#alien stage incorrect quotes | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

solacefruit · 4 years

Note

Hi Grey, I struggle a lot with world building and I think it's easiest for me to learn by example. I was wondering if you had any books or series you'd recommend that you thought did particularly well in the world building department or that you found inspiring. I'm trying to start building a list of things to read, could be any genre

Hello there and thank you for your patience! I’ll be honest, this one’s a challenge to answer, but I’ll do my best. I’ll put it all under a read-more, because I’m going to talk a lot about why I feel these books are good places for thinking about world-building.

Northern Lights, by Philip Pullman. (fantasy)

This one comes up a lot when I’m making recommendations and that’s because I love it. For me, it was deeply formative in many ways, and especially when it came to world-building, because Pullman uses a style of world-building which really clicks for me--which is basically throwing your reader into a world and not explaining much at all, leaving many things gestured at but never explicitly said. Things just happen, things just are, and the reader has to keep up. There’s a lot that goes unsaid in this book, and it means you as a reader have to start thinking and “solving” the gaps in the world yourself. There’s room for speculation and I thrive in that environment, and lean on it heavily in my own work.

A great example of that comes in the first chapter of the novel, on the fifth page and then again on the seventh:

“As Lyra held her breath she saw the servant’s daemon (a dog, like almost all servants’ daemons) trot in and sit quietly at his feet...” - page five. “... and said something to his daemon. He was a servant, so she was a dog; but a superior servant, so a superior dog. In fact, she had the form of a red setter.” - page seven.

That’s good oblique storytelling, because you are told so much and simultaneously so little. From these two tiny pieces, you now know that:

servants usually have dog-shaped daemons

some daemons, even within a family, are “better” than others

daemons mean something about their person

But these pieces tell you enough that you can now speculate and question the world as you read on. Things like:

why do servants have dog daemons?

what makes a red setter daemon better than another dog daemon?

what does a dog daemon mean?

what is the hierarchical system of daemons, who is better than whom?

are people sorted because of their daemons, or do the daemons reflect where the person is sorted to after the fact?

what do other daemons mean?

are these meanings innate or cultural?

The book itself will directly answer maybe one or two questions, hint at a few others, and leave many completely unresolved. But that’s not bad world-building. For me, that’s the kind of world-building I love best. The book can now say, “this person’s daemon is a butterfly,” and you will be primed to read symbolism and significance into that, even in moments where the book itself doesn’t give you any. You’re a participant in creating the world as you read. A little goes a long way.

The Discworld novels, by Terry Pratchett. (fantasy, comedy) If you’re trying to pick a first book, start here.

And now for something completely different. Pratchett’s Discworld is an absurdist world, created to satirise fantasy tropes and play as the stage for social and political commentary. What makes Discworld so interesting as a place to learn about world-building is that it is a world that doesn’t take chronology or “consistency” or “authenticity” seriously. Where a lot of fantasy writers will stress over making sure every detail lines up, and their fans will often get very upset if they find anything “inconsistent” or “incorrect”, Pratchett’s world entirely rejects that way of doing things. Pratchett commented:

“[S]ometimes I even forget [...] where things are ... I don’t think [...] even the most rabid fan expects complete consistency within Discworld, because in Ankh-Morpork you have what is apparently a Renaissance city, but with elements of early Victorian England, and the medieval world is still hanging on. It’s in a permanent state of turmoil, which is very interesting for the author.” (quoted in Hills, Guilty of Literature).

There’s something very liberated and fluid in how Discworld forms, because it’s such a committed pastiche, but it doesn’t at all (at least, for me) undercut believing in the characters or story. I adore Discworld and its characters. I think it’s very valuable to read if you’re in fantasy writing (or speculative fiction in general), because it’s easy to fall into thinking that unless you make everything Perfect and Realistic and Consistent, your world-building isn’t good.

Something else about Discworld worth noting is that, despite being absurd and fluid, it is also grounded in the real. Pratchett’s world is in turmoil, but it includes sewer systems, passages of trade and commerce, and a pervasive sense of the civic life happening and living outside of the plot-line: it’s not just a diorama to be walked through, but a place where people exist and do mundane things and have everyday needs. I personally find it fascinating that the story manages to exist sort of balancing at oppositional ends of the “realism” spectrum at all times, but I think that’s also the key to why it is so successful at what it does.

(Side note: Matt Hills’ chapter in Guilty of Literature is a great read if you want to know more!)

Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie (science fiction)

I’m not a big reader of science fiction, because my heart is with fantasy, always. But this series was super interesting and I can recommend it, especially if science fiction is more your flavour! It’s been a while since I’ve read it, so I can’t give the same amount of detail as I’ve done above, but it was thoughtful and intriguing and I loved the ways this trilogy defamiliarised and refamiliarised ideas through the world and characters.

“The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas,” by Ursula K. Le Guin. (short story)

It’s only four pages long, but it’s haunting. I’ve put this story on the list because I feel like Ursula K. Le Guin belongs in many conversations about world-building; her work, in her time, was often radical--and remains so, in many cases. She didn’t flinch away from making her worlds alien, not in the sense of writing about space and people out among the stars (which admittedly she did also do!), but truly questioning and challenging cultural and societal norms and creating new ones, even (and especially) when they were uncomfortable to the status quo.

