#stop giving a white woman all of the asian skins every year you literally have asian characters

[rein-ette]

Are you still working on your Commonwealth study? Do you have any thoughts on Arthur's relationships with his colonies apart from Canzuk + US?

Not properly, unfortunately with exams and then work I haven’t had mental/emotional capacity to do real research (and probably won’t for a while 😔). But I have continued to think about and develop certain relationships, and I think I also have old hcs I’ve never shared, so I’ll put those down!

Born into the Empire

Australia

@oumaheroes has already done such great hcs on him idk what I can add, but basically he was a little bit of a rowdy child, always breaking windows and shattering fancy pots, never able to sit still. I think rainbow once mentioned that Ken (short for Kenneth, my name for Aus) was a lot like England as a child in his curiosity and energy, and I wholeheartedly agree. But I think Arthur’s intensity was more inwardly directed, pushing him to pursue and master new talents and learn whatever he could, while Australia is a little more carefree in his love for the outdoors, exploring, jumping around and off things, little wild animals. Unfortunately for him, he was born in a period of the empire when Arthur was very serious about his kids education, and therefore often praised those who studied hard and learned fast, which really just wasn’t Australia’s cup of tea. Australia took this kinda hard and thought he was the “dumb” one in the family that Arthur was always scolding, but in reality Arthur knew and appreciated that Australias interests lay elsewhere — he was just a frustrated, tired, parent who really wanted to give his kids the best while also holding his empire together, two goals that were never going to fit well in the end and would completely exhaust him.

As Australia’s grown older he’s realized a bit of this (not entirely, though) and also that 1) he really did break a lot expensive things and cause general mayhem 2) scolding us Arthur’s way of showing he cares, if he didn’t he wouldn’t have payed attention to him at all 3) despite being a penal colony, he was still one of Arthur’s more “legitimate” children (being white and a boy) and was therefore still incredibly privileged — never having to question, for example, why it was that Arthur was his dad, if it should be this way, or if he had a seat at the family table at all (more on this later).

New Zealand

Zee, from birth, was a clear favourite. Obedient, calm, quietly intelligent, he would also later develop a blistering sense of humour which combined with his appearance made it overwhelmingly clear who’s child he was. If Ken questioned his place in the family because of his poor academic record and others did because of their appearance/race/other complications, Kaelan never had such problems; his siblings called him the “prince.” Zee, however, also had a charm that, like Matthew, endeared him to his siblings and mostly protected him from jealousy, though he certainly still had issues with being called a try hard, daddy’s boy, bossy, arrogant. Certainly as a child Zee was a little prideful and, under that unperturbed demeanour, willful, but he grew out of it by the 20th century and became one of those most trusted by Arthur, second only to Matthew. He’s also always been inseparable from his brother Australia despite their differences, and today they both have one of the healthiest and most amicable relationships with Arthur of any nation, let alone former colonies (family road trips, every summer).

Bermuda

I absolute fell in love with this girl after reading about here, once, in this fic by @shachaai, and after that my mind just ran away with me. For me, her human name given to her by Arthur just has to be Ariel — for the little mermaid reference, yes, symbolizing her connection to the sea and stunning good looks, but also because:

1. Ariel is a biblical name, meaning lion of God. This makes sense to me, because Bermuda began as a Portuguese trade post, so Arthur definitely consulted our resident bad catholic Port before naming her.

2. Ariel used to be boys name. This also makes sense, because I hc Bermuda was and still is a tomboy. Bitch is fierce, takes no prisoners, and has zero filter. Her letters to Arthur, which all the colonies sent so Arthur could keep an eye on things, were full of shit like “I swear to god if the Spanish don’t get out of my waters I might eat one of them,” and “father, I asked you for destroyers two months ago, and yet you sent them to Hong Kong — could you explain this most unusual occurrence, surely it’s not that you forgot”, and “thank you for the harpoon on my birthday, I caught a small shark a couple days ago and have sent you some of its teeth for your collection.” Arthur tolerates this attitude because he’s weak when it comes to girls; he absolutely spoils his daughters (and flushes like a 16 year old when a woman so much as bats her eyelashes at him). Yes, p*ssywhipped Arthur is a hill I will die on.

3. It also suits her because? Ariel? Shakespeare? The Tempest? Bermuda Triangle? Shipwrecks? Daughter-like figure of powerful and vengeful sorcerer? Yeah. And this girl is a fire spirit — she is so lively, snarky, clever. As she’s grown older she’s mellowed out a little, but still: a no shit taken, no fucks given type of gal.

4. Speaking of growing up, she’s also become quite the beauty. Shacha, if I’m remembering correctly, described her as dark skinned, wavy-haired, and green eyed and that image has been burned onto the back of my eyelids ever since. Those Iberian genetics really be pulling through for her, that’s for sure. Engport love child if I’ve ever seen one. Definitely one of the prettiest in her family.

Singapore

I’ve already mentioned this to needcake, but I’m not too big a fan of canon Singapore, so this is my oc version. Singapore is fascinating to me because it had only a very small local population before it became a colony (The original settlement had actually been destroyed by the Portuguese about two centuries before the British started building a port there.) So nation-tans like Singapore and Bermuda really are Arthur’s children in the most direct sense of the word. And yet, Singapore is mostly ethnically Chinese, with Malays being the second largest group. Growing up Asian in a white, Victorian era family surely cannot have been easy and more than once Singapore probably wondered if there hadn’t been some mistake. To make up for the constant fear that he wasn’t “really” British, Singapore studied ferociously and had a truly terrifying work ethic. I’m not sure if this is common knowledge outside Asian circles, so I’ll mention that this hc comes from the fact Singapore is well known for having truly exceptional students and some of the most prestigious schools. Singaporeans score highly in literally everything and they have an advantage with good English learning environments, a highly desirable trait in Asia, but these results come from brutally long hours — and its really saying something that they’re known for working hard, considering the studying ethic of students in Korea, Japan, and China aint nothing to sneeze at, either. To me this actually fits really well with Singapore’s upbringing in Arthur’s household, because Arthur himself prizes intelligence and hard work above all else, being a workaholic himself.

As for their relationship, it was probably the best when Singapore was young and peaked in the 1930s with the massive naval base the British built at Singapore, at the time the largest dry dock in the world. Singapore was a well-behaved child, not necessarily introverted but not rowdy either, and all the way into his teenage years he truly admired Arthur and was proud to be a part of the British Empire, despite his lingering unease and insecurities. The British defeat in World War II, however, was a massive turning point. He had worked his ass off to be a good son, a good brother, to contribute to the only family and system he had ever known, and he had thought by the 30s he was finally on his way to becoming a fine adult. And suddenly, the British surrender brings his entire world crashing down. He had followed the rules faithfully thinking it was his destiny, but suddenly it was clear that all rules were made up. Of course, his insecurities exploded. If the empire was a ruse, what the hell was he? A part of the illusion? He couldn’t have a truly Asian identity, because many of the old East Asian nations shunned him for his Western upbringing, and he could not entirely understand their values either. So he was a kid who kinda had to figure out late and very very suddenly who the fuck he was and wanted to be.

And, well, he’s done pretty well for himself, hasn’t he. After having a total crisis and questioning everything, I think Singapore slowly started to realize that just because the British Empire as a political entity didn’t last forever, that didn’t mean that his entire childhood and identity weren’t real. The love he gave to his siblings and the love he got back, the hard work he put in, his bond with Arthur and the safe, happy childhood he had — those memories and feelings didnt have to be diminished by what came after. Essentially, he learned the lesson all nations have to learn, which is that one needs to be able to discern between duties as a nation and feelings as a human being, and to some extent keep them separate to protect both.

Whoooooo ok I’ll stop there because this turned into a dissertation, sorry. Let me know if there are any specifics u want me to elaborate on or anything I missed, but I’ll leave this here for today :)

[mdccanon]

So I read your recent post about Natasha and found it extremely interesting, especially the part about Wanda. I honestly think Wanda is one of the most complex and interesting MCU characters, but recently I ran across a post that said they found it telling that Marvel made a white woman represent justified foreign anger against the US. Now, for context, there is a lot of discourse right now about whether Wanda is whitewashed. (You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to btw)

Well, Wanda was always a very light skinned Roma character. Granted, most Roma people don't exactly look like Esmeralda. Most look just as European as they technically are.

Now, the comic fans annoyed that MCU Wanda isn't described as Roma are even more pissed that she Americanized over the in-story years to the point that even her Sokovian accent faded. Which becomes one of those damned if you do and damned if you don't situations doesn't it? We fight for people to believe that not every immigrant has to have a funny accent, but if they don't have an accent at all, we call it immigration erasure...

We want diversity in stories, but we also want that diversity to be easy and predictable.

Now, it's equally amusing to me that one group of people are fighting for the American audience to see Wanda's nonwhiteness, while the other group labels her white and is annoyed when MCU acknowledges her nonwhiteness.

The WandaVision joke that Wanda is European only gets under the skin of a person who really doesn't CARE how Europeans think of themselves, so they and they alone point out that Vision/Paul is "also European" when that's not how geography works. Then, they get annoyed that a White American would consider a European exotic, because they just don't CARE to understand pre-Cold War politics. They don't even care to understand how Whiteness works. If Irish and Slavic people are considered white now, then they should be considered white in a story that takes place in the 1950s. That's how history works right? You can retroactively change it to fit your modern sentiments, right? They WANT all fair skinned people to retroactively become White because some Americans created the concept, and they WANT to understand the European sphere through American ideas. They actively encourage American exceptionalism and actually think that they're being different. They are, as Killmonger was, using the very tools of their enemies, and thinking they are somehow not. So, they and they alone think there is something wrong with a Slav being the face of MCU's anti-Americanism...

