#even if it's in unflattering or outright criminal ways

[sunderwight]

I love how the general consensus in Scum Villain ABO fics is that whatever Shen Jiu's secondary gender was, he was lying about it.

Omega? Obviously he's going to cover that up. Potential weakness! Probably related to past traumatic experiences! No one can know! He's going to pretend to be either a Beta or an Alpha instead.

Alpha? Hates it and everyone else and has no interest in playing the type. Hides it less because of how other people might respond and more because he's having some kind of complicated dysphoria about it.

Beta? I've never see it but I bet he'd disguise that as well. He's totally an Alpha, don't ask questions, fuck off and don't violate the mile-wide personal space bubble.

Whatever Shen Jiu is, we all know he'd be wildly uncomfortable with it.

[monster-fricker]

Part 4: Like Honey, Until You Depart

Male Orc (He/Him pronouns) x Female Human Reader (She/Her pronouns) - SFW Chapter, but will eventually be NSFW

- TW blood mention, violence insinuation (as always, never anything explicit). This story was meant to be short (admittedly, I intended it to be a NSFW one-shot), but the more I write Galaak, the more I fall in love with him. Those flirtatious tensions are clearly building and the fluff is beyond the point of return. Backstory time and plenty of dialogue. I swear, this will get NSFW soon. You'll have to bare with me in the meantime. -

Galaak seemed restless while you made breakfast. A less observant eye may have suspected his constant intrusions and inquiries as to whether or not you needed help to be a lack of faith in your abilities. But with each interruption, you could tell he was simply not used to being cared for, even if it was just one meal. You pondered how lonely it must be living in this forest, with only stray criminals and wandering animals to keep you company. The thought made you terribly sad.

He pouted like a child when you essentially told him to get lost. He needed rest, you told him, but he outright refused the suggestion and huffed around the house trying to keep himself busy instead. You giggled at the way his brows furrowed, dipping beneath his eyepatch, and scrunched up his nose as he made his way outside, mumbling, "I'm going to wash my hair." Such a monstrous thing taking a quiet tantrum was undeniably cute. He was softer then you would have ever assumed.

You rummaged through the cabinets searching for ingredients, praying you'd be able to whip up something edible. Truth be told, you were never much of a "little chef" and less so now that you had been living off of hastily baked meat. But you were determined to offer Galaak something, especially after what he had done to rescue you and your dagger. The dagger was resting on the kitchen table still, where you had left it in your haste at seeing Galaak's wounded frame earlier. You decided to take it to your room and tuck it neatly back into your bag. While inside, you couldn't help but pull up your shirt and breathe the scent in, still very much Galaak. It was a little embarrassing, you realized, and you blushed. You looked down at the pants you wore and grimaced. Despite how you tried to make them look presentable, they remained dirty, now damp with the water you had used to clean Galaak with not an hour earlier.

You thought of that scene. How terrified you were, emotional, but also how gorgeous he was, how good his skin felt beneath your touch. Without much deliberation, you decided to take them off entirely. Galaak's shirt fit you like a dress anyway and perhaps, if you were honest, you wanted to know what his reaction would be to seeing your bare flesh too. You heard his footsteps enter the house and scampered back to your position at the kitchen counter, not allowing yourself to dwell on that long enough to change your mind.

He had a lot of spices, but in the way of food, it consisted of meat, some vegetables, and more meat. You figured the morning was as good a time as any for deer steaks and a heaping portion of potatoes. It would be fairly quick and it was doubtful that an orc of his size would turn his nose up at such a hearty meal. As you neared finishing up, Galaak crept back into the kitchen, sitting at the table. He was silent, probably afraid you would yell at him again- which was terribly funny to you, but you could hear his breath catch in his throat, just for a moment. You hoped it was your outfit, as unflattering as it may be. You doubted that though.

He watched you for awhile. His gaze burned holes in your back and suddenly he was looming right behind you, body mere inches from yours, peering over your shoulder. "That smells delicious." His voice was more gravelly than usual, heaving as if he was out of air.

"Well, let us hope that it tastes just as good. I would prefer not to poison us both." You turned your head slightly and winked. "At least not today."

