#dehumanizing a 1 year old won’t make you a better person

[queenwille]

how can some people go to bed at night satisfied that they ripped off/defaced posters of actual civilians being held as war hostages just to make a point

well idk, couldn’t be me but sure go off you’re doing great honey fighting for human rights

[linkspooky]

Like some kind of “Man-Child”

Shigaraki is constantly compared to a child by the other characters around him. Whether it’s the staff at UA calling him a manchild, Ujiko saying he’s a twenty year old brat who has accomplished nothing with his life, or Spinner saying he chases his dreams like a child, Shigaraki’s immaturity and underdeveloped psyche is something constantly commented upon others. 

There are two questions to ask now. One, why did Shigaraki turn out this way, and two what does it mean for his character and future growth? 

1. An Immature Manchild, A Worthless Twenty-Something, The Trash of Society. 

Shigaraki is constantly described by others as acting like a child. In most cases it’s used to insult and demean him, and also to point out his lack of any real tangible goal. 

However, Shigaraki’s childish tendencies, his egocentrism, his lack of ability to see the consequences for his actions, and his emotional instability are not a reflection of whether he is a good or bad person, it’s a reflection of his upbringing. This is an important point I want to make before we continu, the hero system uses all of the signs that Shigaraki shows up legitimate mental illness to dehumanize him and make him out to be a “dangerous psycho” rather than to show him any real sympathy. 

All Might’s analyses him at length and comes to the conclusion not that this is an unstable person who shows clear signs of mental illness, but rather that the signs of mental illness he shows makes him a bad person. All of these traits that Shigaraki shows are used constantly by his enemies, heroes and villains alike to unperson him. 

Once again, Shigaraki acting like a child is not a reflection of whether or not he’s a good or bad person. It’s a product of trauma and his upbringing. Heroes seem to be under the impression that a good person would simply not suffer or react negatively to any trauma. Shigaraki doesn’t grow up not because he doesn’t want to grow up and wants to remain an immature manchild forever, it’s because he was raised deliberately. 

Developmental psychology is a scientific approach which aims to explain growth, change and consistency though the lifespan. ... Developmental psychologists study a wide range of theoretical areas, such as biological, social, emotion, and cognitive processes. 

Shigaraki was raised in an environment where he could not healthily develop into an adult. 

A child’s behaviour is an outward manifestation of inner stability and security. It is a lens through which the family physician can observe the development of the child throughout his or her life. All types of abuse are damaging to children—physically, emotionally, and psychologically—and can cause long-term difficulties with behaviour and mental health development.

Seeing the world from other people’s points of view. Thinking about the consequences of your actions. Processing your emotions and stress in healthy ways. These are all things children learn in the process of growing into adults. However, it’s a learned behavior not a natural one. The idea that people, children, are either born good or bad and will develop based on some internal qualities of goodness or badness is patently false. Children who receive no adult supervision growing up just turn feral and have no ego at all. The ego, or rather identity is something both heavily influenced by the interactions with the adults that raise them and interactions with members of the same peer group.

Shigaraki, raised in a basement with entirely selective and controlled interactions with others that were always underneath AFO’s direct supervision and his thumb, who probably did not even get that much freedom until the UA attack is just barely one step above a feral child who has no adult supervision at all. 

These three behaviors: 

Lack of Empathy.

Cannot View the Consequences of his Actions

Cannot handle emotions, setbacks and stress 

They’re all explainable by specific manipulations that AFO introduced to him as a child. “Shigaraki feels no guilt for what he does” said by almost every hero who interacts with him, but this is completely incorrect. The truth is Shigaraki is constantly made to feel guilty. 

He hates himself, and constantly holds back his quirk because he still feels guilt for what happened to his family due to the accidental activation of his quirk. 

He accepts the entirety of the blame for what happened for his family, and therefore views himself as a monster. This is what Shigaraki unconsciously believes and accepts, that he deserves to constantly be punished and tormented without relief for what he did for his family and that he can’t be saved. 

These are not the actions of a person who feels no guilt. However, at the same time Shigaraki is seeking some relief from his suffering, he wants to be saved even though he believes he doesn’t deserve it. Therefore, AFO manipulates him into believing he doesn’t have to feel guilty for destroying the people he wants to destroy. This is literally the exact tactic that Chisaki used on Eri. 

Tenko is constantly made to feel guilty for what he did to his family, and because of that he’s dependent on what AFO told him would make him feel better. Just like Chisaki convincing Eri that it was her fault that people who tried to save her died made her return to Chisaki.

Shigaraki doesn’t show any emotional maturity because he can’t. Being surrounded by your peers, being in a healthy environment, being taught lessons by the adults around you these are all things you learn growing up. We are shown constant signs that Shigaraki’s childhood was constantly barren. He was raised in a room that was entirely blank. 

AFO controlled everything about his life. He didn’t even give him toys or books until he started murdering people, and we see that same room several years later almost completely unchanged from the way it was when he was a kid. 

Shigaraki’s entire world was that one room. It’s even remarked that he wasn’t allowed to attend any kind of school. 

Shigaraki was raised to have his entire world revolve around AFO’s desires for him. Shigaraki even acknowledges that he doesn’t even really want to accomplish AFO’s dream and knows it won’t satisfy him. It’s something that’s forced down his throat, but also what Shigaraki views as his only path forward. Shigaraki as a person doesn’t exist outside of AFO’s goals for him because he wasn’t raised or nurtured to be a person just a thing that wants destruction. 

And, the reason Shigaraki continues to follow down the path set by him by All for One is a rather childish one too. This is once again where Shigaraki’s foiling with Chisaki is illustrative of his character. 

This is how Shigaraki reacts when forcibly separated from AFO. Crying and begging like a child ripped away from their parent, completely helpless without him. AFO doesn’t act like a parent at all, but for Shigaraki he’s the closest possible thing. Shigaraki still believes that he owes AFO for saving him all those years back. 

Shigaraki and Chisaki are the core of their beings are propelled by this idea that they need to repay their father figures for taking them in. They have this childish desire to make their father figures happy and please them, that’s just as true to their nature as their destructive impulses. So, they act like they were shaped to be. Chisaki acts like the perfect Yakuza member, and Shigaraki as the perfect symbol of destruction. They are both desperately trying to be what their parents want them to be. 

Shigaraki can’t handle any setbacks or stress, because he is constantly stressed. He was raised to feel nauseatingly sick of himself all of the time. 

Eri can’t act like a normal child because even after removed from Chisaki’s influence, the emotoinal wounds Chisaki left on her don’t magically go away. It’s not about being a good or bad child, it’s about being trapped in a certain unhealthy way of thinking. 

Shigaraki’s not entitled and emotionally immature. He’s emotionally stunted, and deliberately raised that way. If you could say he was raised at all. His captor had no interest in him as a person. He exists to be a pet revenge project against All Might, to turn Shimura Nana’s descendant into an unstable little bomb that explodes and takes out All Might with him. 

The person who raised him constantly threw him into danger with no regard for his well being. He expected Stain to try to kill Tomura when they met and stopped Kurogiri for interfereing for his safety. He expected All Might to beat the shit out of him and for the UA attack to fail. This goes back all the way to the beginning. 

He exposed Shigaraki to dangerous people who would beat him up, insult him, and belittle him. People that deliberately reminded Shigaraki of his abuser. 

So he would be constantly made to feel unsafe and unstable. Shigaraki has no emotional stability because he was constantly raised in an unstable environment, it’s not hard to remain sane in that environment, it’s downright impossible. 

2. Children can Grow Up

This is a theme we’ve seen repeat itself three times. A child is murdered and has their name taken away by their paternal abusers, and they make it into adulthood (despite symbolically dying as a child) with entirely different names and identities. Takami Keigo grows up into Hawks, Touya grows up into Dabi, Shimura becomes Shigaraki. However, all three of them as adults are malformed and still clinging onto the hurt feelings that they held as a child. Shigaraki and Dabi literally both look like corpses, and Hawks has literally no personality or name outside of being a hero. 

It’s not a reflection of who they are as people, it’s a reflection that they were not raised to be people. However, Shigaraki is constantly remarked on as a child capable of growing up. 

Spinner, Shigaraki’s friend sees the good side of his childishness. He is someone who late in life, is still learning and developing empathy. We see him change over the course of the story. Shigaraki who claims that he doesn’t care about anything besides destruction, also specifically states that he won’t destroy his companions hopes and dreams. 

Shigaraki who is presented as a person who is entirely devoid of empathy, is shown being able to deal with somebody like Twice perfectly. Not only does he listen to Twice’s demands that they rescue Giran. 

He also knows how to make Twice listen, and then carefully places his mask back on again to calm him down afterwards. He deals with him like a person and is accomodating of his quirks. 

Shigaraki makes it deliberately a point that he’s not okay with someone else playing around with Twice’s feelings. 

He also tells Twice to make saving Giran and protecting him a priority when he plans on finishing Rikiya himself. 

All of this consideration for the feelings of an individual. Shigaraki’s empathy has grown and developed to the point where he can imagine the feelings of other people outside himself. Now compare this to the way Hawks deals with Twice. Shigaraki finds trampling all over the feelings of Twice as unforgivable, whereas Hawks brags to Twice’s face how easy it was to deceive him. He belittles him and rubs salt in the wound. 

Hawks can only accept Twice as a good person. It’s Shigaraki who gives a home to those who have no other home, the outcasts, the bad people that heroes would never save. 

Shigaraki who understood how important Twice’s feelings for his friends are, built his entire plan against the MLA around saving Giran, and Twice’s own desires to want to help his friend Giran and pay him back for giving him a place to belong. Hawks literally goes out of his way to single out Twice as the only one he can save and not extend the same helping hand to his friends. Shigaraki recognizes Twice’s feelings for his friends, Hawks goes out of his way to trample on the friends that Twice finds so precious. 

Hawks wants to save Twice but doesn’t understand him as a person. Shigaraki has created a place where people like Spinner, Toga, Compress, Twice, Dabi are all accepted and valued as people. Shigaraki’s childishness is both a good and bad thing. It shows that even after all of this trauma, the core of who Shigaraki is has not changed. 

He is still the kid who deliberately plays with the kids on the playground who get left out. Who states that he specifically wants to be a hero because there were kids who were left out of being played. And who wanted to be a hero even when he knew his father would severely disapprove of it and kept that dream in his heart. 

Shigaraki is still Shimura Tenko. He’s not the child who wanted to be a hero, or the child who wanted to destroy to make the pain go away, he’s both at the same time and that’s where his complexity comes from. Shigaraki like anybody else is capable of good and bad, but what’s especially important about his arc is that we’ve been shown that when removed from underneath the thumb of his abusers, and surroudned by his found family in the league Shigaraki gets better and is able to begin seeing the emotions and feelings of other people outside of him, and becomes a more empathic person. He is a child yes, but also a child capable of growing up. 

It’s also important to remember his arc. When Shigaraki is fighting for the league he always succeeds (against the Yakuza, against MLA). He only ever fails, and relapses (such as his current failure in the hero war arc raid) when he believes that he has to follow the dream laid out for him by AFO. It’s almost as if Shigaraki was intended from the start to shake off AFO’s influence of him and eventually grow into his own person. Shigaraki is a child waiting to grow up, he’s still Shimura Tenko, and he should be allowed that chance to grow past his abuse. He might never become a hero but by the end of the story he deserves to be his own person, not AFO’s thing. 

[whumpcollector]

Project CHIMERA Pt.1: A New Age

Hey everyone. I’ve had this little project stewing for a long while. I’m experimenting with the writing style and such so please give me any feedback you have! (Also formatting this thing has been a nightmare so if anything comes off as difficult to read please lmk and ill fix it)

TW: Dehumanization. Themes of imperialism. Descriptions of blood and injury.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dr. Yarru’s Personal Log

Entry 1

Date: Celendor 3, 991

It is a glorious day. Truly it is. Today marks the beginning of project CHIMERA. I have been assigned to lead this project by Emperor Vystlat himself, an honor I intend to prove myself worthy of. The equipment is still being set up and the facility brought to full function, but within the week we will be able to begin the production of the first batch of clones. All going well we will have our first subjects by the end of Celendor.This will be a new age for the empire.

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Dr. Yarru’s Personal Log

Entry 4

Date: Celendor 12, 991

The first batch of clones are growing better than anticipated. Within two days they have already passed the embryonic stages and have reached infancy. If this rate continues they will be juveniles within three days at most, and we will be able to begin the initial stages of CHIMERA ahead of schedule. This is better than I ever could have hoped for. Soon the need for the empire’s children to die in order to spread our prosperity will be gone. Soon, the glory of the empire will go uncontested.

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                                   ---Security Clearance Level: 5---

Official Report of Progress: Project CHIMERA

Date: Celendor 12, 991

My glorious Emperor Vystalt,I am more than pleased to report that project CHIMERA’s progress has been greater than I ever anticipated. The first batch of clones have reached the juvenile stage and are being awoken as I write this report. After a day of acclimation we will be able to begin their training. Initial physiological tests have revealed that cell growth rates and immune system responses are greatly enhanced compared to the average human’s. With further research we may be able to adapt these properties to other medical fields. While I do not wish to get ahead of myself, the prospective avenues of research are truly promising.

I shall personally inform you of any and all major developments.

May our glory shine upon the world,

-Dr.Archimedes Yarru

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Dr. Yarru’s Personal Log

Entry 6

Date: Celendor 13, 991

It appears that our genetic manipulation has worked a bit...too well. These clones are not the blank slates that we had anticipated, but have managed to develop personalities during their time in incubation. The good news is that the information we imprinted them with during the incubation phase has stuck as well. We won’t need to teach them the basics. In theory their training can continue as normal, but some issues have reared their ugly heads. We are already receiving resistance to the idea of training from some of the subjects, and an alarming amount of them have developed dispositions that aren’t exactly compatible with being a soldier. Still, this is a minor setback at most and I have been assured by the training staff that things will progress as intended. I hope they know what they’re doing, but the emperor chose them personally so they must be good at their job.

Despite this hiccup I can’t help but be hopeful for the future. Every other aspect of CHIMERA has gone off without a hitch. I’m already seeing promising results from my initial tests of the clone’s blood and muscle cells. I will have to study them closer to get better results, but that will come in time.

Damn it's been 22 hours since I last slept. I should probably do that now.

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Celendor-15-991

To: allstaff

Subject: Plans going forward and clarification of CHIMERA details

It has come to my attention that there has been some confusion throughout the staff, both due to the unforeseen personalities of the clones and with general project protocol. Allow me to rectify these issues here.

[1] The classification of all subjects are as follows. Please remember this to avoid any failures of communication in the future.

Stage gamma: Subjects in the initial stages of testing. They will physically resemble adolescents, generally ages 12-15.

Stage beta: Subjects that are through initial training stages and have been curated into specified roles to receive specialized training. They will also reach physical maturity, resembling 20-22 year olds before their biological development and aging slows.

Stage alpha: Subjects that have finished training and are capable of being sent into the field.

Note: The ages attached to each stage are to provide a reference point to help identify subjects at a glance. Subject’s early rapid aging and the subsequent cessation of said aging makes any attempts at estimating age past a certain point futile. Please refrain from doing so

Addendum: This also means that there will be no attempts at assigning or recognizing birthdays. Yes Arthur, we mean you. Sate your addiction to cake on your own time

[2] Despite the unintended development of personality within subjects all current training protocols and methods will be utilized. The head of the training staff has asked that I pass along this message 

    *[While I understand that these new developments may be difficult to handle for some of you, it is imperative to remember that these clones are not people. They are more akin to automatons or even puppets. There will likely be many attempts to resist our training, do not waver. These clones are meant to be the bulwark of the empire. They need to be forged and tempered into weapons of war. If that requires us to break them first we must accept that. Use a heavy hand, accept not disobedience, and do whatever it takes to ensure the compliance of the clones.

                                                                                            Taskmaster Grestin]

[3] Remember that project CHIMERA is still in experimental phases. The genetic makeup, physiology, and even mental development and reception to training will vary from batch to batch and even subject to subject. Adapting to such differences will be crucial to ensuring progress of the project. If you happen to notice any abnormal physiological phenomena or behavioral anomalies please report to me. While these subjects are meant to be made into soldiers for the empire they also provide a plethora of opportunities for other fields of research. Within that vein, please refrain from killing the subjects. I understand that taskmaster Grestin’s previous statement emphasizes the importance of discipline but please, do show some restraint when possible. Creating these subjects is currently an expensive and, quite frankly, unreliable process despite our initial success. There is a reason this first batch only consists of 10 subjects. Please do not lower that number.  

                                                                                        -Dr. Archimedes Yarru

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Dr. Yarru’s Personal Log

Entry 9

Date: Celendor 19, 991

Well Grestin has definitely earned the title taskmaster. I get that any training intended to produce super soldiers is going to be intense but, damn. I’m almost worried that she’ll kill the subjects long before they get into stage beta. Hopefully I’m just being overly anxious. I trust that Grestin won’t push them too harshly too quickly.

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Medical Report: Subject Gamma-A-8

Date of Admission: Celendor-20-991

Subject Gamma-A-8 was submitted to the facility infirmary at 8:26 AM on the 20th of month Celendor, year 991 by staff member Jules Armidin. Subject Gamma-A-8 was admitted due to severe injury and physical exhaustion. A complete list of afflictions has been attached to the report.

After initial treatments Subject Gamma-A-8 has been stabilized and is currently recovering. It is estimated the subject will be fully recovered within 10-14 days with no long term injuries or afflictions.

Attached - Trauma_Report_GAMMMAA8   

[ Subject Gamma-A-8

Muscle tearing located in the left and right biceps, triceps, and pectorals

Hairline fractures located in the left ulna, left and right radius, and sternum

Compound fracture located at the tibia

Eye spasms indicative of long term sleep deprivation Mild concussion

General bruising located across the arms, legs, and abdomen

Lacerations across the back                                                       ]

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Dr. Yarru’s Personal Log

Entry 10

Date: Celendor 20, 991

At least the subject didn’t die. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dr Yarru’s Personal Log.

Entry 11

Date: Celendor 21, 991

Well if anything at least I have been able to study how the subject’s body responds to physiological trauma. The results are nothing short of remarkable. Almost all of the major injuries have been healed to the point of not impairing the body's functions, including bone fractures. I was as shocked as the doctors when a compound fracture seemingly mended itself overnight. It hasn’t fully healed, but the subject is capable of moving the leg to a degree, which is still nothing short of amazing. Accelerated Healing was something that was coded into their base genetics but this is more than what we could have ever expected.

I wonder if this trait is shared by all subjects or if Gamma-A-8 is a special case. Perhaps Grestin’s methods will prove fruitful in more ways than one.

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Dr Yarru’s Personal Log

Entry 14

Date: Celendor 28, 991

It has been less than one month since the beginning of project CHIMERA and the results are already beyond my wildest dreams. Despite my initial reservations almost every subject has taken to the training regimen, no doubt due to Grestin’s expertise.

