" trauma response) isn't intended to manipulate others and it's not meant to be dishonest. Every single person presents a version of themselves to others. This merely describes how trauma informs that presentation on an often unconscious level.

The "fawn" response is driven by fear, not a hidden agenda. The "fawn" type is less about manipulation, because it's not being used to *overpower* someone. Instead, it's an excessive *relinquishing* of personal power, driven by fear and a desire for validation.

For example, someone who runs personal errands for their boss — despite it not being part of their job description — is not manipulating their boss into liking them. (It won't work anyway.) Their boss, testing those thin boundaries, is exploiting their need for approval.

In more intimate relationships, this can show up as "fawn" types gravitating towards hot/cold dynamics, where affection and love are offered unpredictably.

This is where the emotional abuse piece comes into play. You have someone who is controlling, who feels safest in relationships where they call the shots, and most loved when someone is actively seeking out their approval. Enter: The "fawn" type.

An abuser will offer validation only to keep the fawn type tethered. But they'll withdraw that it before things feel secure, to ensure that the pleaser will continue going out of their way to "fawn" — continually giving over their power and autonomy so the abuse can continue.

I'm sharing this because, holy shit, my friends, the number of traumatic relationships I've thrown myself into — professionally, personally, romantically — to get stuck in this cycle, with my self-esteem pulverized, has made my heart so heavy.

It took stepping away from a friendship that had so thoroughly gaslit and demolished me — while plummeting into the deep depths of anorexia — before I realized that chasing controlling, emotionally unavailable, even abusive people was crushing my spirit.

I'm not going to leave you hanging, though. If you're reading this and say, "Holy shit... it me. Oh god. What do I do?" I'm here. I've got some advice, some books, some resources. Hang tight. For starters, I'm going to ask you something: Which of your friends do you cancel on?

Personal experience: I had this tendency to bail on friends, partners, acquaintances, whoever, that were the most generous, warm, and emotionally-available. I avoided those relationships where love was free and easy. Because it didn't feel "earned," so I didn't feel "worthy."

Which isn't to say that everyone with this trauma response does this, BUT, we seek out the familiar. Which means many of us tend to avoid what feels unsafe. For people-pleasers, we're so used to working endlessly hard in relationships — it's disorienting when we aren't asked to.

I made a google doc (no, I seriously did) where I listed out people who were "way too nice to me." And then I asked myself, do I like this person? Do I enjoy their company? If I did, I sent them a text message and told them I wanted to commit to spending more time with them.

I was completely honest about my process with those folks, too. I said, "Listen, I get really scared when people are nice to me. You've always been SO nice to me, and I get afraid of disappointing you. But I want to change that, because I just enjoy your company so very much."

In my phone contacts, I put emojis by their names. I put strawberries next to people who were super loving. I put seedling emojis by folks who taught me things that made me think/grow. So when I saw a text from them, it reminded me that I should prioritize that message. [seedling emoji] [strawberry emoji]

And? My life completely changed... in every imaginable way.

My "strawberry emoji people" went from being acquaintances/friendly to becoming chosen family that I literally could not imagine my life without. With the help of some amazing therapy, I grew to love myself so much — because that love was being modeled for me in a healthy way.

I'm going into a partial hospitalization program for my anorexia in the next couple weeks (because I've taken it out on my body as much as I have my mind), and my strawberry people (who are now all in a group text together) have been there every step of the way.

Resources! I genuinely believe that every single person should be reading Pete Walker's book about complex trauma. "Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A Guide and Map for Recovering from Childhood Trauma." It's really damn good. It talks about fawn types in more detail!

Most of all though, I just want to validate the hell out of you. [heart emoji] I understand the very hellish cycle that we find ourselves in when we're consumed by this idea that we need to be "exactly enough," and that, if we measure it out correctly, we'll never hurt or be hurt again.

But relationships involve putting ourselves in harm's way sometimes. What they shouldn't involve, though, is self-harm — and ultimately, that's what "fawning" does. We're harming ourselves. We're making ourselves smaller, we're self-silencing, and we're punishing ourselves.

