#everything just always links back to the abuse of black women in america

[nephiliam]

Feeling rage at the state of everything on earth and wanting to kill every single corporate behind it again

It's all fucking money, oppression, societal ruling systems and the belief that you have to earn the right to even live. No one wants to follow the roots that made this happen, it's all ignored or made into a temporary fad to be forgotten

How much change can we make when those unmaking those changes persist in existing? How long is the stupid back-and-forth battle going to last?

It's not fair that so many people are left to die and be erased because they aren't the 'perfect white family' standard when that standard doesn't even exist nor should any fucking standard that gates people from their right to be alive.

The mere concept of earning the right to do anything like eat, sleep, breathe, being housed, being able to bathe and just to be comfortable is fucking stupid.

UGHHH my head hurts

[argumentl]

The Freedom of Expression - Ep 32 , Radio version - May 2016 - Domestic Violence, Racial discrimination in the USA, Chiba legend 'Jaguar', Ancient mummy wearing Addidas.

Kaoru starts by mentioning that its still Golden Week in Japan (a week of national holidays that occurs every year in the Spring). Joe says that Golden Week doesn't really mean much to him and Kaoru, as they are always working anyway. Kaoru says its tough for Dir's staff, because if the band are working, the staff usually have to be working too. They do sometimes try to make it so the staff can have a break during this time, but if there's work to be done, it can't be helped. Kaoru does say that the streets in Tokyo are much less jammed with cars during Golden Week, which he likes.

Kaoru's first topic of interest is the 'Black dot' campaign, designed to help victims of domestic violence. The campaign was started by British woman Danielle Tredgett, and the premise was that if a sufferer of DV drew a black dot on thier hand, people in the community might be able to recognize it, and help them. One problem with this is that if the perpetrator of the abuse knows the meaning of the black dot, it could worsen the situation if they see it. Kaoru thinks victims of bullying face a similar situation, in that even if they want to talk to someone about it, they can't. Or if they do tell someone, the bullying might worsen. Joe mentions that in the case of DV, people often feel like there is no way out. He thinks seeing this type of thing on the news makes society face up to these issues and forces us to think about them, even if we are not directly involved in such situations ourselves. Kaoru says it is often the case that women are the victims of DV at the hands of male partners, but he recently saw on the news that cases of women abusing men are also on the rise, and male victims of DV generally have no one to talk to about it, or any means of support. Its very difficult for society to recognise that men can also be victims of domestic violence. Kaoru also thinks its very difficult for a man to admit something like that to others. Its a very tough issue, and he really thinks that community support and having a place to go to for help like a community center is very important.

Kaoru's next topic of interest is about an apparel maker (GapKids) who put out an ad containing four girls: three white, and one black. In the ad (link here), one of the taller white girls is resting her elbow on the head of the black girl. The image has caused a lot of controversy. Kaoru says how this could be seen as inappropriate. Joe says that the Civil Rights Act was passed in America in 1964 as a means to end segregation, but the reality is that even now, discrimination against black people in America has not disappeared. He says that incidents involving the police shooting young black Americans without reason are frequent. The issue of racial discrimination is a very sensitive issue within American society. Joe says he recently talked with movie critic Machiyama Tomohiro via Skype, who said that even now, there are a lot of movies which can't be screened in America - in particular, movies set in the time of the Civil War, or movies grappling with the topic of racial discrimination. Such movies usually cannot be screened in regular movie theatres. He brings up the 1946 Disney movie, 'Song of the South', set during the American Reconstruction era, where a white boy becomes friends with a black man. The movie is seen to pull a veil over the system of slavery. Disney does not curreny screen the movie anywhere at all. Joe asked Machiyama whether it might not be better for these movies to be screened in order to remind American society of its past deeds, but Machiyama told him that it is a risk that movie companies are not willing to take. If such movies were screened in theaters, boycotts would likely take place. There is no merit for theaters or movie companies to do so, only risks. The online backlash would also be intense, and so movies such as this get shelved. Joe thinks this kind of protest reaction is going a bit overboard. Kaoru comments that while racial discrimination in American does not disappear, tensions continue to escalate, but overall he agrees with Joe. Joe says that although this is not a solution to this problem, there is the growing concept of 'Slow media', taking place in America and the UK. This is where news is analyzed in depth three months after it occurred, in contrast to the instant consumption of media that goes on around us all the time. He thinks this type of approach is worth watching, as it is really important to get a good balance when looking at serious issues. Kaoru also thinks this idea is interesting.

Next they welcome Tasai for the Tokyo Sports corner. Tasai says he is covering for Dobashi this time, because Dobashi is busy taking care of his kids. Kaoru and Joe think this is a much better reason than Hiranabe's. Joe says Hiranabe is probably still in Atami, still trying to  get his revenge. (See Ep 29 and 31). Hiranabe apparently sometimes sends Joe cute stamps on Line. Joe thinks he must have sent them to the wrong person. Tasai tells the others that Hiranabe is currently talking to a Thai woman via Line. He showed Tasai texts from her saying, 'Can't wait to see you' etc. Tasai also apologizes to Kaoru once again about the 'bande desinée/bando de shinee' mix-up that Kami made last week.

Tasai's first news is about the trending artist/musician 'Jaguar', who is based in Chiba. Kaoru knows about him already, but Joe does not. Tasai says that Jaguar has been inaugurated as the face of the channel 'Chiba TV' at an event he recently attended. Jaguar originally owned a clothes repair business, and a beauty salon etc in Chiba. He has become a bit of a legend because for 11 years he bought his own broadcasting slot on Chiba TV on broadcadt his own show. He did everything himself, including filming, editing, delivery etc. At the recent inauguration event, Jaguar apparently told people he had come from the planet Jaguar, but got stuck in traffic on the way. Tasai says that Jaguar is also rumored to have hung out with Hide a lot back in the day, as Hide had done a part time job at Jaguar's business, and he has also done events with Ayanokoji Sho, vocalist of the band 'Kishidan'. He's the type of guy who knows people in the rock scene.

Speaking of Hide, Joe mentions to Kaoru that, 'You love Hide more than god, right?', which causes laughter as they confirm that Joe wasn't referring to 'that' god (Kami).

Joe mentions that 'quirky' characters like Jaguar are recently getting a lot more focus in the media and online. Kaoru says its just the next step on from 'yuru kyara' (those cute mascot characters). Tasai reckons Jaguar must be in his 60s by now, as he said once that he was in a band during the oil shock in the 1970s. They encourage listeners to search for Jaguar to see what he is like.

For Tasai's next story he says that he has recieved another tip-off letter, like the one he got last time. The letter is titled 'Time traveller',  and refers to a story about a 1500 year old mummy being found wearing Addidas shoes. Of course the letter was from Kami. Joe thinks Kami should focus more on his night shift, instead of looking for wierd stuff to send to Tasai. Tasai said he was going to just dismiss this story, but he realised that while Kami was busy scolding him last week he (Kami) was wearing Addidas clothes. Tasai suggests that the mummy wearing Addidas shoes is Kami's doing. Maybe he travelled back in time to do it. Kaoru says that Kami is a god after all. He did teleport himself to the studio last time, so of course he could time travel if he wanted. Tasai says that Tokyo Sports have decided to run this story. Joe says the photo of the mummy's foot does look like it has three stripes on it, but there is every possibility that it could be photoshopped. They wonder why Kami isn't joining them for this topic, when suddenly, he appears. Kami's first comment is, 'A Kansai person has to come if they are called', admitting that he is a Kansai god. Kami tells them it was him who went back in time as a god from the future bringing shoes. He says it was a favour for his friend who works for Addidas. Kaoru asks Kami to take Dir en grey's new single far back into history. Kami says people in the past would probably find it too noisy/unpleasant, so Kaoru suggests for him to just take the CD cover instead. Kami loses his train of thought a bit, and Joe accuses him of being slow today. Kami scolds Joe, and they all apologise to him (while laughing).

Kaoru finishes by saying he will play more of the jingle campaign entries from next week after he has had chance to listen to them. He Then plugs the new single (due on July 27th 2016), and his blog, DVD, and tour. Finally he comments that this show has been pretty lively. Joe says its ok because its still Golden Week.

Songs - Dir en grey/Sustain the Untruth.

[wolf-stark]

You ask I deliver — both tfatws asks in one!

tfatws weekly ask 1

i finally saw ep1!! i wont be able to see ep2 until thursday at the earliest but i already have some Thots on this ep. here are the ones I remember

first is, and i'm so sorry for this, a grammar lesson. an appositive is when you stick an additional phrase in between commas, dashes, or the like. i actually just used one! the "and i'm so sorry for this" in the first sentence of this paragraph is an appositive. thing is, most english speakers don't normally use them when they speak, only in writing. so i'm always on high alert whenever i hear somebody in tv or movies use one. (it's generally a marker of bad screenwriting). anyway there was one right in the beginning of the episode. the white army guy yelling at sam wilson said "first lieutenant Torres, our intel officer, will be helping on the ground." yeah so. the writing of this series started out on the wrong foot for me. but the rest of the episode was obviously tons and tons better (every interview i see with malcolm spellman makes me love him more and more)

the contrast between the opening minutes (falcon action sequence) and the rest of the ep.... i would 100000/10 rather watch a series with just sam and bucky dealing with life. i dont give a single crap about the flag-smashers or any of that. i just want sam, sarah & fam getting their boating business back on the ground & yeeting racist dickwads, bucky going through therapy and making amends, sam and joaquin being bros, sambucky homoerotic tension, etc.

the cinnamontography! wandavision mostly used cinematography to signify era n stuff. tfatws doesn't have wv's premise to go off of, so here's some tricks i noticed:

with sam there's obviously all sorts of shots with the captain america iconography next to his face, but he hasn't totally claimed it. there's the mural of steve rogers in the background; there's sam staring into the shield like it's a spectre of steve's face; there's sam looking into the exhibit, the shield and sam separated by glass and a layer of camera focus. steve is a constant spectre, always there, an idea, a symbol himself. sam's relationship with this iconography is distanced. he is separated by glass exhibit walls. by painting canvases. he doesn't yet feel worthy to take on that iconography. this whole thing was pulled off quite well but also a bit on-the-nose if only in quantity. there's just sooooo much fancy iconography stuff

speaking of the exhibit, there's something that i get real pissy about. it's when like, there's an action going on you're supposed to be paying attention to but the cinematographer is like,,,, hey! check out this location! or this headline! or something! there was a lot of that in the exhibit. the camera was like, you could focus on sam and rhodey's convo (which was fine but could have been so much better with an extra like 10 minutes of deep character study talk) but noooo you want me to look at the symbol for the united nations and read all the text about bucky who hasn't even showed up yet. shut up i know the lore and ill watch the shot-by-shot breakdown yt vids you don't have to make the shot this long jkdsalcjklasejf

my fav trick was with bucky and the therapist. i had seen a clip of the scene with bucky and the therapist beforehand and i thought the cinnamontography was super obnoxious, but then i was like, oh duh. the shots frequently change the distance between the camera and its subject. sometimes it's uncomfortably close and sometimes it's really far. a clear allegory for the duality of therapy, esp for bucky! therapy is an invasive process wherein he is ruthlessly examined, picked apart, and berated for his trauma (this therapist is crap in every way btw, "mean therapist" works for greg house and greg house only). so the camera goes close. it makes the viewer claustrophobic like bucky. but when he's like "no i haven't had any nightmares" the camera suddenly goes really far. we see bucky as this tiny head in the center of the bottom of the frame. we are distanced from him. he has pushed us away. we cannot see him. he lies because he is vulnerable. so yeah, amazing work there. the therapy scene was hard to watch on purpose!

did bucky slip a note to yori inside the dollar bill? bucky stop making me emooooo. the suuper awkward fake smile has me 😭 (veteran trying to adjust!)

mark my worrrrds when sam asks someone y the govt picked john “white bread” walker they’re gonna say “we needed somebody everyone can get behind....someone uncontroversial, someone everyone can see themselves in” like that exact racist dog whistle

tfatws weekly ask 2

just saw ep2 so im taking advantage of the 2 seconds i can be on tumblr without worrying about tfatws spoilers before new episode drops

when isaiah said "your people put me in prison for being a hero" and bucky thought "your people" means hydra. 🤦‍♂️

speaking of racism, the interplay between sam being Black (anti-Black racism) and sam being the Falcon (negrophilia, "can i take a selfie w you as i deny you a loan?") and the intersection between the two (j*hn lichrally called sam "steve's wingman"! he takes the crypto out of crypto-racist in like 2 seconds!) !!!!!!!! a Black celebrity's Black experience, the separation of man and identity!!!! (thinking about vanessa bayer in snl in that skit "beyonce is black" telling her black friend "you're not black, you're...my girl!")

after sam gets racially profiled by cops we see j*hn standing in front of cop cars cinematic parallels turns out j*hn is racist who knew

this therapist sucks major ass but she got bucky and sam together in the same room and ready to collaborate...that's something ig. it was lichrally couple's therapy she said she used her miracle exercise with couples sambucky antis get blended

bucky says "he was wrong about you so maybe he was wrong about me"...that's not how people talk. when therapist asks bucky, the guy who doesn't talk at all about himself, "y do you hate sam", the last thing bucky's gonna do is actually connect his hatred of sam to his own self-worth issues. bucky generally refuses to talk about himself, so why would he talk about himself in the one context that nobody ever links back to their own neuroses: hatred of other people? one thing human beings hate most is admitting we're wrong. admitting you hate someone because of your own issues? that's a major therapeutic step. bucky would absolutely have to be prompted to do that. even like one or two lines of dialogue more would have set up that line better. but in terms of the actual thought? an amazing way to take the sam/bucky relationship. bucky bases his self-worth on steve believing in him, and if steve is wrong bucky has no self-worth, so 1) he has to develop self-worth disassociated from steve's assessment of him and 2) he has to love himself before he can love sam, and 3) he has to realize that sam giving up the shield is a sign of sam's humility not his unworthiness.

conversely, we don't get into why sam hates bucky? yeah sam has the right to hate a guy that has tried to kill him (albeit while brainwashed) multiple times, and now shows up in his life just to bash him but. everything happens so fast i cant follow their relationship

in fact i dont feel like i understood much of anything. like y did bucky and sam go on that mission together? how connected are sam/bucky/joaquin with the government? doesn't bucky just want to retire now? literally what is everyone doing/feeling and why???

if battlestar becomes a knowing commentary on the black best friend stereotype i'm gonna party, but i dont expect much of that

the interplay between man and symbol. captain america is obviously a symbol. the shield is obviously a symbol. but steve rogers? the. man behind the cowl? he too seems to become a symbol. a paragon of a good guy, so good he's unreachable. steve was just a guy stop idolizing him the last thing steve would want is to be idolized

as the resident musician/music nerd on mcublr, 1) that captain america rally music slaps, but 2) re: the song at the end of the ep, if you're just gonna rip off mozart's lacrymosa then at least play mozart's lacrymosa. we wont blame you the lacrymosa slaps (if you dont know what im talking about go on yt and search it up youll recognize it fo sho

look i love enfys nest as much as the next guy but if tfatws is gonna get erin kellyman to play another innocent little gurl blackmailed into the fakeout-villain position (her text seemed to suggest as such) then 😡 like why can't women just....be evil? young, freckly, innocent-looking women? girls are not untouchable pure objects but full of rage and resentment just as much as anyone can be

bonus ep1 comment: bucky says about that senator whose car he hijacked, "she continued to abuse the power i gave her." fictionaldarling on yt say that he says "i" because he can't disassociate himself from his winter soldier persona which begets endless and senseless guilt. like dude. can i not be emo for like 1 second.

OKay. First off, as much I enjoy your sending it to me, what made you decide to send me these??

-

TFATWS WA #1

Don't worry about getting this to me as early as possible. I usually don't watch the episode right away.

1. Cool writing lesson.

2. Everyone wants a comedy show [like Friends] about the MCU superheroes.

3. Cinematography is always a beautiful thing.

4. Sam definitely has to carve his own Captain America status for himself, outside of Steve's ya know everything.

5. They have to do that for people who was just now tuning in because they're in love with Sam Wilson or Sharon Carter.

6. I think the therapist was taking a 'tough love' approach for Bucky, because she likely has some very strong opinions about the literal assassin she's been assigned to give therapy too. She did not choose to talk to him, she was assigned that make that clear in the second episode.

And, Bucky isn't lying when he said it wasn't a nightmare. It wasn't a nightmare, it was a resurfaced memory. So, technically he wasn't lying - and yes, the camera does move away because while he's saying he didn't have a nightmare, he's not expanding on what actually happened - so, he's still pushing the therapist/us away.

7. Bucky, and Steve, have/had a TON to adjust to.

8. Yeah, I agree that will be the bullshit line they give. If they ever actually talk about it.

TFATW WA #2

Yeah, always got to take advantage of avoiding those spoilers lmfaoo.

1. Honestly, that line was double meaning. Both about White people and Hydra [which is made up of mostly white supremacists/nazis] So, the line is gesturing to both White People in general and Hydra assholes together. I think the terminology is “double edge sword”??

2. This whole paragraph structure confused me, ngl - so I'm going to answer it the best I can. I do like that they're not ignoring the fact that Sam being Black is 1000% the reason he's not the Official Captain America - because the gov't is racist as hell.

I also like the little lines about how they point out little things about Sam's Falcon persona, like that kid calling him 'Black Falcon' specifically and Sam's response show the split between Sam and Falcon itself.

John is a dick for calling Sam the wingman of Steve Rogers. Sam was a hero all on his own before Steve asked him to join up again. [Side note, it's lichrally??]

3. Exactly, the parallel of Sam being profiled and surrounded while just on the street and John being surrounded by fans and being able to spring Bucky with apparently only a few sentences shows a Loooooot

4. Honestly, at this point I wonder if she's not actually a therapist and is just an agent assigned to assess Bucky outside of an Official Building. I do know, however, that her 'look at each other and speak' exercise is actually a real therapy practice. It's just a little slower.

5. Actually, I think he would've blurted that out. That whole line. I don't think Bucky hates Sam. I think they could've done the scene better, but I think that had Sam prodded him/the therapist been more annoying Bucky would've lost control of his emotions and blurted out the whole "If he was wrong about you, he was wrong about me" but I feel like the writing for this show is just... not there. Sometimes you blurt shit when you get overemotional and I think that was what Bucky was supposed to be like.

