#or western society to explain how fucked up something is in America

[thundergrace]

[impossiblelibrary]

Today's rant brought to you by: Queer Eye Japan, can we all just try to be as kind as they try to be?

After watching the Queer Eye Japan super short season, I wanted to google to see the overall reaction to the show, make sure that my western eyes were correct in seeing the care that was given to the culture. Were cultural taboos, other than being outwardly gay, crossed? So I find this article in the top results and other than the perspective, why tho? Tokyoesque.com had an article with a higher reading level, with surface level appreciation but at least better written.

I can't get over this hate article though. Unfounded, dumb, wrong and incorrect. Do not go forward unless you like that blistering kind of anger from me.

But the reasons just get weaker as the article extends: "Hurts the country it set out to save?" Looking for white savior much? They did not go to save Japan, they gave some free shit to like 4-5 people, think smaller.

Their culture guide wasn't gay enough.

You want to suggest any lgbt insta models or celebrities, use your platform to raises some up?

"There is a growing sexless culture in Japan for married and unmarried people, and it is perilous watching Queer Eye present this without any context behind what is driving this behavior."

Sexiness is what the fab 5 embrace, unfortunately and it was probably discussed behind the scenes of how much talking about sex was allowed or polite and the conversation of not having sex is closer to the tip of the tongue rather than the feeling of sexiness. The West is not the ones blasting that information. It is across multiple Japanese printed newspapers and online stories by now and the "context" is still being discussed and debated amongst Japanese. So I don't think any outsiders should be weighing in or "explaining" this phenomenon. We can repeat what we have been told but guessing at the reasons is not our place. The reasons illustrated by the author of the article seem lacking, a take but not the only one, but who am I to speak on that being in a sexual relationship with someone who pulls from that culture?

Kiko begins to lecture Yoko-san on how she “threw away her womanhood” (referring to a Japanese idiom, onna wo suteru) by going makeup-free and wearing drab, shapeless clothes.

The mistranslation by the subtitles fixed by this author was necessary information. But Kiko didn't lecture her on it, it was brought up by Yoko before any of them arrived, that was her theme, that was what she had decided to focus on. Meanwhile, if you watched Jonathan, he understood there was no time to spend on makeup and skincare so provided her a one instrument, 3 points of color on the skin to feel prettier. That and the entire episode being the 5 treating her like a woman on a date, not trying to hook her up, which is what they did in American eps.

"In teaching a Japanese woman, who already struggles to find time for herself, how to make an English recipe, Antoni is making great TV and nothing more."

So Antoni shouldn't have taught her apple pie because it's too exotic for a Japanese woman. (Can you smell the sexism?)

He didn't make an apple pie, altho Yoko did mention her mother made that for her when she was a kid. He made an apple tartine after going to a Japanese bakery who makes that all the time. Then highlighted the apples came from Fuji in true Japanese media fashion. Honey, American television doesn't usually highlight where the ingredients come from. A Japanese producer told him to do that. So all worries handled within the same ep. She got Japanese ingredients, had the recipe shown to her and then made it for her friends in her own house. Did the author actually watch this show or nah?

"beaten over the head with his western self-help logic. “You have to live for yourself,” he says."

The style of build up the 5 went for was confrontational but in a "I'm fighting for you" way. It's hard to describe, but the best I can say is, a person has multiple voices in their head, from parents, siblings, society, and maybe themselves. By being loud and obnoxious, American staples right there, they are adding one more voice. You deserve this, you are amazing, you are worth it. I know this is against most Japanese cultural modesty, but maybe it shouldn't be.

Sarcasm lies ahead:

Apparently: mispronunciation is microaggressions, not just someone who had a sucky school system. Yea okay, They're laughing at the language not at how stumbling these monolinguals are with visiting another country. Mmhm. Japanese don't say I love you and don't touch and that should stay that way instead of maybe, once in awhile, feeling like they can hug. Yeah, let's just ignore Yoko's break down that she had never hugged her lifelong friend after hugging strangers multiple times. Maid cafes are never sexualized in Japan ever, just don't go down that one street in Akihabara where the men are led off by the hand sheepishly blushing. Gag me. And Japanese men love to cry in front of their wives and would never break down once the wife leaves. I have never seen a Japanese movie showcase that move. Grr.

"I identify as many cultures."

So you're a Japanese man when it's convenient for you to get an article published? Are you nationally Japanese or just ethnically or culturally?

Homeland is an inherently racist word?

"After the Bush administration created the Department of Homeland Security after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a Republican consultant and speechwriter Peggy Noonan urged, “the name Homeland Security grates on a lot of people, understandably. Homeland isn’t really an American word, it’s not something we used to say or say now.”

Yes, let's use a Washington Post article rather than a etymology professor. Yes, the google search results increased after 2001 Homeland Security was used but the word has been around since the 1660s and I've read multiple turn of the century lit on white people returning to their homeland, i.e. the town off the coast they were born in.

"But" is not disagreeing. I think the repeated offender for the author is the not acknowledging the makeover-ees feelings. But, that is how LGBT have decided to deal with the inner voices that invade from society. They are just that, not our own, they are the influence of society, and we can choose, we have to choose, to be influenced by someone, anyone else.

Karamo can't speak about being black when an Asian is speaking about being Asian, even though the Asian gay man was feeling alone. It's called relating bitches, and I'm done with people saying that is redirecting the conversation, it's extending the conversation. That's how we talk, the spotlight is shared, especially when someone's about to cry and doesn't want to be seen as crying, time to turn the spotlight.

The gay monk wasn't good enough, you should have invited the gay politician.

Yeah, causes I'm sure a politician has all the time in the world for a quick stint and cry. They picked a Japanese monk who travels to NY because they had a guest who travels to the West too. Did you want him to stop traveling back and forth? Did you want a pure, ethnic and cultural Japanese gay man who has no ties to the west to talk to this Western educated young man? Seriously?

This is just not how it works in Japan.

Being in a multi-cultural marriage between two rebels, discussions on facets of culture are plenty in my household. Culture should be respected enough to be considered but not held on a pedestal like we should never adjust or throw some things out. LGBT being quiet and private for instance. "Being seen" was Jonathan's advice, and a good one especially for a Japanese gay man that was called feminine since he was a kid. Some gay men can hide, but as Jonathan said, he couldn't hide what he was, he couldn't hide this. So fuck it. Don't hide. It's actually more dangerous for a feminine man to come off as anxious rather than gay and proud. It makes you more of a target if they think you won't fight back. Proud means, Imma throw hands too, bitch.

This is also from the civil rights playbook going back to Black America: never hold a protest or a fight without the cameras, without being seen. LGBT have found the more seen they are, in media, in the streets, the better off we are. When LGBT Americans were being "private" about our lifestyles, we died, a la 1980s. They won't care if you start dying off if they never saw you to begin with.

And hence why I think the author's real anger is from these 5 being seen dancing flamboyantly in Shibuya, in Harajuku, afforded the privilege of doing this safely because of their tourist status, cameras and very low violence rate in Tokyo, loud and obnoxiously. Honestly, they wouldn't have been invited or nominated if they didn't want that brash American-ness coming into their home, just for a taste, at least.

Here's my real anger, my own jealousy: Japan's queer community currently does not have marriage or adoption rights. US does, so we have progressed further. But we are also not that many years from being tied to cow fences with barbed wire, beaten with baseball bats and left for dead overnight. If things are so bad over there, maybe take a few pages from the civil right playbook we took so much time to perfect and produced by the Black Americans who fought first. But so far, I only hear loss of jobs and marriages, which we still have here too. Stop trying to divide us, we are one community, LGBT around the world and we are here to try to help. Take it or leave it, it's not like we're going to go organize your own Pride parade for you.

Rant over? I guess. Is this important enough to be put in the google results along with his. Hell no, anyone with half a mind can see he's reaching more than half the time. And any argument about: this wasn't covered! There are a shit ton of conversations that are not covered in the 45 min they have. They are not a civil rights show, it's a makeover show, doing their best in that direction anyway. Know what it is.

Next blog post, what research I would guess was happening behind the scenes for each of the 5? I'm pretty sure I saw Jonathan doing Japanese style makeup there...

[lligkv]

what the world will look like when it’s over

Can’t Get You Out of My Head is the first Adam Curtis documentary I’ve seen. I gather it’s not the most successful demonstration of his method; it sounds like Hypernormalization or The Century of the Self are tighter in their construction, less effortful (count how many times Curtis says something like “But then it started to run out of control” in this one), and perhaps less frustrating in their narration. In the early episodes of this documentary in particular, it feels like Curtis is constantly presenting what’s being covered as the turn, the decisive shift in his narrative—the emergence of the American counterculture, the revolution of the “unit of One” led by Mao Zedong’s wife Jiang Qing to help her break the stalemate with the other revolutionaries in China into which Zedong had fallen in the 1960s, George Boole’s development of Boolean logic to describe human thought. And the whole thing feels longer and baggier than it needs to be. The early episodes devote much time to interesting individual narratives, like that of the Trinidadian British activist or sorts named Michael Freitas (or Michael X) or a trans woman named Julie in 1960s Britain; they also sprawl in a way that makes the overall argument a bit hard to divine. It’s not until the fourth episode that the shape of Curtis’s narrative becomes clear—that our age is the product of a struggle between a new, broadly liberal-democratic and capitalist image of individualism, a dying era of collectivist struggle, and older, more vicious systems of power, derived from the control of capital and expressed through the middle classes’ suspicion and viciousness toward the subaltern and toward each other, even as they remain subject to the power of oligarchs and billionaires.

Curtis also seems to play fast and loose with the facts sometimes. When he presents Médecins Sans Frontières’s founder Bernard Kouchner as an avatar of a theory of the “one world” of liberal democracy—the idea that we’re basically one world of individuals, enjoying certain human rights regardless of political orientations or ideologies, and that Western nations are duty-bound by virtue of their prosperity to intervene when other nations violate people’s rights—it seems a distortion of what Kouchner actually says in the footage Curtis includes: “We don’t care on leftist or rightist countries [sic]; there is no leftist and rightist suffering, and there is no possibility to split the world in[to] ‘good’ people or ‘bad’ people, ‘good’ dead and ‘bad’ dead.” Which isn’t to say Kouchner didn’t believe in liberal-democratic ideas—he may well have—but what he’s shown as saying has to do with the consideration of suffering as suffering regardless of a person’s identity or allegiance, which is a different matter.

This is just one of several moments when I stopped to wonder how secure I actually was in Curtis’s hands. But ultimately, I find the emotional history he lays out resonant. The age we’re living through now, in the 2020s, is indeed the product of certain fantasies of individualism and of a post-end-of-history, neoliberal “one world”—with no ideologies but capitalism and putative democracy—meeting age-old systems of power, acquisition, and control, and age-old features of the human mind and heart: resentment, prejudice, betrayal, jealousy, the need to be prosperous, the need to be free.

And Curtis’s work appeals to me for the same reason the writer Pankaj Mishra’s work does. He historicizes our underhistoricized time. What’s more, he does so in a way that’s especially rare to see in any mainstream media venue. Usually, when you want to understand the connections between, say, colonial-era empires and post-war welfare states, or if you want to understand what happened to turn Western societies as they were post-war to Western societies as they are post-financialization, you have to seek the information out on your own. It’s valuable to have someone in a place like the BBC willing to put the pieces of these narratives together. And willing to remind us of the events that are so incredibly easy to forget even in one’s own lifetime. Abu Ghraib, for instance, which pops up in part 6 of the documentary. That shit happened while I was alive. How often do I remember it? How many American sins get drowned out in the new ones that emerge every day of every month of every year? Or in the stasis that sets in when what was once novel, like the War on Terror or the invasion into our privacy represented by the Patriot Act, fades into regular life?

I was jotting down copious notes while watching the doc, as is my wont. The questions and thoughts that came up, in no particular order:

How do the elites of a given era impose their preferred ideologies? How are the structures of power we grow up with constructed, and how do those go on to shape our behavior?

Control, as it’s practiced by societies in the 21st century, often comes down to the recognition of patterns in human behavior—and their manipulation.

The loss of power, like that which was suffered after the collapse of Britain’s empire or in the slow hollowing-out of America’s manufacturing industry in the 20th century, leads to anger and melancholy that people can’t be expected to abandon. Does doing what you’re supposed to do bring you the happiness you were promised—or anything even resembling that happiness? When we’re living in a historical moment in which the answer is no, as is often the case today, we’ll need to watch out. It’s a sign people are being manipulated and abused.

Over time, the tech industry has come to understand that you can manage people en masse by collecting their data and manipulating the messages they receive in social media activity feeds and advertising—and you can make them feel like sovereign individuals at the same time through the very same means. In light of all this, will there ever be a revolution that actually changes the structure of power we’re currently stuck in? Is there a chance to alter this extreme individualism. on the part of people who are surrounded by political systems so enervated, by the supra-governmental system that is global finance capital—which politicians can’t control, and must appease and palliate—that they can’t respond to phenomena like climate change or meaningfully punish atrocities like wars prosecuted on false pretenses? Or are we stuck where we are, in a world that’s corrupt and exhausted? In nations whose governments depend on technologies of surveillance and myths of consumerist abundance or nationalist glory to maintain power, in the absence of any real vision for the future?

It all leads to some interesting takeaways. For one, the way culture reacts to politics and vice versa. As I was watching Can’t Get You Out of My Head, I was reminded of a conversation folks on the Discord server for the Relentless Picnic podcast had had recently about the strange things Richard Dawkins posts on his Twitter account. And it led me to think: when religious “caring conservatism” was in the White House, Richard Dawkins and his New Atheism, this brash repudiation of religion and its pieties, grew as a counterweight. When Obama and his technocratic regime were in power, with social media bringing on a wave of progressivism in popular culture and algorithms presenting us a fantasy of endless choice—much of which was a thin veneer over the same old shit: banks getting bailed out, forever wars going on, productivity rising while wages stagnated—we also got Jordan Peterson-types who claimed to speak to a human need for narrative, even in this point of stability we had seemed to reach, this recovery of sanity after the chaos that was the Iraq War and the financial crisis; who claimed we needed ideas and myths to animate and drive our lives, because they sensed there was something hollow and mendacious driving all this consumer choice, for all it seemed a symbol of our freedom and progress.

Of course, both Peterson and Dawkins are provocateurs, not intellectuals; I don’t mean to dignify the movements they led much, since in both the appearance of intellectual rigor or moral clarity often covered the indulgence of the worst instincts: immaturity, obstinacy, provocation for provocation’s sake, contempt for women and trans people. The New Atheists had a point, and could be absolute assholes about it; they ultimately could be as fundamentalist and dogmatic as any religious people. As for Jordan Peterson, his actual work, in the way of so many grand theorists, uses the appearance of profundity to cover something ultimately pretty banal. And he’s most known for grandstanding in the public sphere—refusing to use people’s pronouns, the usual conservative shit. But these movements do seem to reflect a countercultural response no less than 1960s counterculture reflects a reaction to the staid culture of 1950s America and the sins it covered up.