To me, that’s a core part of good world-building. You can just recreate the world we live in, with all the biases we’re raised to have, with the beliefs and expectations of conduct we have, with all the same bigotry--or you can push yourself to pull it all apart and pick from it the pieces you want to play with. You can push things to their extreme limits, or erase them entirely, or just... slide things a little to the left and make the whole world slightly off. Being able to be flexible in your thinking is vital for making vivid, interesting worlds, and Ursula K. Le Guin's work is a place you can start exploring that kind of thing if you’re unfamiliar with it.

For instance, in her novel Left Hand of Darkness, there is only one pronoun (a theme you’ll notice in Ancillary Justice) and the people of the planet Gethin change sex regularly. In her collection of short stories, “The Birthday of the World and Other Stories,” she writes about sedoretu, a four-way marriage she invents, as well as exploring gender, religion, culture, and society. Any of these are worth taking a look at, if you’re feeling a little boxed in.

However, despite saying all this: I don’t really enjoy her writing! I don’t have fun reading Le Guin’s work in practice; it doesn’t mesh with me beyond my delight at the conceptual elements she discusses. I often feel about reading her work like how kids think about medicine: tastes kind of awful, but it’s good for you. I’m grateful to her for paving the way, but I don’t read her work for fun.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente.

I’m throwing this one in the ring for a few reasons. One is that I am heavily indebted to nonsense; I grew up on Dr Seuss, Roald Dahl, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland + Alice Through the Looking-glass, Edward Gorey, A. A. Milne, H. R. Pufnstuf, and a little later, A Series of Unfortunate Events and Discworld. This book feels representative of that big love, and taps into what I love about nonsense.

Another reason is that it’s a good example of what I think of as delightful lawlessness in storytelling. It feels--as respectfully and lovingly as I can say this--like a game of mad libs turned into a book, because of how free and wild it is with what is allowed to happen. I think it’s very difficult to do something like this well, but I also think it’s a great place to play around when you’re first beginning to get to grips on world-building. Spin a wheel of options and go, “okay, so there’s a manticore in the basement, what now?” Make up reasons for things on the spot as a game for yourself. Ask and answer questions, just for fun! “Why is there a manticore there?” “It got in through the magic portal.” “Where’s the magic portal?” “It’s an old picture of the protagonist’s grandmother.” “Why is it a portal?” “The grandmother is secretly a witch and the ex-queen of a fantasy land.” “Why is the manticore here?” “Come to retrieve the queen, but accidentally takes the protagonist by mistake.” “Why does the manticore want the queen?” “Extreme Trivia Night at the Castle has really sucked lately. Also she misses her.” And just like that, you’ve got the start of a wacky but not impossible-to-tell story.

My final suggestion isn’t a book, but a podcast!

Be The Serpent (a podcast of extremely deep literary merit).

A fortnightly podcast by three charming writers who discuss a different theme or topic each episode (using a couple of texts as reference material), and will also make media recommendations. I love listening to it and it’s a great place to think about writing, both as a reader and as a writer. I don’t have a lot of writing friends myself, unfortunately, so it’s honestly so valuable to me to be able to hear them discuss their process and ideas on topics I care about.

I hope this helps! Best of luck to you, and please feel free to write in if you have any other questions.

#reply #advice #world-building #book recommendation #tumblr automatically put my reply under a read-more and i can't undo it?? what on EARTH is going wrong with this website

8 notes · View notes

hellomehlo · 6 years

Text

Get To Know Me Tag!

It me - time for me to answer some questions!

