#like we been knew varis is a fascist

[potassium-pilot]

i got reminded of the scene in post-stormblood with varis and the alliance and it reminds me of this comic every time i think about it

[headspace-hotel]

Fuck that. I absolutely have the right to criticize people who have done nothing but sit around and complain in their online echo chamber, and then decide “welp, time for molotovs and guillotines.”

If you read my posts more carefully, you would realize a crucial truth:

We are on the same side of this

First of all, "execute all the people in power and start over" is a different thing than "violent protest." People call even destruction of property violent. There are levels. That is important.

Secondly—I cannot stand the people who think violently overthrowing the government will automatically fix everything. They haven't thought about infrastructure. They haven't studied history.

I actively detest the sentiment among certain USamericans that "voting does nothing, don't bother voting." Voting, especially in local elections, can make things materially better for people in your community. At the very least it doesn't hurt. Vote. Don't only vote, but fucking hell, don't pitch a fit about feeling criticized or whatever for not voting when people fought tooth and nail to give you that right in the first place, and politicians are fighting tooth and nail to take it away any way they can. I live in a state where 9% of the population is LEGALLY disenfranchised. Read history and read the fucking room.

But I am still firm on this—history tells us that violence is on the way when a people has been unhappy with their oppressive government for many many years. I would LIKE to avoid violent unrest and upheaval but it is something that happens when other means of petitioning the government have not worked.

For me personally, it is incredibly hard to support or condone the extreme version of this—complete violent upheaval— when the likely consequences will be devastating. If the US government crumbled, we would end up under the control of the fascists. Y'all realize that, right?

I am not on the same side of the "revolution is the only way" people. Have y'all been paying any attention to the January 6 hearings? We had an actual attempt at a coup less than 2 years ago. I grew up in the Bible Belt embedded deeply in a nest of terrifying whackos. At least one person I personally knew participated in the attempted coup.

One of the USA's main political factions is dominated by theocratic fascists involved to varying degrees in a batshit crazy conspiracy cult, and these people have more guns than probably any other group of civilians in the world. They are better organized, more galvanized and a MILLION times better armed than everyone else. Electoral politics has one saving grace if it has anything, and that's keeping these people occupied.

I firmly believe we need to be forming support networks, building our own community infrastructure so everyone will have someone to call on when the shit hits the fan. We seriously need to start organizing in ways that let people access food and medicine and fresh water when infrastructure breaks down.

Yesterday our electricity was out for nearly 5 hours after a windstorm. What would happen in a scenario where there was no one to mobilize teams to get out and fix the problem? The systems that sustain life in America are a crumbling, dilapidated joke. Our infrastructure genuinely has the potential to kill millions in a disastrous scenario where people have to travel long distances to get help. Highways will get backed up, people will be stranded, and there will be nothing for miles around because 93% of the land in this country is The Middle Of Nowhere.

My posts about this are referring to the entirely compatible truth that "peaceful" protests are a display of power and a threat display to the people in power, and when more peaceful means of protest are ignored, things get more violent. This is not a judgment I'm making, this is just how it goes. And ultimately, the ability to protest peacefully is connected to the potential to protest more violently—it's a chance for the people in power to course correct before things get worse.

Under ideal circumstances, peaceful protest would be sufficient. But the responsibility is on our leaders to listen. If they don't listen, fear for the future and desperation will drive people to more and more radical action. Again, this is just a thing history teaches us.

One last thing: I have made this mistake in the past, for sure, but never assume that someone you see posting online is not involved with activism in real life. If you don't see evidence of their real life activism, it just means they're being smart and not posting about it online.

[whinlatter]

author's note | chapter 8: bones 🦴

thank you for reading chapter eight of Beasts! this week, it's hotting up politically - ginny meets with the minster of magic, enjoys a hot beverage with all of her ex boyfriends, finds out about the clinton impeachment and rides the east coast mainline from edinburgh to london for free with no cancellations or delays a week before christmas. now that really is magic.

got a bumper author's note this week (and some metas to follow), plus a sneak peek of chapter nine (oh the cameos we've got coming! i've got flashback fever). i am also accepting any and all guesses for who the gang will go as for the grimmauld muggle-themed NYE party. we know anthony's going as tony blair, terry boot's deciding between a terry's chocolate orange or the golden boot, but what will the rest of the DA go as? answers on a postcard/in the askbox pls. ok let's discuss this wet and wintery chapter that i wrote at the beach during a heatwave in august, for some reason

✨ spoilers for this chapter below the cut  ✨

writing things and headcanons:

the hogwarts inquiry and graves on the ministry: the chapter opens with graves (himself an ex ministry employee, though we don’t know the circumstances of his exit yet) poking holes in the wizengamot’s approach to justice thus far in the post-war period, suggesting holding individuals accountable - especially someone like thicknesse who was imperiused - misses how the entire wizarding state is implicated in wartime crimes against muggleborns and other persecuted groups. also disillusioned by the way post-war trials are going, kingsley wants to take a different course of action to get to the bottom of what happened at hogwarts during the war. a lot of post-war fics do an amazing job doing post-war justice through criminal trials, and i wanted to do something a bit different for this fic that is explicitly interested in places and institutions and the cultures they foster (hogwarts and the ministry itself, but grimmauld place and, soon, the burrow, home to different kinds of institutions, including families). like a lot of people who grew up in the uk in the early 00s public inquiries - like the leveson inquiry into media culture and phone hacking, or the chilcott inquiry into the iraq war - really left a big impression on me (though i’m sure this is also true in lots of political cultures, not least in the US in things like senate hearings etc). i also really love seeing inquiries and hearings rendered in fiction (in tv, jesse armstrong shows like the thick of it and succession), so knew i wanted to have a go writing these into this fic. there are actually quite a few inquiries of varying scale that happen in the canon series (though none are public), so we know this is a mechanism the ministry has previously used to investigate various breaches of law or accepted norms (in CoS, arthur faces one over the car; over buckbeak in PoA; into percy over crouch; dumbledore asks for one after the dementor attack on harry, which fudge rejects; into bode’s murder at st mungo’s, and into the miscarriage of justice that saw sirius jailed for the potters’ murders). i’m literally just going to quote from taylor_fannon074’s gorgeous comment on this because it’s so well put: 

‘The Wizarding World knows that their children have been forcibly put at the center of a war they didn’t know existed for most of it. Children are the first line of attack when it comes to implementing fascist ideologies. People  areso sensitive about children and it’s a perfect weapon to utilize against anything that you want. It’s why Dumbledore became headmaster when he could’ve been Minister of Magic. It’s why the Malfoys are Voldemort’s greatest allies. If it were just about the Carrows they’d carry all the blame, now the defendants are the Ministry. Kingsley is using this tactic to direct the people’s anger towards the Ministry’s systemic oppression. He’s giving the kids a platform to talk about how a werewolf was the greatest teacher they ever had and several ministry officials tortured them. It calls the ministry’s competency into question, planting the seeds of doubt. I don’t think Kingsley aiming for a full scale revolution but trying to open the curtains and get wizards more active in their community.  He’s going after that statute of secrecy next, I can feel it in my bones!!!!’

kingsley: there are so many really great reads on kingsley as minister after the war, particularly kingsley taking on the ruthless (and manipulative) instincts of a politician, and speculation about that might clash with harry’s worldview and longstanding resentment of ministers carrying about things like public image and making moral compromises to get things done. i don’t disagree with those reads at all, and think they have a ton of basis in canon. what i knew i wanted in beasts, though, was to see if you could write a different kingsley, someone who hasn’t abandoned his principles but instead is trying to centre them. i wanted to play with the idea that all politicians are the same’, asking how kingsley’s contradictions - an avowed progressive, a lifelong ministry insider with more links to the muggle world than most, a resistance fighter turned a minister of magic trusted and admired by the children of the order - would shape his approach to try to capture post-war momentum for rebuilding and make real change, whatever that might look like. i also wanted this dynamic of kingsley and ginny having some familiarity with each other that we don’t see from the canon series that might hint at some wartime interactions we haven’t seen yet. anyway i wrote this scene with kingsley and ginny ages ago and then i read the unfinished but excellent fic about ginny and post-war justice cited below and was crushed to see someone had already written a version of the same scene much better. what a blow! (read that fic)

ginny’s card-making: ginny weasley loves to decorate and she loves christmas. canon could not be clearer about this. if you think she wouldn’t spitefully refuse to wish minerva mcgonagall seasons’ greetings then i’m sorry i think you are wrong with a capital W. graves didn’t get a card but he did get an essay because she’s warming up to him a bit but cards are only for those who aren’t on ginny approval probation 

writing on the wall: actually this is just me apologising to the anon who sent me this ask ages ago and i didn’t reply because i knew i had this scene in the bank and didn’t want to spoil it but yeah basically anon i could not agree with you more!!! i think it’s really a squandered opportunity in canon not to make more of this - in those old ootp planning notes jkr was going to have ginny write on the wall about umbridge in temper, but then removed it, so clearly was thinking of the DA wall daubing as a parallel with CoS but then… gave the line to neville lol. fuming. anyway! had to be done! thank u so much anon and so sorry again!

beasts, beings and patronuses: my favourite part of this chapter to write! (obviously that’s a lie it was the bit where harry and ginny shagged but second favourite for sure). graves goes all enlightenment subjectivity theory again smh, and then suggests what’s happened with the stag antlers might be something to do with a great disturbance to harry’s soul. @saintsenara think this is me steathily building up a tomarry endgame - other theories are circulating, all theories have me salivating

slughorn: hardcore hinny shipper, we have to stan. what’s he up to? also rina girl get back to school you're making ginny look conscientious

hermione: thank you to the extremely patient romione folks in my inbox - the trouble with this plot is that i have to keep all the romione bits off stage for now (and i have written some hermione and ron pov missing moment scenes that i might drop when this plot is fully developed and the mystery has ended) but for now i’m just sorry that so far in the published chapters the hermione plot is all unhealthy coping mechanisms and no answers!

muggle london: did i go rummaging on the freedom of information requests sent to transport for london to find out adult and child fares for central london weekend travel in 1998? yes i did. you never know when the transport pedants are going to flood your mentions !!! ‘are you a child’ ‘sort of’ could be summary of the entire fic really couldn’t it

the exes: i knew i wanted an unlikely character to speak a bit of truth to ginny, someone she wouldn’t be expecting to call her on her shit. the idea of using one of her exes to do it seemed satisfying for a couple of different reasons. i liked the idea of using a character who knows ginny well and who sees through her a bit, but also has nothing to lose throwing out some tough love to her face because they don’t really have any investment in being in her good books anymore. i also liked the idea of not taking ginny’s canonical descriptions of her relationships with her exes for granted, and using those relationships as an example of previous incidences where this character has kidded themselves, or at least come up with a retroactive narrative of something that has happened to them as a coping mechanism that actually masks a bigger, more complicated truth. (i have a longer meta on ginny and her exes i’ll post this week that isn’t expressly beasts-related where i’ll bang on about my read on what these relationships were to her, but for now suffice to say it seemed important in a fic that is at heart a coming of age ginny character study to draw in characters who were likely formative for her in her teenage years in some way). dean seemed a complicated choice, though (more about him below), so… michael corner it was. 

michael corner (or: characterisation when the character has about five whole lines in the whole of canon): 

this is michael corner this whole chapter:

i had a ball trying to figure out how to write michael corner, as the discord girlies can attest. michael is a very minor character in the series, with only a handful of scenes/appearances, and he spends most of them being a little dickhead lmao. the man never stops interrupting people to call them out/correct them. in his first scene in canon in ootp, at the hog’s head, michael sasses hermione on her motivations to set up the DA (‘“You want to pass your DADA O.W.L. too though, I bet?”’ - that earns him a snippy clapback) and then interrupts harry when harry’s being modest to both praise him but also correct him lol (‘“Not with the dragon, you didn’t,” said Michael Corner at once. “That was a seriously cool bit of flying...”’.) in DH, he yells at harry for planning to nip in and nip out of hogwarts when all the DA are living in hiding (‘“You’re going to leave us in this mess?” demanded Michael Corner’), and then gets annoyed at luna for being dumb about the diadem (‘“Yeah, but the lost diadem,” said Michael Corner, rolling his eyes, “is lost, Luna. That’s sort of the point.”’) when it comes to ginny, she calls him a ‘fool’ when he almost gives the game away about the DA in the hall, and when they’re paired up at the DA and she’s killin it hexing him he’s “either very bad or unwilling to jinx her”. given his interest in his academics - and that he’s a ravenclaw - i think we can suspect it’s the latter, a display of chivalric concern that was never going to go down well with gin. they then break up after ginny decides he’s too ‘sulky’ about ravenclaw’s loss at quidditch, after which michael immediately goes off to get with cho (michael and harry bonding over their shared type fic when). but. michael’s also someone ginny (someone who does not suffer fools!) went out with for an entire year, so can’t be a total dickhead, clearly knows right from wrong and has moments of real bravery - joining the DA in the first place, but also enduring torture that neville describes as particularly horrific for trying to rescue a chained up first-year during the DH, which would almost certainly make him deserving of ginny’s respect after the war. being in the DA under the carrows must have been an intense bonding experience for all involved, and actually would have forced ginny and michael back into each other’s lives in a way that forced them to develop some kind of working relationship. all this then added up to the decisions i made to write him as he is in beasts: someone who is grouchy, sassy, contrarian, too competitive, a bit jealous of others’ abilities (the sore loser), and fond of calling people out/correcting people, but also someone who speaks his mind and whose heart is, ultimately, in the right place, a bit of an arse but not a baddie. and i think that makes sense as a character ginny weasley would be attracted to, at least initially, and who she can get behind as someone whose opinion she will listen to, with a pinch of salt.

