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heatherclowndler · 4 years

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An Open Letter To the Six Fandom

I'm gonna be real with you guys: I’m getting really tired of the moral superiority of some people in the Six fandom. Six is a barely historically accurate concert-musical where the queens fight about their trauma for an hour, but it’s about white women, so I guess that means that its #girlpower is so much more respectable than Hamilton being representation to POC.

If you think I'm not talking about you, I am, @historemix / @ghostheather . I’m fucking sick of your bullshit. How come every time you get called out for being a hypocritical bully, you have a little meltdown, say you'll be better, and then go back to the same bullshit as before?

Before I actually get into the reasons that you’re a hypocrite and a bully, I want to thank everyone that sent me the screenshots and testimonials used in this post. It’s good to know that multiple people are as fed up and disturbed by this behavior as I am, and it wouldn’t have been possible without you.

Anyways, back to the matter at hand. First and foremost, your obsession with being on a fucking high horse is embarrassing. Your self-congratulatory posts about the Six fandom being so much better than the Hamilton fandom is fucking laughable coming from you, and here's why.

Before you get on about the Hamilton fandom being toxic, and the major reason why you can't fuck with the musical, remember that much of the fandom are people of color: most of whom are also minors. And they’re often the first to be driven out of it– not by harmless headcanons and fanfics or kids being "cringy”, but racist, toxic ass adults, colorism, whitewashing and constant harassment. Black fans, minors especially, would be the first to tell you this, since there’s been multiple incidents on Tumblr and Twitter where Black fans have been harassed, called slurs, etc. just for liking the musical, and that isn’t even getting into the amount of shit that’s been sent to the Black cast members for being a part of it. But clearly you haven't been fucking bothered to read the posts of how Black people in this fandom and in the cast have been treated, because maybe if you did, you’d be quiet and think before you start spouting shit, instead of constantly putting Hamilton’s name in your mouth to say shit that you think will give you woke points with the funnymen crowd.

Do you really think that the same bloggers that make fun of Hamilton would see any difference between those fans and you, the adult stanning a musical where Real Life Catherine of Aragon, a character played by a black woman, owned slaves, and was the person that introduced slavery into England is portrayed as a strong, feminist Queen? Or how Catherine Parr, a woman who was complicit in child molesation and later got upset with said child for being a victim of sexual abuse, is portrayed as the ultimate feminist and hero of the musical? Or is it okay for you to talk about how these child-molesting slaveowners were oh so admirable and honorable because you "respect the history,” whatever the fuck that means.

Yes.. I'm sure white women from the 1500s would be so pleased about the fact that their history is being told by women that they thought were inferior to them based on the color of their skin.

Also sidenote, you may want to reconsider your definition of what is a respectable Six fan when you're writing a literal AU for your favorite dead queens. Sis, just say that you want to write Six fanfiction. There’s no shame in it– especially because the people that write Six fanfiction are more respectable than you are.

But speaking of history, you need to take off your clown mask and realize how ridiculous the notion that “respectable Six fans” are ones that have a genuine respect for Tudor history, because despite the fact that you say this, Six completely disregards the actual Tudor history.

Take the example of Boleyn. Anne Boleyn – a woman who was judicially murdered on false charges including incest with her brother, witchcraft, and adultery in part because she couldn’t give birth to a son and wouldn’t be a submissive wife to her husband – is reduced to a three minute comic relief song that makes light of her murder and states that yes, she actually was guilty of adultery, but she only flirted with those guys to make Henry jealous! Writing an entire song about a woman whose name has been dragged through the mud for nearly 500 years after she was murdered on false charges and then saying that she actually did do the thing that caused her to be executed is just peak #Feminism, am I right? And so is making light of her unjust execution by calling the song “Don’t Lose Your Head” and continuously making joking references to her being beheaded, I guess. Never mind the fact that Boleyn was reportedly near-suicidal and “ready to be done with life” by the time she was executed. Never mind the fact that the six fingers rumor – something that’s also repeated in the musical and presented as a fact – was started by Catholics attempting to quell people’s sympathies over Boleyn’s execution by attempting to make it seem like she actually was a witch and therefore deserved to die. None of that matters because Six is about feminism and it does the Queens justice, right?