1. what is your full name?: Emily (that’s all I’m gon’ share :D) 2. what are your nicknames?: Em 3. birthday?: november 2nd 4. what is your favorite book series?: A Court of Thorns and Roses series 5. do you believe in aliens or ghosts?: ghosts kinda sorta maybe? 6. who is your favorite author?: Sarah J Maas for ever and ever 7. what is your favorite radio station?: i don’t listen to the radio ha 8. what is your favorite flavor of anything?: Mint - spearmint, peppermint anything is yummmm 9. what word would you often use to describe something great or wonderful?: noice 10. what is your current favorite song?: the entire les miserables 10th anniversary dreamcast soundtrack 11. what is your favorite word?: yeet 12. what was the last song you listened to?: Prologue from Les Mis 10th Anniversary dreamcast soundtrack 13. what tv show would you recommend for everyone to watch?: Brooklyn Nine Nine and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt 14. what is your favorite movie to watch when you’re feeling down?: Barbie movies (don’t judge me pls) 15. do you play video games?: yes 16. what is your biggest fear?: losing someone I love 17. what is your best quality, in your opinion?: uh, I’m optimistic? 18. what is your worst quality, in your opinion?: Perfectionism. 19. do you like cats or dogs better?: Don’t make me pick (but dogs probs) 20. what’s your favorite season?: summer 21. are you in a relationship?: nope. 22. what is something you miss from your childhood?: Being little enough to sit on my dad’s shoulders 23. who is your best friend?: One girl from my dance class - we’re both huuuuge theatre nerds 24. what is your eye color?: blue 25. what is your hair color?: reddish brown 26. who is someone you love? My ma 27. who is someone you trust?: see 26 28. who is someone you think about often?: see 26 29. are you currently excited about/for something?: I get to move interstate for university in a few weeks and I’m v excited 30. what is your biggest obsession?: Musical Theatre 31. what was your favorite tv show as a child?: Hi-5 32. who of the opposite gender can you tell anything to, if anyone?: My dad, I guess 33. are you superstitious?: A bit 34. do you have any unusual phobias?: what counts as unusual tho, idk probably not. Spiders are a pretty normal phobia? 35. do you prefer to be in front of the camera or behind it?: in front of the camera 36. what is your favorite hobby?: singin’ 37. what was the last book you read?: Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare 38. what was the last movie you watched?: Moonraker - James Bond 39. what musical instruments do you play, if any?: Piano, Violin, Guitar and Voice 40. what is your favorite animal?: Llamas (duh) 41. what are your top 5 tumblr blogs that you follow?: @gerbits @allieice @darlingimmafangirl @lemonywaffles @suddenlycowplants 42. what superpower do you wish you had?: The ability to manipulate rainbows 43. when and where do you feel most at peace?: On a holiday I went on recently to Indonesia, watching the sun set on a beach 44. what makes you smile?: The Trixie and Katya Show 45. what sports do you play, if any?: I dance :) 46. what is your favorite drink?: fruit smoothies 47. when was the last time you wrote a hand-written letter or note to somebody?: this morning - had to remind my brother to check his phone ‘cause I went out while he was still asleep 48. are you afraid of heights?: I’m not afraid of being up high, but I’m afraid of falling 49. what is your biggest pet peeve?: PEOPLE THAT USE INCORRECT GRAMMAR 50. have you ever been to a concert?: yes 51. are you vegan/vegetarian?: I’m like...a selective vegetarian. 52. when you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?: A pop star, just like Hannah Montana 53. what fictional world would you like to live in?: Either Prythian from ACoTaR, or the Overwatch universe. 54. what is something you worry about?: EVERYTHING 55. are you scared of the dark?: yes 56. do you like to sing?: I do indeedy 57. have you ever skipped school?: Never by choice - but doctors and dentists love scheduling appointments in the middle of the school day grr grr 58. what is your favorite place on the planet?: in a theatre 59. where would you like to live?: Melbourne, or LA (I know it sounds cliche, but like kinda) 60. do you have any pets?: I used to have a fat goldfish but he died, aged 11 years old ;-; 61. are you more of an early bird or night owl?: night owl 62. do you like sunrises or sunsets better?: sunset 63. do you know how to drive?: Well I can legally and physically drive a car, but uh - I’ve been too busy in life to take my test, so I guess I’ll be on my Learner’s forever -_- 64. do you prefer earbuds or headphones?: depends on my mood 65. have you ever had braces?: yeaaaah, back in middle school 66. what is your favorite genre of music?: MUSICAL THEATRE 67. who is your hero?: my mum 68. do you read comic books?: no 69. what makes you the most angry?: PEOPLE USING BAD GRAMMAR 70. do you prefer to read on an electronic device or a real book?: real book 71. what is your favorite subject in school?: music, or the school musical 72. do you have any siblings?: yeh, one younger brother 73. what was the last thing you bought?: Online: a phone case that says ‘oh honey’ on the back (Trixie Mattel where u @ gurlllll) IRL: Oats 74. how tall are you?: 5′7 75. can you cook?: not to save my life, but I need to learn before i move away fml 76. what are three things that you love?: musical theatre, RuPaul’s Drag Race and Overwatch 77. what are three things that you hate?: stress, homophobia, the fact that they cancelled Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt after 4 seasons ;-; 78. do you have more female friends or male friends?: female 79. what is your sexual orientation?: straight/heterosexual 80. where do you currently live?: Australiaaaaaa 81. who was the last person you texted?: My group of theatre nerd friends 82. when was the last night you cried?: like a week ago when I went to a production of Les Mis starring heaps of my friends and I was so proud I cried 83. who is your favorite youtuber?: vixella/heyimbee 84. do you like to take selfies?: yeah! 85. what is your favorite app?: snapchat, youtube or netflix, can’t pick. 86. what is your relationship with your parent(s) like?: my mom is the best, and so is my dad! 87. what is your favorite foreign accent?: American, but that’s cause I have to use one for just about every musical I’m in 88. what is a place that you’ve never been to, but want to visit?: HARRY POTTER WORLD IN LA 89. what is your favorite number?: 8 90. can you juggle?: kinda, but not well enough to brag 91. are you religious?: idk at this point, kinda but not fully idk 92. do you find outer space or the deep ocean to be more interesting?: ocean - space scares me 93. do you consider yourself to be a daredevil?: fuck no 94. are you allergic to anything?: dust 95. can you curl your tongue?: mhm! 96. can you wiggle your ears?: no 97. how often do you admit that you were wrong about something?: I should more often than I do 98. do you prefer the forest or beach?: beach 99. what is your favorite piece of advice that anyone has ever given you?: You do you, girl. 100. are you a good liar?: I think I am, but my friends disagree 101. what is your hogwarts house?: Ravenclaw 102. do you talk to yourself?: yep 103. are you an introvert or extrovert?: ambivert 104. do you keep a journal/diary?: i’ve had one since I was 7, but I only write in it like once every 2 years 105. do you believe in second chances?: depends 106. if you found a wallet full of money on the ground, what would you do?: turn it in 107. do you believe people are capable of change?: yes 108. are you ticklish?: absolutely, but don’t do it 109. have you ever been on a plane?: yeah 110. do you have any piercings?: my ears are pierced 111. what fictional character do you wish was real?: RHYSAND FROM ACOTAR, GIMME GIMME 112. do you have any tattoos?: no, and don’t plan on getting any 113. what is the best decision that you’ve made in your life so far?: moving dance schools 114. do you believe in karma?: yes 115. do you wear glasses/contacts?: no 116. do you want children?: haven’t decided, probably tho 117. who is the smartest person you know?: my teachers 118. what is your most embarrassing memory?: tripping up the stairs onto a stage on my way to receive an award 119. have you ever pulled an all-nighter?: no 120. what color are most of your clothes?: navy blue, burgundy, black 121. do you like adventures?: sometimes 122. have you ever been on tv?: i’ve appeared on the news in advertisments for musicals I’m in, but I’ve never been interviewed ;-; 123. how old are you?: 18 124. what is your favorite quote?: “fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times...you’re a fucking idiot, change off widowmaker, I don’t wanna be sniped anymore.” - Muselk 125. do you prefer sweet or savory foods?: savoury