6. I don't think Sam hates Bucky, I think he doesn't trust him though. I do wish they'd talked about that though. The whole 'talk to each other' scene should've been a LOT longer and a LOT slower.

7. Sam and Bucky's relationship is being fast tracked because they don't really know how to work the relationship out, writers-room-wise. Bucky is technically retired, but I feel like he's trying to live up to Steve's expectations and doing what Steve would've done and we all know that if Steve was there, Steve would've jumped on that plane with Sam. It looks like Sam/Bucky/Joaquin are a side-team based from Military services but as Sam says they're all free agents so...?

8. Sadly, They seem to just be propping up to be another stereotype.

9. Captain America is a symbol. Steve Rogers is a man. But now Steve Rogers is an idol because of all the shit he's been through and honestly, it's not a bad thing he's become an idol for people - it's using Steve as a reason to make White Bread Walker the next Captain that makes Steve's idolization so fucked.

10. I don't know anything about music so I have no opinion here, sorry.

11. Enfys?? Also, I think they did the whole Innocent Girl Thing as side commentary for Bucky lowering his guard about seeing a young girl rather than a guy.

12. Bucky is the Winter Solider. The Winter Solider is Bucky. That is how Bucky will always see it because although he was brainwashed, it was still him and he remembers all of it. When you have constant memories of something 'someone else' did, you tend to not be able to pull the two personas out of each other. I want Bucky to take up the title, White Wolf instead of Winter Soldier. Honest.

This is all my opinion, I’m honestly a little disappointed with the writing of TFATWS so far so... I’m not really optimistic about this.

[abuse-culture]

Depression Misconceptions

Our abuse culture is fueled by a misunderstanding of mental health. 

Online I see many people address depression joking with phrases like “serotonin machine broke”. And in serious cases use the hyper medicalised version of depression and mental illnesses in general as just a lack of a neurotransmitter. Either way, they are presenting depression as only a lack of serotonin.  

Mental illness is not the same health struggle as type 1 diabetes and way more complex. Keep in mind even diabetes has other management factors than insulin. Comparing the two as the same or as competition is harmful to everyone.

Mental illness is more affected by environment and life factors than most non-psychological health conditions. Our bodies are complex and our mind cannot be separated from the rest of our body, but mental health is connected to our social-emotional state by treating it like we might a broken arm, heart defect or diabetes.

There is some truth in the idea of depression being only a “sick organ”. There are of course neurological and neurochemical aspects to be considered. The functioning of the Amygdala & Thalamus is altered and the size of the hippocampus are all affected. This was shown in many F-MRI’s, MRI studies. Chemically; Acetylcholine, Dopamine, Norepinephrine, Glutamate & GABA all play a role. Which in itself shows more complex neurobiological levels and shows overlap with PTSD and anxiety on physical and chemical levels.

There are genes linked to depression, but the idea that any depression is purely genetic or generally endogenic is not common. You may see it reported in some places, but the most common belief is that the “depression gene” does not cause depression on its own but instead predisposes you to it. Some studies suggest that possibly 40% of depression in a person may be genetic, but even that shows that 60% is environmental.

This complexity can be exacerbated as there are multiple physiological disorders and health conditions that can induce depressive symptoms due to multiple chemical imbalances and other functions. Chronic low blood pressure, CFS, diabetes, hypercalcemia, hypothyroidism, or vitamin deficiency can all mimic depression. These depressive symptoms can be better by treating the physical chronic health condition if not eliminated.  Disability and chronic illness can be a trigger or layer of depressive disorders by both symptoms of the health condition and as a stressor or trauma that influences depression.

But what is key is that mental health is that layer of social, interpersonal, behavioral, environmental and systemic factors. We have to recognize all of this to understand our mental health and improve our situation.

It stops people considering all the factors that might influence the depression we may be suffering with and it’s always a layered experience.

Examples:

Ableism

Alienation brought on by capitalism

Attachment trauma

Child Abuse

Child Emotional Neglect

Classism

Community Trauma

Death of loved ones

Developmental Traumas

Disabilities & Disabilities

Domestic Violence

Environmental factors (Pollution)

Exposure to the criminal legal system

Global traumas

Homophobia

Incarceration

Intergenerational trauma

Lack of health care

Lack of housing

Lack of hobbies or creative outlets

Lack of social supports for issues like relationships or child care

Negative or toxic relationships

Misogyny

Poor Nutrition

Poverty

Our culture’s lack of emotional inelegance

Racism

Rape

The school system

Sexual Abuse

Spiritual well-being deficits

Substances Abuse Disorder

Your Job

Another common phrase is “if you can’t make a serotonin store-bought is a fine” way of addressing depression. They tend to be moderately effective, even the big headlines saying; “The drugs do work” or “antidepressants proved better than placebo”. The studies are not nearly definitive, including admitting the drugs only work moderately well. Many studies show inconclusive evidence or even show almost no evidence that antidepressants have a major curative power for depression, with high relapse rates and rates that are equal or lesser to other forms of treatment.

I’m not against them but we need to be cautious of and more informed. For example, Understand antidepressants aren’t just concentrated serotonin you aren’t taking serotonin or getting “store-bought”. Only a few psychiatric drugs are directly ingesting the neurotransmitter.

The Rates of depression have gone up in the past 25 years, not down. Our most recent numbers (2017) showed a rate of 7.1% in US adults and 1991 there was only a rate of 3.3%. If our steady increase in medications for depression were having a massive effect, we should have a decrease at least in the rates of major depressive episodes a year, if those with chronic depression were treated and the medication fixed the neurotransmitter problems there should be fewer repeat episodes. Now we can say some stigma decrease allows better treatment sure and contributes to higher rates, but the key part is a lack of systemic improved outcomes.

A rate of around 13% is shown in adolescents.  A rise in extreme pressure in school, media consumption rates, climate grief and other social factors are all indicated to have effects. If social factors improve, these rates may decrease.

Those social factors show in the data:

Indigenous Americans and Alaskan Natives have higher rates of depression and other mental health groups.

Black and Hispanic populations tend to have more persistent and chronic depression.

Women and adolescent girls both have higher rates than those of the opposite sex.

Mixed-race people have the highest rates of depression among racial groups

Low socioeconomic status is a risk factor in developing depression and all mental health issues.

The hyper-medicalization of mental health is for-profit and born from the dismissal of childhood trauma and connected to misogyny and classism. The APA has had a history of connections to powerful groups and dismissing trauma for years, even going as far as to say horrific abuses like incest, being possibly beneficial or at least harmless to children. To this day they still refuse to understand developmental trauma and DTD. The DSM also tends to pathologize behaviours linked to stress in children, labelling them as oppositional defiant (ODD) instead of asking why.

Social political factors not taken into account, leaving our mental health and social support system lacking the tools to address the specific needs of Marginalised communities.

The hyper-medical model is also politically advantageous. If we do not notice that the way our model of employment, social precarity and systemic failures are causing depression and other illness, then we won’t’ fight back. If we don’t understand how our culture steeped in abuse affects our health we won’t change it. A  healthier culture would help combat all mental health problems including depression.

Depression needs to be understood as not just your brain being a sick organ or an illness “just like any other”. Because the fact is it’s not. It’s extremely context-dependent and it’s interesting and complicated. Socio-political circumstance, environment, physical health, childhood and interpersonal relationships all impact our depression.

Which is good in some ways, because we can help alter some of those and important insights showing us combating oppression and our political system would help us! It shows us we have to be holistic in our approach.

If we have people who only think in the medicalised only structure it opens the door for the “sceptics”, “faith healers” and “ The Secret peddler” telling us to pray or “manifest” our depression away. Which is dangerous faith is important and we ought to be critical of pharmacological companies but we can’t throw neuropsychology out entirely and definitely can’t fall into toxic “self Help” or Goop style woo.

It’s healing to know you’re not stuck with a broken brain. But a brain that is struggling through multiple stressors and is currently not operating properly. But you can help it through therapy, behaviour changes, connecting with others, combating alienation, learning, needed medical intervention grounding skills, emotional regulation techniques and becoming embodied.

And by knowing while you can help yourself, you’re not the problem and nor is your body. The problem is also social factors and your history of stress and/or trauma. Which means your body is not fighting against you or failing you. Which is so liberating. Knowing what is and isn’t in your control.

Depression is not just a lack of serotonin or part of your brain that’s broken, it’s complex and complicated and tied in with our culture of abuse and trauma.

Citations undercut

Kirsch I (2019) Placebo Effect in the Treatment of Depression and Anxiety. Front. Psychiatry 10:407. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00407

Martin, Elizabeth I et al. “The neurobiology of anxiety disorders: brain imaging, genetics, and psychoneuroendocrinology.” The psychiatric clinics of North America vol. 32,3 (2009): 549-75. DOI:10.1016/j.psc.2009.05.004

Sandeep K and Rajmeet S: Role of different neurotransmitters in anxiety: a systemic review. Int J Pharm Sci Res 2017; 8(2): 411-21.doi: 10.13040/IJPSR.0975-8232.8(2).411-21.

Socioeconomic Status and Mental Illness: Tests of the Social Causation and Selection Hypotheses, “Christopher G. Hudson, Ph.D., Salem State College; American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Vol. 75, No. 1.

12-19-17 Fact Sheet_Diversity.indd

A., Van der Kolk Bessel. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Penguin Books, 2015.

“Big New Study Confirms Antidepressants Work Better than Placebo.” NHS Choices, NHS, 22 Feb. 2018, www.nhs.uk/news/medication/big-new-study-confirms-antidepressants-work-better-placebo/.

Hari, Johann. “Is Everything You Think You Know about Depression Wrong?” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 7 Jan. 2018, www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/07/is-everything-you-think-you-know-about-depression-wrong-johann-hari-lost-connections?CMP=share_btn_tw.

Harvard Health Publishing. “What Causes Depression?” Harvard Health, Harvard University, 24 June 2019, www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/what-causes-depression.

Johnson, Adam H, and Nima Shirazi. “Citations Nedded.” Citations Nedded, 6 May 2020, https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-109-self-help-culture-and-the-rise-of-corporate-happiness-monitoring.

Levinson, Douglas F, and Walter E Nichols. “Major Depression and Genetics.” Stanford Medicine, Stanford University , med.stanford.edu/depressiongenetics/mddandgenes.html.

Lorant, V. “Socioeconomic Inequalities in Depression: A Meta-Analysis.” American Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 157, no. 2, 15, Jan. 2003, pp. 98–112., doi:10.1093/aje/kwf182.

“Major Depression.” National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Feb. 2019, www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/major-depression.shtml.

“Native American Communities and Mental Health.” Mental Health America, MHA, 2016, www.mhanational.org/issues/native-american-communities-and-mental-health.

O'Shea, Breht. “Revolutionary Left Radio.” Revolutionary Left Radio, 20 Jan. 2019, https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/drugs-addiction-and-social-conditions.

Schimelpfening, Nancy. “Factors That Could Increase Your Risk of Depression.” Verywell Mind, Verywell Mind, 21 Mar. 2020, www.verywellmind.com/common-causes-of-depression-1066772.

Weinhold, Barry K., and Janae B. Weinhold. Developmental Trauma: the Game Changer in the Mental Health Profession. CICRCL Press, 2018.

[imperiuswrecked]

Differet anon - I love character analysis, and want all your opinions about Namor, in as much detail as you're willing to provide.

Hello Anon! I have so many opinions about Namor and if you really want then here’s a long meta that covers various things (warning long post ahead):

Now we all know that while Marvel Comics Universe officially begins with the Fantastic Four in the Silver Age, most of the Golden Age isn’t considered “true” MU canon BUT Marvel plays fast and loose with the GA characters and backstories, they pick and choose whatever they like and leave the rest, for instance many GA characters never made it out of the GA however some have in some capacity and the main three who used to be Marvel’s Holy Trinity due to their popularity in the GA were Original Human Torch, Captain America, and the Sub-Mariner. However Marvel took different approaches to bringing them into the SA. For Jim Hammond he was shelved and his superhero name and powers were given to Johnny Storm, the current Human Torch takes his name from his favorite super hero Jim because Johnny used to read comics about the GA heroes and it’s in MU canon that Jim, Steve, and Namor had comics made of their time during WWll. Captain America was put on ice (though this was not revealed until his reemergence in the comics within the pages of the Avengers after Namor’s SA debut) however for Namor, now Namor was special because Stan Lee loved Namor so much that rather than reinvent him like he and Kirby did with the Human Torch, he just brought him into the comics as he was, he gave him amnesia, and Kirby reworked the Atlanteans and Atlantis’s designs and they seamlessly integrated him into the pages of the Fantastic Four.

The reason why I find this so exciting is because Namor has always been a link for connections within the comics, he and Jim Hammond had the very first comic superhero cross over in comic history, this meant that before their crossover, Batman and Superman never hung out, and everyone was in their own universe. Namor then becomes the connection between the Old comics and the New comics when he comes into the SA. Namor connects the X-Men to the wider universe when he appears in their books, he connects Daredevil when he guest stars, and Namor is the reason Steve was found by the Avengers. His actions cause a ripple across comics. Not to mention that Namor as a creation is himself also a connection, he was the first Anti-Hero in a time where such a thing never existed, there was “bad guys vs good guys” only black and white views, there was no grey human mortality involved. His creator, Bill “Blake” Everett was a descendant from William Blake, a Romantic Age Poet and Artist. So the Romanticism and Bryonic elements to Namor cannot be dismissed especially since Everett connects Namor back to more old romantic age stuff when he named him The Sub-Mariner taking inspiration from “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” Another connection Namor has is that he is the prototype Mutant, his ankle wing origin story and how he gained his ability to fly in his teens was covered years before the X-Men were invented in 1963. (Sub-Mariner Comics #38, Published Feb 1955).

In the Golden Age Namor’s childhood is quickly glossed over, but what we do know is that Thakorr, angry at his daughter Princess Fen, for daring to love and marry a human man, locks her away in a cell and within that cell is where Namor was born. Thakorr now realizing he has a male heir but still upset with his daughter releases her and grants her, her life but he also banishes her and the newborn prince as punishment for her actions. He only allows them to return to Atlantis when Namor becomes ten years of age in order to begin his training to become ruler one day. The reason I mentioned earlier that Marvel takes whatever it feels like taking from the GA is because this fact is usually forgotten or glossed over in the comics. However when Namor was a young boy he was beloved by his mother and his only friend, Dorma, and later after she was retconned into being Namor’s cousin, Namora. Other than that Namor was often ostracized for being born different. He endured racism, taunts and his Grandfather abuse as he was growing up. However Thakorr wasn’t stupid and when he and Fen saw what Namor could do, how strong he grew and how he could survive on land, then Namor began to be molded into the “Avenging Son” a weapon of Atlantis and to be used in against the surface world to make them pay for their crimes.

Namor feeling like an outsider and trying to find his place in the world is a core element to the backbone of his character, his morally grey nature allows him more freedom than other characters.

Namor is a very flawed character and I feel he is very relatable because he makes mistakes and rather than ignoring them he faces the consequences for that.

Namor is perhaps the most honest character in Marvel, and I don’t mean as in he himself doesn’t tell a lie now and then but honest as in what you see is what you get and he will cut through the b.s. and tell you exactly what he is thinking whenever he feels like it. Namor will call you out and he makes no apologies for being abrasive or in your face.

Due to his upbringing and also due to Namor having to constantly fight and endure his cousins trying to take his throne by whispering in Thakorr’s ears, the court was not a kind place for the half breed prince, he had to command respect at every opportunity which is why when people disrespect him on the surface world he is quick to assert himself and remind all that he is the king of seas.

Legend of the Blue Marvel (2009) #4

So Namor deals with A LOT which is why he has this salty grumpy outer shell to his personality and not many people get to see the softer side of the Sub-Mariner. He wears this mask of arrogance and confidence but he also backs up everything he says with his actions. Namor is very aware of how others see him and decided long ago that he gives zeros fucks and will do whatever he wants to do, but something that not a lot of writers in the modern age comics get about Namor is that Namor is very honorable just because Namor uses a different moral compass than other heroes doesn’t mean he isn’t a good person in his own way.

Namor hates bullies, being bullied as a child he despises bullies in all forms and often steps in to stop them and takes the side of the underdog. He especially hates child abusers.

Namor respects women, omfg if I have to read another “hot take” from some writer who calls Namor a home wrecking Casanova I will fling myself into the sun. Toxic Masculinity is a thing that people keep trying to attach to Namor but it’s WRONG. This especially happens in the comics where there is Reed/Sue/Namor drama because writers want people to side with Reed and having Namor be a douche and Sue declaring that she would never be with a man like him no matter how hot he is because his personality sucks and Reed is the good choice for Sue. (can you tell I dislike the namorsue ship? lmao)

Namor treats women with respect and would actually fight others who disrespect women, he is a king and a gentleman, however this does not mean that he treats them as inferior. He has had his ass saved by women so many times, he will fight a female villain the same as a male villain, he will listen to women and trust their judgement in situations. Namor is much less likely to trust men and especially men in power due to him growing up under Thakorr’s tyrannic rule.

Namor’s an old school romantic and he loves being in love even if he doesn’t quite know how to make a relationship last (usually because Marvel kills off his love interests).

Namor gives people second chances even if they have betrayed him in the past.

Namor and his mother have a strained relationship, even though they both love each other there’s a wall between them. Fen was crafty, she would do what could to prepare Namor to be king, including keeping secrets from him.

Namor is a loyal person and friend, and once you have his seal of approval he will fight for you.

Namor likes animals far more than he likes people, and I love him for it. He treats scary undersea creatures like pets.

Namor is a very lonely creature who cares far more than he will ever let on and who, no matter what happens, will always stand up to fight for what he thinks is right even if the entire world is against him.

Namor has this thing about touch, he dislikes people touching him without his express permission and when I first starting reading his comics I chalked it up to a part of his arrogant demeanor, then I thought that it might be because he is royalty and there are certain things you just don’t do with royalty and personal touches like a hand on the should might seem to be too familiar and it was a sign of disrespect, however when I read more about Thakorr’s cruelty/abuse I have come to think that its a mix of “Don’t touch me bitch, I’m royalty” and “I won’t let anyone who I don’t like touch me ever again because of the abuse I suffered”.

His soft heart has been hardened by mankind’s cruelty so he protects it. He’s seen more sorrow and pain than others have in their lifetime and he is just a tired old man who wants everyone to leave him alone.

Thanks for letting me ramble on, lmao.

