#because the government is really fucking up the education model

[error404vnotfound]

why is there such a big gap in teens' math knowledge man

im trying not to lose my mind as i tutor kids but still

i suffer

[mamasbakeria]

hey, what's your major again?

summary: my credible expert opinion on what the aot characters would study in university. what are my qualifications? the dozens of hours i’ve spent staring at my school’s program bulletin trying to figure out what i’m majoring in

genre | includes: headcanons, sfw, minor language, uninformed percy jackson reference (pls don't hate me if im wrong)

characters: eren jaeger, mikasa ackerman, armin arlert, sasha braus, jean kirschtein, connie springer, historia reiss, ymir, reiner braun, annie leonhardt

author’s note: had this in my drafts for months now. i just need to post it so it stops haunting me. might do the rest of the marleyans and vets in the future! lmk your thoughts, my only tumblr notifications are from p*rn bots, so i'd love to hear from real people lol. enjoy <3

eren: sociology and public policy, 4+1 program for a social work masters

there’s only so many times you can hear “you’re gonna be a doctor just like your dad” before you start to believe it. that’s why eren started out with biology on the premed track. the thing is, he really didn’t care for it. eren is really passionate about lessening equity gaps and is a firm believer in “if you want something done right, do it yourself”. this is why i see him making the switch to a double major in public policy and sociology. he wants to know about how society got to the point of perpetuating disparities so that he can fix them. but he also knows that the government fucking sucks and thinks its naive to expect policy change to be the only method of change. and like the maniac he is, eren is enrolled in a 4+1 program so he can get his master’s in social work when he’s done with his undergrad. he’s determined to graduate with both degrees in just 4 years though. rip his summers.

armin: international relations and military ethics, minor in communications or smth

everyone always says armin would study marine biology or oceanographic studies, but i honestly think that it’s a passion that he pursues on the side. he takes marine bio courses for his breadth requirements, but knows he’d end up hating the ocean if he spent the rest of his life studying it. he also strikes me as someone who would rather run buck naked into traffic than sit through multiple semesters of organic chemistry. armin was always a good public speaker, though, despite being a bit insecure. that’s why his speech and debate teacher during sophomore year of high school recommended model united nations to him. he was hooked after his first conference and now genuinely sees the path of international diplomacy as his calling. that’s why he’s majoring in international relations. his concentration in military ethics is something he tacks on in his junior year after taking some courses and publishing research with dr. erwin smith. he probably minors in communications because he can.

mikasa: forensic science

mikasa had no idea what she wanted to do when she started uni. she’s good at nearly everything. like never gotten a B in her life and is the student who the curve is based off of. but excelling in every environment you’re put in often means you don’t know what you’re best at. she knew deep down that she wanted to do something justice related like her childhood best friends did, but she’s no public speaker and has no interest in political reform. she was, however, emo in high school and heard a fair share of undertaker jokes at her expense. it wouldn’t hurt to look into right? as cool as the title sounds, morticians don’t make enough money for the job they have. fortunately enough, forensic pathologists do and mikasa looks good in a lab coat. she would never admit it to spare armin and eren’s feelings, but when they, as children, recreated the crime-solving shows mrs. jaeger always had on, mikasa always wanted to be the brains. so criminology and forensic science it is. (side note: she definitely joins the military and they pay for her education)

jean: structural engineering and industrial design with a minor in studio art

more than anything, jean wants to provide for his mom and knows he can’t guarantee a retirement of luxury for her as the freelance artist he wishes he could be. he’s decent at math when he tries and doesn’t hate physics, so he decided he’d give structural engineering a try for at least a semester or two. he wasn’t expecting to get much from it, to be honest. he had a plethora of backup plans waiting for his supposedly inevitable distaste for engineering, but he found that he didn’t hate it at all. someone once told jean that he had the makings of a great leader and he didn’t believe them until he started taking the lead on design projects and producing incredible results. his only qualm is that he just doesn’t get to be as creative as he wanted to be. that was easily rectified by an additional major in industrial design and a minor in studio art. he’s unbelievably busy, busier than he anticipated when he started his post-secondary journey, but he’s content and there’s nothing some extra coffee can’t solve. 

sasha: environmental science and sustainability

sasha spent her childhood ankle-deep in mud and fighting her way through forest thickets without a compass. an upbringing like that doesn’t leave your spirit, no matter how far into the city you go for school. so sasha’s always been passively passionate about the environment. that passiveness became significantly more prominent when part of the woods she grew up in was cleared out to build an industrial complex. it was then that she started researching and writing petitions about preserving wildlife and making environmentally conscious decisions. her work actually got her the scholarship she’s on (because god knows it wasn’t her grades). and she genuinely loves what she does, so why wouldn’t she keep learning about it? the environmental science and sustainability program at the school is small, but tight-knit and known for churning out changemakers. sasha knows she’ll be one of them one day. just hide your plastic straws from her, okay?

connie: computer science and chinese

stick with me here okay? everyone expects connie to be a douchebag marketing major whose hardest assignments are graphing functions and making posters on photoshop, but he’s a lot more invested in his education than he looks. don’t get me wrong, connie has always struggled academically, but that’s because so much of early education is pre-determined. he performed way better when he could choose what courses he took. it’s kind of like percy jackson being dyslexic in english because he was wired to read in greek. connie can’t keep his eyes on a history textbook for shit, but will gladly sit in front of the c++ code on his pc for hours. he doesn’t even get mad when he realizes that he was missing a semicolon. connie loves how versatile of a future he could have with a compsci degree, because, let’s be real, he could never survive in a typical office environment. definitely takes a bunch of chinese classes and doesn’t realize that he has enough credits for it to be a minor until his second to last semester.

historia: political science with a minor in international relations and child development

historia is a lot like eren in the sense that she knows her time is best spent doing hands-on work in the fields she cares about. she realizes this sometime after reconnecting with her estranged father and volunteering at the orphanage she grew up in. but now that she’s publicly associated with a powerful political figure, historia doesn’t get to do what she wants, only what is expected of her. that’s how she ends up on the pre-law political science and public policy route. the nickname “ms. president” that connie and sasha give her only further reminds her that she’s heading down a path she never wanted for herself. after lots of encouragement from ymir, historia decided to take child development courses on the side. even if she doesn’t take on the full minor, she’s taking some classes she cares about. maybe she’ll find use for it someday. at the very least, it’s her first step in becoming the most selfish girl in the world.

ymir: data science and business management

ymir is smart. much smarter than she presents herself to be, almost as a form of protection. nobody expects much of someone who is aloof, so it makes it easy to slip through the cracks to remain safe and comfortable in the shadows. business management is notoriously low commitment and easy to skate by with. guaranteed internships, post-graduate employment, and so on. To anyone who doesn’t know ymir well, it’s perfect. but they have her mistaken, ymir will do as little as possible to go as far as possible. sure, she can live comfortably with a business degree, but it could be better with a little bit of data science in her arsenal. she’s intelligent enough to pick up on it, and determined enough to make it her bitch. yeah, academia is a money-sucking pipeline into the capitalist hellscape, she doesn’t believe in it yada yada, but at the end of the day, ymir’s gonna get the bag. so what if she’s gotta sleep through some stats classes to get it?

reiner: behavioral economics

reiner’s mother had convinced him his whole life that getting a high paying job would fix their lives and bring his father back. believing “perfect grades lead to a perfect life” made high school tough for reiner; gifted kid burnout is no joke. it really messed him up. he wasn’t sure if he could withstand the pressures of university, but here he is. reiner was never allowed a therapist, so he figured pursuing psychology would, at the very least, give him some answers and be a good pathway to a medical degree. he loved getting to understand how people work and why they act the way they do, but something was missing. he found out what it was when a guest lecturer spoke in his economics class. he knew making the switch would be risky, it’s a new field and his current career options are really only research, academia, or government, but the interdisciplinary study of behavioral economics is calling reiner’s name. 

annie: biomedical engineering and kinesiology

annie’s entire life revolved around her father, including the injury he was never able to heal from. the one she gave him. he’s claimed to be over it, she’s forgiven, but annie will never feel like she’s earned that forgiveness until she gets rid of the problem entirely. how is she going to do that exactly? with biomedical engineering. she has years of hell in front of her, especially with her concentration on biomechanics, but she doesn’t care. annie will throw herself into her work to get the results she wants. she takes the highest amount of credits possible every semester so she can graduate early. you’ll most likely find her chained to a study cubicle at the library at all hours of the day and running on 2 hours of sleep, but it doesn’t faze her. she tacks on a minor in kinesiology because it makes sense and she had most of the credits for it anyway. and as if it couldn’t get worse, she probably TAs for a thermodynamics course or something crazy like that.

© mamasbakeria 2023. do not repost, translate (without permission), or modify

[onsomekindofstartrek]

There's another post going around about how many innocent people would be hurt in your typical conception of a violent leftist revolution. And that's great! It's entirely true that a little interruption of our infrastructure would immediately be fatal for a lot of vulnerable people that we have a duty to. The idea that a lot of leftists have in their head of revolutionary politics is idiotic. It's literally based on Stalinist propaganda of how righteous the fucking October Revolution (and the Cuban Revolution) were.

But I feel like every time I see a version of that post, the conclusion is "therefore we should all do hyper-incremental socdem politics and hope the capitalists don't kill us all before we achieve our utopia that way."

And look, that is on the face of it less violent. I understand why the more left-leaning kind of liberal champions that model.

But it's... like, you understand that there are actual anarchist academics who have written whole bodies of work on how we ought to change society, and it doesn't fit either the "bloody all-out revolution" model or the "let's just try to vote a socdem into office in a country where that's literally inconceivable" model.

Almost all educated and intelligent leftists I know are anarcho-syndicalists. The idea is this: we aim to unionize every single workplace. We fight for the power of labor by any means available to us, from strikes to sit-ins, malicious compliance, civil disobedience, and, yes, defending ourselves and each other violently from cops, strikebreakers and scabs when it becomes necessary. We aim to make organized labor so much of a force in society that not only will the owning class be brought to the table to negotiate with us, the governments of the world will have to come to the table.