#non sims #hoooo boy this took me so long #enjoy

3 notes · View notes

sssusuki · 2 years

Text

Till: I'm 10 times funnier and sexier than you

Ivan: 10 times 0 is still 0 though

Till: Jokes on you, I can't do math

#alien stage #vivinos #alien stage till #alien stage ivan #alien stage incorrect quotes

85 notes · View notes

ruadhdubh · 5 years

Text

It’s still the economy, stupid

At the time of writing, it’s been just over three weeks since Bernie Sanders won the Iowa caucus. It’s been exactly three weeks since the Financial Times published James Carville’s article entitled ‘Hey Democrats, it’s the winning, stupid!’, parodying a phrase he coined when he was last relevant, 28 years ago.

Just over ten years before that though, and Ronald Reagan had ousted the Democrats from the White House, and with them, a period in US and European history that is often referred to as Social Democracy. Reagan didn’t merely bring the Republicans or the conservative element of US politics to the White House. His doctrine, paralleled by Margaret Thatcher’s in the UK, set in motion successive rounds of policy agendas implemented with the result of turning Social Democracies and their welfare systems around. This not only meant undermining the position of workers in relation to capital in our society, allowing the great inequalities we have today. It also instituted a new common sense that bred suspicion of anyone in receipt of welfare support, dissolving social bonds of solidarity and community, and replacing these with extreme competition, transaction-based relations, and situating the market-place as a solve-all.

And when Bill Clinton in turn ousted the Republicans with the aid of Carville, a peculiar thing happened, which again was paralleled in the UK a few years later when Tony Blair brought Labour to power. Both Democrat and Labour governments of the 90s, having seized the opportunity to undo Reagan and Thatcher’s neoliberal policies, seemed instead to adopt them! Becoming cliched at this stage, but when Thatcher was asked what her greatest achievement was, she responded ‘New Labour’.

Her response signals that a faction had taken over the Labour party. And it eventually began to lose. Not when David Cameron came to power however, but when Cameron’s project fell off the rails after he promised, and was held to task over, a referendum to leave the EU. The same, again, happened in the US when Donald Trump somehow managed to become leader of the Republican party, and then the US president. The ideologically-driven faction that had taken over both Labour and the Conservative party, both the Democrats and the Republican party, both the US and the UK governments, among many others, since the 80s, has, in the last few years, reached its limits with the electorate.

And according to Carville in his article, ‘political parties do not exist for factions to gain power over them and lose elections so long as the faction maintains its grip. They exist to win elections’. Despite having now reached this limit, this faction had not lost an election in the US or UK for the guts of four consecutive decades. It would appear, then, that Carville is incorrect as it seems that, irrespective of the faction, a party is prone to winning or losing elections. If a party could determine what faction will win an election beforehand, then there would be no need for a selection process.

That was Carville’s first paragraph. His second focuses on a quote by Sanders, who told the House Democrat caucus that ‘the goal is not to win elections’. Leaving aside, for a moment, that this quote is presented in so rudely a dismembered form, the point Carville hopes to emphasise here is that all that matters right now is winning this election. This presumably, is to suggest that the Democrats should be doing all in their power to present a safe, centrist candidate that will appeal across the board of the US electorate. This primary focus is to forgo the consideration of policy. Instead the candidate’s manifesto for the White House should be watered down to meet the needs of that broad electorate.

Striving to appeal to such a broad consensus on the road to power sounds like some sort of democracy, to be fair. However, if this is the strategy mainstream political parties are to take, then what is left to distinguish them from one another? And if the left and right of mainstream politics converges in such a manner by way of focusing solely on winning elections, then how are diverse and conflicting social positions expressed and represented? And, if this carry on continues for, say, the best part of forty years, what happens to the ingrained suppression of that will to express such social differences? If one was to hazard a guess, they might conclude that eventually the depth of suppression of such a will to express political differences would result in a compounded pressure that will naturally seek alternative avenues of expression, thus leading to a force with a destabilising effect on that status quo, causing ruptures in society such as the bizarre attempt to steer a nation state toward greater sovereignty by giving up its seat at the table with other regional powers.

The strategy of winning elections at all costs makes sense only when you see the field of power in an a-political frame. It is only natural that, after consigning most of society to the private, a-political realm, the winners of industrial capitalism who instituted parliamentary democratic politics as an empty concession to what was left of the aristocracy as well as the mounting body of workers, would eventually return to eradicate that remaining sliver of popular sovereignty. And in neoliberalism, we see such a faction. Politics, over the last 40 years, has been emptied of its contents; replaced with what we were told was a pragmatic compromise between the left and the right – a third way. Capitalism with a smile.

