#norm khan

[roseamongroses]

i like her a normal amount

[mysweetobsessionwithwords]

“How wierd this cat that tries to walk like a pigeon and swim like a fish but society applauds how cultured he is.”

[cheriecelestial]

Batboys as Desi Films

𝐃𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐲𝐬𝐨𝐧

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995)

Raj and Simran meet during a trip across Europe and end up getting stranded in the middle of nowhere after they miss their train. Despite their initial clashing, they fall in love. However, Simran’s traditional father has arranged her marriage elsewhere. Raj must win over Simran’s family to marry her, leading to a series of heartfelt moments, comedic misunderstandings, and ultimately, a dramatic climax where love conquers all as the couple fights for their happiness against societal norms.

Dick is so raj coded with his quips and charisma. Their chaotic banter and chemistry is off the charts. Any Indian who hasn’t watched this gets their desi card revoked immediately, I don’t make the rules. This movies fits Dick’s dramatic flair perfectly.

𝐉𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐓𝐨𝐝𝐝

Goliyon ki Raasleela Ram-Leela (2013)

The modern adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” set in rural Gujarat, India. It follows the love story of Ram, from the Rajadi clan and Leela, from the Sanera clan, who belong to rival gangster clans engaged in a long-standing feud. Despite the enmity between their families, Ram and Leela fall deeply in love, leading to a tragic and tumultuous journey filled with passion, violence, and sacrifice.

It fits Jason’s love for guns and classics. An absolute visual treat with cinematography and all the songs are absolute bangers.

𝐓𝐢𝐦 𝐃𝐫𝐚𝐤𝐞

Jab We Met (2007)

Aditya, a heartbroken business tycoon, someone who was dwelling in the lowest ebb of his life and was almost on the brink of giving it all up, aimlessly boards a train to escape his depressing life. On his journey he meets Geet, a talkative and vivacious young woman. Geet is on her way to meet her boyfriend, but her plans go awry, and she ends up stranded. Aditya, feeling sorry for her, decides to help her get to her destination safely. Along the way, they encounter various adventures and challenges that bring them closer together. Despite their contrasting personalities, they develop a deep connection. However, when they part ways, Aditya realizes his love for Geet and sets out to find her. In the end, they reunite, realizing they are meant to be together.

Grumpy x sunshine. The OG green flag. Epitome of ‘if he wanted to,he would’. Makes my chatterbox heart happy because of how much I relate to the FL. Favourite comfort movie of all time. ML kinda looks like Cillian Murphy’s scarecrow. “I like you a lot but that is my problem, you don’t need to worry about it.” Their fights and his little sassy comebacks and rants were so cute and fun to watch.

𝐃𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐖𝐚𝐲𝐧𝐞

Jodhaa Akbar (2003)

The Mughal emperor Akbar, seeking to forge political alliances, marries Jodhaa, a Rajput princess. Initially a marriage of convenience, their relationship evolves as they learn to respect and love each other. Jodhaa struggles to adapt to Mughal customs, especially with their cultural and religious differences but her courage and integrity win Akbar's admiration. Despite conspiracies and opposition, including from Akbar's own court, their love prevails. The film explores the transformation of a young ruler, initially groomed for ruthlessness by his mentor Bairam Khan, into a wise and compassionate emperor who values mercy, diplomacy, religious harmony and cultural acceptance. Akbar's realization of the importance of religious tolerance, showcased through his abolition of discriminatory policies and his respect for all faiths.

The arranged marriage tag and the ‘raised as a weapon but softens and shows more compassion out of respect and love for his empress’ tag fits demonhead!Damian so much. The way he said mashallah after he pulled off her veil in the middle of a sword fight >>>>. I love how it captures the essence of India’s rich heritage and diversity. “Why seek paradise ? It is before me now.”

𝐁𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐲𝐧𝐞

Khoobsurat (2014)

Milli, a free-spirited and eccentric young woman becomes the physiotherapist for a royal family. She brings her lively yet clumsy personality into the conservative royal household, shaking up their structured lives. It clashes with the formal atmosphere of the palace, especially with the stern matriarch, Nirmala Devi. Despite initial resistance, Milli's unconventional methods bring joy and laughter into the lives of the family members, including the brooding prince, Vikram. As Milli navigates the challenges of fitting into the royal household, she also finds herself falling in love with Vikram, leading to a series of comedic and heartwarming moments.

Very cliched (well it is a Disney film) and the second hand embarrassment is unreal but sometimes after a long day all you need is a feel-good cheesy rom-com. Oh to sit next to Fawad Khan in a red convertible while gazing lovingly at him. I like how she emphasises on improving the patient’s mental health to help him heal. Incase you haven’t noticed already, cold brooding™️ x silly goose is my favourite character dynamic.

𝐀/𝐍 - I’ll be honest with y’all, this was to satiate my desire of writing x desi! reader cuz I don’t have enough motivation or time to do it T^T

[pinkacademiaprincess]

Any guide on Elle woods / hermione / rory coz I had no study motivation 😮‍💨

“she’s like a real life rory gilmore…”

fictional study icons guide, part 1: rory gilmore

ty for the ask! i’m gonna make this multiple parts, next will be elle woods, i never read/ watched harry potter tho so idk about hermione 🫣 but if y’all want me to do other characters, feel free to send ideas!

know your goals

rory had a clear idea of what she wanted for herself: to go to harvard & to become a journalist. when school & studying starts to feel tedious or difficult, having a strong “why” will keep you going. maybe you want to get into a certain school, you have a dream career path, or you want to become extra knowledgeable. never lose sight of your goal - surround yourself with reminders of it. rory had harvard memorabilia hanging in her room as a constant reminder of what she was working towards. you can create a vision board online, print pictures & hang them in your room, put notes up on your mirrors & walls. remember that classes, tests, & assignments are all leading you to a greater goal. studying is a means to an end and you deserve the best ending!

study a lot

rory prioritized her studies and spent a lot of her free time on schoolwork. the easiest way to succeed is to put in the time. don’t cut corners when it comes to your education - do your homework and assignments diligently, go through assigned readings & videos carefully, & if the teacher gives you optional/additional work, do it. remember tho, it’s important to study smarter, not harder. the most beneficial thing you can do is spend as much time as possible utilizing study methods that work for you. don’t waste time on study methods that aren’t effective for you. you can search my older posts for info about study styles or google learning styles & use that to help determine your best approach to schoolwork.

