#and to be fair i was dehumanized by other people in authority but usually for my autism not my gender. that was more my peers

[variantoutcast]

Not sure how to insert a read more on mobile so this post about my personal experiences with transphobia and ableisn will be in the tags only 👍

[women-of-malevolent]

META - Unnamed Elderly Woman

I’ve been informed that the author mentioned in a Reddit Q&A one month ago that he wants to redo this part because it’s in poor taste. I agree, and it’d probably be good to get on that; the show is currently four-plus years into its planned six-year run. Whenever is better than never.

Here’s everything we get about this character.

So, what does she do? She unsettlingly laughs at J&A in the hallway, and doesn’t respond to their questions; she retches in her home; she lives in filthy squalor; she crawls on the floor when she’s not in her wheelchair.

This is depicted as a supernatural terror, instead of, say, a mentally ill old woman having a medical emergency. Arthur’s concern for her humanity is “proven” to be naive by the fact that her home is filthy and she crawls towards him (after he lets himself into her home).

It’s, ironically, pretty reminiscent of original Lovecraft!

Lovecraft’s primary target of ire was usually racial Others, but he did occasionally hit old women with the dehumanization ray, too. I’m not deeply familiar with Lovecraft’s work itself, so I did a quick Google search of Lovecraft + “old woman”.

Pop quiz: Malevolent or H.P. Lovecraft? I’ve mixed up the names, tenses, and POV.

1) The portrait looked grotesque; time and a fair amount of dampness had bloated a portrait of a young lady. Her hollow eyes sagged, and her face looked as though the skin hung off in loose strands.

2) I know she’s the one who frightened us in the slums. Her bent back, long nose, and shrivelled chin are unmistakable, and her shapeless brown garments are like those I remember. The expression on her face is one of hideous malevolence and exultation.

3) There was a much older woman holding a baby, sat cross-legged by the fire. She looked… grotesque. Her skin hung loose and sagging, as if ancient. Her hair was long and gray. She was naked. She had gone mad. Percival knew he needed to help the child she was rocking back and forth in her arms.

4) As once before, the hideous crone seized Percival by the shoulders, yanking him out of bed and into empty space. Again the infinitude of the shrieking twilight abysses flashed past him, but in another second he thought he was in a dark, muddy, unknown alley of fetid odors, with the rotting walls of ancient houses towering up on every hand.

Answers:

1) Malevolent, Part 7

2) Dreams of Witch House, HP Lovecraft

3) Malevolent, Part 2

4) Dreams of Witch House, HP Lovecraft

The pall hanging over Lovecraft’s legacy wasn’t just, "Racial minorities are inappropriate targets for dehumanization, so as long as we avoid that, we’ve fixed it." There shouldn’t be any appropriate targets for dehumanization, and that ought to include old women – even when they’re unkempt, unwell, practicing unfamiliar religions, and/or violent. They're still people with thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

[johannwolfgangvongoethe]

Some Personal Thoughts on Disability in Enstars

disclaimer: disability is a very broad term that covers many different experiences. i will be talking about physical disabilities since i feel most comfortable doing so/have experience with them. obviously that ignores a Huge part of what disability and chronical illness is and can be. but i think it is beyond my capabilities to talk about experiences i don't know much about.

alt caption: i think ritsu is a good character and im trying to explain to myself why

this is sort of a long post, sorry.

content warnings: i talk about ableism and touch on related topics such as dehumanization and objectification and such below. individual parts of this post have their own cw's.

Enstars Writing, Beloathed

to get this out of the way; it is bad sometimes. this is discussed very often. it doesnt depend on the authors either, in my opinion, some writers will hit you with something really troublesome only to (seemingly accidentally) invent human emotion and compassion in a different story. i dont want to repeat what others have said eloquently but there is a fair amount of imperialist worldviews, xenophobia, just racism really, transphobia, ableism, and copaganda to be found in enstars. this isnt about x character being x thing, but about how it is very noticable when the author of a story holds these worldviews and they bleed into their stories.

so that is not the greatest foundation if youre looking for well-written disabilities. but i wouldnt be reading enstars if i didnt think it genuinely is really really good sometimes. in my opinion, the way disabilities are portrayed is a mixed bag overall but there are some extremely worthwhile bits that touched me quite a lot.

What I personally understand as Well-Written Disability

the way disabled people suffer often goes unnoticed, and disabled people dont have a platform to talk about oppression. a lot of life-changing issues can go unnoticed to those unnaffected by them, even if they are in broad daylight: underfounded or entirely lacking healthcare, the way many healthcare systems are marketbased and ethics are prone to suffer bc of this (even under 'welfare' capitalism), a lack of equal marriage, the inaccessibility of the most basic and necessary facilities, financing care and the dependency on family/loved ones (both a logistical and psychological problem), the huge stigma against disabled people, etc, etc, you get me....

we need to write about people who need care, to keep them in mind at all times. disabled people are not a minority in a mathematical sense but in a hierarchical sense. it is naive to think of them as "a substancial percentage" of populations. as we age, we inevitably all enter the stage of needing care at some point. SO to an extend, i want to claim its a topic that affects every single person. yet disabled people are rarely a central topic anywhere. it is not enough to acknowledge them, we need to plan and think with them in mind. and Write with them in mind, i guess.

SO when i see fiction grapple the topic, i am usually really happy, even if the portrayal isnt ideal. (critical, maybe, but generally speaking very happy) pointing out "badly" written disabled characters is obviously not as easy as calling someone out for uncritically saying "i think eugenics are a good idea!!!" through fiction. people with that sort of facist mindset exist of course but ableism does not end there.

if i were to single out things i see often: i think the most disappointing thing a story can do is to - mention a disability without it ever having an impact on people in the story (-> the disability is basically nonexistent, has no impact or relevance, outside of a theoretical mention) OR - uncritically use a disabled character as a mere plot devise, without granting them the ability to speak (-> dehumanization, a lack of understanding that disabled people are, well, People. they do shit.)

and then of course there is fetishization, both in a literal sense and in an inspiration porn sense and the problem of turning disability into a caricature for jokes (either to other disabled people for their behaviour/body or to create a sense of satisfying superiority by laughing at them) but i feel like those problems explain themselves.

to apply these to very basic examples: i think often something like a robotic sci-fi prosthetic is not a good way to represent a disability because it fails to represent what people go through irl and provides a "magic fix" without repercussions. here is a really good post about it. about the plot device issue... i think it is similar to what people often criticise as "manpain". a disabled person will never appear or speak, they are demoted to being the reason an able-bodied character acts a certain way, like a lifeless accessory. this doesnt always have to be bad, esp if its just a sideplot! but it can get tiring if the audience never gets to learn about other aspects of the unseen character in question and we are only introduced to their suffering.

all of this to talk about gacha idol boys. it is how it is. anyway, this is roughly my mental state when i tackle enstars.

disclaimer 2: i am really just a kogaP. this influences which characters i encounter when reading. there are tons of stories i just never looked at and there is SO MUCh lore i just dont know about. please lemme know if you have additions to stuff i say/understand a character better/have related story recommendations! tl;dr the sakuma bit will be long.

disclaimer 3: i genuinely adore every single character mentioned below and am always excited to learn smth new about them. if i criticize writing, that has nothing to do with that character or their fans. it is about the writers.

the most obvious example. Eichi (content warning for brief mentions of self harm and suicidal ideation)

everything eichi does, he does with the knowledge he will most likely die young. that is a truly dramatic setup.

but before i get back to that thought. it always felt to me like eichis illness(/es) lack a certain sense of conciseness? i do not think you need to put a name and diagnosis on it for it to be relatable and real to readers, tbh!! though to achieve believability, there needs to be a good amount of consistency. what i can recall off the top of my head is the following:

he breaks down/straight up blacks out frequently due to weakness and dizzyness

measures were taken to secure his safety in those situations (the infamous Eichi-kun Gauge as seen in Element)

his stamina is seriously low

he coughs a lot

we saw him cough up blood (Daydream)

he relies on long hospital stays because his health needs to be monitored and/or supported this closely

he stays inside a lot (hinting towards problems with his immune system?)

being healthy enough to eat unhealthy food is a big deal to him, so there are dietary restrictions/it was necessary to precisely control what he eats

his grandfather, who died recently, is considered an outlier for how long he lived (so it IS hereditary)

which..... could be a lot of things...? or, more likely: a culmination of many things at once. if you have headcanons on eichis health, please lemme know!

but in addition to eichis terminal illness, there is a second quality to him that seperates him from most disabled people: he is extremely wealthy. and his wealth is fundamentally important to stories. usually illness and poverty go hand in hand, since incame is tied to the ability to work, which worsens an already bad situation. no matter how limited eichis actions are because of his body, the possibilties offered by his wealth make him a central figure in every overarching plot. in addition to this, his family is well aware of his consitution and he is a patriarchal leading figure to them, the head to their coporate hierachy. eichi is free of the things that usually rid the chronically ill of their safety and power: society (he is an idol and popular) and money (he is the richest boy in japan). if youd ask me, i think that while being chronically ill is of course physically taxing, the worse problem is the economic state it puts you in. eichi simply overcomes this? yes, he is terminally ill, his situation is terrifying. but he has an extraordinary amount of control while he lives. more than a poor yet able-bodied person may have.

his unique circumstances enable him to be incredibly active. this is so fun to read about in my opinion. its a fascinating setup to me. without casting any sort of moral judgement on his actions and the antagonistic role he plays; he is, excuse me for my phrasing here, a disabled power fantasy. (at least to me)

this is a double-edged sword to him. because of who he is as a person (ambitious, cunning, ruthless, diligent)

he lives in relative safety but his strong ambition and financial ability to fulfill his dreams tempt him to go past his limits. because his remaining lifetime is uncertain, the need to preserve the body he is given seems uneconomical (a mindset his upbringing and education as an heir to his family would have enforced imo) he is bound to break down sooner or later anyway. i think he begins to see himself and his body as a tool to achieve his goals and neglects spending time on anything BUT working towards them. so the moment he runs out of goals (like at the end of Element), his reason to "remain" becomes futile.

it really struck with me how he appears in Blackbird - emaciated, pathetic, purposefully neglected because he chose to be neglected and weak in an act of self harm bc denying medical attention (something that couldnt have happened otherwise) wataru has to remind him that no one died and the obvious connection to make is that the eccentrics are physically unharmed and starting over, that they should not be a source of guilt to eichi. but i think this is just as much about eichi himself. he might have expected to die since he left the hospital and overexhausted himself at school and as an idol. he didnt die though. it was a real possibility and seemed likely but he didnt. the neglect and indirect self harm here point out, to me, that he saw the "role" he gave himself as fulfilled at that point and waited to die.

eichi stands over economic or social factors that could ostracize and dehumanize him but funnily enough he manages to do so himself by treating his body as a tool and his happiness as an option that got overshadowed by a need to succeed.

this vulnerability makes him, despite how vague the descriptions of his illness are and despite how unrelatable his wealth is, a very satisfying character imo. it is engaging to me. certain limits are removed for him but he created new ones, specifically because he did not see himself as something worth sustaining once he becomes useless. imo, eichi applied the idea that a lifes worth can be measured in its ability to function in an industry to himself. and spiralled over it, entirely inverting his uncanny amount of bodily autonomy. it is clear how the situation he is in worsens his mental health like that. and how his mental health in turn worsens his physical health. it is inseperable.

i cant really get into !! era eichi because i genuinely just dont... know enough. the fine tradition of having a weekly H-Day stands out, though. after all, eichi has new bigger ambitions and is, once again, inviting his own ruin through overexhaustion. so his friends (the new addition of having friends is essential) had to forcefully make him stop for at least one day a week. that is pretty big. i think.

this is true for many marginalized existences so it of course applies to disabled people: if neither your surroundings nor yourself permit you to feel human and therefore assign your person an inherent worth and lovability... sometimes you need a friend to do so!!! social circles are the best support structure for your health.

The Sakuma Family

(i will get into ritsu and rei seperately later on. there are just a few concepts i want to get out of the way that apply to both of them.)

so... to get a little theoretical; the concept of "disability" relies on the concept of a "normative" human existence. "disability" is an otherness and can therefore easily be seen as a "monstrocity" in the eyes of ignorant people, something that instils fear. (there is a reason why a lot of horror exploits disabled bodies as a source of terror and uses mental hospitals as settings) from an able-bodied point of view it seems "desirable" to be a "normative human", yet the disabled person knows that is not a possibility and knows their worth and place as a human in human spaces. at least ideally. able-bodied people sometimes lack this understanding. there is nothing to be desired about an able body or fixed about a disabled body, beyond what medical care can do for ones quality of life.

if you have read operetta, this is all very familiar;

operetta, chapter 17 and, well, here we are. vampires. a very basic truth about the sakuma family that i hate to see denied is that they are human. there is nothing supernatural about them. they are just disabled. or, to turn the idea around, if one was to assign them vampiristic traits and such... is vampirism not a disability and should be taken seriously as such? if you consider the limits a vampire has while coordinating through their life, is that not... strangely just a disabled experience? (MINUS THE KILLING PEOPLE OBVIOUSLY but much modern fiction is sympathetic towards vampires instead and does not display them as violent)

anyway, to hear it from the horses mouth (the horse is rei):

operetta, chapter 19 the sakuma family is a curious case. their condition is hereditary though the severity varies from person to person. it comes up in many stories but for the most part i am thinking about operetta, resurrection sunday, and devils right now. how did this all start? what made an entire family turn to live as vampires, with blood ceremonies and all that? what bizarre kind of generational trauma is this?

(and, while it does not play a role as important as it did for eichi, they are rich. this is important to mention. many normal experiences just dont apply to them because wealth makes them immune. ... how did the sakumas become this influential anyway.)

for an unspecified but long time, an entire family managed to mentally entirely seperate themselves from the rest of humanity because of their chronical illness. personally, i have no doubt this is the result of a world that othered them first. whether the main motivator at play here is a defensiveness towards a society that cannot understand you or an internal need to turn hardships into an identity that can be carried with pride. it takes a considerable amount of emotional strength and planning for the "hey we are human actually" declaration in operetta to occur.

they are, weirdly, what people mean when they talk about a "toxic anti-recovery mindset". (an expression i struggle with because this sort of rhetoric is often used to discriminate against disabled people who speak up for themselves or ask for accomodations. but that aside) it is an amount of pride that leads to internal self destruction.

of course, as is the case with every single character i write about in this post, a lot of it has to do with aesthetics and being chuuni to sell gacha cards. so we know the reason behind the reason. but it makes for some bizarre in-universe implications.

but in any case, the fact that their identity as false vampires is something they have always carried, that modern society sees as "mystical and sexy" has a hilarious side effect: their disability becomes marketable under the guise of vampirism. it is hard to recover from that.

so again, we have a double-edged sword: to present ones medical condition as a "persona" declares it as a performative act, something that is done to bring joy to an audience. personal detriment is not considered here, since it stops being a part of ones being and starts to become "work". the time and place of ones symptoms has to overlap with the time and place of ones performances. or people will hate you for your uncontrollable illness. however, rei and ritsu are both also able to carry their condition with a sort of playfulness. it is almost something like the act of "reclaiming" when they purposefully choose to larp a little for fun. usually, when a scene mentions their disability in the context of comic relief, they have control over the situation that unfolds and even initiate it and invite others to laugh alongside them. this can be a slippery slope to getting harrassed of course.... but i am rather baffled by the amount of dominance they have in social interactions. so it just reads as a healthy amount of dark humour to me.

this, and the consistent writing of their symptoms, and the ability to easily compare it to real existing illnesses, easly make them my favourite instance of written disabled people in the series. their illness has an impact on their behaviour and it is detrimental! and they are both very human in the way they attempt to cope. there is a certain realism to it. idek.

many people seem to headcanon them with myalgic encephalomyelitis, which is a really good explanation, and i personally want to suggest narcolepsy. the point being, there is room to accurately assign them a realistic relatable and understandable condition, even if nothing is ever named in canon. and of course they are mentioned to have an iron deficiency.

bear with this slightly "out there" theory for a moment: have you or a friend ever tried to get a compensation for your disadvantage at school or uni? it can be really hard to do, if it is possible at all, even if it is something very simple (more time, a slightly different enviroment, the ability to drink or sit, etc) yumenosaki is a school for performance arts, mainly idols. bold statement: it might genuinely be easier to get/explain an accommondation for your "idol quirk" (something that would be actively fostered), than for your disability. not that yumenosaki is very strict or asks for a lot anyway, its just something that has been on my mind.

here is another funny thing i have been thinking about: both of them crave juice, soda, and fruit - sugary yet fresh stuff. i feel like this is not uncommon for people who suffer from excessive tiredness and fatigue, the body subconsciously wishes for some sugar intake to "wake up".

Inventing a Guy to Cope. Rei

funny title aside... he... did that... ? rei is a curious example of how different mostly unrelated traumas can overlap. he had no childhood, thanks to his family that considered him "mature" at a very young age and his early status as a child star. and his bad health is a miserable addition to this. it is quite scary to image how pressured to do right he felt growing up and how that resulted in the fragmented distanced way he views himself; reinventable, and ultimately unknowable. (to others AND himself)

despite his bad health he has always been working and performing "well". he was praised for his remarkable talents but rarely had the chance to stop and patch himself up. whether this was a result of a pushy enviroment or his personality as a people pleaser who cannot show weakness and imperfection is hard to tell. maybe both.

the state he is in in Crossroad is fascinating to me. he all but directly lists the criteria of depression to keito when he attempts to explain his sorrows. he is restless, rowdy, mentions later on that he enrolled in yumenosaki against his familys wishes. he is very much searching for joy and his own identity in the middle of a health emergency. this has to do with the way he was raised, only knowing how to exist for and serve others, how he was made to sell a made-up version of himself, but i also believe it has to do with the fact he has started to exclude himself from his familys traditions and values. he started to cast away the uncertain "monstrosity" existence of his family (as well as the false idolhood others assigned him) and instead embraces humanity as a chronically ill person.

crossroad, i forgor which chapters

this of course marks a starting point of change that later results in him making up the wagahai pronouns persona - something he specifically created with the intention of looking vulnerable and weak. because he yearned to do less, to recover from years of exhaustion.

in a way, i want to say both, the ore pronouns persona and the wagahai pronouns persona, are attempts to cope with expectations he cannot handle physically or mentally. one relies on masking, on appearing stronger than he actually is and therefore invulnerable, and the other relies on exaggerating his weakness, in an attempt to finally let others recognize it. i think as a disabled person, both are performances one has to learn in order to "function" in everyday life, while remaining safe from serious harm (doing badly at ones job or classes, angering others that hold power over your life). since ones circumstances are often hard to grasp for someone who does not share the same illness, there is no choice but to simplify and exaggerate until symptoms become tangible concepts or to just brave through it, at the cost of ones health and future time.

rei in particular, for better or for worse, is incredibly capable when he needs to be and unfortunately that means others will often not take his health seriously because they saw him function just fine the other day. this is a general problem but an obvious offender in that regard is koga, who comments on reis fatigue constantly and loves to create a bit of a high expectations toxic work enviroment (and, to be fair, rei terrorizes him too. kogas hostility towards rei is sometimes ableist but not really rooted in ableism. after all koga is highly aware how performative the wagahai persona can be and is a huge motivational and inspirational factor in reis life. its a whole complex)

!! era holds some positive changes. his mental need to please other people remains a persistent source of trouble for him (and others) but he seems to really let his body recover and lives a more nocturnal life. both kuro and kaoru mention that he looks more healthy (in succession match???? i think??) since he finally stopped enforcing a normal day/night cycle on his body just to comply with social norms. you can indeed be very human even if you break human-made rules.

