#finals are literally so stupid and inconsequential when considering. what has been happening on our campus and the world and everything

[blood-and-better-honey]

post-essay clarity is something so beautiful yet so frightening

[itsclydebitches]

I adore talking about this with you, it's so cool to be able to agree, everything I've read is just excusing yen lmao.

And with "geralt would rather do and say things Yen wants to avoid pissing her off" LIKE YEAHH I guess I annoyed yen with my answers and she teleported Geralt out of the tower thing, and then threatened to do it again like??? Like he pissed her off so she has fuck all care about him, was over water thank god but like girl??? omg and her refusing to tell the wticher bros what she was planning on doing to Uma, like I get that they would be hesistent but I mean it's cause it's cruel and painful and they have that trauma around that. She just expects everyone to do what she asks when she asks no questions. (Lambert's "I'm not geralt" when he and Yen are kinda arguring, bb red flags)

I just assumed she didn't believe him cause if she did whats her excuse for behaving how she is lmao??? Like you believe he has amnesia and you still blame HIM over the person who maniplated him KAY.

And goodddd that fucking scene when Triss and Yen see Ciri in Kaer Morhen is genuinely the worst, Triss and Yen see their sis/daughter (not gonna get into how weird I find it that Triss considers Ciri her sister and Geralt is Ciris father and she still wants to fuck him, uncomfy) for the first time in forever, she's alive and well and while Triss is hugging Ciri, Yen kisses Geralt and Triss throws a glare at her. I hated that scene so damn much, it's stupid and shouldn't have been there. (aso I get emotions and all but Yen kissing Geralt is so bitchy, idk even full of gratitude and emotion I wouldn't kiss the man who just dumped me lol, especially not in front of a situation like Triss)

I'm still mad about the women, I really wanted to like them fuck meeee

YOU GOT TO THE PART. Oh thank god, anon, I've wanted to talk about this since we started these conversations lol

Okay, let's set the scene, shall we? You arrive to find that, with our playthroughs anyway, your ex has barged into your home. I say "barged in" because although we (Geralt) know that Yen's help is necessary and she'll be tagging along, the other witchers living there are given no prior warning and, according to Vesemir, Yen teleported in without so much as a "Hello." She then immediately starts ordering everyone around like her servants, failing to explain the situation beyond there being a curse that they have to help with. No, this isn't negotiable. She (still being an ex) takes your old room for herself, which just happens to be the biggest in the keep, and proceeds to toss a bed out the window. It's only later that Vesemir recalls that Triss used to use it, so prior to that everyone apparently just accepted that Yen was destroying their stuff for no understandable reason. Classic Yen. You go upstairs to find her cursing a blue streak at her failed experiment and when you try to lighten the mood, she snaps at you. If you're of the opinion that Yen's every order must be obeyed, this is when you're supposed to drop the conversation entirely, because she said to. Except, funnily enough, you'd like to know why she's up here being The Worst Guest Ever and destroying your property. She tries to justify this by saying that destroying a bed is better than how she could be dealing with her anger over Triss. Be grateful and all that. Except, it's not really about Triss, is it? The line is "You shagged my friend. For upwards of a year. I don't know what your witcher's code says on the matter, but ordinary folk would consider it obscene, base, vile." The blame is not on the woman who knowingly manipulated Geralt into having sex with her while he was vulnerable, it's on Geralt himself! He is the "obscene, base, vile" person for... daring to have amnesia? And when you point that out - "Yen... told you already. I lost my memory" - she yells that she's "lost [her] patience" and teleports you into a lake! This is, apparently, how she really wants to deal with her anger. Not by destroying beds, but by attacking you for things outside of your control. And I do consider it an attack. Yen is meant to be insanely powerful, she is leveraging her magic as a weapon here, particularly when Geralt has spent the whole game commenting on how much he hates portals. Yen knows this. Not just because he says so in her presence, but because she frequently reads his mind, something else he's expressed discomfort with. She's not just demonstrating her power (controlling) and sending him away when he makes a point she doesn't want to acknowledge (immature), she chooses the one thing she knows makes Geralt uncomfortable, perhaps even scared. Then when you've swum your way back to shore and returned to, despite all this, begin her list of chores, she makes a dry comment about how next time she just might drop you high enough for the fall to be fatal. With the next time implied to be, you know, the next time you disagree with her. The next time you dare to do anything other than agree with her every belief and jump at her every command.

The fandom interpretation of all this: "Lol Geralt getting yeeted is so funny. And their banter is just 😍"

Me:

You mentioned red flags and yeah like that ENTIRE SCENE is a crimson banner for me. I mean, by all means, love the fictional ships that are super messed up (I often do), but it astounds me how many fans honestly think this is just a cute interaction with absolutely no problems attached. Nothing to question here, folks. I've mentioned before, but last I discussed this in depth the asker wanted to know if I'd been an asshole to Yen and... that's it. That's the perspective. Any disagreement with her, any pushback, anything that's not complete, blind obedience is something she will not permit AND something most fans take as a given. If you're not doing what Yen tells you to, you're automatically the asshole, and if you're the asshole, you automatically deserve any punishment she chooses to dish out.

Comic spoilers coming up if you want to skip, but this is made abundantly clear in "Curse of Crows." Yen and Geralt are at their best in the moment below, enjoying one another's company on a nice day. Yen asks if Geralt wants to swim and he says nah, he'd rather watch her. She appears to like that idea and, indeed, swims naked while Geralt admires from the shore.

Actually cute right? I really liked this moment! They're cuddled up together and exchanging smiles. It's a rare moment of peace where I can believe that they truly care for one another, outside of passionate sex and not wanting the other dead. Finally, something beyond that incredibly low bar.

...except Yen starts flirting with a young man who shows up, invites him to travel with them, all while refusing to explain why she's interested in his company. The sudden third wheel is clearly bothering Geralt, but Yen continues to ignore his questioning. The answer she finally gives later that night?

She did it purely to mess with Geralt! It's his "just desserts" for "refusing to swim with [her]." She is "not one to be refused - I thought you needed reminding" by giving him "a flick on the nose." When I say that Yen treats Geralt like a dog I mean she literally treats him like a dog. He's a servant who must jump at her every command and if he doesn't, he'll punished for disobedience. He might not even know why he's being punished for a long stretch because Yen enjoys making him think she's a normal person capable of accepting that he doesn't feel like swimming right now - insert the Kaer Morhen scene where she wants to go have sex upstairs, but Geralt wants to catch up with the brothers he hasn't seen in an age here - only to reveal that actually she's made their formerly nice outing uncomfortable because he needs to be put in his place. All of which is followed by, "So... willing to join me now?" The message is very clear! Geralt had better get his ass in that tub unless he wants to be punished some more. Whether he wants a bath right now or not is inconsequential.

This is also the run where she scares the women Geralt was with, despite them being separated right now. Why? "I could."

Claims that Geralt is allowed to return to his companions (who he actually waves away) only for him to realize she's cast a spell to burn him with the water. Yen loves pretending she's okay with things only to punish Geralt for them later - sometimes with physical punishments. And what would have happened if the women had actually joined him again? Do witchers weather hot water better than the average courtesan? Who knows, but Yen clearly doesn't care who might get hurt.

Just like her time in Skellige and at Kaer Morhen, she refuses to explain what's going on. She just expects people to obey her, so-called loved ones included. Geralt was to get her cider, and arrive before her bath went cold, not question what they're doing on this dangerous hunt. He's a servant.

And my favorite, petty moment: transforming her awful inn food into a lavish meal without offering to do the same for either Geralt or Ciri.

"But, Clyde, that's just the comics. They're not really canon." Nah, questions of canon aside, this is 100% Yen's characterization. She's prideful. Immature. Beyond controlling. And punishes anyone who dares to tell her "No." Fans are always pointing out that she's meant to be horrible, she could have been a villain in another life, like any of that explains why I'm supposed to root for this relationship or enjoy her existence outside of being a complex character. Yen is interesting, but she's interesting in a "I can't wait to see her get her own just desserts" way. Not "Wooo now I get to watch this story ignore her behavior again to push a True Love narrative."

She punished Geralt frequently during their first meeting, she punishes him whenever they get together, and, I think, she punished him during the reunion with Ciri. Given our playthroughs, do we really think that after breaking up with her and all this fury over Triss - an anger so deep she destroyed the bed and attacked Geralt - she's just overcome with such joy that she forgets they're not together anymore and forgets the anger she's been nurturing for years? Yen doesn't forget. She's staring at Ciri during that moment, right where Triss is currently running towards them, and then after a considering look at Geralt pulls him in for that kiss. That was calculated. She did that to make a claim she no longer had. To punish them both: make Triss uncomfortable by playing at the "perfect" family reunion; make Geralt uncomfortable by kissing him when she knows he doesn't feel the same way. But of course, the popular reading is that she just loves him so much she couldn't help herself. Riiight.

It's just all SO BAD. (Including, as you say, the ickiness of having Triss lusting after Geralt and referring to Ciri as "little sis.") I love a lot of the women in Witcher - Cerys is a fave, Ciri, Saskia, Philippa, Keira, etc. - but the two I'm supposedly meant to fall in love with are just the worst lol.

Basically:

Half the fandom: TEAM TRISS 🤬

The other half: TEAM YEN🤬

Me: TEAM REGIS 😭

[thisaccisdead]

give up on a miracle - sanders sides au - chp. 1

pairing(s): as of now, romantic nicomas and platonic everyone else

warnings: lots of religious stuff

summary: patton, virgil, logan, and janus are angels in charge of answering prayers. when they find out the earth is scheduled to be destroyed in a week, their only hope for saving it is to set up two humans: thomas sanders and nico flores.

word count: 3.5k

notes: this is a based off of miracle workers but not an exact au, idk it’ll be fun, you don’t have to have seen the show, you just have to like silly angel shenanigans 

Please, God, let this somehow work out.

Thomas didn’t ask for miracles too often. Well—that was a lie, he probably prayed for some inconsequential thing everyday, but he rarely meant it the way he meant this one. The man at the mall felt like fate. He was beautiful, and according to his backpack he was gay, and he was just a few tables down, and... Thomas should have just said hi as soon as he had noticed him, but he had psyched himself out. Like always.

Usually that would be the end of the story, but as Thomas was headed for the exit, the man was there too. In front of him. Speaking to him.

Thomas was too caught off guard to process the first half of what he said—though he did register being given back his abhorrent carrot snack—and when he tuned back in, all he caught was:

“Uh, it’s okay! It’s probably a bit too nosy for me to ask anyway.”

“Uh, yeah! Super nosy! What’s wrong with you, man?” was the sentence that came out of Thomas’s mouth in response. He blamed his lips for coming up with it, because he knew his mind couldn’t have been involved.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” the man smiled apologetically at him, and even that small, sheepish smile was so radiant… yeah, Thomas was mentally beating the shit out of himself. “Well, have a good night!”

So, now the fate-given man was headed somewhere else, and Thomas was about to lose him—probably forever—if he didn’t act. So, obvious answer: he had to act. But he just… couldn’t. Not without a sign at least.

Not without a push.

When no push came, Thomas told himself it wouldn’t have led anywhere anyway. He continued about his day, with only the slightest added weight in his chest.

•••

“Aw, Virge, we have to do something about this one!”

Virgil looked up from his own paperwork to see the prayer Patton had pulled up.

“‘Please, God, let this somehow work out,’” he read out dryly. “Hm, not very specific.”

“Oh, but you didn’t—c’mon, look—“ Patton waved his hand to replay the video of the scene. The figures popped up on the screen, and Patton was reminded all over again of the dopey, flustered expression of the human, Thomas, as he failed so miserably at talking to his mall crush. It was such a silly, hopeful wish—Patton’s favorite kind—and he couldn’t bear to see it go unanswered.

His fellow angel did not share this opinion, evidentially. “Nope. Nuh-uh. No way,” Virgil said, “Love prayers are stupid as shit, hardest of all, never work out. If this whole department’s getting shut down, I’d rather spend my last week answering achievable prayers.”

Patton frowned. His brown-dappled wings drooped as his excitement wavered. “Is that right, though?” he asked, “Should we really stick to… what? Finding lost wallets? Delivering extra sandwiches? Like we’ve done every year of this job? If this is all ending, I wanna finally do something that matters, Virge.”

Virgil looked betrayed. “Lost wallets do matter, Patton. Maybe they don’t end droughts, or heal hearts, but that doesn’t mean they don’t matter. If people wish for it, it matters to them. I always thought you agreed with me on that.”

Patton bit his lip. He did agree with Virgil, on some level, and on any other day he would have considered his words more carefully. But with the prayer department set to close down this very week, he had lost some of his filter. Maybe his ideas were far-fetched, but when he had joined the Department of Answered Prayers he had been hoping to do exactly that--end droughts, heal hearts.

“Virgil’s right,” chimed in Logan. Their manager made his way over, and took Patton’s tablet from his hands. He swiped upwards on the prayer, officially dismissing it as ‘impossible.’ “There is no need to feel bad, Patton. It’s not our fault humans mainly ask for impossible things. If they want impossible, they need God, and God doesn’t have that kind of time. If they want an extra sandwich… we can pull a few strings.”

Logan nodded approvingly to where Virgil was coding breezes on his tablet, screen open to a view of a rural town avenue. He was carefully, cautiously, innocuously blowing leaves into piles one-by-one. This process eventually cleared the front yard of a small house, just in time for a kind-eyed, middle-aged man to come home and cheer at the sight of the finished chore. He even did a stupid little dance to himself, and Patton saw the smallest smile tug at Virgil’s lips.

“I agree with Patton,” came a voice from over by the mini fridge. Janus was doing what he did best: sipping at the canned wine he wasn’t meant to have, not doing any work, and giving his opinion on everything anyway. “Let’s do something interesting. It’s not like it matters at this point.”

“What do you mean?” Patton squinted at him.

“Cuz the prayer department’s getting shut down, duh, what else have we been talking about?” Virgil answered.

“No,” Janus said, “Well—yes, but… you know why we’re getting shut down, right?”