And let’s not even get started on Catherine of Aragon. You know, the person who you've reblogged posts about that claim she was “a remarkable woman”, and that you’re apparently so sad about the fact that she died that you’ve made memorial posts about her knowing good and well that she was a garbage person who owned human beings? The same Catherine of Aragon that was reduced in the musical to only being angry that her husband cheated on her and wanted to divorce her, as well as bickering with Boleyn? The same Catherine of Aragon that also was reduced to constantly talking in the musical about how she was forced to move to a country where she didn’t know anyone? On that note, isn’t it funny how that works? Especially since she and her garbage family owned slaves, forced them to convert to Christianity and change their names to Spanish ones, and then forced them to come to England with Catherine when she moved there to marry Arthur Tudor!

All of the queens are dumbed down for the sake of the musical and it isn't until the very, VERY end of the musical that they all realize that fighting over who got the worse abuse from their husband is fucking stupid. And, even then, it’s still incredibly fucking problematic and gross because the Queen that makes them realize that the fight is stupid, and ultimately the Queen that’s praised for being the most feminist in the musical and by its creators, is the Queen that literally held her stepdaughter down while her husband molested her. If you’re really so damn upset about how much Hamilton and its creator glorify the Founders that it ruined your ability to enjoy the musical when that musical at least still acknowledges the fact that Presidents Washington, Jefferson and Madison owned slaves (and its creator acknowledging that none of the Founders were good people), why aren’t you upset about how Six portrays Catherine Parr and Catherine of Aragon as feminists when they were a child molester and a slave owner, respectively, and it's never acknowledged in the musical? Why isn’t your enjoyment of Six ruined by the fact that the Six creators praise Child Molester Parr and Slaveowner of Aragon for being strong feminists, or the Six Instagram calling Ferdinand and Isabella (you know, the people that committed genocide against Black people in Spain, had others tortured and executed for their race&religious beliefs, and literally caused Columbus’s colonization of the Americas [and by extension, the Transatlantic Slave Trade] to begin) a “power couple”?

The entire premise of Six is flawed, arguably even more so than Hamilton’s, because at least Hamilton actually did what it sets out to do throughout the entire musical, and not just the last five minutes. But even so, the basic plot idea remains– fictionalized (heavy emphasis on the fictionalized, Heather!) versions of real people fighting to tell their story. So, if the creators of Six cast aside historical accuracy for the sake of creating a diverse and modern take on the Queens’s lives and you eat it up as much as you do, why should we give a shit when Hamilton does the same thing? Since you love Six so much, you clearly fucking don't, because otherwise you’d be shitting on Six just as much as you like to shit on Hamilton. It really just goes to show how much of a hypocrite and a pick-me ass bitch you are, because the fact that you love Six makes it really obvious that you only care about hating Hamilton so much because it’s a stance that you think will give you more street cred with the Tumblr and Twitter crowds.

^^ The absolute hypocrisy of you reblogging this when you regularly make posts and reblog posts of you and other people doing the same thing with Hamilton and its fandom. Embarrassing.

I'm saying this as someone who enjoys Six’s songs and also has common sense and brain cells– they're fictionalized versions of real people, and those real people were shitty. And that’s okay. But you need to stop embarrassing yourself and acting like you’re morally superior to people that enjoy Hamilton when your core arguments for enjoying Six literally could also be said for Hamilton, and your core arguments for hating Hamilton could be said (and would definitely apply better) to Six. I see you all the time making the argument about how important it is for Six fans to see an all-woman cast, do you think Hamilton fans of color can't make the argument that they feel it's important to see a cast with over 95% POC? How for those teens, it brought them into giving musicals a try in the first place (this is just one of many examples)? How Hamilton's overwhelming success brought jobs to so many actors of color, including helping some of them (most prominently, Daveed Diggs) make a stable enough income to give them a place to live and rest their head? When it paved the way for musicals like Six to gain popularity, too? Cognitive dissonance isn't a good fucking look on you, luv.

And don’t even try the "creator is problematic argument", bitch. You're all over Mean Girls, where the creator (Tina Fey) is shitty for a multitude of reasons, blackface and saying the n word included. Not to mention the Heathers musical, where the creators turn JD into a sympathetic villain and apologise for him when the director and writer of the original movie made it clear that JD wasn’t a character that people are supposed to sympathize with. It's a fucking joke that you go "I can't get behind a musical with a bad creator!" when you base your whole blog around a musical whose creator that's transphobic and antiblack, as well as a musical whose creators apologise for an attempted school shooter and use their musical to make him sympathetic. We know LMM is a piece of trash, but that doesn't give you the right to steamroll over fans (again, most of whom are minors of color) who just want to mind their business and enjoy a fucking show, like a pick-me ass theater kid you are.