He snickered. "What confidence. You sure know how to work up a man's appetite." A joke. And yet warmth trickled down your spine like honey. Galaak paused. "I see you have taken a liking to my shirt."

It was your turn to lose air. "It is comfortable," you murmured, a little more shaky than you intended, "but it is nice wearing a dress again."

He roared at this. "I suppose it doesn't fit you the same way it does me." He paused again, adding shyly, "It suits you though. You look good in it, little one."

Not a joke. The warmth spread from your spine through your whole body. You tried not to shiver. He was close enough to see it, close enough to feel it. "Sit down. It's time to eat." Unlike you, he did shiver, then did as he was told.

You served him, nervous if the meal would would please him. There was one steak for you, three for him. Galaak beamed. "You sure you don't have orc blood in you?" He stabbed a knife into the steak and brought it to his lips, tearing through the flesh without cutting it. Juices went everywhere. "You are a mess," you chuckled. You picked up a cloth, wiping him clean. His entire body stiffened.

Why did you do that? Had you offended him? Overstepped a boundary? To your surprise, he smiled sweetly. "Do you mind me being a mess?"

You responded by stabbing the steak and biting into it the same way he had. "Maybe there is orc blood in me yet," you mumbled, food still in your mouth. Galaak's eye widened and there was that lopsided smile again. Oh, how you loved that smile.

"It is nice to share a meal with someone who is as messy as I am," he said, more of a revelation than matter-of-fact statement. "It's nice to share a meal with someone at all."

You frowned. "It must be lonely here. This place isn't exactly teeming with people to talk to." You scanned his face for indications to change the subject, but he just took another huge bite from the steak. "Why are you here, Galaak? In the forest, I mean."

He shrugged. Not averting his eyes looked like a difficult task for him. "Same reason as anyone who takes up home here, I guess. Running toward something."

"That implies you had something to run away from."

His expression was indecipherable. "Are you asking for a tragic backstory?"

"I'm asking about you," you returned. The way you spoke was soft. Galaak's features were soft.

"Well, you know how orc culture goes. We raid, we battle. I was good at it too." He pointed toward the large hammer next to the door. It was still discolored from bandit blood. That should have scared you. It didn't. "But it gets tiring. It starts to wear on you, losing everyone you care about, you know?" He forced a hollow laugh. "Or an eye."

You nodded, urging him to continue.

"So one day I just... well, I just took off. You can't tell your clan you don't want to fight anymore. There is no honor in that. I mean, there is no honor in running either. Once I had gone, I knew I could never go back. I was a coward, I guess."

You grabbed his hand, making him put down his fork. He looked unsure, staggered. You squeezed his hand, then rubbed gentle circles into his palm. "You're not a coward. It takes a lot of bravery knowing when to leave."

Galaak studied your grip on him and remained fixated on it for awhile. Not moving, not pulling back. Just watching.

"My clan would never see it that way." He trailed off, then continued. "Anyway, I came across a village not far from here. They were welcoming enough, let me trade goods and sleep a few nights at the local inn. But it was clear my being an orc scared them. I felt guilty, you know? So... now I'm here. I built this house. Made a nice set up, I think." He grinned at that, but only for a moment. "But yes, it does get lonely."

You didn't release his hand. You couldn't. Some part of you worried that if you let him go, he would disappear forever.

"Are you lonely now, Galaak?"

His eye met yours and the sadness subsided slightly. "No. Not until you depart, that is."

"I don't have any plans of leaving." You cleared your throat.

"I'll keep that in mind." Galaak was radiant now, happy. You both observed one another. His hair was still wet from being washed, long damp strands falling down his back, no longer braided. The water left slowly evaporating marks on his shirt. He was prettier than anyone you had ever met. More handsome, more kind. You admired the way his shirt hugged every powerful muscle, every chiseled line, showed off his plump belly. You wanted to memorize every wrinkle on his face, every curve of his scar, the bright freckles in his eye. More than anything right now, you wished he would remove his eyepatch so that you could see the eye he was hiding. So you could really see all of him. You didn't dare ask.

"So," he started, "what are you running away from?"