conquer challenges asap

when rory first started going to chilton, she unexpectedly got a bad grade on one of her first essays. she could have sat there and made excuses, felt sorry for herself and blamed the school/ teachers, but instead she worked extra hard to improve and overcome that poor grade. in the end she was valedictorian, showing that she was able to rise to the challenge and ultimately succeed. if you find yourself struggling with schoolwork, please take initiative asap and get whatever help you need. utilize all your resources - teachers, classmates, youtube video explanations, khan academy, tutors (if possible) - do not allow a dip in performance to be your norm. try to get to the bottom of why you’re struggling and then take care of whatever’s causing it. if you let yourself succumb to the struggle - telling yourself it’s because of bad teachers, the content is too hard, etc. - the only person who is gonna suffer in the long run is you. be proactive and take charge of your education.

take breaks

while rory did spend a lot of her time studying, it didn’t rule her whole life. she still made time for friends, family, and fun activities. life is about balance, and you don’t want to burn yourself out by spending every waking moment on school. take breaks for fun, to spend time with loved ones, to get fresh air & be active. give your mind breaks so that you can stay in top shape. that being said, make sure you strike a balance. don’t let your social life get in the way of your academics, but don’t let studying stop you from living life.

read a lot!

when i think of rory, i think of reading. she always has her nose in a book! she not only reads, but she reads books that are thought-provoking and intellectual - classics, non-fiction, and so on. reading is a wonderful hobby and it can also be a way to expand your mind. challenge yourself by reading books that are somewhat difficult to challenge yourself to read closely & dissect the content. find classics that genuinely interest you or non fiction on topics you enjoy. combine the fun of reading with the desire for intellectual growth. by reading more difficult books you can improve your vocabulary, build you reading comprehension skills, become better at analyzing literary devices, and overall become a more interesting person.

that’s all! have a great school year & best of luck with your studies! 🩷

[drdemonprince]

Hangouts don’t have to involve doing something out of the ordinary together— majority of life is an accumulation of a series of mundane, regular, consistent tasks we need to engage in to survive. The goal is to move towards sharing the mundane together rather than drifting through each day, moving from task to task… alone. Right now, I’m being forced to apply for jobs so I have a position as an attending somewhere after I finish my fellowship next June. There’s so few openings that I can’t be picky about location. I’m also simultaneously studying for my board exams to get licensed in my medical specialty. It’s overwhelming. I find most of these processes deeply unethical and it is excruciatingly cringe to beg for someone to see that you are worthy of life. I’m not even sure how long I can drag on in academic medicine… so this is a particularly stressful time period in my life. But I don’t want to isolate and study myself to death. I don’t want to fixate on this in a way where I have no time left to spend with the people I care about. If I only hung out with people to do something different/ fun/ out of the norm, I’d essentially limit myself to sporadic interactions. Instead, I asked my homies if I could still be there with them AND study or work on a stupid cover letter etc. Along with communal cooking nights and such, I’m slowly starting to spend more time in comforting silence with my homies. I’ll be studying while someone is cleaning or cooking or doing their laundry. Bottomline: I want our day-to-day lives to be more bearable. The cooking, cleaning, caretaking, caregiving, chores, all of the mundane… that’s where we can gradually build in more interdependence. It’s nice to have celebrations that honor any auspicious moment or time in our lives. It’s great to get together to try something new. But we need more low-stakes hangouts that also give us room to deepen our relationships. In Bengre, even if some folks still went out into the city to work during the day— almost everyone including our elders and children, would be outside under the moon at night. Some spend hours drinking chai on porches looking onward at the children playing cricket on the beach sand. Some make the rounds sprinkling blessed flowers from this morning’s temple ritual on every patch of fertile soil in the village as an offering to the land. Some practice their musical instruments and everyone can hear the soothing beats of the mridangam or the melody of the tambura. Some are out back in the kitchens mashing together spices to marinade the fish that others caught on the river this morning. Point is anything… no matter how “mundane” can be a ritual. If anything, that is what makes rituals sustainable.

Beautiful writing from Ayesha Khan that gets me thinking about the conversations we've been having on here about culture!

[wickedlittlecritta]

my personal headcanon is that the clans don’t have gender roles. the caste system just obliterates that. especially for the warriors

think about it: they’re all test tube grown. reproduction is completely decoupled from sex. there’s little indication that sexism really exists in their society, and why would it? might makes right and they’re all genetically engineered to be the perfect warriors. people are pissed when natasha kerensky becomes khan not because she's a woman (and she's not the first or last female khan), but because she was out fucking around with the dragoons for several decades. and then sex is canonically just a social bonding thing--fwb is the norm.

for me, this is prime ground for a society in which you ask the average member of the warrior caste what their sexual orientation and gender is and they just look at you blankly. no idea what the fuck you're talking about. they identify as a warrior. that's it

but also you cannot tell me that the science caste is not down to do any combination of transition surgery possible. you got dysphoria? we can fix it!! you want DD tits and a dick? done.

they must have insane neo pussy game is what i'm saying.

i think he/she pronouns hang on in like, a formal/poetic way (especially since they have that whole thing about linguistic preservation), but you cannot tell me that the people who invented the word "batchall" would not eventually start inventing neopronouns specifically to indicate what caste someone's in or something.

really, if you want the clans to be just so weird and super alien to everyone else, making them get real fucking weird with gender is a great way to do that imo

[youremyheaven]

vedic astrology observations

philosophical songwriters often have tropical virgo and pisces placements. many of them have jupiter ruled nakshatras. mrigashira nakshatra pops up a lot as well. all of these placements contribute to the contemplative nature of these natives, they are deeply reflective and take on an almost religious tone with regard to how they speak of things.

hozier- pbp sun + mercury, anuradha moon with ashlesha ketu

leonard cohen- uttaraphalguni sun, purvaphalguni venus, pushya ketu

sufjan stevens- ubp moon, mrig mercury, jup revati amk, punarvasu saturn amk, ketu in krittika

(in my previous post, i had mentioned how ubp & punarvasu natives love butterfly imagery and here's sufjan on stage with wings!!)

bob dylan- rohini sun and venus, krittika moon, mrig mercury, ubp ketu

bruce springsteen, uttaraphalguni sun, chitra moon+ mercury +ketu, swati venus, mrig rising

joni mitchell vishaka sun + mercury, pbp moon, punarvasu rising, mrig mars atmakaraka

2. Shatabhisha & Pushya natives make great teachers. They thrive in positions where they're able to empower and encourage others.