[thechildoflightning]

Superstitious

Title: Superstitious

Fandom: Sander Sides

Pairings: LAMP/CALM

Part of “just keep stumbling forward (baby im waiting for you)”

Part 10 of 17

Summary: When Patton had gone to the store to get groceries, he hadn't planned on getting stopped by the police on account of so-called "suspicious behavior."

Or: Patton's black. People are racist. America's police force has its issues. Combine all these things and you don't get the greatest mix.

Warnings: Racism, Guns, Abuse of Authority

ao3 link here

~~~

Superstitious

Patton had just parked his car when someone rapped on his window.

“Excuse me sir, Florida PD, could you please step out of the car?”

Patton’s entire body stiffened as he took in the officer's uniform and words. His heart started to thud and he recalled his mothers’ words.

They had sat him down years ago and had taught him exactly what to do when this situation arose. When, not if, because the color of skin guaranteed that it would happen at least once in his life. This would not be the first time he had been talked due to racial profiling. It certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Patton tried to remain calm and push down the racing thoughts of why exactly the police were approaching him. Worst case scenarios flashed in his head, and he had to remind himself that he didn’t know if any of them were true. Maybe his tail light was out, maybe it was something minor.

Or maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was just because he was black.

“Sir,” the officer repeated, “Please step out of the car and keep your hands visible at all times.”

Patton nodded.

“Okay,” he said, even as his heart thudded. He kept his hands on the steering wheel, in plain sight of the cop. “Can I reach to open the car door?” he requested.

‘Keep your hands visible’ was one of the many rules his moms taught him.

‘Ask before doing anything’ was another.

“Yes,” the officer permitted.

Patton nodded again and slowly and carefully reached his left hand to pop the car door open.

“May I step out?” he then asked.

“Yes,” the officer said again, “but keep your hands visible.”

“Okay,” Patton agreed again, and he carefully stepped out of the car. It was not a great pain day and he would have loved to reach for his cane for support, or even put his hand against the car door, but he didn’t dare risk it. Didn’t dare give them something more against him.

“What seems to be the problem officer?” Patton asked.

“We got a report about a man exhibiting suspicious behavior,” the cop explained, “He was driving a car with your license plate.”

“Suspicious behavior?” he asked.

As he spoke he tried to recall everything he had ever learned from his Psych and English classes about speech inflection and cadence, trying to sound as non threatening as possible.

His heart wrenched a bit because what if this had been Logan? Logan didn’t get tone like other people did. What would happen to Logan in a situation like this, when minor details such as tone might be the only thing keeping an officer from acting with more force?

Except, his mind reminded him, Logan wouldn’t be in this situation because Logan wasn’t black. Not like Patton. Logan was generally white passing, and even as that brought up a whole slew of frustrations and injustices, it also meant that Logan tended to not have increased encounters with police due to the color of his skin.

Sure, Patton didn’t know if he was actually being talked to because he was black, but what else could ‘suspicious behavior’ mean?

“A woman said that you had seemed to be following her, before stopping while still watching the way she was travelling. She was concerned for her safety.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Patton said in all honesty. He hadn’t been following any woman, and he wasn’t quite sure where someone would have gotten that idea from. He was just trying to get some groceries.

“What were you doing?” the cop asked.

Patton told the truth.

“I’m here to get groceries,” he said. He almost gestured to the grocery store, but decided not to risk moving his hands in any way. “I really don’t know why the woman thought I was following her. I was looking for a parking spot.”

The officer looked around at the parking lot. It wasn’t empty by any means, but it still didn’t lack spots.

“You were looking for a parking spot?” he asked, voice edging on a harder tone.

“Yes,” Patton insisted, as he realized how his answer must have seemed, “I’m disabled. Check my license plate. I was looking for a disabled parking space, but they were all full. And I did stop for a minute to wait, but I guess the woman took that as me watching her? I don’t know. When none of the spots became available, I looked for a different spot, okay?”

“That’s a bit of a tone,” the officer comment, not backing down.

Shit. This was not good. They had been talking for a while now, and Patton was trying to do everything right, following all the little rules he had learned over the years. But the situation wasn’t deescalating. He didn’t know what to do.

Patton said nothing and just waited for the officer to continue.

“Okay, I’m going to need some ID,” the officer claimed.

And Patton froze. ID? Was Patton being suspected of a crime?

“Officer, I’m pretty sure you can only request to see an ID if you have reasonable suspicion that I have committed a crime,” Patton said faintly.

His moms hadn’t left anything out of teaching him how to handle the police, most importantly, his rights.

Even as he did so he inwardly trembled, knowing that this could go bad and go bad fast.

“You were reported for suspicious behavior,” the cop said, “ID, please.”

“A women called in, claiming she thought I was acting suspiciously,” Patton summarized the cops previous words. He didn’t add that she had probably taken one look at him and made an assumption due to the darkness of his skin. “I’ve explained what I was actually doing. Unless you have an actual reason to suspect me of a specific crime, I will not be showing you my ID.”

Then Patton risked the question that he had been wanting to ask since the beginning considering the officer had nothing on him.

“Am I free to go?”

“Are you free to go? I’m questioning you about suspicious activities!”

“And I’ve answered those questions. Am I free to go?”

The officer spluttered and then suddenly another cop was coming up to join him. Shit. Okay, not good. Two on one.

And Patton hated that he thought that. Hated that when seeing the police he expected nothing short of a fight. Hated that he couldn’t trust the very people who swore to protect him. Hated that he was always acting on the defensive. Hated that this was what America’s justice system was like.

“Johns? What’s going on here?” he asked.

“This was the man called in for suspicious activity,” the officer explained, “But he’s lying to me about waiting for a parking space.”

This was going bad fast.

“I’m not lying,” Patton protested, “I’m disabled, it shows it on my license plate, and I have a placard and my cane in the car.”

That’s when Patton made his mistake. So far he had kept his hands still and in the view of the officer, but at the last sentence he waved his hands toward his car, one of his hands stopping at his side where his pants settled. A place that a gun could be kept, even though Patton would never touch one in his life.

“Don’t move,” the officer warned, hand shooting towards his gun, “Slowly move your hands away from your body and hold them up where I can see them!”

Patton’s heart lurched and he did as told, ever so carefully following the officers directions.

“Johns!” the new officer was quick to step in, “Calm down and take your hand away from your gun.”

Officer Johns was quick to send him a surprised look but did as told.

“Sir,” this time the new cop turned to Patton, “You can put your hands down.”

Patton nodded quickly and let his hands relax even as he shook like a leaf. He just wanted some damn groceries, was that too much to ask?

“I’m Officer Calen,” the other officer spoke, actually taking the time to introduce himself to Patton, “Now could you please tell me what’s going on here?”

“Well-” Officer Johns started.

“Not you Johns,” Calen was quick to cut in, he turned back to Patton with an expectant look.

“Oh,” Patton realized, “Uh well, Officer Johns here asked me to step out of my car just as I parked. I did so and he told me that someone had called me in for suspicious activity? I explained that I had been waiting for a disabled parking spot but none were open so I then moved to park somewhere else. Afterwards he asked for ID and I didn’t show it because it was to my understanding that the law states that I don’t have to show ID unless I’m being suspected of a crime. I then asked if I could go and that's when you arrived.”

Calen nodded and Johns looked close to protesting, but was silenced by a sharp look from Calen.

“So you mean to tell me that you were looking for a parking spot, explained that to Officer Johns here, and he is still holding you for questions.”

“Yes,” Patton admitted, heart thumping. The second cop seemed more reasonable, but Patton wasn’t willing to throw too much hope into that assumption yet.

The officer shook his head. Patton had thought the situation might be improving, but the new officer now looked incredibly angry, so he wasn’t sure anymore.

The officer turned back to Patton.

“You’re free to go, sir,” he told him, “I’m going to make sure Officer Johns here gets a talking too.”

“Really?” Patton breathed out as the tension he had been holding inside finally started to leak out.

“Yes,” he confirmed.

“What?” Johns protested, “He-”

“Let’s go Johns,” Calen insisted firmly.

“Are you kidding me? This man here was called in for suspicious behavior and your just going to let him go?” the cop nearly shouted, turning towards Calen.

“Was he really called in for suspicious behavior?” Calen challenged, “Or was he called in because he was black?”

Patton was taken aback for a minute, having never heard a cop put it so plainly before.

Calen continued, “He explained what he was doing, his license plate shows he can park in a disabled spot, and all of those spots are full. That is basic information you easily could of checked. But you didn’t, because your just as bad as the women who called him in. Worse actually, because you have the advantage of an authority position as well as wielding a weapon. Do your fucking job next time.”

Johns opened his both, probably in defense of himself, but Calen silenced him with a glare.

“Think carefully about you say next, Johns.”

At his words, Johns wisely did not continue and took a step back, hanging his head. Patton breathed another sigh of relief as the newer officer gestured to him and they then started to walk away.

Patton’s disbelief slowly started to sink into reality. They were letting him go, and most importantly, he was okay. He was safe.

Why didn’t he feel safe?

A few bystanders who had been watching then started to merge on him.

“I was taking a video the whole time,” one of them said, “He’ll get in trouble for this.”

“Are you okay?”

“Can we call anyone for you?”

“Thank you,” Patton said to the swarming crowd, “I’m fine, I’m just going to go home.”

He clamored back inside his car, head swirling with emotions. As he started to back away, a few tears pricked his eyes. He blinked them back angrily. He was fine. It was stupid. He was fine.

He would get groceries another day.

~~~

When he got home, he walked straight into the house, dropped his keys on the side table, and continued forward. He wasn’t actually sure of where he was trying to go, but he just kept walking.

“Pat?” Roman asked from the kitchen table as he walked past, “Are you okay?”

He ignored him, and continued walking, only to run straight into Virgil.

“Uh, hi?” his boyfriend said, catching him. Virgil looked at him and immediately frowned. “Patton is everything alright?”

Logan then entered the room, presumably due to both Roman and Virgil voicing their concerns.

Patton didn’t really notice much, just shook his head and then buried it into Virgil’s shoulder. He began to cry.

God he had been so scared.

Once he ran out of tears, he found himself on the couch, his boyfriends surrounding him. Trixie had even joined in and settled at his feet. She wasn’t wearing her vest and didn't seem focused on Virgil, so Patton gave her a few pets.

“Patton…” Logan started, but then didn’t finish.

The four of them just looked at each other for a few seconds.

“So, I’m assuming you didn’t get groceries?” Roman tried, aiming for casual.

Patton let out weak laughter.

“No,” he admitted, “I didn’t.”

He then took a deep breathe.

“I got stopped by the police,” he admitted.

And ever since he had walked into the house, tension had been lying in the air, but now it grew even thicker and the whole room seemed to drop in temperature.

“You were what?” Virgil bit out.

“What for?” Logan said at the same time.

And god, what had he been stopped for?

“For being black,” Patton told them, “What else? A woman called me in for suspicious behavior. I was looking for a parking spot.”

“Are you serious?” Roman exploded. He threw his arms up and stood. He started to pace, muttering curses under his breath. Virgil flinched away from him and his breathing quickened a bit.

“Roman,” Logan said, “You need to calm down.”

“Calm down!” Roman shouted. This time, Virgil’s flinch was more visible, and Trixie got up to lay on top of him, covering him in soft licks. “Specs, don’t tell me to calm down. Police literally just stopped our boyfriend because they are racist assholes and you’re telling me to calm down!?”

“Roman, I’m not saying your anger is unjustified, but you need to calm down for Virgil,” he insisted.

And Roman stopped immediately and glanced at his boyfriend.

“Oh,” he realized, “Shit, I’m sorry. V?”

“I’m-” Virgil broke off to take a deep breathe, “No, I’m good. You have a right to be upset. It’s okay.”

“Hey, no. I mean, hell yeah, I’m pissed. But I know your triggers and I know being visibly angry and loud scares you. It’s okay.”

Patton could only watch on, his mind on repeat watching the cop reach for his gun. He hadn’t even set his hand on it, but Patton had been so freaking scared. He could have been shot, he realized. If things had been just a bit different, he could be dead right now.

Patton’s breathing hitched, catching the notice of his boyfriends.

“Let’s all take a breath,” Logan recommend.

They did so, and then turned back to Patton.

“What happened?”

And Patton told them the story in its entirety, from the moment he got out of the car, to explaining what he was doing, to the cop reaching for his gun, to the new officer deescalating the situation and letting him go.

“At least there’s one cop who’s actually doing their damn job,” Roman muttered bitterly.

The room settled in somber silence.

A few days later and an official and public apology would come from Officer Johns, only due to Officer Calen’s intervention.

He would admit he was in the wrong.

A statement would be sent out talking about what constitutes as suspicious behavior and what racial stereotyping was, and why it was so dangerous.

This was an uncommonly positive scenario.

Millions of cases like Patton’s happened, and most of them never received justice.

More than a few ended much much worse than his.