Note to self: Don’t piss her off

Subject Gamma-A-8 has had a difficult time keeping up with the other subjects. Despite the subject’s remarkable natural healing it seems unable to match the raw strength and speed the other subjects possess. I am hopeful that it will be able to catch up, or at least be able to function adequately in whatever role it is assigned. If not, well, 90% success rate is still more than acceptable given the circumstances.

I feel as if I have gathered as much data as I can working on the peripheries. Blood samples and medical reports are all well and good but they can only get me so far. I haven’t had a chance to interact with any of the subjects thus far. I think it's about time that I change that.

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Tags: @haro-whumps @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Dex comf prompt: the whole family comes together to comfort/spend time with him (MINUS KAREN YOU MONSTER)

For you and @slaintetowhump - you may have one (1) comf for Dex. Seb was the only brother who wanted to show up this time, but…

CW: Reference to torture/caning, reference to dehumanization/pet whump. Wright Farling is @spiffythespook‘s OC.

Sebastian is the kind of person who knocks on doorways and says “knock, knock” at the same time, but Dex doesn’t mind. He and Sebastian have lived in this house for a long time together, working in circles around Karen and quietly and efficiently running her household just the way she likes.

When Sebastian nudges the cracked door the rest of the way open, he blinks at the sight of Dex lying on his bed, naked to the waist. He’s never shirtless except for during discipline - Dex is distinctly private and never wants to be anything but fully dressed.

It occurs to Sebastian that that fact, something he thinks to be true, might only be true here. That maybe, in his trips, he is less… private, self-possessed, lost inside of himself. Maybe he lives less in his head there, with the creepy fucking perv that Dex is somehow enough in love with to live this way.

“Hey, I… I brought you some tea and soup for dinner tonight. Madam’s out with some colleagues. Do you mind if I come sit with you?”

Dex turns his head to look at him, and his light eyes are bright and intelligent, not glazed over or dazed like they have been lately. He gives Sebastian a faint smile and pushes up onto his elbows, then to seated. Seb winces at the welts that litter his body, the new bruises layering effortlessly over the old. He’s a riot of colors, Sebastian’s almost-brother - blacks and purples, reds and yellows and blues and browns over the pale near-white skin. 

The cut on the side of his face is healing well, at least. She hasn’t reopened that. It’s a line of pale pink, darker than his skin, but in time, Seb, thinks, you won’t even know it happened unless you’re right up next to him, unless you knew before.

Who knew he would be good at sewing a man’s face back together? Seb certainly hadn’t.

Dex signs, please, sit, and gestures widely at the bed. 

“We haven’t talked in a while,” Sebastian starts, a little hesitantly. “Dex, I… I haven’t… done everything I could, I know-”

Dex cuts him off with a slash of his hand through the air, shaking his head. His smile widens, just a little. You have done everything I need and more, He signs, the movements of his hands warm and fluid. His fingers on his right hand are mostly healed, and he doesn’t betray any hint of an ache, if they hurt at the motions.

“We both know that’s not true, but thanks for saying it.” Sebastian sets the tray with the soup and tea, both steaming gently into the air, on the bed in front of him as Dex crosses his legs. “Why’d you take your shirt off?”

Dex cocks his head, then glances down at himself. For a second, a grin splits his expression, and Sebastian sits down a little too fast, staring at him. He’s never seen Dex smile like that before.

Thinking about someone, Dex signs, and shrugs, almost one-shouldered, casual as can be. There’s a hint of red in his face, a flush Sebastian doesn’t understand at first, until Dex adds, you interrupted.

“Oh… oh! Oh, shit, um. Ew.” Sebastian wrinkles his nose, but he’s less bothered than he pretends to be. They’ve lived in this house a long time, it’s not exactly the first time he’s interrupted something - or Dex has interrupted him. “Sorry.”

It’s fine. Dex shrugs again, and picks up the mug with both hands, the healing fingers splayed out just a little. He takes a sip, closing his eyes happily, and then sets it down again. Peppermint. Thank you.

“You’re welcome. The, the soup is… a pumpkin bisque I made. Um… Henry helped me make it. He wanted… he wanted to help make your dinner. Look, he did the little swirl of crème fraiche on the top.” He points, and Dex tilts his head to look down, a soft smile still resting in his expression.

Henry grows up well, Dex signs, and the hint of wistfulness is evident in the way his hands move. Eighteen now. Remember when he came, the first day?

“Yeah. Those big eyes, with that suitcase that seemed larger than him.” Sebastian laughs, at the memory. Henry had been frightened and worried, dragged along by adults who gave little time to what he wanted or felt or thought. He’d never heard of human pets, and it had taken him a while to adjust to what Seb, Peter, and Dex were. “He’s… he’s a good guy, now, I think.”

Dex nods, picking up a spoon and taking a sip, eyes closed. Very good, he signs after setting it down. I will enjoy this. Thank H-E-N-R-Y for me. 

“I will. Madam won’t know we fed you again. Can you… Dex, will you tell me something?”

Dex tilts his head, an invitation to continue.

“Why the creep?”

Dex laughs.

Sebastian blinks at him, a bruised and broken man, never allowed to fully heal from what Karen was doing to him. A man so often at the very edge of his sanity, someone they heard crying to himself at night sometimes and all three of them pretended they heard nothing at all. 

He laughs, and it’s a soft, natural sound. A deep voice, masculine and kind of melodic. Sebastian wonders what Dex would sound like, if Karen hadn’t so thoroughly stolen his voice to speak.

Dex signs, It would take twenty years to tell you the reasons.

Sebastian rolls his eyes and crosses his arms “Yeah, right. Tell me one good fucking thing about that asshole.”

Dex’s smile goes mischievous. He simply holds up both hands, a certain distance apart, palms facing each other.

It’s Sebastian’s turn to blush, and he groans, rolling his eyes nearly to the ceiling this time. “Dex, are you serious with this, I was asking you a serious question!”

Dex grins again. The flash of teeth in his smile is so rare it feels like seeing an eclipse twice in one day. Serious answer, he signs.

“Bullshit. Tell me something else, Dex. Something that… that explains why you’re doing this.”

The smile fades, a little. 

Then it returns, and Dex shines like the sun. His dark hair is unkempt and a little dirty, he’s coated in bruises so thoroughly that he has more marked skin than unmarked, but he shines. 

His light eyes sparkle as he signs, haven’t you ever wanted to be a person, again?

Sebastian swallows. “I don’t… I don’t think I was a very good person, Dex. So… no. Part of me maybe wonders, wants to know for sure, but… I don’t really. I’m more sure that I… shouldn’t be a person. I think I was too bad at it the first time around.”

Dex shrugs - fair enough, the motion seems to say - and considers his answer. Then he just sighs. 

It’s a gift, S-E-B, to be human. Dex’s hands drop, then hover uncertainly. Then he seems to finish his thought, and lifts his fingers back up again. He is funny. He asks me questions. He reads the books I read so he can talk about them with me. He talks about my books, with me. I can be angry, with him. 

“So? Is all of that worth… all of this?” Seb gestures at the mess of Dex’s skin.

Dex looks down at himself, then back up. The eyes are where Dex gives himself away - he looks calm except for the sparkle there, the brightness. 

He signs, still smiling, it is worth damnation to be given a glimpse of something better, even if it wasn’t mine to have. I choose hell, for now.

“Because Wright goddamn Farling is heaven?”

Dex shakes his head. Because Wright Farling promised me that hell has an ending. He thinks I can be saved.

[florrickandassociates]

TGF Thoughts: 4x07-- The Gang Discovers Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein

What a weird episode. 

This episode is something else. The writers REALLY overestimated how much the audience (or at least the fandom) liked the pee tape and Melania divorce episodes if they thought this was a good idea.

My recollection of those episodes is that because everything was fake-but-real, the stakes wound up feeling lower and I stopped caring, and when I’m not on board with the plot, the surreal shit and the whimsy feel more annoying than innovative. This episode might fare slightly better in my opinion than the other two because of its central device (more on that later) but it’s (somehow!!!) even more audacious and wild than the episodes that came before. Not my favorite look for the show. 

I DO like the tributes to musicians we’ve lost to COVID-19 that play over the credits.My one quibble is that they could’ve used a little card to inform viewers what’s going on and why. Last week I caught the artist in the captions but this week I missed it (or it wasn’t there), though I figured out pretty quickly it was John Prine.

Starting off an episode with Liz is always a good choice. 

Liz and Marissa are, for reasons we’ll discover later, in New York and investigating Jeffrey Epstein’s “suicide.” 

It drives me INSANE that Marissa consistently has the sound on her phone on. I think we’d know she was taking pictures without it. 

Liz’s old boss, Wilbur Dincon, has tasked Liz to independently investigate what happened. If this case goes well, RBL will get more business from the DOJ.

I’m sorry, did you just say “S-H-U” instead of pronouncing it like “shoe”? I mean, I’m an expert on prisons because I watched Orange is the New Black so I know it should be said like “shoe.” (tbh i have no idea if one is more correct than the other)

This case has lots of details but it’s really only the thematic points that matter, so I likely won’t discuss any plot points… just what they’re going for. 

Good to know Liz was ahead of the curve on knowing Epstein was a dangerous creep. 

Liz is promised she can investigate anyone she wants and think outside the box. Sure. I believe this as much as I believe Diane is in charge of pro-bono stuff because STR Laurie has great intentions.

“Synergy” is such a great bullshit word. Has everyone ever said it for a reason other than the following three: (1) To mock the word synergy (2) as a euphemism for cost-cutting measures that will fuck over employees (3) because they think it sounds professional and want to cover up the fact they don’t know what they’re talking about?

In this case, “synergy” means that RBL needs to cut their payroll by 20%. Fun times.

Diane and Adrian (Liz is downstairs) are not happy about this, even when Mr. Firth reminds them it’s more money for them. They’d rather have less money personally but happier employees since they’re not soulless.

Mr. Firth says they have to do the layoffs. But if it’s any consolation, they get to hand pick who to lay off!

The dogs are still being walked through RBL, in case it wasn’t clear enough that STRL sucks.

The whole firm gets to work on sorting through the Epstein evidence. Liz tries to keep things organized-- murder evidence on one side, suicide evidence on the other.

Associates, however, immediately begin interpreting the word “evidence” loosely. Is there a photo of Epstein with someone they’d like to suspect of murder? Then it’s “evidence of murder”. Ok, Leah. 

As expected, this immediately turns into bickering over politics. Sorry Liz-- it’s going to be tough to keep your staff on target with this one. 

“No! No conspiracy theories. No insane charges. Everything we do, we need evidence, so let’s start here.” Ah, if only everyone could think like Liz.

The room focuses on evidence for about two minutes. Then they find a way to make it about conspiracies again. Go team! 

Also everyone at RBL thinks they have better knowledge than professional medical examiners of the marks left on someone’s neck after they hang themselves. They also all believe that pretending to strangle themselves is the best way to prove their point. It’s a hilarious sight for Diane and Adrian to happen upon.

Adrian and Diane immediately start seeing their employees as numbers and imagining the cost savings of laying them off. Marissa is making $89,000 a year with three years of experience. Jay is making $89,000/year with eight years. Damn, that is so unfair to Jay. (I could see it if Marissa is more vocal about wanting higher pay or if they’re more concerned with losing her… but being vocal about money is probably closely related to Marissa’s privilege and there is zero evidence Marissa is any better, more efficient, or more hardworking than Jay!)  I can’t remember how this plot ended last year, but I thought Jay ended up making more than Marissa after he complained?

Adrian seems to see Jay as the more disposable of the investigators, which is quite sad, especially since from what we see, Marissa and Jay seem to be equally skilled. 

I wish we got to see the salaries, rather than just billable hours, of the other associates. But I’m glad they finally get last names! 

Kevin Walker has been at the firm 7 years and has 2643 billable hours.

Diane imagines the red X over Marissa. I can’t tell if the Xs are to demonstrate who they think they should cut or just to show deliberations. 

Lucca has been at the firm for 4 years and has 2788. Her title is “associate” but shouldn’t it be “Head of Family Law”? 

Leah Davis has been at the firm for 3 years and has 2657 billable hours.

Jancie Muncy has been at the firm 11 years with 2456 hours; Micah Carroll has been there 5 with 2582 hours. John Danzette with 6 years and 2074 hours; Rosalyn Brock with 4 years and 1991 hours (we learn later she was on medical leave for part of the year). Josh Withers with 11 years and 2162. Linda Keller with 2 years and 2389; Mike Roberts with 3 years and 2147. So what I’m getting is that Lucca has the most billable hours of everyone? 

I wish it told us their salaries. How much do the billable hours matter if we don’t know how much $ each hour is worth?

I really like this device. It’s a good way of showing how tough this decision is and how dehumanizing the process becomes. 

Adrian jumps into the conversation and tries to convince everyone Epstein’s suicide isn’t a conspiracy-- it’s just incompetence. Apparently he has a sink that breaks every week and no plumber can fix it because they are all incompetent. I understand this analogy-- no one does their job perfectly 100% of the time-- but I am really concerned about Adrian’s sink. This sounds like a bigger issue than incompetence.

“People do just enough work to get by,” is a very true statement though. I have often thought that it’s kind of incredible the world is as functional as it is. 

If you have 4 or 5 conveniently incompetent breakdowns at once, though, I’m not sure I believe it’s purely incompetence. Feels a bit convenient. 

Diane jumps in and makes a case for why the conspiracy is also likely. This strikes me as counterproductive since what REALLY needs to happen here is for the associates to dig through the evidence. Why not go back to Liz’s original system where they look through the evidence and see where it leads them? 

Lots of news footage and photographs in this one.

Diane’s larger point seems to tie back into Memo 618: “We all have to obey the law. I mean, if we’re told we have to check into with the police every 90 days, we do it. But certain people don’t have to. They’re given special treatment.” Diane claims this is America-- “a special fucking off-ramp for the well-connected.” 

Isn’t it possible both are true? That there’s a lot of incompetence and also systems in place that protect the rich and powerful? Also none of this is evidence!!! 

(I do like this scene for showing Adrian’s POV (cynical about human nature) vs Diane’s (fed up with the government and the treatment of the ultra wealthy). And the show can’t really dig into evidence they don’t actually possess. But evidence-free speeches don’t seem productive!)

Liz is like, okay then… and splits the room into three groups to look at evidence. I am glad Diane and Adrian helped her so much.

Liz is NOT happy about the layoffs when Diane and Adrian loop her in. She’s opposed to cutting anyone. Diane says she could lose Kevin, but Liz sees Kevin as someone newer employees look up to. Adrian suggests Lucy (who?) and Liz says that Lucy actually should get a raise. Diane points out this will look bad to the clients. All good points. This seems like an impossible decision.

Case stuff happens. Lucca knows a “hairdresser to the stars” through Bianca.

And now for some scenes where Diane and Julius try to report Memo 618 to the government and do the right thing! The Kings have said these were intended for episode 8, and while they don’t really feel that out of place since there’s clearly a thematic link between 618 and Epstein’s connections, this bit of info explains two things: (1) Why this ep is 53 minutes long when it feels like it could make its point in less time and (2) why the Julius stuff that happens later in the episode feels a bit anticlimactic because so much else is also happening. My guess is in an episode where it’s more of the focal point it would feel like a much bigger deal.

Do you ever just see a shot of Diane and think, “Damn, Taylor Swift does really look like a young Diane?” Because I do. All the time.

Lucca visits the famous hairdresser and he makes time for her right away. And he gives her a letter from Epstein that he (a) has in his possession and (b) has in an unlocked drawer in his salon. Whatever. 

Lucca convinces him to let her have it, and RBL makes a video to establish chain of custody. I’m shocked we’ve never seen them do this before.

“It is Thursday, May 21st, 2020” Liz says. Nah. You’re in an office. It is not. 

The envelope contains a key, a secret code, and a letter that says “If I’m dead, watch out for BUD”. Welp, there goes any hope of this not turning into RBL chasing conspiracies! 

Rumors about layoffs (40%! Just paralegals! Everyone!) have spread, in case there wasn’t enough chaos. 

The partners are indeed discussing who to fire, and they can’t decide on anyone. So they decide it’s time to get out from under STRL and buy themselves out. It’ll take 20 million, but they can pull that together. 

This would play better if we knew why they decided to sell to STRL in the first place. Who WOULDN’T have seen this coming? 

Liz tells Adrian not to make any promises he can’t keep and he is like, this is like our marriage. Diane is still in the room which is awkward and funny.

Marissa finds “BUD” on a blueprint. A clue! Meanwhile, Lucca and Jay (really, Jay) figure out the code. 

This is the portion of the episode where I can leave the show playing on my phone and go check Twitter instead of writing any commentary. 

Julius gets arrested for speaking out about Memo 618! It feels less impactful than it should when it’s sandwiched between a bunch of scenes following the conspiracy. (Also I am a little surprised they didn’t have Julius and Diane go to the press before the government.)

The conference room squabbles again and Liz asks, again, to tone down the conspiracy theories. They instead begin fighting about even more conspiracy theories.

Unless there’s another conference room scene later, I think this was the moment I understood what the Kings were doing and started to like the episode more. As soon as I realized “BUD” was a Citizen Kane reference, I burst out laughing. This episode plays way better when you know the point they’re trying to make is that this is a lot of fuss that will ultimately be futile (though Marissa and Jay DO come close to finding BUD) than when you’re supposed to be riveted by watching people debate fake evidence. 

Why does Eli Gold have a cheerleader friend? Who knows! Who cares! 

Adrian suggests that he, Diane, and Liz involve their own homes in the scheme to getting 20 million dollars. Liz objects since she’s a single mom-- very fair. Adrian argues that they’ve done well in the past so they’ll get it back. Liz and Diane attack that idea before I can-- if that were really true, they never would have sold to STRL. 

Liz mentions losing ChumHum and the fallout from her dad’s scandal and then says “let us not forget why we joined STRL in the first place.” I feel like that line would work better if the “let us not forget…” came before the “we lost ChumHum”. Because we don’t actually KNOW why they joined STRL. And, as I said in a previous recap, I can roll with it for the sake of plot, but I can’t take lines like “let us not forget why we joined STRL” seriously when there was LITERALLY NO ON SCREEN DELIBERATION about it. 

Adrian says STRL doesn’t value them, their employees, their history, or their culture. To which I say, DUH. Why would you think they did?  

The only important thing about this cheerleader is that she’s played by the amazing Donna Lynne Champlin. Kind of sad she’s in this silly, non-recurring role. She’s so good. (Also she was totally on TGW playing a different role, shhhh). (Go watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, everyone!)

CONSPIRACY THEORIES! It’s another conference room scene. Maybe this is where I realized it was a Citizen Kane reference? But I think it was the earlier one.