You shrugged, unconsciously mimicking his mannerisms. "Grief, I guess. Or more accurately, the aftermath of it. Being an orphan, especially in such a small village, people begin to pity you. And people tend to hate feeling that way, so they avoided me. I avoided them. When your home no longer feels like home, it's lonely. So I ran." You started to fidget.

"And are you lonely now, little one?" There was hope in every word.

"No. Not until my cooking kills one of us, that is."

Galaak's howl echoed throughout the house. You began to laugh yourself, relieved that the tension was gone.

He took his hand from yours and bellowed, "It's time for some ale! Let us celebrate."

You raised an eyebrow. "Celebrate what?"

"No longer being lonely. And surviving your meal, obviously." He shot you a mischievous smirk.

You threw a piece of potato at him, but he only stuck out his tongue and stabbed his last steak, holding it in his teeth while he went to fetch this much-needed celebratory ale.

Previous Chapter

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[maxwell-grant]

May I please ask what your preferred dynamic between Holmes & Lupin would be? (From what I can tell, the term 'frenemies' might have been invented for these two - if any two characters in fiction WOULD spend all their time trying to one-up each other it's these two, if only their diverse other commitments, challenges & interests left them the free time to do so: I'm also morally certain a sadly-hypothetical Holmes/Lupin team is one of the few things that could bring down Fantomas for Good).

I think "frenemies" is what ultimately works best for these two specifically, because there's a certain untouchability to icons as big as these two that limits the potential stories you can tell with them (although yes, definitely on board with the two having what it takes to bring down Fantomas, although probably not as cleanly and easily as they might expect).

The original Leblanc stories involving this premise are very much centered around one-upmanship, even embracing a theme of national rivalry of England vs France. They acknowledge Holmes's talents but without the awe, with a somewhat aged Holmes with mundane imperfections easily exploited by the daring young thief, someone deserving of his legend but who doesn't quite live up to it. Obviously Lupin's gotta have the upperhand, not just because it's his author writing it, but because the whole point of Lupin's creation was to be the new hotness, the counterpart to both the stuffy old Great Detectives as well as the aristocratic master burglars, and really, what kind of rising superstar would he be if he couldn't put one over the other guy? If he's gonna live up to his claim of being the greatest criminal ever, he's gotta be able to humble the greatest detective at least a little.

The treatment of Watson (Wilson) is tasteless and it's frankly a bit saddening to see that even back then writers were still shitting on Watson far too much, but on the whole I think Leblanc was a lot fairer to Holmes than he could have been (certainly other writers from this time period who added Holmes to their stories were not as fair), he makes it very clear Holmes is not just another Ganimard out of his depth and is very much as close to an equal Lupin's ever had. I think the description used to cap off their final meeting is very much on point:

"You see, monsieur, whatever we may do, we will never be on the same side. You are on one side of the fence; I am on the other. We can exchange greetings, shake hands, converse a moment, but the fence is always there.

You will remain Herlock Sholmes, detective, and I, Arsène Lupin, gentleman-burglar. And Herlock Sholmes will ever obey, more or less spontaneously, with more or less propriety, his instinct as a detective, which is to pursue the burglar and run him down, if possible.

And Arsène Lupin, in obedience to his burglarious instinct, will always be occupied in avoiding the reach of the detective, and making sport of the detective, if he can do it. And, this time, he can do it" - Arsene Lupin vs Herlock Sholmes

The consistent outcome is that Holmes "wins" the material battle while Lupin gets away with the spiritual or karmic victory. The first story, Holmes has Lupin figured out from a glance, robbing him of his greatest asset, and Lupin even tells Holmes under a guise that he has no greater admirer than himself. Holmes choses not to arrest Lupin, and instead solves the mystery as quickly as Lupin would. But he is also, well, inferior. His "commonplace appearence" dissappoints the guests and detectives at the crime scene, he doesn't resemble their expectations, he is gruff, ungracious, arrogant and all-business, an Englishman all the way, and Lupin one-ups him by returning to him his stolen watch, and Holmes is not a good sport about it.