bonus michael headcanons: other characterisation bits that are more headcanons than anything else: michael, terry and anthony’s band. ginny is canonically a fan of the weird sisters, with a poster up in her room. the weird sisters play at the yule ball.  michael and ginny meet at the yule ball. like literally nine billion other teenage relationships, wouldn’t be fun if michael and ginny first met/got to chatting because they both liked the same band? then that became: well, dean was artistic - what if ginny’s into creatives? wouldn’t it be a laugh if michael, terry and anthony, this three piece gang of boy besties, were in a band? so that became me imagining them all in a promising but bit-too-clever-for-their-own-good indie band, alt-j or vampire weekend of the 90s, very into the smiths. (the album cover ginny recognises in their flat ‘of a white turreted castle, lush woodland by a sunlit lake’ is blur’s country house - partly because the castle in that album art looks a bit like hogwarts, but also because country house was the single that, as british readers might remember, was in a very famous race for number 1 with oasis in the battle of britpop in august 1995, which became about the middle-class southern band (blur) vs the northern working class equivalent (oasis). in my mind the ravenclaw boys would have been team blur and the gryffindor boys are team oasis lol. 90s lore!) the ravenclaw boys being low key into hallucinogenic potions is literally because michael has a throwaway line in hbp where he asks slughorn about felix felicis lol (‘“Have you ever taken it, sir?” asked Michael Corner with great interest.”). so yeah that was enough to get me imagining michael and the boys as low key stoners but also into experimenting with different psychedelic substances and writing bangin’ tunes. they’re boarding school teenage boys, after all!

dean: ah dean 🥺 one day i’ll finish that damn dean fic. the dean we see here is who i imagine dean would be after the war - more lost and alone than literally any of the other main characters, properly unhappy. unlike the golden trio, or the silver trio, dean spends his deeply traumatic war alone, and i think that would fuck him up. he has to go on the run and leave his muggle family behind, a family he’s lied to about the severity of the war (“My parents are Muggles, mate,” said Dean, shrugging. “They don’t know nothing about no deaths at Hogwarts, because I’m not stupid enough to tell them.”’). he must have struggled, as the trio did, with accessing food and finding places of safety, but also had far fewer protections than the trio (no perkins tent, no invisibility cloak, none of hermione’s abilities). he’d also have had to deal with the fact that he’s a young black boy on the run in majority white racist nineties britain, where he would be hyper visible and vulnerable to the suspicions of muggles as well as the wizarding ministry and snatchers (the police/suspicious members of the public are never going to have treated a black teenage boy who seems homeless well). he briefly has the company of ted tonks, surrogate dad figure, dirk cresswell and the goblins, but then watches all but griphook get murdered. then he’s snatched, rescued, and goes to live at shell cottage with his ex’s brother lol. he would have none of the wartime bonding and sense of group solidarity that the wartime DA seem to have built, and while it seems likely he too would join the aurors if invited to punish the people who persecuted him, i think he would feel intensely isolated and lonely as well as challenged by the demands of that job, one he never really seems to crave in canon. got our first few deamus hints here but yeah basically if michael’s going thru one kind of trauma, dean’s going through another, one that he’s never going to open up to the ex who hurt him about. he doesn’t hate ginny - in DH, when he hears about the sword theft, he shows clearly still wants her to be safe and well - but he’s had none of michael’s time to build a post-relationship working friendship with her, and the emotional trust isn’t there anymore. wow bummed myself out writing that out jesus. he could have offered her a cup of tea, though. that’s just basic brit etiquette

baby’s first almost smut: look. what was i supposed to do. these two haven't shared a bed since august. if you think they’re not fucking immediately on sight i simply do not know what to tell you

(gif courtesy of @uncontainedhybrid)

reading list: 

postwar justice (and kingsley as MoM): 

The Weight of the After by PaperyInk  Castles by @pebblysand

the ravenclaw boys: 

these three brilliant fics by chaserzachsmith (crikey)  Notes from the Ravenclaw Bulletin Board by lost_robin

grimmauld place:

haunted house by @bronzeagepizzeria Grimmauld Place: Azkaban by a Different Name by @artemisia-black

beasts and beings:

this meta by @myrskytuuli on harry potter as colonial fantasy 

on the politics of childhood in 20c european politics, especially post-war (not hp fanfiction but historical non-fiction lmao): 

the lost children and kidnapped souls, both by tara zahra 

songs from the playlist for this chapter:

la jeune fille en feu by para one and arthur simonini | i horó 's na hug òro eile by duncan chisholm | blue ridge mountains by fleet foxes | lull by vraell and rosie h sullivan | if we make it through december by phoebe bridgers | please, please, please let me get what i want by the smiths | wading in waist-high water (solstice version) by fleet foxes | feels like a dream by alice boman and perfume genius

and a sneak peek of chapter 9 because now we're at grimmauld and you know what that means... 🐕‍🦺🐾

‘Wow. What a shithole.’ ‘Fred!’ ‘Don’t lie, Mum, you think it’s a shithole, too, I can see it on your face.’  ‘Well, yes, but don’t be rude, this is someone’s house.' ‘Be as rude as you like,’ says a bored voice. They all jump, turn to see a man standing at the foot of the stairs: tall, gaunt, long hair like curtains framing a ten-thousand galleon face. ‘I assure you,’ says Sirius Black, ‘this house is an insult to shitholes everywhere.’

[pomoapple]

Self harm has always been used as a form of protest by anti fascists. So it's really wild that people are saying that Aaron Bushnell "went too far" or that his death was "pointless".

Self immolation as we know it has been around since the 1960s and, besides being brutal by design, it was used as opposed to other means of self harm BECAUSE it was so extreme. It wasn't enough that you were willing to die for your cause, it was the fact that the offenses committed by the opposition were so great that you simply could not live to see another minute of it so you decided to add your name to the list of people that that regime killed.

Other forms of self harm activism like hunger strikes, refusing medicine and aid, self stabbing, disembowelment, cutting, hanging, poisoning, drowning, self inflicted gunshot, and suicide by cop all have similar messages with varying political and public results. Suicide by cop is often looked at very lowly because imperialism has trained society to believe that law enforcement is an institution of good and cops killing civilians is an action forced on them. Whereas hunger strikes are often looked at with sympath because imperialism has positioned food as a creature comfort and a luxury and to willingly starve is something that everyone has experienced at least once in their life. But self immolation exists in a very unique realm of pain and finality. No one can imagine themselves on fire. No one can find a system to godhead. There's nothing but the horrible feeling of the flames being so quick but the death being so painfully slow.

And again, self harm protests always wield different results depending on the method used, the cause, the justification, the proximity to the injustice, the identity of the activist, and the resulting health/death status. But the message is easier to decipher. "I do not agree with the actions of the oppressor and I want everyone on the political spectrum to know that my goal is to die for that belief". Going "too far" is the point of political suicide, not an unfortunate side effect. Being "pointless" simply doesn't exist because the death/harm IS the point, and by being it has already proven itself to be worthwhile to the committer.

Personally speaking am I ok with Aaron lighting himself on fire? No. I wish that he hadn't have done it at all and I truly wish he were alive today. But he WANTED us to not be ok with his death. He knew that even though he would be villainized, made fun of, have his death celebrated, and have the believers of zionism feel vindicated in their genocide because only "monsters" who support Palestine would enact such violence. But he had his reasons, and us not agreeing with his reason comes from the same place that his suicide came from. Not agreeing with genocide so much that he felt compelled to not live in a world that funds ethnic cleansing.

Articles to look into regarding suicide protests

[kissingfloor]

Woke up today feeling insane, and I haven't figured out if it's the good or bad kind yet. After having covid I've been sleeping 12 hour nights with dreams so vivid I am starting to confuse them with reality. I had a dream that I was eating jollof rice dipped in cheap mexican beer, grabbing it my the forkful and dunking it into the can- and it was phenomenal. I was peeling the dead skin off my feet, I couldn't remember how to play the Debussy piece but I improv'ed it anyway, and I was trying to join a floating commune and dodge the $1k membership price out of sheer social pressure alone.

Instead I woke up at 2pm to a lot of emails and texts wanting me to do something I haven't done yet- pay my hospital bills, or my rent, read all those lit mag submissions, send that invoice. Varying levels of anger from not at all angry to long blocks of text to debt collector threats. I think I am anxious about these things but I can't altogether feel their reality. After all, I am laying in my bed and no one is grabbing me out of it. Really, no one will. I could continue to refuse for a long, long time. I could bring it all down by doing nothing.

This is the state of mind that flunked me out of school, the kind that got me fired from all those jobs, a sort of phase of unreality. There is a sort of psychotic liberation to it, because in failing and refusing but still existing I prove to myself that my existence doesn't really hinge on these things. Maybe they aren't real at all. I could have $0 in the bank account, debt collectors at my door, friends and superiors mad at me, but I would still be here- untouched. SInking low enough to ascend.

Maybe I'll go and see a movie at IFC. Maybe I won't take an umbrella and I'll walk in the rain. Maybe I'll spend the day just looking at people. Maybe I'll blow my cousin off for coffee. Maybe I'll do something stupid like spray painting the precinct to land myself in central bookings. Maybe I'll pick a random person to fuck. Maybe I'll do a bunch of ketamine. Or even more unlikely, maybe I'll actually answer the texts and emails. Maybe I'll trip on mushrooms and call the hospital to make them forgive my bills- convince them I'm too insane to pay them. Maybe I'll just make my espresso of the day and sit here and read. Maybe I'll call up that cute boy that doesn't like me as much as I think he should. Maybe I'll throw myself off a building.

I'm ok actually, really. I'm not sad or stressed. Don't call the fascist internet police on me. Just sometimes nothing feels very real, sometimes rainy days just do that.

Last night I took the midnight train from New Brunswick to Manhattan. I met a strange + attractive poker player in the elevator and on the train platform. His hair was gray and the way he talked referenced the decades he had experienced, but his face was young. His energy seemed so strange that I think he could have been famous. It was humid and comfortable outside, and he talked to me about his weird friends in Joshua Tree- how he lives on their compound for free and makes his money in poker tournaments. How- if i had some intelligence- which he asked me if I had- I could make money that way, too. That is, if I also played a lot of poker. We lost track of each other and I was thinking that maybe I should have just followed him off the train into the night- gone down the shore to whatever weird party house I knew he was on to. The conductors yelled over the PA that they were "low leveling" tonight, and everyone got off in the middle of the tracks. So dark I couldn't see them as we left the station behind.

I gave everyone money who asked for it that night. The conductor had good, strong forearms. He kept reading the printed train schedules out of boredom, which I found funny. Reading timetables over and over as the traincars clacked and the humid air wheezed in through the cracks.

I thought of all the other people who I have run into- always at night- who gleefully and innocently suggest a new career. The MTA worker who told me all about their benefits- how I could have a great career as a train operator. The flight attendant who almost got me to fly out to their training grounds in pursuit of a more fucked up and mobile lifestyle. And now a poker player.

Different lives to think about. Nothing too unlikely until I reach some point where I suppose I am too old. But I'm not there yet...

[tonkysexist]

idk how to feel abt the one person boiling captain america down to imperialist shill after u literally explicitly said he was made by jews to promote american involvement in wwii, like the whole point of him being so “american” is to equate american values to being anti fascist because of how prevalent nazi ideology was in american culture (there’s a reason hitler was inspired in part by america), like I’m absolutely down to critique modern interpretations of him but those are primarily a result of the corporatization of comic books and his character (I have many thoughts on the movies and the modern changes to his character) so painting him with the broad brush of imperial propaganda feels disingenuous and is frustrating because it erases the jewish influence in comics even more (see Superman’s modern interpretation as christ and not moses despite also being created by jews) sorry about the long msg this is just something that I find frustrating, the constant erasure of jewish people from the very art form we created

Yeah idk either. They dmed me about it, but I definitely agree that the anti-semitism in the Marvel fandom is a huge problem.