Hey, it’s another Julius scene. Watching these and knowing they were meant for a different episode, I can’t help but notice that they do feel like pieces of the A plot of a different episode. The whole system is rigged, Julius and Diane realize.

Adrian, Liz, and Diane tell Mr. Firth they want out. Mr. Firth tells them they need to cobble together an impossible 80 million, not 20 million, because not all of the partners have been bringing in more revenue more than they used to. You see, Diane hasn’t been bringing in any money because she’s been in charge of the pro bono department. Ah.There’s the catch. 

I’m shocked they went up to Mr. Firth without reading every inch of that contract. Aren’t you guys partners at a law firm? I’m shocked Diane went ahead with taking charge of pro bono without looking for a catch. This sucks for the character and all, but how are these name partners at a liberal firm that’s seen more than its fair share of drama this naive about big corporations!? This plot twist is devastating… until I start to think about all the things they had to believe to get to this point. 

Still, it’s satisfying to hear Diane hiss “you fucker!” at Mr. Firth. 

Mr. Firth turns into a villain quite nicely. I wonder if we’ll see more of him next year. My guess is the remaining three episodes were going to tie together the corporate overlords plot and Memo 618 and wrap everything up more or less with a bow so they could do a new concept next year. I feel like they’ll either move on completely and tell us what happened, or do an episode like 2x02 (the one that wraps up all the Maia/Rindell Fund stuff in one go so it doesn’t hang over s2).

Dincon drops by unexpectedly and isn’t impressed with what Liz and the team have done, since all they’ve done is collect conspiracy theories (and possibly travel all over the country? Jay and Marissa go to the Virgin Islands; it is unclear if the architect and key maker and lawyer and everyone else were in Chicago…

In Dincon’s defense these conspiracy theories sound like complete nonsense. 

Dincon shuts the RBL team down, but Marissa and Jay are still off adventuring.

Diane asks Dincon what Memo 618 is because Epstein’s life was built on it. “Then you have your answer,” Dincon replies. This scene is another tell that those Julius scenes weren’t meant for 4x07. 

Aaaaand now we get the direct parallels to Citizen Kane, with some shot-for-shot remakes and even a sled (ha!).

There’s a secret door! Marissa and Jay are excited to investigate! Marissa references Parasite, which I haven’t seen yet because I’m awful at watching movies.

Marissa and Jay find nothing and leave. “I think we lost track of the real story: the underage girls,” Marissa realizes. Yup. That is the takeaway. Looking at all these conspiracies is fun but useless, and the most important truth has already been uncovered. 

After Marissa and Jay leave, we get to see what was in the secret room… BUD is Epstein’s penis. And… that’s a wrap on season 4? What a fucking weird way to end a season. 

[pokeblader3]

TDP Meta: rewriting some flaws and missed opportunities

(I won't be talking about anything related to a. Viren, b. Dark Magic, or c. the history of Elven supremacy and oppression and the show’s wack conception of morality sometimes) because those are a can of worms larger than the scope of this small rewrite, and also we don't know how the show will portray them fully in the future.

I would say that in Books 1-3, Claudia and Rayla are the best written characters, with Soren having a good arc muddied by a few poor writing decisions, and Callum and Ezran being rather bland and uninteresting(and also having a few poor writing moments).

-Claudia is the golden child of Viren, and was raised almost as a pawn to him, with her having an unhealthy view of family coming before all else, including morality, and when her family is threatened, she does horrible things in order to keep it together. 

-Rayla was groomed to be an assassin, something she just didn't have the heart to do, and spent her life internalizing shame from her parents being deserters and her own inability to be a good assassin to her adoptive father, and how she "failed" her mission and was ghosted by even Ethari. She puts on a facade of aggressiveness and being hot-tempered to distance herself from being emotionally open(which assassins can't be), and when that mask comes off with Callum we see just how little she thinks of herself. 

-Soren was the one Viren took out his anger on, yet Soren always wanted to prove himself to him and get his approval like Claudia did. He eventually sees that Viren is gaslighting and manipulating everyone, and doesn't let Claudia stop him from leaving Viren before their final battle. 

-Callum and Ezran are... interesting, but they don't have real apparent flaws or weaknesses to their character like the others do. They have some good moments and strong characterization, but aren’t as interesting as the others in my opinion.

1. Callum's arc

Callum has a fairly generic arc about bravery and learning magic, but he also has an important character trait in valuing his family and trying to be a good older brother for Ezran.

Callum is someone who was(or should have been) greatly effected by the conflicts between Katolis and Xadia. He never knew his birth father, lost his mother at a young age, and lived with a distant but loving relationship to his step-dad and his younger brother, his only family left, only to see his home attacked in an attack that killed his father and intended to kill Ezran and him as well.

He should have been allowed to make mistakes or hold flawed beliefs, such as expressing anger or grief to Xadians for being involved in the killing of his parents(especially since he's traveling with the daughter of his parent's killer), but this is only ever addressed in one near throwaway line when he sees Avizandum's statue in Xadia.

It would also have made sense for Callum to be overprotective of Ezran, and stop at nothing to make sure that he won't lose his only family left.

For example, in Book 1 when the egg falls into the lake, it's uncharacteristic that Callum let's Ezran, his tiny 10 year old brother, dive into a frozen lake when he could have done it instead(especially given he's likely still emotionally turbulent and on-edge from having just watched his family get attacked and living on the run). In a rewrite, Callum should be unable to dive into the lake for some reason, but also freak out when Ezran says he’ll dive into the frozen lake, because he doesn’t want to lose him. When Ezran does go into the lake and isn't heard from for a few seconds, Callum would begin to freak out thinking his brother might be in danger and he just let him do it.

Come Book 2, when Callum decides to trust Ezran to return home alone, this decision would hold a lot more weight, as it's a change Callum went through as he overcame a flaw he developed from his past. Also in Book 2, this would add a deeper context to Callum's talk with Ezran about how life sometimes hits you hard unexpectedly, since he is older than Ezran and would be speaking with the experience of someone who's dealt with the war for longer than Ezran, and want to shelter and guide him through growing up in such a tumultuous time.

It makes sense that Book 3 would be about Rayla in Xadia, but there should have been at least a few scenes about how Callum is doing now that Ezran is gone and he truly is alone, far away from family and home. As is, Callum doesn't really have an arc outside of Rayla in Book 3. Callum should have been allowed to hold grievances or react "wrongly" to his parents being killed by Xadians, especially when visiting Avizandum's lair, meeting Zubeia(the one who ordered the hit on his father), and the home of the Moonshadow elves that killed his father. 

2. Soren's arc

Soren's character and arc is complicated and built on a moral dilemma: he is told by his father(who we later learn is abusive) to kill Callum and Ezran, for his father's own personal gain. The problem is that the most important parts of this arc, his debating over and “attempting” to kill Ezran, are completely played as a joke. Because of this, we never get to see how he could have convinced himself that murdering children(who are also his friends) could be justified by himself, because that is not something any normal good-hearted person would even “haphazardly” try, and a considerable amount of his arc falls flat because they made a joke out of what should have been a key character moment.

To a lesser extent, Viren isn’t shown as abusive to Soren until Book 3, which makes his actions and why he’s so on board with killing children confusing and not make sense until we learn how he was gaslit and manipulated by Viren an entire season later, with little to no foreshadowing in the 2 seasons beforehand.

3. Ezran, Zubeia and the ending to Book 3

Ezran's arc is about the burden of ruling and navigating conflict with pacifism. Ezran believes that every death in a war, even if fighting for the wrong side, is still a father, son, lover, family member, etc., who just had their life taken from them. But then by the end, the entire army the protagonists fight against are dehumanized and turned into literal monsters, with it being portrayed as heroic when they kill thousands of them. The show also treats Kasef as a generic bad guy needing to be killed, instead of a tragic figure who chose poorly when his family was killed and his country was threatened(like, say, Claudia and Harrow are).

And now, for the worst part of Book 3: Zubeia. Zubeia is a huge sour note to end what's otherwise an amazing season on.

She ordered the hit against Harrow. She tried to kill the royal family of Katolis, after her husband killed Ezran and Callum's mom. She is over 1000 years old and was the regent of Xadia for the last 300 years along with her husband, and the two of them no doubt committed horrible acts against the humans. It is a complete asspull that she gave a "humans and elves? together :0? how beautiful :0:0:0" speech at the end of the season, and on a larger scale, how fast elf-human relationships instantly heal. Amaya's sister was killed by Zubeia's husband. Zubeia ordered her niece and nephew to be killed. Ezran and Callum were staring at the dragon who ordered their parents(and THEM) to be killed, and then was acting like humans and elves together was the most beautiful thing in the world. Amaya and Janai getting together also should have happened in Season 4, Katolis and the Sunfire Elves were at war literally a day prior, and Amaya was being kept as a prisoner by Janai and put through a torturous pain by her sister a week ago, and all that time she was worried about whether or not her niece and nephew were alive and the war that was going on they were embroiled in. Janaya and Rayllum are my favorite ships but they could have been handled better.

And now for the massive missed opportunity that would have also solved that issue above: Zubeia should have died(aka, what I thought was happening before the final scene when she suddenly recovered). It's thematically consistent with how the other 3 families of main characters experience a tragedy because of the Human-Xadian war, lose their parents at the hands of other families' parents, and have to work past it and choose forgiveness over vengeance. It would have given Zym and the Xadians a more tenuous relationship with the humans since Zym lost his mother to the war, and provide drama for Books 4 and 5, and it would also have shown how sometimes, relations between groups are not easy to heal, and history is not easy to right.

[irinapaleolog]

DISCLAIMER: This article is intended for educational and research purposes only. It has been published to shed light and correct understanding on the escalating issue of hatred of women online. By extension, this article also aims to inform readers on right-leaning and left-leaning internet hive minds and their negative influence on culture, politics, and society.

T/W: This article contains mentions of sexual assault, violence against women, suicide, incest, racism, anti-semitism, sexism

If you’re a woman who is active in an online, women-dominated fandom space, then you’re well aware of everything this article is about to tell you.

You’ve read every death threat.

You’ve gone through the sometimes graphic — but always malicious — anonymous message or tweet explaining every way in which some person you’ll never know would like to harm you.

You may have been banned from a fan forum or had your messages wiped from a Discord channel by a bot or mod who decided that your thoughts and your words as a woman were not allowed around here.

You’ll probably remember all the times your sexual identity, your race, or your religious affiliation was questioned and erased.

You have read every time the latest hive mind online has labeled you a sexist. A racist. An abuse apologist. A school shooter. An inbred. A Nazi. A mental case. Inhuman.

You probably know somebody whose had their information put up on Reddit threads or 4chan forums or alt-right YouTube channels for everybody to see. The aim? To determine if maybe they could find ways to hurt that individual in person or — at the very least — make their life a little harder.

And of course, you know all too well that all the threats, lies, bullying, defamation, doxxing, and dehumanization is driven by the internet’s systemic fear over women enjoying media made for them, on their own terms, and on their own time.

We’ve experienced countless cycles of this outrage, ranging from comic book heroes to k-pop. One of the most recent iterations, however, is driven by a desire to see two fictional space wizards kiss in a galaxy far, far away.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with what it’s like to be a fan of “Reylo” in the Star Wars fandom, well, it looks a bit like this:

All of the screenshots, located above, catalog a small sample of the four years of hate sent to “Reylos:” fans who are interested in the canon romantic dynamic between Rey and Kylo Ren in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. These fans are predominately women.

And, no, let’s get this out of the way: These hate posts, while directed towards fans of a fictional pairing, have nothing to do with fictional characters. This hate has everything to do with policing and punishing women for collectively enjoying fiction in a way deemed incorrect by various political and social agendas. The end goal is always the same — bully these women until they become silent.

Defining a “Bullying Hive Mind:” The “Alt-Right” vs “Antis”

The ways in which bullying hive minds reach this end goal are dependent on the political alignment of the cyberbully. Either they are pursuing an agenda dictated by alt-right circles or one dictated by factions of the progressive left, both of which gained internet popularity in the early to mid 2010s.

Most people — whether it’s because you’ve kept up with the aftereffects of the 2016 election or because you’ve spent anytime on YouTube as of late — are familiar with the alt-right. This group leans male and is driven mostly by insecurity, overt misogyny, and a sense of ownership over what they think are “male-dominated spaces” being overrun by women. It’s another example of extreme conservative thinking: what was mine should stay mine and anybody who thinks differently than me needs to get out of my way.

Arguably the biggest example of alt-right hate and harassment online is Gamergate, an anti-women bullying campaign that first arose on 4chan. The movement’s aim was to push women out of gaming journalism, game design, and gaming fandom by sending death threats, rape threats, stalking women, and dehumanizing women to their peers.

The event bolstered the anger, insecurity, and sexism of young men into an online hive mind that continues today, most notably in Gamergate’s successor “Comicsgate,” which orchestrated the attempted sabotage of Captain Marvel’s release.

These people are not hard to find. They parade their ideas on Reddit or, increasingly likely, on monetized YouTube channels. Their tactics often include spreading misinformation using false “evidence;” discrediting women’s interests by reducing them to “mental cases;” dogpiling; and doxxing.

In Star Wars fandom, this right-leaning group refers to themselves as “The Fandom Menace.” The group was created by former Comicsgate supporter Ethan Van Sciver, who goes by ComicArtistPro Secrets on YouTube. He frequently uploads videos — clickbait title and all — with common alt-right buzz words like “SJW.”

The Fandom Menace was formed in response to The Last Jedi — a more inclusive, forward-thinking addition to the Star Wars franchise that was inspired by the writings of Robert Bly, a leader in the mythopoetic men’s movement. The focus on feminine power and multiple women with complex character development and speaking roles within the film — in addition to the death of Luke Skywalker — powered this hate group to see Star Wars under Disney as “feminist propaganda.” They were driven by the belief that Disney was attempting to erase men from the Star Wars fan community. This led to several targeted hate campaigns including one that ran actress Kelly Marie Tran off of social media.

Where the alt-right works to monetize their hate through public YouTube channels, left-leaning circles are less well known to the general public. Reactionary left-leaning circles that operate within fandom spaces tend to skew younger (mostly generation-z and late millennial) and are predominantly women. They rose in 2015 with the onset of Tumblr and in response to the changing dynamics within “shipping” fandoms. For the uninitiated, “shippers” are groups of people within fandoms who center their attention around a specific relationship within that fandom (e.g. Rey and Kylo Ren).

In online spaces, this reactionary, left-leaning group is better known as “antis.” This name was given to this group after they became known for demonizing, demoralizing, and/or dehumanizing any individual in a shipping fandom who they deemed to be promoting “problematic” content through the fiction they consumed.

Anti harassment campaigns follow a consistent pattern where genuine concerns about real-world injustice are misinterpreted and applied to fictional properties in an attempt to create a 1:1 comparison and exert power over another (often marginalized) group. They start by leveraging performative accusations around real world issues such as sexism, racism, homophobia, sexual assault, and gendered violence against fictional characters deemed by the group to be representative of these problems. The guilt-by-association of these characters is then applied to the people who like these characters, and a general warning is issued: “stop supporting them, or else.”

When this accusation is ignored, it is then weaponized into bullying campaigns that aim to belittle and discredit women through dangerously shallow and irrational pearl clutching. The motivations and levels of participation in these harassment campaigns vary, but they tend to move from one large fandom to the next, focusing on whatever pop culture character will award them the most clout.

As one of the biggest current pop culture “ships,” Reylos have drawn the antis’ ire on both Twitter and Tumblr since the ship’s inception in 2015. The following accusations have been leveled against fans of these characters since 2015. These accusations include:

That Reylos support real life abuse by wanting a romantic pairing between two characters who begin as enemies in an epic myth.

That Reylos are racists because they support a romantic pairing between two white characters.

That Reylos are sexist because Reylos write sexually explicit fanfiction between the “pure” heroine and the “bad guy.”

The importance of these causes and people’s ability to engage with them in good faith is recklessly diminished by blaming valid, real life concerns on women who are enjoying a fictional pair of characters from a film series. It disregards the fact that the women shipping these characters are not a homogeneous group in either their identity or their background. It erases the abuse that some shippers have experienced first-hand — -abuse they should not be forced to out on the internet in order for their shipping to be seen as socially acceptable.

When the Left Leans Right

Launching targeted harassment at any group of women celebrating an enemies-to-lovers ship won’t gain antis clout among their peers. As mentioned previously, Reylo is specifically targeted because it’s arguably the biggest ship in one of the biggest franchises in the world. This means that while Emma Watson said that the enemies-to-lovers dynamic in Beauty and the Beast is about “inclusion and love,” that classic Disney film is old and it’s been done. There is no longer a large, activated community around it, and, as such, there is little incentive to bully the women who enjoy it.

Once antis do decide to bully a ship, however, one of the main accusations leveled at followers of enemies-to-lovers ships is that what they are supporting is “dangerous” to society. To antis, symbolism and subtext in fiction are bypassed in favor of literal and often severe interpretations of a story’s greater meaning. This means that, theoretical little girls and grown women who are unable to separate fiction from reality are put at risk of harming themselves and others because of what they see in fiction.

The irony of this is that a group of mainly women confidently trying to convince other women that they must be protected from complicated romantic dynamics in fairytales is taken from a page in the American conservative playbook that is still used today. For decades, American conservatives have used popular media to scapegoat real issues in society that are easier to pass off as a consequence of the media our society consumes rather than what our society actually teaches and perpetuates.

For example: In 1948, psychiatrist Frederic Wertham began to publish magazine articles and books that claimed that comic books led to juvenile delinquency. While he had no scientific evidence, his writings caused a societal outcry that led to an investigative Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. Here, conservative politicians demonized comic book writers and the comic book industry, declaring that “this country cannot afford the calculated risk involved in feeding its children, through comic books, a concentrated diet of crime, horror, and violence.”

The subcommittee eventually lead to the Comic Codes Authority — a comics industry created code that put restrictions on the art their creators could produce. The code stifled the industry for almost a decade.

Around the time the subcommittee’s investigation was coming to a close in 1955, the pearl clutching continued on television in a special news report entitled “Confidential File: Horror Comic Books!”

More propaganda video than actual news report, the narrator speaks over several young boys alone in the woods reading comic books. The narrator states:

“When I was a boy and hung with the gang we did a lot of things, we roasted potatoes, we went on expeditions, we tipped over garbage cans now and then, we wrote nasty remarks about the teacher on the sidewalk, but we never spent an afternoon sitting around like this, reading.

What a wonderful thing this would be if they were reading something worth while, something that would stimulate their desires to build and to grow. But they’re not reading anything constructive…they’re reading stories devoted to adultery, to sexual perversion, to horror, to the most despicable of crimes…

One of the wonderfully appealing things about children is that they haven’t yet come to the age where reality and unreality are divorced. The emotional impact of something they read in a comic book may be much the same as a real life situation they would witness.”