(additional comment: "becoming human" is of course a theme for each of the eccentrics and not uniquely tied to disability, it very much has to do with the objectification one goes through as a public figure. but this is a post about disability and it really fits in well. so here we go)

Literally Just a Realistic Teenager. Ritsu

ritsu, while not really being among my favourite characters, is my favourite instance of a disabled character in enstars. partly because of his writing and partly because my personal experiences overlap with his so much it sometimes is painful - but always extremely satisfying. just had to get that out.

ritsu is perhaps the most visibly ill. he blacks out and sleeps where he stands, everywhere, without control and often requires other peoples (well, mostly maos) assistance in order to remain safe when this happens. he also repeated a year of school, specifically because of his disability.

he is painfully aware of this. that he looks ill, that he behaves ill, that he is an underachiever compared to others of the same age, even to people younger than him.

ritsu developed unique behaviours to deal with this: he is very dependent and clingy and often asks others to do things for him, unapologetically. that does not mean asking for help doesnt hurt his pride, just that it is the most viable strategy for everyday survival that he ended up with. other than that, he clings more to the vampire identity than rei does. either to defy his older brother or, and this is important imo, because it is the one safety net he has to fall back on that makes him feel "normal" and like he is a regular being. albeit not human. no matter how much others might blame him for his shortcomings or how much he is a failure in the eyes of society, he is very regular for a "vampire". under the logic developed by his family, he is just a child, and the world at large is to blame. it is an easier truth to accept than facing systematic injustice and prejudice in a human world.

the stories i mentioned in another part above aside, i really love what ensemble band does for him; ritsu gets extremely irritated with mao in the prologue, seemingly out of nowhere. his character is allowed to express this sort of anger and to take it out on others, even if it is unjust and misguided. it is not pretty and it isnt good behaviour but it is a very heartfelt emotion to me.

its obvious that he cannot compete with others and that this will always been seen as his personal fault instead of a circumstance he cannot influence. and more than that: no one appreciates the real efforts he makes. for instance, getting himself out of bed in time for classes is difficult for regular teenagers and straight up hellish for ritsu. but he manages to do so a lot later on. instead of acknowledging that this is a real accomplishment on his part and possibly really exhausting and bad for his comfort in the long run, this is seen as doing the bare minimum.

while it is not correct, the malice ritsu sometimes treats others with comes from an comprehensible place. able-bodied ignorance can appear as purposeful slights made by those more privileged than him.

yet he learns to conform. his friends are important to him. knights success is important to him. (thought mental health probably played a role here too and made things even harder prior to his third year of high school) and yet;

seven bridge, chapter 24, but its really just an example i had at hand

the remarks stay the same. his peers still cannot help but brand him as "just lazy", even if they are kind and understanding otherwise and habour no ill intent. so i would like to ask: how long can he keep this up? how hard is this on him?

i dont think i need to explain just how common and hurtful it is to be accused of "laziness". probably the single most irritating comment someone with fatigue will hear every single day.

however, on the flipside, ritsu has perhaps the most people who care for him in comparison with other characters, though they sometimes complain (communication is hard, care is hard, everyone in enstars is very young and i cannot bring myself to see those comments as malice. its a mixture of ignorance and ones own burdens) there is mao, obviously. tsumugi is a very funny example. knights, of course, in particular naru. (at least based on my humble knights readings)

quite interesting how he just decided mao is his caretaker, now and in the future. i shared a few of my thoughts on caretaking here. this is.... a huge responsibility to just put on someones shoulders, to say the least. he shouldnt be doing this but i think it speaks for itself that this is a problem that is on his mind. ITS IS A REALLY IMPORTANT TOPIC TO BRING UP, especially since, the younger you are, the harder it is to get insurance to pay for your care. yes, he is often just teasing mao, but ritsu is looking for ways to get through life. by learning to be as independent as possible, whenever possible. though often you really just find yourself at the mercy of friends and family.

Inter-Sibling Violence

apologies, i will be done with the sakumas soon. i didnt know how to fit this in at the start.

the relationship between rei and ritsu, as people with the same disability who experiences different symptoms and challenges, is worth thinking about. infighting within people of the same disability is very common since experiences can be so different, there are no universal truths or opinions. with different lifestyles come different expectations for what is "normal" and sometimes pressure and social norms can cause someone to shift blame onto others who have no achieved the same things in life.

rei and ritsu are said to have been very close as small children and likely depended on each other a lot. i can see how reis fostering nature and ritsus needy nature developed alongside each other and enforced each other.

time and time again, rei says that he is a "less severe" case, that ritsu has it worse. he jets around the world because he feels forced to do so, when ritsu just wanted emotional support from him to begin with. ritsu stayed alone at home, sheltered and likely caged by their families convictions. but! i want to suggest the following: as much as it hurt him, it was important for reis health to be away from his family, too. i dont think staying there would have been good for him. his absence and the experiences he made away from home were an important catalyst for the positive family development we see in operetta.

of course, rei means well. he cares. he is trying to have a positive impact. yet from ritsus point of view, all of this must feel terribly condescending, especially with how much rei babies him. there is just one year between them. this is barely anything when it comes to sibling inferiority complexes the brain can make up. rei, who is successful and famous and beloved and, most importantly, proclaims to have it "easier than him", is trying to find a cure for him. from ritsus point of view this must be unbearable. their lives are so different when they basically started at the very same point of origin.

more than that, rei shoulders the sketchy blood rituals himself, out of love of course, but if one was more jaded, one could assume he doesnt think ritsu would be able to stomach the responsibility.

you will always compare yourself to your siblings in unhealthy ways but ritsu is just doing this on hard mode, i fear.

HHHRAGAHHHH GHHH ghgghrhgh. Niki

nikis writing is... driving me up a wall sometimes, to say the least. dont get me wrong, i love him. to an extend i understand that his single-mindedness and shallowless has purpose to it. in fact, i adore these character traits. he really seems to be behind four mental barriers at all times, unable to let deeper thoughts touch him, lest they make him succumb to despair. (yet nikis specific flavour of menhera cannot quite shine since... well, he has to stand next to himeru all the time)

the descriptions we get of nikis illness are nonsensical, at least to my knowledge. you could imagine he has something like hyperthyroidism. this never really gets explored though. at some point ENGstars mentions he has "gastroptosis or whatever" (the "or whatever" is part of his dialogue - niki really doesnt give a fuck), which makes no sense at all. weirdly enough, it would even be strangely in character if this was just a misconception.

so, can anyone take niki to a doctor? has this happened and i just wasnt there for it? there is no excuse why no one is considering medical care when it comes to him. except that he often is the butt monkey of jokes the writers want to make and has to stay available for it. more than that; his parents just left him alone like this? as a child? did he get an allowance at least? this cannot be legal, right? i wait for the day this comes up as a topic but i fear it is in vain. (please tell me if it actually did. i dont follow niki that closely) this is an unbelievable thing to do to a healthy child, yet alone one with a severe illness. we are basically looking at denial of assistance.

so many things surrounding nikis story are designed to make him as miserable as possible. i cannot help but feel that he exists purely as comic relief, for funny bickering, and superficial drama. i dont really like that at all, his misery just gets exploited.

EVEN SO... his self-image is actually really fascinating. as rinne likes to point out again and again, niki has no self-worth. he works two jobs, one of which he hates, he constantly gets into dangerous situations, and he will do anything just for some crumbs, and quickly forgets when others treat him badly. and of course, the worst bit:

es!! main story, please dont make me go find it

to some degree, he just accepts this as something he deserves. there is no consideration for his own quality of life, somewhere along the lines it seems like he got conviced just surviving is all he gets. he internalized self-degredation to a dangerous degree and i never see anyone mention this mental affliction specifically as a comorbidity of his disability. to me, there is without a doubt a relation here. sure, maybe he would still fight with this otherwise, just because he had to witness his fathers fall from grace as a child and knows there is a stigma attached to his name now. but i think you can tell it is more than that, from the way he is ashamed to beg (even in a life or death scenario, as seen in hot limit), as if his condition was his own fault.

this circles back to the point i made earlier for eichi; how much nikis life is worth, is measured in his economical value.

of the characters i have spoken of so far, nikis is financially the most accurate to real life. there is no safety net for him, no convenient family wealth.

(at this point it feels important to mention that somehow rinne manages to be the only person entirely aware of the danger and desires to change nikis mindset, YET he is a huge strain on nikis health. i dont know how those two function.)

Just a Lamb. Tatsumi

tatsumis specific trauma is a unique one: while most other characters struggle with conditions they were born with or developed as they grew up, tatsumis injury is the result of strain and violence. those are two different pairs of shoes, though the outcome may be similar. whether it is worse to be born into circumstances you cannot escape or to have to live with having something thrust upon you unfairly is up to personal judgement. pain is not really quantifiable. its just important to keep in mind, i think. under the circumstances tatsumi grew up in, he has his own burdens. it is very easy in many ways to compare and contrast him with eichi. of course this applies to how they used their bodies too: as an expandable resource. they had ideals for their school life (and beyond) that just seemed far more important and they both ended up in hospital because of this. (+ we know tatsumis surroundings were purposefully manipulated to destroy him)

and, of course, tatsumi got attacked later on. he never really talks about it directly but his legs seem to talk for him, in ways.

the story does not quite make it clear whether his occasional weakness and pain are the result of old injuries or entirely psychosomantic, and i dont think there is a real need to know, as a reader. in fact, in a certain light, i think it can be considered good that we dont know for certain: it would be relevant for tatsumi himself, sure, since it would influence which kinds of treatments and help he can seek out. however, i think the ambiguity may foster a certain level of sympathy in readers.

often psychosomatic problems are not taken seriously enough in real life: they cannot be proven physically and they dont fit into the neat little boxes that the ICD wants you to believe exist, so they cannot be defined on paper or easily explained to doctors or insurance providers.

to foster empathy with his situation requires his character to be lovable and for the narrative to treat him with care as well. which is thankfully the case. alkaloid are dear with him and, despite the fact he cannot perform in his work enviroment all the time, he is very respected for his other skills. he is a well-rounded person.

all that aside. it is absolutely worth to mention tatsumi pre-injury, too. he came up with a form of small-scale universal income among a semi-union at school. without getting too much into all that. (obbligato really seems like required lecture in the realm of enstars stories) the entire concept strives for social equality and is extremely anti-discrimination. it fundamentally goes against the idea that someone needs to "deserve" care, and is the opposite of the mindset i described with eichi and niki above. he never had to make first-hand experiences with disability to be extremely compassionate. this seems really rare among people in real life, even those who preach altruism.

While we are Here. K.... Kaname

as mentioned, i spoke a little about kaname before. so i wont get into the complex of caregiving.

it is extremely satisfying we got to meet kaname, if only for one event story. he does not have to remain a faceless motivation behind himeru and tatsumis lives, he thankfully became humanized.

the entire conflict around kaname at the moment is a matter of bodily autonomy. how much of your person can be in anothers hand, ethically? there is no excuse for the theft of his (idol) identity through himeru but the damage is done now. ideally, you dont want any part of yourself to depend on others but the disabled reality is that this is very often impossible. especially for kaname. there simply is no one else who could be responsible for him right now and, to be fair, at least when it comes to medical care, himeru seems to behave very responsibly.

repeating what has been said in the other post but i am worried for kanames seemingly inevitable reintroduction to the story. he has been in a comatose state for a year. if he wakes (since this is fiction, it is possible to exchange 'if' for 'when', realistically it really would be an 'if' though) he would most likely be confronted with permanent neurological and physical damage and years of rehabilitation. at least logically. (not to mention the psychological shock) would this be written with compassion and a sense of realism? it makes for a compelling source of conflict and emotional hardships that could be extremely worthwhile to explore. i just cant entirely bring myself to trust the writers with this one but i would love to be convinced otherwise.

that is, of course, if they dont somehow just skip rehabilitation entirely and declare it a miracle healing.....

imo, the in-game discourse between characters is just as important as his future development. i just really hope autonomy and recovery will be large topics.

He doesnt go here, but. Adonis

so bringing him up just really feels necessary within the context of this post because of his interests. one of adonis hobbies is sign language and accessibility.

this is, i think, maybe the best thing they ever did with his "protector" persona. it just fits so well, it is a direct conversion of ideals to actions. knowing undead songs have been translated for a deaf audience in canon is extremely wholesome and uplifting, even if it is entirely inconsequential for the story and just something that gets mentioned.

(now that sandstorm is out on engstars, you can check that out too for further mentions of this! if i could wish for one thing, it would be for the stories to acknowledge that there are tons of independent sign languages and i would love to know which one adonis and rei speak... you ever think about how adonis speaks like four languages fluently. at least.)

nightless city live, chapter 3

everyone in undead loved that and supported the vision. to see koga, who is usually against anything but musical performances and wishes to express art freely, praise the idea really puts deaf identity and accessibility in a great light. it is a very positively radical forwardthinking idea.

so, i just wanted to mention that. adonis is treated horribly by the narrative a lot, it entirely fails to grasp his identity and is insensitive towards foreign cultures, but i would die for him i think.

finishing thoughts

like mentioned, please absolutely let me know if you have different related ideas or recommendations. or corrections, or worries over something i wrote!!! learning and improving is always great. i am sorry i could not get into so many other characters, the ones i wrote about are those that i feel confident enough to comment on. in the future i would love to meet maguro!! i just havent really read any mama stories at all :'''3

i feel like i barely said anything at all and barely engaged with text enough since i didnt get into any character specifically. i would love to write another post about ritsu or rei or both. a draft for it has been sitting around for ages (as did the draft for this post, lol) but i hope someone will find an interesting thought in here somewhere.

all in all, enstars is actually... surprisingly nice to read for the disability in there??? even if it is disappointing in handling many other things. of course, the writings not always ideal (i read hidden beast just the other day and the ableism in there took years off my life) but often its really nice. nothing hits quite like seeing real emotions and experiences through some metaphorical stylized anime lense, you feel.

anyway thank you for listening. i am actually for real done now.

[moodymisty]

The Sound Of Your Voice - Ch1

Author's Note: So I finally went for it. The multichapter fic begins! I haven't written one of these in... gosh 10 years? A LOTR fic. Anywho I hope you guys enjoy! I hope you'll join me on this at minimum 4-5 chapter adventure (yes there will be smut eventually I know why you follow me) so lets have some fun!

This is mostly a fun self-indulgent project, but I hope at least a few others enjoy it too.

Summary: Life in the skies of Coruscant is dreary; Who better to spice it up than a know-it-all you met on the Holonet.

Relationships: Tech/Fem!Reader

Story-wide Warnings: SFW, Friends to lovers, You are working as a personal assistant for a senator, Eventual smut, Mutual pining, Lots of texting in the first chapter, Scenebuilding so much scenebuilding, an OC for plot's sake, Dehumanization of the clones,

Word count: 4015

ao3 link

The sound of quiet chatter echos through the gigantic central room and the connecting halls, along with heels against tile and drinking glasses clinking against each other.

It’s the usual symphony of a gala; Small groups or pairs of people chatting about business while munching on small, freshly prepared foods and drinking expensive liquor. The main event for the evening, which was a play by a small but talented production group has since finished, with the last round of food being served before the evening finally concludes.

You’ve already done your fair share of circles around the event, chatting with co-workers and business partners, as well as potential ones.

And now that you were finished with your rounds, you find yourself stuck in a quiet corner holding a mostly untouched drink in your hands. It’s good, but there’s something about the amount of thoughts swirling in your head that keeps you from raising it to you lips, staring off in no particular direction.

Accepting to come here was a mistake. I knew I should’ve just stayed home and gotten some actual work done.

Though, this does technically count as work; You remember.

Both your datapads burn a hole in the purse you have slung over your shoulder with their weight, just as a reminder of the reason why you’re here. Social gatherings are a part of the job, even if they don’t present themselves overtly in the job description.

If you’d known that working for a senator would result in this, you might’ve not taken the job when it was presented.

It’s getting quite late; The stars are already shining high in the sky, and you can see the flashing lights of air taxis and speeders in the skylanes below one of the many sets of ballroom windows.

I hope she’s making use of this time to actually sweeten the pot with some other senators on her new bill, or else I’m putting a nice twi’leki massage on her tab tomorrow.

But as you stand here you’ve become so lost in your own thoughts you don’t notice when it seems your thoughts have summoned her, and Llenya appears with a glass in her hands.

It seems the Mirialan senator has a mind for when her assistant is at their wits end; Adjusting the wrist of her dress as she looks you up and down only once.

“Are you alright?”

Beyond her soft, dinner table smile she has the slightest bit of worry on her face, the deep purple lipstick she’s wearing contrasting with the color of her skin. The color matches her floor length dress, as well as the clips that hold her hair in its intricate styling. You look at her for a moment, shrugging before answering.

“I just feel a little woozy. I’m going to go get a bit of fresh air, and see if that helps. Can you live without me for a moment?”

Her smile gets slightly wider, just barely pushing her cheeks upwards towards her eyes.

“I think I can manage. But I would appreciate your help in dealing with one of the other senators, before he gets too drunk to negotiate with.” You’re not a fan of the fact that you know exactly which senator she’s referring to, and the idea of dealing with them doesn’t fill you with excitement.

But now that you’ve spoken to her you can steal a moment to yourself, gently pushing through the crowd and keeping your face tilted downwards; In the hopes that people wouldn’t recognize you and want to speak. After Llenya recently submitted her newest draft for her refugee supply distribution bill it seems everyone wants to speak on it, and be the first to have some sort of juicy information regarding the matter. And when they can’t speak to her, they have to deal with you.

