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incorrectzutaraquotes · 4 years

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let’s talk racial micro aggressions, because i’ve been seeing a lot of them being used online toward people speaking out about racism and even in fandoms unfortunately, so i think it’s time we have a talk. this is gonna be a semi long one, so buckle up.

just for reference, im asian american. because of that i’ve gone my entire life experiencing racism and discrimination simple because im not white. of course, i have definitely had it better than a lot of people, but that doesn’t take away from my experiences at all. i grew up hating the way i looked, trying to fix myself because i genuinely thought something was wrong with me. this led to years and years of insecurity and self hatred. something i had to go through alone, because my family was white and i was too afraid to tell them how i felt. i was afraid they wouldn’t understand. it’s still something i struggle with, though it’s gotten better.

growing up, as stated before, i was around white people. growing up in a very white town, i unfortunately wasn’t formally educated on racism or what micro aggressions were, i just knew that certain comments made me uneasy and uncomfortable, and hurt my feelings. it wasn’t until i was older, when i started using social media that i really came to understand what all of this was.

a lot of you who have white privilege are using it to uplift bipoc voices, and i think that’s great. however it’s also important to acknowledge that many people who are actively anti racist still have implicit biases, which can lead to microaggressions.

first of all, what are microaggressions? you may or may not be familiar with the term. if you’re not, that’s okay! you can use this post to educate yourself and make sure you don’t make these mistakes in the future. microaggressions are defined as brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioural, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative prejudicial slights and insults toward any group, particularly culturally marginalized groups.

basically, intentional or unintentional derogatory and prejudice behaviors directed towards marginalized groups.

these are very harmful to marginalized groups, mostly because they’re not as blatant as outright racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc. this makes it often hard to detect, and you may have found yourself using micro aggressions at some point in your life. that’s not important though, what’s important is that, if you have used them in the past, you understand what you said or did was wrong, and that you learn from it.

now, what are specific racial micro aggressions? i’ve compiled a list of them under the cut, and explained why these are insulting and harmful to poc.

“where are you really from” – this insinuates that we will always be seen as foreigners, and not citizens to our own country. it brings on a feeling of not being good enough and that we will not be accepted.

“not everything’s about race” – if you’re white stop telling bipoc how to feel about race. we are tired of it. please don’t speak over us when we are expressing our discomfort. if poc people are telling you something is racist, it’s racist. stop trying to argue with us, as you are not the ones being affected by it.

“your food is so weird” – it’s only weird to you because it hasn’t been westernized or americanized. insisting that foreign foods are weird or gross because you aren’t used to it, is hurtful. it’s insulting.

“all asians look the same” – by saying this, you’re taking away our individuality. asia is a huge continent, not all of us follow the same traditions and not all of us look the same. it’s not a funny joke, and it never has been.

“you’re pretty for a *insert any race here*” – this is just such a backhanded compliment. it implies that we are not typically or conventionally pretty. it has the same negative connotations as saying “you’re really good...for a girl”. that’s misogynistic for the same reasons saying this is racist.

“i don’t see color” – again, you’re basically erasing our individuality and culture and telling us we shouldn’t embrace it. many pocs even completely distance themselves from their cultures to seek white validation, which is in every sense of the word, upsetting. people want to fit in so bad that they’re willing to leave behind their entire culture. something that sucks about being adopted at such a young age from a white family, is that i have never had a connection with my culture. i know nothing about it, and that hurts. i rationalized in my head that the reason i didn’t learn about it sooner was because i was happy, but that was a lie i told myself for years. the sad thing is, is that because i wasn’t connected to my culture at all, i fit in better and had an easier time making friends then other pocs in my school.

assuming all asian people are smart or good at math – stop. it’s not funny. never has been. the stereotype that all asians are smart is not a compliment, and puts a lot of pressure on us as individuals. it objectifies us, assuming we are more like machines and not actual people. long story short, it’s dehumanizing.

“im not/cant be racist i have black friends” – contrary to popular belief, yes you can be. you can still have a racial bias while being friends with bipoc people. being associated with poc people doesn’t suddenly mean you’re not racist. you may even make racist jokes and think it’s okay because they don’t tell you to stop. just because they are seemingly unbothered does not mean it’s not still racist. a lot of times we are uncomfortable in situations like that, but are too afraid to speak up in fear of our feelings being invalidated or being told to lighten up because it’s just a joke. saying we’re too sensitive when it comes to making mockeries of our races and cultures, is also a micro aggression.

saying “you people” or “y’all” when talking, usually negatively, about a person of a specific race – you’re generalizing an entire group because of one bad experience which is just contributing to the stereotypes and racism we face daily. one or a few bad interactions with a person of a different race does not speak for an entire population.

clutching your bag tight when a poc person, usually black or latinx, stands next to you or following them in the store – the way i still have to explain this one in 2020. they are not criminals, but by doing this, you’re contributing to the stereotype that they are all criminals and thugs, which simply isn’t true. this stereotype is very damaging and harmful, as it also contributes to the systematic oppression of those people.

assuming someone only got a certain job or position because they’re bipoc – this insinuates that we did not work hard to get where we are, and that we did not deserve what we got. we simply got it because we aren’t white. affirmative action comes up a lot in this conversation. all affirmative action does is help decide between equally qualified people by favoring the ones who suffer from discrimination in society, but it does not reserve spots for them.

assuming someone knows how to speak mandarin because they’re asian – asia is a large continent with A LOT of languages and cultures. not everyone is chinese. not everyone speaks the same language. it’s insulting and adds to the already hurtful stereotype that all asians look the same.

“you speak english really well” or “how did you learn to speak english so well” – it’s called practicing because people have been making fun of those with accents for years, simply because they are not used to it. being surprised when a poc speaks english well implies that you may think because they’re not white, they are less educated. we’ve simply assimilated because our cultures are constantly rejected and mocked by white people and even other pocs. this also contributes to the notion that westerners are more “civilized” or that they are better, because they(generally speaking this obviously doesn’t apply to everyone)make no effort to learn our cultures, but we have to learn theirs in order to be seen as “acceptable”.

“but *insert race* are racist too” or pointing out immoral things other countries do when people of that race speak up about racism - you’re redirecting the conversation to avoid responsibility. you don’t actually care about those issues, you just want to invalidate our struggles by pointing out that a place many of us have not been to in a long time, or ever, is very flawed. we have no say in what that government chooses to do. not all places are a democracy, and many democracies around the world are flawed.

something important to remember is that anyone can be guilty of implicit bias and micro aggressions. this is not selective to one race.

if you have anymore of these, please feel free to add on. also, if you’re a poc and something i wrote made you uncomfortable, please tell me. i want to make sure im being truthful with what i said. i did do research for some of these, and some were based on personal experiences, but if you want to add to something or you want me to change or delete something do not hesitate to call me out.

unfortunately they and other racial stereotypes are very prevalent in american media, which has normalized it in our society. this post is solely meant to educate if you weren’t previously aware of the dangers micro aggressions have on minorities. i started the list because i was tired of seeing so much normalized racism online, but i hope you learned something useful with this. if you stuck around this long, thank you for listening. i appreciate it a lot.

as for my zutara fans, i apologize for making so many rant posts rather than posting incorrect quotes. i just feel like im able to reach a larger audience with the platform i have on this account than any other one.

anyway, that’s all. thank you again for listening :)

#this is not to take away from blm #i understand that i talked a lot of asian experiences #but that’s just because i am asian #and ive personally gone through them #i’ll link some carrds to blm resources and other world issues tomorrow #it’s 4am now but yeah #please remember that your fight for equality cannot be selective #it’s important that we all understand our differences #and the different struggles we face #but it’s also important that we support each other right now #micro aggression #racism #racial bias #racism in america #black lives matter #fuck the system #its broken #and we need to fix that

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sammysdewysensitiveeyes · 3 years

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Marauders and Kate’s (Lack of) Leadership:

One more salt post, partially inspired by this issue, but something I’ve been thinking about the series for awhile. Not bashing on Kate here, just feeling that Duggan is, to some extent, doing her dirty just like the rest of the group.

So, Kate is the Captain of the Marauder, but much like Bobby and Christian’s relationship, or Pyro’s reputation as the violent wildcard of the crew, it’s more an informed trait than something we actually see play out in the story. Duggan really isn’t giving Kate all that much to do as “team leader.”

I’d expect a team leader to be dealing with strategies and giving orders during battle, as well as dealing with conflicts and issues within the team itself. Except we see Kate do next to none of that. Most battles the group all seems to do their own thing. We see Kate jump in to rescue her people occasionally, especially in the fight with Donald Pierce and the racist anti-mutant group, where she pulls both Iceman and Pyro out of danger. But we don’t really see her stop and strategize mid-battle, like, “Okay, Pyro, you draw the Sentinel’s attention with fire creations, Bishop, cover him, while I phase the hostages free and Iceman freezes it’s feet.“ I think the King in Black Marauders is one of the few times where we really see Kate giving orders and making decisions during a battle. Most of the time, the battles just kinda happen, and either they’ve been strategized beforehand or someone else has the idea (Callisto in issue 19) or people just charge in and fight.

And to be fair, Kate certainly acts like a captain in terms of their general mission. She decides where they’ll go and what they’ll do, and she does give orders out at sea. But she doesn’t seem to make good use of her teams abilities during battles - mostly because Duggan doesn’t really want to write about anyone but Kate and Emma (and occasionally Callisto), so he lets the potential of the rest of the crew just sit there and rot. He’s too focused on Kate running around doing badass things to actually show her using her crew in an intelligent fashion and making proper use of everyone.

On the second matter - Kate doesn’t really have to deal with inter-team conflict because there isn’t any. At most, there’s some friction between Storm and Emma in the beginning, and they make up after Kate’s death. Kate’s crew just kind of automatically forms around her with no real effort on her part. Storm and Iceman are there specifically to protect her, Bishop has his own agenda, but he is willing to work with the Marauders to do so. Pyro is the only one who Kate would arguably have to win over as leader, and he’s been surprisingly well-behaved. He’s never challenged her leadership or even pushed back or argued that we’ve seen. I guess we can assume that Kate has earned his respect, or that he really enjoys the Marauders’ gig and is toeing the line so as not to get kicked off.

It makes a certain amount of sense, but the lack of friction also feels unrealistic. It’s hard to believe that former villain Pyro, even with his affably evil personality, will just settle right in with the crew and not clash with anyone beyond getting on Storm’s nerves. It’s hard to believe that Bishop, who has his own agenda to follow as a Captain of Krakoa, would never run into a situation where his mission and Kate’s mission clash and he has to walk away or disobey orders. (That was touched upon during King in Black, but then immediately fizzled out like so many other Duggan plotlines.) Hell, even Bobby and Storm, who are Kate’s friends and love her dearly, might disagree with a course of action at some point. But they never do. All is well aboard the Marauder, everyone is best friends or at least willing to tolerate each other, and they all follow Kate’s orders without question, and it feels very unearned.

But to my mind, the worst issue of Kate’s leadership is the lack of information passing down to certain members of the team. Marauders doesn’t feel like a tight-knit team, because most of the time, half the crew has no idea what the fuck is going on. So much of Duggan’s story is focused on Kate and Emma having adventures, making back-room deals and doing sneaky Hellfire stuff, and we’re expected to just accept that Bishop, Iceman and Pyro will be kept in the dark.

As far as I know, Iceman and Pyro have no idea that Sebastian murdered Kate. And BIshop only knows because he did his own investigation and figured it out, then had it confirmed by Storm. I understand the need for secrecy since Emma is trying to smack Sebastian down without making it a Council matter, but surely the rest of the crew should know about this? Bishop is a Captain of Krakoa working with the Marauders, he should absolutely know that Sebastian is playing power games. I can understand keeping some things from Pyro, he’s a new team-mate and former villain who joined under suspiciously convenient circumstances (fell asleep on the boat? Really?). But surely Pyro should at least be warned that Sebastian is not their friend. Otherwise, what’s to stop Sebastian from inviting Pyro up for a poker night at Blackstone Keep, plying him with whiskey and cigars, and getting him to spill the beans about all the Marauders latest missions? As far as Pyro knows, Sebastian is part of the Hellfire Co, AND a Council member, he’s got no good reason to distrust him. Because he doesn’t know that Sebastian betrayed them.

But Bobby is the worst, I think. He’s Kate’s good friend (they even dated briefly, although it didn’t work out for....obvious reasons). They are supposed to be close. And Bobby straight up mutilated a guy who he thought was part of the group responsible for Kate’s death. (To be fair, no one knew at the time that they raided that ship). Bobby was both devastated and furious at Kate’s death, and they’re still keeping him in the dark? Imagine how Bobby will feel knowing that the man he maimed was....not innocent, exactly, but not guilty of what Bobby believed. How is Bobby going to feel knowing that it was Sebastian, and Kate herself kept it from him? Bobby deserves better than to be treated like an underling like Pyro.

Probably the worst example, though, was this latest issue of Marauders (24), where we find out that Emma Frost conned the Mercury away from a shady alien, and that alien has it in for her. (I don’t remember the dude’s name, so I’m calling him Fake Greedo.) Fake Greedo tries to kill both Emma and Kate, they get saved by Sebastian (?!), which is a nice moment for him. Sebastian suggests they solved the problem with money, and Fake Greedo accepts. Then the whole group assembles in the Mercury for dinner, and Fake Greedo double-crosses them and sends the entire group, including Sebastian, Iceman, Bishop and Pyro, out the airlock into space.

The problem here, is that as far as I can tell, Bishop, Iceman and Pyro had NO idea about the deal or Fake Greedo’s grudge with Emma. Pyro literally has a line when he’s handing payment over to Fake Greedo: “I dunno who you are, or what you did to get paid, but you happy?” In other words, Pyro doesn’t know a damn thing about the deal or the Mercury. And I don’t think that’s just a joke about Pyro being clueless. He, Iceman and Bishop were off doing their own thing during most of the issue. (What were they doing? Who knows, Duggan couldn’t be bothered to show it.) It seems like Emma and Kate just....didn’t bother to tell half the crew about what happened. So they ride back to Earth with an alien who has a serious grudge against Emma, and the three of them have NO idea what’s going on, and they get sucked out of the airlock to possibly die, with without knowing what’s happening or why. They deserve better than that. If nothing else, Bishop is a security guy, he should know what’s going on.

If this book was written by someone better than Duggan, I would expect some repercussions from this. I’d expect Bobby, Pyro and Bishop to be angry that they were killed (or almost killed) because of one of Emma’s backroom schemes that they didn’t even know about. I’d expect Bobby to be especially angry that his friend Kate keeps not telling him things. I’d expect maybe some kind of splintering of the group or at least conflict that isn’t resolved immediately, because secrets have been kept that they deserve to know. But what will probably happen is that next issue Emma will do something cool, and any dead Marauders will get resurrected, and everyone will be totally fine with everything.

Anyways, like I said, this is not meant to drag Kate as a character, this is me discussing how Duggan is really doing her dirty by not giving her a chance to be an actual team leader. Because he wants her to be “in charge,” but he also doesn’t really want to write a team book, he wants to write her running around in pirate cosplay having swashbuckling adventures, so she winds up looking like a negligent, unnecessarily secretive leader. And I know she can be much better than that.

#marauders salt #up on my soapbox #or rather saltbox

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itsclydebitches · 4 years

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RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Midnight”

Happy Saturday, everyone! I’d like to extend a formal congratulations to every Cinder fan in the community. Criticisms of the writing aside, you all struck gold with twelve whole minutes devoted to your fave and I’m absolutely thrilled for you.

We again start with a dark screen and some audio, in this case Cinder’s scrubbing. This technique—along with closeups on eyes—is a real favorite of RWBY’s this volume, to the point where I think they’re a little too enamored with it. But at least this is just a preference, not something that actively harms the storytelling in any way, so it’s welcome to stay. This time, unlike our premiere, we stay on Cinder as her life is summed up with three events intercut with one another: scrubbing floors, getting taunted by boys, and the sound of heels making their way towards her. It’s clear that Cinder leads a poor, miserable life, if her dirty clothes and stronger guys throwing her around is any indication, but all that changes when the rich woman says “I’ll take her” and Cinder is transported to a better life in a wealthy hotel.

At least supposedly.

Here’s my problem with the worldbuilding. This moment has Witcher vibes and Witcher, in turn, built itself off of a trope seen a hundred times before: A young woman is treated terribly by her family, is whisked away by a wealthy/powerful caretaker, and though her life has arguably improved, she quickly learns that the new world she’s entered is just as dangerous and harsh as the one she left. In Witcher’s case, Yennefer is a disabled woman abused by her family, bought by Tissaia, and taken to Aretuza where the other girls hate her and the curriculum is potentially deadly. Cinder is a poor woman arguably abused by her family (scrubbing)/the locals (fights), is taken by an unnamed woman, and whisked away to the swanky hotel where the daughters hate her and the work is potentially deadly due to shock collars. The difference between these two setups is that Tissaia bought Yennefer because of her magical potential. Why does our hotel lady take Cinder?

I mean yeah, obviously she wants a slave, but it’s a little weird isn’t it? Usually when a young woman falls headfirst into a new and questionable life, there’s a solid reason for her entry. This woman—whose lack of a name also says something about the worldbuilding—could have hired anyone she pleased to abuse. As we saw in regards to Atlas and Mantle in the past, every city has its poor and downtrodden. So what made her go out to some random farm and snatch Cinder up? It just, as always, feels a little too convenient. Cinder didn’t enter this life because something about her characterization or origin justified it, the plot simply ensured that she, out of everyone possible, and with very little reason, was the one chosen to follow The Plot™ .