Why should the people from which the English word "slave" came from by loanwording the literal name of their people represent anti-Western sentiment? Is this some sort of attempt to make us feel empathy for and solidarity with them?! Never!!!!! (You know what was the easiest ways to get someone to shut up? Asking them if "gyp" and so many other words are bad and shouldn't be used under any circumstances, why do we still tolerate using the literal name of the Slavic people as the word for an indentured servant? NOTHING shuts a #Woke™ person up faster than being forced to acknowledge the suffering of European people. The Peace Corp Era has passed. Volunteering in Yugoslavia stopped being fashionable around the same time we gave up Freeing Tibet. There's only so many hashtag causes people can be outraged about at one time, and acknowledging that Brexit was England's "build a wall" issue because they STILL TO THIS DAY use Slavic people as cheap labor and English people thought leaving the EU would curb the flow of Those People into England to "steelur jewbs" would overload the American capacity to give a shit.)

But even more hilarious is if this wasn't true, and Sokovia, Zemo and Wanda weren't the linchpin of domestic conflict in The Infinity Saga, and it was a more obviously nonwhite culture instead: a non-Indo-Aryan Middle-Eastern, South Asian or African, or East Asian or native American one instead, then the same people who are annoyed by this would also hate that because they would hate a non-white culture only existing in the narrative to be destroyed and it's only characters that we meet being villains. 🤣

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

And with all that being said, I'm so excited for Shang-Chi this weekend. I'm so excited for another GOOD nonwhite villain. So tired of American men in suits.

[spaceshipkat]

i think so much of writing respectfully and inclusively is being aware of what you’re putting down on the page. what do i mean by this? what better author to focus on than sj///m, right? i’ll start with CCity on this, since it’s the one where it’s most obvious she’s trying so hard to fix her mistakes, but the problem always comes back to her fundamental misunderstanding of why and how her shit is problematic in the first place and what she must do to fix said problematic shit. 

i’m sticking this under a cut bc, surprise surprise, i rambled 😌

take, for instance, Hunt: i think it’s pretty widely-accepted he’s coded as a MOC, (potentially an Asian-coded man) since he’s given “golden-brown skin” and “angular” eyes. sj//m was trying to be more inclusive by writing him in such a way that he shouldn’t be perceived as white, but what she failed to realize is two big things: 1) the fact he’s a slave of centuries who is constantly tortured, mutilated, and manipulated by his oppressors, and 2) the fact he lusts after and is demeaned by Bruce, a white girl. furthermore, Bruce constantly makes comments about how Hunt should fight back, shouldn’t allow himself to remain a slave, and taunts him into either disobeying Micah (the man he’s enslaved to) or killing for her. it’s made clear time and time again that Hunt doesn’t like that he’s an assassin for Micah, and yet there are so many instances of him wanting to kill or hurt someone for Bruce, which not only makes his characterization inconsistent, it plays into the problematic trope of the dark-skinned aggressor (a trope that sj///m seems to be particularly fond of, what with the Illyrians). 

(on the topic of Hunt, a quick side-note: the idea of the “alphahole” that comes up again and again in CCity and that antis have critiqued up the wazoo (though not with the “alphahole” colloquialism until CCity came along, but i don’t think many antis actually use “alphahole” as anything but a joke when talking about her obvious love of the hypermasculine alpha male). sj///m is clearly trying to call out her past mistakes and work to rectify them going forward, but she completely fails bc she only succeeds at 1) mocking her readers, who are often fans of hers bc they like the alpha male douchebag sj///m is infamous for, and 2) making herself sound like an idiot when she calls out “alphahole” behavior while actively writing “alphaholes” and making them (possible) endgame love interests (i say possible bc it’s anyone’s guess if sj///m will actually subvert everyone and their mother’s expectations by making Hunt endgame). Hunt is an “alphahole,” even if he’s not quite as bad as riceman or rowboat and even if sj///m thinks she’s not actually writing an “alphahole”. with his aforementioned behavior toward anyone who’s mean to Bruce (aka wanting to kill them for her), he still falls under the “alphahole” category.

but i digress.)

another example of sj///m writing without being aware of what she’s actually putting on the page is her inclusion of queer rep. sj///m queerbaits quite a lot with Danika, thanks to lines she has involving Bruce and her relationship with Bruce, not to mention how many times others wonder if Bruce and Danika are “just” best friends and not actually lovers. we have Hunt wonder about it, after all, several times iirc. one that stands out the most is when he says that they have to be more than “just” best friends because Bruce doesn’t mourn Danika like someone mourns “just” their best friend, thus implying that Bruce is mourning Danika like a lover and/or spouse (bc obviously people can’t be torn to pieces over losing their best friend in a horrific attack, right?). 

here’s some lines that have romantic connotations bc i am nothing if not a historian who likes citations: 

page 38 of my ebook: 

Danika just said it. “If he grabs his phone to check his messages before his dick’s barely out of you again, please have the self-respect to kick his balls across the room and come home to me.” 

page 45 of my ebook: 

But it was Danika’s added “Love you” as [Bruce] slipped out into the grimy hallway that made her hesitate with her hand on the knob. 

It’d taken Danika a few years to save those words, and she still used them sparingly. Danika had initially hated it when [Bruce] said them to her—even when [Bruce] explained that she’d spent most of her life saying it, just in case it was the last time. In case she wouldn’t get to say goodbye to the people who mattered most. And it had taken one of their more fucked-up adventures[...]to get Danika to utter the words, but at least she now said them. Sometimes. 

page 258 of my ebook (aka the line of Hunt’s i referenced above): 

The silence pressed on [Hunt] enough that he asked, “Were you and Danika lovers?” 

He’d been told two years ago that they weren’t, but friends didn’t mourn each other the way [Bruce] seemed to have so thoroughly shut down every part of herself. The way he had for Shahar. 

[...]

Hunt turned in place as [Bruce] padded around the other end of the kitchen island, flinging open the enormous metal fridge to examine its meager contents. “No,” [Bruce] said, her voice flat and cold. “Danika and I weren’t like that.” 

page 696 of my ebook: 

[Bruce] swallowed, looking at the ground that was not earth, but the very base of Self, of the world. She whispered, “I’m scared.”

Danika grabbed her hand again. “That’s the point of it, [Bruce]. Of life. To live, to love, knowing that it might all vanish tomorrow. It makes everything that much more precious.” She took [Bruce’s] face in her hands and pressed their brows together. 

page 700 of my ebook (and i was torn on including this one, but it’s from Danika, so i think i should): 

Danika had whispered, “I love you,” before fading into nothing, her hand sliding from Bryce’s.

page 703 of my ebook (also torn on this, but it does sound a little queer, so): 

But it wasn’t okay. Not even close. What had happened, what [Bruce had] done and revealed, the Horn in her body, all those people dead, Lehabah dead, and seeing Danika, Danika, Danika—

Her breathless words turned into pants, and then shuddering sobs.

also, not for nothing, but the fact Danika dies without an actual male love interest to make Her Straightness Obvious kinda also implies she’s queer, but *sips tea*

furthermore, there’s the way sj///m writes Fury and Juniper: we see the two women together in one scene, in which Juniper is fetishized and goes to sleep with some random guy. for the rest of the book, they never interact on-page and thus we are never given the chance to see their dynamic, which would provide crucial context clues to what their relationship really is by the time this exchange happens between Fury and Bruce on page 494 of my ebook:

“And yet you can still talk to Juniper?” Bryce’s throat closed up. “I wasn’t worth the risk to you?”

Fury hissed, “Juniper and I have something that is none of your fucking business.” Bryce refrained from gaping. Juniper had never hinted, never suggested—“I could no sooner stop talking to her than I could rip out my own fucking heart, okay?”

“I get it, I get it,” Bryce said. She blew out a long breath. “Love trumps all.”

i’ve talked about this scene to death, but this is written in such a way that it can be read as “just” best friends or as two women in a romantic relationship, depending on the reader. the fact that Bruce “gapes” (which faerug also does to Mor, and which i talk about below) implies that being openly queer isn’t accepted in this world, that it’s not very likely you’ll see two women holding hands as they walk down the sidewalk or kiss at a romantic restaurant. it also implies that Bruce, no matter that she says about “love trumps all,” might not be as accepting as sj///m would like us to believe. maybe sj///m has never had a friend come out to her before, but if i came out to someone and they gaped at me (and i’ve come out to several people several times now, both about my sexuality and my gender, so i have some experience here), i don’t think i would be very happy with them/want to remain their friend. 

on the note of queer rep in sj///m’s work, Mor is another fantastic example of trying to be inclusive through a response to criticism without sj///m being aware of what, exactly, she’s writing. Mor comes out because faerug all but forces her to by not shutting up what a good guy Azriel is and that Mor should just give him a chance. that right there is fucked on so many levels, not just because Mor is a lesbian, but bc she’s supposedly faerug’s friend. no one should ever force their friends to date someone they don’t want to (i’ve had this happen to me! i had to literally snap at my friend to get her to back off bc i wasn’t going to go to the dance with this one guy who ignored my every rejection and bought us tickets to winter formal, just bc he’s a nice guy and i might like him if i gave him a chance), but i don’t think sj///m could figure out how else to write Mor’s coming out scene, largely bc she has no fucking clue how disgusting the scene we’re given is. the problem with Mor being a lesbian is threefold: 1) she’s a woman who was tortured by her father and left to die bc she was no longer a virgin; 2) Azriel spends centuries lusting after a woman who makes it clear time and again that she does not reciprocate his feelings and yet he cannot take the fucking hint, so much so that sj///m has to now dangle Elain in front of him like a piece of meat to get him to let go of Mor; and 3) sj///m was obviously setting up Mor and Azriel to be an endgame couple in ac0maf, as evidenced both in canon and in her pinterest board: 

even stans picked up on it, what with their vocal outrage over how Mor “led Azriel on” for centuries instead of just outing herself to a man she obviously does not feel safe around, and posts like these: 

and fanart like this: 

the tl;dr of this ramble is this: if you want to write inclusively and respectfully, you have to be 100% aware of everything you’re putting on the page. when people ask for advice on this kind of thing, my first comment is to always say they’re already on the right track bc they’re already thinking of this, rather than being unaware of problems bc a state of unawareness is where the problems begin to appear. Hafsah Faizal has talked about this before on her twitter (i wish i could find the tweet, but this is from eons ago), but if you write a character of color when you yourself are white, you have to be wholly conscious of how your white character talks to this character of color. if the character of color is constantly yelled at or ordered around or ignored by the white character, that’s a big problem. if you write a queer character when you yourself are straight, you have to be conscious of how your queer character comes out, is perceived by the reader, and is treated by the straight character. if the queer character comes out by comparing their bisexuality to forced prostitution, as is the case with Aedion and Lysandra in t0g, that’s a big problem. 

the moment you share your work for public consumption, it no longer matters what your intentions are (something sj///m has a lot of trouble understanding, hence why she over-explains everything in her interviews and on tours, not to mention why she force-feeds us her opinion of her characters in canon so we’re forced to share the exact same outlook on them) bc all that matters is what you’ve put down on the page. your words, at that point, have no choice but to speak for themselves, and if they do any of the above, your work is going to come under warranted critique, and unless you learn from that critique and do more than half-assed jobs to write more inclusively and respectfully, you’ll run into the exact same problems that sj///m has with CCity. 