The moment you hit the one of the sets of doors leading to the balcony the fresh, cool air hits your face, and you can’t help taking in a deep sigh. At least as deep as one you can take, with the corset of your dress wrapped tight around your waist.

This was a beautiful dress; A deep maroon red that almost brushed across the floor and flowed around your wrists, but it has become more than a little uncomfortable as the night as gone on.

Moving away from the doors you slowly walk along the outside of the ballroom, admiring the clouds shining bright from Coruscant’s lights as you wander while drifting your hand along the railing. It’s surprising you don’t spot anyone on the way, though the gala’s staff are more than likely being quite careful to avoid any stragglers meandering out of the venue.

But in your wandering you end up by the back entrance of the building, and stop only once you find something that manages to catch your interest. The night sky casts a soft light over your only peaceful moment in this entire night of annoyances so far.

The spot you’re standing in overlooks an absolutely beautiful rooftop garden; Plants from no less than five different planets all planted in dramatic patterns and trimmed to perfection. Not a single leaf or flower was out of place, nor had been allowed to fall onto the paths weaving through it. The topiary are all perfectly manicured, and in a way they seem almost artificial; As if no living plant could be shaped into such a perfectly strict form. You didn’t know this place had a garden of this scale, as it was completely unseen when you’d first arrived.

It’s such a wonderful sight, it would be nice to share it with someone.

Maybe he would like it?

Though he seemed to like everything, to a degree. Maybe it’s the side effect of having such a scientific mind.

Your personal datapad is quickly pulled from your bag, before you lean forward over the railing to take one quick picture of the expansive garden. Once you lean back you take a look, and your lips purse together just a tad.

It doesn’t look as pretty as a picture...

But it still looks nice. You send it, and feel the way your bottom lip gets caught between your teeth as you wait for a response. You don’t have to wait long to get one.

- Are those Poya berteronias? In the top left?

It seems like he waits for your response for only a moment, before elaborating.

- Blue Poyas, is the name most people traditionally know them as.

- Yes, they are. I didn’t know you had such a keen eye for plants.

Though he seems to have a keen eye for everything, in all of the times you’ve spoken too him. There hasn’t been a thing yet he hasn’t been an expert on.

- information on plant biology and botany is not exactly rare. I’ve had some downtime to research such things relatively recently.

- You seemed to know your fair share as well, in our previous conversations.

- Aww, thanks Tech.

Tech. Part of you still thinks the name is a little odd, but you had always assumed it was a nickname that had attached to him like glue, and he just prefers it. Given his personality, it’s a more than accurate nomer. As well the skill it alludes to the reason why he apparently works for the GAR, as he’d once said.

Part of your considers taking the half flight of stairs down into the garden and walking around, but your feet are already complaining after spending the evening in such uncomfortable heels, so you ultimately decide against it. As much as you would enjoy getting a chance to take in more of the fresh air and maybe smell some of the flowers.

Tech hasn’t messaged for a moment, and you assume he’d gotten swept away by something or someone, until he messages again about five minutes later.

- I apologize for disappearing. I was looking for something in one of my datasticks.

He sends an attachment moments later, which you open to see an image of the flower he’d brought up earlier. Only it was wild, what most people would consider overgrown and so big it had almost begun to weep.

- Wow, where did you see this?

- We were on Devaron a few standard months ago. I remembered it being a rare plant and decided to document it.

He types ‘we’, though it gets so quickly corrected to ‘I’ that you almost miss it. He does that sometimes, so you figure he just has family or partners from work that he doesn’t want to speak on.

You don’t want to pry, but it doesn’t mean you aren’t curious.

You mean to ask why GAR would send someone like him to a planet so remote like Devaron, though a set of footsteps from behind you makes you turn your head away from your datapad for a moment. One finger shuts off the screen, while you take a better look at the person approaching you.

Someone about your age; Though you don’t recognize him. People come in and out of your work life so fast that it’s hard to remember faces, even if you’ve spoken to them before.

“The party not keeping you entertained?”

He gives a polite smile, stepping close enough to be within range of quiet conversation. Glancing down to see your datapad in your hands, you put it back into your bag moments later.

“Just needed a little bit of air, that’s all. It felt so hot in there, I just wanted some breathing room. Especially after the play finished.” He laughs and nods, looking downward at the garden before back up at you. He leans against the railing, an elbow supporting him while he grabs his wrists.

“It certainly wasn’t the best play I’ve seen, though I haven’t seen quite as many as most people.” You turn to look through one of the ballroom windows and instantly recognize a few faces, but it seems some have left.

Good, the party is finally dispersing. As if it isn’t already way too late.

“Oh, I’ve only seen a few also. I’m more of a concert person, personally.”

At the moment however, I’m mostly a ‘leave me alone’ person.

As much as you might like to, you hold your tongue and smile, for the sake of avoiding any sort of repercussions for an abit small annoyance.

“But I have to get back inside; I know there’s probably a few people all in there ready to pounce once I return.” Nodding to you, he still keeps his hopeful expression despite his attempts at anymore conversation resulting in failure.

“Well, I’ll see you back inside then. I think I’ll take another moment of air and admire the scenery.” You smile.

“Enjoy the view, it’s lovely.”

Quickly shuffling back inside you once again keep your head low enough, until you’re back on the acceptable outskirts of the party. It’s not as if you hate all parties and social events; It’s that so many of these forced encounters tend to grate on you after awhile. But even so, you still need to search for Llenya before she notices how long you’ve been gone. She might be a little bit more lenient with you than another senator might be, but missing a good portion of the party she’s using for gathering good will is a little far past her limit of leniency.

You find her speaking to a senator you vaguely recognize, but as you make your way over, he leaves before you have a chance to speak. Llenya feels your presence beside her and turns, eyebrows raising upwards.

“Feeling better?” The metal of her jewelry clinks together softly as she adjusts it on her wrist.

“Yeah. It was just so hot in here I was starting to get nauseous.” Her smile fades for just a moment. Great, she is more than likely not pleased that you weren’t here to keep people off of her back.

“Whatever happened to ‘just a moment’?” Someone brushes by quite close behind you, causing you to take a small step forward.

“Someone wandered by and starting trying to talk to me.” While I was speaking to the person I actually wanted to talk too… “I didn’t recognize him from anywhere though. And he didn’t seem interested in talking about you, surprisingly.” That perks her interest, though she doesn’t get much of a chance to question who they might’ve been, before she decides to divulge more important matters.

“I think it might be time for us to take our leave; Judging by the last conversation I had, it seems I’ve worn out my welcome among a, good portion of the guests.” She must’ve been pushing her bill on people hard, if they were souring on her like that. Granted, she knew it was a hard sell coming into this.

Many of these senators are notably not fans of actually pushing money towards relief effort for the war, especially if they aren’t going to get any sort of gain from it.

“I’ll call the driver.” You do exactly that, and once you grab both of your coats, it’s moments before you’re both in the air taxi. The driver knows the address, so he instantly begins driving to Llenya’s private home once you say to do so.

She spends most of the time talking about a few of the people she’d had conversation with, though you find it difficult to keep invested beyond giving noises of understand.

I hope Tech doesn’t think I just got bored of talking to him…

“I think I’m going to make a few small changes to it; If I do so, I think I might before to win over a few more senators before my time is up.” You can see her building through the divider of the air taxi, before turning to her and nodding.

“When you do, send it to me and I’ll do the rest right then.” Pulling up to the private entrance, Llenya gets out, but hangs on the door for a second and smiles at you.

“Remind me to thank you for working so late.” You wiggle your fingers and smile back.

“I’ll be sure to. Good night.” Once she closes the door, you tell the driver to bring you back to your own place now, so you can finally get some well needed rest.

It’s been a long night.

Once you arrive, you’re more than quick to slide off the seat and out, closing the door and not even turning as the taxi goes off back into the skylane.

Finally, home.

Once you get inside and close the door behind you, your first stop is your bedroom; To change out of this clothing before it makes your body ache anymore. These sorts of events always take a lot out of you; The excess of delicate dancing that is social interaction with senators and hours and hours of standing around in uncomfortable dress, but in the end nothing feels better than tearing it all away once it’s over.

Moving to your closet you grab a pair of sleep clothes off a middle shelf and slowly change, sighing as you take off the restrictive dress you’d been wearing all night and gently hanging it back up. After doing so, you stand in the full length mirror and slowly undo your hair, until it’s no longer pinned and clipped into place.

Once you finish, it takes a good roll of your shoulders to realize how long you had to hold such a tight posture. And deciding to relax, you sit down on the bed and it’s still neatly tucked sheets, curling your legs up and leaning against the headboard.

Your bag was close by, so you hook the strap with your foot and pull it close enough to grab, and pull your datapad out. Your work one was pulled partly out by accident, but you don’t bother to do anything about it.

Instead, you open up to continue the chat you’d started what felt like ages ago, though it had only been a few hours.

-I hope you’ll forgive me for disappearing.

Tech instantly responds again.

Does this man ever sleep? Anytime I message, he seems to always be right here.

-Forgotten.

- I was actually attending a party earlier, But I had to show my face again eventually.

- Was it so droll that there was no one to talk to?

Oh, there were plenty of people to talk to; Just none you wanted to. You talk to plenty of senators and other political figures enough during your time working, and so you have zero desire to try and pretend to be their friend. Especially when it’s so transparently transactional.

That’s however, not a very pleasant answer to his question, so you just scrap it for a more endearing one.

- No, you’re just a far more entertaining conversationalist.

- I’m glad you find my ability to nurture conversation with an endless array of topics entertaining.

- That was a joke.

It almost hurts the way you attempt to avoid smiling at your datapad, finding his sudden declaration so incredibly endearing.

You’ve never met anyone quite like Tech; Which you’re more than happy to have.

- I figured. Though it’s a bit hard to know without hearing someone’s tone of voice.

You’ve never actually heard Tech’s voice, in all this time. You have one for him in your head; One that reads his dialogue in your mind instead of it being a bunch of silent text scrolling across a screen. Though you’ve always wondered how accurate it is compared to the real thing.

- It’s funny to think how long we’ve been talking and I’ve never actually heard your voice.

- Is that merely an observation, or a suggestion?

Your other datapad for your business life lays right beside you; Which thankfully has yet to alert you to Llenya sending her new draft. She probably won’t get it done tonight, leaving you with the evening free.

- Either? Whatever you prefer.

Maybe it’s the mystery of it all, but you can’t recall a time someone’s ever had you so on your toes like this. You said you didn’t mind, but you would be lying if you weren’t incredibly curious to hear him, and see how accurate your guess has been thus far.

- Someone is sleeping in the seat beside me, let me tell him to leave first.

Even if no one can see you, you can’t help the way you visibly jolt as if instinct to get up and stop him.

- Don’t do that!

He doesn’t respond for about three minutes, so you assume he hadn’t listened to you.

After that short amount of time he signals his return to his datapad with a call; But you’re unable to stop yourself from letting it ring one or two times before answering. Normally someone would say hello, but given what he’d presumably just done you open with shaking your head and saying:

“You are a cold, cold man, for doing that to someone.”

“It would not be the first time someone has called me cold. Being of a methodical mindset seems to evoke such a comment.”

…

Oh kark, right; I need to speak.

“O-oh yeah? I hope you pushed him in the direction of an actual bed instead of another chair.”

His voice…

It’s distinctly not as you had it in your head, giving you a healthy bit of surprise of the pleasant kind.

“Proper beds are in quite short supply when on duty unfortunately. He prefers sleeping partly upright apposed to the traditional approach as well.” It is easy to forget he is on duty at times, with how often you speak.

“Well, I hope you aren’t busy.” After you speak you reach up to your hair and pull out a stray pin you must’ve missed, setting it on your bedside table.

“I am no more occupied than I normally am at this time. Though at the moment I have time to work on something I’ve been meaning to finish.”

His voice could put me to sleep in an instant. But… In a good way. Not boring.

“Have I been distracting you?” There’s a soft clang, the gentle sound of metal on metal. You’re not entirely surprised he’s working on something of the mechanical sort. “I am more than capable of having my attention split between multiple different activities.”

What a charming way to say I’m not bugging you.

“Well, then what are you working on?” There’s more clanking and shuffling, and the sound of him letting out a quiet noise of effort while reaching over to grab something. “It would take quite awhile to explain.” He obviously can’t see the slight pout your lips form when you don’t get an actual answer. You’re curious; Every time you’ve asked he’s always been making some sort of wacky or amazing thing, you never know what he’s going to be working on next.

“I don’t mind. I’m curious.” Much to your surprise he’s actually somewhat quiet for a moment, as if he’s trying to think of what to say. You can’t hear much movement either, unlike before.

“It’s a heat signature modification for a helmet display, By the time I am finished with it, it should be able to see heat from up to half a klick away.”

Wow, you think; Before you remember to vocalize it.

“Wow Tech, that sounds impressive.”

He gives a nonchalant sounding hum, before speaking up.

“Not particularly. It’s mostly a mundane upgrade I simply haven’t gotten around to doing.”

You can’t quite tell if he’s shrugging off your compliment, or if he genuinely didn’t pick up that you even gave him one. The ladder seems to be more common with him. After going silent for a moment, the sound of metal hitting each other cues you in enough that he’s probably working on another bit of his project. Eventually however, he finally speaks up.

“You, said you were attending an event?”

You perk up, nodding despite him not being able to see you.

“Yeah, it was for work.” You sigh. “Thankfully that fiasco is all over.”

While still shuffling around, Tech adjusts his datapad enough that it makes a small noise.

“Judging by the tone of your voice, I am going to assume it was not an event which you had wanted to attend?”

The understatement of the night.

You don’t exactly feel like indulging your work to him given it’s sensitive nature, so you round it about with a chuckle. As well as the fact that you'd rather just forget about it for the night, while you have the ability to.

“Yeah, putting it lightly.”

Tech doesn’t ask you about it again thankfully, and instead you both chatting back and forth for a good while, and listening to the sounds of him work in-between. It’s oddly soothing; There’s something about listening to him just explain what he’s working on and answer your silly questions that’s incredibly relaxing. You could do this for hours; But if you did, the morning would likely end up shining through your windows soon enough. And you know without a shadow of a doubt, you’re going to have an overwhelming load of work to do.

“Is much as I’d like to stick around, I should probably sleep.” He doesn’t stop working for a moment, hearing the sound of a spanner sparking against metal.

“Very well. Be sure to get adequate rest; And,” His voice halts for only the briefest moment. “I will speak to you tomorrow.” That makes you smile, before you turn off your datapad. Talk about good luck being able to end what would normally be a terrible night off on a good note, you think.

Sleep ends up coming easily, though it’s hard for your brain to not replay your conversation in your head a few times, before you eventually do nod off.

[dollfaceksj]

Why put it on Patreon? It’s not fair for the other readers that didn’t do anything. The ones that keep sending the ask are probably the same young people and just trolling knowing that it gets under your skin. Especially since it’s a Jungkook fic. His fics are usually on the top search bar so of course people are greedy and impulsive and ask about the update daily even you though you have answered about it billions times

where did i say i’d put in patreon? the answers weren’t serious.

and even if, patreon would only mean some ppl would get it earlier than the rest. or would just have access to teasers, deleted scenes, spoilers.

that being said, if i wanted to put my stories on patreon, i would have done so a long time ago

and to be honest, this isn’t just about jungkook. ppl ask me for updates on cal and my other stuff all the time. that does not excuse spamming authors with asks about updates cause frankly this might sound dramatic but it just gets dehumanizing over time

it’s not like i mind questions like “hows the chapter going?” its the “when”s.

it’s like y’all only gaf abt the story and not about how much time the author is putting into it or just the author in general.

i got an ask not too long ago in which an anon said “i usually don’t like memes in my fics but this was well done” excuse me but when the hell did it become YOUR fic?

it’s something sooo small yet something that bothers me. you never see it being used for other content creators.

no one ever tells a fanartist “i usually prefer my fanart with more shading but this is really good”. no one ever tells an editor “i usually prefer my edits without so many transitions but this is great”.

i don’t want to sound dramatic but for some reason no one bats an eye when someone goes “i prefer my fics like this” despite just being a consumer. how hard is it to just describe them as the fics you read/fics you like? it’s like ppl really just don’t care about authors

anyways. i have a ko-fi account where you can donate if you like my stuff and i’m satisfied with that.

when i start writing/posting the long series that i have planned i might start something like patreon or kofi memberships for early teasers and extra content. for now, i just wanna take my time and enjoy writing instead of feeling like i have to

[zooptseyt]

מיר וועלן זיי איבערלבן

We will outlive them

This year I had one of the greatest honors of my professional career, and frankly a high point in my life in general, in being asked to present to sophomore English classes about Jews and Judaism as part of their unit on the book Night. I made a point of talking very little on the Holocaust itself. Instead I divided it into three main sections: (1) Jewish practice, culture, and belief; (2) Ashkenazi Jewish history pre-Holocaust, with special focus on Jew hatred; (3) what we should take away from the lessons of the Holocaust today.

In this last part, I explained how the Nazis' hatred was aimed at many aspects of society—foreigners, LGBTQ+ people, leftists—and that Jews were hated both for being Jews and for being associated with these groups.

Because of this especially, I spent the weeks in which I presented waiting anxiously, worried that I might get an email or a phone call letting me know a parent or student complained. Fortunately, this didn't happen. I wish that made me feel more like the fear was misguided.

I have faced, in some form or another, antisemitism at every job I have worked (other than Baskin Robbins, credit where it's due). I have had a coworker at Jimmy John's lecture me on how the Holocaust is a myth and Jews run the world and, upon me letting management know this, they promised to move us to different shifts. That was all. No disciplinary action.

Before that, Menards was the first time I got called a kike. Had another guy complain about what I was doing in Israel (to clarify, I have done nothing in Israel, as I have never set foot anywhere near it). Had a coworker who, in a moment of being overly familiar, called me "you fucking jew" the literal first time he met me (we did not become close and I don't believe I ever learned his name). Had others, upon learning I was Jewish, compliment me for looking normal, and not having an ugly nose.

The students are mostly great. I have heard some students murmur things about Jews upon seeing me enter the classroom, but only once. I accept the possibility that comments happen behind my back. I had one student start chanting "Jew" at me directly when we went over a story about a kid making a bunch of money through their wise business decisions. When I shot him a look and told him to stop, he looked genuinely upset to see I was mad. That stuck with me. He was a nice boy who very clearly liked me a lot, and he thought chanting "Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew" at me as a joke about getting rich was fine. Oy.