It also messes with the Cinderella parallels. Originally (or “originally,” going off of Disney here which is likely what RWBY is using as a template too) it’s her step-family that abuses her and yes, we recreate that via the hiring (“hiring”—I doubt she was paid), but Cinder was already scrubbing floors back home. Her status as the servant already existed. So why change locations? Why not just keep Cinder as an abused farm girl, or have her a part of the hotel family right from the start? Part of the reason why Cinderella resonates is because of the contrast between the happy life with her father and the new, horrific life she falls into once he dies. Which is then further contrasted by the rest of the outside world. Fairy Godmother, Prince, and party-goers alike are all presented as kind, decent people. They represent the “real” world that Cinderella can escape to. By making Cinder’s original life horrible, her new life worse, and everyone connected with that life cruel and/or indifferent (with the exception of this one, special huntsmen)… you paint a very different picture of the world as a whole. Which is something RWBY has been vocal about trying to accomplish—it’s not a fairy tale—the only problem is with how these moments are undermined the second the story wants Ruby to ~Believe in People~. Cinderella is a story about enduring and eventually overcoming temporary hardship. Cinder’s story is about endless hardship that creates villains. A dark and fascinating story… but how does that fit into last week’s episode where Ruby told the whole world about Salem, expecting them to band together in peace and harmony? This is how Remnant’s world treats people when there’s not a global crisis, and Cinder isn’t even a faunus.

Which, I want to make clear going into the rest of this recap, does not excuse Cinder for her actions. At all. I think there are some complicated acknowledgements to be made in terms of her abuse and the Huntsmen’s responsibility in it continuing, but that does not give Cinder a blanket pass for all the horrific shit she has pulled over the years. Cinder didn’t just defend herself from abusers, she became one. More on that in a minute.

First though… is the Huntsmen’s name Rhodes? Did we hear that in the episode? If we did, I totally missed it because I have a note here about the one important character not getting a name. So yeah, idk. If we got this from more supplemental info, bad RWBY. If I missed it, bad Clyde. Either way, I’ll use that name going forward.

Back to the plot at hand. The hotel is, as said, populated by indifferent and shallow people and there’s no desert nearby, so I presume we’re supposed to be in Atlas? (Why did this woman buy a girl from another Kingdom?) There are customers getting drunk, flirting, and generally just enjoying their wealth, which harkens back to Weiss’ comment in Volume 4 about all their problems being superficial. We’re introduced to the owner’s two daughters who are, as expected, quintessential Mean Girls.

They love ordering Cinder around, not just with hotel chores, but personal ones as well like, “rub my feet”… despite the fact that this place is massive and must have an equally massive staff to stay in business. Why aren’t the girls terrorizing anyone else? Again, it makes sense for Cinder(ella) to be the focus of their abuse when she’s in a single household, but transplanting that to a hotel raises a lot of questions that RWBY hasn’t bothered to examine. You can’t move a story like that and not think about what further changes that would evoke.

See, RWBY could have done something interesting here by considering some of those other changes. Like having one or both step-sisters be the one to help free Cinder from her abuse, playing the villain before becoming the fairy godmother. Up until she turns villain instead of hero, this is just Cinderella’s story copy and pasted into RWBY. It’s moments like this that should make us wary of using fairy tale allusions as evidence for our readings and theories. Whether RWBY is deconstructing or upholding a story varies wildly, and we never know what we’ll get until we actually see it on screen. Even then we can’t count on a choice remaining consistent, as we saw with Ironwood’s deconstruction being tossed out the window in Volume 7.

Cinder is originally just as meek as her fairy tale counterpart too. We don’t hear her speak until the owner is about to leave when she simply goes, “Food?” The sisters laugh at her and a roll is thrown to the floor with the comment that she should get busy because it “looks filthy.” I quite like that moment. Your job is to ensure the floors are clean enough to eat off of—literally.

We see a montage of Cinder doing just that, lots of chores, with a new song listing all the tasks she’s now responsible for. During this, Rhodes is seen in the background and witnesses when Cinder (presumably) first uses her semblance by heating up the brush and chucking it at the sisters, creating a massive cloud of steam.

It’s that moment which “earns” her a shock session with her necklace and I’m staring at the screen, a little open-mouthed. I mean, that’s the second child torture we’ve seen this volume (with Cinder being ten here). Again, I’m not making a specific accusation, just going, “Really?”

Also, note the anti-faunus sign. Nothing like continually showing us racist establishments rather than actually writing a story that deals with the racism needless put into the story world. I’d like to remind everyone of my previous comments this Volume about how the story works hard to paint Mantle as sympathetic, but refuses to show anything that does the same for Atlas citizens, people who are in just as much danger with Salem as an equalizer. A whole city is not actually made up of shallow racists, the show is just showing us only those people to create a simplistic “They’re all bad” reading that encourages us to reject Atlas and, by extension, Ironwood. Weiss is walking proof that Atlas citizens are both complex individuals and capable of bettering themselves. If we can come to adore the Schnee heiress, we should be questioning why nearly every other citizen is painted as an abuser, too wealthy to care, or has conveniently left the story (Rhodes dead, Klein gone, Whitley rejected, etc.).

As Cinder is being tortured, we see that she’s forced to say, “Without you, I am nothing.” Now see, this is excellent... in theory. This is the kind of line we needed to hear with some consistency over the last seven years (if RWBY still insisted on waiting that long for a backstory), setting up that this line is clearly engrained in Cinder and she repeats it on instinct. Instead—to my recollection, anyway—we only get it this Volume, in two episodes. If it appeared before then it wasn’t notable enough to remember. I commented on this before, but it wasn’t a, “Ah, this line must be important” reaction, it was a “Lol why is RWBY using the same line twice? That’s weird.” By only giving it to us twice before the backstory and in such a short timeframe, the impact of this reveal is lost. We’re only now realizing that the line is important, rather than coming to realize why.

Our writers know just enough to recognize what techniques work, but not enough to have figured out what makes them tick. They get that providing a RWBY-vised version of Cinderella is cool, but not how to adapt that 100% successfully. They know that repeated lines have power, but not how to create good setup for the reveal. They know the camera should use closeups, but not what moments are important enough to warrant that. RWBY, eight years on, still feels like a newbie writer copying what the great stories are doing without yet understanding why those aspects work and, thus, how to recreate them.

I mean, Cinder’s backstory appearing now attests to that most obviously. I waved at the Cinder fans before, but the reality is that most viewers don’t care, either because Cinder herself is so bland, and/or because the story waited too long to make her a little more interesting. This entire flashback was handled badly simply by virtue of it arriving over seven years past the character’s introduction.

So after this torture session Cinder steals Rhode’s sword. We hear some dialogue in the background of him getting pissed that it’s missing and the sisters promising to find it, implying that Cinder will have this tool at her disposal for a while. Instead, seconds later he’s found her hideout and confronts her. I don’t know if I’m impressed with Rhode’s skills, or rolling my eyes at how contrived this all is. Chuck in the question of whether Cinder was talented enough to steal the sword out from under him, or if Rhodes was stupid enough to leave it lying around, and I’m edging towards the eye rolling.

He dodges Cinder’s attack, rolls her more weapons to prove he’s not here to hurt her, and acknowledges that she’s not getting “the most fair treatment.” Okay, here’s where things start to get complicated. Rhodes tells Cinder she shouldn’t run away because then she’ll be running her whole life (don’t really agree with that). He likewise (rightly imo) tells her not to straight up murder them because look, no matter how much of a shit stain someone is, I can’t condone slamming a sword through their chest on an individual’s say-so (especially when two of those people are also kids growing up under an abuser, like Whitely). So what’s left? Rhodes says Cinder can train to become a huntress. At ten years old, she has seven years to prepare for the exam.

But she has to stay with her abusive family until then.

My problem is far less with the claim that this “has” to happen and far more with the writing’s failure to tell us why. Cinder could have begged to come with Rhodes and he says she can’t because… idk. Make up a reason. He doesn’t make enough to feed the both of them. It would be too dangerous out on missions without training and he doesn’t have a permanent place to stay (hence using the hotel all the time). He could even go the “They’re your legal guardians” route with more explanation because it’s arguable that Rhodes had no idea about the collar. Doesn’t mean Cinder’s treatment isn’t “that bad” in his eyes, just that he might not have known the extent and thus thought it was preferable for Cinder to put up with “just” being insulted and overworked until she’s 17. That this life that he only has a partial picture of is preferable to the life she’d have at his side. Something to explain the stakes here, the risks, and why he took this stance.

And/or give us a reason why Cinder doesn’t try to run, a suggestion I make very cautiously because it’s not my intention to put the responsibility solely on her. This isn’t meant to be a “Just save yourself! It’s easy!” claim. Rather, it’s an acknowledgement that young, barely trained kids go out into the world all the time in this show—Ruby, Oscar—and it’s an acknowledgement that Cinder tugged off her collar easy-peasy. The point is, practically speaking, Cinder could have left and braved the streets like Emerald did… so give us a reason why she decided to stay. Maybe she’s scared of living on the streets, acknowledging that a little food and a place to sleep is better than nothing. Maybe she’s scared that if she doesn’t have a direct connection to the hotel (convenience), Rhodes won’t train her anymore. Maybe, as an abuse victim, she can’t articulate why she won’t leave, she just can’t. Something to acknowledge these gaps because, right now, we just have the fandom going, “See? This is why the huntsmen are all evil cops. Rhodes took the lawful route and look where it got Cinder! He’s the responsible adult in this situation, so it’s all his fault.” Problem is, this take ignores:

The fact that our heroes are also huntsmen and were pretending to be huntsmen before they had those lawful licenses. So what does that make them? We can’t continually criticize these professional roles without criticizing our heroes’ use of them as well. Ruby just ensured the world would take her message seriously by introducing herself as a huntress. We can’t condemn these laws and privileges while likewise letting Ruby continue to use them however she please. It’s okay if she’s a part of the system, because Ruby is inherently good! That’s not how this works. I’ve just described every American cop show that tumblr is currently turning against: The system is corrupt and needs to be overhauled, but our protagonists are different.

The story fails to tell us why Rhodes won’t do more outside of a single line about Cinder being of legal age. That just acknowledges that age has some bearing on his decision, not whether it outweighs other considerations (can Cinder survive if she leaves?), or whether Rhodes even has a full picture of what’s happening to her (the collar). The takeaway is that we don’t know what his though process was because RWBY didn’t show it to us, not that his thought process is automatically awful.

Rhodes, as a literal stranger entering her life, is not 100% responsible for what happens to Cinder. I know people don’t want to acknowledge that because leaving a child in that situation is absolutely horrific, but if RWBY wants to be ~realistic~ (and it does) then we need to acknowledge that reality too. If you saw a child employee getting yelled at in a hotel and then found her with your sword, would you rip the collar off her neck and be like, “Congratulations, you’re my child now”? Nice as that trope is, probably not! Or hell, maybe a lot of you would upend your life and risk legal action to whisk them away, but a lot of other people wouldn’t... and they're not the devil for doing what they can within the bounds of the law. The idea that because Rhodes unexpectedly had one (1) encounter with Cinder means he’s now responsible for her life and outcome is, well, crazy. “But, Clyde, you can’t just see that kind of horror and not do something about it.” You’re right. You know what you do? Tell the authorities. But does Remnant have the equivalent of social workers? We don’t know! Which means we can’t assume that Rhodes didn’t call them just because he’s a bad person. Or maybe they exist and the fandom considers them too corrupt to be useful, like so many other authorities in this show. So… what else is there for him to do? There doesn’t seem to be anyone above Rhodes that he can turn to, he doesn’t (for whatever reason) want to essentially kidnap Cinder and start a new life with her, so what’s left? Try to give Cinder a healthy relationship and a way to escape in the long run, which is precisely what Rhodes did.

Honestly, I’m kind of salty that this guy went out of his way to help her, he saw what everyone else saw and was the only one who would help her, but because he didn’t do more—because he didn’t entirely upend his life and/or risk arrest to take her away to this hypothetically better situation—the fandom is acting like it’s his fault Cinder killed her abusers. It’s not. Cinder made that choice.

At the end of the day, blaming Rhodes reveals the expectation that it’s his responsibility to solve this massive problem purely because he had the bad luck to be the one Cinder stole from. That’s like telling a teacher who learns about abuse from a paper that following the lawful channels and going out of his way to assist the child in other ways is responsible when the kid murders their family one day. “Why didn’t you just barge into the house and take the kid?!” Because there are a hundred reasons why that would go incredibly badly? Rhodes can’t help Cinder if he’s in jail. Rhodes can’t help Cinder if she ends up dead on a mission while following him. Rhodes can’t help Cinder if their attempt at escape fails and she bears the punishment.

The only thing I think Rhodes did absolutely wrong was giving Cinder the sword while she was still under the owner’s thumb. Stupid, but not cruel. And again, stupid does not equal blanket responsibility. I’m likewise seeing, “Rhodes gave her the sword and thus it’s his fault that Cinder got in trouble. It’s his fault they died. What was Cinder supposed to do, not defend herself?” Are people forgetting that Cinder stole the sword herself in the beginning and then readily accepted it again? She had agency in obtaining weaponry and what she wanted it for. Are people forgetting that, in accepting it, she likewise accepted the risk of keeping it hidden in the hotel? Are people forgetting that the time skip shows this happening years later and that Rhodes clearly thought Cinder was past her murderous streak? Are people forgetting that Cinder killed the owner by snapping her neck and resisting the shock collar, no sword required? She could have killed them any time she pleased based on the crime scene, whether Rhodes had given her a weapon or not. The weapon was just the catalyst that, truthfully, could have been caused by anything else. Cinder snaps when they find the sword and she’s tortured. Cinder snaps when she drops another tray and she’s tortured. She had planned to kill her abusers and never completely let go of that.

Honestly, I’m just annoyed that we have another good hearted, takes action, does his best and makes some mistakes character getting blamed for everything another character chose to do, erasing their agency in the process. Rhodes did not abuse Cinder. Rhodes did not force her to kill her actual abusers. And Rhodes is certainly not responsible for what Cinder later becomes. Could Rhodes have done more? Of course, but every character could always do more.

The tl;dr is that this complex situation needed far better setup in the show and the fandom needs to stop using that lack of setup as “proof” that characters are horrible people when they fail to magically fix said complicated, badly explained problems. Cinder chose to murder three people. Whether that was justified in the face of her abuse is up to you to decide, but it was still her choice. Please stop blaming the adult male characters for the choices the teenage girls in this show make. RWBY is too convoluted and attempting to tackle too many complex issues to reduce that to, “Every man here is the evil, responsible party and ever girl is a #queen. Even when they go on to murder Pyrrha ^_^” As a woman who would very much like to be rooting for the mostly-woman cast more than I now do, this isn’t the feminist take people want it to be.

But I’ve jumped waaaay ahead. Let’s backtrack a bit.

That first interaction between Rhodes and Cinder is super weird because the camera keeps covering Rhodes’ face and I don’t know why.

We segue into that montage of him training her for presumably years (Cinder’s hair changes) until we see him giving her the sword in what’s meant to be a moment of pride and trust. Soon after, Rhodes (randomly) comes back to the hotel when everyone else is asleep and hears noises in the back. Moving to check them out, he discovers that Cinder has murdered the two sisters and is in the process of murdering the owner, throwing back the line, “Without you, I am nothing, but because of you, I am everything.” Again, much more impactful if this had been a line we’ve associated with Cinder for years now, not a couple of episodes.

After she breaks the owner’s neck (damn, strong hand!) she tells Rhodes she doesn’t have to run anymore. Cinder clearly expects him to be happy for her and is shocked when he takes out his weapons.

I’m sorry, this is not a “betrayal.” Could Rhodes have just let Cinder go? Sure. Should he have? Given what she becomes, that’s very debatable! Rhodes clearly thought he’d helped her grow into someone who was not inclined towards murder (giving her the sword) and thus is probably going to be a little rattled when he walks in to find her killing three people. Again, there are obvious differences given the level of abuse Cinder seems to have suffered in comparison, but imagine that Glynda, after teaching Weiss for years, walked in on her killing Jacques and Whitley in revenge. Is she supposed to just ignore that? Shrug her shoulders and wish her well? I know a lot of people consider that the “fair” outcome given the inclusion of abuse, but that’s because we’ve had an omniscient view of Cinder’s history and insight into her emotional state. Rhodes doesn’t have that. All he has is his oath as a huntsmen to prevent things like, you know, murder sprees. I’m not going to delve into the overall ethics of a judicial system, either in RWBY or the real world, and thus I’m not going to make any naive claims about it being fair—it’s fucking not—but I don’t think the answer to these systematic problems is, “Why wouldn’t you just let the teenager murder three bad people and then go on her way? She totally deserved it!” Rhodes is not in a position to decide that, which is the entire point of having a judicial system in the first place.

So Rhodes wants to bring Cinder in. Kind of like how Clover wanted to bring Qrow in once he had an arrest warrant. I can’t emphasize enough that wanting to start a legal process rather than letting clearly guilty/potentially guilty people go because they WANT to is not a “betrayal.” Regardless of what teen dramas may have taught us, you don’t have to potentially throw your own freedom and your morals away because you found out a friend is wanted by the authorities. Or you walk in on them currently snapping someone’s neck. There are options other than, “Believe your friend is right without question and help them hide the bodies” (looking at you, Maria, Pietro). Whitely is not insane for going, “Hey, can you not make me an accomplice to a crime by forcing your way in here with a bunch of fugitives?” I’m constantly surprised by the number of fans who can, in one breath, condemn characters for not throwing a middle finger up at the law and in the next praise Jacques’ arrest. Do we want to benefit from this system or not? If yes, that means you have to weigh which laws can be broken (such as in a protest), which should be obeyed (bring murderers and wanted men in), all while working to change the laws that are prejudice and aren’t working.

Anyway, they fight. It’s short and sweet, backdropped by the large clock striking midnight, hence our title. I’m incredibly suspicious of Cinder breaking Rhode’s aura first, given that she’s still the student in training, but here we can more persuasively say he wasn’t fighting seriously, given that he then stupidly rushes towards her without a weapon. Still, that would be the second time now that RWBY has relied on elite fighters “holding back” to explain how the kids in training beat them, the first instance, of course, being with the Ace Ops.

Rhodes does rush Cinder though when she hits the wall and breaks her own aura, clearly concerned. She uses the moment to stab him with both swords. He uses his last breaths to put a hand on her head, conveying that he doesn’t blame her for how this all turned out.