Sidney Poitier in perhaps his most famous role, as a teacher, in To Sir With Love. He has Shatabhisha sun.

Robin Williams, in one of his most iconic roles, as a teacher in Dead Poets Society (he also plays a teacher in Good Will Hunting). He has Pushya sun, Shatabhisha moon.

Aamir Khan plays a teacher in one of his most known roles in Taare Zameen Par. He has Pushya moon.

3. Fairy Godmother roles in cinema are often played by either Taurus rashi or Pisces rashi individuals

In the 1987 movie Maid to Order, the fairy godmother is played by Beverly D'Angelo who is Rohini moon

in the 1997 movie A Simple Life, Martin Short plays the fairy godmother. he has UBP stellium (sun, mercury and rahu)

1997's Cinderella has Whitney Houston playing the fairy godmother. she has Revati moon & jupiter (ive talked about pisces rashi's connection to butterflies before and look at how whitney's spreading her wings in this picture!🥺)

in 2015's Cinderella, Helena Bonham Carter plays the fairy godmother. she has Rohini sun & Ketu in Revati

Maleficent is played by Rohini sun, Revati moon native, Angelina Jolie

i've previously talked about how Rohini nakshatra is associated with shape shifting and transformation and Revati nakshatra is known as the wealth giving star. These two combined create the ability to deeply transform one's life, heal from old wounds and ways of living and rise to the high echelons of society. They're both known for creating wealth. it only makes sense that these natives would be chosen time and time again to play the "fairy godmother" responsible for transforming the lives of a virtuous person trapped in unjust circumstances

4. ive noticed that many mars ruled men (mrigashira, chitra, dhanishta) go after older women 👀 bharani is another nakshatra that pops up often (bharani is the meeting point of mars and venus)

my personal take on this is that mars influence makes natives interested in taboo and unconventional topics and areas. all 3 mars ruled nakshatras belong to the "servant caste" and bharani is an outcaste nakshatra. what this says is that these people have no desire or need to conform or adhere to the norms set by society. they don't care for the status quo and feel no sense of belonging to mainstream society so they simply do as they please<3

Ashton Kutcher, Dhanishta stellium (sun,moon & venus) was married to Demi Moore who is 15 years older than him. Demi is a Bharani moon.

Aaron Taylor Johnson has Mrigashira sun, Dhanishta moon and venus in Bharani and his wife Sam Taylor Johnson is 24 years older than him.

Hugh Jackman, Chitra sun (and mercury) and Mrigashira moon is married to Debora Lee Furness who is 13 years older than him.

Emmanuel Macron, Bharani moon is married to Brigitte Macron who is 25 years older than him

Nick Jonas, Bharani moon, Chitra venus and Ketu in Mrigashira is married to Priyanka Chopra who is 10 years older

Nick Offerman is married to Megan Mullaly who is 12yrs older than him. He has Mrigashira mercury atmakaraka and Saturn in Bharani amatyakaraka

Nick Cannon, Bharani rising was married to Mariah Carey who is 12yrs older than him

Blake Shelton, Mrigashira sun & venus, Jupiter in Bharani atmakaraka with Ketu in Bharani is married to Gwen Stefani who is 7yrs older

Roger Moore was married to Dorothy Squires who is 12 yrs older than him. He had Chitra sun & mars (amatyakaraka & atmakaraka)

5. others have made observations regarding how Jupiter influence blesses a native with voluptuousness. imo Jupiter, cancer rashi and Moon ruled nakshatras can make a native naturally busty.

Jupiter being the largest planet creates voluptuousness in its natives often blessing them with large breasts (obviously other placements will also impact your appearance) Cancer rashi because well, cancer rules the moon and the chest so its kind of a no brainer and honestly every cancer girl ik irl has a big bosom. Moon is yin and bestows its natives with a very curvy physique.

Christina Hendricks is Shravana moon

Billie Eilish is also Shravana moon

Emma Kenney is Vishaka moon with Ketu in Shravana

Ariel Winter is Shravana sun

Scarlett Johansson is Vishaka moon,rising and ketu

Katy Perry is vishaka moon & saturn

Jessica Simpson is Punarvasu sun & mercury and Vishaka rising

🐲🕊🧚🏼‍♂️👼🏼👸🏼🦋🦢🧜🏼‍♀️🧚🏼‍♀️🕊👼🏼🦋🦢🧜🏼‍♀️👸🏼🦋🦢🧜🏼‍♀️🧚🏼‍♀️👸🏼🦋🦢🧜🏼‍♀️🧚🏼‍♀️

Tumblr has a 30 image limit per post so I cant include more examples :( but look forward to pt 2 <3

[icyg4l]

Pick-An-Icon: How can you show up for your ancestors during Black History Month?

(Left-to-Right: Pile 1, Pile 2, Pile 3)

In honor of Black History Month, I wanted to start a Pick-A-Card series dedicated to Black Americans. I want to highlight icons in our community while simultaneously offering advice for any Black Americans who seek guidance about how to honor their heritage. If you're a Black American and you're reading this, this is for YOU! With the usage of the special Hoodoo Tarot deck, I will present you with ways to honor your ancestors. If you read this and enjoy and/or resonate with the reading, I encourage you to book with me! Thank you in advance!

Pile 1: Cards Used - Eight of Knives, Railroad Bill, Three of Baskets, Nine of Baskets, Two of Baskets, Nine of Knives, Gullah Jack and John Horse.

Affirmation: It is easy for me to take control of my narrative.

If you chose the image of Chaka Khan, then you resonate with her feisty, raw energy. This pile is for the creatives who are unsure of their talents. Your ancestors want you to know that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Introduce original ideas to the forefront. One way you can honor them is by not allowing time to limit your abilities. You put in so much work only to feel limited by a man-made construct. It doesn’t matter how old or young you are, you will always have time! Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I channeled this old interview of Prince saying how he doesn't celebrate birthdays because it keeps him younger. Take on that carefree mindset of not applying the norm to your life. Your time is now! Another way that you can honor your ancestors is by setting up an altar. I get the sense that this pile is very secretive with their spiritual practices. Adorn your altar with foods, drinks, jewelry and other belongings of this loved one. They will appreciate it dearly. If you've lost someone recently, my condolences. But definitely keep in touch with them. I get the feeling that this is a young man, like an older cousin or brother. Keep the memories of you two alive so that he can peacefully cross over into the afterlife. Lastly, being a class act is a great way to honor your ancestors. Refusing to sit back and allow injustices to happen will make your ancestors proud. You have a voice! Use it! Organizing protests, sit-ins, even crowdfunding will make your ancestors proud. Combatting the capitalistic nature of society by collaborating with those in your community will hep you get in touch with your ancestral roots. You're naturally a giver, I can tell.