The way MCU Wanda stans beat down on people (esp Jewish people) who discuss how her ethnicity was erased is horrifying. Or everything abt that terribly offensive Trial of Magneto cover from last week.

To further my Captain America discussion- Jack Kirby changed his name from Jacob Kurtzberg because he knew that the name “Kurtzberg” would hinder his career. Comic books were some of the only work Jewish artists could get because it was considered a “lower art form.” The history of Captain America is just as much a history of Jewish-Americans than American involvement in WWII. My great great grandmother told my great grandfather to marry a Christian girl & convert to protect himself in the 30s. The danger was real. Simon and Kirby stoking anti-fascist sentiments was necessary to them. History has made Nazi Germany seem like it was universally hated, but that’s far from the truth. Simon and Kirby revived no shortage of threats for their Captain America comics.

Modern interpretations of Cap vary wildly and that discussion is necessary. The most recent anniversary comic actually opens up a really interesting discussion about Cap’s image (I may post that separately if anyone is interested). But there have been more than few grave missteps (Hydra Cap wtf was that and how the American military directly funds the MCU) that should be critiqued appropriately.

But I for sure agree that saying Cap’s history is only imperialist propaganda is outright false.

[fresh-prince-of-denmark]

Cyberpunk 2077 Literary Analysis Pt 7: Leave me Alone, Hemingway, You’re Supposed to be Dead

Surprise bitch I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me.

Cyberpunk spoilers ahead!

Cyberpunk meta literary analysis masterpost here 

Okay, so I thought I would be done with this, but it kinda feels like Hemingway has me by the left asscheek and won’t let me go as of late. So here we are: Cyberpunk literature meta-analysis part 7: For Whom the Bell Tolls

Hemingway comes up a few times in Cyberpunk, too many times to ignore. It’s not surprising, really. We know that Johnny is actually a pretty well-read guy from some of his passing comments, and if I had to guess, he’d probably really connect to Hemingway. In fact, if you play Johnny’s ending with Rogue, the final quest is called “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (which is also cool since it keeps the theme of all the missions being song titles, as this is also a Metallica song). But for once, this analysis isn’t entirely about Johnny or V. Hopefully this rings a bell (pun intended), as we’re very explicitly told who else really connected to Hemingway.  

Jackie Wells.

During the quest Heroes, Mama Wells will ask you to go through Jackie’s garage to find something for the ofrenda. One option is a book, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Earnest Hemingway. Misty will comment that he used to read it before a big job, and that it was important to him. If you choose to bring the book for the ofrenda, V will “read from the book” (I put this in quotes because the passage they read has actually been misattributed, it is a Hemingway quote, but not from FWTBT, rather from another of his works titled “Men at War”):

“When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you... Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.”

The majority of our main characters start out as The Fool, naive and feeling like they’re on top of the world, the kind of hubris that can only come with youth. Yet, like Hemingway says, it takes a bullet to give one a dose of reality.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a story of war. Our protagonist, Robert Jordan (I’d be really interested to know if Johnny’s birth name, Robert John Linder, was inspired by this), leaves his cushy job as a college instructor in the United States to join the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Robert begins the novel fairly bland; he has no real friends, no real family, and he feels completely disconnected from the world. In all honesty, he’s boring. Like, if wet cardboard were a person. He doesn’t really care if he lives or dies, not because he’s a badass, but because he really doesn’t have anything to lose. No passion, no connections, nothing he loves that ties him to this earth despite the fact that he is a man of such strong convictions that he willingly joins this war. Robert is tasked with destroying a bridge, meeting comrades of varying philosophies along the way, who become a kind of found family to him. Despite going out of his way to avoid making connections, he falls in love, not just with the love interest Maria, but with his friends, finally giving him something worth fighting for, something connecting him to this life. The novel concludes as the group finally blow up the bridge (a task done in vain, since the Republican side has ultimately sustained more losses than the Fascists), and Robert is injured. He convinces the others to leave him behind so he can buy them time to escape. The novel ends just as it begins; our protagonist lying in wait in a forest, gun in hand, “heart to the ground,” on a bed of pine needles. (For more on cycles/mirrors/reflections, see here).

While there’s a much larger political message here that could parallel the themes of Cyberpunk, I want to focus more on the philosophical side, as it ties in with my previous analysis much more coherently. The biggest theme of this novel is about how interpersonal relationships are what matter most in this life, which is summarized very nicely by the poem by John Donne which not only lends the novel it’s name, but serves as it’s opening epitaph:

No man is an island,

Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thine own

Or of thine friend's were.

Each man's death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

This poem and the overall meaning of the book work on two levels. The most obvious is that we all die one day, that mortality is fleeting. But on another level, No man is an island. Our identity is tied within our communities, those that love us, and those we live for. “Therefore, send not to know/For whom the bell tolls/It tolls for thee.” Each time a person dies, a piece of all those who loved them dies with them. Funerals are not just for the deceased, but for us, a chance to bury the pieces of ourselves that died with them. “Each is a piece of the continent/Apart of the main/If a clod be washed away by the sea/Europe is the less.”

Johnny is incredibly similar to Robert Jordan. Despite knowing a lot of people and having a lot of connections, Johnny is not particularly loved, and that feeling is mutual. He even tells V that they are the only person who knows him that that doesn’t hate his guts. Both Robert and Johnny are men who base their morals and identity solely on principal and ideals; standing up for what is right, fighting against oppression, rebellion, but that passion is not borne from interpersonal relationships and connections. It is made of hate of the world, not love of their fellow man. This leads to one of Johnny’s fatal flaws; he did not fear death, because he did not feel as if he had anything to lose. He was consumed and driven by hate, not love, leading to all of his failed relationships. Had Johnny something to lose, he may not have taken all of the stupid the risks he did, acting as if he did not care about his own life.

V, in many ways, parallels Maria, Robert’s love interest in the novel. While Robert salvation lies in the love he has for all of his newfound friends, the main focus is on the love interest, Maria. Here’s an interesting bit of dialogue between Maria and Robert:

"Now, feel. I am thee and thou art me and all of one is the other. And I love thee, oh, I love thee so. Are you not truly one? Canst thou not feel it?"

"Yes," he said, "it is true."

"And feel now. Thou hast no heart but mine."

"Nor any other legs, nor feet, nor of the body."

"But we are different," she said. "I would have us exactly the same."

"You do not mean that." (20.66-71)

In this moment, Robert and Maria are talking about how they feel as if they have fused into the same person, as if they share a body. Yet there is a key difference in how they view their relationship: Maria wishes that they were exactly the same, while Robert states that she doesn’t mean that. Similarly, while Johnny seems to enjoy the growth he and V provide one another, his greatest fear is V/himself being changed into something they are not. Hmmmm….

Johnny and V are very different people by the end of Cyberpunk, finding meaning in relationships just as Robert has. For V, this means Judy, River, Panem, Kerry, Misty, Vik, etc. And for Johnny, this means V, and by extension, all of the people who make up V’s identity through their love and friendship. Despite dying and rising again as lines of code, V is able to finally show Johnny what it means to be human. His journey, I believe, can be accurate summed up by this quote from the novel:

“This was the greatest gift that he had, the talent that fitted him for war; that ability not to ignore but to despise whatever bad ending there could be. This quality was destroyed by too much responsibility for others or the necessity of undertaking something ill planned or badly conceived. For in such things the bad ending, failure, could not be ignored. It was not simply a possibility of harm to one's self, which could be ignored. He knew he himself was nothing, and he knew death was nothing. He knew that truly, as truly as he knew anything. In the last few days he had learned that he himself, with another person, could be everything. But inside himself he knew that this was the exception. That we have had, he thought. In that I have been most fortunate. That was given to me, perhaps, because I never asked for it. That cannot be taken away nor lost. But that is over and done with now on this morning and what there is to do now is our work.”

In addition, Robert’s final conversation with Maria as he is convincing the others to leave him behind so he can buy them time to escape is nearly identical to Johnny and V’s final conversation:

"Listen to this well, rabbit," he said. He knew there was a great hurry and he was sweating very much, but this had to be said and understood. "Thou wilt go now, rabbit. But I go with thee. As long as there is one of us there is both of us. Do you understand?" (43.319)

Here, Robert is telling Maria that because they are the same, only one of them needs to survive in order for them both to live. Compare that to what Johnny tells V:

V: For fucks sake, defend yourself! You’re not even trying!

Johnny: Hmm…sounds kind of familiar. We know that attitude. See, V? Stayin’ with you whether you like it or not.”

This scene is further paralleled by the fact that V crosses a bridge to reach Mikoshi, which is set to be destroyed, just as Robert was tasked with destroying the bridge. Furthermore, in the Suicide ending, the overall theme is about how V “never realized just how many friends they had.” Friends who, in all other endings, were willing to die for V, as losing them meant a piece of themselves dying with them. Similarly, Robert considers killing himself as his friends escape, as the pain of his injury becomes too much to bear. However, he is comforted knowing that his sacrifice will mean that they live, telling himself, "I don't mind this at all now they are away.” Despite now having something to live for, like Johnny, they are still able to brave their deaths as now they have been given meaning. And not just any meaning; love. No longer hate, or rage, or blind idealism. Love. 

This is the overall message of Cyberpunk: maybe you won’t change the world. Maybe you won’t win the war. Maybe your sacrifice isn’t going to change history. Maybe, in the grand scheme of the universe, you don’t matter, and you won’t ever be a legend. But you do matter to the people in your life. No man is an island. We were made to be in each other’s lives, to love one another, to change one another for the better. And that’s what life is all about.

[corporationsarepeople]

hello, i have seen the chaos going on with america and i wonder, why did this all happen? i mean of course, george floyd and trump being incompetent as always, but there is just a lot of things happening and i could use some explanation, thanks in advance

I wish I could explain it, I truly do. Here’s my attempt at it:

The United States has tremendous structural problems that have been laid bare and/or exacerbated by several recent factors.

We have a barely functioning healthcare system; a weak social safety net that is deliberately opaque; a legacy of slavery and racism that has never been fully addressed; a political party that refuses to propose any policy beyond tax cuts and liability protections; a vastly overpriced education loan system that prohibits innovation and creativity; and a growing fascist movement

Our corrupt and incompetent president didn’t have the skill or the will to hold this rickety boat together like another may have done. As such, he simply dropped the charade of pretending to care.

Our healthcare system is designed primarily to deny employees the option to leave their jobs, and is a hodgepodge of different insurance policies, coverages, and runaway costs. The ACA reined this in to an extent, but the trump administration loosened those reins and the pandemic has emphasized just how shaky it was. A system built for a nation’s health would be able to coordinate testing and even develop a strategy for tracking the virus, but not a series of consumer-facing companies seeking profit. Trump has made this worse by offering zero leadership in the crisis, leaving Americans to argue over varied local and state responses.

At the start of the pandemic we knew that people would be unable to work and businesses would close. As we quickly hit record unemployment levels, the paltry and poorly designed systems in place were exposed to a higher number of Americans than ever before. Two options were clear: pay people more to stay home to give time for a response plan, or don’t—keep benefits as they are to force them back to work to save state funds. We focused on the latter and destroyed trust: additional payouts were pocketed mainly by the very wealthy, and states that opened early did so mainly to push people off the rolls.

But all of this is due to the legacy of racism and slavery that exists. While most Americans have learned to pretend that this has long been a land of opportunity, it wasn’t originally intended to be that way for everyone. In most parts of the country, the equality of whites was simply a charade held together by the oppression of blacks and others.

The US was an authoritarian nation for much of its existence, and has only been a non-racial democracy for about 50 years. We still have a massive amount of people here who think these recent changes aren’t for the better.

The states were addicted to slavery, its wealth-creation, and its personal power for hundreds of years; when it was finally limited, and not eradicated, that addiction didn’t go away. It still exists in the heavy-handed American blaming of the poor for poverty and of black people for racism, the adulation of wealthy psychopaths, and especially in the acceptance and expectation of control of big business over their employees’ lives. A real safety net undermines that control over the lower classes, and terrifies the American right more than anything else.

Trump dropped the pretense that he didn’t long for those earlier authoritarian times, and explicitly campaigned on going back to them. A lot of us knew that would work, because it has always worked here, right down to the election intimidation and enthusiastic public voter suppression.

In other words, this is what America has always been. The push to jettison democracy has never made by the president himself before, but that’s only because authoritarian whites have rarely ever been this afraid.

[uncloseted]

my mom keeps badgering me about the capital event bc i really hated it but i support the blm protests and she says it’s hypocritical of me bc the protests were just as “violent” as the capital and “caused lots of deaths”. i never really have anything to say back to justify what went down, do you have any info i could use to explain myself? i know they were for completely different causes and one actually matters, but i don’t know how to justify the “violence” (i personally don’t think a majority of them were violent, all the ones where i lived were routinely peaceful and i think the extreme ones were sensationalized for the news). anyway sorry if it’s dumb i’m 14 and just trying to get into politics and stuff so i’m not super well informed and just trying to learn.