Then Cinder pulls off her collar with a single snap and looks up at the broken moon, crying her single tear.

I’m dragging the flashback for multiple reasons, but I want to emphasize that I think this episode is leagues better from what we got last week. Absolute night and day. It’s just that, as always, improvements are incredibly comparative in RWBY. It’s not really good for numerous reasons… it’s just better than what we’ve gotten before. It’s “great” provided you go in with standards buried in the ground.

We then return to the present as Cinder wakes up in Salem’s whale. This scene gives us a great shot of her grimm arm, so cosplayers take note!

Emerald arrives soon after and immediately rushes to her side, expressing how worried she was. She grabs Cinder’s grimm hand without hesitation. Honestly, I don’t care much about either character… but this single frame activated some sort of ship button in my brain.

Not fully because I’m personally not drawn to toxic relationships in fiction (which, as I’m about to explain, would absolutely be the case here), but just the tinniest bit. Because I’m a sucker for monstrous people being loved despite their monstrous nature, so having Emerald take that hand over the other is like a ship speed run for me.

I’m predictable, folks.

But we need to talk about less happy things for a moment. I mentioned above Cinder becoming an abuser herself. I hope I don’t need to lay out the laundry list of murders, attempted murders, sabotage, and general taking-over-the-world-ness she’s engaged in since Episode One. Don’t let a sad backstory erase all that. Hell, for all we know the hotel owner had a horrific backstory too! Doesn’t justify how she treated Cinder. The point though is beyond her clear status as a villain, we now know that Cinder treats Emerald just like the owner once treated her.

Cinder was “rescued” from her life on the farm by the owner. Emerald is “rescued” from her life on the streets by Cinder.

Both realize over time that the situation they’re now in is actually worse.

Both reiterate that they “owe” the other “everything,” with Cinder having that shocked into her and Emerald seeming to willingly believe it.

The owner treats Cinder as a slave. Cinder treats Emerald as a slave. “Both of you, get out. I’ll let you know when you’re needed.” The only difference is that Cinder’s orders were things like “Scrub floors” and Emerald’s are “Convince an audience this girl attacked our ally.”

Both use threats to keep the other in line: the owner with her shock collar and Cinder with her Maiden powers. Cinder doesn’t need to resort to violence (yet) because Emerald adores her, but the threat is always there.

There are even visual similarities this episode, such as kneeling and gem necklaces, though I acknowledge fully that those are just interesting details as opposed to anything like persuasive proof.

The point is that Cinder became exactly what she hated, she just turned the dial up to eleven by going after the whole world instead of a single child. “But Cinder never had a chance to be anything else.” Sure she did. Blake and Weiss are proof of that. Even if we believe that Cinder was doomed to be a villain due to the extent of her abuse, what does that say about the hotel’s owner? We don’t know anything about her history, so what if she was abused too? Does that mean she was always “doomed” to treat Cinder that way? Does that excuse everything she did to her because she supposedly never stood a chance of becoming anything else? Of course not.

Though very iffily done, this is a commentary on the cycle of abuse. Each case is horrific, but it doesn’t excuse what comes later. Every abuser was once an innocent child and every innocent child has the capability of becoming the next abuser. Cinder’s life up until now was beyond awful and yes, she lacked a lot of privileges that others had to help them head down a better path, like Weiss’ wealth. On the other hand, she lacks other difficulties that would make that path harder for others, like Blake’s status as a faunus. Everyone has a choice to make: Will you treat others the way you were treated because that’s “fair,” or will you decide to treat others better than what you were dealt? There are lots of aspects that factor into the likelihood of someone choosing the latter—which is why I really like Rhode’s hand on Cinder’s head, acknowledging his understanding that she’s an abused kid taking the only path she thinks is available to her—but individual agency is by no means removed from the equation. Cinder escaped her situation and decided she’d never be powerless again. What does that mean to her, perhaps becoming a community member who works to prevent abuse like the kind she suffered? No, it means grinding the entire world under her heel until she’s the only one with power left.

This GIF continues to be the only one I need.

(No, the fact that it comes from a cop show and I’m using it for such an anti-law, anti-establishment story/fandom isn’t lost on me.)

(Also, if anyone is curious, this is why I love Ozpin. Out of everyone in this cast, HE has suffered the most, tenfold, and yet he still chooses to be kinder to those than they’ve been to him.)

Anyway, I should really stick to the plot lol. Cinder realizes that her waking up means that they’ve lost, which I still think is BS. Cinder needed a win to come across as a formidable villain again and the likes of Neo, Emerald, and a Maiden with years of practice under her belt should have wiped the floor with a scientist, retirement grandma, and a girl who got the powers an hour ago. But I again digress.

Mercury reveals that he will no longer be following Cinder’s orders because Salem has a special job for him. They’ve all been told to meet on the bridge.

Then we cut to Ozpin and Oscar.

My poor boy is a mess and Ozpin is in the process of begging Oscar to take a “break.” “I would like to express again that this is my burden to bear, not yours.” Take note, fandom. In a few moments Hazel will accuse Ozpin of being a “coward” because “All this time, it could have been you, but you let him suffer.” I just know a bunch of people will be going, “Yeah! Ozpin just let a kid get tortured instead of him. WTF??” Okay 1. We should always be suspicious of agreeing with the takes villains have and 2. Oscar just refused to let Ozpin do that. It is—again—his choice because he thinks that Hazel is “holding back” with him. Oscar is being a brave and logical dude trying to make the best of this situation for both of them. Don’t take that away from him just to make Ozpin look bad. What would we even want him to do? Take control back? The fandom has been yelling at Ozpin for that since Volume 5.

So they’re going back and forth when Oscar suddenly announces that they “can’t leave yet. This is our chance.”

Ozpin even says he thinks Oscar must have taken one too many hits because… yeah. What? Long story short, Oscar recognizes that they’ll never be this close to Salem’s subordinates again and that they should try to undermine her from the inside out, just like she’s done with the world since she knows she can’t take on everyone at once. I love Oscar taking charge here, I love them speaking in unison, I even love the hope of achieving something epic while in captivity despite my own belief that Oscar should break and reveal the Lamp’s password. What I don’t love is:

Another messy, unexpected belief that Salem made her choices because she “knows” she can’t win any other way. Except that—like Ruby’s line in the recording—Salem’s current attack blows that idea out of the water. She IS taking on the whole world. Granted, Ozpin and Oscar presumably don’t know that the whole world literally knows of her existence now, or that Salem was smiling about it, but they do know that she’s attacking Atlas head on. What else is that except a declaration of war with all of Remnant?

The idea of undermining Salem from the inside via Hazel. For anyone who reads my other metas, I just said that this idea wouldn’t work because Emerald isn’t the one torturing him, the one character who has consistently demonstrated hesitation (or, now, Neo). Hazel despises Ozpin so much that he would never listen to him. He despises him so much he doesn’t even see Oscar as his own person… at least he didn’t before. That’s been retconned now with Hazel going “easy” Oscar and having an actual conversation with Ozpin. Whereas before, he was slamming Oscar into walls and screaming about how he’s going to kill the “murderer” of his sister. They basically softened his character to make this plan possible.

The fact that this scene came about without Oscar and Ozpin ever getting to reconcile their problems. Last we saw them, Oscar was saying how he hated that Ozpin came back and refusing to acknowledge their merge. Now, they’re working together like they’ve always been solid allies. I get that the danger they’re in helps to put it all into perspective, but why can’t we get a few lines of them hashing this out? Or at least putting things aside until they’re out of Salem’s clutches? If you don’t need to re-write Hazel’s character with “he’s going easy on me” lines, you can use that space to deal with the conflict we’ve already established. Especially given the strange choice to have Oscar refuse to give up control and be the one coming up with this plan... but then Ozpin does take control and (maybe, see below) enacts it? I feel like we’ve missed huge chunks of this story. As it is, I wonder if RWBY will bother coming back to this. The questions of if/how Oscar will accept Ozpin and if/how he’ll reveal this secret to the group feels like they’re being swept under the rug and it will likely go unnoticed by a lot of viewers simply due to how intense the kidnapping plot is.

So things are a little messy, but otherwise enjoyable, and they’re about to get downright confusing. For me, anyway. See, Hazel reveals that he follows Salem because she can’t be beaten (cue my continued worry about Ruby telling the whole WORLD). She “can’t be stopped. She’s a force of nature,” and Ozpin is fighting a “cause with no victory, no end.” He yells back that “Someone has to try!”—bless this man—and then looks down at the ground going, “Salem can be fought. Unless… she brings the Relics together, if that happens…” and mentions summoning the Gods.

So here’s my confusion. The scene makes it feel like Ozpin is planting some sort of seed in Hazel’s head. He and Oscar JUST got done agreeing to try and undermine her from the inside out, then we get this line that feels like him “accidentally” dropping a secret that will turn Hazel against her. Except… Ozpin doesn’t lie here? The line isn’t useful to them as far as I can tell. They are screwed if Salem gets the Relics. …Right? Because if not, why the hell have the heroes been working so hard to keep them out of her hands? So I can’t decide if:

A) This scene is just written badly and none of this is part of the plan to undermine Salem.

B) Ozpin is going, “NO. Don’t collect the RELICS. That would be the WORST THING EVER /s” in an attempt to trick Hazel into doing it anyway and this is somehow supposed to hurt Salem, despite being presented since Volume 5 as the worst outcome for our heroes?

C) Ozpin specifically wants Salem to make the mistake of summoning the Gods because he thinks he’s completed his task? Or something? But what in the world would make him think that—especially without seeing Ruby’s message (not to mention the lack of unity that mess should cause)—or what makes him think the Gods would just destroy Salem regardless of what he’s achieved? If summoning the Gods was ever a defeat Salem option, why hasn’t he done it before?

I’m leaning towards A just because it makes the most sense by far, but that would also mean we had Ozpin and Oscar decide on this plan, have a chance to start this plan… and then didn’t actually do anything. Yelling at Hazel for following Salem isn’t a new strategy, they were doing that before, so what’s new? Or has the new strategy not been revealed yet? Idk, as happy as I am to see them being BAMF together, I’m slightly unsure about how it all hangs together. I’d much rather have an internally consistent and clear outcome that’s predictable (Oscar breaks or just holds out until rescue) rather than what appears like a super cool, badass, unexpected plot on the surface… but crumbles once you poke at the foundation a bit.

So whether Oscar and Ozpin started this plan or not, they’re dragged into the throne room where they’re forced to kneel before Salem. Yikes. She sits on her throne with the Hound, who I’m only now realizing could be read as a messed up Toto

We learn that Tyrian heard from Watts about his incarceration and hacking Penny. What? Okay, I took the time to go back through “Amity” just to find this screenshot.

That’s not a working Scroll! Idk what I thought Watts might do with it at the end of last week, but it wasn’t send a full, uninterrupted message to Salem that updates her on everything that’s gone down in Atlas. This thing is toast! Moments like this make me question how much communication there really is between the writers and the animators, despite last Volume’s disaster with Oscar telegraphing his punch like whoa. Are we still getting that level of miscommunication?

Salem then punishes Cinder for disobeying her by hurting her grimm arm. See, this here (for me, anyway) is the mark of a newbie writer. When the moment first started I went, “Oh nice. Just like the shock collar!” Then the scene made that abundantly clear by cutting to flashbacks of Cinder in her collar. That’s too heavy-handed. We already got the parallel, but then the show went, “Do you get it??” It shows that the writers are too scared that the viewers won’t get it, that their nuance will be lost, so they scramble to make it as obvious as possible, rather than trusting in their own writing.

And if you’re like, “So you want RWBY to be more clear and also… less clear?” the answer is, sadly, yes lol. The things that are already confusing due to retconning and inconsistent themes need to be made explicit, whereas the details that are already strong don’t need an in-your-face, “Okay, but did you really get the parallel here? We’re just making sure.” It’s like launching into explaining why a joke is funny when it’s already landed vs. telling a nonsensical joke and then waiting for the laugh that will never come. RWBY struggles in both areas.

Salem delves into this speech about how this is actually all her fault and she should let Cinder spread her wings or something. AKA, go free Watts and track down Penny. Then you can have your precious Maiden powers.

There’s a massive earthquake across Mantle and we watch a + medical symbol go out. Again, heavy-handed. We don’t need that in order to understand that the whole city shaking while the grimm look happily up to the sky is a bad thing.

We cut to Winter listening to the Ace Ops complain about Penny. She tells them to act like the elite they are, likely because she hates how they refer to Penny as “junk.” Still being set up to betray Ironwood, I bet. During this scene we learn that they have “confirmed visual of her leaving Amity. She appeared to be malfunctioning.” So Penny is alive? Also, they have eyes on Amity Tower and were able to see Penny leaving, but didn’t see any of our trio coming to launch it in the first place? Did Ironwood want it to launch? Did they see Cinder? I just don’t know.

Before they can get there though a message from Jaune comes through. Serious kudos to Team JNY for asking that “anyone” respond/taking the personal risk of calling for help in the first place. They’re finally putting—as Harriet says—they’re own selfishness aside in favor of the greater good. Yang obviously hates that it’s “you guys” they ended up with, but she’s not outright attacking the Ace Ops or anything. I’m like,

Excellent job, Yang.

Jaune is a little harsh in his panic. He said in his message that a “large mass of grimm” is heading towards Mantle and then when Harriet leads with asking about Penny, wants to know what’s wrong with her. Why are you asking about Penny when lives are in danger and “it’s” (the grimm) are “right there”? Except he, uh… points at nothing. There’s the chasm with (I presume) the weird grimm goo down it? Not sure based on the shot, but the Ace Ops expected a “mass of grimm” and then land to see no grimm anywhere nearby. So yeah, they’re more focused on the missing Maiden than the seemingly imaginary enemy Jaune is freaking out about.

They only get on board when the river launches itself at Atlas.

So the goo is, like, sentient before it becomes individual grimm? Or Salem is controlling it from her whale? Either way it’s BAD.

I want to briefly gripe about how the hell everyone is watching this. What, is there a camera conveniently trained on this one random part of Atlas’ underside and everyone’s scrolls tuned into that the second the attack started? It seems far-fetched, to put it mildly. In RWBY’s favor though, I want to acknowledge that we finally have appropriate expressions for the situation! This is good!!

I’m going to level with you all. My notifications have known no peace since I made the mistake of criticizing the adored trio that is Ruby, Weiss, and Blake. I thought supporting Ironwood would get me heat. Nope. Not supporting the main girls is what did it and honestly? I shouldn’t have been surprised. Last week I pointed out that having them smile and, in Ruby’s case, coo during a moment of horror is not good animation and implies some pretty uncomfortable things about their overall sympathy level. The image in question:

It doesn’t set a good tone, especially when we add in what we’ve gotten for Ruby’s group across the rest of this volume. The counters of, “They need and deserve a break. Why won’t you let them be happy?” fall flat when we ignore that this group has been animated as consistently goofing off post-premiere. Sneaking into the guarded military base of a former friend? Tube shenanigans! Need to find your way around? Funny Penny moment! Semblance reveal? Cutesy chibi explanation! Need to do more sneaking? Silly coffee plan! Nora gets electrocuted? Joke about how awesome that was! Even Wiess telling Whitley to go to his room reads as funny to the audience.

Ruby in particular has been a problem, given that she’s our main character and the others’ leader. We take our emotional cues primarily from her. Alongside being a part of all these fun and games, her animation during more serious moments has been less than stellar. This is Penny when Nora goes down.

This is Ruby, Weiss, and Blake. No worry, just focused on the fight.

This is Penny when the fight is over.

This is Ruby, Weiss, and Blake. No worry, just chatting about suspicious activity.

This is Penny in the airship, worrying about Nora and the situation they’re in. This is also Ruby in the airship, apparently not worried at all.

This is Ruby when she learns her uncle is in jail. Is there shock? Fear? Horror that he might be in serious trouble? No, she just maintains the same emotion she had before: fury at Harriet.

So when we reach them watching the recording and they look like this:

No, I’m not convinced that this trio is taking the situation seriously, or that they really care about the people involved. I know they’re supposed to care, they all obviously care from a meta perspective, but the “obviousness” of that only exists in our personal understanding of the characters if we don’t see it on screen. I completely believe that Penny is worried about Nora because she’s animated expressing that worry. I completely believe that JRY are in the middle of a warzone because they’re (mostly) animated as fearful and angry. The rest of Ruby’s team has a scared line from Blake and Weiss holding Nora’s hand, whereas the majority of the emotion across this adventure has been indifference or playfulness. That’s a problem given how horrible the events of this Volume have been, most of which the group is aware of.

All of which is an incredibly long-winded way of saying that this

finally feels appropriate. Well done, RWBY.

Alright, this recap is already over 7k long so I want to return to our plot with the summarized: IRONWOOD WAS RIGHT. He said they couldn’t withstand a head on attack by Salem and he was right. It literally took seconds for her grimm to burrow into Atlas, knock out a tower, and disable the shield. Everyone still claiming that leaving is useless because it’s oh so obvious Salem’s grimm could fly however high it wants (when did we learn that?) are ignoring that leaving was at least a plan with some kind of hope attached to it. And, given her focus on the Staff, may have saved Mantle by drawing Salem’s attention away from the city. The point is we don’t know. All we do know is that Ironwood tried to do something in the face of hopeless odds, Ruby’s team stopped him, and now look, everything is awful. No one could have possibly seen that coming.

Salem: “It’s time.”

I’m very pleased that Salem is finally using the tools at her disposal. Upon reflection, I still don’t buy why she had to wait. “Well, she was waiting for the grimm goo.” She couldn’t have used flying grimm to take out the tower? Take a burrowing grimm and give it wings? She couldn’t have used the goo that was apparently inside her whale the whole time?

It’s all very convenient. In the sense that we’re drawing out the volume by having the villain inexplicably hang back, despite not having a good reason to. In the sense that—unless Ruby’s message comes back to bite her—the villain’s passivity also conveniently let the heroes accomplish the one goal they were desperate to achieve. All of that’s still not good, but at least the Volume seems to be moving out of the “not good” category and into the “slightly better” territory.