Which leads me to the question: what was the culture’s response to Trump’s administration? Maybe QAnon and Russiagate, as conspiracies—that is, actual narratives people inhabit to explain the world’s evils, and not just a vague need for them that they satisfied with Jordan Peterson’s light form of Stoicism or his theories of Light and Dark or whatever the fuck. And in that way, perhaps, once a countercultural movement—namely nationalism and Trumpian populism—actually seemed to have overthrown a regime, of Obama-era liberal technocratic management, culture and politics came to mirror each other, rather than standing in opposition to each other. Both became equally conspiratorial and unhinged; in fact, they merged. All the ruling myths and conspiracies mutate in kind these days: Trump’s garbage about draining the swamp, a cover for Trump and his family enriching themselves and Stephen Miller’s like getting to fashion the state they wanted, becomes QAnon’s garbage about rings of child trafficking and pedophilia and Trump, of all people, being their savior—all while actual trafficking and abuse perpetuated by Jeffrey Epstein and his ilk goes unpunished, Epstein’s death swallowed up by the state without a sound—becomes the liberal pundit class’s screaming about Russia: connections between Trump and Putin that were always conjectural to me, because no one who pled them seemed to feel much need to substantiate them.

Here again I feel like what were once centrifugal forces in our culture—between mainstream and the independent media, for example; between people in power and their critics, either in the media or at society’s margins—have collapsed into a single morass. We’re all in hell and there’s no way out.

In all this, what does Biden’s administration represent? Little more than an interregnum, to my mind. How disappointing to see not even a gesture toward forgiving student debt or raising the minimum wage in these first 100 days of his presidency. There’s been some progress in climate legislation, and progress in putting Stephen Miller’s deportation machine to a halt (though they’re also reopening several emergency shelters to accommodate more minors already being held past the mandated limits for keeping them in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of Refugee Resettlement). But there’s also been such triangulation on policy by the administration and its supporters and such complacency on the part of the media covering the administration, refusing to call them out on or even cover this. And how can the average voter respond but with resignation?

Ever since I read Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus near the start of lockdown, absorbing the picture of the world pre-World War II that’s presented in that book, I’ve thought we’re in the same sort of moment that Mann’s protagonist Zeitblom was in. There’s a crisis that’s passing over this whole planet like a wave or a seismic event, and no human intervention can interrupt it. We can only wait for it to pass—holding on to whatever’s to hand, waiting to see what the world will look like when it’s over.

[thekillerssluts]

DIY Magazine, October 2020.

Interview TALKING ‘BOUT MY GENERATION: WILL BUTLER

Talking to Will Butler is a bit like trying to have a conversation with a human magpie. Hugely enthusiastic and with a constant giggle on the go (“I have a nervous laugh, so I laugh at more things than I should…”), the 37-year-old has a tendency to veer off down strange tangents, taking your original point but then getting distracted or excited by some other new, shiny train of thought in a different direction.

You can tell he’s smart - not just booksmart, but the kind of smart where you can practically see the cogs turning at 100mph. “I love knowledge for its own sake,” he professes at one point. “I believe in it to a fault. I think it’s worth knowing all this shit, for no other reason than just knowing that it’s true.” And it’s this attitude that’s filled the three years since ‘Everything Now’ - he and his Arcade Fire bandmates’ society-skewering fifth LP.

In that time, amid world tours and festival headlines, Will has had two more children - twins - and went to Harvard to study a masters in public policy. He also found time to record ‘Generations’ - a second solo effort that takes the brilliantly all-over-the-place nature of 2015’s ‘Policy’ and hones it into something that’s more pointed, though still clearly fuelled by the same curious mind. Or as he puts it: “The first [album] it’s like, ‘I’m at the market! There’s some eggplants! Oh there’s a nice sausage guy! And OK cool I’ll get some of those and these!’ But then ‘Generations’ was much more like, ‘I’ve been storing these bones in my freezer for two years and now we’re gonna boil this down to make the pure essence of the beast’.”

Like most debuts from artists splintering off from their main projects, ‘Policy’ had been born from accumulating a collection of material that didn’t fit with his band. Unlike most, Will had just been nominated for an Oscar (for his soundtrack to Joaquin Phoenix film Her) before its release, “so that was a confidence boost,” he notes amiably. Conversely, the essence of ‘Generations’’ particular beast seems a far more targeted one - one intrinsically linked with the intense political conversations the musician had found himself wrangling with during his recent studies.

“I always want whatever I’m making to emerge out of what I’m living and for it to help me understand how I’m living better, so going to policy school was certainly part of that artistic project as well as the ‘what do we fucking do?’ project,” he explains. “I jokingly say that I was radicalised at Harvard, which is basically true. I was in a mid-career programme, so there were 25-year-old geniuses but also people in their middle age who’d worked in the UN in Pakistan or the government in Mexico. They had this whole perspective of how fucked everything is across the whole globe so it was… educational.

As such, his second brims with a sense of palpable unease for a society that’s not only crumbling before our eyes right now, but has been doing so intermittently for decades and centuries. The twinkling, finger-clicking patter of ‘Close My Eyes’ belies the all-too-timely despair beneath it (“The photograph is new / But I seen that same headline, and I got to dance to keep from crying”), Randy Newman-esque closer ‘Fine’ digs right back to “George Washington and all his slaves,” while ‘Not Gonna Die’, he explains, was written in direct response to the November 2015 Bataclan shootings.“All these things hit different people in different ways, but that was so close to home,” he says. “It was Christmas after that and I was shopping in Manhattan; I walked into Sephora and it was super crowded and I thought, there’s a lot of people in here, where would I go [if something like that happened]? And I got so mad. It fucking worked. You made me scared. I’m not gonna die in Sephora on 5th Avenue but you made me think about it, you fucking pieces of shit.“Mike Pence was writing about it before he was running for Vice President, like, ‘We need to make sure we don’t have any immigrants come in because the immigrants can do this to us here’. And it’s like, I’m not gonna be killed by a woman fleeing violence in Guatemala!! The terrorists and the people saying ‘Be afraid!’: what you’re doing is working, and I AM afraid, and fuck you.”

Perhaps most interestingly, however, ‘Generations’ doesn’t just point the finger outwards, it also poses questions of the singer’s own inherent part in it all. “A big chunk of this record is asking: What’s my place in American history? What’s my place in America’s present?” he explained in a previous statement about the album. “Both in general, but also extremely particularly: me as Will Butler, rich person, white person, Mormon, Yankee, parent, musician. What do I do? What can I do?”

“It’s basically like, ‘My God, how did we get here?’ - that Talking Heads line,” he continues now. “The record is at times literally a conversation with people arguing back and forth, and there’s a lot of questions raised and the answers aren’t answers - you just end the conversation in a different spot. There’s something to that process of discussing and coming to some sort of revelation only to find out what’s lacking there, and then you move onto the next conversation and find out what’s lacking there. I was pleased that the material felt cyclical and of a piece, and you feel like you’re in a different spot than you were at the beginning.”

Because yes, his latest might not provide all the answers - “This is a musical work and I don’t know what the end notes are,” he admits - but ‘Generations’ does emphasise the importance of asking the questions and having the conversations, both with the world and with yourself. And if you can have them over an album of musically explorative, rich and often perversely funny new offerings? All the better.

Next, he’ll return to the fold to begin work on Arcade Fire’s sixth opus. Writing for that had originally started in New Orleans before the pandemic hit, but the band “don’t have the file management down to really do it at a distance,” he chuckles. “Win and Régine are always demoing and working, and I’ve done a little. We always work on a record for about a year and a half and we’re not off that pace yet, we’re still weirdly on track…”

You can bet by the time that record lands, he’ll have chalked up a handful of other accomplishments to his name, too; lord only knows the political battleground of the coming weeks will give him enough food for thought. And in the inquisitive mind of Will Butler, thought and curiosity are clearly the most nourishing tools of all. “You can write a love song that’s super true, but can you write a history song that also is? And if it comes out right and there’s some value in it, then what does that mean?” he muses. “It’s about just trying different angles to express something true.”

‘Generations’ is out now via Merge.

Butler’s Bits

‘Generations’ is undoubtedly an album rooted in politics and society - this much we know. But it’s also a record that digs into the musician’s relationship with other parts of the human experience…

HUMOUR “It’s a coping mechanism and it’s also a worldview. There’s not exactly a cabaret scene in New York but the comedy here is quite musical and there’s a lot of comedians that interact with people in interesting ways. They’re a bit younger than me - I’m the oldest millennial - but there’s something in that spirit that feels relevant.”

RELIGION “I grew up Mormon and I’m still ethnically Mormon. It’s like The Smiths song, ‘Meet Me At The Cemetery Gates’ - ‘Keats and Yeats are on your side, and Wilde is on mine’, you lose, haha. I’m sure Yeats is such a fucking asshole but that’s my heritage. The classic lineage of the Western canon is how I grew up.”

ADULTHOOD “I have three kids now, and it doesn’t make me worry about the future so much as it’s made me learn so much about humanity watching them - watching how it all goes into the ‘this is what humans are’ mill. On ‘Policy’, the protagonists are a motley crew of rag-tag whatevers, whereas this is much more a coming of age novel - not like a teenager becoming an adult, but an adult becoming a worse adult…”

As featured in the October 2020 issue of DIY, out now.

[cosplayswitzerlandaskblog]

Unlike last time Hetalia got a new season, the response has not been particularly positive, and I’m seeing a lot of twisted feelings towards the show and the fandom to a point where it seems long time content creators are stepping away from it. I know anyone still active who follows me either are or were fans of Hetalia, so it should be relevant for all y’all.

As a fan who never fell out of the show, I find the response sad though healthy, and even if I know I ghosted you all on tumblr (sorry) because of time constraints and mental health, I still make the occasional CMVs. Fact is, I do not let go of special interests very easily. It seems a lot of you all started watching the show at 10-14 years old, where I myself was a bit older – 17 – and had grown a bit more. Long story short, my Naruto phase was your Hetalia phase, and no, it’s not pretty. You’re young and stupid and don’t know much critical thinking and make mistakes, and you have to forgive yourself for those mistakes, especially when the content you consume is associated with the real world in a sensitive subject.

But after seeing all these posts explaining all the bad we see from Hetalia, I wanted to make a post explaining what I learned from it – all the good that can come with a show like this if you stay aware of perspective. I am not excusing all the bad that came with it, for WWII is a serious event in history that should never be forgotten nor made fun of, but here goes:

I went from a ‘war-is-cool’ history buff to one who truly delved in and learned the intricacies of history, being fascinated with the ‘hows’ and the ‘whys’ as well as getting an excuse to look at the histories of nations which I’d never otherwise be interested in, and I know a lot of other people in the fandom did the same. This is how history should be known, as that is how we can truly apply it to the real world.

I learned to separate people from their countries. To give an example that’ll hit close to much of tumblr, when I started Hetalia I hated Americans with a passion because of the road “you” had put the world on, and I considered all y’all dumb and bad as a cause of it. Getting that excuse to take an ACTUAL look at how your nation functioned and what communities truly hid behind the borders, I learned instead that your government is corrupt as shit, your society is rigged against you and you have been forced to stand by and watch as chaos happens. It got applied to the world as a whole, where I considered other nations being as dynamic as my own, with people both good and bad, and the actions of the nation is even less of a reflection of the people in the cases of corrupt democracies or dictatorships.

I separated from Colonial world views. I was never actively racist, brought up in a proper home, and already before Hetalia I fiercely protected the rights of Muslims who are often mistreated in my nation and tried to hear them out when possible. But I was a Westerner, and even if the nation I came from had barely participated in invasions, I had learned to consider my culture ‘correct’ and native and African cultures ‘primitive’. While the journey was long, a step wise process of realizing things like there was nothing inherently ethically wrong eating dogs or partially incubated duck eggs, only in how the animals were acquired, that cultural progress is heavily dependent on perspective and that fucking genocide of native peoples still happen in this damn century, Hetalia was the stepping stone which gave me the interest in other nations to expand my world view. I probably ain’t done here – I have a whole life of outside influences to unlearn – but I’m further than most people I know in my near surroundings, and I’ve even managed to move my parents who originally taught me to respect people of all kinds in the first place.

I learned Nazis were people. This is a conversation which often comes up here on tumblr, and the demonization Nazi Germany and its government directly allows actual Nazis and fascists like Richard Spencer a free pass because they look groomed and proper. Until then, I’d simply assumed no one was ‘stupid enough to be a Nazi’ because of the atrocities of WWII and therefore looked at the world naively. Realizing how little true support Nazis had during WWII and similarly anyone could end down that pungent rabbit hole, I became careful of what I excused on social media and allowed myself to doubt seemingly normal people if their behaviour was alarming – such as the police man who is supposed to be a damn ‘hero’ of society.

I learned how to deal with material sensitive to others. A common problem in the fandom has always been the cosplaying and portrayal of Nazis, especially at cons and the like, and in a similar vein – I did blackface once because of Hetalia. The horrible thing about this is that blackface is immensely common in Europe – at least my own country – and blackface frequently happens at schools during ‘international’ events, where whole classrooms are assigned to portray a designated country. A whole of two times – in 6th grade as well as 2nd grade of high school – I was exposed to blackface as my class was given an African nation to portray – Somalia the first time, Kenya the second. No one, adult, teen or child, are aware of the history of race imitation in my country, but by the second time I was supposed to participate in dressing up as an African tribe, I’d understood the issue – thanks to Hetalia. My friend group of white, privileged, European teens discussed what symbolism was appropriate at cons or in videos – could we wear the Iron Cross? The Nazi flag? What if we burned it during the video? These thoughts are not usually a part of the mind of European youth, and I consider that a grave problem which leads to people making fun of ‘triggers’, downplaying racial issues and the like.

It offered me a means to make history personal. The biggest struggle for good history teachers and the reason we are often made to read and write letters from the periods we study is to make it seem real and get a emotional connection to these past, lost peoples. Hetalia offered puppets for me to place into historical contexts to make them truly real – the main driver pushing me away from mere fascination of war, since I suddenly felt the horrors of warfare through the characters that I loved. Things like Elizabeth I’s court, the conquests of Rome, the dissolution of the Kalmar Union, the battlefield of Somme, the invasion of America, damn slavery becomes different when something you already know is a part of it and you can see them in there. Hearing of people of the past should in itself be enough, and for the closest parts of history (WWII and afterwards) it always was for me, but we are human. We cannot understand the size of a billion, and we struggle understanding the lives of those living centuries before us, unless we are offered context.

I’m not blind to the issues of the fandom or the show. I was here for ‘the r*pist, the pervert and the p*dophile’, I know of South Korean and Chinese issues with the show, and I heard the gassing joke in the show’s dub and got nauseous from discomfort and anger. I’ve always been in the fringe of the fandom due to my social disabilities, so I don’t know everything that happened, but I’ve seen many racist OCs and disrespecting of historical sites. It’s not pretty, but I will believe these people, who were likely young, likely learned in time. And I may have been able to learn these things by other means, but not in the same way, and not through personal interest and research that’s helped me become sceptical and analysing of the world around me.

At its core, Hetalia is about watching a normal, nerdy guy learn how to draw, using stereotypic country personifications mainly from the perspective of Japan. It’s natural he chooses Japan, since he’s Japanese, and WWII is unfortunately the automatic historical event for most common people to focus on – but Hetalia doesn’t even solely focus on that, but is an amalgamation of vaguely correct historical situations played out by the characters, and often it is with the intent of comedy rather than the grimness often associated with historical settings which allows a wider audience than merely history nerds.