Patton and Virgil tilted their heads at him, and Logan looked away. A smile appeared on Janus’s face, but not one of joy. One that had an edge, a venom in it. “Logan… you didn’t tell them?”

“It would only upset them,” the management angel replied, still not meeting Janus’s eyes.

“Yeah, because they’ll not be upset at all when they see Earth randomly explode in a few days,” Janus deadpanned.

“What?!” Patton and Virgil exclaimed in simultaneous dismay.

Logan glared at Janus. “Are you happy? Now we have to deal with this for the next week.”

“Earth can’t explode yet,” Virgil said matter-of-factly, “that’s not right. Right?”

Patton nodded emphatically. “We should’ve gotten at least a century’s notice! Or had it on a public schedule somewhere!”

“Yeah, God has to call it off. At least for now,” Virgil agreed.

“You want God to stop it?” Janus said with a laugh. “He didn’t even remember it was happening; it was His PA who told the management staff.”

“Yes, it was,” Logan narrowed his eyes at Janus. “How did you find out about it anyway?”

Janus opened his mouth, but before he could answer, Virgil cut in, “God’s not gonna do anything about it?”

“It’s been in His plan. Why would He need to change it?” Logan asked rhetorically, adjusting his large, round-framed glasses as he did so. It was a movement he made often when he was being a know-it-all.

“How’s Earth gonna die?” Patton asked, looking at the floor, still in denial. He had lived his life on Earth, he had been a human—they all had, before they died and became angels. It had been so long since he’d been alive, he couldn’t quite remember the feeling of it. The memory was blurred around the edges, but it still seeped warmth, like dough burning into bread over a fire. Now, the only connection he had to that sensation were the humans--the chance to watch them, how they lived such utterly flawed, full lives. He recalled Thomas’s hopeful expression.

“Asteroid,” Logan replied. He didn’t need to check his files to give the answer, his ink-blue wings stiff behind him--and that was when Patton knew, despite his cold, indifferent attitude, this news was weighing on him too.

“Like the dinosaurs. Well, bigger. But still unoriginal of Him,” Janus scoffed, checking his nails—well, more like checking his gloves, which seemed unnecessary. Something mournful crossed his face for a moment, but Patton couldn’t place what. “The dinosaurs were sad too.”

“You lived in the 19th century. You weren’t around for dinosaurs,” Logan stated, brow furrowed in confusion. Janus ignored him.

“An asteroid? He could prevent that so easily! Earth deserves to at least live to its natural end,” Patton said. He glanced to Virgil, hoping for backup, but his coworker seemed most focused on biting his black-polished nails into dust.

“Well, isn’t it the natural end if it was in His plan?” Logan asked, once again, rhetorically. He also adjusted his glasses again. Patton liked to think of himself as particularly nice, even for an angel, but he wouldn’t have minded seeing those glasses broken in that moment.

“I’m more interested in your claim that Earth doesn’t ‘deserve’ to end,” Janus smiled at Patton. It was a slippery kind of smile, one that he couldn’t grasp the intentions of. “Overall, it’s a dumpster fire of a planet, wouldn’t you agree? I mean, 99% of the prayers are literally impossible for angels to answer at this point.”

“Yeah, well, I know some angels who are too busy with their shitty wine to even try—“ Virgil began to complain, turning on Janus, but Patton was too busy having a revelation to pay much attention to it.

“That’s it!” Patton exclaimed, jumping up from his seat with a grin.

“Please, be more specific, Patton,” Logan sighed. “Define ‘it.’”

Patton was, once again, too busy to pay attention to this. He made for the doorway with haste, only tossing over his shoulder: “I’m going to meet God!”

•••

Logan, Janus, and Virgil made it to God’s office before Patton did. He wasn’t the best with maps, so sue him. The trio was waiting in the grand hallway for him, and he was thankful that they had decided to back him up, despite the fact they had no idea what he was doing. Even though the coworkers bickered their fair share, you couldn’t work as the only 4 angels in a crumbling department without a certain bond forming.

Patton gave them a grateful smile as he strolled past them and right up to the secretary’s desk. The secretary, who was… not present? He checked the name plaque. Engraved in the gold of it was: Mrs. Snuffles, but the ‘u’ had been scratched out and written over so that it was Mrs. Sniffles. Before Patton could even begin to be perplexed by this, a large orange tabby hopped up from the floor, where she had been hidden, and onto the desk.

The cat looked him in the eye, with a surprising amount of purpose, and meowed.

“Hello?” Patton asked, dumbfounded. “...Mrs. Sni—Snuffles?”

She meowed again, this time with an undercurrent of what Patton could only assume was impatience.

“I—“ Patton looked back at the group behind him, but they just shrugged. They were following his lead. That couldn’t be good. “We would like to schedule a meeting with God, please.”

Mrs. Snuffles trotted over to a stack of papers, and pushed the top one aside with a swipe of her paw. She looked up from it after a moment, and then jumped down from the table, going up to the gilded, arched doorway at the end of the hall. She started meowing loudly, and soon an angel with cardinal-red wings and a matching red suit jacket stepped out. He looked down at Mrs. Snuffles, then up at Patton.

“I’m terribly sorry, but God is not available right now. He’s very busy,” the angel explained with a polite smile, the kind that was trained and not felt, “and he will be until Earth explodes. Thank you, goodbye.”

“Oh,” Patton said dumbly. He maybe should have expected that.

Mrs. Snuffles hissed at the angel, and he sighed. “You really think they want to talk to Him?”

“We do!” Patton interjected.

“You think you do,” the angel replied, an undercurrent of bitterness to his tone.

“Same difference, right?” Patton said, giving the other a hopeful smile.

“Just let us in, Princey,” Virgil’s annoyed voice came from behind. “Don’t be an ass. At least not more of one than usual.”

Patton looked between the two of them. “You know each other?”

‘Princey’ gave Virgil a deadpan glare. “Fine. You want a meeting with God? Be my guest.” He stepped aside from the doorway, gesturing to it with a sarcastic flourish.

When no one else made a move, Virgil grumbled and pushed past Patton. The rest of the group followed. When they got to the door, Patton paused and turned to the red-winged man. “Princey—“

“Roman,” he corrected.

“Roman,” Patton repeated. He pointed at the cat curiously, “Mrs. ‘Sniffles’?”

Roman blushed. “I was allergic when I was alive.”

A resounding reply of “Me too!” went through the group, and they all turned to each other in mild surprise.

“It’s how I died!” Patton added cheerily.

“Huh,” Roman replied with a puzzled frown. He cleared his throat. “Well, good luck.”

“Thank you!” Patton said. He looked down at Mrs. Snuffles as well, “Thank you, too.”

She gave him a final, curt meow, and rubbed up to his legs, pushing his feet against the door. He laughed, turned to the others waiting for him, and they nodded. Roman opened the door, and gestured them in.

Patton didn’t know what he had expected God’s office to look like, but it was decidedly not what he found upon entering that door. He had expected something resembling the grand hallway leading up to it: golden statues, velvet carpet, ivory columns. And, sure, that seemed to be the basis of the office; it was everything that was added on that was surprising. The bookshelves were stacked exclusively with trashy magazines, the walls were covered in posters of boy bands and movie stars, and a side-room had been renovated into what appeared to be a personal Starbucks. Finally, in the center of it all, sitting on the sofa and watching TV, was:

“...God?” Patton asked unsurely.

The man--(should Patton call Him that?)--eyed the group from behind a pair of sunglasses. He didn’t bother to turn the TV off as He casually greeted, “Hey, babes! What’s up?”

“Um,” Patton glanced at his friends for help, but they were clearly just as lost as him. Well, not Janus; Janus seemed unbothered. This provided Patton some sense of comfort, enough for him to continue, “We wanted to ask about--”

“Hold that thought, hun,” God held up a finger. “Roman!”

Roman walked in, almost reluctantly, at the call. “Yes?”

“Be a peach and mute the TV, would you?” God asked, throwing His PA the remote. Roman caught it as if with practice, and pressed the mute button with a wry expression.

“Thanks, love you!” God said, then turned back to Patton. “What were we talking about?”

“Well--”

God tried to sip the frappe in His drink-holder, only to find it empty, and He interrupted again to say, “Roman, coffee alert! Mama needs His caffeine!”

Roman bit his lip, presumably to stop himself from letting out a sigh. When he walked to the Starbucks corner, he seemed to purposefully avoid eye contact with the group. Patton glanced at his friends, and found Virgil suppressing an amused grin, and Janus not bothering to suppress his.

“We wanted to ask about the end of the world,” Patton finally said.

God’s brow furrowed slightly. “End of the world? Oh! OH, that is coming up, isn’t it? When’s that again, Ro?”

Roman, from behind the coffee maker, replied, “7 and a half days.”

“Oo, fun!” God gasped, “That’s so soon! I totally forgot that was so soon, isn’t that crazy?”

“So crazy,” Roman agreed dryly, handing Him a new venti frappe.

“Right,” Patton said, almost at a loss, “So, you… want the world to end?”

God shrugged, using one finger to play with his coffee straw as he spoke. “It was in my plan, wasn’t it? Plus, I mean, y’know… Earth’s really, like, ‘ew’ right now, right? Like, sure, I COULD save it, and then I’d let the humans keep doing their little thing, but I don’t want that; they’re mostly messes. I wanna make… I dunno a new place with, like, more Idris Elba’s.”

“And you’re willing to kill the real Idris Elba for that?” Janus cut in. God looked him up and down critically, before asking,

“Hey, do I know you from something?”

“No,” Janus replied quickly, “Certainly not from Eden, and even if I was there, I wasn’t the snake. I’m a real angel, hush.”

Patton turned to him in confusion, but God just shrugged again, and said, “K, whatever. Anyway, yeah, what’d you gals wanna know about Earth again?”

“Um, we wanted you to, maybe… not… blow it up?” Patton asked.

“Hmm,” God hummed, “Thanks, but no thanks! Earth is gross, I’m just so over it, you know?”

“No, I don’t know,” Patton replied without thinking, unable to hide the frustration in his voice anymore, “If Earth’s messed up, all the more reason to be there for your children, and not just kill everything. It’s wrong.”

There was a ‘thunk’ against the floor, and Patton looked to see that Roman had dropped the old coffee cup he had been carrying to the trash. Logan and Virgil were staring at Patton with equally stricken expressions, and Janus’s face was unreadable. He suddenly realized what he had said. He then realized how many angels had fallen for saying much less.

God stood up slowly. He approached Patton until He was uncomfortably close.

 “Awe,” He pouted, “babe, I know it’ll be sad, but how am I supposed to change it now? It’s in the plan, hun. I’m sure you understand.” He patted his cheek once condescendingly--a touch that carried the pleasant warmth of a sunbeam--before He stepped back and took a long sip of His coffee. Patton didn’t break eye contact the whole time.

“I have an idea,” Patton said in a newly sunny tone--the type of overly kind, conversational tone that should be feared-- “How about a bet?”

“Are you for real?” God gaped at the continued insolence, somewhere between disbelief and delight. In the end, delight--or at least novelty--won. “Deal with the Devil is out, deal with God is in; OK, I’m into it!”

“You say it’s too hard to save Earth now? Impossible, even?” Patton asked challengingly. He heard a quiet gasp of realization from Logan, and when he glanced behind himself, he noticed Janus was smiling, as if impressed. This gave him enough confidence to continue, “Impossible, like it would be impossible for a few random angels to answer an unanswerable prayer?”

“Sweetie, I don’t know what you’re saying, but I love the way you’re saying it,” God waved His hand appreciatively.

Patton took Logan’s tablet from his hands. He scrolled to find the ‘Discarded Prayers: Impossible’ file. He held it out to God for proof as he concluded, “If we can answer one of these prayers before the end of the world, surely you can stop it from ending.”

“THAT’S your plan?! Pat, we can’t complete the possible prayers half the time,” Virgil exclaimed. He buried his face in his hands. “Earth’s dead.”

God, however, let out a dreamy sigh, holding one hand against His chest. Patton wasn’t sure if he was meant to feel like the ambitious hero or the prize dog at a pet show. “You know, I should say no…” God bit his lip with the same expression a suburban mother might have when she was about to cheat on her juice cleanse, “...but I never could resist a little twist! Ok, shake on it!”

God extended His hand, and Patton took it without hesitation.

“I, God, proclaim: Earth will not be destroyed next week if, and only if, an impossible prayer is answered.” As He spoke, His palm began to glow white, such that Patton had to look away for fear of being blinded. If God’s touch had been a sunbeam previously, it was now the whole sun, and Patton almost cried out from the burning heat. Technically, he didn’t have skin in the same way he did when he was alive, but he swore he felt it melting off in that grip.

Yet when God pulled away, there was no extra light in the room, no damage to his hand.

God smiled innocently. “Ok! Cute! So, what prayer you gonna choose?”

Huh. Patton hadn’t thought that far ahead. Maybe Virgil’s concern wasn’t so unwarranted. He looked down at the tablet he was still holding. His eyes scanned past several prayers that were beyond impossible--fix capitalism, no more YouTube ads, fix global warming, no more incels--until his eyes caught on just the thing. An unabashed grin overtook Patton’s face in realization,

“Oh, I know exactly what prayer we’re doing.”

•••

“Well, have a good night!”

Nico turned his back on the cute mall man after he said it, and he had to push down the urge to glance back a final time. He tried not to believe in true love—it was at best unlikely, and at worst an extremely problematic trope—but he was a writer, and a daydreamer, and when he spotted the man a few tables down at the food court… he just knew.

Ok, he didn’t know, there was no way to know that kind of thing—but he did want. He did hope. And he did, in a move that was unprecedented for him, pray:

Please, if anyone’s up there: I know it’s silly, but I want this so badly. And I know it’s basically impossible at this point but, maybe… if we meet again... let this somehow work out?

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

An Explanation of Why Louis and Violet are Both Terrific Love Interests [3/5]

+Why both romantic routes are not only amazing but better than other games I’ve personally played in the past.