So it would appear then, and particularly in the face of the desperate need to win this election, that the Democrats need to offer an authentic alternative to both the centre, whose a-political ideology has led to this mess, and the far right, who have been consolidating gradual but great gains in our society once more.

Strikingly, the extended Sanders quote butchered by Carville, is as follows. ‘The goal isn’t to wine elections. It is to transform America’. What is the point in winning an election if you don’t have a mandate to enact policies that meet the political needs of your constituents? As above, a strategy solely focused on winning elections activates a filter that disincentivises a party from providing a political alternative. And while it is true the centrist faction does offer a genuine alternative to the likes of Trump and Nigel Farage, the latter’s success in the past few years is based on the former’s ideological failing in dealing with the accumulation of unmet social needs.

Their third way has failed. The economic system it conserved tumbled like a series of overpriced houses made of card, destroying the lives of tens of thousands and the livelihoods of millions, the faction’s response to which was to then make those who suffered the most pay for the cost of the damages. People deserve an alternative. And that is precisely what political parties exist for.

Carville is wrong in identifying only one moral imperative. The next Democratic presidential candidate not only has to defeat Trump, they must also provide an alternative to forty years of political suppression and cynical economic conservatism by this centrist faction. The mistake that faction is making is to believe that the far right represents the disruptive factor in the field of their vision for society. The dispersion among the electorate to right or left extremes is not due to the spontaneous appearance of alternatives to their vision. Those alternatives and their appeal are a result of that factions’ grip on politics. They are merely failing to recognise that the disruptive factor causing this dispersion is their role in determining what politics is supposed to look like in our society.

Carville’s painting of political alternatives to his own as extreme is a disingenuous attempt to play on the democratic field and conceal the legitimate democratic expression that those alternatives represent. He’s not cheating, but it’s not honest. When he speaks about the choice Democrats face, it’s not between an ideological cult and a reasonable and sensible normal, everyday friendly neighbourhood politician. It’s between two ideological cults (if we must use that term) that will inevitably alienate large swathes of the public. That is what political parties exist for – embodying different perspectives in a political field, a field where people can negotiate their differences without having to resort to destroying each other. They do not exist to become one homogenous a-political grouping with a neatly woven consensus. We tried that in the twentieth century. Indeed. The Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of heterogeneity and the Chinese Communist Party adapted to allow for it.

Consensus on that level is impossible and attempts to conceal difference, heterogeneity and dissent amounts to suppression. There doesn’t need to be militarised police presence in the streets for this to be considered violent. Though that tends to happen too. Regardless, as outlined previously, suppression eventually amounts to rupture – hence Trump. Hence Farage. Carville is correct about one thing. Democracy is indeed on life support. In order that it be resuscitated we need to see past this disingenuous centrist cult and its rhetoric; determine our options independently; and then vote for them democratically! We need real alternatives and the chance to express our impulse to social division before its suppression spills over from the political into the social and we end up tearing our society to shreds.

Oh, and one more thing. Describing these ongoing primaries and their inclination toward the farthest left candidate as a rat race is interesting given the candidate at the farthest left. I hope Carville’s slip of the tongue here alludes to the Freudian case of ‘rat equals penis’ and not something darker.

0 notes

hoshinamylove · 3 months

Text

Lack of evidence

Luka: I was arrested for being too beautiful Hyuna: Charges were dropped because of a lack of supporting evidence

#alien stage #alnst #alnst hyuna #alnst luka #alien stage hyuna #alien stage luka #hyunkuka #incorrect alien stage quotes

14 notes · View notes

alittlelessdemocracy · 7 years

Text

Cruel Summer

“When the enemy’s not in the room, we practice on each other”

If there’s a silver lining to the toxic cloud of the election of Donald Trump and all of the ugliness that has followed in its wake last fall it’s that even as it’s forced the extremes of the political spectrum further and further away from each other, (even as it was largely the result of the same process of fragmentation amplified for fun and profit by social media) it’s simultaneously been making those extremes less palatable to ordinary people than they were prior to the election, and making the idea of aligning oneself with the plight of a fictive, but nonetheless productive image of divergent yet “ordinary” people more attractive to people like myself who largely survived our young adulthood by clinging to inflated ideas of exception and difference, slowly forcing liberals and conservatives alike to listen to each other as they come to terms with the fact that even though they disagree profoundly on questions of morality and fairness they now posses a common enemy, neither liberal or conservative in any way.

Even a few months ago, it seemed that the opposite effect was actually the case, with heated campus protests over issues of cultural appropriation, and calls for greater diversity leading one insufficiently demonstrative anti-racist professor at one of America’s most left leaning institutions not willing to voluntarily absent himself from a mob-enforced “day of absence” to proclaim in a recent interview after he was targeted by impassioned left wing protestors at Evergreen State College this past May that we may have finally reached “peak bullshit.” One can only hope.

Nevertheless, if the increasingly moderate tone of my usually far left Facebook feed is any indication, there are signs of hope just beyond the barricades of the corporate sponsored #resistance. Within the last month or so two definitively left leaning friends of mine both posted links to articles on established right wing publications – an insightful article by Camille Paglia (who I hadn’t read in twenty years) at The Weekly Standard and a biting critique of Trump at The National Review, echoing a recent editorial by conservative commentator Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal. And a little over a month ago, another friend of mine, who I mostly know from his immoderate rants posted a link to a thoughtful interview between liberal commentator Fran Lebowitz and libertarian Bill Maher about the issue of toxic divisiveness and compulsory self-censorship on the left. This interview in fact is how I first got wind of the protests at Evergreen, which when I heard of them immediately reminded me of some of the emotional conversations I encountered in some of my own classes after the election.