What I want you all to do is learn from your mistakes and forgive your younger selves for not knowing better. Maybe reflect on what you got from the show, rather than what you lost. A new generation of young Hetalians is likely coming with the new season, and us old timers might be able to help them avoid pitfalls if we stay around to teach them. The best of the show is compassion towards the people of the world combined and love of history, as I believe Hima wanted it – the worst is Nazi apologetics and racial stereotyping. We decide in what direction we take it, and what lessons we bring into the future.

TL;DR: As a lot of media intended for older audiences, Hetalia is a show which has to be watched critically, which makes it dangerous for young people to watch unhinged, but it also opens up for interest in the world beyond the borders you live within. We should be aware of the issues and learn from them, but in and of itself the show has a lot of good to offer in learning compassion for other nations and cultural groups.

[sosation]

On the Passing of Michael Brooks

I only relatively recently became aware of Michael, less than a year ago. In that time he has impacted my life more than any other media personality, more than anyone I’ve never met.

Even though the first time I voted was for Obama in 2008, my political consciousness really began during my 2nd stint of college at UTA circa 2014/15. My history undergrad was waking me up to the power dynamics and hegemonic systems that exist in our society. I was beginning to understand geopolitics under the tutelage of Dr. Joyce Goldberg and getting really wrapped up in 20th century diplomacy. The Snowden leaks had happened and the Michael Brown demonstrations in Ferguson were drawing attention to the militarization of our police forces and their tactics on US citizens. I began to see capitalism as consisting of, and causing and contributing too, countless problems. Then, the 2016 election cycle stoked my already burning interests.

During this time, there was little “left-tube” to be found. Since 2012, streaming on our X Box has been my wife and I’s primary means of entertainment. Slowly more and more of our time was being spent on YouTube. The Young Turks was really the only progressive voice on Youtube, to my knowledge, at that time. (I wasn’t yet aware of Pakman, Kulinski, Seder and Brooks.) And even though they were my primary source of news, I wasn’t crazy about the hyperbolic presentation, Cenk’s ego, or some of the attitudes expressed by various hosts at various times. That being said, I learned a lot. I was exposed to many many great journalists and they certainly helped me solidify and articulate many of the arguments I had been thinking and feeling during this time. I even became a Texas Wolf-Pac Volunteer right after Trump’s election. 

I ended my bachelor’s and master’s programs under the Trump presidency. (May ‘17, Dec ‘18 respectively.) During this time I read and wrote more than I ever have in my life. Under Dr. Christopher Morris, Dr. Patryk Babiracki, and Dr. Pawel Goral, I read Marxist historical theory and studied the history of the Cold War  from the perspectives of the US, USSR and Europe. I also began watching less and less TYT and more Secular Talk, David Pakman, and David Doel. While these shows are great, there was little to no international perspectives or geopolitical discussions happening. (Doel being Canadian accounts for something but, IMO, anyone who lives in the 5 Eyes is hardly a non-western perspective and therefore significantly less valuable in regards to gaining the insight of the peripheries of the globe. As the hegemonic “leader” of the world, Canadians, New Zealanders, Aussies and Brits, can point and laugh at the US all they want but they are taking our lead-systematically and economically.That’s not to say that their perspective is unimportant, just not the same as those outside the western sphere) Furthermore, there is still even less of a historical perspective being represented in regards to current events anywhere on YouTube. No one seems to have a long dureé, an understanding of how history plays out- again and again, and how capitalism is responsible for much of our recent history. Marx did. Michael did. 

I began my teaching career in earnest last summer, 2019, as a Geography teacher. First time I’ve ever had a salary and the first time that I didn’t have to wear a hat (or hairnet) to work. My lunch was 2nd lunch, 12:35-1:15. Here in Texas, The Majority Report was live and it began showing up consistently on my youtube feed so I began watching them while I ate my sandwich and apple, before students from guitar club would show up for a quick lesson before 6th period. I had watched TMR before, particularly live streams on twitch during the first few primary debates this cycle. They reminded me a little too much of an east coast morning talk show for me to take them too seriously at first but I eventually began to see that while Sam is--well-- Sam, the others on the show had quite a lot to say and clear, logical and articulate reasons for their positions...especially this guy Michael. Once I heard that he had his own show it quickly became the most listened to podcast in my feed. (This in itself is no small feet. I’ve been listening to podcasts for hours a day (sometimes 8) since 2012. It, too, no doubt contributed to my education and understanding of our world during this same time period but that is another blog all itself.)

Michael was everything that I was looking for. He was unabashedly a Marxist. He was intelligent and enjoyed rigorous thinking and leftist theory. He was hilarious and did fantastic impressions. He also was compassionate, kind and empathetic. He was a humanist, in the truest sense of the word and he understood, and articulated to me, that Socialism is a humanist movement. After I became a patron, I once asked him on Discord what his credentials were and he said that his Bachelor’s was in International Relations, which explained so much. Again, he was the only media personality that I was aware of that was knowledgeable and curious about the same things I was. He understood history. He valued history and its importance, so much so that he dedicated a separate Sunday show just to “Illicit Histories” where he would invite Historians from all over the world to discuss leftist movements in their own countries and how we could apply those lessons here and vice versa. This was it. This is what was missing from our national discourse--an international perspective and voice, and a historical perspective and voice. Michael was both and he was damn good at it. 

The Michael Brooks Show was an inspiration. Michael, Matt Lech and David Griscom were smart, eloquent, young men who articulated the systemic failures of our time, who critically discussed and analyzed our current political discourse and who pondered possible solutions based in history. The guests of TMBS, the network Michael created, really were the shining feature. Ben Burgis, Artesia Balthrop, Molly Webster, Glenn Greenwald, Adolf Reed, President Lula De Silva, Slavoj Žižek , Noam Chomsky, Dr. Cornel West, Dr. Richard Wolff...the list goes on and on and on. These people brought so much insight to the state of our world. Professors, Journalists, people who have spent their lives working on the cause, a cause for a better future, one based in humanity and empathy. Michael was able to bring his own empathy for humanity into his interviews, asking thoughtful direct questions that got to the heart of the issue-- while simultaneously bringing levity to a serious topic by making jokes in the voice of Gandhi, Mandela, Obama, or Bernie, to name a few. He, fucking, got it man. He understood how the world was connected. He understood that we are ALL humans, and that we all deserve to be treated with dignity, and he understood that Marx was right about a ton of shit and he wasn’t scared to remind you of that. 

Michael, for me, was an exemplar. He was a role model. I looked up to him. I had no idea he was only 13 months older than me, I thought he was probably in his early 40’s just based on the amount of shit that he knew. My personal 10 year goal was to be on his show. I wanted to either become a writer or go back into academia. I even wrote into a show a couple of months back and asked him which was a better choice. He was honored to be asked such a heavy question but didn’t feel comfortable giving that kind of life advice and I don’t blame him. He recommended that I continue teaching high school if that’s what I enjoy doing, and I do, and I likely will. He has shown me how to speak up for ideals that are right, regardless of what people think. Like, I understood that in the abstract, but watching someone do it multiple times a week really put it in my head that I need to advocate for my position publicly. I tell people that I’m a marxist- which in Texas is unheard of, even among leftists. Mostly due to people not understanding labels and what that even means. So I tell them. Thanks to David’s weekly recommended readings I haven’t stopped reading leftist theory even though I finished grad school over a year and a half ago. If TMBS never existed I never would have had the opportunity to read any of that. 

My heart bleeds for Matt and David. I can’t imagine what they’re going though. I want them to continue, to keep the community alive in his name. But I completely understand if that is just too painful. 

I was thinking earlier, trying to find an appropriate historical comparison to his passing. There are many but as a North Texan, the one that I ended up landing on was the passing of Dimebag Darrell Abbot. He did a lot. He accomplished a lot in a short amount of time. He inspired many to do things like him. It was entirely unexpected and not one person, not one, has a bad thing to say about the guy. Dimebag was adored. He listened to people, strangers, fans. He was kind and open-hearted and treated everyone with respect. Which made it extra hard when he passed. The same can be said for Michael. For Michael, since Socialism is more than just music, he inspired us to educate ourselves, to ask questions, to remember the periphery-Latin America, Africa, and Asia,-- to remember history and value it, to be compassionate, to educate others and to be active in our own communities. 

He will be sorely missed. The one thing I keep telling myself is that his death has the potential to bring even more attention to his message-- to help further catapult this movement into something undeniable. To bring more awareness to how power works and to finally activate us to become, as Michael said at Harvard on Feb 1, 2020: machiavellian.

 “...we still have to put work into reminding everybody that (Dr. MLK Jr.) was on the left. He wasn’t a guy who came out once a year and said ‘everybody should treat each other nicely. ...The other thing I loved about this speech was he talked about the fallacy- that certain Christians misunderstand love as a seeding of power. And then Nietzsche came along and rejected christian morality because he thought it was denying someone’s vitality- the will to power in a healthy sense, and he said ‘Love without power is sentimental and anemic. And power without love is abusive and corrosive’ I’m paraphrasing. And that was when I saw, I thought, ‘well here, ok, we know the left-wing Dr. King. Well here is the machiavellian Dr King, and I love it.’ I want the left to have Machiavelli, so we can have the strategy, the ruthlessness, the clarity, to actually win these battles. And be ruthless with institutions. And then I want us to learn how to be really kind to each other, welcoming of a broad set, and actually have a movement that has the capacity to do that.”

Let’s do the best we can to make that happen. Educate yourself about power. Educate yourself about ideologies. Read Marx and Engels. Read Slavoj Žižek and Adolf Reed. Read Michaels book Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right. Don’t get caught up in identity politics. Never lose sight of class dynamics. Use this knowledge to educate others and make informed decisions. Register to vote. Run for office. Effectuate real change. Do the intellectual rigor that was happening on TMBS every week, multiple times a week. Thank you for all that you brought to us Michael, you will be sorely missed and I hope to see you at the clearing at the end of the path. 

Anthony Sosa

7-21-20

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

How do I write a world where non-earth religions (I’m creating them) are both diverse, and also common place to see people participate in multiple religions’ festivities or rituals. One, because there’s distance to actual religion and entering common lifestyle. Example like on earth plenty of non Christians are holding Christmas parties, it’s a common thing and not overtly religious. Two, or why not because of the diversity, religions simply mix together. Like on earth why not have fasting like Muslims do simply become a common lifestyle custom alongside Buddhist meditations also being common lifestyle customs. Three. Like two, but why can’t someone on earth be both Muslim and Buddhist?? Does that even make sense?

I only gave you real life religions as example only, for ease of explaining, not at all what I’ll use.

Also in this kind of world, how would you see religious tolerance? Can it honestly really be in harmony? How about the bigots? There’s still got to be some won’t there? Especially when daily lifestyles, or simply in the architecture and design throw all sorts of religion in their faces they can’t avoid unless they live under a rock.

Feral:

I’m not sure what the question is here. Should some people in your world participate in religious festivals that do not align with their beliefs? It’s certainly possible, and it depends on the religion in question. Christianity is inherently an evangelical religion; “witnessing” is the call of every Christian, so Christian religious activities tend to be geared towards welcoming non-believers with the intent on making them believers. Not to mention nearly all Christian festivals were the festivals of other religions that Christians reshaped into their own. And not to mention the commercialization of Christmas specifically has fundamentally changed how Christmas is viewed by Christians and non-Christians alike; I’ve heard it said, and am inclined to believe more or less, that even Christians in Victorian England really didn’t celebrate Christmas until Charles Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol.” So, Christmas, for example, is of such mixed ancestry and exists in such a way as to be welcome for outsiders to “celebrate” without already believing in the underlying religion. It’s very important to keep in mind that this happens in culturally Christian regions or where Christmas has been so commercialized that people couldn’t even tell you its religious significance; and a lot of people of minority religions really fucking hate it - it’s insulting to be told that displaying a hanukiah at work is against company policy because you can’t have anything overtly religious on display when you’re surrounded by Christmas trees and listening to Christmas carols like “Oh Holy Night” piped in over the sound system. So you’ll want to keep in mind that some people will view a religious festival that’s “ubiquitously” celebrated as a dominant religion being forced on them at the expense of their own religious identity. You’ll also likely have religions that don’t proselytize and have absolutely no interest whatsoever in non-believers participating in their holy days - they’re holy! They’re meant for the people who already believe.

I’ve already briefly touched on why some religions would have a problem with non-believers crowding in on their holidays, but it’s worth repeating - not all religions are like Christianity. I’d go so far as to say that no other religions are like Christianity in this particular way. As for your examples regarding “Muslim fasting” and “Buddhist meditation”? People do fast. People do meditate. And it has nothing to do with religion. A lot of what makes “Muslim fasting” Muslim is prayer and dedication to Allah; if you’re removing that religious aspect of it, then you’re just fasting. And fasting is part of a number of religions, so it’s really hard to say which religion it comes from once the religion has been stripped away. As for meditation, meditation gained a lot of traction in the West because of the explosion of yoga. Which is a religious practice in Hinduism and Buddhism (and Jainism). It’s just been stripped of the religion, and like with fasting, meditation is found in many religions around the world; it’s just not that unique.

So, Buddhism is quite famous for being adoptable into other religious practices. Like if you had asked “why can’t someone be Muslim and Hindu?” my answer would have to be a run-down of the many fundamental theological reasons why those two religions are incapable of coinciding in a single person’s beliefs; however, Buddhism or Buddhist practices can be practiced alongside most religions. It’s non-theist, so there’s no creator deity that could contradict the beliefs of monotheists, polytheists, and atheists. Buddhism and Christianity have this whole huge long history, and Buddhism and Catholicism specifically dovetail really nicely together. What you’re talking about is syncretic religion, and it’s pretty common worldwide and throughout history.

The answers to all of those questions depend so intimately on how you build your religions and what their specific beliefs are. Some religions are naturally exclusivist, or you might have soft polytheism. It’s your world and your religions; we cannot make these decisions for you. If you want fundamentalism and bigotry to be a part of your world, then you can build your religions in such a way that those things would naturally occur. If you want harmony across religions to be a part of your world, then you can build your religions in such a way that that would naturally occur. You can even have it both ways! A world is a big place, and how people interact with their religion and the religions of others depends largely on where in the world they are and who else is there with them. A cosmopolitan culture where you have everyone brushing elbows with everyone else will have people developing a tolerance and softening their hardline views that would not occur in a more homogenous society where one religion is dominant.

Delta: A note about bigotry and prejudice: In geopolitics on earth, religious intolerance tends to be about one of two things: first, the majority religion (in the western world, Christianity) feeling compelled to force itself on other populations who do not share their beliefs. Examples of this include the Spanish Inquisition and, to some extent, “evangelical aid.” In Christianity, evangelicalism is a very important concept; sharing the religion is almost as important as a person’s personal faith. Off the top of my head, as Feral discussed, I can’t think of another religion with quite the same focus; so, by eliminating this element of religion, a huge amount of conflict could be eliminated if practitioners weren’t compelled to make all their acquaintances agree with them all the time. (Which is not to say all Christians just walk around proselytizing all the time, but it is fairly common in America; though I understand it to be somewhat less common in Europe, which through both culture and law has become more secular; more on this later.)