+Why some people are idiots and get off on picking stupid fights.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

[a new frontier and forced romances]

You have to romance me otherwise the plot makes no sense also I’ll throw a tantrum like a small child.

Do I even need to explain this one?

It’s Kate. 

I’m talking about Kate.

The romance with her is forced and I don’t like it. 

I hate to be blunt because I’m sure there are people out there who like Kate and like the relationship between her and Javier, and I don’t want to step on any toes and say your ship is invalid because it’s not. 

However, as someone who didn’t romance Kate the first three times I played the game for a number of reasons, I hated how the game constantly forced her on you while giving the illusion that it’s a choice. 

Because that’s the issue: Illusion of choice. 

No matter what you do, Javier has romantic chemistry with Kate [apparently] as told by everyone Javi talks to. Tripp mentions it, Eleanor mentions it, Clementine mentions it, and even David says something about how Kate only sees Javi now. 

You can literally be an asshole to Kate and turn her down every single chance you get, and she’ll still come to you like “Hey, we’re a thing, right? Things have been pretty intense with us in the past so we should totally give this a shot, yeah? Fuck David, let’s be together!” 

This would make sense for her say if you returned her affections whenever possible, but it makes her look clingy and in denial if you repeatedly turn her down. 

When it comes to whether or not you want to pursue that relationship with her, you have two choices: Say you feel the same way and have to story make sense, or say no and not only will she pout like a small child, but suddenly so many things don’t fucking work. 

You turn her down and David still freaks the fuck out because Kate’s all “I can’t believe I loved either of you!” and takes Gabe away which leads to the final choice which leads to the ending. 

If the story wanted to be forceful with Kate, then y’know what? Fine, but go all the way with it. None of this illusion of choice shit, just tell us that Kate and Javier are a couple now and give us the choice of what kind of boyfriend we want to be. Don’t say “Here’s Kate, you can smooch her if you want” and then proceed to have everyone and their mother tell me to smooch her even though I don’t want to. 

Also, did you know that Javier Garcia is a bisexual protagonist, as well? 

Yes, it’s true! It’s never mentioned or shown outside of ONE flirtatious dialogue choice with Jesus in the last ten minutes of the game, but it’s true!

I honestly don’t know why they didn’t either give us a choice between two love interests or decide to keep the focus off romance in general. Instead, we got Kate and a mess of a plot when you don’t pick the “correct” choices.

Give me a REAL love interest! One that I can get behind!

...Wait, of course!

Hey, don’t you look at me like that! It could work!

Francine’s dead, therefore Conrad’s single! And so what if he held Gabe at gunpoint and threatened to shoot Javi in the face?? All couples have their fights, c’mon! 

...Alright, fine, but I’m putting a pin in such a potential ship and saving it for later.

ANYWAY, we were talking about Kate. 

Compare Kate to Louis and Violet. 

You don’t have to romance either of them and if you don’t, it doesn’t fuck over the plot. 

If you don’t romance Louis, he doesn’t turn into mister pouty pants and slap Lilly and confess to loving Clem during a dangerous situation which results in an even more dangerous situation because he’s butthurt. 

If you don’t romance Violet, the plot suddenly doesn’t make sense because the game was steering you to make the “correct” choices that give you the “correct” ending and now everyone’s confused because they assumed you were smoochin’.

No, you can just be friends with them and it’s fine! Sure, you miss out on the cute date scenes, but y’know what? You miss out on stuff if you DO romance them, too! 

You get different dialogue and scenes that work with the story you’re creating! Just because you didn’t smooch them, doesn’t mean they suddenly don’t have any interest or care in you! It’s just platonic!

If the writers took a page out of ANF’s book, then we would’ve had a mess with Louis and Violet. They would’ve forced Louis on you and then let you have one line of flirty dialogue with Violet! Or everyone would be constantly telling you how much chemistry you and Violet have despite you rejecting her every chance you get! 

In conclusion: Louis and Violet are important characters, but you are not pressured into having a relationship with them if you don’t want to. You can friendzone them and they will still love you. 

[king’s quest and likable but inconsequential love interests]

Romance me or her, it doesn’t really matter we look identical when we’re old and our children suspiciously look the same regardless so just pick one

King’s Quest is a game that came out in 2015. It’s an episodic reboot to the classic games of the same name and follows the life story of King Graham told by himself to his granddaughter, Gwendalyn. 

I love this game. It made me cry and I loved every minute of it. Graham is one of my favorite protagonists that I’ve ever played, and this game has something wonderful about it, aside from purple badgers and Whisper: Romance. 

Surprising, I know. 

In Chapter 3 of this game, King Graham decides that he’s ready to meet the love of his life, so he turns to his magic mirror, which shows him a tower that holds his future bride. Ecstatic about this, Graham travels to this tower and climbs in to meet the love of his life. 

He’s then greeted with these two. 

These lovely ladies are Vee and Neese, and they will be your potential love interests for the evening. 

Vee is the more serious of the two, taking a liking to puzzles and archery, but she also has a knack for puns. 

Neese is the sillier of the two, loving music and animals, while also having excitable outbursts. 

These two are likable in their own different ways, and both get the same amount of screen time throughout the episode, it all just depends on which one you prefer more and who you think Graham has more chemistry with. 

That being said, it doesn’t really matter who you pick. Nothing drastic changes in the story if you pick Neese over Vee or vise versa. 

The story happens the same way: Graham marries the one you pick, their son gets kidnapped by Manny, they grow older with their daughter, their son comes back, they go on vacation, and it turns out the one you didn’t marry is now Icebella and dies at the end of Chapter 4. 

Really, the only difference is the color palettes they wear and dialogue options to signify which one you chose. 

I mean, pick Vee or Neese, but they’ll both reveal that their real name is Valanice and your children look the same regardless. 

So, why is this a problem? Well, it’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially when you consider that Vee and Neese are actually based off of Valanice from the original games, hence why they’re both named after her. And they’re both incredibly likable, so that’s not the issue, either.

For me, when I learned that it really didn’t matter all that much who I picked, it made the choice feel less impactful. In Chapter 3, they’re clearly two different characters with their own personalities, and while they’re similar to their CH3 counterparts in future episodes, they mush together despite the small differences. 

Thinking back to the two times I’ve finished King’s Quest, I can’t even tell them apart. I know that I prefer Vee for Graham in Chapter 3, but other than that, it’s inconsequential, it really doesn’t matter as much as some of your other choices throughout the game. 

When it comes to TWDG, it matters and makes a big difference depending on if you pick Louis or Violet and HOW you pick them. 

You can romance and save them, or you can romance and betray them, or you can do everything right and devote yourself to them only to decide you don’t trust AJ in the end. Each route plays out differently and has obvious, drastic, and memorable consequences.

You romance Louis then save Violet? Well, now your boyfriend doesn’t have a tongue anymore leaving him completely traumatized for life. You now have to live with that for the rest of your life. 

You romance Violet but then decide not to trust AJ? You now have to watch your girlfriend get eaten alive by a herd of walkers because she stayed behind to save Tenn’s life. 

You play your cards right and romance, save, and keep Louis/Violet alive until the end? You get to be happy and in love with them at the cost of your friend’s tongue/eyes and Tenn’s life. 

Do you see what I mean?

Yes, if you marry Vee, then Neese dies. That’s impactful but not nearly to the degree that a choice like this is presented in TFS. 

In conclusion: Vee and Neese are likable but inconsequential. Louis and Violet are lovable, memorable, impactful, and they change the outcome of the story drastically. 

Continued in Part 4

[clairen45]

About that Dark Visions comic...

I think it’s fair to say that when Marvel’s Dark Visions miniseries about Vader as seen from a different perspective was announced, everybody was excited. We have been hammered on the head since ROTS that “there are heroes on both sides” , and with the expectations concerning the end of the saga as a massive redemption and hope plot, you were bound to be curious about what they would come up with. TBH, I was not expecting to see a softer side to Vader. It would be wrong to expect anything like that, and it would somehow diminish from what happens to him in the OT. He is supposed to be more machine than man. So, no, I definitely did not expect him, or wished him to be the kind of guy operating as the Death Star Secret Santa, knitting socks for the poor and needy, or rescuing people’s pets. It was not my understanding that he was much loved by his Imperial “colleagues” either. When we first see him in ANH; he is derided and dismissed both by a colleague (sorry, forgot the name but you all know whose faithless person I am thinking of) and Leia. Respected for sure, because of the fear he instills in people. So if awe is obviously the right word to use, in the most etymological sense of the term, that is to say “ a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder”, how many people found Vader awesome? Besides the audience. There had to be. And as a concept, it was pretty cool.

That being said, if you think of the title for the series, there were already many ways of interpreting it. Dark Visions... Visions of the power of the Dark Side? The way some people saw Vader? The way Vader thought people saw him? Did the stories happen for real or are they just what the title imply they are: visions. Images. Fantasies. Daydreams or nightmares? Possibly just the imagination of some deranged mind. There is something there that implies that we are not dealing with something too objective. But rather something unhinged and disturbing.

Now, I intend to keep this in mind about the issue that has been raising so much concern: “Tall, Dark, and Handsome”. I think malaise is really the word we should settle for. This issue is problematic in many ways.

For those who haven’t read it or just heard about it through social media and people complaining about it (possibly people on the other side of the spectrum fanning about it), this is how you can sum it up: this is the first person narrative of an unnamed nurse, working on the Death Star for Vader’s personal doctor. The nurse has developed an obsessive infatuation for Vader that has her snoop around him and collect bits and pieces about him (mostly gorish remains of his time at the medical bay) that she hides in her room. She keeps on daydreaming about him and the connection she thinks they have, until one day she musters up her courage and goes to talk to him in his private quarters in order to let him know of her love for him. He cuts her off in all the meanings of the word, both interrupting her speech of eternal devotion and undying love, and piercing her through with his saber. Last moment we see her is lying dead on the floor while he moves away and asking for the sanitation to rid him of the “garbage”.

Ok, that’s a tall order. Here are points that I find entirely problematic.

1.The Question of Agency:

The authors decided to give a voice, a narrative agency to a character that is presented as inconsequential to the story. She is an anonymous nurse, a dot, in  the bigger picture of the Empire. Much, let’s say, like our current ST heroes: Rey, Finn, and Rose, who started as “nobody”, even more so in the case of Finn and Rey who have literally been deprived of their identities. You could think it’s cool to thus give a voice to this nurse. Even more so when you consider that throughout the comic, she is presented as downtrodden, poor, pushed over, abused physically and verbally, dismissed, and despised. Her employer disrespects her constantly, calling her “fool”, “idiot”, or “stupid”. He shoves her around, and also diminishes her job, calling it “not a real job” or insinuating that she does not do her job correctly. Cases in point:

And what do we get in this story? A female nobody who starts asserting herself. Wow.

She tells her own story. First person narrative. She becomes an agent.

Look at the evolution of her daydream fantasies. She starts from damsel in distress who needs a man to protect her from her daily abuser

From nurse whose job means something, to a solid professional, and equal partner to her fantasy Lord:

And finally a powerful woman in her own rights, even overshadowing her partner, and who is able to defend herself.

Which then matures into her mustering up the courage to speak for herself, and tell her feelings to the (unwilling) object of her affection.

Except that.... well...she is just presented as a massive psycho. And, ok, it’s fair, we all know that there are female stalkers, and that her obsession for Vader is totally crazy because she doesn’t know anything about him, and she actually fell for someone who was treating her as poorly as the others. But there is the malaise there... The mix of female empowerment and batshit craziness. That’s what put a lot of people ill-at-ease. I wouldn’t even call that subversion, because, dudes, what are we subverting there exactly. It’s not like women are not daily abused and treated poorly at work and in their relationships on a daily basis... And are we supposed to take that as a cautionary tale about fangirl craziness? Because, there again, why did they need to have that girl get such a shitty treatment all through the comic. It is like the comic says that she deserved it. In the end it’s not just Vader calling her trash. It’s also the doctor calling her trash for most of the comic, and even have her literally waddle in a trash compactor. Cause this was supposed to be subtle?

Like, fine, if it were only Vader calling her garbage because the man is just dead inside, which, fairly, is represented in the comic. But it’s just not Vader, it is the way the character is presented through the eyes of the doctor AND even through the eyes of a cartoonist who keeps on representing her with the stupidest darned faces.

And there is no other viewpoint. Family, friends, other nurses or colleagues who could give us another idea about her. Or explain why she is like that. Nope. Basically, this woman is given a voice just so she can be cut off mid-sentence and made... fun of... I guess? Was that the author’s goal? Is it what we are supposed to feel? About this pathetic character and her pathetic life, dreams, goals, feelings, and eventual demise?

The “Subversion” of Female Romantic Tropes

Like ... LOL... How is that “subverted” anyways? But, ok, let’s go through them. It has all the classic elements of female literature.

The Cinderella story: nobody falls for high lord and expects to be swooped off her feet. Complete with ball scene, because, yes, why not? I give them a point, though, for the cool reflection on the ground which has her in her regular scrubs... BTW, Beauty and the Beast in the mix as well.

the nurse complex! Otherwise known as the Florence Nightingale effect. You know, woman is going to take care of the guy... They even made her a real nurse! Again, so subtle. Couldn’t make her any other profession and still be victim of this complex.

the reference to so-called “trashy” female lit, think bodice ripping, Harlequin, and their infamous covers. Even the title of the comic: “Tall, Dark, and Handsome”

The effing Phantom of the Opera!

and of course all the female discourse about love, because, yep, trashy: “kindred spirits” etc...

And again, how are we supposed to interpret it? Well, hang on, this woman, remember, is a bat-shit crazy deluded psycho, who has delusions about life and love. Oh, and the doctor says she is trash. And he throws all her stupid gory, disgusting trickets in the trash. Oh and also Vader says she is garbage. Well. Ok. So, I guess all of that which mattered to her, all her ideas, all that she loved, was just that. Trash. Garbage. Well, take that, you female reader!

But wait, it gets even better...

Star Wars is just trash!