You are allowed to have ALL the feelings. You are allowed to take up ALL the space. You're allowed to be everything that you are & then some. The right people — your people — will love you even more when they see how expansive your life becomes when you give yourself that space.

It doesn't happen overnight. It's a process! But I want you to know that it's a process you can begin at any time. It's never too late to give yourself permission to be, to show up more authentically, and to find those who will celebrate you for it. I promise you that.

[lancecharleson]

As if I’m not already scared for the future of the internet enough.

As if I’m not already losing enough sleep over the upcoming Article 13 threatening the lives of content creators everywhere in europe, I only find out JUST LAST NIGHT that the reason tumblr staff have been cracking down on adult content and forcing EN ES EF DOUBLE-U artists to disperse to multiple sites on the internet, is because of a set of US based bills called SESTA and FOSTA thanks to this twitter thread I came across while looking through my timeline.

What to they have to do with Article 13 or tumblr’s rampant crackdown?

Let me explain for those who aren’t in the know, what are these bills exactly?

Their acronyms stand for Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act. These bills where passed on the false pretence and lies that it would make sex trafficking illegal and protect victims of sexual misconduct, even democrats opted for these bills with good but misguided intentions of “protecting the children.”  Here’s the truth however; SESTA and FOSTA does NEITHER of those things.

So what do these bills really do? Make it so that ANY website advertising third-party content related to sex work or having any kind of sexual content for that matter, will be sued. 

Basically, not only are American NSFW artists and porn directors/ actors under threat of erasure from these new bills, but Sex Workers, Sex Educators and LGBTQIA people will now be under EVEN WORSE threat of violence AND criminalisation now that the US government has presented them with a set of bills designed to remove them from the only safe place they had left from this unforgiving world of puritans, non-sex worker civvies who are antsy about talking about sex publicly and SWERFS/TERFS; The free and open World Wide Web.

This bill was passed back in April with the communities deeply implicated as mentioned above, being the only ones speaking up about this relentlessly for months, only to be met with silence and absolutely no one else sharing this with other non-sex worker people who advocate for Net Neutrality.

If you’re mad about NSFW content being purged from this site or your posts being flagged for no real reason other than the poorly designed filter, be mad at these bills and how they threaten the lives of millions. Because those are the conditions to how Verizon ushering forth the tumblr apocalypse really came around.

After the the bills passed in April, many sex work sites where purged from the internet, and now with Facebook and tumblr following suit, I fear that twitter will be the next place that starts cracking down on adult content in order to abide by the new laws instated by SESTA/FOSTA, whose laws will come into full effect NEXT MONTH. 

Not only will NSFW content creators be eventually shit out of luck trying to find new places on the internet to share their work anywhere, but sex workers, educators and LGBTQIA people will be DOOMED. Because any site they go to in order to continue their adult careers, which happen to have a US presence, will be pressured and under threat of lawsuit unless the site’s owners start feverishly disallowing adult content on their platform.

I’m actually both angry and upset at myself for not catching news about these bills anywhere on here or my twitter timeline, even more so that I didn’t hear NSFW content creators make any mention of how this implicates them or how this will hurts Sex Workers the most. If I did, I would’ve been sharing this info like wildfire.

Worst part is that some European countries have already adopted, or are thinking of adopting, laws similar to this like Sweden’s “Nordic Model” and now the UK is considering their own similar laws without even looking at the consequences already happening.

I wish there was something I could do to help stop this, but there IS something you American peeps can do to prevent these bills from going into full effect next month. Even if you found out way too late, it’s not too late to start pestering and begging your elected representatives not to let these bills take full control of the internet and have them repealed fast.

I defiantly don’t want to spend the rest of my Christmas worrying and losing sleep over how bad this suppression of sexual expression will be for everyone across the world, while all these puritan, SWERF and TERF fuckscoffs party it up while clinking champagne glasses on top of the graves of REAL HUMAN BEINGS. 

Migrating to other social media platforms is not going to be any better. Protesting tumblr’s new policies by logging off for 24 hours isn’t going to get Verizon or staff to reconsider their decisions. 