Second, it’s also about not wanting to concede power or control. A huge motivating factor behind all the Medieval Inquisitions, including the Spanish Inquisition, was the effort to curb what people in power considered religious heresy or just straight-up religious differences. They thought it was their place to dictate a group’s religious beliefs. Spain in particular was trying to stop the spread of Islam through the growing Ottoman Empire, which comes down to Medieval geopolitics as much as it does the religious differences between Islam and Christianity. Modern Islamophobia and religious conflict falls in this category a lot, too. But if your religions weren’t tied to more extensive geopolitical conflicts, you won’t have politicians using them as leverage to take and keep power like we do, so you could reduce religious tolerance that way, too.

Finally, secularism, which doesn’t directly address your question, but I wanted to mention it. In China, the official Communist Party has been somewhat infamously aggressively secular because religion was seen as a potentially rebellious force. Soviet Russia had similar experiences, both particularly with Muslim populations with whom they have political differences with besides, religion in this instance becoming a motivating factor for rebellion.

This is different from someplace like France, which aims to simply be neutral. Europe, overall, does not share the same public religious zeal that places like Israel, America, and Saudi Arabia have, but that doesn’t mean the conflict isn’t there.

Utuabzu: Something worth considering is are these gods real in the world you’re building? If the gods are demonstrably real, religiousness will be a lot more common and people are probably going to be more accepting of those that worship different deities given that any claims about them being false are easily refuted. Another thing to consider is the difference between philosophy and religion. In the West, Christianity fills both slots for many people (Judaism and Islam also do for some). In much of Asia, however, philosophies like Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Yoga (the Hindu philosophical school, one of six major Hindu schools), etc. are practiced in addition to a more localised traditional religion, often comprised of a local pantheon of gods and some degree of ancestor worship. To some degree, even Christianity is sometimes treated like this, see the Chinese Rites controversy for example. It is entirely possible to have people simultaneously believing in local animistic deities (local forest/mountain/river gods), regional major deities (Sun god, moon god, justice god etc.) and one or more universalist philosophies. Add in the possibility of mystery religions (closed faiths that do not publicise their theologies and often don’t accept converts, see Mithraism, the Orphic Mysteries, or for a modern example, Yazidiism) and ethnic religions that don’t seek or don’t accept converts (see Judaism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism), and it is very possible to have a wide variety of beliefs coexisting in a society. If they’ve been coexisting over a long period, one would generally expect most people to be aware of the major festivals, ceremonies, etc. of each, and while some may be open to all and treated by non-believers as more of a cultural festival (probably the animist ones), others may be believers-only, or invitation-only. Some festivals might be shared by several religions, because they either come from the same root, or both revere the same prophet/saint/whatever, or both worship the same deity, or maybe just had similar festivals happening at roughly the same time and though mutual influence ended up doing them at the same time. It really depends how you’ve built these religions and what their stances on non-believers are, how long they’ve been coexisting and how orthodox/orthopraxic (emphasis on believing the right things vs. emphasis on performing rituals correctly) they are.

[duhragonball]

On Twitter, there’s a new movement that started up on... Thursday, I guess, with the hashtag #SpeakingOut, where women were encouraged to call out instances of sexual abuse.     I’m not sure if it started with the pro wrestling community or not, because earlier in the week I saw some stuff about comic book pros like Warren Ellis and Cameron Stewart, but maybe that was a precursor.   All I know is that right now, I’ve been seeing all sorts of names being dropped in the pro wrestling business, each of them accused of being sexual predators, or covering up for the crimes of others.    Some of the names I don’t recognize, because they’re independent wrestlers from promotions I’m not familiar with, but I’ve seen some names I do know, and that’s pretty tough to take.   I’m going to discuss this here. 

Predictably, I’ve seen some backlash to #SpeakingOut, which reminds me of the same bullshit talking points used by the #IStandWithVic crowd last year.   In case you didn’t know, Vic Mignogna was a voice actor who worked for Funimation and provided the dub performances for Broly in DBZ, and Eward Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist.   I think those were his two most famous roles.   Over the decades, Vic garnered a reputation for being a sex pest, kissing and inappropriately touching women and teenage girls at conventions, and harassing his colleagues.  I assume the release of the “Dragon Ball Super: Broly” movie in the U.S. in 2019 precipitated a newfound interest in those allegations, and fans started objecting to his bookings at 2019 conventions.    By mid-year, Vic was fired from Funimation and RoosterTeeth, and he responded to this by starting an ill-advised defamation lawsuit.   

Vic’s defenders are, to put it mildly, idiots.    There were professional lawyers on Twitter who explained, very clearly, why this lawsuit was a bad idea.   The main reason being that it was done in Texas, which has a lot of laws designed to make it harder to sue people for defamation.    I think Vic’s goal was to find some way to punish his accusers for making him look bad and getting him fired.   Winning the lawsuit, was a way for him and his supporters to feel like they “cleared his name”, except that was never how it worked.   If he had been arrested and tried for sex pest crimes, the burden of proof would be on his accusers to show that he really did bad things.   But he was suing people for slander, so that means the burden of proof was on him to show that they really were saying things that were demonstrably false and damaging to his reputation.    The main problem with that is everyone had been talking about his sex pestery for years, so it doesn’t make sense to single a few people out in 2019 and blame them for reinforcing something everyone already believed.  But the ISWV crowd kept insisting that this distinction didn’t matter, and that it was wrong to ostracize or turn against Vic without “proof”.   I see the same demands for “proof” being tossed around for all these wrestling personalities.  

I think there’s a couple of things going on with this.   One is simple denial.   If you’re a fan of someone and you find out they did something terrible, you really don’t want to believe it.   I was never that into a lot of these guys, but I know I felt pretty low when I first heard about Vic’s shenanigans, because I liked his work.    And I’m feeling that way about Warren Ellis now.   Not a huge fan, but I liked some of his stuff, and now I feel a little guilty by association for ever liking that stuff in the first place.   It would be nice, I suppose, to just pretend that I hadn’t heard those accusations, or that they weren’t real.    Then I could just go back to the way things were before, without all the uncomfortableness.   I just can’t do that, but it seems like a lot of people can and will.   It’s not about “proof”, it’s about putting up some sort of barrier that will excuse them from confronting an unpleasant truth. 

I think this is why you see people going out of their way to defend Christopher Columbus and Confederate monuments.    They want to believe that there was something noble about that stuff, because the alternative is to admit that a lot of the things they learned in school aren’t true, and a lot of the “heritage” they cling to is built on white supremacy and slavery.    I don’t think anyone really cares about a Robert E. Lee statue, but I’ve seen people go out of their way to try to say Lee opposed slavery, like he’s one of the good Confederates, so he should get a pass.   Except he did own slaves, and even if he hadn’t, he still fought to defend a nation founded on slavery as a guiding principle.    Tearing down a statue of Lee is a tacit admission that Lee never deserved a statue in the first place, and everyone who admired him was wrong, and maybe the admiration was rooted in racism all along.   That’s a bitter pill for people to swallow, and a lot of them just refuse to swallow it.   So they deny and deflect, and do anything they can to make this about something else.   

The other side of it is just plain hatred.   I don’t know if Vic’s defenders were all misogynists to begin with, but it seems like they all got there, one way or another.   The train of thought always seemed to be “He didn’t do these things, but even if he did there’s nothing wrong with it.”   From what I saw, it really seemed like Vic’s backers were all fired up about defending a man’s right to creep on women in any way he sees fit.   “What, so kissing is illegal now?” No, jackass, but when you’re fifty-fucking-five and you kiss a seventeen-year-old girl who only wanted to take a picture with you, it’s pretty damn messed up.    When you use your celebrity status to try to mack on young fans, that’s messed up.   When you’re an established wrestler and you try to take advantage of up-and-coming wrestlers, that’s messed up.    And some of that behavior is totally illegal, but the sad reality is that most of these creeps will never get prosecuted for any of it.   That’s why the calls for “proof” are so hollow, because everyone knows it’ll never end up in a courtroom.  At best, some of these guys will get fired, and guess what?  “Innocent until proven guilty” doesn’t apply to employers.   I lost a job once because my “teamwork” wasn’t good enough, and that was the closest thing to an explanation I got.    Don’t bullshit me about “proof”.

I guess I should tie this train of thought in with Black Lives Matter while I’m at it.    I find it absurd that the police in this country are so out of touch that when there’s a nationwide protest against police brutality, their immediate response is... more brutality.   This, more than anything I’ve seen, is the reason to defund the police.    They appear to only have the one mode of conduct, and they don’t even know how to do things a different way.    If the situation is this bad, we may as well scrap the police as they are and start over.   If the cops wanted to fix this situation, all they have to do is treat people with respect and hold themselves accountable, but they can’t let go of their hatred for five fucking minutes and figure that out.   This is why you hear about those guys who make up stories about restaurants spitting in their food.   They’re paranoid that everyone’s out to get them because they know they deserve to face some consequences, so they’re constantly on guard for this sort of thing.  It’s sick. 

Somehow, people who support these guys end up supporting the very behavior they were supposed to be denying.    Maybe this is why Columbus is such a sticking point.   I never gave a shit about Columbus.   One of my high school yearbooks had a Columbus theme because it just happened to come out on the 500th anniversary of his first voyage to North America, but I never understood what that had to do with my high school.   I think there’s people that want to give him tons of credit, basically thank him for everything that’s happened in the Western Hemisphere since 1500, not in spite of his atrocities, but to retroactively justify them.   What I mean is, if you can convince society that Columbus was a great man, and that his achievements outweigh his wrongdoing, then you can also convince society that the wrongdoings aren’t actually that bad.    “The price of progress,” they can say.    It’s like the idea that Robert E. Lee is admired solely for his “brilliant” military mind.   His side lost the fucking war, so I never understood how he gets all this credit for being a great general.    The point is that if you can convince people that he was a noble man in spite of the slavery thing, then you can open the door to the idea that the Confederacy as a whole wasn’t That Bad, and that only opens the door to the idea that slavery wasn’t That Bad, and so on.  

Same deal with Roman Polansky and Woody Allen.    It amazes me that people will still try to defend those fucks, but it probably has a lot to do with all the other sex pests in Hollywood, who hope that everyone will stick up for them when they get exposed.   So you have this little chesnut about how “Yeah, they did bad things, but they sure made some good movies.”     The implication is that you have to accept a few sex crimes if you want good art.    And no, that’s not true, and even if it were true, it wouldn’t be worth it.   

I don’t know where things will end up with J.K. Rowling.   I’d like to think that one of these days, she’ll wake up and apologize for all this TERF rhetoric she’s been spouting.    That would probably be the best-case scenario.   More likely, she’ll cause an entire generation of Harry Potter fans to wrestle with their loyalty to her books.   There’s no job to fire her from, no laws to punish her, no government agency to step in.    She’s got no financial stake in repairing this PR damage.   There’s going to be an audience of bigots that will still kiss up to her no matter what she says, so her ego will be well-insulated.    Maybe a hundred years from now, people will be talking about tossing her statue in a river, as society admits that we don’t need to accept transphobia in exchange for YA literature.   

I don’t know, I think I went all over the place with this one, but I had a lot to get off my chest.   I think the overall lesson from this year is that we can’t put these people on pedestals.   Some of them are just hell-bent on letting us down, and it’s just a matter of time before their misdeeds are brought to light.   I see these dopes with Thin Blue Line flags and “I stand with [X]” hashtags and I’m like “Who are you supporting here?    What is it you’re standing for, exactly?   Why should they be worthy of your loyalty?”    And I think the answer is less about loyalty to a person or group, and more about sticking it to someone else.   Women, minorities, whoever.   They just want to stand by someone to spite someone else.    And that’s awful.   

[princess-of-france]

i would love to hear abt your rococo lll

Oh my gosh, you lovely human, settle in. This production is my Ultimate Theater Pipe Dream and I apologize in advance for how little chill I’m going to have as I explain it. 

Are you ready? 

I want to start with my standard disclaimer: I am a theater artist, not a literary critic or a historian. When I’m directing a play, I extract fragments of lit crit and historical fact as I need them and leave the rest on the buffet line. This LLL in particular requires me to play fast and loose with history, so be prepared for a truckload of anachronisms. They make the vision work!

So, with that…

The sad Catch-22 of my Rococo LLL is that no theater will ever put it up:  a smaller, indie, risk-taking theater wouldn’t be able to afford the astronomical production costs of casting the 20 actors I need, to say nothing of building opulent sets and period-accurate costumes that imitate the royal courts of the late 18th century; conversely, a large, well-funded, regional theater wouldn’t be able to justify funding a 2.5-hour Shakespeare retelling that turns one of his most sparkling comedies into a dark, violent allegory about the French Revolution and casts young, privileged, light-skinned European elites as the tragic heroes brought low by proletariat Jacobean reform. Even as I type these words, I realize how irresponsible an investment that would be. My Rococo LLL is not the kind of classical theater we need in America right now. It is retrograde in terms of diversity, equity, accessibility, and social justice. It probably says something terrible about me that I even dreamt it up in the first place.

And yet.

I want to direct this production so badly it feels like I’ve swallowed a piece of the sun. If I had all the proper resources (time, money, venue, artists, designers, marketing, etc.), I would do it tomorrow. It’s my baby.

Here’s a blurb that kind of nutshells it all together:

July 1789. King Charles VI of Navarre has died, leaving his son, young Ferdinand III, to take the throne. On a tide of Enlightenment idealism, King Ferdinand commissions his three best friends to join him for a period of ascetic study at the court of Navarre. The rules are simple: no luxuries, no alcohol, and no women. For three long years.

The boys’ oath is immediately put to the test when four young ladies arrive in Navarre on a diplomatic mission from Versailles. Led by the spirited Duchess d’Albret, the Frenchwomen and their mile-high coiffures prove irresistible to the King and his companions. With the help of a motley band of scholars and servants, they set out to woo the Duchess and her friends. But when sober news arrives from Paris, will young love be enough to rewrite history?

Set against the glittering backdrop of the last golden days of the ancien regime, this bold reimagining of Shakespeare’s beloved comedy invites us to look at the most famous revolution in Western history through the eyes of the young elites who learned the truth about privilege just a moment too late.

Of all the radical things I want to do with this production, the thing that would probably cause the most controversy (and earn me a reputation for being a narcissistic, pessimistic, Shakespeare-desecrating hack) is my addition of a prologue set in Paris in June 1793. I could try to sum it up here, but honestly I think it would be a lot more effective and comprehensive just to post the excerpt from my script:

…etc.

So basically, half my audience will vomit due to the unexpected onslaught of blood, gore, and violence…and the other half will vomit from the sheer anti-progressivism of the show’s politics. And I don’t blame anyone who finds fault with this production concept. On a political level, I find fault with it. Arguably the last thing our society needs right now is a Shakespeare production that paints young, pale, overprivileged trust fund babies as the poor, helpless victims of a liberal-led revolution for social equality. 

But at the same time, I can’t help but think that the entire point of Love’s Labour’s Lost is to make us look hard at our own privilege and ego, and weigh those things that seem sooo valuable against the true gifts of love, empathy, friendship, generosity, and kindness. 