Yep, because on closer look, most of the fantasies this woman has are very Star-Warsy. I am floored that they are actually trashing these:

Anakin and Padmé’s Naboo scenery, green, lush, terrace, nightgowns...

The scene when Anakin learns about Padmé’s death:

and of course, the one that you were not expecting... Reylo... “You are not alone”

Again, why is this problematic? In itself, it is fine and fair to be making fun of trashy female literature and campy romance novels, it is also fine to make fun of crazy stalkers, and it is also fine to be making fun of Star Wars. So why does it feel so icky in this comic somehow?

You can’t help but feel disgusted when you consider how poorly this woman is represented. There is not one aspect of her life that is not ridiculed. And again, this is about a woman who has NOTHING. They could have the girl fall in love with Vader and being killed by him because he is a cold-hearted machine. He killed his wife, the love of his life, so yea, of course he will feel not a pang of remorse or hesitation at killing this nobody who thinks she is in love with him. But they did not need to make fun of the very little she had in her life: her dreams. Her effing dreams. Plus the crazy stalker psycho. And the crazy face. And the fact that again we are talking about a woman, who had NOTHING. No family, no connection, no friends, no respect at work, not many possessions except her sad little Vader treasure chest.

And again, context. Here we are, reading a Star Wars comic where a lot of fanboys have been using the EXACT same terms to ridicule women in the fandom. Especially in the Reylo context. Trash. Garbage. Crazy bitches. Ridiculing theories about ... well, well, ain’t it a sweet surprise... Phantom of the Opera, or Beauty and the Beast parallels with Reylo. I’ll be damned. It feels crazy awkward, if you ask me. I mean, again, it’s all fair, but you don’t do that when you are in the midst of a toxic fandom war.

So why do I give zero F...  about it in the end?

If some antis in the fandom saw that as validation, well, let them have their moment of happiness. It won’t last. We can give them that.

One, I don’t think for one second that it means anything about what will happen in the ST as far as Reylo is concerned. Again, they are even making fun of Anidala in the comic, and dude, that thing happened. As my good friends from @lordsofthesithpodcast would tell you after their glorious SWCC panel : Romance, these ships belong in Star Wars.

Two, as I highlighted in the introduction, this belongs in the Dark Visions series. It is meant, in my own opinion, to be disturbing and unhinged. Not sugar coated. So maybe the whole point was shock value. Mission accomplished. It was poor taste again given the context and the awful treatment THEY (and not just Vader) give their female character, but yea, dark visions. Not Star Wars Adventures. You have to look at the target audience and everything.

Three, if it were not for the in-your-face references to female tropes, I actually took most of it as a critique of fandom in general. The problem is not that she is a fangirl. There are some crazy obsessive fangirls, mind you. The problem is that they are making fun of all things female on top of that. But, remove the romantic aspects. Couldn’t that apply to fanboys as well? I could totally picture a cadet, or some other young imperial, developing the same crazed obsession over Vader. And it was just as toxic. And, tbh, it could very well be. Collecting trinkets is not just a girl thing, and after seeing with my own eyes the tons of merch purchased by fanboys at the recent SWCC convention, or the obsessive way some guy could talk to you about Vader and the minute trivial details in his life, or that they are the only ones understanding the guy, well yea... it works...

I’ll even go a step further. I wondered for a sec if the whole thing was not even a critical meta about the franchise as a whole. Let me explain. Some fanboys have complained about the femininization of the franchise, that is “polluting” the shades of Pemberley, I mean Star Wars. Claiming that what is happening right now is utter garbage. Also also, I have another possible reading which has the nurse representing the current state of the fandom and how crazy obsessed they can be over a franchise that some currently view as tired and dead inside (especially since it has fallen into the fold of Disney). Representing the unhealthy relationship between the two. And guess what, it doesn’t end well for the fandom. Who will never get what they want.

I will finally quote this from Chuck Wendig who was fired from the project and came up with that particular comment on Twitter, and which actually seems to go with how I tried to read it myself:

Apropos of absolutely nothing, my issue three of SHADOW OF VADER was about a toxic fanboy (a morgue attendant on the Death Star) who became obsessed with Vader. (And it didn’t end well for him. Er, obviously.) I thought it was good and I’m sorry you won’t see it! Onward we go. 

I think they kept some of the original idea from Wendig, but it took a turn for the worse. It would be great if the authors cared to explain about their intent for this piece if any. I am not saying they should. I actually totally respect and support full freedom of speech and authorial choices. It is our choice, then, as a reader to read or not the material we don’t care about. I am just curious to know their opinion I guess, and I was not able to find any comment online. If anyone has a reference, I am interested...

In any event, I think everyone should read the comic for themselves if they are curious about it. Better to make your own opinion about it.

[aboriginalnewswire]

TheAngryindian

07.06.2001

‘As for a climactic conflict between a once-Christian West and an Islamic world that is growing in numbers and advancing inexorably into Europe for the third time in 14 centuries, on this one, Breivik may be right’.

-Patrick Buchanan

[FOTO: Public memorial one day after the Breivik attacks. Credit: Johannes Grødem]

As sensible people try to find psychic balance after the deplorable attacks in Norway against cultural progressivism in Europe, it has become painfully clear to all that Christian fascism, xenophobia and right-wing violence have again become an undeniable part of everyday life in the west. As much as it hurts, White society must finally accept the fact that what occurred in Norway did not arise out of a vacuum. Only a flat-out bigot would try to deny that right-wing Christian terrorism does not has a long and sordid history of violent opposition to ethnic and religious minorities, left-wing politics and progressive social change. Despite what conservative apologists might say, their religion has not taught them anything about tolerance and peace.

The racist doctrine of White ‘ethnic’ supremacy has been lovingly nurtured in popular culture, spiritually endorsed by Jesus’ theologians and accepted by many within the White and non-White mainstream as an equitable politic in the 21st century. When wealthy Caucasian dandies like fashion designer John Galliano and pop icon to the forlorn, Morrissey, start playing around with far-right racialism, it is painfully obvious that being a dedicated follower of fascism has become more than respectable. It’s back in vogue. We can continue to bury our heads in the sand like the Obama administration and pretend that White racism on a global scale does not exist, or, we can pragmatically move forward by bravely addressing the ugliness that is staring us in the face.

Like it or not, White racist attitudes have been a prominent part of the European social fabric since antiquity. And it is foolhardy to overlook the reality that xenophobia is still used as a political tool by the European and Euro-settler upper-classes. Visible examples of pro-White, anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic sentiment have been simmering in Western Europe ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Inspired by US President Ronald Reagan’s ceremonial state visit to honour the Nazi dead of Bitburg, Germany in 1985, Eastern European fascists simply brought their admiration for Adolf Hitler along with them to the now unified Bundesrepublik Deutschland. And guess what, no one cared.

In the UK, Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher deftly contributed to the rise of the right by making it perfectly understood that she felt White Britons were ‘tired of being swamped by immigrant cultures’ as Brick Lane slowly began to turn sepia. A conscious move on her part to make peripheral use of the National Front and the British Movement which began attacking Asians, Africans and Jews at will. And during that time, they were quietly protected by the veiled racialist sympathies of the British media and local law enforcement.

It sounds like a chapter pulled out of the Mussolini years but it isn’t. It is a matter of the international public record and it is rarely mentioned in connection with the role of fascism in modern Europe. The acceptable line of selective thinking argues ‘that was then and this is now’. Things have changed they tell us. But do not be fooled by what seems like progress. The rank unpleasantness the ‘Great Communicator’ and Baroness Thatcher gave birth to in the 1980’s is still with us. Only the superficial veneer is different. The current US President Barack Obama may be of African descent, but his portfolio as an American politician is no less Europocentric and no less racist than any of his predecessors. By and large, the most powerful Black man in history has done more than any other world leader on record to enforce the machiavellian processes of White Christian supremacy by any means necessary. And no one knows this better than self-aware African and Indigenous peoples.

Conservative White folks and other suckers suffering from acute Europhilia may be able to ignore the realities of this apathetic disdain, but people of colour and the poor are suffering loudly and in plain sight. It does not take more than a glance to see just how little his administration is concerned with how bad African people in America are doing under federal Black leadership. Although he is deep into his first term as Commander-in-Chief, Mr. Obama has yet to address institutional anti-African or anti-Indigenous racial discrimination, the widespread social crisis of racial profiling or the established inhumanity of overtly racist police departments or conservative judicial brutality against the poor. Now that it is achingly clear to the conscious that the incessantly repeated fear of an Obama-led era of Marxist-neo-Nazi-Wahabbist ‘reverse-discrimination’ against White Christian American world is patently ridiculous, what next? Will the racists and politically stupid now cease behaving like the goofy characters in ‘Springtime for Hitler’ or will they persist in their pursuit of a global Whites-only agenda? You know the answer to this question as well as I do.

So for brevity’s sake let us cut to the chase and admit to a few well-known social variables. Even if it happens to embarrass the Europeans who may be reading this commentary. The phenomenon of pro-European racism and exploitation of darker peoples is, and has been, a reality across the world since the classical Roman Empire. We can get into lengthy discussions about how and why later. But let us suffice it for now by saying that what we are dealing with in terms of the ‘new’ Christian fascism is in reality, a White man’s problem. Faulting the people of the Third and Fourth Worlds and social progressives for what has happened in Norway is like blaming Jews for the Odessa pogroms.

And truth be told this is exactly what is being done with the editorial reportage of Breivik’s bloody massacre of the innocent. The victims, mostly young socialist-leaning citizens and residents of Norway, are ultimately being blamed for what happened to them. And US media jester and devout Mormon Glenn Beck did just that when he equated the socialist victims of the Utøya attacks with the Hitler Youth cadres of the German Nazi era. And really, is anyone in the literate world really surprised by this, or the fact that this vicious Mormon bigot still has his job? The sad fact is that Glenn Beck and the other unrepentant Völkisch journalists like him in the US, UK and Israeli news media did exactly what they were expected and paid to do. In a conscious fit of blatant White supremacist damage control they all blamed the attacks on Islamic extremism, even after it became clear that the perpetrator was a Christian zealot hoping to spark an anti-Islamic ‘Holy War’ in the traditional lands of the Master Race and Palestine.

The ‘Truth’ Game

For once it would be refreshing if White society actually took responsibility for its own congenital insanities, but this isn’t likely to happen anytime soon. Expecting the dominating Europocentric racist world order to willingly come to grips with its own xenophobic hubris is foolish. Denial is central to the paradigm and White racism as an ideology has been spinning the same outrageous frequent liar programme across the globe for generations. The reality that people around the world are being starved, maimed and killed in the name of positive White control has always been soft-pecked and dismissed as inconsequential. Although racialist laws are considered morally reprehensible, Apartheid in South Africa was clearly defined as racial separation and it was still supported by all of the major democratic powers.

We can make believe that we are witnessing a sudden sea change in social and political attitudes, but this just isn’t credible. The writing, in large part due to the maddening and sickening violence of Anders Breivik, is on the proverbial wall and it is written in scarlet. You and I both know what is really going down in the world, to whom it is happening to and ultimately, who it is that benefits from the institution and maintenance of human-on-human brutality. And we are all cowards for knowing this and for allowing it to continue in a democracy. And Whites who work overtime to deny what has been going on in their name for centuries are the greatest cowards of all.

At some point one would hope that White people as a demographic would eventually come to their senses and stop playing games with the lives, minds and general welfare of others by facing up to the truth of their own belligerent behaviour. They could actually begin right now by admitting to themselves that the Christian terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik, is one of theirs. This hasn’t happened yet because the conservative lobby is doing everything possible to deny the obvious connections him and the rest of the White ‘race’. Some are even going so far as to deny that Breivik is actually ‘White’ since we now know that Breivik decided to undergo plastic surgery in the United States in order to look, ‘more Aryan’. Twisted identity politics maybe? Perhaps. But no matter how the conservative lobbies in the US, UK and Israeli may try to spin things, Anders Breivik in all his anti-Muslim, bathed in the blood of Jesus glory belongs to them lock, stock and bloody barrel.

Anyone who has watched the rise of the far-right in Europe and North America is not surprised by this omission of kinship. And this writer for one does not accept the juvenile arguments of the White Christian talking heads that are trying to convince us that no one could have seen this coming. You and I both know that this is indeed a lie. And further, we know that such protestations are more than just disingenuous. They are also telling in that any rush to vigorously defend Breivik’s Christian terrorism and racism at this moment only blatantly exposes the establishment’s unmistakable fondness for this sort of Europocentric extremism.

There is no excuse for this. How can there be after the ravages of Mussolini, Hitler and Franco? Pretending that they did not do their very best to burn their way across the subcontinent in pursuit of ‘purity’ is inherently dangerous and stupid, but who really remembers anymore? Who really cares? Not the educated, apathetic Judeo-Christian democratic populations of the exalted west. They have made a conscious choice to dismiss the lessons of any history they regard as a passing joke, including their own.

Considering the hard reality of the mass graves left over from the ethnocidal breakup of Yugoslavia, how can anyone in the progressive world sit quietly while it happens all over again? Remember that Yugoslavia was supposed to be the genocide everyone said was impossible.

Yet, it happened right in front of the United Nations and the world’s news cameras while the European and American far-right laughed at the world community. Why not? They were watching their fascist compatriots from World War Two, the Hrvatski Revolucionarni Pokret (or Ustaše) of Croatia come back to the world stage blessed and endorsed by the world’s superpowers as a legitimate government and military force. They also thought well of the Kosovar Albanian Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës or KLA, an extremely violent and xenophobic criminal faction that Yugoslavian government and intelligence authorities officially identified as a terrorist group on line with the Sicilian Mafia. NATO, along with several foreign observers and journalists in the country during the conflict, even went so far as to declare that the KLA were dead-serious about ‘cleaning-out’ Kosovo’s Serb population and expanding their criminal enterprises internationally.