Neither of those events took place during my presentations for Night. Aside from the usual few kids sleeping, they were all very respectful and engaged. I'm deeply grateful for this.

And yet I spent a month expecting to get called in. We as a nation have had two notable instances in the news where someone in authority said educators need to be fair to the Nazis. Thankfully, both instances were met with backlash. Maus just got pulled in Tennessee. People are regularly making comparisons between public health ordinances and being dehumanized, rounded up into camps, and murdered for being Jewish.

אוי.

I have become slightly more visibly Jewish lately. You could call me baal teshuvah, which I would, but this usually comes with the assumption of an orthodox affiliation (I am Reform). Part of this is because I believe firmly in my religion and want to act on it, but this was true for years before I was willing to wear a yarmulke out in public. At some point I realized that frankly the only reason I wasn't wearing a yarmulke was that I didn't want people to think I was weird. Without a yarmulke, even people who know I'm Jewish see me as a person first. With a yarmulke, I realized that even many of those who don't hate Jews will see my Jewishness first and then, hopefully, my humanity. At some point I realized two things: firstly, that I was happy with being seen as a Jew first. Secondly, that I want anyone who may hate me for being a Jew to hate me. I would rather be spit on for being a Jew than accepted under false pretenses.

But, as seems fitting, my religious baal teshuvah was part of a larger returning to Jewish culture. I've started cooking kasha varnishkes, (vegetarian) kishka, matzoh balls, latkes, kugel, baking challah, etc. I'm studying Yiddish on duolingo, reading Yiddish literature in translation, and so on. I'm not a perfect Jew, I am decidedly not good about Shabbos, but I light the candles. I try to daven. I do the holidays, big and small. I eat bagels.

A major part of this whole thing for me comes from the way Jews view time and history. It is said that every Jew should see themselves as leaving Egypt every day. It is said that every Jew was present at Sinai. We aren't merely to see ourselves as the descendents of our history, but active participants who feel these events as their personal experiences rather than historical.

I understood this conceptually, but only recently did I actually start to feel it, to actually really get it myself. I think this shapes how we look at the Holocaust, especially as we move closer to a point where there are no survivors left. It certainly shapes how I view it. The impact of the Holocaust has shaped in some form every Jew alive today.

I was reading just the other day a book that mentioned the idea that to dance at a Jewish wedding is to dance on Hitler's grave. We should view our lives as such, as acts of defiance, and as acts of triumph. We as Jews should live every day knowing that our moments of joy and safety are an act of triumph hard won.

As an educator, I obviously value education as a means of doing good. Education is vital to honoring the lives, history, and culture stolen from us by the Nazis. Obviously, educating on the Holocaust is important, and we must ensure we combat the decline in knowledge about what happened. But I think we should do more. Engaging today with that which they tried to destroy—our literature, our practices, Yiddish, our food—is a way to both honor and remember, and an act of triumph and defiance against those who wanted and want us dead.

To my fellow Jews, I have no interest in preaching how to be a Jew. Whether it's secular and atheistic or growing payos and studying Talmud, I just suggest passionately that you be a Jew with pride.

To everyone, Jewish or not, I would suggest studying Jewish history outside of the Holocaust, as told by Jews. Read Jewish literature that isn't about the Holocaust. Understand us as artists, poets, thinkers, families, as fully human, rather than a tragic moment.

A note I ended my presentations on was the humanity of others. It is so vital to truly realize that the person you hate most in life is as fully human as yourself. This isn't only necessary in remembering those lost in the Holocaust. It is also essential to how we view the Nazis. Every guard, every officer, was a human with a full inner life and friends. You may well have gotten along with some. It's easy for people to see themselves in the Jews—just ask an anti-vaxxer—but harder to be willing to recognize that same humanity in the Nazis, in Hitler. We must not see these people as mere historical monsters, for it creates a fiction that prevents us from honestly confronting what happened and ensuring we never let it happen again. Nazism was both deeply inhumane and unfortunately human. We cannot afford to dehumanize this enemy, as it creates a fictitious line between our present and our past. We must actively work to flush the faintest hint of the Nazism from each other, ourselves, and our society. We must actively confront hatred and violence, by the state and by individuals. It did not exist in a vacuum, killed by time. Confront hate when you see it in others. Confront yourself on the people you don't really see as people first. Maybe it's Muslims. Maybe it's prisoners. Maybe the homeless. Maybe it's Jews. Maybe it's Palestinians. Maybe illegal immigrants. Maybe the disabled. Maybe it's people you disagree with politically. Whoever it may be, recognize within yourself the potential to hate, and then act tirelessly to remove it. Empathy is an act of love and defiance.

Never Again.

[booklindworm]

A rant against Karen Traviss' understanding of history and her FAQ answers

Did you base the Mandalorians on the Spartans?

<cite> No. I didn't. </cite> Fair enough.

<cite> I really wish history was taught properly - okay, taught at all - in schools these days, because history is the big storehouse that I plunder for fiction. It breaks my heart to hear from young readers who have no concept even of recent history - the last fifty years - and so can't see the parallels in my books. You don't have to be a historian to read my novels, but you'll get a lot more out of them if you explore history just a little more. Watch a history channel. Read a few books. Visit some museums. Because history is not "then" - it's "now." Everything we experience today is the product of what's happened before. </cite> Yeah, I do to. Please, Ms Traviss, go on, read some books. Might do you some good. And don't just trust the history channels. Their ideas about fact-checking differ wildly.

<cite> But back to Mandos. Not every military society is based on Sparta, strange as that may seem. In fact, the Mandos don't have much in common with the real Spartans at all. </cite> You mean apart from the absolute obsession with the military ["Agoge" by Stephen Hodkinson], fearsome reputation ["A Historical Commentary on Thucydides" by David Cartwright], their general-king ["Sparta" by Marcus Niebuhr Tod], the fact that they practically acted as mercenaries (like Clearch/Κλέαρχος), or the hyper-confidence ("the city is well-fortified that has a wall of men instead of brick" [Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus])...

<cite> A slightly anarchic, non-centralized, fightin' people? Sounded pretty Celtic to me. Since I went down that path, I've learned more about the Celts (especially the Picts), and the more I learn, the more I realise what a dead ringer for Mandos they are. But more of how that happened later... </cite>

The Celtic people are more than one people, more than one culture. Celtic is a language-family! In the last millennium BC nearly every European ethnic group was in some ways Celtic, and they were not one. Later, after the Germanic tribes (also not one people, or a singular group) moved westwards, the Celtic cultures were still counted in the hundreds. Not only Scotland was Celtic! Nearly all of Western Europe was (apart from the Greek and Phoenician settlers on the Mediterranean coasts). The word “Celts” was written down for the first time by Greek authors who later also used the word “Galatians”. The Romans called these people “Gauls”, and this word was used to describe a specific area, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, the Cévennes and the Rhine: “Gaul”. So the Celts, the Galatians and the Gauls were all part of the same Celtic civilisation. "Celts, a name applied by ancient writers to a population group occupying lands mainly north of the Mediterranean region from Galicia in the west to Galatia in the east [] Their unity is recognizable by common speech and common artistic traditions" [Waldman & Mason 2006] Mirobrigenses qui Celtici cognominantur. Pliny the Elder, The Natural History; example: C(AIUS) PORCIUS SEVERUS MIROBRIGEN(SIS) CELT(ICUS) -> not just one culture "Their tribes and groups eventually ranged from the British Isles and northern Spain to as far east as Transylvania, the Black Sea coasts, and Galatia in Anatolia and were in part absorbed into the Roman Empire as Britons, Gauls, Boii, Galatians, and Celtiberians. Linguistically they survive in the modern Celtic speakers of Ireland, Highland Scotland, the Isle of Man, Wales, and Brittany." [Celtic Culture: a historical encyclopedia. by John Koch] "[] the individual CELTIC COUNTRIES and their languages, []" James, Simon (1999). The Atlantic Celts – Ancient People Or Modern Invention. University of Wisconsin Press. "All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae live, another in which the Aquitani live, and the third are those who in their own tongue are called Celtae, in our language Galli." [Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico] <= I had to translate that in school. It's tedious political propaganda. Read also the Comentarii and maybe the paper "Caesar's perception of Gallic social structures" that can be found in "Celtic Chiefdom, Celtic State," Cambridge University Press. The Celtic tribes and nations were diverse. They were pretty organized, with an academic system, roads, trade, and laws. They were not anarchic in any way. They were not warriors - they were mostly farmers. The Celts were first and foremost farmers and livestock breeders

The basic economy of the Celts was mixed farming, and, except in times of unrest, single farmsteads were usual. Owing to the wide variations in terrain and climate, cattle raising was more important than cereal cultivation in some regions.

Suetonius addressing his legionaries said "They are not soldiers—they're not even properly equipped. We've beaten them before." [not entirely sure, but I think that was in Tacitus' Annals]

Regarding the Picts, in particular, which part of their history is "anarchic"? Dál Riata? the Kingdom of Alba? Or are you referring to the warriors that inspired the Hadrian's Wall? Because no one really knows in our days who the fuck they were. The Picts’ name first appears in 297 AD. That is later. <cite> Celts are a good fit with the kind of indomitable, you-can't-kill-'em-off vibe of the Mandos. Reviled by Rome as ignorant savages with no culture or science, and only fit for slaughter or conquest, the Celts were in fact much more civilized than Rome even by modern standards. </cite> That's how the Romans looked at pretty much every culture that wasn't Greek, Roman, Phoenician, Egyptian, or from Mesopotamia (read, if you want, anything Roman or Greek about the Skyths, the Huns, Vandals, Garamantes...).

<cite> They also kicked Roman arse on the battlefield, and were very hard to keep in line, so Rome did what all lying, greedy superpowers do when challenged: they demonized and dehumanized the enemy. (They still used them in their army, of course, but that's only to be expected.) </cite> They were hard to keep in line, but they most definitely did not kick Roman arse on the battlefield. Roman arse was kicked along the borders of the Roman Empire, such as the Rhine, the Danube, the Atlas mountains, etc. And mostly by actually badly organized, slightly anarchic groups, such as the Goths or the Huns (BTW the Huns were not a Germanic people, even though early 20th century British propaganda likes to say so). Though they were also decisively stopped by the Parthians. Who were very organized. Ah well. <cite> While Rome was still leaving its unwanted babies to die on rubbish dumps - a perfectly acceptable form of family planning to this "civilisation" - and keeping women as chattels devoid of rights, the barbarian Celts had a long-standing legal system that not only gave women what we would think of as equal rights, but also protected the rights of the elderly, children, and the disabled. They had a road network across Europe and worldwide trade long before the Romans ever got their act together. And their science - well, their astronomical calculations were so sophisticated that it takes computers to do the same stuff today. </cite> See? You even say yourself that they weren't actually anarchic. Also you're not completely right: 1. women (of most Celtic cultures, with one notable exception being the Irish) were not allowed to become druids, e.g. scientists, physicians, priests, or any other kind of academics, so they did not have equal rights. Also, as in other Indo-European systems, the family was patriarchal. 2. the roads they had were more like paths, and did not span the entirety of Europe; the old roads that are still in use are nearly all of them Roman. Had the Celtic inhabitants of Gallia or Britannia built comparable roads, why would the Romans have invested in building a new system on top? 3. world-wide? Yeah, right. They traded with those who traded with others and so were able to trade with most of southern Eurasia and northern Africa, as well as few northern parts (Balticum, Rus), but that's (surprise) not the whole world. 4. most people use computers for those calculations you mention because its easier. It's not necessary. I can do those calculations - give me some time to study astronomy (I'm a math major, not physics) and some pencils and paper. 5. and - I nearly forgot - the kids didn't die. That was a polite fiction. The harsh truth is that most Roman slaves were Romans... <cite> So - not barbarians. Just a threat to the empire, a culture that wouldn't let the Pax Romana roll over it without a fight. (Except the French tribes, who did roll over, and were regarded by the Germanic Celts [...]) </cite> WTF Germanic Celts? What are you smoking, woman? Isn't it enough that you put every culture speaking a language from the Celtic family in one pot and act as if they were one people, now you have to mix in a different language-family as well? Shall we continue that trend? What about the Mongolian Celts, are they, too, proof that the Celts were badass warriors? I think at this point I just lost all leftover trust in your so-called knowledge. <cite> [...] as being as bad as the Romans. Suck on that, Asterix... </cite> Asterix was definitely a Celt, and unlike the British Celts, he was not a citizen of the Roman Empire.

<cite> Broad brush-stroke time; Celts were not a centralized society but more a network of townships and tribes, a loose alliance of clans who had their own internal spats, but when faced with some uppity outsider would come together to drive off the common threat. </cite> They might have tried, but they didn't. The first and only time a Celtic people really managed to drive off some uppity outsider would be 1922 following the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921*. The fact that France, Spain, Portugal speak Romance languages and the British (or Irish) Isles nearly uniformly speak English should be proof enough.

*Unless you count Asterix. <cite> You couldn't defeat them by cutting off the head. There was no head to cut off. </cite> You mean unlike Boudica and Vercingetorix. Oh wait. Tacitus, in his Annals, said that Boudica's last fight cost 80,000 Britons and 400 Romans their lives. He was probably exaggerating. But it definitely stopped much of the British resistance in its tracks. <cite> To the centralized, formal, rather bureaucratic Romans, for whom the city of Rome was the focus of the whole empire, this was a big does-not-compute. The Celts were everything they didn't understand. And we fear what we don't understand, and we kill what we fear. </cite> While that is totally true, it's also completely off the mark. The Romans demonized the druids, not every Celt, and they were afraid of what was basically an academic network. That had nothing to do with war. <cite> Anyway, Mandos....once I took a single concept - in this case, the idea of clans that operated on a loose alliance system, like the Celts - the rest grew organically. I didn't plan it out in detail from the start. </cite> That's really obvious. Maybe looking at some numbers and remembering that you weren't planning a small, local, rural, medieval community would have helped, too. I mean lets have a look at, say, Scotland (since you specifically mentioned the Picts): they still have less than 6 mio. people all together, and that's today. Mandalore is a sector. A sector of Outer Space with at least 2000 inhabited planets. How do you think that translates? It doesn't. <cite> I just asked myself what a culture of nomadic warriors would value, how they would need to operate to survive, and it all grew inexorably by logical steps. The fact that Mandos ended up as very much like the Celts is proof that the technique of evolving a character or species - find the niche, then work out what fits it - works every time. It creates something very realistic, because that's how real people and real societies develop. </cite> Celtic people were usually not nomadic! And, once again, non of them were predominantly warriors! It's really hard to be a nomadic farmer. I believe the biggest mistake you made, Ms Traviss, is mixing up the Iron Age (and earlier) tribes that did indeed sack Rome and parts of Greece, and that one day would become the people the Romans conquered. And apart from the Picts they really were conquered. <cite> So all I can say about Mandos and Spartans is that the average Mando would probably tell a Spartan to go and put some clothes on, and stop looking like such a big jessie. </cite>

I'd really like to see a Mando – or anyone – wearing full plate without modern or Star Wars technology in Greece. Happy heatstroke. There is a reason they didn't wear a lot (look up the Battle of Hattîn, where crusaders who didn't wear full helmets and wore chainmail* still suffered badly from heat exhaustion). [Nicolle, David (1993), Hattin 1187: Saladin's Greatest Victory] *chainmail apparently can work like a heatsink CONCLUSION You're wrong. And I felt offended by your FAQ answers. QUESTION You're English. You're from England. A group - a nation - that was historically so warlike and so successful that by now we all speak English. A nation that definitely kicked arse against any Celtic nation trying to go against them (until 1921, and they really tried anyway). A nation that had arguably the largest Empire in history. A nation that still is barbaric and warlike enough that a lost football game has people honestly fearing for their lives.

Also, a Germanic group, since you seem to have trouble keeping language-families and cultures apart. If we were to talk about the family, we could add on the current most aggressively attacking nation (USA) plus the former most aggressively attacking nations (the second and third German Reich), also the people who killed off the Roman Empire for good (the Goths and Visigoth), the original berserkers (the Vikings) and claim at the very least the start of BOTH WORLD WARS. Why did you look further?

Some other sources:

Histoire de la vie privée by Georges Duby and Philippe Ariès, the first book  (about the antiquity) I read it translated, my French is ... bad to non-existent

The Day of the Barbarians: The Battle That Led to the Fall of the Roman Empire  (about the Huns) by Alessandro Barbero

If you speak Dutch or German, you might try

Helmut Birkhan: Kelten. Versuch einer Gesamtdarstellung ihrer Kultur, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien

Janssens, Ugo, De Oude Belgen. Geschiedenis, leefgewoontes, mythe en werkelijkheid van de Keltische stammen. Uitgeverij The House of Books

DISCLAIMER

I’m angry and I wrote this down in one session and thus probably made some mistakes. I’m sorry. Or maybe I’m not sorry. I’m still angry. She can’t know who reads her FAQ and at least two of her answers (on her professional website) were offensive to the reader.

[stillness-in-green]

Thoughts on Chapter 314 (and surrounding events)

Being a loose summary of several things I thought about in relation to the leaks, what they say about the series as a whole, a bit of new operating headcanon on the Peerless Thief, and a dash of how fandom is responding to the revelations. Spoilers, obviously.

This chapter makes it quite clear that the HPSC absolutely would have gone in and eliminated the PLF quietly, lethally, and wholly unlawfully if Hawks hadn't reported back the numbers that he did. The only reason the raid involved non-Commission-affiliated heroes at all is because the PLF's manpower was simply too much for the Commission to deal with via their usual methods. I'm both appalled that the disregard for human rights in HeroAca Land is somehow even worse than I thought it was and smug that that tiny little piece I recently posted criticizing the PLF's treatment has turned out to be totally justified and supported by the canon.[1] (Note that this does not absolve Horikoshi of the responsibility to, himself, treat the PLF better than paper dolls tossed into the incinerator of Plot Irrelevance when they cease being convenient to his story.) The fact that the Commission was forced to involve heroes might mean Re-Destro, Mr. Compress and the others are somewhat safer than might otherwise be the case. Because of the involvement of the unsuspecting stooges law-abiding heroes, and because the botched raid became such a huge disaster, there’s far more public scrutiny on this than would otherwise be the case. Of course, "accidents" can still happen,[2] especially in a chaotic environment, but the factors above (combined with Clone!RD murdering the bejeezus out of the Lady Prez) do, I think, suggest that there probably isn't an organized push for quick solutions going on behind closed doors.