And while we're talking about your hypocrisy, let's talk about your incessant harassment of a teenage Six fan for fucking months. You’ve instigated wave after wave of bullying towards a fan who was only 15 at the time when it started, for various reasons. I don’t give a fuck if you were just trying to “spread awareness” about their actions, or get them to change their ways, or whatever. You’re a grown ass fucking adult. If you see a minor in fandom – especially one that’s 3+ years younger than you – doing cringy/problematic stuff, let other minors be the ones to say something about it. Your harassment and creepy behavior around minors isn’t justified by the fact that you think that you’re doing something good.

This is just one of the many examples of you vaguing/posting about the teenage Six fan under the guise of trying to “spread awareness” about their reaction. This one is just fucking rude, especially because they’re a minor with ADHD/ADD that projects traits that they have onto fictional characters and vice versa. I’d expect you to know a lot about projecting onto characters and picking up traits from them, since you channel Heather Chandler and Regina George’s bitchiness and their consistent harassment of teenagers that they consider to be lesser than them into your internet persona and identity, am I right?

The potential end result doesn’t justify the means; but clearly you think it does since you never say shit about this teenager getting harassed until you get called out for your complicity in it, say that you never sent them any asks, promise you’ll do better about the way you interact with minors in fandom, repeat.

Not to mention the complete hypocrisy of this statement in the tags of one of the below posts– especially considering that you were the one that made it open season on this girl in the first place with your consistent vaguing about her and making joke posts about her with your friends when she was only fifteen. And on top of that, denying that you ever harassed Lizzie, claiming that your only crime was vague posting her – when you and your shitty friends posted memes about stuff that she had been doing and making it really clear in your vagues that it was about Lizzie. Just because you didn’t name her directly doesn’t mean that it wasn’t harassment, asshole.

Oh, and here you are, months earlier, admitting that you did cause her to get harassed and acknowledging that you named her? Interesting.

The fact that you say that you have to take responsibility for it, but you never fucking do? [Narrator Voice] Heather would not take responsibility for that.

And let’s not forget how after almost driving the girl to the point of suicide and after getting called out multiple times for it, you promised to be a better person, before running to Twitter and continuing to vague about her. And in addition to that, you making memes and joke posts about Jay, the black teenager who was also bullied almost to the point of suicide for minding his own fucking business and making some fucking fanart and quirky headcanons, is fucking nasty. To further stick your nose up at him and go “not my fandom” at him for drawing Trans!Jefferson art when your Tumblr icon is Anne Boleyn with a lesbian flag behind it and your Twitter icon is the same thing with Katherine Howard... the joke writes itself. Do I have to repeat my point?

Not to mention the fact that you fucking lied in your apology on your viral post about him, because you said that you only became aware of the fact that he was a Black teenager that was harassed after the post whent viral.. when someone told you months before (in the replies to the above post) that he was a Black teenager that was harassed relentlessly for his fanart and asked you to leave Hamilton fans of color alone. But clearly you still stand by your point about Hamilton fans. Who’s surprised?

And then after receiving a 22-anon thread where anon presumably called you out on your hypocrisy of this, you still went to Twitter and started bitching about the fact that you were called out despite saying that you were deeply ashamed and that you would do better. Yet another example of Heather the Hypocrite, am I right or am I right?

You really switch up from “I feel incredibly ashamed and I want to reassess where to go forward from here” on Tumblr to “I hate Tumblr purity culture” when you’re on the safety of your Twitter account like clockwork. And it’s awfully bold of you to mention Tumblr purity culture like you didn’t cause waves of harassment to be sent to a 15/16 year old girl to the point where she felt paranoid that someone was going to come to her house and attack her, and later make memes/joke posts about a Black minor who was harassed to the point where he tried to commit suicide and later had to get rid of his online presence altogether for his own safety.

Also, you posted the IP address of the anon who called you out, and tagged them as “asshole” on the website that you use to track IP addresses. But you genuinely felt ashamed, right? You wanted to change and reassess yourself, right? (The anon’s IP address has been blocked out by me to protect their privacy, because the person who sent in this screenshot didn’t black it out, either.)