Pile 2: Cards Used - Nine of Knives, Two of Coins, Five of Sticks, Strength, Daughter of Knives, Aunt Caroline, Ten of Sticks, Six of Knives, The Garden and Seven of Coins.

Affirmation: I deserve to move through life with ease.

Hello, Pile 2. Off rip, I get the feeling that this is my pile of overachievers. I also believe that this is the pile that people who identify as LGBTQIA+. You resonate with the energy of Lauryn Hill's mysterious, intellectual nature. Why do you feel the need to carry so many burdens, Pile 2? One way to honor your ancestors is to lighten your load. They see that you struggle so much because of the amount of responsibilities that you carry. They had to go through similar things and they do want to witness their struggles in your lifetime. Ask for help, please. If you do not ask for help, then you will implode and we want to avoid that as much as possible, yes? You do not have to be the strongest in the room. Who are you trying to prove yourself to? It would be best that this pile talks to a mental health professional to receive guidance and proper medical treatment. Another way that you can honor your ancestors is by blowing off steam. Let your emotions flow. Slam the doors. Scream in pillows. Remove the mask and don't allow your emotions to consume you. You are allowed to be angry, my love. You have a lot to be angry about. Finally, the last way that you can honor your ancestors is to explore. You put in so much work, it's only right you get rewarded for it. Book that spa day. Go get a mani-pedi. Take the weekend off and go into hiding, you deserve it. Go somewhere you haven't been before. Your ancestors want you to relax and wind down.

Pile 3: Cards Used - Ten of Coins, Father Simms, Mother of Knives, Four of Coins, Dr. Grant, Six of Sticks, Six of Baskets, Six of Knives, Nine of Knives, Miss Robinson and Five of Coins.

Affirmation: I am doing perfectly fine in the present moment.

Alright Pile 3. You choose the image of Donna Summer, which means you resonate with her sultry, bold personality. This pile already has a close relationship with their family/ancestors, specifically the maternal side. To honor your ancestors, you must keep it this way. Learn about the traditions of your maternal side. Preserve recipes, photos and jewelry of your maternal side. And most importantly, gatekeep these things! You don’t have to share everything with everyone! Some people who choose this pile will have ties to Houston, Texas or currently live there. If you’re thinking about moving there, you should! It will help you mature. Another way that you can honor your ancestors is to receive compliments of comparison to a family member of yours well. You may not like it, but it shows your ancestors that you have respect for their features and/or personality. If you look like Aunt Linda or Uncle Jermaine, then that’s absolutely fine! Don’t deny it! Embrace it! Lastly, don’t let money consume you! I channeled the scene at the end of Players Club where Diamond visits Ebony at her new job in the shoe store. Diamond tells Ebony to “make that money, girl but don’t let it make you.” You don’t have to keep up with the latest fashion trends. You don’t have to have a job in tech or have a “lazy” desk job. It is perfectly fine to work at McDonald’s or work in retail. You’re making an honest living and that’s all that matters. Accept things as they are. Your ancestors made something out of nothing, and so can you. They are proud of you! Keep going.

[mzoyagon]

People sometimes wonder if Doll's motive in The Promening was really to avenge her parents considering that worker drones are programmed to not care about death, but that made me wonder why Uzi cares. She wants revenge on humanity for sending the disassembly drones after them, so she obviously holds at least some emotion for almost every worker drone who was killed or wronged this way, especially her mother. She gets angry at her father for leaving her for dead (though I think worker drones do care about their own life, hence why Khan abandoned her in the first place). Khan is obviously traumatized by Nori's death, which is strange as he doesn't have as much in common with Uzi and Doll as they do. So then I wonder, who are all of the characters that care about the life and death of others (even if not everyone)?

Uzi, who is upset by the loss of her mother and wants revenge on humanity on behalf of the dead worker drones. Additionally, in Cabin Fever, she seems to hate the fact that she killed several of her classmates.

Doll, who wants to avenge her dead parents even if at the cost of other drones' lives. Additionally, she protects Lizzy in Heartbeat and keeps her alive in The Promening, showing that she does care for her friends.

Khan, who is traumatized by having to kill Nori and recently seems to have begun caring about Uzi. Plus creating whole mechanisms to protect your kind seems fairly "I care about death"y to me.

N, who cares deeply for all his friends and doesn't want to kill anymore.

V, who pretends not to care but seems protective of Lizzy.

Emily (the "final girl" in Cabin Fever), who worries about Darren and Rebecca after they've been gone a while.

Thad is an honorable mention, because while he isn't shown to explicitly care or explicitly not care when it comes to others dying, he does care about others, especially his friends.

So here's my thought... only one is a normal worker drone not counting Thad. Uzi and Doll are confirmed AbsoluteSolver hosts, Khan behaves oddly compared to other workers (sometimes prompting the theory that he also has AbsoluteSolver), and N and V are disassembly drones. Which can only have one meaning:

AbsoluteSolver hosts do not behave like worker drones, and that is why they care about death.

Information that you can apply to most side or background characters can't be applied to Uzi or Doll, and whatever is going on with him, Khan differs from the norm as well. Perhaps solver hosts aren't worker drones at all, and simply have the appearance of one in their early lives. After all, we know that N and V used to look like worker drones too.

How I interpret the behavior of worker drones relating to death is as follows: They were programmed by JcJenson to not care about danger or death because that lack of a survival instinct made them easier to dispose of (and still does today). Now that they're free, they can try to deviate from their programming, but the only ones who have truly changed and developed a sense of life and death are the ones who may not have been worker drones in the first place. One of the AbsoluteSolver's functions is to promote the survival of its host, and we can see this when it is so adamant on feeding and repairs. So it makes sense that the program also reprograms its host to understand that death is serious. That's why Uzi cares. That's why Doll cares, and that's why Doll wants revenge.

[telomeke-bbs]

BAD BUDDY – THE LGBTQ+ ALLEGORY IN PAT AND PRAN'S STORYLINES

(above) The Bad Buddy Series poster

I'm writing up some preliminary thoughts on LGBTQ+ themes and directions that Director Aof appears to be pursuing in Last Twilight, and I'm reminded of how he's tackled similar preoccupations in previous works.