I’m sorry this has taken me a few days to get to.  What happened at the Capitol is complicated, and I want to make sure I give you as full of an answer as possible.  I also want to just quickly say that it’s awesome you’re getting involved in politics at such a young age and trying to help your parents understand these issues.  I would love to answer any questions you have about politics or social issues (or just kind of anything in general, I’m not picky).  Last thing and then I’ll get into the meat of this post- I’m a huge supporter of the BLM and police abolition movements and was a protestor over the summer, so I’m maybe a little bit biased.  This situation makes me really angry on a personal level, but I’ll try to stick to just the facts as much as possible in this post and let you know when I’m showing my own opinions.

So the first thing I want to talk about is language.  The Black Lives Matter protests were protests- a public expression of objection, disapproval or dissent towards a political idea or action, usually with the intention of influencing government policy.  In the US, protesting is a constitutional right protected by the First Amendment.  The storming of the Capitol was not a protest, and it wasn’t intended to be.  It was planned several weeks in advance with the explicit intention of disrupting the counting of Electoral College ballots.  Their stated goal was to overturn Donald Trump’s defeat in the presidential election, an election that is widely considered to be the freest, fairest, and safest election in US history (ironically, in part due to Trump’s insistence that there was voter fraud in the 2016 election).  Storming a public building is not a form of protest protected by the US Constitution.  Further, an attempt to overturn a democratic election is an attempt to carry out a coup.  The Capitol rioters will likely be charged with sedition (conduct that incites rebellion against the established order) and/or insurrection (a violent uprising against an authority or government).  The Black Lives Matter protestors were not attempting to carry out a coup against the US government, and none have been charged with offenses as big as those.

Next, I want to touch on motivation.  The Black Lives Matter protesters were protesting against police brutality towards minorities, particularly Black people.  There has long been a documented history of police misconduct and fatal use of force by law enforcement officers against Black people in the US.  Many protests in the past have been a response to police violence, including the 1965 Watts riots, the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and the 2014 and 2015 Black Lives Matter protests in response to the murders of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray.  By contrast, the Capitol rioters were not motivated by fact.  They were called to action by the President of the United States, Donald Trump.  They were told that the election had been “stolen” from Trump, and were encouraged to march over to the Capitol to “take back our country”.  The idea that the election was stolen from the president is demonstrably false.  They weren’t motivated by a social issue, a concern for their own lives, facts, or even really principle.  “Our president wants us here...we wait to take orders from our president,” was what motivated them. The affiliations of those rioters are varied, but many of them are affiliated with either the far-right, anti-government Boogaloo Boys, the explicitly neofascist Proud Boys, the self-proclaimed militia The Oath Keepers, or the far-right militia group Three Percenters.  Many are also on the record as being QAnon followers (followers of a disproven far-right conspiracy that started off as a 4chan troll, which states that an anonymous government official, “Q”, is providing information about a cabal of Satan-worshiping, cannibalistic pedophiles in the Democratic party who are running a child sex trafficking ring and plotting against Trump.  Yes, really).

The intentions of BLM were largely peaceful.  BLM protest documents encouraged protesters to be peaceful even in the face of police violence, because the BLM protesters knew what the price of being violent would be.  We were encouraged not to bring weapons or anything that could be misconstrued as a weapon.  Even non-violent protests were met with tear gas, rubber bullets, and riot gear.  A reported 96.3% of 7,305 BLM protests were entirely peaceful (no injuries, no property damage).  The 292 “violent incidents” in question were mainly the toppling of statues of “colonial figures, slave owners, and Confederate leaders”.  There were also several instances of right wing, paramilitary style militia movements discharging firearms into crowds of protesters, and 136 confirmed incidences of right-wing participation at the protests (including members of the aforementioned Boogaloo Boys, Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, and Proud Boys).  It was also rumored that off-duty police were inciting violence (although to my knowledge, that is unconfirmed).  There is no evidence that “antifa” (a decentralized, left-wing, anti-racist and anti-fascist group) played a role in instigating the protests or violence, or even that they had a significant role in the protests at all.  People who were involved in crimes were not ideologically organized, and were largely opportunists taking advantage of the chaos for personal gain.  

By contrast, the “Storm the Capitol” documents were largely violent; messages like, “pack a crowbar,” and “does anyone know if the windows on the second floor are reinforced” were common on far-right social media platforms.  One message on 8kun (formerly 8chan, a website linked to white supremacy, neo-Nazism, the alt-right, etc) stated, "you can go to Washington on Jan 6 and help storm the Capitol....As many Patriots as can be. We will storm the government buildings, kill cops, kill security guards, kill federal employees and agents, and demand a recount."  The speakers at the Trump rally encouraged attendees to see themselves as foot soldiers fighting to save the country, and to be ready to “bleed for freedom”.  The Capitol rioters were mostly armed; rioters were reportedly seen firing pepper spray at police officers, and pipe bombs, molotov cocktails, and guns (including illegal assault rifles) were found on the protesters. One protester was filmed saying, “believe me, we are well armed if we need to be.”  Some protesters arrived in paramilitary regalia, including camo and Kevlar vests.

I quickly want to touch on scale.  The George Floyd BLM protests are thought to be the largest protests in US history, with between 15 and 26 million (largely young, sometimes children, minority) people attending a protest in over 2000 cities in 60 countries.  There were around 14,000 arrests, most being low-level offenses such as violating curfews or blocking roadways. 19 deaths have been reported, largely at the hands of police.  Only one death is known to have been a law enforcement officer.  The number of people who stormed the Capitol is still somewhat unclear, but it seems to be between 2,000 and 8,000 (largely older white, cis, straight, Christian men) people.  80+ people have been arrested for federal crimes, including 25+ who are being charged with domestic terrorism (something nobody associated with BLM is being accused of).  There have been five deaths reported.  One was a police officer, and the other four were rioters.  Of those deaths, one was a police related shooting (a female Air Force veteran).  The other three died of unrelated medical emergencies.  One reportedly had a history of high blood pressure and suffered a heart attack from the excitement.  

Now I want to look at government response.  During the BLM protests, there was a huge response from law enforcement.  200 cities imposed curfews, 30 states and Washington DC activated over 96,000 National Guard, State Guard, 82nd Airborne, and 3rd Infantry Regiment service members.  The deployment was the largest military operation other than war in US history, and it was in response to protests concerning, in part, the militarization of police forces.  The police were outfitted in riot gear.  They used physical force against BLM protesters, including batons, tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets, “often without warning or seemingly unprovoked,” per the New York Times.  Anecdotally, everyone I know now knows how to neutralize pepper spray, treat rubber bullet wounds, build shields out of household items, how to prevent cellphones from being tracked, and how to confuse facial recognition technology to prevent being identified (as six men connected to the Ferguson protests mysteriously turned up dead afterwards, and the police were using cellphone tracking technology).  Amnesty International issued a press release calling for police to end excessive militarized response to the protests.  There were 66 incidents of vehicles being driven into crowds of protesters, 7 of which explicitly involved police officers, the rest of which were by far-right groups.  Over 20 people were partially blinded after being struck with police projectiles.  When the BLM protests were happening, Trump said that, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

In contrast, the response to the Capitol protesters was relatively tame, especially given that the US Capitol’s last breach was over 200 years ago (when British troops set fire to the building during the war of 1812) and the rioters weren’t being shy about their aspirations to conduct an armed insurrection incited by the sitting president.  There was (widely available, able to be found through a Google search, everyone saw it) prior intelligence that far-right, extremist groups were planning on (violently) Storming the Capitol on January 6th, with the intention of interrupting the Electoral College ballot counting and holding lawmakers hostage.  However, the US Capitol Police insisted that a National Guard presence would not be necessary for the protests, and Pentagon officials reportedly restricted DC guard troop from being deployed except as a measure of last resort, and restricted them from receiving ammunition or riot gear.  They were instructed to engage with rioters only in self-defense, and were banned from using surveillance equipment.  Despite prior knowledge of the “protests”, Capitol Police staffing levels mirrored that of a normal day, and no riot control equipment was prepared.  The Capitol Police weren’t in paramilitary gear the way they were for the BLM protests.  The mob walked in to the Capitol with little resistance.  Some scaled walls, some broke down barricades, some smashed windows, and one video even seems to show Capitol Police opening a gate for the mob. Rioters traipsed around the Capitol (one of the most important government buildings in the country) with little resistance, looting and vandalizing offices of Congress members.  Some rioters felt safe enough to give their names to media outlets, livestream their exploits, and take selfies with police officers.  One man was (ironically) carrying a Confederate flag, a symbol of a secession attempt on the part of the South (and of racism). It took 50 minutes for FBI tactical teams to arrive at the scene, and the National Guard were initially directed by Trump not to intervene.  Pence later overturned that ruling and approved the National Guard.  Police used finally used riot gear, shields, smoke grenades, and batons to retake control of the Capitol, but notably no tear gas or rubber bullets.  Video showed rioters being escorted away without handcuffs.  Trump’s response to the riot was, "we love you. You're very special ... but you have to go home." 

This is where I’m going to get a little editorial, but I think it’s important to say.  If the people storming the Capitol Building were Black, they would have been met with a large, pre-coordinated military presence, violent restraint, arrests, and quite possibly would have been shot.  They wouldn’t have made it inside the Capitol, much less been given free rein to wander around without immediate consequence. Hundreds of people during the George Floyd protests were arrested for just being present- 127 protesters were arrested for violating curfew on June 2nd in Detroit alone, twice the number of arrests made during the storming of the US Capitol.  It turns out that the police do know how to use restraint, after all.  What an absolute shock.  It’s almost like they’re a corrupt and racist institution we should get rid off...

The last big thing I want to talk about is the outcome.  The BLM protests were meaningful, but the outcome from them has been tame.  Nobody has been accused of domestic terrorism. State and local governments evaluated their police department policies and made some changes, like banning chokeholds, partially defunding some departments, and passing regulations that departments must recruit in part from the communities they patrol.  Only one city, Minneapolis, pledged to dismantle their police force.  The response has largely been localized.  I think the biggest impact it’s had is introducing people to the concept of police abolition and getting more people involved in the movement.  By contrast, the Capitol riots have resulted in over 25 people being accused of domestic terrorism and the second attempt to impeach Donald Trump, something that has never happened before in the history of the US.  

But what really concerns me is the precedent this sets.  Donald Trump is an idiot, and he’s gotten this far.  We can’t count on the guy who takes his place to be an idiot, too.  The next guy could be clever, strategic, well-spoken, well-mannered... not to invoke Godwin’s law here, but people liked Hitler.  He was a persuasive speaker and capitalized on conspiracy theories about World War 1 to gain support.  His 1923 attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government failed, but sympathy for his aims grew.  He painted himself as a good, moral man who loved dogs and children and was trying to do right by his country (by, among other things, arresting communists and leftists, and then eventually all minorities).  Trump isn’t Hitler.  He’s not even a Hitler analogue.  But Trump has already done this much damage to the fabric of our society.  He’s worn down our relationship with the media, with one another, with democracy, with morality, and with truth itself.  We have to be prepared for the idea that the next guy might be a much better politician.  Getting rid of Trump isn’t the end; it’s the beginning of a fight against fascism that’s only going to grow from here.

There are other differences you could point to.  BLM protesters wore masks to prevent the spread of COVID (and indeed, researchers have reported that the protests did not drive an increase in virus transmission), for example, while the rioters were largely unmasked.  But I think the bottom line is that the millions of BLM protesters were doing their best to be responsible citizens fighting peacefully for an evidence-based, human rights cause, even though they knew that as a primarily minority group of people, they would be met with violence.  The thousands of far-right, white, Capitol insurrectionists were doing their best to overturn a free, fair, safe, and democratic election because of a call to action by Trump and a stringent belief in disproven conspiracy theories, which they knew would be met with minimal resistance despite the severity of their actions.  The insurrectionists are fascists, full stop, and we should call them what they are.  The BLM protesters were by and large just people, of all different political views and motivations, who wanted to fight against something they saw as unjust.  

I’m sorry that this is such a long post. This topic has been on my mind all week, and I wanted to give it the nuance it deserves.  All we can do from here is to keep fighting- for justice, for truth, and, hopefully, for peace.