And even then, aside from all that, your actions have caused multiple minors in the Six fandom to feel uncomfortable. Below are testimonials about your behavior, and how it’s made minors in the Six fandom feel. One of these is also a reply on a post that called out your behavior. (URLs and icons on both Tumblr and Discord are blacked out to protect their privacy.)

Take in what these testimonials are saying. The fact that your behavior with harassing minors has grown so much that people are afraid to post in the Six tags and express their love for the musical because they don’t want to get harassed by you and your group of friends is concerning.

You, a grown adult, have made minors scared to be themselves and do things their way. You’ve created a culture of fear in a fandom where over 80% of its active fans are minors. You should have been leading by example, showing Six fans how the message of uplifting women should be implemented, but instead? You caused a floodgate of harassment to be sent to a then-15 year old girl that got so bad that she was suicidal and paranoid that people would come to her house, and it ended with even more minors afraid to post in the fandom’s tag because they’re afraid that you and your shitty friends will come for them, too. Shit, I was a follower for a while! I had only unfollowed due to your moral high horse, but it wasn't long before I was made aware about your history of bullshit.

You shouldn’t just be ashamed of yourself– you should be mortified with yourself. And your little friend group should be, too: not only because of their part in all of this, participating in harassing and making fun of that poor girl with you, but because of the fact that they keep enabling you to do this harmful shit by not properly shutting you down or calling you out. But it's not like you care anyways, because you’ve made fun of people voicing their concerns about your behavior and calling you out for making the fandom an unsafe space.

"But I said I'm sorry-" Yeah, we know. We saw a series of half-assed “I'm sorry” posts, paired with you not taking real responsibility for any of the harm you’ve caused. And clearly you didn't actually mean anything you said, because you kept doing it again. And again, and again, and again.

By the way, Heather, the implication that you would be indicted for murder if Lizzie committed suicide despite never speaking to her isn’t just an implication: it’s a literal fact that people can be prosecuted for manslaughter/murder without ever laying a finger on the suicide victim. This includes cyberbullying.

It means nothing to admit you're a hypocrite and do nothing to improve, especially because you’ve said this same exact “apology” multiple times, almost word from word. You're a grown fucking adult that vicariously lives out her dream of being a highschool bully through Tumblr by harassing teenage girls on the internet, and it gives me secondhand embarrassment. Grow the fuck up already, Heather. You’re 20 years old.

You're always harping about how the Six fandom is becoming toxic and embarrassing without considering the fact that you’re one of the toxic ass adults that make children embarrassed and ashamed to be a part of their fandoms. Whenever they do something even slightly cringy, and not even genuinely problematic like some of the other shit in the Six fandom, you’re quick to be like “This isn’t respectable,” “The Six fandom is going to be the next Hamilton fandom,” or whatever the fuck else you say. Teenage girls calling Boleyn a gremlin and making headcanons about the queens siblings/children is not the end of the world, and the fact that you act like it is when you’ve actively created a culture of fear in a fandom that’s mostly made up of teenage girls is embarrassing and disgusting.

I don’t care about whatever apology or sob story you’re going to say after you see this post, because in the end, it’ll just be an empty promise as long as you stay on here. At best, you’ll say that you’re going to do better and leave Tumblr for what, a month? Only to bitch on your Twitter account for the entire month, then come back to Tumblr and do the same exact thing that I’m calling you out for.

You need to stay away from minors in fandom. As a matter of fact — stay out of fandoms that are mostly made up of minors as a whole. You’ve proven time and time again that you don’t care about the safety or feelings of minors, nor do you care about actually “improving” or reassessing yourself every time you get called out. The fact that you’ve been called out for the same things via being indirected on a Tumblr post (linked here), being sent multiple anons by different people (shown above), and being sent a 22-anon thread by one single person calling you out (stated by you above), and you still haven’t changed? Is all of the proof that I need that you won’t change.

That’s all I have to say to you.

People in the Six fandom, I’m heavily urging you not to continue giving this person a platform. I can’t force you to do anything, but you all deserve the right to know what’s been going on. Aside from her hypocrisy about Six, it’s historical figures, and its fandom as a whole, she’s been involved in harassing a minor to the point where she felt paranoid and wanted to leave the fandom on separate occasions, made jokes about another minor in a different fandom that was harassed to the point of attempting suicide on multiple occasions (then lying and claiming that she was never told he was a Black minor who was harassed after she was called out due to a post she made about him going viral when someone told her months before that he was all of those things in the notes of another post she made about him), and other minors have posted/stated that they feel her behavior went too fair, and that because of it they feel unsafe posting stuff in the fandom.