The whole "Herlock Sholmes" name change, although it was out of legal obligation, almost reads like a cheeky courtesy of Leblanc, like he's giving Holmes enough of a courtesy in sparing him the embarassment of being the loser. And the following adventures stay consistent: Sholmes is smart, as smart as Lupin, and he's a gentleman. But he isn't as smart as he thinks he is, and he isn't as much of a gentleman as Lupin. He resorts to unsporting tactics like intimidating Lupin's lover and involving the police in their conflict, and in the end, he's solved the crime, but "sown the seeds of discord" in a family Lupin was protecting, becoming the villain for a change, a role reversion Lupin openly laughs at. Holmes wins the "loot", he wins the material battle, but Lupin has the last laugh, and despite being a self-proclaimed villain, Lupin gets the moral victory.

It's a quite unflattering view of Holmes and one perhaps not suited for a crossover outside of the specific context of Holmes being the old and stuffy intruder in an Arsene Lupin story. Then again, every great hero needs a lesson in humility every now and then.

There's a particularly interesting variant of this dynamic to be found within China's own takes on Sherlock Holmes and Arsene Lupin.

Sherlock Holmes was quite the breakout hit for Chinese audiences at the time of his release, revered as an alternative to Judge Bao and the court-case novels. It's estimated that from 1903 to 1909, detective fiction constituted over almost 50% percent of all Western translated fiction, and with Holmes followed others like Nick Carter and Charlie Chan, and then Arsene Lupin, and soon their own local versions. The most famous and popular of which was Huo Sang, created by Cheng Xiaoqing, who was one of the main translators for Conan Doyle's stories. Cheng Xiaoqing even wrote his own take on Sherlock Holmes vs Arsene Lupin called "The Diamond Necklace", intending on correcting Leblanc's take, although interestingly, he unintentionally recreates the exact outcome by giving Holmes an unsporting attitude, where he "wins" only because Lupin lets him, and Lupin gets away again with the moral high ground. He would fare off much better in correcting Holmes with his own character, Huo Sang.

Huo Sang has a lot of similarities to Holmes, even with his own Watson counterpart, but was also designed to represent a few more traditional Chinese values. He is a science teacher with no addictions who belittles the wealthy class and fights for the poor, and he is praised for humility, one story even making a point to criticize Holmes for arrogance. He is a very Westernized character, with suits and guns and cigarettes galore, but the books were very dictatic and the author marketed them as "disguised textbooks for science", playing up on a newfound social reverence to scientific methods and self-improvement and national rejuvenation.

The stories deal heavily with corruption of the police force and institutions. In the earlier stories he outright calls police detectives useless rice buckets only good for solving petty thefts and preying on those that can't defend themselves, and while they become less sinister in later stories, Huo Sang's relation with law enforcement is much more frayed than Holmes's own. He uses dirty police tactics of his own and sometimes takes the law into his own hands, thinking the law cannot possibly achieve justice on it's own. His biggest loyalty is to his country and he values his reputation above all else. He values justice more than the law, like Holmes. But like Holmes, he still prefers to work inside the law and within Chinese traditions.

"Bao Lang, you scholar, you're too idealistic. Don't you realize how weak the law is in modern society? Privilege and power, favors and money - the law has all these deadly enemies

"We investigate half to slake our thirst for knowledge, half out of duty to serve and uphold justice. In the realm of justice, we are never constrained by the wooden and unfeeling law. For in this society, which is gradually tending to surrender its core to material things, the spirit of the rule of law cannot be put into general practice, and the weak and ordinary people are aggrieved, more often than not unable to enjoy the protection of the law.

Lu Ping, as you'd expect from a counterpart to Lupin, was much different. In fact, right in his very first story, he was already pitted against Huo Sang and outsmarting him, in a story called "Wooden Puppet Play". The character is inspired by an already existing tradition within Chinese literature of the "chivalrous thief", shapeshifting masters of deception and martial arts, and considered admirable and benevolent opposite to the corrupt government officials they outwit.