[thegayhimbo]

What it’s like in the Game of Thrones Fandom on Reddit:

r/naath: 

Game of Thrones is the greatest show that ever existed! It’s the Mona Lisa of Television. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are underappreciated geniuses who knew exactly what they were doing when they adapted the books. Everything about the show was flawless, and anyone who disagrees is a stupid hater! Season 8 was a masterpiece in storytelling, and people just don’t understand the brilliance of it. Anyone who hates the ending are bunch of whiny snowflakes who expected a Disney ending! Daenery’s arc makes perfect sense! She was ALWAYS THE VILLAIN! Every single thing she ever did for her entire life was selfish and self-serving and secretly evil. People who like Daenerys also must like fascist dictators like Adolf Hitler or cult leaders like Jim Jones! Daenerys was WRONG for wanting to free the slaves! WRONG I SAY! The slavers in Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen were much better people than Daenerys! She was always going to go mad because she didn’t stop her husband from killing her abusive brother when he threatened to cut out their unborn child on sacred ground. Daenerys killed way more people than the White Walkers ever did! DAENERYS WAS EEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL! And by that logic, anyone who likes Daenerys or defends her actions must be evil as well! I’m genuinely scared that people who have issues with Game of Thrones at all might go shoot up a town! I’m going to take the moral position that anyone who has any criticism about Game of Thrones or Daenerys’s arc is either stupid or a terrible person!

r/freefolk:

Game of Thrones was the worst thing to ever happen in the history of TV shows! David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are bozos who had no fucking idea what they were doing! I HOPE THEIR CAREERS TANK! Everything they ever wrote was shit! They’re hacks who have no clue what good storytelling is, and were only piggybacking off of Geroge R.R. Martin! Even though I watched this for 9 years, I always knew the show was shit! There are no payoffs for anything! Why do people teleport across Westeros in the later seasons when Littlefinger and Varys were doing that since the beginning of the show? We wanted Jamie to have a redemption arc even though he raped his sister next to their son’s corpse! Sansa and Jon Snow are the reasons Daenerys went insane for no reason and burned a whole bunch of people! Oh wait, that was fucking stupid as well! There was no foreshadowing that Daenerys would go insane! Daenerys was ALWAYS a good person, and if she did anything bad, it was either because it was justified or other characters forced her hand! Sansa’s a braindead bimbo! Because season 8 was shit, that must mean EVERYTHING about the show was shit! How many plot-holes can I find because I’m so bitter and angry that I want to feel validated in my rage? THE SHOW FUCKING SUCKS!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ok, I know I’m being a little nasty here, but this is literally what it’s been like for 2-3 years now since I’ve been on Reddit. It’s sheer insanity at this point. 

It’s shit like this that kills any interest in being a part of a fandom or enjoying a TV show. Some people need to grow up and realize their opinions are not the gospel truth, and that there is such a thing as complexities and a middle ground. 🙄 

[mechina]

1. Jorah. His death was painful. He loved Daenerys and knew she would get far in life. He believed in her. Adored her. Wanted to protect her. His death had been the beginning.

2. Rhaegal. Her other child. She had lost Viserion to the Night King and now Euron (loyalist of Cersei) killed him. It destroyed her. After all, the dragons are the only children she would ever have.

3. Missandei. She was Daenerys’ best friend. Completely loyal. Loved her. Cared for her. Believed in her. Her last word, “Dracarys” meant more than what the audience knew. Was she condemning the entirety of King’s Landing? I sincerely doubt it.

4. Jon. She lost him as soon as they went to Winterfell. He betrayed her trust by telling his family his true heritage. She knew this would cause problems because in this world, men dominated. Was she wrong in her feelings? Absolutely not. Varys wanted to poison her. Varys’ death disturbed Jon. He couldn’t forget that she was his Aunt even though he said he loved her. And still loved her in the end. She never once betrayed him. In fact, she saved his life more than enough times to be considered an ally.

Emilia Clarke had no say in what direction her character went in. She was devastated. The girl she had played, whom had saved her life, will end as the villain. Was Daenerys a good person? Of course. Was she ruthless? Sometimes, but so is everyone else in Game of Thrones.

To say they did all this to prop Daenerys up is more than likely a lie. Making her mad was the easiest way out of it. D&D had other plans. And yes, it is their job to tell her where to take Daenerys. The commentary about her followed with them repeating she was not a sadist and not her father. All these deaths were used to isolate her. She was depressed. She was used. She was tired.

No one saw this coming. Kit called this ending disappointing. Emilia did not want Daenerys to be viewed this way even though she read the books and knew Daenerys had confliction within her. D&D told her what they wanted. They should have said she would end up this way. Stop using certain interviews to help your ideals.

Defending genocide? Horrendous. No one is doing that. No Dany stan is happy she burned innocents. When they said “burn them all” it was said in jest and pointed at her ENEMIES, not the innocent ones. Emilia is justified in standing by her character. She loved her. She saved her life. Being rude to her and awful will not change the ending. The petition will not change the ending either.

I stan Daenerys Targaryen. I stan Emilia Clarke. That does not make me a fascist. It does not mean I support genocide. You are taking this world of fiction too literally. It is not real. Emilia did her best to portray Daenerys as mad even though she did not agree with it.

People like Jason Momoa and Aaron Rodgers... they loved her too. Just because we are upset does not mean a damn thing. We have that right to hate the ending. We have that right to love Daenerys and Emilia Clarke just as you have the right to hate her. Remember that this is fiction. Condemning someone like this will not help you feel better.

It only helps you turn into the very thing you wish to stand against.

[desbianherstory]

In a coffee shop in Mumbai I waited nervously to meet 'the community'. I had just moved back to the city after years abroad and begun the search for other lesbians. Already I had been warned by Sakshi, who had come to make contact with me and make sure that I was not a reporter, that levels of trust were low. This was not only because of the need for confidentiality but also because women from The Outside, she told me tactfully, tended to take up so much space; tended 'to assume that their priorities are ours'. We were sitting by the cash register. When the phone rang and the server asked for Sakshi, I was close enough to hear the voice on the other end, demanding: 'Well? Shall I come to meet her? Is she Us?'

When I first started working as a reporter at the Times of India, the breaches of trust I engaged in while trying to promote lesbian visibility were multiple and unthinking, unprepared as I was for the difficulties of being both Us and Not-Us. When the group in Mumbai began working towards the first nationwide retreat for 'women who love women' I helped organize it, participated in it and then wrote about it. It was a conflict on many levels: between organizing collectively and yet representing 'Us' as an individual; between what I knew readers needed to hear and what I didn't know that lesbians were unwilling to share.

I also had to think about Us and Not-Us on many levels when I began the work of compiling Facing the Mirror, a collection of writings by lesbians in India. As soon as word of the project spread, I started receiving letters from men, offering to write about lesbian fantasies, about threesomes, about wishing to be lesbians for a day, about their lesbian wives. I had never expected this.

Some Indian lesbians themselves objected to the Facing the Mirror project on political grounds. One told me that there was no purpose to putting the existence of Indian lesbians into words, since it would just cement and make public the divisions between lesbians and women at large - divisions which we should be working to erase.

'Militant lesbians aren't aware of the existing spaces,' she said. 'Think about the ladies' compartment of the trains, you see women together there all the time. They hold hands, and from their faces you know that it is bliss.'

I tried to persuade her to change her mind - after all, that very week there had been an article in a women's magazine talking about the scourge of lesbians in train compartments. Such single-sex spaces of safety were increasingly rare, increasingly threatened. But she merely shook her head, told me that both the verbalizing of same-sex desire and the violent reactions against that desire were marginal to the vast reality of an Indian tolerance.

'All this - it has nothing to do with India,' she said.

Us and Not-Us. these words took on a new valence for me after Deepa Mehta's film Fire came out in India, at the end of 1998, and was immediately attacked by the Hindu right for its depiction of lesbianism. Fire, a tale of two women married to two brothers, developing a relationship with each other in the congested streets of middle-class New Delhi, was not a film made for Indian audiences. The symbolism was pureed like baby food, the metaphors of fire (Sita's trial by fire from the Ramayana. the evil custom of bride-burning. home-fires and hearth-fires.) so deliberately labelled 'For Export Only'. The film had even less to offer Indian lesbians. In its portrayal of two married women falling painlessly in love, there was, as the lesbian writer VS pointed out, no attempt to take on the 'anarchic and threatening emotions that accompany sexual practices generally considered perverted, criminal and taboo'.

Nevertheless, lesbians watched with alarm as the attacks on the film gathered intensity. Even though the Censor Board had, to everyone's surprise, cleared the film without cuts, right-wing groups like the Shiv Sena and Rashtriya Seva Sangh were in no mood to accept that verdict. On 1 December, Pramod Navalkar, Minister of Culture for the state of Maharashtra and no stranger to controversy - he would often claim that he enjoyed driving around Mumbai wearing a long blonde wig 'just to see what kinds of men will try to chase a white woman' - told newspapers that lesbianism was 'a pseudo-feminist trend from the West and no part of Indian womanhood'. The next day movie theatres in Mumbai that were screening Fire were attacked by mobs of men and women from the Shiv Sena. Ticket windows were smashed, hoardings were torn down, and audiences beaten up. The day after that theatres in Delhi were targeted.

In the ensuing debate in the upper house of Parliament only detractors of the film could actually bring themselves to say the word 'lesbian'. 'Do we have lesbian culture in our families?' one Member of Parliament demanded, defending the attacks. 'The Mahabharat and the Ramayana don't contain any lesbianism,' agreed another. On the other hand, the MPs insisting that Fire should not have been attacked would do so only in the most general terms: it was as though lesbians were purely symbolic, unnamable markers of the director's right to creative freedom, of the audience's democratic rights to watch what it chose, or of the Shiv Sena mob's fascist intolerance.

So some lesbians in Delhi gathered on a tidal wave of despair, unable to believe that years of discreet organizing had culminated in such intense and unwelcome visibility. It was almost incredible that we should have come together at all for we were a dispersed, fragmented lot, rent by dissension over who 'we' were - a national lesbian conference had recently disintegrated over the issue of whether white women were welcome in a space designated Indian. Even more disturbingly, over the span of a very few years the community had divided itself neatly into lesbian archives, sexuality help-lines, education and outreach groups. The informal networks we had fostered in our homes splintered gradually by ideology, particularly disagreement over funding.

Some of us believed that funding would only help us, giving us the resources to reach beyond our largely middle-class, English-speaking circles. Others of us were apt to quote the staunch activist who maintained that a foreign donor supporting any radical effort was about as plausible as Oxfam nurturing the Quit India movement 50-odd years ago.

But, in spite of our histories of disagreement, lesbians in Delhi joined forces in the wake of the attacks on Fire. We worked with desperate energy to plan a protest rally, scheduled to take place within 48 hours of the Shiv Sena's violence, and reached out to all our old allies from secular groups and from the women's movement. To our dismay we encountered that same unwillingness to name the issue a lesbian one - again, it seemed, our concerns were to be subsumed in favour of the 'bigger picture'. The word 'lesbian' was not to be used in the press release, one women's group insisted. Instead, we needed to highlight our support for the film's theme of 'the hypocrisy and tyranny of the patriarchal family'. After all, we could not possibly expect groups at large to champion a 'narrow' concern like lesbianism.

We gave in and the protest went ahead. Hundreds of people showed up outside Regal Cinema - the theatre that had been ransacked by the mobs - holding candles, chanting, raising placards. But for the first time ever in India, lesbians were visible among the other groups marking the specific nature of their anger. In the sea of placards about human rights, secularism, women's autonomy, freedom of speech, was a sign painted in the colours of the national flag: 'Indian and Lesbian'. Who would have thought that staking that saucy claim to our share of national pride would result in such a furore? You are not Us, we were reminded at once, by a chorus of voices. The deputy editor of the national weekly magazine India Today expressed particular dismay that 'the militant gay movement, which has hitherto operated as website extensions of a disagreeable trend in the West, could now come out into the open and flaunt banners in Delhi suggesting that "lesbianism is part of our heritage".' He went on to announce: 'Thievery, deceit, murder and other... [criminal] offences have a long history. That doesn't elevate them to the level of heritage.'

But that same searing moment of visibility and defiance threw together a small group of activists - a varied lot, from trade unionists to professional blood donors, men and women, heterosexual, homosexual and other. What we had in common was a sense that we should take the energy of the protest forward in the form of a campaign for lesbian rights. Why the emphasis on lesbian rights? 'To articulate the troubled connections of lesbians in and with the women's movement,' we declared in our mandate. 'To talk about the social suppression of women's sexuality in general, and to address the aspects of lesbians' lives that make this struggle distinct from the gay men's movement.'

The Campaign for Lesbian Rights was a revelation for me. For the first time, lesbian issues were occupying public space - we met in the Indian Coffee House in the centre of Delhi, a hotbed of anti-establishment politics with a permanent Home Ministry spy, and we sipped six-rupee coffee and strategized aloud. We handed out thousands of leaflets on 'Myths and Realities about Lesbianism' in parts of Delhi that were commonly considered hostile to activists - industrial areas housing hundreds of factories, a Muslim university, outside the headquarters of Delhi Police. We attended public meetings organized by women's groups, human-rights groups, student groups. We wrote a street play, the familiar rhythms and gestures of that form inscribing the experiences of grassroots activists among us who had listened to women in villages all over rural North India talking about saheli-rishte - intimate bonds between women.