[yooniegalaxy]

Okay, so this is going to be fun. So the preface behind this is that V got a few asks about this and then I went and straight up threw in my two cents... and in return got these asks. Instead of fuming about it and just keyboard warrior-ing back at the person ( using person as a very loose term at this point ) I decided to take a step back and deal with this rationally.

Trigger Warnings // Abuse, Assault, R*pe and Predatory Men Mentions. Public Masturbation. I will tag appropriately.

I apologize, in advance, for the length. I also haven’t proofread this because at some point I just didn’t care enough to re-read. Yes, I did cite things. Don’t @ me about it.

Alright, so this is very bold of you to assume that you know anything about my culture as it is. There are more than just that one reason as to why Korean women/girls aren’t dating ( which is also very bold of you to assume ). There is a great divide in everything. South Korea is a very patriarchal society, so of course there are privileges to being a man. But that can literally be said any where in the world. The world is intrinsically male oriented, despite having various matriarchal societies.

If we are talking about Korean women in general, there are a lot of reasons why they don’t date aside from the inherent fear. It is literally the fact that everyone pays attention to their careers first. School is a very large part of Korean Society, as well as a lot of other Asian Countries. Education is the first and foremost for a lot people, which often pushes the bounds of women when do decide to date, if at all.

“It says so in an article“, is not a great defense, especially since the only article I could find about this was a CNN article ( feel free to read it here ). While well researched, it is under the lens of a University study for a “Gender and Culture“ class taught at Sejong University. They do go into statistics about economic strain and what percentage of age groups are single and may not be dating.

I pulled this from the article, “[a] growing number of South Koreans are shunning romantic relationships amid economic hardships and societal problems.“ This, in and of itself, counteracts your broad strokes claim. The fact of the matter is that you clearly don’t understand how expensive it is to date anyone or live in Korean society. Even going out with friends is awful, I find, because we are always drinking and heading to the next bar or the next and you’re no fun unless you go to all of the bars. If you ditch, you are literally called no fun and you can kiss your social life goodbye.

South Korean Culture is very much about group dynamics and it is social suicide not to hang out when asked unless you have a VERY good reason. This brings me to, “[t]he country's overall unemployment rate last year rose to its highest level in 17 years, at 3.8%. The youth unemployment rate was far higher, at 10.8% for those aged 15 to 29.” This is basically the fact of the matter, dating and socializing unless you are getting funded by your parents, is EXPENSIVE. Even when you are out of University and starting your first job, if you are even hired. If you aren’t, you will be working any form of shop job, construction, retail or food and service. 

Side note: minimum wage in South Korea is 7530 won/hr, or like 6-ish USD, but not a lot of places even pay that. They pay under that.

Yes, in the light of a lot of Korean scandals and lot of word of mouth about x boyfriend or y abuse incident, many people are put off by the idea of dating. But I feel like this is the case everywhere and not just South Korea. You could even say that it is taken less lightly elsewhere in the world than it is in South Korea.

You also have to realize that this article is literally just talking about Korean Women dating Korean Men. There are a plenty of other races that live in South Korea that are ex-pats, are studying abroad or are teaching abroad ( as they don’t really like hiring people of Asian Heritage to teach English, especially ). A lot of South Koreans hire a lot of foreign specialists for jobs due to the high specializations in some fields. So Korean Women might not be dating Korean Men, but they are still dating.

This is not a “not all men” statement because I will never make that statement. “Not all men” is such a stupid statement because it is inherently bias. 

Korean dating culture isn’t dead. People still date. People still count their relationships in days and have cute anniversaries. People are allowed not to feel safe. I don’t feel safe and I live in a country where I am allotted freedom and yet I still look over my shoulder because off the gender that I was born as. 

CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE AT THE DOOR. 

Please don’t ignore the fact that you are generalizing a whole population to suit your own arguments and needs. You are literally doing yourself, and everyone you are generalizing, a disservice.

Honestly, no. Claiming you are right is actually a rather sad way to try and win an argument when someone hasn’t responded. My country isn’t “full of predators”. If anything all of my experiences in the United States ( and other countries though I will only give one example ) sort of tells me otherwise. I, personally, have a lot of stories of where I have felt unsafe in countries outside of Asia.

NEW YORK CITY ( tw: male public masturbation, aggression )

I was about nineteen at the time of this incident. I am, by no means, a person who is uneducated or idealistic in anyway. I was raised a realist, someone who wasn’t exactly sheltered from the storm, despite growing up in a traditional family. I made a lot of mistakes as a kid but I learned from.

In New York, I was with one other person. She was around my age and we were exploring the city together and I believe we were going to a conference at the time? I was studying Film at the time and she was a good friend of mine going to New York Film Academy. We hopped on the subway because literally the only way to get around the city unless you want to be stuck in traffic. What I experienced on the train was varying degrees of traumatic but I laugh about it now?

We were chased off the subway four or five stops before we actually wanted to get by a guy literally masturbating directly in view of us. There weren’t that many people on the subway car and he was making DIRECT eye contact with us while were talking about the film we were shooting for class. He was literally dirty talking at us and his advances became more bold until he literally chased us off the subway when we tried to leave.

He couldn’t have been more than I want to say thirty or forty and he was white male privilege. He was wearing a decently fitted suit with shined loafers so, clearly not just a homeless man on the street.

He chased us up to street leave with his dick out, ejaculating at our shoes as we tried to climb the stairs and told us we were ungrateful and deserved it. This happened on three separate occasions in a span of a week, different men.

I was much younger than most people that this happens to on a regular basis in the US. Tell me how “my country” as you call it is full of predators when this is what I was subjected to as a person that, at the time, is older than a solid chunk of the frequenters of this site.

Not only that but I have never felt the need to check my drink as much as I do in a western country as I do in an Asian one. I have been to frat parties and have been witness to college r*pe culture, to where I have been made witness to various friends being roofied because they don’t check their drinks. I was taught as a kid not to leave your drink lying around and if you did, you didn’t drink from it ( I should point out that I grew up both in Seoul and in Canada ).

I don’t feel safe in any country for the fact that I AM A WOMAN and not because of any racial bias that I might have. I don’t have the privilege of walking wherever I like without being cat called fully clothed, not showing any skin or figure. I constantly look over my shoulder when I see a shadow, this is not one country’s problem, it is every country.

Like I said, I was at work and would rather not get fired for interacting with someone that doesn’t take my priority because they wish to remain anonymous and not have educated argument. Rather you would like to anonymously bash a whole nation in which you are NOT apart of. Not that I particularly like my job, it kind of just pays the bills.

[thesydneyfeminists]

The Crimes of JK Rowling

CW: racism, homophobia, mentions of abuse and drugs.

The cool thing about growing up and expanding your world view is that you eventually see your childhood heroes for what they are. Flawed humans (and maybe, just plain assholes). First Joss Whedon and now JK Rowling. Nothing is sacred and no one is safe.

I loved the Harry Potter series (the original seven books, I refuse to accept any of the latest garbage she’s put out/had her name attached to – within the HP universe) and I still count Prisoner of Azkaban as one of my favourite books, but even fondness and nostalgia can’t shield JK Rowling from some of the problems with the world she has created, the way she explains/defends it, and her quarter assed (not even half) and damaging attempts to rectify that now in 2018.

Note: Simply for length reasons, these are all related to the Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts franchises.

Crime One: Racism

It’s no great secret that there are very few characters of colour in the Harry Potter universe. Apparently, while it’s plausible that there’s a whole (not so) secret world of magic, it’s just too unbelievable for there to be many witches or wizards of colour. Before you come at me with “but Vee, mudbloods and Voldemort only wanting pureblood wizards is a metaphor for racism!” you can stop that right now. Because you know what’s also a great metaphor for racism? Actual racism. How about how people of colour are literally discriminated against every single day. They get passed over for jobs, they’re spat at in the streets, they’re being killed by police. Metaphors for racism? Not good enough.

I’m in the camp that think white writers shouldn’t write their main character as anything other than white, for a whole host of reasons, but if I had to summarize it, I think stories of colour should be told by authors of colour, we should be opening the doors for more authors of colour, we should listen to their voices, their stories, their experiences. I think white authors can’t know the exact nuances of what it’s like to be a person of colour, how the world treats us, the experience of living in diaspora, the disconnect between first gen, second gen and third gen family members, and so much more. It’s something that sure, you can read about it, you can do your research, but you’ll never quite understand it unless you’ve lived it. All of that being said, I do believe that white authors can include characters of colour in a meaningful way, that is, not for decoration, not as a handy plot device to move your story along, and not as a harmful, disgusting stereotype. But let’s stop for a second and count the number of background characters of colour that have been more or less confirmed (note that Hermione could easily be coded black, the only hint we get is in PoA, she’s described as “very brown”, but it’s not until the older Hermione was cast with a black actress in The Cursed Child did JK pop up and say “of course she could be black!”). So, we have Lee Jordan (maybe unfairly assumed, as he’s only described as having dreadlocks but he was cast with a POC), Dean Thomas (who was very good at drawing – also maybe unfairly listed, was cast with a POC), Parvati and Padma Patil (possibly unfairly listed, described as having long black hair, and cast with POC), Cho Chang (quickly, can I point out that a character of Asian descent being sorted into Ravenclaw the “smart house” plays into so many racist stereotypes that I can barely breathe), Kingsley Shacklebolt, Blaise Zambini. And then, well, there’s Nagini.