I don't think Nagant has been around for a terribly long time or that there was an uptick in vigilantism in recent years—I think the scene where she mentions vigilantes becoming accepted as heroes is just in reference to the early history of heroism. It's in keeping with what Tsukauchi Makoto described in Vigilantes, and forms the basis of the current system—the current system that Nagant was a single cog in a big machine grinding away to preserve.

Speaking of Nagant and the system, it's interesting to me that one of the groups Nagant apparently targeted at the HPSC's behest was corrupt heroes—those who colluded with villains or specifically goaded/incited civilians into using their quirks illegally, thus turning civilians into capital-V Villains in the eyes of the law. One might easily say that targeting corrupt heroes (albeit using a much broader definition of "corrupt") was Stain's whole shtick, but it actually puts me more in mind of the Peerless Thief, Harima Oji. Harima punished greedy or corrupt heroes with theft, and presumably with a measure of declaration and exposure,[3] then distributed their money back to the streets. Someone who ridicules those who abuse their power, and gets away with it for long enough to build a reputation: that right there is a recipe for a folk hero. The HPSC, in whatever form they existed at the time, obviously couldn't let that go on—such repeated humiliations would weaken peoples’ faith in (and obedience to) the system the HPSC was trying to build. At the same time, though, it would also weaken faith in the system to openly acknowledge that system's flaws, to acknowledge that some pretty awful people had found their way into the heroics business specifically for the power and ability to abuse it that the title of Hero afforded them. Public trials would make it a matter of record that some heroes—and, accordingly, heroes at large—did not deserve the public's unquestioning faith. Obviously in a system that was built from the ground up on faith, that was unacceptable. And so Harima was branded a supervillain for exposing the system's flaws, while the corrupt heroes who embodied those flaws to begin with were—and continue to be—quietly disposed of at the HPSC’s discretion.

There's a lot of talk around about how Lady Nagant is stupid, or hypocritical, or delusional, or whatever other dismissive adjective people want to use, because she expresses a preference for AFO's rule over the HPSC's. Firstly, I think it's dubious Lit Crit to fault a character for not being a Paragon of Rationality, especially when they're under the cascading stressors Nagant has been under since she was, what, 13? 14? Forced to live this dichotomy of smiling gallant hero and ruthless covert assassin, had her life threatened by the man who'd taken her in,[4] probably dumped in Tartarus until such time as her trial could be held,[5] and kept in those ghastly, dehumanizing conditions for who knows how long? How shocking, that her objectivity might be somewhat compromised! Secondly, it's not like she's saying that AFO's rule would be a sunny walk in the park. The kanji she uses doesn't even mean "better"; while it can mean serene or tranquil, her more likely meaning is clear/transparent. Her phrasing indicates that she's aware it would be pretty bad; she's simply of the opinion that at least his rule wouldn't be a sham, a pretty lie. It would be bad, but everyone would know it. No one would have these comforting illusions they could lose at any time; if you stepped out of line and got shot in the head by an assassin, well, at least you would probably know you that being defiant was running that risk, rather than never seeing it coming because you'd been told all your life that Heroes Didn't Do That To People. Again, this is a woman whose life was shattered no less than three times by the duplicity of the highest acting authority in this comic.[6] She doesn't have to be Objectively Correct By The Standards Of Ethical Utilitarianism—nor do you have to agree with her choice that because she doesn’t want to live in the Matrix, no one else should get to either—for her opinion to make sense from her own perspective! Thirdly, while I think it's fair to say that the HPSC and AFO actually use fairly similar methods to recruit followers and punish dissenters, we have no idea how much Nagant herself knows about AFO's recruitment tactics other than her own brief experience of it. And while AFO is a controlling and manipulative bastard, at least in his case it's coming from a man who openly styles himself as a Demon King, not an organization positioning itself as lawful regulators of the protectors of society at large while secretly training child soldiers to flagrantly violate every law protecting the human rights and due process of that society's people.

Overhaul's presence is delightful, and yes, he is a victim of Hero Society, if only because Hero Society could have put him in some kind of prison-based rehab facility after Shigaraki was through with him, but chose to dispose of him in Tartarus instead, for absolutely no justifiable cause. I suspect it's only due to Horikoshi not being very interested in the harsh realities of the trauma caused by enforced isolation[7] that Overhaul is the only Tartarus escapee that talks to himself and has dissociated from reality almost completely. Overhaul's maiming was not the fault of Hero Society, nor did Hero Society force him to torture Eri and repeatedly commit cold-blooded murder. But his madness? Yeah, I'm pretty comfortable laying that one at Hero Society's feet, actually. I can’t wait for Deku to have to face the victim that Chisaki Kai has become due to levels of systemic cruelty and negligence that really ought to be criminal—and which, if this were real life, would be.

--------Lately, footnotes are really popular with us!--------

[1] Lady Nagant: *talks about how the Hero Society everyone believes in is illusory, a thin fake over a brutal reality, and that returning to the false simplicity of that status quo will only cause history to repeat itself* Me, two weeks ago: Hero Society will never stop creating its own villains so long as, every time it fails people, it does nothing but shrug and write off the victims as unavoidable, inevitable sacrifices for the greater good.

[2] Yes, I'm still highly suspicious of the "Destro committed suicide in prison" claim.

[3] Compress tells us Harima “preached reformation,” but regardless, you don’t dress up in a modified kabuki costume and waltz midair through nighttime cityscapes raining cash out of the sky if you’re trying to keep your activities a secret.

[4] And her family situation couldn't have been much better than Hawks', if she was targeted by the HPSC to begin with. I would guess she was an orphan in the childcare system, easy to move from whatever alternative care arrangement she was in, be it an orphanage, a group home, or simply mature enough despite her relative youth that she lived alone on government support payments—that kind of thing isn't as unbelievable in Japan as it is in the U.S.—to the HPSC's care.

[5] And given what we learned between this chapter and 297, I doubt she was even allowed to be present for it. Japanese law states that everyone by default is supposed to be present for their own trial, but as in the U.S, that right can be waived if the defendant proves themselves to be a threat to the safety of the judge, court staff and other attendees. And of course, what a threat the HPSC could have painted her as being!

[6] At least until Hori deigns to show us a damn Diet session.

[7] To say nothing of the physical consequences of spending six months stuck in a tiny room with no natural light while frequently being strapped into a straitjacket, of which there should also be several.

[readingaway]

Thoughts on voidpunk and writing?

(voidpunk's definition is quickly accessible through a Google search)

Characters who are voidpunk. Author's writing voidpunk stories.

I'm not expecting anything indepth. I just think you might have some interesting surface level thoughts on the matter.

Huh, that's a little hard to write about since I can find definitions of the aesthetic and subculture, but I don't know how stories would incorporate voidpunk. It can't just be aliens, monsters, or robots. There's tons of stories featuring and a fair few about alien, monster, and robot characters. I suppose a story about an alien, monster or robot or some such related character who is trying to but can't quite fit into humanity could be voidpunk. And the character has to be accepting of themselves to fit the definition, in a way that’s not just comfortable but aggressively so. In which case, one could claim that Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles and Renegades series are voidpunk since the first series has a cyborg, a mutant, and an android as 3 of the main characters. And two others are not quite human either. And in Renegades there's a whole backstory of superpowered people being outliers and outcasts among humanity and that they used to be oppressed as the lowest of humanity. But because voidpunk also dictates that the creators of voidpunk material must also experience dehumanization because of those identities, then unless Meyer is on the a-spectrum or has a disability I don't know about, or has otherwise experienced that kind of dehumanization where embracing the dehumanization can make one feel powerful, then those wouldn't work as examples. I could come up with some other related examples, like the I'm Not Your Sidekick book series could be voidpunk, I don't know enough about them or the author to say yay or nay. I read some short stories in this collection - which is unfortunately out of print and difficult to get ahold of - that I think would definitely fit the definition of voidpunk, most of the collection actually, but I returned the book to the library and don’t remember what the stories were all titled. 

So I can find examples of stories and characters that might be voidpunk, but don’t meet the full criteria. And because voidpunk requires the participant to identify themselves then there’s a similar issue to all the other “ownvoices” type issues - that it is not necessarily safe for someone to out themselves. I could write voidpunk based on past experiences and my identity. But I usually keep parts of my identity private and would not be able to publish anything in this category without first having to go through some very uncomfortable conversations and experiences that I’m not willing to deal with at this time. I am still busy protecting myself from the dehumanization that leads people to make voidpunk material. So, those are some thoughts. Thanks for the ask, Nonnie.

[janiedean]

I feel so frustrated, I mean.. I read so many bullsh*ts around and I'd like to know your opinion. I think that making a villain sympathetic through their backstory is not *insert bad action* apology. I'm so tired of people trying to make me feel guilty just because I think 100% of times a bad person is not born bad but turned into a monster because of a lot of reasons. It's dehumanizing to consider someone bad without taking into account their past. There's always a reason in the past, even if a villain looks like they're enjoying doing bad things. It's sad and something to be compassionate to that a person find enjoyable hurting others because something in their past made them reach the point where they think hurting others is acceptable or even the only way out

eh I... agree with you on all accounts but again this is... the ultimate reaping the sows of this idiotic attitude cool motive still murder in fandom everywhere lately which like, some times it could be a fair objection to... people not owning up to their favorite being actually an asshole (and even then it would be valid just if they’re harassing you), but most times it started like that and turned into AH IF YOU JUSTIFY BAD DUDE’S BACKSTORY OR EXPLAIN IT THEN YOU EXCUSE HIM, which like.... shows at least some things:

a complete lack of being able to analyze a story going outside the ‘good guys vs bad guys scheme’ which is why I really wish people stopped consuming only media aimed for ages from fourteen under because that’s not going to do anything to help you

refuse to consider the fact that what happens to anyone in life shapes them negatively or positively but negatively is... a... thing, thus falling back on the usual calvinist bullshit of either you’re good or you’re bad and the best thing you can do to redeem yourself is dying to help someone else, which again.... the world doesn’t work like that

a complete refusal of actually trying to understand how trauma and abuse works because like cool motive still murder for someone you don’t like 99,9% of the times translates in the good victim vs bad victim dynamic, which in turn basically translates into ‘if you’re an abuse victim/you have trauma but you don’t react in The Appropriate Way or don’t fit the Good Victim points then your trauma/abuse isn’t valid’, which like... sorry but all victims of trauma/abuse are valid in that sense and you can’t write off someone just because they didn’t react the way you think they should

(which then usually means that they treat fans of problematic character who might in their turn have trauma etc in the same way and like... lol no)

now, thing is, one thing is fiction and another is real life - in real life if someone hurts you and they’re a shit person and they have exceedingly good reasons to be but they’re still a shit person you don’t have to be in contact with them and if they don’t get their shit together even moreso (or if they try to and reach out for help you can accept to or not), but when it comes to fiction the point is: it’s up to the damned author.

like, one thing that people don’t get is that obviously fictional bad actions are not happening in real life and a narrative is usually built to either redeem the person committing them or not, but if they want to, then... that character will be redeemed and there’s like nothing the reader can object. now, like... I mean if this ask isn’t about b*n solo I’ll eat my hat but if it’s not let’s just take him as the poster child example for this entire bullshit trend: ofc if you kill your father irl you go to jail, but since star wars is a SPACE OPERA where real life world consequences don’t exist and patricide is a literary device since the history of ever (GREEK TRAGEDY FFS) to symbolize freeing yourself from your roots and needing to find yourself and so on, the act of ben killing han in itself means shit narratively beyond telling you that ben has ISSUES that made him go to the dark side and that he’s conflicted, and in the moment that someone is conflicted you already should see he’s a decent person or has the potential to be. now, ofc ben solo did an amount of exactly not kosher things and is a shit at declaring his feelings and has issues, but the point is: if the sw sequels (as bad as the overall narrative eventually was) wanted him to be conflicted and then do the right thing (reconciling himself with his parents ahahahahah HAN FORGAVE HIM LIKE.. XDD) then they want you to see him as a human being who made mistakes but then could still do the right thing. the fact that he died after bc they couldn’t commit to one damned side and do a sensed story doesn’t matter, but the concept of ‘he did x y and z fictionally so BAD’ is stupid bc x y and z never happened irl and you can choose to forgive a fictional character because he’s fictional, and a lot of people who are ‘’bad victims’’ or not poster children for trauma management actually do find hope in seeing characters like that getting another chance. because guess what, catharsis through fiction. like guys I realized I could actually not settle for someone out of fear of not ever finding anyone the moment I realized why I was into jb that much, someone else can find catharsis in bensolo being redeemed or whatever and people refusing to see it can’t engage with an adult-driven story (and not even for children bc a lot of media for children has bad guys who turn good).

and in that sense like.... I mean personally if I see a character like that I don’t even count them as villain bc I know they won’t eventually be (like I didn’t consider bensolo a bad guy since... ever) and for me villains are 95% of the time just people who are assholes without redeeming qualities that the author doesn’t care for redeeming even if they explain why they’re like that (see instances c. lannister for one I hate and randall flagg for one I actually love) so I have troubles like.... seeing them as bad guys (I mean the... supposed one from luke cage s2? for me went from vague villain to antagonist the moment they exposed his backstory lmao) and idg this mindset but personally I just hope fandom goes back on the ‘you do realize you can like antagonists without being a bad person for relating to them’ train because this entire mindset is just... fucking... tiring.

[whoisrandall]

Racial Profiling is Not a Myth

My Stance 

A major debate that was covered in class that I want to discuss is the debate on whether or not the police actually racially profile. More specifically, the debate talked about racial profiling at traffic stops but I feel that only speaking on profiling in one scenario does the topic not enough justice, as this issue is bigger than just one type of instance. Whether it is at a traffic stop, on the street, or in your own neighborhood, racial profiling is a real thing. One side of the argument holds the belief that police do racially profile and that there is a large race disparity when it comes to not only traffic stops, but deaths and arrests in the hands of police. The other side of the argument holds the belief that racial profiling is not actually present among the police, and that the police target criminals of all races, not just intentially targeting minorities or African Americans. I firmly believe that the police do, in fact, racially profile against minorities, especially African Americans. I believe this because there is too much conclusive evidence put out in the media and on the news about innocent minorities, specifically black men, dying and being victims of police brutality and racial profiling for things they did not even do. It is seen too often on social media, which everybody has nowadays in our society, that multiple black men die every year by the hands of police and there are always breakout cases like Tamir Rice and Philando Castile that spark protests and immediate calls for change. Black men do not have any breaks when it comes to living in this society, and it’s not until everyone opens their eyes and acknowledges the fact that the police racially profile that we can truly progress and make sufficient changes.

Traffic Stops Part 1

To start it off, I believe it’s important to start off with talk about traffic stops in particular, to then branch further into racial profiling as a whole. When it comes to police traffic stops, the police do have a job to let the driver know why they were pulled over and go through the regular steps necessary for it to be a reasonable stop. One thing that is not written in the rulebook is that officers have the ability to stop someone and resort to unreasonable measures and become unfair on the grounds of skin color. An NBC News article by author Erik Ortiz shined light on the obvious issue that there is an alarming amount of racial bias in traffic stops. The beginning speaks about the story of Richard Jackson, an African American Navy veteran who was stopped by a white police officer for an alleged cut off in 2016. Jackson denied the claim and was issued a citation for two other offenses that also were denied and never happened. Luckily, he fought the citations and won, but the issue still stands that an African American man was stopped and fined for no reason whatsoever, which is not a rare case. According to Ortiz (2019), a study of 100 million traffic stops between 2011 and 2017 was done, and “the results show that police stopped and searched black and Latino drivers on the basis of less evidence than used in stopping white drivers, who are searched less often but are more likely to be found with illegal items” (para. 7). The article also makes mention of the tragic deaths of men such as Walter Scott and Philando Castile, who were shot dead due to racial profiling at traffic stops, and it provides further evidence that this is far from a myth. Walter Scott was unreasonably shot down after fearing for his life from a white cop, when no other option was exhausted other than to pull out a handgun. Philando Castile was shot numerous times in his own vehicle because the cop apparently feared that Castile would discharge his firearm after he ordered him to show him his license and registration. There is no excuse for situations like this, and to look at these cases and so many others and still believe that racial profiling is not present, it just sounds absurd. The article also makes mention of studies that were done to measure other factors such as stops at different times of day, searches, and searches pertaining to marijuana. Evidently, black men are stopped at higher rates during the day which suggests that it is higher because the officer will be able to distinguish race easier. The bar for searches is also low for black and hispanic drivers, while white drivers are usually the ones who get stopped with illegal items more than anyone, and the stops for marijuana are twice as high with blacks and hispanics. These stats are nothing short of surprising anymore in our society today, but racial profiling in traffic stops are just a small piece of the pie when it comes to analyzing racial profiling as a whole.

Traffic Stops Part 2 

There are numerous studies that have been done over recent years that show the increase of racial profiling in police traffic stops all over the Unites States. An article written by Darwin BondGraham proved that black people are stopped more often by police than anyone else in the state of California. BondGraham (2020) provided statistics from studies done in 2018, and said, “According to the new data, black people are much more likely to have firearms pointed at them by police officers. They also are more likely to be detained, handcuffed and searched” (The Guardian). BondGraham also provided that over all three major parts of California (L.A., San Francisco, and San Diego), 73% of drivers stopped by their respective police departments combined were black. It is even worse of a statistic to hear when it is afterwards mentioned that in all three of those areas combined, black people only make up 20% of the population. For African Americans to only make up a small percentage in a state and be part of a gigantic percentage of stoppage rates, something does not add up and there is a slim chance that all of those stops were reasonable and contained no form of racial profiling. The numbers do not match, and when it is realized that white people get found with illegal items more than black people on fewer searches, it appears that there is too much focus on the wrong group of people and nothing is being changed. BondGraham (2020) also provides a quote from Alberto Retana, who is the CEO of the Community Coalition of Los Angeles. Retana says, “black people in particular, and Latinos, are fearful of the police and are constantly having their dignity compromised by unwarranted stops and searches”. Some people will see racial profiling or stops based on race as preemptive measures, but the problem with this is that this measure is dehumanizing black and hispanic people and essentially doing the exact opposite of what the police should do. The well known job of the police of course is to protect and serve, but we cannot expect that job to be carried out when minorities do not feel protected and justice is never served for the irresponsibleness of countless police stops and searches. It is scarring for many black and hispanic people to be stopped and/or profiled by police based on their skin color because these are the people who are supposed to be protecting the community, when in reality this racial profiling does its share of tearing down the community.