And when we've achieved that dual power, we improve the world any way we can, but we damn sure hold onto that power and make sure that we're not only preserving the infrastructure that keeps society alive, but that we are synonymous with that infrastructure.

The state will lose its sheen of benevolence when the world sees who really protects the life-saving infrastructures of the world. It is important that we never be seen as threatening those infrastructures, but instead fight in every way we can to improve them and make them more accessible and equitable. When the boss tells us to raise prices, we should have union people in every position that would be necessary for that order to be carried out, and simply not do it. They can't fire everyone.

And little by little the old state will be seen as the parasite it is, and wither away and die in a world where it is no longer necessary.

This follows in a perfect logical chain if you don't view the infrastructure of the modern world as something the bourgeoisie and the state have graciously provided to us, but as something that workers built and workers maintain, often at personal risk and with great personal sacrifice.

We already have the power, because we do all the work and make up the vast majority of humanity. We don't have to violently seize power in an apocalyptic war in the streets, we just have to learn to exercise the power we have.

And frankly, it does piss me off when I can agree with the first nine-tenths of a post about the popular conception of revolution, and then the last tenth is "therefore we should be very passive and let the capitalists have their way or actually we're the real monsters."

[beigeshiba]

Pluto in Aquarius: The Naked Cyberpunk Emperor

I've been thinking again about Pluto in Aquarius.

For quite a while, it was a big source of anxiety, given how Saturn in Aquarius were some of the toughest years of my life and some people were making out Pluto in Aquarius to just be 2 decades of that utter bullshit.

Thinking about it, especially after listening to Gordon White's take on Pluto in Aquarius (and he tends to be one of the more doomer voices about it) I think there may be some source of unexpected optimism.

Pluto is the planet of Black Swan Events, of "If only you knew how bad things really are" going from being a topic that only insiders with experience in certain niche careers can conceive of, to becoming common knowledge. It is the planet of "Normies getting Red Pilled on X". Please do contain your excitement, because normies waking up to reality mostly just improves your daily conversation. It rarely leads to political change because the average person is powerless and politically irrelevant. Democracy is just a slogan for military recruitment posters, after all.

Let's take Pluto's transit through Capricorn. At the start of that, concerns about the potential for abuse of powers granted by laws written after the 9/11 attacks was a niche issue for political wonks. By the end of it, it's now a mainstream opinion that the US Government is as openly and nakedly corrupt as the banana republics it used to be respectful to scoff at.

I suspect that Pluto's transit through Aquarius is going have as devastating effect on the credibility of industries associated with it (chiefly technology, medicine & education) as the transit through Capricorn left government and financial institutions with approval ratings in the high single or low double digits)

There's a lot of really bad stuff that's been going on in the Aquarian industries, which I've had plenty of contact with in my career, that feels as though it's just about ready to come to light. A lot of these chickens coming home to roost are going to be in large part because the Capricorn institutions meant to regulate against this self destructive behaviour were too busy fucking around and finding out.

Some highlights:

Pretty much the entireity of the ad supported internet is fake. The numbers are fake, the engagement is fake and the business models lack any path towards sustainable path to profitability.

"Dead Internet Theory" - The notion that humans are a minority on the internet, websites are short lived and going away at a greater rate than new ones are being created.

The persistent failure of the "Gig economy" to pay for itself, despite its exploitation of participants.

High tech products are increasingly being designed to extract money from users constantly, break before they've achieved positive return on investment and be impossible to fix when they break.

Most of the effective medicines were invented so long ago they are off patent, most of the new stuff is inferior to the off patent drugs and most doctors are on the take to prescribe inferior drugs.

A medical licence is a more reliable indicator of a poor quality, negligent or unethical doctor than a good quality one.

Education is a more reliable path to financial ruin through debt than towards upwards socioeconomic mobility.

Most modern education is teaching people wrong on purpose and setting them up to fail, to ensure that young folk can't become a threat to the people up top and living large.

I suspect that as Pluto does its thing and wakes people up to the realities in the Aquarian industries, those opinions given above will go from being fringe, "extremist" opinions to being mainstream opinions.

Of course, I fully expect loyalists to still toe the official line on all these issues. After all, their main source of income is barely laundered patronage and so publicly endorsing complete bullshit from their paymasters is the essence of how they make their living.

And I expect technology is going to go from being huge publicly traded for profit companies making shiny things that break, in factories around the world with elaborate and gossamer fragile supply chains, to being stuff made in people's backyards, from designs made and circulated within a community of enthusiastic amateurs, with end results that are rough and janky, but still get the job done acceptably well.

The open source hardware community are doing some very interesting things, learning how to get high VGA output from old 8 bit microcontrollers and single board computers using similar components to the 1980s home computers but with much better performance. Even if the really high end silicon fabrication from the likes of Intel, Samsung and NVidia collapses under its own weight, it's not going to mean the death of computers, thanks to the very innovative uses of older, modestly specced microcontrollers that people are quietly coming up with.

There's likely to be a lot of that in the automotive space, all kinds of backyard conversions to run on gasified wood or liquid biofuels. The result will be much less powerful engines that'll go much more slowly than people were used to, though it'll still be a damn sight better than a horse and cart.

[scamallach-1]

Really it makes me sick to be around anyone who complains about someone else having an “anti-American” sentiment or critical perspective of us. Why does that make you so uncomfortable? Are you shocked? Why deny? Wtf?? Like, why are so many of us settlers here so willing to jump into this patriotism and create some empty identity to wrap ourselves up in over… an illegal settler state established thru white supremacy and genocide? When we know this to be true? Even self proclaimed ‘radicals’ around me cling to this fucked “identity”. Also why I hate patsocs. The constant repackaging of liberalism (we call it ‘radicalism’ when it is not) here really makes it stick thru time, I think. Ffs.

No dude - fuck the flag, fuck our settler feelings and fuck our individualism and our illegitimate settler history and our nostalgia - one reason amongst many that I’m fucking pissed is that being an “American”, outside of the Black nation and Indigenous nations, whose cultures are rich and preserved with great effort by those communities against active attempts at eradication and theft and bastardization/appropriation/whitewashing and Eurocentrism; but being a white, settler “American” means being devoid of community connection that has any meaning outside of settler-colonialism. It means no connection to the land. It means being a fucking ghost. Waking up more and more to this fact; sure it’s a hard truth, but a truth to work to accept if you must, and we must because it is a truth.

Look at what “America” has done to the world and thru settlers it has us like mere tools to be used, and what’s more, we invite this to carry on, we choose repeatedly to maintain this. In every aspect of white settler “culture” in the “US”, we are stripped and molded and kept isolated from humanity which makes us ever so useful to act on and carry out the sheer destructive inhumanity of our imperialist government’s agenda. It’s in our arrogance, our individualist mindsets, our public school “education” (Prussian Obedience model, anyone?), our apathy, our politics, our “radicalism”, our family structures, our child rearing approaches, our perception of justice and our laws, our media and pastimes, our holidays, our ideas of success/failure, our psychiatry and academia… I don’t move to innocence - Don’t misunderstand me here. We cannot. We are still actively complicit, as the systems we propel remain.

So you get defensive and scared and “uncomfy” when people rightly call us out? You claim “there’s no need to be so anti-American”? Shameful and pathetic reaction.

The grief I feel over such a meaningless life of illusionary “comfort” that doubles as a tool of destruction elsewhere on Earth… there is no pride. No innocence. Nothing to reclaim. Nothing to look back on except that every ounce of ease and joy we settlers have ever experienced was indeed at the cost of those our illegal “nation” colonized/es. To deny this and place our feelings of shame and denial above duty and fealty to those working to decolonize, and to be unwilling to face this fact, is just more disrespect to those we oppress actively.

My wish and hope now is that settler-colonialist powers will fall, “America” (as an imperialist power, as a false identity) will be dismantled and this land will go back to its rightful stewards, that we settlers will be disempowered where we do not belong, that the horrible construct of “whiteness” will cease to exist (I am thinking of James Baldwin’s On Being White and Other Lies) and future generations globally will not be murdered, destabilized, infiltrated and ethnically cleansed by our gov meanwhile we live this void, settler-ghost life. There’s no humanity in “being an American”, trust me. It has to be completely dismantled.

[n0thingiscool]

Hot Takes From Troll Accounts - re: Breaking Bad and the MSM's General Influence on Populous Beliefs/Behaviors

Exhibit A) absurdly-“useful”

Except mainstream anything has an immediate influence on the masses hence why electing a pro Nazi rapist to office was fucking BAD for the population and the safety for women, POC, queer folk, and people with disabilities… ya goofy misdirecting troll account see you next tuesday. 😂

Exhibit B) wackweeder, grimeclown, and cactusseeds

No, to answer your question - grimeclown. But that’s kinda not really the focus.

*eyes rolling at cactusseeds* - tell me you work for media without telling me you work for media.

For wackweeder - you say “media illiterate” like that’s a bad thing. Lmfao. I prefer to put my limited time in reading published studies, reading historical books, interacting with people who value educational content (not you), taking STEM classes, and beating my ass up in fitness arenas than working on my “media literacy.” I have all my social media feeds to tell me shit I don’t care about in relation to mainstream television now, anyway. It’s not like I get to bury my head away from any of it as much as I would love to. But why the hell would I want to watch brain rot with what limited time I have on this planet. I rhetorically ask. Here’s the key response to your overall population influence illiteracy - media influences everything including drug usage. This is why most developed governments are so sensitive about tobacco and alcohol ads in the presence of children. It doesn’t generally matter how the shit is portrayed. If it did then Nancy Reagan’s “War on Drugs” TV specials would’ve had some positive effect on the masses. Hint… it didn’t.

https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article/44/3/229/178279

Now - you can go ahead and make the argument that BB the show, itself, could’ve turned people away from using because there are zero studies to counter that argument but that’s disingenuous claim to make at best. Personally, I feel more comfortable looking at all the other numerous studies looking at drug and alcohol usage influenced through media, in general, and applying that data to the picture at hand because that is a rational thing to do.