Tweet reads: “The Naga are snake-like mythical creatures of Indonesian mythology, hence the name ‘Nagini.’ They are sometimes depicted as winged, sometimes as half-human, half-snake. Indonesia comprises a few hundred ethnic groups, including Javanese, Chinese and Betawi. Have a lovely day.”

 About a week ago, the trailer for Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald was dropped to mixed reactions. The trailer revealed a snippet that reveals that Voldemort’s pet snake was once a shapeshifting woman, cursed to become trapped in a snake’s body. An Asian shapeshifting woman. Reduced to becoming (a white supremacist but metaphorically) a white man’s pet. Cool. Naturally, there was some backlash about this turn of events, and so JK tried to tweet out the reasoning and explanation (while also saying she’d been keeping this racist secret for 20 years) that obviously Nagini had to be an Asian woman because it was based on a creature from Indonesian mythology, and that Indonesia comprised a “few hundred ethnic groups, including Javanese, Chinese and Betawi”. Cool, JK, but the actress cast is Korean, and you saying all of this kind of reinforces the idea that all Asian ethnicities are interchangeable. Let’s not even get into a white woman explaining Indonesian mythology or ethnicity, or the fact that it’s also an Indian mythology, the Naga. I don’t want to split hairs here, there are other examples of mythology that are similar but have key differences across other cultures (the kitsune/kumiho/huli jing fox spirit, for one). So it’s possible she only read up on the Indonesian myth and took her inspiration from there. But the way she “explained” the debacle sits uneasily with me. She brushes over any concerns that come from people of colour – valid concerns and questions, and instead chooses to ignore the real issue, which is that by playing into the harmful stereotype that Asian women are subservient, and that all of the different Asian ethnicities are interchangeable, she does more harm than good for inclusivity and that she is doing it for show. She doesn’t give a shit if her work includes characters of colour, and if it does, she doesn’t give a shit that they’re shitty stereotypes, 2D characters that are nothing more than the colour of their skin, just there to boost the POC count in her works.

Thinly veiled racism? Guilty.

Crime Two: Poor Handling of LGBT+ Issues/People

Back in 2007, speaking to a crowd of fans at an event at Carnegie Hall, JK Rowling revealed that she “always thought of Dumbledore as gay” to wild applause. Finally, a canon character was more or less confirmed as LGBT+ (sorry to the Dracarry shippers, that still just lives in our hearts). Great, right? Except, why did she wait until the book series was completed to come out with this revelation? Why didn’t she include it in the books? Sure, you might say “well, Vee, it’s a kids book, you’re expecting far too much” except it’s not a “kids book”, it’s always very clearly been in the young adult category (certainly after the third book, at least) and readership has always been split between adults and younger people. The series came out when I was a teenager, finishing when I was 21, and I definitely would have appreciated some LGBT+ representation in a book that meant so much to so many people. I’m not saying she needed to include a sex scene in there (she could’ve faded to black, like Stephenie Meyer did in Breaking Dawn) but to go back and retcon that Dumbledore was gay and that she’d always thought that, for it to ring true, she needed to leave us hints in the original series. She “always thought of Dumbledore as gay” but “didn’t feel the need to spell it out”. Maybe she didn’t see the point of it, maybe she didn’t want to spoil her “big reveal” (note that some fans had always suspected that Dumbledore had been in love with Grindelwald), but by not mentioning it until after the fact? It comes off as lazy, or as wanting to appeal to the LGBT+ community, by trying to earn an ally card by doing very little at all.

Tweet reads: “I was asked whether Lupin’s treatment by others could be seen as a metaphor for (then) stigmatised conditions. I agreed that it could. 2/4”  J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling)

Then there’s the Lupin issue. Supposedly, at some point in 1999, JK was asked whether or not Lupin’s “condition could be seen as a metaphor for (then) stigmatised conditions” and she said it could. Basically, lycanthropy is meant to be a metaphor for HIV/AIDS in the HP universe. In Short Stories From Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship, and Dangerous Hobbies (released 2016, mind you), JK writes “Lupin’s condition of lycanthropy was a metaphor for those illnesses that carry a stigma, like HIV and AIDS. All kinds of superstitions seem to surround blood-borne conditions, probably due to taboos surrounding blood itself. The wizarding community is as prone to hysteria and prejudice as the Muggle one, and the character of Lupin gave me a chance to examine those attitudes”. Maybe she had the best intentions in mind when she came up with that idea, and true enough, blood and blood purity does matter to an extent in the wizarding world, but something about it feels hollow and gross. I’d like to note here that we only meet three werewolves in the series (Lupin, Greyback and an unnamed man who was bitten) and none of them were female. Take that how you will, but a few fans came to the conclusion that her “metaphor for HIV/AIDS” also includes the harmful stereotype that gay men were going out and maliciously infecting over men with HIV.

Retconning the source material to make herself seem LGBT+ inclusive but handling it terribly? Guilty.

Crime Three: White Feminism

Maybe this crime really explains the others. It explains her support of the decision to cast Johnny Depp in the Fantastic Beasts film series. Yep, Johnny Depp, you know, the guy who physically abused (then-wife) Amber Heard. Sure, he’d been cast before we knew about that. He’d appeared, for five whole minutes in the end of the first Fantastic Beasts film, so he’d already signed on. Surely, he couldn’t be fired when his contract was signed. Except, we’ve seen examples of men accused of abuse being let go from their jobs (not often, but it happens sometimes). Kevin Spacey, for one. So, why couldn’t Grindelwald be recast? Especially after a five minute cameo at the end of a movie? JK Rowling released a statement where she acknowledges that around the time of filming the first movie in the new franchise, stories involving Depp’s abuse of Heard started to appear in the press, and “based on our understanding of the circumstances, the filmmakers and I are not only comfortable sticking with our original casting, but genuinely happy to have Johnny playing a major character in the movies.” Comfortable and genuinely happy to have a known abuser affiliated with your work, based on our understanding of the circumstances, the circumstances being that Depp physically abused Amber Heard, who provided photo and video evidence. Even Daniel Radcliffe has spoken out about the decision to let Depp remain on cast, given the decision to fire a lesser known actor (Jamie Waylett) from HP: Deathly Hallows pt 2 after his arrest for growing 10 marijuana plants (he was later arrested for a more serious crime, but that was well after his firing from Harry Potter). DanRad mentioned how he was, of course, thankful for the opportunities provided to him from being cast as Harry Potter, but that “I suppose the thing I was struck by was, we did have a guy who was reprimanded for weed on the (original Potter) film, essentially, so obviously what Johnny has been accused of is much greater than that.”

Tweet reads: “Just unfollowed a man whom I thought was smart and funny, because he called Theresa May a whore. 1/14” J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling)

Of course, supporting the casting of an abusive man doesn’t make her a white feminist, nor does tweeting about unfollowing a man for calling Theresa May a whore. What does, in my honest opinion, is her handling of any criticism she receives, and the bullshit way in which she tries to earn her ally card, but only when it suits her. If all of this mattered so much, she would’ve included it the first time around. Retconning her source material in an effort to appear more diverse isn’t true diversity. It’s literally a made up world, she could’ve made it more diverse from the start. She needed to explicitly state things, because marginalised groups need to see representation. Good, strong, representation. Not weak and harmful versions. By being properly inclusive in her material, as a middle class white woman, she could’ve set an example of how things should be. If she’d spoken to any marginalised group, heard their stories, about their lives, gained an insight in how to write about them, her POC, LGBTQIA+, lower class, etc audiences would’ve come away with the message that she cared and wanted them included in her stories. In her world.

The bottom line is, JK Rowling does not care enough to follow through, and well, when you’ve made as much money as she has, why should she? She bangs on about how truly diverse the wizarding world was and gives examples to back it up, but she does so way too late, and without any real proof, just her word. Sure, she created this universe, maybe she did believe Dumbledore was gay, or Hermione could be black, but she needed to say it back then, not ten years later when people are critical of the cis-het white world she’d created. She rants about men immediately calling women names when they disagree with them, prides herself on blocking and unfollowing these men, but when called out about supporting the casting of a known abuser? She suddenly no longer cares about supporting another woman. One who was arguably, treated a little worse than just name calling. Her idea of feminism is clouded by her life experience, which would be fine if she took the time to listen to the people around her, from different backgrounds, and try to understand why they feel what she says and does is offensive, clumsy, and lazy. But when her opinion and her views challenged, she comes out swinging, blocking people, throwing around statements like “Dumbledore is gay!” or “Hermione is black!” as a clumsy attempt to appease the very people she does not give a shit about. The solution is laughably simple, all she would have to do is just listen to marginalised voices. Hear their stories and educate herself. And if she truly wanted to be a true intersectional feminist, she would do it. Understanding her privilege would cost her nothing. In fact, it would garner her more respect, something she’s lost a lot of in the last few years.

Just say you don’t care, JK, it’s more honest. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

By: Vee H 

 Sources:

Twitter

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2016/09/08/jk-rowling-reveals-remus-lupins-werewolf-condition-metaphor-for-hiv/

https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/grindelwald-casting/

https://ew.com/movies/2018/01/12/daniel-radcliffe-johnny-depp-fantastic-beasts/

[wnmnblog]

Andrew Sullivan Column Saying Sarah Jeong Is Racist Is Both Right And Wrong

Andrew Sullivan hates that Sarah Jeong is on the New York Times Editorial Board, and because, he writes, that she’s racist.

In his “When Racism Is Fit to Print” column on the website of The New York Times, Mr. Sullivan rants “A series of tweets from 2013 to 2015 reveal a vicious hatred of an entire group of people based only on their skin color. If that sounds harsh, let’s review a few, shall we? “White men are bullshit,” is one. A succinct vent, at least. But notice she’s not in any way attacking specific white men for some particular failing, just all white men for, well, existing. Or this series of ruminations: “have you ever tried to figure out all the things that white people are allowed to do that aren’t cultural appropriation. there’s literally nothing. like skiing, maybe, and also golf. white people aren’t even allowed to have polo. did you know that. like don’t you just feel bad? why can’t we give white people a break. lacrosse isn’t for white people either. it must be so boring to be white.” Or this: “basically i’m just imagining waking up white every morning with a terrible existential dread that i have no culture.”