She’s been called out on her behavior on multiple different occasions, and each time she said that she would reassess her behavior and discuss how her actions were toxic. People have given her multiple chances, and each time, she’s gone back to the same toxic behavior and done the very things that she claimed she would stop doing. It’s getting ridiculous at this point, and her actions have gotten to the point where it seems like the only course of action is to call her out publicly.

Like Heather herself said, and I will now brilliantly quote because karma is a bitch: “If you keep making the same “mistake” MULTIPLE TIMES, people aren’t gonna be happy about it.” She isn’t exempt from criticism, especially when this stuff has happened multiple times and she hasn’t done anything to change her behavior. Listen to what she said, and hold her accountable.

Again, I can’t force you to do anything, but I hope that everyone in the Six fandom keeps what was said in this post in mind the next time they consider interacting with her or her content. Take care.

#six the musical #six musical #if youre in the six fandom pls reblog this to spread awareness. this has gone on for long enough #ghostheather

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doberbutts · 6 years

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sheprd replied to your post “sheprd replied to your post “I love DA2 and the hate on it is so...”

Oh I wholeheartedly agree with that. My issue is not the general concept alone of having regulation of magic, but literally tearing people from their homes and locking them up in glorified prisons. That imo is objectively wrong and there's no justification for it. On top of that it is canon that the mages face horrible evils inside the circles like violent abuse and are literally slaves in some cases.

The reason most people are so aggressively pro-mage is because THAT is how Templars and the Chantry were presented to us and Bioware just kind of assumed the idea of people who had power over others in some way would be enough to grey up the issue but it just Objectively doesn’t. At the end of the day until a mage does something bad, they are innocent. But it also is, as you said, not a great allegory for oppression faced by people in real life.

There could just as easily be a system like how public education works but for mages. You are required to send your mage kids to be educated on how to use and control their magic but nobody’s going to prison just for the crime of existing. But a lot of the mages presented in DA are PRO educating mages to use their magic, something the Circles don’t actually do. Most mages weren’t calling for all out anarchy.

But sorry to bring DA mage-rights discourse into your notifications LOL. Again at the end of the day its not real and doesn’t actually matter I just dislike how Bioware handled a lot of it.

Sorry, I had to take a serious break from all things that weren’t eating or sleeping yesterday because I started work back up and tried to do both work and therapy and ended up basically collapsing in bed the second I wasn’t doing one of those things. Yay injury recovery. Anyways.

Yeah, I’m not disagreeing with you on most of that. As said, people don’t belong in cages, even if you dress up the prison to look like a paradise at the end of the day it’s still a prison. It does need to be kept in mind that some circles were better than others- Vivienne was allowed to have an affair that was semi-public, and was also allowed to leave, compared to Anders’ circle which heavily punished mages for standing too close to each other or wanting to wander around outside. Meredith, too, ran the Gallows with an iron fist, to the point where most of the people from outside Kirkwall who’d heard about it were even a little surprised at the stories. Even Cullen expressed distaste when I brought some things to his attention, and in my playthrough he did turn against Meredith last minute. That’s why I put the human-rights (elf-rights?) issue in my tag- there are some pretty big problems with the way the system was working and I think anyone that tries to deny that is lying to themselves and others.

But I also think of mage characters that not just scorned the circle system (rightfully), but also the idea that mages need some sort of oversight, because allowing mages to be completely without rules and just responding to incidents as they happen when mages literally have the ability to summon all sorts of world-ending magic is a bad idea waiting to happen. Morrigan (and she’s one of my favorites!), Anders, Solas (another favorite!), even Merrill to a degree. And Morrigan and Solas both have access to world-ending magic and we’ll see how that goes in DA4, Anders literally blew up an entire Chantry and became a terrorist just to make a point, and, depending on your choices, Merrill’s decisions can cost her the entire clan. These are also fan favorite party characters with the exception of maybe Merrill, which I don’t understand because I think she was robbed of her rightful place as mirror-expert in DAI but w/e people don’t seem to like her as much as the other women on the team, which may be why I see more people saying the extremes rather than being willing to consider a compromise. These are also usually the accounts that say that they hate Vivienne, that she’s complicit in abuse, and that she’s a royal bitch, while I found her fairly moderate and easy to get along with, so there’s that to consider.