For a lay example - why don’t news outlets publish suicide rates? Because it increases suicide. Just because it looks bad in the broad scheme doesn’t mean it has none or an anti-influence. That’s not how this works. I can think of other media influencing mob behavior: Flash mobs. The increase of street takeovers in a post Fast and Furious world. How little girls think they need to look like some twig on the runway. How little boys think they have to hide their emotions because the machismo men on their favorite shows do so. How Bhutan’s GNH (presumably - the documentation has all but vanished from online sources I had read from in the aughts - shoulda saved it back in the day…) fell after the introduction of Western Media. And so on…

People are easily influenced, man. They teach in journalism school (yes, I went) the average American reading and comprehension level is at the equivalent of the third grade. When you see mofos out there believing Q-Anon conspiracies without second guessing you know that fact isn’t far off. We’re not anywhere near as evolved a you want to believe.

Exhibit C) roadkillbuffet

I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not but Breaking Bad was not the first gay kiss on television…

But also… if the comment isn’t sarcasm or a troll then - “but Breaking Bad was the first gay kiss on tv therefore if you’re calling a meth based television show out you are homophobic” - is a piss poor argument to make for the queer community. Of which I am in, btw.

If that were actually true and BB was the first show to validate queer relationships then how homophobic is Hollywood to take that first dive into validating queer lives in a show about meth? I’m going to guess this is a sarcasm response though. No one can be that off base… can they?

Exhibit D) "I can't read this" Cool. Go back to your basic memes.

[qqueenofhades]

Do you really hate this county? Or were you just ranting?

Sigh. I debated whether or not to answer this, since I usually keep the real-life/politics/depressing current events to a relative minimum on this blog, except when I really can't avoid ranting about it. But I have some things to get off my chest, it seems, and you did ask. So.

The thing is, any American with a single modicum of genuine historical consciousness knows that despite all the triumphalist mythology about Pulling Up By Our Bootstraps and the American Dream and etc, this country was founded and built on the massive and systematic exploitation and extermination of Black and Indigenous people. And now, when we are barely (400 years later!!!) getting to a point of acknowledging that in a widespread way, oh my god the screaming. I'm so sick of the American right wing I could spit for so many reasons, not least of which is the increasingly reductive and reactive attempts to put the genie back in the bottle and set up hysterical boogeymen about how Teaching Your Children Critical Race Theory is the end of all things. They have forfeited all pretense of being a real governing party; remember how their only platform at the 2020 RNC was "support whatever Trump says?" They have devolved to the point where the cruelty IS the point, to everyone who doesn't fit the nakedly white supremacist mold. They don't have anything to do aside from attempt to usher in actual, literal, dictionary-definition-of-fascism and sponsor armed revolts against the peaceful transfer of power.

That is fucking exhausting to be aware of all the time, especially with the knowledge that if we miss a single election cycle -- which is exceptionally easy to do with the way the Democratic electorate needs to be wooed and courted and herded like cats every single time, rather than just getting their asses to the polls and voting to keep Nazis out of office -- they will be right back in power again. If Manchin and Sinema don't get over their poseur pearl-clutching and either nuke the filibuster or carve out an exception for voting rights, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is never going to get passed, no matter how many boilerplate appeals the Democratic leadership makes on Twitter. In which case, the 2022 midterms are going to give us Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House (I threw up in my mouth a little typing that) and right back to the Mitch McConnell Obstruction Power Hour in the Senate. The Online Left (TM) will then blame the Democrats for not doing more to stop them. These are, of course, the same people who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton out of precious moral purity reasons in 2016, handed the election to Trump, and now like to complain when the Trump-stacked Supreme Court reliably churns out terrible decisions. Gee, it's almost like elections have consequences!!

Aside from my exasperation with the death-cult right-wing fascists and the Online Left (TM), I am sick and tired of how forty years of "trickle-down" Reaganomics has created a world where billionaires can just fly to space for the fun of it, while the rest of America (and the world) is even more sick, poor, overheated, economically deprived, and unable to survive the biggest public health crisis in a century, even if half the elected leadership wasn't actively trying to sabotage it. Did you know that half of American workers can't even afford a one-bedroom apartment? Plus the obvious scandal that is race relations, health care, paid leave, the education system (or lack thereof), etc etc. I'm so tired of this America Is The Greatest Country in the World mindless jingoistic catchphrasing. We are an empire in the late stages of collapse and it's not going to be pretty for anyone. We have been poisoned on sociopathic-libertarian-selfishness-disguised-as-Freedom ideology for so long that that's all there is left. We have become a country of idiots who believe everything their idiot friends post on social media, but in a very real sense, it's not directly those individuals' fault. How could they, when they have been very deliberately cultivated into that mindset and stripped of critical thinking skills, to serve a noxious combination of money, power, and ideology?

I am tired of the fact that I have become so drained of empathy that when I see news about more people who refused to get the vaccine predictably dying of COVID, my reaction is "eh, whatever, they kind of deserved it." I KNOW that is not a good mindset to have, and I am doing my best to maintain my personal attempts to be kind to those I meet and to do my small part to make the world better. I know these are human beings who believed what they were told by people that they (for whatever reason) thought knew better than them, and that they are part of someone's family, they had loved ones, etc. But I just can't summon up the will to give a single damn about them (I'm keeping a bingo card of right-wing anti-vax radio hosts who die of COVID and every time it's like, "Alexa, play Another One Bites The Dust.") The course that the pandemic took in 21st-century America was not preordained or inevitable. It was (and continues to be) drastically mismanaged for cynical political reasons, and the legacy of the Former Guy continues to poison any attempts to bring it under control or convince people to get a goddamn vaccine. We now have over 100,000 patients hospitalized with COVID across the country -- more than last summer, when the vaccines weren't available.

I have been open about my fury about the devaluation of the humanities and other critical thinking skills, about the fact that as an academic in this field, my chances of getting a full-time job for which I have trained extensively and acquired a specialist PhD are... very low. I am tired of the fact that Americans have been encouraged to believe whatever bullshit they fucking please, regardless of whether it is remotely true, and told that any attempt to correct them is "anti-freedom." I am tired of how little the education system functions in a useful way at all -- not necessarily due to the fault of teachers, who have to work with what they're given, and who are basically heroes struggling stubbornly along in a profession that actively hates them, but because of relentless under-funding, political interference, and furious attempts, as discussed above, to keep white America safely in the dark about its actual history. I am tired of the fact that grade school education basically relies on passing the right standardized tests, the end. I am tired of the implication that the truth is too scary or "un-American" to handle. I am tired. Tired.

I know as well that "America" is not synonymous in all cases with "capitalist imperialist white-supremacist corporate death cult." This is still the most diverse country in the world. "America" is not just rich white middle-aged Republicans. "America" involves a ton of people of color, women, LGBTQ people, Muslims, Jews, Christians of good will (I have a whole other rant on how American Christianity as a whole has yielded all pretense of being any sort of a principled moral opposition), white allies, etc etc. all trying to make a better world. The blue, highly vaccinated, Biden-winning states and counties are leading the economic recovery and enacting all kinds of progressive-wishlist dream policies. We DID get rid of the Orange One via the electoral process and avert fascism at the ballot box, which is almost unheard-of, historically speaking. But because, as also discussed above, certain elements of the Democratic electorate need to fall in love with a candidate every single time or threaten to withhold their vote to punish the rest of the country for not being Progressive Enough, these gains are constantly fragile and at risk of being undone in the next electoral cycle. Yes, the existing system is a crock of shit. But it's what we've got right now, and the other alternative is open fascism, which we all got a terrifying taste of over the last four years. I don't know about you, but I really don't want to go back.

So... I don't know. I don't know if that stacks up to hate. I do hate almost everything about what this country currently is, structurally speaking, but I recognize that is not identical with the many people who still live here and are trying to do their best, including my friends, family, and myself. I am exhausted by the fact that as an older millennial, I am expected to survive multiple cataclysmic economic crashes, a planet that is literally boiling alive, a barely functional political system run on black cash, lies, and xenophobia, a total lack of critical thinking skills, renewed assaults on women/queer people/POC/etc, and somehow feel like I'm confident or prepared for the future. Not all these problems are only America's fault alone. The West as a whole bears huge responsibility for the current clusterfuck that the world is in, for many reasons, and so do some non-Western countries. But there is no denying that many of these problems have ultimate American roots. See how the ongoing fad for right-wing authoritarian strongmen around the world has them modeling themselves openly on Trump (like Brazil's lunatic president, Jair Bolsonaro, who talks all the time about how Trump is his political role model). See what's going on in Afghanistan right now. Etc. etc.

Anyway. I am very, very tired. There you have it.

[marcias-meme-blog]

What are your thoughts on the Media bez wyboru ? People are having two different opinions, mostly "They wanna silence us!" or "Don't be an idiot it's just taxation not restriction!"

That’s one hardcore question to receive. 

From what I know, it’s a taxation imposed on ad income in all sorts of media, the internet, newspapers, radio and even cinemas. This means that a chunk of platforms’ income instead of going back towards fuelling those institutions will go to the government.

The main gripe imo is this: many platforms will simply not survive this.  The taxation will be a solid blow to the smaller, often independent/neutral platforms who rely on that money to continue operating. Ultimately they’ll either collapse because of the lack of income or have to start relying on other methods of staying afloat eg. paywalls (and I REALLY hope we’re all aware how paywalls and subscription models contribute to inaccessibility to goods, and specifically here news and articles, on a global scale).

While some might say “it is what it is, that’s how taxes work babey” we MUST consider all pieces on this board. Because you know who will not feel this blow? Who will not have to worry about putting their stuff behind paywalls? Who will not have to worry about staying afloat?

Government sponsored media.

I hope it’s clicking for everyone that that is literally the ABCs of propaganda,  a really short way to monopolise the market of information, and an indirect attempt (we can debate whether intended or unintended) to control the public opinion in the long run.

Government media is NOT objective or trying to stay neutral. It presents you with content & news filtered through a very specific, and in this case, very VERY conservative lense, that paints the ruling party in a holy light while smearing their opposition in shit. 

“Opposition“ may seem like an abstract political concept but here’s a quick rundown of topics that are in opposition to the agenda being pushed by the current political leaders and would effectively be dipped in shit:

- LGBT as a concept, - rights/suited medical help for trans people, - gay marriage, - abortion/planned parenthood, - sex education in schools, - immigrants, - climate change/global warming, - carbon footprint of the environmental destruction that is the mining industry and so on.

