#I was thinking about a post that posited cas is more effective as a leader LATER precisely because he’s learned kindness

[shallowrambles]

Cas really did fall into the arms of the first person to show him kindness after The Great Fall.

It was the only time he let himself be soft and vulnerable and genuinely enjoy scraps of affection with a mirrored soft smile and: “More of this, I hope.”

He let go of his angelic asceticism and let himself feel.

It was so cruel.

I mean it must really fuck with his head … how basking in affection leads to death or punishment … in one way or another.

….

[scripttorture]

I have a question about torture and organizations. Can a political movement (rebellion in this case) with a history of using torture succeed in eliminating its use of torture? In my story a member of the rebellion learns that some others (on the leader's orders?) have been torturing people. Appalled, this person decides to split off and form a rival faction, bringing with them other rebels who disapprove of torture... (organizations ask 1/3)

Is it likely that this faction would be able to succeed (replace the original faction and continue not torturing people)? How likely is this? What factors would impact the likelihood? Mostly I'm focusing on the contrast between one organization torturing and the other not torturing, e.g., I can see how locals might be skeptical of the second organization because they're on the same "side" as the torturers. (organizations ask 2/3 -- I think I might've accidentally numbered the first one 2/3, aah)  The organization uses torture for mainly punishment (which might include trying to get people to make false confessions) and intimidation (as well as in some cases in attempts to force compliance, like making people supply them with food and materials or making people give them information; this last is the rarest... oops, I just realized that's all of the purposes in the UN definition). (I have read a lot of your posts and I know torture doesn't work.) Thank you!! :) (organizations ask 3/3)

-

Anon you are delightful.

 Rejali spends an awful lot of time discussing the various arguments on whether torture can be eradicated and how that could be practically done. There aren’t a lot of definite answers but I can give a summary of the kinds of factors that we think are important and describe things your characters could practically do.

 I think it’s worth stressing from the start that no country has completely eradicated torture. As a result we don’t know for certain what… works. Or at least not what works completely and permanently.

 I don’t think this means getting rid of torture is impossible. Neither does Rejali. Rejali argues (convincingly in my opinion) that torture has changed so drastically in the modern era because of concerted efforts to wipe it out. Part of that change has been an almost complete eradication of some torture techniques. As a general rule people are no longer broken on the wheel, hanged drawn and quartered or have their flesh torn off with red hot pincers. We have already completely transformed both torture and public attitudes to it.

 And that implies that we can get it rid of it.

 It’s likely that torture is less common now then it was historically but this is hard to prove. Most historical records don’t provide a clear indication of every single person who was questioned, arrested or tried, let alone who was tortured or how.

 It’s also hard to prove exactly how much a particular factor reduces torture. The fact torture is illegal and that victims may not report what happened to them make it difficult to measure how often it occurs. We rely on estimates based on the reporting we have, which is likely to give a lower figure then the real number of cases. (Because we know from more thorough studies on other crimes that there is always a proportion that goes unreported and it is likely this proportion will be higher when the victim could face repercussions for reporting the crime. As is often the case with torture.)

 So what seems to help? I’ll start by talking about the factors we’re aware of that can reduce torture and then I’ll try to talk about how you might be able to apply them to the revolutionary organisation in your story.

 It might sound obvious but making torture illegal is usually a necessary first step.

 A change in the law in and of itself does not really do much. Especially not overnight. It’s about beginning to build a framework where reporting can happen and where people are actively looking for evidence of torture.

 The next steps are well building up that framework. Independent oversight is one of the biggest things.

 Here are a couple of things that can mean:

Anonymous reporting

Independent inspections

Regular unscheduled inspections

Independent medical reports and autopsies

Treating reports of torture seriously

Thorough investigation of all reports

Prosecution of torturers where there is sufficient evidence

Sentencing that fits the gravity of the crime*

Suspension of individuals accused of torture

 I tend to think of those factors as things that are sort of outside the organisation. Because ideally they’re coming from outside the organisation.

 Note that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re outside the system entirely. Using a comparison if you’re trying to stop police torture then the people handling reports, investigations etc could still be government employees but they should not be police. When the people in charge of torture investigations rely on the people they’re investigating for their jobs and wages… you get problems.

 There are also important factors within the organisation. Which are about building an organisation where torture is less likely to occur (whereas the factors outside the organisation are about rooting it out when it’s found.)

 A lot of these things basically boil down to building a positive working environment:

High quality training for all personnel

Regular refresher training with updates to training as appropriate

Appropriate staffing levels (ie there should always be enough people to easily run the organisation)

No one is forced to work overtime

Generous holiday allowance and sick pay

Consistent effort to structure and manage things to reduce stress in the workplace

Reasonable, achievable goals for staff

Appropriate, well supplied facilities

Thorough record keeping for staff and anyone they are responsible for

Avoidance of shifts that disrupt sleep as much as possible

 Torture is much, much less likely when staff are correctly trained, supported and given the resources necessary to do their jobs.

 There are also a handful of things that would probably help and fall into neither category such as limiting (or eliminating) access to devices commonly used to torture. For instance Tasers, pepper spray, particular forms of restraints but also (depending on where in the world we are) chilli powder, hose pipes and cleaning supplies.

 This might seem like quite a lot but it’s funny how much of it applies to the industry I actually work in: drugs testing.

 The place I work is regularly inspected by outside organisations (and usually without notice). Every single person on site has to go through extensive training programs which are refreshed at least once a year. Each and every one of us has to record and account for all our actions and any material and equipment we use. We can report things anonymously. Any allegations of malpractice are dealt with swiftly and prompt massive investigations.

 So I guess I’m saying that I think more of the organisations responsible for people should have the same level of accountability pharmaceutical testing does.

 Depending on the structure of your rebel organisation and what’s available too them a lot of this might not be possible. At least not at first.

 A small, poorly supplied organisation could struggle to combat torture effectively. But where there’s a will there’s a way.

 Size of the group seems to be a big thing here. With really small groups the members can often say pretty confidently whether torture is happening or not. Because they’re all working together so closely that they know more or less everything their colleagues are doing. But the bigger a group becomes the easier it is to lose track of people and for abuse to be hidden.

 My instinct is that genuinely independent oversight probably becomes easier after organisations reach a certain size. Because for a smaller (but not tiny) group anyone who might be investigating accusations could still be reliant on the people they’re investigating. They’re likely to work together, be close to each other and as a result they’re bringing a bias into any investigation.

 I think a smaller, newly founded organisation would really struggle to set up the kind of structured, independent inspection bodies that do most of the grunt work of finding and reporting on torture. Especially early on when they’ve just split off from the older, more established group.

 That’s partly because of numbers and partly because it takes time and expertise to set up these systems. Or at least to do it well. Going back to the comparison with my work, the organisations that inspect and audit my workplace have all been around for decades. Most of the ‘younger’ organisations are mergers or rebrands of much older organisations. The process is updated at least once a year and there is a labyrinth of laws around every single aspect of… well all of it.

 It takes a lot of time, energy and error to build that up in a robust way.

 But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing they can do.

 They might not be able to detect or investigate torture easily in the early stages but they could structure their organisation in ways that make it less likely for torture to happen in the first place.

 Proper training is probably the biggest one that would make a difference. Things like conducting a proper investigation or interrogation, de-escalation tactics, building rapport/people skills and negotiation.

 They could also limit the number of prisoners they hold and the length of time prisoners are held for. This is trickier to do ethically in a combat situation. If part of the point is that this group is more ethical they shouldn’t be maiming or summarily executing surrendering troops from the opposing side. They also shouldn’t be releasing prisoners in places they’re likely to die.

 One potential way around this is to focus on destroying equipment and facilities rather then ending lives. Taking weapons, destroying barracks, supply lines and the like.

 Captured enemy troops can potentially give out valuable information (you can read about effective interrogation here) but the majority of useful information doesn’t come from interrogating suspects/enemy troops in these scenarios. It comes from people volunteering information, whether they’re civilians or defectors.

 It might sound really obvious but a very easy way to avoid torture as an issue to not have anyone to torture. A policy of no prisoners, not in the sense of killing everyone but in the sense of immediate release after the goal has been achieved, reduces the amount of people held and hence the chance of torture.

 This sort of strategy in the beginning could give the organisation time to come up with the facilities, training program and inspection regime needed to keep prisoners in… as safe and ethical a way as possible. It would mean adopting a strategy of ambush style attacks on the facilities and supply lines of he opposing side/s.

 It would also help avoid overcrowding of any prison facilities which is a factor that leads to more violence in prisons.

 I think that just leaves the question of long term success which you’ve defined in terms of avoiding torture and eventually replacing the rebel group that tortures.

 That isn’t a question I can give a definitive ‘yes or no’ answer to. It depends on a lot of factors, as you can probably see from the lists above.

 My instinct is that it is possible. However it would take time. A lot of time. And it would mean keeping up that dedication, the rejection of torture, throughout.

 Supplanting an existing organisation would take years. Easily 5-10 years, and I think I might actually be under estimating things. It also depends on things like how well known both rebel groups are, how well they manage to build up public trust, the supply of recruits, the amount of territory they occupy.

 Part of what I’m driving at here is that doing things well, building systems and organisations that last and keep ethics at their core; it takes time. It takes hard work. And a lot of it feels thankless.

 In the early days your rebels will probably be bending over backwards, making life so much ‘harder’ for themselves in order to avoid torture. Only to have civilians turn around and mistake them for the group that tortures.

 The sad fact is that a lot of people feel destruction is more satisfying. It feels like ‘doing something’, whereas the hard work of building a better system over years/decades… it often feels like you’re getting nowhere. I think that, along with the cultural message that violence ‘works’, is why a lot of these abuses continue to happen.

 Once again I think that what you want from this story is possible. But it isn’t simple, it isn’t easy. It’s playing the long game. And there will be times when that grinds the characters down.

 A lot of stories say that ‘doing the right thing isn’t easy’ and then proceed to show the characters doing some big, impressive act that instantly solves everything. This is a fallacy. Sometimes it’s a fallacy that leads to some great stories! But it’s still a fictional motif that romanticises acts of violence over the hard work of building something better.

 And I think that if you want to show that hard work in your story you can’t gloss over the fact that it’s hard. It’s exhausting, it can be isolating. It can all be wiped away at any moment because of one hot-headed idiot.

 But the hard work and dedication would eventually pay off.

 These rebels would end up with better intelligence networks, better ties to the local communities and a better reputation. Which would probably lead to them becoming the go-to group for defectors, both from the other rebels and the group they’re trying to fight. They’d also probably get more volunteers in the long term.

 Wrapping up I think I’ll end with a note from Kurlansky’s Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea: Long term victory generally goes to the group that is the most organised. Focus on that. Really think about inventive ways to set up the systems and organisations these rebels are trying to build.

 Follow those points through logically.

 Your group might not end up looking like any rebel group you’ve seen in media before. But it’ll probably look closer to a lot of real organisations and give you a lot of fodder for stories.

 I hope that helps :)

Disclaimer

Available on Wordpress.

*Obviously there will always be debate about what this means but I personally do not think most places treat torture as a grave crime. As an illustration of what I mean American torturer Jon Burge is thought to have tortured at least 200 people during his time as a police officer. Several of the people Burge tortured ended up on death row. Thirty years after the initial reports he was sentenced to four and a half years in prison. He served three and a half.

[innuendostudios]

Here’s How to Radicalize a Normie, a video essay on how the Alt-Right and their fellow travelers recruit. Clocking in at 41 minutes, 6756 words, 633 individual drawings, and 27 sources (including three full books), it is by far the longest and most heavily-researched video in The Alt-Right Playbook. I am very tired.

It took so long to put this behemoth together that my Patreon started to dip. So, maybe a little more than usual, if you want to keep seeing videos like these, please consider backing me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

Say, for the sake of argument, your friend Gabe is starting to worry you.

Gabe’s always been just, you know, a regular guy. Not very political. He likes video games, sci-fi, comics, Star Wars, and anime. White guy shit. The only offbeat thing about him is you suspect there’s like a 20% chance he’s a furry. For all intents and purposes, Gabe is a normie.

But recently Gabe’s been spending a lot of time on some radically conservative forums, and listening to radically conservative podcasts, and picking some radically conservative arguments with you and your friends. You never would have expected this, not from Gabe, and, given the speed it’s happened, it’s worrying to think where it might be headed.

How have the Alt-Right gotten their hooks into your friend?

If you’ve ever known a Gabe, this video is for you. Here’s How to Radicalize a Normie.

Step 1: Identify the Audience

What you need to know before we begin is: around 2013, the Nazis went online.

Hate groups in the US, as tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center, had been growing in number since the noughts, but, between 2012 and 2014, they dropped by almost a quarter. Patriot groups dropped by over a third. However, hate crimes stayed about the same. Radical conservatism was not shrinking, but decentralizing. Still radical, still often violent, but now full of white nationalist nomads unlikely to join a formal organization.

This didn’t make them harmless. What it did was protect their asses from the typical hate group cycle: getting the public’s attention, making allies in conservative media, swelling their numbers, and then eventually disgracing themselves with failures, infighting, and, often enough, members committing horrific acts of violence, which come with social and sometimes legal consequences for all the other members.

So the Alt-Right and their fellow travelers these days don’t so much have members. They have hashtags, followers, viewers, and subscribers. This insulates them from their own audience. If Gabe, as a member of that audience, were to go out and commit a crime on their behalf, there’d be little doubt they had a hand in radicalizing him, but it’d be very hard to claim they told him to do it. On some of these sites, where Gabe spends hours and hours of his day, he’s never created an account or left a comment; the people radicalizing him don’t even know he’s there.

This distributed nature is what makes the Alt-Right, and the movements connected to it, unique. (You may remember a notable proof-of-concept for this strategy.) Doing almost everything online has, as compared with traditional hate movements, dramatically increased their reach and inoculated them from consequence. The trade-off, as we will see, is a lack of control.

And so we come to Gabe.

Gabe exists at the intersection of the kinds of people the Alt-Right is looking for - straight white cis men who feel emasculated by modern society, primarily, though they do make exceptions - and the kinds of people who are vulnerable to recruitment. Gabe fits the first profile in that he got bullied in high school, and often feels he has to hide his nerdy side for fear of getting ridiculed. The Alt-Right also has success with men who can’t get laid or recently got divorced or feel anxious about an influx of non-white people in their community. These things can make one feel like less than the confident white man they’re “supposed” to be. And it’s the closest they will ever come to being minoritized.

Regarding the second profile, it’s important to know that Gabe is not categorically different from you or me. He’s a cishet white dude - his problems are not unique. There isn’t a ton of research into the demography of the Alt-Right, but there may be a higher-than-average chance Gabe has a history of being abused or comes from a broken home. You don’t know if it’s true of Gabe, he’s never said. But most abuse survivors don’t become Nazis. The things that make people like Gabe recruitable tend to be situational: it happens often during periods of transition, as dramatic as the death of a loved or as benign as moving to a new city. Things that make people ask big life questions. Gabe has concerns like economic precarity, not knowing his place in a changing world, stressful working conditions. In other words, Gabe is suffering under late capitalism, same as everyone, and it’s entirely plausible he could have gone down the path to becoming a Leftist.

This is not to make an “economic anxiety” argument: the animating force of the Far Right is and always has been bigotry. But the Alt-Right targets Gabe by treating his “economic anxiety” as one of many things bigotry can be sold as a solution to. It is their aim that, when dissatisfied white men go looking for answers, they find the Alt-Right before they find us.

Step Two: Establish a Community

Were Gabe pledging an old-school hate movement, there would probably be a recruiter to usher him into an existing community. But that’s the kind of formalized interaction modern extremists try to avoid. Online extremism has many points of entry, and everybody’s journey is unique, so rather than be comprehensive we will focus on what are, in my estimation, the two most common pathways: the Far Right creates a community Gabe is likely to stumble into, or infiltrates a community Gabe is already in.

The stumble-upon method has two main branches, one of which is just “Gabe ends up on a chan board,” which we’ve already done a video about. The other is kind of the polar opposite of 4chan’s cult of anonymity: Gabe ends up in the fandom of a Far Right thought leader.

These folks are charismatic media personalities (that’s charismatic according to Gabe’s tastes, not ours; I don’t understand it, either). These personalities may gain traction on any number of platforms, from podcasts to reportage to blogging, though the most effective platform for redpilling is, and yes I am biting the hand that feeds me, YouTube. They may get Gabe’s attention through fairly standard means, like talking about or even generating controversy to get themselves trending, while some of the more committed will employ dubious SEO tactics like clickbait, google bombing, and data voids (just pause for definitions, we don’t have time).

What they tend to have in common, especially the most accessible ones, is that they don’t present themselves as entry points to the radical Right. In fact, many did not set out to be Far Right thought leaders, and may not think of themselves as such (though they are often selling products, of which the Alt-Right are among their biggest purchasers, and it’s not like they’re turning the money away). How they present is the same way anyone presents who wants to be successful on social media: accessible, approachable, authentic. The face-to-face relationship a budding extremist forms with their recruiter or the leader of their hate group’s local chapter are here folded into one parasocial relationship with a complete stranger.

Why this person appeals to Gabe is they’re not selling politics as politics, but conservatism as a kind of lifestyle brand. They rely heavily on criticizing or ridiculing the Left: feminists are oversensitive, Black people unintelligent, queer folks doomed to loneliness, and trans people insane; I dunno if it’s a coincidence that these are all things Gabe thinks about himself in his low moments. By contrast, they don’t sell conservatism as having sounder policies or a more coherent moral framework, but that abandoning progressive principles and embracing conservative ones will make Gabe happier. Remember, Gabe isn’t looking for white nationalism or misogyny, what he wants is the cure to soul-sickness, and these friendly micro-celebs are here to offer a shot of life advice with politics as the chaser. It is extremely important that politics be presented as a set of affects, not a set of beliefs.

The second pathway is infiltration, which is its own beast. Media personalities sometimes become gateways to the Right almost by accident: they do something edgy, a part of their audience reacts positively, and, facing no real consequence, they do it more; this leads to further positive reinforcement from conservative fans, the rest of the audience acclimates, and the cycle repeats, the personality pushing the envelope further and further based on what flies with their increasingly conservative audience. In this way, they become a right-wing figure by both radicalizing and being radicalized by their audience.

Infiltration is deliberate.

The Far Right will reliably target any community that has 1) a large, white, male population, 2) whose niche interests allow them to feel vaguely marginalized, and 3) who are not used to progressive critique of said interests. This isn’t to say progressive critique doesn’t exist, or hasn’t been baked into the property from the beginning, but that it has been, so far, easy for white guys to ignore. As such, progressives within that community probably don’t talk politics much, and women and minorities are perfectly welcome to post, same as anyone, but just, you know, don’t, don’t make identity politics, you know, like, a thing.

Given Gabe’s proclivities, he’s probably already in a number of fan communities where he can geek out and not get teased. And this is where the Far Right will go looking for him

Communities are at their most vulnerable to infiltration at times of political discord. This can happen naturally - say, a new property in the fandom has a Black protagonist - or it can be provoked - say, a bunch of channers join the forum and say provocative things about race to get people arguing - or both. Left to its own devices, the community might sort out its differences and maybe even come out more progressive than they started. But, with the right pressure applied in the right moment, these communities can devolve into arguments about the need to remove a nebulously-defined “politics” from the conversation.

The adage about bros on the internet is “‘political’ means anything I disagree with,” but it’d be more accurate to say, here, “‘political’ means anything on which the community disagrees.” For instance, “Nazis are bad” is an apolitical statement because everyone in the community agrees. It’s common sense, and therefore neutral. But, paradoxically, “Nazis are good” is also apolitical; because “Nazis are bad” is the consensus, “Nazis are good” must be just an edgy joke, and, even if not, the community already believes the opposite, so the statement is harmless. Tolerable. However, “feminism is good” is a political statement, because the community hasn’t reached consensus. It is debatable, and therefore political, and you should stop talking about it. And making political arguments, no matter how rational, is having an agenda, and having an agenda is ruining the community.

(Now, it is curious how the things that provoke the most disagreement tend to be whichever ones make white dudes uncomfortable. One of life’s great, unanswerable mysteries.)

You can gather where this is going: a community that doesn’t tolerate progressivism but does tolerate Nazism is going to start collecting Nazis, Nazis whose goal is to drive a wedge between the community and the Left. Once the Left acknowledges, “Hey, your community’s developing a Nazi problem,” the Nazis - who are, remember, trusted, apolitical members of the community who might just be kidding about all the Nazi shit - say, “Did you hear that, guys?! Those cultural Marxists just called all of us Nazis!” Wedge. Similarly, any community members who say, “but Nazis though” are framed as infiltrators pushing an agenda, even if they’ve been there longer than the Nazis have. They get the wedge, too.

This is how fandoms radicalize. They are built as - yeah, I’ll say it - safe spaces for nerds, weebs, and furries, and are told that the Left is a threat to their safety. Given a choice between leaving a community that has mattered to him for years and simply adjusting to the community’s shifting politics, the assumption is that Gabe will stay. This assumption is right often enough that a lot of fandoms have been colonized.

What is true of both of these methods - Gabe finding the Right or the Right finding him - is that Gabe does not come nor stay for the ideology. He’s here for the community, the sense of belonging, of being with his people, of having his fears validated and his enjoyment shared. The ideology is simply the price of admission.

Step Three: Isolate

There is a vast, interconnected network of Far Right communities out there, and Gabe is, at this point, only on the periphery. In order to keep him in, they need to disrupt his relationships to other communities, and become, more and more, his primary online social space. Having made this space hostile to the Left, they now seek to break his connections to progressives elsewhere in his life.

This is hard to do online. The whole appeal of moving radicalism to the internet is that your away-from-keyboard life doesn’t have to change. You are crypto the moment you log off. Some thought leaders will encourage their audience to cut ties with Family of Origin, or “deFOO,” but, even then, they can’t monitor whether the audience has actually done it the way an in-person movement could. And so alienating Gabe from the Left is less controlled, and, consequently, may be less total. How much Gabe isolates is up to him.

But the vast majority of Far Right media presumes an alienation from the Left. Part of conservative bloggers and YouTubers making the Left look pathetic is doing a lot take-downs and responses. This is a constant repetition of the Left’s arguments for the purpose of mockery, and, for Gabe, it starts to replace any engagement with progressive media directly. He soon knows the Left only through caricature. It also trains him, if he does directly engage, to approach the Left with the same combative stance as his role models. (For reference, see my comment section.) And this is only if he doesn’t partake in one of the many active boycotts of “SJW media.”

In addition to mocking the Left’s arguments, they also, curiously, appropriate them. This is one part sanitization: liberal centrism is more socially acceptable; indeed, many figures on the outer layers think of themselves as moderates, even as they serve as gateways to radicalism. But, also, many of Gabe’s problems could be addressed by progressive leftism, so they sell him racist, sexist versions of it. Yes, there is a problem with workers being underpaid and overextended, but the solution isn’t unions, it’s deporting immigrants; yes, there is a chronic loneliness and anger to being a man in the modern age, but it’s not because of the toxic masculine expectations placed on you by the patriarchy, it’s women being slutty; yes, wealth disparity does mean a tiny percentage of elites have more influence over culture and politics than the rest of us combined, but the problem isn’t capitalism, it’s the Jews. And it’s hard for Gabe to reject these ideas without, in the process, rejecting the progressive ideas they’re copied from; the Right’s “take the red pill” is, to the untrained eye, similar to the Left’s “get woke.” (Or, at least, the bowdlerized version of “get woke” that is no longer specifically about race which came to fashion when white people started saying it, grumble grumble.)

Take the red pill or reject them both; either is a step to the right.

As this rhetoric slips into his day-to-day conversation, even as seemingly harmless “irreverence,” it may strain relationships with people who are not entertained by this shit. Off-color comments about race and gender can certainly be wearying for female and non-white friends, which can lead to a passive distance or an eventual confrontation [“why is everyone but me so sensitive?!”], which only seem to confirm what his reactionary community says about liberal snowflakes. If he says these things on social media, he may get his account suspended, and, if he comes back under an alt, you can bet his new reactionary friends will be the first to reconnect, applaud the behavior that got him banned, and repeat should he get banned again. A few cycles of this and he’s lost touch with everyone else.

Also, his adoption of the insular, meme-laden terminology of this community makes him less and less comprehensible to outsiders.

Over time, sources of information get replaced with community-approved ones: conservative news, conservative YouTube, conservative Wikipedia if he’s really committed. The Algorithm soon takes note and stops recommending media from the Left. He stops watching shows with a “liberal agenda,” which usually means shows starring women and people of color. Now, there is evidence that the human mind responds to fictional characters similarly to real people, and that consuming diverse media can decrease bigotry in ways roughly analogous to having a diverse group of friends, which is one of many reasons we say representation matters. By consuming a homogenous media diet, Gabe stymies his ability to have even parasocial relationships with anyone who isn’t a cishet conservative white dude or one of their approved exceptions.

To the extent that any of this happens, it happens at Gabe’s discretion and at his own chosen pace. It has not been forced on him, only encouraged and rewarded. But the fact that it hasn’t been forced can make him all the more willing to accept it, because it seems safe to consider; even though his life and social circle are changing to accommodate, he does not feel committed. But many Gabes have walked these halls, and, if they close the door behind them, there’s nowhere left to go but down.

Step Four: Raise their Power Level

(...and they say we ruined anime.)

Consider the ecosystem of the Alt-Right as layers of an onion, with Gabe sitting at the edge and ready to traverse towards the center. (No, I’m not just going to reiterate the PewDiePipeline, though, if you haven’t seen it, go do that.)

The outer layer of the onion is extremism at its most plausibly deniable. Without careful scrutiny, the public-facing figureheads could pass as dispassionate, and the websites as merely problematic rather than softly fascist. It is valuable if Gabe believes this as well; that, at this stage, he believe the bigotry is simply trolling, the extremists an insignificant minority, and any report of harassment faked. That he believe where he is is as deep as the rabbit hole goes. And that he continue to believe this at each successive layer.

People in the deepest crevices of the Alt-Right self-report getting redpilled on multiple issues at different times in their journey to the center of the onion. If Gabe’s first red pill is about the SJWs coming for his free speech, he’ll think that’s all anyone in his community believes; there’s no racism here, people are just making a point about their right to use slurs. Then, when he gets redpilled on the white genocide, he’ll laugh at those Alt-Lite cucks who tried to sweep the race realists under the rug, and at himself for having once been one, but acknowledge that those channels and websites are still useful for onboarding people, so he won’t denounce them. At the same time, nobody takes those manosphere betas seriously.

And this process is reiterated with every pill swallowed: gender essentialism, autogynephilia, birtherism, Sandy Hook truth, pizzagate, QAnon if he’s really out there. The heart of the onion is typically the Jewish Question, but these can happen in any order, and in any number. But each layer sells itself as being, finally, the ultimate truth. Each denies the validity of the others; the layers ahead don’t exist, they’re made up my liberals, while the people behind are asleep where you are now awake. That’s why they chose “the red pill” as their metaphor: take it, and everything will be revealed. That’s why it cozies up with conspiracism. But what’s supposed to follow is that this knowledge help Gabe in some way, and it doesn’t. Blaming immigrants doesn’t actually fix the economy, and hating women doesn’t make men less lonely. But, having been alienated from everything outside the onion, once that sinks in, the only recourse on offer is to seek out the next pill.

And pills are easy to find. Those within the network have laissez-faire relationships, even as they, on paper, disavow one another. When they need a source or a guest host, they aren’t going to go to the Left; they’re going to feature each other. The Left is the enemy; their ideas are beneath consideration, and the only reason to engage them is for public humiliation. [Shapiro’s book.] But you can interview “western chauvinists” and that doesn’t mean you’re endorsing them, just, you know, it’s fine to hear ‘em out, nothing should be off-limits in the marketplace of ideas. Besides, Nazis are apolitical.