“This is not generous, not gentle, not humble!” Holofernes cries as the Crazy Eight—high on adrenaline and their own cruel wit—jeer him off the stage during his performance as Judas Maccabeus in 5.2. More than any other, this moment epitomizes the value of setting LLL in a sex-charged, champagne-fueled, pastry-laden, cream-filled, lace-drenched, satin-covered, feather-topped, Rococo landscape. There’s no way in hell the audience is meant to sympathize with the insult-flinging prep school Kens and Barbies when they humiliate Holofernes to the point of tears. Shakespeare is way too smart for that. In the final whimsical moments before the messenger Marcadé comes onstage, laden with the news that is going to change the entire genre of the play, the Bard turns a critical spotlight on the young people we’ve been rooting for since Act One, Scene One and invites us to view them—for the first time, really—through the lens of the hardworking, lesser-privileged plebs of Navarre. The portrait is revolting. However witty, cultured, and elegant the courtiers might seem, they clearly have a lot more homework to do. Marcadé’s arrival a few short lines later is the final test of their youthful ego. Is being clever worth the price of experiencing love? Is love worth the price of responsibility? Is she brave enough to admit that she’s scared to take up the mantle? Is he brave enough to give up the one person who matters for the sake of the people he once mocked, the people he now must lead?

I don’t believe the Navarre Nerds and Les Filles have survived the centuries because they end the play as sharp-tongued, entitled, and self-absorbed as they behave at the start. We wouldn’t still be making and remaking this play if the protagonists were so static. I think the young people of LLL resonate with us—or, at least, they resonate with me—because in the course of Shakespeare’s plotless little play they grow up right before our eyes. King Ferdinand learns that he can’t bury his head in his books and ignore the responsibility of ruling when he watches the love of his life choose duty to her country over the desires of her own heart. The Princess learns that the cost of being the cleverest person is human connection when she finds herself laughing alongside Ferdinand at the antics of the Nine Worthies and somehow feels happier than she ever did when she was mocking him into the earth. Berowne learns that love wins every argument: against wit, against intellect, against bachelorhood, against willpower itself. Rosaline learns that love is strength, not weakness, and that she is stronger when she allows herself to feel. Dumaine learns that love demands vulnerability. Katherine learns that love is not a game. Longaville learns that love thrives on honesty. Maria learns that love takes courage. When the Crazy Eight say their heartbreaking goodbyes at the end of 5.2, they no longer care about sounding smart or superior; in fact, they speak against their own intelligence. The erudite Ferdinand trips over his words, the cynical Berowne invokes romantic idealism, the boastful Dumaine speaks with humility, the shy Longaville puts all his cards on the table. The women are no less altered. I don’t want to fall into the trap of ascribing an easy, one-size-fits-all moral maxim to LLL, but what else are we supposed to take away from this play if not the fact that we fucking owe it to ourselves as a species to set aside our stupid pride and say, “I love you,” when we feel it because we never know when time is going to run out? What else are we supposed to feel if not pride in these young people for choosing to step up and take responsibility when they hear news that the world outside is ending? That there may be no world left? Les Filles go with their Queen. The Nerds rally around their King. They choose fidelity to their respective kingdoms over the indulgence of love. But they also learn to value love for what it is, and to call it by name…even if that love can only last for a few fleeting seconds:

“If this or more than this I would deny,To flatter up these powers of mine with rest,The sudden hand of death close up mine eye.Hence ever, then, my heart is in thy breast.”

(King Ferdinand, V.ii)

As the Crazy Eight grapple in real time with the consequences of Marcadé’s message and what it means for their role as leaders in society, Rosaline gives Berowne a task to complete in their year apart that practically hums with poetic intelligence. Her lines are so iconic, we still quote them colloquially today:

BEROWNETo move wild laughter in the throat of death?It cannot be, it is impossible.Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.

ROSALINEWhy, that’s the way to choke a gibing spirit,Whose influence is begot of that loose graceWhich shallow laughing hearers give to fools.A jest’s prosperity lies in the earOf him that hears it, never in the tongueOf him that makes it. Then, if sickly ears,Deafed with the clamors of their own dear groans,Will hear your idle scorns, continue then,And I will have you and that fault withal.But if they will not, throw away that spiritAnd I shall find you empty of that fault,Right joyful of your reformation.

(V.ii)

I think this is the moment when I would start crying if I ever watched my Rococo LLL performed live. Because of all les Filles, I think Rosaline is the only one who knows that by choosing to accompany the Duchess back to Versailles at the end of LLL, she is effectively signing her death warrant. The Jacobeans and sans-cullottes are not going to want young, eligible, Catholic Rococo princesses wafting around their new, secular state. The guillotine may not yet exist in the summer of 1789, but the there is a thirst for blood and Rosaline can smell it. And now Bastille has fallen. Paris is on fire. King Louis XVI has months to live. The world will never be the same. Rosaline’s once-ordered, once-gilded country is careening into a bloody nightmare of soured ideals and ruthless social weeding, and even though she can’t see the future, she can read men like books. Even Berowne. Even the charismatic nihilist who earned a bachelor’s degree in bachelorhood and tried to hide his heart under a bushel. She can read him and she can save him. They can’t kill her husband if she doesn’t have one. 

Rococo LLL? I don’t know. It’s a pipe dream. 

But can’t you picture it? 

Tagging my girls @harry-leroy @suits-of-woe @lizbennett2013 @dedraconesilet @exeunt-pursued-by-a-bear @henriadical in case anyone is interested :)

Thanks a million for one of my favorite asks ever! Happy holidays, friend!!

xx Claire

[apostateangela]

LIGHTSWITCH LIVING

In April of 2018 I had a life altering experience. I attended a production of The Book of Mormon musical. I hadn’t been to church for over a year. I thought I had pretty much separated myself from that world- at least in my mind and heart.

I was wrong.

The leaving of a religion and culture is not as easy as cutting an umbilicus.

It is more like the unraveling of a tightly woven tapestry. In my case a tapestry I had been weaving for almost a half of a century. While it is true, I had torn large holes in the fabric that had surrounded me and shrouded every part of me.

I still stood in the tatters, unable to shed them completely.

I felt naked enough, as I have described. So much so that I didn’t notice that a great deal of the LDS church and its teachings still clung to me.

I don’t know how much is there still.

It’s difficult to rewrite your DNA.

There are moments in your life where you know an impetus has been reached.

Personal iconic moments that change who you are forever.

A handful of happenings that can be listed as pivotal and undeniably valuable, priceless even.

The night I experienced The Book of Mormon musical was one of these moments.

Understand, I have almost died in a roll over car accident, I have been married only once, I have given birth to four children; I do not classify this night lightly.

The evening began having dinner with two people who have deepened in value through the previous year or so and who I’ve come to rely on and love. They have supported me in my journey and maintained their interest through the challenges I’ve faced trying to find myself and in shedding my dogmatic skin.

While we ate dinner, I ended up sharing some cultural stories, one of which had to do with the day I said ‘fuck’ for the first time; I was 45 years old.

(maybe I’ll post that story later, as language is interesting to me, and all culture has language)

We laughed and enjoyed the food and made our way to the theatre.

I should say that I had been prepping for this experience for some time. I had been exposed to and enjoyed other film and media by the creators of BOM musical.

I had been overjoyed at Orgasmo (I was seriously, Lisa).

I had watched a fair amount of South Park, including the Mormon episode, and was convinced that Matt and Trey were the Shakespeares of our time.

(Shakespeare critiqued his society and did it in the language of the masses)

But no amount of prelim could prepare me for the unraveling that was to occur.

The first thing I encountered as we approached the theatre were the real Mormon missionaries handing out Book of Mormons and offering to tell, “The real story of the Book of Mormon.”

This made me laugh as well as feel some kind of transferred shame as my oldest son had served a mission, and the silliness of the juxtaposition was not lost on me.

Little did I know how deep that shame would go.

The musical is outlandish and poignant.

That is an incredible combination.

The provocative, set against the innocent ignorance and pitiful reality, creates a mirror with the clarity of 4K.

Looking at the sharp edges of my life performed on stage, well…

I wept through the whole thing.

It was such a cutting revelation;

the places in my psyche held in the dense ideological fabric shredded.

I sat sobbing, fibers ripped from the lungs of my identity,

gulping fresh outside air and asking myself,

“How did they know?”

I really can’t do a play by play, there’s too much.

But there are two pieces that are important to recognize as they pulled out so many threads embedded deeper than I knew.

Two songs: Turn it Off, and I Believe.

The Turn it Off scene is set with the group of young Mormon male missionaries talking about their struggle and failure preaching the gospel in Africa. The lead in to the song is that any negative thoughts are not valuable or valid and should be simply “turned off.”

Here is a portion of the lyrics:

I got a feeling

That you could be feeling

A whole lot better then you feel today

You say you got a problem

Well that's no problem

It's super easy not to feel that way

When you start to get confused

Because of thoughts in your head

Don't feel those feelings

Hold them in instead

Turn it off, like a light switch

Just go click

It's a cool little Mormon trick

We do it all the time

When you're feeling certain feels

That just don't feel right

Treat those pesky feelings like a reading light

And turn 'em off

Like a light switch, just go "bap"

Really, what’s so hard about that?

Turn it off

Turn it off

I hunkered in my balcony seat, clinging to the arm of the dear man beside me, shook at the cultural distillation of one of over sixteen million people’s core perspectives, myself included. That’s the current Mormon membership worldwide. But, that may not totally track as many are converts because of the barrage of missionary work the Church puts forth and as such may not have this perspective.

Narrowing it down, I’ll just say, four and a half million people in the western states Mormon corridor where settlements were directed in the early days of the church (Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, California, Colorado, and Montana). Here is where the culture of the Church is the strongest and so these people would be impacted by the specific concept of turning off your feelings. (to say nothing of the generations past)

This story is about me, but I wanted to give you some scope.

As I listened to the words of that song my emotional life flashed before my eyes.

That life was dark, because it was all kept inside.

What I heard and saw in my mind were the phrases and faces holding me to task and forcing my hand to the lightswitch.

Early memories of my father refusing to speak to me if I were crying.

Berating me and sending me from the room if I exhibited any emotion of any kind besides happiness.

Sitting in my bedroom or going on long walks as a teenager and talking to myself out loud, trying to sift through the feelings I wasn’t permitted to voice.

Then my mother eavesdropping at my bedroom door and confronting me with the implication that I was ‘crazy’ if I talked to myself and explaining for the hundredth time that I should simply talk to God; pray and hand my troubles over to Him.

That I should seek the blistering sunny side of every trouble, doubt, or powerful emotion because “Heavenly Father only gives us what He knows we can handle” and “Everything happens for a reason, we just have to have faith until the reason reveals itself”.

Remembering countless moments in church when any voice of dissention was silenced by similar instruction and an added challenge of repentance because, “If you are having negative feelings you must not be living righteously and need to fix that problem in order to be happy again.”

It seemed almost as if emotion had been attached to sin all my life.

There is a reason Mormons have the stereotype of being happy, nice people.

It is because they must learn to “turn off” every other emotion, impulse, or desire.

Everything else must be tempered, internalized, or fought against; anger, confusion, sadness, depression, lust, anxiety, and fear--to name a few.

One of my challenges and gifts is that I’m an empath.

I feel other’s emotions, and emote powerfully as well.

I’m a two way conduit of emotion.

Can you then imagine the pain, the shame, the harrowing binding this very Mormon concept caused me?

Add to the previous childhood examples my narcissistic husband’s constant critique of my emotional persona and his efforts to condition the “turn it off” in me.

He shushed me thousands of times.

He told me I was irrational and too much constantly.

His said there was something broken inside me way before he broke me himself.

And so I wrote all my feelings into poetry journals and cried myself to sleep thousands of times lying right next to him.

All these things and more exploded in my chest and raced through my mind as I listened and watched fictional Mormon boys sing about turning off their feelings about abuse, death, and rejection. An upbeat song about stamping out your very self, because the church told you it was wrong.

How did they get it so right?

How did they turn this thing that most outside people don’t understand into a catchy Broadway tune that tore my heart’s blindfold to pieces?

I reeled in my seat through the short remaining moments after Turn it Off until intermission. With the blindfold off I watched the ridiculousness of my church and culture pointed out through song and dance with satirical exactness.

But more than that, I felt the weight of millions of people who hadn’t been able to process or share their feelings.

And we had been taught that damaging practice in the name of God!

I didn’t move through the intermission.

I just cried and shook my head and was held and listened to as I tried to explain my distress.

One of the things I remember saying was, “But I believed. I really believed all of it.”

And I had.

I had deeply believed with all my heart.

I had proclaimed that testimony to others.

I had supported my son in the arrogant practice of Mormon missionary work; spreading the message that we know better than you and our truth supersedes your truth.

We had been wrong.

I had been so very wrong.

The first song out of the gate after intermission that hit me was, you guessed it, I Believe.

Being in the middle of that piece of my processing, ashamed and astonished and sorrowful at having believed it all, then being hit with a song that demonstrated both the deep devotion of Mormon belief AND the blindness of that kind of belief… How did you know Matt and Trey? How?

The music is perfect.

The refrain I BELIEVE is touching--sung out strong, the notes held.

The words are simple and use the exact phraseology that Mormons say to each other and themselves.

Here’s just a piece:

I believe that the Lord God created the universe

I believe that he sent his only son to die for my sins

And I believe that ancient Jews built boats and sailed to America

I am a Mormon

And a Mormon just believes

You cannot just believe part-way, you have to believe in it all

My problem was doubting the Lord's will, instead of standing tall

I can't allow myself to have any doubt, it's time to set my worries free

Time to show the world what Elder Price is about, and share the power inside of me

Unthreaded, the remnants of my belief were washed away by music and performance.

I was unbaptized.

The second half of the musical is everything that South Park is, offensive and wickedly funny and I could almost hear Kyle say, “You know, I learned something today…” when the show came to an end.

I wanted to say it too.

Yes Kyle, I learned something today.

I learned so many things.

And I unlearned some things as well, or I started to at least.

Satire is a mirrored sword that shows us the truth we are afraid to see as it cuts the fallacy away. That is why Mormons often walk out of The Book of Mormon musical.

Not because it is offensive, but because it shows them the truth behind the carefully constructed myth.

And believe me, that is not an easy thing to see.

It makes you want to run.

I felt that urge many times during the show.

Luckily, I had stopped running from the truth by then.

I stayed till the end.

And was transformed by it.

I walked out of that theatre stipped bare.

Able to move, able to see, able to feel,

able to better understand the unhealthy deception that had kept me bound.

I metaphorically hobbled away,

my spiritual feet unbound and ready for the next step.

If you are Mormon, or have ever been Mormon,

Please

Please

Please, I beg you,

Go experience the genius that is The Book of Mormon musical.

And turn on the light.