Although, as I just acknowledged to a friend, RWBY seems to alternate for me. Every time I have an episode where I think, “Okay, there are still massive problems here, but I can see a glimmer of hope” the next episode is inevitably the pits.

Still, grabbing onto that hope with both hands: Atlas should be decimated, folks! Grimm are swarming, our idiot heroes herded everyone directly under the city, the world should be panicking, and the cold should still be killing people if the story remembers that it exists. At this point my only question is wtf our heroes are supposed to do next, but regardless of what the plot gives us, it’s going to be wild. You all know what’s coming. Next week is our final episode before a two month hiatus, which means we’re going to witness all kinds of awful and then end on a six week cliffhanger. It’s inevitable, so best to emotionally prep for that now lol.

I don’t believe we have any Bingo updates, with the exception of edging towards a few: “Winter betrays Ironwood,” “Army of grimm conveniently doesn’t kill any civilians,” “Atlas somehow survives,” and “Ironwood dies” being the most notable. We’ll have to see what, if anything, gets checked off next Saturday.

As always, thank you so much for reading (I feel like I don’t say that enough :D) and I’ll see you next week! 💜

[Ko-Fi]

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #rwby recaps #rwby midnight #mymetas

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kitkatopinions · 3 years

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I'm tired of fantasy world writers being like 'oh, this is my allegory for racism in my fantasy world where actual racism doesn't exist, also I'm going to not do any research on how to properly include said allegory, badly portray it, make my main characters affected by this white or white passing, and then use racist stereotypes later.' Long post full of RWBY criticism ahead.

RWBY is terrible with the Faunus racism they chose to make part of their story. They made the White Fang an evil terrorist group, they made Blake lecture fellow Faunus about how they're the ones actually hurting themselves by using violence against each other, they framed comfortable and peaceful protest as the only good way despite establishing that peaceful protest didn't work, and they made their child slave coded character who literally got branded turn into nothing more than an abusive stalker and then had him killed without ever addressing the aforementioned child slavery. Also, the only Faunus among our main cast now that Sun is gone is one of the most privileged of the Faunus. Blake can pass as a human if she wants to, she grew up fairly rich, she has two loving parents, and she comes from an inherently powerful position as the daughter of the Chief. Having Blake be privileged would be absolutely fine, if she acknowledged her privilege, wasn’t the mouthpiece on Faunus rights, if she wasn’t the only Faunus in our main cast, and if she didn’t repeatedly lecture other Faunus.

On top of that, two of our main cast have been racist (within the narrative of the show) towards our main Faunus character, one of them learns from it (even though that as well was badly handled) and became the only member of Team RWBY to ever call out human's being racist after season three. Oh wait, except the other member of our main cast that was racist that never had it addressed because it was treated like a joke now has yelled at a racist once, in an incredibly tense situation, so I guess her racism is gone. It’s good that it’s gone, since CRWBY is pushing her and Blake as a couple, but it’s frustrating that her racism never even got a ‘that wasn’t funny’ and we never see Yang learn any better, because it feels like CRWBY brushed it off and acted like it was fun and quirky instead of treating it like the casual racism it was. They do a similar thing with Robyn in season seven which came out in 2019, when she calls Marrow ‘Wags.’ Also none of our main cast are ever seen protesting for Faunus rights (sans a two second flashback of child Blake at a rally and a non canon RWBY chibi cartoon.) I don't think Ruby - our main protagonist - has ever even mentioned Faunus rights. In a world where Adam was branded with the SDC logo under fifteen years ago at the most, racism and fighting racism should be a big part of the story, and instead, it's brushed to the side and used for the occasional 'we don't like racism btw' moment now that Blake got rid of a Faunus run terrorist group. To me, this implies that the number one threat to the Faunus… Was the Faunus, and although some humans are still anti-Faunus, no one has to devote their time or energy into fighting for equality. In season 7, Blake doesn’t even attend the rally of the political figure running against Jacques Schnee - who as far as I’m aware, is the only business owner or person in power who has ever displayed anti-Faunus racism in the show. By the way, please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. It’s been a hot minute since I watched through the show.

Instead of attending a rally that seems very important for the Faunus, Blake goes dancing with her crush. It’s like she stopped caring about politics and rights after the White Fang got removed. That feels so bad. Also, I'll note that most of the actual POC Faunus that can't pass as white in this show are on the bad side (Sienna, Fennec, Corsac, Lionheart, Ilia, Marrow.) And either they die, or they must learn to give up their destructive ways and become better people. I’m not saying this was intentional, I’m saying it’s a pattern, it’s alarming, and the writers should’ve known better.

I believe Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross have admitted that they mishandled Faunus racism, but first off, it still doesn’t excuse them because they were grown people putting out a product that premiered in 2013 and they should’ve known to do research and do better. But second off, I still feel like they haven't done the research they need to and continue to mishandle the racism by ignoring it when they want to and bringing it up only to let us as an audience know Weiss and Yang aren't racist anymore. They can’t just cut the Faunus from their storyline now, but they can’t just ignore it, and need to actually make it a better allegory. Honestly though, one of the big reasons I'm convinced that they still haven't done any real research on how to properly portray POC or racism is because of how terribly they're handling the Ace Ops.

They're writing a fantasy show, they aren't tied to real world portrayals of law enforcement, but they went the route of commentating on real world police, corrupt police, and use of excessive force. That's fine. But things are already pretty dicey just starting off because of how they've mishandled and continue to mishandle Faunus racism. Outside of Jacques Schnee and his company and business partners, I don't remember seeing Faunus racism in Atlas (not Mantle, Atlas.) If I'm wrong about that, again, please correct me, I may have missed it. But without seeing actual discrimination against Faunus within the police force, right off the bat, that's a mishandling of commentating on police brutality. But also, other than Clover who is now dead, the Ace Ops are all people of color. CRWBY made their bad cops all not white. Even Ironwood - who is white passing - is voiced by a person of color who has said he believes that James is Chinese American. I'll point out that being a Hunter is pretty much just being a cop with more freedom and seemingly less rules. Qrow (a Beacon Huntsman) goes around destroying public property and comments on how some hunters work outside of the law, and yet it's only the Ace Ops who are held to real world ACAB rules and everyone else gets to be a good cop/law enforcement officer. Ruby gets to proudly proclaim herself a Huntress, Weiss gets to arrest people, Jaune gets told that he deserves his Huntsman license, we've been getting told for seven seasons that Hunters help people and do what's right, and we're given long time Hunters and mentor figures like Oobleck, Glynda, Qrow, and now Robyn is being framed that way, and they back that up. Even training Atlas soldiers like Neon and Flynt are fine and fun. But only the Ace Ops are bad, corrupt law enforcement officers. So that way, we can have the entirely white passing Team RWBY beat up the entirely POC, not white passing Ace Ops. Even though Team RWBY is a byproduct of the same kind of program and even though we’ve seen the police discriminate against Faunus in Vale. If CRWBY wants their allegories to be taken seriously, they need to recognize that RWBY and co are also certified police. Also, it’s really not funny to see people use ACAB as a reason why the Ace Ops are of course bad, but then turn around and simp for Winter, and be like ‘We want Winter to be redeemed, but Harriet? What a bitch!’ Like… I’m side-eyeing that pretty hard.

Speaking of Winter, now she’s in charge of the Ace Ops. But unlike Marrow, Winter doesn’t just look sad sometimes and blindly only follow direct orders without protest. She’s actually feeling all kinds of things, and she’s actually being framed as strong, intelligent, and reasonable. I’m sure no one forgot this, but I’ll note it anyway; Winter is white. Having Winter be the only Ace Op to actually listen to JRY and do things without James explicitly telling her to (although I don’t consider what she did a betrayal or going behind his back) is dicey. They could’ve given this moment to Harriet and nothing would change. ‘This lady typically follows orders, is short tempered, and pushes down her emotions, but she can still recognize a fairly good idea when she sees one and can actually think for herself, so although this isn’t a betrayal, she compromises and lets Team JRY go after their friend.’ Yeah, idk guys, I feel like there was literally no reason to slot Winter in with the Ace Ops to be the lone voice of reason when Harriet could’ve become the new leader and played the exact same role. Instead, Winter gets to have a power move where she puts Harriet in her place. Winter is given actual depth and gets to put down the black woman who the writers have made display nothing but anger for the whole season. The fans rally behind Winter because she was given depth and hate Harriet because she has none, but that’s the fault of the writers. Btw, ‘this black woman won’t show any emotion besides anger’ is a racist stereotype. It would probably have taken like five minutes on google for Luna and Shawcross to have realized that it was a bad idea to write a black woman in any sort of position of power to be constantly angry + hiding her emotions. Elm is in the same boat as Harriet, and I was going to say it’s less severe, but then I remembered that she literally attacked Ren for talking about their emotions.

Look, my point is that RWBY as a show has never handled allegories like racism and corrupt police well, and either they should stop trying and stick to ‘make believe land is just different than the real world’ or start putting in the work and fix this. By the way, I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad for watching or even enjoying RWBY, but I hope people can watch it while recognizing that some of the things CRWBY has chosen to put into their show are destructive and that the creators need to be called out. I’ll continue to hope that most RWBY fans do recognize that RWBY is deeply flawed, but I’ve just been stewing recently about someone who told me that I shouldn’t have expected the show to address Faunus racism in the Atlas arcs because that ended when Adam died.

I want to make it totally clear that I agree with and support ACAB in the real world and I'm not against it being used in fantasy works, I just think CRWBY is doing a poor job of portraying it and many fans are misusing it and it feels disrespectful. This is an actual real world movement with actual real world consequences. It feels very bad to see people use it to argue that the writers who have never handled allegories of racism well can make an all POC group be a destructive, violent, easily controlled, easily beat group of corrupt cops that need a white woman and fellow cop to be the voice of reason.

#RWDE #rwde content #rwby criticism #rwby critical

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yournewapartment · 4 years

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YNA, I need help or advice or something: there's this video going around Facebook, that my cousin just sent me, from a woc who is saying that "racially motivated police brutality is a myth" and I'm so angry like how can she say that? "White men are more likely to be killed by cops," "cops are more likely to be killed by black men," and crap like that. I dont believe any of it but how do I prove to my cousin it's bs? The woman was citing figures and yelling "look it up!!" Was she bluffing?

I recently listened to a wonderful podcast from In The Dark about the case of Curtis Flowers, a POC who had to endure an unprecedented number of murder trails in Mississippi for a mass murder he did not commit. The prosecutor on the case, an asshole named Doug Evans, was a racist, and tried the case six times. There is only one other case in all of United States history, to have been tried even close to this many times. One other case! Curtis’ case kept getting overturned because his defense team was able to prove time and time again, that Evans and his team were racists. They used their legal power in the courtroom to strike as many black people from the jury pool as possible. Out of the six trials (think 12 jurors and 3 alternates), I believe only eight POC made it onto the jury. That’s 8 out of 90 possible! My memory might not be 100% correct, but you get the point.

It’s a wonderful podcast and I highly recommend you listen if you’re interested in true crime. BUT, my point...

During several of the trials, Mr. Evans used jail-house informants who were POC. All of them have since recanted their testimony and have said that Evans paid them to testify or helped them get lesser prison sentences. But this is after the fact. In the Dark investigators interviewed different jurors who sat on different juries (the jail house informants were used at almost every trial). Many of the white jurors said that they gave the jailhouse informants more credence than they normally would have, because they were POC. They said that they did not think that POC would turn on other POC if it wasn’t for a good reason. Which is, my friends.... wait for it... just another form of racism against POC!

The few black jurors that made it to juries did not give the jailhouse informants more credence at all. Several even said that they found the jail house informants very untrustworthy and unreliable. Because the court literally tells you: “Hey, these are jail house informants, you have to take their testimony with a grain of salt.”

I haven’t seen this video and I obviously don’t know the background of it or of the POC on it. But it sounds to me like white people are watching this video and thinking: “Well, this is a POC saying these things, so this video has to be an honest take on the situation.” It’s sounding like they’re giving this video more weight and importance than they would a video of a white person saying the same exact things.

Which is... racism!

Racism is not always brutality and violence, thought it often times is.

Racism can be your white grandmother saying: “I don’t have a problem with black people, their music is just too loud.”

It can be your friend saying the n-word when she’s singing along to a Kendrick Lamar song: “He said it first, so why can’t I say it?”

It can be a co-worker assuming a POC co-worker speaks a different language based on their skin color.

It can even be you! If I’m walking around at night by myself, and I see a group of black men hanging out in a park, doing their own thing, why am I uneasy? I have to ask myself- if this were a group of white men, would I still feel uneasy? Why do I feel this way? Do I carry inherent racism with me as a white person, just based on the way I react with society as a white woman?

Guys- I definitely do! And if you’re a white person reading this, I bet you do too. My parents are die-hard liberals who have always touted equal rights for everyone. In my education, I never had a teacher spout openly racist view points or try to “brain wash me” into being racist. It was a default. A default, because every interaction I’ve had with everyone I’ve ever met, has in some part been a judgment based on my appearance. It’s not a conscious thing, it’s what we as humans do, we take in our surroundings. Living life as a white woman has granted me invisible privileges that POC do not share.

And... that’s a hard pill to swallow. I’m sure that I’ll get comments on this post and asks in my inbox with angry white people criticizing what I’ve just said. Because nobody wants to be called a racist! White people who spend their whole lives with POC, who have never intentionally said anything negative about POC, do not want to hear that they were essentially born into racism. Fam, I didn’t want to hear it either! But it is not enough to “not be a racist”. We’ve come too far as a species to sit back idly and occasionally tweet “Black Lives Matter” and congratulate ourselves for the effort. As a white person with my rights and privileges, it is my duty to society to be actively “anti-racist”.

It is my duty to educate myself. It is my duty to stand with POC. To amplify POC’s voices. To listen when POC talk. And most importantly- to not make it about myself! Which I have in this post, I know. But as semi-popular blogger who is white, I feel that I needed to write this out to help other white people. White people- get angry! Be the change you wish to see in the world. Step up and do what you can to support POC.

I know I’ve somewhat indirectly answered your question, so more to the point. I don’t know who this POC is in the video. But on a very basic level, I know that you know, that what the woman in the video is saying is not the truth. It’s been proven time and time again that POC (particularly black POC), have been murdered by the systemic racism of our justice system. Just scroll back on my blog and check out the posts I reblogged #blacklivesmatter for more specific details. This is not to say that the justice system magically works 100% if you’re white, it clearly doesn’t. But as a white person, you have a much better chance of getting a fair shake of things. Whether that’s being pulled over by a cop, being arrested, or even getting an impartial jury. These are basic human rights that we should all enjoy!

Anyone can hop on the internet, record a shitty video, and act like it’s the truth. I can record a video stating that I’m an FBI agent who has been hunting serial killers using the nanotechnology of gusher candies, but nobody is going to fucking believe me. Every video on the internet needs to be treated with scrutiny, and frankly, your cousin is a fool if she’s willing to end her education on racism just because she watched one video with a POC condemning it.

In this case, I would message your cousin the following resources on racism and police statistics so that she can educate herself. There are countless articles all over the internet:

https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/08/police-officer-shootings-gun-violence-racial-bias-crime-data/595528/

Also important resources:

https://blacklivesmatter.com/

https://www.aclu.org/

How to be anti-racist: https://weedmaps.com/news/2020/06/where-to-start-being-anti-racist-educate-yourself-with-black-voices/

https://medium.com/wake-up-call/a-detailed-list-of-anti-racism-resources-a34b259a3eea

Check out the case of Curtis Flowers on all your favorite podcast streaming services: https://www.apmreports.org/in-the-dark/season-two/curtis-flowers-updates

I appreciate everyone who read this. I feel a little uneasy posting this if I’m being honest. I am white, this isn’t about my voice. So if you are a POC and have feedback for me, please let me know. I will keep on keeping on, and will do my part to support #blacklivesmatter.

#Anonymous #racism

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foreverlogical · 3 years

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San Francisco is once again fighting over billionaires’ philanthropic power.

Billionaire philanthropy is once again on the defense in San Francisco, the home of many a tech billionaire.

The latest backlash centers on a city proposal to get 20,000 schoolchildren some in-person teaching and playtime this summer, after city public schools have been closed for more than a year during the pandemic. But a liberal lawmaker has temporarily derailed the initiative to raise questions about the involvement of a volunteer group that she worries is pushing a political agenda.

The saga is another flashpoint in the debate over the proper role of billionaire philanthropists — and their affiliated nonprofits — in society. And it is a window into how the city that is home to tech wealth is increasingly suspicious of civic projects from those tech leaders. Late last year, San Francisco officially condemned Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for his errors at Facebook after he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated $75 million to a local hospital.

Here’s what happened: Earlier this month, San Francisco announced that a foundation called Crankstart, funded by famous Sequoia venture capitalist Mike Moritz and his wife, Harriet Heyman, was donating $25 million to help start a city initiative to offer free summer school or day care programs to kids. The program would be aided by an outside advocacy group called TogetherSF that was formed last year to work on civic projects in the city and has also, separately, been funded by Crankstart. Crankstart brokered the arrangement between TogetherSF and the summer school program.

But TogetherSF’s involvement has become controversial — and is being cast by one San Francisco supervisor, Hillary Ronen, as a possible political play by education reformers. And Ronen this week convinced the board, on a 10-1 vote, to delay approving the program to educate San Francisco students until she could investigate TogetherSF and its political ties.

Ronen is suspicious in part because Together SF is not a typical nonprofit organization that is a 501(c)3 group, but is instead organized as part of a bigger lobbying or advocacy organization, a 501(c)4. The group is also co-led by a former aide to multiple San Francisco lawmakers. And Ronen believes that the group may have loyalties to activists who push for school privatization and charters schools, which are lightning rod issues in urban education policy.

Ronen conceded she didn’t have any hard proof of ties from Crankstart or TogetherSF’s ties to the education reform movement, but said based on its 501(c)4 structure and her limited research, it “looks and smells like” they are seeking to promote a “political agenda.” She is concerned, for instance, that the group could seek to use the volunteers it recruits for future political campaigns in support of anti-union candidates.