The Bigger Picture

To further branch out with the topic of racial profiling in police traffic stops, the numbers still stay high when it comes to racial profiling in general. Author Kia Makarechi wrote the article titled “What the Data Really Says about Police and Racial Bias”, which provides more than enough statistics and facts about police are really doing in America that no one wishes to talk about. One interesting point Makarechi included was from a study done by the Center for Policing Equity between 2011 and 2015 in regards to forecul police stops. The study found that, “African-Americans are far more likely than whites and other groups to be the victims of use of force by the police, even when racial disparities in crime are taken into account” (Vanity Fair). As stated before, there is no real excuse as to why African Americans experience more abuse in police stops than anyone else, considering anybody can be the same threat level police may perceive black people to be. The way someone is stopped by the police should not be because of skin color, it should be because of the level of offense and what it is perceived to be. Most of the time, which Makarechi (2016) also included, people of color will be stopped when no incident has even occurred. Stats like these are too abundant to be made up and are too prevalent when discussing the topic of racial profiling by the police, so it is mind-blowing to figure out why there are people that simply dismiss these facts and garner the reasons why it somehow isn’t racial profiling. In Oakland, California, a study was done to also research the number of white people handcuffed compared to black people, and the numbers are not even remotely close. Without actually arresting anyone, police in that study handcuffed only 72 white people, while the number of black people reached a staggering 1,466. It was even reported that when it came to these stops, you would be able to tell two-thirds of the time who was getting arrested based on  skin color by the verbatim used by the officers. Seeing as though the use of language is yet another factor in the racial profiling argument, there is increasingly more information to prove that it is not just something made up to claim racism. Racial profiling by the police is something that is actually happening in front of everyone’s eyes, whether one chooses to see it or not.

Traffic Stops Part 3

An article titled “Racial Profiling: Past, Present, and Future?” by David A. Harris speaks more on the issue of racial profiling in the police and goes more in depth on the topic, especially at traffic stops and searches. One major part of this article is that it refutes certain ideas about the opposing argument of racial profiling, and proves that saying that it does not exist has its limitations. Harris (2020) mentioned the hypothesis of Miami police Captain Marshall Frank, which stated, “African Americans commit most of the serious crimes, and until that changed, police should continue to use profiling. It was the smart thing to do” (American Bar Association). This hypothesis was mainly stated off of the fact that there was an increase of African Americans being jailed, but that’s not to say those were lawful arrests, or arrests that should have occurred in the first place. Frank’s hypothesis was refuted with the introduction of “hit rates”, which were studied closely in places that put much focus on blacks and hispanics. According to Harris (2020), “In jurisdictions using racial targeting in their stops and searches, police hit more often when they stopped and searched whites than when they searched either blacks or Latinos”. Back to the claim that many people believe in regards to racial profiling or “closely watching” black and hispanics is necessary because they “do most of the crime”, it is clearly refuted with this study. This preemptive measure to closely monitor blacks and hispanics ended up taking a big toll on hit rates and lowered the accuracy by great amounts, considering there is no focus on white people who are clearly the ones who, when hit, are successfully hit. More hit rate data is provided by Harris, and he stated, “In every police agency in which measurement had occurred, the use of race-based stops and searches rendered police efforts less effective than policing that did not reference race. In departments using profiling, hits among blacks and Latinos were not higher than hits among whites; they were not the same as hits among whites” (American Bar Association). The evidence brought up even showed that the number of hits among blacks and Latinos were actually far lower, and it proved that racial profiling tactics were just plain ineffective. Almost all of what Harris explained in terms of research further backed the fact that racial profiling actually does exist, and evidence provided that police actually acnknowledged this as an actual police force tactic. Not only is it even acknowledged, but it proves to be rather useless and it is still being used among different police departments on the grounds that it just has to work. Then, for Captain Frank to mention that with that claim there is no racism involved, it sounds pretty absurd considering if you’re backing the claim that racial profiling needs to be present in the police force, that is blatant racism. Also mentioned, if racial profiling and stops on the grounds of skin color are to continue, there is no way that it can continue without accountability being taken by officers who practice these tactics and fail to do their job successfully.

Racism as a Whole 

Another limitation in the viewpoint that racial profiling is not a thing and everyone is targeted is the fact that not only is racial profiling very much alive and being carried out, it is actually just a cover term. Author Jelani Cobb wrote the article “No Such Thing as Racial Profiling” is more of a backhanded reading towards people who do not believe in the term, but actually does state that it is not a correct one. Cobb (2014) emphasizes, “Nothing better illustrates the slick, manipulative power of euphemism than the fact that our dialogue takes seriously this non-term. There is no such thing as “racial profiling”—there is simply racism” (The New Yorker). The claim is basically Cobb saying that you may say that racial profiling is real, or you can even say it isn’t, but if you don’t believe in the term then that is ok because it’s just a newer term for racism. Cobb just wants people to call it what it is because in reality, yes it is true that racial profiling is simply racism at its finest. What we choose to say about the definition and description of examples regarding racial profiling, are generally one in the same with racism since it is basically the same thing. I agree and I believe that generally the term racial profiling is just a more proper way of saying something is racism in certain circumstances. It sounds a bit loose when talking about crooked police officers unlawfully harassing a black or hispanic person and saying “this is racism”, whereas now society has become more accustomed now to saying that in those situations, it’s a case of racial profiling. Cobb also refutes the limitation of saying that racial profiling is an outcome of black crime and this is why we have reactionary policing. Cobb (2014) states, “When, in 1906, whites began wrestling black passengers from streetcars and murdering them in the streets of downtown Atlanta, sparking three days of riots and resulting in dozens of black casualties, a specious wave of black crime was cited as the basis for their actions” (The New Yorker). Waves of black crime were simply always just displayed outrage of immoral acts committed by white people. It is impossible to say that black crime is the cause of all of this and if it never happened, maybe things would change, because for so many decades, everything that black people have done to try and gain respect has been in retaliation to injustices shown by white people. It has to be common knowledge by now that white people have been the antagonists in terms of why this fight for black lives is even a thing, because it should not be a debate anymore that black lives must matter. Racial profiling, or racism, is no longer arguable as to whether or not it exists because it is clear understanding now that not everyone is being targeted one in the same. Blacks and hispanics, as noted in all articles, and pretty much almost all studies, are the ones primarily focused on and targeted when their crime numbers don’t even precede over those of whites in basically all categories. Studies have much dominance over opinions as we cannot argue against facts, but even the portrayal of racial profiling in the media is no coincidence, and is mainly used to get people to open their eyes and realize that this is real.

Fruitvale Station

One resource that I would encourage readers to view to explore more on the topic of racial profiling is the movie Fruitvale Station starring Michael B. Jordan. It follows the true story about Oscar Grant, a 22 year old black man who was involved in a police altercation on his way home from celebrating New Year’s Eve with his family and friends. Spoiler ahead, but Oscar Grant ended up being shot and killed by a white police officer during the altercation. The movie is very emotional and it highlights the harsh reality that police do show racial profiling at any given chance, and it can be over the smallest situations. Oscar Grant only wished to be able to go home with his family that day and was unreasonably stopped, and unreasonably killed by the hands of the police. It also makes the viewer reflect on how seriously these situations must be taken, and for me especially, I self-reflected a lot when watching the movie. This portrayal of a young man’s true story is not just a media message, this is a wake-up call for change to occur because there has not been any efficient change at all in decades. Black lives still do not matter to America and it is sickening how through all of the fights every year, it is not fully grasped and people still turn the other cheek.

The Hate U Give 

The next resource that I suggest to readers who want to know more about the topic of racial profiling is to watch the movie The Hate U Give. This movie, just as emotional as the other previously mentioned, is about a young black girl who watched her best friend get shot and killed by the police and becomes a powerful activist who demands justice in the system. There was a character in the movie who made a great point and said something about white people accepting diversity, but it can’t be too much, and I agree with that statement so much. I believe that white people do want diversity in some aspects and will acknowledge it, but what black people really want in this society, white people are not willing to give it up. We, as minorities, do demand more representation and it is unfair to have to fight for decades for something that is honestly a basic human right. Everyone deserves to be seen and heard, but cancelling out these voices and a whole race of people is despicable. The movie does a great job of touching the heart and making someone want to get up and make change. I believe that these two movies are most definitely a must see and even if your eyes are already opened to the social injustices of racial profiling in America already, it is never a bad thing to sit back and learn more about what can be done.

Wrap-up 

Furthermore, all of the information above on the topic of racial profiling is from research and studies done in the 2010’s up to 2020. To sum it up, racial profiling is alive and well in this country, and there is little to no evidence at all that can sincerely prove otherwise. It is shown in cases every year, different studies and statistics, books, and movies that racial profiling exists and is something that has to change. Surely everyone is targeted by police at one point as a whole, but the truth is, blacks and hispanics are targeted much more and at higher rates. Racial profiling is one struggle in this country that will take a long time to tackle fully, but can never end. If we give up on this fight to end racial profiling and racism overall, nothing in this country will change, and we are long overdue for change.

[rosecorcoranwrites]

Common Misconceptions About Character

Characters are the heart and soul of any story, so it makes sense that those of us who write or analyze stories focus much of our time on the ins and outs of character and characterization. Yet a lot of this analysis ignores certain types of storytelling, unfairly idealizing some story and character types over others. Worse than that, even, is that which misunderstands the relationship between an author and their characters. I've noticed three particular misconceptions which crop up the most, and I have a theory as to where they come from (Hint: it's moralism!).

Misconception 1: Character Driven Stories are Better than Plot Driven Stories

Character driven stories are those where the characters have some goal or desire and work to achieve it; the plot is generated by the characters’ choices. Plot driven stories are those where events happen and the characters have to react to them; the plot is also generated by characters’ choices. If the characters didn't make decisions, they wouldn't be characters! So what's the difference?

In character driven stories, there’s a sense of urgency that can be appealing. What is that character willing to do to get what they want? Why do they want it? Will they get it, or learn that perhaps there are things more important than their goals?

For plot driven stories, it’s interesting to see what the characters do when things are thrown at them. How will they get out of this scrape? Why do they react this way vs that way? Can they really beat such insurmountable odds?

I think the root of the misconception that character driven stories are superior is based largely on bias against certain genres. Literary fiction tends to be heavily character driven, in that not a lot happens other than the characters making choices. Genre fiction like fantasy and sci-fi are mixed, where inciting incidents kick off the plots and random encounters along with choices made by the characters keep it going. Comedy, adventure, and horror are at the far extreme, usually totally driven by plot and circumstance rather than character goals. Much of the derision of plot driven stories is genre bigotry in disguise.

Both types of stories have something to offer us, and it’s rare to find a work of fiction that is only driven by characters or only driven by plot. Most stories mix them, to great success. People need to get off their high horses and focus on writing the best characters they can, whether they drive or react to the plot.

Misconception 2: Dynamic Characters are Better than Static Characters

Speaking of writing the best character, clearly that means writing a dynamic character who learns and grows over the course of the story, right? Wrong! Static characters have their place, just as plot driven stories have theirs.

First of all, a story is not the same thing as a life. While we all do grow and change over time, a story is a window into a particular time, through a particular point of view. Some characters have gotten their changing out of the way in the backstory. Others serve as constants for the other characters to rely on. It would be weird if every character, including the side characters and villains, all changed by the end of the story, because this isn’t necessarily their story, not the beginning of it, not the end of it, not the time when they happened to do their changing.

But what about protagonists? Surely they must undergo some sort of transformation, right? It depends on the character, and the story, and—you guessed it—the genre. Take cozy mysteries, or slice-of-life, or comedy. We don’t want Sherlock Holmes or Yotsuba or Bertie Wooster to change and grow; that’s not the point of their stories or their characters. We want to come back to those books, again and again, and know exactly who's waiting for us.

Even genres that generally have dynamic protagonists don’t require them. Take Lina Inverse, of the fantasy series Slayers, who is just as gluttonous, greedy, and wild in Season One, Episode One as she is in the finale of the fifth season, made fourteen years later. What about Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird? Though she slightly changes over the course of the story, mostly in how she perceives her father and Boo Radley, it’s more important for her to be the static viewpoint character through whose innocent eyes we see what’s happening in Maycomb County.

Again, there is a place for both static and dynamic characters. As long as they are each well-developed and serve their stories, it doesn’t matter if they change or not.

Misconception 3: Nothing You Make a Character Do is Out-of-Character

I don't even know where to start with this one. No, wait, I do: reductio-ad absurdum. If Javert, from Les Miserables, decided to join the Thenardiers in their skullduggery rather than either accepting Valjean's mercy or jumping to his death, that would be out-of-character. If Uncle Vernon, apropos of nothing, warmly embraced Harry and said that he had come to truly accept him as his son, and that he had been misguided all these years and seen the light, that would be out-of-character. If Luke Skywalker were to not see and seek the good in some relative of his and instead decided to kill that relative off before they could go full Dark Side, that would be out-of-character (ahem... AHEM!!!).

Just because you are the writer does not mean you can do whatever you want with the characters. If that were true, they wouldn't be characters, but rather cardboard cut-outs that you cause to do random actions and say random things. Characters are supposed to represent real people, and real people act a certain way from situation to situation and over the course of time. Past behavior predicts future behavior.

That's not to say people can't change, for weal or woe, but that usually happens in one of three ways. First, they change over time, as dynamic characters are wont to do. Second, they have a "road to Damascus" moment; much like miracles, these tend to be considered deus-ex-machina and are thus rarely employed in fiction. I would say these usually happen when character A does some act of kindness or sacrifice for character B, and B is struck by this and realizes they must change their ways (again, for weal or for woe; Javert gets such an act of kindness from Valjean, but instead of accepting it he chooses to kill himself rather than live in Valjean's world of mercy. What a guy!).

Finally, there are stressors. These might be the character losing their job, or getting betrayed, or having someone close to them die, or breaking up with a long-time love. If you’ve heard the term before, it’s likely from the context of criminology; stressors are often what precipitate a violent crime. If a kind, sweet character suddenly goes bad, maybe it's due to a string of stressors. Notice I said a string; you have to have some sort of build up for a character to really go off their rocker or it will feel like it came out of nowhere. For a crash course in this sort of in-character change, I recommend Tangled: The Series, which artfully depicts not one, but two characters' roads to perdition in unexpected but understandable ways. These kinds of stressors should feel like the final straw in the bale that broke the camel's back.

For all of these changes—gradual, road-to-Damascus, or stressors—the change itself still needs to be in-character, which means that the writers need to know who their characters are and what makes them tick. If this villain is shown an unprecedented act of kindness, will they immediately forsake their plans, start going easier on their own minions, or withdraw for a while to think? It might be that only one of those courses of action would be in-character for that particular person. If this character's loved one is murdered, is that enough to make them go on a revenge spree? And are the particulars of who is caught in that revenge spree in-character?

I submit that Hawkeye killing criminals in Avengers: Endgame is in-character—he's already a hero, so he's still technically protecting innocent people, even if that means mowing down bad guys who "should" have been killed in the Snap. It makes sense, given who he is and where he's coming from. I also submit that Katniss agreeing to a final Hunger Games for the Capital's children in Catching Fire was out-of-character. She had seen what those death games were like first hand, especially for little kids like Rue, and it doesn't make sense—even if her sister was murdered—for her to do a 180 and throw away everything she stood for. Had she been shown, earlier on, to not care about the lives of Capital citizens, or to have a dehumanizing or vengeful streak, I could see it. But she didn't, so her sudden bloodlust came out of left field. I also can't accept the murder of her sister as the last in a line of stressors because—despite the horrors Katniss had seen inflicted on the people of the Districts—the Capital also did that to their own citizens. It is made abundantly clear that the Capital is willing to murder their own people (Katniss witnesses this first hand as she makes her way through the Capital streets), so it doesn't fit for Katniss to choose further violence towards the people she has seen being slaughtered by the very people she is fighting. Her action (and, by the by, Haymitch's going along with it) felt startlingly out-of-character.

The Moral of the Story

Going back to the above example, if Katniss's actions were so out of the blue, why did Suzanne Collins write them that way, rather than choosing another route? I think it's fair to say her intention was to underline the horrors of war and what it does to people, which... is a bit patronizing. The entire Hunger Games Trilogy was about the horrors of war. We saw children forced to kill each other. We saw an entire district reduced to rubble. We saw people melting in the Capital A-bomb-style. To then feel the need to have Katniss—who by this point is already so hardened by what's happened to her that she barely blinks at the violence around her—give up everything she has fought for and become like the very evil she has been fighting seems to be hitting us over the head. But that story needed a moral, and Collins really, really, really wanted to make sure we got it.

And that is perhaps the greatest misconception of all, and the root of the other three: the ardent insistence that stories need to teach a moral. Some of you might balk at this, saying, perhaps, that modernism and post modernism have gotten rid of the whole idea of "the moral of the story", but they didn't. They just changed what the morals were. True, early novels is England and America had a puritanical streak, and some people, back in the day, insisted that stories teach lessons about religion, and virtue, and the dangers of a life of debauchery. Truly, fewer and fewer stories, as the years went on, dealt with these particular topics, but those morals were subsequently replaced with lessons about feminism, and representation, and the dangers of war and racism. Before any one flips their lid, they should know that I support all of those morals: I love religion and virtue and feminism, and am really not keen on war, racism, debauchery and such. But I'm really not keen on being preached at in books

Obviously, not all, or even most, books are preachy. They weren't way back in the day and they aren't now. And yet, there seems to be a sneering favoritism for books that offer some sort of moral over those that are, frankly, just fun and entertaining. Books where characters make choices—moral choices, though they aren't always explicitly called that—are seen as superior to books where people respond to the plot by going on adventures or getting into scrapes. Dynamic characters who change—by either learning lessons and growing as people or, contrarily, losing themselves to a life of vice and sin (even if we no longer describe it as such)—are so much better than those silly characters who simple exist, neither rising to the heights of heaven nor descending to the depths of hell, with nothing to teach their audience about where life might take you. Nothing you make your characters do is out-of-character, because they don't represent people but instead archetypes and Vice and Virtue and whatever else you need to preach—Uh, I mean tell—your story.

Again, I'm not against stories having morals; heck, I'm one of those last few weirdos who can't stand books that have an immoral message. What many people don't understand, though, is that there is a vast and cavernous difference between an immoral story and an amoral story, and that amoral stories, be they wacky comedies, cute slice-of-lifes, puzzling mysteries, or tales of derring-do, are not bad, nor even inferior to other stories. They are not inferior for offering fun, plot driven stories, nor for having constant, static characters. They are not inferior for not having a moral. In fact, I submit that any random amoral story with well-developed characters is superior to a "moral" story—be they old morals or new—where the author forces the cast to act painfully out-of-character in order to beat us over the head with a message.