-Angela

[wrldwrn-blog]

I'm curious-- Could you expand on how the phrase "It belongs in a museum" was racist? As I under stood it, Indiana wanted the stolen artifact to be where people could see and learn from it, while the guys trying to steal it were trying to exploit it, sell it, profit from it. Have I misunderstood something?

hello! ok, so maybe racist wasn’t necessarily the right term for that specific phrase, but i stand by my point that it’s a nasty phrase regardless. the idea that anything “belongs” in a museum is actually wildly eurocentric bc it implies that native/minority artifacts, people and culture exist for us to study, which is…..not rlly true at all.

anyways, this is kinda long, so if you don’t want to read my lowkey sleep deprived and rambly answer, i can probably just sum it up with a quote or two:

“The problem is that these films rarely spend any time considering the actual cultures from which artifacts are stolen. Ind.iana Jon.es is supposedly a professor, but we almost never see him reading, writing, or speaking to the living descendants of the communities he supposedly studies. Artifacts that have cultural and spiritual value are described as either mysteries or priceless treasures: they exist to be solved or sold, instead of preserved as the tangible heritage of past generations.“

“Many of the world’s richest and most renowned museums are filled with artifacts seized during colonial conquest. The wealth of Europe and North America came, in part, from looted treasure — not only gold and diamonds, but also the human beings who were turned into commodities by the atrocities of slavery.”

“Although the character of Indi.ana Jon.es arguably raised the profile of archaeology as a whole, and L.ara C.roft could inspire young women to go into the field, both figures have little regard for the cultures whose histories they collect. ‘It still promotes a problematic smash-and-grab mentality to irreplaceable artifacts and lives.’“

  x

this was actually a big thing back during that time period, and the mindset still kind of exists today  –– the concept that taking things away from people and studying them is somehow more important than the autonomy of a group. it is a wildly western (read: European/North American/white) mindset, that was mainly used against non-Western people to show that they don’t necessarily know what’s best for them and therefore have no place handling their own material goods. this is an actual archaeological thought process of the time, so like….while archaeologists hopefully don’t do “archaeology” the way ij does it anymore, it was still a prevalent thought process at the time, and probably is for some people today. basically, ij is a highly dramatized version of what archaeologists have done to people for the past few centuries, but the end result is kinda the same.

if he went to the people from which those artifacts were taken and was like ‘hey can i have this so that i can study it’ and they were like ‘yeah sure we don’t want it’, then that’s one thing, but a lot of early anthropology was based in the idea that non-white people weren’t really capable of handling their own stuff. what white people do with that information is usually take it and go ‘oh wow look at how backwards/ancient these primitive people are compared to us!’,  which is also…super racist.

you also have to understand that archaeology, by nature, is a really destructive process because once you take a site apart, it can’t be put back together. this can also be said for the places in which you do archaeology, because if you just walk in and start taking stuff, you’ve probably just fucked up relations with those people, and say goodbye to ever being able to get better data bc you’ve stolen stuff and now they hate you. anthropology highkey depends on having good relationships with the people that you’re studying, bc you’re not going to get good data if you don’t communicate and cooperate with those people.

because of that, it can also be a super politically/socially controversial process, and any good archaeologist should take great care to work with the people from that area, and to take really good notes and show a lot of care in how they conduct their research and excavations. what indiana does is like….go in, take some stuff, destroy some more stuff, and then pretend like he is somehow better than the people who are trying to make a profit off of those artifacts. he might be “better” in a sense because artifacts aren’t on the black market, but the museum is still making a profit off of those artifacts, and i highly doubt that any of those profits are going back to the communities from where those artifacts came. either way, those artifacts are being stolen, and the people really had no say in the matter. like yes, learning about other cultures is a good thing, but we don’t need to be walking all over hundreds to thousands of years worth of culture and tradition in order to do so.

basically the best way i can kinda explain it is like….imagine you live in a house. your parents lived in that house, your grandparents and their parents, and their parents and a whole bunch of your ancestors lived in that house. it’s probably got a lot of sentimental value to you, and you have certain stories and objects that mean a lot to you because of the history you have in that house. and then all of a sudden, some random white people come barging in and take a bunch of your stuff out of your house, and you’re not really being consulted on it because they don’t think you know best when it comes to your stuff, or how to take care of your stuff. if one guy says to you that he’s taking it so that people hundreds and thousands of miles away can “study” you (which is also a super dated concept, as most anthropologists today believe that you need to go participate in a society in order to study the society), that probably won’t make you feel any better bc no matter what he says (even if he’s taking your stuff so that other people don’t also…take your stuff), he’s still like…stealing your stuff, with no apparent plans to bring it back?

anyways, i know this is super rambly and it’s probably a wild stream of consciousness so i’m sorry if it makes zero sense, but also here’s some articles that probably put it a little better than i could: x x x

[forsetti]

On Defending Misogyny: Ross Douthat Edition

Ross Douthat’s latest nonsense in the New York Times is quite the pile of crap, even when compared to other piles of crap written by Douthat.  Here is my take on the article (Douthat’s article in bold.) One lesson to be drawn from recent Western history might be this: Sometimes the extremists and radicals and weirdos see the world more clearly than the respectable and moderate and sane. All kinds of phenomena, starting as far back as the Iraq War and the crisis of the euro but accelerating in the age of populism, have made more sense in the light of analysis by reactionaries and radicals than as portrayed in the organs of establishment opinion. Not one single person with an ounce of credibility thinks that extremists and radicals and weirdos see the world clearly because SEEING THE WORLD CLEARLY IS ANTITHETICAL TO BEING AN EXTREMISTS, RADICAL, OR WEIRDO.  The ONLY way Douthat's statement makes any sense is if he thinks people with enough common sense to know invading Iraq on bogus reasons with zero plan on what to do after the initial invasion was a fucking horrible idea, were extremist, radical, weirdo.

This is part of why there’s been so much recent agitation over universities and op-ed pages and other forums for debate. There’s a general understanding that the ideological mainstream isn’t adequate to the moment, but nobody can decide whether that means we need purges or pluralism, a spirit of curiosity and conversation or a furious war against whichever side you think is evil.

For those more curious than martial, one useful path through this thicket is to look at areas where extremists and eccentrics from very different worlds are talking about the same subject. Such overlap is no guarantee of wisdom, but it’s often a sign that there’s something interesting going on.

A classic Douthat move-lay out a completely bogus claim right out of the block and then construct a whole argument on top of it.

Which brings me to the sex robots. People having opinions about the Iraq war and the European Union logically leads us to sex robots because of course it fucking does.

Well, actually, first it brings me to the case of Robin Hanson, a George Mason economist, libertarian and noted brilliant weirdo. Commenting on the recent terrorist violence in Toronto, in which a self-identified “incel” — that is, involuntary celibate — man sought retribution against women and society for denying him the fornication he felt that he deserved, Hanson offered this provocation: If we are concerned about the just distribution of property and money, why do we assume that the desire for some sort of sexual redistribution is inherently ridiculous?

If you use “libertarian,” you don't get to follow it up with “brilliant.” Never....fucking ever.  As crazy as that juxtaposition of terms is the casual acceptance by Douthat of what “incel” means is even more disturbing.  The idea that women in society have to have sex with men is repulsive on every level.  That someone gives voice to this notion and give it its own term is fucked up beyond reason. Sorry men, women are not here for you to have sex with.  Here's a thought, if men want to have sex with women, then maybe, just maybe, they should behave in ways that women deem appropriate enough to where they will give up their bodies willingly to them.  Anything short of this is misogyny at the least and rape a the most. After all, he wrote, “one might plausibly argue that those with much less access to sex suffer to a similar degree as those with low income, and might similarly hope to gain from organizing around this identity, to lobby for redistribution along this axis and to at least implicitly threaten violence if their demands are not met.” Let me de-fuckify this statement because it is a Ceasar's Word Salad of nonsense.  “Men who don't get as much sex as they want, think they deserve, need to band together to find ways, even through violence, to get women to fuck them against their wills.”

This argument was not well received by people closer to the mainstream than Professor Hanson, to put it mildly. A representative response from Slate’s Jordan Weissmann, “Is Robin Hanson the Creepiest Economist in America?”, cited the post along with some previous creepy forays to dismiss Hanson as a misogynist weirdo not that far removed from the franker misogyny of toxic online males.

I can't understand why the “mainstream” would find the unionization of violent, horny men hell-bent on making women their sexual subjects offensive.  But, see what Douthat has done.  He has already constructed his argument where the mainstream is the ones who don't “see the world clearly.”  Since the mainstream has been pigeon-holed as not seeing reality for what it really is, then it logically follows for Douthat that their view cannot be correct.

But Hanson’s post made me immediately think of a recent essay in The London Review of Books by Amia Srinivasan, “Does Anyone Have the Right To Sex?” Srinivasan, an Oxford philosophy professor, covered similar ground (starting with an earlier “incel” killer) but expanded the argument well beyond the realm of male chauvinists to consider groups with whom The London Review’s left-leaning and feminist readers would have more natural sympathy — the overweight and disabled, minority groups treated as unattractive by the majority, trans women unable to find partners and other victims, in her narrative, of a society that still makes us prisoners of patriarchal and also racist-sexist-homophobic rules of sexual desire.

There is a lot to unpack here.  First, Douthat uses a philosopher, in order to bolster the credibility of his argument.  As someone with two degrees in philosophy, I can tell you that there are a lot of batshit crazy people with philosophy degrees who throw out outlandish arguments for no other reason than to be controversial and get their shit published in order to placate the Publish or Perish Gods. Second, having sympathy for how a culture views and treats groups outside the accepted norms like “overweight,” “trans,” “disabled,”... who have a difficult time having sex for a host of reasons is, to quote Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, “...ain't the same fucking ballpark. It ain't the same league. It ain't even the same fucking sport.” Third, Douthat, a devout Catholic who has carried water for the patriarchy, for misogynists, for homophobes...for years now doesn't get to pretend he is worried about the very structure he helped build.

Srinivasan ultimately answered her title question in the negative: “There is no entitlement to sex, and everyone is entitled to want what they want.” But her negative answer was a qualified one. While “no one has a right to be desired,” at the same time “who is desired and who isn’t is a political question,” which left-wing and feminist politics might help society answer differently someday. This wouldn’t instantiate a formal right to sex, exactly, but if the new order worked as its revolutionary architects intended, sex would be more justly distributed than it is today.

Not only did Douthat use a philosopher to bolster his argument, he completely misused their words in order to do so.  Notice how he uses Srinivasan's comment, “who is desired and who isn't is a political question,” and dovetails his own comment “which left-wing and feminist politics might help society answer differently someday,” as if they were one and the same statement.  Every culture has their own ideas of what is/isn't sexually desirable.  It has nothing to do with “left-wing” or “feminist” politics.  Some cultures sexually value heavier companions, those with smaller feet, those with longer necks, those with fairer skin...  We can argue the rationality of all of these but none of them are based on leftist or feminist beliefs.  In fact, left-leaning and feminists would argue the fuck against these arbitrary sexual values.

A number of the critics I saw engaging with Srinivasan’s essay tended to respond the way a normal center-left writer like Weissmann engaged with Hanson’s thought experiment — by commenting on its weirdness or ideological extremity rather than engaging fully with its substance. But to me, reading Hanson and Srinivasan together offers a good case study in how intellectual eccentrics — like socialists and populists in politics — can surface issues and problems that lurk beneath the surface of more mainstream debates.

By this I mean that as offensive or utopian the redistribution of sex might sound, the idea is entirely responsive to the logic of late-modern sexual life, and its pursuit would be entirely characteristic of a recurring pattern in liberal societies.

Shorter Douthat: “Smart people reacting honestly to the arguments of a libertarian nut job don't know what the fuck they are doing but I, a dyed-in-the-wool social conservative does because of some magical reason that is never explained.”  If you think placating angry, resentful, horny men is the way to utopia, I'm pretty sure you are either stupid as fuck and/or just about the most intellectually dishonest person I've ever read.

First, because like other forms of neoliberal deregulation the sexual revolution created new winners and losers, new hierarchies to replace the old ones, privileging the beautiful and rich and socially adept in new ways and relegating others to new forms of loneliness and frustration. Douthat's use of “neoliberal” was done on purpose and as meaningless as the term itself.  What Douthat really means by this statement is, “In the past, men could do whatever the fuck they wanted to women, whenever they wanted and women had to take it because that is the fucking way it was.  Now men can't do this and they are having a sad about it so we need to blame the women and those who support them instead of the fuck wad misogynists who were morally wrong 50, 100, 200... years ago for their behaviors.”

Second, because in this new landscape, and amid other economic and technological transformations, the sexes seem to be struggling generally to relate to one another, with social and political chasms opening between them and not only marriage and family but also sexual activity itself in recent decline.

“The sexes seem to be struggling generally to relate to one another, with social and political chasms opening up between them.”  Holy Both-Fucking-Siderism!  NO!!!  The “sexes” are not having a problem.  MEN caught up in an archaic belief system are having a problem-a big fucking problem.  Douthat doesn't get to lay the responsibility and consequences of men not adapting to women's rights on the doorstep of women.

Third, because the culture’s dominant message about sex is still essentially Hefnerian, despite certain revisions attempted by feminists since the heyday of the Playboy philosophy — a message that frequency and variety in sexual experience is as close to a summum bonum as the human condition has to offer, that the greatest possible diversity in sexual desires and tastes and identities should be not only accepted but cultivated, and that virginity and celibacy are at best strange and at worst pitiable states. And this master narrative, inevitably, makes both the new inequalities and the decline of actual relationships that much more difficult to bear …which in turn encourages people, as ever under modernity, to place their hope for escape from the costs of one revolution in a further one yet to come, be it political, social or technological, which will supply if not the promised utopia at least some form of redress for the many people that progress has obviously left behind.

There is an alternative, conservative response, of course — namely, that our widespread isolation and unhappiness and sterility might be dealt with by reviving or adapting older ideas about the virtues of monogamy and chastity and permanence and the special respect owed to the celibate.

So let me get this straight, the problem with sex in America is because of feminists and leftists but, “ the culture’s dominant message about sex is still essentially Hefnerian.”?  I've never known a single feminist or leftist who was not only okay with the views and attitudes about sex espoused by Hugh Hefner but who used them as the basis of their sexual ethics.   In fact, it has been the direct opposite.   Douthat's view of feminism and left-leaning is comical and beyond conservative stereotyping.  

But this is not the natural response for a society like ours. Instead we tend to look for fixes that seem to build on previous revolutions, rather than reverse them.

In the case of sexual liberation and its discontents, that’s unlikely to mean the kind of thoroughgoingly utopian reimagining of sexual desire that writers like Srinivasan think we should aspire toward, or anything quite so formal as the pro-redistribution political lobby of Hanson’s thought experiment.

By defacto argument, the sexual revolution was bad so men trying to come to terms with how to really treat women as equals would be a misguided approach to the problem.  We need to go back in time to when women had limited rights and almost none with regard to their bodies, their sexuality, and start from there in order to build a more perfect union where men get to get laid when they want by whomever they want.

But I expect the logic of commerce and technology will be consciously harnessed, as already in pornography, to address the unhappiness of incels, be they angry and dangerous or simply depressed and despairing. The left’s increasing zeal to transform prostitution into legalized and regulated “sex work” will have this end implicitly in mind, the libertarian (and general male) fascination with virtual-reality porn and sex robotswill increase as those technologies improve — and at a certain point, without anyone formally debating the idea of a right to sex, right-thinking people will simply come to agree that some such right exists, and that it makes sense to look to some combination of changed laws, new technologies and evolved mores to fulfill it.

Whether sex workers and sex robots can actually deliver real fulfillment is another matter. But that they will eventually be asked to do it, in service to a redistributive goal that for now still seems creepy or misogynist or radical, feels pretty much inevitable.