“There has to be, in my book, unprecedented transparency and agreement that funders of this initiative are doing so because they’re very concerned about children — and aren’t trying to advance some alternative privatization, charter agenda that is meant to dismantle our public schools,” Ronen told Recode.

Together SF’s founders, Kanishka Cheng and Griffin Gaffney, say their work is non-political and that they merely are seeking to mobilize a network of volunteers to serve their hometown in crisis. They are helping the city with work like collecting donations from private employers and creating a website for the program.

“We’re incredibly surprised by it, honestly. This is the first we’re hearing about this privatization, charter agenda come up as a reason to question the program and our involvement,” Cheng told Recode. “It’s not at all what Together SF has been involved in.”

For now, Ronen has just delayed the vote on the program by two weeks. She told Recode she doesn’t expect it to jeopardize the summer program, but that she was open to voting against it if her investigation revealed new information. But regardless of the final vote, some observers are concerned that the conflict — along with the high-profile Zuckerberg censure in the spring — could dissuade more and more wealthy philanthropists from donating money if it only brings them more scrutiny. The city is also about to embark on a $2 billion fundraising drive, also led by Ronen, when it will need more money from wealthy people.

Moritz, a former board member of Google, and his wife Heyman, an award-winning novelist, have long made local causes a focus of Crankstart, which has a private profile but is one of the Bay Area’s biggest foundations by total assets at almost $2 billion. Crankstart has donated over $50 million to San Francisco nonprofits in 2020, funding efforts during the pandemic that paid San Francisco essential workers to quarantine if sick and local efforts to feed the hungry.

Moritz told Recode that he was trying to help local schoolchildren “and nothing beyond that.”

“All we want to do is to help people who don’t necessarily have a great, wonderful ticket for a great education to get that ticket. That’s all,” he said. “Does it pass the litmus test of is this good for San Francisco, or for a portion of San Francisco? I think the answer is yes.”

Moritz is technically the funder of TogetherSF’s parent company, Civic Action Labs, which runs TogetherSF and a second organization that has also faced tough questions about its political ties. That organization is Here / Say Media, a new media publication focused on San Francisco news that has drawn raised eyebrows from journalism ethicists because it is owned by the 501(c)4 parent company. Almost all nonprofit newsrooms are traditionally structured as 501(c)3 groups rather than as “dark money” political groups, as 501(c)4 organizations are sometimes called.

What unites these two stories is that Here/Say Media, which is also run by Cheng and Gaffney, originally declined to disclose its donors — and that troubled media observers. But then on March 9th — the day before the city of San Francisco announced the involvement of Cheng and Gaffney in the summer program — Here/Say quietly updated its website to disclose that Crankstart was a funder.

“We knew the [summer] program was launching. We’d be more visible. So we wanted to be more transparent about that,” Cheng said when asked about the timing.

Cheng and Gaffney are trying to unwind the intertwined controversies; They are in the process of trying to turn Together SF into a new 501(c)3 organization, which will theoretically reduce suspicions about their political agenda. They said that they will also spin out Here / Say Media into a new, to-be-determined, non-political structure, too.

But political critics of San Francisco government — which is managing several concurrent crises, including one involving its school board over racist tweets — are concerned that the damage has already been done. And that philanthropists will find other things to fund with their billions rather than a city that makes their life difficult.

Asked if this brinkmanship sent a bad message to private philanthropists who want to get involved in city life, Moritz said “actions speak much louder than words.”

“We live in a bit of a political cauldron, and so you know it’s just part of life,” Moritz said. “It certainly won’t deter us if people who don’t even know us, people we’ve never even talked to, ascribe various motives to us.”

Ronen, though, insists it is merely about transparency.

“If their investments is free and clear, and don’t involve a political agenda — fantastic, that’s very generous and wonderful,” Ronen said. “But if they involve an agenda, no thanks. We don’t want your investment. You have enough power as it is.”

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

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Why Is It So Hard for Democrats to Act Like They Actually Won?

Rebecca Solnit

November 19, 2020

When Trump won the 2016 election—while losing the popular vote—the New York Times seemed obsessed with running features about what Trump voters were feeling and thinking. These pieces treated them as both an exotic species and people it was our job to understand, understand being that word that means both to comprehend and to grant some sort of indulgence to. Now that Trump has lost the 2020 election, the Los Angeles Times has given their editorial page over to letters from Trump voters, who had exactly the sort of predictable things to say we have been hearing for far more than four years, thanks to the New York Times and what came to seem like about 11,000 other news outlets hanging on the every word of every white supremacist they could convince to go on the record.

The letters editor headed this section with, “In my decade editing this page, there has never been a period when quarreling readers have seemed so implacably at odds with each other, as if they get their facts and values from different universes. As one small attempt to bridge the divide, we are providing today a page full of letters from Trump supporters.” The implication is the usual one: we—urban multiethnic liberal-to-radical only-partly-Christian America—need to spend more time understanding MAGA America. The demands do not go the other way. Fox and Ted Cruz and the Federalist have not chastised their audiences, I feel pretty confident, with urgings to enter into discourse with, say, Black Lives Matter activists, rabbis, imams, abortion providers, undocumented valedictorians, or tenured lesbians. When only half the divide is being tasked with making the peace, there is no peace to be made, but there is a unilateral surrender on offer. We are told to consider this bipartisanship, but the very word means both sides abandon their partisanship, and Mitch McConnell and company have absolutely no interest in doing that.

Paul Waldman wrote a valuable column in the Washington Post a few years ago, in which he pointed out that this discord is valuable fuel to right-wing operatives: “The assumption is that if Democrats simply choose to deploy this powerful tool of respect, then minds will be changed and votes will follow. This belief, widespread though it may be, is stunningly naive.” He notes that the sense of being disrespected “doesn’t come from the policies advocated by the Democratic Party, and it doesn’t come from the things Democratic politicians say. Where does it come from? An entire industry that’s devoted to convincing white people that liberal elitists look down on them. The right has a gigantic media apparatus that is devoted to convincing people that liberals disrespect them, plus a political party whose leaders all understand that that idea is key to their political project and so join in the chorus at every opportunity.”

There’s also often a devil’s bargain buried in all this, that you flatter and, yeah, respect these white people who think this country is theirs by throwing other people under the bus—by disrespecting immigrants and queer people and feminists and their rights and views. And you reinforce that constituency’s sense that they matter more than other people when you pander like this, and pretty much all the problems we’ve faced over the past four years, to say nothing of the last five hundred, come from this sense of white people being more important than nonwhites, Christians than non-Christians, native-born than immigrant, male than female, straight than queer, cis-gender than trans.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito just complained that “you can’t say that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. Now it’s considered bigotry.” This is a standard complaint of the right: the real victim is the racist who has been called a racist, not the victim of his racism, the real oppression is to be impeded in your freedom to oppress. And of course Alito is disingenuous; you can say that stuff against marriage equality (and he did). Then other people can call you a bigot, because they get to have opinions too, but in his scheme such dissent is intolerable, which is fun coming from a member of the party whose devotees wore “fuck your feelings” shirts at its rallies and popularized the term “snowflake.”

Nevertheless, we get this hopelessly naïve version of centrism, of the idea that if we’re nicer to the other side there will be no other side, just one big happy family. This inanity is also applied to the questions of belief and fact and principle, with some muddled cocktail of moral relativism and therapists’ “everyone’s feelings are valid” applied to everything. But the truth is not some compromise halfway between the truth and the lie, the fact and the delusion, the scientists and the propagandists. And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people. Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?

I think our side, if you’ll forgive my ongoing shorthand and binary logic, has something to offer everyone and we can and must win in the long run by offering it, and offering it via better stories and better means to make those stories reach everyone. We actually want to see everyone have a living wage, access to healthcare, and lives unburdened by medical, student, and housing debt. We want this to be a thriving planet when the babies born this year turn 80 in 2100. But the recommended compromise means abandoning and diluting our stories, not fortifying and improving them (and finding ways for them to actually reach the rest of America, rather than having them warped or shut out altogether). I’ve spent much of my adult life watching politicians like Bill Clinton and, at times, Barack Obama sell out their own side to placate the other, with dismal results, and I pray that times have changed enough that Joe Biden will not do it all over again.

Among the other problems with the LA Times’s editor’s statement is that one side has a lot of things that do not deserve to be called facts, and their values are too often advocacy for harming many of us on the other side. Not to pick on one news outlet: Sunday, the Washington Post ran a front-page sub-head about the #millionMAGAmarch that read “On stark display in the nation’s capital were two irreconcilable versions of America, each refusing to accept what the other considered to be undeniable fact.” Except that one side did have actual facts, notably that Donald J. Trump lost the election, and the other had hot and steamy delusions.

I can comprehend, and do, that lots of people don’t believe climate change is real, but is there some great benefit in me listening, again, to those who refuse to listen to the global community of scientists and see the evidence before our eyes? A lot of why the right doesn’t “understand” climate change is that climate change tells us everything is connected, everything we do has far-reaching repercussions, and we’re responsible for the whole, a message at odds with their idealization of a version of freedom that smells a lot like disconnection and irresponsibility. But also climate denial is the result of fossil fuel companies and the politicians they bought spreading propaganda and lies for profit, and I understand that better than the people who believe it. If half of us believe the earth is flat, we do not make peace by settling on it being halfway between round and flat. Those of us who know it’s round will not recruit them through compromise. We all know that you do better bringing people out of delusion by being kind and inviting than by mocking them, but that’s inviting them to come over, which is not the same thing as heading in their direction.

The editor spoke of facts, and he spoke of values. In the past four years too many members of the right have been emboldened to carry out those values as violence. One of the t-shirts at the #millionMAGAmarch this weekend: “Pinochet did nothing wrong.” Except stage a coup, torture and disappear tens of thousands of Chileans, and violate laws and rights. A right-wing conspiracy to overthrow the Michigan government and kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer was recently uncovered, racists shot some Black Lives Matter protestors and plowed their cars into a lot of protests this summer. The El Paso anti-immigrant massacre was only a year ago; the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre two years ago, the Charlottesville white-supremacist rally in which Heather Heyer was killed three years ago (and of course there have been innumerable smaller incidents all along). Do we need to bridge the divide between Nazis and non-Nazis? Because part of the problem is that we have an appeasement economy, a system that is supposed to be greased by being nice to the other side.

Appeasement didn’t work in the 1930s and it won’t work now. That doesn’t mean that people have to be angry or hate back or hostile, but it does mean they have to stand on principle and defend what’s under attack. There are situations in which there is no common ground worth standing on, let alone hiking over to. If Nazis wanted to reach out and find common ground and understand us, they probably would not have had that tiki-torch parade full of white men bellowing “Jews will not replace us” and, also, they would not be Nazis. Being Nazis, white supremacists, misogynists, transphobes is all part of a project of refusing to understand as part of refusing to respect. It is a minority position but by granting it deference we give it, over and over, the power of a majority position.

In fact the whole Republican Party, since long before Trump, has committed itself to the antidemocratic project of trying to create a narrower electorate rather than win a wider vote. They have invested in voter suppression as a key tactic to win, and the votes they try to suppress are those of Black voters and other voters of color. That is a brutally corrupt refusal to allow those citizens the rights guaranteed to them by law. Having failed to prevent enough Black people from voting in the recent election, they are striving mightily to discard their votes after the fact. What do you do with people who think they matter more than other people? Catering to them reinforces that belief, that they are central to the nation’s life, they are more important, and their views must prevail. Deference to intolerance feeds intolerance.

Years ago the linguist George Lakoff wrote that Democrats operate as kindly nurturance-oriented mothers to the citizenry, Republicans as stern discipline-oriented fathers. But the relationship between the two parties is a marriage, between an overly deferential wife and an overbearing and often abusive husband (think of how we got our last two Supreme Court justices and failed to get Merrick Garland). The Hill just ran a headline that declared “GOP Senators say that a Warren nomination would divide Republicans.” I am pretty sure they didn’t run headlines that said, “Democratic Senators say a Pompeo (or Bolton or Perdue or Sessions) nomination would divide Democrats.” I grew up in an era where wives who were beaten were expected to do more to soothe their husbands and not challenge them, and this carries on as the degrading politics of our abusive national marriage.

Some of us don’t know how to win. Others can’t believe they ever lost or will lose or should, and their intransigence constitutes a kind of threat. That’s why the victors of the recent election are being told in countless ways to go grovel before the losers. This unilateral surrender is how misogyny and racism are baked into a lot of liberal and centrist as well as right-wing positions, this idea that some people need to be flattered and buffered even when they are harming the people who are supposed to do the flattering and buffering, even when they are the minority, even when they’re breaking the law or lost the election. Lakoff didn’t quite get to the point of saying that this nation lives in a household full of what domestic abuse advocates call coercive control, in which one partner’s threats, intimidations, devaluations, and general shouting down control the other.

This is what marriages were before feminism, with the abused wife urged to placate and soothe the furious husband. Feminism is good for everything, and it’s a good model for seeing that this is both outrageous and a recipe for failure. It didn’t work in marriages, and it never was the abused partner’s job to prevent the abuse by surrendering ground and rights and voice. It is not working as national policy either. Now is an excellent time to stand on principle and defend what we value, and I believe it’s a winning strategy too, or at least brings us closer to winning than surrender does. Also, it’s worth repeating, we won, and being gracious in victory is still being victorious.

[Rebecca Solnit’s first media job was in fact-checking and her last book is the memoir Recollections of My Nonexistence. She’s sent a lot of mail to her nieces and nephews during the pandemic.]

#words and writing #Rebecca Solnit #Recollections of My Nonexistence #feminism #assault on the Capitol #Corrupt GOP #Criminal GOP #abuse #words and writiing #my favorites #Nazis

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thats-a-lot-of-cortisol · 4 years

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I’ve been seeing (and sharing) some things about certain prophets and scriptures and such. So I’m going to share my unsolicited opinion about this. I’ll preface by saying that I’m not Black and don’t pretend to know the full extent of the harm from the racism in the Church. I’m coming at this from what I’ve heard and learned and studied; if I say something inaccurate, please let me know!

I’ll make it as organized as I can. It’s gonna be long so it’ll be under the cut.

First of all, I know that we’re told to listen to the prophet’s voice. D&C 21:4-5 says:

Wherefore, meaning the church, thou shalt give heed to all of [Joseph Smith’s] words and commandments which he shall give unto you as he receiveth them, walking in all holiness before me;

For his word ye shall receive, as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith.

(Brackets added by me).

This says that we need to heed the voices of the leaders of the Church because they’re mouthpieces of the Lord. It also says that we need to have patience and faith. To me, this means that sometimes they’ll say things we disagree with. This is often looked at as “oh you need to pray and learn to be okay with the doctrine”, which is the case sometimes! But sometimes, to me, this also means “you need to pray and figure things out for yourself, keeping the faith when your leaders decide to spread their opinions instead of or alongside doctrine”. It’s odd to me that we say that our leaders are imperfect but then refuse to truly admit when a previous leader (you know the one, though there were plenty more) were, in a word, wrong. Brigham Young was an imperfect person who supported slavery and took away Black mens’ rights to hold the priesthood. He did some awful things! And guess what? He was wrong. Ezra Taft Benson said that Martin Luther King was a communist. Guess what? He was wrong. Saying that someone was a prophet and brought forth doctrine and saying that they had wrong/harmful opinions are not mutually exclusive. We readily criticize Joseph Smith for being bad at money but we have a hard time criticizing Brigham Young for being racist and pro-slavery. Honestly, I consider Young to be worse in that regard, so I’m not sure why we’ve refused to acknowledge it for so long. A couple other people who are held up as religious leaders who did the Lord’s work include:

-Martin Luther, who was antisemitic for a large part of his life and died holding those views.

-Paul, who was sexist. (I’m not going to get into the debate about whether or not the verses in question were actually his words because I’m not very knowledgeable on the topic, but they are attributed to him as of when I’m writing this so that’s what I’m going with).

Paul is well loved and respected by Christians, at least from what I’ve seen. Martin Luther was a crucial part of the Reformation. We say that those views are outdated and harmful despite the fact that those men were “a product of their time”. In the secular sphere, we say this about Confederate generals and slaveholders. We recognize the culture they grew up around but critique their views anyway because we know better now. On top of that, cultures are never monolithic, so not everyone’s going to have the same views. Heck, Martin Luther wasn’t antisemitic at first. “Their time” included people who weren’t sexist or racist or antisemitic or any other bad “-ist”. Their time period isn’t an excuse.

So why are we allowing it to be an excuse with our leaders? Joseph Smith, the first prophet of the Lord’s Church in the latter-days, was anti-slavery! He appointed Black men to the priesthood! Some examples: Elijah Abel was the first Black man to be called to the Seventy. He went on three missions. He was ordained to the priesthood! Joseph T. Ball was a branch president! He was also ordained to the priesthood. I said it earlier and I’ll say it again: Brigham Young took the blessings of holding the priesthood away from Black men. This goes directly against what Joseph Smith, one of the first to hold the priesthood in the Restored Church, did. And this stance was held up by other racist leaders until 1978.

Our leaders through the years have claimed to have been praying for an answer about this, and I’m sure they were, but they didn’t receive the go-ahead to lift the ban. I commonly hear people justifying this by saying that such a radical stance would have killed the Church because the world wasn’t ready for it. But there were plenty of anti-slavery churches who actively helped and protected slaves and free Black people at that time and afterwards. So to me, the logic doesn’t add up, and it’s never sat right with me.

But here’s the thing: we know that the Restoration is a process. We know that we learn and grow “line by line, precept by precept” as we are willing to apply what we are taught. You can pray for whatever you want, but if you’re not truly open to the answer you won’t get it. I’m sure many of us have had those times where we say that we’re open to whatever the answer is but we aren’t yet; I know I have. I, personally, think that that’s what happened. The apostles and prophets weren’t truly ready. And guess what it took? It took them realizing that a community of Saints in Brazil (if I remember correctly) who wouldn’t be able to go into the temple being built in their area raised money to build it anyway.

In a similar vein, we know that some of the teachings used to justify those views are false.