I relearned the lesson that a movement is accountable only to the people, and, to that end, that rejection is only the beginning of dialogue rather than the end. We fielded questions like 'What have lesbians done for society that we should support you?' and stood our ground and continued the conversation, our commitment spurred by the knowledge that, as a group opposed to external funding, our work depended on our ability to persuade fellow activists, fellow citizens, that they should contribute a rupee or two to our cause.

Progressive groups, who addressed all kinds of dispossession and oppression through the lens of human rights, would tell us that lesbian rights was no fit realm for them to enter because sexuality was about 'personal choice'. And so we walked a curious double line, saying: 'All choices involving consenting adults deserve respect, and in the face of compulsory heterosexuality, human rights means making that choice real', and 'Lesbianism is not necessarily a choice'. It's hard to describe what it meant to us, then, to receive a letter from the Human Rights Trust acknowledging our work as 'part and parcel of the broader human-rights movement'. It was the recognition that lesbians were part of a larger group of people, attacked and discriminated against in a panoply of ways, but with this in common - that we could give a name to the violations and to the rights we were seeking.

Most importantly, though, the Campaign reshaped what I thought of when I said 'we'. I have in front of me a citizens' report on the suicides of a lesbian couple in an Orissa village, brought out by aids Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan, one of the Campaign's constituent groups. Written by two heterosexual men, the report is titled, touchingly, For People Like Us.

—Ashwini Sukthankar is a Mumbai-based writer and activist. Her book Facing the Mirror: Lesbian writing from India was published in 1999 by Penguin India.

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

Anyway, would you imagine the madness that would be the Civil War (2006) Event if it was released today?

Like...

1- There is a major explosion wiping out a suburban, white picked american town in the midwest, explosion started right next to a school, caused by a team of C List superheroes literally attacking a group of B list Supervillains, who were having a barbecue there for some reason, just to get more ratings on their reality show rather than any heroic duty. Many people die, mostly kids due to the school, and we see the bloody aftermath. Even the Sentinels, compared to burning crosses in terms of racial sensitivity by Wolverine, help out to fish out people from the debris.

2- Because of this, major Anti Superhero Sentiments start sprouting up in the country. One of the victims’ mother (A major player in the event believe it or not) spits on Tony Stark’s face. The Human Torch gets lynched by some black stereotypes because he was allowed to go into a exclusive nightclub with a white girl due to his celebrity status and they weren’t, major protests start going trough the nation, all demanding SOMETHING to be done against those pesky superheroes, As monuments are being torn down and what not, as ALL superheroes, as a social class, at fault for what has happened there during the explosion.

3- This brings us to the Government Regulation Thing, THE Superhero Registration Program. Maria Hill, who wasn’t a Skrull Chaos Agent and has never been (It’s important you remember this), announces to Captain America that the... senate? chamber? Anyway, someone is going to approve this new law (Which, you know, isn’t law yet btw) that will require all superheroes to have their Identity revealed to the public and become paid government workers. They get a pension and health insurance and insurance for any collateral damage they cause as long as they do what they are told and do not step out of line.

You know, Normal, TOTALLY not fascist shit.

4- Anyway, Cap obviously is outraged by this, for “How Long until it will be Washington that tells us who the real villain is” (Which is, you know, SUPER RELEVANT), and claims will never sign up for any of this, which Maria Hill, who, again, is not a Undercover Skrull Chaos Agent, knew he was going to say so she tries to arrest him for breaking a law that isn’t a law yet, unleashing plenty of armed guards and a couple of attack helicopters on him. She fails, he runs away, and the other superheroes are presented with a choice.

CONFORM OR BE HUNTED DOWN LIKE DOGS.

5- If you think this was bad prepare for the real bad shit to start now, because you have to keep in mind this:

The registration side are the supposed good guys here. They are what the narrative consider to be the one who win at the end, whose ideals were better than Captain Fucking America’s. Keep this in mind as you read this:

6- The Major 3 players of the Registration Side are Tony Stark, Mister Fantastic and Hank Pym.

6A- Tony Stark is a war criminal. He tries to stage a terrorist attack on Independent Nation Atlantis, using a “Mind Controlled” Norman Osborn (More on this later) to pull the trigger, so he could both kill Namor and start war with the underwater kingdom, whose Non Namor Rulers will surely try to get revenge against the surface for such happenings, sell weapons during the ensuing war, AND unite the divided superhero community against a common enemy, in this case, Atlantis.

Tony Stark is also responsible for the Supervillain Rehabilitation Program, which is taking willing and unwilling supervillains alike and putting bombs in their brains, ready to blow up at a sign of disobedience, so to use as enforcers for the registration side. Many of those villains have a kill count on the double digits. Many of those villains where later deployed in hunt down and capture missions of Superheroes who had defected, superheroes they all had a hate boner for and loved nothing more but to beat up and potentially kill/maim. One of the fucking Hobgoblins was among them. BULLSEYE WAS FUCKING AMONG THEM.

He manipulated Spider-Man into revealing his identity to the world, something that caused major Bullshit to everyone involved, for, once Spider-Man realized what kind of bullshit he had signed up for and decided to go rogue, Tony first hacks the stark patented supersuit he gave him as a gift so it malfunctions, then sends 2 bloodthirsty supervillains armed to the teeth with explosives and with bombs in their brain to capture him and rough him up a little, then removes peter’s wife and aunt from the family protection/hostage program, which forces them to hide out in a crappy motel in fear that one day a supervillain discovers where they are and bombs them, which guess what is what fucking happens in the end since a sniper finds out they are there and shoots Aunt May, which is what ultimately leads to the worst story in comic book history ONE MORE (FUCKING) DAY.

6B- Reed “Mister Fantastic” Richards is presented by the narrative as emotionally distant and abusive to his wife. He will, with the help of Tony Stark and Hank Pym, create a mechanical clone of Thor, who was absent from earth at the time, with the sole purpose of crowd control and dispersion in the event of a superhero vs superhero fight.

Lethal Force is apparently authorized and approved, for The first mission he is deployed in, Clone-Thor, the clone of a bloody Norse god, ends up Killing Black Goliath, a black superhero, something not contested, in fact almost condoned by the narrative and the registration side, and both the reason why Spider-Man defects and a Hydra Scientist (Oh, yeah, they also conscript Hydra Scientists in the thing so tho create more bio weapons and shit) finds the reason why he considers those three his favorite superheroes.

Also Reed Richards is a McCarthy apologist. He talks about this one uncle of his, a artist, who was considered a communist and was put on trials for having left leaning, liberal views/just being a plain weird artist (I think he was also gay coded?), and he says how he mocked the question and the absurdity of the whole situation in particular and McCarthyism in general, which ultimately blacklists him from work and makes him die alone and without money, so Reed Fucking Richards of course said that the moral of that story is that “My uncle was wrong, If there is a law that might seem unjust, you shouldn’t be down to clown but you should just shut your mouth and keep going.”

The Fucker.

6C- Hank Pym starts a fucking child soldiers conscription program. Teen Superheroes discovered by shield will be captured and separated from their families, Identical Robotic Decoys put in their place to prevent the families from finding out, and will be conscripted into the registration program as child soldiers.

They will be given a usa army approved regiment of training, and will be soon deployed on real, life or death missions, either involving the capture of rogue superheroes or fighting “enemy” forces such as AIM or HYDRA, what the government seems more fit to fight at the time.

The Kids, for ages seemed to vary from 15 to 19, will be trained and encouraged to kill, especially if faced with faceless hydra goons as they blast down their aircraft in a dog fight in the skies. This will of course scar and traumatize the, again, 15 years old government sanctioned child FUCKING soldiers, but not as much as the alternative to this.

For, as it is shown, failure to comply with orders, as well as emotional instability due to being, you know, a 16 years old girl in stressful situations such as, you know, a guy turning into a giant spider in front of you, will cause the government to “terminate” your employment under them, which will result in them forcibly taking away your powers, most of whom you were born with, with invasive, unwilling, non sedated surgery on you, as it happens to a girl whose arm is a literal magic gun who had her, you know, magic arm cut off after she accidentally misfired and kills another of the kids watching from the, you know, not that safe watching room not even a glass mirror away from the training room.

No wonder the girl whose superpower is literally just “can make pretty clouds with her mind” is so eager to kill as many people the government as her to after being conscripted while she was just flying around on her cloud and has to witness... you know, all of this shit.

6C- Maria Hill, Director of Shield and, again, not a fucking Skrull Chaos Agent, starts hunting down unregistered superheroes. Any superhero that didn’t sign up the registration list at least on the exact midnight of the day the law is made law, will be hunted down and forcibly imprisoned without a due process.

This happens to Luke Cage, who, again, on the exact midnight the law is enforced, not a minute more, had his apartment swarmed up with cops in tactical gear ready to “arrest him” despite him doing nothing yet, all the while shooting around the, you know, predominantly black neighbor like they are the Simpsons’ Texan guy. His wife and newborn daughter are also hunted down, the two fleeing to Canada, a safe heaven for superheroes and their families in this time of crisis, for undefended families of superheroes become leverage the registration side can use against them to make them sign up, for at some point a superhero must have revealed his identity to another superhero, another superhero that will statistically be either on the registration side snitching on you, or, you know, a Undercover Skrull Chaos Agent, if not both.

Captured heroes are shipped off to a private prison owned by Tony Stark and his goons in the Negative Zone (Think hell, but more depressing), where they will be interned without, again, any semblance of due process, and will be fucking kept in torture pod of virtual reality for the entirety of their stay. They will not be allowed any contact with the other inmates, or even to feed, relieve or just wash themselves, everything will be done by the pods, so that they will be in eternal, perfect imprisonment until they “see the error of their ways”.

Somewhat worse than the Barry Allen’s private prison in the Flash, if only by just a little.

Some brain washing was also implied to happen.

7- Cap’s Side is, of course, against all of this, yet it will be Cap’s side to lose the civil war, for , when Captain America is pummeling Tony to the ground for everything that has been going on in the middle of a devastated time square, some REAL WORLD HEROES (You know, a cop, a nurse, a fireman, and so on), tackle Steve to the ground, blame HIM for everything wrong that has happened, and ask him to stop in his futile resistance.

Statistically Speaking, at least 2 of those people were a Skrull Chaos Agents BTW.

Steve “sees the error of his ways,” surrenders to the police, is about to be given a sham process (He gets one but fucking daredevil, a lawyer, doesn’t as he’s shipped off to Tony’s Hell Prison? I guess there is a upside on getting arrested by the program in front of witnesses that you cannot all silence) until Sharon Carter shoots him on the steps to the courtroom because he was being mind controlled by a undercover hydra hypnotist that might or might have not been conscripted by the “let’s conscript supervillain scientists in the registration program, WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?” thing.

8- Also Hawkeye comes back to life for a bit and is immediately almost manipulated by Tony into taking the Captain America’s role after Steve's death, except this time working for the registration side against his friends, which he ALMOST accepts because he doesn't know what the fuck is going on yet but he trusts tony until he meets Hawkeye (The girl one) and Patriot during his first mission as Registration Cap who tell him “Duuuuude, Steve’s body isn’t even cold yet, what the fuck” which makes him go “Holy shit Tony, what the fuck?” and make him decide to abandon the shield and shit and lay low for a while.

9- Oh, yeah, also this happens:

(Recognize that journalist? Is the same journalist that gives Hydra Cap a interview about how inhumane Hydra was during their regime, the one he sends to the labor camps and mocks with “I’m sure you can complain about it on Twitter later.” That wasn’t just a dig at the (Justified, oh so justified) detractors of Hydra Cap on social medias, but also a dig at THIS. FUCKING. SCENE. THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY FOR ALL DAY TO COME, FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA IS OUT OF TOUCH WITH THE REAL AMERICA BECAUSE HE DOESN'T USE MY FUCKING SPACE).

10- What else what else... Oh, yeah, everyone favorite absolute monarch T’challa, King of Wakanda and Black Panther, married with X-Men’s Storm at the time, X-Man that, btw, have been pretty much neutral during this whole shitstorm due to, you know, the “genocide” they recently suffered by the hands and mystical powers of one Wanda Maximoff, both of whom have diplomatic immunity due to the, you know, status as the rulers of a hyper advanced nation who holds the cure for cancer among other things, has his wife taken hostage by the united states. They go to the united states on a joint diplomatic mission, and are promptly ambushed and kept grounded in the states, separated from each other, until at least Ororo signs the registration program, T’challa having to follow closely behind, and then they will be allowed to be let go.

Again, I can’t stress this enough, The United States try to strong arm 2 foreign rulers, one of whom a mutant, into signing up a domestic policy about domestic internal affairs of public security.