Solas and Morrigan also scorn the Dalish magic system- which I can understand some of, such as the abandonment of mage children if there are already “too many” mages in a clan. So we’ve got two seriously powerful mages that might be the most powerful mages currently alive in the entire world at this point, with the power (and implied intention re:Solas) to commit genocide, that dislike any system of oversight they’ve had recommended to them (iirc isn’t there party banter between Solas and Viv on this? I know it exists between Wynne and Morrigan), and that are proud to be total anarchists that advocate for zero-rules magic.

That’s... bad. I would say that introduces multiple shades of grey to the discussion just on that premise, and ultimately it’s why I dislike the mage rights debate being likened to irl human rights debates. I cannot snap my fingers and wave a stick and kill off the entirety of a race or multiple races by breaking the world. That just about sums up what Solas’ plan is and it’s heavily implied that he’s just about ready to do it and we’ll be either actively stopping him or cleaning up the mess afterwards in the next game. As much as I’m sure I’ll enjoy Dragon Age: Infinity War, it’s really not an ideal situation to compare it to what I have to go through for the crime of existing as a black, gay, trans, disabled dude in the real world.

So yeah, I agree that Bioware didn’t really handle it the best they possibly could, but I disagree that they presented a black-and-white case and had no right to be surprised when people rejected a middle ground and only wanted one extreme or the other. I do think DA2 is as black-and-white as the mage rights debate gets, because Meredith is an extremist, and even her buddies turn on her, whereas Orsino’s much more moderate and his followers trusted him to the bitter end and, as you’ve said, his bossfight is mostly bullshit. Bioware should have known people would be overwhelmingly pro-mage from that alone and I am honestly shocked they expected anyone to honestly choose pro-templars if they wanted a “good” worldstate.

#text post #man I *wish* I had cool magic powers and that's all people hated me for #maybe then people would leave me alone #bc they'd be afraid I'd singe off their hair or something #tbh I probably *would* singe off their hair they deserve it

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613526362 · 6 years

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There’s a Storm Inside of Me

I checked in that pocket, like five times, and the number 7 wasn't in there

Brad talked to a lot of girls tonight, but few talked back

Of course all the ones I chose talked back, but only because I choose humble women

I checked my jacket

Not really

They hunted me down and said you have to check your jacket

And of course it was 3 dollars

But I wasn't sweating

I pulled out the huge stack of ones that we didn't spend at the strip club because the strip club was dead

Kitty didn't remember us from last time

That hurt

Harmony was awesome though. That almost sounds like a fucking Christian name

We wound up on the loudest club in the big city

Brad seemed hesitant to wait in line. I told him, look through the fucking glass

It will be worth it

It was

We lit that fucker on fire

I was dancing with chicks like crazy

Black girls

31 year old hipster girls

I turned out a 31 year old hipster girl

She was super timid and STILL

till I approached

And then she did all the shit she can't do with her hipster husband of 13 years

That mother fucked probably works at a factory designing modern furniture

He has a beard

And somehow, he hasn't gotten her prego yet

Where

The

Fuck

The

Kid

Bro

But it's ok

She had the time of her life celebrating her friend's 30 lb weight loss

Brad got me some girl's number at the club before

We were the only white dudes in that one

We even asked the bouncers and they were like, yeah, you're the only white dudes in here

Brad says she was nurse and going for nurse practitioner

But aren't they all

He said she's from Columbia

This is the drunkest I've ever been

We'll see what dyhydromyrecitin can do

I'm on the floor

What the fuck

Who got me sick

I think it was Brad

Fuck

It had to happen

So that

I can go to Africa

Healthy

By my calculation

drinks

Bumping into things

Brief moments of intimacy

Sharing lip balm with a 13 year married woman

Grabbing her hands from behind and grinding ass to ass for a whole song

That was hours after the stripper kissed me

Harmony

Brief moments of intimacy

Tonight was the last night

I'm done

No more drinking

Ever

It's time to go to work

---

I just watched Zero Dark Thirty

2018 has been huge for me

The most valuable take away from this year

I have absolutely no shame or hesitancy left in my body

Last year I would have feared to look my father in the eye and say, no, dad, I'm not going to work a single day as a doctor in the United States

Now I'll be proud when I do it

I almost want to add, "