Basically, the point of a story isn't to teach something, at least, not necessarily. The point of a story is to be true to itself. That might mean having some deep message, or it might mean being thoroughly entertaining, or maybe both. Characters, similarly, should be true to whatever story they find themselves in. As I said at the beginning of this post, characters are the heart and soul of any story, and I mean any story: plot- or character-driven, dynamic or static, moral or amoral.

And those, dear readers, are my thoughts on character.

[donnerpartyofone]

What questions do you hate getting? Like what asks really annoy you lol

there are so many ways to answer this! get ready for an extremely long answer!

like first of all, there have been many anon styles over the years that i really object to, but that i wouldn’t consider real “questions”:

- i’ve had people serially send me these elaborate “asks” that amount to some sort of incredibly dreary performance art. the person obviously thinks they’re so gonzo and that they have such an amazing command of the language, but the harder they try to be eccentric and brilliant, the more sophomoric and predictable they sound. i really hated those because they were so unfunny and pretentious, in spite of what the author obviously thought of himself. (i say “him” not only because i prejudicially think this is a very boy-on-the-internet behavior, but also because i think i know who was responsible for a lot of them) reading them was just exhausting and depressing.- i really don’t get the point of copypasta, in which i would include the practice of sending disembodied chunks of dialog from movies and tv. i guess the goal is supposed to be to make the recipient look like an asshole if they’re duped into thinking it’s a real message, but a) it doesn’t make you stupid if you don’t have everything on knowyourmeme memorized, and b) ...it’s always so, so obvious when someone is sending copypasta, even if it’s totally mundane. i can’t explain why, it’s just an instinct. somebody will send me some “weird”, “random” message, and it always has this kind of artificial smell on it. every time i get something like that, i just google the first line of it and find out immediately that it’s from, you know, ANCHORMAN 2 or something. sometimes i also get asks that are just copied from some other actual tumblr’s recent text posts, and those are equally obvious for whatever invisible reason, but somehow they’re even grosser to me. i have no idea what people get out of sending these things.- obviously it sucks to get deranged messages from alt right trolls who have decided for themselves that i’m obsessed with hillary clinton, or whatever else they’re excited about, and who think they can shame me by sending obscure, unverifiable, decontextualized chunks of “news” that could only have come from whatever nazi echo chamber they’re part of. but, i guess that’s just a fact of life now, on or off the internet. 

i do also get these certain types of messages that are more like “real questions”, but they bother me because in part because they’re annoyingly topical, and moreover, because they’re leading questions. i wish i could come up with specific examples but i don’t have the energy to go through my whole archive for these things...it’s just questions about, you know, the latest donald trump gaffe, or the most recent attention grab by james franco or shia lebeouf, or something else that’s a) more of a TMZ topic than what i’m usually interested in, and that b) really has a prefabricated answer that’s the only acceptable response: this guy’s a douchebag, that movie fucking blows, rapists and racists should be thrown off a cliff, et al ad nauseam. i guess there’s a possibility that whoever asks me these kinds of questions hopes that i’ll say something really surprising that no one has thought of yet, but the vibe i get is that they really just want me to go off on a fun, sarcastic tear where i satisfy the person by reinforcing things that they (and practically everyone) already think. sometimes there’s an adjective that kind of tells me what i’m supposed to think to begin with, or the question is structured in such a way that suggests that the author  thinks they already know my answer. sorry i don’t have any fun examples! i just remember the sad, tired feeling of getting one of these after another, and wondering like: what provocative, unusual thing could i possibly say about some youtuber i’ve never heard of who just dropped the “N word”? isn’t that guy just an unqualified asshole, is this really deserving of analysis?

on a very similar note, sometimes i get messages that take this sarcastic tone toward social justice-related shit, like say the idea of being “woke”--as if that word weren’t originated by legitimately oppressed people to describe their need to relentlessly research and fact check every piece of information that crosses their path, because their lives are threatened by evil, bigoted social and political machinery. if the word “woke” is starting to sound ridiculous, it’s only because people with privilege find it hilarious to toss it around, specifically because it’s so far from their own experience. it isn’t inherently funny that people are trying to improve their circumstances through education that goes beyond the conventional curricula, or that people who have had traumatic, dehumanizing experiences are using modern technology to unite and increase their visibility with things like hashtags. the person who asks me these questions doesn’t come right out and shit all over this stuff, but their use of quotation marks and tonality always makes me think that they’re angling for me to thumb my nose at “today’s climate” of political correctness.

and on THAT note, i sometimes have this sense that people want me to be more, i don’t know what, anti-everything than i actually am. like they want me to hate every significant artist with the slightest taint of corrupt thoughts in their work, or they want me to hate every remake of a classic movie just because hollywood remakes = automatically bad. it’s like there’s a hope that i’ll be a lot more radical than i am, in one direction or the other, and i have to remind people that i’m mainly just a regular person who likes a fair amount of regular stuff. that’s kind of a weird experience.

[psychologyforeveryone-blog]

A Psychological Profile of the Alt-Right (Forscher & Kteily, 2017)[1]

As cited by Vox[2], iflscience[3], etc.

Before I say anything, I’d like to note that this study has not been published, which means it has not been peer-reviewed. Basically, when a journal is considering publishing an article, they have (usually) three experts in the field read the proposed article, critique it, and recommend either that it’s published, edited and reconsidered, or not published at all. Unpublished studies instantly make me nervous, because I am not an expert, and certainly not an expert in this field, so I’m likely to miss problems that a true expert would catch—or misattribute normal practices that I’m not used to as errors. In addition, the point of experts is to tell us whether or not something is up to the standards of good research in their field, and let us give the study the benefit of the doubt. Because of this, I will be significantly more critical of the study itself (as opposed to the media written on it) to counteract the lack of professional critique, but I would also ask all of you to read this summary (and, if you wish, the article itself) with a healthy serving of doubt. It’s always good to read articles skeptically, but this is a special case in which the only protections against bad science is our own skepticism. I would also implore the media—and anyone sharing media— not to present unpublished work as fact.

With that said, on to the study!

TL;DR VERSION:

·      Researchers looked at how people who self-identified as members of the alt-right differed from a typical population in terms of their personal beliefs, especially focusing on dehumanization of political and racial ingroups and outgroups.[a]

·      The alt-right was more likely (vs. the control [b]) to express authoritarian beliefs, distrust of mainstream media, and a sense that their ingroups were being oppressed.

·      Importantly, the alt-right was much more likely to dehumanize outgroups, rating them as less evolved by a large margin.

·      The alt-right could be divided up into two major groups: populists, who were focused on corruption and inequality in the government; and supremacists, who were more likely to dehumanize outgroups (especially non-white people).

·      The study is flawed, with many of the measures shortened more than they likely should have been, but the findings of increased dehumanization are striking and should not be underestimated.

·      The media reception does seem to be fairly accurate to the study.

FULL SUMMARY (be aware, this is a 26-page study, so even the summary is long):

Hypothesis: Right off the bat, the authors acknowledge that this study is exploratory, and therefore can’t be used to draw any causal claims.[c] The authors instead state their expectations: that people identifying as members of the alt-right will show preference for groups like men and white people; dehumanize and derogate[d] racial and political outgroups such as black people and Democrats; and express more extremist behavior than people who do not identify with the alt-right.

Methods: Participants were drawn from Mechanical Turk (MTurk)[e] using two separate surveys. The first explicitly asked for members of the alt-right, and paid participants $3 for taking the study; the second did not specify any political orientation, and paid participants $2. Both surveys contained two political identity probes-- one at the beginning and one at the end. In both, participants wrote about their political views and sympathies towards the alt-right; they were told they would be paid regardless of their answers to encourage honesty. 447 participants were in the alt-right sample, and 382 in the comparison (non-alt-right) sample. Everyone in the comparison sample specifically did not identify as alt-right.

Participants then began the survey itself. First, participants listed the names of up to five friends, rating their closeness to the friend and how much their morals and political views matched with this person.

After rating their friends, participants were given an opportunity to rate their own moral foundations: equality, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity1. The authors used the short version of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, in which four questions are used to measure each of the foundations[4]; however, the authors shortened this further, to two questions per foundation. The authors also rated what’s referred to as the Dark Triad: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy1. The authors again used a self-shortened version of the short form of the Dark Triad scale[5], reducing the scale from nine items per trait to four.

The authors then measured two aspects of how participants engaged with authority: Social Dominance Orientation, defined as how much a person believes that some groups should be dominant over others; and Right-Wing Authoritarianism, defined by how much a person agrees with submitting to authority, aggression by authority, and social contract theory. Social Dominance Orientation was rated with certain items on the SDO scale[6], two of which needed to be removed because of “experimenter error1;” Right-Wing Authoritarianism was measured using twelve items taken from Altemeyer (1996)[7].

Next, participants rated their own motivation to express or inhibit prejudice towards black people. The authors divided this into four subscales: motivation, either external or internal, to respond with or without prejudice. Again, authors shortened two scales[8],[9] using three questions per subscale instead of the standard five.

Following these scales, participants were given their first opportunity to actually dehumanize the outgroup: they rated political and ethnic groups on a scale of how “evolved” they were, using the standard image of evolution wherein the left is an ape and the right is a human walking on two feet. Participants rated these groups from zero (an ape, completely unevolved) to one hundred (a full human).

After giving these ratings, participants were asked how their thoughts translate into their real lives. Participants wrote how frequently they engaged in behaviors such as harassment, name-calling, and purposefully offending outgroups online and in person, as well as more internet-based behaviors such as doxxing or sharing offensive memes.

Participants then expressed their opinions on their future and present state. They first rated the economy, in terms of their personal economic situation and how optimistic they were about the economy in the future. Then, participants expressed how disadvantaged they found certain in- and outgroups, both political and racial. They were next asked how that disadvantage translated into political issues, rating how much of a problem they found discrimination towards their ingroup, concerns about wealth-based power dynamics such as corruption, concerns about safety, and issues prioritized by liberals such as discrimination against women.

Afterwards, participants rated their opinions of certain groups. They first rated their support of police and fears that police are racist. Then, they rated how much trust they had in different facets of media, from the mainstream (e.g. CNN, the New York Times, BBC) to the non-mainstream (Breitbart, Fox News, the Drudge Report). Finally, participants rated their belief in collective action by both a hypothetical group focused on white interests and the group Black Lives Matter.

Results: (as a note, I was surprised by the lack of statistical tests in this section. I will admit that statistics is by far my weakest skill in psychology, so I’m not going to put this down as a concern, but if someone more adept in psychological statistics would be willing to explain this or agree it’s not normal, I’d be eternally grateful!)

While interpreting these results, the authors remind us that a “high” or “low” rating does not mean the result is far from or even above the scale midpoint. As an example, the alt-right group rated the evolution of political groups they opposed, such as feminists and Democrats, at a mean of 60.19, which is above the scale midpoint of 50—however, it means that they consider these groups less than a full human, according to the scale. The comparison group rarely rated any group much below a 90, making the rating of 60 low by comparison.

It is also important to look at these results in terms of the control sample. People in the alt-right group showed higher levels of Social Dominance Orientation, Right Wing Authoritarianism, external and internal motivation to express prejudice, behavior meant to harass and offend, perceptions that their ingroups were disadvantaged and at risk of discrimination, concern about security, respect of the police, trust in alternative forms of media, optimism surrounding the economy, support for groups dedicated to white issues, and disapproval of Black Lives Matter. The alt-right group also reported fewer ideologically-similar friends, lower internal motivation to respond without prejudice, lower perceptions of disadvantage to the alt-right’s ingroups, less concern about liberal issues, and less trust in traditional media. Finally, the alt-right engaged in higher levels of dehumanization across the board than the non-alt-right sample, and dehumanized outgroups much more.

Some important correlations [f] also arose. The authors found correlations between a person’s motivation to express prejudice and harassing and offending behaviors, wherein a greater motivation to express prejudice correlated to increased antisocial behaviors. In addition, participants who were more dehumanizing of black people (relative to their rating of white people), who believed more in social dominance, or who expressed more right-wing authoritative thinking all showed increased support of collective action on behalf of white people and decreased support of Black Lives Matter.

Interestingly, the authors did find evidence of two slightly different groups within the alt-right communities, which they named “populists” and “supremacists.” Populists, they found, showed higher levels of concern about government corruption. Supremacists, instead, showed much higher dehumanization of outgroups, higher internal and external motivation to express prejudice, and higher rates of aggressive behaviors and Dark Triad traits. On the other hand, both groups were similar in many issues-- for example, their desire for groups dedicated to white issues and their derogation of Black Lives matter.

Concerns and Important Issues:

My major concern with this study involves the shortening of pre-validated [g] measures. When a researcher makes a short version of a scale, they often are basing their cuts on extensive previous research, and it’s shortened just to the point that the researcher thinks can be considered valid based on that work. Even then, the shortened version of the scale has to go through testing before it’s considered legitimate. This doesn’t mean it’s perfect, or that it’s impossible that additional cuts could be made without sacrificing validity, but I was honestly blown away when I realized that virtually every single measure that the authors had not developed specifically for this study was halved or more. Maybe more experienced researchers would disagree, but that makes me question the results of these shortened measures, which make up the majority of the study. It’s hard for me to necessarily agree that the authors accurately measured, say, motivation to express prejudice, as opposed to measuring exclusively what the two questions explicitly asked.

That being said, I will say that those questions themselves are pretty striking. For example, one question regarding motivation to express prejudice is, “I express negative thoughts about Black people to avoid negative reactions from others.”1 If a large group of people are agreeing with that statement, yes, that’s important. The issue is that our psychological understanding of the concept “motivation to express prejudice” is complex and based on the full profile, not just a couple questions that seem important to us (bear in mind that psychologists don’t just throw surveys together haphazardly—assuming that “important questions” can be picked out visually is condescending to the researchers who worked on the measure). In addition, so much research has found that the wording of questions can drastically change how people tend to respond. We use multiple questions that may seem similar to minimize the risk of this effect and understand a person’s true beliefs. For both these reasons, I would argue that the authors found that people in the alt-right are more likely to respond in the affirmative to the question “I express negative thoughts about Black people to avoid negative reactions from others.” However, I’d shy away from making the statement that people in the alt-right are more motivated to express prejudice, a much more complex idea.

My second major issue is whether or not the population recruited was truly representative of the alt-right. Before I go into this, it needs to be clear that in MTurk, participants are usually paid a few cents for a psychological study. A $3 study on MTurk, especially a relatively short one like this, is incredibly attractive, attractive enough that I would argue it is a virtual certainty that people would lie about their affiliation to get the money. It’s true that the authors had two probes to ensure that they were only getting true alt-right members, but I don’t necessarily agree that the authors were conservative enough when examining those probes. They only referenced removing 14 participants, and they stated that was because those participants literally copied their definitions of the alt-right from Google. I scanned through their data, and within the first maybe twenty responses I found two people who referred to the alt-right as “they” (decades of Social Identity Theory research, and common sense, can tell you that “they” is an outgroup term—when referring to an ingroup with whom a person identifies, that person will likely use the word “we”) and, if that feels excessively nitpicky, a participant who literally used the words “I don’t really call myself an alt right…” Maybe these people were eliminated, as the authors did not clearly mark in the data which participants were included in analysis. Based on the information I was given in the study as to who was eliminated, though, I’m not sure.

There’s also the trickier question of how to truly measure whether someone belongs to an ideology, especially an ideology like the alt-right, which disgusts its outgroup. The authors argued that the sample was likely accurate because people in the sample used words attached to the alt-right, like “snowflake” and “cuckservative,” and that a person lying for money would be unlikely to generate responses similar to the following:

“[...] If it were not for Europeans, there would be nothing but the third world. Racist really needs defined. Is it racist to not want your community flooded with 3,000 low IQ blacks from the Congo? I would suggest almost everyone would not. It is not racist to want to live among your own. [...] Through media [the Jews] lie about the Holohoax, and the slave trade. Jews were the slave traders, not Europeans.. many people don't even understand these simple things. [...]”

Clearly, that statement is abhorrent, but I’m not sure I agree with the authors’ conclusion. The words they mentioned, especially “snowflake,” are commonly associated with the alt right but known by people who are not in the alt right. As for the statement they cited, it reads to me either as an incredibly racist person, or a person who wants to appear incredibly racist—for example, to make money (or even possibly to derogate an outgroup they think is racist pretending to be an extremely racist member of that outgroup.) I’m not denying that there are people who think that way, but I think there’s a real possibility that left-leaning people could have lied about their affiliation in this study and given those responses. This is less a critique of the study itself, since for the most part there’s nothing we can do but trust internet-based participants. However, it does call for more in-person research.

That all being said, the findings of this research are critical. Even if we throw out all the problematic surveys, one part of this study stands out—the dehumanization rating in which alt-right participants rated outgroup members as highly unevolved. That sort of open, clear racism and dehumanization is abnormal in most populations and, quite frankly, terrifying.

Jargon Notes:

a.     An ingroup is a group of people someone identifies with; an outgroup is a group of people they do not identify with. A person can be part of multiple ingroups and can consider any number of groups outgroups.

b.   The control is the “standard” group that the “experimental” group is compared against. In this case, there is no true experiment happening (nothing is being systematically changed for one group of people), but the control is still necessary to see how the alt-right group differs from the general population.

c.    An exploratory study means that the authors were not testing a specific hypothesis—they were just taking a bunch of data and seeing what came of it. This can’t be used to draw causal claims, or claims that one factor causes another, because nothing was changed within the course of the study (unlike an experimental study, where something will happen to affect change while the person is sitting in the room.) Therefore, the authors have no true way of knowing what caused these differences to arise.

d.   To derogate is to disparage or bring down a person.  

e.    Mechanical Turk is a website where people from across America (and even the world, although most psychology studies limit their sample to the United States or English-speaking countries) can do short tasks for very little pay, often less than a dollar.

f.     A correlation is when two factors tend to move together: in other words, when a person has more X, they also tend to have more Y (or, when a person has more X, they tend to have less Y).

g.    A measure is validated when different studies show that it accurately measures what it is said to measure.

References

[1] Forscher, P. S., & Kteily, N. (2017, August 10). A Psychological Profile of the Alt-Right. Retrieved from psyarxiv.com/c9uvw

[2] https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/8/15/16144070/psychology-alt-right

[3] http://www.iflscience.com/brain/heres-the-worlds-first-psychological-profile-of-the-altright/

[4] Graham, J., Nosek, B. A., Haidt, J., Iyer, R., Koleva, S., & Ditto, P. H. (2011). Mapping the moral domain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 366–385.