The current Polish leaders are IN LOVE with the status quo and the current division of the country. They are especially big fans of presenting everything as a us vs. them narrative. The gays are an attack on polish families and christian values. Abortion is an attack on polish children. Climate change is a made up propaganda to destroy the mining industry and put the good polish people out of their jobs. And immigrants? Oh boy.

And this narrative heavily speaks to the current generations of people of age 40+; the generations that still remember communism, generations intimately aware of our history as a country where the other, the oppressor came and destroyed everything that was us, taking Poland off of the maps for over a fucking century, and how long it took for us to stand on our two legs again as an independent nation.

And all the topics that I listed above? Are used to scare those people by the leading party. To reach deep within and push that emotional button, that knee-jerk reaction that something is waiting, again, to destroy us and who we are as people, as a nation. And this emotional manipulation with fear is very incredibly effective. And I in turn fear that the limited number of accessible journalistic platforms will only contribute to the exponential growth of this sad phenomenon. 

And you know what is the worst thing if all of this? The theatre of absurd that is the way the government is trying to pass these controversial laws. Because those laws are never a stand alone thing. They are always dressed up in a narrative, wrapped up in an entire cushy bill that is going towards something objectively good. They did that many times in the past: most recent thing that I can remember are bills that were supposed to help out single parents but they simultaneously had one or two anti-LGBT laws right next to them, in the same package.

So to put the issue simply, by opposing one aspect of the bill, you’re automatically seen as a shithead trying to prevent a major improvement to the country’s structure. And that goes back to the whole us vs. them narrative I talked about. It’s a circle.

The bill they’re trying to pass right now is not a “new taxation on Ads” bill - it’s marketed as a bill going towards the growth of NFZ (national healthcare), the preservation of Polish history & culture via NFOZ (mostly monuments, old historically important buildings and landmarks etc.) & the creation of a new institution: FWKDN  the goal of which would be the creation of projects and platforms focused on promoting polish heritage & culture in the digital age.

Those are objectively good things, especially rn money for national healthcare would be godsend.

So here comes the ultimate dilemma: Should we introduce the new tax, the money from which will in theory help the people of our country, even if it means sacrificing independent media platforms which effectively means the beginning of the government’s monopol on news and journalism?

And that is a very loaded problem with no easy solution.

Personally I am against that bill and I support the strike that’s going on. The money gathered via this tax will be but a droplet in the sea of needs when it comes to our public healthcare system. Whatever the money could accomplish (which assumes the government that I already don’t trust won’t put the money towards something completely different),  the long term social consequences of news platform reduction far outweigh the potential good, in my books anyway. I do believe there are other solutions to this problem, but we could talk about the changes to the national budget all day and not get anywhere. 

TL;DR: It’s a loaded issue, but having seen certain worrying patterns within the actions and motivations of the current political party I am unwilling to risk letting them take control of journalism nationwide. 

[styleiswild]

Interview with Beastie Boys for Machina magazine, 07/1998

By: Rafał Bryndal

Translation: Anna Bak ( @styleiswild )

 -------------

Introduction: The party called Beastie Boys in Lisbon went on for two days. On the first day we (the journalists) were invited to the magical “Kremlin” club to listen to the new album [Hello Nasty]. I don’t think I have to explain how I felt knowing that I was possibly one of the first Polish people to listen to that phenomenal record. On the second day each of us got to meet the band in Hotel Ritz during the so-called “round-table.” It’s like a private conversation with the artists. It looks a bit like a coffee party at your aunt’s. (…) The whole meeting was just as absurd, in a positive way. The answers they gave us were often ironic, as one could expect.

R.B.: Don’t you think that being Beastie Boys is way cooler than being any other band in the world?

MCA: Unfortunately, we haven’t tried being a different band yet. So I can’t really answer your question.

Mike D: To be honest, there’s something to it. Maybe because we have so much fun working together. It’s not always fun, of course. We do work from time to time, but only sometimes.

R.B.: It seems like you work on your albums for fun and pleasure exclusively?

Mike D: I think it’s because we don’t release them that often.

Ad-Rock: Yes… Yes, you must be right, man.

Ad-Rock: Yes… Yes, you must be right, man.

MCA: Hey, we’d released Ill Communication after a two year break.

R.B.: Yeah, but this one took you four years.

MCA: Yeah, we had to level it out. It takes us three years most of the time.

R.B.: You grew up together. Are you always on such good terms with one another?

MCA: Sometimes there’ll be tripartite fights. Not sure you’ve ever seen what it looks like when three people fight each other. Each of them against the other two. That happens sometimes. Rarely, though. To be honest, we don’t really argue much.

R.B.: Your new album seems a bit like a departure from The In Sound from Way Out!

Mike D: Hello Nasty is a collection of a dozen or so songs, each of them stylistically different. That’s why you can’t really compare it to our previous releases. I guess, though, that at least two of the songs would’ve worked well as instrumentals on the previous album.

R.B.: How do you deal with the new technologies in music?

Mike D: Technology is present in all genres today and you can’t run from that. Music evolves largely thanks to the new technology. Especially hip hop music. We do it like the true rappers do, which means we start with a drum machine, then we put it on a loop, and then we use digital delay system. That’s one of the newest inventions. Technology is unpredictable, because people – who are its creators – have no clue about what the artists can do with it.

R.B.: Is it true what they say on the internet? That this album is the first one of the three that you’ve recorded lately?

MCA: You’ve really heard about that?

Mike D: Gosh, you can’t keep anything secret today.

Ad-Rock: Three? To be honest, we’ve got many more albums recorded.

Mike D: The last one of the three is a country album. The genre is so popular that you can’t really keep such a record a secret anymore. Especially when you’re in Manhattan and you walk around in a cowboy fit, it’s suspicious as hell. Because there aren’t many cowboys in Manhattan. People see a guy in a cowboy fit and assume that he has to be working on a country album.

R.B.: Is it really so important for your clothes to fit the style of your music?

MCA: You identify with your music more when you dress up. People often cheat, they wear clothes that don’t fit the music they play.

R.B.: So what kind of clothes did you guys wear when working on Hello Nasty?

MCA: I wore a bat girl costume.

Ad-Rock: I dressed up as a scared woman.

Mike D: I’d wear a bathing suit, because I wanted to go swimming all the time.

Ad-Rock: We couldn’t really find what we were looking for at first. We tried on a range of fits and finally found those that went well with our music.

R.B.: You’ve been popular with skateboarders. It’s a group of people who wear unique clothes and listen to a lot of your music, as it seems. Do you identify with this subculture?

MCA: I don’t think it’s just that one subculture. There are a few more we’d like to identify with.

Mike D: For me it’s long gone. Skateboarding isn’t much of an extreme or exclusive kind of sports discipline anymore. It’s become very popular.

R.B.: You’ve worked with Lee “Scratch” Perry on the new album. Can you tell me what kind of benefits did that bring you?

Mike D: It’s hard to say, but we’ve always been pretty impressed with his work on dub music. He’s also inspired Mario Caldato, our studio engineer. For me, Lee is an artist of science, a living fucking legend.

R.B.: Do you think that you can inspire young musicians?

MCA: Sure, but that’s a normal thing, right? If music is evolving as a part of culture, then everything and everyone inspires that process. We’re happy that we can be a part of that culture to some degree.

R.B.: A lot of white kids have gotten into rap music thanks to “Rhymin’ & Stealin’.” At least that’s what happened to me…

MCA: As a white kid… Right, it’s hard to be a black kid in Finland.

Mike D: We discovered hip hop when we were thirteen or fourteen. We’d go and see Public Enemy and bands like that. We were totally enchanted. It’s not that weird that kids who listen to us want to do the same thing.

R.B.: Some people say that you don’t like it when other artists sample your music. Some say that you’re more liberal, though.

MCA: It all depends on how the sample is used. If it’s creative, then we’re here for it. But if they go and copy our own ideas, and the whole track revolves around that idea, then we’re obviously pissed off.

R.B.: Are you as satisfied with making music as you’re with your magazine and your record label?

MCA: It’s all really about creating something new, publishing the mag, recording albums or playing gigs… We’re really into humanitarian work, too. Sure, the music is the most important thing of all. Nobody knows where it comes from, it’s hard to define the process of making music. It comes from subconsciousness.

R.B.: I’ve heard that you were to make a movie based on your “Sabotage” video?

Mike D: Unfortunately, that’s not true.

MCA: It doesn’t change the fact that we’re planning to make a movie…

R.B.: About what?

MCA: You can actually watch it in the cinema already, because Spice Girls had stolen our screenplay and made it their own.

R.B.: In the 80s there were a lot of humanitarian aids, like benefit concerts during which quite a lot of money got lost for a very simple reason. Those actions were organized on such a grand scale that it was nearly impossible to control the funds. Aren’t you scared that the same thing can happen to your organization?

MCA: Free Tibet is there to help people find out about the issue and educate them on it. The money that we get helps us organize the Tibetan Freedom Concerts. It’s not like those other actions from the past that were strictly about collecting funds.

R.B.: Do you believe that the bands you invite to play consider the gigs something more than simply another type of self-promotion?

MCA: I feel that most of those artists are really moved by the issue we’re trying to bring to people’s attention.

R.B.: You’re fighting for free Tibet, while recently it’s been 50 years since the State of Israel was formed. And Palestinians are fighting for their rights to be respected. Why have you taken on Tibet and not Palestine?

MCA: Tibetans’ fight is based on the idea of non-violence. It’s a peaceful fight. The contrast between the brutality of the Chinese government and that quiet fight of Tibetans does make an impression, and that’s why we’re popularizing the ideas behind the Tibetan struggle. We believe that the non-violent, peaceful act is the only logical way of dealing with the issue.

R.B.: Even if the peaceful fight ends up leading to the extinction of Tibetan culture?

MCA: The same thing will happen if Tibetans decide to use violence as a means to gain their freedom.

R.B.: Is it true that your music is banned in Hong Kong?

MCA: That’s right. We can’t play there. Our albums can’t be sold on their market. All of the bands playing for Milarepa are banned from performing in China.