Those Sarah Jeong posts, taken alone, would be strong evidence of racism, without question. But because Andrew Sullivan doesn’t know the difference between “racism” and the act of being what I called “race conscious”, he makes the mistake of throwing the entire mix of Sarah Jeong tweets together into what he might call one giant bag of racism. One example of what I am saying is provided by Sullivan and from Ms. Jeong: ““Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.”

That is not pointing to all white people and saying they are a something – what Ms. Jeong is doing is describing an observed action by some who she says are white. That’s the act of being “race conscious” and not “racist” – she’s not putting down an entire group of people, so much as she’s complaining about an action she sees certain people doing who are white. Indeed, Sullivan himself wrote that Sarah Jeong expressed remorse for her take, and appologized for words that may have hurt anyone’s feelings. Good enough for me. And here is where I hold that Andrew Sullivan, as well as those who tend to be white and react to any comment pointing out a habit done by a subset of a group of people identified by race by saying such comments are racist, are not only wrong, but could be accused of trying to stop others from pointing out racism. Let me give you an example, using a problem I blogged about in Oakland 12 years ago.

In 2006, there was a spate of reported crimes committed against white women around Lake Merritt. Sadly, the persons who tended to do the criminal acts were young and black. I pointed that out in a blog post on my Oakand Focus blog at the time. For example, there was this mugging attempt https://ift.tt/2ACgz0H. But then, the same year, I used my Oakland Focus blog (Oakland’s first blog) to complain about a racist incident at Easy Bar on Lakeshore (which has since closed and given way to a new place called “The Cat House” at 3255 Lakeshore). https://ift.tt/2vhvUyy

But back then, I wrote

“A 1998 poll conducted by the San Francisco Chronicle seems still to apply here in 2006. It reported that 62 percent of African American residents experienced an example of racism in restaurants and stores, where only 10 percent of whites, 32 percent of Asians and 41 percent of Latinos did. Notice that the percentage increases as the color of the skin darkens. That’s not by accident. A person who only identified herself as an “white woman Adams Point resident” chimed in to explain away the incident — and she wasn’t in the room at all. This is crazy. What sickens me more than anything is that if I tell anyone who’s black about this, I get a sympathetic ear, yet the rate of white or non-black Oaklanders who seem to “get it” ranges about 50 percent – a coin flip. That’s nuts. What’s lost in all this from the “explainers” is that not one — not one person – bothered to ask me what happened; they just fire off with their steady stream of “maybes” as in “Maybe he this,…”

Since then, 12 years have passed, and judging by Andrew Sullivan’s post, American society still has a long way to go. There should not a climate where a person can’t point out racist actions – from that perspective, Ms. Jeong was right. If you see just some of the examples of racist and sexist trolling she has endured, you’d understand why she went off. But, and again, she did appologize. Now, Andrew Sullivan should express that he understands her pain – he has not done that.

Andrew Sullivan’s behind the times, but he’s right about Sarah Jeong’s expressed racism, and wrong for not understanding what racism is.

Stay tuned. via IFTTT https://youtu.be/-LZWtFeperc

[rametarin]

If I had the ear of South America..

I would say, “Latinx is only the beginning.”

Yeah. It’s perceived as an anglo plot to colonize and imperialize the Spanish language, as it was born in the US thanks to a bunch of cultural marxist shitheads that are shamelessly trying to argue against gendered language on some futurist utopian transhumanist bullshit, white claiming it’s purely, “for diversity and inclusion of the transgendered and non-binary gendered people.”

But you aren’t going to stop or stem this tide of stupid by writing it off as some anglo plot. It just.. it won’t stop.

Here in the United States a guerilla cultural war went on. As a child I was exposed to radical feminists that took careful measures to engineer my experiences and get me to draw conclusions. That white people were evil, as individuals and as a group. That white people were destroying the world. That white people were soulless, cultureless imperialist monsters that just wanted to subvert all the innocent and harmless brown people and verifiably undeniably had enslaved everybody and everything.

That togetherness you enjoy under the label Hispanic and/or Latino? These people that formulated Latinx are working to subvert that, too. Here in the states, “I don’t see race” became controversial because the supposed progressives don’t like the egalitarian model that eliminates race and class from the equation to address if an individual is free or not based on their own personal merits, poverty level, education, etc. They DO like to ask, “Are these COMMUNITIES and MINORITY GROUPS (self identified) thriving and growing? If not, is it because the majority isn’t helping them grow at their own expense?”

In the United States, for the longest time, the narrative was that Spanish colonialism was irrelevant, at least in the US conversation about race and oppression, because, “Spanish speakers are marginalized and oppressed.” And also implied to be synonymous with being as different from white people as Asians and black Africans. So giving the Spanish the same stigma as they give, say, people descended from the English, or the French, or the Germans, was considered wrong.

But now that they’ve decided they want to cement more ties with drug cartels and guerillas across South America, the conversation and discourse has progressed. Now they want to kick up activity in Latin America to make society divisive and talk about how the black Latino is inherently oppressed by the white Latino. Rather than the discourse assume everybody south of the border is some big happy singular culture and family, it’s becoming clearer they don’t like white Spanish, and want the progressive and hip and cool kid view that white Spanish people, regardless of their origins or immigration status, are oppressors of people with different skin, solely on account of their, “privilege.”

This mentality that encouraged minority groups to militantly self-segregate and declare themselves separate cultures unto themselves, being oppressed by a white majority, is being used to sell social theories and scapegoat majorities for any and all problems being faced by a community .Exploiting the very real colorism and history of discrimination, but not for the ends of ending it, but for exploiting it to motivate division, discord and violence.

Feminism’s surface stated values and goals in and of themselves aren’t all bad. Obviously, there are backwards and exploitative or outright misogynistic views, values and social policy put in place to prevent women from living independent lives or progressing in work or business. The concept of a niche of interest that covers that WOULD be good, except it has been co-opted and platformed by these same marxist guerilla people for the purposes of selling dialectic materialistic views on what is unfair and what is unjust, and they’re harnessing that anger to create a culture that makes women feel oppressed as a class and under the auspices of what they’re learning from the Marxists.

They use and exploit this niche, this legitimate advocacy towards equality and advancement for women, the way a horror movie monster wiggles into the skin of a crewmate to characterize itself as something it is not while sabotaging the environment and exploiting the situation for its own ends. Infiltration. So female uprightedness and empowerment in and of itself is not the problem, but ‘feminism’ as a social organization is. The banner has been platformed and tained, and a lot of the literature mixed in with it is more of the same Critical Legal Theory crap that tells them certain things are true and absolute based on arbitrary theory.

It is important to not see this egalitarian undertone as the problem. It is not. The egalitarian element that is appropriated by these conspirators and guerillas is not the issue. The issue is the people that have exploited the conversation of female equality, are doing so to stick lenses over the eyes of the people with the only outlet of social organization they can see or know to do anything about it. And that’s how you get populist radical feminism as the only or biggest, loudest game in town for their organizing.

That’s how you get buzz cut self-proclaimed radfems rioting and attacking churches and other, “patriarchal organizations.” That’s how you get the same sort of woman taking the liberty of telling young girls (whom then go on to see young boys so dourly and poorly) that “society is corrupted and evil.”

It is so, so important going forwards to fight shit like Latinx in the correct way. If you make the wrong arguments, you won’t break through to your daughters or sons. They’re being told that white people (and this now includes Spanish-Latinos) are monsters. And they’re being told that men are shit. Little boys (like I was) are being cornered by their female age-group peers, their peers older sisters, aunts, mothers, other peers, that men by default are oppressive, woman-hating monsters by default and by society/culture.

You need to understand that the things these supposed progressives try to fight for, they do it solely to take the niche away from anybody else and DEFINE progressivism as what they want, and anything they do not, to be more of the same oppression by race, by sex, by religion, by culture, by money. It’s a propaganda game, and the more any of you try to preach about Jesus or the church knowing best, or ‘things are just naturally a certain way and you need to understand that,’ the more you play into their hands.

Your enemy is radical, and it is only secular on paper. But they’ll induct people to have “important conversations” with your children and community that appeal to what they only call science and logic, that are in fact only loosely that. And really just subjective opinion, philosophy. Social science. You try and appeal to religion to argue their stuff, they’ll beat you like a drum and you’ll just prove them right in the developing hearts and minds of a generation that is trying to not be stuck with the stigma of their parents or ancestors in the eyes of their friends.

This is not an enemy you can just sing a song about Jesus and Mary and defeat. These people will take and twist any real or even perceived and interpreted flaw in your society and those that suffer from the ills the most will internalize it, if what’s made to appeal to their sensibilities takes.

In America, that comes in the form of mixing racial separatism and supremacism with conflating it for the struggle for black freedom and equality. And I cannot imagine it being any different south of Mexico, whatsoever. They’ll work on the girls and tell them that to be born white-Latino is to be an oppressor, tell the girls they’re largely exempt from this because women are a marginalized and oppressed minority/demographic, and tell the misc. non-white groups across South America that they should organize against the hegemony of white people and “whiteness.”

They’ll do it while pretending their attempts and desire to spread disunity and hostility is “sticking up for the little guy.” They’ll do it while confronting overbearing actual patriarchal culture and binary gendered culture (so long as it’s white)  and write off ALL of Catholicism in South America as equal to the WORST of examples of bad Catholicism.

American conservatives continue to struggle dealing with these people because they see an opportunity to polarize and capitalize on the totalitarian nature of this polarization. They see it as a way to incentivize people to vote for more conservative, religious and similarthings, because if their alternative are literal communists and socialists, they can afford to ask for more.

Meanwhile they lose when it comes to hearts and minds of the young because their messages are just utterly worthless when as a 2-13 year old, you’re being told religious, old, white, capitalist people are oppressing everybody and destroying everything and trying to force everybody to live and society to work under the totalitarianism of religion.