So, for Douthat, the need to address and placate incels is important but we shouldn't do it with legalizing prostitution or other means.  What Douthat is really saying is, “If men cannot dominate and be in control of women, then any sexual solution won't be acceptable.  Not legalized prostitution. Not sex robots.  Nothing short of actual, real women being subservient to men will do.”

At no point in this entire article by Douthat are men held responsible for their beliefs, for their actions.  NOT ONE SINGLE FUCKING TIME! “Feminists” and “left-leaning” people are the real reason behind backward thinking, immoral. egotistical men for behaving the way they do towards women. GTFOH!

[charlie-bradcherry]

MARK PELLEGRINO INTERVIEW: LUCIFER IN S13

Here is the interview or ‘information post’ with Mark Pellegrino that I promised to show you guys because it is pretty interesting to read. I copied and pasted it in this post because Tumblr format is a lot more enjoyable to read for most, and I edited it a bit so it’s more pleasant for the eyes. If you wanna read it on the site, click here.

I bolded the lines that I think are really worth thinking about, that gives us a little bit of insight on Lucifer and spoilers for the upcoming episodes!

Question 1: There’s been a lot of talk in the fandom about an article that you did – I don’t remember who it was with – but it had that quote that you said in this last episode [The Rising Son] about Lucifer being smart and not totally evil. There’s been a lot of talk about Sam’s experience with Lucifer and how badly he was tortured; when Sam and Lucifer do finally meet again in this season, is Sam still going to be so fearful of Lucifer? What are your thoughts on that whole situation?

I imagine that Sam is going to have some PTSD. You don’t spend time in the cage and come out of that experience completely whole. I think he will have some residual feelings about the old Lucifer. The dynamics in the universe have shifted, or are going to shift to a degree that people’s feelings about each other don’t matter so much. When the world was faced with fascism, America and the Soviet Union – sworn enemies ideologically – became allies. So weird things happen when universes shift.

Question 2: (The Interviewer) Lots of people say that they don’t want to see Lucifer’s redemption, if Lucifer has a redemption arc. I said, if we don’t see Lucifer as a fully formed, well, angel in this case, he becomes just a one-dimensional foil for Sam and Dean, and honestly, that’s just boring. As the actor that plays Lucifer, I’m assuming that you prefer the roles where you have more than just a one-dimensional character to play.

I do. You can’t act what isn’t there, but I always try to add different dimensions to a character, that I don’t necessarily see on the page. Redemption of a character like Lucifer – I’m not even sure what it means. Just think about it. Just because I see the mythology of Lucifer in our culture as one massive paradox, you know what I mean? On the one hand, there are these absolutely noble characters that he possesses, and if we saw them in a human being, we would say, “This man is a king of virtue.” His stubbornness, resilience, his insurmountable will and his sense of justice … and the thing that he’s probably put down for most, his sense of pride.

To me, these are virtues. If I saw them in another person, instead of pride as in arrogance but pride as in a sense of justice and a feeling for your own ability to deal with the universe … it’s a different sensibility toward pride than the one that Western culture gives you.

On the one hand, I seem him as the first rebel against authority; whose own personal characteristics drove him to say no. The first to say no. I see him as the being that introduced humanity to its moral sense. The paradox in all of this is that all of these characteristics are seen as sins in a religious world. Instead of rebellion, conformity and obedience are seen as virtues. Instead of an independent mind, and a moral sense, submission is seen as a virtue. Humility instead of pride, so somehow our society adopted – they say whoever wins the war dictates the history. Lucifer lost the war, so the opposition made the history and turned values upside down.

So the guy who actually thinks he’s a figure of virtue, instead of vice, I don’t know what kind of arc that would be … to acknowledge the other side is right and to change from what he is, would mean embracing the opposite of what he stands for. I don’t want that to happen, but I do want healing to happen. I think that the bad parts of Lucifer’s character were bred from – I don’t think they are nature, I think they’re nurture, and this is an argument that was started by Sam. They’re just saying Lucifer is just inheritably bad, whereas Sam wants to apply a different kind of ethics to Jack, but I don’t think Lucifer is inheritably bad … I think his dad even said that. I think isolation from love and alienation from an entire universe, and being painted as the villain from time immemorial, can sour a person.

Just in the five days that I was painted as worse than the devil himself in the eyes of social media were annoying as fucking hell! I can’t imagine going through it for a fucking eternity. And not being pissed off at everybody.

So if you have a sense of pride and dignity, when you’re being attacked like that, it’s going to inspire a vast reprisal. I think Lucifer’s desire for revenge – I used to think that was what motivated him but it seems a little different. I don’t remember if it’s already been filmed or if it’s happening in the future, but Lucifer has a very specific take on creation and on his father. And it’s not what you think. It’s actually kind of interesting. You’re going to see it in a few episodes. (!!!)

Question 3: In this last episode, one of my favourite lines that Lucifer said something like, “You have no idea what I care about.” So what does Luci care about?

I love that line, especially now, because of all the flack and pain that a certain group of people put me through. I see that most of the battles that we fight are fought against straw men. We forget that underneath that straw man we’re hacking to death there is a human being, and the real thing. That’s what I think I meant to her. She knows what she thinks I care about; she’s got her ideas of me. But she doesn’t know me. And I’m not going to tell you what Lucifer cares about; I think it would be revealing spoilers.

That’s a great maxim that we should carry into life, don’t you think? You don’t know me, so stop acting like you do.

Question 4: Do you think there was any correlation between that first opening scene with Lucifer and Mary, in this last episode where Mary’s like you’re going to kill me, and Lucifer’s like no, I’m not, and then at the end when Michael basically has Lucifer by the throat and Michael’s like I need you, I’m going to let you live – do you think there are any correlations between those two situations?

Oh yeah. I think that’s good writing, that’s power reversal right there, and Lucifer being put in Mary’s spot. Lucifer even said something about it in another episode. He’s definitely low man on the totem pole in this universe. What was so funny that he’s the low man on the totem pole in the narrative, which he keeps confronting, “What? This fucking place sucks!” Every time that he’s confronted with the narrative that Lucifer is dead, he’s actually confronted with the fact that he’s not top dog in that world. That’s pretty castrating.

One of the beautiful things that I love about Lucifer is his indomitable will. I don’t care where you find him, he’s still going to go, “Fuck ya. You’re not going to get me. You can tear me apart above the skies of Abilene, like you did to the alternate universe Lucifer, but my middle finger will still be flipping you off as I’m falling down to the ground.” You’ll see that too. You’ll see that Lucifer carries himself with his typical sassy, irreverent demeanor, no matter what horrible situation he finds himself in.

That’s where Lucifer is very different from me. I’m oversensitive, and very affected by the things that people say and do to me … I may not seem that way because you see me probably battling people all the time … but I’m sensitive to the things that they say, and I feel like I don’t want to challenge people to harm me. Lucifer would challenge people to harm him. He pushes the limit all the way to the end and says, “Let’s see how good you are, let’s see how strong you are. Let’s see if your will matches against mine.”

Question 5: At the end of the premiere episode, which really had me bawling – the scene where Sam and Dean and Jack are saying goodbye to Cas, Kelly Kline and Crowley … I don’t know how much you want to talk about Crowley’s demise … but because Crowley has been Lucifer’s nemesis for so long, do you think he actually maybe misses him?

I hope you noticed that when Crowley showed up in the alternate universe, before he was sacrificed, Lucifer did something when he noticed it was Crowley. He kind of wriggled around on the ground and said, “Crowley!” That was sort of a spontaneous thing that happened in the moment … I think Lucifer’s character being what it is … he admires men and women without limits. He admires cleverness and intelligence and will. Crowley demonstrated the ability to outsmart him. He liked it … he liked the challenge … the challenge now of fighting this formidable being … like any great boxer is going to be defined by his opposition. Ali wasn’t Ali until he met Foreman and Frazier. And that’s what made him a champion.

The same with Lucifer … I think he would see things in the terms of bring me your biggest challenge and I’ll meet it. I think he would miss Crowley to be honest. Especially with this new guy Asmodeus coming up. That guy’s a real piece of work. I think he’s a lot worse and a lot more powerful than Crowley. Crowley was sort of an ambitious CEO … sort of a ruthless CEO, there was something about his intelligence that I admire. I don’t think that’s the same with Asmodeus, he’s a tyrant.

So in answer to that, I think yes, I think Lucifer would miss Crowley.

Question 6: The season premiere really hit me, at the end when Sam is talking to Jack and explaining how you say goodbye to someone who has passed. Sam’s line – and Jared’s delivery of that line – was exactly what I needed to hear at exactly the right time. And that’s one of the reasons why I love Supernatural … it seems to have the timing of picking up on stuff that is the perfect timing for a lot of things. I know that’s the way it is for a lot of people as well.

I thought that was an interesting for Sam to say as well. I thought it was a great summation of the process of understanding death for the living. Here’s what I love about Supernatural – we all know that the story is about family … but it’s about orphans. It’s about people who’ve had to become their own guide in a crazy universe, and only had each other to rely on. That’s pretty powerful … so many of us come from broken homes, where we miss one parent or there are other abusive family relationships … if you come to the world fractured and you have to survive by your own wits. Being in a show like this, even as fantastical as it is … it’s possible to defy even a whole universe and be right. To be treated like they were, but still find love and loyalty … the family don’t end in blood thing is all about that. I think that’s why so many people find solidarity in the show itself.

Any opinions on this interview?

[bxngtan-fanfics]

On the whole “English Album business” (REPOST from main blog)

I’ve seen some people who think that it’s not a big deal that BTS are being bombarded with English Album requests. I’m here to clear up exactly why people should stop and why it’s disrespectful and entitled to expect it. Read to the end, and PLEASE reblog!!!

Language Barrier

First off, BTS are Korean. We all know this. Their first language is Korean and Korean and English are not similar languages and trying to learn English as a second language is very hard. My mother works with ESL kids, and even at a young age, they struggle with such complex and abstract grammar rules. Adults have less ability to learn languages like kids, so automatically BTS will have an even harder time learning English. While RM is fluent, he cannot, and should not have to carry the weight of the entire team. BTS has already worked their asses off to give us the English they do speak. Appreciate their hard work. Realize that trying to make an entire English album would be difficult, unfair to BTS’s work ethic and force them to translate lyrics that were meant to be Korean. This means many of BTS’s beautiful lyrics would be lost in translation, and it would sound much more dumbed down and might even change the entire feel and meaning of the songs. That would ruin so much of an album that what point is there anymore? Making BTS sound Western is to lose a huge part of their sound and style.

Their Korean Pride

BTS love their country. They love Korea and they are so proud to be Korean. Jimin makes jokes that he was born in Busan first, lording it over Jungkook playfully. Suga will literally never shut up about being a D-boy, and that he’s from Daegu. BTS was so proud of their cities they made a song about it - Ma City. They didnt even care when it got banned for the song being what it was. If they could tell the world how much they loved their town, they didn’t care. Also, one of my favorite BTS songs is Satoori Rap. This song was the first idol song to feature Satoori (or certain Korean dialects) as it’s main point. Most idols have to lose their Satoori when they move to Seoul or they are made fun of or something of the like. The song features the complexities of different Korean dialects and they rap about how sometimes it’s so different the Satoori’s can sound like different languages. Obviously, they put so much pride into where they come from, and they don’t want that to change. Suga has vehemently denied English album propositions before, and a lot of the time in America he doesn’t speak much or just speaks in Korean. He 100% can speak some English, but he doesn’t want to. He could give broken English answers but he knows he sounds better in Korean. He doesn’t want the message he cares about to be lost to translation. He’s Korean, and he loves it. They all do. They smile so wide and are so happy when international ARMY’s learn some Korean, know the fanchants, or sing along to Korean lyrics. Why take that joy away from them? They love when other people learn to love Korea through them. Don’t make them give that up. Asking them to make an album in English is like asking them to give up so much of their pride in their culture. That’s asking them to turn away from a place and a country they love with all their hearts. Essentially, trying to make BTS more westernized is… Well… Kinda trying to white-wash them and make them pretend they’re western when they aren’t. And that’s wrong.

It’s Unfair

English may be a very widespread language. So is Chinese and Spanish. Western artists are not forced or pushed into learning another language because they are popular in that country, much less pressured into making an album in a different language. Why on Earth would you expect BTS to do it? Don’t make them set this precedent for Kpop in the Western world. They are pioneers right now, and what they do shape American opinions on Kpop. If another K-artist makes it big in America, they will probably have to follow similar steps to BTS. No Korean artist should be forced to learn English or write English songs unless they want to.

It’s Entitled to Think You Deserve it

You don’t. No one does. BTS are their own people and they give so much to ARMY no matter what. You may think an English album would be connecting with them better, but you’re wrong. Korean fans won’t understand the songs. How will the album fare in their home country? An English album could fucking flop and it’s just not worth it. If you want to know what they’re saying so bad, look up lyric translations that fansites work their butts off to give you, assholes.

You Love The Way Korean Culture Has Shaped Them

Don’t deny it. They’re respectful, sweet, keep their noses clean and never step too far out of line. Korean culture and the Kpop industry is what made them that way. If they were Western, they’d most likely be much more closed off, have less of a bond with their fans. They wouldn’t dance or make covers for you. They wouldn’t make Bangtan bombs or half of the events they do in Korea. They wouldn’t rush to make so many songs and wouldn’t worry about taking a while to come back. Their music videos would be vastly different. Their songs and image would most likely be sexualized worse than it is now. Admit it. You love the way Korean culture and Kpop has shaped them. You can’t have both. You can have a Western artist or a Korean one. Asking BTS to adhere to your American standards and still take what you like about Korean culture with them is appropriating their culture and that’s not okay. BTS may not be a racial minority in Korea, but the U.S. they are, and racism has already reared it’s ugly head on them. Don’t add fuel to the fire.

They Already Accommodate For You

BTS already incorporates English into their songs. If you’ve been a fan for as long as I have, then you noticed that the English in their albums increased the moment they realized how many international fans they actually had. They want you to appreciate that. They want you to hear the English they do put in and know they thought of you. They love international fans, and they try so hard for you. They just try in ways that lets them keep their central identity.

You’re Ignoring What BTS Taught You

BTS have repeatedly said that music is a universal language. Ive heard so many ARMY complain that people don’t understand that not English language music is just as good as English music. How does it look if we demand English music from them now? How does that reflect us as a fandom, us as fans? We seem hypocritical as fuck, and that’s not what we want. BTS taught us that all music can speak to us, no matter the language it’s in. Remember what those seven wonderful young men taught you.

Before anyone comes for me, know I am an American. I like Western Artists. I don’t know Korean, and I only know English. But that doesn’t mean everything I said wasn’t true. If you’re American like me, understand that asking for an English album makes you sound horrible to other ARMY’s. Realize how ignorant and selfish you make Americans sound when you say that stuff. Please. Our reputation already sucks.

Add on if you can, send me asks if you want to ask questions or want me to explain more. Spread this. Please. Reblog this so every ARMY can see it. They need to know why asking for English albums are wrong, not just the fact that it is. Make this known that true fans of BTS only want them to do want they want, not what a society pushes them to do.