The news report goes on to show young boys stabbing trees with a knife and almost killing their friend with a rock after reading horror comic books.

This same outlandish, conservative mindset is what we see today in left-leaning anti culture. The difference now, however, is that these ideals are being regurgitated and repackaged for young girls as each generation of women gains more power within a patriarchal society.

For girls, the preoccupation is not around whether or not they will commit violence, but rather, who they will have sex with and how they will be treated as they grow within a historically male-dominated culture. The idea that women will get themselves into toxic, abusive relationships because they consume hyperbolic myths and fairytales instead of the real consequences of imposter syndrome, insecurity, and the restriction of women to explore their worth in society is no different than what conservatives said about boys in 1950s America. They asserted that boys would become violent psychopaths because they consumed multi-colored panels depicting fictional, exaggerated violence instead of the real life wars our countries waged, fear mongering on the news, or the pro-gun culture surrounding them daily. Both thought processes are damaging to the growth of our societal beliefs.

In fact, the fear and discomfort of women exploring sex within their own spaces is something that is threatening to groups on both the left and the right.

John Boyega’s New Years Eve Tweet: What Caused It and Why Did it Blow Up?

All of the screenshots above were taken within 4 days following a blow up on Twitter involving Star Wars actor John Boyega, a few sock puppets, and whole load of serial anti and alt-right accounts.

If you’ve been on Twitter this year, chances are you have noticed John Boyega trending. The 27-year old actor (best known for his portrayal as Resistance hero Finn in the Star Wars sequel trilogy) gained traction on Twitter New Year’s Eve when he posted a tweet of characters Rey and Kylo Ren fighting (as they do in a movie entitled, well, Star Wars) with the caption “Star Wars Romance.”

To anybody who had never touched fandom Twitter, the tweet appears harmless enough. However, the tweet was successful in doing exactly what it intended and exactly what lurking hate accounts who successfully orchestrated the bullying barrage wanted the tweet to do. It galvanized a hoard of antis and alt-right trolls and their following to — by their own admission — bully Reylos.

This particular incident began with Twitter user @crogman, a sock puppetnow going by the name of @solo_sebes. The sock puppet account appeared on Twitter in mid December 2019 and quickly entrenched itself in a community of Reylos by retweeting and posting Reylo-positive tweets and joining in on post The Rise of Skywalker discourse. The account was also quick to energize antis of the Rey/Kylo dynamic.

Now that the sock puppet is embedded deeply enough into the Reylo community that somebody within that community would see controversy on their timeline between @crogman and Boyega, @crogman tweeted at the Star Wars actor, “bro you’re extremely disgusting and gross also fucking disrespectful…you cannot be this jealous of adam driver dude as a black woman im fucking ashamed that someone like you represented us in star wars.”

The comment was included with a screenshot of John Boyega on Instagram writing “@heyfabrice it’s not about who she kisses but who eventually lays the pipe. You are a genius.”

Boyega’s Instagram comment was in response to a fan suggesting that Rey (played by Daisy Ridley in The Rise of Skywalker) was now available after her canon romantic partner, Ben Solo (played by Adam Driver) died saving her life.

Boyega’s comments upset some fans on Instagram who found that his comments suggested that a woman’s worth in romantic relationships — fictional or not — was a prize to be won by the man who gets to have sex with her first.

The sock puppet account inflamed a situation that would likely have stayed on Instagram. While antis correctly identified that the account was fake and was indeed blackfishing, antis incorrectly claimed that the account was created by Reylos to justify a group of white women attacking Boyega on social media. Instead, the account was clearly a plant meant to goad the actor into directing hate at Reylos.

This is proven by the fact that the account under its new username attempted to instigate hate towards Boyega’s co-star Daisy Ridley in the comments of Reylos’ posts shortly after New Year’s Eve.

Additionally, @crogman was not the only account never associated with the Reylo community that was used to inflame the situation with Boyega. User @FaberLima1 tweeted at Boyega under @crogman’s tweet writing “you are paying mico and only worsening your image. Better stop (and erase while you have time).”

Boyega responded to this tweet with several laugh emojis.

The account @FaberLima1 at the time of this screenshot has 6 followers and no tweets past December 25th. Like @crogman, the account posts Reylo-positive posts utilizing popular hashtags within the fandom including #BenSoloDeservesBetter, a hashtag created by fans of Ben Solo to express their dissatisfaction with his character’s ending.

Also like @crogman, the account was created in July 2019 yet has tweets only traceable in December, signifying that the account has been nuked perhaps multiple times.

Shortly after @crogman’s tweet to Boyega, antis began to push common anti-Reylo accusations. This included accounts who had never actively bullied Reylos. For example, user @sxidey posted several tweets accusing Reylos of “sexualizing Rey,” “harassing John”, and giving “money to the military.”

The latter accusation is a common left-leaning talking point against Reylos who support Adam Driver (a former marine). This particular comment was a reference to a Gofundme started by Ben Solo fans on Reddit. The Gofundme is raising money for Driver’s charity, Arts in the Armed Forces.

The account, however, had only had one recent mention of Reylo two days earlier on December 28th. The account itself is also new, joining in October 2019.

It’s possible that the account is simply a new anti account on Twitter. Regardless, the listing of anti accusations against Reylos almost at the exact time of @crogman’s post reveals the motive of inciting hatred against members of the Reylo community.

Another account, @itsjoey56138220, was also inflaming the situation early on underneath @crogman’s tweet with accusations that Reylos were racist.

Unlike @sxidey, this account has a history of inciting hate against Reylos with outlandish conspiracy theories including one theory that Reylos were created by the alt right who caused “ex Twilight bitches” to make the ship popular. The account has also claimed that Reylos are racist because Reylo shippers want a “whites only romance.”

Boyega, in response to users including two sock puppet accounts with no association to Reylo — and encouraged by anti accounts sewing seeds of hatred across Twitter — finally took to his own Twitter account to tweet:

The tweet, which currently sits at over 190k likes, caused tens of thousands of hateful, targeted tweets towards a group of fans made up predominantly of women and girls. It also resulted in several hate videos by alt-right YouTubers totaling hundreds of thousands of views, several hacked accounts, and the suicide baiting of a teenage girl.

The New Years Incident By The Numbers: How Boyega’s Tweet Set Off The Left and Alt-Right

Following Boyega’s tweet, reactionary users on both left and alt-right Twitter felt further emboldened to hate on a group of women they had been discrediting, dehumanizing, and sending death threats to for years. For myself, the event presented an opportunity, albeit an unfortunate one, to track these groups’ behaviors and quantify them. Ultimately, I had the goal to break down how these incidents are organized to hate on women, whether for purposes of clout or their desire to purge women from fandom spaces.

For this analysis, I took a sample of tweets that contained the word “Reylo” (the search pull also included its plural form “Reylos”) from December 31, 2019 (the day of Boyega’s tweet) to January 3, 2020. After cleaning the accounts to the best of my ability of “pro-Reylo” tweets, I was left with 25,012 tweets that contained negative and neutral comments about Reylos and the Reylo dynamic. I sifted manually through about 7k of these tweets to find key themes, which I verified utilizing a text mining analysis of the tweets.

I emerged being able to quantify the following key themes:

Hate, Trolling, Cyberbullying

Abuse, Toxicity

Racism

Sex, Sexualized, Objectification

Mental, Psychotic, Unhinged

“Hate” received the most individual tweets at ~2.2k tweets and received ~31.4 likes per tweet on average. Tweets containing themes “abuse” and “racism” received a slightly higher avg like count at 38.7 avg likes and 35.4 avg likes, respectively. These themes, along with tweets dealing with “sex” were all mentioned over 1k times.

What this suggests is that a smaller number of accounts with a wider reach were posting more substantive tweets with a focused agenda, while tweets containing “hate’ keywords were more likely to be lobbed out by anyone, including accounts with very little reach.

Tweets mentioning the theme of Reylo fans being “mental” cases had less tweets at 602 total tweets. This theme was pushed strongly by the alt-right circles involved as opposed to leftist circles, which dominated the conversation on Twitter. While this analysis does not focus on the alt-right’s reaction on YouTube, Twitter was used as a place to spread YouTube reactions created by notable Fandom Menace members.

Keyword Group: Hate

The “hate” keyword group quantified tweets containing any mention of trolling, cyberbullying, or hate towards Reylos. The fact that “hate” reveals itself as a top keyword provides further evidence that this event was viewed as implicit approval to bully a group of fans consisting predominantly of women. Anybody involved in sending Reylos hate were, by their own admission, the bullies and were cheering John on for “trolling” women and “putting [women] in their place.”

“Reading Reylo hate to cheer myself up”

“I don’t like Finn’s character either, but I love how John is putting Reylos in their place.”

“Seeing John Boyega troll the Reylos is the greatest way to end 2019”

The clear agenda to send hate towards a group of women and teenage girls was further validated by the fact that the incident was received positively by all sides of the political spectrum, from “progressive” antis to members of the alt-right. The members included the Fandom Menace and alt-right leader and Pizzagate supporter Jack Posobiec.

Both groups took advantage of the situation utilizing the same tactics they typically employ. The alt-right took to YouTube and Twitter to discredit women among their followers by using buzz-words such as “SJW” and “Twilight.” “Twilight” — which was mentioned 103 times in association with “Reylo” between 12/31/2019 and 1/3/2020 — is often used to describe any piece of media enjoyed predominantly by women.

The goal is to degrade women’s interests among their peers by pushing the narrative that Reylos are silly girls consistently preoccupied with the same trivial, valueless media.

Examples of tweets from the alt right include the following:

“John Boyega ripped the Reylo’s a new asshole. You haven’t seen this many acne riddled fatty Tumblr Girls lose their shit since Twilight ended.”

“My thesis: Reylos and most of these Neo Star Wars fans are just ex Twilight fans and self hating beta male cucks who attached themselves to the franchise like parasites. Next they will glom onto whatever film series is hot and continue their rot.”

“StarWars was so great before Disney. Now its plagued by psychotic Reylo fans, Tumblr freaks, representation-screeching SJWs, radical feminism activists, ex-Twilight fans, &wine-guzzling Disney-fan mothers caked Karen. &these are the people they’re now targeting for their fandom.”

On the other side of the spectrum, long-time anti accounts spearheaded the harassment of Reylo shippers, leveraging Boyega’s tweet to bombard Reylo shippers with hate messages. This included viral tweets from accounts with a history of anti behavior across multiple fandoms, along with multiple tweets from accounts with history of targeting Reylos.

For example, Twitter user @Iovestour tweeted, “oscar isaac going off about disney’s blatant homophobia & john boyega telling reylos to fuck themselves all within two weeks i love men men are my friends.” This tweet has more than 48k likes. You’ll be hard pressed, however, to find any tweets by the account past November 2019, even though the account has been active since March 2018.

All tweets made under the account’s former name “blinkapologist” have been deleted — a trait uncharacteristic of your normal Twitter user just looking to share their opinions and maybe curate the news. Past tweets (to which blinksapologists’ tweets and replies have been deleted) reveal a pattern of anti behavior including a history of going after individuals supporting fictional characters the anti finds problematic, utilizing extremist parallels to real-life events.

A reply to @Iovestour in June 2019 reveals the user had allegedly called victims of the Holocaust Nazi supporters. The accusation appears to have been said to supporters of Marvel character Wanda Maximoff.

Along with antis with history across multiple fandoms inciting hatred against Reylos, this event also revealed itself as a targeted harassment campaign due to the frequency in which some accounts tweeted at or about Reylos.

Boyega’s tweet caused some anti accounts within this sample to tweet over 50 times about Reylos in the span of 4 days including sadgeorgelucas1, who tweeted about Reylos ~100 times, drhorotiwtzfine, who tweeted about Reylos ~75 times, and saltandrockets, who tweeted about Reylos ~65 times.

This is not abnormal. Several of these top accounts were also consistently bullying Reylos. The accounts highlighted in red in the chart below are anti-Reylo accounts that were also included as mentioning Reylo frequently between December 31, 2019 to January 3, 2020. This includes once again drhorowitzfine, who has mentioned Reylo negatively ~1,150 times between 2017 to 2019. Other top anti accounts include winniethepoe1, who tweeted about Reylo ~320 times from 2018 to 2019 and ~25 times during Boyega’s New Year’s Eve incident.

Of course no harassment campaign can be waged without finding ways to make the people being bullied look like they were worth being bullied. One of the two main “arguments” thrown against Reylos included the predictable anti accusation of Rey and Kylo’s “abusive” relationship poisoning the mind’s of women and girls. Since Reylo shippers had made the decision to create transformative works and discuss a fictional romance found to be impure by the antis, Reylos could now be cyberbullied in real life for their morally reprehensible decisions.

Reylo is also referred to as “abusive” because some still try to stretch the narrative that Rey and Kylo’s relationship is incestual, and therefore Reylo’s are promoting incest.

The idea that the relationship is incestual goes back to a 2016 fan clash over who Rey’s parents were. Many fans wanted Rey to be a Skywalker or a Solo, which would make her related to Kylo Ren, the son of Leia Organa and Han Solo. The event involved Reylos being frequently lobbed with accusations of incest, and they were at one point banned from discussing Rey and Kylo’s dynamic on a popular Star Wars forum, Jedi Council Forums.

Another common theme was that Reylos were “toxic.” This theme was mostly fed by alt-right circles and originated with a post by Fandom Menace supporter Dataracer117, who has a history of harassing Reylos.

Dataracer117 has a history of voicing his contempt for Disney and their “radical feminist propaganda.” This is most notably seen in his involvement in Comicgate’s attack on Captain Marvel. This included digging up screenshots by fans of Captain Marvel who spoke out against the sexism being aimed against the film, accusing all the accounts of being “Captain Marvel bots.”

Like the Captain Marvel incident, Dataracer117 posted a tweet with screencaps that Reylos were allegedly sending death threats to JJ around the time of Boyega’s tweet. Despite Dataracer117’s history attempting to devalue women in fandom communities and despite the screencaps being debunked by the Reylo community, the screencaps gained traction around Twitter, YouTube, and in media publications including Buzzfeed. They were further used to create the narrative that Reylos are “unhinged.”

This narrative inflamed alt-right accounts, and they began to frequently frame Reylos as mental cases. Discrediting women is nothing new (in fact you can easily read about it in this essay on Western puritanical conditioning against women in the 17th century), and is to be expected from a community who dedicates their time to driving women away from their online spaces.

The second accusation that was used to fuel harassment against Reylos was the claim that Reylos were racist against Boyega. They claimed that Reylos’ harassment of the actor led women to be upset with Boyega over his Instagram comment. This led to harassment on his Twitter — which remember, was started by a sock puppet account not associated with the Reylo community.

While racism is a prevalent concern that needs to be addressed within all fandom communities-and questions over inherent privilege due to one’s community are something to be examined-no support was given to back up these particular claims about the Reylo community during this incident.

This is not to say, however, that isolated incidents have not occurred outside of this specific accusation within the Reylo fandom, as they would within any large and global group of people. However, these incidents are statistically insignificant to the population of people who discuss Reylo positively on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis (which, according to the sample number of accounts who have discussed Reylo between 2015 to 2019, can be quantified at over 40k individuals. The true number is dependent on how many accounts — currently almost 70k — discuss Reylo negatively within the sample).

This particular accusation of racism has several layers to it and I would like to break them down separately.

“But Reylos Read Explicit Fanfiction”

The first part of this is that the nature of Boyega’s Instagram comments allowed antis and alt-right circles to attack Reylos on NSFW fanfiction and fanart written and drawn for and by women. It also allowed antis to draw more criticism around the ways in which Reylos analyzed The Last Jedi, a film with many allusions to the writings of psychoanalytics including Sigmund Freud.

After the release of The Last Jedi, the Reylo community, who had written long form meta analysis on the Star Wars saga since 2015, wrote lengthy metas about the symbolism in the film. Much of this symbolism was reflective of Rey’s sexual awakening throughout her journey in the movie.

Antis took issue with this and saw this as “sexualizing” Rey’s character. They asserted that women exploring sexuality through the lens of a fem-gaze narrative written for women was appalling, degrading, and out of line.

For anti and alt-right circles, the Reylo community’s openness to discussing sex in Star Wars through meta, fanfiction, and fanart by women (and generally for women) meant that Reylos could not take offense to Boyega’s questionable comment that suggested to some of his fans that Rey was a sexual prize to be won. The narrative antis spun was wholly unable — and unwilling — to separate women discussing sex in their own communities as different from men offering their sexual “jokes.”

This justification for bullying Reylos felt eerily similar to “she was wearing that, she asked for it.” It’s a highly socialized sexist line of reasoning women deal with daily and one that was readily accepted in this incident.

2. “But Reylos Ship Rey With The White Character”

Since 2015, Reylos have been accused of racism on the grounds that Reylos did not prefer Rey to be in a romantic relationship with the black male protagonist. This claim is presented without any evidence to back up the accusation.

Furthermore, the people who ship Rey and Finn (known as “Finnrey”) have done little to celebrate this pairing and act as a fan community. In fact, they have consistently acted more like a group that seeks to find ways to activate hate against Reylos instead of create content for their ship.

The two data visualizations below show every user in my sample who has tweeted the word “Reylo” between 2015 to 2019 vs every user in my sample who has tweeted the word “Finnrey” between 2015 to 2019. The gray in these charts represent the number of accounts who have only ever tweeted about their own ship. The purple represents the overlap — that is the accounts who have tweeted at least once about the other ship.

The first observation is that the number of users discussing “Finnrey” is small in comparison to the number of accounts discussing “Reylo.” Finnrey was mentioned by 7,780 accounts while Reylo was mentioned by 69,484 accounts.

As mentioned, gray = accounts who have only ever tweeted about their own ship. Purple = accounts who have tweeted about at least one other ship. So, in this case, out of the ~7.8k accounts that tweeted about Finnrey, ~60% of accounts mentioned “Reylo” at least once (4,665 accounts total). This number represents only ~7% of accounts who have ever talked about Reylo.

This data is supported by other statistics comparing the two ships. For example, on fanfiction website Archive of Our Own, the fic tag for Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren has ~16k fics. There are another 12k fics in the tag for Rey/Kylo Ren. The fic tag for Finn/Rey has under 2k fics.

3. “Reylos Have Bullied John Since 2015”

The most damaging false claim to come out New Year’s Eve was that Reylos had been attacking Boyega (and other Star Wars actors) with racist tweets since 2015.

It is very true that the actor has received heinous racist attacks. Most notably, the actor was attacked on social media following a #BoycottEpisodeVII hashtag that was started by two 4chan trolls in an attempt to get racist Star Wars fans to take the bait. It is well known that this hashtag was the work of racist alt-right accounts.