And because these folks keep showing up in each others’ metadata, regardless of what they say, Google thinks there is definitely a relationship between the guy “just asking questions” and the guy denying the Holocaust. Gabe is softly exposed to many flavors of conservatism just slightly more radical than he is now, and is expected, at the very least, to not question their presence. This is an environment where deradicalizing - listening to the Left - would be sleeping with the enemy, but radicalizing further? You do you, buddy.

Gabe’s emotional journey, however, is somewhat more complex. If you’ve spent any time reading or watching reactionary media you’ve probably noticed it’s really. fucking. repetitive. It’s a few thousand phrasings of the same handful of arguments. Like, there’s only so many jokes about attack helicopters! But these people just crank out content, and most of it’s derivative; the reason to pick one personality over another isn’t because they say something different, but because they say it differently. Gabe just picks the affect it’s delivered in.

Repetition dulls the shock of the most egregious statements, making them appear normal and prepping him for more extreme ideas. Meanwhile, the arguments themselves? They’re not good. (BreadTube will never run out of shit to debunk.) They are repetitive because they’re not good. They’re mantric. A good argument you only need to hear one time; if you can follow it, internalize it, and explain it to someone else, you know you’ve understood it. But a bad argument can’t convince you on its own merits, so it will often rely on affect. This can be the snappy, thought-terminating cliche, or the long, winding diatribe that sounds really sensible while you’re hearing it but when someone asks you for the gist you can only say “go watch these 17 videos and it’ll all make sense.” Both these approaches are largely devoid of content, but, gosh, if they don’t sound sure of themselves.

And that mode can be very persuasive, but it doesn’t stick the way a coherent argument does. It needs to be repeated, the affect replenished, because the words matter less than the delivery. There needs to be a steady stream of confident voices saying “we’ve got this figured out and everyone else is stupid” or Gabe’s gonna notice the flaws. They are not well-hidden.

And the catch-22 of returning to that stream over and over is that these communities are stressful even as they are calming. People afraid they will die virgins go to forums with people who share and validate that fear, and also say, “Yes, you will die a virgin.” People afraid Syrians are coming to kill us all watch videos by people who share and validate that fear, and also say, “Yes, Syrians are coming to kill us all.” Others have already pointed out that rubbing your face in your worst anxieties is a form of digital self-harm, but I need to you understand the toxic recursion of it: Gabe is going to these communities to get upset. Every emotion is converted into anger, because sadness, fear, and despair are paralyzing but anger is motivating; Gabe feels less helpless when he’s pissed off. And so, while he’s topping up on reassuring nonsense, he’s also topping up on stress. And, being cut off from everything outside the network, the only place he knows to go to release that stress is back to the place that gives it to him. It’s a feedback loop, pulling him deeper and deeper on the promise that, at some point, relief will come.

It is a similar dynamic that keeps people in abusive relationships.

When someone in Gabe’s community makes a racist joke, they are presenting Gabe with a choice between the human interaction of laughing with his friends and his societal responsibility not to be a fuckin’ racist. And not laughing seems ridiculous; everybody’s friends here; no one’s getting hurt; this is harmless. And so the irreverent race joke draws a line between the personal and the political, and suggests that one can be safely prioritized over the other. One way to look at radicalization is being asked to stick with that seemingly innocuous decision as the stakes are raised incrementally: first with edgier humor, and then comments that are funny because they’re shocking but you couldn’t really call them jokes, and then “funny” comments that are also sincerely angry, but, in each instance, since he laughed with his bros last time, it stands to reason he should keep favoring the personal over some abstracted notion of “politics.”

This is why the progressive adage “the personal is political” is among the most threatening things you can say in these spaces.

I’m not trying to make a slippery slope argument. Most of us who laughed at edgy jokes when we were teenagers didn’t grow up to be Nazis. It is a slippery slope in the specific context of being in community with people trying to radicalize you. Gabe is a lonely white boy in need of friends, and laughing at a racist joke is personal, while not laughing is political. Staying in a community that has Nazis in it is personal, and leaving is political. The personal is what brings people together and the political drives them apart. (The “only if some of them are bigots” part of that sentence is usually lopped off). There’s this joke on the internet that nerds perceive only two races: white and political. Following that logic, what could be more apolitical than an ethnostate?

They are banking on his willingness to adapt his beliefs to suit an environment that meets a need. That same need can be satisfied by white nationalism. There are few things more seductive to people who doubt their own worth than being told you are valuable simply for being white. And you can sub in male, cis, straight, allosexual, or able-bodied. It just takes priming: by the time Gabe officially embraces bigotry, he’s already been acting like a bigot for months. The red pill is simply the moment he says it out loud.

Change Gabe’s surroundings, and you change Gabe.

Step Five: ???

The final step in a traditional extremist group would be getting a mission. But that is one thing the Alt-Right can’t do. Once you start giving clear directives, you can’t play yourselves off as a bunch of unaffiliated hashtags and think tanks; you are now a formalized movement accountable to its followers, and can be judged and policed as such.

To my mind, Charlottesville was an attempt to become such a movement, taking things offline and getting all the different groups working collectively. And, as so often happens when these people get in the same space - especially with no official leaders or means of control over their members - it backfired. Their true colors came out before they were ready and a counter-protester lost her life.

This would be the point where, historically, an extremist group starts to disintegrate. Their veneer of respectability gone, they’re now hated by the public, the media wants nothing more to do with them, and everyone not in jail turns on each other or goes underground. This is also the point where the liberal establishment says, “My job here is done,” and utterly fails to retake control of the narrative, allowing the next batch of radicals to pick up more or less where the last one left off.

But to an already-decentralized group like the Alt-Right, Charlottesville was bad but eminently survivable. People retreated back to the internet, with its code words and anonymous forums, but that’s where much of the work was already done anyway. The platforms where they organized kept tolerating them, the authorities still didn’t classify them as terrorists, and any disgraced figureheads were replaced with up-and-comers.

The major change in strategy is that it doesn’t seem anyone has tried to formalize the Alt-Right since.

So where does that leave Gabe? He’s gone through this whole process of largely hands-off indoctrination - and I should stress his journey may look like what we’ve outlined or it may look different in places, this video is not comprehensive - but now he’s swallowed every pill he cares to, he blames half a dozen minorities for everything he sees as wrong with the world, and no one will give him anything to do. You’ve got this ad hoc movement frothing young men into a militant fervor and then just leaving them to stew in their own hate. Should we really be surprised at how many commit mass shootings?

This is a machine for producing lone wolves.

Leaving men to take up arms of their own volition is a way of enacting terror while being just outside the popular conception of a terror cell. There are also, of course, more classic militias that will offer Gabe clear directives - they’re recruiting from the same pool. And Gabe may stop short of this step, settling in a middle layer that suits him or finding the inner layers too extreme. But violence is the logical conclusion of an ideology of hate, and, should Gabe take this step, he can approach violence in the same incremental fashion he approached conservatism.

He can start with yelling at people on Twitter, and then maybe collective brigading, DDoS attacks, sharing dox, leaking nudes, calling their phone numbers, texting them pictures of their houses from the sidewalk. These acts of cruelty become games of oneupmanship within his community. All this can start as far back as Step 2, and get more intense the deeper he goes. Some people join explicitly partake in harassment and violence the way Gabe joined to talk about anime.

But this behavior can serve as a kind of buy-in. The Left and the feminists and the LGBTQs and the Muslims and the immigrants are all, within his community, subhuman. You’ve maybe heard the conservative catchphrase “feminism is cancer”; well don’t treat cancer by having a respectful exchange of ideas with it, but by eradicating it down to the last cell. Cruelty against the Left is framed as righteous.

From any other perspective, posting someone’s bank information is something you might feel ashamed of. Which creates a psychological imperative not to consider other perspectives. A thing that keeps people in is staving off the guilt they will reckon with the moment they step out. Gabe is also aware that anything he’s done to the Left could be done to him if he leaves; some communities even keep dox on their members as insurance. And the things he’s been encouraged to do to the Left will likely make him feel that the Left would never take him now; the radical Right is the only home he’s got. Harassment becomes another tool of isolation.

Steadily, options for Gabe are whittled down to being a vigilante or a nihilist. There are periods of elation: moments the Alt-Right feels it’s winning - or, more accurately, the people they hate are losing - are like cocaine. They are authoritarians, after all. But the times in between are mean and angry. They are antisocial, starved of emotional connection, consuming incompatible conspiracies that may at any point run them afoul of one another, devoted to figureheads who cater to but cannot risk leading them, and living under constant threat of being outed to the Left or turned on by the Right for stepping out of line. Gabe took this journey for the sense of community and purpose, and, but for the rare moments everything goes their way, the Alt-Right can’t maintain either. They can only keep promising his day will come, a story he could get from a $5 palm reading.

The feeling there’s nothing left but to kill yourself or someone else is so common it’s a meme.

But there is always a third option: Gabe can leave.

Pre-Conclusion: For Fuck’s Sake Do Not Make Gabe Your Whole-Ass Praxis

Before we continue, I want to state plainly that Gabe went off the deep end because he found a community willing to tell him that, because he is a cishet white man, the world revolves around him. Do not treat him like this is true.

If a fraction of the energy spent having debates with America’s Gabes were spent instead on voter re-enfranchisement, prisoner’s rights, protections for immigrants, statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, and redistricting, Gabe’s opinions, in the societal sense, wouldn’t matter. Reactionary conservatism is a small and largely unpopular ideology that is only so represented in our culture and politics because they’ve learned how to game the system.

And I get it. Those are huge problems that are going to take years to address, where, if you know a Gabe, that’s a conversation you could have today. And, if you think you can get through to him, it is worthwhile to try. This is a fight on many fronts and deradicalization is one of them. But it is only one, so please keep it in perspective. It sends an awful message when we spend more time trying to get bigots back on our side than we do the people they are bigoted against.

Your value as a lefty does not hinge on whether you can change Gabe’s mind.

Conclusion: How Gabe Gets Out

He may just grow out of it. These communities skew young, and some folks hit a point where hanging with edgy teens doesn’t feel cool anymore.

He may become disillusioned after the movement fails to deliver on its promises.

He may become disillusioned if something goes wrong in his life and his community isn’t there for him, if he feels they like his race and his gender but don’t actually care about him.

He may be shocked if he sees the Alt-Right at its worst before being appropriately conditioned. Charlottesville was a step too far for a lot of people.

His community may turn on him for any perceived unorthodoxy, and he may leave out of necessity.

He may be separated by circumstance from the community - a trip with no internet, hospitalization, arrest - and not be able to top up on the rhetoric. This may lead him to question his beliefs.

His community may disappear, either tearing itself apart or getting shut down by authorities.

He may have incidental contact with populations he’s supposed to hate, and have trouble reconciling who they are in person with what he’s been told about them. In his community, people bond over shared intolerance, but, suddenly, being tolerant helps him make friends. (This is one reason the Alt-Right has made a battleground of the college campus.)

He may form or revisit relationships outside the network, people who can offer him the connection he’s been looking for. This may reintroduce outside perspectives. More importantly, it rekindles his ability to have healthy relationships at all, something the Alt-Right has estranged him from.

As with recruiters, it seems these “escape hatch” relationships can sometimes be parasocial; coming to respect a public figure who is on the Left, or is critical of the Alt-Right.

Someone he is close to may compel him to choose, “me or the movement.” A lot of young men leave to save a romantic relationship.

Hearing stories from people who’ve already jumped may help; there aren’t a lot of public formers, and some raise suspicions as to their sincerity, but it is getting more common, and may be the closest we get to exit counseling for the Alt-Right.

He may become aware of the ways he’s being manipulated, or have them revealed to him, maybe because he stumbled into BreadTube, I dunno. Knowledge that you are being indoctrinated is no guarantee it won’t work - you are not immune to propaganda - but it can help one resist.

And he may revisit a core belief system that used to guide him, be it religion or social justice or a really wholesome fandom, and be reminded of the identity he used to have.

Moments like these, in isolation or in aggregate, can inspire Gabe to jump. They are also good times for friends to intervene. The reach and the impunity that comes with the internet means it has never been easier to fall into reactionary extremism. It has also never been easier to get out. People who exit skinhead gangs often fear for their lives; for Gabe, there’s a chance getting out is as simple as going to a different website. Much of his community does not know his name or his face and he may not important enough to dox.

What doesn’t get Gabe out - not reliably, not that I have seen - is an argument with a stranger who proves all his facts wrong and his ideology bunk. Facts don’t always work because facts don’t care about his feelings. This was about staying in a community, and holding onto an identity, that mattered to him. It was about belonging, and that is something a rando from the other side of the culture war can’t give him and probably shouldn’t be responsible for.

The theme here is human connection. Before he can do the work of disentangling himself, and facing the guilt of what he’s believed and maybe done, he has to know there’s somewhere for him on the other end of it. That the Right hasn’t ruined him. They’ve told him all of history is groups fighting each other over status, and, without his clan, he’ll be an exile. He needs a better story.

I don’t know that lefty spaces are ideal for this, in no small part because bringing someone who’s a bit of a Nazi but working on it into diverse communities is… questionable. And it probably wouldn’t be good for him, either; having just gotten out of a toxic belief system, he’s going to be deeply skeptical of all ideologies. In a perfect world, people who care about Gabe could build for him - to use a therapy term - a holding space. Someplace private - physical or digital - where Gabe can work out his feelings, where he is both encouraged and expected to be better but is not, in the moment, judged. That comes later. It is delicate and time-consuming work that should not be done in public, but we find these beliefs, built up over the course of months or years, tend to fall away very quickly with a shift of environment. Change Gabe’s surroundings and you change Gabe.

But, instead, a lot of people who jump are functionally deprogramming themselves, which is working for a lot of them, but it’s haphazard, and there are recidivists.

If you don’t personally know a Gabe, or have training as a counselor, you may not be in a position to help him. Possibly there are things you can do to disrupt the recruitment process or prevent infiltration of spaces you’re in - I’m looking into it, but talk to your mods - but, elephant in the room: meaningful change will require reform on the part of platform holders. Tools to disrupt this process already exist and are being used on groups like ISIS, but they’re not being used on the Alt-Right because they try oh so very hard not to get classified as terrorists (and also any functioning anti-radicalization policy would require banning a lot of conservative politicians, so there’s that...).

But what makes our story better than theirs is that the fight for social and economic justice, though it is long, and difficult, and frustrating, when it works, it fulfills the promise the Right can’t keep: it materially make people’s lives better. I am not prone to sentimentality, or to giving these videos happy endings. But one thing we have that the Alt-Right doesn’t is hope.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 9, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

I had hoped that the days when the news came like a firehose were over, but so far, no luck.

This morning, the stock market jumped 1200 points in its first day of trading after the announcement of Biden’s election. Over the course of the day it was up as much as 1600 points, then ended for the day with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 834.57 points, or 2.95%.

The strong market is at least in part because pharmaceutical company Pfizer and the German drug company BioNTech announced today they have a coronavirus vaccine which appears to be about 90% effective. The Trump administration immediately tried to take credit for the vaccine, only to have Pfizer note that it has not taken federal money under Trump’s Operation Warp Speed for rushing a coronavirus vaccine. Don Jr. promptly suggested that the delay in announcing the potential vaccine until this week was designed to hurt Trump’s reelection, but it seems Pfizer is likely distancing itself from Trump to avoid any suggestion that the vaccine is about politics, rather than science. In the past, the administration has touted a number of treatments for Covid-19 that have turned out to be ineffective, and the pressure for a vaccine before the election threatened to weaken public faith in one.

The pandemic continues to worsen across the country. Today we learned that Ben Carson, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, has tested positive for the virus; so has David Bossie, the Trump adviser in charge of the campaign’s legal challenges to the election loss. Both men were at the election night watch party at the White House, along with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who was infected at the time and did not wear a mask. Aides told PBS NewsHour reporter Yamiche Alcindor that they were worried the event would be a superspreader, but felt pressured to attend.

President-Elect Joe Biden started his presidential transition today, beginning by announcing the makeup of his coronavirus task force. It’s an impressive group of doctors and scientists, including Dr. Rick Bright, a whistleblower fired by Trump officials. “Please, I implore you, wear a mask," Biden told Americans. "A mask is not a political statement…. The goal is to get back to normal as fast as possible.”

New leadership and the rising infection rates are shifting the conversation. Last night, Utah’s Republican Governor Gary Herbert announced a state of emergency. He has imposed a statewide mask mandate indefinitely and a ban on social gatherings outside of households for the next two weeks. He has limited extracurricular activities at schools. Businesses that don’t follow the mask mandate can be fined; organizers who ignore the social gathering rule can be prosecuted and fined up to $10,000.

Not everyone likes the idea of new leadership, though. In an unprecedented move, Trump is refusing to acknowledge that he has lost the election. He has launched lawsuits challenging the ballot counting in a number of states, and his surrogates—including White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany—are accusing the Democrats of cheating. Tonight, Attorney General William Barr legitimized the idea of voter fraud by permitting federal prosecutors to investigate such allegations. Barr’s move prompted the head of the Election Crimes Branch of the Department of Justice, Richard Pilger, to resign.

But what’s so weird about this is that they are losing all these lawsuits. Indeed, some of them they’re not even trying to win: they’re not bothering to fill out the correct paperwork. It seems clear that they are simply stoking the narrative of an unfair election, but it is not at all clear to me to what end.

It is certainly possible that Trump and his people are launching a coup, as observers warn. And yet, this would not be an easy task. Biden’s win is not a few votes here or there; it is commanding, and Trump’s aides are telling reporters they think the game is played out. The military has already said it wants no part of getting involved in the election, and the courts so far are siding against the administration entirely. Even key Republican leaders, such as Georgia’s Republican lieutenant governor, are denying there has been any problem with the vote.

Maybe what’s at stake is that last Tuesday’s election left control of the Senate hanging on two runoff elections in Georgia. Today the Republican candidates in those races tagged on to the cries of voter fraud to call for Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to resign. Raffensberger is the top elections official in the state. He is a Republican. There is no evidence of any irregularity in the 2020 Georgia election, and the two senators did not offer any. But if they can get Democratic votes thrown out, Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler might avoid the runoffs that look like they might well result in Democratic victories.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is determined to keep control of the Senate, and ginning up a conviction that the election was rigged could do that. McConnell defended Trump’s challenging of the election today, although he did not explicitly say he believed the election had been fraudulent. Trump’s attacks are working: new polling shows that 7 out of 10 Republican voters now think that the 2020 election was illegitimate. Barr met with McConnell before he signed onto the idea of voter fraud by announcing that federal prosecutors could go after it.

Still, while control of the Senate is likely driving McConnell, it seems highly unlikely that Trump cares about it. Perhaps the president is simply deep in a narcissistic rage, unable to face the idea of losing.

But there is something else niggling at me.

Trump’s refusal to acknowledge Biden’s win means that the current administration is denying him the right to see the President’s Daily Briefing (the PDB) which explains the biggest security threats facing the country and the latest intelligence information. Trump can keep Biden from seeing other classified information, too.

Today, Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper (by announcing the firing on Twitter), and replaced him with a loyalist, Christopher C. Miller, who will be “acting” only. Trump also selected a loyalist and Republican political operative, Michael Ellis, to become the general counsel at the National Security Agency, our top spy agency, over the wishes of intelligence officials. Ellis was the chief counsel to Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA), a staunch Trump loyalist. Trump is also reportedly considering firing FBI director Christopher Wray and CIA director Gina Haspel. Last week, he quietly fired the leaders of the agencies that oversee our nuclear weapons, international aid, and electricity and natural gas regulation, although the last of those officials was moved to a different spot in the administration.

In other words, Trump is cleaning out the few national security leaders who were not complete lackeys and replacing them with people who are. It’s funny timing for such a shake-up, especially one that will destabilize the country, making us more vulnerable.

Today Washington Post diplomacy and national security reporter John Hudson noted that a source told him that the “Trump administration just gave Congress formal notification for a massive arms transfer to the United Arab Emirates: 50 F-35s, 18 MQ-9 Reapers with munitions; a $10 billion munitions package including thousands of Mk 82 dumb bombs, guided bombs, missiles & more….” This deal comes two months after the administration’s Abraham Accord normalizing relations between Israel and the UAE opened the way for arms sales.

The UAE has wanted the F-35 for years; it is the world’s most advanced fighter jet. They cost about $100 million apiece. The president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has secretly been pushing for the sale of the arms to the UAE in the face of fierce opposition by government agencies and lawmakers.

The administration had announced a much smaller version of this deal at the end of October, in a sale that would amount to about $10 billion, but Congress worried about the weaponry falling into the hands of China or Russia and seemed unlikely to let the sale happen. In 2019, it stopped such a deal. Trump declared a national emergency in order to go around Congress and sell more than $8 billion of weapons to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. He later fired Steven Linick, the State Department’s inspector general looking into those sales, but when the IG’s report came out nonetheless, it was scathing, suggesting that they put the U.S. at risk of being prosecuted for war crimes.

When you remember that Trump’s strong suit has always been distraction, and that he has always used the presidency as a money-making venture, I wonder if we need to factor those characteristics in when we think about his unprecedented and dangerous refusal to admit he has lost this election.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Heather Cox Richardson

[progressiveparty]

Bigger Than Bernie: The Other Progressive Challengers Taking On the Democratic Establishment (via Christopher Hass)

Our Progressive Candidates

Our endorsed candidates are running for office representing progressive values. Fighting for progressive ideas, for the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, free college, ending mass incarceration and deportation. It’s time to empower the voice of a new generation of Progressives who represent the people. A new generation of Progressives who will fight for solutions that match the need of the many.

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CANDIDATES CLICK HERE   Can not find your progressive candidate?

Year 2020 – Recognize a Progressive – Nominate a Candidate:

The Other Progressive Challengers Taking On the Democratic Establishment

By Christopher Hass “Today,” Bernie Sanders booms in his monotone shout, “we begin a political revolution to transform our country—economically, politically, socially and environmentally.” He marks each beat with his right hand, as if conducting with an invisible baton. Behind him, a lone seagull flaps its wings as it flies across Lake Champlain. The crowd of 5,000 that has come to Burlington, Vt., on a sunny afternoon in May to witness Sanders’ official campaign announcement breaks into a cheer. At the time, it was easy to dismiss talk of revolution as the rallying cry of a 74-year-old democratic socialist who clings too dearly to memories of the 1960s. Eleven months and more than six million votes later, Sanders’ call for revolution is harder to ignore. But what, exactly, would this political revolution look like? It’s not hard to imagine Sanders marching in the streets with the masses—he’s walked plenty of picket lines, most recently alongside Verizon workers in New York City last October—but that’s not the revolution he’s calling for. For Sanders, political revolution means shifting control of American politics away from corporate interests, convincing non-voters to go to the polls and attracting white working-class voters back to the Democratic Party, all while moving the party left enough to embrace democratic socialist policies. A political revolution of that kind is going to require two things: a wave of candidates committed to a bold set of progressive ideas and a mass of voters with the political will to elect them. There’s evidence both of these are already here.

Progressives are fired up here for a victory against big money. —Jamie Raskin read the full interview In These Times spoke to U.S. House and Senate challengers across the country who are very much a part of this wave. They are all outsiders to varying degrees, and all of them are running against the Democratic establishment in its various forms—from corporate donors and super PACs to the head of the Democratic National Committee herself. These challengers range from first-time candidates to experienced lawmakers, from community organizers to law professors. Each is balancing the individual concerns of the voters they seek to represent alongside the larger mood of the nation. None of them is running because of Bernie Sanders, but they clearly benefit from the enthusiasm and sense of progressive possibility his campaign has created. It would be a mistake to call them “Sanders Democrats” (and it’s unlikely Sanders himself would want anything to do with the term). Some have endorsed Sanders, others remain neutral or even back Hillary Clinton. But they are coalescing around a set of progressive policies familiar to anyone who has heard Sanders speak, including single-payer healthcare, free college tuition, a $15 minimum wage and breaking up the big banks. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic platform more at odds with Bill Clinton’s centrist Third Way of the 1990s. More importantly, these positions increasingly reflect the popular will. Even after the brutal battles over Obamacare, polls show that more than half of Americans support moving to a single-payer healthcare system. Fifty-eight percent want to break up the big banks. Sixty-three percent support raising the minimum wage to $15. And Americans are nearly united in agreement (78 percent) that Citizens United should be overturned. What’s striking about recent polling, though, is not the support for these progressive policies (many have enjoyed widespread approval for a while), but the openness to new, radical ideas—especially among young voters. In a January YouGov poll, people under 30 rated socialism more favorably than capitalism. On the eve of the Iowa caucus, when asked how they describe themselves, 43 percent of Democratic caucusgoers chose “socialist.” Take a moment to let that sink in. This is what happens when you have a generation of young people whose central experiences with capitalism have been two recessions, a financial crisis, crushing college debt, flat wages and soaring income inequality. For young people, the devil they don’t know is looking better and better than the devil they do—and that sentiment is fueling insurgent challengers. Many of these candidates continually emphasize the need to purge U.S. politics of corporate money, starting with the Democratic Party. “It’s easy for candidates to say they’re for overturning Citizens United, but it’s really meaningless when they’re also taking so much corporate and dark money that they’ll never follow through,” says Tim Canova, who is running for Congress in Florida’s 23rd congressional district. “The Democratic Party has lost its way. It has gone corporate and Wall Street on so many issues that it has unfortunately turned its back on its own grassroots base.” And it’s more than a matter of principle: Many of these candidates believe that voters are fed up with how the corporate capture of the party has pulled it to the right. “The Democratic Party has been Lucy with the football and the voters have been Charlie Brown,” says Tom Fiegen, a candidate for Senate in Iowa. “Democrats have pulled the football away too many times, so the voters say, ‘Nope, I am not going to be tricked again. I am not going to have you lie to me and tell me you’re on my side, and then when I send you to D.C., you vote for the TPP or you vote for the Keystone Pipeline.’ ” Nowhere is this trust gap felt more keenly than among young voters. Sanders has won the support of young people like few politicians before. In each of the 27 states that held primaries or caucuses in February or March, he won the youth vote, often by more than 50 points. In his home state of Vermont, he defeated Hillary Clinton among voters under 29 by an overwhelming 95 percent to 5 percent. Tom Fiegen saw how this played out in Iowa. “In the conventions I went to,” he says, “there was probably 30 to 40 years difference in age between Bernie supporters in one half of the room and Hillary supporters in the other half of the room.” Fiegen himself has endorsed Sanders, and you can hear in his voice the same passion that has animated so many young people: “We are idealists. … We want a better world. We think we can achieve it. We’re willing to basically throw our bodies in front of the bus to do that.”