Dad, I don't dream about the Island every night, but I do dream about it every week. All the worst years of my life, all the most horrible human emotions and all the darkest corners of the world - they were and are all here in this shithole country. This country has a simple story - Europeans came and killed native Americans to take the country (and eventually pretended to make reparations to them and apologize). Then the descendants of those Europeans destroyed entire societies in Africa to steal people from there and build America into a superpower (and eventually pretended to make reparations to them and apologize). Now, the descendants of those Europeans live in a divided country, because some of those who they enslaved and oppressed have shone a bit of truth on the national narrative. The question that you and I should ask dad, is, if we didn't participate in killing native Americans or enslaving Africans - or sit idly by as our peers did so - what great travesty are we complicit in? The wars of this country, and the lack of economic outreach to communities of poverty - communities in our nation and abroad - is just as abhorrent as the slavery or genocide our people committed in the past. I choose not to stay here and attempt to tune out my people's evil. I choose instead to trade my life for the lives we have destroyed - and become a slave to what is righteous and right in this world. I am limited only by what I can believe is possible. You are limited by what you have seen in your life. Look at my life, father. It has already exceeded yours. By not listening to you, look what I have accomplished. I will not back down. I will not bring my Father shame."

I need to fix the organization financially. Eventually I'll get sued. And if we're incorporated, I can kill the name and put up a new name. Maybe. I'm trying to build in ultrasound training next. And after that, a program to take pre-med students overseas and get them medical experience working with refugees in refugee camps.

We have to keep making money

And I need to work on my personal financial situation

Most of the loans to do the things the Organization has done have fallen back on me.

I'm concerned about my next tuition bill.

I am dedicated to finishing my MD.

So I need to keep my ducks in a line.

I think it's funny that Brad's big brother (don't remember his name) isn't responding to texts much anymore. He's done. He's finally encased his pride in gold. Finally, a staff surgeon. Finally, a wife. Kids soon I hear. A dog. A big house.

So what's next.

I know the answer to that. Mediocre medical work overseas or an affair.

In his case, probably both.

And for Brad, his divorce is underway, his daughter is becoming more and more like her mom, and he's about to start the Academy to be a government operative.

I tip my hat to them all. They've accomplished everything they ever wanted by 30 or 32.

Now it's my mother fucking turn.

Very few questions still remain:

-Can the organization's profit over the course of a year be stabilized, or will there be big, inevitable downturns?

-How should the organization be staffed? How should I recruit and hire?

-Can I finalize our legal standing? Can I find people to come on board and stand behind this organization?

-Will my personal finances place a limit on what can be done through the organization and it's growth?

-Can I diversify our streams of income so we are not so vulnerable to changes from outside actors

2018 has come to a good end, because none of those questions,

"Can I make it alone? Will I kill myself? Can I cope with bipolar? Should I take meds?"

Those questions were around a couple months ago. Then I put shit in high gear, and I've grown our organization, hired new employees, and excelled in school.

Yes, the low points of this year did not leave me unscathed. I probably spent $5,000 on girls and on fucking around with Brad this year. And it damaged my health and my mind.

The damage to my hearing was completely unnecessary. But maybe the psychological struggles were necessary.

I feel strong now. I feel like I don't need a woman.

And I know God will back me up and keep them away from me.

We're a team.

When I think of Barack Obama's presidency, I think of how one extremely well intentioned and dedicated individual ran some positive projects and helped some people. Most of all, he did not make everything worse in a time and place of extreme greed and evil.

I'm going to shoot for the stars. If I don't save a whole nation from poverty, it's ok. At least I'm not perpetuating evil, or standing idly by as it occurs.

An abusive mother and a book called The Devil Came on Horseback made me who I am. I will continue what they started. I will force people of this sick land to see what their parents committed and ignored. I will show love to people in the places our people have ignored or raped.

The evil of this shithole country runs deep. And affected by it, and part of it, I understand and rise above it.

"There's a storm inside of us. I've heard many team guys speak of this. A burning. A river. A drive. An unrelenting desire to push yourself harder and further than anyone could think possible. Pushing ourselves into those cold dark corners. We wanted that fight at the highest volume. A loud fight. The loudest, coldest, darkest, most unpleasant of the unpleasant fights."