R.B.: You’ve met Dalai Lama on several occasions. Does he like your music?

MCA: Dalai Lama doesn’t listen to pop music at all. Lots of bands give him their CDs. He takes them because he doesn’t want them to feel bad, but he won’t give them a listen.

Ad-Rock: That’s why he stores so many demos at home.

R.B. What is Dalai Lama like?

MCA: He’s fantastic. He’s a great role model, representing all of the values people associate with Tibetan culture, with Buddhism. He’s got great charisma. He oozes calmness that comes from the respect he has for everyone.

R.B. What’s his opinion on Tibetan Freedom Concert?

MCA: He thinks it’s an excellent way of spreading his word. For him, the concert is a kind of holiday.

R.B.: As far as I know, you have a slightly different view on the future of Tibet. He wants to negotiate with the Chinese government about Tibet’s legal right to autonomy in China, while you fight for total freedom for Tibet as a sovereign country. Is that true?

MCA: It’s related to his view on the type of fight. He’s so scared of any form of violence that he’s ready to negotiate with the Chinese government. He’s choosing the lesser of two evils, that’s what he’s doing. We’re in a completely different situation, though. As American citizens, we want to speak with our government about freedom for Tibet. We believe that Tibetans should be free and we want to encourage the government to take action to help Tibetans gain autonomy.

R.B.: The “Sabotage” music video was unique and quite shocking. Are your new clips going to be equally as original?

Ad-Rock: It’s gonna be some good shit.

MCA: We had lots of fun working on it. The “Sabotage” video had a lot to do with the song, though. Our new clips won’t have anything to do with the songs. They can be treated as independent short features. We plan to make a couple more totally different clips.

R.B.: You’ve been a band for so long that you must be best friends and not only, let’s say, collaborators. Can you please describe one another?

Mike D: Adam Horovitz is, to use basketball terminology, the play maker. He shows us how we’re supposed to play because he’s the one in charge of the balls. Sometimes he can’t score from a distance, though. Adam Yauch, on the other hand, is a very unusual power forward. His style is completely devoid of aggression, unlike Karl Malone’s. Or Charles Barkley’s. He can dull his opponent’s vigilance with his slow moves and get all the points.

Ad-Rock: Mike is an idiot and a thief. Yauch is a liar. I’m as cool as James Bond.

Mike D: Some people might say that we’re CSC. Crazy Sexy Cool. And that’s what we wanna be.

R.B.: Can you explain your record cover? You’re in a tin and you look like sardines.

Mike D: Doesn’t it sound pretty? “Sardine tin”? It’s almost like a big surprise. You open the tin and it turns out that people’s lives are similar to the life of sardines.

MCA: Maybe this album was recorded by sardines and you’re now talking to them? Who does know?  

[rarepears]

Love the worldbuilding for Fmab x mha. Since only the military/diplomats can leave and Amestris' strict policy with outsiders , how is Bakugo able to leave and get in the country during his childhood?

Original post being referred to in this ask: https://rarepears.tumblr.com/post/663630029826179072/king-bradley-fma-x-katsuki-bakugou-son-of

He's an interesting case since he's half Amestrian(?) - well, you know what I mean - instead of full Amestrian. There's not that many half Amestrians running around outside of Amestris's corner of the world, much less ones without Amestrian citizenships, but Bakugou's situation is a very unique one.

(I imagine Amestris to be located in Eastern Europe, maybe south of Poland, so that its eastern neighbor, Ishval is in the Middle East region. Plus Eastern Europe has a history of being more political instable and with lingering historic influences from Nazi Germany.)

His dad, aka Kimblee, was on a mission to serve as a military guard for a diplomat, and disobeyed regulations to go lay with a hot famous model (aka Mitsuki). Kimblee gives no fucks about the rules. As you can guess, he was never invited back to such a mission again, but what's done is already done.

Anyways, back to Mitsuki. She's hot, she's young, but most importantly, she's famous - aka she has a lot of influence worldwide as a supermodel - and she's the one carrying the baby. She has a lot of negotiating power, and the Amestrian government isn't willing to invest all that time and energy for a legal and PR battle.

So when Mitsuki demands full custody, the Amestris government gives it. It's not like the little Bakugou can learn alchemy on his own, yeah? Too young, no instructors or books to follow, and the kid wouldn't even know of the existence of alchemy. Plus, the department in charge of all of this doesn't want the higher ups to know of this mess. Wouldn't reflect well on them, so easier to just pretend it never existed - out of sight (aka out of the country), out of mind, right. There's some deals signed like Mitsuki isn't allowed to talk about Katsuki's biological father, etc.

The department still keeps a passive eye on Mitsuki and son just in case something weird happens. Whether that's because the government official in charge of the surveillance finds the model hot (and wants to get paid to admire her some more) or because they are somewhat curious to see how alchemy and quirks will mesh together, that's up to you.

Then Katsuki gets his explosion quirk, and shit. Shit shit shit, doesn't that look way too much like Kimblee's explosion alchemy? And in the hands of a kid who definitely doesn't know what he's doing but somehow managed to just start some small explosions...

The Amestris government very much regrets just signing off all custody rights to Mitsuki. Katsuki is also a Japanese citizen (another oops), so they can't just kidnap Katsuki without starting a whole headache of an international incident either. Their reputation is bad enough as it is, they don't need to get labeled as a "villainous" government and invite more international government oversight from the UN and the like.

So the best solution they can think of is:

Katsuki gets a "nice" invite to visit Amestris every year to visit his biological father who just so happens to have the same quirk! How nice - Katsuki gets to learn more of his other heritage and learn how to control his quirk better. Mitsuki appreciates the free time and peace and quiet, but she puts her foot down and says that Katsuki can only go during his summer vacation. Education is important.

Katsuki actually doesn't get to meet his father other than maybe once or twice a summer.

Meanwhile the Amestris government does its best to throw all their Amestris military propaganda to Katsuki to lure the kid into signing up to join the military soon. Unfortunately, Japan has a strict policy against dual citizenship, so they are going to really need to get Katsuki to give up that Japanese citizenship and become an Amestris citizen or part of the Amestris military so that Amestris laws apply to him - since as the laws are written now, they don't. Then they can go back to their good old policy of not allowing anyone to willynilly leave Amestris like Katsuki does.

Oh look, Katsuki likes heroes. Excellent, let's use that as a starting point to get Katsuki gungho about the military, even when he's not in Amestris for 3/4 of the year.

Yup. The Amestris government actually added to Katsuki's obsession about winning, heroics, and all that good stuff.

# A story of government incompetence, loopholes, and unfortunate series of coincidences # Or you can read it as Mitsuki keeps winning no matter what # Katsuki got that from his mom

[oneyanderegirl]

My Personal Experience as a Chinese American

I don’t generally make posts like this, but after the Atlanta shooting, where 6 Asian American women were killed, I wanted to write about my own personal experience with racism as a Chinese American. For years, I have had to deal with several instances where I would be put in situations that made me uncomfortable, annoyed, and angry at the people who decided it would be funny or fun to do so. Almost every time these instances happened, I could only suck it up and play it off as a joke, dismissing my own feelings and forcing myself to accept these situations.

Racism doesn’t just come in form of physical violence. In fact, I feel like for Asians especially, most of it comes from the acts of microaggressions, stereotyping, and general dismissiveness when Asians try to speak up about their experiences. This does not mean that physical violence against Asians does not exist. However, from my own personal experience, I have mostly seen it in its more subtle forms, as mentioned above.

Some people may wonder why didn’t I just speak up then? Why didn’t I just tell them to stop or fuck off with their racism? 

The most simple answer can come down to two reasons. The first reason, and probably biggest reason in my opinion, is the way the media has gaslighted society to accept casual racist remarks and stereotypes made towards Asians. The second reason is because of the way my parents have taught me to stay quiet in these situations because they are afraid of the consequences that could result in speaking up about these issues. 

The media has, for years, stereotyped Asians into being type casted into certain roles; fetishized its women, while mocking its men; and have made the same racist jokes over and over again with no criticism made towards them. Here are some examples: 

1. Characters with ascents being made as a punchline of some joke 

2. The amount of times Asian actors/actresses that have been type casted as martial artists or only selected to act in martial art themed movies 

3. The amount of times Asian actors/actresses that have played the “ lonely, nerdy kid that does nothing but study”  

4. The fetishization of Asian women in porn 

5. Asian men have “smaller dicks”, are “shorter”, and “less manly” compared to other races. 

When you grow up in an environment that constantly portrays Asians as these type of things, it eventually becomes something that you accept, even begrudgingly. To better understand what I mean by this, think about how drug dependence develops. When you constantly use the same drug, for example an opioid, your brain eventually develops a tolerance to it. When this occurs, you require a higher dosage of that same drug in order to feel the same effects that was felt at a lower dosage. Similarly, when the media constantly portrays Asians in this stereotypical manner, you eventually accept it as a part of American culture and require something more drastic to make you feel the same anger, annoyance, and uncomfortableness that caused you to speak up about it in the first place.  

The second reason that I wrote about is my parents. Before I elaborate more about this, I just want whoever is reading this to understand that I do not blame my parents in any way for teaching me to stay quiet about these situations. I hope that you do not either. Rather, I hope after reading this, you will better understand why I and so many other Asian Americans have been taught to stay quiet when dealing with microaggressions and other racial remarks and why it is so difficult to stand up against racism aimed towards us. 

The American dream is something that used to be, and still is, famously discussed and shown off around the world. It is this American ideology, having been passed along to many cultures, that became the reason why so many Asians have tried to immigrate here over the decades and decades of history. When you live in a country with raging war occurring, high poverty, oppressive government or a mix of all three, the people will always end up suffering. Doesn’t the American dream then, sound like the perfect way to escape such a life? 

Escaping such a country isn’t easy. It’s painful because not everyone makes it. Many immigrants end up leaving their entire lives behind. Some have to separate from close friends and family, where they may never see those people again. Others end up leaving their businesses or education behind. It’s not the same as traveling from state to state, they have to travel literally across the ocean, maybe even halfway across the world, to be able to even have a chance to enter this country.  