Because of course they do.

10- I think I forgot some minor shit happening like speedball’s entire arc or Wolverine’s revenge plan or the Latverian Caper, but I think the gist of WHY this bullshit would have blown up today is all here.

For you see, now, imagine all this shit all the implications, the crimes, the horrors and stuff...

Just Imagine, all this shit is going on... with a Secret Invasion of Skrull Chaos Agent coming soon to shake thing even more...

And the president of the united states, the one that, again, ultimately will decide who the REAL enemy is, where the real supervillain to fight is...

Is Donald Fucking Trump.

How long until the superhero child soldiers are tasked to guard the border I wonder...

[canchewread]

Editor’s note: this is going to be a very different sort of book review article than the ones I usually write; namely in that the main essay doesn’t include an actual book review.

For those of you who are curious - “Permanent Record” by Edward Snowden is an enjoyable read which I have no regrets about buying, even in hardcover. Although it’s true that there are no “new” revelations about the NSA mass surveillance program and part of the story Snowden is telling has already been told from the perspective of other people involved in the later stages of the tale, I disagree with the idea that the book presents “no new information.” The author’s impassioned arguments about the need to alter the fundamental functions and purpose of the internet, his clear insight into the reasons why online privacy rights were now as fundamentally essential to a free society as our already recognized rights and freedoms and finally the exposure of the thoughts, motivations and overall rationale that finally pushed Snowden to leak evidence of the NSA mass surveillance program are all fundamentally “new” bits of information - they just aren’t leaks.

All in all I’d say it’s a good book but it’s still a biography and as such you can probably afford to wait for the softcover, unless the CIA finds a way to ban it before then.

---

The Casualties of Cacophony

As those of you who read my post on Can't You Read yesterday already know, I recently purchased the new Edward Snowden biography and I've been reading it during smoke breaks for the past three days.

After hearing from numerous reviewers that the book contained "no new information" my primary motive here was personal enjoyment but even just the act of buying the book itself was telling me a story I wasn't listening to and wouldn't understand until this weekend. I'll explain:

On the day the Permanent Record was released in the country I'm staying in right now, I went out to my local bookstore to purchase it with tampered expectations and yet still, a certain amount of hopeful expectation.

Now before I continue further here I should mention that Americans who do not travel abroad are largely unaware of the tremendous amount of influence U.S. political media and ideological thought have over the (largely) white majority of the West in general and most Five Eyes countries in particular. Furthermore this influence is typically divided along the exact same "culture war" political lines that exist in the United States, although the degree to which they incite passions often varies from region to region - the average Canadian "conservative" cannot afford to be as rabid about opposing gun control laws as the average American "conservative" because culturally the idealized tradition of gun ownership does not exist there - but the idea, even without its systemic reinforcement, does.

I mention this because my local bookstore can be said to have a distinctly Americanized "liberal" set of sensibilities and ideas; although they would likely object to that statement as all Canadians vociferously object when you compare them to Americans. This is reflected in the "balanced" book selections on the shelf (which overwhelmingly consists of mainstream liberal, or conservative writers/thinkers and or Canadian authors) and in the sensibilities of the staff, management, and ownership I’ve encountered while shopping there; all of which were (as far as I can tell) fundamentally identical to those of your average white American Democrat.

I don't say any of these things to disparage them; the shop is a small, single-proprietor business and it's hardly surprising to anyone who understands class dynamics that a petite-bourgeoisie bookstore in a rural "conservative area" isn't going to be a hotbed of left wing thought or ideology. 

Yet despite all of this, I found myself somewhat shocked when the clerk behind the counter informed me that the stored hadn't ordered any copies of Ed Snowden's new biography - so much so that I did a double take. I asked again, if only to confirm that it wasn't a question of U.S. Government censorship or the fact that I was in a country that wasn't home so the release dates had changed - no, they simply hadn't ordered it.

For my part I assumed that was a careless mistake, after all even mainstream liberals had celebrated Snowden as a heroic whistleblower when the results of his revelations were appearing in corporate "liberal" news publications like the Washington Post and The Guardian. At that point (and while still not connecting the dots) I asked the store to order me a copy and helpfully suggested that they might want to order several copies for their shelf as this was the first time to my knowledge that Snowden would be presenting his own thoughts about one of the more important scandals and abuses of government power in our lifetime.

Then I innocently went on my way and back to my busy life for a week until the book finally arrived. As it turned out (and at my insistence) they'd ordered two copies, one of which was mine.

This decision would continue to baffle me for several long hours after I left the bookstore and indeed, none of it would start to make sense until I actually started reading Snowden's book - and with that act, found that the flood of memory about the NSA mass surveillance leaks and the political circus surrounding it, came rushing back to my mind like a raging river of madness and deceit.

There is, especially for the scholar, something altogether terrifying about reading something that you already knew and realizing, as you're in the very act of reading it, that you had for all intents and purposes forgotten something important that you were never supposed to forget. After all you can’t rightly analyze society without analyzing the history that helped shape that society, and you certainly can’t analyze history that you don’t even remember.

This creeping and altogether horrifying feeling of morally inexcusable “forgetting” became my constant companion as I reviewed Snowden's work, in his own words, while reading Permanent Record. I'm not just talking about the NSA spying and online data collection programs either; those I readily remembered, although I can't necessarily say the same for the public at large around me. As Snowden recounted James Clapper lying under oath to Congress, the (now all but completely deposed) wave of Democratic Socialist governments that opposed American internet surveillance and even the U.S. government’s efforts to trap the author in Moscow so he wouldn't fly to Ecuador, I slowly realized what I'd forgotten.

I'd forgotten the sheer breadth and open brazenness of the Pig Empire's war on not just privacy, but the truth. A war conducted not just against the whistleblowers and those rare few souls in the media who would seek to help them expose abuses, violations and atrocities conducted by our governments and the ruling classes of our societies, but also on each of us, on our own feelings, our own memories and dare I say it, our own psychological well-being. A war we are all losing as I write this to you today.

To understand what I mean by that however we’re going to have to go back to the bookstore and answer the question I should have been asking the day I tried to buy a copy of Permanent Record I the first place. That question is of course “what changed?” If only six years ago, Edward Snowden was a hero in liberal media (The Guardian U.S., the Washington Post) for exposing mass surveillance and abuses by the NSA and various arms of U.S. intelligence, why was I getting a weird side-eye for even asking about the book in an ostensibly “liberal” bookstore – especially in Canada?

While I won’t claim to be psychic, I think it’s fair to say that what have largely changed are mainstream liberal attitudes towards leaks, whistleblowers and the larger American national security state. Somewhere in the culture war-fueled anger about losing the 2016 U.S election, among stories of malignant foreign hackers, Hillary’s leaked emails, the Russianization of Wikileaks, the demonization of Julian Assange, the lionization of Barack Obama and a new fascist president’s ongoing war with “true liberal patriots” in his own FBI and CIA, the original signal had been lost. More accurately, the past on some deep and purely emotional level in the larger liberal zeitgeist had been replaced with a new communal understanding that my alienation from mainstream liberal thought had prevented me from recognizing until now. The word ‘replaced’ rather than ‘forgotten’ is important here because due to social pressures and the normal human tendency to forget our own embarrassing mistakes, the memory of Snowden’s time as a brave hero in the liberal reckoning is at best extremely hazy and more often than not, completely gone from the minds of most observers.

To the clerk behind the counter I wasn’t asking for a biography about a heroic whistleblower, but instead a bound volume of lies written by a traitor whose very existence represented a threat to their now-entrenched image of the iconic and canonized last liberal President (Barack Obama) and whose “decision” to hide from “justice” in the now thoroughly hated Russia proved where his true allegiances had always lain. Besides, even if in some unlikely event Snowden was innocent and Obama had gone after the wrong guy - leakers and traitors represent a grave threat to our beloved intelligence agents who are, as you all know from hours of repetition on Rachel Maddow, the only thing standing between everything you love about America and the sinister iron grip of Vladimir Putin.

From the mainstream liberal perspective I might as well have been asking them to fetch me a copy of the latest work by Lee Harvey Oswald at that point. Nothing about Snowden or his earth-shattering leaks had changed, but because the larger feelings about Snowden had been altered, both the leaked information and the author himself were now perceived in a new and wholly less favorable light.

In the often quoted but rarely understood science-fiction novel about authoritarian states entitled 1984, author George Orwell’s central character Winston chillingly observes that “who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past.”

What Orwell meant by this is that the powers of the day control our understanding of, perceptions about and feelings towards the past and in doing so can have a tremendous amount of influence on our actions in the future. Of course in his novel the Ingsoc government had absolute control to write and re-write the historical record of society but the author was also engaging a metaphor that cast light on the nature of this truism in even a “liberal democratic” nation like Britain in the late 1940’s. It is not enough to simply acknowledge that “history is written by the victors” but one must also be aware that the writing and analysis of our society’s historical record (which is often conducted in real time by the news media) is largely conducted by upper class writers who are ultimately employed in the service of some aspect of establishment power or another – whether we’re talking about mainstream corporate media companies, the American government itself or the elite educational institutions that churn out historians, journalists and the general class of television punditry.

At this point you might find yourself protesting that despite their upper class backgrounds, the media, publishing houses and academic institutions don’t work for the government and in some broader sense that’s true, but in terms of the facts on the ground in the war against truth, it’s also hopelessly naïve. Setting aside the obvious reality that corporate media and elite educational institutes are themselves part of what any sane person would identify as “establishment power” the fact is that the American government does actively seek to influence the records of our past, both in real time and in its own files.

We know from revelations like “Operation Mockingbird” and the periodic unmasking of intelligence agency employees in the public eye that at least some of “the news” is directly written by folks with very clear ties to U.S. intelligence. From incidents like the Valerie Plame Affair, we know that the government sometimes purposely leaks top secret information to the media for its own nefarious purposes. We know that official government sources and interpretations of events are almost invariably broadcast unaltered and without serious challenge in mainstream media outlets - how many stories in the past month have you read that contained information from “a senior administration source” or “an undisclosed official at the State Department?” I’ll bet it’s happened significantly more times than you’ll remember.

This reinforcement of the establishment line even filters all the way down to your local news, where police department summaries of “officer involved shootings” are routinely broadcast as if they were the established facts of the case with few, if any questions asked about whether or not the department might be somehow motivated to lie about why some cop shot someone in broad daylight, again.

Not sinister enough for you? Okay, how about the Bush administration’s decision to retroactively classify thousands upon thousands of government documents and legal opinions that had already been released to the public, thereby effectively erasing America’s own arguments against the illegal activities the administration engaged in - like mass surveillance, extraordinary rendition (read: kidnapping) and the now rarely-mentioned and almost forgotten CIA torture program? Sort of puts the now infamous Karl Rove quote “we're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do” into a new and terrifying perspective, doesn’t it?

Please keep in mind that these are only the direct ways the state, virtually any Pig Empire state, influences the media and thereby our collective real-time record of history; there are quite literally a myriad a indirect ways the state influences the media you consume as well. A good example might be simple access to the information a journalist needs to write stories; if a news outlet is consistently critical of the government and skeptical of the claims made by its officials, how long do you think they’ll keep getting off the record statements, leaks and interviews from people aligned with that government? How about the right-leaning billionaires who own modern media companies, do you think they align with the interests and power of the government? Well they probably should in America at least - thanks to the magic of corporate lobbying and Citizens United they own most of the politicians who work in that government after all. Once you realize that Jeff Bezos owns both the Washington Post and Amazon, the latter of which currently has the cloud computing contract for the CIA, the idea that you can separate establishment power in the state, from establishment power in the private sector (even in private media) starts to look more than just a little bit obtuse.

Of course as Michael Parenti discussed at length in his still spectacular 1986 work “Inventing Reality: the Politics of the Mass Media” not even a corporate news outlet can lie away some stories without irreparably damaging their credibility. Presented with the opportunity for a scoop, irrefutable evidence and public outcry bolstered by outrage among even the average “liberal” voter the corporate media was forced to turn against their own political allies and go along for the ride on the “Edward Snowden is the greatest hero of our time” train - although not without fastidiously printing government lies and denials as if they were fact in the very same articles that proved Snowden’s accusations.

Over time however and under the relentless crushing weight of op-ed after op-ed, an edit here, an omission there, one tiny smear and suggestive bit of framing at a time and the story starts to change. You can’t actually alter history but by subtly washing Snowden’s story in the ongoing smears against Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and other whistleblowers while casually omitting the subject or context of the author’s still mindbogglingly important revelations, you can start to change feelings about the past and the rest is basically a self-reinforcing cycle with a highly predictable outcome.