Since the hashtag, other attacks have been levied on Boyega. One of these attacks included a surge of outcries against him by The Fandom Menace, after a tweet posted in June 2018 stated: “If you don’t like Star Wars or the characters understand that there are decisions makers and harassing the actors/actresses will do nothing. You’re not entitled to politeness when your approach is rude. Even if you paid for a ticket!”

The Fandom Menace took the opportunity to bring their anger over Boyega’s comments to Twitter and YouTube, much like Comicsgate did when Brie Larson spoke in favor of diversity.

Reylos, however, are now being blamed for these attacks without any supporting evidence. They are also being blamed for the harassment of Kelly Marie Tran. The actress was bullied off of social media by alt-right trolls on her Instagram page, along with antis who saw her character kissing Finn as “sexual assault.”

You will not find any evidence linking the Reylos back to the targeted harassment of any Star Wars actors over the years. Predictably, however, you will find that the people who used this accusation to their advantage admitted that their own motive was bullying.

For example, Twitter user @notlipglosse tweeted “the way this man waited until he got his last star wars check so he could freely make fun of the racist stans who have bene harassing him since 2015 %@&@*!?!?!?” This tweet (at the time of the screencap) gained ~92.2k likes. A tweet posted on December 19th, however, reads “the way we’ve been bullying Reylo stans and calling them delusional and they won…,” further supports the data that this incident was about inciting hatred towards a group of fans predominately made up of women.

Another example is from user @irisckp. Shortly after Boyega’s tweet, the user tweeted “NOT THIS REYLO AND HER MUTUALS ACTING LIKE JOHN BOYEGA HAS BROUGHT SOME TYPE OF OPPRESSION WHEN HE WAS RACIALLY ABUSED BY REYLO’S FOR YEARS. HE HAD EVERY RIGHT.” Again this tweet was presented without evidence that Reylos had “racially abused” Boyega.

The tweet is referring to a livestream from a young woman in the Reylo community who candidly expressed discomfort over the false accusations and bullying. The livestream was taken by antis and used to further bully the young woman.

This bullying eventually descended into suicide baiting that resulted in the woman’s account being deleted. However, this did not stop antis from pushing the woman to kill herself. It also did not stop them from telling the teenager’s father, who had gotten involved in combating the harassment, to “live tweet your reaction when you find your daughters lifeless body dangling from her rooms ceiling fan.”

After @iriscpk’s initial tweet, the user admitted that they had “never seen Star Wars” (like a portion of antis bullying Reylos that night) and that “Reylo” is used as an umbrella term for their unsupported accusations of racism against Boyega.

The tweets again reveal that viral tweets making accusations against Reylos had no merit, and were not based in any evidence they had seen with their own eyes. These users were looking to be involved in the latest conversation despite the lack of evidence or knowledge and despite the real harm being done to the community the tweet targeted.

This supports the hive mind behavior behind this cyberbullying attack. There was no concern for any person hurt. There was no concern for the misinformation that was being spread. And there was no concern for the very real issue of racism in online spaces.

This was only ever about a group of women getting hurt and, hopefully, getting off the internet altogether.

Why This Matters and What This Means for Art and Society in The Digital Age

If you have gotten this far and you find this article absurd, you should. This much vitriolic hatred, ugliness, and anger over women analyzing and creating media for a romantic pairing in a Hollywood blockbuster is, to put it mildly, overblown. Unfortunately, it’s the reality. And it’s a reality that has even deeper repercussions if not addressed.

I wrote this article not only in a hope to correct the misinformation against a group of women in the Star Wars fandom, but also to address a larger issue of what it means when these hate campaigns are so readily accepted by the general public, by journalists, and by other fans.

The internet will continue to evolve as it already has. It will evolve into an ecosystem that will touch every single moment of our lives. It is a future that will be as brilliant as it will be terrifying and when we are so willing to demonize a group of women with no evidence but a tweet with a lot of likes, it shows that we are not prepared.

We are living in an age where art is being dictated to what a few executives read online, or what a data analyst may write up in a report. We have seen how Disney has made a movie based off of fan service easily found in Reddit threads. We have seen Paramount shift the schedule of an entire film to redesign a character after apparent outrage. We have seen Disney remove James Gunn from a major movie project following a targeted alt-right campaign to get him removed. And we have seen this with Warner Brothers choosing to green light their films using AI.

This pattern is concerning in part because we are willing to create art via algorithm. But, it’s also concerning because, unless these algorithms are properly coded and taught overtime to understand hive mind mentality, the machines that churn social listening data will be regurgitating intelligence corrupted by organized and hateful groups. These groups aim to restrict freedom of speech, diversity, and meaning in our art for the sake of political agendas laking any evidence, any substance, or any valuable goal.

I also wrote this article because it is not only our art that is at risk, but the ways in which we communicate as human beings online. The ability to see individuals — namely women — as inhuman or as less than with no second thought is something we should all understand is a problem. We have a deep inability to question what we see on our Facebook feeds, our Twitter timelines, or in our Instagram photos . We also live in an age where entire governments are being overturned by algorithms and social media ads. We are quick to blame Facebook and Cambridge Analytica and YouTube for this, and yes, while, those platforms have a responsibility of their own, we need to realize that it is our responsibility as well to always question what we see and search for evidence if it is not provided to us.

This example of bullying women in an online community is not necessarily synonymous with political elections, but it still presents yet another moment where people are failing to believe hard evidence over buzz words, sensationalized headlines, and clear, often spelled out agendas.

Until we learn not to react to everything we see, and listen to the people around us who come with facts, this type of behavior will continue, this type of behavior will get worse, and this type of behavior will impact us politically, socially, and culturally as we become more and more integrated as a digital society.

On January 10th, John Boyega posted a video to his Instagram account showing himself mocking tweets by women in the Reylo community. He did not blur out the names. These women were specifically targeted. The event created ~50k tweets continuing to bully women. Media outlets including Forbes, IGN, Cinemablend, Esquire, and The Wrap picked up the story. They all applauded the video.

In response, Reylos trended #reylolove — stories about how women in the community had positively impacted their lives.

They also created a charity event for anti-cyberbullying charity Cybersmile, which you can donate to here.

[symflash]

Ultimate Spider-Man Symflash headcanons

Because I can’t write, I can’t draw, and I can’t pay other people to do it for me.

* The symbiote that's with Flash is a fragment of the larger chunk of symbiote that went down with the Helicarrier in season 1, episode 26, and not the brand new symbiote created in season 3, episode 2. Consequently, they remember Harry, but not the time the Goblin injected Peter with Venom (different fragment).

* Also, in this continuity, "Venom" is actually the name the symbiote picked for themself.

* Venom was a blank slate at their birth, like an infant, with zero concept of morals or social mores. They might've been able to suss it out by osmosis from their hosts' brains, if their most long-term host hadn't been Harry "I hate my dad and I wish he was dead" Osborn.

* Flash's and Venom's first dance as Agent Venom went something like this: Venom: “Okay, I think I've cracked the code. Every time I assert my personhood separate from my host, I get electrocuted to smithereens. So maybe if I... pretend to be an inanimate object, act super low-key, this new host won't notice, and I can delay my next near-death experience.” Flash: "This is awesome! You're awesome! What's your name? I'm Flash! Do you wanna be friends? Do you like football? Do you know what football is?" Venom: *tears streaming down their metaphorical face* "wHAt tHe fUcK Is goINg oN"

* That was not the moment Venom decided to bind themselves permanently to Flash, though. That happened after Beetle tried to hit them with a sonic blast. Venom was in pain, and Flash was telling them not to be scared, because Spider-Man would help them, they could trust Spidey. That was Venom's first exposure to the concept of trust. And after they saw that trust paid off, they decided to trust Flash. And their trust paid off. Flash: "Did you hear that, buddy? You won't have to leave after all! Isn't this great?" Venom:

* Flash's training period at SHIELD was mostly dedicated to teaching human morality to Venom and training himself to not refer to himself as "we" (it gives the people with the sonic guns twitchy trigger fingers).

* Sure, I could NOT shoehorn in Flash's comic book backstory. But I'm a slut for cheap angst, so I'm gonna. ** Flash didn't so much live at the gas station as he squatted there after running away from home. ** The smell of alcohol is a trigger for him. He drops off the radar on his 21st birthday because he's terrified his friends will try to take him to a bar.

* Flash and Venom converse telepathically more often than they let on. They like to do Mystery Science Theatre 3000 running commentaries during boring meetings. They also do a psychic duet of Bohemian Rhapsody whenever a known mind reader walks into the room. Just in case.

* Venom thinks the fact that Flash was The Very First Host They Ever Took is the most romantic thing ever. ("It was destiny!") Flash is just embarrassed that their first meeting was so inauspicious. ("You came out of a toilet and I tried to feed Pete to you.")

* Venom can do a bang-up impersonation of Harry, and you can bet they use it to make fun of him at any opportunity. ** "Hurr burr, I have a limousine, a penthouse home and billions of dollars, and when my favorite Spider-Person doesn't reciprocate my gay crush *choking up* I don't cry about it."

* There was a brief period after "Anti-Venom" where Venom was too weak to speak to Flash, and Flash wasn't sure if they were dead or alive. ** Of course he cried; slut for cheap angst, remember?

* Flash has undiagnosed dyslexia. He didn't figure it out until Venom asked him why letters wiggle for him but not for Harry.

* Venom likes dandelions, especially ones growing out of cracks in the sidewalk. ** "They're considered weeds and eradicated on sight, and yet they're strong enough to break through rock, and hardy enough to survive in environments that would be inhospitable to all other plants. It's just... poeticcinema.jpg." *** "Buddy, you can beam a crisp and clear mental impression of any picture directly into my brain. There's literally no reason for you to say 'dot jay peg' out loud, ever."

* Peter & Co. keep making references to stuff Venom did that Venom has no memory of (because there's an entire branch of symbiotes that diverged from them, so they literally weren't around for those events). Flash decides to investigate and pulls up all SHIELD case reports about Venom. That's the first time he finds out how many symbiotes SHIELD has killed or attempted to kill. Venom can only shrug their metaphorical shoulders. People have been trying to murder them nearly from the moment of their birth. They didn't have a point of reference, so they'd just sort of assumed it was a normal part of life. They don't really understand why Flash is crying. And that makes Flash cry harder. ** And that's the story of how Flash got over his crush on Peter. *** Venom doesn't see much point in holding grudges. After all, if they ever express anger or try to retaliate over their treatment, they'll be stuffed in a jar at best and incinerated alive at worst. Luckily, Flash is a finely-tuned rage producing machine; he can be angry on both of their behalf.

* Flash encourages Venom to have their own hobbies separate from him. To facilitate this, Venom has permission to drive around Flash's body while he sleeps, provided they don't stray away from SHIELD headquarters and wake Flash up if there's an emergency. ** Venom likes looking up video tutorials for random things. And because they share a brain with Flash, he ends up learning things by proxy. (The morning he woke up fluent in American Sign Language was a trippy one). *** They're also into videogame speedruns, of all things.

* Scarlet Spider would very much like to forget the time he got up for a midnight snack and found Flash, with solid black eyes, hunching on top of a vending machine like a goblin, attempting to insert three chocolate bars into his mouth at once.

* Venom is the only one allowed to call Flash "Eugene". They're very territorial of their monopoly.

* Venom has a dim, dim view of father figures. Their genetic progenitor tried to murder them multiple times, and their only second-hand experiences of fathers are, well, Norman Osborn and Harrison Thompson.

* What's the point of having a foot long tongue if you don't use it to lick the bottom of your ice cream carton?

* Venom and Flash have such divergent music tastes, they need to have two separate playlists. (Flash likes punk rock and hair metal, Venom's into eurodance and chiptunes.)

* Incomplete list of animals Flash unironically thinks are cute: tarantulas ("Fuzzy!"), snakes ("Their tongues go blelele!"), amblypygids ("They cuddle their babies!"), velvet worms ("Their feet are so stubby!")

* Flash is actually pretty insecure about being Venom's host. He feels the only reason they stick with him is because he was the first person to be nice to them, and they could do better. ** Flash: "I mean, you give me superpowers, the means to get away from my old life, the opportunity to be somebody... but what do I give you in return? Maybe Doc Ock was right... maybe I AM a parasite." Venom:

* Actually, Flash is insecure about a lot of things. He's afraid Peter secretly resents him for the years of bullying, he fears that he's just fooled everyone into thinking that he's a good person and really he's just as much of a monster as his father, he's scared he's too stupid to make anything of himself and he'll become a deadbeat... it's a bunch of separate but interlocking self-esteem issues. ** Venom helps, though. It's useful to have an outside perspective to your own brain.

* Flash initially calls Venom an "it", because they're genderless and he doesn't have a lot of insight into gender politics and pronouns. He later learns about they/them pronouns, and asks if he can use it for Venom. Venom, who's used to being called "it" and knows even less about personal pronouns, is confused. They have a long discussion about dehumanizing language that ends with Venom shrugging their metaphorical shoulders and going "Sure, if it makes you feel better".

* Being a couple kind of sneaks up on them. In their defense, both of them have little to no experience in giving or receiving affection; they have trouble distinguishing different kinds of love (hence why Flash thought his giant gay crush on Peter was just wanting to be his best buddy).

* Cons of wearing actual clothes instead of a shapeshifted symbiote: Doing laundry. Pros of wearing actual clothes: Nobody can tell you're giving your boyfriend a fullbody cuddle under his shirt in public.

* They're both super affectionate and flirty. They both get super flustered and embarrassed when receiving affection and being flirted at. Together, they are a disaster.

[bitchesgetriches]

Hi Bitches, I have a question that's not really financial, but more about maintaining empathy in this capitalist hellscape. It's long, so I apologize in advance. So. I live in NYC and there are homeless people everywhere. I can remember being a kid and having huge amounts of sympathy for the homeless in my hometown city; I always gave some of my allowance money if I walked by a homeless person, or asked a parent for a dollar to give. Fast forward to now. I'm 27, have lived in 1/4

           NYC for 2+ years, and have lost so much sympathy for the suffering of the homeless. I know logically that I should be much more sympathetic to their situation, but I also can't help but to think that they are such a nuisance. I almost never give them a spare dollar or two now. I mean, I really need every dollar I make right now, at least I think I do. My family & I just can't afford it. I loathe them for inconveniencing me with their shouting and their stench. I think that if they've 2/4   

           reached the point of needing to beg strangers for help, they must have alienated all of their loved ones; I'd never be in that position. If the people who love them won't help them, why should I? But then logically I know that's not true either. I could be in that place with just a few family tragedies. It's this internal battle I deal with every day on my commute: I dehumanize these people, I feel guilty and logically know I'm wrong, I do nothing to help. I want to stop my dehumanization 3/4       

           of the homeless because I know it's wrong, and because I know I can do better for them and society can do better for them. The homelessness problem is clearly related to this capitalist world we live in, but what can be done? How do I stop mentally battling myself and actually get over being annoyed and repulsed every time a homeless person inconveniences me? Thank you bitches for everything, even if this never gets answered        

This is SUCH an interesting question. Thank you for asking it, dearheart! And I applaud you for your self-awareness, pragmatism, and compassion. It’s clear that this is a mental struggle for you, and the very fact that you don’t simply stop the introspection at “Well IIIII would never end up homeless, alone, and stinking up the sidewalk” but instead are working to improve your outlook speaks very highly of you.

So let’s talk about homelessness.

As John Oliver so eloquently explains in this clip, the vast majority of Americans are sooooo much closer to being a homeless beggar on the streets than they are to being on MTV’s Cribs. Our individual financial security is fucking precarious! That’s why we write this blog! Yes, you can build up an emergency fund and save six months of your income, but when you get right down to it, most of us are one major medical emergency away from bankruptcy.

And if you can’t recover from said emergency, if you don’t have a support network to get you out of that mess... that’s it. You’re done. You’re staring down the barrel of homelessness and getting judged by strangers on the street for your inability to stay clean and hygienic while you literally sleep under the overpass and rummage through the dumpster behind Panera for day-old bread.

Now let’s address your knee-jerk reaction that homeless people must’ve really fucked up to lose all support and end up on the street. Surely, someone like YOU could never end up there because you have people who love and support you, right?

Sadly, a lot of homeless people are mentally ill, and slipped through the cracks left by their caretakers and an imperfect system. Others are kids who have aged out of the foster care system with no helping hand and no prospects for an education or career. Others are gay and trans youth who were literally kicked out of their homes and disowned by their families. Others are addicted to substances in this great nation where we treat addiction like a crime rather than the public health crisis it is.

Put even the most normal, patient, chill person in any of these situations, grind them down with bad weather, abuse, lack of nutrition and healthcare for months and years, and I guarantee they’ll get a bit surly. When you meet a loud, annoying, unhygienic homeless person on the street, you’re meeting them at their worst. I defy you to act any better in their situation!

All of which is to say that even a homeless person who you find personally repugnant and unsympathetic is probably not so different from you. Non-homeless people can be massive fucking dicks, so why not the homeless?

I know I keep using “you” in a sort of accusatory fashion in this post, and I promise I’m not condescending to you or picking on you. It’s all meant to reinforce the idea that there is a very thin line separating all of us financially stable people from the homeless. That alone makes them worthy of our compassion and respect. Basic human decency goes a long way to someone who gets alternately ignored and shat upon by most of the human race.

Here’s s’more on why we should all cut the poor and homeless a break:

"Poor People Are Poor Because They Are _____. Rich People Are Rich Because They Are _____." 

It's More Expensive to Be Poor Than to Be Rich

Lastly, here’s what you can do to stop feeling impotent, useless, and heartless when you see a homeless person and you can’t afford to give them money.

Vote.

I personally very rarely give money to the homeless. But I do donate to a number of charitable organizations that help to alleviate the plight of the homeless and impoverished in my country. I also vote for politicians and policies that will improve life for those struggling to make ends meet. I support policies and politicians who aim to get at the root of the homelessness problem--not just systemic poverty, but inadequate mental health programs, lack of support for veterans and the disabled, and lack of protection for children suffering abuse or lacking stability in their home lives.

I pay taxes in the hopes that my money will be used to stab the root problems of homelessness in the heart. When I see a homeless person on the street, I remind myself that I am making informed political decisions to help them. I remind myself that they are the reason I donate to charities and food banks. And yeah, sometimes if I can, I spare a dollar for their plight. But if I can’t in that moment, then I know that I’ve still done something on a broader scale.

You need to start thinking this way to alleviate your guilt. Be the logical, pragmatic person you appear to be from your question. And remind yourself that some day, you could be in the same position whether you expect it or not.

Good luck, honey. It’s going to be ok.

Here’s some further reading:

Ask the Bitches: "How Do I Protect My Own Mental Health While Still Helping Others?"

Raising Awareness About "Raising Awareness"

Raising the Minimum Wage Would Make Our Lives Better 

How to Spot a Charitable Scam

Judging Charities Like Judgey McJudgerson: How Can Your Donation Make the Biggest Impact? 