-”Mark of Cain”: used to say that Black people were unworthy of temple covenants because they’re descendants of Cain. This is false and dehumanizing.

-”Valor in Heaven”: this is the belief that people who aren’t white are that way because they were “less than faithful” during the war in heaven. This is false. A lot of things have grey areas, but I feel like this is pretty straight forward: either you ended up on the Savior’s side in the pre-existence or you didn’t. Everyone reading this in a physical body ended up on the Savior’s side. I, personally, don’t think Heavenly Father would quantify it, either. Is someone who joined the Church later in life any less qualified for the Celestial Kingdom? What about someone who doesn’t accept the gospel until the afterlife, but gets all of the saving ordinances by proxy? Do they get stuck in a Kingdom lower than what they actually should get? “Valor in Heaven” flies in the face of our teachings and is dehumanizing.

-The Lamanites’ curse: this was a specific situation that applied to a specific group of people. Quick note: I’m wrestling with these verses myself, but this is where I’m at with them right now. This is definitely “gospel according to Jean” territory, partly because I’m not sure how often recent leaders have discussed it: we’ve been avoiding the topic all together for a while now.

It didn’t make their culture monolithic. Both they and the Nephites went through phases of righteousness and unrighteousness. The main issue was that the Nephites (who started out righteous) were actively being killed by the Lamanites. The curse was a way to tell them apart, yes, but it would have been the same whether it was “the Lamanites will have blonde hair” or “the Nephites will be dark” (to use the terminology in the Book of Mormon). Also, what does Jacob tell the Nephites in Jacob 3? One, to “revile against them no more because of the darkness of their skins” (verse 9) and two, that they were more righteous than the Nephites were at that time. Jacob gives a couple reasons for this: firstly, they loved their wives and didn’t cheat on them or participate in polygamy that wasn’t given the go-ahead by the Lord (this is what the Nephites were doing). Secondly, the hatred they felt towards the Nephites was passed down by their fathers. Their fathers were Laman and Lemuel, who actively tried to murder their brothers and even their father, and taught their children to do the same to their cousins. The Lamanites hated the Nephites because they were taught that Nephi stole the brass plates (which held genealogy and doctrine) and tried to take the right to rule from his older brothers. I, at least, can understand the logic of that, even if it’s not really what happened according to the Book of Mormon. They were acting on what they knew. It was a lasting blood feud between family, not “oh one group is Not White so they’re bad”. This, besides the fact that the Lehites hailed from Jerusalem. So, Middle Eastern. Also, “filthiness”, from what I can tell, was used as another way to say “unrighteousness”. It’s not that they were literally “dirtier”, as I think many people take it to mean.

When one group was righteous and the other one wasn’t, the righteous group sent missionaries to the other. We use it to justify racism and slavery. There’s also the fact that sometimes the scriptures say that the Lord caused something to happen when really it was more that He let it happen. He didn’t actually harden the Pharaoh’s heart, He just didn’t violate the Pharaoh’s agency to un-harden it. I wonder if the “curse” was something similar.

So all that to say: we should absolutely hold Brigham Young, Ezra Taft Benson, and the others accountable for the harm they did. They were human! And humans are never just good. It’s okay to say “we recognize that these men furthered the Restoration, but they also did and said awful things that are not acceptable.” That’s not disrespecting their roles as prophets, seers, and revelators, it’s ensuring that we don’t conflate their opinions with doctrine. Is it so hard to apologize? To not ignore the pain this caused? But until us and our leaders both start actively working to undo the racism inherent in the system, we’re not going to get anywhere.

#tumblrstake #church of jesus christ of latter day saints #lds #mormon #religion #jacob 3 #okay to reblog #racism #jean's musings #antisemitism mention

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ashandboneca · 5 years

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The racism is coming from inside the house.

With all that's happening in the world right now, I wanted to take a moment to talk about racism and discrimination in the general pagan community.

I know a lot of people see pagans and witches as a loving, hippie-dippy, group who couldn't possibly contribute to such a hateful thing. It almost makes me want to laugh. Not only does the pagan community contain racism, parts of it actively enable and perpetuate it.

I have written extensively previously about my own experiences in my own community 5 years ago, when a local white supremacist was harassing me online, attempting to defame me, and attacking and slandering members of the community who are people of colour (POC). I cannot speak for any of those POC, I do not know their experience. I can only speak for myself and what I saw happen. I saw members of my own community, members and organizations that I have worked with and that I have trusted, back up a known white supremacist with 'they're just proud of their heritage' and a refusal to do anything to protect other members and potential members of the community, even with proof. I still see people that I know and used to respect attend their events or promote their events. The community where I used to live is so steeped in racism, and it is enabled by the people who have the power to prevent it.

I can't even imagine what it would be like to walk in the shoes of a POC here, seeing a whole mess of white folks who claim to be welcoming and accepting, sheltering a known neo-nazi. It must be so uncomfortable. It must be so infuriating.

Unfortunately, you see a lot of prevalence of neo-nazi beliefs and behaviours in the Heathen and Asatru community. Our gods have been co-opted by the jack-booted masses, looking to perpetuate their ideals of a pure race (which, newsflash, doesn't actually exist), white is right, and hatred of the other, searching for ways to twist the words of the gods to justify their tirade of fear and hatred. You have groups like the Wotan network, Asatru Folk Assembly (which is officially classified by the US government as a hate group), and the Thulean Perspective. You have the Heathen Harvest, the Soldiers of Odin, the Wolves of Vinland, Operation Werewolf. People take the beliefs of the Thule Society and the pro-Germanic beliefs of the Nazi party during WWII, and mix it with good old fashioned fear. Presto, welcome to the new nationalist kindred: whites only, please.

You run into a lot of issues with any POC who dares to work with gods from any of the northern European pantheons: it's as though they feel that anyone who isn't lily fucking white has no business working with their gods. Oh, did you buy them? Do you have a fucking deed of sale? I mean, try not to mention that northern Europe has never been 100% white, what with all the Romans and Moors who travelled there long before and long after they were Christianized. You think they didn't intermarry? Don't dare mention that most of the population of northern Europe is Christian, and they are praying to a brown, middle eastern Jew. Don't mention that their gods were queer and sometimes brown. Like, get the fuck over yourselves.

Don't even get me started on the racist practice of cultural appropriation, or the claim from some groups that are clearly not closed cultures (cough NAZI HEATHENS cough) that POC are stealing their beliefs. The POC have no right to the Germanic/Norse gods (what are you, their fucking keeper?), that they should (and this is a quote I have see many times) just stick with their own African gods, or go back to Africa where they belong.

Heathenry is not closed culture; it is in no way under threat of extinction, and it's practitioners were not subject to genocide or mistreatment. So yeah. How about no. How about this: we all should just listen to our POC and listen to what they say about their cultures and their practices. We white folks have no business telling them what we can steal from them; we've done quite enough of that, thanks.

As much as we claim that 'hate is not a pagan value', to some it is. A belief they hold deep in their very souls. It starts, insidious at first, as a belief in pro-nationalistic, pro-tradition rhetoric. It speaks of bringing together the 'disenfranchised', whose culture is being threatened by the cries of diversity. It slowly turns into anti-immigration, anti-islam, anti-feminism. Then it turns into marches and gatherings to 'preserve their culture'. Then it turns to violence. Then murder.

Example? Varg Vikernes. Super racist metal musician, confirmed northern practitioner, convicted arsonist who burned down churches, and convicted murderer. Now that he's out of jail, he preaches intolerance and violence through the Thulean Perspective. The man is so full of hatred, and because he was a popular musician, he commands a large audience.

Tackling the utter mess of the racist pagan community is not an easy task. I have no easy answers. All I know is that in times like this, there are 2 quotes I live by:

“Where you recognize evil, speak out against it, and give no truces to your enemies”

-Havamal, stanza 127

and the always quoted:

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

- Edmund Burke (often misquoted as 'all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.')

The most important thing to do in times like this is not not be silent. We need to stand up against racism whenever and wherever we see it. We need to own our own racist shit, and strive to be better. We need to listen to the folks who are suffering the most, and do what we can to make sure their voices are heard - and we need to let our voices rise up to combat the hatred.

We can't literal nazi fucks continue to co-opt what we have tried to build. Been there. Done that. Pretty sure we fought wars about it. It means making hard choices. It means removing people from your life who have decided, for whatever reason, that there are numerous people who do not deserve basic human rights. It will likely mean ending decades-long friendships, or family. It will mean standing up for what is right, even if it is what is hard to do.

We have to look at what these communities have become, and be absolutely disgusted at the state of them. We need to be the helpers. We need to be the ones to push to create change.

If we want this community to survive, we need to fight for it. If we can't save it, we need to burn it down to kill the disease, and start again.

#ashandbone.ca #heathenry #the crooked path #traditional witchcraft #witchcraft #ash and bone #racism #racist bullshit

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anubianpagan · 4 years

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Ma’at and Is/f/et

It seems the kemetic community is confused as to what is Ma’at and what is Isfet. So let’s break this down using the most recent instance of this ignorance. Prompted by @secondgenerationimmigrant ‘s hate-fueled rages. I’ll let @belovedbysetandsekhmet and @ngdiscourse speak for themselves but here is my take.

Let’s start with Ma’at, there’s been alot of great discussions of what Ma’at is and I feel these discussions are some of the more pertinent and excellent ones to peruse for understanding Ma’at. These discussions all make very excellent points and are well worth the reads: Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here and Here!

To begin with the hate anons “someone” sent me directly after a post of light mocking beginning with this one:

Now, I appreciate the politeness of saying “please” but the rest shows a complete lack of understanding about what Ma’at is. Nothing I’ve posted is “anti-ma’at” unless of course you are a radicalized extremist who relies on overly emotional and manipulative mental gymnastics to justify yourself. Most of the kemetics in the little political fandom group tend to think along these lines, that being a hateful, bitter person is somehow justifiable because they have convinced themselves it’s “ma’at” mostly these people are misguided and ignorant, and to be pitied.

It is one thing to send such hate anons to someone, and another to wish horrific harm to someone for lightly mocking you. As evidenced in this link: Here.

To be clear, this is not an execration because nothings being purged, nothings being removed, is/f/et isn’t being snuffed out, the wyrm isn’t being destroyed, this is just pure bitter hate. Pure malice wished on someone because you can’t handle anythign outside your echo-chamnber. Lets break this down:

“I hope your government fucks you personally over and that you drown in debt and starve like the people who were victims of austerity in the UK. “

It takes a special kind of evil to truly wish this on someone for mocking you. Getting a light bit of mocking and you wish the government destroys their lives and they go into financial ruin? This is not fighting is/f/et this is actively trying to feed it. This is not Ma’at, this is actively stomping on Ma’at out of such bitter hatred and lack of moral fiber, even in a rage, this is a truly vile thing to wish on people you politically disagree with. However, when you justify to yourself that everyone who disagrees MUST be evil and all political dissent is the work of pure evil...it’s easy to cast yourself the hero in your own demented morality play.

“I hope you feel the despair of the people who had to choose between food and heating, of the people who had to work several jobs to exhaustion just to make ends meet, of the people who had to ration lifesaving medication because they couldn’t afford refills.“

Good vitriol but poor choices of wording. How can you think you have any morality what so ever, that at the sight of being mocked for your political opinions, you immediately turn to this as your go-to reaction to wish on people? Wishing harm, despair, pain and suffering on people who disagree with you or don’t believe you. How can you honestly sit there and pretend you have felt even one modicum of Ma’at’s light fill you when this is where your mind goes because you lost a political event? Your team didn’t win this time, it sucks, sure, but turning to wanting such horrible poverty and hardship and wishing it on people who politically disagree with you...is honestly, not anywhere near Ma’at, in fact, it’s directly the opposite. You aren’t fighting FOR Ma’at here sweetie, you’re DEFENDING Is/fe/t. We are just people disagreeing with you on the internet, we aren’t salivating over people dying and suffering, or complicit in desiring pain and hardships on families you deluded downer debby duckling.

“How is this Ma'at, you awful pieces of shit? How can you justify this to yourselves and be OK with treating the whole situation as an occasion to get your shits and giggles out of the “leftie snowflakes who have finally gotten got”?“

To be clear, we’ve mocked SGI’s politics, we never agreed with the opposing parties. But to an extremist so blinded by their own hubris and false senses of moral superiority...I’m sure it looks the same. Much is the case with social justice crowds, they are completely blinded by their own foolishness that they hurl themselves into the darkness and call it light. To blame some people who mocked you, for the evils of the world, is at best terribly naive, at worst, willfully ignorant. These same people also tend to not understand the difference between “I disagree with you” and Fascism™, but that usually stems from not actually wanting to know the difference. It’s a lot easier to disgrace someone’s name when you claim they are literally evil and morally abhorrent. This is why so many who don’t bow down to the kemetic fandom’s crowd of toxic sjw’s get called fascists, or nazis, or any kind of -ism imaginable. Mostly it just shows these people are profoundly ignorant and exist in a toxic echo-chamber headspace that is, in the long run, unhealthy. It’s an ideology of unlearning and unthinking, it’s gross, it’s not “social awareness” because social awareness would include knowing what words mean. Not throwing them around so hard they lose all meaning. “Owning the leftie snowflakes” isn’t the goal, usually it’s to argue against what is thought to be bad leftist ideas, with better, more sound arguments that go over their heads because they worship their politics.

I’m sure some would argue it’s “mean” to tease these people or mock them for their bad ideas/opinions, but when you watched them support the people who led the charges in the sjw war on the kemetic community, the people they hurt, the people they smeared and chased away, the content they trashed, gods they disgraced...They become comically tiresome clowns. We’re tired of their bullshit, the kemetic community was trashed into a garbage heap because people wouldn’t bend the knee to their political tripe. In hateful revenge they made sure everyone who didn’t agree was either smeared, chased off, or they lied their asses off to disgrace their names. None of them really have any idea what Ma’at or Is/fe/t are, they just throw the words around without any care for meaning, or quoting some violent racist rapists book as holy doctrine on the subjects of Ma’at.

To be clear, I’m not angry, I’ve long since passed angry and went all the way around to pity. I pity these kids, alot. I hope they wake up someday.

This clear overreaction is even more hilarious when you consider that they have no idea how to form an execration...imagine if such terrible people actually knew how to use magical systems to achieve working goals...the world would look like the middle east, shredded in war and poverty and religious extremism, terrorism and death. It truly is a blessing of the Netjeru that these fools have no concept of how to use magic, heka, or execration ritual prayers.

#kemetic fandom #kemetic #hate anons #secondgenerationimmigrant #in the house of ma'at #sjw bullshit

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miasanfamilie · 4 years

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DFB-President Keller Seeks Out Conflict -- Peace in the boxes, war against fan curves

Fritz Keller should have been the embodiment of change at the DFB. However, his strange appearance in “Sportstudio” damages his image as beacon of hope, who acts ignorantly in cases of racism and affronts active fans in a way out-of-touch with reality.

Magic lives inside every new beginning. Especially when the past hurts. Fritz Keller should have been the face of this new beginning at the DFB. His predecessor Reinhard Grindel met his fall over a luxury watch and failed on all accounts: The case of Özil, the unquestioning loyalty to Joachim Löw, the missing explanation of the sold Sommermärchen, the growing chasm between amateurs and pros, the poisoned atmosphere between clubs, federations, and fans -- this heavy burden has rested on Keller’s shoulders since September 2019.

Hymns of praise accompanied his election to DFB-President. It was believable that this Keller was reasonably competent, upstanding, in short: “The right choice,” like Uli Hoeneß said. However, for anyone who heard the beacon-of-hope Fritz Keller on Saturday in the “Current Sportstudio,” a few other attributes could spring to mind: out-of-touch with reality, inflated, ignorant, bigot. No trace of the magic. Only traces of the past.

Of course, moderator Katrin Müller-Hohenstein began the conversation with the excitement of the day: The match pauses in Sinsheim, which has been written about in this paper many times already, for example here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. However, just for background, one more time the facts: In FC Bayern’s fan block, banners were hung with insults against Hoffenheim’s financier Dietmar Hopp. Nothing less, but also nothing more.

Protection for one who does not need it

However, Keller stood strongly on the sides of the football-elite from Karl-Heinz Rummenigge to Michael Zorc: “I believe we have really arrived at the bottom.” He spoke about continuing “only in solidarity” for the “cleanliness of the sport.” Once again: This was about an insult against Hopp. Now about the slush fund for the Sommermärchen, not about the crooks at Fifa, not about the dead workers at the construction sites for the winter-world cup in Qatar. For the DFB-President Keller, who leads more than seven million members, the line is crossed when a billionaire is insulted. A man who can afford the best lawyers, and also does so. For years, Hopp has buried fans with cases.

In order to discover who called their boss the son of a sex worker, TSG installed directional microphones in the stadium. Hopp doesn’t need any special protection. Jordan Torunarigha could have used some, however he received a red card instead. The Hertha-BSC pro player was the victim of racist insults. But what would have happened, if he had left the pitch and his colleagues had followed? When asked, Keller suddenly turned from being an engaged anti-racist (”The dummest form of hate”) to a petty bureaucrat: “There are rules, regulations, and processes that are made by Fifa.” In other words: we’ve already lost in the bureaucracy, there’s unfortunately nothing that can be done, too bad.

Altogether, though, it was hard to shake the feeling that the DFB-President could have used a little bit of help dealing with the topic of racism: Keller claimed England is farther along in fighting racism, because I has simply been a problem there longer. A slip of the tongue? Probably not, he piled it on: It did not want to enter his thoughts how now, so many pears after the war, racism is becoming a problem in Germany again. Again?

Keller is 62 years old. Even when he was very busy being a vintner and gastronomer, wouldn’t Lichtenhagen mean something to him? Solingen? The NSU-murders? He has worked in football since 1994. He must have heard the U-Bahn song at least once in stadium. Seen the flags for the Third Reich at away matches of the national team. Right-wing hooligans at the World Cup in France. Or does the president of the world’s biggest sporting federation want to pretend that racism in German stadiums is a relatively new phenomenon in the year 2020? That would explain why the DFB is so often disgracing themselves on this topic. That cannot be serious for Keller.