Looking at Bad Buddy in particular, in retrospect it's clear now how Pat and Pran's storylines were very definitely allegories for aspects of the queer experience – two sides of the same coin.

The allegorical subtext in BBS was overshadowed by how powerfully PatPran's story was brought to life by the writing and the acting (I'm still in awe of Ohm and Nanon's portrayals), and a whole lot of us got so emotionally swept up in how authentically heartfelt the final product was rendered on the screen, it was easy to overlook that there could be more than meets the eye.

But with Khun Noppharnach in the director's chair, you can always expect some form of LGBTQ+ activism to be woven into the fabric of the storytelling.

I've written about this in bits and pieces before (see this post on BBS's overall allegorical message here), but have never placed Pat and Pran's individual storylines side by side to shine a light on their paired allegories together, so this short write-up is more to consolidate my own thoughts on the matter than anything else.

Now Pat's storyline was about trying to be someone you are not, based on outside expectations of you. Naturally-loving and affable Pat was continually stressed to the max when he was expected to outcompete and hate his best friend while personifying the toxically-masculine, competitive hyper-ruffian that Ming was pushing him to be.

This is an allegory for the futile struggle queer people put themselves through when they try to conform to a heteronormative world's standards and norms with regard to behavior, sexuality and attraction. LGBTQ+ people know this only too well; how exhausting is it to be told all the time – to be expected to live the dictated belief – that the way you naturally live and/or love is wrong, and that the love in your heart deserves to be replaced with hate instead?

And Pat only found peace when he rejected that false persona imposed on him by his dad, and followed the authentic soundings of the love within himself. 💖

Pran's storyline (and this is what gelled for me only recently, when looking at Last Twilight) was really an allegory for life in the LGBTQ+ closet, with him living behind a carefully-constructed identity (see this analysis linked here) while keeping his authentic self a secret behind defensive walls and never showing anyone who he truly was.

He probably learnt to do this from Dissaya's obsession with saving face and protecting one's reputation that she mentions in Ep.10 – living within a constructed shell that makes you acceptable, even desirable, to a world that may be at odds with your true self inside, that you have to keep hidden from view for whatever reason.

It was Dissaya who taught Pran how to build and live in that closet, but it was only when he broke free from this prison of his own making (beginning first with the Ep.10 khan maak, then hashing things out with Dissaya, as painful as that process was), was he able to flourish as his best self (which is what his guitar and musical storyline were also about; see this analysis linked here).

And this is a lesson that queer people have been learning over and over again, that burying your authentic self beneath layers and layers of dissimulation means a pretty lonely existence for your true identity, denying yourself the freedoms that others take for granted.

When read together with Bad Buddy's over-arching LGBTQ+ allegory (mentioned above, also linked here), the messaging points at a single truism – that LGBTQ+ people shouldn't have to have their love and lives defined by anyone other than themselves, and that when this self-determination is allowed, sensible and peaceable co-existence is still possible even if not everyone in the wider community is wholeheartedly approving (which is what PatPran's family lives in Ep.12 – and especially Ming and Dissaya's grudging tolerance of their boys' relationship – were also demonstrating in allegorical form).

At this time (in late 2023) Thailand is proceeding cautiously toward improving its position on LGBTQ+ rights (see this post on marriage equality linked here). Meanwhile, far right camps in other parts of the world are also doing their utmost to shrink shared spaces (see these articles linked here and here). 👀

Two years after it first appeared on our screens, the message encapsulated in Bad Buddy's allegories is perhaps as pertinent and important as ever. 😔💖

[beardedmrbean]

The former Yale student who was acquitted of rape in 2018 — but later ousted from the Ivy League institution — can sue his accuser for defamation over statements she made during a school hearing, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled this summer.

Saifullah Khan, 30, has had a $110 million defamation lawsuit pending against the Ivy League institution since 2019. Khan has been fighting to bring his accuser, a fellow student, into the suit over a 2018 university hearing that eventually resulted in his expulsion.

Connecticut’s high court granted Khan’s request in June. The court ruled that the accuser shouldn’t receive “qualified immunity” from her school testimony that Khan raped her following a Halloween party in 2015.

Qualified immunity protects people from being sued for statements they make in judicial cases or “quasi judicial” cases. But the high court said the university hearing wasn’t a stand-in court proceeding, since Khan wasn’t given the opportunity to cross-examine the accuser.

“For absolute immunity to apply under Connecticut law,” the June decision says, “fundamental fairness requires meaningful cross-examination in proceedings like the one at issue.”

During the hearing, Khan’s team listened to the woman’s testimony from a separate room and never got the opportunity to question her. The court ruling said this left his defense attorney to act as a “potted plant.”

The court also said the Yale hearing couldn’t be considered quasi-judicial because it didn’t make the woman testify under oath and didn’t provide Khan’s side with a transcript of the testimony.

Khan, a native of Afghanistan, started attending the school on a full scholarship in 2012 and majored in neuroscience.

His education was completely derailed after the rape allegations in which the 21-year-old acquaintance claimed that he took advantage of her when she was extremely drunk following an off-campus Halloween costume party.

At trial, Khan’s lawyers argued the encounter was consensual.

Khan was suspended from classes amid the allegations and then returned to school after his 2018 acquittal — despite widespread opposition to his return, including a petition with 78,000 signatures.

He was ultimately kicked out of the school in 2019.

Khan’s lawyer Norm Pattis said: “We are delighted and look forward to trial.”