[the-midwrite-oil]

Character Creation Tag!

I was tagged by @megxnswrites . Thank you, and I’m so sorry it took me so long to finish this! This is one of the more unique ones I’ve been tagged in!

(I’m doing this for Kesa, so fair warning that half of this may not make any sense because this story has its beginning in my mind five years ago and it’s been through countless changes since then. It’s hard to pinpoint when specific things came to me.)

1. What was the first element of your OC that you remember considering (name, appearance, backstory, etc.)?

Her backstory and station in life. Kesa has had multiple versions because the premise for this is so old (in my head, at least), but for this specific iteration, the fact that she is the daughter of a lord and destined to marry the king was the first thing to come. She even used to have a different name!

2. Did you design them with any other characters/OCs from their universe in mind?

Yep! I first started thinking about her and Nick (in the earliest, earliest versions of this, they were supposed to fall in love!). Then once I realized that Nick would be the villain, I created Egan. Brija came last, and she ultimately wasn’t very important anyway until I cut another character named Marsa.

3. How did you choose their name?

When I make fantasy names, I just...toss a bunch of sounds together into a form that sounds vaguely name-ish. Kesa was originally named Liya, until I made up the name “Kesa” as a throwaway name for a servant, and I was like, “oh my GOD this is such a better name.” Liya eventually became the name of Kesa’s deceased mother.

4. In developing their backstory, what elements of the world they live in played the most influential parts?

Plot-necessary things, like Kesa’s ancestry and social class. Someone with a different backstory could never have been the main character in the story I wanted to tell.

5. Is there any significance behind their hair colour?

Not particularly. Kesa has always had black hair to me, throughout almost every version I can remember.

6. Is there any significance behind their eye colour?

Again, not really. She just has blue eyes.

7. Is there anything significance behind their height?

I’ve never thought of her height as anything but “average.” There’s nothing special about it.

8. What (if anything) do you relate to within their character/story?

Her need for power, albeit in a lesser way (I’m not trying to maintain hold over a whole country like she is), is something I relate to very strongly. I’ve struggled a lot with feelings of powerlessness because of my own mental illness and background. (If I haven’t gotten into my past yet on this blog already, I will eventually, but basically...my life hasn’t been easy, and I haven’t always had the power to choose anything that happens to me.) Writing Kesa become powerful after being in that same mental state as I was has been incredibly cathartic and freeing. She’s been broken down and dehumanized and made to feel a similar way to how I felt, and after, she’s incredibly powerful.

9. Are they based off of you, in some way?

Like I explained above, we’ve been through a similar internal journey. But it was entirely unintentional, strangely enough. I’ve been working on this version of this story for almost two years, and I only realized a couple of months ago how close our ordeals have been to each other. I didn’t mean for us to be so similar, and I really didn’t know how to feel about the story after I realized. I’m glad I decided to keep going with it, but there was a time when I debated stopping. Everything in the story feels so much more personal now.

10. Did you know what the OC’s sexuality would be at the time of their creation?

I didn’t think about it very much. I’d say she’s heteroflexible, though. Saying she’s straight doesn’t feel totally right, but saying she's bisexual doesn’t feel right either. (I’m bi.)

11. What have you found to be most difficult about creating art for your OC (any form of art: Writing, drawing, edits etc.)?

Writing scenes where Kesa has lost control of something or is feeling particularly powerless are very hard. It’s like, “I know exactly how horrible this feels, and I’m still doing it to her.” It does make me feel guilty.

12. How far past the canon events that take place in their world have you extended their story, if at all?

I just have a vague mental image of Kesa and Egan one day and they're married and they're ruling together and they have kids and just...Kesa gets her happy ending. Mostly everyone gets a happy ending. I really hate stories that are already dark and then they end sadly.

13. If you had to narrow it down to 2 things that you MUST keep in mind while working with your OC, what would those things be?

1. Kesa’s motivation to become as personally powerful as possible. She believes that that will make it so that no one can control her ever again. 2. The things she’s been through. Her suffering. It shapes her very deeply, so when I’m going between writing earlier and later scenes (I’m editing TBK right now and jumping around a lot), I have to remember that at the very beginning, she’s still scared and weak. She’s not yet the strong, power-hungry person she becomes.

14. What is something about your OC that can make you laugh?

Kesa’s really funny when she’s happy. When she’s happy and surrounded by people that love her and she feels in control of her environment. She’s jokey and fun and she really makes me smile.

15. What is something about your OC that can make you cry?

How selfish she is sometimes. She’s been hurt so many times before that she’s learned to only look out for herself. And it’s not out of malice or anything. It’s a defense mechanism she learned from being abused. It makes me really, really sad to see her scared and weak and alone because she made a decision that only benefitted her.

16. Is there some element you regret adding to your OC or their story?

Not really. If I regretted adding something, I would just...take it out. That’s the beauty of being the writer.

17. What is the most recent thing you’ve discovered about your OC?

She has blue eyes! I have written 90k words in her head, and I had no idea what eye color she had until like...a week ago!

18.  What is your favorite fact about your OC?

How passionate she is. When she wants something, it is hers and there is nothing anyone else can do about it. 

I’m tagging (sorry if you were already tagged, and feel free to not do this, I won’t mind!): @luna-evans-writes @halrose @sarmarble @writersloth @thesteamgoth @lyntries @touchingmadness

this is not ten but...it is after midnight and I do not give a fuck lmao.

[nomediaplay]

Why SM rarely disband their groups?

Because it makes absolutely no sense.

I don’t know why most “kpop-fans” have a problem to understand this, but each single member in a group has individually signed contracts to hire SM as their agency to help manage their individual celebrity careers as best possible. Many members won’t think of their groups as the final goal. They will think of their group as a stepping stone in launching their careers. As I expressed back when NCT was launched: I personally didn’t like it at all but it was obviously a very direct response to the extreme troubles SM had had with TVXQ and EXO members leaving. If your fave group isn’t doing many group activities, then it’s because (some of) the members don’t want to do group activities. However, that doesn’t mean that they’ll never ever want to do any group activities in the future. Just look at all these really old groups who have come back together for some group activities over the last years. And even if it’s unlikely that they’ll do group activities in the future, many of the members are probably still helped in their solo careers by association with the group. I mean, just look at SNSD. Even the 3 that left SM to get more appropriate agencies for their solo careers of choice always keep reiterating how “they’re still SNSD”. Does it mean they’ll actually do activities as SNSD in the future? Who knows.

And that Q&A kind of leads on to a whole bunch of other questions in my inbox:

“What do think about that new sm super group with exo,shinee and nct members, do think it’s a good idea , will those idols gain anything from this project. You probably don’t care but I wanted your insight on this”

You’re correct in that I don’t really care and up until today I assumed it was some project for a CF deal like in the past. But I guess it turned out much more interesting. It’s not really shocking or strange if you get what I wrote above, and they’re clearly doing this in cooperation with a big US label (and Capitol is part of UM which SM of course have worked with before). But really, at this point in time I’m at no position to have an opinion on either how popular these selected members are in the West or what the future holds for SHINee and EXO, so I don’t really have anything of value to say about this project.

“You admit that kpop companies abuse their artists (and fans to an extent) but you also say most idols are talentless idiots who don’t deserve to be paid much… I’m confused”

Yes, it’s my very firm opinion that most idols are talentless idiots that don’t deserve to be paid. However, that doesn’t mean I think their companies deserve to make lots of money instead either. In a better world, stupid fangirls wouldn’t be as stupid. And I’m a bit upset about a whole lot of things that companies do:

First off they distort the media landscape entirely and make it extremely difficult for actual serious artists to break through (as I said before, many aspiring artists will have little choice but to actually take part in this shit-show).

Secondly, many of the companies are abusing any serious artists (or actors) they have by not helping them as individuals and refusing them to do solo activities, both in terms of making money from solo deals to capitalize on their current popularity and in terms of helping them build long terms careers.

Thirdly, many companies will very intentionally not inform big/popular (but new-ish) acts of the actual economics of the business and try to abuse them. They’ll make them constantly do things for free like v-live updates and they’ll make them go do a ton of events like fan-signs and hi-touch events etc “to win number 1 ranking” even though the member gets basically f*k all money while the company makes lots of money, and meanwhile they’ll keep insisting that members shouldn’t do solo activities that actually would give members lots of money.

Fourthly, they not just distort the media landscape, but they very intentionally feed public with an extremely incorrect view that all “celebrities” make a lot of money, which fuels the whole circle of how a million talentless idiots wants to become idols.

“sooman’s wet dream is to have idols dehumanized and turned into robots, make them disposable. and it literally represents everything that’s wrong with kpop. he’s a scary scary man but go on kissing his ass.”

Heh. I used to get lots of comments like this 6 years ago… But the agenda of “SM idols being robots” was usually either pushed by JYJ’s or YG’s marketing team. So you must be something else and I presume someone’s been sharing posts I’ve made on some other platform to attract some new haters going crazy when told about reality. As I’ve clearly expressed before and as should be obvious from the above answers if you somehow didn’t know before: I don’t like SM. At all. But I despise all other kpop companies. Compared to other kpop companies SM is absolutely amazing. What other kpop company have actually (successfully) debuted more diverse trainees? What other kpop company actually let their celebrities speak as much and as freely (for example, tons of SM celebrities have hosted radio shows where they spend hours live on-air discussing all kinds of topics with other people)? And what other kpop companies are even doing half the effort SM do to actually help all of their celebrities to build solo careers?

I know that SM is losing money in its non-music business but how considerable is this loss for KB Asset Management to be so fussy lately? First they brought up the payment issue to LSM personal company which pretty much went nowhere. Then they asked for dividends to be paid out. Now they are onto closing business lines. It looks more and more like the media is reporting all these demands and portraying SM in a bad light for clicks. Does this circus happen every SM shareholders’ annual meeting?

Errrr, I’ve always pretty clearly said that some of these side businesses SM’s been doing seem like rather bad ideas (everything from hamburger bars to karaoke bars to COEX Artium and many of their investments into other companies too). So I clearly agree that some of the critique from SM shareholders is justified. At the same time though… I mean, I’ve clearly expressed my opinions about buying shares in these companies and that artists management agencies shouldn’t be publicly traded companies to start with. Korean media isn’t reporting on this for clicks - it’s simply that some stupid people are unhappy about finding out that they’ve made stupid decisions. But at least as long as JYP shares keep falling they’ll feel better knowing there are others who made more stupid decisions.

Now obviously 14 y/o girls will post all kinds of stupid posts on PANN and “journalists” will post “news” on allkpop but what they write has nothing to do with reality.

“Do know how much an artist make from digital music sales, for artist like taeyeon, iu g dragon etc.   Which pays better to an artist digital sales or physical sales.”

For all successful artists, music sales are basically irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if the artist just is a recording artists or a singer/songwriter and it doesn’t matter if it’s digital or physical sales. Music sales is not how top artist make the bulk of their money. However, as I’ve expressed before, for the type of artists that can still actually sell physical albums - that brings in much more money. (hold on I’ll edit in links to old posts). Edit: I guess the comments I wrote in this post about Billboard’s “top money makers 2014″ and the comments I wrote in this post about Spotify talk a bit about it. But remember the kpop groups typically have really low royalty rates on music sales.

“Why are ballads singer so popular in south Korea at least on charts it seem. Some seem also to have the ability to have concerts even though they don’t have die hard fans, but those rnb and pop singers doesn’t seem to be able to do the same even though they have die hard stans. I’m sorry if the question sounds stupid but it’s something I have noticed for a while now.”

Ehm, but it’s a lot about what I’ve always said about the difference about popularity of a song and popularity of a singer. Many of the songs that rank high on the digital charts aren’t actually liked because people like that specific singer and how he/she performs the song and would pay to go to their concerts. And that’s not only for Korea. That’s for all countries. As I’ve expressed clearly before I’m extremely disappointed in the American industry over the last 20 years.

Some of these Korean singers are indeed actually popular and can hold concerts while many others can’t.

[txtdol]

02. losing my edge (week 4)

Time compression in league fandom is a funny thing, especially to a new fan.  In 2010, YellOwStaR, as part of Against All Authority, played in the Season 1 equivalent of worlds, the season championship. In 2010 I graduated college. That doesn't seem that long ago. Telling me that YellOwStaR has been playing since Season One makes him seem ancient, a grandfather to even Madlife and Score, who had played in the granddaddy of LCK tournaments, the OGN invitational. Telling that to a new fan -- "YellOwStaR has been playing before Korean pro league of legends existed" -- is mind-blowing.

Because that was only 6 years ago, and YellOwStaR's progaming career is, for the moment, over. He's 24 and retired. I'm older, and my career feels like it's still just beginning.

Hai is also 24, but he's retired, come back, moved to the bench, and then joined a challenger team that has since been promoted and bought out. He's been kicked out of his team and invited back; he's replaced his substitute and trained his substitute; he's switched lane assignments twice. I've worked for almost as long as he has, and feel like I've only accomplished a quarter of what he has.

He was parked in the driveway of C9's old gaming house in Northern California with his whole life packed into the little egg of a car. He was about to drive away, but the reality of what he was leaving behind finally caught up to him. For two years, he'd lived with his team. They'd become his family — the first real semblance of such a thing in over a decade. They were the people he trusted most, and together, they had pioneered a path into professional gaming. And he was their leader.

But the calls for his retirement buried those memories in the past. The perception of him being a weak player crept into the team and chipped at him from behind. Every time he made a mistake in practice or in a game, the little holes grew. He tripped over them again and again until he fell in. And at 22 years old, he retired his dream and wondered what was next.

- Kien Lam, "The Hai Road”

Where was I at 22? Certainly not standing on a precipice, peering down into the pit of obscurity, wondering if this was the end of the road for a dream I spent so much of myself pursuing. Even now, way past 22, I see my future as a series of paths that could branch out to ever broader worlds, hidden by the fog of war that is simple, human uncertainty. Maybe these paths are no longer as multitudinous as it used to be; maybe they are not multiplying the way they had when I was 18, but the paths that I am on are even better lit by the wards other people who have traveled ahead of me have placed. So if even I think there are unknowns I should pursue, if even I think that the path I am on has not yet ended, will split into more, if thinner and less well-traveled, footpaths, why should Hai’s path have ended at 22? Why should we have thought that one peak was enough, or that he needed to have peaked at all?

In America, at least, how we read any great athlete’s ending still seems influenced by Michael Jordan’s merciless stage-managing of his own second retirement. . . . Hit the last shot, seize the title, never lose, never show weakness, end on a big banging chord that the audience remembers forever; then you’re a champion for all time, in the same way Cheers never closes. That this is, actually, such an impossibly grotesque and dehumanizing approach that not even Michael Jordan could resist coming back to screw it up should possibly tell us something. But there it is, an ideal that every generational-apex-type star has to contend with on some level.

- Brian Phillips, “The Sun Never Sets: On Roger Federer, Endings, and Wimbledon”

Self-confidence is a double-edged sword: it means you're not afraid of failure, but it also means failure shakes your sense of self. I think of it like the reverse imposter syndrome: instead of play-acting the successful person, always afraid that you'll be caught out faking, you can't recognize the person who is actually losing. An in-game dysmorphia. "Is that defeat really me? Why does no one believe me when I say I can still win?"

But then he gets off a boat, comes home to a struggling team. He feels his competitiveness kick in, almost a chemical thing, and he starts working out, and he wonders: Could he play at 50? What would he do against LeBron?

What if?

"It's consumed me so much," he says. "I'm my own worst enemy. I drove myself so much that I'm still living with some of those drives. I'm living with that. I don't know how to get rid of it. I don't know if I could. And here I am, still connected to the game."

He thinks about the things Phil Jackson taught him. Jackson always understood him and wasn't afraid to poke around inside Jordan. Once during his ritual of handing out books for his players to read, he gave Jordan a book about gambling. It's a Zen koan Jordan needs now, in this new challenge: To find himself, he must lose himself. Whenever he obsesses about returning to play, he tries to sleep, knowing that when he wakes up, things will be better. He knows he won't get to 218. He knows he won't ever play pro basketball again. He knows he's got to quiet these drives, to find a way to live the life he worked so hard to create, to be still.

- Wright Thompson, "Michael Jordan has Not Left The Building”

Maybe that's why the greats keep coming back. They can't recognize the person who isn't playing the game as them. In retiring and hoping they can "find themselves," the self they find is a stranger who shares their body. As Kien Lam wrote, “There was supposed to be relief in retirement. And yet he cried.” Not content to rest on what they've accomplished, always sure they could accomplish more, they put on the clothes of the game or team that felt most like them.  

While on the Wizards, Michael Jordan was just average. They never made it to playoffs. Yellowstar on TSM frustrated everyone, including himself; on 2016 Fnatic, he was joyless. Federer is still winning, but as Brian Phillips points out, it's no longer effortless, invincible, second to religious certainty. Even with all these narratives, though, it's still the nature of the fan to hope for the impossible and the impeccable -- that their hero remains unbeatable from beginning to end, never having to suffer the indignity of loss. We don't want to see someone struggling to find themselves; even here, we prefer the Faker of 2013, tearing through an unbeatable run to Worlds, and not the Faker of 2014, struggling against Samsung White. We want to see them fully formed, like Venus arriving in the arms of Nike -- well, this metaphor is getting away from me.

Fans have an idealized narrative that sports heroes are supposed to follow. The seasoned veteran works excruciatingly long hours to achieve an end, he climbs the ranks and makes a name for himself. When he’s reached his peak, when he’s won it all, he retires gracefully because he can rest well on his laurels.

That ending can also be that of a coward who is afraid to want to achieve more. YellOwStaR was no coward. He didn't quit at his peak; he kept doing what he loved until he became weary of the game. His final year in the LCS was a disappointment, likely not just for his fans but for the widely celebrated support player himself. But no pro should know his limit until he reaches it and the drive to push it vanishes. That sort of heroism is what kept us searching for YellOwStaR's face when the camera panned away from the Nexus to show us the emotions of the players and the crowd.

- Kelsey Moser, "YellOwStaR's final year”

C9 is playing FlyQuest tomorrow. It's possible by the time you read this, you'll already know the results. Did Hai win? Did he body Jensen? Did he show that OG C9 is still the best C9, that greatness, even in league, can be intrinsic, and not just a function of taking advantage of the meta or drafting into OP champs?

Or was FlyQuest just a fluke? Did C9 stomp over them? Has their ceiling been reached? Was it too much to expect that our past can be equal to the present, that the young won't always bury the old?

I want Hai to succeed, not because I respect him as a player, or because I think that storyline is the most interesting for the casual viewer like me, even though those things are both true. I want him to succeed for purely personal, petty reasons: I like Hai, I see in Hai something of me, and I want him to carry that small part of my investment to a victory over the current best team in NA LCS, to spring split playoffs -- hell, even to worlds. I want a mouthy, hyper-competitive, scrawny-as-fuck Asian-American man to be an inspiration. I want to prove that League of Legends is not just a young person’s game. I want to make Kien Lam happy.