A couple of months ago I would have found it almost unimaginable that any of my friends would have been willing to affiliate themselves in even the most tangential way with any of these publications, or with anyone claiming to represent even a moderate point of view, it having become something of a truism among my friends and myself to assert that the country has been moving further and further to the right over the past decades (a contention I find increasingly unconvincing in the current climate of moralizing unanimity among the nation’s elites and those who aspire to join them) so that any talk of “the center” in the mainstream media should almost always be taken as a sign of our collective capitulation to back stage maneuvering of right wing ideologues like the Koch Brothers (even as talking heads on the right have been claiming the opposite for just as long) allowing cultural commentators like Christopher Lasch to piss off all sides equally forty years ago when he pointed to the increasing narcissism and moral dependency of the American population generated by the forces of global capital coupled with an ambitious project of progressive social control which began a little over a century ago. So consider my amazement when around the same time I started noticing my feed slanting ever so slightly to the right I saw a post from one of my most left-leaning online acquaintances – a radical Marxist publication linking to an article revisiting Lasch’s analysis from the late seventies in light of the election results last November. Even more surprising was my own increasing appetite for the intellectual nourishment I found when I followed these leads, casting me down a rabbit hole echoing with the until now unheard voices of reasonable people calling for actual live and let live tolerance, diversity of opinion, and free speech exercised responsibly. Who knew these voices even existed? I certainly didn’t. What once looked like a convergence of American culture engineered by a “vast right-wing conspiracy” began to look more like a vast consillience of global corpratism and left wing idealism working hand in glove with disappointed right wing nostalgia to create the perfect storm we all co-created last November though a combination of ideological blindness, resentment, and neglect.

And now I find myself, as usual, ambivalent about the current situation. On the one hand, despite my reluctance to join the fray, I’m excited by the possibility of an emergent unity of political will without the need for consensus of opinion on matters of ideology and cultural expression that seems to be gathering force against the current administration apart from the #resistance ™ and its sibling brands which were already co-complicit in its arrival even before the inauguration; on the other hand I remain distrustful of efforts by agents of the latter to leverage the former to their self serving advantage, which insofar as they succeed will only amplify the divisions which got us here in the first place, making it harder for people on the right and the left of the DNC to unite with their fellow citizens against a common threat to our shared polity.

I’m reminded of another piece of related cultural detritus that has been bobbing along the surface of my media landscape this past year - this odd-ball quote from a speech Ronald Reagan delivered to the UN thirty years ago, a fact which I can barely account for, but am happy to pass along:

“Cannot swords be turned to plowshares? Can we and all nations not live in peace? In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity…Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond…I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?”

Reagan was surely incorrect in his assumptions about the alienation of warfare, especially given his invocation of the very instinct in his evocation of the archetypal struggle with the enemy, but I think he was right to try to turn this will to fight to the advantage of all. Three decades later there is in fact an alien in our midst - a reckless and insipid foe that we ourselves have chosen - some of us actively, most of us passively through our acts of disavowal - the likes of which we’ve never faced, increasing the “threat of war” with his every gaseous tweet. And if this is what it takes for us to finally redirect our energies away from calling each other out and tearing each other down in neo-Maoist rituals of self immolation, then I for one welcome our alien overlord…for the time being (may this occupation be as brief as is necessary to unite us against all that it heralds.) Perhaps now we might all agree to disagree like the democratic republicans striving to constitute the kind of pluralistic and tolerant society we aspire to be, and in the timeless words of Sinead O’Connor “fight the real enemy!”

1 note · View note

mhioislife · 7 years

Text

Tags for mobile users

If a tag is listed here but it doesn’t work, it means either I made a typo or the first post with the tag is in my queue and will be published soon. If the link doesn't work, wait a few days and check it again. If it still doesn't work, send me an ask, please! It’s the most likely with AUs and fics or comics mentioned by title tho.

Trigger info: for now I tag only a few triggers (animal death tw, blood tw, cancer tw, death tw and gore tw), if you want me to tag something specific, send me an ask! It’s not a problem, really!

Type of work

fanfics (oneshots, multichapters: as long as you’re with me you’ll be fine, covered in the colors, element of secrecy, i guess we’re idiots too, texting and parties, the cursed dragon)

fanarts

comics (hope, it stings, the fhq adventure, the tale of the demon king)

text posts (headcanons, incorrect quotes)

edits (manga and anime screenshots edits (including tumblr textpost memes), character/ship boards and pics of how would characters’ social media and texting apps look like)

gifs

videos (anime edits and all this stuff)

cosplays and stage play

playlists

other (memes, shitposting and characters appreciation posts)