The accuser’s lawyers didn’t immediately return a request for comment Sunday.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Stinkpump Linkdump

Next Tuesday (December 5), I'm at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC, with my new solarpunk novel The Lost Cause, which 350.org's Bill McKibben called "The first great YIMBY novel: perceptive, scientifically sound, and extraordinarily hopeful."b

Once again, I greet the weekend with more assorted links than I can fit into my nearly-daily newsletter, so it's time for another linkdump. This is my eleventh such assortment; here are the previous volumes:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

I've written a lot about Biden's excellent appointees, from his National Labor Relations Board general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chair Rohit Chopra to FTC Chair Lina Khan to DoJ antitrust boss Jonathan Kanter:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

But I've also written a bunch about how Biden's appointment strategy is an incoherent mess, with excellent appointees picked by progressives on the Unity Task Force being cancelled out by appointees given to the party's reactionary finance wing, producing a muddle that often cancels itself out:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/08/fiduciaries/#but-muh-freedumbs

It's not just that the finance wing of the Democrats chooses assholes (though they do!), it's that they choose comedic bunglers. The Dems haven't put anyone in government who's as much of an embarrassment as George Santos, but they keep trying. The latest self-inflicted Democratic Party injury is Prashant Bhardjwan, a serial liar and con-artist who is, incredibly, the Biden Administration's pick to oversee fintech for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC):

https://www.americanbanker.com/news/did-the-occ-hire-a-con-artist-to-oversee-fintech

When the 42 year old Bhardjwan was named Deputy Comptroller and Chief Financial Technology Officer for OCC, the announcement touted his "nearly 30 years of experience serving in a variety of roles across the financial sector." Apparently Bhardjwan joined the finance sector at the age of 12. He's the Doogie Houser of Wall Street:

https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2023/nr-occ-2023-31.html

That wasn't the only lie on Bhardjwan's CV. He falsely claimed to have served as CIO of Fifth Third Bank from 2006-2010. Fifth Third has never heard of him:

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-occ-crowned-its-first-chief-fintech-officer-his-work-history-was-a-web-of-lies

Bhardjwan told a whole slew of these easily caught lies, suggesting that OCC didn't do even a cursory background search on this guy before putting him in charge of fintech – that is, the radioactively scammy sector that gave us FTX and innumerable crypto scams, to say nothing of the ever-sleazier payday lending sector:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/01/usury/#tech-exceptionalism

When it comes to appointing corrupt officials, the Biden administration has lots of company. Lots of eyebrows went up when the UN announced that the next climate Conference of the Parties (COP) would be chaired by Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, who is also the chair of Dubai's national oil company. Then the other shoe dropped: leaks revealed that Al-Jaber had colluded with the Saudis to use COP28 to get poor Asian and African nations hooked on oil:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67508331

There's an obvious reason for this conspiracy: the rich world is weaning itself off of fossil fuels. Today, renewables are vastly cheaper than oil and there's no end in sight to the plummeting costs of solar, wind and geothermal. While global electrification faces powerful logistical and material challenges, these are surmountable. Electrification is a solvable problem:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/09/practical-visionary/#popular-engineering

And once we do solve that problem, we will forever transform our species' relationship to energy. As Deb Chachra explains in her brilliant new book How Infrastructure Works, we would only need to capture 0.4% of the solar radiation that reaches the Earth's surface to give every person on earth the energy budget of a Canadian (AKA, a "cold American"):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

If COP does its job, we will basically stop using oil, forever. This is an existential threat to the ruling cliques of petrostates from Canada to the UAE to Saudi. As Bill McKibben writes, this isn't the first time a monied rich-world industry that had corrupted its host governments faced a similar crisis:

https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/a-corrupted-cop

Big Tobacco spent decades fueling science denial, funneling money to sellout scientists who deliberately cast doubt on both sound science and the very idea that we could know anything. As Tim Harford describes in The Data Detective, Darrell Huff's 1954 classic How to Lie With Statistics was part of a tobacco-industry-funded project to undermine faith in statistics itself (the planned sequel was called How To Lie With Cancer Statistics):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#harford

But anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. When the families of the people murdered by tobacco disinformation campaigns started winning eye-popping judgments against the tobacco industry, the companies shifted their marketing to the Global South, on the theory that they could murder poor brown people with impunity long after rich people in the north forced an end to their practice. Big Tobacco had a willing partner in Uncle Sam for this project: the US Trade Representative arm-twisted the world's poorest countries into accepting "Investor-State Dispute Settlements" as part of their treaties. These ISDS clauses allowed tobacco companies to sue governments that passed tobacco control legislation and force them to reverse their democratically enacted laws:

https://ash.org/what-is-isds-and-what-does-it-mean-for-tobacco-control/

As McKibben points out, the oil/climate-change playbook is just an update to the tobacco/cancer-denial conspiracy (indeed, the same think-tanks and PR agencies are behind both). The "Oil Development Sustainability Programme" – the Orwellian name the Saudis gave to their plan to push oil on poor countries – maps nearly perfectly onto Big Tobacco's attack on the Global South. Nearly perfectly: second-hand smoke in Indonesia won't give Americans cancer, but convincing Africa to go hard on fossil fuels will contribute to an uninhabitable planet for everyone, not just poor people.

This is an important wrinkle. Wealthy countries have repeatedly demonstrated a deep willingness to profit from death and privation in the poor world – but we're less tolerant when it's our own necks on the line.

What's more, it's far easier to put the far-off risks of emissions out of your mind than it is to ignore the present-day sleaze and hypocrisy of corporate crooks. When I quit smoking, 23 years ago, my doctor told me that if my only motivation was avoiding cancer 30 years from now, I'd find it hard to keep from yielding to temptation as withdrawal set in. Instead, my doctor counseled me to find an immediate reason to stay off the smokes. For me, that was the realization that every pack of cigarettes I bought was enriching the industry that invented the denial playbook that the climate wreckers were using to render our planet permanently unsuited for human habitation. Once I hit on that, resisting tobacco got much easier:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/03/i-quit/

Perhaps OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al-Ghais is worried about that the increasing consensus that Big Oil cynically and knowingly created this crisis. That would explain his new flight of absurdity, claiming that the world is being racist to oil companies, "unjustly vilifying" the industry for its role in the climate emergency:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/27/opec-says-oil-industry-unjustly-vilified-ahead-of-climate-talks-.html

Words aren't deeds, but words have power. The way we talk about things makes a difference to how we act on those things. When discussions of Israel-Palestine get hung up on words, it's easy to get frustrated. The labels we apply to the rain of death and the plight of hostages are so much less important than the death and the hostages themselves.

But how we name the thing will have an enormous impact on what happens next. Take the word "genocide," which Israel hawks insist must not be applied to the bombing campaign and siege in Gaza, nor to the attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. On this week's On The Media, Brooke Gladstone interviews Ernesto Verdeja, executive director of The Institute for the Study of Genocide:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/genocide-powerful-word-so-why-its-definition-so-controversial-on-the-media

Verdeja lays out the history of the word "genocide" and connects it to the Israeli government and military's posture on Palestine and Palestinians, and concludes that the only real dispute among genocide scholars is whether the current campaign it itself an act of genocide, or a prelude to an act of genocide.