But for now, Patton just sat in the living room of his own home, surrounded by his boyfriends, the image of a cop reaching for a gun replaying over and over in his head.

~~~

Taglist Below

-message me to be added or removed-

@mewithanie @eddies-spaghetti @lemonyellowlogic

[loudlytransparenttrash]

This Week Within Our Colleges: Part 22

Students at George Mason University spent days protesting the hiring of Brett Kavanaugh as a visiting law professor at GMU’s Law School. Some students complained to campus leaders, telling them students’ mental health is threatened by the Kavanaugh hire, despite the Law School being located 3,500 miles away from the university. “This decision has really impacted me negatively. It is affecting my mental health knowing that an abuser will be part of our faculty.” Another female student gave similar comments to the board, “As someone who has survived sexual assault three times I do not feel comfortable with someone who has sexual assault allegations like walking on campus.” A third female student told the board, “we are fighting to eradicate sexual violence on this campus. But the hiring of Kavanaugh threatens the mental well being of all survivors on this campus.” The next day, students marched around campus chanting “kick Kavanaugh off campus” and holding “cancel Kavanaugh” signs while some stuck blue tape over their mouths.

University of Colorado Denver brought back a 2016 course, “Problematizing Whiteness: Educating for Racial Justice.” Students will learn “the plight of people of color and how white people are complicit.” The course details explains, “The study of whiteness has always sought to challenge racism, racial privilege, white supremacy, and colorblind racism. However, to overindulge in the spectacle of ‘white racial epiphanies’ overlooks the ongoing work whites must do to participate in racial justice. Beyond the feel-good of momentary White racial awareness lurk enormous concerns about how to continually examine Whiteness in order to uphold antiracism, moreover the fruition of a more racially just society.” It also, understandably, tells students that recording any of the lecture is forbidden.

A State University of New York College at Old Westbury professor wrote an article which he states it makes him happy when he sees poor white people on the street begging for food and often wonders how hard he should kick them in the head. “White people begging us for food feels like justice. It feels like Afro-Futurism after America falls. It feels like a Black Nationalist wet dream. It has the feels I rarely feel, a hunger for historical vengeance satisfied so well I rub my belly.” White people, he says, are a Rorschach test: “I see in them the history of colonization, slavery and mass incarceration that makes their begging Black people for money ironic - if not insulting. You wasted your whiteness! Why should we give to you?” The professor admits that this isn’t a “good look,” however, when he thinks about Martin Luther King Jr.’s “be thy best self” and “show compassion to those who spite you,” he retorts “go f**k another secretary Martin!” 

A University of Utah student reported her business professor to campus administrators for assigning too many books written by male economists and philosophers. “Many of these figures are of great importance. But at what cost do we continue to plant the seed of sexism in the minds of individuals? But especially in a course and college that is already deemed to be a ‘boys club,’ continuing those teachings, and those teachings being delivered by a professor of his character is dangerous.” The student also took issue in her bias report about a joke the professor made about how, “while all our jobs will be taken by robots,” he will be “retired living in Tahiti surrounded by 40-45 beautiful women feeding him grapes.” The student complained, “Not only did the professor willingly and openly objectify women, but he also objectified women of color. Women of another culture.”

University of Texas at Austin freshmen were threatened to be doxed if they considered joining the Young Conservatives of Texas or Turning Point USA. “Hey #UT23! Do you wanna be famous? If you join YCT or Turning Point USA, you just might be. Your name and more could end up on an article like one of these,” the tweet said, linking to previous doxing posts of conservative students at the school. “So be sure to make smart choices at #UTOrientation.” They went on to encourage other students, “if you begin to spot the young racists trying to join YCT or TPUSA, send us a tip so we can keep our reports up to date.” The anarchist student network have already released extensive personal information of pro-Brett Kavanaugh demonstrators at UT Austin, including their names, photos and contact information. It went so far as to post some of the phone numbers of the employers of students and urged them to be fired.

Webster University offered its white faculty and staff a chance to “witness their whiteness” in a program that seeks to eliminate racism. According to the event description, Witnessing Whiteness is about “white people voluntarily coming together to do work around racism in a supportive, non-threatening setting.” It’s also about “learning to speak about race and racism, exploring white privilege, and practicing allying with sisters and brothers of color.” White attendees also were taught how to commit to positive change in their lives, workplace and region and understand and practice interrupting racism and developing skills to act as agents of change.

University of North Georgia hosted several "safe zone trainings" to make the school a “safer, more inclusive environment for members of the LGBTQ+ community.” Students were given handouts which featured a ‘gender unicorn’ cartoon and encouraged attendees to use “LGBTQ-Inclusive Language” by giving them a list of “Dos and Don'ts.” They asked students to not use words such as “mailman” and “ladies and gentlemen” or phrases such as “both genders” and “opposite sexes,” instead suggesting that they use “all genders.” Attendees were also shown a YouTube video from Franchesca Ramsey called “5 Tips For Being An Ally,” which instructed them to understand their privilege.

Middlebury College were forced to soothe upset and angry students after Polish conservative scholar and politician Ryszard Legutko was invited to speak on campus about totalitarian temptations within liberal democracies. Ironically, the school canceled the lecture just hours beforehand after some students complained, then later held a reflection meeting with the student protestors, where administrators told them, “I hear you, and you should be outraged, and we should acknowledge that and apologize, because that’s the least we can do right now, because we can’t make it right in the moment. But in the future we will do everything we can to make it right.” As the safe space meeting was going on, unbeknown to the protesters, a political science professor allowed Legutko to be ushered into his classroom and address students in secrecy. 

At University of Texas at Austin, a pro-life speaker’s event was disrupted after someone set off a smoke bomb, triggering the building’s fire alarm and forcing attendees to be evacuated. The event went forward in another building.

A Canadian University of New Brunswick professor said he is in favor of taking a variety of actions against “white supremacists” who speak on campus, including publicly shaming them, firing them from their jobs and driving them from restaurants. What’s concerning about this is the professor’s definition of white supremacists. He said the "Make America Great Again" hats will carry the same shame as the uniforms worn by the Ku Klux Klan. “Every time I watch a documentary about the civil rights movement and all the hateful violence they faced, I wonder what the white people who were doing those horrible things were thinking... We are living in an era with Donald Trump and the Republican Party and the right-wing movement in America where things of similar gravity are happening. The entire sentiment of 'Make America Great Again' implies that there was a time when America was great and it's not any longer... America for Trump and his supporters is no longer great because black people have too many rights or there are too many women in the workplace."

A City University of New York professor was interviewed on radio where she stated the “ideology of racialized terrorism” is the responsibility of every white person in the United States. She criticized America for building "mental health hospital beds for white home-grown terrorists, but concentration camps and high-level security prisons for Black, and Black and Brown immigrants.” She goes on to wonder why we pay tribute every September 11 to “the pillars of American capitalism,” but never to “the young Black and Brown” victims. She also claims she's suffered in capitalist America after being designated a “other, non-white" on her arrival into the country and "white America has damned this democracy into the hands of white terrorists.” 

A University of Arizona student live-streamed herself on Facebook harassing two Border Patrol agents who were giving a lecture to Criminal Justice students. The female student stood near the door of the room, zooming in on the officers repeatedly while calling them murderers and saying they were an extension of the KKK on campus. “They allow murderers to be on campus where I pay to be here. Murderers!” In the second part of the video, the student follows the Border Patrol agents to their vehicle, repeating the phrase “Murder Patrol!” and also yelling at them in Spanish. At the end of the video, she films a protest apparently against the appearance of the officers. The student also launched into a rant about the “white woman” who attempted to talk to her. 

Gonzaga University’s Women and Gender Studies and Native American Studies departments hosted a screening and discussion about Disney’s film, Moana, titled, "Is Moana about rape?" According to the flyer, the professor behind the lesson discussed how Western patriarchy and masculinity attack “the feminine,” indigenous cultures, and the environment and nature. “Layne will ultimately also suggest that the film is Neocolonialist. It excuses Western culture from oppressing women, degrading the environment and erasing/murdering indigenous people,” the flyer says. It also came with a trigger warning, stating that racism, sexual assault, genocide and colonialism will be addressed.

Tufts University decided to remove a historical mural after students complained that the paintings depicting only white people eroded the school’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. The Alumnae Lounge mural, which depicts “the great names of men” of the school’s history, does not include “a single image of a person of color" which has lead students to complain that “they don’t want to receive awards in Alumnae Lounge because they feel excluded.” Tufts Senior Vice President said. “We want to attract a diversity of people to the university. But no less important, when they arrive, we want them to feel they belong here.” Tufts Africana Center Director applauded the decision, saying “the murals create an unwelcoming space for current students of color.”

Also at Gozaga University, an assistant professor wrote an op-ed where he blasted one of his white law students and accused him of deliberate “racial antagonism” because the student wore a MAGA hat to class. Without naming the student, the assistant professor wrote, “From my perspective as a black man living in the increasingly polarized political climate that is America, MAGA is an undeniable symbol of white supremacy and hatred toward certain nonwhite groups. I was unsure whether the student was directing a hateful message toward me or if he merely lacked decorum and was oblivious to how his hat might be interpreted by his black law professor. I presumed it was the former. As the student sat there directly in front of me, his shiny red MAGA hat was like a siren spewing derogatory racial obscenities at me for the duration of the one hour and fifteen-minute class. As my blood boiled inwardly, I jokingly told the student, ‘I like your hat.’ Without missing a beat, the student mockingly grinned from ear to ear and said, ‘Thank you.’” The professor concluded by arguing that “‘making America great again’ suggests a return to the days when women and people of color were denied access to these very institutions.”

A George Mason University assistant professor took to Twitter to ask white parents across America: “Why are you producing so many young white male terrorists?” “What is going on in your households? How involved are you with your sons? Are you missing signs their racism is filtering out of commonplace household racism into ‘I want to murder strangers’ racism?” She followed up with a reply to the white parents declaring their devotion to making sure their child isn’t a white terrorist, “I appreciate the testimonials of white parents doing the work of raising anti racist children. You give me a bit of hope.” 

The University of Michigan revamped its already transgender-friendly student health plan to include more services on top of sex-change operations. The school already covers mastectomies, genital surgeries, hormone therapy and counseling for transgender students. These plans now also accommodate “facial feminization surgeries,” as well as facial hair removal and “Adam’s apple reduction.” Another addition is “fertility preservation” for transgender students whose transition efforts result in infertility.

A Massachusetts school superintendent told a community audience that white people in our “systematically corrupt system that oppresses black individuals” need to “rewire their brains” in order to overcome their biases. The Pittsfield Public Schools chief (who is white) also blasted Trump, blaming the president's “daily hate” for the rise in racism and hatred on a national level. The event was planned to announce the implementation of African American history courses in local high schools. The course will delve into African American oppression and plans on stopping the normalization of seeing “black people being beaten on TV.” A teacher who worked on the curricula design at the schools said her eyes had been opened after participating in implicit bias training and reading the book "Waking Up White." 

Hofstra University students protested a statue of Thomas Jefferson at an annual event, titled “Jefferson Has Gotta Go!” which was co-organized by local Planned Parenthood staff. For the past few years, students have defaced the statue with “DECOLONIZE” and “Black Lives Matter” in an attempt to pressure the university president to join the long list of schools removing or covering up “traumatizing” statues and artwork. So far, the statue remains. 

An academic conference in Toronto focused on “Critical Becky Studies,” with multiple professors and faculty from American universities participating. “This session aims to characterize ‘Becky,’ a term specific to white women who engage whiteness, often in gendered ways,” the session description states. “Explorations of Becky and implications of educational practice from a variety of perspectives and contexts will illuminate the dynamics of power, privilege, and oppression tied to the gendered and raced mechanisms of whiteness enacted by Becky,” says the session description. Another paper discussed in the panel was titled “Border Becky: Exploring White Women's Emotionality, Ignorance, and Investment in Whiteness.” According to the description, the paper focuses on white women who must undergo a battle in order to extract themselves “from the white supremacist alliance.” 

At University of South Dakota, a planned ‘Hawaiian Day’ themed event had to be changed to ‘Beach Day,’ due to a cultural appropriation complaint from a single student. The student group planning the party were told to make the name change and to ban handing out leis as it violates the school's policy on inclusiveness. The group posted, “It was determined that these (leis) are culturally insensitive by the administration after doing research based off of the essay written by the initial complainant.” 

Williams College student activists demanded the Board of Trustees "commit to a complete process of reparation and reconciliation to indigenous peoples." The open letter states, “Many junior faculty of color are considering medical leave due to the unmitigating stress of living in an unsupportive and callous environment and to avoid the emotional detriment of existing here.” The students then demanded a “complete process of reparation and reconciliation” to the indigenous peoples, “approve a request of $34,000 as well as the increase of $15,000 additional funding for incoming Minority Coalition groups.” ”Offer free weekend shuttles for faculty and staff" and provide separate housing for black and queer students, as well as for all other marginalized groups. Lastly, “hire more therapists, especially trans and racial minority therapists.”

Dominican University in California has added a new major, wholly focused on social justice. The school created the major after a “growing number” of students became interested in social justice “careers,” according to the university news release. Students who major in social justice will have the chance to “examine the links between well-being, social justice, and diverse worldviews.” Additionally, students will “analyze social injustices and work toward positive social change.”

The State University of New York-Plattsburgh offered students the chance to de-stress with therapy donkeys during their Wellness Fair. 

[franken-fan]

wanna tell us more about steven? i know the basics and i'm trying to do researches in details about his story in every album he's part of but i can't seem to find much :/

If this isn’t what you were looking for let me know! I can talk endlessly about this character!

I looked back at my first Steven info-dump and I already kind of did an album to album analysis (though it was very brief), but I guess I’ll go into more specific detail for each album and do a character study of sorts.

In brief, Steven is a recurring character created by Alice Cooper who is featured across many albums, some comics, and a full stage show. He is the main character of the concept album Welcome to My Nightmare, which is Cooper’s first solo album. Steven is essentially a personification of everyone’s child-like curiosity and sense of fear, in the form of a seven year old boy.

This is quite…..long. So I’m going to throw it under the cut. I’ve covered every piece of media that I can think of that Steven appears in. Not many pictures this time, but I’ve provided links where appropriate.

It should first be noted that there isn’t a ton of official, specific lore written about Steven. Everything comes from the albums, and as is with music, very open to interpretation (so my opinions are definitely not to be taken as fact). Cooper is a big fan of Kurt Vonnegut, and is often quoted as saying that the inspiration for a fluid, recurring character came from Vonnegut’s Kilgore Trout, who is similarly featured or mentioned in several of Vonnegut’s novels. Here is a link to a video of Cooper’s own take on Steven.

Summary: Steven is a man who experiences violent night terrors, and due to traumatic childhood experiences, spends much of his life stuck in the mindset of a young boy (approximately 7 or 8 years old). Most of his story is told through his nightmares, which are written out over the course of 4 concept albums, in which he is usually seen fighting against the devil. In a single track on the Hey Stoopid album, it is confirmed that Steven is in some sort of psychiatric care facility, and has been there for a majority of his life. Along Came a Spider follows the story of a serial killer named Spider, where Steven is specifically named in the epilogue at the end of the last song. It is stated that he has been in this hospital for 28 years, which means that Spider is another nightmare album. Steven faces his death in Nightmare 2, and is “officially” killed off at the end of the album. Steven is depicted as a very innocent, naive person who has a very black and white sense of morality (much like a child), but is still quite mischievous. It is clear that his abusive past has haunted him through the course of his whole life. He is a very dynamic character, and Cooper has put a lot of effort into developing him throughout his career, Despite his “death” at the end of Nightmare 2, I don’t entirely believe that he is done with the character either.

Welcome to My Nightmare (Album, Tour, Movie): The original Nightmare album follows Steven on a guided tour through Hell. In the album, the character Alice Cooper serves as Steven’s guide, while Vincent Price is featured as the Devil himself. The first half of the album occurs in Hell, where songs like Welcome to My Nightmare and Devil’s Food set up the premise of the tour. The album continues to progress through various scenes in Hell, very similar to circles of Hell as seen in Dante’s Inferno. The album itself does not really feature Steven’s own reactions to these songs, but in the accompanying television special, “The Nightmare” (which has finally been remastered in ridiculous HD and released on DVD after literal decades of it being impossible to find), has some small quips of Steven dialog, especially in the Devil’s Food and Black Widow scenes; he is simultaneously very timid and also not afraid to mock the Devil to his face in his own home. He is curious about everything that he is seeing, but seems to immediately regret almost all of his decisions. It isn’t until Years Ago that the album takes a more real turn, in which it starts to be suggested that Steven might not actually be the little boy he is written out to be. The song suggests that Steven is grown man who is mentally stuck in his childhood for some reason or another (this reason isn’t even explored in this album), but who has very little control over which version of Steven he is at any given time. The transition into the song Steven is amazing (and can only be truly appreciated on vinyl), and once more brings out more of Steven’s true character. From this song (and I say this hesitantly), he appears to suffer from some sort of psychosis, and has a very lose grip on reality; this idea isn’t touched upon more until Hey Stoopid, and the “calling” that he hears in Steven is likely the voice of his wife trying to wake him up, as he hurts her in his sleep (because of the night terror he is experiencing, a realization that he has in The Awakening and then tries to run away from in Escape). There are two main ways in which you can view the progression of the first half of the album: as either each song representing some sin that Steven is witnessing in Hell, or as each song representing some repressed part of Steven is experiencing (in his sleep or in his past, that’s up to you). Cold Ethyl is, ehm, questionable….in it’s true meaning to the character. I personally take it in the alcoholism interpretation rather than the necrophilia one. Only Women Bleed is a commentary on abuse, where I see it more as Steven’s personal stance and understanding, but Along Came a Spider most definitely skews this.

Alice Cooper Goes to Hell: This album is a direct follow-up to the Nightmare, in which Steven is once again stuck in Hell/his dreams. There isn’t a terrible amount of character development in the album itself, the album focuses more on the character of Alice than Steven. The dust sleeve included with the original vinyl release (and I believe the re-release too, I’m not sure though as I have a pretty decent original and didn’t feel like upgrading) has a little story printed on either side as a beginning and end to the album, which implies that in this nightmare, Steven is sent back into the Hell of the first Nightmare in order to go save Alice from his place in Hell (this is also touched upon in the title track of Dragontown). The exact wording in the text is that Steven must “free” Alice, and essentially take his place in the nightmare. This would explain why Steven goes from being an innocent, child-like character to becoming so malicious in subsequent albums, because it isn’t really Steven, at least mentally (and the Alice character has always been written as a villain). Whether this is a truly paranormal event or a psychological one is up for debate, and truly depends on how you personally view the character. This wasn’t a hugely successful album either, and is by no means his strongest one. I Never Cry, Wish You Were Here, and I’m Always Chasing Rainbows are my personal favorite tracks, and are honestly the most Steven-y, along with Wake Me Gently, in which Steven is once again struggling to wake up. The title could be a throwback to The Awakening, where Steven can’t be snapped out of his nightmares quickly without negative results, but the lyrics themselves show that Steven is drifting away from himself and he can’t control it, which would confirm the theory that Alice is taking over.