The number one lesson that everyone can learn from Bernie Sanders, and that I’ve tried to emulate, is: Tell the truth. —Tom Fiegen The challengers:

Tim Canova (FL)

Donna Edwards (MD)

Tom Fiegen (IA)

Lucy Flores (NV)

Alan Grayson (FL)

Eric Kingson (NY)

Pramila Jayapal (WA)

Susannah Randolph (FL)

Joseline Peña-Melnyk (MD)

Jamie Raskin (MD) It would be a mistake to overlook the fact that this year’s election is playing out in a moment when protest movements have interjected themselves into the national conversation in a way we haven’t seen in a long time. Black Lives Matter, Fight for 15, the climate movement and more have demonstrated the value of setting uncompromising demands and pushing the boundaries of what is politically possible. It’s no surprise then that some of these progressive challengers come directly out of protest movements. Pramila Jayapal, a Washington state senator running for the 7th District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, has a long history of activism and advocacy in Seattle. She founded the post-9/11 immigrant rights group Hate Free Zone (now OneAmerica), which has held massive voter registration drives. “The only reason I got into politics was because I believed it was another platform for organizing,” she says, “and that’s what I want to do with my congressional campaign. We’ve brought in thousands of leaders, young people and people of color and women who never saw themselves as part of democracy.” Joseline Peña-Melnyk, who is running for Congress in Maryland’s 4th District, says: “These movements give me hope for the future of our democracy. They show that the spirit that gave rise to the civil rights movement is still alive as people take up causes that matter and challenge the status quo.” Donna Edwards, a co-founder of the National Network to End Domestic Violence now running for Maryland’s open Senate seat, agrees. “I’ve always believed in outside movements,” she says. “Government doesn’t move effectively and elected officials don’t move effectively unless they have a big push from the outside.” Candidates like Debbie Medina, a democratic socialist running for state Senate in New York’s 18th District, are happy to be that push. As she told The Nation, “This election is just another rent strike.” Sanders himself is arguably the biggest protest candidate of them all. But a funny thing is happening: Many of the protest candidates are winning. By the middle of April, Sanders had won 16 states, as well as the Democrats abroad primary. Donna Edwards has led by as much as 6 points. Polls show Lucy Flores, a Sanders supporter running for Congress in Nevada, leading by 20 points. In Maryland’s 8th congressional district, Jamie Raskin’s two closest opponents are busy arguing over who’s in second place. For any new president to enact a progressive agenda, they’re going to need a new Congress. The establishment, however, is not going quietly. In Florida, where Tim Canova is challenging Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz for her congressional seat, news got out in March that the Florida Democratic Party (FDP) had denied Canova’s campaign access to the party’s voter file. His supporters created an uproar; the file is crucial to any campaign’s get-out-the-vote efforts. The FDP eventually backed down in order to avoid, in the words of the state party executive director, the “appearance of favoritism,” but the policy remains in place for all other Democratic primary challengers in Florida. And not just Florida—Democratic challengers in other states are routinely denied access to this data or charged extra for it. “The DNC and state Democratic parties must stop favoring incumbents over insurgents in Democratic primaries,” Canova says. “We need to recruit activists committed to our progressive agenda to run for office, and that includes challenging incumbent Democrats.” Given that these candidates want to rid the party of corporate influence, it’s no surprise that many are going head-to-head with big money. In Maryland, Jamie Raskin’s two biggest challengers in the Democratic primary are a wine mogul named David Trone, who has already spent more than $5 million of his fortune on the race, and Kathleen Matthews, who once oversaw the Marriott political action committee and is now herself the recipient of more lobbyist money than any Democrat running for the House in 2016. “My major opponents here have no real history of involvement in Democratic Party politics,” Raskin says. “They are creatures of the big money politics that have overtaken our country.” He’s won the endorsement of both liberal groups and a number of Democratic state lawmakers, and—borrowing a page from Sanders’ playbook—has relied on a surge of small-dollar donations to remain competitive. “Progressives are fired up here for a victory against big money,” Raskin says. In Nevada, Lucy Flores faces a multi-millionaire, Susie Lee, who has loaned her own campaign $150,000. But as Jeb Bush will tell you, money alone only gets you so far, especially in a year when voters seem more interested in authenticity. “The number one lesson that everyone can learn from Bernie Sanders,” Tom Fiegen says, “and that I’ve tried to emulate is: Tell the truth.” Donna Edwards put it this way: “We should not run away from who we are as Democrats and the values that we share. … We lose elections because our voters stay home.” For a President Sanders or a President Clinton to be successful, they’re going to need voters to come out not just in November, but in 2018, 2020, and beyond. For any president to enact a progressive agenda, they’re going to need a new Congress, made up of people like Donna Edwards, Jamie Raskin, Pramila Jayapal and others. When Barack Obama first ran for president, he spoke frequently about how his election was not about him, but us. He may have meant it, but it was hard to shake the feeling that at that moment in American history, it was in fact very much about him and the qualities he possessed. Today, when Sanders uses the same language, you believe him—if for no other reason than it’s hard to imagine a wild-haired septuagenarian in a baggy suit as the catalyst for a popular movement. Clearly, something deeper is going on. For the most part, Sanders himself has remained focused on his own election fight with Hillary Clinton. He has avoided talk of the future. But in a recent interview with Cenk Uygur of the “Young Turks,” Sanders let his guard down for a minute, saying, “We need, win or lose for me, a political revolution which starts electing people who are accountable to the working families of this country.” There it was—“electing people,” plural, not a single president. That’s what revolution looks like. These challengers are also carrying the flag of the political revolution sparked by Bernie Sanders. This Piece Originally Appeared in Christopher Hass Read the full article

[angrybell]

Things I have to get off my chest about Senator Kamala Harris (aka why no one should ever vote for her)

So you think Kampala Harris is a really great candidate for president. Really?

Was she a good DA? Her first elected office. Well, no, she was not. Her office somehow managed to get less convictions at trial than her predecessor (believe me, if you knew the sordid history of what her predecessor did to the office, it would amaze you). SF Weekly did a review of her office and reported that her prosecutors, “won a lower percentage of their felony jury trials than their counterparts at district attorneys’ offices covering the 10 largest cities in California[.]” Yeah, LA county was outperforming her, and their jury pool back then was a nightmare for prosecutors.

Was she an honest prosecutor? Nope. She was found to have hidden information about a crime lab technician which was discoverable under California law. This was information she was legally required to turn over to defense attorneys. This lead to 600 convictions being overturned and dismissed for prosecutorial misconduct.

Since this was SF, a bluer than blue city in a deep blue state, she received a promotion to Attorney General. Failure and abuse of power was rewarded.

As Attorney General, she directed her office to cover up prosecutorial misconduct. What does that mean I’m plain English? She protected prosecutors who falsified evidence.

This was not a one time thing either. Her prosecutors were cited for this multiple times. Just like when she was the SF DA.

In one case, the local DA added lines to the transcript of an alleged confession. Without them, there was no admission of guilt. Basically, they falsified the confession, so that the defendant would plead guilty. The only way it was caught was because the defense attorney fought for the tapes of the interrogation and got them. Now, the trial judge, when shown the evidence did the right thing: he dismissed the indictment completely.

Then-Attorney General Harris, who likes to portray herself as noble for not opposing the Prop 8 lawsuit, instructed her appellate prosecutors to take the issue up on appeal. She literally told them to defend lying and falsification of evidence.

This case was not the first time she’d had been caught defending a known lie to the courts. In a series of cases coming out of the Sierra Pacific/Moonlight fires, the investigators committed more outrageous misconduct. The state agency, CalFire (which handles wildfires in California) basically hid/destroyed evidence. And the Attorney General’s Office helped cover it up.

The conduct of the CA DOJ under Harris was so egregious, the Ninth Circuit was talking about making a referral for prosecution for perjury during the oral arguments in the Baca case.

In the Baca case, there was evidence that the prosecutor had actually suborned perjury. Harris’ appellate team tries to sweep it under the rug. Harris has her prosecutors fight tooth and nail to deny the appellate court access to transcript of hearing where the perjury came to light.

Did Harris’ DOJ prosecute these rogue DAs for their crimes? Nope. Did any of the appellate attorneys within her own office suffer any consequences? From what I’ve read, not a one has been disciplined in any fashion.

Clearly, she’s happy to tolerate and protect corruption. Is this what makes her a good choice give her your vote?

As Attorney General, she tried to force non-profit groups to release their donor lists. She was of the opinion that the government had the right to know the identity of everyone who donated to every group. Why? There’s no reason except for the purpose of harassment. Which is exactly what was happening as soon as the non-profits handed over their donor information. Witnesses at the trial testified to being harassed and intimidated because their private information was leaked.

Put another way, do you want Trump to have this power? No? Then you shouldn’t want Harris, or anyone else to have this power.

Fortunately, this program of Harris’ was stopped by the federal courts. And before you say “oh it was because a Republican judge”, the judge who enjoined the program was appointed by Lyndon B Johnson.

One of the reasons the judge ruled against Harris was because it was clear that the purpose of her program was not a proper one. Judge Real wrote, “As made abundantly clear during trial, the Attorney General has systematically failed to maintain the confidentiality of Schedule B forms.”

It was not an accident that the information was leaked. It was by design. She was blatantly using her power as AG to oppress people who disagreed with her.

And you want to reward her with your votes and give her more power? Do you think that she won’t turn on you if you end up disagreeing with her?

Think about that.

What has she done as Senator? Has she sought to find a way to broker compromise on issues where that is possible? If you look at her voting record, that’s not the case.

Has she gotten any legislation passed? She’s sponsored 76 bills, resolutions, and amendments to bills. She’s gotten the same bill passed twice. She’s gotten a couple of Senate resolutions thanking various groups for their service (my favorite was Buffalo soldier one).

So what’s the bill she’s gotten passed twice? It’s to outlaw lynching. Something I find hilarious because for more than a century, the Democrats blocked anti-lynching laws in Congress. Of course, the last lynching happened in 1981, so clearly it’s a pressing matter. In case your curious, it was a unanimous vote.

Is this a demonstration of her political skill? Not really. Being opposed to lynching in politics is as controversial as being in favor the sun rising in the East.

Being a politician means more than just winning elections in a state that is so in your favor, with a party machine that picks its people according to the wishes of the party leaders (and she clearly has thei favor). It means getting things done. So far, she’s done nothing. She’s built no alliances. She’s moved no bills through Congress.

She hasn’t even gotten a post office named and Bernie Sanders has been able to do that at least once.

What is she good at? She’s good at getting media attention and showing up to celebrate hard fought victories achieved by other people. The scene of her showing up in The Case Against 8 is one of the most disgusting displays of political opportunism I’ve seen in recent years. They fought the case. They went through it all. And she swooped in for a fucking photo op after doing nothing but making sure their victory was incomplete.

She’s not a good politician. She a good media whore.

Is that what you want in the next person to take the oath as the next President of the United States?

Where do you stand on your civil liberties? She’s anti-2nd Amendment, which I realize is a plus for people who are inclined to vote Democrat. What should trouble you is that she is also opposed to the 1st Amendment’s freedom of speech guarantee. How do we know this? She has called for Supreme Court Justices to be conformed who would overturn Citizens United.

Now, I realize that the propaganda is that Citizens United allowed “bad” money into elections, but that’s not true. the holding of the case deals with the power of the government to restrain free speech. The case is about a small group of people, who formed a corporation, to speak out on certain topics. One of those was to oppose Hillary Clinton and her proposed policies. If SCOTUS has ruled the other way, the ability of people to get their voices heard would be subject to government restraint. Or to put it in clearer terms: censorship. It would ensure only the wealthy would have a say in elections (who else has enough money to self fund a protest movie? Or ad?)

Think it would only restrain groups like Citizens United (you know, the evil right wing ones)? Nope. It would also apply to unions, the Sierra Club, and all the other “good” groups.

She has some other troubling positions that implicate the 4th Amendment. She is in favor of law enforcement doing a DNA dragnet through commercial DNA testing services, looking for familial DNA to develop leads on cases. I don’t know about you, but giving the federal government free reign to develop a DNA database is troubling.

Senator Harris is also proponent of civil asset forfeiture. As much as detested the Obama Administration, at least they were trying to make it harder to do. She is so much of a fan, she tried to make easier for the government to forfeit your property. Now, if you don’t know what civil asset forefeiture is, you’re not alone. In my experience, it’s one of the least understood things that the government does by lay people.

Essentially, civil asset forfeiture (“CAF”) is a law that allows the government to seize the assets of criminals. Sounds harmless right? Well, it’s an easy power to abuse. Under CAF rules she was supporting, the state would be able to forfeit the property if there was a “substantial probability” that it was obtained by criminal acts. Now, that sounds good but it’s really a lower standard. Remember, to be convicted of a crime, you have to be convicted only if there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. To make it worse, the presumption works against the person who has lost their property to the state asset seizure. You have to prove the negative. Prosecutors love this, because they almost always win (I do have the dubious honor of having lost one of these cases as a prosecutor).

So what does all this tell you? Senator Harris has a history of abusing power, violating the law, and protecting government corruption. If that’s how you like your candidates, then she a perfect choice. If you care about someone who will not intentionall violate the law, use the government to harass and intimidate her opposition, or be effective at upholding the law and constitution, find someone else.

Please stop rewarding her track record of failure and abuse of power!

[orionsangel86]

Episode Review - 14x01 - Want, Everything, Sunshine, and Beyonce

Hellatus is over everyone! Put away the crack memes and shit posts and bring out your meta caps because we are back in business! Oh boy are we back in business! 

Right before @tinkdw came over to watch the premier with me, we discussed our expectations and both agreed that whilst our expectations were pretty much in our boots, we would consider the episode a success if it was even remotely meta. We wanted to be able to see clearly constructed themes both as a continuation of what had come previously and as a foundation for a strong season going forward. We were both hoping that at least from a meta perspective, that the episode would leave us happy and thirsting for more.

Dabb did not disappoint us.

It was such a strong episode meta-wise. There is a lot to pick apart that is ripe for discussion and I seriously hope that Dabb will keep a close eye on the other writers to ensure that these themes continue throughout the season. Plot-wise it was a weaker episode, but then again Dabb has always focused on the character emotional arcs more than the actual plot points in recent years, and I am grateful for that. The second half of season 13 felt stagnant to me simply because there was little to no character development and from a meta perspective it was also extremely weak. I went into this hellatus feeling negative about the show simply because I hadn’t actually enjoyed an episode properly since 13x12. However, the season 14 opener was most definitely enough to quench my thirst and get me excited for the coming season. Fingers crossed it goes from strength to strength.

Long review under the cut

Michael!Dean - What Do You Want

Straight in after the introductory Nyoooom of Baby (driven by a grim looking Sam and a pretty impressive swap from title music to diegetic music), we are introduced to the angel of the hour. 

8 Things about Michael:

1. I am not sure how I feel about Jensen’s performance right now. He is playing Michael extremely straight and whilst I can see how this cold, calm portrayal can come across quite terrifying, it’s not a carry over from Christian Key’s performance. I don’t want to be too critical, because we only saw him in a few scenes so far, but when I compare it to how Tahmoh portrayed Gadreel alongside Jared, and the way Misha pretty much nailed Mark P’s performance (and greatly improved it), I guess I’m still waiting for Jensen to WOW me in the role. The one thing I will say is that he did terrify me and managed to come across creepy when acting alongside his own WIFE. So he's doing something right I'll give him that. When Jensen wants to have chemistry with someone, he does.

2. I like the fact that Michael’s goal right now seems to be to educate himself on our world. He’s not running around causing terror and mayhem like Lucifer, he’s learning how best to go about “improving” the world. He also appears to be inspiring people with his words: “Holy men, leaders, killers” and we have seen the effect he had already on Kip the Demon - who was inspired to run for King of Hell until Sam Fucking Winchester ruined that plan. I wonder if we will be seeing the fallout of Michael’s specific type of inspiration throughout the season.

3. “What do you want?” Obviously this question is an important one. It was repeated like six times throughout the episode, though never to the main characters. It looks like this is going to be the theme of the season and as far as TFW’s personal journey’s go, this is now the question we are asking them and the question being explored. What does Sam want? Or Cas? Or Dean? This has an endgame flavour to it that has me extremely excited. 

4.Michael’s own personal want of “A better world” is a follow on in a way of many of the villains that have come before him. For seasons now we have been exploring this concept of improving the world for the better. We had it first in season 8 when the brothers had the goal to do the trials to make a world without demons, in season 11 Amara’s vision was to destroy so she could reshape the world to her own blueprints that she saw as better than Chuck’s. Dabb era has been even more obvious, first with the goal of the British Men of Letters being “a world without monsters” which was shared by Mary wanting a better world for her boys, and then in season 13 Jack’s arrival floated the idea of “paradise world” to Castiel. I don’t think Michael is gonna fair any better than any of these others, and wonder exactly where all these escalated versions of “a better world” will end up. It's all exploring the notion that nothing is black and white, but in fact a grey area.

5. I already discussed Michael and Sister Jo here. Cas mirrors... Cas mirrors everywhere... I also side eye the "pretty things" line because it reaks of Dean and his whole sublimation thing. In that sense it seems Dabb is making Jo a mirror for both our boys. I'll be keeping a close eye on her from now on.

6. ”Why would he say yes to you?” “Love”. OH DEAN. Just, Dean wasn’t in this episode but my god did we feel his presence RIGHT HERE. And to think there are people out there that still think this is a macho mans show about macho manly men. I’ve never known another character with more heart than Dean Winchester. This show is about LOVE above all things. I wish people would stop trying to deny that fact.

7. Radioactive Pigeon:

Look I’m not trying to be critical okay it’s very pretty and this is the FIRST time they have attempted showing an angels true form and that is amazeballs and all, but still. He has little pigeon wings and a bent halo. Pfft.

8. The Purity of Vampires. I actually love this. I think it comes across a bit silly on the surface, but the whole idea of monsters being pure is a massive callback to purgatory and season 8 and anything that calls back to season 8 makes me happy. 

Sam Fucking Winchester

Excuse me while I scream HELL YES. I have been waiting for Sam to take on the leadership role for AGES. Honestly this was always my dream endgame for Sam. To organise and lead the hunting community. There’s your better world guys. It was something that the writers flirted with in late season 12, but at the time Sam only took on the position with Dean’s approval and encouragement to go ahead. Sam has always stepped back and let Dean take the lead throughout the show as the big brother and parental figure. I think this was always a role he was destined to fill and something that has been building in the subtext for a long time (much the same way as the toxic codependency has been shown to hold Sam back.) 

What’s of interest here is what will happen when Dean comes back and is fighting fit. Will Sam relinquish his leadership position to Dean? Or fight for it? Will this cause conflict? I read this amazing meta on this which turned into an epic discussion and I highly recommend reading it. My HEART.

Sam’s state in the episode is one of constant motion. He cannot stop for a second, always being pulled from one thing to another. He doesn’t sleep, he doesn’t get to change out of his hideous blue and orange shirt (which is officially now my favourite Sam shirt), he doesn’t even get to finish his soup. I know Jared said that Sam had a ‘grief beard’ but Tink and I are adamant that the beard is simply due to the fact that Sam doesn’t get the time to shave. He has taken so much weight on his shoulders and in amongst that has to deal with horribly traumatic things such as face the face of his abuser and actually be a healer to him. Sam doesn't get a moment to himself and spends all his time concerned about others. It's very noble of him, but he's going through the motions.

Sam is the contrast here to both Cas and Dean, who are physically and mentally stuck in their awful situations. Sam is also stuck in a way, stuck with no time to actually contemplate the situation he has got himself in. Stuck without a moment to breath, or to grieve his brother. Stuck holding the weight of the world on his shoulders as every other single character looks to him for support, help and guidance. Sam is the motherfucking Beyonce of the episode, that is for certain.

He is also calling the shots on hell now...

(x)

... I find it amusing that back in the early days Sam's destiny was to be the boy king of hell, and it's almost like he's fulfilled that destiny, not by being king, but by being gatekeeper and in a position powerful enough to scare the demons into submission. This is probably what Crowley intended. Sam probably owns the moon now.

About Nick - Well, first of all, I TOLD YOU SO. I did say that I could tell the guy from the back of his head and I was damn right about that. Learn to trust me guys I am occasionally good at this stuff. Okay, now that that is out of my system, let’s talk about this. Round of applause for Jared in this scene. Because he takes Sam’s hell trauma extremely seriously and made sure that every nuance, every twitch, was picked up by those camera’s. I loved that. Potentially Nick could be a good way to help Sam heal in the coming season, as Sam has finally freed himself from Lucifer’s grasp. Is it fair that he should have to look after the face that tormented him for years? No. Not at all, but could it prove somewhat cathartic in the end? Maybe. 

At the end of the day, Dabb must have considered Nick to have a purpose beyond “I want to give Bucklemming something to play with so they don’t fuck up my actual story” and “We need to keep stroking Mark P’s ego for some stupid reason”. Because otherwise I am really worried about how limited his power must be, and refuse to entertain the thought that he was overthrown by Singer and his horrid wife. I can see the potential in Nick being a dark mirror for Dean following his freedom from Michael’s possession. How Nick deals with the post possession trauma could be an indicator to how Dean is really coping even when he buries it.

At the same time, both Sam and Cas have been possessed by Lucifer, and therefore have all the experience between them to help Dean’s recovery without needing Nick to get involved. So I dunno guys. I’m trying to see the positive in something I otherwise despise. 

Anyway I thought Jared was fucking superb in that scene and pretty much the whole episode and want to give him a round of applause because it is rare that he truly gets to shine on his own without Jensen by his side.

Now all we need is for Sam to get some sleep. How he is still functioning by the episodes end I will never understand.

Castiel Everything Winchester

(x)

Look at him. So defiant and done. You can almost imagine that fire behind him burning in his eyes as well. He’s such a dom.

Several things about Cas in 14x01:

1. He is 100% done with every demon on the planet and doesn’t give a fuck. Honestly though. The way he says “Oh God” when Kip walks in. The way he rolls his eyes. I wonder if he had Dean’s voice in his head saying “You know who wears sunglasses indoors Cas? Douchebags.” 

2. He is making desperate choices in order to save Dean, which is certainly typical for him. The fact that he spends the entire episode stuck in a chair is a fantastic metaphor for his whole feelings on the situation, a metaphor then reinforced through a mirror at the end when he speaks with Jack (we never get anything explicit with Cas do we?). The fact that Cas can’t save Dean right now is weighing on him, but he is determined to do whatever it takes. The conversation he has with Sam at the end is a brilliantly short but important moment:

“I should never have gone to those demons”

“Cas no I don’t blame you. honestly I wish I had thought of it first. If it meant finding Dean I’d work with.. I’d do anything.”

The takeaway here is that actions speak louder than words. Sam HAS been distracted being leader of the hunters and having to face his own nightmares thanks to Nick, but Cas has literally been doing anything he can with a soul focus on saving Dean. 

It's an intimate moment between them. In a bunker now bustling with life and movement this is the only time in the episode that it really seems still. The library has always been Sam's private space, where he feels most at home - like the kitchen is for Dean. But here he and Cas sit as equals together weighed down by their shared grief. It's the soft moments like this that I love the most about this show. They are both willing to do anything they can, but the difference is that whilst Sam is being pulled in lots of different directions, Cas’s sole focus is Dean. Note that heaven wasn’t mentioned once. It hasn’t even crossed his mind.

3. Everyone Knows, but Cas doesn’t give a shit. 

“How is it you lost Dean, I thought you guys were joined at the... well you know, everything.”

It is an extremely explicit nod to Destiel. It is also the first time a line like this has made it into an episode since season 7 I think. The difference now being that we’ve had years of steady subtext and narrative building on the love story, hence the line has a different weight to those previously. It was very carefully written, careful not to imply that Cas was joined to BOTH Winchesters as the line was specifically about Dean. It was written by the showrunner, who would have known the significance of such a line, it encourages the view that all of heaven and hell have made their own assumptions about Dean and Cas’s relationship, and in case anyone wants to argue that the missing word was “hip” like the saying goes, the gesture and nod by Kip goes to prove otherwise. In other words, there is no platonic interpretation. Which is delightful.

Cas’s completely stoic silence is even more delightful. God I love him.

4. He can’t see demons true faces anymore. Like everyone else, Cas not realising those people were demons really threw me for a moment. Tink and I both agreed that the scene should have had Kip snap his fingers and have the demons smoke in and possess all those people instead - still catching Cas off guard but not making it seem like he is just super unobservant. I personally feel like this was just an error Dabb made. I have no desire to try to meta explain that one and I accept it as the error it is. I do like that it took an entire room of demons and 4 sets of enochian hand cuffs to overpower him though...The fact that he had to sit there and watch his family be beaten and almost killed around him whilst he was helpless again, is an excellent parallel to Dean’s current situation and what he will most likely have to face in the coming episodes, and also a reflection of Cas’s mental state (as mentioned above), Coming out of this episode it seems like this will be another season where Cas and Dean mirror each other and walk similar paths in terms of growth and development - if only those paths would meet with a kiss!

5. He’s the bait. Tink found this line hilarious straight away, where as I had to blink and ask why because I obviously took offence. But once we started discussing it and realised the quadruple entendre it is I found myself applauding Dabb on his genius. Cas IS used as bait, by the SPN PR people. Because he’s Mister Popularity. He’s also the character who causes the most conflict in fandom, with those who love him so much they are bitter and mean and those who simply hate him often complaining about the exact same things but in different ways - leaving the regular fans stuck in the middle (Tink explained this to me with delight - how both anti’s and bitter!cas girls alike will latch onto that line for completely different reasons). He’s also potentially a queerbait depending on how you look at it. But anyway. Cas’s epic eye rolls in this episode were almost enough to rival Sam’s bitchfaces. I am impressed.

6. He takes no pleasure for himself. I am forever going to obsess over Cas’s relationship with human food and drink:

“Coffee has no effect on me.”

“Me either, not anymore. But its like with saltwater taffee or infants, you know I just like the taste”

Although we can argue his refusal is out of stubbornness to not give the demon the satisfaction, even when accepting drinks from the Winchesters he doesn’t usually bother, or will stick with water. Even if he is seen ordering coffee it is usually only to avoid looking suspicious in diners. We know Cas enjoys some food and drink, but Cas rarely allows himself the pleasure. Even in 13x14 when Dean offered him a beer, it remained unopened. A symbolic metaphor for Cas refraining from indulging in other pleasures? This is why I am so so desperate for Michael to ask Cas what it is HE wants. Lucifer stated that Cas was a “pleasureless dullard” and I want to see this theme continue. Cas uses his grace as an excuse not to indulge and I consider this linked to meta about the “sacred oath” of heaven and Cas being duty bound and numbed by his grace. But these are all elements for a bigger meta at another time and the moment in this episode is just another snippet of that.

7. He looks awesome framed in fire. I just really liked the set up of Motown Meats as the new hang out for hell, with its fire pit and orange glowy bar. There is a lot of general symbolism there but I enjoyed the flames framed behind Cas in every shot he was in. Because even though he was mostly stuck in this episode, that fire raging inside him didn’t burn out once. He WILL save Dean. Just as he promised to Jack at the end, even if he get’s battered, beaten and bruised, his determined stubborness to save his husband will win eventually. Cas is no longer the broken thing of seasons 11/12. He well and truly rose like a phoenix in season 13 and now it’s showing through, as it’s a mission fueled by his own passion and love.

Jack Winchester (AKA my nougat son)

Poor Jack, like his father he hasn't had it easy in 14x01. He is struggling with his humanity now, his usefulness, in such a clear mirror to Cas that it kinda hits you in the face. He is desperately seeking guidance from those around him. First in the form of AU Bobby who has clearly bonded with Jack following their experiences together in apocalypse world.

It is great to finally see the Bunker gym! A room we all have ingrained in our fandom hive mind thanks to a 100 destiel fanfics. We all know what's gone on in there. >.>

Throughout the episode, Jack seeks out guidance first with Bobby, which goes badly, then with Sam, which is interrupted, and finally with Cas, which is when he finally gets told what he needs to hear. I am really happy that whilst Jack has so many father figures now, it is Cas who truly holds that torch and is able at least somewhat give Jack what he needs near the episodes end. If only he had damn well given his son a hug!

I loved the conversation so much that I transcripted it here:

JACK: I’m fine.

CAS: You did well

JACK: All I did was get punched. In the face

CAS: To be fair we all got punched in the face

JACK: That’s not - Before when I had my powers I could have done something

CAS: Jack you don’t have your powers, and your grace should regenerate in time, but until then..

JACK: I’m useless. I cant kill demons I cant find Dean and Michael is in our world and I cant stop him.

I can’t do anything. I don’t have anything.

CAS: Oh Jack. That’s just not true. You’ve got me. You have all of us. You have your family.