Curiously, no one was interested in this news. And despite their murderous activity, the US state dept. and the other European powers who could have stopped them did not regard the KLA as terrorists while Slobodan Milosevic’s government certainly did. And when the KLA was finally removed from the official terrorism watchlist in 1998 by the US, UK and France, the capitalist powers began building business relationships with the major Kosovar caporegime as if nothing had happened. The victims are not remembered much less regarded any longer and the rest of the story is simply seen as the bygone history of an unpleasant time in the Balkans. Business as they say, is business.

As we can see, if the far-right were really considered a threat by the ruling classes they would have been stopped cold in the 1940’s. Instead, (and with considerable help from Pope Pius the XII and US intelligence) the Nazi’s simply moved to the Americas and continued on with their work. This goes a long way in explaining why even the organised, government sponsored madness that swept Europe under fascism has been largely forgotten aside from its unfortunate misuse as a political tool. We know this because when US Christian-Zionists began defining the European Holocaust as a gift sent to them from the Almighty, virtually no one objected. And as bizarre as this idea sounds, the fact remains that this outlandish belief is shared amongst a great number of ethnic Jews.

The Zionist Organization of America for instance not only defended but actively promoted the US evangelical shaman John Hagee when he began preaching that the genocides of the last century were necessary for Yahweh (יהוה) to bring back the state of Israel. Clearly, the Evangelical Christian desire for Armageddon, the Rapture and a holy ‘race war’ far outweigh any logical of moral considerations for social justice. The victims of White religious and capitalist violence are simply seen as acceptable exodus fodder, nothing more. They are either exploitable pawns or annoying hindrances standing in the way of God’s divine plan. Either way, they must and will be moved into positions of advantage for European uses. This is the vicious cycle Scotsman Adam Smith described with his ‘Vile Maxim of Mankind’, the willingness of the rich to take unfair advantage of the weak while actually believing that such an arrangement is ‘fair’. So much for the wonder that is capitalism.

Social xenophobia is bad enough, but denying that it isn’t a political and economic device when it is clearly evident in thought and deed is vulgar. This is why conservative media attempts to downplay what happened in Oslo and Utøya are patently absurd. They selectively ignore the political role of Judeo-Christian violence, slavery and ethnic repression in Europe and throughout its colonialist holdings during the Catholic-led Crusades immediately after the Reconquista in 1492. It also leaves out the horror-show that developed after those overseas colonies became independent and internally-colonialised the native populations they displaced or enslaved for their own benefit. This includes the direct involvement of German and US private industry, international banking and the Catholic Church who knowingly assisted in carrying out the ‘Final Solution’. Because of this moral negligence, belligerent fascism has returned with a vengeance. And seemingly, no one in authority is willing to stop it.

Especially not the first African leader of the whole free world. Like the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus Augustus or the native collaborators who proudly served with the South African Police during Apartheid, Mr. Obama has shown precious little mercy to other people of colour at home or abroad. Native Americans, Africans across the Diaspora and Spanish-speaking Indigenous immigrants are doing worse now than ever before. While at the same time, White conservatives gripe and grumble about Obama’s supposed war against European American and the White Christian heritage. This is of course absurd on a variety of levels, mostly because Mr. Obama has done more to uphold traditional standards of ‘Whiteness’ in the United States than any one else.

By the same token, the European conservatives that are complaining about him the most do not believe in the system nearly as strongly as he does. The ideal world these idiotic people claim to want is being given to them by the Obama administration on a platter. Arabs and Muslims are being militarily intimidated, Africans and being starved and racially profiled and immigrants, (who aren’t White) are being ejected from the US at record numbers. So what are they complaining about? Thanks to Mr. Obama and his financial backers, it is the people of non-White, non-Christian world that are paying for US capitalism’s rampant and unrestricted greed. Self-evidently, then, it stands to reason that the racist opposition to Barack Obama is just that, an issue of White racism, not of political differences.

The sordid hoaxes circulating about his non-connections to Weather Underground alumni Bill Ayers, the location and conditions surrounding his birth, his genealogy and his religious convictions are all about White fears of a Black and Brown planet. Their racism is so ingrained and so blinding that they cannot see how closely the Obama presidency actually mirrors their twisted vision of White American global supremacy. Politically, militarily and economically, the United States is without a doubt still the biggest bully on the block. This is the reality. And the Obama administration has done absolutely nothing but expand their capabilities while US citizens bear the brunt of the nation’s economic collapse. Without mercy, the Obama administration has pressed on with the so-called ‘War on Terror’ in search of its ‘enemies’, the very people, these ignorant arses say Barack Obama ‘really’ represents.

Their nonsensical theories also painstakingly leave out the fact that the Goldman Sachs Group and other wealthy capitalist contributors to his campaign were clearly making an investment for their own best interests, not for the working classes most of these White supremacist Neanderthals happen to hail from. Their gross ignorance of politics and history, even of their own country, makes it nearly impossible for them to comprehend what is really happening. Their fears that the election of Barack Obama is some sort of depraved Manchurian Candidate socialist coup d’état’ designed by Islamic mullahs to enslave America’s non-White population is based on absolute smoke. Just as is was during the Antebellum Era and Jim Crow, White folks, bigoted or not, live in morbid fear of an angry and massive backlash for all that has and continues to happen under European racialism and exploitation. But it is not the dark masses that encourage this derangement, it is the inner-human, the race-neutral consciousness

And because of this historical paranoia, Europeans have never felt totally secure anywhere, even within their own territorial domains. Anti-miscegenation laws, ‘Separate but Equal’ education restrictions and the application of indiscriminate White terrorist violence are symptoms of this fear. The mark of the racist is the stubborn unwillingness to acknowledge his or her own fears of the ‘Other’.

And if one is to take the late Algerian psychologist Franz Fanon seriously, Whites often react as explosively as they do precisely because they know how they would react if it was they who were faced with the same sort of oppressions non-Europeans are expected to endure quietly. White people for the most part walk the Earth as if they own it most anywhere and in relative safety. Nonetheless, those Whites that cannot or refuse accept even this are, as we have seen in Norway, prepared to go to extraordinary lengths in the name of White racial and cultural ‘security’. From false propaganda about the first African US president to violent acts directed against non-White people and left-wing political activists, White racism as a movement is willing to go that extra mile. It needs to be reckoned with as a danger to the greater society but until the powers that be decide to a ‘War on Racism’, expect the White Power movement to grow even more as the world’s economic health continues to deteriorate.

Xenophobia, Paranoia and Negligence

Almost from the moment Anders Breivik declared himself the hero of White Christian Europe, conservative opinion makers began doing ju-jutsu with the facts behind his ideological ideas and inspirations. Why is the far-right allowed to get away with this? Obviously because someone within the Europocentric power structure wills it and the psychologically downtrodden masses passively allow it to continue. It is clear that the more White control is challenged, the more White society is seen to overreact. This is indisputable. And it also gives us an important clue as to why Anders Breivik is being accorded such undue preferential treatment and extreme tolerance by the White, mainstream press. Very few conservative news agencies refer to him as a terrorist and most far-right media pundits now enthusiastically describe him as insane and ‘deeply disturbed’. We are told by his lawyer and other experts that he is not entirely responsible for his actions. At first this seems almost reasonable until you think for a moment about how Arab, Muslim and left-wing terrorist suspects and acts are handled by the establishment information paradigm as opposed to how White, far-right terrorist activity is dealt with.

Have Jose Padilla or Pfc. Bradley Manning received this sort of consideration or attention from the mainstream media? When was the last time you read a story or report discussing at length the mental stability of a known Muslim terrorist or noticed a veiled tolerance for their extremist religious convictions? And why is this not a legitimate question? Neo-Nazi, White supremacist and anti-immigrant factions operating in Europe, North America and Australia are by their own admission using violence and intimidation to get their politics across through a policy of fear. Yet, democratic governments in the west are only concerned about such groups when their actions cross the line into threatening their own legal authority or political existence.

Given the extensive record of far-right violence in the past as well as the present one would logically expect to find these entities at the very top of the list for anti-social threats, not at the very bottom. But this is the reality of the situation internationally, and American and European governments are entirely at fault for allowing and encouraging the existence of such organisations in the first place. Democratically-elected governments are supposed to defend their societies against threats to the progressive well-being of their constituents. But they cannot do that and covertly align themselves with the very same negative forces that almost destroyed the world at the same time and call themselves moral. We are forgetting what it means to be and how to remain human. And it is unambiguous that no one is a position of authority thinking in terms of raw political and economic power is willing to identify such movements as contrary to the social good.

The extant Europocentric paradigm operates on two distinct principles: first, it makes damn sure that the literate population only understands the world through a rhetorical mythology concerning the ‘Enlightened European’ and two, that the class-separated masses observe a closed-minded and emotional rejection against their own betterment. Under such jaundiced circumstances, White Christian violence and marginalisation against minorities, Muslims, socialists, atheists, homosexuals, anti-war protesters and non-submissive women can almost always be dismissed as justifiable. Particularly if you repeatedly and intentionally mischaracterize these issues as conservatives regularly do via their lapdogs in the mainstream corporate owned media.

Not a day goes by when the spokespersons for the powerful do not make light of the everyday concerns of real people. With the authority granted to them by the political and religious elite, the problems of historical and institutional White racism, Christian hegemony and capitalist domination are articulated as someone else’s problem. In this way the sole responsibility for doing anything about it is placed on the victims, not the perpetrators. The international discourse concerning social injustice is little more than a sad joke. Europeans are held accountable for nothing. And the United States, now led by a son of Africa, will belligerently defend the influence of White racism and politicised Judeophobia so long as it is beneficial to their imperialistic aims.

I don’t say this without credible evidence. When reports began circulating that the USA’s chief media jester Glenn Beck had the unmitigated gall to tell his dim-witted public that the people killed by Anders Breivik were left-wing ‘Hitler Youth’ wannabes, everyone just shrugged. By rights, Beck should have not only have lost his job but should have been swiftly drummed out of the industry for such callous insensitivity. But if you look closely you’ll notice some things you might not wish to see. For one, its hard not to notice that the usual Zionist jackals obsessed with ruining the lives and careers of honest journalists and bloggers have not gone after Glenn Beck. Even after his numerous verbal assaults against the ‘uniqueness’ of the Jewish holocaust under the Nazis, Beck and people like him have yet to be seriously hindered by their hypocritical positions concerning gentile bias towards the world’s Jews.

In fact, it seems as if their radical Jewish support actually increases after such utterances of stupidity. Following his nonsensical remarks about Reformist Judaism being a different kind of ‘radical Islam’, support for Beck among hard-line Zionists in the US and Israel grew substantially. And let’s not forget that the head of the very Zionist Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, actually had the audacity to apologise to Beck after the popular ‘Two Minutes’ Hate’ chap suggested that capitalist George Soros, a Jew, helped ‘send other Jews to the death camps’.

Where is the Zionist lobby when the western world could really use them? As I have said before, Beck’s shameless, pro-gentile Zionism is simply Christian theological chauvinism in drag. It isn’t serious. But now that Beck has yet again crossed the line into territory that has permanently ruined the careers and personal lives of better mortals, where are the usual Zionist loudmouths and why haven’t they called for his symbolic flogging? Where are the ‘responsible’ talking heads of the mainstream media, the American Exceptionalist crowd and the Zionists now that Beck has identified the young victims of a rabidly fascist, anti-Islamic Christian terrorist as a left-wing gaggle of the ‘Hitler Youth’?

In a logical world, Israel’s zealous-minded supporters in the west would have a great deal of explaining to do. But as we have seen in the editorial aftermath of the Norway tragedy, the Zionist lobby not only approved of the Oslo and Utøya attacks but cheered the racism, Islamophobia and the terrorist proudly taking responsibility for the attacks. As writer J.J. Goldberg has accurately noted, radical as well as moderate Jewish conservatives have gratefully given their sympathy and support to Breivik mostly because of what they perceive as his uncompromising stance in support of their claim to Occupied Palestine.

After this, let there no longer be any doubt that international Zionism is perfectly willing to stand by a frenzied, racist Christian terrorist seeking to reestablish the decidedly Judeophobic medieval Order of the Knights Templars:

‘The debate exploded aboveground on Saturday in an opinion essay at Ynet (in Hebrew only) by Ziv Lenchner, a left-leaning Tel Aviv artist and one of Ynet’s large, bipartisan stable of columnists. It’s called “Dancing the Hora on Norwegian Blood.” He argues that the comment sections on news websites are a fair barometer of public sentiment (a questionable premise) and that the overwhelming response is schadenfreude, pleasure at Norway’s pain’.

Historically speaking, the Templars were a professional Catholic military organisation that violently occupied and looted Jerusalem during the Crusades by killing Jews, Muslims and non-European Christians in the name of the Mother Church. Their religious biases against the people who dared crucify ‘The Christ’ at Golgotha is beyond credible refute. But modern Zionists simply gloss over this specific by only recognising the Islamophobic and Europocentric aspects of the story. They do this in favour of the ‘White makes Right’ philosophy, a racialist gospel that assumes for itself a dominating role within any given setting no matter what the circumstances are. Proof of this can easily be found in any popular English of Hebrew-language web portal that is covering Breivik’s gross act. Without a doubt, Israelis and Israel-supporters that have bothered to comment at all on the attacks or the debate surrounding the attacks have clearly focused their attention on whether or not the victims of Oslo and Utøya ‘deserve’ any respect at all.

Don’t believe me, read the disturbing comments left by conservatives on the web for yourself via the anti-Zionist crew over @ Jews Sans Frontiers and a translation provided by one of their compatriots from the original Hebrew by way of Ynet:

1. And in the mosque there won’t be some ceremony?

2. It’s fun and warms the heart to see them crying!!!!

3. Go to hell. Haters of Jews/Israelis, anti-semites busy with the problems of others all day—here you got some too. [signed Zionist]

4. I have no identification with an anti-Semitic country that leads to the hatred of Israel. Not happy, not sorry.

5. All in all, what they asked for is what they got!!!!

6. [in Norwegian.] Serves you right, you Nazis.