Hey Stoopid: So the only song on this album that directly relates to Steven is (my personal favorite) Wind-Up Toy, which is the final track on the album. This is the first time Steven is mention in over 15 years (since Goes to Hell), and he comes back in one hell of a track. In the song, Steven is in a hospital, grown up but clearly still stuck in his childlike state. He’s been abandoned by his parents and it is suggested that he is at the full mercy of the hospital staff, which he seems to claim as being anything but helpful. It is also suggested that he ended up here after being caught from escaping at the end of Welcome to My Nightmare (so then Goes to Hell is likely also a product of whatever drugged up stupor he’s been in), as seen in the line, “Preacher crucifies me, Warden wants to fry me,” so he’s clearly been caught for something that would warrant a potential death sentence. The lines, “I was never young, never just a little boy,” also confirms that Steven, at least in the course of the time frame in which Alice writes him, was never as young as the first half of Nightmare would have us believe. Steven’s name is also explicitly stated in the last couple seconds of the song, albeit quietly. In live performances of this song, he brings real life to Steven, and I am eternally hoping that he will bring this song back to touring. If you really wanted to stretch, you could argue that the rest of, or at least a majority of, the album could also be about Steven in some capacity (namely Might as Well Be on Mars and Die for You), but again that’s a stretch and not really worth going into more detail with.  

The Last Temptation: This is another concept album, which was accompanied by a comic book of the same name written by Neil Gaiman. The general plot follows the story of a boy named Steven as he is tempted by a character named The Showman (who is depicted physically as Alice Cooper) to join his traveling show. It plays on the themes of dystopian America and the issues of morality. I do not personally see this album as a development of the Steven seen in the other albums, but more of a spin-off. It honestly isn’t too far off from the original Nightmare. Stolen Prayer is basically a Steven soliloquy about his moral dilemma in regards to joining The Showman, and realizing how twisted his show really is, which is very similar to Steven fighting with the Devil in the Nightmare albums. In Unholy War, Steven decides against The Showman’s offer. In this song you can start to tell that The Showman is another Devil character. Lullaby is a killer track, though. It’s a direct conversation between The Showman and Steven, and is the best link to the original Steven character out of the whole album. This entity (The Showman or Devil or what have you) is turning on Steven now that it has realized that he’s a lost cause, and Steven admits that up until this point he has truly been deceived by this being. The voice acting in this track is incredible, and I think is just as strong as the original Steven song. The last track, Cleansed by Fire, shows Steven casting out The Showman (and confirms him as a fallen angel/the Devil by referring to him as “a fallen star”), but there are also a couple hints that could potentially link it to Along Came a Spider. Steven still questions what happens to him if he falls into the trap, but explicitly declares his victory over The Showman. One of the things that The Showman offers Steven is eternal life, and later in the song there is the passage, “What about death? What about sin? What about that web you’re trying to spin?” Now, there is a 14 year gap between The Last Temptation and Along Came a Spider, but Steven’s uncertainty in his own future after encountering The Showman could mean that Steven wasn’t as successful in his moral battle, and would directly link this album to the rest. The comic follows the same plot as the album, and the artwork is really gorgeous.

Along Came a Spider: This album is one of my all time favorites, and I wish he’d ended up doing the sequel he planned (it was to be called The Night Shift and I’m still mad it was never made, and am forever hoping that he’ll one day release some demos off of it). Along Came a Spider is about a serial killer known as ‘Spider,’ who wraps his victims in silk after stealing one of their legs. He claims that he has to do this to build his own spider, and thus needs eight victims to complete the task. He is a stalker, using this method to learn everything he can about his victims before using this info to make a quick seduction and then kill (as told in I’m Hungry and (In Touch With) Your Feminine Side). There are some slight hints at potential cannibalism (in I’m Hungry, obviously, and Catch Me If You Can with, “She was not the first and she won’t be my last, my hunger and my thirst”), though I’ve always taken these references less in the literal sense and more in the “hunger” equals “strong/insatiable desire” sort of way. Through the course of Feminine Side and Killed By Love (and INCREDIBLE ballad by The Coop), Spider falls in love with his final victim and struggles to come to terms with the “fact” that he must kill her. He lets her go after much internal debate (The One That Got Away), and starts to come to terms, or more so realization, with all of the horrible things he’s done. I Am the Spider/Epilogue is Spider’s confession and he’s not humble about what he’s done. The plot twist comes in the epilogue portion, in which Spider says, “We’ve been in this cell for 28 years, Steven. We couldn’t have done all those horrible things” (a part that had me screaming the first time I listened to it). There are a couple of interpretations that I’ve come up with on this point. The first is that this whole Spider scenario is another one of Steven’s violent nightmares, and all of these events have occurred solely in his head. After all, if Steven really has been hospitalized since before Wind-Up Toy, then he really couldn’t have been out there doing these things. The second (that I don’t like as much, due to the extremely negative implications of it), is that Steven and Spider are in fact the same person, in which case Steven either escaped or was released from wherever he was is Wind-Up Toy, committed the crimes chronicled by the album, and was then arrested as Spider. The re-release of the album features two bonus tracks (three, if you count the “acoustic” version of Salvation) which flesh out Spider as a character a bit more. Shadow of Yourself is Spider admiring his creation, and is basically a love song to his murder plot. I’ll Still Be There is another stalker song, though the way it’s written makes it sound like a letter he’d send to the woman he let go. Both tracks are absolutely phenomenal, and I honestly wish they’d been released on the original album because they are very, very strong.

Welcome 2 My Nightmare: This album is a direct follow-up to the original Nightmare, it can be looked at as if none of the albums between Nightmare and Nightmare 2 exist, or as a continuation of the Steven developed in those albums. This is also the last canonical appearance of Steven in the albums (though I always hope that he will pop up in the next album). The album opens with another powerhouse of a ballad, I Am Made of You (don’t be turned off by the auto-tune, this is one of his best songs), though who it is about, we just don’t know. He’s obviously fallen in love with someone and grown as a person because of it, possibly even out of his seemingly permanent child-state as this song boasts of a much more mature Steven, mentally and emotionally. However, he’s beginning to spiral again, and viciously fighting sleep in Caffeine. He knows what’s coming for him if he sleeps (“Because I know inside, if I close my eyes, it’ll be the death of me.”), and the line, “I’m shaking in the ice cold shower, I’ve been here for about a week,” suggests that Steven has been released from (or escaped from) the hospital he’s been in for so many years. He loses his battle with sleep and is brought back into the original Nightmare with the throwback track The Nightmare Returns. Now, Steven travels back through his Hell, but with little to no fear. This is another Dante-esque album, where the tracks The Runaway Train through Ghouls Gone Wild are another tour of the different rooms of Hell (featuring Rob Zombie as “The Guide” in The Congregation and Kesha as another incarnation of the Devil in What Baby Wants). This album also gives us a look into the event that likely caused Steven’s psychological trauma with the song When Hell Comes Home, which is about Steven’s father and some serious, serious abuse (the specifics of the abuse are not stated, but it’s definitely physical in the very least). This is not so much part of the nightmare as it is a memory. The tone and lyrics of the song are incredibly dark, and while the song is about one night in particular, it not so subtly hints that this is not an isolated event. Steven’s mother is in denial of anything that is happening, both to herself and to Steven, and this is what gets her killed. After the solo, the father’s enraged voice can be heard bellowing Steven’s name while Steven quietly chants, “no.” Clearly Steven is aware of what is about to transpire, because he says that this time he’s ready for him, and that he plans on fighting back (if not also killing his father). In I Gotta Get Outta Here, Steven recaps his nightmare for the album, and then realizes that he doesn’t get to wake up from this one, though he doesn’t want to accept that yet. The song ends a a sort of cliffhanger, as the last track is just an orchestra medley of both Nightmares. There are many bonus track associated with this album (spread out over many different editions). The two most important are Under the Bed which is an old school, scaredy-cat Steven track about a monster under the bed, and Flatline. Flatline is three minutes of ambient noise and a heart rate monitor. The monitor flatlines at the 46 second mark and then holds the tone until the end of the track. 12 seconds to the end, a voice calls out Steven’s name (Someone trying to wake him up? Or someone calling to him in Hell?), This track confirms that Steven is dead. Flatline was only released on the vinyl version of the album, but thanks to the vinyl purists of the world, someone took the time to convert the track to digital, which can be heard here.

Other: I personally feel like Paranormal from the album Paranormal is a Steven track. It’s a song from the point of view of someone beyond the grave comforting a loved one. Steven dies at the end of Nightmare 2 and has two ballads (I Am Made of You and Something to Remember Me By) on that same album. There is clearly an unnamed love interest for the character which would count as “unfinished business” for his soul. He also led a very troubled existence, so it wouldn’t be too far of a jump to assume that even though he died, his ghost remained behind (going by the stereotypical explanation for ghosts). Also, in Goes to Hell, Steven is contacted by Alice during the night (as seen in the sleeve text), and is tasked with going to save Alice by taking his place, who’s to say that Steven didn’t have to die to do this? In which case, the paranormal events of the song would be Steven following in the footsteps of Alice.

[didanawisgi]

Toting the Gat: Black Women and Gun Culture

​“For the Black female, the solution is not to become less aggressive, not to lay down the gun, but to learn how to set the sights correctly, aim accurately, squeeze rather than jerk and be overcome by the damage.”

                                                           --Angela Davis

​The first gun I recall seeing was in my grandmother’s house in Tennessee. My father was checking out her .38 BB gun; however, he was having difficulty cocking it. Granny shook her head, walked right over to her son-in-law, and carefully took the weapon from his hands. “It’s like this, Greg,” she instructed, and then cocked it with a finesse that impressed my then 12 year old self. When my mother asked her if she still kept guns in the house, she responded unapologetically, “Of course we do. This is Tennessee, honey. We still got Klan around here.” Years earlier, it was Otha Collins, my father’s mother, who would bestow upon him his first pistol: she also owned a sawed off double barrel shotgun in her Chicago home. Granny Ruth and Granny Otha, both born and raised in Mississippi, were women of the South—resilient, no-nonsense, and, like many other Black women of their time, owned guns for the utilization of self-defense.

​There is a complex history between Black women and gun ownership in America; such history is inextricably linked with questions concerning agency and whether or not Black women have the right to defend themselves against toxic masculinity and white supremacist actions of the state. It is reported that Black women who are murdered by men are almost always killed with a gun, and most likely be someone that they know, particularly in domestic violence disputes. In 2015, 15 Black women were killed by the police, a counter-narrative made possible by the organizing efforts of Black queer women in the Black Lives Matter movement. As there is a history of abuses against Black women inter-personally and by the state, it is important to state that Black women have always been resilient against violence—and the obtainment of weaponry, from Emancipation to hip-hop, was a symbolic gesture of bodily autonomy and dedication to survival.

​It is white men who are historically celebrated in the American imagination as brave and charismatic gun-slingers. Westerners portray white men as heroic purveyors of new territory, with a shot gun in hand. The glaring differences of how white male gun ownership is perceived in comparison to those who are Black reflects deep-seated racism, stemming back to the era of slavery. “Django, Shaft, and a few other Black action figures notwithstanding, most glamorized gunmen are white. For Americans, the notion of Black people carrying guns conjures fear rather than admiration or nostalgia,” says writer Charles Cobbs. Due to the history of slavery, Black folks with firearms (and Black women in particular) were seen as especially dangerous, capable of inciting masse uprisings during enslavement and upsetting the power dynamics of Jim Crow.

In the South, it wasn’t uncommon for a number of Black women to easily obtain weapons, as “the South’s powerful gun culture and weak gun control laws enabled Black people to acquire and keep weapons and ammunition with relative ease.”  “It was common knowledge in Sunflower County, Mississippi, that Lou Ella Townsend, the mother of famed civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer, could be dangerous if pushed too hard,” Cobbs continues. “Walking out into the cotton fields to work, Mrs. Townsend would put a pan on her head and carry a bucket in each hand. One of them was always covered by a cloth and in that bucket there was always a 9mm Luger pistol. Once, when a plantation overseer hit her youngest son in the face, she warned him not to do it again. Laughing, perhaps as much in disbelief that she could or would do anything to stop him, the overseer grabbed Townsend, spun her around, and raised him arm to strike her. She caught his arm and forced him to the ground. When she let him up, he fled; he never bothered her children again.” Older Black women didn’t hesitate to use firepower as an aid in exercising their rights. Cobbs adds that, “A story Stokely Carmichael liked to tell was of bringing an elderly woman to vote in Lowndes Country, Alabama: ‘She had to be 80 years old and going to vote for the first time in her life. . . . That ol’ lady came up to us, went into her bag, and produced this enormous, rusty Civil War-looking old pistol. ‘Best you hol’ this for me, son. I’ma go cast my vote now.’”

​If Black women’s possessions of weaponry made whites uncomfortable in Reconstruction and the Civil Rights eras, it downright frightened them in the Black power period.  No longer were activists keeping it low-key that they exercised their right to self-defense against state terrorism. While there were many phallocentric theories by men of the Black Power movement concerning weapons, it was personally gendered for women in the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army.  “By wielding guns, revolutionary women of the 1960s and 1970s claimed full citizenship,” writes Laura Browder. “And yet, they sought to change, and in some cases worked actively to dismantle, the nation. The gun came to be both a badge of citizenship and a symbol for dismantling an oppressive state.” In the 1970s, as Blaxploitation cinema emerged, Pam Grier, Tamara Dobson (Cleopatra Jones), and Jeannie Bell followed the example of Black Panther women in film by playing autonomous, radical lead characters who could aim, shoot, and fire at their assailants.

A number of Black women in hip-hop culture also frequently weaved gun talk into their lyrics, as a stance against gender imbalance in the genre and a defiant act against sexism. Lil’ Kim in “All about the Benjamins”: “And I kick shit like a nigga do/Pull the trigger too/Fuck you”, and Foxy Brown’s verse “Might breeze through Prada, Chloe, or Tiff’s/ Other than that, it’s just me and my 6”, were most notable in spitting bars that alluded to an embrace of self-preservation. Perhaps most poignant is Eve, whose record, “Love is Blind” chronicles the killing of an abusive male partner who is responsible for her friend’s death:

“And before you had a chance to get up

You heard my gun cock

Prayin' to me now, I ain't God but I'll pretend

I ain't start your life but nigga I'ma bring it to an end

And I did, clear shots and no regrets, never

Cops comin' lock me under the jail

Nigga whatever my bitch, fuck it my sister

You could never figure out even if I let you live

What our love was all about.”

​While there is a rich history of Black women utilizing weapons for self-defense, such acts of self-agency are increasingly met with push back by the state. In 2010, Marissa Alexander, a mother of three in Florida, fired a warning shot into a wall to ward off her abusive ex-husband, who had a history of being abusive, threatening to kill her. Two years later, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison on a murder charge. The court’s refusal to evoke the “Stand Your Ground” law in Alexander’s case sends the message that Black women are not supposed to fight for their survival, and to do so means that they will surely be punished. “If you do everything to get on the right side of the law, and the law does not apply to you, where do you go from there?” Alexander stated.

​While it has been a year since Alexander’s release (due to a retrial), her case is not unusual. Eisha Love, a Black transgender woman, was criminalized for defending herself against transphobic attacks and booked on aggravated assault, despite her assailants taunting her into an altercation in 2014. Cherelle Baldwin, another Black mother, was convicted of murder after she was attacked by her ex-boyfriend in her home in 2013. Baldwin tried to flee from her home, but her boyfriend came after her, and attempted to choke her with a belt. When she tried to escape the car, it rolled over her leg, and ended up crushing her ex-boyfriend. While the state is unable to provide for the safety of Black women, they also penalize them for enacting any type of method for survival. (Left: Marissa Alexander)

Understanding the history of guns in America from the perspective of Black women is crucial in understanding what liberation for our community will look like in the future. While firearms do not completely eradicate the threat of white supremacy and misogynoir, they are indisputably a traditional act of defiance for Black women, whom society refuses to grant autonomy. The embrace of firearms by women in the Black community demonstrate a brilliant sense of resilience. By actively working to dismantle the prison system, challenging the penalizing codes of the court systems, and working to end white supremacy and toxic masculinity, only then can the power of the gun in the name of self-defense be fully utilized.

​

Sources:

Amber, Jeannine. “In Her Own Words: Marissa Alexander Tells Her Story”. ESSENCE. 3/04/2015. Accessed 01/25/2016.

Browder, Laura. Her Best Shot: Women and Guns. North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Cobbs, Charles. This Non-Violent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Basic Books, 2014.

Henderson, Tanasha. “Black Domestic Violence Survivors are Criminalized from All Directions”. Truthout. 06/04/2015. Accessed 01/25/2016.

“Black Women Murdered by Men are Most Often Killed with a Gun, Almost Always by Someone They Know, According to New VPC Study Released Each Year for Domestic Violence Awareness Month”. Violence Policy Center. 09/19/2012. Accessed 1/24/2016.

Vincent, Rose Addison.  “State of Emergency for Transgender Women of Color”. Huffington Post.  09/16/2014. Accessed 01/25/2016.

[olivia-rabbini]

Essay to show a formal tone and knowledge of artists/research 

 The artist and photographer JR is a big inspiration to me as his work has a consistent political message which conveys meaning in many ways to many different people around the world. He started his artistic journey when he was just 15, writing his name on walls and doing graffiti around the streets of his hometown in Paris using his city as a canvas. Using subways tunnels and roof tops, he presented his first side walk gallery at the age of 17, framing photos he took and pasting them on the street walls.

His work inspires me to try and put a message behind the art I create, as he is controversial and allows his audience to question the topic rather than to just to sit and admire. JR has used his art to portray a fair and real story wherever he goes which reflects the actual truth of people and a country, often against popular opinion portrayed in the media. I love his photography and black and white portraits which I have taken inspiration from for my most recent work about communities in London. This project was originally based on the events following the fire at Grenfell and the photography of Tom Cockram, where he captured the faces of people most affected by this tragedy and created a short film. I also wanted to convey a message by painting these people’s portraits and taking pictures on a disposable camera of tower blocks and council estates to go with them.

One of my favourite pieces is called ‘Hold Up’, an enormous print pasted on the side of the Tate Modern in 2008. This temporary piece by JR, a then unknown street artist with concealed identity, can be seen as a big statement only exhibited here for a short time which makes the impact even bigger. It consists of a young black man holding a gun-like structure up to his shoulder, looking along it through the lens making direct eye contact with his intended audience. The strap hanging from the man’s hand bears resemblance to a type of gun used in assassinations or poaching. The circular frame at the end of the object allows the audience to be intimidated as it is not only pointing directly at them, but the protagonist also looks at the audience, so everything points at them.

Upright positioning of his arms angling the object downwards causes a threatening sense as it looks like he is about to shoot. All these aspects signify  immediate danger and violence which is why this piece creates such a massive impact from the outset as it is so big making the audience feel helpless and small. At first glance, we assume it’s a gun due to his pose and hand positions around the object looking like he’s ready to ‘shoot’ or setting up to do so.

Also because of the strap hanging from his arms, it reveals the imagery of a typical rifle perhaps used in gang to gang violence and murders/crimes being committed. The object however is not a gun but a camera, which we begin to see as we look longer at the main subject in the image. JR has created this illusion of a gun to play on how people first interpret someone’s look and actions and make them question why they assume what they do on a first impression. The idea of a gun links to gang violence/culture, the figure holding what is actually a camera is a young black man; does the viewer’s misreading of the image reinforce racial stereo types? The large figure is isolated, standing alone on the side to the Tate Modern in central London, visible to all, not just the public visiting the gallery. This reinforces stereotypes and peoples first assumptions; the camera actually could create a sense of innocence and safety heavily contrasted to the person’s first impression of a gun creating an atmosphere of danger and threat.