Your only options left (to my knowledge anyway) to prevent this false purification of the internet is call your representatives and demand that they have SESTA and FOSTA repealed immediately, ask your folks if you’re not old enough to call, or look up SESTA and FOSTA to learn more about how this will harm Sex Workers/educators and LGBTQIA people in the long term and search for ways to prevent the bills from taking full effect. Hell, speak up about this loudly and noisily on every social media site you’re on.

I don’t care what you do, just DO IT BEFORE NEXT MONTH HAPPENS. SESTA and FOSTA and bills like this absolutely must be opposed just as much as Article 13 and anti-Net Neutrality advocates if we really want the internet to be a free and safe place for everyone.

TL;DR: Sexual expression of anykind on the internet will be fucked over unless SESTA and FOSTA are repealed before next month.

[cyarsk52-20]

31m ago

View on Twitter

Yup they can miss me with being pro-black when we know who will get harmed first.

Hey TikTok Influencers: You Can’t Be Pro-Black and Anti-Voting

The speed at which TikTok “influencers” & social justice warriors, movie reviewers, and makeup artists reflexively and in unison turned Anti

MEDIUM

Hey TikTok Influencers: You Can’t Be Pro-Black and Anti-Voting

Myron Clifton

The speed at which TikTok “influencers” & social justice warriors, movie reviewers, and makeup artists reflexively and in unison turned Anti-Biden saying they won’t vote, then started repeating Russian propaganda is making me rethink laughing at the gop for wanting to ban TikTok.

So many of them have posts calling out white supremacy, advocating for Black folk, indigenous folk, and the lgbtqi community… but the war between Israel and Hamas is their “launch point” for harmful anti-Biden rhetoric.

Pro Tip: You can’t be pro-Black and Anti-Voting. Anti-Voting cancels any and all advocacy.

Anti-Voting specifically harms Black people and Black communities. It harms our seniors, children, schools, healthcare, and finances.

Anti-Voting is a targeted attack on Black people. It is digital voter suppression and gerrymandering.

And of course Anti-Voting is anti-lgbtqi, anti-indigenous, anti-immigrant, and in this environment anti-Jewish and anti-Palestinian.

It’s anti-woman and it is anti-social media. That’s how dumb those calling for not voting are. They’re advocating for their own silencing.

Like Twitter and Facebook, TikTok has national and global reach. But unlike Twitter and Facebook, TikTok has extremely large accounts run by everyday folk who have followers that number in the hundreds of thousands.

The Biden administration demands that TikTok be sold, or risk a nationwide ban

TikTok officials say they are "disappointed in the outcome," but will remain focused on implementing a plan to keep the…

Your little Twitter following of 5k, 10k, 20k, 50k or hell, 200k, are nothing compared to what you’ll see on TikTok from a person who does makeup tutorials, cooks, organizes refrigerators, or talk over videos made by other creators. Their total views and comments are often in the millions.

A TikToc influencer will have 400k-1m followers. A look at their content shows that it is all basic stuff that would equal 20–40k on Twitter and even fewer followers on Threads, Spoutible, or Facebook.

But now those shockingly large accounts have been weaponized against democrats, democracy, President Biden, and, by extension, Black people.

Just in the time for the 2024 election.

The Chinese owned company, notoriously “fickle” when it comes to minimizing views and content monetization of Black creators, suddenly has no problem pushing anti-voting messages all users, but especially to Black users.

What is new isn’t new.

Just like at Twitter when notorious racist Elon Musk took over, or at Facebook when Mark Zuckerberg allowed foreign and domestic voter suppression groups to target Black voters, what we are seeing isn’t new, unique, or particularly creative. The tactics are as old as gerrymandering, voter suppression, poll taxes, voter intimidation, and other American-born efforts designed to prevent Black people from voting.

And yet, I don’t think people should flee from TikTok. Knowledgeable users have to counter the anti-voting propaganda.

And quickly.

We saw what Facebook did in 2016 & 2020 with surgical targeting of Black voters, led by Russia, Steve Bannon, Trump, and Cambridge Analytica. They worked twenty-four hours a day to depress and siphon Black male voters — with some success.

miro.medium.com

We have a year until the 2024 election. But we don’t have a year to counter the anti-Biden and anti-voting, anti-democratic party, and the anti-democracy movement that’s rapidly growing on TikTok.