If YellOwStaR had retired at the end of 2015, I would always wonder what he could have achieved in 2016. Romantic notions are one thing, but the reality of watching him confront difficulty this year, of accepting that he had struggled and failed to replicate results, was almost more fulfilling. I will always remember that in his final year of professional play, YellOwStaR wanted to keep playing and challenged himself until he came to a realization he felt too exhausted to continue. . . . YellOwStaR simply dared to dream. It would do us well to remember that, sometimes, to fail is also heroic. (KM)

I can’t speak for you, but me? I’ll take Federer’s version. Before we even get to the question of whether being no. 2 for a long time and winning minor tournaments enhances or damages the résumé of someone who was once no. 1 and winning majors, what I find most admirable in Federer’s late career is simply the vision of freedom it implies. The idea that you can make your own way. That you don’t have to give up what you love simply because you’re told to. That what hurts you might also fulfill you, or even make you happy, because life is not simple. (BP)

But reading about Yellowstar and Federer, I'm comforted by the feeling that failure is not always failure. More than "loss is improve," failure is a door to other opportunities. It frees us from the prison of thinking we gave up too soon. It closes the path behind us, so that we can't keep turning back. And it forces us to find what is next, be it the analyst's desk, the coach's chair backstage, or, in Hai's case, right back to where he started.

This is why I feel for people who've been fringe LCS players for a long time. I wonder what kinds of things they've given up to just chase the dream. What are they eating? What's their living situation? And in the long run, maybe it's worth it. (KL)

Here's to standing at that precipice, seeing the darkness, and vaulting face-forward into that pitch-black unknowing anyway. Here's to failing as a way of discovering yourself, not in the way defeat helps young players to grow, but in the way losing helps us make piece with our limitations, even our eventual mortality. Here's to playing for yourself, because you don't owe anyone anything, not a good game, not a graceful game, not even a mediocre one. Here's to Yellowstar who put his own demons to rest. And here's to Hai, who chased his dream to the end and back again, who stands before us on Sunday not the idealized sports hero but my ideal sports hero. Good luck, buddy. 

[kyrianlyndon]

(via THOUGHTS ABOUT THE "ROSEANNE" MESS)

When you try to look at something from all angles, you make no friends, but I’m compelled to do it anyway. That said, I hesitated to write this because as others have wisely pointed out, horrible things are happening all around us every minute of every day, and here we are battling over a comedienne and the “right” to see a TV show.

Many seem to think this controversy is about one person insulting another. They’ve brought up Joy Behar, Jimmy Kimmel and other liberals who have “gotten away with it.”  I don’t watch The View or Jimmy Kimmel, but I do agree that anyone who has made bigoted statements or who does so in the future, should be called out the same way and, if necessary, face appropriate consequences.

I didn’t defend Michelle Wolf for roasting Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Kathy Griffin and her decapitated Trump photo. I did notice, however, that the same people who were appalled by those two incidents are okay with Roseanne’s crap and Ted Nugent’s crap. So, it’s kind of like pot/kettle. There’s a lot of, “but he said, but she said, and hey, he started it.” It all seems rather childish, except the anger we feel toward each other knows no depths, and the venom feels poisonous.

As far as comediennes go, I have always liked the ones who target institutions, government, and politicians. All of that to me is fair game. I’ll admit, too, there are people I don’t mind them poking fun of, but those people are usually guilty of offending us and putting themselves out there in such a way that you kind of feel they deserve what they get. They are comedy gold, and I understand that.

But this issue is not about insulting someone. It’s about destructive and divisive hate speech, i.e., racism. There’s a big difference.

Some people claim that what Roseanne said is not racism. Let’s see, there was the “Roseanne didn’t know Valerie Jarret was black because she’s light-skinned” argument. Except she knows damn well who Valerie Jarret is, enough to still be talking about the woman when Obama is not even in office anymore. Roseanne follows politics obsessively and knows all the players. She has made a run for President. At the very least, she didn’t know Ms. Jarret wasn’t black, but the ‘ape’ reference was not  a coincidence. And it wasn’t the first time Roseanne tweeted something racist.

Then there was, “Why are they offended if they believe humans evolved from apes?” “They” includes all liberals, I presume, because, of course, they must all believe the same thing when it comes to creation, right? Wrong.

People who make this argument don’t seem to understand what it means to evolve. Per Merriam-Webster, it means to undergo an evolutionary change. It is “a process of continuous change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher, more complex, or better state.” So, you don’t evolve from something and still appear to be that something.

But the people who make that reference know this. They know full well that the ape reference is used to dehumanize and to subjugate. They did it to Michelle Obama. In fact, they were downright merciless in describing Mrs. Obama.

Those who make this reference believe they can pass it off as an innocent joke, or harmless insult, and that the rest of the world will be stupid enough to believe it.  Sorry, but no.

Alas, there is the freedom of speech cry! That is a good one when all else fails. People don’t seem to understand the First Amendment either. They think it means there should be zero consequences regardless of what we say, that no one should react unfavorably or reject it or use his or her power to handle the situation. These same people feel differently, however, when someone is saying something that they don’t like. Yes, double standards, indeed, but we’ll get to that.

Let’s get to that right now, in fact, because double standards exist everywhere between genders,  parties, religions, races, and more.

And, of course, I can’t speak for everyone, but when some celebrity gets caught with his or her pants down, as many have, I don’t care about their politics. It is not about left or right, and it shouldn’t be. It’s about right or wrong.

Yes, sometimes Democrats get away with things. Sometimes Republicans do. Just look at the “C” word argument. Both Roseanne and Ted Nugent have used the word against Hillary Clinton. That was way before Roseanne got a TV show and before Ted Nugent got invited to the White House.

The president gets away with saying despicable things all the time.

Similarly, people call out the predators and pedophiles in Hollywood, as they should, but then turn a blind eye to predators and pedophiles in the Catholic Church. They think because there are predators and pedophiles in Hollywood, all Hollywood celebrities are predators and pedophiles. No, wait—all liberals, according to some. Imagine if anyone said that because of pedophilia in the Catholic Church, all Catholics, or all Republicans must be pedophiles? Yes, it is absurd.

FFS, must everything be a competition?

Now, I am not here to defend ABC. Roseanne was the same person when they hired her. They knew who she was. Apparently, she also knows who she is, as she had serious reservations about doing the reboot in the first place.

It would have been one thing if she’d come on playing the character she played in the 90s, and the show didn’t have plans to explore and possibly heal the divisiveness with a real-life Trump supporter as the star pretty much playing herself, and liberal producers and writers. On the one hand, they were trying too hard to appease both sides. On the other hand, they were encouraging the series star in her belligerence and paving the way for her downfall.

Yeah, it was a bad idea.

And many won’t like this, but I do feel empathy for Roseanne. I can’t help that.  I do believe that this fallout has been hell for her and that she is not doing well. Besides that, something is clearly wrong with her.

Conservatives who watched her screech the national Anthem hated her then, and they hated her for many years after that, as she wasn’t their physical ideal or very ladylike, and they probably figured, on top of all that, she was a liberal. They pretend to support her now, but if they genuinely cared about her, they would not encourage her bad behavior.

The smartest tweet I’d read about this whole thing came from White House correspondent April Ryan when she tweeted Roseanne, saying, “Just stop.” Ms. Ryan told Roseanne to go on a retreat or something, stay off Twitter, off the phone, and stop listening to the enablers who are defending her mess. It’s easy to see that people are exploiting her in a way that will only make things worse.

She needs to fix this not dig a deeper grave.

And, okay, I couldn’t help laughing at the Twitter backlash she got from the Ambien excuse. She walked right into that, but I still feel bad.

Her “supporters” say she should not even have apologized. I say she should have stopped with the apology, no drama like, “I’m leaving Twitter,” only to come back and begin defending herself, justifying what she did with excuses.

It’s not a good feeling, watching someone self-destruct. It gives me no pleasure to see another human being crushed, humiliated, and used this way. There is that part of many of us, where we can’t look away from a train wreck, but it is no less awful.

And personally, I couldn’t keep quiet about any of it. I’ve hated racism and all forms of bigotry from the moment I was old enough to see it for what it was.  I was a child then, but I’d seen no evidence that any one group of people were superior to another and I’ve firmly believed that we are all entitled to dignity, justice, and respect.

Still, I don’t claim to be righteous and tolerant. I can’t because I am genuinely happy to coexist with people. I don’t claim to be tolerant because I am not a nice person who is just being politically correct. What I do or say along those lines is not for the sake of pleasing anyone.  When I speak out against racism, I am not defending the people targeted because they are more than capable of defending themselves. I’ve seen it. I am defending myself and what Ibelieve. I’m fighting for the world I want to live in. Lastly, I don’t claim to be tolerant because there are things I can’t and won’t tolerate. And, yes, racism happens to be one of them. It is crucial that we call it out when we see it, and it’s about time.

© Copyright June 1, 2018 by Kyrian Lyndon at kyrianlyndon.com.

Photo by Alexandra on Unsplash

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Police state, corporate state, denuded duncery state — a blistery bunch of 80 percenters lost in a carnival of debt, malignant food, maladjusted education and the folly of a full-throttle powerfully propagandist media like a proverbial copper girdle wire around our collective consciousness. That So Called Liberal (sic) Press (sic) playing triple dirges for the death of any emaciated version of democracy with a capital D for dollar. Feeding frenzy of the old and new rich class, and a lot of wannabe’s lusting after lotto, You Tube fame, anything from the comfort of plasma 72 inch Big Brother. Isaac Asimov’s I Robot, going on 70 years soon, and that’s the way of the Zionist drone hucksters, those lovely glassy-eyed Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg, Gates, Dell types, and the entire class of probiotic Kombucha libertarians who have no interest in climate change, clean oceans, the growth in poverty, wars, pestilence, resource theft, toxins, on-the-spectrum child birth rates skyrocketing, art, revolution, real human to human relationships, nature, other species, blue skies, discourse, food sanity, clean water, education. Read this from NewsSpeak, err, Newsweek rag: The world’s top tech companies are in a race to build the best AI and capture that massive market, which means the technology will get better fast—and come at us as fast. IBM is investing $1 billion in its Watson; Amazon is banking on Alexa; Apple has Siri. Google, Facebook and Microsoft are devoting their research labs to AI and robotics. In September, Salesforce.com announced it’s adding AI, called Einstein, to its business software. Its value, CEO Marc Benioff said at the launch, will be in ‘helping people do the things that people are good at and turning more things over to machines.’ AI will lead us into the mother of all tech revolutions. The last time anything came close was around 1900, when the automobile, telecommunications, the airplane and mass electrification all came together at once, radically changing the world from the late 1800s to the 1920s. Such times are particularly frightening. ‘A society that had established countless routines and habits, norms and regulations, to fit the conditions of the previous revolution, does not find it easy to assimilate the new one,’ wrote economist Carlota Perez in Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, her classic book. ‘A sense of impotence and frustration accumulates and a growing incongruence is experienced between the new and the old paradigm.’ Amazingly, these people are many cards missing from a full deck of humanity. Shelter, baby, sane sanity, and calm, less frenetic anxiety, less is more, and more is monstrous — obvious necessitates in any hierarchy of needs paradigm. More time for humanity to do what, is the question about these libertarians who think robotics and computers will turn us all into Athenians? More reading and schooling and community-it-takes-a-village action? Right! To help thy neighbor in endless bouts of humanitarian sharing? Right! To bring distribution of health, education, nourishment, and sanity to the rest of the world? Right! So, the goal of AI and robotics is, drum roll, to grease the palms of the millionaire and billionaire class and their classless middle managers and technocrats. More: The danger of artificial intelligence is in its behavior, and whether it is conscious or possesses other attributes of human thought is irrelevant. Computers that can drive cars and fly airplanes certainly pose dangers to humans and in fact Google has gone to great efforts to design safety into their self-driving cars. Computers that can run the entire world economy and provide constant companionship to all humans will pose great danger to humans. Malicious motivation is irrelevant to many of the dangers posed by super-intelligent machines. There are two forms of ‘wireheading’ to guard against: computers that delude themselves about their observations of the environment and computers that modify the source of approval for their actions, for example modifying humans. There are also dangers from what Omohundro described as ‘Basic AI Drives.’ Super-intelligent machines may be tools of competition among humans, who will be careless about these dangers because they are caught up in the heat of competition. And, Bill Hibbard, academic and AI tinkerer, is many times quoted as someone questioning AI, but let’s look at this, from James Barrat, author of Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era: That’s the cornerstone of an idea called the ‘intelligence explosion,’ developed in the 1960s by English mathematician I.J. Good. At the time, Good was studying early artificial neural networks, the basis for ‘deep learning’ techniques that are creating a buzz today, some 50 years later. He anticipated that self-improving machines would become as intelligent, then exponentially more intelligent, than humans. They’d save mankind by solving intractable problems, including famine, disease and war. Near the end of his life, as I report in my book Our Final Invention, Good changed his mind. He feared global competition would push nations to develop superintelligence without safeguards. And like Stephen Hawking, Stuart Russell, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak, Good feared it would annihilate us. ‘They’ll become self-protective and seek resources to better achieve their goals. They’ll fight us to survive, and they won’t want to be turned off.’ The crux of the problem is that we don’t know how to control superintelligent machines. Many assume they will be harmless or even grateful. But important research conducted by A.I. scientist Steve Omohundro indicates that they will develop basic drives. Whether their job is to mine asteroids, pick stocks or manage our critical infrastructure of energy and water, they’ll become self-protective and seek resources to better achieve their goals. They’ll fight us to survive, and they won’t want to be turned off. Omohundro’s research concludes that the drives of superintelligent machines will be on a collision course with our own, unless we design them very carefully. We are right to ask, as Stephen Hawking did, ‘So, facing possible futures of incalculable benefits and risks, the experts are surely doing everything possible to ensure the best outcome, right?’ These conversations intrigue the controllers and their minions, especially in our institutions of higher learning where a scant few are also the controllers of the narrative and worse, the curriculum. Imagine the dialogues around poverty, resource theft, cultural immolation with farmers, activists, revolutionaries, the parents of 11 million babies dying a year from treatable (mostly caused by malnutrition) disease. Imagine the former prisoners talking about reform and the enslavement of their lives and families’ lives by the punishment society, largely ramped up by the very inventions of the robotics-AI-Big Data yahoos, espousing their idiocy at conferences in the Rockies and at the foot of their superconductors. Imagine the millions of lost human lives caused by the financialization schemes dreamed up by computer whizzes. The model of terror for New Orleans, Detroit, Flint, across the land and globe, the Bhopal-driven corporations utilizing the best and the brightest and their inventions of creative human destruction. The political classless sucking on the crack pipe of power and money. Imagine, these conferences and interviews INTERSECTING with the age old problem of the rich and haves and the majority, poor and haves not, never in the same room. From that mush-making propaganda and infotainment and dirty entertainment, to the daily dehumanizing life cycle of drive-thru’s, Amazon Fresh deliveries, tellerless banking, on-line K12 and college, and the endless Windows and Screens of mush that sucks any agency and verve out of the average person as they navigate the endless bureaucracy of the modern 21st Century/Beyond Kafka Road Show of Stiff Arm Saluting to the Digital Gods. Can anyone see the efficacy of actually calling upon us, the masses, the ones stuck on the hamster wheel of generational poverty, generational indebtedness, generational running from the repo man (now some cyber security systems embedded into all the tools of democratic life – DMV, Labor, Medicine, Insurance, Credit Bureaus, Background Agencies, Drug Screeners, Fact Checkers). I have spasms of the old Molotov way, when I hear these supposed eggheads, and our superficial lust for another Turning or Watson. Oh, these billionaires and their underlings, the geniuses, sure, driving this absurdity of technology, colonizing Mars and Uranus, endless projects of tinkering, while coral reefs melt, farms dry up, millions perish yearly, while these captains of industry fly their AI-captained drones into the orifices of the dying while sending out gigatons of meaningless junk into both the ether and on our highways and byways. Food, Shelter, Safety, Education, Health? Shit no, if you are not part of the White Jewish-Christo-Emirate Class – Big questions derailed in this punishment society scrambling to make sense of 100 years of robber barons and elitists running the show, the neo-con, neo-liberal, neo-fascist, neo-libertarian, neo-gulag show: Where do I live, social worker? Portland, Oregon, where rubber and spewing diesels rule the day and night, 24/7? At least 10 states (California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Texas, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Arizona, Florida and Colorado) offer less than 30 affordable rental units for every 100 potential renters. Will Mexico pay to build a wall to stem the American exodus south? You think those mental tinkerers give a shit about people, of the soil, pushed away from the lands – rivers, beaches, islands, mountains, deltas, steppes, savannas, fjords, ice-fields, hills, canyons, forests, deserts, jungles, cloud islands, plains — to solder the shit of their digital orgasm, and to glue, hammer, weld, galvanize, ionize, nanosize, titrate, liquefy, saw, mill, percolate, mine, harvest, spray, tap, refine, package, burn, acidify, synthesize, denature, distill, stitch, sew, de-ionize, plow, scrape, smelt, sluice, pulverize, butcher, hoe, excavate, fertilize, fumigate, decapitate, denigrate, assemble all the other supplies, junk, consumer items, raw goods, commodities, toys, weapons, propaganda tools for the vaunted minority in the First World. The digital creeps love inventing and marketing the toys of lobotomy and anti-social thought control – one giant replicator for Call of Duty and variations on a theme . . . and all the crap that pits people against people, race against race, religion against religions, class against class, gender against gender, nation against nation in this clawing and shooting and pummeling cultural slipstream that teaches each next generation the devaluing of ”the other.” The controllers this side of the next Kool-aide batch coursing through each and every home’s tap water spigot are having a hay day, as Americans are floundering now more than ever, waiting for the next 3.0 iPhone, pining over the next Ridley Scott movie of salvation, at the ready to stump the Trump in meaningless spasms of attacking just his side of fascism, leaving the rot-gut democrats and libertarians to continue their giant tapeworm of destruction to grow and grow. Now, especially, this abomination out of the closet (Familia Trump) — reflective of the stupidity and tough-guy-in-the-mirror/on-Twitter-Kardashian-wanna-be but never really able to back machismo that is America the Red-White-Blue of the continuous hematoma in the pericardium — IS holding the sputtering heart of America, and Trump and Company, LLC, Kosher Certified, are drawing the ire and bombastic support of the leveling Americans with a little “a” for abomination. All these spasms, or even silent nightly sweats, after this last shit-hole election, when all along, the blackness of Capitalism has been the rancid pustule smothering each next generation – Baby-Boomer, Yuppie, Millennial, Gen X,Y, Gen Zed, Zombie. Always with us, days of genocidal floodgate openings, first nations the real genocide purloined by all manner of cultures, religions, shit-bag people — always here in the place called Turtle Island: those robber barons, slave holders, financiers from over the pond, Rothschilds, the 1.3 percenters called the Chosen People, shifting massive trillions through their sluices of pain, collective punishment gulags, legal gymnastics and technological Kendo moves their forte now. Colluding Talmud-citing, Bible-Thumping, Manifest Destiny-humping peoples from another womb. As I lay Dying, William Faulkner  – And the next morning they found him in his shirt-tail laying asleep on the floor like a felled steer, and the top of the box bored clean full of holes and Cash’s new auger broke off in the last one. When they taken the lid off her they found that two of them had bored on into her face. Soylent Green is people, you’re goddamned right. Money, derivatives, the billionaires’ four-timing shuffle, the perversions of debt and credit, the heavy sack of coagulated blood hanging like a dowager hump on every family’s next and next generation. Now daily the liberals, the so-denatured Americans of the little-to-the-left-of- center adherents of the continuous never tell a lie Georgy Porgy Washington, they cluck and claw and turn pink about this Mafioso President, the one on TV, paid for and delivered by the American people-Nielsen Ratings-Arbitron-$50,000 a second commercial satisfaction. They all tune in, now don’t they, happy Capital Americans. The un-Holy Publishers print his vile, art of the deal, publish the vile of every one of them – traitor, general, politico, POTUS, and shyster peddling invented history and deafening feats of pseudo psychology and mainstream entertainment. We are all the rump and laughing stock in his apprentice way of raping entire classes of people, this POTUS Numero Four-Five. Like a .45 stuck in the craw of every American and Third Worlder! In the mix, though, the controllers, they keep ladling pap or pabulum, pushing the spine loosening pacification into each bronchial of our lives — respect for all peoples, bring in the consensus crew, respect all opinions, all people while they kill us with their smiles. Imagine, we should be teaching who to hate, how to hate and in all the meaningful ways, how to utilize hate into action. Imagine, we teach these toddlers and the college ones and all of us in these sappy companies to do the opposite of what should be – thou shalt hate and seek justice for crimes perpetrated by the elite onto humankind. WTF! So, we unteach anger, unteach retribution, unteach action, unteach revolution, unteach how to spot a precipitant. Every minute we should be auguring that ability to fight back, and rebuff, not only the fascism of the Holy Republican Party and a Trump or Netanyahu, but to hate the entire sociopathic nature of corporations-militaries-punishers-bankers-investors-renters-technologists. Instead, we get pundits and middling folk attacking anyone who might go out and march and scream and shout and dervish in the streets when the police state comes down hard like Gestapo, their weapons of Zionism glimmer in the sweat of the mace and industrial tear gas. I see them go to Costco, see them find more days off lifting false dreams in their Disneyland world, their American evil seeding of cultures with the poison of travelers checks and exceptionalism . . . . like resistant tuberculous, the Americans hit those beaches and slum-poverty tours, cruises, enclaves in Costa Rica, anywhere on earth, the westerners end up like leeches looking for more soft flesh. Americans . . . Germans . . . Canadians . . . Brits . . . Australians . . . . From sea to shining oil slick sea! Interestingly, I go back to Andre Vltchek, on one of his American book and film tours, “In the USA – “I Cannot Write!”: I was shocked by the state in which I found the United States. I left many years ago. I left New York, which was, for more than a decade, my home. I never returned, except to launch my books and films, and to see my friends. I never stayed for long time. Two weeks, this time, was the longest in years. This visit broke me. It exhausted me. It thoroughly depressed me. I saw clearly how grotesque pseudo-morality, disgusting religious concepts and hypocrisy influenced and ruined entire nations, client states, worldwide, especially in Asia and Africa. Yes, I believe in collective guilt. Holding US citizenship, I share the guilt. And therefore, I work non-stop, not to wash my hands, but to stop the madness. I am convinced that the West, the white race and its lackeys abroad, have no right to rule over this Planet. I saw enough to back my conviction. The West is finished, its culture dead. What is left is unattractive, even horrifying. There is no heart, no compassion, and no creativity. And those billions of people beyond the Western realm should not be dying, while forced to support the aggressive individualism of the post-Christian, post-Crusade colonialism and fascism of Europe and the United States. Ahh, living the dream, daily, watching people running around in tights and redneck t-shirts, everyone looking like they are in a Walmart clothing competition. Or the fake ones. All the inside jokes, the memes, from Facebook to the next recipe for spicy hot wings, these Americans lavish in the trash of the airwaves, Netflix, and the entire Madison Avenue tripe fed to this country of ennui, NASCAR, polluting football, and endless buffets. I easily find how much I drown daily – my comeuppance —  the fruity intercourse-interchanges with the people I work with, those neighbors, the frightened ones, and the idiots running the streets with their lifted-up pick-ups with six-foot by eight-foot USA and Trump Makes America Great flags streaming like swastikas ablaze. So many corners turned, USA, the world of half-assed thinking and doing, until we come to today, POLICE STATE USA, thanks largely to the colluding Press, and my daily reminder, how one of my professions ended up in the sewage pit. From Robert Parry, Consortium News: It was on Dec. 9, 2004, when the mean-spirited mainstream media’s treatment of investigative journalist Gary Webb led him his career devastated, his family broken, his money gone and his life seemingly hopeless to commit suicide. It was a moment that should have shamed all the big-shot journalists who had a hand in Webb’s destruction, but it mostly didn’t. Oh these precious decades like Rip Van Winkle narcolepsy of the collective soul, until we are all soiled by this lazy, anxiety-filled hibernation: As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness. — Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas It’s easy to go on and on about this police state, and the policing by the corporations – swabs on cheeks, background checks, no time off, work 24-7, black out those holidays, no excuses for terminal gridlock, wage thieves. This is the mortician on duty and manning the radio and air ways – you are guilty until pronounced dead. You are suspect until you’ve given pound of flesh and left kidney for the cause of Capitalism. You are shit out of luck because we have the backing of the Sixth Fleet, a million marching SWAT teams, endless surveillance of every waking blink and snoring seizure. It all comes down to basic rights, right? In a blistering dissent in Utah v. Strieff, Justice Sonia Sotomayor blasted the court for holding ‘that the discovery of a warrant for an unpaid parking ticket will forgive a police officer’s violation of your Fourth Amendment rights.’ Sotomayor continued: ‘This Court has allowed an officer to stop you for whatever reason he wants—so long as he can point to a pretextual justification after the fact. That justification must provide specific reasons why the officer suspected you were breaking the law, but it may factor in your ethnicity, where you live, what you were wearing, and how you behaved. The officer does not even need to know which law you might have broken so long as he can later point to any possible infraction—even one that is minor, unrelated, or ambiguous. The indignity of the stop is not limited to an officer telling you that you look like a criminal. The officer may next ask for your consent to inspect your bag or purse without telling you that you can decline. Regardless of your answer, he may order you to stand helpless, perhaps facing a wall with [your] hands raised. If the officer thinks you might be dangerous, he may then frisk you for weapons. This involves more than just a pat down. As onlookers pass by, the officer may feel with sensitive fingers every portion of [your] body. A thorough search [may] be made of [your] arms and armpits, waistline and back, the groin and area about the testicles, and entire surface of the legs down to the feet.’ If you still can’t read the writing on the wall, Sotomayor breaks it down further: ‘This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and check it for outstanding traffic warrants—even if you are doing nothing wrong… So long as the target is one of the many millions of people in this country with an outstanding arrest warrant, anything the officer finds in a search is fair game for use in a criminal prosecution. The officer’s incentive to violate the Constitution thus increases…’ Need any lessons on spread eagle poses, downward facing dog body cavity assists, frog march locomotion tips, and upside facing black boot gymnastics? God, the American Psychological Association, here, mealy-mouthing: While much was known about psychologist involvement in detainee abuse prior to the PENS (Psychological Ethics and National Security) report, what has become progressively clearer is that the methods used by interrogators, guided by Behavioral Science Consultant Teams (BSCTs), have been intentionally shaped by psychologists. Many of the most objectionable interrogation strategies had been re-designed by psychologists from U.S. military programs, primarily the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) program, originally intended to protect U.S. soldiers from undesirable thought reform. According to international definitions, and the understanding of the SERE program itself, SERE-based interrogation procedures constitute torture. Official reports and numerous journalists over the last several years have provided extensive documentation depicting how these SERE techniques were used in U.S. interrogation practices by SERE-trained psychologists, both in DOD and CIA detention facilities. Yet, however despicable, psychology should never let these ‘enhanced techniques’ cause us to ignore the only somewhat more subtle techniques prescribed in the Army Field Manual, the common guide for all U.S. military interrogations. In the Army Field Manual, allowable interrogation tactics include deception, fear escalation, ego harm, isolation, and psychological disorientation. Regardless of whether these techniques are ethical for professional interrogators, they are morally problematic for psychologists, given the clearly circumscribed ethical underpinnings of the profession. http://clubof.info/