[5] Jones, D. N., & Paulhus, D. L. (2014). Introducing the Short Dark Triad (SD3): A Brief Measure of Dark Personality Traits. Assessment, 21, 28–41.

[6] Ho, A. K., Sidanius, J., Kteily, N., Sheehy-Skeffington, J., Pratto, F., Henkel, K. E., ... Stewart, A. L. (2015). The nature of social dominance orientation: Theorizing and measuring preferences for intergroup inequality using the new SDO? scale. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109, 1003–1028.

[7] Altemeyer, B. (1996). The authoritarian specter. Cambridge, US: Harvard University Press.

[8] Forscher, P. S., Cox, W. T. L., Graetz, N., & Devine, P. G. (2015). The motivation to express prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109, 791–812.

[9] Plant EA, Devine PG. Internal and external motivation to respond without prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1998;75:811–832. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.75.3.811.

[jam2289]

Responses to My High IQ Article

I posted my article criticizing an overvaluation on high IQ in some high IQ groups. I was just curious. I don't read all of the comments on my articles anymore because the internet seems to be a place for hostile interaction rather than discussion, and if I do read them I don't usually respond because no one seems to want to have a reasonable discussion online. But, I did a little bit this time, just to see what would happen. Here it is.

In the first few hours six people commented on my article in a Mensa group. Four people liked it and one person wowed it. Two of the commenters either deleted their comments or blocked me, which we'll get to in a minute. Two of the comments were good. Let's look at those first. (Note that I also posted this in the EPL High IQ Society, which I've found to be a more reasonable group, and received no interaction at all. My site stats say that 81 people have been on my site to see it so far.) Here's the article link too.

http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2019/02/why-high-iq-isnt-that-impressive.html

- - - - - - -

N - I agreed with everything you said until you started insulting people. What group is this where people are frequently doxxed? I'm in a lot of Mensa groups, and I've never seen more than maybe one doxxing (not that I think any doxxing is justified).

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Her criticism about insulting anonymous Paul is fair enough. That was just my internal reaction to his comment. Maybe doxxing has died down in the Mensa groups, that would be good. Some of them were always good anyway, some of them weren't.

- - - - - - -

M - Some of this reminds me of my first exposure to Taoism - The Tao of Pooh. This book helped shaped my values and how I think. It discusses the differences between wisdom and knowledge, which is kind of what I think you’re ultimately discussing here.

- - - - - - -

This is interesting. I've never heard about this before. Just recently I was talking to a friend who has some success about whether I could turn the subjects that I write about on my blog into something more oriented towards worldly success. His recommendation was to connect it to something that is already popular. I already have articles on Harry Potter that dive into philosophy, so it's not hard to make the leap there. The author of this book did exactly that. Also, it's useful for the readers, as M points out.

There were little follow up replies on these comments, but they were nice and reasonable conversations, so not that exciting. Now, on to the attacks on the article. I'll give my replies here too.

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E - To the writer, Paul is a troll. Your not recognizing this calls your intelligence and your practical social skills into question.

Jeff - This is a great example. This person, E, thinks that by calling someone a name, Paul = troll, it completely dismisses anything they say. They move from a full human being to this other identity that doesn't require moral engagement. Albert Bandura talks about dehumanization as one of the eight ways of disengaging morality. But why do this? I'm not exactly sure. Because it's more comfortable than thinking about the statements, maybe. Who gets to choose who's a troll and who's not? E does. Notice that literally the same thing can be done here. My entire comment could be, "E is a troll." It would not be wrong. Then E tries to do an ad hominem / name-calling attack in a somewhat indirect manner. It's just a beautiful example of why high IQs aren't that impressive.

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E either blocked me or deleted the comment after my response. This is common if someone can't refute your argument. It's also a good thing to do if you can't have a reasonable discussion. I've had to block some people when they were threatening me and such. I usually give it a few weeks and then unblock them. I don't like having people blocked, and I prefer to be overly transparent. I have no one blocked on my Facebook right now, even the people that have threatened to kill me.

Paul gave no indication of speaking in an ironic or sarcastic manner in his comment in the original article. There is some use to ignoring what other people say and dismissing those you disagree with though. This isn't usually discussed, but it's important for getting things done. The next one was a little longer.

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D - Like yourself, I too get my insight into IQ's predictive value from blog posts that don't cite authoritative sources.

Jeff - Another good example. Rather than talk about any of the issues proposed in the article he tries to dismiss it in whole by using the argument from authority as criteria of truth. He tries to do it in a witty and clever way, so that's something. The proposal that my insights are from blog posts has no foundation, he's just trying to through criticism spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. Another nice example of why a high IQ isn't that impressive. I'm guessing he'll probably delete his comment after this reply, like the others.

D - I base my assessment of the claims that g/IQ scores have high predictive value from authoritative sources. Neither the blog post, at top, nor your narcissistic response constitutes an authoritative source.

"IQ testing has been shown to have excellent test-retest reliability and to demonstrate various types of validity, including convergent and predictive validity. IQ strongly predicts learning ability.

Specifically, IQ scores predict complex job performance (Schmidt & Hunter, 2004)."

Ref. https://static1.squarespace.com/.../1524176266786/apa.pdf

See also https://static1.squarespace.com/.../the-neuroscience-of...

Jeff - This is a beautiful example. There isn't a contradiction or refutation here. The guy is literally making proposals and citing sources that don't contradict anything in my article. IQ predicts learning, of course, it's pattern recognition ability. These are almost synonymous. IQ predicts complex job performance, of course, because complex job performance requires increased rates of pattern recognition. The guy doesn't seem to realize that he isn't disagreeing with me. It's so weird, but these types of conversations happen all the time in high IQ groups. It still astounds me.

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Here's the thing, all of the people in this group have an IQ that is at least in the top 2 percent, but it would be difficult to tell if you were just communicating with them. If they weren't in the group I would guess some as having a high IQ and others as having a low IQ. I would be wrong a lot. The people that you think are smart probably do have a high IQ, but some of the people that you think are stupid probably have a high IQ too. It's a weird phenomenon. And these are just a few quick examples.

I'm guessing that part of what is happening here is that people with high IQs often base part of their identity on their high IQ. I know that I did. And it seems like that is being attacked when I question the value of IQ, but I'm proposing more than that. I used to think of myself as an intelligent adventurer. Then, I lost both of those things. I lost my intelligence and my memory and I lost my physical health. I've regained many of those abilities again over the last few years, but that's highly unusual.

There's something important that I'm trying to point out here. A high IQ is good, but it's not everything. I would say that morality and meaning in life are more important than IQ. Some people would say that happiness is more important. Maybe, although I see happiness as an effect from engaging in meaningful activity. I would say that using IQ to acquire knowledge and knowledge to acquire wisdom is more important than happiness too.

There are different kinds of values. A high IQ can help you to create more because you can learn faster, but creative values are not everything. Experiential values and attitudinal values may be more important than creative values. The psychologist Viktor Frankl says that attitudinal values are the most important, and I tend to agree with him because they are the only value that can't be taken away.

On a long enough timeline we will all lose our physical health, our memories, and everything else that we have. This is a major problem and it doesn't get better by ignoring it. The stance that you take towards that is far more important than your IQ. It can be hard to change your identity from valuing something like IQ to something else, but by not doing it you are setting yourself up for an immense identity crisis in the future.

And here's the thing, your IQ doesn't really matter that much to you, because you can't really change it. There's just what you can do and what you can't do. If you can try something you can learn, if you can learn you can make progress, and if you can make progress you might succeed. Maybe you don't, maybe you fail, maybe that's because you weren't able to recognize the patterns that you needed to fast enough. So! You engaged with something of value, and by trying to change the world you were also transforming yourself. There is nothing more important than that.

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You can find more of what I'm doing at http://www.JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

[back-and-totheleft]

Where others fear to trend

It’s a conversation any father and son might have -- a quick chat about baseball, families and world affairs. But when the speakers are President George H. W. Bush and his son George W. Bush, even a seemingly innocuous conversation can suddenly carry great weight, especially when Oliver Stone is at the controls.

With sweat cascading down his face on a steamy June night in Louisiana, the Oscar-winning director was directing James Cromwell (playing the elder Bush) and Josh Brolin (starring as President Bush) through a critical moment in “W.,” Stone’s forthcoming -- and potentially divisive -- drama about the personal, political and psychological evolution of the current president. Although the father-son patter was ostensibly friendly, the subtext was anything but, hinting at the intricate parent-child relationship that Stone believes helps to explain George W. Bush’s ascension.

While the Bushes in this scene from 1990 were talking about the Texas Rangers (of whom George W. once owned a share) and Saddam Hus- sein (against whom George H. W. was about to go to war in Kuwait), there was much more at stake, as Stone and screenwriter Stanley Weiser saw the fictional conversation unfolding.

“You need to back him down and take him out -- like you did Noriega,” George W. tells his father about Hussein. The elder Bush wasn’t sure he was going to be that rash. “You know I’ve always believed in leaving personal feelings out of politics,” the 41st president told his son. “But Saddam -- this aggression cannot stand. Not gonna allow this little dictator to control 25% of the world’s oil.”

As the architect of the outspoken dramas “Platoon,” “Salvador,” “Wall Street,” “Born on the Fourth of July” and “JFK,” Stone stands apart as one of the most openly political filmmakers in a business where it’s usually the actors who wear their beliefs on their sleeves. A longtime backer of Democratic candidates (recent donations include a gift to Sen. Barack Obama), Stone is either the oddest person to chronicle the life of the current president or the most inspired.

Whatever the verdict, the marriage of director and subject has left nearly as many people running for the sidelines as wanting to be a part of the director’s undertaking.

Indeed, “W.'s” combination of story and filmmaker and the poor track record of recent biographical movies scared off at least three potential studio distributors and any number of actors, including, initially, star Brolin, and even Major League Baseball, which declined to cooperate with the production.

Yet as Stone guided Cromwell and Brolin across Shreveport’s Independence Bowl stadium, doubling for the Rangers’ home field, it was possible to see that “W.” could be, in a complicated way, sympathetic.

The father was belittling a son, George H. W. cautioning George W. to stick to simple things: “Maybe better you stay out of the barrel,” the senior Bush told his son, and leave the family’s political legacy to younger brother Jeb. “Well, son, I’ve got to say I was wrong about you not being good at baseball,” the father ultimately said, tossing him a scrap of a compliment.

The future president didn’t quite get what the reproving “barrel” idiom meant, but he realized his father didn’t respect him. Brolin took in the snub, but then his bearing grew determined: George W. would have to prove himself beyond anyone’s imagining.

Stone said it’s part of what drove the younger Bush into the White House: to show his doubters wrong. “Someone who could step into that path and out-father his father,” Stone said in his air-conditioned trailer during a break in filming. Racing to film, edit and release the film before the November election, Stone was not always getting five hours’ sleep. Even though it was nearly midnight and the crew was just finishing its lunch break, the 61-year-old director grew increasingly animated talking about “W.”

“I love Michael Moore, but I didn’t want to make that kind of movie,” Stone said of “Fahrenheit 9/11.” “W.,” he said, “isn’t an overly serious movie, but it is a serious subject. It’s a Shakespearean story. . . . I see it as the strange unfolding of American democracy as I have lived it.”

Stone, Brolin and the filmmaking team believe they are crafting a biography so honest that loyal Republicans and the Bushes themselves might see it. Given Stone’s filmmaking history, coupled with a sneak peek at an early “W.” screenplay draft, that prediction looks like wishful thinking.

Still, it’s a captivating challenge: Can a provocateur become fair and balanced? And if Stone is, in some way, muzzling himself to craft a mass-appeal movie, has he cast aside one of his best selling points?

Dressed in a suffocating Rangers warmup jacket earlier on that scorching June day, Brolin kept running into an outfield wall, trying to make a heroic catch as part of the film’s baseball-oriented fantasy framing device.

Stone worried the leap wasn’t quite athletic enough and chose to add the baseball’s falling into Brolin’s mitt through visual effects -- allowing the “No Country for Old Men” star to throw himself into doing everything else.

Brolin spent countless hours studying the president’s speech patterns and body language but said he wasn’t trying to concoct a spitting-image impression, which ran the potential of becoming a “Saturday Night Live” caricature.

“It’s not for me to get the voice down perfectly,” the 40-year-old Brolin said, even though he came close. More important, the actor said, was to unearth Bush’s inner voice -- “Where is my place in this world? How do I get remembered?”

Like other actors approached for the film (including Robert Duvall, who was asked but declined to play Vice President Dick Cheney), Brolin had more than vague misgivings about starring in “W.” He was, in fact, dead set against it. “When Oliver asked me, I said, ‘Are you crazy? Why would I want to do this with my little moment in my career?’ ” Brolin recalled. Then, early one morning during a family ski trip, Brolin read Weiser’s original screenplay, which covers Bush from 1967 to 2004. “It was very different than what I thought it would be,” Brolin said, “which was a far-left hammering of the president.”

Brolin said many friends still weren’t buying it. “There were a lot of people I tried to get involved, who were very, very reluctant to do the movie,” Brolin said. In addition to Cromwell, the cast includes Elizabeth Banks as Laura Bush, Richard Dreyfuss as Cheney, Toby Jones as Karl Rove and Scott Glenn as Donald Rumsfeld.

While noting Bush’s low approval ratings (23% in a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll released this week), Brolin, like Stone, said “W.” isn’t intended to kick the man while he’s down. “Republicans can look at it and say, ‘This is why I like this guy,’ ” Brolin said. “It’s not a political movie. It’s a biography. People will remember that this guy is human, when we are always [outside of the movie] dehumanizing him, calling him an idiot, a puppet, a failed president. We want to know in the movie: How does a guy grow up and become the person that he did?”

Stone, who was briefly a Yale classmate of Bush, is clearly no fan of the president’s politics but said he’s amazed by the man’s resilience and ambition. The movie is basically divided into three acts: Bush’s hard-living youth, his personal and religious conversion, and finally his first term in the Oval Office.

“He won a huge amount of people to his side after making a huge amount of blunders and really lying to people,” the director said. What further fascinates Stone is Bush’s religious and personal conversion: a hard-drinking C student who was able to become not only Texas governor but also the leader of the Free World.

“We are trying to walk in the footsteps of W and try to feel like he does, to try to get inside his head. But it’s never meant to demean him,” Stone said.

The movie has hired a former Bush colleague as an advisor, and labored to get the smallest details right. For all the historical accuracy, though, “W.” is clearly a work of fiction.

“We are playing with our own opinions and our own preconceptions of him,” Stone said. “This is his diary -- his attempt to explain himself.”

This wasn’t the movie Stone was supposed to be making. Instead of “W.,” the film was going to be “Pinkville,” a look at the Army’s investigation into 1968’s My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

Only days before filming was set to begin, with many sets already built and department heads in place, “Pinkville” star Bruce Willis pulled out of the film last fall, unhappy with a script that couldn’t be rewritten because of the writers strike. Stone flirted with casting Nicolas Cage in the lead role, but enthusiasm from United Artists -- whose war movie “Lions for Lambs” had just flopped -- had waned on fears that “Pinkville” was too violent.

At the same time, Stone had been working on the “W.” script with screenwriter Weiser, the author of Stone’s 1987 hit “Wall Street.” Stone was at first worried the topic was almost too timely -- “When I made ‘Nixon,’ ” the director said, “he had died.”

Said “W.” producer Moritz Borman: “He wasn’t sure. He worried, ‘Is there enough material about Bush? Or will there be more once he’s out of office?’ But then a slew of books came out.”

Soon after “Pinkville” imploded, Stone returned to “W.,” and by early 2008 he was convinced it was not only the right time to make the movie but also imperative the movie hit theaters before the next presidential election, because its impact would be greatest then, when everybody was obsessing over our next president. But that early release date created a post-production timetable that would be half of Stone’s most hurried editing schedule. Before he could set up his cameras, Stone and his team first had to answer a key question: Who in the world was going to pay for it?

“You put the two names together -- Bush and Stone -- and everybody had a preconceived notion of what the film would be. But look at ‘World Trade Center,’ ” Borman said of Stone’s commercially successful 2006 movie about two Port Authority policemen rescued from Sept. 11 rubble. “There was an uproar when it was announced and then, when the movie got closer to release, the very people who protested it preached from the pulpit that it was a film that had to be seen.”

Still, Borman and Stone knew few studios would commit to the movie, especially given the desired October 2008 release date, because studios often plan their release schedules more than a year in advance. What they needed was an independent financier, someone not afraid of challenging material -- a person like Bill Block.

Block had formed QED International in 2006 as a production, financing and sales company interested in the kind of highbrow drama that studios increasingly shun. Block saw in “W.” not a troublesome jeremiad but a crowd-pleaser, and QED colleagues Kim Fox and Paul Hanson quickly assembled the “W.” deal.

“What Oliver is making is a splashy, commercial picture,” Block said. “This is not a static biopic. It’s kinetic.”

In addition to footing the film’s $30-million budget, QED also raised money to underwrite its prints and advertising costs upon release. Any distributor committing to “W.,” in other words, would have no money at risk: It could release the film, take the distribution fee of about 15% and move on. “I think it’s a no-brainer,” Stone said. All the same, “W.” could spark a potential inferno inside the White House. “You never know exactly why” a studio rejects a movie, Stone said, while noting that all the major studios are small cogs in global conglomerates. “But at the highest levels, it didn’t pass. Some would say it’s too much of a risk and too much of a hot potato politically.” Stone declined to name names, but two people close to the film said among those considering but passing on the film were Paramount, Warner Bros. and Universal.

Harvey Weinstein’s Weinstein Co. aggressively pursued the “W.” deal, but QED, Borman and Stone picked Lionsgate Films in part because of its strong balance sheet. Also, because it’s not part of a larger studio, Lionsgate is one of the only truly independent distributors left.

Lionsgate worried about fitting “W.” into its October schedule and has discussed a post-election release if the film isn’t ready in time. But whenever it comes out, the company is ready for any backlash -- after all, it’s the distributor of the “Saw” and “Hostel” films.

“To the extent there is going to be heat,” said Joe Drake, president of Lionsgate’s motion picture group, “we can take the heat. That won’t be a problem.”

-John Horn, “In defining Bush, Oliver Stone goes where others fear to tread,” Los Angeles Times, June 29 2008 [x]