In my work currently I’m focusing on communities in London such as age, gender and culture, and how we integrate. A gang is like a group or community some might say, and an escalating problem is knife crime and drug related incidents which have been gang related, especially in London. I would like to incorporate this into my work similarly to how JR uses topical controversial issues for the basis of his photographs and placement of his pastes.

JR started out with his friends when he was just a teenager leaving a mark on his society with graffiti work painted along tunnels around Paris and in the subway, all very public spaces. He started off as a street artist which led him to take photos and document his life through a camera which he found on the Metro subway. Like me, I started off by using a digital family camera, and then as iPhones progressed my photos got better, however I love going back to always having a disposable camera on me, capturing moments that could be gone in a second, the uncertainty of what photos I’ve taken looms when I go to pick up my prints. JR would paste these photos on the walls of the streets and buildings around Paris and framing them in colour to make sure that the public did to not get them confused with advertisements and take them purely only for modern art .

It was known that Israeli and Palestinian people have been in a constant conflict over land and religion for many years affecting thousands and devastating both countries, however, it can be argued that this is only portrayed in one light in the media and doesn’t often get major coverage. So JR went to see if he could change people’s perception and again, without being part of the media and just a simple art project. He held an illegal art exhibition called ‘Face-to-Face’ which was about guessing who is Palestinian and who is Israeli. This involved pasting huge close-up photographs of people’s faces on the border between both countries, the portraits were of people doing the same job but from the separate places within the conflict and on opposing sides. Where the conflict lies between them, they were pasted next to each other and the public were asked who was who? It quickly becomes clear that you cannot tell which person is from which background, and that people are the all same regardless of colour, job, religion, wealth and status.

“Women are Heroes ” – another project by JR this time started in the favelas of south America.  It brought him all around the world pasting huge portraits of women in different places. His project made a huge difference to favelas, as on the side of houses females’ eyes and faces were pasted creating a completely different image from deprivation, poverty, misogyny and corruption to, full of culture and busing with life. He changed the media representation of these places, which were once disregarded and never talked about, to quite the opposite. The project encouraged more and more women to come forward about abuse they have suffered and trauma they have had to endure in their lives and once again he brought people together and changed perception.

 JR he makes a huge social statement wherever he goes and where ever he leaves his mark causing people to question their beliefs and what they know, how the media interferes with what we see. I would love to make an impact like this with my own art and photography – he inspires change and questions beliefs and opinions which I try to hint through what I do.

[twelvesignsrp]

congratulations codee/cody, gemini is now alexandre/alexander “alex” vega with the faceclaim lucas bernardino

APPLICATION

Character Sign: Gemini

Character name: Alexandre/Alexander “Alex” Vega

Birthday: June 10th, 1997

Sexuality: Bisexual, Bi-romantic, Trans Guy

Gender: FTM 

Moon Sign: Aries

Faceclaim: Lucas Bernardino

Power: Telekinesis - and not like Mary-Sue Jean Gray powers. This dude’s power is almost completely linked to his emotional state, and he has a very hard time controlling it because he has a hard time controlling his emotions. He’s not powerful enough to lift big things, like a car (or even his own body weight most of the time), with his mind, but when his emotions are out of control, the immediate area can become that way as well. Think poltergeist powers - if he’s angry, chairs blow away from him. If he’s sad, books come falling off of shelves. If he’s horny, every shirt in the immediate area comes unbuttoned “accidentally”. Ahem.

What do they study? Technically, he’s international studies because he wants to travel all the places, though he has changed majors a few times to get to that one now. The only constant thing is his custom minor/possibly major he’s building through dance.

Biography:

Trigger warniiiiing: Drugs, sexual themes, gender dysphoria, child abuse and neglect, gang shit. Oh yeah, and swears.

Alex isn’t one you’d call humble at all. He’s stubborn and snarky, though he doesn’t actually hold himself in very high regard compared to everyone else. He knows there’s nothing particularly special about him, but he’ll rarely let that self-doubt leak through his exterior. If you choose to worship him, hey - that’s your own fault. But if you don’t, he’ll probably just be the biggest pain in the ass you’ve ever met. Either way, you’re not likely to forget him soon. Speaking of pains in the ass, Alex is also gay as fuck, and generally lets people know this whether through words or the way his eyes undress you from afar. Chicks are okay, really, but he prefers the D, though he can pull off the part of the womanizer if he needs to in order to get something he wants. He’s also incredibly flighty when it comes to relationships, meaning that nothing ever lasts long with him before he either gets bored or freaks out over his own commitment issues and dumps your sweet ass.

In the bedroom, he prefers bottom but he’ll never fully admit to that, and topping can always be fun, too. Outside of the sheets, however, he’s confident and arrogant, but in a way that some people somehow find charming. His smile can charm the pants off of you - literally (considering his power) - or it can boil your blood. There is no in-between with Alex. He’s all extremes and sharp corners. The worst thing you can do is misgender him - that will get you a sucker punch straight to the nose. If you want to get on his good side… if you think he has one, that is, then booze and cigs are never a bad idea.

However, being the Gemini that he is, Alex also has a total flipside to his personality. When his guard isn’t up, which is not often, he can be the dorkiest, most awkward person you’ve ever met. If you ever get to see this side of him, you might wonder which side of Alex is the *real* Alex, and which is just the show meant to entertain. In all honesty, Alex probably couldn’t even answer that question for himself. Both aspects of his personality are so ingrained into him that he really couldn’t just be one or the other.

Alex tends to have trouble with emotional control, as well. He has a very short fuse, and that results in a lot of angry words and shouting, or very aggressive dance-offs. He definitely has a dark side that no one wants to see, and often says words he doesn’t really mean when he’s in the heat of an argument. He hates the fact that he has so little control over his emotions, and works hard to slap on a smirk or redirect attention using jokes, flirtations, or distractions in order to keep you from uncovering his real emotions in a situation. He’s perfected this to nearly a T.. at least until this pesky telekinesis popped up. Now, even when he is saving face, his powers tend to give him away to anyone who’s made the connection.

When Alex was born, things were a little different for him. His mother was a hard-working laborer - and young - when she got pregnant with a pair of twins. Only one of the babies ended up surviving, and it was said that Alex sort of absorbed the materials from his twin brother. The pregnancy was difficult on a young, poor, single mother, and when the baby was finally born, she could not take care of him. Rather than giving him up for adoption or to a church, however, she decided that she was desperate enough to sell the child for a small sum of money. Thus began Alex’s strained childhood, and it would be the first of many times that Alex exchanged hands.

At first, the baby was going to be sold into the slave market running rampant in America, but very quickly, an elderly mother of two preteen boys found out about the child, and decided that she would raise Alex on her own. The woman, who had come to be known as “Abuela” to the kids on the street, was a poor woman living in a rundown neighborhood in Laredo, Texas, watching constant drug wars and fights happen along the border, on both sides. As a result, Alex grew up practically on the streets, learning everything from his two older “brothers”. By the age of four years old, it was clear that Alex was very different from the other dirty-faced children that ran through the streets around his home. While he had been assigned female at birth, Alex had nothing in common with the other girls. He was much more prone to rough-housing and hard labor than he was to sewing or playing with dolls or dressing sweetly. His clothes were constantly dirty, which earned him whoopin’s with sticks and switches from bushes until the backs of his legs were black and blue, and he submitted to doing as he was told.

Despite this, however, Alex never lost his stubborn flare. As he grew up under his abuela, aka grandmother, he became more and more defiant, not more obedient. He would tear the dresses she forced him into, on purpose, destroy his own stockings, and jump in every mud puddle that he could find. Those around him began to take notice, but it was assumed that he was just a stubborn, misbehaving child. His legs were nearly purple with the amount of beatings he took, and sometimes he would have trouble walking or sitting properly for hours from it. Still, the fire in his spirit was there, and at ten years old, he led his first revolt against the “establishment”. Sneaking into one of his older brother’s rooms, he stole Luiz’s clothes and dressed himself, and threw his dress into the trash.

Not entirely certain how this plan was supposed to work out, Alex ran off to play with his friends, only to come home later that day to a *fuming* abuela, switch in-hand. After all, she had worked hard to give him the clothing that he had, so why would he throw her effort away so easily?

Luckily for him, Luiz interceded on his behalf, convincing the old woman to let Alex be for once. And when she finally left them alone, his brother turned to him with a smirk.

“So, you wanna be one of the guys, huh? Well, let’s see what you got, Hermanito.” (“Little brother”)

It was the first time anyone had ever called him what he wanted to be called, and it sent Alex’s heart fluttering. His brother may have said it jokingly, but the ten year old didn’t care. He eagerly followed Luiz from that day forward, running the streets with him, joining his friends, his gang, and causing trouble. Luiz’s only rules were that Alex could not be in danger, nor would he allow him to smoke or drink like the other kids.

When Alex turned twelve, something shocking happened. He actually began to bleed, for no particular reason, from between his legs. There had never been much talk of what would happen to the children once they hit puberty, and Alex had seen his brothers grow up, so he had thought everything would be the same for him. After all, what difference was there between himself and Luiz? None, as far as he was aware. Thinking that the blood meant that he was dying from a ruptured organ, Alex resigned himself to solitary confinement in his bedroom. It wouldn’t last, of course. His abuela quickly found out what had happened, and told him that he’d had his first “period”, and that this marked his first steps into becoming a *woman*. Alex was horrified. A woman? That was wrong. He was a boy. He had always known he was a boy no matter what the others had said. Luiz knew he was a boy, so why didn’t his body? There hadn’t been any difference between himself and his brothers, as far as he knew. He didn’t understand what made him a woman and Luiz a man. But his confusion was ignored. He was a woman, his abuela insisted, and now he would need to learn to be one. Enough of this foolish child’s game.

He started getting restricted to indoor time when his brothers got to roam the world, free. After all, his grandmother reasoned, he was a woman and women weren’t treated right on the streets. Alex was miserable. He discovered that the bleeding wasn’t going to just stop. This was a monthly occurrence, as was the pain associated with it, and the strange need to cry over everything when he had never cried unless beaten before. Things no longer made sense. People started looking at him differently, as if there really was a difference between himself and the other boys he hung out with. Even the boys he had called his friends for so long began to take notice.

His body began to go through other changes as well. Corners were somehow closer when he walked through a room, cutting painfully into hips he hadn’t had before. His chest began to grow, sore and strange, and his face rounded out. Every time he looked in the mirror, it was as if he was staring into a pair of eyes that weren’t actually his. He had somehow, at some point, jumped into a developing female body without knowing it. This was wrong.

When he was sixteen years old, he decided he’d had enough. He wanted to be who he was without pressure from his family or the people that he grew up with. He wanted more from his life than just these drug runs and neighborhood wars. He wanted to go somewhere else, to make a new name for himself and have a new life. So he packed up what few belongings he had, got a fake ID from Luiz, and set out to a different city.

Austin, Texas, was highly different than the border towns, and provided so many opportunities that Alex had never had before. Not only were schools better, but there were jobs that didn’t involve drugs or standing around in parking lots, waiting for contractor work. Here, there were bistros and dance clubs and art museums and… freedom. He set up shop, putting himself through the rest of high school on his own, joining drama teams and dance teams, and sports. He worked tirelessly, multiple jobs at a time until one day he met Francis.

Technically, the guy’s name was Francois Belevaire, originally from Marseille, France - a local talent scout that had heard through the grapevine that Alex was a dancer. A few weeks of discussion later and Alex had replaced two of his jobs with a dancing gig - a… “special” kind of dancing.

Alex refused to be dressed as one of the girls in the club, however, so he worked out with Francis that he would only go on stage if Francis allowed him to do it in drag. Keep Austin weird, right? Intrigued by the prospect, Francis decided to give it a trial run, and it was the most successful gig he’d ever had at his little club. By day, Alex was a student looking to move on to secondary education, and by night, he was “Alexandre the Great”, drag king. Alex took to the act like a fish to water. Tight leather pants, mohawks, and athletic tape to keep him in place? Check. It didn’t matter that he still had to strip for the crowd, or that he had to keep this gig a complete secret if he wanted to graduate with honors. When he was on stage, people actually liked who he portrayed himself as. They didn’t force him to be the girl that he had been born as. It was a total confidence booster in who he was becoming, physically, which just increased with the introduction of T shots to his system. A year later, and he actually somewhat looked like the man he wanted to be, too.

Graduation came and went, and Alex worked at getting into college. This life was so different than anyone was leading back home, and he knew he had worked his ass off hard enough to get a scholarship - so long as the school didn’t find out about his sordid night club routine. The last year of sports in high school had really been helped by the introduction of testosterone to his system, and his dancing had actually gotten better, as well. Application after application was sent out, but Alex never received the news he wanted. Scholarships were hard to land, and for the kind of school he wanted to get into, they were even harder.

For a year, he did nothing but apply to colleges all over the world and work his tail feathers off until, finally, the letter came. He was accepted. To *Durham* University - one of the leading universities worldwide, on a dance scholarship.

Alex was overjoyed. It seemed all his hard work had paid off. No, it wouldn’t cover all of the costs of the school, but most of it was covered, and he was sure he could get loans for the rest. Using the money he had saved up over the last year, Alex made his way to England to start his education.

And this year? Things can only get better. He’s already got friends, he’s into sports, and - hey! There’s a beach trip coming up in March. That should be fun, right?

Five interesting facts about your character: Are you kidding? Is he not totally interesting already? ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED??? Okay, fine. Here goes.

Alex is super ticklish.

He hates beets.

He believes the pyramids are alien landing pads.

He swipes right on Tindr for EVERYONE, but mostly just to troll them.

He knows every word to Moulin Rouge.

Character Quote: ~Look in the mirror, what do you see? Who is this stranger looking back at me?~

If your character had a patronus what would it be? and why? (Okay, I don’t really know what this is but HERE GOES)

TBD. (Admin note)

WRITING SAMPLE

Okay, no. No, that’s impossible. That… no. You’re just imagining things.

Alex stood stock still, frozen to the floor, as he stared straight ahead. He was alone in the kitchen, he knew that. So how in the hell had that happened? There had to be some trick, he was sure of it. Someone was messing with him. There were ropes or fishing line… maybe magnets. No, wait, magnets didn’t stick to wood. Right. Maybe… wheels? But there were no wheels under the legs of the chair. He could see that much. Wires… except he was staring right at the damn chair and there were NO wires. What the hell did that mean??? Who had just done this?

He swallowed back the paranoia creeping on the edges of his consciousness, and glanced around again. Nothing. No one. He was alone. He was alone… and standing in front of four chairs. All he did was accidentally stub his toe. A shock of pain had launched through his body, and at the same time, as if in a fucking horror movie, all four chairs shot away from the kitchen table so hard that they were now in a pile as if someone had tossed them haphazardly into the corner of the room.

His Spaghetti-O’s had landed face-down on the kitchen floor, splattered out before him like some sort of blood spatter from a homicide. The murder of Chef Boyardee. But Alex didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy wondering if his kitchen was now haunted. Did he even know of any exorcists around here? Did he even know of any churches? Maybe he should find a priest and get some holy water. Because that had to be the only plausible explanation for what he had just witnessed. Ghosts. All other options were exhausted.

….Weren’t they?

ANYTHING ELSE?

Black. LIKE MY SOUL.

[nightcoremoon]

hugely unpopular opinion here

I'm not gonna vocally support incest because, gross, but like... can we fucking stop putting it next to pedophilia, bestiality, rape, and abuse?

if two rednecks hook up after a family reunion, but they're both consenting adults and there isn't any coercion involved, yeah I find it to be creepy and gross because I wouldn't fuck any of my cousins, but putting it at the same level as the big for of actually irredeemable and bad things just really rubs me the wrong way.

now, fucking your parents or children is wrong from a biological, psychological, and emotional standpoint. if they got pregnant then that child would be super deformed beyond belief. coercion will ALWAYS be present in a romantic relationship between parent and child. sibling fucking is also a straight shot to webbed feet. doubly so if they're twins (dear japan... stop).

but two people whose parents just so happen to be related to each other, if they really wanted to fuck, and they agreed to it, the problems I see it are VASTLY overshadowed by the problems with coercion and biological disasters, pedophilia (kids can't consent), bestiality (non-sapient animals can't consent), rape (no consent), and abuse (I really shouldn't have to explain why that's bad).

I'll make an analogy to put it in perspective.

misogyny is bad. racism is bad. homophobia is bad. transphobia is bad. antisemitism is bad. islamophobia is bad. xenophobia is bad. ableism is bad. classism is bad. this we all can agree on. fat-shaming is also bad. but women, people of color, queer people, jews, muslims, immigrants, the handicapped and mentally ill and neurodivergent, and the poor have all been long victims of stripping civil rights, genocide, lack of representation in media, throughout all sorts of societies and cultures: victimized by bigotry, prejudice, and hatred. fat people are often mocked and receive subpar medical care in modern day america. which sucks, don't get me wrong, but if I were asked if between fat people and, say, black people, who faced a harder time, I'd without question say black people. fat people aren't murdered by police. fat people have never been rounded up in camps and killed off. fat people don't have an identity to strip. being fat doesn't alter the chemistry of your brain or inhibit the abilities of the body or restrict you to a different social class or provide leeway for people to deny you civil liberties on account of their religion on as mass a scale as the others. it can make life as a woman, person of color, queer person, ethnic or religious minority, disabled or mentally ill person, or impoverished person harder when in conjunction with that minority, but by itself, if you're a straight white neurotypical otherwise able bodied christian (or ambiguously atheist) american cis male who happens to be fat, for the love of god shut the fuck up about how much you're ~oppressed~ for weighing over 250 pounds.

and that's the end of the analogy.

in the analogy, non-coercive incest would be fat shaming. bad, yes, but to a much lesser extent than literally everything else mentioned. I know that analogies are difficult for discourse gremlins on this hellsite to understand but I'm hoping people are smart enough not to froth at the mouth and zero in on buzzwords and frame me as some incest-loving fat-shaming bigoted perverted asshole.

and furthermore, a lot of ancient (like, before common era level ancient) cultures around the world often had no choice but to resort to incest in order to keep their people going. egypt, greece, rome, japan, china, india, many native american, latin american, and african tribes, pacific island peoples, scandinavian peoples, countless others i'm forgetting about right now, all have long histories of incest that permeates their culture and religious beliefs. maybe not sibling or parent-child (in all cases; some did that too), but a lot of cousins fucked. and it's super fucked up to brand all of those cultures as evil as pedophilia/bestiality/rape for doing things that we in our current state of society are afforded the privilege of looking down upon. even cultures victimized by many genocides like jews are populous enough now that they won't have to fuck their cousins just to keep their bloodlines alive and probably won't ever considering just how many humans there are in the world.

now, this can totally come off wrong and... bad. one thought that popped into my head was "are you implying that incest was normal in ancient brown skinned people thus suggesting they're rooted in savagery and grossness and thus asserting your own white superiority" are you reed richards because WOW that is quite a stretch. plus exclusively white skinned people fucked their children to keep the family on the throne [well, and egyptians, but that's a tale for a different time], so jot that down.