His stories are more whimsical, energized, more varied, less dedicated to strict science. He whistles while committing crimes, is identifiable by a red tie and wooden puppets he uses to signal his goons on what outfit he's gonna be wearing, and even cracks asides to the reader. In many aspects Lu Ping is influenced by hard-boiled Western detective stories, and naturally, he has a much more contemptious view of the law than Huo Sang

Well then, was he willing, in his capacity as thief, to represent the sanctity of the law and catch the murderer? Yes, he would be quite happy to round up that murderer. But he wasn't at all willing to boost the reputation of the law. He'd always felt that the law was only something like an amulet that certain smart guys had fabricated to get them out of embarassing situations.

Such an amulet migh be good for scaring away idiots, but it oculdn't threaten the violent, crafty and arrogant evil ones. Not only could it not scare them away, a lot of them hid right behind it to work their evil tricks!

Conflicts between these two are not just rooted in one-upsmanship or the patriotic conflict between the two, but instead in two differing approaches to justice, their influence on fellow Chinese writers to step outside tradition, and the respective ways they address issues in society. Additionally, it's not just a conflict between Great Detective vs Gentleman Villain, but the Holmesian Detective and the Hardboiled Detective. And, naturally, when the two met, a pattern reocurred again.

Writing a Lu Ping tale in his usual manner, Sun Liaohong deprives the detective of the advantage he typically enjoys at the hand of Cheng Xiaoqing or any other follower of Conan Doyle - narration by the detective's coadjutor.

It is Huo Sang who slinks around like a thief, alarming hotel service personnel. He becomes rattled, and even so is vain and arrogant. He is a bit too positivist about searching for clues, and he spends a remarkable amount of time just relaxing and waiting for something to happen.

The figure of "wooden puppets" turns wicked when the author uses the term to refer to Huo Sang, Bao Lang, and the police. Satirizing the genre as a play in which the author woodenly manipulates his character. But Lu Ping as puppet is a genius, moving from one identity to another, whereas Huo Sang is a dumbbell - wooden indeed, bourgeois, ridiculed.

A gentleman's agreement occurs only at the end. Huo Sang has the formal victory. He frees Lu Ping in order to get the paining, but the exhibition is held a day late and it now bears Lu Ping's seal.

In wartime, peace talks, diplomacy and gentlemen's agreements are just smoke screens, the stuff of puppetry. Both Huo Sang and Lu Ping surround themselves with lies to reach their final accomodation. Perhaps they are both puppets - Chinese Justice, the Fiction: Law and Literature in Modern China, by Jeffrey C. Kinkley

Both characters were canned in 1949 when the CCP banned detective fiction, and it was replaced with anti-spy literature about how the party police would expose counterrevolutionary conspiracies. They never got to have a rematch, and to my understanding there were a couple of films made afterwards about them, Huo Sang had a very recent one in 2019, but never another meeting.

I guess the takeaway here time and time again is that, credit to Holmes and all, but:

[allonevoice]

Paper Two: The Oppositional Gaze

With an unprecedented degree of available media content for consumers to view, it is worth considering how these near-incessant streams of information impact us as well as our vision of the world and those who inhabit it.  Television, Film, Radio, Music and literature are not only reflections of the world but more importantly they are subjective representations of their creators’ reflection of the world.  They are a template from which all observers must assess the world as well as themselves and their lived experience.  The viewers and consumers of media, especially during this plugged-in era of the hypnotic, ever-present smartphone and earbuds, are rapaciously gathering data and ideas about the world they inhabit from curated fiction and non-fiction at an increasingly frenetic pace.  The desire to keep this autobahn-paced intake of entertainment harvesting and maintain the endorphin-high chaotic feasting of novelty has put a pressure on content creators to truncate nuance, in a world where more than ever, conversations of increasing complexity are necessary for progress and survival.  I mention this to emphasize the gravity of influence that media has over listeners and viewers as well as to underline the casual way that messages are consumed.  This casual, constant absorption of stories and ideas (be they fictional or non-fiction, a distinction that matters very little when talking about the very-real consequences that these influences can have) can leave the modern bewildered listeners susceptible to the subliminal (as well as the conspicuous) bedlam of messages they are bombarded with in their daily lives.  These points are made to exhibit that any forthcoming evidence or argument made for inequality-prompting trends in media are far from trivial and are more pertinent to observe and address than ever, not just for their pernicious nature but their pervasiveness.