Ships and characters’ tags

matsuhanaiwaoi

matsuhanaiwa

matsuhanaoi

matsuiwaoi

hanaiwaoi

matsuhana

matsuiwa

matsuoi

hanaiwa

hanaoi

iwaoi

issei

takahiro

hajime

tooru

And additional

seijou team

yahaba

watari

kyoutani

kunimi

kindaichi

AUs

other series

aladdin au

avatar: the last airbender au

beauty and the beast au

boku no hero academia au

brooklyn 99 au

game of thrones au

ghost adventures au

ghost busters au

hamilton au

harry potter au

in a heartbeat au

little red riding hood au

log horizon au

miraculous ladybug au

naruto au

overwatch au

pacific rim au

percy jackson au

pocahontas au

pokemon au

princess mononoke au

shingeki no kyojin au

shrek au

voltron au

modern aus

bakery au

barista au

bartender au

biker au

childhood au

delinquent au

famous au (actors au, idol au, model au, musician au)

firefighters au

hip hop au (created by @amalasdraws)

internet au (tumblr au, instagram au, twitter au, youtube au)

lifeguard au

mafia au

nasa au

office men au

parents au

photographer au

police/special units au (like law enforcement units and security service but also detective au)

restaurant au

roommates au

sport au (baseball au, boxer au, dance au, professional volleyball player(s) au, surfing au)

teacher au

travelling au

fantasy, urban fantasy, sci-fi, historical and other aus

adventurous, treasure hunters and indiana-jones-like stuff au

aliens au

animal au

dragonrider au

dystopy/apocalypse/post-apocalypse au

fantasy au

final haikyuu quest au

greek deities au

historical au

merpeople au

pirates au (space pirates au)