Memories of complex technical information about online surveillance fade, and the constantly reinforced feeling that leakers and whistleblowers are harming our brave and decidedly “anti-Trump” intelligence agencies in their battle against the dastardly Russian menace and Vladimir Putin, takes their place - until one day, just over six years after Edward Snowden risked his life and freedom to blow the whistle on an ever growing American police state, some clerk at a small town liberal bookstore is eyeing you up as a potential terrorist when you ask about purchasing the Snowden biography in broad daylight.

Understood in that light, perhaps the most alarming thing about Orwell’s quote as spoken by Winston in 1984 is the fact that the author didn’t know about and had no way of conceiving of the internet. Here after all is an environment where editing the record of the past is as easy as pulling down one article and publishing a new one under the same URL as before - and if you don’t think that is happening online, even in stories published by major news corporations you simply haven’t been paying very much attention.

Nor could Orwell have imagined that between social media, the comments section and twenty-four hour cable news programming, we would create a media environment that intrinsically favors outrageous or controversial lies over “boring” and nuanced truths. He could not have predicted that eventually the average American media consumer would become so bombarded with marketing, propaganda and contradictory information that all too often the facts of current events would be lost, replaced only by a wave of vague and hard to pin down emotions that in turn color the observer’s future observations - even observations about the now forgotten facts themselves.

One man however did see it coming and long before the internet existed in its present form - Canadian professor and communication theorist Marshall McLuhan. Combining his study of the effects advertising had on society with some alarmingly prescient observations about the fundamental ways “electronic media” was altering man’s relationship with the world, McLuhan predicted a society totally immersed in a cocoon of endless media content which served more to inspire feelings and emotions than to inform - an idea partially captured in his most famous phrase “the medium is the message.” In the case of ongoing Snowden coverage in the mainstream media, the contents of the stories themselves (and indeed, the author’s act of heroism on behalf of global society) have clearly taken a backseat in favor of defending the national security state and establishment power as a whole over time.

Although this probably isn’t what McLuhan ultimately meant by his famous phrase one can certainly say with a certain amount of bitter irony that in the Snowden story at least, the medium has indeed become the message - the problem is that the medium, corporate liberal media that directly influences mainstream liberal attitudes and opinions, doesn’t like the message our intrepid whistleblower delivered and now after years of subtle propaganda, neither do most of the people consuming that media.

Perhaps the saddest part of it all is that reading “Permanent Record” makes it clear that Snowden himself has almost no idea that this massive cultural shift in attitude towards him has even occurred. Frankly, how could he? Trapped in exile, he didn’t directly experience the slow and often subtle media reconstruction of public confidence in the national security state over these past six years. Having been purposely shut out by both the American government and the mainstream media, Snowden was unable to participate effectively in the ongoing discussion around whistleblowers and the demonization of leaks. In far away Moscow it may not have even occurred to him that hostile feelings towards Julian Assange on behalf of newly-anointed liberal saint Hillary Clinton would poison the liberal discourse towards all other “leakers” like himself.

In some ways the war against truth as it pertains to Edward Snowden has already been won by the national security state. Sure the author’s leaks promoted some legal restrictions on the NSA’s power but even Snowden openly admits that this isn’t nearly enough to effectively stop government mass surveillance. Indeed, Snowden himself and a few of the more famous journalists who told his story are really the only triggers that jog the public memory left in this story. The author exists as a living reminder that freedom and democracy are a sham in a post-internet world and that’s why he will never be pardoned and never be allowed to return home so long as this establishment remains in power - not just the government, but the whole corrupt oligarchy and all of its elite corpse merchants.

All wars, even propaganda wars, have causalities.

- nina illingworth Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog. Updates available on Twitter, Mastodon and Facebook. Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

[happymetalgirl]

Deadspace - The Grand Disillusionment

It has been a huge year for Australia's Deadspace to say the least. The band went to their darkest corners and came back with the masterpiece of their career and the best album of the early year in unexpectedly sardonic fashion with Dirge, which was followed up by the solid EP of similarly merciless depressive black metal, Libido Dominandi.

The Aussies have been one of the most tenacious and creatively vivacious bands in black metal that I have seen lately. Their portion of the Reaching for Silence split album in 2017 showcased a tremendous degree of liberty and confidence to melt so many other elements into black metal to reinforce it, and Dirge earlier this year just showed how unbelievably potent their black metal core could be when they distilled their sound down to it.

I said it earlier this year and I still believe it; that album is their masterpiece. So hearing that the band had let another full-length to offer us this year, I wasn't sure what to expect really. I wrote in my review for the Libido Dominandi EP that it played like a band who knew they were in good creative form and wanted to make the most of it; I suppose the band coming through with another full-length before the year's end is further proof of exactly that. So here we are, one EP and now two LPs into 2019, how is Deadspace's form holding up on The Grand Disillusionment?

The album follows the stylistic suit that it's predecessor laid out for it and the compositional productive hot spot the band find themselves at this year, no juxtaposition to Dirge with callbacks to their more blackgazey stuff or novel melodic stuff either. This very much plays like a continuation of the sound they've been riding this year, and if there's one thing the band prove on this album is that they can do it for the long haul, across two full albums and an EP in one year. And I do quite like this album, but it's no Dirge, and I certainly wasn't expecting them to match that one so soon. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if some or many of these tracks were taken from that album's sessions.

The band continue to work in a lot of dynamic to their newly aggressive revelation of their black metal as they did on Dirge. The opening track, "Inhale the Slime", for example, goes from its eerie sampled-screams intro to vigorous blast beats to slower, harsher dissonance, and then loops back to similar uneasiness with the integration of these eerie piano melodies at the end.

"The Funeral March" makes further use of the minimalism of ominous piano lead for its intro, before it breaks into an abyssal display of perturbing nihilistic despair, which the band keeps engaging, again, through the consistent integration of compositional dynamic. And I think the vocal and instrumental performances across the album should get some credit again for the liveliness they bring to this album's dismal disillusionment. The tightness on the full-team performances like "Horrors to Endure" and the individual flair like the pummeling blast beats on "Masturbation Ritual", the rapid-fire double-bass of "Lungs", and the particularly menacing snarls and growls and doom-summoning shouts on the apocalyptic "The Ashes of the World".

Also, it's not particularly flashy, but I love the timing of the double-bass drumming on the song "Infliction"; it's still showful enough up top, but the instinct to support the trajectory of the song rather than go manic with rhythmic diversions is part of this creative high this band is in right now. The production on this album can be iffy around the high pitch of the guitars when they start getting more layered, but when it comes to the drums, they sound full-bodied and chiseled, which certainly contributes to their being a standout instrumental feature so often here.

The band do go a little more consistently traditionally atmospheric on songs like "As Time Moves Backwards", which makes great use of varying drum rhythms and some particularly stormy double bass near its finish to provide a fierce atmospheric climax, as well as the more openly sorrowful "The Seventh Death of a Fascist Sun", whose traditional NWOBHM guitar melody serves as a surprisingly sturdy foundation.

The closing track "The Bones Beneath My Feet" does well to wrap up so much of the previous tracks' energy into something conclusive and climactic, and the drums just dazzle through their crisp, incredibly flattering production as they pull out all the stops of double-bass, tom rolls, and blast beats for a grand fireworks finale.

While not quite up to the unprecedented outright mastery of Dirge, The Grand Disillusionment follows suit worthily and shows not just that Deadspace are still in fine form, but that they can make this hot streak go the distance. Honestly, the more I write about this album and the more I've been listening to it alongside other contemporary black metal in this vein, the more I appreciate how creatively compact this album is and how on fire Deadspace are right now. I mean, for such a consistently sinister album, this thing is such an exciting musical ride, and that deserves to be appreciated with a "real" score for once.

8/10

[onwesterlywinds]

Okay! 4.5 thoughts under the cut, with spoilers for MSQ and Return to Ivalice.

MSQ:

I was telling people before the patch that I was convinced Zalera was going to show up. Well, he did show up, albeit in the exact opposite place I was expecting.

Molly had to stop as soon as Emet-Selch was namedropped because I couldn’t remember which of XII’s Espers it corresponded to*. I pulled up my XII chart, saw that Emet-Selch was created to oppose the Angel of Death, and just went “Oh no. We’re all gonna die.”

*Obligatory disclaimer that XII’S SCIONS AND THE ASCIANS AREN’T LINKED BY ANYTHING OTHER THAN NAMES, THERE ARE ONLY SUPERFICIAL INSIGHTS TO BE HAD FROM XII LORE, et cetera.

An oft-repeated line: “LET ALISAIE SAY FUCK.” God, she had so many good moments in this patch.

I’m surprised at some of how the “Shadowhunter” reveal was handled, but not necessarily displeased! Even if Hien’s awkward “Welp!” after the guy gets back on his ship is the biggest mood.

It happened so fast, or so it seems... then again, I would have hated for it to be treated as some exceptionally dramatic moment when we already knew who he was, like the Griffin.

I just love that we meet him, and then he fucks off, and THEN Varis lays out his entire Ascian-fueled rant. Like, it would have been nice to have Gaius at least nearby.

The negotiation scene was awesome.

Re: the absolutely fascist language from Varis - I know a lot of people said they felt sick when he started going off about his “one perfect race” and that’s totally fair and valid. Yet from a narrative standpoint, laying out that goal and everything it represents (and all the real-world baggage that comes with it) means that there’s no longer any room for the Warrior of Light and XIV’s main cast to sympathize with the Empire. I’ve always wondered how XIV’s story team would balance presenting a multifaceted antagonistic force without handwaving away the atrocities that come with any imperial presence, and... this. This is it.

That’s not to say there aren’t still past cruelties that NEED to be addressed for any real moral clarity, especially where Gaius’s reintroduction is concerned. But it’s a great start to show that we as the Warrior of Light cannot and should not show any hesitation about tearing down everything Varis represents and stands for.

Also, as a bit of a tangent, because I’m sort of stream-of-consciousness shouting (scream-of-consciousness, if you will) - I’ve done some introspection as to how I examine “moral” themes in this game and other media, after a couple conversations over the past few months. Ultimately, I dig deep into what XIV has to say about themes like imperialism and justice and equality because I know that this game has positive and meaningful messages about those themes. I’ve seen when they get it right, and I’ve seen how much it matters to myself and others when they do - and when they don’t. I don’t expect all of the media I consume to be ideologically pure, nor do I expect this game to tell every story flawlessly, and I accept that people will have different tastes as to how stories are told. But for my part, I’m going to keep laying out why the storytelling in this game matters, because I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t love XIV.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT, SQUARE. WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.

RETURN TO IVALICE:

HAIL ULTIMA.

H A I L   U L T I M A.

It’s hard to pin down a single favorite thing about that arc, but Ultima might have been among the most memorable parts for me.

“I am Ivalice!” Like. Yooo.

She isn’t totally wrong, though.

VIERA ARE CANONICALLY QUEER ICONS AND I COULDN’T BE HAPPIER.

I didn’t get many screens of this unrevisitable lore, but the Matsuno-dramaturge himself says that viera gender isn’t distinct until age thirteen or so, and that viera choose romantic partners based on “closeness of the soul.”

Yasumi Matsuno, the absolute madman.

So like... Fran was interesting. To paraphrase the Matsuno-dramaturge later on, “I have no idea what to say, and I use words for a living.”

She’s absolutely a departure from her XII counterpart. In fact, I’d say that this Fran was more of a change from the original even than Ramza Lexentale and Ramza Beoulve. XII Fran is passive-aggressive almost to a fault; she doesn’t speak in riddles, per se, but she definitely doesn’t share her thoughts freely.

XIV Fran is almost the exact opposite.

And she’s everything I’ve wanted from Stormblood since the end of 4.0.

Seriously. Calling out the Warrior of Light for living comfortably alongside Garlean nobility, calling out THE EAST ALDENARD TRADING COMPANY for actively profiting off of people’s misery, being fiercely protective of her people and her traditions and her way of life... I love.

I cried when I saw Mustadio. And I cried harder for Agrias. I was just resigned to my fate by the time I got to Orlandeau.

I loved the ending of the raid because it carried on that trend of “the forgotten man” being given a voice - and now, those who hear the story are just as important as Ramza, if not more so! It felt like such a great nod not just to Ivalice, but to its fans. So of course I cried.

I also cried when they played “Staff Credits” because that one gets to me every time.

WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT SCENE AFTER THE ENDING, THOUGH.

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

(WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUUCK.)

Molly can attest to me screaming at the top of my lungs IRL.

WHY IS HE ALIVE. WHAT IS HE DOING.

HE’S IN THE PHAROS, WHERE THERE ARE STAIRS.

WHEN WILL WE SEE HIM AGAIN, BECAUSE WE HAVE TO SEE HIM AGAIN.

“PRINCESS” TOO. FOR REAL.

HOW DARE YOU DROP THAT BOMBSHELL ON ME AND THEN JUST... CALL IT A WRAP? END THE ENTIRE ARC?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH.

Five months left to write a roleplay for this. I’m fucking ready.