and of course it doesn't reflect well on me that I'm saying anything other than INCEST IS JUST AS BAD AS PEDOPHILIA/BESTIALITY/RAPE... I wouldn't fuck anyone in my biological family or anyone who marries into it, and I certainly don't wanna be around people who would. and gross fortysomething uncles with leery eyes at their teenage nieces are, well, pedophiles anyway. however, I feel like when it's not coercive it's not as big of a deal and that it shouldn't be demonized- now here's the important part- AS MUCH as the other things that I've mentioned.

now of course, as a person who would never consider anything like that, my perspective is heavily skewed. and as a person who has not been victimized by non-coercive incest (i was sexually abused as a child by most likely either my stepgrandpa who watches child porn and molested my sister as a kid, my schizophrenic methhead uncle who watches child porn and dates women the mental age of children, or my father during a crack and heroin binge, in descending order of possibility, but that's got nothing to do with consensual cousinfucking), I'm not attuned to the psychological effects of consensual cousinfucking, and am not exactly the most knowledgeable person on the subject.

THEREFORE.

if I'm wrong and there's scientific studies done on the subject and there are dissenting logical opinions I would love to hear them because I'm sure there's GOT to be a legitimate, tangible reason why incest between cousins is bad.

*also on the subject, technically speaking every single human on earth is probably descended from the same gene pool. scientifically it's from the first humans who evolved from a common ancestor with apes, theologically (from only a judeochristian perspective) it's from noah's sons ham, shem, and japheth, and I'm sure that there's a hundred other ways to trace back all of humanity to one single set of parents, so in an odd way all humans are distant cousins to each other. I'm curious as to know exactly how far away two people need to be on a family tree for it to no longer be technically classified as incest. fourth cousin? fifth cousin? sixth? ninth? twelfth? this is purely a scientific curiosity only tangentially related to the rest of the post and should be ignored when it comes to the other passages.*

TL;DR I don't have enough of a proper base of knowledge to understand the specific exact logical reasonings behind why non-coercive non-pedophilic consensual incest that won't result in horrible birth defects is bad. I know that it is bad, but beyond just a modern social norm... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ idfk man I just want a link to someone laying it down using science n shit so I can shut down fuckin white supremacists on twitter or something

edit- no anons, no notes. nobody read this lulz

[jesusonacid-blog]

A Book Of F.B. Ranting. Random Facebook postings Jesus DeAcido Hate is cathartic! Being mere near powerless individuals, hatin' on Trump (for good reason) and expressing same (usually with humor, but with a little venom it's betta) provides psychological relief through the open expression of such strong emotion. But if screaming at everyone about how superior you are for not hating anyone gets ya off, go for it! Be your own personal Jesus! Then we can crucify you, or sumthin'. ;) -----Jesus DeAcido Actually it should be %90, like what it was when America WAS Great. ;) I'm serious. For no one actually paid %90. 'Cause they kept their money in their businesses or invested in one (thus not taxed at that rate) instead of liquidating assets. Then they'd expand operations and that created JOBS! Which was GOOD! We had the highest standard of living in the World, and the rich still got rich! Actually RICHER! More productivity, more consumers with more disposable income equals HUGE profits! Average people could buy homes and cars and only one person need work outside the home, as well. People that rail against higher taxes for the "Elites" are simply under-educated and/or brainwashed.-------Jesus DeAcido There have ALWAYS been those that will suck the King's Cock for Favor. And, of course, out of guilt, those same Cum Stained Chin Muther-Fuckers insist we ALL guzzle the mouth wash of disdain of which they gleefully partake! Yet I boldly say..."No thank you, Sir!". "Rim Me, Young Masters and Mistress, I say!" "Eat'est mine ass, Dainty Tits!"................Jesus DeAcido If anyone deserves hate, it's Trump. And it's not blind hate, it's real and based upon reality. He's attempting to destroy the United States! He's a rapist, as well. (at minimum his wife AND a 13 year old sex slave) Perhaps the word should be despise? Now, if YOU want to be a "Hey, Hitler was nice to his dogs" type, go for it! But don't expect others to be so blindly accommodating. BTW, "Hate Group" should be a designation for ignoble and illogical (i.e. racist, etc) organizations. And seems you are doing the Trumpian "there are good people of both sides" argument with it's use. "If your religion or politics require you to bend over while others suffer, you need a new religion or politics." ................ Jesus DeAcido As a kid I was a little head banger (MC5 to Black Sabbath, etc) but this one time I won two tickets to a Temptations/Supremes concert (musta been '72 0r '73) the ONLY reason I went was this song! I love this song! Anyways, The Supremes were NOT good on my ears, but I loved the entire Temptations set! I was hooked! A school friend and I were the ONLY Whites in the place, BTW (that I could see, at least) and EVERY Brutha and Sista was so nice to us. I guess they figured we were "good ones". (we were, of course) ;) One funny situation was when two Bros in full Pimp Regalia were "arguing" about who was prettier (better dressed). One was in all white, with white fringe trim, white bowler hat. Even a white cane. The other guy was in different shades of purple with a purple cowboy hat and purple feathers on top. My friend and I needed to get by them to get to our seating entrance so I politely said "Excuse me!". The guy in white said "Of course, my little brother!" so I thank him. And then, while passing, I turned and exclaimed to the crowd assembled "The guy in white is prettier!". They all bust out laughing, and the guy in white gave me a fist bump. Fun time! In more ways than one. ------------------ Jesus DeAcido I'd say that it's kinda dumb either way. Unless there is some actual redeeming value to doing it, which would be a rather hard hurdle. BUT it could happen. As for "(it's) not meant to make either look lesser than", I'd have to point to the fact that such depictions usually include actions or affects that was parodies of the race they are depicting. For instance, the Black actors made up as White Girls did exaggerated depictions of both Women AND Whites. Which was pretty bad. The sin, IMO, is that it wasn't funny. Robert Downey Jr. playing the White guy pretending to be Black was doing much negative Black stereotypes as well. That movie was funny though. ;) And there was some modicum of a point to it. L.O. doing Othello held no innately racist stereotypes or exaggerations. And the Black Face is but topical. The character is a Moor. I think it's, as always, the INTENT mixed with actions. I'm sure that you are bringing this up due to Gov. Northam being called upon to resign (I apologize if that isn't the case). Well, I believe that that IS an overreaction. The year AFTER Northam did that the movie Soul Man came out! (illustrating the mindset of the time) And anyone remember Gene Wilder in Silver Streak? Now THAT was pretty bad, but it wasn't back then! (well, maybe SOMEONE complained, but I never saw it) Anyways, and again, I believe it's all about intent AND actions. And the intent may be right, but the actions may not be. We should just stop it. We have evolved. For if doing it hurts anyone...that's reason enough to not do it. And it's not necessary. (even when playing Othello, for we all know he was Black) Sorry for going on so long, BTW. -------------------------------- Jesus DeAcido Dewey Rai Lineberry I agree. I'm a professional Comedy Writer, BTW. And I'm not Politically Correct. I'm just Correct! (jez kidding) ;) I CAN hold two or more opposing ideas in my head at the same time though, so I can see where most people are coming from (on both sides) and the reasons they feel certain ways. I can relent on certain comedic takes IF I get a reasonable account of why I should tread lightly. If only because I'm a nice person, and I don't intend on hurting anyone (well, except for people that deserve it) Again, as for Northam, THAT is P.C. Gone Wild! (although his waffling about the issue is pretty fucked up) I believe people should be able to do whatever they fuckin' want, in the case of Free Speech, even if it's disgusting and/or stupid. BUT if ya Speak Freely, albeit abhorrently, expect others to return fire, VERBALLY. For that's the way it should work. Oh, and Political Correctness is NOT an exclusively Liberal attribute, of course. Conservatives have their own versions. Try burning your OWN American Flag, or say something pro-Socialism, or take a knee, or protest Police abuse. They get as warped as any tree-hugger...and they'll often kill ya for it! Or you'll lose your job, like Kaepernick did. ............................ Jesus DeAcido Time for some True Love! Like yo' Dad gave! Like yo' Mom gave! Some "No! You can't do that!" about the Head and Shoulders! TRUE LOVE! -------- Thinking upon Grunge, haven't you all noticed that "Grunge" ain't/wasn't a sound? SEEMS it started as a Uniform. The Pendletons and Levis, and a graphic Tee Shirt. Just NOT the Glam! It was anti-Glam. Actually, it was what my friends and I wore forever! The MUSIC was everything! Every sound! Akin to the 60's, IMO. The only REAL "Grunge" was Mother Love Bone/Pearl Jam. That's about it, past that: Soundgarden...Metal! (at least at first) Alive In Chains...started as Glam! Nirvana...PUNK! (think about it!) Blind Melon...Hippy? Melvins...Noise Rock STP...Rock Toad The Wet Sprocket...Mellow. Mazzy Starr...? Here's more on this. ------- Jesus DeAcido shared a link. 11 hrs Now, I'm sure that this will start arguments of if Rap/Hip Hop is Rock & Roll or not, but lets assume the positive, but we can argue the point if ya like (I just offer this so as to affirm that I'm not trolling). Personally I believe it is. Anyways, to the point... Anyone here like/appreciate Rap/Hip Hop? And who/what type is your fave? Myself, I find the new stuff unlistenable. (It's not very heavy OR lyrical, IMO) I like Old School and especially Gangsta Rap. ;) (And I liked a lot of the "Nu-Metal" back in the day) I have to qualify that I like all genres of music. IF it's any good. BTW, to the haters...you do realize that Frank Zappa was a Rapper, right? ;) "BOOM! Blowin' da minds of the people that be illin'. But I be here psychopath chillin'!" ------ Jesus DeAcido Seriously though, people have a right to shave their heads if the hair is getting weird lookin'. And it feels GREAT! No need to insult or infer motives beyond personal preference. Do I scream and yell about you always shaving your less than ample bag sack until it bleeds? NO! Of course not! ----------------

[briannamediablog-blog]

Music Video Analysis

Video 1: Green Day - Boulevard of Broken Dreams

The picture for the the song features an angel with wings, this could be resembling Billie Joe Armstrong, and how he felt alone, however the fact the wings are whole and not broken, could be showing how strong he truly is.

What style is it?

Green Day is an well known American Punk Rock band and in there seventh album "American Idiot" featured one of their most signature songs worldwide, being Boulevard of Broken Dreams being the second single on the album , the song's lyrics where written by Billie Joe Armstrong himself, and the music was composed by the band, this song was released in 2004. 

 The style in which this particular song is filmed in, is in a narrative way, telling a story of walking alone, due to the front man of the band, being the iconic Billie Joe Armstrong,taking some time to clear his head to get new song ideas, he traveled to New York City alone for a few weeks renting a small loft in a East Village in Manhattan. Here he spent a lot of time taking long walks and taking part in Jam sessions. Armstrong wrote the song basing it on his time in New York City and "feeling alone", he felt the song fit nicely with the album's story line, which is about "going away and getting the hell out, while at the same time fighting their own inner demons."

How is it filmed/edited

The song is solemnly focusing on the front man of group and his experiences of being along in New York City for few weeks, and therefore the video is being cut to the narratives, and having Billie center stage at all times, and when in the music video in a side view he is always the middle man in between Trè Cool, and Mike Dirint, this therefore keeps Billie the main focus throughout the entire video, the lyrics are made to be extremely strong and powerful, such lyrics as " i walk this empty street on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams" and "I walk alone" followed by "My shadows the only one that walks beside me" are seen as the most powerful lyrics within in the song and are repeated to throughout in order to get a point a crossed, that this feeling of being alone is very much real, and everyone can feel very much alone alone at times, which can emphasis on the fact that even though you may feel alone, your not the only one who may feel that way, so it's that reassurance that your never truly alone. However the main focus of the song is to show that everyone can have times of walking alone, and experiencing loneliness, in it's own way, and maybe it's referring to the fact that we aren't truly human if we don't experience this particular feeling. The editing in this specific video is fast paced, considering the topic in which is being address, however it adds the bands original energetic vibes, to the video.

What effects have been used and why?

Within this music video a range of different color grading has been used in order to give the video an old kind of look, with a lot of medium shots, long shots, and close up shots, overlays have also played an extremely important role within this music video, as it makes the narrative, of Armstrong experiences, and emotions stand out, and become a very strong role within it, the advanced editing of filter the video as well as using a range of overlays, adds to making the video look old fashioned, as well as a number of different jump cuts, on top of using a dissolving transition, in order to change one shot into another in the most effect way, to keep the audience engaged, with the video and the band. Also by keeping Armstrong telling his story and emotions, could have the audience feeling closer to the singer, and relating to him in a number of different ways.    

The music video itself is focusing on an old ruined town in a desert type of area, with a women standing outside her house next to a normal looking mail, which could emphases on the fact that this is her "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"

As the video continues on tracking the band as they walk further into the scene the shot cuts into the ruins, of a house will could be used to show people in the area have began to loose all hope they ever had left, however it could specifically be showing the loneliness in which the singer may be feeling on the inside, which is not visible on the out, we see many close up shots of the band member pulling there blazers up covering themselves from the wind, this close up shot also shows the other band members emotions in their eyes as they walk down the road more. Many of the shots, are of Billie Joe Armstrong, as he is being soul of the this particular song, meaning that close up shots of him, is vital, as it is directly showing his emotions throughout the entirety of the song. As of today “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” has 258 Millions views on youtube since being posted 5 years ago, by the band, and is number one on the list of the bands top ten viewed songs.

Video 2: Green Day - Troubled Times

Troubled Times was released in 2016 along with their new album “Revolution Radio”

History of the Song and Editing

Troubled Times was inspired by the terrorist attacks, in which tragically struck in Paris, in November 2014, and where the front man of the band, Billie Joe Armstrong was friends with guitarist, Eden Galindo, who plays the guitar for the band for Eagles Of Death, played at Paris club Bataclan, where 95 of their fans where shot dead in the horrifying attacks which haunts Paris, the song solemnly focus upon the issues in which have happened in the pasted, such as honoring the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, as well women suffrage, it also features captured images of protests, and many other problems in which have shook the world over the years, the song has many different overlays and color filers in order to give it a range of different textures and look about it, it also uses a range of different wipe cuts / transitions in order to make the song effective to the audience in which are watching it, the use of the dissolving of different images inside of each other, can be used to emphasize on the amount of problems in which have happened, and that, it’s time to stop and time for a change.

Also featuring a Trump like figure, wearing a Make America Great Again baseball cap, saying hateful uses of to a crowd, which can emphases that Donald Trump is a problem, in the world and in this video they are criticizing him for all of his actions, however at the time in which this video was made, he was just an elect for President, and maybe Billie Joe was trying to foreshadow the unraveling events in which could occur if he became President, this can also show how Armstrong feels towards Trump and what he is doing, and wants to do is wrong, and by having him as President could cause a Troubled Times for America in the years ahead.

This song touches upon all different types of problems in which effect people world wide, and the lyrics are extremely important, to the telling of the story line, of the point in which the band is trying to get across to people, “What good is love and peace on earth, When it’s exclusive” The leading man Billie Joe Armstrong, ask a rhetorical question in order to point the dryness that despite many known religions and political, movements that preach love for everyone and everything, and how the world should be in this day and age. Throughout the cause of all of their songs Green Day still foreshadows the feelings of loneliness, and being alone, as it is always having a slight appearance within everyone of their songs. This can also show the development of their music over the course of the years, and how the music style is still the same, but the songs are still as good as they were back in the day, and still follow the same kind of pattern which is what links them all together

Video 3 : Green Day American Idiot

Green Day released their seventh album American Idiot in late 2004, the front cover of the Album consists of three main primary colors, red white and black. The white of the hand holding the heart, is used in order to show, peace, purity and tranquility, however the red contrast with this as it has connotations of love unity, and passion, but at the same time it also amplifies the theme of rage anger, and destruction, and with the background being such a bold color such as black, allows the other colors to stand out more, although black still can have that feeling of loneliness hidden within it, which is always shadowing throughout the entirety of their songs, furthermore the bleeding which has be made in such a way, that it looks like a grenade, has been used to really emphases that love can be used as a weapon to destroy a being, as well manipulate another into doing something to another being, love can also be used as a way of controlling and abusing the power of love, and turning it into something that it’s not, therefore love can be one of the most dangerous weapons to have.

Looking at the Music Video 

The style in which this particular song is filmed in is rock, as well as narrative,lioe mist of Green Day's songs they have a meaning as well as most of the bands songs, it is still conveying an important message to be heard, at the begging of the video, Billie Joe Armstrong, the front man of the band from various different shot angels, center stage of the camera, this represents that he is a very important part of the song, and that what he is about to sing is something to be heard, but it can also show his importunity to the band as a whole, and as an individual, and therefore isn’t someone you would want to ignore, Armstrong also wrote this song himself.

The lyrics are specifically based upon the post 9/11 America in which they had to live in everyday, with the harsh politicians, media in which was controlling what to wear and what to buy, and who they should be, and to not allow them to change you into a different personality, and change into the "Idiot America", this songs it extremely important as all of Green Days' songs it is convey a message of importance, as the video continues the camera cuts to a long shot of all three members of the band, this conveys to the audience their attitude toward whatever it is they are about to sing about, this can also show that what they are going to sing about is extremely important to them, and therefore you should listen well to them, and this scene unravels more it cuts to a more closer up to the bands members facial expressions

It then cuts to a lower angle of the front man of the band, Billie Joe Armstrong, by doing it as a lower angle shows that he has power and authority due to me the leader of the band, the camera then cuts soulumly to a close up of his face which can convey to the audience his opinions upon the subject in which he is singing about, and in this case it is about the post 9/11 America they live in, also by showing the front mans face cab also show the emotions and hate in which he feels at this point in time.

Editing

The editing for this music video can be considered as being fasted paced, because of the quickness of cuts, to all the different camera shot, these shots consist of, long shots medium shots, and close up shots, of the front man of the band, which can indicate to the audience just how important he is as an individual, as well as being to the band itself, this could of been done as fasted paced, in order to fit with the pace in which the guitar was being played at, but also to fit in with the front man of the band, and therefore keep the camera attention upon him for the introduction of the song, before cutting to a varied of different shot types, to the other members of the band, however when panning around he other members of band, and as the band as a whole, the motion of the camera is a lot more slower, which contrasts with the band members quick and fast paced playing in a very ferocious kind of way, this has an extremely good effect for the audience, as it enables them to s the the masked up facial expression of the band members a lot more clearly, and therefore the explosion of all their emotions throughout the course of the song is a lot more effective, and visible. The use of zooming in and out of the band members, and focusing clearly upon the, can relate to the energetic vibe in which the band brings out clearly through, through the way they are in center camera shot, therefore the constant change in camera angle can also be referring to the song itself, as well as the America in which they now live in, which can also be a way of conveying their message to their viewers, as everything is constantly changing, and nothing is ever staying the same, and by having the close ups of their faces’s, especially the front man of the band, is a very specific way in which has been used in order to convey their opinion, on the constant change in which they are surrounded by, and it needs to stop.

What Special Effects have been used and why?

Not man special effects would have been used in the making of this music video, maybe some lighting editing would have been used, because while filming in a warehouse give them a lot of high key lighting, and in some cuts there is low key lighting, and therefore some color grading, or light editing would have been used in order to make it look darker than it actually is, which fits with music video extremely well.

[njawaidofficial]

Experts Say Bill Cosby Will Have To Face The #MeToo Music At His Retrial For Rape