When the angry political lesbian type corners you as a small child and explains that men are why women are so afraid of men, and you can’t even rebutt that it’s a feminist talking point without them talking about how that’s a Nazi/conservative propaganda view, and the young girls they’re grooming go with that interpretation of the world and events because it holds more romantic value for them, things they want to be true and things that they’ve been given just enough facts and reason to think are true, it doesn’t help when competitive arguments are either, “you’re too young to think about or talk about social issues or political discourse,” or, confirm every negative suspicion they now have with, “well they’re right, we are oppressing them, but we have every right to.”

The only way to truly beat these manipulative, lying, exploiting animals is to beat them at their own game.

They do not care about minority welfare or rights beyond their solutions on how to address any given injustice they can think of. Whether it be by making society respect the establishment of different racial communities again solely to provide financail welfare to people on the basis of race, or rules that say they’re free to discriminate against groups of people in the name of hiring and defending others. They care only about using those struggles to give the state more power over not just people, but groups, and even how communities are defined. Right down to trying to demand biological sex be marginalized in importance of terms like gender solely because less than .4% of the human population claims to not be defined by the biological sex/gender binary.

So the only way to defeat them is to address the problems in a way that route and solve them, while you still have power and the means by which to solve them the proper way. For if you don’t, the Marxist village idiots will.

[rickfallsforgravity]

Heart of the Storm

(Older Dipper x Reader // Trigger warnings: violence and some swearing) Foreword: Not a 100%  sure I’m happy with this but here it is anyway. The monster is kind of base of Sirens…? Anyway, hope you enjoy!

The morning haze drifted through the trees as I listened to Dipper’s heavy footsteps along the dirt path. Everything was still, stagnant, silent other than us and the sleepy morning mist. I looked towards him, the ragged journal tucked into the crook of his arm, the sunlight breaking through the canopy in rays that turned his hair a brilliant golden. I took a deep breath; the air was so heavily laced with moisture it was almost suffocating. I glanced through the leaves and noticed the clouds gathering, clustering…

“A storms brewing,” I said breaking the silence. Dipper’s head turned slightly, glancing at me, “and it’s a big one. Whatever you’re planning to do you better make it fast.”

A small smile entwined into his lips as he nodded but didn’t say anything.

 It wasn’t normal for him to be this quiet. Yeah sure, he was shy and adorably awkward in most social situations however, just like his sister, he was a talker. Especially with close friend. Normally, he would be babbling on about something science related or a new monster he discovered. I felt my heart rate increase a little, anxiety setting in. It just wasn’t like him to be this… quiet.

Suddenly he stopped and opened the journal, flicking through the pages until he found what he was looking for. I twisted myself to face him, to see whether I could guess what he was thinking but his eyes where hidden under his cap, shadowed and dark. I couldn’t read a thing.

“Dipper… what exactly are we out here to do?” I asked cautiously. It was stupid for me to even get worked up like this, I mean this was Dipper! And it wasn’t like this was the first time going on walks with him… But, it was just me and him, deep in the woods, alone…

He had changed over the last year too; grew a lot taller, put on a little muscle, became rather cute- I shook my head vigorously. What was I thinking, I’ve known Dipper for years! Being in a relationship with him would be wrong (no matter how many time Mabel tried to set us up together). It would never be ideal.

Plus, there was no way he liked me back. He’s obsessed with Wendy, always has been…

“You’ll see,” a wry smile on his lips. It was almost like he was mocking me… My anxiety rose like a mountain lion waking from a deep slumber as we started to walk again. I fell silent, trying to tame my heart, coaxing it into submission. Maybe it was the atmosphere. The air heavy with water molecules, so much so that it clung to my skin. It was claustrophobic. It was unbreathable. And it seemed to get worse the deeper we went into the forest but maybe it just my anxiety building and building and building-

Suddenly there was a break in the trees. I gasped, partly from amazement, partly because my lungs were on fire. As we edged into the clearing the mist parted to reveal a lake. Crystalline. Tranquil. So still and undisturbed that it reflected the sky, it’s water shimmering silver. The air here was so dense it was almost like I was drowning. The oxygen deprivation made my head spin and I clasped onto Dipper to steady myself. But it didn’t take away its beauty.

Without the leaf canopy hiding the sun, its light rained down, reflecting off the water dense mist to create fragments of rainbows in every direction I looked. Millions of colours. Everywhere.

“Dipper…” I breathed, my voice hardly audible. I felt his hand slip into mine and I realised that he too was struggling to breath. “What is this place?”

“I found it, once. A few months back. And I thought it was beautiful… I’ve been trying to look for it ever since; almost obsessively. It appears in various parts of the forest before the biggest storm of every month and then complete disappears.” He muttered, “I’ve not told anyone else about this yet, I- I wanted you to be the first one I showed it too.” But as I look out over the lake again… there wasn’t a single breath of life. Not a breath of wind. Not a single minuscule ripple of the water. Not a sound. It was like everything was drowned, dead and wilting; an uneasiness settled into my gut. Everything about this place was… off.

“Dipper… let’s leave” I glanced to the clouds, they had gone a grey so dark they were almost black. This couldn’t be good. I tugged at Dipper’s hand but he only stiffened, unmoving as his eyes locked onto metallic pool. As the dark clouds rolled over the edge of the trees into the clearing, the fragmented colours started to fade, shadowing us in the grim. In the oncoming dark, the perfectly circler lake started to glow. I watched, intrigued, as ripples broke the surface of the mirror and a body started to emerge from the middle of the lake.

Dipper took a step forward, mesmerised, nearing the water’s edge.

Then it started to rain. The storm unfurled, blossoming from a light English drizzle into an Asian monsoon. The droplet so heavy they bruised my skin like hail. The body unfolded into a beautiful lady, her eyes closed, perfect and still. Her skin the colour of death, pale and fragile. Her dark wet hair slicked to her back. Her blue dress clinging to her wet body, the water making it practically transparent, revealing… everything.

But she was beautiful.

Dippers hand slipped from mine, my fumbling fingers unable to grasp any friction with his. He fell onto his knees as if in prayer. Like he was seeing god-

Suddenly, her eyes fluttered open and I wanted to scream… but only silence was granted by my terror. Her eyes were abysses of oblivion- for she had no eyes, only a blackness that engulfed where they should have been. No iris, no pupil, no whites of the eyes- only nothingness.

And then she started to sing…

I felt my conscience dance to the hymns. Entrapped by its beauty. My mind was compelled towards her, making me want to throw myself into the lake, to give her all of me. My mind flooded for the sudden desire to become one with her. Suddenly, I was just another string on her harp of souls, just waiting for her to use me and my body for whatever she craved. The whole universe now revolved around her, silent and waiting.

I staggered lake wards, squinting through the pelting rain. Water stinging my eyes, everything turning into blurry visions. Suddenly, my foot caught on a rock and I tumbled forward, catching myself moments away from plunging head first into the dark murky depths of the lake. I froze, staring into the water, my face inches away from its surface.

Thousands of black eyes stared up at me, their faces ugly and deformed, contorted into looks of hunger and desire. Their skin wrinkled and grey. Their hair sparse and thinning.

And as they saw me they started to surge towards me, claws outstretched, yellow with age. Their mouths opened in anguish, showing rotting fangs. I threw myself backwards in a mad panic. This was a trap! All of it! I looked towards the maiden and what I saw horrified me. She was the worst of them all once the facade had fallen, spell broken. She was a rotting carcass, her skin grey and decaying, broken by maggots that had stripped the flesh to the bone. Her mouth agape, no longer singing but screaming…

Animals of all sorts were now emerging from the bushes, completely enraptured by the spell. Like zombies they stepped into the water, their eyes never leaving the maiden. Violently, they were dragged into the depths of the lake. The army of monstrosities tearing the poor things apart. Claws ripping apart flesh and fur. Teeth sinking into helpless throats. The blood of the deer, squirrels and foxes tainting the pure lake, the horror living on as the animals thrashed, calling and squealing as they were literally torn apart alive, the fear glinting in their eyes as the witchcraft fractured all too late.

Everything just a blur of red and silver; screaming bodies thrashing, drowning, dying in front of me. The silence before the storm now long gone as I found myself caught in its craze, the rain crashing down so loud, so brutal- this was the epicentre. This was what lurked at the heart of the storm…  

Suddenly I remembered Dipper and my eyes darted franticly. Momentary relief flooding through my veins as he was still on the grass. But I fell back into terror’s hold as I remembered that he was still trapped in the magic-

With eyes still glued to the woman, he carelessly casted the journal aside and started to strip, slowly pulling off his hoodie. He was falling for it! I needed to pull him out of the enchantment, I needed to find a way to bring his mind back into reality-

He tugged off his shirt, revealing his bare chest, his skin illuminating in the darkness. He stood up, moments away from meeting the water…

I lunged at him, pulling him onto the grass, sending us both tumbling away from the lake. I straddled him, my weight pinning him down as he squirmed underneath me. His pupils still dilated; searching for her, the maiden of the lake. He should have snapped out of it by now, why did he-

An abrupt snarl escaped his lips, the enchantment turning him into an animal, a wild thing, making him mad with desire. His nails dug into my skin, drawing blood as he tried to get me off him.

“Dipper…” I whimpered, struggling to keep hold of his slippery body. Why was their effect so strong on him? Why didn’t he just snap out of it when he broke eye contact like I did?

Suddenly, an outburst of shock escaped my lungs as a white-hot throbbing bloomed across my face. I was violently thrown to the side as Dipper’s fist connected with my cheekbone, the blood rushing to my face as it already started to swell red. My hand gingerly lingered over my cheek, the initial shock subsiding as the realisation hit home… Dipper had never hit me before.

As quick as lighting, he was on his feet again. My existence completely erased from his mind as he solely concentrated on her, stumbling forward, slipping in the mud, muttering something under his breath. He was blinded by his craving for her, who was in his mind was more beautiful than I ever could be… it made my stomach twist in jealousy. It hurt to see him like this…

Gritting my teeth, I staggered into a standing position. Hurt turned into hatred faster than a flutter of butterfly wings, igniting a fire within me that I didn’t realise I had. I advanced towards him, every scrape of my bones sparking new anger, new envy, new loathing. This was going to stop. NOW.

My hand clawed his shoulder as I spun him around to face me. His feral eyes darkened with insanity, his body preparing for a fight he knew he was going to win. A fight that would leave one of us dead. Preparing to end me. I growled, returning the hostility, returning the aggression- Then I did something that neither of us expected…

I kissed him.