And we are going to find dean and we are going to beat Michael and we are going to do it together. Because that’s what we do.

This whole conversation was PERFECT. Every line chosen so specifically and weighted with meaning. Urgh Dabb I fucking love you for this.

Jack starts with “I’m fine” which Cas knows by now means you are not fine but he has also learned to recognise that sometimes it doesn’t mean “leave me alone” as Jack was crying out for guidance and support here. 

The mirrored “got punched in the face” calls to attention the fact that Jack is a reflection of Cas himself here and everything he has felt both now and in the past.

Jack’s complaint about being useless without his powers is a fear Cas has carried with him since his fall in season 9. It’s something that still weighs on him and whilst Cas now knows his place by the Winchester’s side, knows that they are a family and that he is not just a hammer, I think that fear of losing his power and being cast out is still well and truly weighing him down. It will be cathartic for Cas to see the family accept Jack as one of their own even if he is “useless” and human. 

Cas’s “That’s just not true” when Jack says he is useless - his voice breaks and you KNOW Cas has had those exact same thoughts.

“you’ve got me, you’ve got all of us. You have your family” compared to You’re my family, I love you, I love all of you” compared to “We're family. We need you. I need you.” The difference is there is no ambiguity in the word ME. Dabb turned it around, but had Cas clear it up. It’s the same line every time. The only difference is the placement of each individual statement. If this isn’t yet another clear example that the “I love you” was specifically directed at Dean I don’t know what is. THIS IS A CONTINUING PATTERN PEOPLE.

The determined promise to save Dean at the end, right after he specifies the singular and plural because obviously Dean was on Cas’s mind at that point - Mister I Don’t Get Words Wrong over here knows exactly what he means.

I love this whole conversation, but as I said above, it drums home the fact that whilst the Winchesters and others may be sources of guidance and support for Jack, he only has one true father, and I think Dabb wanted to make that clear in this episode. Remember:

Fingers crossed for more father/son bonding between these two in future episodes.

Mary and Bobby

(x)

Baring in mind I was expecting 1 small Destiel moment in the episode in the form of a line from a demon. You have NO IDEA how happy this moment between Mary and Bobby made me. If anyone saw that inktober pic I drew for premier day of me and Tink gasping in shock at the screen, it was for THIS moment. My face lit up in delight.

I said at the start of this long review that Dabb picked his moments well. With every second counting from a meta perspective. This was one of those.

Tell me, anyone, when watching that moment, would you deny that there was something between Bobby and Mary? As homework I'd like you all to play this scene to your heteronormative friends and family, or even be brave and ask a bibro. Would ANYONE deny that it was intended to be romantic?! I highly doubt it.

And yet there was nothing textually explicitly romantic about it. There was NOTHING in this scene that hasn’t been filmed a thousand times between Dean and Cas. The fact that Dabb chose to write this extremely small seemingly unimportant moment, in the kitchen, and for Bobby to use THOSE EXACT WORDS. As I have mentioned several times already, Dabb doesn’t fuck around when using well known moments from past canon in order to reinforce the importance of a thing. Dabb LOVES parallels. He wrote Bloodlines after all. He also knows the fandom hive mind and the things we pick up on and latch on to. This was a very smart calculated decision to include this in the episode and I am LIVING that he did it. GIVE ME ALL THE BOBBY x MARY/ DESTIEL PARALLELS. 

...

I actually really liked Mary in this episode. There is so much discourse in fandom about her and whilst I find Sam Smith pretty cold and wooden, I have never understood the utter hatred of Mary as a character. Hence why I praise Dabb’s genius at this moment:

(x)

Because this line literally sums up her entire arc since her return. Tink and I paused the episode and basically flailed at each other because this is EXACTLY what Mary has been trying to do. She was in HEAVEN, with her BABIES and suddenly she is back on earth with two grown men who are strangers to her, telling her they are hunters and have suffered a life of HORRORS without her. So she ran. Hell, I would have ran too. She shoved herself into hunting because all she could think about was trying to make things GOOD for her boys. Trying to FIX her mistakes the only way she knew how: by HUNTING. She was drowning in the bad. So she found focus in trying to make things good. Like in this episode, she reassures Sam so much that he snaps at her. He doesn’t want to be reassured, and that’s fine. But my god this felt like the first time Mary has truly had a voice. I really weren’t kidding when I said that Dabb made sure every word counted.

OTHER THINGS

I am unsure how I feel about the title card:

Tink called it. I think it looks a bit odd, a bit too clean. I like the title cards to be grim and dark. Black angel wings though! And hey, at least the fiery halos in the title cards are perfectly spherical... so we know they CAN do it right...

*side eyes SFX team*

Kip as a wannabe Crowley was kinda fun for a one off episode but I am glad that they are stressing now that wannabe Crowley’s get killed. The last one we had was Bart in 13x08 who was very much the same flirtatious queer coded demon. I’m fed up with the villainous queer coding by now. It’s been done too often. Give me another Demon like Alastair or Ramiel or none at all.

“Asmodeus Kentucky Fried” DID ANYONE LIKE ASMODEUS OTHER THAN BUCKLEMMING? This made me LOL.

The fight scene at the end was really weird and overly long. I dunno why they decided on so many random slow mo and wooosh shots. the whole Mary slow mo throwing the blade at Sam was cringy. I wish they’d stop being experimental and stick with what they know! You think they’d learn after 13x23!

Maggie was a bit annoying. Why bring her along if she can’t fight? Also the random cuts to her reaction after Jack was angsty had me reeling. simply because in het couples that’s a brewing romance and that is a massive NOPE from me. I like her as an individual character, I DO NOT like her as a love interest to a 1 year old, and I certainly wouldn’t like some pining story for her where she falls for an unavailable guy. It’s not fair on her character. The one thing I did like was the “pointy end” comment. It reminded me of Charlie for some reason.

The throw away line about Ketch being in London looking for the golden egg Lucifer/president extractor. Nice closing of a plot hole there Dabb.

I liked the Jesus weapon expert hunter dude. He seemed quirky. Dead man’s blood bullets are an excellent idea. 

DETROIT. Why does everything always happen in Detroit? I swear one day they are gonna reveal that Detroit is like a central universal power hub where the walls between the dimensions are thinnest or something. I could go on about this but I am sure a better meta writer elsewhere already has and this is waaay too long so I’m leaving this here.

If you got this far. Kudos and thank you for sticking around to read my thoughts. Feel free to ask me anything about any of the above. If I could hand out cookies through the internet I totally would right now.

Basically I enjoyed the episode. I have since re-watched it a dozen times and it is really the meta of it all that makes me love it. The story IS weak, and there ARE moments that are a bit odd, or infuriating depending on the way you look at it, but the heart of the episode was classic Dabb. All character driven and full of meaning. I am extremely well fed after this meta feast, perhaps even enough to get me through the horror show that will be Bucklemming’s 14x02. 

So long as Cas continues to look like a sexy beast I’m sure I’ll get through it.

I’ll just leave this here:

God he’s such a dom. :P

[ask-jaghatai-khan]

MK11 Roster ranked for Warhammer

// Since I’m on a Mortal Kombat kick. How would each character from the Mortal Kombat 11 vanilla roster fair in either Warhammer? I’m keeping it to the playable roster since all the DLC characters haven’t been revealed yet and I didn’t want to have this post be five miles long. Might do more in the future, however.

Let’s face it, most of these psychos are gonna do pretty well. They regularly get into punch-outs with gods. The biggest problem will likely be which attitudes get them singled out by their allies.

Jade

40k: Decently well. She has many of the makings of an Imperial Inquisitorial acolyte or an Eldar Exarch. Extreme combat skill and mild psychic power are usual marks of greatness. Also very good at subtle politicking. Might be a bit of a pushover though.

AoS: Even better! Less stigma over her magical abilities, slightly more reasonable allies, and less likely to have to fight power-armored super soldiers.

Erron Black

40k: You can already play as this guy in Dark Heresy. Pretty much any Rogue Trader would be happy to hire this guy, and he’s too stupid to be bribed with anything other than cash.

AoS: Limited opportunities due to lack of good personal guns. Might get on well in some kind of mercenary group from Chamon or Hysh, but his rogue nature still wouldn’t earn him many connections.

Kabal

40k: Super-speed and melee skill are good, but only get you so far. If nobody grabbed him as an assassin, he’d still make a killing as a gang boss, and I think he’d be fine with that.

AoS: Probably even better chances of success, but it’s gonna be sucky with those third-degree burns given the lack of things like high-end prosthetic rebreather masks.

Kung Lao

40k: Kung Lao is absolutely a Rogue Trader/Dark Heresy character. He’s gonna get a lot of weird looks, but assuming that hat can cut through power armor, he’ll probably get on just fine. His big mouth might earn him some enemies, though.

AoS: Again, since he uses a low-tech weapon and martial arts, he’s even better in a fantasy setting. The entire Shaolin Temple would do pretty well for themselves in the Mortal Realms.

Sub-Zero

40k: A cryomancer? Seems suspect of heresy. Then again, a cryomancer who hates the undead and can fight as good as an assassin? Seems like prime Inquisitorial material!

AoS: Nagash’s grip is cold, but if Sigmar can get the Lin Kuei on his side, he’s got a lot to gain. Kuai Liang is as great a leader as he is a warrior and mage.

Scorpion

40k: Absolutely corrupted by Chaos, but I think most Chaos Lords would still be reluctant to run into Hanzo Hasashi. Less of a chance he could redeem himself, but even more of a chance for him to wreak absolute havoc on anyone who tries and betray him. Hellfire is plentiful in 40k.

AoS: A better chance for redemption, and even more utility from his ninja skills on top of the hellfire. Whoever has their grips on Scorpion’s soul, whether it’s Nagash or Chaos, better double-check just how strong that grip is.

Cetrion

40k: She’s a god! On the scale of 40k, she’s at a bit of a disadvantage, but being a god is never gonna hurt. She better just steer clear of Slaanesh.

AoS: Again, she’s a god! Set up shop in Ghyran and kick back with Alarielle in the “kill absolutely anybody who messes with our utopia” clubhouse.

Frost

40k: Cryomancer cyborg assassin is hardly the weirdest profession in 40k, and her conniving nature should help her out plenty whether she wants to work with the AdMech, DarkMech, or some other group of bastards.

AoS: Shame she couldn’t keep the robot body, but cryomancer assassin is still more than enough to raise some hell in the Mortal Realms. Nagash’s clubhouse seems most her style.

Baraka

40k: This guy would do well as King Mook of a group of Chaos mutants. That’s pretty much what he is anyways.

AoS: Same meat, different sausage. Being a half-demon warlord may not make you immortal, but it’s hardly a disadvantage.

Raiden

40k: His character and storyline makes him a solid fit for a high-end Inquisitor. Psychic might and leadership skills, with a tendency to turn into a psychotic templar? Tell me that doesn’t sound like a classic Inquisitor.

AoS: As a storm-god, he’d get on even better. He might even have the makings of a mighty Sacrosanct wizard. He’s already attuned to Azyr!

D’Vorah

40k: By the standards of some xenos races, she’s not really a top concern, but D’Vorah knows this and would make the most of what she has. Everyone’s so concerned about Chaos and Tyranids, they don’t even notice when they’re suddenly overrun by the Kytinn.

AoS: Set up in some blighted corner of Ghyran, out of sight but with plenty of foolish heroes to snack on, D’Vorah would do about as well as she’s done in Outworld.

Jax

40k: Eat your heart out, Straken. Or rather, eat your arm off. Jax has all the makings of a Guard commander, though his heart might be a bit too soft to finish his career free of scars to his mind and soul.

AoS: I’m sure someone in Chamon or Hysh could hook the man up with some new arms. Either that, or he’d make for a good Stormcast!

Geras

40k: Who the hell is this guy? Does he work for the Necrons? The Ordo Chronos? Wherever he came from, that archaeotech is going to make him a nightmare for whoever gets in the way of his inscrutable goals.

AoS: Even weirder! He must be some Age of Myth construct left behind in Hysh. Maybe a fractured remnant of a lost God of Law? Either way, he’d probably be more akin to a terrain obstacle in Underworlds than a regular enemy.

Kano

40k: There’s about fifty of this bastard on every world in the Imperium. Maybe he’d help out Chaos, but at the end of the day the Black Dragon is all Kano needs. His smug mug is going to be on wanted posters from Terra to Ultramar.

AoS: Who the hell keeps smuggling Chaos Dwarf cannons into Azyr? What maniac stole a warehouse’s load of weaponry from Hammerhal and sold them to damn greenskins?! If that bastard even looks at a Stormvault I want at least three merc companies sent to hunt him down!

Cassie Cage

40k: The Imperium loves legacy careers! Explains where she gets all those fancy toys from. Inheriting her dad’s mouth is going to make her time in the Schola rough, though.

AoS: A loyal ranger best suited for exploring Stormvaults and hunting down powerful champions. Chaos Lords best not underestimate her, she’s more than meets the eye.

Kotal Kahn

40k: Thank god we managed to find a governor able to rein control of that sector. Not often someone can purge Chaos that efficiently, especially a Feral World-born. Keep an eye on him in case of further developments, however...

AoS: The last of the Osh-Tekk might not worship Sigmar, but he’s a mighty and ruthless ally in the fight against Chaos and undead encroachment. A powerful priest and warrior of the light.

Skarlet

40k: Chaos could always use more assassins. You’d think more people would be looking into blood magic, but the rarity of it just means less competition and counters. Skarlet is every Inquisitor’s worst nightmare.

AoS: Same blood, different vein! Powerful dark magic and assassin skills are hard to knock.

Sonya Blade

40k: A peerless and loyal leader of the Guard. Maybe her choice of friends isn’t the cleanest, but her results can hardly be blamed.

AoS: The Free Peoples always need more competent generals, and even mortal leaders are expected to be able to kick some ass one-on-one. Even if she gets demolished, I think Sigmar was waiting for an excuse to reforge her.

Johnny Cage

40k: Movie stars aren’t so popular in the Imperium, but shining examples of the might of the common man over the unknowable alien? That’s good, even if he never shuts up. Charisma and fighting skill will get you far even if you’re surrounded by enemies. Probably for the best he gets Sonya on his side, though.

AoS: Less likely to be killed for snarky blasphemy! Also everyone’s so damn serious all the time, mockery would probably make for as effective a weapon as magical fists.

Noob Saibot

40k: I swear I’ve seen this type of guy before in Chaos’ toolbox. A shadow-daemon sorcerer assassin? Subtlety is a rare trait among Chaos,  so it might make for a powerful advantage.

AoS: There are some parts of Ulgu best avoided. Laugh at the name all you want, just not if you’re standing in the shadows.

Kollector

40k: Mutant or xenos, his ass-kissing skills will serve him well when he inevitably sets himself up with some Chaos Lord. Obviously without plentiful Forge Worlds to draw from, it would best suit your unholiness to hire someone who can scavenge much valuable plunder, yes?

AoS: Hardly different. Having a sticky-fingered mutant to oversee the finances of your kingdom leaves more time for a Chaos Lord to stick to taking skulls and planning conquests.

Kitana

40k: This character absolutely already exists in 40k. Planetary governor turned out to be a heretic? Well thank the Emperor his assassin daughter is amicable!

AoS: Fan blades seem like something a Khainite would enjoy, but thankfully Kitana is more restrained. Diplomatic skill, martial might, and a cool weapon gimmick will help her fit right in!

Jacqui Briggs

40k: Another military legacy, which is always a benefit. Also extremely skilled in combat and making inter-service connections. Probably has a better chance at a legit command position due to her personality over Cas, who’d be better relegated to black ops.

AoS: Again, great warriors and generals are always in high demand. As a commander of the Freeguild or the Stormcast, Jacqui even looks like one of the new warrior-women models GW likes to release nowadays.

Liu Kang

40k: Another mighty champion from outside the Astartes for a change. Liu Kang has protagonist energy, and even if kung-fu is rare in 40k, that’s enough to get you pretty far. Especially when he has such powerful friends.

AoS: More chances to flex those fists, less stigma around summoning fire and turning into a dragon, and he’s still a trusted friend of many generals and demigods.

[amwritingmeta]

13x01: Full Episode Deconstruction

What am I supposed to say here? Sincerely, what? How can I even begin to create a coherent commentary on this episode when the imagery in my head is the entire crew with their balls out? *prostrates myself on the floor again* *fighting back tears of ever more resilient hope* *because them balls are so beautiful, babes*

I mean, if this isn’t balls out then I don’t know what is. And what the fuck does balls out even mean in the first place? 

It means the narrative tying back to the first act, which is S1-3. But they’re bound to - and have so done - do callbacks to the start of the second act as well, which is S4-5. 

I believe they’ll be picking and choosing to do callbacks to all the most memorable moments because this final stretch of the road is all about pulling the curtain back and revealing what the show really is all about, what the narrative has really been trying to tell us all along, moving us into an ending that feels surprising and yet wholly inevitable. 

Meaning the narrative is wrapping up and is singing its last note as it hurtles down the highway towards positive endgame. So far the sound of that note is a thing of epic proportion and we only have the first episode.

*light sheen of sweat on my brow*

So, here we go, upwards and onwards with this review. 

Let me tell you, firmly, that we screamed, we ( @margarittet @bluestar86 @tinkdw ) all screamed out loud as soon as the first notes of Nothing Else Matters started playing. 

Anyone who has seen the S12 recap reel that they released during SDCC this summer will have been screaming their heads off as well, because that reel was all about family and love and it was so CasDean/DeanCas/Destiel heavy that one cannot even begin to fathom the joy it’s brought all summer long. 

And here they go and use the song again (well, as Saz pointed out, now that they’ve got the rights why wouldn’t they?) but also we were just amazeballed in our eye sockets at the reveal that it was the chosen opening song and omfg we were four seconds in and already we could just tell that this. Was going. To be. Epic.

And fuck me I barely even know where to begin. So I’ll follow the above comment on the opening  music mind-melt with… the first scene, I guess. Feels a bit boring and standard since so much meta has already been published but, oh well, can’t be galloping on the back of a unicorn over the rainbow in every post.

…….. Can you?

No. Okay, no. Keeping it neat and tidy. Scene by scene, blow by blow —> off we go.

1. “Father?”

I have a feeling this season is going to be about fatherhood.

That’s totally sarcasm, because we all knew this season was going to be about fatherhood. Dabb has stated it on more than one occasion. Here’s our first introduction to Jack and glowy daddy devil eyes fade and give way for confusion almost immediately, which made me do a little dance and almost make a little love to poor Tink sat beside me on the sofa.

Yes, we knew he was going to be a blank slate but actually seeing it, seeing ALL of this episode play itself out, still gave shockwaves of pure awe. There he is. It’s Jack! Pleasure to meet you, finally.

2. Ummmmmmmmmmm no

I mean YES. Because oh my God, look at his wings on the ground. They’re too magnificent for words. (yes @magnificent-winged-beast that’s a nod to you) (a sad one) And Dean’s face. Look at Dean’s faaaaaaaace. And how it shifts from utter disbelief, like he can’t even compute, like, no, this isn’t supposed to happen, this isn’t right, and into focus at the reason for it and what can be done about it. It’s like he’s looking at Cas thinking How…? Why…? And then his brain clicks and all he can think is Nephilim.

(what is sort of horrifying to think about is that, to Dean, Jack is a baby - Dean doesn’t know that Jack’s all growed up...)

Tink has been banging her drum for this moment of Dean pulling his gun and running up to scare the bejesus out of Jack since May. I think I might’ve given her a bruise from screaming YES and shaking her by the arm. :P

3. Visual Manifestation of Power

Sam is Sam is SAM. God, I love Sam so much throughout this entire episode. He’s so Sam. That’s a shitty comment, but seriously, he IS SO SAM. Compassionate and logical. I believe this season is going to be so good to Sam and he’s already stepping into those Leader Sam boots.

As ever, Dabb uses a scene with efficiency and establishes a lot of things for us here.

Jack has a mission - he wants his father and needs to find him. Jack’s eyes glowing throughout the scene tells us that, no matter how calming Sam is trying to be, Jack hasn’t begun to trust him yet, and then Dean barges in, gun drawn, spots those glowing eyes, takes aim and fires off a shot. So the instinct of self-preservation takes over and Jack’s powers manifest.

The visual of Jack’s power is so goddamn brilliantly effective, because I think we know he’s bound go dark side, and he is fucking scary here. (I hope we’re right) (we have to be right in that he’ll go dark and I can’t wait!) (I can’t wait for Dark Jack!!) He knocks the brothers out cold.

TITLE CARD: it’s so fucking beautiful, what else is there to say?

My first reaction - as I’m certain most of ours was to it - was literally holy fuck, it looks like the sun!!

The up-side-down cross with an I inside it makes me think of how I believe this season will focus on the question of identity more than ever before, based in Dean finally beginning to trust, to have faith in people outside of himself, easing up on his need for control, all of this immediate and necessary stepping stones toward him finding self-worth in realising all of his self-worth is not in being the hammer, it is just as much in being the shield. 

He can take the backseat and still be useful, appreciated and loved. 

4. Burning on the Ceiling

Dean dreams of Mary stepping between the brothers and Lucifer. 

So, this dream sequence tells me that Mary going through the rift is - to Dean - the same as her dying, killed in hellfire once again, and him unable to stop it. 

But what else does this image from the Pilot hit home? This nightmare image of Mary burning on the ceiling? What does that image represent to Dean Winchester? 

Well, it set the course for his entire life, didn’t it? Losing her again is like a sudden reset, as though perhaps that change that had begun to take hold now after 12x22 was nothing but smoke and mirrors after all and this proves it. Whatever hope Dean had begun to feel for the future was taken from him with Cas’ death, and this flashback to his helplessness as a child when watching his mother burn only underlines how all the change he’s been going through is for nothing: he’s back right where he began. There is no happy ending in the cards for him. Ever.

Mary also bookends the episode, so Dean having a nightmare about her death leads into the reveal that no, Lucifer did not kill her the moment the rift closed: she’s still alive and, moreover, Lucifer is hellbent on her staying that way.

What else will you be proven wrong about, Dean Winchester? <3

5. Does He Have Wings?

The brothers wake up and we get a closeup of Dean picking up his gun. Yeah, he won’t be deterred by some freak power show, they’ve dealt with those before, and he is clearly hellbent on finding Jack. There will be no asking first-shooting later - that kind of power isn’t messed with, it’s put down before it can kill anyone. 

The cut on Dean’s lip intrigues me. He keeps touching it, it gets worse, then heals up, and at the end of the episode Mary has a cut in the exact same place after Lucifer hits her. There’s a visually established link between Dean and Mary in this episode. She was always an incredibly strong mirror for him, so this is bound to be meaningful later on. What’s lovely is that she remains a Cas mirror as well, stuck in her own Purgatory.

6. Nature Child

I love this shot of Jack’s feet walking in earth and dried pine needles, Jack surrounded by the forest. It feels organic and non-threatening, Jack sussing out this planet of ours with every new step he takes, and it’s even a subtle link to Cas and how he loves nature.

7. Pirate Pete’s Jolly Treats

Seriously, though. Seriously. We have a fast food joint with its menu changed by a blue-eyed and dark-haired Cas-on-the-outside/Dean-on-the-inside mashup of mischievousness. There is a joyful wink here that is not even subtle anymore and there are no fucks given and I love it. Please let it continue. (I have zero doubt that it will but, as ever, I could be wronggg)

High Seas Butt Combo is probably my favourite, but the buttshake has such a nice ring to it, too.

Now, Clark is a delight whatever view you take on him. Either he’s a guy with a wicked sense of humour and buckets of self-assurance who goes wide-eyed and looks rather delighted at the sight of a naked dude - or he’s all those things and just rather amazed at a dude without a stitch of clothing repeating the word “father” into his intercom. Whatever else there is, at the very foremost, there will most likely be friendship here as it seems Clark reappears in 13x03. 

Clark calls his mom -->

8. Sheriff Barker

*insert other people’s brilliant meta on the FUCKING MUG*

The FUCKING MUG could be a plant of the place itself, that something big will happen later on in the season in the spot where the rift occurred, where Jack was born and where Cas died. Kind of a significant place to remember the name of… Then again, they could easily plant it in dialogue or just bring up “the place where Cas died” so… Very very very visual plant of that mug. Or perhaps Phil Sgriccia is selling these mugs on eBay and is making a not so subtle product placement… (goes to check eBay to immediately endorse) (I’m a sucker for a good mug)

9. “Cas is…”

Look at that big beautiful body of water (rebirth) and the mountains (knowledge) and that lone white sailboat in the middle of it. Just so pretty, if you ask me.

Dean: We still have holy oil, right? Sam: For what? Dean: ‘Cause we’re gonna have to hit him with everything we’ve got. Sam: Hold on a second. Can we just talk about what happened back there? Dean: Sure, which part? Let’s see - Crowley’s dead, Kelly’s dead, Cas is… mom’s gone, and apparently the Devil’s kid hit puberty in thirty seconds flat. Oh, and he tried to kill us. Sam: Yeah, because you shot at him. Dean: I tried to kill the monster, Sam, it’s kinda what we do. Sam: We don’t know what he is yet, Dean, and I had it under control. Dean: I’m sorry, are you defending the son of Satan? Sam: I’m not defending anything. I’m just saying, look, with everything that’s happened I’m obviously spun out also, but we need a plan. Dean: Yeah - kill him. That’s the plan. Look, right now all that matters is finding him and ending him before he hurts anybody else. Now, once we do that we’ll figure everything else out. Sam: What about Cas? Is he really dead? Dean: You know he is.

Ohhhh Dabb, the evil man. I’m sure there’s a ton of coda after the weekend (I’ve glimpsed one or two!), but wow, Dabb left out the scene of the brothers going back outside before going after Jack, both of them standing on that sand, by Cas’ body, taking in those wings in daylight, Sam maybe just double checking for a pulse or any sign of life, Dean… well, I think he’d still be just blankly staring because it’s starting to sink in. 

Then Dean lifting Cas in his arms and bringing him inside while Sam goes and gets that sheet to cover him with. Oh, my heart. This is where that “You know he is” from Dean stems from, right? Yeah. They moved him inside and they know that there’s nothing they can do. Sam still holding out the smallest hope and Dean feeling it deep inside, that this is it. He’s lost Cas. And nothing else matters, as this entire episode demonstrates to us.

*mind* *so* *fucking* *blown*

Here’s the thing. In this my most recent long ass episode deconstruction I talk about how Castiel entering Dean’s life sets about a change, sets about a sudden need for self-examination, because Dean’s attraction to Cas is undeniable even to him and, to be honest, looking at that small smile in 4x05, he looks like he just might be in the first stages of falling in love. And the point of the love story (of any love story) is to push character progression. To make Dean need something more out of life, which will lead to him slowly daring to hope for more, because the need inside is taking over and is overriding any fear of the possible fallout.

Shooting that grenade launcher and tearing down that wall at the beginning of 12x22, which lead directly into him letting Sam go off and lead a mission before turning around and confronting/forgiving his mother, was a leap and a bound for Dean’s individual arc. What I’m getting at is that the above dialogue ties back into the image of Mary burning on the ceiling and Dean’s loss of hope. He is so fucking bitter, right? “I tried to kill the monster, Sam, it’s kinda what we do.” 

It’s like - okay, so this is my only function on this Earth: to kill. Well, then, let me kill. I’ll kill anything and right now what needs killing is this thing related to the fucking Devil. This is all I am, right? This is all I’m meant to be or meant to have.

What is so remarkable about this dialogue is that Sam is subtly, but firmly, standing his ground, just as he did in 12x20 when they had the whole Cas-isn’t-himself exchange, where Dean was spun out of his head with fear, and Sam just did not see the situation in the same light at all. Sam gets to even make the awesome statement “and I had it under control.” Fuck yes, you did, Sam - you’re in control of this situation and Dean is spiralling through his anger-fuelled denial of his grief, wanting a target to blame and having it.