           Issues of representation for People of Color have always been problematic in news/entertainment media and advertising in the U.S.  The Anglocentric and patriarchal representation of artists, entertainers, models, musicians, business professionals, scientists, actors is rampant.  Much of this comes about from majority white ownership of media and advertising companies. Entman and Rojecki suggest, for the most part, outright intolerance and racism of the many individuals, the moving parts and people in media businesses, be they newspapers or television companies, is probably not to blame.  More plausible is that the systems in which they are cogs, are flawed on this point.  Regardless of who is to blame, it is a white-majority and white perspective bias that result in People of Color being withheld opportunities to be on television shows despite having a wealth of talent, vision and intellect.  So too is it a belief in this racist system when historically and presently, Black filmmakers cannot get funding for serious projects discussing racial figures, or plights specific to the Black community, or non-comedic/action films that feature majority Black casts.  These decisions discussed as recently as Spike Lee’s post-2000’s struggle to get significant funding for a Malcom X biopic are the results of white-owned production companies’ misguided and racist conviction that there is no profitable majority audience for these films.  Not only does that assume that white audiences have no interest in learning about Black figures, and assumes that the emotional, psychological experiences of Blacks are so alienating to white people (a deeply dividing notion) as to be disinteresting, it also presumes that the only audience, and the most important audience to consider, is a white audience to begin with.  This presumption, when viewed in the reverse, negates the validity and existence of Blacks entirely.  In much of early radio, well into the 50’s until the Carter administration endeavored to amend the issue, the FCC wouldn’t greenlight Black radio stations or programs and wouldn’t fine any stations that exhibited blatantly discriminatory practices.  Sadly, there are countless examples of these sorts of exclusionary racially motivated acts over the decades.  

A lack of representation creates a disservice to those who go unrepresented as entertainers but also as consumers, not just for the inequality that the media is maintaining within the confines of its business practices, but also in the message that it sends to consumers.  To white consumers, with no Black-owned, black culture featured media, this insulates them and creates no understanding or available empathy or tolerance.  When Blacks are represented by white writers and curators of media, they are likely to be misrepresented when they are depicted at all.  For consumers, this normalizes whiteness to the point of invalidating the existence of Blackness, it creates a latent hostility from whites and a wrongheaded presentation of the world.  For Blacks, there is a great and terrible othering that occurs, either by misrepresentation or exclusion.  The writer of “The Oppositional Gaze” bell hooks talks about how Black female spectators would deal with the pain of this omittance, of this complete erasure of their existence, at times to attempt to “ignore race”, other times to ignore cinema altogether, as it obstinately decided it wouldn’t represent People of Color either at all, or accurately and honestly.  Bell hooks says,

“Not all black women spectators submitted to that spectacle of regression through identification. Most of the women 1 talked with felt that they consciously resisted identification with films--that this tension made moviegoing less than pleasurable; at times it caused pain. As one black woman put, l could always get pleasure from movies as long as I did not look too deep." For black female spectators who have "looked too deep" the encounter with the screen hurt. That some of us chose to stop looking was a gesture of resistance, turning away was one way to protest, to reject negation.” (bell hooks, The Oppositional Gaze, Chapter 7, page 121, paragraph 3).

           Fictional media creates inequality by presenting inequality, by creating a false reality bereft of complex People of Color as written and represented in good faith by employed people of their own culture to do their stories justice.  What is a person to do but, as some of those that bell hooks has interviewed, but to either turn away, or to swallow the pill that society rejects your experience, your history and your narrative, and you must engage on the most detached level with these white-majority pieces of biased media? There is of course the alternative that she suggests elsewhere in the text; resisting, critiquing and fighting to change these systemic problems that create a lack of relatability and accuracy for Blacks, a painful and exclusionary scenario, as well as engenders more division and lack of empathy from uninformed (and woefully uncultured, uninstructed) white viewers.