As if that wasn’t difficult enough, the new difficulties that comes with being an immigrant in a new country adds even more stress. The racism coupled with not being able speak English and having no money, property, or power are all things that many Asian immigrants had to face when they first came to the United States. My parents were no exception. 

For many years, my parents had to suffer working low paying jobs, deal with microaggressions, and being unable to connect with their friends and families, in order to save enough money to buy a home and build a life that could support me enough to allow me to build a stable life for myself. Even now, they are still working hard to make sure that I don’t suffer. 

Why? 

Because that is their American dream.  

That is all they, and many other Asian parents, have always wanted: to see their children live happy, financially stable lives without the suffrage that they were forced to experience in their country during their own life. 

Are they the perfect parents? No. Does this excuse everything? No. However, it does give you insight and understanding as to why they taught us to stay quiet and avoid trouble for all these years. It’s not because they think racism doesn’t exist or that it’s useless to speak up about these issues (though they may say this), it’s because they are afraid. They are afraid for their children. They are afraid of their children getting hurt, being forced under the same circumstances that they had worked so hard to escape from.  So for those parents, racial remarks means nothing to them if it means that they are able to survive and stay alive. It doesn’t mean that they like it, but if you had to choose between starving and living under the fear that the government may one day kill you for war or for going against their ideology versus racial remarks made by ignorant people, wouldn’t the answer be obvious? 

It is because of this, that is why I was always taught to stay quiet or to avoid trouble. That is why over the years, I have tried to push out my own feelings and forced myself to accept these situations. That is why I have always tried to go along with the racial remarks that people try to play off as a “joke” or dismiss these racial remarks as “ no big deal”.  Here are some examples that I have personally experienced over the years: 

1. Being called a “Chink”. 

2. The “ Guess-what-type-of-Asian-am-I game: “ Are you Vietnamese? Japanese?” or “ Where are you from?” or “ What are you?” in a disrespectful manner of speaking. 

3. “ You don’t look Chinese.” followed with “ You’re really dark for a Chinese person.” 

4. Slanted eyes made towards me to show that “ Look, I can be Asian too!!” 

5. “ I heard you eat babies for breakfast.” 

6. “ You’re Asian, you probably just study all day.” 

7. “ I can speak Chinese too: ching chong ling long!” 

8. “ Your eyes are too big to be Chinese,” or “ Your eyes are too small,” 

Nowadays, with the attacks against Asians being higher than ever, when I go out to buy groceries for my family or to go attend my classes, my parents are always afraid. They always tell me to come home as fast as possible. They tell me that they are scared that I am going to get shot by some racist or even worse, murdered. 

For years, we have tried to stay as quiet as possible, to make as little trouble as possible, and to tolerate those racial remarks made against us. Yet we are still being killed for trying to live peacefully amongst ourselves. We are being killed for existing. Worst of all, it is mostly our elderly and immigrant parents who are being targeted. Imagine experiencing so much hardship over the years, going across the continent to a completely new country, working your ass off and suffering for years before finally building a somewhat comfortable life for yourself, and then? You just randomly get killed off by some ignorant, racist murderer who decided they “had a bad day” or some other stupid, insignificant reason and chose you as their target. The American dream that they had worked hard and sought for years and years, all gone now, all because of that stupid, insignificant reason. The Asian Americans who have worked hard to build such a life, won’t ever be able to enjoy its benefits ever again because they are now dead. 

That is why, I have decided to speak up about it. That is why so many Asian Americans have decided to speak up about it. We are tired of staying silent. We are tired of having to keep our suffering quiet. Racism against Asian Americans have always existed. We have always suffered from racism. The myth that Asian Americans are the “ Model Minority” has always been just a way of dismissing our issues. 

So if you are reading this, please listen. Listen to our stories. Learn about our culture. 

Listen to us. 

[drwcn]

wangxian au: lan wangji is a music major taking an elective in introduction to anatomical sketching, and wei wuxian is the nude model who, as one student said in the class chat, is “the most perfect human specimen ever created”. Poor Lan Wangji is plagued with lots of inappropriate thoughts. His life gets even harder when he discovers Wei Wuxian has moved into the dorm room across the balcony from him and has a tendency to not close his curtains. 

Gusu is the name of the prestigious semi public-semi private university, mostly known for its Humanities, Arts and Music faculties. The Lan family founded the university and is still part of governing body. The Twin Jades are very understated, but have garnered a substantial fandom in campus, and maybe even extending to other campuses like the business school across town.

Lan Wangji is a sophomore. He lives in dorm even though he and his brother have their own place downtown because LXC thought it’d be a good opportunity for his lil brother to make some friends.

WWX is a talented artist who can't afford art school. He works three jobs to keep himself afloat: barista, art model for the university, and contact wall painter for a reno company. 

WWX doesn't really live in dorm. Technically he's not even a student there. The room he's staying in is Nie Huaisang's (a freshman) who doesn't need that room per say because he's got NMJ's empty apartment while NMJ's frequently off on business trips.

wwx’s old apartment’s landlord sold the apartment to move out of the country, and the new landlord is greedy and jacked up the price, so if NHS hadn’t offered WWX his dorm room, he’d be living in his ratty old second-hand Toyota. 

WWX’s parents died when he was very young, leaving him in the care of the Jiangs but the Jiangs also died in a plane crash not long after. While the Board of Directors of the Jiang's enterprise kept custody of the two heir/heiresses (Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli) they had no reason to keep hold of WWX so poor baby got put through the foster system.

wwx ran away when he was a teen, dropped out of high school and got in with the wrong crowd and went to juvie for a year. He has a tattoo of a bunny on his rib cage which makes LWJ weak. 

what wwx doesn’t know is that jyl and jc has been trying to find him since jyl came of age and wrangled the rights/control of her company from the greedy, greedy paws of the BoD. But his records were all sealed, so they have no clue where he is.

Technically, dormitories do not allow NHS to lend his room out to non-students, so for weeks, WWX paraded around his residence as NHS to make sure NHS doesn’t get into trouble. When Lan Wangji starts coming to hang with WWX, words travel fast. 

NMJ texting LXC: “Our little brothers???? Are banging??????” 

LXC texting Meng Yao: “I heard Wangji has started dating Huaisang, should I interfere? Have not seen it for myself, but I am concerned.” 

Mo Xuanyu (a high school senior and NHS’s best friend): “My dude, why has my brother just texted me about you possibly hooking up with Jade 2, what the fuck??” 

Wen Ning who goes to the same school as Mo Xuanyu and also a part-time barista with WWX says, “Did you know that Lan Zhan guy you keep talking about is dating my friend Mo Xuanyu’s best friend, Nie Huaisang???”   

LWJ knows WWX isn’t NHS bc he knows NHS from before, but he doesn’t bother correcting anyone until at family dinner, his Uncle Lan Qiren says: 

"Wangji, I want you to know that although I didn't initially approve, if you and Huaisang are happy together, than I support you."

LWJ, ".............................................."

Lan Wangji does not know Wei Wuxian is essentially homeless because WWX keeps saying he’s only living at NHS’s dorm because his own apartment flooded

Until NMJ comes back into town unexpectedly forcing NHS back into his dorm and WWX who hates imposing himself on other people goes to live in his car. 

Lan Wangji finds out, and brings Wei Wuxian back to his own dorm. 

In a day, words spread across campus like wild fire.

WWX reunites with the Jiangs when his boss is contracted to paint Jiang Cheng’s new apartment 

Jiang Yanli is devastated that her little brother is essentially homeless. “What do you mean A-Xian doesn’t have a home? What do you mean he can’t afford an education? What do you mean he works three jobs? Are you eating? Why are you so thin???? I -” 

Jiang Cheng cries for three hours straight but will throw hands if anyone dares to bring it up. 

LQR does not approve of WWX. “He has a criminal record!” Then for LQR's 50th birthday, LWJ brings a huge scroll painting of Cloud Recesses (the ancient private scholar academy that Gusu University was founded upon).

LQR: "....this is.....very impressive. Wangji I had no idea your dapple into visual arts was so fruitful. Are you switching majors?" LWJ: "No Uncle. I did not draw this. Wei Ying did."

Wei Wuxian *innocently* “Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, you’re so well formed, so symmetrical, so proportional, will you ever consider letting me draw you?”  

Lan Wangji *straight faced* “On one condition.” 

WWX, “name it.” 

LWJ, “Draw me like one of those French boys.” (LXC showed him the movie bc he knew his brother had a romantic side.) 

WWX  *chokes* 

WWX makes the sketch, but instead of a necklace it’s the Lan family wrist tie (a modern version of the head ribbon) that LWJ suggests they use, and it’s looped suggestively around his neck and one of his wrists.

From that point on, WWX starts making other (less salacious) drawings of LWJ, using different medium and different techniques in different settings (acrylic, oil, digital, watercolor and pencil sketches). He binds it into a portfolio, including the original “french” drawing, and names it Every Shade of Blue (Chinese ‘Lan’ = blue). He gifts it to LWJ. 

LWJ is blown away and suggests WWX use this to apply to Gusu and try for the scholarship. After some convincing, WWX agrees. 

But he forgets to remove the nude sketch of LWJ. 

Lan Xichen and other Lan Elders are on the admissions committee.

The ambulance had to be called. 

LWJ and JYL fight for the right to help pay for WWX’s tuition. Neither gets the opportunity, because WWX wins the scholarship.  

[king-killaway]

It's hard to talk about how badly this country, (Untied Sates) has brainwashed its citizens without sounding like a conspiracy theory nut or something of the like.

Every single media that's ever been released by a studio with ties to anything with public opinion is completely Pro-USA propaganda.

The best examples of this is any action movie that uses the US military. Movies that require government approval. And I don't mean, "yeah you're good you didn't screw up a couple of facts", I mean a whole damn, "good you paint the US as the good guys and everything else as bad and evil."

News stations that get funding directly from in House politicians or hell even the ex president (I'm looking at you Fox News).

All of it is subtle too. The propaganda begins at an early age here in the "good ol' US of A", reciting the Pledge of Allegiance from kindergarten everyday up until high school. To the very addition of seminary classes in said high schools even though there's supposed to be "Separation of Church and State".