I love you, Sam Winchester.

Dean’s face after he says “finding him and ending him before he hurts anybody else” is also telling of where his head is at and who that anybody else is in relation to. (yes it’s Cas who got hurt)

And then they’ll figure “everything else” out - as in what to do about Cas’ body that they left behind in that house. 

And then, of course, we get the lens flare to end all lens flares.

I mean, when the fuck has this colour not been used in a situation related to Cas and now they are fucking undeniably tying it to Cas by having it flare TO CAS’ FUCKING NAME. *they will murder us all* *balls so fucking out and dangling in all their glory*

The rest is under the cut. It got long. *smiles in friendliest manner*

10. North Cove

Take note. I have a feeling the name of this place will be on the final exams. ;)

11. Heaven Divided

Cas lying dead on a table will haunt me forever.

So they establish that there is a side of Heaven still on Cas’ side, and one side that is decidedly not.

*hands clapping ecstatically*

The Decidedly Not side calls Kelly “the brood mare”, the more Empathic Angel clearly aggravated by it. It’s established they want Jack and when the Decidedly Not angel mutters that of course Jack’s gone, looking down with something like disgusted disappointment at Cas before covering him up again, we get this expression from the Empathic Angel as Decidedly Not moves off:

Now, she actually looks smugly pleased here, right? Like she’s happy her companion doesn’t suspect what she’s really up to. I’ve no spec to add because I’ve no fucking clue what this means, but Heaven being up to old tricks doesn’t feel too far-fetched. Wether it’s tricks for the good or tricks for the worse remains to be seen. It is doubly-intriguing that the angel looking like she’s up to misbehaving is the angel empathic to Cas, thinking he “deserved better”. This expression is also linked to Jack, though, and the fact that he’s gone: is she looking pleased because Jack slipped through their fingers? Or are there bigger things afoot here… We shall just have to wait and see!

12. There Is No Such Thing as Weird

I mean, this just made my fucking day for the rest of the fucking year. My brain, my head, my soul and my heart - forever singing praises, because yes. If nothing else had given me the balls out feels, this would be the moment that I just went holy fuck they are making a fucking statement right here and right now because THIS IS WHAT THE SHOW HAS ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT. And this made me feel they are bringing it to the forefront now. This is what this season will be dealing with: no more black and white, all of it glorious shades of grey all over. 

Honesty.

Ie. BOOM SHAKALAKA: curtain drawn back and look at the truth of us.

Sheriff Barker: There is no such thing as weird. Everyone’s normal in their own way.

I do so adore you, Andrew Dabb.

I was so happy when Jack said that Kelly is in Heaven. She sacrificed herself out of love because she had such faith in him, she felt his goodness surge through her when he saved her life, and I will continue to believe he saved her life out of the love she’d already taught him, rather than blind self-preservation - and the same when he killed Dagon. That’s why the flash he gave Kelly of Cas stepping in front of her contained the dialogue “You get away from her” rather than “You get away from them.” But I shan’t digress. I’m just happy she’s in Heaven.

And “the bad woman burned”. Dagon as representative of evil in 12x19 is no surprise, but oh my God how nice to hear Jack label her as such. He remembers the universe screamed, which is amazing exposition for his powers. 

I kind of love how there’s such an air of Jody around Sheriff Barker, and definitively a mothering energy as well. I wonder if both mother and son will be a possible addition to Wayward. It’d be such cool beans.

Clark asks Jack what he’s on and we just get Jack being Cas, wearing a tan jacket and just feeling like Cas and it’s amazing. Yeah, it is fucking amazing. And Jack’s hungry —> so fucking human. As in showing his humanity, not foreshadowing anything human for Cas!! (just to be clear)

13. Baby Is So Dirty!!

So the brothers arrive to Jolly Pete’s and it’s Sam’s idea to go check it out, while Dean is being overtly aggravated with the mere idea, right? He sends Sam in alone so that he can call Jody, which I personally think is a pretty amazing sign that the codependency is continuing on its track of crumbling into dust. After the call, Dean sits for a second, reflecting, and since he’s alone he takes the opportunity. (we know what he does - he goes around the corner and prays)

14. Sam and the Butt Combo

This is a well-written, tight piece of exposition right here, but nope, I’m leaving it for now and might come back to it another day because I love Miriam. 

On Friday we were all loving the fact that Sam spots that menu and does his Reaction Face to it - his oh, ok, so that happened face. It feels significant for this season. Especially since that menu was created by our walking, talking Cas/Dean in-on-body embodiment. 

Also, Jack has the coolest fingerprints in the history of fingerprints.

15. Elsa

Okay, so I sincerely just love this shit. Any Disney reference breathes air into my lungs and mentioning Elsa is… well, it’s fucking significant because shedding your tightly held facade to be free of the idea of what you should be, and be happy with who you’ve been all along, is kinda the point of Dean’s arc.

Now.

Miriam: I punched a wall once. Well, a poster on a wall, but same diff, right? Freshman year I had this roommate - Becky - she had this giant poster of Elsa - you know, from Frozen? And I mean, first: who brings something like that to college? A cartoon, really? Like, hello home school, right? Anyway, Becky was - and I say this in the most feminist, screw the patriarchy way - a giant super-bitch. She’d take things and break things and piss people off and just do whatever she wanted, no matter who it hurt. It’s like the whole world was just Becky to her, you know? Dean: So you punched her poster. Miriam: And lit most of her stuff on fire. I’ve got issues. Sam: Dude, what’d you do to your hand? Miriam: Don’t ask. He’s super-sensitive.

Watch this scene again and watch how Dean reacts to her dissing Elsa, dissing liking cartoons at college age, dissing home schooling, look at how he just relates to fucking ALL of it and how he’s so done with her. He then brings out a bottle of alcohol, takes one swig of it (after fucking praying and getting nothing for it and brutally attacking a sign as a violent outlet for... despair, pent up grief, fury - take your pick), pours the rest on his wound and doesn’t drink a drop more of it, all the while being mostly aggravated with the scantily clad, attractive girl on the opposite side of Baby’s roof. 

I mean, I’m just saying that he didn’t ask Sam to get him a burger and he didn’t focus on the fast food right in front of his nose, he barely touched that drink and he’s not for one second seeing this girl as any kind of means of distraction. Idk if we will get coping mechanisms galore in the coming episodes, but personally I would rather he shut himself away in a darkened room and didn’t want to engage with the world at all because what the fuck is even the point? He’ll do the job, but other than that? Meh. (but we’ll see) (and if we do get coping mechanisms HEY that is so all good!)

Baby is like a lie detector. Shit usually gets real around Baby, so no wonder Miriam’s calling out of Dean’s deeper personality traits come out here, as well as the call-out to how he’s super-sensitive. Like whaaaaaat? YES. 

Miriam has come to act as exposition for how Dean really feels, rather than how he’s acting. She can see right through him, thanks to being an angel and all, and it’s interesting which buttons she immediately chooses to push. 

So I read this dialogue as being a deconstruction of Dean himself: 

his non-performing side is tied to the Elsa poster

his toxic masculinity is tied to the super-bitch

the poster got punched

most of super-bitch’s things got lit on fire

And “It’s like the whole world was just Becky to her, you know?” to me is such a resounding uppercut right into the jaw of control freak Dean that I can’t even. 

And then Miriam ends her statement with a “you know?” which is so telling, because Dean does know. He hasn’t related to the world in the selfish way Miriam paints it out as, but THAT IS HOW HE IS FEELING RIGHT NOW. 

So fucking guilt-ridden and full of self-blame that he can barely even stand it, as always - thinking that if he’d just related to Cas as CAS, rather than him seeing everything through his need to be in control of everything all the time, then perhaps Cas would be alive right now.

But there’s something else there, too - a budding hopelessness, a growing not-giving-a-fuck attitude, and it will be challenged and underlined later by Miriam calling our attention to it with one of the most epic lines of this entire fucking series. 

16. Flickering Lights

I had my comrades of the evening giggling like mad because, well, fan fiction territory galore. Flickering lights as Cas and Dean get it on. (I’ve read too little fan fiction to have been clued in on the joke without being enlightened but omfg just hilarious)

Then we get Jack as a fucking Cas-mirror again with “I like it. I like nougat.” (“I like emojis” and his literal way of communication just… omfg yes, because this Castiel is not the one coming back from the Empty. I believe we will get a more focused, BAMF Cas back who will have a mission and who will be completely dedicated to it, but he’ll still be Cas, with all the lessons he’s learned thus far.)

And we get Dean-mirror Clark (I’m sorry but his last name is Barker and… I mean, dogs bark and… there’s a whole lot of inference that can be made here but… okay just so amazing), who began the sequence at the police station with soft judgement of Jack’s sanity, to moving into assuming he’s high - and connecting with that behaviour - to now calling Jack “magic”. Such a Dean trajectory of rejection->acceptance. I raise my hands and applaud.

Jack is adorable. ^^^^

And here comes the angel radio and yes, absolutely, such a Dean and Cas first meeting callback that I almost want to lie down and cry and cry because just yessss please. All of the S4/S5 callbacks!! (all the callbacks) (from all over!!) (please)

And Sam tasers Jack in the back, which tells us electricity actually knocks this powerful being out cold and it must be linked to his humanity, right? (we’ll see if this is used by Dean)

17. Honesty

This is one of the most amazing scenes they could’ve given us this early on. This entire episode is telling us that this show is taking a turn for something wholly fresh, right? I mean, this is also Dean being so fucking done with putting on a performance - he does not CARE anymore - but it still sets the precedent for this season dealing with honesty and truthfulness and open fucking communication in completely new ways. *crossing fingers that it is so*

Sheriff: So what’re you, some kind of superhero? Dean: I’m just a guy doing a job.

Holy fucking hell does he not think of himself as a hero right now. He is so broken. Any semblance of a performance has left him. More than that, he is giving “the talk” in a completely straightforward way, and though it’s because every ounce of hope has left him, this is still an adult sat opposite that sheriff. Dean is all grown up.

Dean: So, Jack is a nephilim. He’s half-human, and half-angel. Angels are real, too.

HIS FAAAAAACE.

Crack goes my aching heart. Jensen Ackles breaks us every time!!

18. That’s Not His Name

This scene between Sam and Jack is golden in so many ways. Both Jared Padalecki and Alexander Calvert bring such heart to it. Dabb has written it with tension and moments of respite that create a fucking amazing flow and the exposition is just beautifully handled.

Also - Jack is one BAMF.

And Sam, though of course having a slightly ulterior motive for wanting to keep Jack on his side, is still able to relate to Jack on an emotional and intelligent level. (I’m not calling Dean stupid) (he’s spun out and just completely compromised by it at the moment is all)

Jack: I was scared, and when I get scared, things happen. I can’t stop them. Sam: Why were you scared? Jack: Because of the voices. They were so loud, so angry.

So, not a great first impression of Heaven, then. (yay!) Also, Jack’s fear informs the manifestation of his powers. But, there’s more. Jack switches mode from being on alert to sitting cross-legged and relaxing, surprising Sam by asking if he’ll tell “them I’m sorry.” Meaning the sheriff and Clark, of course.

Sam: Jack, how are you-…? How are we talking right now? I mean, you’re not even a day old, how do you speak English? Jack: My mother taught me. Sam: So you talked to her? Jack: I was her. Sam: Okay, and your… powers. Did she teach you those too or…? Jack: No, I… I don’t know why these things happen. It’s like I’m me, but not me. Sam: Jack. Look, before you were born you opened up a door to another world. Do you remember that? Jack: Yes. Sam: Okay, um, could you do that again? Jack: I don’t, I… I have to find my father. He’ll protect me. Sam: Jack, you gotta listen to me. That’s not really what Lucifer does. Jack: Lucifer? No, that’s not his name. My father is Castiel. Sam: What? Jack: My mother, she said Castiel, he would keep me safe. She said the world was a dangerous place. That’s why I couldn’t be a baby, or a child. That’s why I had to grow up fast. That’s why I chose him to be my father. Where is he? Sam: He’s dead.

Okay --> Holy Graal of Exposition.

So I read this as Jack not “talking” to Kelly meaning that he felt what she felt, he heard her thoughts - he was her, and she was him. 

How I interpret this scene is then that there’s a clear difference between:

Jack talking about his powers and appearing unsure

Jack talking about opening up that door, remembering it, and looking somewhere between disliking the memory and threatening pain if Sam pushes him further

Jack talking with ease and softness about Kelly 

This differences underline for me how much Jack loved his mother, his love informed by how much she loved him because he was her, he was kept safe in that love.

“It’s like I’m me, but not me” is extremely intriguing, however. This meta writer - and most meta writers I know - well, we’re pretty much assuming Jack will go bad at some point and this might be key to that switch. 

Perhaps Jack is the one under threat of control. I always figured he’d be manipulated (like Christ was tempted by Satan before being put on the cross) but what if this is why he needs protecting? He can’t control his powers and, if someone finds the key, his powers might end up controlling him, especially since he’s connected to everything (he heard the fucking universe scream) (I’m crossing fingers it’s Michael who gets his greasy paws on him) (it.would.be.so.amazing!!)

Jack remembers opening up the rift, but I maintain that if he’s not in control of his powers now, then he did not open up that rift intentionally.

However, he knows it was a bad thing to happen and whatever sensation is linked to it reminds him of his need for protection, reminds him of his mission to find his father. So the thought of the rift makes Jack immediately feel exposed, in need of protection and, most probably, guidance by his father.

Yeah, we screamed the bloody house down, you’d better believe it, at Jack actually fucking stating in dialogue that his father is Castiel, not Lucifer. 

I mean, Dabb is not pulling any punches here, naming Lucifer and having Jack reject him as his father figure - he flat out in episode one rejects his birth father - and stating that he has chosen his father, and his father is Castiel.

(there are candles burning right now) (candles of fragrance and love on my altar of worship)

My longer 12x19 meta is grounded in Kelly as the Good Mother and Cas as the Good Father Figure and as concepts they sound almost ridiculously archaic, but my point was that the narrative of 12x19 circles the theme of Good vs Evil through Cas/Dagon-Luci and Kelly/Dagon-Luci, as well as the theme of parenthood so prevalent throughout the entirety of S12. So to all of Jack’s declarations - hell yes and please and thank you!

And now his father figure and protector is dead. Jack isn’t too happy about that. He looks downright vengeful. (common ground with Dean…) (*crossing fingers*)

19. Frigging Angels

So, honesty saves the day and the sheriff is about to let them go without a fuss - to Sam’s astonishment. Yup, a whole new world, Sam.

Dean: So, let’s grab Damien here and find someplace quiet.

Dean is just going to literally kill this newborn being without any hesitation and without asking any questions based solely on the principle that anything non-human falls in the category of monster  and has to die. Okay, fine, Jack is the son of Lucifer but HELLO DEAN HELLO! WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ALL YOUR LESSONS!!??

Oh, right, this is a callback to the beginning so we’ll realise how far you’ve come. Okay, alright. What was it that began blurring those black and white lines between the good and the monstrous of the world again? 

…. Hmmmm, let me think. 

Oh, right, it was Castiel coming into his life. 

There is so much in season four, but the most prominent thing is this movement into focusing the question that has always been a part of the show: 

What makes a monster and what makes a man? (yes I’m quoting The Hunchback of Notre Dame) (shut up) 

And now we get to glimpse Dean as he was, so that when Cas comes back the contrast will be un-fucking-mistakable. (I’ve no doubt) (but disclaimer I could be wrong because that ^^^ is spec)

And Miriam makes her reappearance in this sequence! Restating:

Miriam: I don’t know what he’s told you. I mean, I can guess. Some line about how he and his brother “save the world”? Grr. So macho. But really, he’s not a hero. He’s Becky. You take things and break things and piss people off and just do whatever you want no matter who it hurts. Also, you’re a giant super-bitch. So yeah, you’re Becky. And Becky needs to die.

So, here - instead of the Elsa reference and a super-sensitive comment, Miriam calls out performing!Dean with her “Grr. So macho” line. And it ties in with how little macho manly man performance is left in Dean, because of what comes next: “You take things and break things and piss people off and do whatever you want no matter who it hurts.”

And his face tells us what?

He looks like he agrees with her. And he doesn’t even offer up the smallest protest. Because he knows she’s right, and that’s why he didn’t tell the sheriff that he and Sam save the world - he told her the exact opposite, downplaying their importance and making what they do sound like they’re part-time plumbers. He does not think of himself as a hero. Not at all.

The macho bravado of his toxic masculinity has slipped off him with all this loss. He’s thought of himself as Grr-so-Macho because it’s him as the hammer, it’s him on a mission, it’s him with a purpose, and he’s always put himself last, everyone else first, never thinking about himself - even saving Sam has usually meant putting his own life on the line, because Dean has never known who to be without his brother to protect - never expecting to have a future, and now, with the loss of Cas, he understands exactly how big a lie all of that has always been, because he’d started wanting more, had started hoping for more, and now that hope is gone.

There is no normal after watching the man you love die.

And what Miriam is still pushing on here, but even harder than across the roof of Baby, is the guilt of it all, as well as the forever burning thought in his head that he doesn’t deserve better, doesn’t deserve more, that this is what always happens because it’s what needs to happen - he’s one of the Becky’s of the world, selfish and reckless and this is what happens when you can’t work with others, when you can’t open up, when you can’t trust. And love is pain and has always been nothing but pain. There is no happy for Dean Winchester, not ever and good things just don’t happen to him. Or, at least, they don’t last.

But here’s the most epic fucking line ever spoken on this show: 

Becky needs to die.

The version of Dean with a poster on the wall and a bitchy attitude needs to go the fucking way of bye-bye. No more dual identity. No more Batman-superhero moments. 

It’s time to embrace change, Dean Winchester, and stop with the blame game and the guilt trip and allow this grief to take hold and allow it to evolve you into the type of man who, when the love of his life returns to him, will not hesitate to show him how much he means to him. *crossing fingerssss*

(Okay, there might be tentativeness and Thelma and Louise moments of awkwardly trying to suss out where he stands, but this time I hope that Dean will not be deterred by Cas’ deep frowns and questioning expressions, but rather Dean will step in there and dare to be himself and show Cas who he really is and that he wants to spend time with him. It’ll lay the foundation for Cas’ real transformation... But I’ll write another post about that.)

Also, Becky needs to die to make way, make way, for Team Free Will!

:P

So, now in this sequence of scenes we learn that Jack can’t be blasted away.

And Dean learns that Jack can’t bring Cas back. After Dean’s already prayed to Chuck for help and gotten no answer. So yeah. Ow.

Miriam: …Because Beiber in there, he can do almost anything. Dean: Anything? Miriam: Oh, sweet. Almost anything. Castiel - he’s dead. All the way dead. Because of you.

And she gets free by pressing her finger hard on that guilt button. 

Miriam stabs Jack with an angel blade - doesn’t kill him or even hurt him.

(Dean is mentally taking notes)

Speculation: I mean, it seems pretty probable that Dean is going to try and extract Jack’s grace, right? Somehow use that spell? For Dean it’d be a win-win if he gets to know and like Jack, because extracting the grace means no more nephilim power fucking up the world, but Jack gets to live. I just wonder if Dean will still be suspicious by the time Cas comes back and if this will be a source of external conflict between them. I think that could be fantastic, especially since Cas so expressly will come back on a mission to protect Jack.

20. The Bench

I mean COME ON DABB!! The callback to end all fucking callbacks when Cas, sat on a bench, professes he has questions and doubts and states that he’s not a hammer (he doesn’t WANT to be a weapon and omfg Cas I love you) and we get our first smile from him. Jesus Christ on a tortilla, that first glimmer of humanity. So delicious.

Sam wants to take Jack back to the bunker and Dean agrees. Sam is surprised.

Sam: So you… changed your mind? Dean: No. No, nothing’s changed. He’s still the Devil’s kid, he’s still evil, he still brainwashed Kelly and Cas, and even if he hasn’t gone Big Bad yet, he will. Sam: You don’t know that. Dean: Yeah, I do. Since when have things ever gone right for us? So until I figure out a way to end him, we bring him home. At least there the only people he can hurt are you and me.

So while Jack is sitting, pensive and Cas-like giving us a visual link to our first human moment with him, Dean is going on and on about his mistrust of Jack. Two conflicting messages and I Wendy I Wanda which one we’re meant to take to heart.

Thing is, we know more about Jack than Dean does at this point, and so does Sam. Sam doesn’t know one hundred percent how to handle Jack or how much of an allegiance they’ll have with him, but his compassion is real, and he’s seen Jack the way we’ve seen him.

Dean is wrong when he mistrusts Jack based solely on him being the son of the Devil - it’s narrow-minded and complete bullshit and not what this show is about. It’s a mindset the brothers have moved out of, which got them in trouble with the BMoL to begin with.

But Dean is right when he assumes Jack will go dark side. He will go Big Bad because it’s in the cards for him and for TFW. 

What gives me such a thrill of hope for the future is that Dean, in the first episode of the season, calls out his own lack of trust in anything ever going right for them. I hope the narrative is about to give us a slow series of events to prove him completely wrong. (but I could be wrong about that reading) (I would just love it and it falls in line with everything else they’re giving us) (oh believe me things will get dark and fucked up before they go right) (but I have faith that they will go right in the end)

What’s both horrible and good about him saying “At least there the only people he can hurt is you and me” is that, yes, it shows he really doesn’t give one fuck anymore about anything, even keeping Sam safe, but it also shows he doesn’t care about keeping Sam safe.

Sam just suggested that they bring Jack to the bunker and Dean is acknowledging Sam’s choice and allowing Sam to take his own responsibility for the consequences.

Smack down brodependency. Brodependency SMACK DOWN.

Die Becky die die die!! ;)

(I know there was a character on this show named Becky but I’m sure there are miles of thoughts on her and how Dabb choosing that name so very specifically might just be a not so subtle pointer to stuff so I’ll do a reblog of that topic instead)

Sam also clearly realises how low Dean actually is. He wants to say something, but Dean gets up and it’s time to go.

21. Lake House

Back at the lake house (can’t get over how Baby is so incredibly dirty and so miserable) (aw Dean) Sam tries to coax Dean into waiting to burn Cas, instil some tiny sliver of hope in him, suggesting they pray to Chuck, and Dean bites off “Don’t you think I’ve tried that” and I think we collectively fell into a heap of feels. Seriously, this was a clutch each other and hold on for dear life moment.

Dean fucking praying to God. Which we’d already heard him doing in the teaser they released, but still! Here it is!!

I can’t attack this scene in less than half a page. There is so much here. There is so much pain and need and anger and he even begs him. Twice. Dean begins with saying “I need your help” and moves into “us” when he accuses God for up and leaving them. But it’s ok - the bunching himself together with Sam - because it’s needed here. Dean’s praying for the both of them, for everything they’ve lost.

And oh did I mention earlier a lens flare to end all lens flares? Well, what do you know? They give us ANOTHER ONE! A fucking rainbow. And rainbows in this narrative - as far as I know and as far as this visual underlines - are completely linked to God. 

The fact that the scene is entirely framed by how it’s time to burn Cas’ body makes the prayer - for Dean - take on a whole new meaning, no matter that he’s praying for both himself and Sam.

“We’ve lost everything. And now you’re gonna bring him back.”

Are you... serious, Dabb?? (he is) (he so clearly is)

The flashback ends and Dean tells Sam “God’s not listening. He doesn’t give a damn.”

But he clearly does give a damn. His sign is right there in a visual plant!

And we all went, ohhhh. Will Chuck make an appearance in the Empty? It does make the most sense, tbh. Cas is in the fucking Empty, for crying out loud, from whence there is absolutely no return. So God appearing because his grandson needs a Guardian, a guardian said grandson himself has chosen, kinda makes sense, because who else can restore Cas’ burned out grace and send him back? But we’ll see! Cas might still meet himself in the Empty, tbh, with Chuck there. Either way, it seems the most logical that Cas will get to make a choice. Or will he? .... We’ll know in a few weeks!! :P

22. Kelly

Jack says goodbye to his mother, placing a hand delicately on her feet and it’s such a beautiful sign of respect and I’d look up the deeper meaning if I wasn’t already twelve pages into this meta. I’ll reblog and reblog gifs with reams of intriguing tidbits, I’ve no doubt! Such a gorgeous visual and, to me, underlining of how Jack truly loved his mother. (as ever, the artwork on the wall as Jack enters the room is eye-catching and those stormy seas with the sunlight breaking through dark clouds give me good feels, must say)

23. Cas

Yes. I cry. And I cry. And we all cry at this scene. I didn’t cry the first time around, I was way too overwhelmed by amazement that we even got this incredible visual and Jensen giving us one of those subtle, heart wrenching moment-upon-moments that is just… There are no words. What can I say about this scene that hasn’t already been said?

Dean steps in through that door almost as though he’s questioning if Cas will be there, leading with his head, not wanting to hope, but hoping all the same because every other time… But there’s the sheet, and there’s Cas underneath it. And the wide angle shot is so beautiful. Dean sighs. Like he’s been holding his breath with the hope and now… gone. No more. And he looks away, because it’s just too much. And then he looks, and it’s real and all of it is just so damn visceral. FUCK. And when Dean almost breaks down. When he has to stop, like he has that pain in his chest that makes you feel like your ribs are caving in… and he closes his eyes and he bends his head before he looks up at Cas again… And he knows he will be the one to wrap Cas’ body, there are no two ways around it, and he does it and it’s just... FUCK!

24. Pyre

They burn Cas and Kelly at sundown. Yes, so fitting. And Sam teaches Jack about how humans say goodbye. Also so fitting. And Dean says goodbye and we all just want to lie on a pyre as well. Sam says that they don’t know if Mary’s dead, and Dean says that yes they do, linking back to his nightmare at the beginning of the episode.

To him, Mary is gone, and he doesn’t even feel the urge to try to fight to bring her home, to find a way. I’ve mentioned it before, but his line “No matter how much it hurts, no matter how hard it gets - you gotta keep grinding” when he and Sam were hunting for Cas lends this such weight. 

Dean has never been here before. 

He’s a fighter, but now the fight has gone out of him, and he may keep grinding for the sake of it, but hoping that the grinding will lead somewhere good is done and dusted. At least according to Singer, who said Dean will carry on doing the job but will suffer bouts of “inertia” - which is another word for apathy, which is wholly connected to depression. I am just so fucking HAPPY!! *sadism*

The way the pyre is reflected in Dean’s pupils. Yeah. Fuck you, Phil Sgriccia!! <3

25. The Devil You Know

Mary and Lucifer in the AU will be interesting. I love that they might have to try and survive together and that Lucifer sees the potential in keeping her alive. Again, there’s that visual link between Dean and Mary with the cut on their bottom lip and I’m really looking forward to seeing how they’ll use it and if they use it and when and why and how! Oh, but wait - Lucifer has a cut in the exact same spot as well. Curiouser and curiouser. 

Final comments: I mean, what more could we want from this episode? I don’t think we could want anything more from this episode. Balls out with the love story because Dean’s entire appearance in this episode have to do with Cas, brodependency barely existent anymore, Jack is fucking perfection, all out orgasmic setup for what’s to come this season and the intimate moments that give us so much character are, as ever, to simply die for. I can’t wait for this week’s episode. OMFG WE HAVE A NEW EPISODE IN LESS THAN A WEEK! THIS IS WHAT LIFE IS LIKE NOW! CONGRATULATIONS - WE SURVIVED HELLATUS!! Now we just have to keep from biting our nails down between each new instalment. :P

Next time I’ll do a pure gif-post. Thanks for sticking with me throughout another long ass meta! ;D

[perfectirishgifts]

What Is Trending In College Admission?

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/what-is-trending-in-college-admission/

What Is Trending In College Admission?