I felt him stiffen with shock as my lips met his. He was soft, gentle, a scared animal lost within layers of incantations created by evil. I wrapped my arms around his torso, his skin electric against mine-

Then I felt him kiss me back.

His hands caressing my waist as he pulled me into him, deepening the kiss. The fire within me exploded with passion, taking over whatever sense I had. All dangers forgotten as we were lost in the heat of our bodies in union. My finger entwined into his wet, curly, locks of hair; never letting go, never stopping, never going to let him slip through my fingers like that again…

We finally pulled away, our lungs screaming for oxygen. Our pants releasing wisps of steam into the atmosphere. I glanced around us, noticing the stillness that had again overcome the forest, only fragmented by the rusting leaves in the wind. The rain had stopped…

“(Y-y/n),” Dipper stammered, his eyes large and curious, his fringe pulled back to reveal his birthmark. He was back to his normal self, good old dipping sauce. I brought a finger to his lips, hushing him gently as my own lips went to rested on his collarbone. I looked past him, into the clearing and saw that the lake was gone… like it never existed. Just grass and undergrowth.  

I sighed, relieved and finally let Dipper go, laughing when I saw how ridiculous we looked. Dipper’s clothes scattered on the floor, both of us covered in bruises, dirt and scratches, soaked in rain.

“Ford is going to throw a hissy fit when he sees us like this,” My laugh echoing through the trees, a deep blush blossoming on his cheeks as he looked around. I could just imagine it: Ford’s deep, steady, logical voice telling Dipper that we ‘were not kids children anymore’ and that we really should not go fooling about in the forest alone. Especially not during a storm. Stan would be standing behind him, adding on that he was a young man once and knew what it was like. When asked if anything did happen, Dipper would give everything away with a stuttered denial and the blood rushing to his cheeks. Mabel would then lose it; squealing ‘I KNEW IT’ before running off screaming ‘OTP’ or ‘Omgomgomgomg’. Ford would come to the conclusion that we were into some really kinky shit, judging by the state of ourselves, and Stan would pretend to be disappointed but secretly wink at Dipper, letting him know that he was totally onboard with the whole situation…

And I would get up from where every I was sitting, walk up to Dipper as I take his hand and plant a deep sensual kiss on his throat. Then continue in a flirty tone, ‘I’m going to take a shower, I’ll be waiting for you so don’t be too long…’ before winking at him and walking off. Probably escalating the situation by 1000% to then leave him to deal with the aftermath.

I grinned and turned to Dipper who had finished putting his soggy clothes back on. I cocked my head to one side and gave my most innocent smile.

Today was going to be interesting.

Written by M.S.T

[brownfemmequeerinjapan]

"Bones of ribbon in my hands."

My entire life I have felt in between. Other. I am too "White" to be Black. Too Black to be Asian. I'm too fat, too loud, too smart, too opinionated and too aware. When I came to Japan when I was younger, I was acutely aware of my "otherness" but there was a shield to protect me. My friends and family provided that shield or maybe I hadn't developed the acute sense of fear I feel in all public places because I single handedly represent one entire group of whatever group I appear to represent to that person I'm interacting with at a given time when all I just want is to buy my damn Earl Grey Tea Latte in peace. Today (or rather yesterday in America.) I woke-up to the news that yet another rally of Nazis was happening in my country and took to Facebook and Twitter to watch White friend after White friend post reactions in outrage and then cautiously worded explanations for how they are tired. How they feel they can't deal with the news today. How everything is so negative so they must turn away. And I snapped. I snapped at people who were supposed to be my friends, I snapped at myself for believing...for continuing to try and love other people. The fragile feelings. The pats on the back. The clutching of pearls. They will be the dirt that lines my grave. They will be the sickness in the air that takes down the generation of POC children in America after me, slowly crushing them under the weight of a fate they were told they might not have to deal with because "yes we did" so many years ago. In my day job, back in America, I look at genes. I rather, I read data and compare it to multiple sets of genes to look for patterns which, upon conclusion, point towards an origin point of change. Change that wouldn't happen if something in the history of those genes - the stories of our ancestors in our DNA - didn't come upon. This usually shows itself as historical trauma. So, to put it simply, my work literally reminds me that racism is killing me. Killing those I love. That hatred is probably shortening the lives of trans people, of gay men and women. That trauma children experience not only affects them psychologically but genetically in this lifetime and the life of the children they have, if they have them. Trauma haunts us at all sides. So upon hearing the news this morning and seeing the video of a car plowing into protesters encircling a statute of a bigot who fought for enslaving my ancestors, a statue that had already been scheduled to be taken down, I felt myself move into that familiar space where everything is an echo and all I can see is a tunnel. And I crumbled. And I will tell you why. In June of 2016, I realized that Trump was going to be our next president. If you talk to many POCs, they will say the same. Maybe not the same date but MANY of us knew it was coming. Our existence is literally possible because our previous ancestors were able to see the impending danger living in our world presented and altered course accordingly. So I altered course. My family's history is filled with people who did so because it would mean a better life and I did the same. But I did it, naively thinking that setting up my life to move back to a country my family left would mean that I would get to focus on school and better my life and AT LEAST that would be worth giving up so much. That the fear, the anxiety, the dread I feel just stepping out my door as a women of color in America would be different in Japan because I'd be so far away. But I told myself a lie. We live in a digital age and all that hate is broadcast all over the world in real time. And I refuse to ignore the hate others are experiencing because I'm lucky enough to leave. Because I am still American. I feel I have to break down "lucky" in this context: I am 36 years old, dark skinned, queer woman of color who is painfully opinionated. I am fat. I have giant feet. But every account of who I am, I am different therefore my life is challenging in Japan. I love anime, I love Japanese culture and I love the safeness of Japan. But I get to trade those things for being basically ostracized for my entire time here. Which I knew I was going to walk into....but if you look at the dumpster fire that is America and then compare it to a life of self imposed loneliness and celibacy but at least a police officer won't shoot you for being the wrong color then which one do you choose? Really? I've been tired for many years now. And I keep smiling and saying it's ok when it's not. Every once in awhile, I will crack and those around me, usually White people, will tell me to take a break. But the problem is, there's no breaks in this race. If you stop, it will all catch up to you and that's it. The only people who are afforded breaks in this world are those who take the right to exist from others. Every part of my life has been because I didn't stop running. My survival has been because I somehow shaved a few seconds off the clock. I keep moving my feet until they are bloody , until I can't move them anymore because that's how any of us get anywhere in society. And that's how my ancestors survived. And if we're lucky we live a few years after we've "made it" to see a little bit of what we worked so hard to achieve. We die too soon because we pushed ourselves too hard. These days, some of us give up friends and family for "a better life" and so we have the added bonus of dying alone. I'm starting to understand why that happens too. This isn't a surprise to me and honestly, I bet if you ask your POC friends, it's not a surprise to them either. We keep saying it should be better but we get too tired to do anything more. I know these words will alienate people. I know they will push them away. But I can't hide the truth anymore. I do it enough in my daily life in Japan that I can't do it online, which maybe is a blessing I guess. It's a small price to pay in comparison.

[equinoxparanormal]

10 Creepy, Haunted Objects with a Hidden Past

Is that clown doll looking at you funny? It may very well be. Haunted objects are the subject of Stacey Graham’s new book, Haunted Stuff: Demonic Dolls, Screaming Skulls, and Other Creepy Collectibles, and I'd think twice before picking up that doll house at the next yard sale, bub. Here are ten haunted items from the book:

1.       Lady Lovibond

Was a woman's betrayal behind the sinking of the Lady Lovibond? Driven mad by the sounds of his beloved's wedding celebration to the captain below deck in 1748, the first mate, John Rivers, bludgeoned the seaman at the wheel of the tall ship and steered it to certain destruction on the Goodwin Sands off the coast of England in revenge. Now, every fifty years, the vessel has been spotted smashing upon the rocks only to fade before the eyes of its rescuers. One ship recorded hearing the sounds of music floating across the water as the Lady Lovibond nearly rammed into them. There was no official sighting of the ship in 1998, but I'll be on the beach waiting for it to appear in 2048—I'll save you a spot.

2.       Driskill Hotel

The Driskill Hotel in Austin, Texas boasts several ghosts, starting with the death of the young daughter of a state senator following a fall down the grand staircase in 1887. Soon after Samantha's death, a ball was reported bouncing in the first floor lobby, and her laughter echoes near the second floor ladies room and the stairs leading to the mezzanine.

The Driskill also hosts the Suicide Brides. Twenty years apart, two women took their own lives in the opulent room 427—one by hanging and one by a self-inflicted gunshot in the bathtub. The rooms in that section of the hotel have been refurbished, but rumor has it that 427 is resistant to change. It had to be repainted four times as the paint peeled from the walls, and the bathtub would fill with clear water—though there was no running water to the bathroom and leaks were never found.

3.       Aunt Pratt

The painting of a woman hung in a bedroom at Shirley Plantation in Virginia kicked up its heels at the thought of being forgotten. After being placed in the attic during a redecoration of the bedroom, Martha Hill (or Aunt Pratt, as she'd come to be known) created a "mighty ruckus" in the attic in the form of the family hearing a chair being furiously rocked until the painting was returned to the bedroom. In the 1970s, the Virginia Travel Council borrowed the painting for an exhibition of supernatural phenomena at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. While there, witnesses saw the painting swing back and forth so wildly that the seal of Virginia, which hung next to it, also began to rock. The phenomena were captured on film after a reporter from CBS caught the action while on a lunch break. One morning, workmen found the painting on the floor, several feet away from its case and, in their words, "heading toward the exit."

4.       The Broken-Faced Doll: Mandy

Strange things are afoot at the Quesnel and District Museum and Archives in British Columbia. After acquiring a 1920s-era doll in 1991, the curator felt a little uneasy with the way the baby doll smiled through its cracked visage. The curator later learned that the donor would repeatedly find in the house windows securely latched that, moments before, would be wide open, and hear the eerie cry of a baby coming from the basement—only to find another open window...and no child. These reports creeped the curator out a little bit more. The doll settled into its new digs well enough, until patrons to the museum started complaining about how they felt the doll's eyes were following them as they crossed the room, or that its fingers would move and eyes blink. The doll has garnered national attention for its antics, and the museum welcomes those who are brave enough to stare into the eyes of the broken-faced doll and make their own conclusions of whether it is haunted...or simply just extremely creepy.