Racism? Just not at this buffet...

The explanation for Keller’s strange views probably lies with the point-of-view: Whoever only saw the match from the TV or watches Bundesliga stadiums out of VIP-areas, probably only sees football simply as the superficial, simple, shiny product that advertisers from Coca Cola to SAP want to see so badly. The deeply-rooted racism, which has continued to live on especially in the lower leagues and is now simply getting louder again, is so wonderfully easy to look past from the boxes.

Not only that: The things that happen in the fan curve, that bother the fans -- no one in this five-star buffet is interested. If they protest, if they become loud or uncomfortable, then the functionaries put them in their place. For Keller it sounded like this in “Sportstudio”: The clubs should “reconsider, who they give tickets to.” At the end of the day, it’s about “anarchists who want to destroy the game.” This says the man who smilingly shook Fifa-boss Gianni Infantino’s hand at the end of last week. A meeting before the hearing about the purchased Sommermärchen. What was spoken about there? The DFB didn’t release any information about it, the new transparency doesn’t go that far. When would it be released, Katrin Müller-Hohenstein wanted to know in “Sportstudio.” Keller responded with a question: “How am I, a simple football functionary, supposed to get the truth?” Well, if only the president of the DFB could do something... Maybe the DFB could, just as a suggestion, not act as “underhandedly” during the investigation into the Sommermärchen as the best-informed SZ-journalist Thomas Kistner claimed during the Fifa-corruption scandals.

What the fans think? Who cares

If you were to take the photo of the happy pair Keller and Infantino with you through the fan curves in the Bundesliga and ask who here is destroying the game, most people would rightfully point their finger towards the bald man. And if Fritz Keller isn’t careful, then they’ll also point towards the DFB-president after that.

Keller’s hard stance in “Sportstudio” against the supposed “anarchists” in the fan curves in the league begs another question: Does he really not know what Hopp symbolizes? Does he not know the proxy war that is being waged against the Hoffenheim boss? That’s impossible: The discussion about exuberant commerce, the growing alienation of the critical groups of fans -- these cannot escape the notice of a DFB-leader. So he must be intentionally ignoring this perspective. The viewpoint of active fans is apparently completely moot to Keller. And this despite that it happens to be exactly them who have led meaningful educational work with the initiatives against racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia. And they have to lead the work, because the DFB left them alone long enough and looked away. Until the curves sought out the wrong enemy. One from the VIP-boxes.

You could do everything the way the DFB-president has. But then you have to live with the accusation, that you are a boss for bosses. Yesterday in “Sportstudio,” Keller was exactly that person as he explained to active fans what solution the DFB wants to pursue in the future: peace in the boxes, war against fan curves.

#dfb #fritz keller #tsgfcb #fckdfb #idk what else to tag this as if someone has something lmk and I'll change it #my translation #this is like two days out of date but also translating takes a long time and I'm busy #please enjoy more context #eventually I may (may) post pretty pictures instead of just scheiß dfb things but like #at this point the bullshit has gone so far I'm kinda over anything that's not this #especially since the dfb theoretically agreed to an open conversation with us #but after FORCING us not to publicize it of course they go and talk about how great their idea was to talk to fan circles #y'all it was QFF who demanded the conversation not the dfb and fuck that whole package of stuff #anyway everyone feel free to dm me for more ~cool anti-dfb rants~#dietmar hopp #nazisrausausdenstadien

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hyphenednation-blog · 4 years

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What it truly approach to be an anti-racist, and why it's now not the same as being an ally

It become three months after Ahmaud Arbery become shot with the aid of a former police officer while jogging, two weeks after Breonna Taylor turned into shot and killed in her home by way of the police, and six days after George Floyd died underneath the knee of a police officer.

These names are only some of the various Black Americans who have been killed by using the police within the beyond decade alone. But it was Floyd's death that intensely woke America as much as police brutality and the horror of systemic racism that has seeped into America's underbelly because slavery started out inside the US four centuries ago.

The Black Lives Matter movement, which originated in July 2013 after George Zimmerman turned into acquitted for the killing of Trayvon Martin, is out in full pressure throughout the nation and worldwide.

But for a non-Black individual to fully apprehend anti-racism, they should endeavor to understand the underlying context of Reid's Tweet: Black lives (and voices) had been marginalized and silenced to the point of death for centuries. They've been trying to inform us about the deadly problem of institutionalized racism; the white community has not been taking note of them and has not been appearing to fix it.

Racism towards Black Americans isn't perpetuated amongst white Americans alone, and Black Americans are not the simplest racial group to be afflicted by racism. That is to say, racism and anti-racism exist in multitudes. But it was white European colonialists who were at the helm of slavery 400 years ago, laying the inspiration for today's structural racism that everyone is born into.

In learning and scripting this article, I became transported returned to my readings and research on colonization and racism from college African American literature classes. I realized with soreness that I shouldn't have stopped my education on the difficulty just because I no longer had a proper class — perhaps I faster could have understood how racism has embedded and benefited my day by day life. But I also realized that my white privilege isn't a burden to bear, but a manner for me to enact alternate.

The first step is getting to know what racism and anti-racism are, what it means to be anti-racist, and a way to take action. The guideline beneath is only a beginning point of understanding it all.

What is anti-racism?

"Anti-racism is an energetic and conscious attempt to work against multidimensional elements of racism," Georgetown African American studies professor Robert J. Patterson advised Business Insider.

Patterson, who wrote "Destructive Desires: Rhythm and Blues Culture and the Politics of Racial Equality," brought that we want to collectively shift our taking into consideration racism as conscious, intentional, overt movements to unconscious, covert, and unintentional movements. He brought that whilst racism can manifest individually, it often occurs institutionally.

When abolitionist Anthony Benezet based America's first abolition society in 1775, it is able to have signaled the first recognised act of anti-racism in America. Anti-racism has its foundations in abolition and the post-liberation fight for structural trade as well as 20th-century civil-rights movements, Malini Ranganathan, a faculty team lead at the Anti-Racist Research & Policy Center at American University, told Anna North of Vox.

But it's difficult to trace the exact beginning of the term "anti-racism."

Merriam-Webster will tell you the first recognized use of "anti-racist" become in 1943 — the equal yr Marxist historian Herbert Aptheker dismantled the longstanding argument that African Americans typical slavery in his book "American Negro Slave Revolts."

Aptheker, who later became the literary executor for creator and civil-rights activist W.E.B. DuBois, eventually overturned the then extensively held idea that each one whites universally accepted racism in his book "Anti-Racism in US History: The First 2 hundred Years."

Today, anti-racism is perhaps maximum closely related to Ibram X. Kendi, the founding director of American University's anti-racist studies center (who is now moving to Boston University to open an anti-racist center there), who popularized the concept together with his 2019 book "How to be an Anti-Racist." In it, he wrote: "The only way to undo racism is to always discover and describe it — and then dismantle it."

What does it mean to be anti-racist?

You don't need to be free of racism to be an anti-racist, Ijeoma Oluo, creator of "So You Want to Talk About Race," once tweeted. "Anti-racism is the dedication to combat racism anyplace you locate it, which include in yourself. And it's the simplest way forward," she wrote.

Racism perspectives a racial institution as culturally or socially inferior. An anti-racist, in line with Kendi's book, is "one who is expressing the idea that racial groups are equals and none desires developing, and is helping coverage that reduces racial inequality."

But to recognize what an anti-racist is, one ought to additionally apprehend what an anti-racist is not: a non-racist. There is no such aspect as a non-racist, Kendi writes, as it indicates neutrality.

"One endorses both the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an anti-racist," he says. "One both believes issues are rooted in organizations of human beings, as a racist, or locates the roots of troubles in strength and policies, as an anti-racist. One both permits racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist."

Patterson, the Georgetown professor, stated that humans "collapse identification and behavior" when they misconstrue now not being racist as being anti-racist. In the process, they underappreciate how action alerts anti-racism and underestimate their very own influence in dismantling the structures that guide racism.

Patterson stated Kendi's view of anti-racism highlights the way racism is socialized into behaviors — how racial inequities and disparities are embedded in private and public life. We should unravel those behaviors via thinking about and pulling back assumptions we make approximately "the naturalness of things," he stated.

If your default wondering is "I'm not racist," a greater knowledgeable point of view would be spotting how you're informed and influenced by way of the embeddedness of race and institutionalized racism.

"It's in reality critically thinking about and studying how race subjects in seemingly nonracial context," he stated.

To be an anti-racist, Kendi said in an interview with Vox, is to admit while we're being racist and then challenging those racist ideas.

"We adopt anti-racist thoughts that say the problem is strength and coverage whilst there's inequity, now not humans." That is, it's far the gadget, not a racial group, that wishes to be changed. "And then we spend our time, we spend our funds, we spend our strength hard racist policy and electricity."

What is the difference between an ally and an anti-racist?

"I assume that human beings suppose that racism is Black human beings's trouble," Patterson said.

It isn't always. Misunderstanding whose trouble racism is and who can fix it misplaces the weight of obligation to solving racism directly to the disadvantaged group.

"Racism is a white hassle," Robin DiAngelo, sociologist and the white anti-racist creator of "White Fragility," informed The Guardian in a February 2019 interview. "It turned into built and created via white humans and the remaining obligation lies with white people. For too lengthy we've checked out it as though it were a person else's trouble, as though it turned into created in a vacuum."

That leaves the onus on white people for non-public ACCOUNTABILITY : Understanding and spotting the financial and social advantages and privileges this machine bestowed upon them (which include this writer) and taking action to transform these conditions.

This involves getting beyond white disgrace and guilt. While white people today didn't create racism, activist Ben O'Keefe tells Vox, they can choose to confess that they gain from it and acknowledge their power in converting conditions.

"We don't want you to hold the load of your privilege," he said, addressing the white community. "We want you renowned it and to use your privilege, sell good, and to fight oppression."

But in the usage of white privilege for distinctive vantage points to speak approximately anti-racist practices, it's important to now not talk for Black humans's experiences, Patterson said. That "kind of reinforces the concept that Black people can't speak for themselves or that you need a white voice to authenticate what the Black attitude is," he said.

The act of doing additionally marks the difference between an ally and an anti-racist. An ally, Patterson stated, is someone who supports the cause and is interested in the issues, however doesn't as explicitly interact in actions. "An anti-racist is extra actively fighting towards the structures, et cetera, that perpetuate racism, while an ally might be in a extra supportive cast role," he added.

To be clear: It is movement that lies at the heart of anti-racism. As Kendi wrote in a December 2018 article for The Guardian, "A racist or anti-racist isn't always who we are, but what we're doing within the moment."

Keep in thoughts that anti-racism isn't approximately sitting on information, however acting on it.

Here's where you could start.

Educate yourself. Read approximately privilege, histories of race, and oppressed voices with the help of anti-racism reading lists from courses like The Strategist and Time.

Identify steps to take by talking to friends, family, and peers.

Check out this Google Doc of anti-racism resources.

Volunteer or donate to organizations combating racist rules that create and assist racial inequality.

Call out racism while you see it and espouse anti-racist ideas to help change racist policies.

Patterson said most of these exceptional steps will create an arsenal of demonstrative ongoing hobby that isn't just "for the hashtag." For example, remember how these movements could play out whilst you're in a board room discussing diversity and inclusion or in a college-admissions committee discussing test ratings and supposedly objective measures, Patterson said.

It took too long for non-Black human beings to capture directly to the Black Lives Matter movement. But now that the white network is listening, we all want to apprehend our strength in creating exchange. And Kendi stated it great in his interview with Boston University earlier this week: "You have to agree with alternate is possible on the way to convey it approximately."

#ACCOUNTABILITY #ALLY #ANTI-RACISM

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mobius-prime · 4 years

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121. Knuckles the Echidna #22

Dark Alliance (Part One of Three): You Say You Want a Revolution…

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Jim Valentino Colors: Barry Grossman

So fair warning - this arc is very politics-heavy. I've already criticized the inclusion of politidrama plotlines in the comic before, despite my own personal interest in them, so I won't go over it again. What I will go over is that this arc also includes quite a few tasteless references to the Nazi regime of World War II, starting with the intro page. See, every issue in this arc begins with, rather than the traditional intro page that recaps past events and introduces plot points to come, instead a speech or quote relevant to the current story. This one is a parody, if you will (though played completely straight) of the "First They Came" poem by the German pastor Martin Niemöller, referring to how many people stayed silent while the Nazis oppressed and enacted genocide upon groups that those in silence didn't belong to. In this altered version, "Anonymous" claims that Robotnik came for hedgehogs, squirrels, rabbits, and foxes first, during which the speaker stayed silent as they were an echidna and didn't want to get involved, and so by the time he came for the echidnas there was no one left to speak up for them. Of course, quite aside from the fact that this is completely disrespectful to the real-world situation that the actual poem describes, that's not even how the Robotnik coup went down. Robotnik, upon dethroning King Acorn, pretty clearly just started roboticizing all Mobians indiscriminately without regard to their individual species. Not only that, but he didn't even get a chance to start on the echidnas, as all of them were either contained in their pocket universe on the Floating Island, or hanging out in Albion, which it appears Robotnik never even knew existed. I don't know, the whole thing is clearly an attempt to seem really intellectual and deep on Penders' part, but it just comes off as insensitive instead.

Anyway, onto the actual story. We open in the house of High Councilor Pravda, who appears to be the main political leader of the city. In the dead of night, Pravda is awakened by a window smashing downstairs, and angrily stomps down to confront the intruder, believing it to be "dingo trash up to no good." Instead, he is dragged out of his house roughly by several Dark Legionnaires, while the leader, called Kommissar (her title, not her name), admonishes him for his apparent hypocrisy regarding his anti-technology stance.

Well, she seems lovely! As she has her people drag him away, we pan to Haven, where Knuckles is demanding answers from his grandfathers on his father's whereabouts. To his credit, Sabre is genuinely apologetic to Knuckles, believing that they should have been a lot more forthcoming with him a lot sooner, but Knuckles really isn't having it, and can you blame him?

As a side note, this is about the point in the comic where the eyes of characters such as Knuckles and Tails, formerly depicted as black pupils as in the classic games, start to gain some color. We already saw it with Tails a little while back during the Sand-Blasters two-parter, and it's very inconsistent between issues (for example, you'll notice his eyes are blue instead of purple up there), but you'll start to notice it in screenshots from here out before their designs finally stabilize to their modern forms, similar to their designs from the games.

While Knuckles continues to demand to see his father, we ourselves see Locke, who is dropping off Remington, Julie-Su, Lara-Le and Wynmacher back in Echidnaopolis. Remington asks him how things went with Lara-Le again, and Locke acts like he's all regretful that he couldn't woo Lara-Le back to him or something, which like, really man? You're divorced and haven't spoken properly in years, and she has a new fiancé now, did you really expect to just manage to sweep her off her feet again and get remarried? Julie-Su tries to approach Locke to thank him for saving the whole group, and finds herself recognizing his appearance somewhat. Upon asking, she's shocked to find out that he's Knuckles' father, and asks him about Knuckles' whereabouts. Remington ushers her away before they get a chance to speak further, probably to protect Locke's privacy, and as he jokes with her that it seems like she actually cares about Knuckles, Locke muses to himself that his son is likely furious with him, which, yeah, not far off there buddy. He has an idea of where his son might have gone, and as he speeds off in his air vehicle, we jump over to the Kommissar, who has by now dragged her captive all the way back to the Dark Legion's current hideout… and oh boy, inside we get to see a familiar f- …uhh… okay, well, I won't call him a familiar face, because we've never seen him looking quite this messed up before, but it's Dimitri, okay? It's Dimitri back on his BS.

Guess he had to have some, uh, extensive reconstructive surgery after his rather literal fall from grace. And unfortunately for everybody who doesn't want to be ruled over by a cyborg'd up monstrosity of a dictator, he's got a new takeover plan in mind for the city!

Back in the more civilized areas of Echidnaopolis, Remington is having his driver take Wynmacher and Lara-Le back to their apartment when they find the streets blocked by a protest from dingoes, agitating about their lack of housing and accommodations within the city. Remington tries to resolve the situation peacefully by requesting that if they must protest, to at least let traffic pass while they do, but at that moment a giant flaming fireball comes out of nowhere and starts wrecking the place, and the whole thing devolves into a big brawl between the protesting dingoes and the watching echidnas.

Remington calls Haven for backup, and while I'm not sure who exactly in that nest of grandpas he expected to go rushing out of there for something as simple as a protest gone wrong, luckily for him he mentions Lara-Le over the comm, and Knuckles immediately enlists Archimedes' help to poof him out there to help his mom. Meanwhile, we get to see that Locke has completely, thoroughly misjudged where Knuckles would be hanging out at this moment, having thought for whatever reason that he would be brooding inside the Chaos Chamber next to Mammoth Mogul's ugly frozen mug.

Now this is some well-appreciated character development from Locke. I've been heavily criticizing him this entire time for how he's handled his interaction, or lack thereof, with his son, and I'm glad to see that Lara-Le's admonishments seem to have gotten through to him. While he won't get a chance to catch up with his son right at the moment, at least we know the big talk isn't that far off in the future.

Knuckles and Archimedes poof into the fray on the streets, and Knuckles begins throwing punches at whoever gets close enough, which as everyone knows is the single best way to end a violent brawl - by participating! Despite being an echidna himself, he doesn't hesitate to throw punches at other echidnas in the bunch, with Archy adding some of his own fire breath into the mix. If anything, I'd say he accurately judged the situation, which is that the dingoes were peacefully demonstrating and it appears to have been an angry, racist echidna who threw the first molotov. General Von Stryker makes his entrance, and despite him predictably acting aggressive and blaming echidnakind in general for the dingoes' treatment, Knuckles actually agrees with him that the echidnas are being really crappy, and offers a truce so they can discuss what went wrong and how to resolve it. Meanwhile, back in hell - I mean, the Legion's hideout…

This is probably the single most disturbing page in the comic so far, if you ask me. This guy is begging, screaming, for mercy and they put him under like nothing's wrong and start doing surgery without his consent (obviously) on his brain. Dimitri, watching the proceedings, starts mwahaha'ing to himself about the whole affair, as apparently Pravda is the direct descendant of Menthor, the councilman who denied his and Edmund's proposal to use the Chaos Syphon all those centuries ago. He's determined not to get careless with his power again in the future, and now that he's defeated death by old age through the sheer power of adding more and more cybernetics to his failing frame every time something goes wrong, he's ready to get his long-due revenge.