“Should I send my SAT scores?” 

“How do I self-report my grades?” 

“Is my college essay too cliche?” 

“What exactly does Restrictive Early Action mean?” 

I spend most of my days as a high school counselor mired in the details of college admission. And, while I often lament that it should be a more simple and humane experience for students, I love being in the trenches with young people imagining a bright future. At the same time, my work necessitates a clear understanding of trends in admission, so that I can effectively guide my students. This year, very little seems clear and it can be difficult to assume this balcony view from the pit. Therefore, as 2020 slips into hindsight, I asked my colleagues who lead admission offices to provide perspective and offer insight into the pulse of the field. Here is what they shared:

Fluctuating Application Numbers

Unsurprisingly, the trends in application numbers depend on who you talk to. The Common App reported in November that, compared to last year at this time, the number of students applying to college was down 8% among their returning member colleges. For students who are eligible for fee waivers, the year-to-year decrease was even more pronounced at 16%. Just over two weeks later, on December 2 the total number of applications to returning Common App member schools had increased 6% from last year. Unique applicants to returning members were down 2%, so even though less students are applying, they are submitting applications to more schools. Meanwhile, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, enrollment at two-year public institutions is down 9.5% from last year with almost a 19% drop in first-time freshmen.

While some of these are alarming statistics, as Robert Frost reminds us, there are “miles to go before [we] sleep”. Admission leaders hope the new year and regular decision deadlines will see a rebound in applications, as some colleges have already experienced toward the end of this year. There are indications that those who are applying to college are doing so on a delayed timeline, but also with more intention and discernment, which could be positive for enrollment yield and students finding an appropriate match. 

W. Kent Barnds, executive vice president of external relations at Augustana College, says “our pool is smaller this year, but it seems to be completing tasks more promptly and is responsive to outreach.” Falone Serna, vice president for enrollment management at Whittier College, agrees, saying, “we are trending behind in applications submitted to date, but the applications are completing at a much higher rate than last year which suggests a more intentional applicant pool for us.”

Eric Nichols, vice president for enrollment management at Loyola University Maryland unpacks these trends even further, saying “we are running behind this year and this seems to be a slower forming pool.” He explains that typically about 70% of Loyola’s total applicant pool applies Early Action, but this year that won’t be the case. Nichols says “more students are choosing to apply later and I think COVID has a lot to do with that.” He adds, “we also have a record percentage of applicants from in-state. We saw this trend with our Fall 2020 enrollments and it’s carried forward to the Fall 2021 applicant pool. The pandemic has students considering options closer to home.”

To show the unpredictability in this admission cycle, Stefanie Niles, vice president for enrollment and communications at Ohio Wesleyan University shares an overview of their application numbers throughout the past few months. She says, “at our first report in mid-October we were 26% down in applications versus last year on that date. We gained some ground in the next couple of weeks and lowered that deficit to 18% in early November. Upon our December 1 Early Action deadline, we were about 3% ahead of last year’s outcome at that point in time.” She adds, “based on our own results and November data from the Common App, it appears that applicant pools are, at very least, forming more slowly than what has been considered normal.” As for specific demographics, Niles explains, “while we are up in most of Ohio, we are down in our two primary, urban markets. Some of this is amplified by a slight decline in our student of color numbers, though we have also made significant gains with this pool versus where we started in mid-October. Our international numbers were slow until mid-November, and now they are up by over 40% versus last year at this time.” Dickinson College is seeing similar increases. Catherine McDonald Davenport, vice president for enrollment and dean of admissions, says “I was prepared to see a drop in international applicants given COVID, the election, and exchange rates, but they are running ahead of last year.” She adds, “while we are seeing an increase in applicants from our ‘closer to home’ markets (PA, MD, NJ, and VA) we have also seen an increase in more distant markets (CA, FL, ME, NC) where we have regional staff doing great work.”

At the University of Denver, Todd Rinehart, Vice Chancellor for Enrollment says, “our overall applications have been running about 3% ahead of last year, but the interesting dynamic is that our applications for our Early rounds are down, and the increase in applications is for Regular Decision.” He adds, “our theory is that students are wanting to submit another term of grades, and are still hoping to submit test scores.” Meanwhile, at Cornell University, Jonathan Burdick, vice provost for enrollment, says “applications have increased substantially.”

The Divide Grows

As many feared, the pandemic has disproportionately impacted underrepresented students and those who would be the first generation in their family to attend college. Andy Borst, director of undergraduate admissions at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, says, “Applications from first-generation, fee waiver eligible, and historically underrepresented backgrounds are trailing previous years. Counselors and community-based advisors tell us that these students are still planning to apply before our final deadline, but they say that distance learning has made it difficult for both counselors and universities to connect with these students.” He highlights the unsurprising disparity between access to resources, adding, “the equity gap is likely to get wider.”

Augustana College’s Barnds agrees, saying, “we are concerned about application trends among African-American, Latinx, and rural applicants, which are all well behind previous cycles. It is certainly reinforcing some of what we are hearing in the media about the struggles of students who come from backgrounds, where college-readiness and college-going are even further behind this year.” He adds, “I also will observe that this cohort of students seems to be very motivated by deadlines and urgency. I have a feeling that this cycle is likely to be defined by those who apply before February 1 and those who apply after February 1. There is likely going to be a very high level of engagement of new entrants to the application process after February 1, when some students realize that they are behind.” Barnds emphasizes, “we have a responsibility to reassure them that they are not behind and they can still do a thoughtful search even with later engagement.”

Jody Glassman, director of university admissions at Florida International University, points out why this is true. She says, “this is a year of hesitation and pause. College applications and the associated process isn’t the priority. There are a lot of young people who have transitioned into positions of being a caregiver, part-time employee, or home chef along with full-time student; filling out a college application has taken longer or has taken a backseat.” She adds, “there is a general sense of disconnectedness; it’s not just in the colleges, but in the high schools too.” Glassman explains, “one school counselor told me it was like she had two different senior classes, the students who were in face-to-face school and those who were in virtual school. Those who are taking classes through virtual school are missing out on some of the benefits that they would normally receive during the school day. That ability to pop-in and talk to the college counselor, the ‘quick question’, the morning announcements, or LED sign. It’s rampant across education.”

Ken Anselment, vice president for enrollment and communications at Lawrence University says, “I know many in our profession have been thinking (hoping?) that this is just a delay, and that eventually we will see activity among first-generation and low-income students pick up, but the ticking of the clock is growing ever louder.” He adds, “I am worried that the impact of the pandemic upon this cohort of students’ opportunities will echo for decades if we do not extend our application processes well beyond the typical timelines that we’ve used—even beyond what we did in 2020.”

Testing

Another undeniable trend of this admission cycle—which has been often reported on in the past nine months—is the role of standardized testing in college admission. As a growing number of colleges and universities adopted test-optional policies, both schools that traditionally didn’t require tests, and those new to the game, saw significant increases in “non-submitters”. Falone Serna, vice president for enrollment management at Whittier College, explains “there is a significantly higher number of test-optional applicants in our pool this year. Since adopting our test-optional policy a few years ago the number of applicants applying without test scores had already been increasing annually, but this fall there was a definite spike.” He adds, “a good number of our test-optional applicants applied with the intention of sending test scores, but later requested that we change them to test-optional (usually due to test cancellations).” Serna says, “I hope this means that students have become more trusting that they won’t be disadvantaged by applying without scores to test-optional institutions because there seemed to be some skepticism around that.”

Jeff Schiffman, director of admission at Tulane University agrees, saying, “a huge chunk of our applicant pool applied without test scores. Many applicants noted they signed up for 3 or 4 or 5 administrations of the SAT/ACT and each one got canceled.” At Loyola Maryland, Nichols says “those who are applying test-optional are way up. In a typical year, we see 65%-75% of the applicant pool submit scores (we’ve been test-optional since 2010). This year it’s currently only 35%.” At the University of Denver, Rinehart reports that in their applicant pool, “57% are applying test-optional compared to 25% last year.” He says, “the large percentage of students applying test-optional is completely understandable given the limited testing opportunities, “ adding, “the shift isn’t a change in student behavior or an intentional strategy on their part, but rather the simple fact that they don’t have scores to submit.” 

At Georgia Tech, director of undergraduate admission, Rick Clark says that a much bigger percentage of underrepresented and first-generation students requested that their application be reviewed without test scores. Students from these backgrounds also represented a larger portion of the students admitted through the Georgia-exclusive Early Action round released last week. At Boston College, only 42% of the students who were accepted Early Decision had submitted test scores. One can only hope for reasons of equity, access, and achievement pressure, that these trends continue beyond this admission cycle.

Anxiety

Needless to say, the pandemic has contributed to stress and anxiety throughout the world. Unfortunately, it has also amplified what was already the often overwhelming experience of applying to college, fraught with worry for some students, parents, and educators. Aaron Basko, vice president for enrollment management at Sweet Briar College pinpoints some of this concern, saying, “there is a lot of anxiety over visiting and financial aid. Students are feeling like they have to make decisions with less information.” He adds, “we are hearing that students are behind in the application process and that the normal counseling dynamic that typically takes place has been badly disrupted. We’ve been trying to do whatever we can to provide good general guidance to the students we are working with, while also looking for ways to reduce the overall stress students are feeling.” 

Tulane’s Schiffman raises another fear that students and those who support them have about diminishing spots for admission. He says, “from a number of panels I have served on, I’ve almost universally heard that the rumor that colleges allowed for massive groups of freshmen to defer a year/take a gap year (and thereby leave this current senior class in an even more competitive place) was completely unfounded.” He emphasizes, “I did not hear a single university admission officer note that because of gap years, this current applicant pool would face tighter admission standards.”

Amy Cembor, senior associate dean of admission at Providence College observes that “students are nervous and stressed about how they will compare, understandably.” However, she points out that students have also “had time to reflect and take stock in their activities, family, community, and future.” She adds, “We underestimate the resiliency of young people—they have pushed through with grace and determination.” Anthony E. Jones, associate provost and assistant vice-president of enrollment management at Howard University reminds us that students’ concerns are greater than the application experience. He says, “admission counselors are reporting increased anxiety among the prospect pool due to COVID, but there is also the uncertainty students feel about whether they will have an on-campus experience in the fall.” He adds, “more than the benefit of the degree, students are attracted to college for the collegial connection to their peers. With this in question, I believe many are weighing the option whether to exercise a gap year hoping the pandemic will subside enough during that time to ensure an on-campus start to their college life the following year.”

As we close out the “year that was” and move into 2021, we will continue to have more data and insight about admission trends. Applicants and admission leaders will continue to face great uncertainty, but perhaps the fall provides a window into what is to come. There is one thing for certain and Augustana’s Barnds puts it best, saying “people in my position will survive on a diet of Tums and Pepto Bismol.”

From Education in Perfectirishgifts

[shirlleycoyle]

The High Price of ‘Making the Numbers’ at the USPS

This article was sent on Tuesday to subscribers of The Mail, Motherboard’s pop-up newsletter about the USPS, election security, and democracy. It is the second in a multi-part series about working conditions at the USPS. Subscribe to get the next edition before it is published here, as well as exclusive articles and the paid zine.

This is Part II of a multi-part series looking at working conditions at the post office. If you missed Part I, click here.

For a brief period, it looked like the post office would finally be changing. On Valentine's Day in 1992, eight union leaders and USPS management signed the Joint Statement on Violence and Behavior in the Workplace (JSOV). Spurred by the Royal Oak shooting we covered last week, the one-page document was much more than the "thoughts and prayers" style platitudes we have since become accustomed to after a mass shooting. Instead, the JSOV declared that "grief and sympathy are not enough. Neither are ritualistic expressions of grave concern or the initiation of investigations, studies, or research projects." 

The statement went on: "This is a time for a candid appraisal of our flaws and not a time for scapegoating, fingerpointing, or procrastination." It affirmed that "every employee at every level of the Postal Service should be treated at all times with dignity, respect, and fairness…'Making the numbers' is not an excuse for the abuse of anyone."

But among the missing signatories was the American Postal Workers Union, one of the biggest and most influential unions representing postal workers. 

Years later, APWU Eastern Region Coordinator Mike Gallagher wrote a position paper to stewards about the continuous problem of workplace violence at the post office. He explained that his union chose not to sign because "quite frankly, we knew that the USPS would apply the principles of the Joint Statement against bargaining unit employees and not against managers." The APWU's position was this statement wouldn't change much, because the causes of workplace violence at the post office were fundamental to how it operated. Even a blanket zero-tolerance policy wouldn't change that.

Over the last few months, I have been interviewing postal workers about what it is like to work for the post office. They express a range of sentiments, from pride to gratitude to frustration and exhaustion. As I have said before, the post office is an impossibly vast and diverse organization that defies simplicity. 

The most common sentiment I hear is postal workers are proud to work for the post office because it is inherently meaningful work. But they also wish it was a more humane place to work, that problems actually got fixed instead of ignored or passed along. Most of all, they wish the USPS was a place where being a good boss or being a good worker actually mattered. There is a maxim at the post office that doing your work well only gets you more work. It was a maxim 30 years ago, and it's still a maxim today. 

I found the most revealing part of this reporting process came when I asked a few of the postal workers I interviewed what they thought of a 1994 Government Accountability Office study, its results succinctly summarized by the title: "U.S. Postal Service: Labor-Management Problems Persist on the Workroom Floor."

The seven postal workers from around the country who volunteered to read the study unanimously agreed the basic characterization of the postal service from 1994 is still accurate. It is an authoritarian, top-down organization in which policy is set by higher-ups who have often never done the work of sorting and delivering mail. The people actually doing the work—or even the people managing the people doing the work—have little to no say in how the work is done. There is a widespread perception that supervisors are not selected based on their management skills. As a result of the basic metrics and incentives upper management creates for both supervisors and workers, an "us vs. them" mentality between labor and management dominates daily routines.

To the question of "have things gotten better since the 'going postal' era?" I received a resounding "no."

"I cannot even begin to tell you how incredulous I was reading this," a 27-year-old mail handler at a processing and distribution facility in Oklahoma wrote in an email. "To know that my same daily complaints and laments were a problem back nearly as far as when I was born—and that they haven’t been resolved in the slightest!!—is so disheartening to me."

Another processing and distribution facility worker from the Pacific Northwest echoed similar sentiments. "That was 10 years before I started, and I have to say overall, No. It has not changed much."

Today's edition of The Mail is going to be about why so little has changed even after the rash of shootings that resulted in dozens of dead and wounded and permanently tarnished the post office's reputation. But it's important to acknowledge this is not just about the post office. Violence—both verbal and physical—in the American workplace was not a new phenomenon when Patrick Sherrill killed 14 coworkers in Edmond, Oklahoma in 1986. The U.S. workplace too often treats workers as little more than extensions of the machines they operate, measuring success and failure by "hitting the numbers," callous to what that sort of treatment does to human minds and bodies. We often think of the post office as a quintessential American institution. Unfortunately, when it comes to how it treats its workers, it is.

In 1994, two different letter carriers filed grievances against supervisors who were allegedly harassing them. The cases were consolidated into one national-level arbitration hearing in 1996. The national-level arbitration was not about the specific harassment allegations, but whether the JSOV, by then four years old, was an enforceable agreement. In other words, could a carrier file a grievance against an abusive manager for violating the JSOV and have that supervisor disciplined, transferred, or even fired? Or was the JSOV just another empty promise from management?

The JSOV itself appears to be quite clear on this question. "Let there be no mistake," the statement concluded, "that we mean what we say and we will enforce our commitment to a workplace where dignity, respect, and fairness are basic human rights, and where those who do not respect those rights are not tolerated."

But by 1996, USPS management didn't see it that way. They argued the JSOV was merely a "pledge" and did not override its right to manage the workforce as they see fit. They said the JSOV was nothing more than an effort to "send a message to stop the violence."

Just as the APWU predicted, management was using the JSOV to punish rank-and-file employees for offenses like cursing at managers while simultaneously arguing the JSOV was nothing more than a toothless document when wielded against abusive supervisors.

The arbitrator sided with labor. "The Joint Statement marked a departure from the past and pointed the way to organizational change," the arbitrator found. "This was a document that evidenced an intent to take action rather than a mere statement of opinions and predictions." 

It's difficult to objectively evaluate the JSOV's effectiveness in curbing workplace violence at the post office. But the broad consensus among postal workers and union stewards I've spoken to is the JSOV is better than nothing but hasn't done much in practice. 

On the one hand, there is some evidence that working conditions at the USPS have gotten better. In 2000, there were 10,553 Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaints filed against the USPS by employees out of a workforce of 786,516, or a rate of 1.34 percent. By 2018, the latest year for which these statistics were available, there were just 4,081 complaints out of 633,641 workers, or a rate of .64 percent, less than half what it was in 2000. But factors besides working conditions at the USPS—such as the perceived worthiness of filing complaints with the EEOC—can also impact those rates. 

Likewise, grievances that went to arbitration show some tentative signs of progress. Since 1996, when the JSOV became contractually enforceable, there have been 1,195 grievances involving the National Association of Letter Carriers with a JSOV-related complaint, or about 50 per year on average, according to a copy of the grievance database reviewed by Motherboard. Of those, 611 of the complaints were denied by an arbitrator, leaving 584 cases ruled at least in part a violation of the JSOV.

But, again, this data is not capturing the whole picture. These numbers are not the total JSOV-related grievances, just those that reached arbitration for this one union. And although the years with more grievances came prior to 2000—the most was 145 rulings in JSOV cases in 1997—this is probably because workers had this new avenue to file grievances they didn't previously have, so it captures events dating back several years and conflicts that have been stewing for a while. Rulings per year gradually declined until 2008 with a low 14, before rising again to about 35 per year in recent years.

Source: NALC arbitration database obtained by Motherboard

Moreover, some of the rulings detail that postal management continues to look the other way on problem supervisors, a key issue highlighted by the Congressional investigation into the Royal Oak shooting. 

For example, in 2008, an arbitrator found a supervisor in Oakland, CA had "a history of cease and desist orders…at stations throughout the Bay-View Postal District." Management was aware of these previous violations of the JSOV and the history of worker complaints against this one supervisor, but management "failed to take appropriate action." The arbitrator said the supervisor's actions of calling his employees "muthafuckers" and "bitches" was "exactly the type of work place behavior that the JSOV was intended to prevent." The arbitrator ruled the supervisor could no longer be anyone's boss, but only in the Pacific Area region. 

Sometimes, the arbitrators themselves do little more than shuffle off problem supervisors to other locations. In 2009, a supervisor in Gaithersburg, MD repeatedly threatened and harassed workers, which the arbitrator found to be "abusive behavior which holds open the potential for violence." Nevertheless, the arbitrator's ruling was to reassign the supervisor to another nearby post office and receive sensitivity training. 

Also in 2009, a union steward and postal supervisor in Stockton, CA got into a physical altercation when, after an increasingly escalating shouting match, the steward accused the manager of sleeping with the postmaster in order to get her job. The manager then slapped the steward, who restrained the supervisor and left. Despite the police being called and a statement taken, the supervisor received only a written warning while the steward was suspended for 21 days without pay. The arbitrator discovered this was not the first time local management had looked the other way on complaints of this particular supervisor violating the JSOV.

And these are just a few of the examples that have been documented. More often, postal workers and union officials say, violence and harassment in the workplace goes unreported as an accepted part of the job. In 2018, NALC Branch 343's newsletter succinctly summarized just how little has changed since the "Going Postal" era:

It has been my experience that seasoned carriers often times will ignore or shrug off this type of behavior because they have been exposed to it for such a long time. This speaks volumes. Many of these carriers have seen worse and nothing happened. 

Why is the post office such an enduring hotbed of workplace conflict? This is a question I've asked postal workers around the country over the past few months. And the most surprising element of reporting this story, at least to me, is there is absolutely no mystery about it. Everyone knows exactly why the post office is rife with workplace conflict. It's even right there in the JSOV: "making the numbers."

Until recently, Josh Sponsler was a letter carrier in Ohio. He decided to quit the post office despite being a "career" employee with solid pay, good benefits, and a decent pension waiting for him at the end of the road. But he quit because the mounting stress and tension in the workplace took a toll on his mental health. When I asked what it was about the workplace that made it so stressful, Sponsler brought up "the 96."

The 96, officially known as Form 3996, is the form carriers have to fill out if they expect they will have to work overtime to deliver the mail that day. In the morning, when carriers show up for work, they will look over the various types of mail they have to deliver: the pre-sorted mail, the magazines and other "flats," and the packages. If they think work that day will take longer than eight hours and therefore trigger overtime, they reach for the 96. 

But supervisors also have their own opinion about how many hours each route should take. The machines that pre-sort the mail automatically generate statistics about how much mail is going to each route. Those stats are then sent to supervisors each morning. Then, supervisors literally measure each route's unsorted mail with a yardstick. After plugging that number into the same software, the computer generates a final estimate for how long the mail should take to deliver.

Often, Sponsler says, the carrier's estimate will be very different from the computer's. For one, neither the computer programs nor measuring mail by the yard captures the most important factors about how long it takes to deliver mail. For example, what's the weather like? Are there mailers going to every business along the route? Every residential address? Is there road construction along the route?

And the computer's estimate is based on the regular inspection every route gets, where a postal supervisor will literally time with a stopwatch every move the carrier makes to determine how long that route "should" take. This estimate then becomes the baseline for that carrier's route estimates until the next inspection is done. But, for various reasons, that inspection may not be representative of the route year-round.

These two estimates for how long the day's mail will take to deliver is, as Sponsler put it, "the first thing that would cause tension" every day.

The tension is heightened because these estimates, multiplied by the thousands upon thousands of mail routes around the country are, in many ways, the main metric for how the modern post office functions. Supervisors are not given budgets in terms of dollars but in terms of work-hours. The more hours carriers say they'll need to finish their routes, the harder it gets for supervisors to meet their work-hour budgets, which will get them in trouble with their bosses.

The same goes for supervisors overseeing workers who don't deliver mail, such as mail handlers and other workers in processing facilities. In fact, for them it can be even worse, because they never leave the facility and are therefore constantly watched by their bosses. Throughout the JSOV grievances reviewed by Motherboard, workers report supervisors timing their bathroom breaks with stopwatches, looming over them so the workers can "feel their presence" while they work, or filing official warnings if they're too slow on a machine by a matter of seconds.  

When carriers, union stewards, and post office managers talk about "making the numbers," they're talking about these numbers, the work-hour budgets. And they're also talking about the increasingly unreasonable requirements postal management puts on supervisors and postal workers alike, bringing mail to more and more delivery points every year with fewer and fewer workers, relying more and more on overtime that management consistently wants to slash. Talking to postal workers, an analogy that often comes up is that working for the post office feels like working in a pressure cooker. Everyone is being squeezed.

Reaching for the 96 has become an increasingly common occurrence. In August, the USPS Inspector General reported on the agency's soaring overtime costs which it largely attributed to "staffing challenges." Because the post office has consistently cut the number of people it employs even as it delivers to more locations, it relies on overtime to deliver all the mail every day. But, in many ways, keeping employees from filing their 96's is the most important thing a supervisor does from USPS management's perspective, because it saves the post office money. 

Source: USPS OIG

There are, of course, good ways and bad ways for managers to handle this dynamic. Most postal workers I've spoken to said they've had at least one good boss who was reasonable and treated workers with respect. But, they are the exception, not the rule, because doing so requires actively ignoring or competing with the incentives put forward by their bosses. 

For the not so great bosses, they have every incentive to bully workers that take longer to do the job, have routes with the greatest discrepancy between the computerized stats and the carrier's own work pace, or, as is all too often the case, just pick on someone they don't like for whatever reason. And they often do it under the guise of achieving operational efficiency, of hitting the numbers.

Day after day, week after week, month after month, this conflict by design can easily devolve into being about anything other than delivering mail. Mail carriers get frustrated and feel like they're being gaslit into doing a job that cannot be done. They get frustrated being told to do a job in a way they think will be slower while also being told to work faster. Their bosses think they're a liar for saying the work can't be done in eight hours. Supervisors tag carriers who they perceive as constantly asking for unjustified overtime as problem workers who need discipline. 

This dynamic was represented in an extreme but not anomalous way in the Gaithersburg case. The supervisor testified to the arbitrator on the record that he "thinks that Carriers that apply for overtime are 'thieves.'" This view, he added, was the reason he felt empowered to harass carriers who said they would need overtime to finish their rounds. It was also backed up by his postmaster, who expressed similar sentiments.

"You just know there's a very good chance that, by filling this sheet out, you're getting into an argument about time," Sponsler said. And sometimes those arguments get out of hand.

If things haven't gotten any better at the post office, it's fair to wonder: why don't we hear about "going postal" anymore? 

I put this question to Northeastern University Professor James Alan Fox, who has studied mass shootings and workplace violence since the early 1980s. He said shooting trends are more like a "general contagion," in that once they get publicized, a small group of people identify with the shooters and replicate their actions. For example, once the Edmond shooting was covered by the media in 1986, other postal workers started to think that might be a way for them to address their grievances, too. In a situation where these shooters likely saw no way out of their problems, they now had one.

But these trends pass just like any other. "There are fads in crime as there are in other aspects of life," Fox said. "Back in the 80s, the way that postal workers expressed their anger and grievance was with a gun…but that is not part of the culture now."

There is, however, a cohort of postal workers who report regularly higher job satisfaction than everyone else. They're called rural mail carriers. They do the same job as the so-called "city" carriers, even many times out of the same offices with the same supervisors, but for complex historical reasons, they fall under different salary structures. Whereas city carriers are hourly employees that get overtime for working more than eight hours in a day, rural carriers are given an annual salary to deliver the mail however long it takes. As a 1994 Government Accountability Office report put it:

"Rural carriers do not have to negotiate daily with supervisors regarding the time it will take to complete mail sorting or delivery, and their performance is not closely supervised. Rural carriers generally control their own workdays as long as all the mail is delivered on time each day."

I asked Sponsler if he thought putting everyone under the rural carrier structure would solve the workplace issue. He said he had never thought about it before, but he doubted it could ever happen because the entire organization, workers and management alike, have become too addicted to overtime. Many of the workers like the extra money and management won't hire enough people to avoid it. 

Instead, he proposed different solutions, ones I had heard many times before. Abandon the autocratic management structure. Get rid of the computer metrics, or at least drastically curtail how they're used. Empower supervisors to run their post office the best way they see fit, not just follow orders from on high that apply to all the post offices in the area. They're big ideas, but not impossible ones. 

Sponsler ended our interview by saying he didn't really want to quit the post office, but he had to. He liked most of the people he worked with. The carriers really do care about delivering the mail in that cheesy way you always hoped was true but never wanted to ask. It really is true, he said. 

"Even with my experience, it can be a very good place to work," he assured me. But it's a far cry from making sure that experience applies to more than just a select few lucky ones with a good supervisor. "The service needs to work on a lot of stuff to get there."

The High Price of ‘Making the Numbers’ at the USPS syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[vinayv224]

The Instacart strike, explained

Vanessa Bain is one of many Instacart shoppers going on strike for better working conditions during the coronavirus pandemic. | Nick Otto/Washington Post

Why workers at Instacart, Whole Foods, and Amazon are walking off the job in protest.

Workers for Instacart, one of the most popular US grocery delivery apps, went on strike Monday, demanding better pay and health protections as they risk exposing themselves to the coronavirus to deliver essentials to people on lockdown.

Instacart and other grocery delivery workers are facing soaring demand — as much as 65 percent more compared to the same time last year across the top three services in the first week of March alone. But many of them say they feel increasingly unsafe doing their jobs because the companies they work for are not providing basic support, like giving them the time and supplies to wash their hands between shifts.