The latest attack on Black voters from TikTok surfaced after Hamas attacked Israel and Israel responded.

The misinformation, old videos, and planted disinformation of course made its way to the Chinese-owned fast growing social media site. Influencers who built large following by joining with Black people to call out racism — including by the TikTok app — and social injustice.

As soon as the war started they pivoted with alarming quickness to condemning President Biden and advocating not voting for him/not voting.

They’ve turned their advocacy for Black people to advocacy against Black people voting.

miro.medium.com

These influencers apparently aren’t worried about Trump saying he will immediately implement a ban on Muslims, extend the war against Palestine, Iran, Syria, and block any Palestinians from coming to America.

They aren’t worried about regaining the Senate, retaining the House, installing more judges, or the next Supreme Court appointments. They aren’t worried about women’s right to an abortion, public school funding, more student debt eliminated, or stopping Russia from expanding its war beyond Ukraine. They do not care about healthcare, unions, the environment, sanity at the border, or fairness in the tax code.

No, they think that the people who should be punished for the Israel versus Hamas war are… Black Americans.

Sorry World, Black Americans aren’t your Saviors

The most recent Middle East killing show/war/genocide/conflict/resistence/sovereign exercise of defense — whatever you…

TikTok influencers are good at making entertaining videos on a wide range of topics, of creating new dances, and launching musical sounds. They help writers and authors, showcase small brands and small creators, and they provide a space for people to creatively interact, teach, make laugh, and clarify on short videos.

That is the strength of the app. But if that strength is now being weaponized against Black voters leading many to call for the banning of the app. The influence the Chinese government on the app and thus on US elections is a growing concern that is showing itself even more so than it had during the last election.

People who have no real interest in Black lives, who have no knowledge or care of the centuries of work our ancestors and families undertook to gain the right to vote, to be able to vote in safety, and to have our votes counted equally with white votes, should never be listened to when they tell us not to vote.

The influencers do not care about the harm we will endure with another republican president — Trump or any other republican.

All they care about are views, clicks, and sponsorships.

What we care about is the health and wellbeing of our lives, the lives of our family and friends, and about the protection of democracy.

The Biden-Harris Record | The White House

President Biden and Vice President Harris ran for office on the promise to move quickly to deliver results for working…

Sent from my iPhone

[teeky185]