Even simple things such as ad campaigns that bombard you daily to the point you only take in what they're saying subconsciously. Its become such a normal thing to hear about the newest model of the iPhone that you don't even realize they make them to break in a year or two, just to extort you of your money.

Its fabricated into the very veins of this country that if you "just work hard enough" you can do anything, be anyone. Lies. It's all lies intentionally written to make you feel guilty about being "lazy" because you're not successful, when in reality if you're born poor you'll likely never move any higher on the class scale.

Public education was a driving force of what our country was founded on, but is public education free? No. Not even mandatory education such as grade, middle, and high schools are free. If you send even just one child to school K-12 you'll spend around 200$ to 3,000$+ per year just to have one child in "free public education", and that's just the known costs. More are hidden away in your taxes.

Healthcare is an utter sham. Private pharmaceutical companies are outright inhumane and unethical, but under the facade of Capitalism are completely normalized.

Similarly, privately owned and run prisons are just slavery 2.0. Using underpayed labor to make things like the licence plates on your car. Or forcing them into unsafe working environments, "volunteering" them as firefighters and construction workers. Most prisoners make around 0.25 cents per hour of work and spend almost all of that back to the private prison system for basic necessities like hygiene items. When prisoners are released back into the general public, they've received almost nothing to help them rehabilitate into society and are then brought back into prison for repeating crimes. It's a purposely built cycle to keep minorities suppressed and felons, most of which are there for nonviolent offenses, unable to return to society and reliant on the prison system. The system that then thrives via a workforce that will never deplete and cannot legally unionize.

Engrained even further is the idea of a Nuclear family, an idea only ever truly accomplished by already well off straight white citizens. It is then therefore fault on the individual for failing to meet society's standards of a successful life. May poor and marginalized families are unable to meet this unnecessary standard, specifically Latino families are targeted the hardest by this. It also demonizes any families that have gone through a divorce or families that live in two separate parts of the world.

Christianity is the standard in the US, this is evident from any piece of government document you read. It's a line in the Pledge of Allegiance, which as already mentioned is in itself propaganda dug into child from the moment they start school, "In God We Trust". However, allegedly you have freedom of religion, meaning you can freely practice any religion in the United States without persecution, but that doesn't mean its without bias. Specifically Muslims and Jews are targeted the worst here, especially after 9/11. (Which if you really dig into that event's history you find some pretty fucked up shit the US did, which included the funding and gifting of money, weapons, and military training to ISIS.) Events that you will likely never learn about in a textbook.

You'll also probably never learn about the true extent of the Red Scare on US soil in a textbook either. When US military would stalk and murder suspected "Communist" in its own country. Most of which who died were in fact not Russian Spies, but rather protesters of the Cold War. Plenty of which had access to the creation and distribution of media, specifically movies. Plenty of directors in Hollywood were killed for no other reason that because someone who didn't personally like them called in and accused them of "Communist behavior".

Need I remind people that the holiday of Thanksgiving exists? The celebration of death and plauge to Native Americans within their own homes because of colonization. That before Black Africans were shipped over as property, Natives were originally used as slaves and brutality murdered.

That last year police started riots at peaceful protests, well within constitutional rights, and to top it off the ex president started an insurrection which led to the storming of November 3rd.

And this is all just the tip of the iceberg that is USA propaganda, a system built around keeping minorities from being able to accomplish anything with first "proving" themselves worthy. A system built around Wealthy Christian, White Nuclear families and little room for anyone else. An entire country built on over inflated pride and ego without the guts to own up to its mistakes.

The United States is broken and the first step to fixing this country is to understand what's wrong.

[m143ui]

A MESSAGE TO THE PJO FANDOM

so hello friends on the other side

I understand some of the major concerns regarding characters like piper and the feather and hazels description but when you bring Leo and Reyna into the fucking conversation I have lost all respect.

ANYONE CAN BE ABUSED, ETHNICITY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT

LATINO CHARACTERS

Reyna is not a negative stereotype, she isn't defined by being latina and neither is Leo, he isn't a stereotype simply because he’s latino and was abused. also him being called an elf was because he was short, which had nothing to do with him being latino. also the mamacita comment like y'all hide under the label “progressive” but ignore that mamacita has been a thing in Latin American communities for a fucking while. its not an insult dammit. its something that happens in our communities!!! its like saying muchacho y'all don't see men bitching about that.

also shocker I read the mamacita comment and I can proudly say I didn't go

“RICK YOU RACIST BITCH”

things that actually happen in communities aren't racist

and before any of y'all come at me with the usual you’re white excuse, hello friends im Peruvian and Paraguayan.

I don't think he’s perfect but bitching about characters like Leo which gave many of my Latin American friends hope for similar characters destroys your “listening to minorities” argument

also the lol “hes Mexican taco bad” argument like I live in Mexico we eat tacos like every fucking day. its literally a fact. and Leo isn't just defined as taco man.

believe it or not us latinos respect rick because he gave us role models and characters like us. we don't define a character by one line and instantly call discrimination. like yes a asian character can be snobby it has nothing to do with ethnicity. y'all are making this about ethnicity. an asian character can be anything, just like a white character or a black character or a gay character. people are not simply defined by their labels like ya’ll think. y'all are just a bunch of easily triggered snowflakes that can't live with that. they can be influenced but in the end labels are labels we are all human and should be treated as such.

LGBT REPRESENTATION

another thing Reyna was never officially a lesbian that was YOUR interpretation not riordans. IF HE DIDNT STATE IT , SORRY HONEY IT ISN’T CANON! I don't care about how she was “lesbian coded” if he didn't state it it isn't canon. 

I am so sick, as a lesbian, to see people use ALL QUEER DEATHS as a bury your gay tropes, what happened to seeing us as humans? why can't we be treated like any other character? if we die we die, it isn't always “haha gay evil boom death”. sometimes fully fledged characters have to die friends.

Nico isn't a bad gay character, he’s just a normal character who happens to be gay and has suffered major trauma. HIS TRAUMA WAS CAUSED BY HIS UPBRINGING, Nico isn't a 2000′s character, he’s from the 30′s, so obviously he woudn’t be perfect with his sexuality for gods sake it was the 30′s. the exact same thing happens with hazel, she isn't a modern black woman, she's a 30′s black woman. Nico’s coming out isn't him as a 21st century teen its from the time when the GOVERNMENT KILLED YOU FOR BEING GAY

also saying there are no lesbian characters? like wow look emmie and jo don't exist. Lavinia doesn't exist. poison doesn't exist. thanks fam you really make yourselves look smart here. simply because rick never said the word gay doesn't mean the gay characters don't exist friends. they are just labeled as what gay characters should be labeled as.... human.

LESBOPHOBIA & RACISM

im not educated in muslim or black culture so I won't mention characters like sam and hazel and piper because I respect and I am highly critical of what rick put in his books to describe these specific minorities.

HOWEVER saying rick is a lesbophobe, a homophobe, a racist a sexist cis guy is like do y’all wanna be taken seriously? use arguments don't hide behind words.

rick isn't a perfect writer but y'all really don't know how to criticise, y'all just hide behind big boy words and back it up with no evidence, just opinions.

rick doesn’t have the best minority rep out there but he is damn well trying and I respect that unlike all you fucking idiots.

SHIPS

now onto ships.... yay

frazel: im not gonna censor it like you pussies, believe it or not 13&16 year old relationships exist. they might not always be healthy but they exist. to deny this is to be stupid

solangelo:  another ship that is censored..the main argument I've seen is that it isn't developed and will isn't even a character... he was in last olympian and lost hero not my fault y'all have fish brains. I don't care if you dislike it but don't be like “ANYONE WHO SHIPS THIS IS AN ABUSIVE WHORE” like wow you always preach about accepting all ships and then throw this? also if you hate solangelo because of the “abuse” but ship percico like hi friends Nico is 4 years younger than Percy.. if y'all hate frazel because of the 3 year age difference y'all should hate this too.

CONCLUSIONS AND SHIT

not every character minority or otherwise is gonna be the way you want them to be, believe it or not any character can be anything, black characters can be loud, white characters can be loud. if they're only loud because “haha black” then THATS an issue not the simple existence of a loud black woman who has a loud personality.

y'all be here bitching about drew and I've never heard the asian perspective of this? just a bunch of black and white people telling asians they should be offended. was that just an uno reverse?

also last point stereotypes aren't always a negative thing and y'all need to get that in your heads.

anyway stay mad hoes <3

from a sane Peruvian <3

EDIT

I saw this beauty and had to comment on it

“having LGBT characters experience abuse and violence. nicos forceful outing rubs me the wrong way, especially because hes called a coward for being in the closet. its violent and kind of disturbing to make your gay character come out of the closet by force. maybe write better. additionally, alex's abusive father and subsequent homelessness because of her being trans is badly written.”

oh noooo gay characters can't deal with homophobia anymore ! like I can tell you have never been punched for being gay. is it bad to showcase how trans and gay ppl are 40% of homeless youth? or is even mentioning that discrimination? believe it or not some of us live in countries where people try to kill us. you have an advantage and it shows. about the coward thing... 

was FUCKING CUPID A GOOD CHARACTER? NO? I REST MY CASE. CUPID IS NOT SEEN AS A GOOD PERSON THEREFORE HE IS NOT A GOOD PERSON GET THAT IN YOUR THICK SKULLS.

 YOU HEARD IT HERE FOLKS LGBT FOLKS DONT GET FORCED OUT OF THE CLOSET 

#NEVER HAPPENS IN REALITY. 