Instacart shoppers’ complaints echo those of other workers: Around 50 Amazon workers at a warehouse in Staten Island, New York, reportedly walked off the job on Monday in protest of the company’s decision to keep the facility open despite one of their colleagues being diagnosed with Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. And Whole Foods workers are planning a national “sickout” on Tuesday to call for better protections, such as free coronavirus testing for employees and paid leave for staffers under quarantine.

“We are lacking things that are essential for our safety and the safety of our customers. We are potentially going to be vectors of this disease,” said Vanessa Bain, an Instacart shopper and leader of the group organizing the strike, Gig Workers Collective.

Though we don’t have an exact number of strikers, and Instacart says the protest hasn’t reduced customer orders, these actions are effective in a different way: They’re drawing the attention of the public, and politicians, to the health risks that workers are taking to keep US supply chains running during a public health crisis. These workers had been pushing for better pay and basic benefits like health care long before the coronavirus pandemic, but now there’s a renewed sense of urgency around workers’ demands when their lives, and the lives of their customers, could depend on it.

“I believe this is really a time for these companies to show leadership and show that they get it,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who represents a wide swath of Silicon Valley. “I think doing something dramatic like doubling wages for folks, for a few months, I think would be a great gesture.”

Instacart has changed some of its policies in response to workers’ demands in the several weeks leading up to the strike. It began offering new worker benefits, such as providing 14 days of paid time off for shoppers who can prove they have been diagnosed with the coronavirus or placed under mandatory quarantine, as well as a new bonus based on shoppers’ performance. The company also announced plans on Friday to acquire and distribute hand sanitizer.

Instacart told Recode that overall, its workforce has seen earnings increase by 40 percent in the past month compared to the month prior. When asked about the strike and workers’ concerns, a spokesperson for Instacart told Recode in a statement:

In the last four weeks, Instacart has introduced more than 15 new product features, new health guidelines, new shopper bonuses, new sick leave policies, and new safety supplies, as well as pay for those affected by COVID-19. Our team has an unwavering commitment to safely serve our shoppers in the wake of COVID-19, and we’ll continue to share additional updates over the coming days, weeks and months ahead as we further support this important community.

The company also said that it respects the rights of shoppers to provide feedback and voice concerns.

Why exactly are workers striking?

Instacart strikers want the company to take immediate action to reduce their risk of coronavirus exposure.

Shoppers — whose work requires them to interact with grocery store clerks, customers, and other shoppers — are concerned about catching and spreading Covid-19. Workers are also concerned about touching surfaces such as plastic bags and food items that could be contaminated with the virus and then passing it on to customers. (Though it may be possible to contract the disease via contaminated surfaces, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the primary mode of spread is through person-to-person contact.) Workers say that if Instacart provided access to better hand-washing facilities between deliveries, gloves, and other preventive sanitation measures, that could help mitigate the risk.

In order to mitigate these risks, they’re asking four things of Instacart: First, they want personal protective supplies at no cost to workers, such as hand sanitizer (which the company has started to distribute), disinfectant solutions and wipes, and soap. Second, they want hazard pay of an extra $5 per order; third, they want the default tip in the app to be set to at least 10 percent of customers’ total orders. And fourth, they’re pressing the company to grant 14 days of sick time to anyone who has been impacted by Covid-19 and provides a doctor’s note saying as much, or if they have a preexisting condition or are at high risk for facing complications from Covid-19.

“I guarantee you, if you tell a customer, there’s a chance there’s a shopper who is handling your product and packaging your groceries has coronavirus, they would say, ‘no thank you.’” said Bain.

What impact is the strike having?

Since organizers aren’t counting how many people are participating in the strike, all we have are numbers from Instacart itself. And in a reflection of how many Americans are turning to the service during the pandemic, the company says business is doing just fine — even better than before — during this strike.

“As it relates to today’s actions, we’ve seen absolutely no impact to Instacart’s operations,” a spokesperson for Instacart wrote in a statement.

The company said that on Monday, it saw 40 percent more shoppers on the platform compared to the same day and time last week, and that over the past 72 hours, it sold more groceries than ever before.

It also said that in the past week alone, 250,000 new people signed up to become Instacart full-service shoppers, and 50,000 of them have already started shopping on the platform.

Regardless, the strike is raising awareness about worker issues in the gig economy. And Instacart’s new leave policy, which it enacted on March 10, is at least a start in addressing some of workers’ concerns.

“We have to recognize the courage of these workers at Instacart and Amazon, who risk their own safety doing essential work that’s allowing us to have food for our family and our kids, and to have basic supplies,” Khanna told Recode. “While many of us are sheltering in place and working remotely, these workers are doing the essential services to keep our society functioning. So the least we can do is make sure they have safe conditions.”

Khanna said he supports the strikers at Instacart in demanding more from their employers, and that he also sees a role for the government to help essential workers in the grocery and shipping industries.

He said he is in discussions about proposing what he’s calling a “GI Bill” for essential workers during the coronavirus pandemic, such as emergency and health care workers, as well as people like Instacart shoppers and Amazon warehouse workers. The bill would have the government distribute special bonuses to these workers, among other benefits.

Labor activists and other labor-friendly politicians such as Khanna have also called on gig economy companies such as Instacart, Uber, and Lyft to follow new legislation in California, AB 5, that was intended to compel companies to convert their contracted workforce to employees, entitling them to benefits such as health care and paid time off. Most companies have been largely ignoring the legislation, arguing that the new rules don’t apply to their workers.

What will happen next

Organizers of the Instacart strike have said that they will continue to strike until their demands are met in full.

In the meantime, their action, especially in light of concurrent protests from workers at Amazon and other companies, is emphasizing more starkly than ever how the gig economy puts its workers in a precarious place, even as more people rely on their services.

“I think that consumers are seeing how reliant they are on these particular workers and how essential in this pandemic their work is, so it’s a particularly powerful moment,” said Veena Dubal, a law professor at UC Hastings, who researches the gig economy.

Instacart has positioned its workers as a community of “household heroes” — providing a critical service to Americans during a global crisis. It remains to be seen, though, if these workers can successfully negotiate for the better working conditions they’ve long been asking for — and not just during these unprecedentedly difficult times.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/2xDUzl2 from Blogger https://ift.tt/3bCl4pt via IFTTT

[harrisjv]

Video Signoff Review And Large Bonus

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Wish to add online video to your advertising and marketing strategy?

Wondering just how online streaming can increase consumer loyalty and engagement?

Live video clip aids you stick out from the competition by making your Video Signoff advertising and marketing interactive.

In this write-up, you'll discover three creative ways to make use of live video in your social media sites advertising and marketing.

# 1: Develop That Black Friday Really Feeling Every Day

This video from the Ultimate Yard Sales Shop in Hickory, NC, is a basic marketing device. It tells potential clients what they can anticipate to discover at the shop, but the details offered is depictive. Visitors know they will not find the very same eating furniture as well as the authorized football that appear in this video. By the time individuals see the video, those items have actually likely been offered.

If this store were to transmit real-time video clip, the owner could reveal customers his acquiring trips as he builds his supply. Viewers can see the products he buys, so they know what products will be readily available. They 'd know that if they get down to the store quickly sufficient, they can snap up the items they want. Video Signoff Customers could also put bids in the remarks as they enjoy the live program.

With online video, any kind of retail store can transform a business right into a real-time possibility. You can walk through your shop, take out bargains, and tell your clients what wonderful deals are available now. As an example, Urban Children Consignment, an utilized toy shop in Huntington Coastline, CA, uses Facebook Live to show what's in stock and takes inquiries concerning rates.

Broadcast live video clip to show visitors what products are currently in supply at your store.

To prepare your real-time video, tell your audience concerning a sale. Mention what time they'll be able to acquire the great things you'll be showing viewers. Throughout your video, mix in a variety of outstanding deals, such as a cashmere coat for $35 or a widescreen television for a number of hundred bucks. Highlight your loss leaders to build exhilaration as consumers take a look at your sale things.

Due to the fact that the video is live, customers will know that those deals could still be offered when they pertain to your shop. For stores, live video clip transforms sales and also special deals into real-time occasions.

# 2: Turn Item Demos Into Workshops and also Shock Launches

You can discover educational videos all over YouTube, covering things from smartphones to skateboards. Scrivener, a creating application, utilizes its Facebook page to repost video clips it assumes individuals will be interested in.

Scrivener shares a YouTube video clip that Video Signoff users might such as on its Facebook web page.

Yet do these video clips truly address possible individuals' questions? The publishers may wish so, but they can't know ... at the very least up until they take a look at the remarks.

Nonetheless, in a live product trial, you can interact with your audience in real time. Audiences can ask questions as well as assist direct the material in the video clip. For example, utilizing Facebook Live, Michael Kelly Guitars hosts normal live demos of its new guitars. Viewers ask inquiries concerning the guitars and also strategies the artist is using.

In a real-time broadcast, a how-to video clip can end up being an interactive workshop or product trial where followers can ask inquiries.

To pick a subject for your how-to video or demonstration, look through your assistance tickets for the most regularly asked concerns. Those queries will develop the foundation of the info you supply in the video.

Advertise your real-time video clip by telling individuals when you'll be relaying as well as what the program will certainly have to do with, but also make clear that you'll be addressing inquiries. Urge your fans to consider what they intend to ask, and describe exactly how fans can post their inquiries in the comments.

For modern technology companies specifically, conventional video clip how-tos can now become online workshops with consumers around the globe. And when a product is heavily prepared for, a real-time expose can be one of the most effective method to launch.

# 3: Transform Offices Into Soap Operas and Showrooms

Ever intended to open your own ramen dining establishment? Most likely not, but if you resemble the more than 2 million individuals that watched the video listed below, you'll intend to see what it requires to run one in Japan. Individuals are curious to see behind the scenes of their preferred services, and also this interest develops a chance for online video.

This Video Signoff technique does not count on immediate offers like a real-time video broadcast to promote a retail sale. And also it does not need the target market to think before they watch. The focus is on amusement more than information. Highlight your personnel; they're the personalities your consumers will certainly tune in to view.

For instance, if you run a dining establishment, introduce your personnel on your Facebook page as well as even take into consideration giving them their own Twitter feeds. Allow them end up being stars. Not every one of them will intend to radiate however in any dining establishment, your most personalized cooks, stewards, and also table bussers will certainly have a good time turning a video camera on themselves.

Allot a couple of mins during a worker's change when they can talk to the video camera, discuss your products, display their skills, as well as engage with consumers that aren't at your location at the time. Each broadcast will certainly advise those clients of the enjoyable experience they'll have during their next go to.

Ontario Bakeshop, a cake store in Ontario, CA, broadcasts its bakers building as well as embellishing the company's wedding cakes, allowing audiences to see the ability that enters into producing their items.

This live program lets Video Signoff visitors see how the pastry shop embellishes wedding cakes. You do not need to do live video each day, but normal online broadcasts can give your local company the pull of a daytime drama and show the ability that goes into making the items that consumers like.

Final thought

Live video clip can help in practically every industry, yet some organisations should not wait. The benefits are clear as well as the methods are easy to do. If your service can utilize one of these live video clip methods, do not wait an additional min in the past hitting that Live Broadcast switch.

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Video Signoff is great for offering video clips to businesses however it also lets you produce different kinds of touchdown pages for your videos. In fact, it's obtained multiple uses which you discover the even more usage you use it.

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[amamblog]

An Interview with Wang Guangyi (in English and Chinese)

In the current AMAM exhibition Conversations: Past and Present in Asia and America, a painting titled Chanel (below) by Chinese contemporary artist Wang Guangyi is on view. To demonstrate Wang’s “conversations” with art and artists from the past, Chanel is paired with an anonymous propaganda poster from the Cultural Revolution, Thoroughly Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius!, and a lithograph titled Crak! by Roy Lichtenstein, one of the leading figures in the Pop Art movement in the US.

Wang Guangyi first gained wide critical acclaim with his Great Criticism series, which included Chanel. The works juxtaposed propaganda imagery from the Cultural Revolution with brand names and motifs from Western advertising, which were flooding into China during the Reform Era of the 80s and 90s. Like Pop Art, Wang appropriated elements of mass-produced commercial advertising; however, by adding exaggerated, heroic figures from political posters he slyly suggests that advertising and propaganda are equally manipulative. Recently, Zimeng Xiang, the AMAM Student Curatorial Assistant in Asian Art, interviewed the artist.

* Below, you can find a transcription of the interview in Chinese. 

Wáng Guǎngyì 王广义 (Chinese, b. 1956), Chanel, from the Great Criticism series, 1994, oil on canvas, 149.2 x 119.7 cm. Oberlin Friends of Art Fund, 2001.20. Allen Memorial Art Museum

Q: The shift from your early works in Northern Art Group to the Great Criticism series was extraordinary. What was the change in your opinions on art that caused such a huge shift? What triggered such a change in your mind?

Wang Guangyi 王廣義, Post-Classical: Gospel of Matthew, 1986, Oil on canvas, 100cm x 100cm. (Fig. 1)

A: My works created before the shift of my focus had almost nothing to do with my life experience. They were just my imaginary issues: the Post-Classical series (1986) was my own correction to the classical culture and the Frozen North Pole series (1985) was about an imaginary “northern culture”. Not until I started painting Mao (1988,1989) did my artistic practice begin to mature; not until then did I realize what was really connected to my life experience and my educational background.

Wang Guangyi 王廣義, Waving Mao Zedong, 1989, Oil on canvas, 150cm x 120cm. (Fig. 2)

Apart from that, the formation of the Great Criticism series was somehow accidental as well. Despite the poor artistic qualities of propaganda images made by amateur painters during the cultural revolution, I used to find in them a unique kind of power which I wished to exploit in my works. I enlarged and copied one of those images of workers, peasants and soldiers onto a canvas, setting it in the corner, and had no idea how to deal with it. Several days later, I happened to have a chance to drink a can of Coke. This was in those days when lots of Western consumer products (such as Coca-Cola and Marlboro cigarettes) had just entered China, but coke was still a “luxurious” drink. Incidentally, I set the Coke can on the ground, suddenly coming up with some interesting ideas.

Since the Great Criticism series, my attention shifted from the form to the imagery itself. The form is entangled with art historical contexts and elements of individualization, which I was trying to get rid of. I tried to free art from the hands of artists, to make it possess more power—the power that came from people as well as the leader. In the Post-Classical series, with the aid of old masters I told a myth about art history; in Mao’s portraits, with the aid of photography and printing presses I told a myth about the leader; in the Great Criticism, with the aid of people I told a myth about people.

Q: The Bold outlines and exaggerated figures of the Great Criticism series bring to mind a series of Cultural Revolution-era posters, such as “Thoroughly Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius!” (ca. 1970), that are themselves reminiscent of the work of the Modern Woodcut Movement of the 1920s-1940s. Were you referencing either of these in your series, or Cultural Revolution imagery more broadly?

A: Yes, I was referencing the Cultural Revolution-era posters. Basically the prototypes of the Great Criticism series are such imagery created by the “people”. I was juxtaposing these two kinds of imagery coming from different eras—figures of workers, peasants and soldiers, and images from imported advertisements that had permeated contemporary life.

Wang Guangyi 王廣義, Great Criticism: Coca-Cola, 1990-93, Oil on canvas, 200cm x 200cm. (Fig. 3)

Q: How did you feel about the widespread propaganda posters during the 60s and the 70s when you were young? What was the impact that the swelling consumer culture brought to your life in the 90s? How did you come up with the combination of propaganda images and Western commercial advertisements?

A: The cultural revolution lasted only for ten years, during which Chinese people subverted politics, as well as history and art. We lived in a political metaphysics. Elimination was regarded as creation. Chaos was believed to be order. The Cultural Revolution is usually understood as a mythmaking movement, but I consider it more like a kind of Dadaism. This is Mao’s political metaphysics—a unity of mythmaking and Dada. Under the influence of such metaphysics, we embraced the negative, with an unprecedented audacity, as if they are actually the positive. A particular image system was built when the practice of “Great Criticism” was invented. As the Cultural Revolution ended and Mao’s utopia vanished, commodity fetishism became popular in China where true religious belief was submerged. Chinese speedily switched to another image system—a system about signs of consumerism. Everything but my cognitive system was changing dramatically. I was trying to look for a meaning behind the conflicts between my haunting memories and this burgeoning new imagery.

Q: The whole series of Great Criticism includes both prints and oil paintings. Is there any difference in ideas between works made in these two kinds of media?

A: They express the same idea, just different in the ways they could be spread.

Q: Could you tell us about how you created those strings of numbers on the painting Chanel and other special techniques you applied?

A: I stamped those numbers. I also used an altered traditional glazing technique.

Q: Besides the Great Criticism series, many of your other works, such as the sculpture series Materialist made in around 2002 and the painting series Methodology of People’s War made in 2004, also make reference to images from woodblock prints made in the Great Leap Forward or Cultural Revolution period. Why are you interested in employing images and visual effects originally generated for reproducible media in your works that were made in non-reproducible media?

Wang Guangyi 王廣義, Materialists, 2001-2002, Sculpture (Fiberglass and Millet), Approximately 180cm x 120cm x 60cm. (Fig.4)

A: There was a transformation happening there when I modulated and recreated the existing prints. Through such a process of transformation, artists would amplify or even distort the original meanings of the material. My Great Criticism series tended to flatten and simplify (the source material) by removing those medium tones in colors and shadings. It might relate back to the original image style of “Great Criticism”, which was redolent of woodblock prints, but I indeed intentionally pursued that kind of effect in my later works. Plenty of Cultural Revolution imagery, including some of those propaganda images, retained more or less some sense of space; those were created by professional artists, in a Soviet art style. However, they simplified the forms to make images speak to people. I call that a thorough conceptualization. Interestingly, it is exactly those conceptualized images that possessed a unique power.

Q: Because of your Great Criticism series, many critics and art historians consider you as the founder of Chinese Political Pop art. What do you think of such an identity (or rather, label)? Did it have any unexpected effect on your later artistic practice? Do you think that it might restrict the ways viewers read your works?

A: Of course, my Great Criticism series should belong to the category of Pop art, whereas my Pop art has probably included some issues related to politics and ideologies. Pop art is defined as a popular art concerning mass culture, but to a country like China, the most “popular” would be politics.

It certainly had some impact (on my later artistic practice), both positive and negative, but this was not something that could be determined according to my individual will. My works and my words became productions of the world of pop as soon as they left me. Maybe that is the reason why contemporary art approaches everyone’s life so closely. Contemporary art seems to be a reconstruction of the synchronic experience of the public. It involves everyone and forces them to participate, like a huge “game”. At first glance, they are unsure about what exactly this game is, in the same way as they are about the evening news on television. But one thing is clear: contemporary art always reminds the public of a most basic matter—both news and games lead us to real life.

Q: In a previous interview, you mentioned that “the core of art is something spiritual”. Could you choose one word to describe the “spirit” of contemporary Chinese art? What do you think is the biggest difference between the “spirit” of contemporary Chinese art and that of ’85 New Wave?

A: The only way I could talk about ’85 New Wave is from my own experience of it. History is just a random product. When we were actively participating in ’85 New Wave, we had no idea that it would be eventually remembered this way after thirty years. What’s more valuable and substantial is the process of re-thinking the spirits and thoughts of those individuals involved in this piece of history. As far as I’m concerned, it was still a great period of time back in the 1980s, when my numerous dreams and imaginings about art were constructed during those salad days of mine. ’85 New Wave offered me a starting point—a point that related to my feelings about Shamanism in the northern area where I grew up—of my artist’s career. All those major themes of Shamanism—pantheism, mysteries, agnosticism and indeterminacy—still mean a lot to me. Today I still believe that we are agnostic about art, and what artists express are no doubt some kinds of thoughts—but such thoughts are indeterminate.

Q: Most Western audiences nowadays as well as Chinese students of my generation would probably not respond to your “Great Criticism” series as you expected since they did not have the same experience that people of your generation had during the Cultural Revolution, either as participants or foreign spectators. What kind of role would you like your work to play at AMAM, a Western academic art museum? What kind of impact would you like it to have on students of my generation?

A: Essentially, China is a somewhat utopian country. In its long history, the shifts in state power influenced people profoundly. Nowadays such influences are gradually fading away from the memories of younger generations, but something remains the same—something that has never changed except that the way it happens may be different now. Since the early years during which I was born, I’ve had strong feelings that the state was trying to brainwash people with its utopian ideas through propaganda imagery. Meanwhile, when I finally grew up and became an artist, I found that in some Western, developed countries, the state power was used to stimulate people’s ardor for commodity fetishism. As an artist having these two mechanisms superposed, I stood in the intermediate realm, presenting the result to audiences of different ages from different places. As for the role I would like my work to play at a Western academic art museum, I wish that it could guide audiences to learn about issues I’ve been interested in, issues that essentially transcend the concept of nation and time.

Wang Guangyi 王廣義, The Last Supper, 2011, Oil on canvas, 1600cm × 400cm. (Fig. 5)

Q: Images of Western political or religious leaders, as well as Christian icons, started to emerge in your works after 2010. What are your major ideas behind these recent works? Earlier you said that you are more interested in expressing collective notions rather than personal feelings in your works, and that your works are usually created by “the public’s hands”. What are the collective notions that you would like to convey in these recent works?

A: Those works are from the New Religion series. About this series, earlier I said, “The presence or absence of various rituals, icons, relics and commandments, etc., are not something we are able to control. We can only obtain a sense of history’s existence through the figurative reproduction of memories. We looked at everything, but from the backside. We observed the existing human civilization, but with a veil covering on it. Since our childhood, we’ve been exposed to all kinds of things by accident. Those things are like negative films that will re-emerge once they are activated, again, by accident, at some point. Today everyone’s life is affected by such “negative films” carrying a certain density of time and memories which would influence the way we see the world.” What I mean by “collective notion” is that my works rarely involve issues that only I, an individual, have been faced with; instead, they concern issues that most of us have been faced with.

Q: Could you tell us about what you are working on currently (or where you are among different stages of the art making process)?

A: Currently, I’m preparing for a show that will take place in Wuhan this November (2016), and the other one in Prague next year (2017). Both of them will present my works from different time periods as well as those made most recently.

Regarding my recent thoughts on art making, I’m trying to find the source of all my artistic practice. Last year (2015), I made a new installation The Origin of the Gods through which I connected other works of mine, including those made in the early period. This work could be related back to my childhood experience in the northern area. When northern kids are sick, they would probably be sent to a shaman instead of a doctor. I thought this was nothing more than superstition when I was young, but as I grew up, I found that behind such a phenomenon there is a particular significance of those original religions, which interested me a lot.

Such habits came from the legacy of Northern Shamanism which originated from Northern China, Northern Russia and some European areas, but mainly Northern China. To some extent, what we are faced with are so-called “religious” matters—Buddhism and Christianity undoubtedly came from foreign areas; only Shamanism is indigenous. Curious about it, I wanted to find its root, the most basic thing about our spiritual life.

What that is in my works, in which I tried to find that “root”, is exactly an attitude of Pantheism—an emphasis on accidental encounters rather than assigning everything their unique values. As I’ve mentioned before, if someone was tripped up by a rock when walking at night and the next morning he found that the rock had actually saved his life by keeping him from falling down the cliff, this rock would be his savior—from a Pantheist’s perspective. This sounds very interesting to me. Pantheism regards everything around you, such as rocks, ropes, crows and other things we could encounter in our daily life, as potential saviors; accompanying inadvertent circumstances, it determines whether this particular thing would show such a value and meaning. If we look at Western civilization from a Pantheist’s perspective, we would find that this rock, in absolute terms, is the same as what Nietzsche has said in Ecce Homo.

Interview transcription in Chinese:

王广义专访

向子濛 Zimeng Xiang

从您“北方艺术群体”时期的作品到“大批判”系列是一个非常大的转变，在这个过程中您对艺术的看法发生了怎样的转变？是怎样的契机促使了您的艺术观念发生如此大的转变？

在这之前我的东西应该说和我的生活经验都是没关系的，是我想象出的一个问题。“后古典”是我对古典文化的修正，“北方极地”是我想象出的一个北方文化，实际上和我的经验和我的生活，和我整个的教育背景都没有关系，实际上我真正成熟是从画毛泽东这件事开始的，我接下去就更明确了，和我经验相关，和我艺术整个教育背景相关，大概是这种产物。《大批判》的产生，除了这个之外，也具有偶然性，那个年代，大量的西方商品刚刚进入中国，像可口可乐、万宝路烟，而文革期间大量非专业的人画的一些很幼稚的报头来表达他们的态度，从绘画语言上非常拙，形也不准，但确实有一种力量，我也想找到怎么来使用它，我先是把其中一个工农兵的《大批判》报头打格放大成一米乘一米，画到画布上原样临摹下来，放到墙角儿，好几天也不知道怎么处理。很偶然，在那个喝可乐挺奢侈的年代，我偶然喝了一罐可乐，把可乐罐放到地上，突然觉得很有意思。

从大批判开始，我的注意力从图式转到了图像。图式有太多艺术史和个性化成分。我想努力地摆脱它，我想把艺术从艺术家的手中解放出来，让它更具有力量。力量来自人民，来自领袖。我创作了毛泽东和大批判。在后古典那里，我借古代大师说话，讲了一个艺术史的神话。在毛泽东那里，我借照相术和印刷机说话，讲了一个领袖的神话。在大批判那里，我借人民说话，我讲了一个人民的神话。

“大批判”系列中夸张的粗线条人物形象让我们不禁联想到文革时期的宣传海报，例如（AMAM收藏中的）“彻底批判林彪孔老二”。而这些宣传海报本身又令人回忆起20年代至40年代的新木刻运动。在“大批判”系列作品中，您是否有暗示这两者中的其一，或是广义上的文革图像？

和前者（宣传海报）是有关系的，或者说我的《大批判》作品的原始图像，就来源于前者这些“人民”创造的图像， 我将这些工农兵的形象与今天我们生活中的那些引进的、渗透到大众生活中去的商品广告图像相结合，将这两种来源于不同时代的图像因素并置。

六、七十年代时随处可见的带有宣传性质的图像曾带给当时的您怎样一种感受？九十年代至今的消费主义文化对您的生活又产生了怎样的冲击？为什么会想到把这两者联系在一起呢？

文革只有短短的十年的时间。十年中，中国人颠覆了政治，颠覆了历史和艺术。中国人生活在玄学政治中，破坏就是创造，天下大乱达到天下大治。人们常说文革是一种造神运动，依我看来，文革更像是一种达达运动。造神和达达的统一，就是毛泽东的政治玄学。在这种玄学的影响下，中国人以一种空前的魄力，相信负面的东西更具有积极性，他们发明了大批判，建立了一套特殊的图像系统。随着文革的结束，随着毛泽东乌托邦的破灭，拜物教在信仰空缺的中国盛行。在图像上，中国人迅速地接受了另一套系统，一套关于消费的标识和数字系统。社会的一切都在剧烈地转换，我的认知系统却未能适应。残留的记忆和新兴的图像发生了冲突。我试图在我的艺术中却寻找这种冲突背后的意义。

整个“大批判”系列中既包含版画作品，也包含油画作品，使用这两类不同的媒介所创作的作品背后的意义有什么不同吗？

意义是一样的，只是这两种媒介的传播方式不一样。

请问Chanel这幅作品上一串串的数字是怎样弄上去的？您在创作这幅作品时还使用了其他什么特别的方法/技巧吗？

上面的数字是我用印章印上去的，同时我还使用了改变了的传统罩染方式。

“大批判”系列之后，您的许多其他作品似乎也借用了大跃进或文革时期版画中的人物形象，例如02年左右的雕塑作品“唯物主义者”系列，以及04年的作品“人民战争方法论”系列。为什么会对使用不可复制的媒介（油画/雕塑）来再现原本由可复制媒介（版画）所产生的图像这种创作方式产生兴趣？