I'm not a genocide scholar, but I am a Jew who has always believed in Palestinian solidarity, and Verdeja's views do not strike me as outrageous, or (more importantly) antisemitic. The conflation of opposition to Israel's system of apartheid with opposition to Jews is a cheap trick, one that's belied by Israel itself, where there is a vast, longstanding political opposition to Israeli occupation, settlements, and military policing. Are all those Israeli Jews secret antisemites?

Jews are not united in support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians. The hardliners who insist that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic are peddling an antisemitic lie: that all Jews everywhere are loyal to Israel, and that we all take our political positions from the Knesset. Israel hawks only strengthen that lie when they accuse me and my fellow Jews of being "self-hating Jews."

This leads to the absurd circumstance in which gentiles police Jews' views on Israel. It's weird enough when white-nationalist affiliated evangelicals who support Israel in order to further the end-times prophesied in Revelations slam Jews for being antisemitic. But in Germany, it's even weirder. There, regional, non-Jewish officials charged with policing antisemitism have censured Jewish groups for adopting policies on Israel that mainstream Israeli political parties have in their platforms:

https://jewishcurrents.org/the-strange-logic-of-germanys-antisemitism-bureaucrats

Antisemitism is real. As Jesse Brown describes in his recent Canadaland editorial, there is a real and documented rise in racially motivated terror against Jews in Canada, including school shootings and a firebombing. Likewise, it's true that some people who support the Palestinian cause are antisemites:

https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/is-jesse-a-zionist-editorial/

But to stand in horror at Israel's military action and its vast civilian death-toll is not itself antisemitic. This is obvious – so obvious that the need to say it is a tribute to Israel hardliners – Jewish and gentile – and their ability to peddle the racist lie that Israel is Jews and Jews are Israel, and that every Jew is in support of, and responsible for, Israeli war-crimes and crimes against humanity.

One need not choose between opposition to Hamas and its terror and opposition to Israel and its bombings. There is no need for a hierarchy of culpability. As Naomi Klein says, we can "side with the child over the gun":

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/11/why-are-some-of-the-left-celebrating-the-killings-of-israeli-jews

Moral consistency is not moral equivalency. If you're a Jew like me who wants to work for an end to the occupation and peace in the region, you could join Jewish Voice For Peace (like me):

https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org

Now, for a jarring tone shift. In these weekend linkdumps, I put a lot of thought into how to transition from one subject to the next, but honestly, there's no good transition from Israel-Palestine to anything else (yet – though someday, perhaps). So let's just say, "word games can be important, but they can also be trivial, and here are a few of the latter."

Start with a goodie, from the always brilliant medievalist Eleanor Janeaga, who tackles the weirdos who haunt social media in order to dump on people with PhDs who call themselves "doctor":

https://going-medieval.com/2023/11/29/doctor-does-actually-mean-someone-with-a-phd-sorry/

Janega points out that the "doctor" honorific was applied to scholars for centuries before it came to mean "medical doctor." But beyond that, Janega delivers a characteristically brilliant history of the (characteristically) weird and fascinating tale of medieval scholarship. Bottom line, we call physicians "doctor" because they wanted to be associated with the brilliance of scholars, and thought that being addressed as "doctor" would add to their prestige. So yeah, if you've got a PhD, you can call yourself doctor.

It's not just doctors; the professions do love their wordplay. especially lawyers. This week on Lowering The Bar, I learned about "a completely ludicrous court fight that involved nine law firms that combined for 66 pages of briefing, declarations, and exhibits, all inflicted on a federal court":

https://www.loweringthebar.net/2023/11/federal-court-ends-double-spacing-fight.html

The dispute was over the definition of "double spaced." You see, the judge in the case told counsel they could each file briefs of up to 100 pages of double-spaced type. Yes, 100 pages! But apparently, some lawyer burn to write fat trilogies, not mere novellas. Defendants accused the plaintiffs in this case of spacing their lines a mere 24 points apart, which allowed them to sneak 27 lines of type onto each page, while defendants were confined to the traditional 23 lines.

But (the court found), the defendants were wrong. Plaintiffs had used Word's "double-spacing" feature, but had not ticked the "exact double spacing" box, and that's how they ended up with 27 lines per page. The court refused to rule on what constituted "double-spacing" under the Western District of Tennessee’s local rules, but it ruled that the plaintiffs briefs could fairly be described as "double-spaced." Whew.

That's your Saturday linkdump, jarring tone-shift and all. All that remains is to close out with a cat photo (any fule kno that Saturday is Caturday). Here's Peeve, whom I caught nesting most unhygienically in our fruit bowl last night. God, cats are gross:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53370882459/

It's EFF's Power Up Your Donation Week: this week, donations to the Electronic Frontier Foundation are matched 1:1, meaning your money goes twice as far. I've worked with EFF for 22 years now and I have always been - and remain - a major donor, because I've seen firsthand how effective, responsible and brilliant this organization is. Please join me in helping EFF continue its work!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/02/melange/#defendants_motion_to_require_adherence_with_formatting_requirements_of_local_rule_7.1

Stinkpump Linkdump

[eretzyisrael]

The outrage was quick to follow. However, according to the IDF, the two were not intrepid war correspondents in the Ernie Pyle or David Halberstam mold; rather, they were in the service of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Al-Dahdouh’s death was “an unimaginable tragedy” and that “far too many innocent Palestinian men, women, and children” have died in the war.

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour posted on X that “the number of journalists killed during Israel’s war on Hamas is appalling and unprecedented... Journalists in Gaza are our eyes and ears for the truth.”

“Eyes and ears for the truth?” Is that what the two men were? According to the IDF spokesman, whom this newspaper believes more than Hamas or the Hamas-backed Al-Jazeera, they were operating a drone that endangered Israeli forces in Khan Yunis.

They worked for news operations – so what? It was not their only role.

According to the IDF, basing its conclusion on documents captured inside Gaza, Al-Dahdouh was a member of PIJ’s electric engineering unit, and Thuria was the deputy head of a Hamas terror battalion.

“That cannot be,” the willing-to-be-fooled will argue, aghast. It cannot be that terrorists moonlight as “journalists.” Hamas would not do that. They would not place journalists in danger by doing such a thing.

Right. And Hamas would never use ambulances to ferry around terrorists, place its central headquarters underneath a hospital, or hide missiles in preschools and mosques.

Beyond the gullibility of the world and its willingness to take at face value what a terrorist organization says, including taking as gospel the casualty figures that it provides, equally disturbing is the willingness to believe the absolute worst about Israel.