7. He is a hero, kill all leftists, expel all Muslims.

8. European efficiency.

9. It’s only a matter of time until an Israeli rightwinger will do something similar.

10. My heart with the families of all the victims. I wish you will never know more sorrow and I wish all the wounded will heal as quickly as possible and will put this tragedy behind them. Condolences and sympathy from Israel. [Norwegian and English]

11. I have hope too… that you have many more days of mourning and tears.

12. Feel a little bit of what we feel here all the time, maybe now you’ll understand what it is, terror.

13. The ugly Israeli continues to talkback. Shame on you, you bunch of people who rejoice in the suffering of others dancing on the blood. It’s a shame that you even hold Israeli IDs.

As you can see, Norway is viewed by Zionist hard-liners as too pro-Palestinian for its own good. Once it became clear via his numerous online screeds that Anders Breivik as anti-Arab spree killer was acting on his anti-Islamic theological and political beliefs to combat Islam in Europe, he immediately gained their loyalty as a fellow fighter engaged in their struggle. Don’t be surprised by this. Especially since the discourse has evolved, if you will, into a Hasbara-driven controversy suggesting that any objective criticism of the pro-Breivik position amongst Zionists and Israel’s goyim supporters is actually veiled anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish prejudice in disguise.

The Dynamics of Denial

‘It is out of the question for the leader of the Western world to lay a wreath in a war cemetery where Nazi storm troopers are buried. … The stated purpose, reconciliation, is being drowned in a rising flood of long-buried passions from the death camp survivors, who feel as betrayed and abandoned as they did 40 years ago.’

– Washington Post, 23 April 1985

If you are confused at this juncture be not afraid, because that is exactly the point of all of this circular semantic diarrhoea. Remember if you will for a moment how all this began. The mainstream media in the west immediately began flooding the international news cycle with false and sensationalist headlines stating as fact that al Qaeda had finally penetrated Europe by attacking two targets in Norway. Although they had absolutely no evidence for this, their contemptible reportage on the story forced the public opinion broadly against Muslims whom they mistakenly held responsible for the double attacks.

The propaganda politruks working within mainstream media did their damndest to create the falsehood that militant Islam was making a serious bid to make itself known in Europe. Even the technical journal Wired published a story that assumed only Muslims could have been behind the attacks showing, rather embarrassingly, that the supposedly ‘liberal’ sectors of US society are not all that tolerant of religious differences. Apparently even ‘geeks’ can share the very same knee-jerk prejudices of the rabidly extreme anti-Muslim far-right.

What about the other overlooked fact that the establishment media’s knee-jerk ‘terrorist’ label was abandoned the split-second Anders Breivik was identified as the culprit? How does his act of religious indiscriminate violence differ qualitatively from other acts of theological xenophobia? Does Breivik’s ideological position in full support of White Power globally exclude him from being considered a terrorist? It is a reasonable question since independent investigators and journalists not swamped by corporate censorship have been finding connections between Breivik and known White supremacist organisations operating in Europe. Including ties to the Christian fundamentalist movement gaining social and political ground in the United States.

This isn’t a big secret. The US based New York Times, to its credit, did admit that Anders Breivik was extremely enthusiastic about the rise of the racist right-wing in the United States. But they noticeably stopped short of holding traditional American fascism responsible for its role for what happened in Oslo and Utøya. Not surprisingly, popular media attention in the US has been critically focused upon the entertainment aspects of this story instead of the serious speculation one would expect considering the importance of the issues at hand.

Earnest, investigative journalism concerning the conspicuous ideological and religious use of US, UK and Israeli cultural Islamophobia and political conservatism is difficult to find in the mainstream. As expected, the Christians have given themselves a pass. The religio-political movement founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, when one really thinks about it, is perhaps ultimately responsible for creating the sort of poisonous social climate that has made unconscionable far-right bastards like Anders Breivik possible. But do not expect to read anything about this is the western press which is still ideologically blaming Muslims in Europe for Breivik’s murderous rampage.

The artful dodging of responsibility for US Euro-settler Christian fascism’s international influence says a great deal about the level of cowardice shown by conservatives and White racists when faced with the morose reality of their twisted and hypocritical rhetoric. The American racists and Islamophobics cited by Anders Breivik in his detailed writings, (still available online for the time being) represent a hodgepodge of right-wing ideologues. But is it clear from reading his work that his main source of inspiration is centrally rooted in the United States and the US-led anti-Palestinian Zionist movement.

His list of popular anti-Muslim media propagandists includes such luminaries as Pamela Geller, (creator of the wildly ridiculous ‘birther’ myth suggesting that Barack Obama is Malcolm X’s illegitimate son) Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer and hard-line Israelis like Avigdor Lieberman and Caroline Glick. Each of these names figure prominently in his writings as definitive reference points for articulating his personal insecurities about non-White inclusiveness in European social life. A concern duly noted by US pundit and legendary pro-Europocentric bigot Pat Buchanan who succinctly put it this way, ‘Breivik may be right’ when he opined that the Norwegian Christian Berserker’s idea of a major military conflict between the Christian European world and Islam may actually be the next logical step forward for White survival.

Scared yet? If not you should be. While the fascist 1930’s are without question furiously nipping at our heels, the bright minds of the political, legal and journalistic establishment say their is nothing for us to worry about. Rest assured they tell us, the culture war against Muslims in Europe and North America is still on the table despite its idiocy. Especially if professional Islamophobic politicians like Irish Republican Army supporter Rep. Peter King and the very Catholic Rudolph Giuliani have anything to say about it. And if you can see past the glaring hypocrisy you’ll notice that their stated political beliefs and religious convictions are as weak as their antiquated, narrow-minded arguments. Please believe, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, democratic, religious or sane about conservative politics in the west.

Still not convinced that there is more to this tragedy than the conservatives are making things out to be? If that is the case, it would do well for the reader to consider the base ideas behind Breivik’s obsession with ‘Whiteness’ and his affection for Christian cultural and racial ‘purity’. Ideas often do have an ideological genealogy and unfortunately, many of the visible road signs along Breivik’s explosive path lead directly to the doorstep of the American and United Kingdom’s organised far-right. Although Breivik’s connections to the Scandinavian branch of the English Defence League and infamous Irish loyalist and Neo-Nazi supporter Jonathan ‘Mad Dog’ Adair (former brigadier of the notorious West Belfast UDA) have been positively confirmed, his emphatic allegiance to America’s brand of White supremacist thinking is being selectively ignored.

The US ideological component is interestingly rarely mentioned in relation to Brevik’s politics and you should be asking yourself why. Very few foreign observers would try to refute that the United States is currently the world leader in popular racism although most mainstream US citizens and residents will vociferously argue the reverse. No matter, American conservatives regularly and treacherously perpetuate the false myth of an organised left-wing/Islamic extremist alliance against the entire White world population all day long. The craziness is now so embedded that socially conservative politicians, pundits, clerics and politicians, both White and non-White, are finding it necessary to ride the wave of populist racism if they intend to stay socially relevant.

Europocentrism Revisited

This is a clear throwback to the melodramatic and quasi-religious whinings of traditional Euro-American White Power terrorist organisations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the ‘respectable’ Bible-thumping bigots who populate the membership of John Birch Society. And Anders Breivik is known to have travelled, (and sought surgical services) to the United States where he hoped to make personal contact with professional Islamophobes such as the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ maven Pamela Geller, (who is doing everything possible to refute any link between them) American White supremacist Christian militia extremist groups like the Army of God and the belligerent members of the pro-corporatist Tea Party. If you have the stomach and the time for it, try reading some of Breivik’s published Christian Übermensch manifesto, his 1,500-page statement regarding his admiration for the Americans and the conservative Christian movement. In his own words he makes it plain that the US is his main inspiration and that he was certain American fascists would approve of his ideas:

‘A majority of Europeans love the U.S….just like a majority of Europeans support Israel’s fight against Jihad. But considering the fact that 80-90% of the media + politicians ‘officially’ support Cultural Communist views it’s only natural that the coverage is extremely biased’.

Now, where have we heard this line before? Taking his cues from the American fascist nut-cases he likes so much, Breivik parrots the groundless fib that liberal bias in the mainstream media distorts the ‘truth’ of White Christian superiority and the threat of Islamic infiltration. A charge that makes little sense considering that the US media industry is a field hopelessly overloaded with stiff, conservative-minded simpletons who do little but intentionally report misleading and contradictory information to serve the extant corporate interest. This is incontestable. Simply look at the ownership of the major news providers and see for yourself who actually ‘owns’ the media. Under such obviously parochial conditions the concept of ‘truth’, as one UK official candidly put it, ‘can be a dubious proposition’.

How US conservatives can spin the Norway incident into a ‘warning’ about the evils of Islam in the White world only makes sense when you consider the actions of American extremists at home. Anders Breivik may very well have gained some of his inspiration from the rogues gallery of American Christian terrorists that have made the news headlines in recent years:

 Eric Robert Rudolph – The pro-Christian anti-abortion extremist responsible for numerous bomb attacks in the United States between 1996 and 1998 that killed two and injured at least 150 other people. He hoped that attacking the Olympic Centennial Park in Atlanta would lead to the end of the radical Marxist and homosexual ‘agenda’ in the US.

 Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier – Hard-line Christian Identity followers and militia movement members who planned and executed the bomb 1995 attack against the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City.

 Byron Williams – Inspired by the conspiracy theories endorsed by right-wing conservatives such as Glenn Beck, this unemployed carpenter donned body protection, loaded his mother’s vehicle with automatic weapons (loaded with armor-piercing rounds) and headed off with the expressed intent of killing of progressives in liberal San Francisco. After he survived an extended fire-fight with the California Highway Patrol who stopped his car for erratic driving, Williams readily admitted that he wanted to start a revolution by ‘Killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU’.

 George Sodini – A devout Christian upset with the Obama election and his belief that: ‘Black dudes have thier choice of best white hoez….’ decided to take three loaded weapons into a Pennsylvania dance class and shoot wildly after he shut off the lights. He killed three women and severely wounded nine other people before killing himself.

 James W. Von Brunn – A lifelong White supremacist and cold-blooded Judeophobe, Von Brunn led a lone armed assault against the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC in 2009 that killed an African-American security guard. Later, when US President Barack Obama spoke of the need to ‘remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms’, he failed to mention that Von Brunn’s racism was not limited to Jews.

This is far from a complete list. I could have added minor White Power superstars like Christian terrorist Scott Roeder who murdered the well-respected Dr. George Tiller while he was in church, or the seditious ‘Hutaree Group’, a ‘Christian Warrior’ militia outfit accused of conspiring to commit acts of violence against their local law enforcement department. And of course there are the ‘patriotic’ anti-immigrant ‘Nativist’ goons of the Minuteman Project, Inc., the self-ordaining racial separatists of the Phineas Priesthood and the Council of Conservative Citizens who would prefer it if the planet was only populated by White Christian heterosexuals and women like Ann Coulter. I also left out the murders of radio chat-show host Alan Berg by the White Power terrorist group, The Order and of African immigrantMulugeta Seraw by neo-Nazi ‘boneheads’ in Portland, Oregon. I even could go further by citing how the Ruby Ridge incident did much to help fertilize the notion that White racists in American deserve sympathy too and other underreported stories detailing the religious far-right’s reach in the United States. but in spite of all this documented violence you will be hard pressed to find major news services, in English, willing to do objective, investigative reporting on these issues.

Earlier this month I presented an editorial entitled, ‘Why the Time to Dismantle Edward Bernay’s Corporatist Propaganda Paradigm is Now… ’ laying forth a reasoned case for why the organised left should get off its befuddled arse and start aggressively challenging the legal and moral credibility of Rupert Murdoch and his fascist-friendly international media empire. Like any other sober political analyst paying attention to the rise of Europocentric paranoia and the gross inequalities of the never ending class-struggle, I fully expected Murdoch’s News Corp and the UK Tories to deny everything and take responsibility for absolutely nothing.

And true to form they did just that and were allowed to feign total ignorance to the inner workings of their own media organisation. Moreover, they provided a functional example for their American executives to follow as they actively downplay the severity of the wiretapping of 911 victim families phone calls in the US with mobile devices provided to them by News Corp employees.

Mainstream politicians, journalists and academics are consciously turning a blind eye to the rise of pro-White supremacist/Christian fascism in their nations while at the very same time they capitalise upon the social bad-jacketing of non-European ethnic and cultural groups. Occasionally this is intelligently discussed in fair terms, but the fact remains that the victims of discrimination in Europe and the Americas are the same ethnic and cultural groups that have been demonised in European and Euro-settler social tradition, religion and law for centuries.

This dynamic however is rarely discussed at length because to do so would be a self-convicting acknowledgement that xenophobia in the White world is an undeniable fact of life. Further, such an admission would empirically unshroud the reality that White racial perspectives and prejudices undoubtedly remain to be the primary reason why the world is in the shape it is.

The popular post-modernist argument that ‘all oppression is the same everywhere and in every circumstance’ is a Europocentric deception. It suggests a sociopolitical, educational and economic equality amongst all people that does not exist. It flatly denies the harsh realities of White Power, its hatreds, its inconsistencies and its long and sordid history of violence against those they declare to be feeble and powerless. It is also a blatant insult to the basic humanity of the victims who have generally been convinced that it is proper and noble to acquiesce quietly to their own disenfranchisement. This of course is not by accident. It is by calculated design. White society is not ignorant of the routine stresses that demoralise the hearts and minds of the non-European world. It simply masquerades institutional marginalisation and exploitation as the normative division between the better and the worse amongst human society.

And the problem is everywhere and anywhere you may care to look. Worldwide, the struggle between human dignity and the stubborn persistence of White racist advocacy, religious violence and economic robbery continues unabated by modern liberalism or common sense. Those of us who realise that our political, social and psychological under-development is the direct result of our struggle against racialism understand that have a great deal to do in terms of standing firm during these difficult times. We are not swayed by the pretty talk of the establishment or Barack Obama’s skin colour.

We live with the gross indignity of White racism and its by-products every day of our lives. What’s worse, every White person in the Americas is fully aware of this reality, but only a precious few are prepared to do more than simply wax philosophical about it.