我对已有的印刷品进行再加工、创作， 是一个转换的关系。艺术家通过转换，把原来那个东西的意义放大了，甚至也可能是扭曲了。我的《大批判》倾向于平面化，逐渐去掉了中间调子，不论是素描关系还是色彩关系，越来越倾向简单。这虽然与那些大批判的原始风格有关，那些东西有木刻的感觉，但我在后来的画面上一直有意追求这种效果。文革中的不少画面还是有一种立体感和空间感，基本上是苏联艺术的风格样式，还是出于专业艺术家之手，即便是一些大批判的报头画，也是他们画的，但当他们在向人民述说的时候，他们在形式上就做了简化了的处理，我把这种简化称之为“彻底的概念化”。有趣是，恰恰是这种概念化的图像，有一种特别的力量。

您因为“大批判”系列而被许多评论家及艺术史学者公认为中国政治波普艺术的创始人，请问您怎么看待这样一种身份（或说是一种标签）？这种标签是否对您之后整体的艺术创作产生了��响？您是否认为这从某种意义上来说束缚了观众对您的作品的解读？

当然，我的“大批判”毫无疑问应当属于波普艺术的范畴，只是我的波普艺术可能包含了政治和意识形态的一些问题。波普的定义是一种流行的通俗艺术，但是对中国这样一个国家而言，最流行的应当是政治。

影响肯定是有的，有正面的也有负面的。但有些事情是不能以个人意志来决定的，我的作品和我所说的话一经离开我，就成为一个波普产物了，也许，正因为这样才使得当代艺术逼近了每一个人的生活。其实就当代艺术来讲，它似乎应当是一种公众共时性经验的一种重组的实现，它涉及到所有人，它是一场大型的“游戏”，它迫使公众参加进去。从表面上看，公众似乎弄不清楚这个游戏的真面目，这有点像公众在晚间观看电视新闻节目一样。有一点是清楚的，那就是当代艺术总是在提醒公众注意一个最基本的问题：新闻和游戏引导我们走向真实的生活。

您曾经在一次采访中说过，“艺术的核心是精神性的东西”，那么您认为当下的中国当代艺术的“精神”，与85新潮时期的“精神”相比，最大的不同是什么？如果请您用一个词来形容中国当代艺术的“精神”，那将会是什么？

我只能从自己经历的85去真实的谈论这段历史，任何一件事情成为历史其实是非常偶然的，就像我们当时参与到其中，不知道这会成为历史，如今三十年过去了，我知道这是历史了。在这个过程中，回到参与历史具体的个人精神思想的历程可能更具有价值、更真实。以我个人而言，我仍然觉得80年代是一个美好的年代，我的青春年华是在那个年代度过的，我的无数梦想、无数对艺术的想象是在那个年代建立的。 85为我的艺术道路提供了一个起点，那个起点和我小时候生活在北方对萨满教的感觉有关，萨满教的泛神论、神秘感、不可知、不确定这些词语对于今天的我来说依然有巨大影响，我今天仍然认为艺术是不可知的，艺术家所表达的毫无疑问是一种思想，但是这个思想是不确定的。

大多数西方观众以及正在海外留学的这一代中国学生由于并没有您那一代人年轻时的经历 （不论是作为参与者还是西方旁观者），对您作品中的政治元素都无法产生感同身受的体验，很可能会对您的作品产生一些您预料之外的回应。您希望自己的作品在AMAM这样的西方学术性美术馆中扮演一个什么样的角色？  您希望您的作品对我们这一代的学生产生什么样的影响？

本质上讲，中国是一个乌托邦国家，在它漫长的历史进程中，国家权力的变化对人构成了很深的影响。虽然在今天，这些影响也在慢慢改变、淡出了更为年轻的一代的记忆。但有些东西是恒定的，其实从未改变，只是方式不一样了而已。从我出生的年代开始，我深深感受到国家权力将“乌托邦”的想法通过宣传画的方式对人进行“洗脑”。当我漫长的成长为一个成年人，成为一个艺术家之后，我发现，在西方一些发达国家的国家权力在利用商品的商标设计去刺激人的“拜物”的热情。我作为艺术家，我把两种东西重合在一起，我站在中间地带，把它呈现给不同地域不同时代的观众。要说我希望我的作品在西方学术性美术馆扮演什么样的角色，那我希望通过我的艺术所呈现的问题，能够引导观众去了解我所感兴趣的问题，这些问题在本质上又应该超越于国家和时间的概念。

2010年之后，您的画面中开始出现许多现实中的西方政治、宗教领导人以及基督教圣像，可以谈谈这些作品背后的想法吗？早些时候您曾说过“我不太适合表达自己的很私密的感受，这不是我的强项，我更适合表达公共的概念……我的艺术常常是借人民之手来完成的”那么在这些作品中，您想传达的是怎样的公共概念呢？

你说的这些作品，是《新宗教》的系列，关于这些作品，我曾经说过：“各种仪式、偶像、遗物、戒律等是否在场，是我们所不能掌控的。我们只能靠‘记忆的表象复制’来获取一种历史的存在感。我们看到的所有东西，都是在背后。我们观看人类已有的文明，都是隔了一层的。从小时候开始，我们接触到的一切东西都是偶然的。这些东西像“底片”一样在我们心中存在，在某一时刻它们又被“偶然性”激活，就会浮现出来。我们今天人的生活，都受到“底片”的影响。而“底片”所承载的时间和记忆的厚度，又会影响我们观看世界的方式。”我所说的公共，是我的创作极少指涉我作为一个个体所面对的问题，而更关心更为普遍的“我们”所面对的问题。

愿意透露一下近期在准备什么样的作品，或是正处于一个什么样的创作阶段吗？

目前我正在准备我今年（2016）11月份在武汉的美术馆的展览，还有就是明年（2017）在布拉格的美术馆的展览，这些两个展览都将呈现我各个阶段包括最新的创作。

另外，我近期在创作上的思考，就是我试图要找到我所有的创作的一个根源。去年（2015），我创作了新的装置作品《众神的起源》，通过它将我其他的作品，包括早期的作品串起来。这件作品和我童年小时候生活在北方的经历有关。北方小孩生病了，不一定找医生，可能用一种巫术的方式弄好，小的时候知道这是迷信行为，不知道这里很复杂的含义。随着年龄的增长，我发觉这里面有一种比较朴素的原始宗教的意味，这个是我特别有兴趣的。

事实上这些行为来源于北方萨满教，萨满教主要的发源地是中国的北部和俄罗斯的北部，以及欧洲的某些地方，但是以中国北部为主。所以从某种意义上讲，我们所面临的和遭遇的是所谓“宗教”这些事情，像佛教、基督教毫无疑问都是外来的，惟有萨满教是非常本土的东西。我觉得这个事挺有意思的，我想找到它的根源，找到属于我们精神生活中最基本的一个东西。

我做这个作品找到那个东西，就是一种泛神论的态度，对所有的事物不赋予唯一性的价值，而是去强调这种偶然的遭遇。就像原来我谈过一个人在夜晚的时候走路，被石头绊倒了，早上起来发现如果不被石头绊倒就会掉下悬崖摔死。对他而言，这个石块就是他的拯救者，这是经典的泛神论说法，我发现这是非常有意思。泛神论把你周边所有的物都赋予了一种拯救者的身份，像石块、绳索，包括乌鸦等等这些我们日常常见的物体，伴随着偶然发生的境遇，决定这个物体是否会凸显这个价值和含义。如果我们也以泛神论的立场来看待西方文明，我们会发现，这个石块和尼采所说的“瞧！那个人”在绝对意义上是一样的。

Image Sources:

Fig. 1. Wáng Guǎngyì, Chanel, from the Great Criticism series, 1994, Oil on canvas, 149.2 x 119.7 cm. Oberlin Friends of Art Fund, 2001.20. Allen Memorial Art Museum, http://allenartcollection.oberlin.edu/emuseum/view/objects/asitem/id/11046 (accessed February 7, 2017).

Fig. 2. Wang Guangyi, Post-Classical: Gospel of Matthew. 1986, Oil on canvas, 100 cm x 100 cm. Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong. From: Asia Art Archive, http://www.aaa.org.hk/Collection/CollectionOnline/Details/29792 (accessed February 6, 2017).

Fig. 3. Wang Guangyi, Waving Mao Zedong. 1989, Oil on canvas, 150 cm x 120 cm. Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong. From: Asia Art Archive, http://www.aaa.org.hk/Collection/CollectionOnline/SpecialCollectionItem/12153 (accessed February 6, 2017).

Fig. 4. Wang Guangyi, Great Criticism: Coca-Cola. 1990-93, Oil on canvas, 200 cm x 200 cm. Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong. From: Asia Art Archive, http://www.aaa.org.hk/Collection/CollectionOnline/Details/29830 (accessed February 6, 2017).

Fig. 5. Wang Guangyi, Materialists. 2001-2002, Sculpture (Fiberglass and Millet), Approximately 180 cm x 120 cm x 60 cm. Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong. From: Asia Art Archive, http://www.aaa.org.hk/Collection/CollectionOnline/Details/29864 (accessed February 6, 2017).

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Law School Personal Statement Writing

Writing a Personal Statement for Law School

When you apply to any law school to get admission, they ask you to fulfill their requirements. You have to submit certain documents, like your educational certificates, CV and personal essay. Different schools ask for a 500 – 700 words statement and give a chance to the applicant to express their traits. A personal essay is a very important document. Your academic achievements are mentioned in your CV, but this document gives you a chance to explain your personality. You can tell the admission committee about your passion for being a lawyer. You can explain the motivational factor, which forces you to choose law as a career.

This statement is the platform to convince the admission committee that you are the right person to be selected and you deserve the seat. You can explain your future goals and how getting this degree can help you to achieve your dreams. If you get admission, what good you can bring to this particular school and how this law school can help you to achieve your dreams. Many people have no idea about how to write a personal statement and how to write a law school addendum, all you need is to give it proper time and if you feel any problem, you can also get professional help. Writing and editing experts can help to write your documents, they can work according to your given details and within your given deadlines.

Why Are Law School Personal Statement So Important?

The majority of the students underestimate the value of a statement. They don’t understand that this particular document can play a key role in securing admission in their preferred law school. There are many factors, which make this statement so important. Firstly, it is used as a tool to evaluate the personality of the applicant. It expresses your passion for law, your confidence, and your big dreams. The admission committee is very keen to know what you know about yourself and how you express that. They want to know, why they should make you a part of their institution. If you can write a good statement, you can get admission, even with average academic grades. Secondly, it reflects your writing abilities. How well you can write and how strong is your command on the language, it is very crucial. Moreover, it gives you a chance to explain, if there are any red flags on your CV. You can tell them the reasons for your semester break, during your previous degree. You can state your achievements and accomplishments as a person and as a student. Personal statements law school can change the course of your life if you write them properly. Moreover, you need to write a unique statement for every school. Writing customized account for every school can enhance your chances to get admission. Mention the key features of the schools, which attracted you to become part of that institution. Your little effort can make a big difference.

What Does A Law School Personal Statement Do?

When you write a Harvard law school personal statement or statement for any other law school, you should be very clear about the reason. You are writing this document because you want to get admission. The role of this paper is to show your individuality. A good statement keeps the readers engaged till end and convince him that you are the right person. It reflects your writing abilities, how cleverly you can comprehend information in fewer words. It shows the importance of that particular school in your career and what is the key feature of their institution, which forced you to apply. A well-written statement can do the magic. There are examples of the students, who got admissions in top law schools, in spite of their low grades.  A personal essay can make all the difference. Unfortunately, a lot of students do not give this document due to importance and lose their chance to become a lawyer. This is not just a paper but an opportunity for those students, who are not high achievers in academics. If they use it wisely, it can take them to the top of the merit list.

Professional Law School Personal Statement Help with Application Writing

The statement can play a decisive role in your admission. You can write it yourself. A lot of help is available online and you can get a law school personal statement sample as well. However, getting professional help is always useful. Professional writers know the exact requirements of law schools. They know the details like format, content and word selection. Professional writers can save a lot of your time too. They can write your statement when time is short.

Right Law School Personal Statement Format

Usually, law schools give no details about the format. Word count is mentioned, which is different for different schools, but you have to follow a general format, for all the law schools. The document is written like an essay without any title, headings or subheadings. It is divided into three or four paragraphs. The first paragraph is about the introduction. The body of the statement comes in the second paragraph or you can split it into two paragraphs and the conclusion comes in the end. Personal statement law school example can help to understand more about formatting details.

Times New Roman or Ariel font style is used to writing such official documents, with 12 pts. The margins of the page should be one inch, on all four sides. Usually, double space is preferred, and paragraphs are intended. Justify your text or keep it align left. Avoid the use of any fancy font styles and font colors. It’s a professional document and should look the same. Once you are done writing your essay, edit and review it many times and make sure there are no mistakes and errors. If possible, show it to an expert or a teacher, who can help to point out your mistakes. The correct format is important, but an error-free statement is more important.

How to Conclude A Personal Statement

Writing a personal essay requires your time and attention. The whole document is important but a personal statement conclusion is particularly vital. The last few sentences leave a long-lasting impression, so the conclusion should be very strong and impressive. You can mention your personal and professional goals at the end of your statement and reinforce your passion for the law as your career. A convincing conclusion can help to get your target. However, the concluding paragraph should not be very long. You have to keep in mind that you have a word limit. Select your words carefully and make sure the message is effectively conveyed. Personal statement examples law school can help you to get an idea about the conclusion. But make sure you use them just to get information, don’t try to copy anything from those samples or examples, which are available online.

Avoid the use of typical concluding catchphrases. Admission committee members are not only familiar but fed up with them. Uniquely conclude your statement and leave an everlasting impression on the mind of the reader.

What Personal Strengths Do I Have to Mention in My Personal Statement Law School?

This document is about yourself, your personality and your traits. You have to mention your strengths which make you a useful part of the institution and a successful lawyer. The strengths you can mention in your account can be

Hard worker

Disciplined/ Well – organized

Motivated/ Inspired

Passionate

Team player

Leader

Enthusiasm

Respectfulness

Determination

Dedication

Patience

Critical thinking

Communication skills

Other than these, you can mention any other positive personality trait. However, try to be realistic and practical. Avoid exaggerating things, because being honest is also a very important quality.

What Qualities Are Necessary to Be Good Lawyer?

Law as a career is not for everyone. You must possess some key qualities. Every profession has some specific demands and requirements and if you cannot fulfill them, you may not be able to excel in the field. If you want to become a successful lawyer, you must have the following qualities.

Observation: You need to be a keen observer.

Analytical skills: A person without analytical skills cannot be a lawyer.

Research skills: You must have excellent research skills. You have to quote the references of previous cases, which requires a lot of research. You must be aware of different platforms, where you can find your required information.

Listening skills: A good listener can be a good lawyer. Listening to your client’s care is the first step in your success.

Communication: Law is all about communication, if you cannot communicate effectively, you cannot be a lawyer. You have to communicate with your clients and in the coat, so having communication skills is very important.

Perseverance: grit is important to be a lawyer. You need to be very persistent. It may not be a win-win situation always. If you have perseverance, you will be successful.

Management: Lawyers need to work on different projects at the same time, and management is very important. People who can’t manage properly ca not get success.

How to Write A Law School Personal Statement?

Documents like law school essays or statements are confusing. When students start writing them, they have no idea about the content, format, and length of these documents. They avoid them, till the last date of application submission. When a statement is written in the last moments the result is a badly written document, which has no focus and no idea.  Consequently, the application is rejected despite all the efforts and struggles. The law school application essay requires your attention and time. If you are not sure about the content, you can get help from writing services. If you are equipped with writing skills, you can hire editing services. You can also find samples of legal personal statement, which are quite helpful.

When you write your statement, use simple words and write short sentences. The aim is to express your personality. The use of fancy words will not impress the reader, rather there will be more chance of mistakes. Students use common catchphrases, which is not a good idea. The admission committee wants to see some original content.

Law School Personal Statement Writing Services

You can not put your career at stake, just because of a statement. If you are not sure about the content of the document, you can hire professionals. Writing services are available online, who can write completely customized documents according to the law school you want to apply. They have professional writers, who have years of experience in writing such documents. They know all those points for which the admission committee is looking for. They not only write but format your documents and you can submit them without having a glance. These writing services are particularly useful when time is very short. They can write your statement with 24 hours deadlines and save you in the last moments. However, you have to be very careful in the selection of the services. Some non-professionals are also working in the field, just to make money. When you hire a writing service, make sure they have professional writers and have a good reputation. You can read client’s reviews to get an idea about the quality of the service.

Law School Personal Statement Editing Services

If you have already written your statement, Bravo! But it is always good to get it checked by the expert. Students are not writing experts and the content you write may contain errors and mistakes. The admission committee does not acknowledge a statement full of mistakes. Mistakes reflect the inability of the writer and the careless attitude, which is not acceptable for any law school.  So, it’s better to get it reviewed by an expert. You can hire editing services for this purpose. They ask for very economical charges. They will correct spelling and grammar mistakes and review your statement. During editing, they will remove all kinds of errors and format your document. NYU law personal statement or any other statement, they will make it error-free and your document will be ready for submission. Select a trustworthy editing service and secure your seat in your favorite law school. You can ask the services about the editing services they offer. Some services offer proofreading services as well. if you have good writing skills and sure about your sentence structure and grammar, you can hire proofreading service.

Sample Law School Personal Statement from Expert Writers

Another helpful source for writing your admission statements is to get help and guidance form samples. You can find a lot of samples and examples online. However, all of them are not trustworthy. Try to find an LLM personal statement sample written by writing experts. They will give you a clear idea about the content and writing style of this key document. You can also get help with the keywords, you can use and the formatting details. However, do not copy anything from these samples. They are for your help and assistance only. The admission committee members are well aware of all such samples, which are available on different platforms and they don’t like plagiarized material. Get help from these samples and construct your statement, step by step. To get help from the samples, you need to read a sample carefully. Consider sentence structure, the choice of words and the use of technical terms. Reading a few samples will give you a clear idea about the content. You can get inspiration to write your own story.

These are the few sources, which help you to write a successful statement paper. If you are writing your statement, review it many times and try to get it reviewed from an expert.

Best Examples of Law School Personal Statements

If you need to write ISAT personal statements, you can find examples online. A large number of websites offer such samples and examples, but you have to make your choices, carefully. The majority of the samples are written just to attract the traffic, the content on those pages is of low quality and they are not properly written. Consulting such examples for guidance can lead to a disaster. Try to find the best examples which are written by experts.

We have law experts in our writing team, who are well aware of the technical terminology. If you need a Tax LLM personal statement or statement about any other sub filed of law, you can use our samples. They are written by our law experts, who have years of experience and many of them have served in different law schools. They know the exact requirements of the law schools, required length and the formatting details. You can use these examples for guidance. They are the true examples in every aspect, no matter its content, formatting, word selection or structure of your statement. Reading statements from different sources will make it easier for you to find the best quality documents. Remember, if you want to write a good statement, you need to follow the good examples. Professionally written examples provide the necessary information and guidance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Applicants have a lot of questions regarding statement writing and sample letter explaining a low GPA. Students who write their statements for the first time have a lot of questions in their minds. They have no idea that either the statement should be like an application or essay or how they have to start? Here are the answers to some frequently asked questions, which you may find helpful.

How Long Should A Personal Statement Be for Law School?

Different law schools have different requirements. Some law schools give the word limit, which is usually 500 – 700 words. But in some cases, there is no word limit given and the admission committee gives free hand to the applicants. In this case, you can write a document which should be one and a half page and should not exceed from 2 pages. No one is interested in reading long stories. The admission committee has to review a lot of applications in a limited time. So, write an interesting account, which should not be very long. A comprehensive, well written and precise statement is required.

How to Brainstorm Unique Law School Personal Statement Topics?

It is very important to write a unique personal essay. You can use some tricks to brainstorm a unique law statement. For instance, write or read your resume in detail. It may help you to recall some interesting stories, which you can write in your statement. Think about your strengths and unique qualities, which the admission committee can appreciate. See some samples and examples, you can find some similar ideas. If you like an idea you can write in your unique writing style. It is very important, not to copy anything from any source. Keep your individuality and eccentricity, intact. You can ask your family and friends and they may come up with some interesting observations about your personality. You can ask a friend to write an essay about your personality. An honest review can help you to get a unique topic. When you find a topic, you need to stay focused and use the best skills to write an essay.

What are the crucial NYU Law personal statement writing requirements?

New York University School of law, does not ask for too many requirements, as far as this document is concerned. The official website of the university suggests it as an opportunity for the applicants to describe their unique qualities and true self. They also give you a chance to explain red flags on your resume. They ask students not to mention details, which are already available in resume or application. There is no specific word limit or any specifications about the content. So, you can write your account and try to be precise. Focus on your qualities and abilities and make sure it does not exceed two pages.

What Do They Expect from A Harvard Law Personal Statement?

The official website of Harvard law school takes this document as an opportunity to express yourself, your ideas and your vision. It should not be more than two pages and the font size should not be less than 11 pts. A 1-inch margin is required on all four sides. As far as content is concerned, they expect students to explain their strengths, which can contribute to the campus and other law communities. You can express your interests and intellectual background.

Should I Submit A Diversity Statement for Law School?

Most of the law school asks for a one-page diversity statement as an optional essay. This document is just another opportunity to explain yourself. You can see the website of the law school, where you are applying. If they ask for a diversity statement, they provide some guidelines as well. If there is no information on the website, you can call the office and ask about it. If you can write properly, it is always good to submit a diversity statement. You will have another page to explain your strengths and attributes. However, if you are not sure about the content, consider hiring a professional or don’t write it at all.

What Should Be Included in A Law School Personal Statement?

In this document, you have to introduce yourself as a person. Tell me about your motivation for being a lawyer. What are your long term and short-term goals? Why do you want to get admission to this particular law school? What are the unique personality traits, which can contribute to the betterment of the school? How passionate you are about being a lawyer? How you can make a difference in the lives of the people around you and society, at large? These are just a few questions, which must be answered in your statement. However, avoid telling those details which are already mentioned in your CV. If you have any distinction in your academic career, do mention them. Try not to compare any institute or any person with the other.

How Long Should Your Personal Statement Be for Law School?

The law school statement should not be very long. You have to write a comprehensive and precise note. Admission committee members have to go through a large number of applications and they are not interested in reading long stories. Have an engaging start and make sure you keep the reader interested till the end. One and a half page document is enough, and you must not exceed from two pages. Build your story and leave a long-lasting impact on the mind of the reader.

Struggling with law school personal statement? Our examples can help you. Try them now!

[contentmag]

A thought leader transforming the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History into a community gem.

“How can we have intentions to be welcoming but not actually be welcoming people in?” asks Nina Simon, executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH). For more than a decade, she has been a leading voice in pushing cultural institutions around the world to adopt new models of operating in order to stay relevant to the communities they serve. “You can’t just say that you’re going to be for the community. You can’t just hang up a Bienvenidos sign. You have to really do the work to become representative of them, to be created by them, so they feel ownership and true involvement in the space.”

Simon grew up in Los Angeles and went to school for electrical engineering. After college, she moved to the East Coast and landed what she thought was her dream job at NASA. But in the meantime, she found another interest: having seen throughout her schooling and in her work how badly people struggle with math, she became interested in finding innovative new ways to educate. She began working with local children’s museums to help design interactive exhibits. “I just fell in love with the world of museums as places that invited people to learn and explore without there being a test or a grade.”

She had found her calling and soon left the engineering world to throw herself, full-time, into museum curation, working with cultural institutions and science centers and “making puppet shows about infinity.” Eventually, she landed a large project at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.; later, she became a curator at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose.

“I came from a family where we didn’t go to museums all the time,” she says. For Simon—the engineer—it’s more a matter of needing a solution to a problem. “We have a world where people are really creative and engaged artistically, are really curious about the past and the world,” she says, “and yet many people see museums—which are places to explore art, history, and science—as irrelevant.” Simon soon realized she had another opportunity to share what she was learning in the field of exhibition design. “There was a lot of talk in the museum industry about how what we called ‘Web 2.0,’ things like Wikipedia and YouTube, was going to potentially change the way that museums work. I started to hear people who I thought of as mentors and leaders in the museum field ask questions like, ‘What is the Wikipedia of museums, what is the YouTube of museums?’ So, in 2006, I started Museum 2.0.” The blog, which offers new ideas on how institutions can grow with technology, rethink their top-down structures, and engage more effectively with communities, has become one of the most-read online sources of content for arts and cultural institutions.

“It’s kind of a Silicon Valley story,” Simon muses. “I started a blog when I was 24, and suddenly, within a year, was starting to be treated like an expert because I had been exploring a topic that was emergent.” It wasn’t long before she was being recruited to help open and transform different types of cultural centers around the world. When she settled in Santa Cruz with her family, Simon didn’t plan on taking a position at the Museum of Art & History. But when the floundering organization reached out to her in 2010 with the opportunity to put her ideas into practice in her local community, she decided to take it.

The transformations she implemented at MAH, which she highlights at her numerous speaking engagements and in her best-selling books, The Participatory Museum and The Art of Relevance, included giving local community partners a chance to co-curate exhibitions, hiring bilingual staff to ensure Spanish-speakers feel welcome, and altering the makeup of the board of directors to include better representation of the people the museum serves—not just wealthy donors. “Every community is different,” she points out in one of her TED talks. “What says welcome to one says keep out to another.” Her goal was to find what she calls “new doors,” ways to make more members of the community feel welcome.

It worked. In just a few years, MAH went from being nearly broke to sustainably funded and thriving, from being a forgotten and ignored building downtown to being a busy community space filled with people and creativity. A new outdoor public gathering place called Abbott Square opened adjacent to the museum, bringing together art and cultural activities with restaurants, a bar, and a performance space.

“When I came on, we had 17,000 visitors—and the majority of those were retired white folks and school kids on school field trips. We just closed the fiscal year with 148,000,” Simon exclaims. That’s 10 times the patronage the museum received seven years ago. In addition, the current audience reflects the diversity of the county. “We really think what we’re doing is about building community, and you don’t just do that inside the museum,” she adds. “Being welcoming to people also means having a great place to sit and connect that cultural and creative experience to the social experience.”

Simon’s latest project, launched earlier this year, is OF, BY & FOR ALL, a global initiative offering a certification process that organizations can opt into with a goal of becoming more “of, by, and for” their specific communities. It provides an online assessment that anybody can take, as well as tools and resources to help institutions work toward the kinds of changes she has pushed for.

“There’s no question that there is a trend and an exploration of community participation happening in cultural institutions,” Simon says. “I am certainly very pleased that people read the blog, read the books, tell me they’re using the work…but to some extent, I’m dissatisfied by how far we have—or haven’t—gotten. Cultural institutions still primarily serve a small niche of most communities, a niche that is whiter, wealthier, and older than the general population. And I think that, yes, there may be a lot of institutions that now have post-it walls or have somebody engaging people online, but I wonder. Is that moving to the fundraising plan? Is that moving to how exhibitions are planned and how programming is developed?”

Simon knows that some of these transformations won’t work for every organization, but for many community-based museums, cultural groups, and educational facilities, such changes may be not only a powerful and important way to stay relevant to the people served but the only way to survive and thrive going forward.

“I feel very passionately from what we’ve seen here in Santa Cruz at the MAH that making institutional change—to be an organization that is of, by, and for community—has shown an incredible transformation in who’s coming in, how we’re funded, and in what we’re able to accomplish in terms of impact…and I want to see that kind of change happen for other institutions.”

Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History 705 Front Street Santa Cruz, CA 95060

instagram: santacruzmah

Written by Nathan Zanon Photography by Daniel Garcia

This article originally appeared in Issue 10.5 “Dine”

  Nina Simon A thought leader transforming the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History into a community gem.