royal au

rulers of day and night au

secret agent/spy au

soulmates au

superheroes au

urban fantasy au

wild west au

vampire au

zombie au

#i'll be updating it regularly #organizational matters

11 notes · View notes

hedrigal · 7 years

Text

My friends response to our university

One of my best friends wrote this in response to an important member of the Bard Faculty defending his decision to invite a dollar store version of Milo Yianopolis. In light of recent events and the encroachment of liberal ideology to the extent of justifying fascist platforms, I decided to describe briefly, for those of you who may be on the fence, why I think fascists ought to be denied a public audience. Because this is a matter of some import to me, I have endeavored to respond to Berkowitz’s justification of inviting the fascist to speak at Bard in the most concise and detailed manner that I am able. I hope this will serve some of you, if nothing else, a fair bit of entertainment and food for thought. In the perspective of the liberal theorist, academia ought to serve as an alleged battleground of ideas. Their picture of the world is this: the glory of civilization has advanced to such a head that we, western liberal democracy, now stand at the forefront of such luxury that we may be afforded the privilege of “rational dialogue.” For the liberal, all ideas are born equal. That is to say, they all share in the equal right to compete amongst one another in the ideology of discourse. From this discourse, the liberal believes that, given sufficient utilization of reason and the best application of our mental faculties, the strongest ideas shall prevail and become the dominant mode of political praxis. Freedom of speech, an icon of sacred worth to the liberal, is the vehicle by which this mental picture of society is thought to be manifested. In principle, the liberal shares with “freedom of speech” the same logic as that of laissez-faire capitalism’s “freedom of the market.” That is to say, if child-labor is a bad idea or a bad economic practice, then its persistence within a truly free market shall never actually come to fruition. It shall die within the free market by virtue of its internal dysfunctions. The liberal fetishizes freedom of speech in the same manner: if an idea were truly incorrect, then within the arena of reason it shall be rendered obsolete. No one will buy a bad idea in the same vein that no one would, theoretically speaking, support a malicious economic practice. At least, that is their logic. Yet the movements of history speak differently and the faulty reasoning of the free market fetishist applies equally to the free speech fetishist. The fundamental error is this: ahistoricity and a misplaced faith in reason. Some economic practices ought to be censored. Some ideas ought to be censored. To this the liberal throws up their arms and cries, “Totalitarianism! You’re just as bad as the fascists! Don’t take away my right to say and do whatever I want!” But this rhetoric is simple ideology. It has no self-awareness of the jargon it spews and its place in history. The bias liberalism exhibits in favor of the absolute worth of ideas, that all ideas possess an intrinsic right to be expressed, and that reason in general is the best medium through which ideas compete, stems from a fundamentally philosophical prejudice of the Enlightenment era. “Cogito ergo sum; I think therefore I am”. The liberal dogma has always been to hold the house of the mind, the rational ego, logos in-itself, as the fundamental constituent of the human essence. One is not their body, rather one is their mind. One has their total being in their ability to reason. Reason is man’s essential being-in-the-world. This “prejudice of the philosophers” as described by Nietzsche, beginning with the Enlightenment and ultimately rejected towards the 20th century with the advent of Nietzsche himself, Hegelianism, Marxism and psychoanalysis, holds that the individual is in principle an atomistic, unbodied, dismembered geist of pure logos. The individual who actually exists in the logic of liberalism is neither their body, their culture nor their emergence as a political being. The individual is their faculty to reason. (This is evident in the writings of canon classical liberal and Enlightenment thinkers, whose ideologies persist to this day). In the mindset of liberalism, reason is divorced from history, divorced from the body, divorced from contingency. It is pure in its free usage of a universal Reason; as though reason were in principle precisely identical throughout all humankind, and as though reason were free from historical constructions of what is considered “reasonable.” But it is from this ideological underworking that the liberal ultimately concludes that rational discourse is the most efficient methodology through which the just society shall be achieved. One can easily draw parallels between the liberal’s faith in capitalism with their faith in free speech, as the philosophical prejudices underlying the two are identical: human beings are rational agents. As rational agents, they shall respond to the so-called “best arguments” or “best products” or “best practices” within the sphere of the market (whether intellectual, abstract or literal). As such, through the free employment of speech or the market, the “best” general outcome will subsist and become the dominant norm. The liberal genuinely believes REASON to be the ultimate guiding force that shall exalt us to a higher future. Meanwhile, in reality, child labor still emerged regardless of the geist of human logos. And one need not look back to the centuries; even today, we all, beneficiaries of liberal democracy, enjoy the savage fruit of capitalism without even the slightest hesitation. Every facet of modern living is produced in fountains of off-shore blood. Anyone who denies this is utterly beyond discussion. And yet, despite the ease with which that sort of information is accessible, despite how criminally many of the products under capitalism are produced, despite the enormous burden of human suffering and environmental damage directly caused by the consumption of such products, despite the nagging voice at the back of our minds when we purchase bloodgoods with bloodmoney, we nevertheless entertain ourselves with their company. Is this a fault of self-control? Is this a fault of that supposed “free agency of the mind”? Far from such a notion. The best interpretation of this apparent reality is that human beings are not rational beings, through and through. Our being in the world is embodied, historically situated and contingent upon that history, and reason only manifests as a subsidiary of that embodiment. “Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings,” to quote the hermit of Sils Maria. In exactly the same manner, the myth of the arena of free speech is fundamentally flawed. It assumes from the offset that society at large shall respond to the best reasoning, or rather, that speech is actually free. SPEECH cannot be divorced from its historicity. The production of an idea is not, as the liberal understands it to be, purely ideal. This is what I mean when I accuse the liberal of ahistoricity. The idea itself is not a harmless apparition of a string of propositions that simply return true or false, given the right counterargument, nor does society at large respond to ideas in this manner. Ideas themselves possess an embodied history and as such are embodied objects: they take actual form and carry political weight. When I invoke a racial slur or a sexist slur, I do not merely invoke a sound or a proposition. I invoke a history. I invoke an embodied dynamic of power relations. The sexist who shouts foul misogynies at their victim is not “making an argument.” The response to that sexist is therefore mistaken to take a “rational” approach. Should one stop and politely correct the offending person with a feminist thesis of alienation? This would only be the response of one who has never actually faced the reality of such an offense. An actual victim would reply in self-defense. The misogynist does not seek to be corrected, nor are they simply mistaken. Their speech carries a history of carnal violence, utter brutality, dehumanization, humiliation, objectification and suffering, and is thusly embodied into a threat against the victim. The victims of misogyny live in an ethos, paths and logos of their dehumanization. The offender, in making misogynist speech, is therefore putting the victim in their place within that history: that is, their powerlessness, their defeat, their tragedy. The whole stage of woman’s oppression and the entire planetary system of her own dehumanization is brought before her in the manifestation of the word, so ineffective to the privileged, yet so disastrous to those it directly damages. In the real, cold reality of actual human lives and human experiences and human conditions, speech is not experienced as discourse, nor does it manifest as such in body politic. Speech is not merely the interplay of a pure human logos. It is not experienced by many as mere civil exchange through which truth and justice are obtained. It is experienced as violence. Speech, like everything in the course of human history, is a medium of political struggle. When one takes that political struggle, puts it on a pedestal and pretends that misogyny, genocide and FASCISM are mere IDEAS to be discussed, and not the lived experiences of actual oppressed victims, they utterly ignore the reality of power that underlines the façade of pure speech. The lucky among us who are removed from political struggle and brutalizations are free to continue in their delusion that free speech is the mere open dialogue of interlocutors. In his justification for the invitation of the fascist to Bard, Berkowitz writes that we are too confident in our notions of justice. That we presume to know the truth in its absolute form, and as such, we are blind and childishly defiant in hearing the opinions of others. This formulation is uncharacteristic of my own perspective, and I believe it is a caricature of the views of many others who disapprove of the fascist’s invitation. This is no concern of justice, good, evil or truth. This is class struggle. It is not on the basis that he is “evil” that the fascist ought to be denied a right to an audience. I have no concern for the notion. This is self-defense. The manifestation of speech in actual body politic is the increase of power for the social consciousness of fascism. To grant fascism a right to speak is to equalize it as a legitimate political viewpoint within the myriad of possible views (that is to say, that it ought to be discussed in the first place). Many of us have not only heard the “opinions” of the fascist, but we have experienced them all our lives. To say that we seek an echo chamber away from dissidence is downright laughable and insulting when many of us literally contend with patriarchy, racism, classism, homophobia, et al, on a daily basis. It subsists in every facet of life already. It immanently reigns supreme as the hegemonic ideology through which all else is subsumed, the eternal black hole of our existential condition and the dreadful face which looks back in the reflection of every mirror. The speech of the fascist is experienced as the “free interplay of ideas” ONLY to those among us with the luxury to ignore the reality of its consequences. The myth of free speech exists as much as the myth of the free market; the speech of the fascist is absolute hegemony uprooting itself from the bowels of human discontent and opposing us with the forceful recognition that within our society, one day, we may be slaughtered like cattle for merely being who we are. The brutal reality of child labor in America did not end with academics discussing whether or not it was moral, economically efficient, or reasonable—nor did it end with the marketplace and moral consumers “voting with their dollar.” It ended with class struggle. History is on the side of the radical left because, as it happens, the radical left is the only thesis which embodies a philosophy of history, recognizing objects of speech or commodity, not as independent things-in-themselves, but as politically situated forces within a history of struggle between peoples. Supporting fascism’s free admittance to an audience demonstrates which side of that struggle you align with.

#goodnight alt right #privilige #argument #bard college #liberalism #communism

1 note · View note