There is a reason for this and it is important that we understand the issue fully for what it is. Peer pressure is a very powerful thing. And when decent White folks stand up to White racism they often place themselves at considerable social and physical risk. White people who are not shy about their anti-racism can experience rejection, insult and sometimes violent retaliations from family, lifelong friends and other Whites who object to their ‘cultural’ and/or racial dissent. This is sometimes so damaging emotionally that people who do indeed believe ethnic equality may decide to either stay ‘in the closet’ about their feelings or, they may even pretend to ‘go along’ with the traditional attitudes as a means of social survival. Even for ‘good’ White people, the risk of being socially marginalised as a ‘Nigger Lover’ is simply too much to deal with when it is easier to simply acquiesce to the mainstream and agree that White’s have an inherent God-given ‘right to rule’.

And whether White people in the US, UK or Israel want to accept it or not, they are all to an individual actually profiting from non-White social and political disenfranchisement and genocide. Forget about the hypocritical statements made by US Justice Robert Jackson as he sat in judgment of German Nazis while his own country was still eliminating Native Americans to steal their lands and brutalising African people for profit and sport. The fact is, White supremacist attitudes, Europocentric power and unearned White privilege are the end results of racist imposition and belligerence, not the assumed frailties of the chosen victims. White power is a lot like the Christian concept of the Devil in that it claims it does not exist, yet it informs everything that occurs in national, international and inter-cultural relations. And if you dare tell the truth, the way Brazil’s former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva did when he correctly pointed out that the international financial crisis is entirely the fault of the White people who really control what happens in the world, expect to be painted as a reverse-racist who despises ‘civilisation’ itself:

‘This crisis was caused by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing. I do not know any black or indigenous bankers so I can only say [it is wrong] that this part of mankind which is victimized more than any other should pay for the crisis.’

– Lula da Silva

European conservatives took great offense to this but what could they really say? He was spot-on with his analysis and moreover, he was using the apologetics of White supremacy to effectively support his statement. The concept of White racial and cultural superiority isn’t his idea, its the most elemental argument presented by the ever-dominating White male power structure. It is also the primary fundamental hypocrisy of White racist philosophy. If the White man is the only cultural and ‘racial’ entity on Earth that has ever produced anything of consequence, this means that White society must also accept its central role in all that is wrong with the world they assert they alone have created.

Rational Alternatives to Manifest Destiny

The rise of the far-right is not simply a populist response to non-White immigration and modern religious and ethnic tolerance in the west. It is an engineered sociopolitical phenomenon created, financed and directed by the economic and social upper-classes of continental Europe and their corporate Euro-settler offshoots in the Americas and Australasia. And while ‘Old Europe’, (as former US Vice-President Richard Cheney rudely put it) is still a very important player internationally, the real bulk of actionable world power rests squarely within the intellectual domain of the United States which has occupied this exclusive position since the end of World War Two. Think beyond Bretton Woods, which is still important, and ask yourself why the literate world chooses to believe that the US is a bastion of democracy and human rights.

Are the educated around the world not cognizant of what is happening in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan? Of course we are. It is virtually impossible to avoid the ‘designated information’ streamed to the masses about the glorious mission to bring ‘freedom and democracy’ to the Arab world. Are we ignorant of the overt oppression and covert repression of Indigenous peoples, the African population, Spanish-speaking immigrants, political dissenters and religious minorities in the Americas? No, we are not ignorant of these human rights abuses but we are willing to turn a blind eye because the perpetrators are White. As long as the victims are not White Christians or Ashkenazi claimants to the Holy Lands, all forms of injustice to the human dignity of those deemed unworthy of being regarded as ‘legitimate Europeans’ will be justified in deed, faith and the written word as sanctioned by the great Aryan deity of Providence.

This sad state of affairs is of course helpful to Judeo-Christian industrialists and bankers, but it is bad business for those whom they regularly rob, rape and pillage without mercy in the name of profit and Europocentric hegemony. This is why understanding the White nationalist duo-doctrine of American Exceptionalism and Christian fundamentalism is vital if one is to make any sense out of what has happened in Norway. While the United States did not invent White racist religiously-sanctioned philosophy or violence, it certainly has perfected its practise and political apologia like no other society in history. And the United States is unique amongst the Euro-settler nations in that its institutional practise of ethnic hierarchy, marginalisation and racial terrorism are regarded as normal, if not benevolent, for those who are subjected to it.

And understand this too if nothing else, Europe’s irrational intellectual belief in its own supremacy and cultural superlative will serve to be the factors that will bring about its eventual downfall. Like Apartheid is South Africa, White Power simply cannot last. Just do the math. Whether the situation is in Aotearoa (New Zealand) or Occupied Palestine, Europeans are not a racial majority anywhere outside of Europe, (except for maybe Argentina). Ignore the usual multicultural arguments for a moment and just deal with basic numbers. Racism in any form is a foolish and black-hearted practise, but White racism in particular is completely daft and totally unrealistic. If White folks were smart, they would be eagerly finding ways to work along with non-European folks rather than seeking ways to exploit them.

And despite the wacky suspicions of the insecure, people of colour, even after centuries of mistreatment and neglect, still do not hate White people simply because they are ‘White’. We hate the oppression and we hate the arrogance. If this were not the case, non-White feuds against Europeans would be a very regular occurrence all around the world. It simply isn’t happening. Outside of a few very well publicised incidents, non-Whites have been pretty forgiving. And although ‘normal’ people are finding ways to adjust to the new circumstances, the current trend we are witnessing of compulsive White racialism is clearly reactionary. It is a symptom of the White world’s psychological failure to come to grips with a decaying system of monolithic Europocentric authoritarian domination.

Not that the major press agencies, celebrity psychologists or mainstream politicians report on it much, but conservative folks are frankly just a pitiful rabble of sad, insecure little sods afraid of the world their prejudices made out of whole cloth. And on that basis alone they should not be feared. Just like the American, (and now Canadian and Australian) Ku Klux Klan, the violence exhibited by White conservatives only betrays them. It just proves just how afraid they really are of things that logically challenge their closed-minded perspective of the world.

Their childish fear of non-Whites, Catholics, homosexuals, Jews and anyone else who crosses them is unfortunate. Its also a clear and easily readable indicator of just how deep set and how self-immolating such hatred is for those that hold on to such ideas. Bigots of any colour are mentally ill, and Whites who practise race-ism are consciously vile. There is a very big difference between the two, disliking someone because of their ethnicity is bias, having the social power to actualise that bias is something else entirely.

Ignore the conscious liars and the loony songbirds of the conservative and neo-Confederate media lobby, Anders Behring Breivik, the devout Christian fascist terrorist who has openly admitted to planning and executing the recent attacks against organised leftists in Norway is one of theirs. They own this tragedy and we should not allow them any leeway to disassociate their politics or their intentional falsehoods from what has happened. And most importantly, we must not let Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp be exempted from blame for pressing the bigotry button the moment they found out that Oslo was burning in the name of the risen Christ.

Despite the obvious cognitive and social setbacks of racialist thinking, the important business of Europocentric, pro-Christian, ultra-conservative and neo-Confederate propaganda will roll along. Even in the face of extreme hypocrisy, White supremacist attitudes and terrorism can always be assured of a warm and welcoming reception from the people who bring us the news and from those who claim to serve us politically. This is a shame and people of goodwill must do more than just politely ignore such issues.

Racism is everyone’s problem. And the problem of White nationalism and racist violence will not go away unless we all, all of us, work earnesty to expose and ridicule these attitudes and the movements that fuel them. Violence is the refuge of the weak-minded, so let’s educate them, and ourselves, by taking the fight to another level. When we expose the roots of Eurpocentric ethnic bias we do more than just fight racism, we get to the heart of the unfair exploitation that threatens us all. Even the bigots.

After Vlakplaas, I think we all deserve better than this.

– TheAngryindian

[trickstercaptain-archive]

       okay so let’s write a novel talk about actual trainwreck of a character Jack Sparrow in this movie. so there are spoilers under this so don’t read if YOU DON’T WANNA BE SPOILED because I’ve been waiting months to write this and now I finally can:

      the scene that annoyed me the MOST was when Barbossa and Jack release the Pearl back into her true form, and this was a theme throughout the movie. long story short, they get it out of the bottle and they throw the model-size Black Pearl into the ocean and she sinks briefly before rising up into her full majesty and JACK DIDN’T EVEN LOOK REMOTELY BOTHERED WHEN SHE SANK. and this was my problem -- particularly in the second half of the film -- that when it was required of Jack to show emotion, he didn’t. he was actually fine during the first half and showed some decent emotional range, but something really weird happened around the half-way point and honestly, when the Pearl briefly sunk, Hector looked more bereft than Jack did, which makes absolutely no sense. both of them should have been saddened, but Jack has literally fucking died for that ship twice, so he should have been heartbroken -- particularly when it was established early in the movie that Jack was keeping the Pearl on his person, under his coat, above his heart. idk whether it was the editing or the take they eventually used in post-production, but it was seriously odd. and likewise, Jack gives two reactions to Hector’s death, but imo there’s not nearly enough emotion in them for the audience to believe that these two individuals have known each other for half of their lives. it seemed very half-assed, which is basically this entire movie in summary, but something honestly really bothered me about Jack’s characterisation in the second half in particular and I still can’t quite put my finger on it, but he seemed very disinterested in what was going on. the first half was lazy writing, but I kind of want to say that the second half was lazy writing and lazy acting.

        also, let’s talk about the fact that Jack was so stupid he didn’t even realise that you’d need to put the Pearl back into the water for her to grow in size. Hector seriously showed most of the smarts out of the two of them in this movie. the fact that Jack at one point admits he’s a bed wetter, says ‘spaghetti wolves’ when he’s woken up from a drunken stupor, and asks for 200-odd barrels of rum from Barbossa along with the chance to eat Jack the Monkey tells you the kind of infantile stupid Jack was being in this movie.

      now this is the thing with Jack in DMTNT -- I could ultimately see what they were trying to do, and it kind of worked in the first half, but it was so poorly executed because ultimately they created a contradiction for themselves. the directors and Johnny have stated on multiple occasions that Jack is now apparently a character without arc or development, and yet they put him into a narrative where he is supposed to change in some way between the start and end point. I said this before when I remarked last week that it was ironic he had an ‘arc’ in this movie considering those comments: he’s meant to get somewhere, regain his rep, return to a ( mostly ) sober state -- but they kept stagnating him in the narrative because he is this weird arc-less character at this point. it just didn’t make any fucking sense. if you’re going to put a static character into a narrative ( as Jack apparently is nowadays ), then you don’t put him in it at a relative low point, changed from the last time we saw him as an audience and apt to change/develop along the course of the narrative as he ‘redeems’ himself. you’re just writing yourself into a brick wall. he should have been FINE the moment the Black Pearl was restored, but they kept returning him to this earlier drunken, idiotic state without reason even after that point and it just made the whole thing really sloppy. you want to paint Jack at his lowest point? well by doing so, you’re giving the audience a stake in seeing Jack redeem himself and return to the character we know and love -- and yet there was no obvious sign that had happened, no natural development that saw him slowly but steadily getting his groove back and taking control of his own narrative until the very end, when suddenly he was absolutely fine even though he’d been fighting plot convenient alcoholism for the entire movie. 

      but, let’s be honest~

      he was essentially inconsequential to this plot, save from the beginning when he acts as the catalyst for Salazar’s escape. he wasn’t very active whatsoever, nor was he really ever in control, save for when he takes Henry and Carina hostage, and even then the scene where Jack threatens Carina, Jack doesn’t appear very threatening -- mostly incompetent, and this is a theme. normally, Jack is always in control of his own actions, and he hates it when he’s not -- it’s a hallmark quality of his character because he values his personal freedom above all else. here he kinda gets passed around from character to character -- more as a burden, than anything, and boy was he a burden on this narrative. in the second half in particular, he was just sort of there, making the odd joke every now and again, with Carina as the biggest drive in this narrative. she continually pushed the plot forward, more so than Henry, but another problem this movie suffered from was pacing. at no point did the editing seem to take a breather or focus on the characters -- either the characters were making jokes, or they were making clunky expositional statements that was more of a ‘say what you see’ and ‘repeatedly say what we have to do to resolve the plot’ kind of thing rather than the ‘show not tell’ rule. 