He proposed that maybe rather than continual exposure to mild violence, it may be better to expose them to extremes of violence. He responded, “It's the opposite. What will happen is I'll just overwhelm you with violence. If you're overwhelmed, you won't do anything, you'll just become prey. You'll have a fear for violence. I don't want you to have a fear for violence, I want you to thrive in violence. I want you to treat it as if it's ordinary."

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Hyperallergic: At BP-Sponsored Art Show, Protesters Call Out the Corporation’s Abuses

BP or not BP? stage an intervention at the National Portrait Gallery in protest against the oil company BP’s sponsorship of the annual portrait award. BP also has extensive oil and mineral interests in West Papua. The painting is by Dale Grimshaw of Benny Wenda. (all images courtesy BP nor not BP?)

LONDON — The National Portrait Gallery’s annual portrait prize exhibition gained an extra exhibit last night thanks to an intervention by BP or Not BP?, an anti-British Petroleum (BP) artist protest group. The BP Portrait Prize is an annual public competition that has run for 37 years and has been sponsored by BP since 1990. The protest was one of many staged events against BP’s involvement in the arts in recent years by BP or not BP? and other members of the Art Not Oil Coalition.

In the hall just outside the exhibition space, BP or not BP? unveiled a portrait of Benny Wenda, a West Papuan independence leader exiled in the UK. Wenda is the face of a struggle that protesters claim has been ignored by BP.

“It felt good to do something not only about BP’s impact on climate change, but also the human rights aspects,” Lianna Etkind, a participant in the protest, told me. “Companies like BP are complicit in people losing their land from flooding resulting from climate change, but also complicit in acts of direct oppression.”

BP works closely with the Indonesian government to extract West Papuan natural resources such as liquefied natural gas. There is a strong liberation movement in West Papua, the western half of the island of Papua New Guinea, to gain independence as a nation, as the Indonesian government has claimed it a province of its country since 1963.

According to a statement given by Wenda, “BP is operating in the middle of a genocide. Since 1963, hundreds of thousands of West Papuans have been killed by the Indonesian occupation, either directly by government forces or through the loss of their homes, their lands and their livelihoods. The money that BP pays to the Indonesian government helps them to buy weapons and ammunition that are used to harass, intimidate and kill my people.”

The portrait was displayed next to the “morning star” flag, used by West Papuan independence supporters but which is banned by Indonesia.

Dale Grimshaw, the painter of the portrait, had submitted his painting of Benny Wenda to the competition as a form of protest, but it was not selected. He explained his decision to protest the exhibition in an impromptu talk to gallery-goers. He said: “[BP] know very well what’s going on in the land, they engage politically and financially speaking with the Indonesian military … could you imagine, on a weekly basis, people you know being imprisoned and tortured for peaceful protest?”

BP or not BP? at the National Portrait Gallery in protest against the oil company BPs sponsorship

He also said in a statement: “BP gets to plaster its logo all over the gallery and present this false version of itself to the world. Art can be a way to fight back against that and tell the truth about what these companies are really doing.”

The intervention was timed to happen on the same day as the submission to the UN of a 140,000-strong international petition calling for a free and fair independence vote for the people of West Papua.

After the portrait was unveiled, the group screened a short video of Wenda and performed a mini “awards ceremony” presenting prizes for “biggest hypocrite” and “biggest polluter” to the “Director of the National Portrait Gallery” and a “BP representative” respectively.

The charge of hypocrisy stems from the National Portrait Gallery’s Ethical Fundraising Policy, released via a Freedom of Information request made by BP or not BP?, which states concern over accepting funds from anyone “known or suspected to be closely associated with a regime known or suspected to be in violation of human rights.”

Dale Grimshaw speaks at the BP or not BP? protest at the National Portrait Gallery

The National Portrait Gallery does not publicly state how much money it receives from BP, but it is a share of the £7.5 million five-year deal between the National Portrait Gallery and three other British cultural institutions. BP or not BP? point out that a quarter of this amount would be less than 2% of the gallery’s annual income.

Hyperallergic reached out to the National Portrait Gallery for comment but as of this writing has received no response.

BP’s relationship with Indonesia as well as other repressive governments are currently the subject of a formal complaint to the National Portrait Gallery by the campaign group Culture Unstained, who, along with BP or not BP?, are part of the Art Not Oil Coalition.

The BP or not BP? protest took place at the National Portrait Gallery (St. Martin’s Pl, London) on Thursday, August 31.

The post At BP-Sponsored Art Show, Protesters Call Out the Corporation’s Abuses appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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