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2017 Sundance Film Festival Day 1 'Inconvenient Sequel' and 'Whose Streets?'

The timing for the 2017 Sundance Film Festival couldn’t have been better for Friday’s inauguration of Donald Trump. Even though Robert Redford said they would be steering clear of those topics, the films opening the festival more than speak for that.

WHOSE STREETS?

Directors Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis balance raw footage of violent protest movements with the intimate, personal struggles of the people behind them to reveal the powerful story of an uprising for racial justice. It’s a movement that began in Ferguson, Missouri, following the 2014 death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, who was shot multiple times by a white police officer and left lying dead in the street for more than four hours.

Their non-fiction film Whose Streets? premiered to a standing ovation at the Prospector Theater Thursday night in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.

When the grand jury failed to indict Darren Wilson for the death of Brown, the movement against the continued police brutality intensified and the National Guard descended on Ferguson with military-grade weaponry. The film is packed with disturbing footage – some recorded by cell phones during the rioting and looting – as the citizens take to the streets to fight for justice. While the mainstream media typically focused on the extreme elements of the protests, such as burning buildings and looting, the directors here are equally unflinching in depicting the unrest – one particularly powerful image depicts an armored tank shooting tear gas grenades at the protestors beneath a street banner that reads “Seasons Greetings.” Folayan and Davis also provide an intimate look at the community members, such as Brittany Farrell, a 25-year-old nursing student and mother of a young daughter, who were forced to emerge as leaders.

During the Q&A that followed their film, Folayan and Davis brought their entire team to the stage, describing their film as “an extremely collaborative project.”

A Ferguson resident who was in the audience relayed how terrifying the protests were and asked how the filmmakers maintained the courage to continue documenting them. Farrell galvanized the crowd by insisting that turning away was not an option for her. “If we don’t do it, who’s going to tell this story?” she asked. “Just imagine all the undocumented stories of communities that are terrorized by the police and are hurting and mourning. What would the world be like if we all got off our asses and did what we have to do for justice and humanity?”

Folayan shared that she intends to continue telling similar stories. “The epidemic isn’t just police brutality,” she insisted. “The epidemic is apathy. The epidemic is the dehumanization of certain people who walk in certain skins and certain bodies. I hope this film can become a tool for people who are already on the ground mobilizing.”

I DON’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE

A lot of films are inspired by true-life events – most, even. Yet it’s still a bit surprising to learn that I don’t feel at home in this world anymore. is one of them. The opening night film of the U.S. Dramatic Competition is a giddy maelstrom of a movie – combining elements of thriller, comedy, noir, romance, and small-town indie drama – that spirals deeper and deeper into “I can’t believe that just happened” territory. Yet according to first-time director Macon Blair, the first movements of his script were indeed based on personal experience.

“My apartment got burglarized, and they took a laptop computer and a sentimental no-value item,” Blair said during the post-screening Q&A at the Eccles Theatre. In the film, Melanie Lynskey plays Ruth, a hospital aide who comes home to find her laptop and grandma’s silverware gone. Blair recalled of his experience, “I asked the police, ‘What if I find out where the laptop is?’ And they were like, ‘No man, don’t worry about it.’” But in the movie, Ruth does worry about it, to the tune of recruiting her oddball neighbor, played by Elijah Wood – working kung fu moves and a rattail – to confront a shady lawyer and a band of local thieves, leading to everything from a Mexican standoff to an entanglement with a poisonous swamp snake. “It was a wish-fulfillment scenario of, ‘What if I had followed that down?” Blair said.

According to Lynskey, who returns to the Sundance Film Festival after previous visits for Hello I Must Be Going and Happy Christmas, Blair wasn’t the only one fulfilling a wish. “I think a lot of the time if there’s a woman running and being a badass in a movie, they tend to be a little bit skinnier. I wasn’t on those lists for genre-type movies,” she said. Yet this time, not only was she considered for the role; it was written with her in mind. “When I read the script it was such dream come true. I was like, ‘Are you serious? You want me to do this?’ I didn’t just cry when we wrapped; I cried for the five days leading up to wrap. I never wanted it to end.”

Other members of the cast expressed similar sentiments, with David Yow revealing that seven members of the cast and crew commemorated their time together by getting matching cat tattoos like the one worn by his seedy crook, Marshall. “That’s conviction and love,” he said. Strong attachments were also forged with the run-down car that Ruth drives, a vintage 1970s Pontiac that harkened back to the director’s first ride. They’d originally cast that very same model, a ’76 Pontiac Ventura, painted pine green to match his memory, but that car died on the first day of shooting. The replacement vehicle was apparently warmly welcomed into the fold by the film’s star. “Melanie just loved that car. She loved parking it and driving it,” Blair said, and Lynskey picked it up from there. “I loved shutting the door because it was so easy and smooth,” she cooed. “I loved being in it, smelling all the fumes.

AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL

Leave it to Al Gore to discredit the show business adage that sequels are rarely as good as the originals. Eleven years after his aptly titled An Inconvenient Truth put the issue of global warming on the cultural map, the former Vice President and environmental activist returns with An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, an unfortunately necessary follow-up to the Academy Award-winning first film, which remains one of the highest-grossing documentaries on record.

The documentary, with wife-and-husband team Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk effectively taking over directorial reigns from Davis Guggenheim, premiered in the prestigious opening night spot at the Eccles Theatre Thursday night as part of The New Climate, a program dedicated to conversations and films about environmental change and conservation.

During his opening remarks, Festival president and founder Robert Redford informed the audience that he and Gore are very close friends, having worked together numerous times in the past. “Being out of politics and going into film allows him to work both sides of the street,” Redford noted. “He has done it beautifully.” Watching the film, few were able to argue with that assessment.

Following Redford’s comments, Festival Director John Cooper, without directly acknowledging the January 20 inauguration, told the audience that the night before was the perfect time to watch this film. As he called the directors to the stage, Cohen noted that on the eve of the inauguration of a president who has publicly described climate control as a hoax created “by the Chinese,” this documentary takes on added importance.

If ever a non-fiction film could be accused to playing to the choir, it’s probably this one. The doc opens with vocal criticism of Gore’s awareness campaign over heartbreaking footage of melting glaciers. Throughout, Gore clearly aims to clarify that global warming is not a partisan issue. He meets with the mayor of Georgetown, Texas, who has almost miraculously gotten his city to 100% renewable power. The film also offers a not-frequently seen look into political deal-making. Gore travels to Paris for a political gathering to sign a treaty, which would call for a net zero climate pollution by the end of the century. The talks are interrupted by the terrorist attack on the city.

While the film depicts a future that is unclear, Gore insisted on leaving the premiere audience with a positive thought. After the credits rolled Gore was called to the stage, where he insisted that environmentalists like him will prevail. “I won’t give all the evidence of why I’m so confident, but I am,” Gore told the Eccles audience. “For those who have any doubt, just remember there are so many others who are yearning to do the right thing and see the right outcome.”

He went on to call the movement against global warming a moral issue. “It’s a spiritual issue,” he said. “Are we a pathetic, self-interested, short-sided species whose run on the planet will soon be over?” Sounding incredibly presidential, Gore added that we have the ability to rise above our limitations. “No one person can stop this,” he said referencing President Trump, “It’s too big now.”

DAYVEON

The first film in the NEXT category to ever screen on opening night of the Festival, Dayveon is an evocative, closely observed portrait of a young man who gets pulled into gang activity in Little Rock, Arkansas. After the premiere at the MARC, debut filmmaker Amman Abbasi appeared alongside his cast to talk about the germination of the project.

“I used to work in documentary, and we were working on a project on gang violence in Chicago. I spent about two years there, and as I was talking to young kids and hearing about their stories,” he said, “I started thinking, ‘Why don’t I look at Little Rock, which is my hometown?’” Abbasi said that despite the disparity in city size, he was struck by the similarities of what young people have to confront, and he began to work on a script that would “look at gangs not as a criminal organization but as a form of acceptance for someone in adolescence.” Violence lurks around every corner in the film, but it’s also not hard to see why the protagonist, Dayveon, who’s still mourning the death of his older brother, would find a kind of kinship among young men taking power into their own hands.

The actors, all nonprofessionals prior to Dayveon, talked about the unusual circumstances and locations where they were recruited for the project, thanks to venturesome casting directors John Williams and Karmen Leech. Lead actor Devin Blackmon was found from among a search throughout the neighboring states, and he said his initial readings for the part were held at the local Starbucks. Chasity Moore, who plays Dayveon’s older sister, said she was looking up job listings on Craigslist when she saw the casting call. Kordell Johnson, who plays her boyfriend, said he was spotted at the Olive Garden. “She was just looking at me when I was picking up my food,” he said, referring to Leech. “I’m just a guy from a small town in Little Rock, Arkansas. I never shot a movie, and I never did drama. So I’m not taking it very seriously. But she hit me the next day on email and told me I had a meeting with Amman at McDonald’s.”

And Lachion Buckingham, who also served as a producer on the film, was working as a driver at a hotel in Little Rock when he got linked up with the film. “Unlike the person on the TV, I’m a good guy,” he reassured the audience. Buckingham talked about his own brother who was paralyzed by gun violence, and the people he knew, some of whom are imprisoned or dead, who dealt with similar pressures and outcomes as the characters in the film. “I put a lot of the people I knew growing up into one to create the character,” he said.

Abbasi said they workshopped the script for three months before shooting, which allowed for improvisation on set. He also said that some of the characters evolved based on the actors, particularly Dayveon. “He brought a certain introspection to the role that I hadn’t previously thought of,” he said, referring to Devin. “So it took me a while to let that guide the character.” Abbasi also tailored the film’s score, which he composed, to the development of the characters. “With a film like this, it’s not so much the dialogue but the emotion of these characters” that leads us through, he said, “and obviously music is a great vessel in.”

There were questions from the audience about some of the mysterious, metaphorical choices of the film, such as a swarm of bees that looms just outside of Davyeon’s house, as well as the lack of actual depicted violence, but Abbasi reassured them that was entirely by design. “I think … the things that you don’t see sometimes leave a longer impression,” he said.

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