JUST BECAUSE YOU WERENT FORCED OUT OF THE CLOSET DOESNT MEAN OTHER PEOPLE HAVE THAT SAME LUXURY. 

maybe stop spewing bullshit <3

(so I get that this scene can remind people of being outed and it can hurt them however this scene was never intended to be a good thing it literally says Nico is scared of facing his emotions)

EDIT NUMBER 2

oh boy rick really pissed off the snowflakes that I share a fandom with

“give Nico to the gays” no? he would be a femboy and they would yeet his trauma like ssrsly?

also hate rick? bitch no one is forcing you to read his tweets.

death of the author is such a toxic thing like the mans is alive boo he aint going nowhere..like What the fuck 

EDIT NUMBER 3

anyway final thoughts on this :

nico insn’t Uwu gay and its an insult to his character

Reyna is not a lesbian canonically (neither is Thalia)

Leo and Reyna are not racist

none of ricks characters are  written as insults to their communities

and if I see one more “but ....phobia/ ...ism I will do very illegal things

peace lol

RICK RIORDAN UPDATE:

congratulations rick antis! you have successfully harassed a  56 year old man into leaving social media! wow so progressive!!!! this totally won't backfire or anything!!!

all jokes aside all of you who harassed rick to the point of someone else taking over his social media should feel ashamed

[decayandfanfics]

The great book of sayings

PAIRINGS: Tomura Shigaraki x FemReader

SUMMARY: He looks at you, his scarlet eyes fixed on yours, burning a hole through your head, every bit the predator he is, but you are as tough as it gets, so, against your better judgment and any well-founded logic, you answer his silent threat, the animalistic look he gives you with nothing less than a fearless smirk, irises burrowing into his pupils.A clever girl. He thinks, finally labeling you inside his head, cursing himself in the very moment he allows his brain to think of you as more than an asset. He is sure (he knows himself enough to know) he’ll think of this moment many times from now on.A clever pretty girl.

Reader is a typical college student until she gets herself tangled with the league of villains.

WARNINGS: Unhealthy/complicated relationships, violence, Tomura being Tomura, mentions of murder, heroes’ abuse of power, smut later.

A/N: I’m trying so hard to write crusty boy here really in character. At least after AfO is taken. Any misspelled words, english is not my native language so i’m trying Helen.

__________________________________________________________

Chapter 5 / Chapter 6

Honesty is the best policy.

She’s odd.

And that’s rich coming from him.

She’s weird in a soft homely way. In the way she speaks kindly but firm, always minding her own business, but pretty aware of everything is happening inside her little apartment.

He watches her taking notes, reading something in her laptop, fully concentrated. A bunch of colored highlights and sticky notes spreading in the study her study space, in a corner of her room.

It’s funny how after an hour or so she melts in the chair and begins to cry quietly hiding her face on her hands.

Five minutes later the alarm goes off, she stands up, washes her face and resumes her task.

What the fuck?

It’s not like he cares for her or what she feels, but that little display is so fucking weird, it caught his attention, so he asks.

“why are you crying?”

“I’m not crying.” She says with a serene smile painted in her face.

“Liar. you were crying like...five minutes ago.”

I don’t appreciate liars. He thinks briefly.

“oh, that…I always cry when I study.”

“…why?” he’s completely confused at her explanation because it doesn’t match her tranquil face.

“because I’m stressed and I’m finding difficult to understand this topic, I grow desperate. So, I cry.”

He looks at her like she grew another head.

“…you cry when you are stressed?”

“When I’m college stressed, yes. I mean…college does that to you, to everybody. Half of my class is on anxiolytics.”

“are you on anxiolytics?” he asks more and more confused.

She laughs lighthearted.

“no, I don’t have the money to pay for a psychiatrist. But I manage…Tons of coffee and programed crying while I study does it good for me.”

Tomura looks at her puzzled. He rarely thought about what it is to be twenty something and have a normal life. This is not what he had in mind.

She keeps taking notes in complete silence, a picture of a nasty fracture with some screws attached on her screen, but she seems pretty okay with the gory part of her task.

“Why did you want to become a doctor?” he interrupts her again.

“hmmm…I guess I wanted to save people.”

“like a hero?” He asks, snarling the word.

“maybe, I think my concept of heroes might be different from yours.” She states keeping her eyes glued to the screen.

“how so?” he eyes her, suspicious.

“I think that hero es a very big word, like doctor. People call physicians doctors, but the true meaning is someone who has a PHD.”

“and…?”

“and you have these “heroes” who go saving the day because is their profession, but the true meaning of the word doesn’t have anything to do with agencies and schools. A hero is someone who helps others but does it by incarnating important traits for the ones he saves.”

“Traits?”

“yes, traits. Like…I can be saved for a so-called hero, but if he’s not kind in the meanwhile, I wouldn’t think of it as much as heroic. That’s why anyone can be a hero to someone else, and at the same time not all heroes are heroes for everybody. It’s the same for villains.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, it depends on your own morals and needs. You could kill a man tomorrow and people would say you are a monster, and then find out he was violent to his wife and children, and somehow now you are a little boy’s hero because you freed him from his monstrous father.”

“You think evil is in the eye of the beholder?”

“Not evil perse, there are things that are just wrong, but I think villainy and heroics are a matter of perspective.”

He waits before asking the next.

“and what’s your perspective?”

She brushes off the answer like is nothing. Like his heart is not pounding heavily inside his cage, fixed in her expression trying to grasp any lie in her statement.

“It has to do with politics, to be honest. I think right now, a very specific part of heroes is being super idolized. The ones who fight are treated like royalty by the government, paying them with our taxes, when that money could be used for rehab, hospitals or mental illness treatment. You see, thieves and murderers are not a factor, but a product of lack of opportunities. Monsters are made, not born. Of course, there are evil people, psychopaths and all that, but they are a minority. So, we pay Endeavor tons of money for him to fight with some random criminal every week, meanwhile children are starving in the streets, then those same children turn to violence and crime and who’s fault is that? But it’s okay, we can always pay some random dude in a leotard to beat the shit out of them. I mean, I had the opportunity of an education that will allow me to live pretty well-off tomorrow, but how many people has that? I cannot ask a person who grew up in a violent environment, poverty or homeless to be well adjusted, because morals are a luxury when you are hungry, and there are so many ways to starve a child. Not only food, but guidance, care, and love, but you cannot measure it in numbers, so no one cares.”

He looks at her aghast. Something warm feeling the hole in his chest.

She looks so pretty when she talks like this. Full of resolve, her brilliance shining through her clear opinions.

“do you hate heroes?” he asks full of something akin to hope.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Shigaraki, but no. I don’t hate them. If anything, I feel sorry for them, because they have this massive impossible task of trying to save everyone, which is simply not accomplishable, meanwhile society keeps rolling over everything wrong like it’s not everybody’s business. I mean, it’s not Hawks or Endeavor, even All might’s obligation to care for the poor, the ill and the abandoned. That’s what’s the government is for.”

He licks his lips absentminded, thinking about her words for a moment. The great difference between them plainly obvious to him now.

She’s partial, compassionated and well adjusted to the model despite everything she knows. So, she works with what she has. Meanwhile he is an absolutist, he knows that. He doesn’t have in him the nerve to do anything in half. That’s why he hates and craves destruction as the only meaning to achieve his goal. As an outcast, he knows he’s every bit the monster society make him be and they all will pay for the life he didn’t got the chance to have.

Still, he takes what she offers as he always does. Her knowledge now saved like some advice, a confirmation of everything he wants to destroy.

A smile stretches across his face, his ruby eyes memorizing the curve or her cheeks.

Pretty when she smiles. He thinks, a self-indulgent thought he will allow for now.

“what?” she asks suddenly nervous, color rising to her ears out of the blue.

“you know what? You could be a wonderful villain.” He tells her smiling truly amused.

“oh” she smiles back “you have no idea.”

Chapter 7

[brandyspringsluxury]

Isaac Adams

32 - 6’7” - 210 lbs || he/him || Room 210 || Charming Hacker Vigilante 

He’s tall and is all muscle. He can pick up a beer keg over his head and throw it and he looks it too. He’s got very pale skin and it’s largely unblemished until he starts getting more physically involved in his vigilante bullshit.

 He’s got a long, straight nose that’s convex and thin, down turned lips. He’s starting to get crows feet and laugh lines, but no other wrinkles. He’s got dirty blonde hair and its starting to grey slightly underneath. He keeps his hair like the classic military cut with the slightly longer top that’s gelled up slightly and the tighter crisper sides and back. He’s got thick but groomed brows that would start inching towards a unibrow if he let it. Can’t tan, like physically impossible. Doesn’t have ANY moles, freckles, etc either. Skin looks fucking porcelain. Got a thick chest and TITTIES. He’s got a huge CAKE of an ass too. Thighs that could kill in seconds that are all strong and thick and inviting to sit on. Wide shoulders, wide enough even the biggest people could ride those things. Makes anyone with a size kink go brr. Has a dazzling smile with straight, white teeth. Takes really good care of his nails and gets manicures with a clear coat top, no color. Could be a model if he wanted but likes staying inside too much. 

If it weren’t for his height and stature you would never guess he could ruin someone’s life. Charismatic, energetic, and charming he looks younger than he is, too. Very kind and caring, empathetic (or so it seems) and very funny. Doesn’t know anything about his heritage, took his parent’s death bed confessions to know that they were from Russia and had changed their whole identities coming to America. Never told him their birth names or anything about Russia. Refuses to do genetic testing like 23andme or anything similar to respect his parents’ wishes. Surely there’s a reason they don’t want him knowing… Doesn’t look it but is very tech savvy and can hack government databases if he wants. Uses the dark web, but for the most mundane shit. Doesn’t condone or like the really gross stuff he finds on the dark web and takes out newer criminals getting into it through anonymous tips with proof to the government on a highly protected vpn. Can’t take out larger players in the game (like the Owner) without protection (or more of a gang) but stops other criminals from making the world worse; Vigilante shit. 

Grew up in a suburban area as if he were like any other American child- except his parents had an accent and all the other kids’ didn’t. It was pretty normal, except for the fact that his parents gave him unmonitored access to the internet at an early age and the freedom to do whatever the fuck he wanted, really. Because of this, he was exposed to a lot of really fucked up shit really early on. Learned coding and hacking early on and the exposure only got worse. It explains his apathy, sadism, and immoral/deplorable sexual interests. That being said, he had a best friend throughout his public education that taught him a lot about empathy and emotional vulnerability and general moral codes where his parents may have neglected. For example, he likes a lot of really gross, awful shit but knows limits and won’t bring up unless he knows for a fact that his potential partner was as fucked up as he was and they brought up a lot of their own gross kinks first. Very weird moral compass, but a very strict one due to his parents and his friend. Not much to note throughout his childhood, most of the interesting stuff that he got into in his life happened late high school or after graduation.