Matt Bevin has horrified opponents and allies alike with a slew of ‘extreme pardons’ that also disproportionately benefited white offendersIn May 2014, Patrick Baker and two accomplices set out to rob a house in Knox county, Kentucky. Baker knew the hardest part of the home invasion would be getting past the front door, so he devised a plan to dress up as police officers conducting a routine investigation.Once inside the Mills family home, Baker revealed his true colours. He tied up the mother of the family, ignoring the pleas of the three children present, stole money and objects, then turned a gun on the father, Donald Mills, shooting him dead.When Judge David Williams sentenced Baker in December 2017 to 19 years in prison for reckless homicide, burglary and impersonating a police officer, he said he would have given a longer punishment if he could. “I’ve been practicing law for 30-something years, and I’ve never seen a more compelling or complete case, the evidence was just overwhelming.”Fast-forward just two years and Patrick Baker is a free man, released by Kentucky’s outgoing governor in act that has been dubbed “extreme pardon”. The brutal killing is just one of the extraordinary elements of the eleventh-hour move by Matt Bevin, a Republican in the Donald Trump mould who even by his own controversial record has astonished and angered his state with his pardons.It was the final manoeuvre of a governor who was elected in 2016 on Trump’s coat-tails, making Kentucky the last southern state in America to turn Republican, only to be voted out of office last month. What motivated a politician who has spent the past three years waging bitter wars with teachers, trade unionists, voters, liberals, scientists and reproductive rights advocates suddenly display such profuse mercy towards prisoners has become the talk of Kentucky.Even his own previously loyal Republican peers have expressed bewilderment. The top Republican in the state senate has called for an investigation of Bevin’s “extreme pardons and commutations”.Mitch McConnell, the US senator from Kentucky better known as the Republican trying to stymie Trump’s impeachment trial in Congress, has denounced the release of “heinous criminals” in his home state as “inappropriate”.Speculation of what drove Bevin to his action initially focused on money, after the Louisville-based Courier Journal discovered that the family of Patrick Baker had donated $21,500 to Bevin’s political campaign funds before the commutation. Suspicion of pecuniary incentives then turned to moral outrage of a different sort after Bevin tried to explain on local radio why he had pardoned Micah Shoettle after only 18 months of his 23-year sentence for rape.“There was zero evidence,” Bevin told the radio host, adding that the girl’s hymen had been intact.That provoked a whole new chorus of indignation, including from paediatricians who pointed out that rape cannot be proved or disproved by examination of the hymen.That was just the start of it. As intrepid local journalists began to dig into the mountain of pardoned cases, other apparent horrors emerged.They included further sexual offenders. Dayton Jones, who Bevin set free after three years of a 15-year sentence, had pleaded guilty to raping a boy aged 15 whose bowel he ruptured with a sex toy. Charles Phelps had his name removed from the sex offender registry by Bevin having pleaded guilty in 2013 to child abuse images offences and sexual conduct with minors.The gruesome details of the violent crimes committed by some of those selected for commutation did not stop there. Delmar Partin was convicted of beheading a female co-worker and hiding her mutilated body in a barrel; Irvin Edge had hired a hitman to murder his business partner at home in front of his family; Blake Walker had killed his own parents.Most of the lucky 428 singled out by Bevin were non-violent. When the Courier Journal came to analyse the beneficiaries of his largesse, the paper found that 336 of them were on non-violent drug sentences.But therein lay another discrepancy. Within that group, 95% were white. That’s in a state in which 20% of inmates on drug convictions are African American or from some other minority community.The newspaper calculated there were almost 1,000 black or other minority prisoners who would have qualified for Bevin’s largesse. He chose 16.On one level, there is something fitting about the storm of controversy in which Bevin has finished his governorship given that disputes seemed to follow him around throughout his term in office. At the height of a recent measles epidemic, he let it be known that he had exposed each of his nine children to a neighbor’s chickenpox so that they would contract the disease as an alternative to getting vaccinated.“They were miserable for a few days, and they all turned out fine,” he said, while telling the federal government to get its nose out of people’s private business. That anti-vaxxer sentiment expressed by Kentucky’s then governor earned him a riposte from a leading paediatrician who remarked: “We’re no longer living in the 17th century”.Earlier this year, when Kentucky schools were closed to protect children from the -20F (-29C) wind chills, Bevin publicly complained: “C’mon now. I mean, what happened to America? We’re getting soft.”On policy, he followed the classic Trump textbook, ramming through “right-to-work” laws that prevent trade unions gathering fees as a condition of employment, denouncing teachers on strike for exposing kids in their charge to sexual abuse and physical danger, supporting efforts to suppress the vote among minority communities, limiting access to Medicaid and banning abortion at 20 weeks.The toxic combination earned him Trump’s adoration – the US president unsuccessfully campaigned on Bevin’s behalf in the recent gubernatorial race – but it also gained him the mantle of one of the most unpopular governors in the US.Last week Bevin posted a long screed on Twitter in which he sought to explain his pardons. He began by evoking the spirit of redemption and second chances, and the ambition to help offenders seek rehabilitation.He went on to insist that during his years as governor he had invested hundreds of hours to reviewing petitions for pardon. “Contrary to that which has been falsely stated by many, not a single person was released who had not already been scheduled for a specific release date,” he said.He denied any financial motive, calling any such suggestion “highly offensive and entirely false”.The Twitter thread does not appear to have satisfied his detractors, or calmed the widespread shock at a Republican’s last-minute flurry of pardons. The sister of the murdered home owner, Donald Mills, was blunt after she learnt that Patrick Baker was now out.“Matt Bevin can rot in hell,” she said.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2Q8ljzp