BTS deserve their own creative freedom.

[sarahcoomes]

My life in Blog: 1

LIfe from the westside ( West side of LA not London…)

8 am, it’s October 23rd.  I wake up with fireworks - sadly, not going on in my knickers… but in my garden outside. I didn’t know they were fireworks at first.  I thought maybe it was something exploding… it was so flipping loud!

The dogs are going bonkers… all four of them Bobo, Mrs Moo, and my two fosters: Chloe and Sadie. No point in trying to peel them off the ceiling while the noise is still ricocheting around my house..  So, I leap out of bed and run outside.

Please note that I would NEVER win a spelling Bee.  I had to look up how to spell Ricochet and the wonders of the internet!  Not only did it spell it for me, but it also gave me a man!

Everyone:  meet Ricochet:  

Apparently he’s a professional wrestler. Anyhow - I digress.  

I fly through the garden to the back gate and look up and see smoke rising from the alley.  Christ, that’s all we need  - another fucking fire in LA.

“WHAT’S HAPPENED ?? DID THE…  I grapple for a word, it’s too early in the day to be forming full sentences.  My arm flails around towards...  ‘DID THE TOTEM POLE CATCH FIRE?!’

“What?”  Replies the woman, standing in front of me.  

I wildly gesture to the electricity pole that’s shrouded in grey smoke.  “Sorry, not the Totem Pole - the electricity pole.  That thing.   This … that! It’s smoking!”

Then my eyes glide down and rest on the kid collecting firework cans off the floor.  

“Cleaning out the garden shed,’ His mum says with a little laugh”

WHAT??? What is a teenager even doing UP at 8.30 in the morning?? Teenagers don’t do that,  they sleep in until 1pm! That’s what I did!  8.30am is completely unnatural for a kid his age... I think to myself very quickly, staring at the lad in front of me.

I launch into: “Why would you think THAT was a good idea?”  

“Why he thought that was a good idea - I do not not know”

Said, his mum, repeating what I just said.

We both stare at each other. There’s a quiet standoff. They both look uncomfortable.  I’m not leaving until I feel absolutely one hundred percent satisfied that the lad knows and deeply understands, in every cell of his body, that it was not only a bad idea but a completely and utterly shit idea to set off fireworks at any time of the day, let alone first thing in the frigging morning.

If my sister were here she would chime in  Sarah to 99 percent of the planet 8.30 am is not ‘First thing in the morning.’   She is of course referring to the fact that I don’t have kids and so am a lazy fuck - not contributing to society in the slightest and so have no right to complain about being woken up at 8.30 and she could be right.  

But for now, I’m right.    

Again, I say nothing  -but I’m thinking and staring hard at them before I launch into:

“I have dogs!  I say passionately.  YOU, you have dogs!”  (They have dogs, the smallest,  yappiest, most annoying dogs in the history of dogs)  I add. ( No-one can ever argue with the fact that small as her dogs are, even if a cat walked down the alleyway we’d all know about it. GREATEST GUARD DOGS EVER. Fucking annoying, but great, small dogs are great)

We leave it at that.  She turns to go inside, the kid, weirdly - says absolutely nothing and then I turn too.  It’s only at that point  that I realize the dressing gown that I grabbed to cover myself with -  when I ran out of the house was a see-through one.  How very seventies of me. I am basically, Naked.  Full on muff and boobs.    

Wheyhey! I bet the kid didn’t anticipate that.  Lucky boy.

I go inside.  

ALL my dogs are now scattered around my house, inside various cupboards and wardrobes… sorry, closets.      

I was lying in bed watching THE LAST DEBATE - if you can call it that.  The last presidential debate that happened last night - and I missed it because I was busy humiliating myself on a zoom call.  More of that later.  

I go back to bed is the word: Totem pole racist?  Is that like a white, western made up word?  I google it.  This is what I find:  

The word totem comes from the Algonquian word odoodem meaning “his kinship group.” This means a family or a clan. Totem poles represent Indigenous families and clans.

The original totem poles were created by only six nations of the western part of North America:

the Haida (say "hydah"),

the Nuxalt (say "nu-halk"),

the Kwakwaka'wakw (say "kwak-wak-ya-wak"),

the Tlingit (say "kling-kit"),

the Tsimshian (say "sim-she-an")

and the Coast Salish (say "say-lish") people.

I’m sort of happy I didn’t use some racist noun first thing this morning  - but it’s still an English word to describe them?  Isn’t it? It doesn’t feel right  - it feels like using the word Eskimo instead of Inuit.      

Well anyway  - back to  THE DEBATE  -if you can call it that.  

Why can’t people debate these days?  It’s just an argument guys! Just argue!      

They can’t  - it’s so weird.

I think that has something to do with being American?  America has lots of amazing things going for itself… but self awareness and embracing the truth are two things,  I genuinely not sure are here in abundance.  

For instance  - and clearly this is a wide and vastly over exaggerated generalization  - but let’s just look at the religious thing here.  They are very into the no swearing thing - dear god forgive me, if I ever fucking swore.  I once swore not exactly AT my bank manager but inside a conversation with my bank manager  - if you get my drift. We were discussing the banks role in some terrible things - oil pipelines and the such…  He thought it quite reasonable to roll out the atrocious behaviour the bank partook in and have a calm and rational conversation about it all - but when I wanted ton take it up a notch. - you know have a bit of a debate and dropped in, “ I mean, fuck me …. His face turned white and I thought he was going to faint.   

I LOVE swearing! Not all the time, and my swearing has definitely improved since I moved here.  But nothing gives me more pleasure and makes me laugh more than going out with my dad in his old Mercedes and hear him swear at teh typo of his lungs at bad drivers.  

I think my favourite Is “You fucking prick! Look where you re going… “  as my dad mounts his car onto the pavement to avoid some poor shopper in their electric cart, doing a fifty six point turn and taking up most of the highstreet.

Anyway you get the gist.   on loads of quite petty stuff  - but come to porn and well…  you get the gist - it’s an old argument  - but one that never changes…  American hate the petty stuff  - and so are petty and yet are quite happy having a load of kids in cages at the border.  Astonishing, really.  

… and here we are, the end  - we have TWO weeks until the November 4th election!  I never thought that would ever happen! I am so excited.  It has been the most stressful four years living here in the states, witnessing this horror show.  Watching his vulture like family shit all over the largest democracy in the world.

America you wild and wonderful beast, you female goliath! You gorgon! You dove … you rabbit… okay I’m not so good at metaphors okay??    

When I try and explain to my English friends or my family what it’s been like living with the giant orange idiot running the shop  - they just don’t understand at all.

Last year I thought there was going to be civil war, I went home to my family and announced it to everyone. My mate Debs believed me But I think she was about the only one. She knows.  She knows everything.  It’s good having friends like that.

And when it did happen…  

Wow.  

Enough for today see you tomorrow

Love, SArah X    

[movietvtechgeeks]

Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/mark-pellegrino-deconstructs-supernaturals-lucifer-redemption/

Mark Pellegrino deconstructs 'Supernatural's' Lucifer and redemption

I had the chance to have another nice, lengthy chat with Mark Pellegrino recently about his character, Lucifer. Mark doesn’t need much introduction … There’s been a lot of talk in the fandom about an article that you did – I don’t remember who it was with – but it had that quote that you said in this last episode [The Rising Son] about Lucifer being smart and not totally evil. There’s been a lot of talk about Sam’s experience with Lucifer and how badly he was tortured; when Sam and Lucifer do finally meet again in this season, is Sam still going to be so fearful of Lucifer? What are your thoughts on that whole situation? I imagine Sam is going to have some PTSD. You don’t spend time in the cage and come out of that experience completely whole. I think he will have some residual feelings about the old Lucifer. The dynamics in the universe have shifted, or are going to shift to a degree that people’s feelings about each other don’t matter so much. When the world was faced with fascism, America and the Soviet Union – sworn enemies ideologically – became allies. So weird things happen when universes shift. One of the other comments that I actually got involved in was someone was saying that they do not want to see Lucifer’s redemption, if Lucifer has a redemption arc. I said, if we don’t see Lucifer as a fully formed, well, angel in this case, he becomes just a one-dimensional foil for Sam and Dean, and honestly, that’s just boring. As the actor that plays Lucifer, I’m assuming that you prefer the roles where you have more than just a one-dimensional character to play. I do. You can’t act what isn’t there, but I always try to add different dimensions to a character, that I don’t necessarily see on the page. Redemption of a character like Lucifer – I’m not even sure what it means. Just think about it. Just because I see the mythology of Lucifer in our culture as one massive paradox, you know what I mean? On the one hand, there are these absolutely noble characters that he possesses, and if we saw them in a human being, we would say, “This man is a king of virtue.” His stubbornness, resilience, his insurmountable will and his sense of justice … and the thing that he’s probably put down for most, his sense of pride. To me, these are virtues. If I saw them in another person, instead of pride as in arrogance but pride as in a sense of justice and a feeling for your own ability to deal with the universe … it’s a different sensibility toward pride than the one that Western culture gives you. On the one hand, I seem him as the first rebel against authority; whose own personal characteristics drove him to say no. The first to say no. I see him as the being that introduced humanity to its moral sense. The paradox in all of this is that all of these characteristics are seen as sins in a religious world. Instead of rebellion, conformity and obedience are seen as virtues. Instead of an independent mind, and a moral sense, submission is seen as a virtue. Humility instead of pride, so somehow our society adopted – they say whoever wins the war dictates the history. Lucifer lost the war, so the opposition made the history and turned values upside down. So the guy who actually thinks he’s a figure of virtue, instead of vice, I don’t know what kind of arc that would be … to acknowledge the other side is right and to change from what he is, would mean embracing the opposite of what he stands for. I don’t want that to happen, but I do want healing to happen. I think that the bad parts of Lucifer’s character were bred from – I don’t think they are nature, I think they’re nurture, and this is an argument that was started by Sam. They’re just saying Lucifer is just inheritably bad, whereas Sam wants to apply a different kind of ethics to Jack, but I don’t think Lucifer is inheritably bad … I think his dad even said that. I think isolation from love and alienation from an entire universe, and being painted as the villain from time immemorial, can sour a person. Just in the five days that I was painted as worse than the devil himself in the eyes of social media were annoying as fucking hell! I can’t imagine going through it for a fucking eternity. And not being pissed off at everybody. That is so true. So if you have a sense of pride and dignity, when you’re being attacked like that, it’s going to inspire a vast reprisal. I think Lucifer’s desire for revenge – I used to think that was what motivated him but it seems a little different. I don’t remember if it’s already been filmed or if it’s happening in the future, but Lucifer has a very specific take on creation and on his father. And it’s not what you think. It’s actually kind of interesting. You’re going to see it in a few episodes. In this last episode, one of my favourite lines that Lucifer said something like, “You have no idea what I care about.” So what does Luci care about? I love that line, especially now, because of all the flack and pain that a certain group of people put me through. I see that most of the battles that we fight are fought against straw men. We forget that underneath that straw man we’re hacking to death there is a human being, and the real thing. That’s what I think I meant to her. She knows what she thinks I care about; she’s got her ideas of me. But she doesn’t know me. And I’m not going to tell you what Lucifer cares about; I think it would be revealing spoilers. That’s a great maxim that we should carry into life, don’t you think? You don’t know me, so stop acting like you do. Do you think there was any correlation between that first opening scene with Lucifer and Mary, in this last episode where Mary’s like you’re going to kill me, and Lucifer’s like no, I’m not, and then at the end when Michael basically has Lucifer by the throat and Michael’s like I need you, I’m going to let you live – do you think there are any correlations between those two situations? Oh yeah. I think that’s good writing, that’s power reversal right there, and Lucifer being put in Mary’s spot. Lucifer even said something about it in another episode. He’s definitely low man on the totem pole in this universe. What was so funny that he’s the low man on the totem pole in the narrative, which he keeps confronting, “What? This fucking place sucks!” Every time that he’s confronted with the narrative that Lucifer is dead, he’s actually confronted with the fact that he’s not top dog in that world. That’s pretty castrating. One of the beautiful things that I love about Lucifer is his indomitable will. I don’t care where you find him, he’s still going to go, “Fuck ya. You’re not going to get me. You can tear me apart above the skies of Abilene, like you did to the alternate universe Lucifer, but my middle finger will still be flipping you off as I’m falling down to the ground.” You’ll see that too. You’ll see that Lucifer carries himself with his typical sassy, irreverent demeanor, no matter what horrible situation he finds himself in. That’s where Lucifer is very different from me. I’m oversensitive, and very affected by the things that people say and do to me … I may not seem that way because you see me probably battling people all the time … but I’m sensitive to the things that they say, and I feel like I don’t want to challenge people to harm me. Lucifer would challenge people to harm him. He pushes the limit all the way to the end and says, “Let’s see how good you are, let’s see how strong you are. Let’s see if your will matches against mine.” At the end of the premiere episode, which really had me bawling – the scene where Sam and Dean and Jack are saying goodbye to Cas, Kelly Kline and Crowley … I don’t know how much you want to talk about Crowley’s demise … but because Crowley has been Lucifer’s nemesis for so long, do you think he actually maybe misses him? I hope you noticed that when Crowley showed up in the alternate universe, before he was sacrificed, Lucifer did something when he noticed it was Crowley. He kind of wriggled around on the ground and said, “Crowley!” That was sort of a spontaneous thing that happened in the moment … I think Lucifer’s character being what it is … he admires men and women without limits. He admires cleverness and intelligence and will. Crowley demonstrated the ability to outsmart him. He liked it … he liked the challenge … the challenge now of fighting this formidable being … like any great boxer is going to be defined by his opposition. Ali wasn’t Ali until he met Foreman and Frazier. And that’s what made him a champion. The same with Lucifer … I think he would see things in the terms of bring me your biggest challenge and I’ll meet it. I think he would miss Crowley to be honest. Especially with this new guy Asmodeus coming up. That guy’s a real piece of work. I think he’s a lot worse and a lot more powerful than Crowley. Crowley was sort of an ambitious CEO … sort of a ruthless CEO, there was something about his intelligence that I admire. I don’t think that’s the same with Asmodeus, he’s a tyrant. So in answer to that, I think yes, I think Lucifer would miss Crowley. The season premiere really hit me, at the end when Sam is talking to Jack and explaining how you say goodbye to someone who has passed. (To read my review regarding this episode, go here.) Sam’s line – and Jared’s delivery of that line – was exactly what I needed to hear at exactly the right time. And that’s one of the reasons why I love Supernatural … it seems to have the timing of picking up on stuff that is the perfect timing for a lot of things. I know that’s the way it is for a lot of people as well. I thought that was an interesting for Sam to say as well. I thought it was a great summation of the process of understanding death for the living. Here’s what I love about Supernatural – we all know that the story is about family … but it’s about orphans. It’s about people who’ve had to become their own guide in a crazy universe, and only had each other to rely on. That’s pretty powerful … so many of us come from broken homes, where we miss one parent or there are other abusive family relationships … if you come to the world fractured and you have to survive by your own wits. Being in a show like this, even as fantastical as it is … it’s possible to defy even a whole universe and be right. To be treated like they were, but still find love and loyalty … the family don’t end in blood thing is all about that. I think that’s why so many people find solidarity in the show itself.

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