In another part of the city, Knuckles and Archimedes poof right into the middle of the Chaotix, who are pleased to finally see him and hopefully get a chance to catch up. As he explains what was going on with the protest, Julie-Su arrives and gives him the "why" he was looking for, which is that, naturally, Pravda was kind of a racist ass and wasn't working very hard to ensure the dingoes would have housing built for them in a timely manner. However, elections for the position of High Councilor are coming up in a few days, and Pravda has ever-so-mysteriously been missing since the previous night, with his traumatized wife too messed up to be able to talk about what she saw. She slyly mentions when questioned that "a little birdie" gave her all this information, leading Vector to rather rudely blame her for "having friends in low places" and generally acting as distrustful of her as ever. Seriously, Vector's been kind of a jerk to her ever since she left the Legion, and you just know that situation is gonna come to a head sooner or later. But enough of them - let's head back to the Kommissar, who's having her people reenact Kristallnacht in the streets of Echidnaopolis! (Told you this arc is full of tasteless references to WWII…)

She reports in to Dimitri, who is pleased to hear about her progress on the senseless property damage and random citizens she's beating up for no reason. Like, the regime seems cacklingly evil enough to want to do this kind of stuff, sure, until you hear Dimitri's actual plan for takeover this time - he's implanted control chips into Pravda's brain, and is going to use him as a mouthpiece for the Legion's ideals in the upcoming election!

So, wait. You want to get your new mind-slave to cast your organization in a positive light, and at the same time you're having one of your main commanders go around smashing windows and beating people up in alleys? How is this master plan of yours supposed to work, exactly? That entire Kristallnacht page could be removed from the comic and not only would it not impact the story, it would make it make more sense than it currently does. I seriously think that it was only included to draw more parallels to the Nazi regime, because there's just no way it makes any real sense otherwise. Sigh, Penders. Why do you have to be like this?

#nala reads archie sonic preboot #archie sonic #archie sonic preboot #sonic the hedgehog #kte 22 #writer: ken penders #pencils: jim valentino #colors: barry grossman

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popculturebuffet · 5 years

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Analysis of X: X-Men 2k19 #1: Little Scotty, Happy at Last

Dawn of X Begins with an average day for Grand Captain of Krakoa, Scott Summers: Racist Science Gorillas, sexual tension with his former arch enemy’s daughter, and family dinner where his former insane god emperor brother burns the steak while his dad’s space family drops in to his house on the moon. We’ve all been there. Join me under the cut, it’s bang zoom straight to the moon.

I’ve been a huge X-Men fan since my teens, gobbling up various books, enjoying the hell out of them, and genuinely loving this team, the love only growing with each book I read. Some better than others, we’ll get there, but I have a huge amount of love for the team and i’ts offshoots, so marvel basically taking a bat to the franchise’s nuts for the last 5 years or so, the final embarrassment being the filler stories used to buy time for House and Powers of X. But said series have lifted the clouds: Writers are finally allowed to actually write again, the landscape has shifted and the x-men are truly interesting again. I waited feverishly for House of X #1 to come out. It did not disapoint and while i’ll certainly dive into that series at some point, i’d rather catch the dawn of x as it comes, and thus being a week behind, we come to X-Men # 1. For those of you who didn’t keep up with hosue and powers... Previously on...

While humans slept, the world change. Professor Xavier and Magneto founded Krakoa, an island soley for mutants, though humans can visit it’s various embassys. in exchange for Nationhood and Amnesty for it’s less desirable members, mutantkind sells them flowers from Krakoa, the island that walked like a man and is fully sentient, that can cure all manner of diseases. The nationhood is approved by the end of the series and mutants at last have a safe paradise to enjoy life in.

It turns out this power play was in part thanks to Moira Mactaggert, longtime X-Men ally.. and as the series reveals secret mutant who lives a new life every time she dies.. and after 9 failures decides to break the wheel, tell xavier and magneto they always loose and set up a long game. After setbacks due to charles optimism and Erik turning against her, she suceeds. Said longgame turns out to not only be the nation but using 5 mutants in concert to cheat death. Just about every notable mutant that we’re aware of is alive and well. Death is no consequence for mutants.. as proven when an assault on anti-mutant groups Orichis, made up of agents from various secret agencies across Marvel past and present, big satiltie head results in the whole team dying but the mission being accomplished.. but at the cost of a ton of humans, and with a sacrifice from Erasamus, wife of top scientist Dr. Gregor

Good. With that in hand, let’s start the showwww. We open on...

Sadly, it’s not Garnet but Charles Xavier, urging a young Cyclops to open his eyes. As it will turn out he’s given Scott his first pair of ruby quartz sunglasses, the red peepers that allow Scotty to open his eyes without killing everything he sees, but Scott is scared to open them, afraid of hurting him. Charles gently tells Scott that he understands Scott not wanting to hurt someone, but keeping his eyes shut because of fear? That’s what they do. And he doesn’t have to go through life stumbling around afraid like humanity is of mutantkind. He can be better. So scott opens his eyes, opens his eyes.

They work, and Charles closes out this great opener promising “Oh the things i’ll show you.”. You know god like aliens that look like your grandpa, far more aliens than you’d expect for a comic about mutants, whatever the fuck vanisher’s wearing, a weirdo calling himsel fthe living monolith that turns into a giant man, and whatever the hell a demi-man is. Seriously look at him.

What IS that? I truly don’t know. And that’s just before you turn 18. With that and the title for our issue, “Pax Krakoa” and Hickman’s standard cast chart thing out of the way we get into the story proper. Our heroes have been busy since the rager at the end of House of X and once the island’s hangover wore off, set to work dismantling Orichis, something I like as sometimes the X-Men tend to sit on their hands a while with these genocidal assholes. Well it’s a new day and Cyclops and storm are tearing shit up, though Storm almost misses a sentinel because she’s tired.

Scott, at least it’s human sized. You’ve missed far bigger targets.

I wonder if they knew it was Christmas Time at all? Or maybe simply having a wonderful Christmas Time for a sentinel is roasting mutants over an open fire.

Regardless, Scott soon figures the fact their stupidly trying to hold the omega level mutant and experinced trained badass off means their hiding something and have Magneto literally tear the roof off this place, before he has his daughter Polaris clears the humans away.

Cyke clears off the lock and Magneto gently tells him to step aside so he can finish it off, showing clear respect for Scott, something that makes perfect sense to me. He’s fought beside him in two teams, trained his time lost younger self whose memories scott has, and even fighting against him always respected Scott’s strength and conviction. It’s a subtle touch but it’s there and shows that, hickman really gets these two and why they’ve been one of the strongest parts of his run. Some panicked Orichis Scientests decide the datacore, and whatever their guarding, is too important and decide to stab themselves with science.. and the result.. is sublimely ridiculous.

I fucking love this book and Hickman’s wilingnesss to remind you “yeah the marvel universe is fucking weird and I love it that way. “ me too man, me too. And it somehow gets weirder. But Mags agrees to hold them off while Cyke goes after whatever they were guarding.. which turns out to be stasis tubes full of mutant children. Cyclopes and Lorna prepare to open them the fuck up while Storm makes a gateway back to Krakoa. only one of the tubes.. dosen’t contain a mutant but something diffrent...

A post-human who’s desyched with time and quickly vanishes, who storm hypotheises is from the Vault, which I don’t know enough about to go into at this time, and she soon vanishes. Magneto and daughter want to peruse her like a hunted animal but Scott, having some empathy, declares they have more important things to do and he’ll track her down if the Council asks. But for now...

This is what I love of HIckman’s Scott Summers: He’s a nice blend of past and future. He has the badass dedication of Claremont, the snark of Whedon and the leadership qualities he’s always had, without falling into being a massive dick as he would sometimes due to poor writing post decimation. He’s no longer the man who has to make the hard choices to survivie or fight against his own friends because they still blame him for a death he was hopped up on unstable emotinally enhancing space god during, he’s a man who wants to keep his people safe, enjoy his life, as we’ll see, and fight as hard as he has to for the innocent wether their his species or not. This is peak Scott Summers and after years of mistreatment i’m sure i’ll get to eventually, this is a GLORIOUS change.

Our heroes return to Krakoa where Dr. Ceilia Reyes is looking after the rescued children. Since she’s kind of a minor character, Celia is a doctor that can create force fields and never really WANTED to be an X-Man but was essentially fired for being a mutant and had nowhere else to go. She was one of three additions to the X-Men at the time and the only one I really liked the other two being Maggot (who’s power is gross but throughly intresting but whose personality at the time is throughly obnoxious and stereotypical) and Marrow, who at least in her intial apperances is just gross, agressive and annoying. Ceilia was a victim of circumstance, engaging and i’m happy to see her back. Dr. Reyes assures, as seen above, that the kids are fine and that Krakoa is more than equiped to help them. IT’s part of what sells this as a mutant refuge: traumatized Mutants are no longer forced to stew in their trauma but have decent help and genetics to help with the worse aspects of their powers. We then get a nice character bit with storm as she decides to stay with two of the young mutants, a pair of silent blue and gold mutants radiating energy.

Speaking of returns to form. Ororo is back from being a plot ping pong ball for various writers and is once again the soul of the X-Men and this is a reminder why: She will never stop fighting for her people but she’ll take equal time caring for them and was likely an excellent queen as rushed as that relationship is and as messy as her reconciliation with t’challa is likely to be now she’s living in a country opposed to his. Yet another of the 80 or so intriguing plot threads this era has set up for other books, X or Not , to pickup. We then get a sight that clearly unsettles Scott.

No no nothing THAT bad. No what he gets... is this.

Magneto, his old arch enemy, being treated like a celebrity and hero among the children. Their Tom Hanks if you will, another great character scene as Magneto, being seated as hero and savior of his kind as he always felt he should be.

Naturally Scott is unnerved by this but for the sake of diplomacy keeps his mouth shut and instead makes time with Magneto’s daughter, inviting her back with him for family dinner. While he does mention her ex and his brother Alex will be there.. it’s subtly hinted there may be more here. And I like it and her refusal as she needs time for the past to be the past and for her to adjust, feels like Lorna when previously she’d been a rather out of character obdient daughter, something I hope Hickman explores and is not just a sudden change for the free spirited, strong willed, snarky daughter of the big M. Also as you can tell i’m not a huge fan of Scott’s brother alex who is barely in this. He’s just never been utilized well and she deserves better. When asked his thoughts, Scott gives a nice speech about how scared he was having his son and the horrors his son would face.. and given his son was infected with a virus, shunted to the future, became mother fucking cable, and has died twice and has now been replaced by his teenage self who murdered him, yeah, he was right to be scared. but now his son is in a place of peace, and he feels he’s finally achived his dreams and all the fighting and bloodshed has been worth something.

But family dinner will have to wait and we get back to Orichis meeting their leader, Director Devo, who tells them to whip it .. whip it good. Okay obligatory joke aside, we do see a funeral for the soldiers that were killed during House of X.

Devo and Karima talk over the disaster, how while their location around the sun, in the solar satlite thing reed richards and tony star built, and before you assume the worst they were both thought dead at the time it was stolen, is good for keeping humans from raiding them, it’s not really enough to stop MUTANTS, and Devo wishes he’d been there to stop the slaughter. Really nothing of HUGE consequence, just some plot movement and huminzation of the racist malitia.. which works. While their still not necearily good people: Karima took up with the very kind of people who turned her into what she is, and they kidnapped children just for being diffrent, they are still more than carboard cutout characteratures of racist. These are scared, frightned people wanting to halt what should be inevitible. However it also, like some of mutantkind’s shakier actions recently, dosen’t excuse it either: their still plotting genocide to save themselves instead of trying to find a peaceful solution, and while yes the X-Men strongarmed their way to peace, it was after a good decade and a half of racist slaughter and trying to be a good example while mankind did hardly anything to help. The mutants, at least to me, end up coming off as more sympathetic simply because they’ve suffered while mankind, even the superhumans, did nothing. While Orichis is more understandable than most anti-mutant militia’s they are NOT heroes. While some of the krakoans may not qualify either and some are outright monsters, Orichis are trying to do a genocide out of fear instead of doing what the X-Men did for years: find peace even though it’s not the easy option. Show you DESERVE to live side by side instead of shunning them so much their forced to make their own home and keep you out this time. Their taking the easy way out, as did so many other superheroes in turning away, as did so many civliains in giving into fear, and that’s why their the bad guys. Krakoa is far from perfect, but Orichis is not even close.

One diatribe later, we find ourselves at Scott Summer’s house....

On the fucking moon! As scott says above, he figured why settle and always loving space as a kid, and having lived there in one of his two teen lives, he figured why not. It also explains how Krakoa can be there: while humans can’t live on Krakoa, they can visit the embassies, and given my rant above, you can see why maybe their being a bit paranoid. But yes scott’s pirate dad is visiting. Which is awkard given that his son who killed him is currently grilling steaks int he kitchen.

Yeah for those of you only casually aware of X-Men, or even just recent fans who wisely skipped Deadly Genisis, he might take some explaning: This is Gabriel Summers. He was born from his dying mother and made a slave, got back to earth, and then charles foolishly used him as the dry run for the all new all diffrent x-men, who all got killed by Krakoa. Double awkard given he now lives in part of him. Two surivived, the other being Darwin who went on to great things in Peter David’s X-Factor and I hope comes back here, and Gabriel later came back pissed as hell, killed a lot of people and became emperor of the shiar then died saving the universe after going crazy town banana pants. Oh and he also killed empress lilandra, Xavier’s long time lady love and empress of the shiar.

I shoudln’t of been able to make that joke twice, but the X-Men are insanely complicated and Gabe wasn’t a favorite of mine due to being a one dimensional psychopath and making Charles into kinda huge dick for getting some people killed and then never telling the rest of the X-Men. But here.. he’s fucking hilarious, going on long rants about fire and generally coming off as an entertaining nutjob. Other family activities include kid cable, another character I wasn’t crazy about, trading guns with Corsair’s buddy Raza. Just treating him like a normal teen made him instantly more likable than he has been as a know it all dickhead what killed the original vastly more likable Cable, and giving him a chance at a happy child and adulthood instead of years of misery and war. In one issue Hickman actually made me like two characters I previously couldn't stand... props to him and his hard work. We also get a touching scene where Scott gives his dad a krakoan flower to plant on the Starjammer, his ship, so he can visit anytime, a really touching gesture and a really nice moment. Now that’s out of the way, as the summers have dinner and gabe presumibly rants about fire off screen... it’s time for the elephant in the room.

If you look closely.. you’ll notice Scott, Jean and Logan all have interconnected rooms. No one has shut up about this since the comic was released and understandably so, as it means that their either both in a relationship with jean or, and I doubt this is true but I can hope, all three are dating each other. Me.. I like it especially if it’s the latter. After all the romantic bullshit i’ve had to deal with, it’s nice to have either possible polyamory, treated as safe and normal, or more likely an open relationship treated the same without it being a farce. Logan finally gets a shot with Jean, Scott still gets her but is free to explore other avenues given he’s been in only two relationships in his lifetime, but still be together and raise their son together. I like it a lot and i’m sure future X-Men issues will fill this out a bit. I also wouldn’t mind a Scott/Logan relationship, as it relay woudln’t hurt to have two of marvel’s biggest heroes be either bi or pansexual. With dinner finished Corsair offers to help Scott with dishes, only for him to only turn him down because Krakoa uses goo to both wash and dry.. and this was a COMPROMISE over edible plates that just.. no. No thank you. Corsair takes this chance to have a heart to heart over his misgivings at mutantkind’s new mission, especially as a human, and we get one of the best scenes of the issue, if not the best.

And we see how Hickman, rather than just paper over Scott’s shadier moments over the last decade, instead has Scott evolve past them. He’s done trying to just survive. He wants more than that. Without the terrifying brain computer that sometimes comes with that, but he wants to enjoy his life. He’ll never stop having to fight.. but instead of focusing on the fight every day.. he’s focusing on those he loves and cares about. And we see now WHY he belivies in Krakoa. he may have his doubts, his misgivings.. but after about 15 years of fighting just to make it out alive.. he gets to live. To have fun, to have somewhere where he can be safe, where he dosen’t have to worry about some psychotic jackass sending robots to blow up the kids in his care in the middle of the night. He’ll still give mutantkind every ounce of fight he has, but he can switch it off now... he’s letting himself be happy and it’s just wonderful to see. But of course, this wouldn’t make much of an ending that entices the reader to buy next issue would it... so we check back in on Orichis one last time.

Devo checks in on Dr.Gregor, finding she wasn’t at the funeral and while he’s fine with rage fueling her work, he’s not so crazy about her using it to sublimate her grief. In truth she knows they didn't have enough to bury.. and more importantly... it may be moot for you see....

And just in case you missed it like I did, said crystal with his memory... looks just like Nimrod’s.. aka the badly named turbo sentinel that has always been key in snuffing out mutant kind. Ruh-Roh.

Final Thoughts: This issue kept the momentum and story from Powers and House going, but rooted it more in character, continuing Hickman’s cleanup job on Scott Summers, while doing some on his family, and creating a truly great start to the new era. My only complaint is sometimes Yu’s art looks a bit off when it comes to faces and as with his previous teamup with hickman on avengers, sometimes takes me out of the story.. but the story is so riviting and the better moments of art so stunning that it can’t bring this book down. The future continues to be bright for the x-men. If you liked this review, reblog or follow, feel free to request an issue for me to review for 3 bucks a pop, or vote in the poll I have going for what dawn of x related issue i’m going to review that closes this friday. And until next time, farewell my x-people.

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