      Henry and Carina could have been developed more, as could have Carina and Barbossa -- I think some of Jack’s strongest scenes were actually with Carina, surprisingly enough, because at least they seemed to have a bit of banter back and forth, and the Jack and Henry stuff was kinda decent. but the characters didn’t feel like characters -- not the ones I know and love anyway. I think Hector was the best character out of the originals ( Geoffrey did great with what he had to work with ), and Salazar was pretty good on the whole, but Javier could have been given more to work with -- and with Jack acting like a five year old whenever the two got close to each other, it didn’t really work.

      stuff that did work though in regards to Jack imo: his entrance was pretty good and true to form across the franchise, and the bank robbery scene was fun and felt like potc ( I especially liked the look Gibbs stole at Jack when they were approaching the bridge. AND THERE WAS ANOTHER MOMENT WHEN GIBBS SAVED JACK’S LIFE THAT I LIKED A LOT ). Jack asking his crew for tribute when he’d lost the money was utterly stupid ( that’s not how pirate ships work and honestly several times across this movie I think Jack deserved to be left behind/abandoned because he was acting like a complete fucking needy idiot ), but I think the most emotion he showed in the movie was in that scene when his crew left him -- it fucking KILLED me tbh because HE LOOKS AT GIBBS LAST AND GIBBS JUST GIVES HIM THIS MOST SYMPATHETIC LOOK AND MY HEART STILL HURTS. most of the stuff on Saint Martin for Jack was pretty decent because he felt like Jack -- the problems came once he got out to sea and every so often he’d just regress into a whiny infant for no reason at all. the sleazy stuff kinda annoyed me -- I could have done without the Carina scene on the boat or his continued insistence on ‘horologist,’ and his description of Elizabeth was Unnecessary. but mainly he was just annoying.

      the problem is, he showed absolutely no smarts in this movie, save for the flashback. he had to constantly be saved by others, lucked his way out of most situations -- and the shark scene was Okay because he showed that he could and was willing to save Henry multiple times, but he just wasn’t very proactive at all in this narrative. he was just there, waiting for stuff to happen to him. he saved Carina once which was good, and there were moments when it looked like he was playing the mentor figure to both Henry and Carina, particularly when he was the one to keep bringing up their crushes on each other, but it didn’t really go anywhere. the script had robbed him of all of his wit and charm, which is what made him likeable in the first three movies.

      as for the flashback scene -- I didn’t hate it, even though I wanted to. I could have done without the whole part where the crew gave Jack famous pieces of his costume because a) that’s dumb and TPOF handles his costume better and b) it contradicts everything Johnny has said about picking up pieces of his costume on his adventures over the years. the CGI was pretty good, and I loved them showing Jack as this intelligent and dangerous pirate who traps Salazar without remorse because he needed to put an end to his reign of terror over the seas. I also could have done without it being the Wicked Wench but eh I’m just over it at this point. the point at which it came in the story was pretty random though -- like I understand it was Salazar’s monologue but it just seemed inserted for the sake of ‘ah yes time to show off our CGI technology.’ they could have used it to better showcase how far Jack had fallen since then tbh.

       oh and one last shoutout - ‘Captain Jack Sparrow is dead. buried in an unmarked grave on Saint Martin’ I LOVE. and the scene when Jack walks into the pub and his wanted poster has been changed so his bounty is only £1 as opposed to £100. the visual gag of that worked really well. as did the whole guillotine sequence. that was one of the strongest scenes in the movie tbh. 'you’re to be executed’ ‘executed?!?!! well I’m never coming back here again’ he was drunk af but the pettiness worked in that scene lmfaoo

       OH AND NOT PUTTING JACK IN A SCENE WITH WILL AND ELIZABETH IS STUPID AF

[deltavsotome]

The Amazing Shinsengumi: Heroes in Love: Episode 3: You Know You’re Not a Literal Wolf, Right? Also That’s Fucking Gross [Ep.1]  [Ep.2]

Following the destruction of roughly half of Japan by Heisuke’s ridiculous dojo showoff hour, Cash resumes her “normal” life at the base of the shinsengumi--cooking, cleaning, doing laundy, trying to stop Heisuke from doing the same, staring into the middle distance. Things seem to be unusually okay considering the setting, but the idyllic illusion is about to be shattered not only by flames of indeterminate and inconsequential origin, but the flames of twisted passion...

The shinsengumi has been called away from their “recreation rooms” by their sworn enemy, fire. Cash is worried. She stands in the middle of the courtyard, presumably staring at nothing, the scent of bakumatsu pine sol wafting through the air from her recent adventures in sanitation.

She has decided to stay home (as if she would have had any other option) since she likely would have just slowed the group down. I don’t know. She has demonstrated a large amount of skill when it comes to dousing people with water, but I suppose that’s not needed for this particular breed of fire.

This fire is apparently the biggest thing that has happened since she started staying with our beloved samurai cops. Nothing’s going on in this country! Anti-bakufu sentiment? What’s that? Sono joi? Eh? Ronin plotting shit? Naaaaah. The absolute biggest thing they could possibly be dealing with is fire. When is this even taking place?!

??? is looking for Cash. Oh, boy! Who could it possibly be?

It’s our ol’ flirty pal Sanosuke. He informs Cash that Heisuke is hurt! Oh no! Was his headguard busted? Did the fire do it? What happened?! He says that even though Heisuke is obviously hurt, he won’t have any of it. “Golly gee!” he probably cried, tossing his baseball in the air as he glared at Hijikata, “I’m not hurt! You can’t tell me what to do! You’re not my real pa!” Hearing this, Cash agrees to come with Sanosuke and convince Heisuke that he is, indeed, injured.

Upon finding Heisuke (who is sitting in a corner) he repeats that he isn’t hurt. After some (read: not much) goading, he shows Cash his burn with a pitiful frown on his face and says that he didn’t pay attention to treating it because it seemed like it would be troublesome. Okay.

“I’ll heal it with some spit,” he says. Please don’t.

Wanting to care for Heisuke’s barbecued arm in a non-disgusting way, Cash spots an unassuming stream nearby in the middle of Kyoto and runs off. She rips off her sleeve and dips it in the water, coming back and placing it on Heisuke’s red, bubbling, blistering flesh.

Heisuke gives the protagonist some vital information about the enemy that she perhaps shouldn’t know. The shinsengumi is supposed to be a special military force, guard your secrets! Don’t go ahead and spill information about fire of all things to a civilian!

Hungering for more sanitation, however, and feeling a little feverish from coming into contact with the mysteriously hot fire, Heisuke drags Cash into the stream.

He takes her deep into the stream and she feels like she’s drowning, but all he can manage to say about this is “cute” because this is Heisuke and being a functioning adult is a foreign concept to him in this game. He really is some kid from the 1950s in Heisuke’s body.

Cash, terrified by her near-death experience, stares at Heisuke as he smiles blankly at her, glad that (A. She continues to be cute (B. His wound has been cooled. He can’t read the air. Either that, or he totally refuses to.

The answer here? GET MAD. Cash isn’t going to smile at Heisuke after nearly killing her for no reason. “What were you thinking?” Cash cries. Heisuke is confused. He thought what he was doing was romantic and awesome! He thinks he looks handsome! What’s more is that he thinks Cash looks super sexy now that her wet kimono is nearly see-through and clinging to her body due to all the moisture. Embarrassed (as anyone would be), she tries to hide her shame.

“Don’t hide yourself,” Heisuke says. Following this, he embraces Cash and then begins licking her cheek. What in the goddamn FUCK is wrong with him? He continues calling her cute and begins licking all kinds of random-ass places on her face, like her nose (?!) she’s freaking out! Anyone would be! They’re in public, she’s soaked, and WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE OTHER SHINSENGUMI?

RESIST THAT MOTHERFUCKER

Unfortunately, Cash has no way to escape. Heisuke won’t let go of her because she’s “so cute” and continues his public molestation. You want him to stop? No! You’re just too damn sexy and kawaii for him to let go of. This, unfortunately for him, is the opposite of sexy and kawaii. It’s gross and kowaii.

The ensuing unwanted makeout scene is written in the most clinical and stilted way, which makes it even creepier. THEN he begins licking her again, and demands that she be honest with him. She loves this! Cash, apparently, does, because these games never really account for the revulsion you attempt to get across, but we’re given another chance.

STOP IT ALREADY. Seriously. This is fucking gross. Cash’s face is going to smell like spit. Nasty. You’re the worst, Heisuke.

After CONTINUING to do this stupid shit after this decision, going so far as to ask if Cash would be “even more excited if someone were watching,” he FINALLY understands that she wants him to knock it off.  He looks totally shocked. “You want me to stop?” he asks incredulously. IT’S NOT LIKE SHE OPENLY ASKED YOU TO DO SO TWICE OR ANYTHING.

After explaining that she absolutely does not want any more of this shit, Heisuke pouts and throws a mini-tantrum.

Of course. He decides that her asking him to stop sexually harassing her in the middle of the city in broad daylight means that she just wants him to do it in private. He also doesn’t understand that licking someone’s cheek is disgusting.

When they get back to the base, Hijikata is there. He’s frowning, and gently scolds Heisuke not only about his stupid-ass third degree burn but the fact that he was just... molesting Cash in broad daylight. It essentially amounted to “don’t do that” and Heisuke got absolutely none of it. This Hijikata is so... weak. This is a wonderbread Hijikata. No requests for seppuku, no punishment, just a gentle bit of admonishing for poor conduct. He actually brushes the whole thing off with “Well, that’s just the kind of guy he is” and requests to meet with Cash later. She agrees, and he leaves. When he does...

Heisuke IMMEDIATELY wants to begin acting like a perverted asshole furry again. Cash says that she needs to see Hijikata and immediately bolts from his darksided ass faster than you can say “fuckshit.” She finds bizarro Hijikata grilling rice cakes in his room. Because of course.

After being sure that Cash knew why he called her in, he says “I’m sure he told you he wanted to do more after I left as well.” YES HE DID. Being a gentleman (as far as I know) Hijikata asks if Cash would like to stay in his room for the time being. He doesn’t stay with her. What a guy! She stays there for a few days to let Heisuke’s awful dog instincts hopefully burn out.

All’s well as it could be, all things considered, but this arrangement does not sit well with a certain wolf cub...

[rmildner46]

North Korea:  the Hard Truth

North Korea is dominating the news.  Ominous threats from the government of North Korea and outrageous responses from our President including unprecedented threats in 140 characters or less, cast a pall over an already tense world.  Is a North Korean attack imminent? Will there be war?  Will the U.S. strike first? Behind these questions and the headlines lies the intractable relationship between North Korea and the U.S. and the rest of the western world.  This long simmering crisis was born in a conscious policy of neglectful indifference punctuated by hostile policies that continued across the decades, nurtured by multiple administrations across party lines.  And now they have nukes.

During the 1990’s the Clinton administration engaged the North Koreans and the forged a pact known the Agreed Framework that included food aid and a path toward the normalization of relations in return for North Korea’s abandonment of its nuclear weapons program.  Around the same time, South Korea announced its Sunshine Policy, which also included the normalization of relations with North Korea.  Once that agreement was signed however, the U.S. exhaled, moved on as it does, and North Korea surreptitiously continued its nuclear program.  In 2001, the Bush administration declared North Korea “a rogue state”, part of the “axis of evil” and adopted a policy of encouraging regime change.  In 2006 North Korea conducted its first nuclear weapons test.  Now North Korea has successfully tested an ICBM capable of reaching the continental U.S. and our intelligence sources tell us that they have produced a miniaturized nuclear device that could be mounted on that missile. North Korea is just a few short steps from joining the U.S., Russia, Great Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan and Israel as the world’s 9th nuclear power.

We are alarmed and our leaders have declared this outcome to be unacceptable.  In January of this year President Trump said it “will never happen”. After the U.N. passed new sanctions with the unlikely support of both China and Russia and North Korea appeared to threaten Guam, Trump announced that “any threat to the U.S will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”  North Korea’s young leader, Kim Jong-un, is irrational, unpredictable and mentally unstable.  Our President is impulsive and untested.  The threat of war with North Korea has never been higher.  Or maybe not.

Kim Jong Un is certainly ruthless even by historical precedents set by other totalitarian leaders. And while he is no doubt cruel and even barbarous, he is likely not mentally unstable, irrational or even paranoid. In fact, every official act taken by multiple leaders of North Korean over the last 60 years has been guided by the three primary goals.   First and foremost is protecting North Korea from foreign invasion and occupation, followed closely by the preservation of the governing regime and the leader himself.  Finally, they crave respect on the world stage.   And all three are irrevocably intertwined; a threat to any is a threat to all.  And conspicuously absent from the list is any reference to the people of North Korea.

All three leaders of North Korea have pursued these three ends through one primary means:  build military strength.  And they have done so.  The Korean People’s Army is the largest in the world with over one million active duty soldiers and over 8 million trained reservists, equipped with over 3700 tanks, 2100 armored personnel carriers, 17,900 artillery pieces, 11,000 anti-aircraft guns, and over 10,000 anti-tank missiles.  At 1000 vessels it has the largest navy in the world, including the largest submarine force and its air force has over 1600 planes. Any technological deficiencies are clearly overcome by sheer volume.  It also has an advanced cyberwarfare capability, as shown by its penetration of the Sony server along with other lower profile efforts.  And now it has a well-publicized nuclear and emerging ICBM capability.  Not your average banana republic.

All of this weaponry is intended to prevent foreign governments from even thinking about invading the country.  And while we may think this reflective of extreme paranoia, the history of the Korean peninsula is one invasion and occupation after another, beginning in the 6th century and culminating in the cruel Japanese occupation before and during WWII.  Then after the war, as a client state the North Korean economy was directed by and totally dependent on the Soviet Union, until the Soviet dissolution in 1989. Beginning around 1990, North Korea picked up the pace of its military buildup and began to aggressively pursue nuclear weapons.  But until those nuclear weapons materialized, the intent was clearly defensive, and even now, with the exception of South Korea, they are clearly focused on discouraging potential invaders.  Even those nuclear weapons are likely intended as a deterrent.  

So, if the objective is to get North Korea to ultimately give up its nukes and ICBMs, threats are unlikely to work, since they just serve to reinforce the fears.  Think about a dog that has been mistreated by previous owners.  Tough love isn’t going to bring him around.  The only option you have is to shower the beast with love and affection, an approach that is understandably difficult when he is snarling at you the whole time. Even that may not work.  But lest you think putting the animal down is an option in this case, you need to consider reality.

In fact, there is no realistic offensive military option for the U.S.  Any strike against North Korea will put South Korea in extreme jeopardy and expose Japan.  While South Korea is a potent power with a large standing army, a substantial navy and almost as many planes as its northern neighbor, Seoul, a city of over ten million is less than 20 miles from the border, well within range of thousands of artillery pieces and missiles. Unless the U.S. initiated a massive nuclear first strike, North Korea could literally destroy Seoul without ever leaving the country.  Even that nuclear strike would not totally destroy North Korea’s ability to land destructive blows in South Korea and Japan.  Everyone involved knows all this, including Donald J. Trump.

North Korea will become a sustainable nuclear power and it is difficult to see what would cause them to give it up. Bombast will not work.  Threats are empty.  We would have offer them something more desirable than their security.  It is possible to reduce tension and the risk of confrontation, but that would require accepting them and their nuclear capability.  That doesn’t play well to anyone’s base.  The good news is that they will never use their nukes while we maintain an effective deterrent capability against them.  As long as we have the capacity and the will to wipe them out, they will keep the nukes in their silos, just as the same threat has prevented them from attacking South Korea for more than 60 years.  So North Korea will continue to misbehave and we are likely to respond with combative threats and little else.  The language out of North Korea will become increasingly annoying, jarring and even unnerving, but will otherwise be inconsequential.  Unless we do something stupid.