On another front, news media often (either out of cynicism or laziness, the maligning result is the same) perpetuates harmful stereotypes for men and women of color.  Whether representing issues of poverty with deriding image clusters equating poverty with violence and Blackness or the local-news media tendency to replicate biased police reports and announcements of arrests without any nuance or consideration to the alleged criminal, (statistically more likely to be shown in cuffs, in mugshots, and unnamed if they are Black) there are plenty of systemic habits that do nothing but to depict a negative (and wrong) view of people of color to the nation as a whole.  These misrepresentations are pervasive and harmful, they communicate an adversarial and dangerous picture of people of color which does nothing to show reality.  These blunt-force misdirected and wrongfully-presented ideas in news stories are not trivial, as I argued in the opening paragraph.  They have great consequence, people interact with others based on this media-born information, these harmful racial stereotypes.  People like Trump get into office on racist dog-whistling propaganda, on hate-speech genocidal language references to helpless refugees, because ideas have power, because representation matters a great deal. When news shows use euphemistic language to describe white nationalist statements, or don’t lead a quote where Trump is being entirely dishonest or inventing statistics with statements that point out that lie, that matters a great deal when you consider that 60% of people stop ingesting a news story after reading a headline.

The realm of ideas, concepts and conceits matters a great deal, as these things catalyze our perception of the world and the people that inhabit the world around us.  The out-of-context soundbite that we “learn from”, the catchy click-bait-motivated headline that we skim over, may just influence the hand that pulls the lever in the voting booth.  This sobering reality reminds us that Media, our pseudo-oracle, the influencing ever-blaring window to the “outside world”, is deeply influential in forming our opinions on public policy, our view on religion, our political outlook and more locally, our tolerance of a new neighbor, who we are likely to hire in the workplace, if we would grant a loan to a person whose name or race seems unfamiliar, or whom we suddenly associate with an alarming and unflattering news story.

In the era of Youtube, Vine, Twitter, Instagram and even higher-profile companies like Netflix, Hulu and so on, the broadened media ecosystem has given more people than ever are given a voice, which is great when it comes to representation, where on streaming sites and social media, comedians, artists, and models of all backgrounds are given a fair chance to represent and share their work and stories.  Conversely, again though, the trouble of curation comes in as Youtube and many news and social media sites have also given platform to nefarious thinkers and content creators.  Interestingly, the system breaks down when advertisements create click-motivated ad revenue, and sensational stories, misleading headlines and the “trolling” aspect of many content creators enter the fold.  Youtube specifically has been shown to have algorithms that the suggested video content will lead most people to more right-wing leaning and white-nationalist or conspiracy-oriented videos. Only terrifying and depressing motivations can be assumed from not just the creation of these venomous or at the very least, patently false and time-draining clips, but from a multi-billion-dollar companies’ impetus to promote content like this.  These systemic structures still exist, and they are inherently evil influences and perpetuators of white supremacy.  

These days, with media rampant, it is so important and difficult to communicate the power of a president’s words, or the angle that a writer would take, or the negative influence that a stereotyping or racialized character in a show would do to people young and old, of white or of color.  As we attempt to navigate this space, free speech ideologues who doubt in the power of words and ideas or who ignores the malevolent nature of dog-whistling and historical context take pleasure in smugly feigning ignorance (or exhibiting true ignorance) as they rebuke attempts to call out blatant racist pundits and propaganda.  Even centrist self-proclaimed liberals and generally rational/logical thinkers decry events of Twitter de-platforming of people like Alex Jones of the Far-right Infowars media site once he incited violence (aside from the appalling transgression of spreading hate speech and lies for years on his website) or refusing to give admitted nazis and white-supremacists such as Richard Spencer an opportunity to speak publicly or on campus as attempts to destroy “the first amendment”.  You can safely bet that most of these thinkers and skeptics are white men who have no (colored) skin in the game.  Media and those powerful people who manipulate it (in front of or behind the camera/the computer/the writing desk), greatly, terrifyingly shapes the world by shaping our understanding of it.  Media puts thoughts in our heads, opinions in our hearts, feelings in our psyche, and subsequently puts our action into motion, which if we aren’t careful can put our children into cages, our bodies into illness, our parents into addiction, our siblings into prisons, our families into poverty, our environments and our communities into disrepair, all of this and more culminates in our very humanity and moral, unifying aspirations into shambles.