https://styleveryday.com/2018/04/08/experts-say-bill-cosby-will-have-to-face-the-metoo-music-at-his-retrial-for-rape/

Experts Say Bill Cosby Will Have To Face The #MeToo Music At His Retrial For Rape

Bill Cosby arrives for his sexual assault case at the Montgomery County Courthouse on April 4 in Norristown, Pennsylvania.

Chris Szagola / AP

Bill Cosby on Monday will walk into the same Pennsylvania courtroom where just last year a jury failed to reach a verdict on charges that he sexually assaulted a woman in his home in 2004. But this time around, the 80-year-old actor faces new challenges that experts say will make it harder to avoid conviction.

For starters, prosecutors will be able to call five women who say they were similarly assaulted by Cosby, as opposed to just one during his first trial. That could go a long way toward establishing an alleged pattern of abuse and assault to bolster allegations that Cosby drugged and raped Andrea Constand at his home.

Andrea Constand leaves the courtroom after closing arguments in Bill Cosby’s 2017 trial in Pennsylvania.

Pool / Getty Images

During the trial last year, Constand said she came to know Cosby while running the women’s basketball program at the comedian’s alma mater, Temple University.

She testified that after she arrived at his home in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania, to discuss her career plans, Cosby offered her three blue pills, which he allegedly said were herbal. Soon after taking the pills, Constand testified, her speech became slurred and she began to lose control of her body. She said she didn’t remember passing out until she was “jolted awake” with Cosby’s hand inside her vagina as he masturbated.

The mistrial spared Cosby from what could have been 30 years behind bars, but it did little to salvage his legacy as America’s Dad, with more than 50 women having accused him of also drugging and sexually assaulting them.

This time, experts say the #MeToo-related cultural shifts that have occurred since the mistrial could significantly affect how the jury of seven men and five women view the evidence in a case in which the comedian is charged with three felony counts of aggravated indecent assault.

“We are in a different place culturally than we were a year ago,” said Maya Raghu, director of workplace equality and senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center. “The effect of the national reckoning that we have been having for the last six months in particular has helped dispel a lot of stereotypes about victims. People are more willing to understand how things happen, why these things happen, not to blame the victim for them, and to not be so quick to judge.”

Bill Cosby leaves the courthouse in 2017 after attending a court hearing pertaining to his new trial.

AFP / Getty Images

Victim-blaming was one of the reasons the jury for Cosby’s first trial couldn’t reach a verdict, forcing the judge to declare a mistrial. One of the holdout jurors who voted against conviction told the Philadelphia Inquirer he blamed Constand’s actions for what allegedly happened that night.

“Let’s face it: She went up to his house with a bare midriff and incense and bath salts,” he said. “What the heck?”

But legal experts say that sort of outlook has been eroded by the Time’s Up initiative and #MeToo movement and a sea change in how alleged victims who come forward are treated, for better or worse. Of the first 240 jurors polled, 238 said they were aware of the #MeToo movement and one third of those said they had already made up their minds about Cosby’s guilt or innocence.

However, at one point during the selection process, prosecutors blocked one white man who said he thought many of the women coming forward in the #MeToo movement are “jumping on the bandwagon.”

Protesters demonstrate outside of Bill Cosby’s Far From Finished Tour at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center in 2015.

Marcus Ingram / Getty Images

“I don’t think it will change a conservative person’s mind if they are that closed off to the issue, but people who might not have known how prevalent it was are now going to be more open to the idea that these situations happen,” said Alexandra Kazarian, a criminal defense attorney.

The fact that so many of the #MeToo stories revolve around allegations of sexual misconduct that are often years, if not decades, old could also enlighten deliberations when it comes to Constand’s case, which dates back to 2004.

“In the past you might have had a juror who said, ‘How is it possible this happened in 2004 and it wasn’t until many years later that this was reported?’” former federal prosecutor Priya Sopori said. “I think now there is going to be a greater understanding of the fear, the intimidation, and the self-blame that sometimes go hand in hand with an alleged assault.”

That understanding would work in the favor of prosecutors, who plan to call five other Cosby accusers to the stand as they seek to paint the comedian as a serial assaulter who incapacitated his victims with powerful sedatives.

For the first trial, Judge Steven T. O’Neill only allowed the testimony of one other alleged victim, Kelly Johnson, who in the 1990s worked at the William Morris talent agency where Cosby was a client. She alleged Cosby drugged and raped her at a Bel-Air hotel.

But this time, experts predict the cumulative effect of five women telling their stories on the stand will be devastating to Cosby’s case.

“The judge now allowing five women to testify who claim they were victimized by Cosby is a game changer,” Troy Slaten, a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney, said. “It will definitely have an impact on the jury. One or two people, you could argue credibility. But when you have five people all telling their same story about how Cosby victimized them, it is going to be very difficult to ignore.”

Janice Dickinson addresses reporters with celebrity attorney Lisa Bloom in March 2016 in Los Angeles. Dickinson alleges Cosby defamed her by telling the media she made up a story that he drugged and raped her in 1982.

Frederick M. Brown / Getty Images

Prosecutors have not officially released the names of the women they plan to call to the stand. But based on pretrial motions, model Janice Dickinson is expected to be among them. She has been one of his most high-profile accusers, alleging that in 1982 she blacked out after Cosby gave her a pill for stomach pain and woke up the next morning in her hotel room with semen between her legs and pain in her anal area.

But Cosby’s defense attorneys will have new arrows of their own this time around after O’Neill ruled that they will be allowed to present testimony from one woman who says Constand told her she had not actually been sexually assaulted by Cosby, but that she “could say it happened, file charges, and get money to go to school and open a business.”

Cosby’s attorneys are expected to portray Constand as someone who framed the comedian to get rich.

The witness, Marguerite Jackson, was not allowed to testify at Cosby’s first trial. O’Neill did say, however, that he would revisit his decision to let Jackson testify after Constand takes the stand.

One central figure experts do not expect to take the stand is Cosby himself. Just like his first trial, his defense team will likely keep him away from the witness stand and the dangers of cross-examination.

Unlike the previous trial, O’Neill hinted that he may block prosecutors from introducing Cosby’s deposition in which he admits to obtaining and giving women quaaludes, the powerful sedative. But if he were to take the stand and deny that, the judge could decide to allow his damning statements.

“The past statements that he has made under oath could be used against him and could be very harmful to his case,” said Sopori. “There are always risks when you put a defendant on the stand. You are going to open doors previously closed.”

Cosby’s legal team will also look different this time around. He has brought in famed defense attorney Thomas Mesereau, known for securing an acquittal for Michael Jackson in his child molestation trial in 2005. Mesereau also initially represented actor Robert Blake, who was ultimately found not guilty of killing his wife.

Bill Cosby’s attorney Tom Mesereau (center) departs the Montgomery County Courthouse on April 2.

Mark Makela / Getty Images

He is regarded as a skilled storyteller who captivates jurors while walking the line of being extremely tough on witnesses. But he is also known as being very personable and relatable to jurors — a talent that will prove useful in a trial that could take a month.

“I think if anyone can relate to the jury, it’s going to be Mesereau,” Slaten, the Los Angeles–based defense attorney, said. “He’s great to listen to, and he is not going to make the jurors go to sleep.”

But don’t expect the charm offensive to extend across the aisle, at least if the acrimonious jury selection process is any indication.

“It’s definitely a sign that things are going to be heated and that they are going to fight tooth and nail,” said Kazarian, who expects the defense attorneys to use “every tool in their bag,” even personally attacking the prosecution.

“This isn’t going to be the kind of the trial where you see the prosecution and defense joking before the jury comes out,” she added. “They have to frame this as a personal attack by the prosecution, so everything that the prosecution does is a personal attack, not just a legal attack or an evidentiary issue.”

LINK: Bill Cosby Admitted To Getting Drugs To Give Women For Sex, Court Records Show

LINK: Bill Cosby Rape Case Ends In Mistrial After Jury Deadlocks

[clubofinfo]

Expert: And I love all people, rich or poor. But in those particular positions, I just don’t want a poor person. Does that make sense? Does that make sense? From the criminally insane leader to his insane captives, at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Wednesday [6/21/17], as Trump was stumping for the health (sic) care (sic-sic) death bill the Republicans are pushing with the blessings of the kleptocracy that is the millionaire-billionaire class (sic). That’s us, folks, poor people – looking at a cool 150 million of us in the USA, or maybe even more! He wants zero voice or self-agency from us poor, huddled tired masses! Lately, I’ve been thinking hard about the law of time, and how fractured we are as Western Nuclear-tipped Civilization, leagues away from any sort of humane equilibrium, which if we look at white society, something the white race has been disconnected to for thousands of years, and how Western (civilization) time has warped everything, from how we live and work, and how we fornicate and defecate, how we treat our families, neighbors, the earth.  Easy to wander into philosophical and extraterrestrial thought — how we have pushed the 13 moons and 20 sequence tied to the Mayan calendar into a broken system of 12 (months) and 60 (seconds and minutes): Jose Arguelles knew this number was the key to the tzolkin, the 13 x 20 (= 260) “time matrix” upon which the Mayan calendar is based. Utilizing Oliver Reiser’s hypothesis of the psi field as a kind of DNA thought belt located in the radiation field, while finding the design key to place the DNA in the Tzolkin matrix, Arguelles was able to unlock a great system of codes underlying the programs governing the historical manifestation of civilization and its imminent transformation into a stage of galactic civilization and consciousness – the noosphere made manifest. In Projects Prometheus and Krishna, Appendix II to his fascinating synthesis, Oliver Reiser takes full cognizance of the contribution of Vladimir Vernadsky and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Reiser cites Vernadsky’s calling attention to the process of social synthesis, “whereby mankind become a single totality in the life of the Earth, and the psychozoic era of the earth’s biosphere be transformed into the noosphere.” Taking account of the sequence of spherical shells constituting the whole system earth – the barysphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere – he writes, “Now, at long last, the processes of cultural evolution have generated another envelope, superimposed on the biosphere, i.e., a ‘sheet of humanized and socialized matter,’ which is the noosphere.”1 This discussion of the noosphere now seems new agey, especially in a time of tweets and intellectual retardants not only escaping all the orifices of the man in orange-glow-worm toxicity, but by followers, who would dare laugh with or validate this horror of a man’s premise that he only believes the rich are human enough to be in the corridors of both power and the economy. All those eggheads ratcheting up the nerve gas formulas, the smart bombs, the drone-enhanced surveillance, and the nuclear tipped nightmare missiles of this class of people. America, the business (sic) mentality (dog eat dog, let all businesses rule) tied to everything the digital kings serve us, the workers, trapped in their ever-expanding Excel Spreadsheets and microprocessor gulags. Collective consciousness, hmm. Looking for an alternative form of energizing positive thought and conscience? Hmm, pretty out of the mainstream Kick Ass Now, Shoot First, Ask Questions Never thinking that has captured this Wonder Woman endless bang-bang shit that serves as hog sty consumption. It’s the same thinking and attitude toward the poor, that is, those on the other side of strap pulling the gunny sack of gold – neoliberal, liberal, highfalutin new rich, Hollywood syphilitics, Democrats, Politically Correctives, Corrosive Corporate Media and the Mindless Mush Heads of the Suburbs. They bullshit their ways to Sundance or this or that crappy TED Talk/conference, but in the end, they too do not want your local ex-con, ex-druggie, ex-offender, current-homeless, continual recovery bloke and gal anywhere near the chambers of control over their shit-storm companies and non-profits and higher and lower educational institutions. These people — Trump or ClintonX2, GatesX2 or Any X/Y/Z Philanthropist — never-ever bring the poor and disposed and dispossessed and down-trodden and diseased and disheveled and drunk and drugged and deranged to the table. Instead, we have these insane people — like every white mutated soul roaming the corridors of power, politics, military, industry, the press, medicine, psychology, and entertainment – propping up their bullshit superficiality and absurd self-absorption. They speak for “those people,” the “other ones,” anyone “not of our caliber-pedigree-upbringing-educational/economic standard.” Is this one of the most blatantly rich/sick (monetarily) administration ever, and those yahoos in Iowa or Georgia or you name it anywhere U-S-A chanting, U.S.A. . . . U.S.A., like the maniacs they are in real time, is it the most corrosive? This battlefield today of missing IQ elites and this idiocracy ruling the people, is it so new, so unnerving today in 2017? Just go back, young man, young woman, and see that road show of lying, bombing, stealing, killing, thieving presidents, tall, squat, square jawed and flabby. This is a country of vapidity and false valor. Hokum’s and hussies. Whores and pimps groveling for one elite after another elite/chosen peoples. Surface to Air Delight in Every Bombs Bursting in Depleted Uranium-Coated Air. So, when I think hard about how wicked this economy has always been, and how blood-sucking the people running the little shows – bureaucracies – and then the big engines of pollution and garbage – corporations – ARE, I understand there has to be another field of alternative forms of thinking and communicating, whether it’s telepathy or collective consciousness. Anything but this hocus-pocus marketing crap of the Freudian nephew creation (Bernays). How many people have poo-pooed the harmonic convergence or the concept of universal disharmonics? How many know we are living in this out of sync globe, with faulty mathematics and broken time-clock chronology, so misaligned from and with the universe it’s obvious for anyone with a brain and heart to see and feel — while the pestilence of nuclear-biological-propaganda wars shapes our out of balance closed system, a cosmic disorder that has over millennial created these Caesars and Mammon worshipers, these Trumps and Carnegies, these weapons of cultural destruction, slavery and the Sixth Mass Extinction. Trump, Obama, Dell, Zuckerberg, Hitler, Mussolini, Rothschild, Pharaoh, Emir, Ford, Genghis Khan, Rabi, Pope, Minister, General, Admiral, Queen, King – these are the culmination of out of whack thinking, breathing, living and dying. Can we really admonish this warped mind, the missing link of a Trump, his racist-sexist-war monger-slum landlord- little big Mafioso-perverted version of misanthropy? Is he not the culmination of the hard soil that grows no love — the caliche planted by generations of bankers and ministers of pain, by the land thieves and empire seekers, all those twisted people who occupy the political pigsties of the world? From the Old World to this Genocidal New World. Ahh, the real law is the law of time and the principles of a noosphere where humanity can merge with the energy of the biosphere to attain a new consciousness, one that had already been ebbing and flowing in different cultures and native tribes way before the mutated white race flogged the earth with his/her/its out of synchronicity superstition and clock of horrors which have continually shaped white civilization around the black ideas of war is peace, truth is lies, death is life. I see the hollow hearts of America, the industrialists and digital kings, those hearts ticking in numeric derivative sequence as Artificial Intelligence shapes the future of this plagued world. These manipulators, and the technocrats and patent lawyers, all are living off the flesh of other worldly beasts. This is a story of stories – social worker now, and my journey begins each day and never ends, as one life is layered upon the layers of my soul, and then another set of circumstances overcomes, and then the entire field of Maya corn is planted over and over in my worst nightmares. I am working with biological and foster parents. Let it be known that most of the bastards (sperm donors) and receptacles (women) have millions of years in hell to pay for the germination and gestation and incubation and unholy labor and daily abuse of their offspring – beaten, starved, pimped out, sexually assaulted, raped, bridled and chained to these adults’ ectoplasm of sin-shame-salaciousness. It takes more than a village to re-raise a village or a child. These horror stories are like white lightning in the soul of their DNA, and my youth are struggling, whipped by PTSD and acquired traumatic developmental delays/disorders/ disabilities. I was with one of my youth today at the end of a shift when it struck me how plagued and maladjusted these captains of industry and so-called leaders really are. I am a social worker for young people in the clutches of foster care, where most are wards of the state, held into place with the fences that are guardian parents and the grips which define many levels of bureaucracy. Two months ago, I was servicing older homeless people – addicts, ex-felons, sex offenders, the mentally harassed, one day at a time adults. Many of my friends’ stories at the last non-profit are tied into abuse at a very young age – fathers and mothers, stepparents and siblings, strangers and family members raping, beating, humiliating, denigrating and plying youth with drugs and prostitution and minute-by-minute consternation and condemnation. You don’t wake up one morning and say, “I want to be addicted to meth, and I want all my teeth to fall out in 15 years, and I want all my possessions stolen, and want my life to be welded to a turnstile of constant court-jail-prison-fines-restitution homelessness.” So, most of my peeps a few months ago in another job with another non-profit tie into what the hell went wrong in a child’s life that brought him or her to the streets, to gangs, to the pipe and cooker, to the gun and the knife, to the abuse and the violence, and to the sexual assaults and criminality? Try a big bad daddy and mommy and slew of wrong people at the right time of development. Every day the clock ticks in disharmony, and the pigs juggle botulism balls and masquerade as officials and servants of the public when, in fact, they are worse than heroin-coke-booze-gambling-sex addicts all rolled up into one scabby man or emaciated woman. These pigs run the show, and we have to react to their presence in the cultural ether, and the noosphere, with so much potential, is being short-circuited by the millions blathering on TV, the millions holding seances with their millions of bucks in their 10,000 square-foot well-appointed elite prisons working on project after project to addict the next and the next generation to their flaccid Facebook and Amazon dot com worlds. That we even sit on thumbs and let the latest baboon president, Trump, say what he says . . . . * 26,000 unreported sexual assaults in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together? * “It’s certainly not groundbreaking news that the early victories by the women on ‘The Apprentice’ were, to a very large extent, dependent on their sex appeal.” — HowToGetRich, 2004 * “You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.” — from an interview with Esquire, 1991 * When a lawyer facing Trump in 2011 asked for a break to pump breast milk for her infant daughter, The Donald reacted very poorly.“He got up, his face got red, he shook his finger at me and he screamed, ‘You’re disgusting, you’re  disgusting,’ and he ran out of there,” attorney Elizabeth Beck told CNN. Trump’s attorney does not dispute that his client called Beck “disgusting.” * “My favorite part [of ‘PulpFiction’] is when Sam has his gun out in the diner and he tells the guy to tell his girlfriend to shut up. Tell that bitch to be cool. Say: ‘Bitch be cool.’ I love those lines.” — TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald, 2005 * “I have black guys counting my money. … I hate it,” Trump told John R. O’Donnell, the former president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, according O’Donnell’s account in his 1991 book Trumped! “The only guys I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes all day.” Trump, according to O’Donnell, went on to say, “‘Laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that.” * Speaking to Time magazine for a profile published in January 1989, Trump was asked to give an estimate of his total wealth. “Who the f knows? I mean, really, who knows how much the Japs will pay for Manhattan property these days?” he asked in response, using a racial slur for the Japanese. Khizr Khan, the father of the late Army Captain Humayun Khan, spoke out against Trump’s bigoted rhetoric and disregard for civil liberties at the Democratic National Convention on July 28. It became the most memorable moment of the convention. “Let me ask you, have you even read the U.S. Constitution?” Khan asked Trump before pulling a copy of the document from his jacket pocket and holding it up. “I will gladly lend you my copy.” Khan’s wife, Ghazala, who wears a head scarf, stood at his side during the speech but did not speak. In response to the devastating speech, Trump seized on Ghazala Khan’s silence to imply that she was forbidden from speaking due to the couple’s Islamic faith. “If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me,” Trump said in an interview with ABC News that first appeared on July 30. Ghazala Khan explained in an op-ed in The Washington Post the following day that she could not speak because of her grief. “Walking onto the convention stage, with a huge picture of my son behind me, I could hardly control myself. What mother could?” she wrote. “Donald Trump has children whom he loves. Does he really need to wonder why I did not speak?” . . . . and that we even validate his big bellied thugs chanting U/S/A, this Ugly Sick America, USA, sick and ugly America, while we hunker down and hold chins to sternums, well, this is the reaction of the Rachel Maddow-loving Har-Har-Har Liberals, a la Stewart and Colbert. I’ve seen enough of the lambasting, the entertaining us to death, the Facebook billion flickers of foolishness, and the endless swill and sewage that is an America high on corporate sodium pentothal. Many Americans of the white persuasion ARE the evil seeds or evil breeders of this Trump World, where money, meanness, madness, and tossing grenades at every crowd possible to get a rise out of them is the daily blue chip special served up in their corridors of shame and horror they call families. * Cosmic Humanism, p. 557 http://clubof.info/