[iteratedextras]

We'll see an intellectually-inclined 'man of color' with a white wife (or ex-wife) and 'mixed' children, like Wesley Yang, support post-racial liberal norms. (Also Razib Khan. Or from the opposite direction, Rufo's wife is asian, their kids are 'mixed,' and he's supporting post-racial liberal norms, even though he's willing to talk to people farther right.)

This makes a lot of sense, because they're trying to make a world that would be a good world for their children, and even if these men aren't perfect, that's something you can build a society out of.

At the same time, we'll see a 'woman of color' politician married to a white man, who presumably has 'mixed' children herself, go off and create 'BIPOC-only' parties or something.

This probably isn't statistically significant, just politically salient in terms of who gets promoted and platformed.

But still, what the fuck.

[multiversal-pudding]

Hey you ever kinda just think about how like.

Yeah, the teacher telling Khan “there might be something damaged with her system” about Uzi and the “maintaining your insane daughter unit” stuff might’ve been not-meant-fully-seriously but like. To take things completely at face value/ wayyy to seriously for a show about Funny Robots for a moment

The drones may be starting their own civilization but like. They’re picking up a lot of stuff/copying a lot of stuff from the humans

The humans viewed them. Really just as nonsentient tools- any deviation in behavior from the norm was likely viewed as a sign of damage/corruption, and like.

Sure now the drones are experimenting with letting their children develop in new ways but, intentionally or not, it kinda feels like they picked up a lot of the views on themselves as people from the humans? Like- not really mourning/reacting properly when someone dies (despite implications that it does affect them like Khan’s happy memories box and Doll wanting revenge), the way it kinda feels like they’ve just given up and accepted living in constant existential dread, and of course, jumping straight to words like “damaged” and “Insane” when talking about people like Uzi and Nori… which, given how a lot of Uzi’s quote-unquote ‘craziness’ can be more linked to stuff like ‘actually caring enough to get angry when people are hurt/mistreated, being passionate about her work, wanting to find the source of/fix problems, venting about her frustrations, wanting affection but never getting it in return’ (even if it often comes out more as wild cackling and monologues, conspiracy boards, and mad science gadgets)… paints a pretty tragic picture

Like, it feels like the colony as a whole never really learned to grieve or to view themselves as actual people, and even if they have the pinnings of a society, they’re still stuck at thinking of themselves as tools and replications of people, save for a few like Uzi and. I guess to some messed up extent, Doll?? (Like- she cares enough about her parents to want to avenge them even if it means slaughtering anyone in her way to do it, which could be seen as “caring about people but take it in a bad direction… which I guess Uzi has shades of too in the whole ‘wanting to take revenge on humans just as a concept’”)

How sad that the ones who seem to care the most are the ones that ended up having to literally eat people to survive. Irony’s a real dick sometimes, huh?

[ckerouac]

Too many books came in at the same time from my library queue, so @redheadgleek suggests a poll and yes, let’s poll! Y’all can see my… varied reading interests lol

What should I read next?

Daughter from the Dark: Late one night, fate brings together DJ Aspirin and ten-year-old Alyona. After he tries to save her from imminent danger, she ends up at his apartment. But in the morning sinister doubts set in. Who is Alyona? A young con artist? A plant for a nefarious blackmailer? Or perhaps a long-lost daughter Aspirin never knew existed? Whoever this mysterious girl is, she now refuses to leave.

The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett: Wanting to organize an assisted death on her own terms, world-weary octogenarian Eudora Honeysett forges an unexpected bond with exuberant ten-year-old Rose, who drags her to tea parties, shopping sprees, and other social excursions.

Flesh and Bone and Water: André is a listless Brazilian teenager and the son of a successful plastic surgeon who lives a life of wealth and privilege, shuttling between the hot sands of Ipanema beach and his family's luxurious penthouse apartment. In 1985, when he is just 16, André's mother is killed in a car accident. Clouded with grief, André's father loses himself in his work while André spends his evenings in the family apartment with Luana, the beautiful daughter of the family's maid. Three decades later, and now a successful surgeon himself, André is a middle-aged father, living in London, and recently separated. One day he receives an unexpected letter from Luana, which begins to reveal the other side of their story, a story André has long repressed.

Geek Love: The Binewskis are a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out-- with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes-- to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There is Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan. Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins. Albino hunchback Oly. And the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family's most precious-- and dangerous-- asset. As they set out across the U.S., family values will never be the same.

Same Bed Different Dreams: March 1919. Far-flung Korean patriots establish the Korean Provisional Government to protest the Japanese occupation of their country. This government-in-exile proves mostly symbolic, its petitions ignored by heads of state as Korea's nationhood is erased. After Japan's defeat in World War II, the KPG dissolves and civil war erupts, resulting in the North-South split that remains today. But what if the KPG still existed now, today-working toward a unified Korea, secretly harnessing the might of a giant tech company to further its aims?

Unholy: why white evangelicals worship at the altar of Donald Trump: Fueled by an anti-democratic impulse, and united by this narrative of reverse victimization, the religious right and the alt-right support a common agenda--and are actively using the erosion of democratic norms to roll back civil rights advances, stock the judiciary with hard-right judges, defang and deregulate federal agencies, and undermine the credibility of the free press. Increasingly, this formidable bloc is also forging ties with European far right groups, giving momentum to a truly global movement forecasted to last long after the Trump era.

Comemadre: In the outskirts of Buenos Aires in 1907, a doctor becomes involved in a misguided experiment that investigates the threshold between life and death. One hundred years later, a celebrated artist goes to extremes in search of aesthetic transformation, turning himself into an art object.

I Who Have Never Known Men: A young woman is kept in a cage underground with thirty-nine other females, guarded by armed men who never speak; her crimes unremembered... if indeed there were crimes.

Road of Bones: Kolyma Highway, otherwise known as the Road of Bones, is a 1200 mile stretch of Siberian road where winter temperatures can drop as low as sixty degrees below zero. Felix Teigland, or "Teig," is a documentary producer, and when he learns about the Road of Bones, he realizes he's stumbled upon untapped potential. Accompanied by his camera operator, Teig hires a local Yakut guide to take them to Oymyakon, the coldest settlement on Earth. Teig is fascinated by the culture along the Road of Bones, and encounters strange characters on the way to the Oymyakon, but when the team arrives, they find the village mysteriously abandoned apart from a mysterious nine-year-old girl. Then, chaos ensues.