5.       The Blushing Portrait

Haw Branch Plantation sits tucked away in the hamlet of Amelia, Virginia. The owner's cousin sent a painting of a young, distant relative who had passed away; the owners, upon receipt of the painting, were disappointed to find the painting a mix of black, grays, and dingy whites, having been told of the painting's beautiful colors in green and pink. Out of respect to their cousin who had sent the painting, the owners placed the painting on the mantelpiece in the library and forgot about it. Days later, women's voices were heard coming from the library, where the owners only found an empty room. This continued until it was noticed that the painting of the young woman was taking on color. Over a year and a half, the painting was slowly infused with the promised greens and pinks, but also revealed a lovely redheaded woman. At some angles, it appears that the woman was blushing but in others it looks as if the portrait was bleeding. Local experts were called in to examine the painting for an explanation, but none were ever able to give a firm and logical answer.

6.       Golden Gate Bridge

A spectacular tourist spot in San Francisco, California, the Golden Gate Bridge welcomes visitors from all over the world—and leads some to their doom. Named the premier suicide spot in the world (with over 1,300 known deaths from jumpers since its opening in 1937), the bridge has a shadow over its beauty. On nights locked in the fog rolling off the bay, passersby may hear the screams of the jumpers before their bodies hit the water.

The Tennessee ran aground on the sharp rocks on the Golden Gate Strait in 1853. Luckily, all of her passengers and crew were saved before it sank, but in 1942, the crew of the USS Kennison reported seeing the ship sail under the famous bridge and into the fog without leaving a blip on the Kennison's radar.

7.       The Screaming Skull of Burton Agnes Hall

The untimely death of Katherine (Anne) Griffith of Burton Agnes Hall in Yorkshire, England left behind more than a tragedy of a young life cut short. After being robbed and beaten by one of England's notorious highwaymen near her home in the early 15th century, Anne was taken home to perish in relative comfort. Making her sisters promise to always keep a part of her with them, she died wanting to "remain in our beautiful home as long as it shall last." Literal much, Anne? Burying Anne's head along with her body, her family returned to the Hall to discover one very grumpy ghost pleading to come home. Disinterring the body a few weeks later, they found that her head had been severed from the neck and was completely bare of skin or hair. (You have total permission to get grossed out now.)

Returning with the skull to the Hall, the ghost and odd noises stopped until years later, when the skull was thrown away and Anne got her caterwauling on. The family eventually hid the skull within the panels in the Great Hall, and it has been quiet ever since.

8.       Belcourt Castle

Belcourt Castle in Newport, Rhode Island housed a diverse collection of artifacts from around the world—some just happened to be a little sassier than others. In the French Gothic ballroom, visitors to the mansion have described feelings of unease, a dip in room temperature, and getting the stink eye from a pair of salt chairs reportedly used by French royalty.

Salt chairs were so-called due to the fact that they have a chamber beneath the removable seat to store commodity such as salt and whatever crown jewels they had laying around. Now at Belcourt Castle, the chairs have been reported to repel would-be sitters, and even to have once tossed a person from the chair itself.

A row of suits of armor dating from the 15th and 16th centuries lined the back wall of the ballroom. Each March, the family reported hearing screaming coming from one set of the amour as a knight relived his final moments. A helmet was also rumored to swivel to follow tourists as they walk through the house. Other ghosts in the home include a robed monk, a British soldier, ladies dressed in evening wear, and a Samurai warrior who is believed to have traveled to the house along with the former owner's Asian collection of antiques.

9.       Chair of Doom

It's a little on the dramatic side, but with the chair hanging from a wall at the Thirsk Museum, in North Yorkshire, England, you can't be too careful.

Convicted of murdering his father-in-law in 1702, Thomas Busby placed a curse upon anyone who dared to sit on his favorite chair at the Busby Stoop Inn—the same one his father-in-law had sat in the night he was killed by a blow of Busby's hammer. After Busby's hanging, the legend of the chair's curse grew. Locals dared each other to sit in the chair and taunt the curse of a dead man—until a string of accidents made them wonder if they had pushed it too far. First, in the late 18th century, a chimney sweep was found hanging from a gatepost next to where Busby was hung years before. Years later, airmen who had dared the curse were found dead in an automobile accident the same day. More and more car crashes linked the chair to untimely deaths. The pub owner finally donated the chair to the museum after a man working on the roof fell to his death after using the chair earlier in the day.

10.   Hollywood Sign

Bright lights and the big city can also equal crushed dreams and a roll down the hill into legend. The Hollywood Sign looms over the sun-drenched valley in California as a symbol of ambition and fame—but what happens when it all becomes too much? Actress Peg Entwhistle felt her career had gone nowhere after she left New York to try her luck in the movies in 1932. Desperate and no longer wishing to be a burden to her family, she chose to plunge off the top of the letter H of the (then) Hollywoodland Sign. The next morning, a hiker found her coat and purse, with the suicide note tucked within, at the base of the sign and left it at the police station. They found the body two days later; it had rolled into the brush downhill. Two days after identifying the body, a letter arrived at her uncle's house giving her the lead in a new production at the Beverly Hills Playhouse.

Now, hikers report seeing a woman in 1930s-era clothing wandering at the base of the sign, only to disappear when they approached her. Park ranger John Arbogast claims to have smelled gardenias, Entwhistle's favorite scent, in the dead of winter. Police have often been called to the sign on reports of seeing a woman jump, only to find nothing but the beautiful view of the valley below.

[Stacey Graham, Llewellyn]

[adambstingus]

55 People Reveal The Strangest Thing About Their Body

Found on AskReddit.

1. I cry when I pee or take a shit.

I cry when I pee or take a shit. It’s not just tearing up, it’s literally tears streaming down my face. I have no pain, nor is it because I feel relieved. Nobody that I know experiences the same thing. (Sorry if I made any grammar mistakes. English is not my first language.)

2. My nuts are comically tiny.

Im Asian yet have a bodybuilder’s physique, including legs. I’m 5’8″ but my penis is huge (9.5 inches and thick) but my nuts are regular size. So my penis looks normal sized compared to my legs/body and my nuts look comically tiny.

3. I have three nipples.

I have a third nipple.

4. I have four nipples.

Two extra nipples.

5. I was born without eyebrows.

When I was born, I didn’t have any eyebrows. Dislike, they were fair, or light, I had none. They didn’t begin developing in until I was 6 years of age. After ten years, they are sketchy, at various statures, and look in no way like each other. No idea why.

6. I have a birthmark on the tip of my penis shaped like the continent of Africa.

I got a birthmark on the tip of my penis that’s weirdly shaped like the continent of Africa. Ladies find it cute, which is why I’ll never get circumcised.

7. I have a micropenis.

I have a micropenis. I’ve pretty much given up on dating. The only way I could ever be in a relationship is if a woman doesn’t care that much about sex.

8. I look like I’m going to murder someone when I comb my hair.

If I touch the right side of my scalp, my lower eyelid twitches. I look like I’m going to murder someone when I comb my hair.

9. I am shaped like a shovel.

I am shaped like a shovel. Seriously. Like, you know pear figures? Yeah, I don’t have that. I am straight and then, BOOM! My hips billow out like the giant disappointments they are.

10. I do not recognize or remember faces.

Brains are part of the body, right? I have Prosopagnosia (face blindness), which means that I do not recognize or remember faces. I can look at someone, turn around, turn back, and I won’t recognize their face. I don’t recognize my coworkers, friends, or family by face. I have a lot of funny stories related to this

11. If I touch my clit on the toilet, I automatically pee.

If I touch my clit on the toilet, I automatically pee. Like a pee button. It’s kinda useful for public restrooms where I want to be in and out really fast.

12. I have tits and a dick.

Tits and a dick. Most people seem to find that rather weird.

13. It’s like a whole community of hair just said fuck it and moved to my body’s equivalent of Florida.

On the left side of my head, above my ear, I’ve developed a random bald spot slightly larger than the diameter of a quarter. Coincidentally, right below my right shoulder, I have a thick patch of back hair about the same size (my back is otherwise hairless). It’s like a whole community of hair just said fuck it and moved to my body’s equivalent of Florida.

14. Certain sexual thoughts will cause me to sneeze involuntarily.

When I have certain sexual thoughts, I get an involuntary sneeze reaction. It’s not all sexual thoughts, just the ones I find inappropriate. Like, I when I first started fooling around with my girlfriend (now my wife) at her mom’s house where we could get caught by her slightly younger sister, it happened a lot. But fooling around in general wouldn’t cause the sneeze unless I was about to suggest something a little naughtier than normal. My wife knows now, so when we’re in bed and I sneeze her first reaction is to ask if it’s an innocent sneeze or something else. It’s only gotten me in trouble once or twice, like when her girlfriend casually mentioned threesomes and I sneezed immediately, which kind of pissed off my wife because she knew it wasn’t an innocent one. Her friends and sister, thankfully, don’t know about my sneeze reaction.

15. My mom says the mole on the side of my head looks like a penis.

I have a perfectly smooth, mushroom-shaped, skin0colored mole on the side of my head and I’ve had it since birth. My mom says it looks like a penis, you know, nice stuff that moms say.

16. I have two pee-holes, and pee comes out of both.

I have two pee-holesthey’re right next to each other and pee comes out of both.

17. Im a guy and I have a huge butt and huge thighs.

My thighs are really disproportionate compared to the rest of my body and my butt is bigger. I am a guy and this really doesn’t look good.

18. My penis curves upward and toward the left.

My penis curves upwards but is also turned about 15 to the left. It’s weird. I can pee around corners.

19. I get pus-filled cysts over much of my body.

I have a condition called hidradenitis supprativa. I get pus-filled cysts in my armpits, under my breasts, on my stomach, and along my inner thighs. It is pretty rare, and can be debilitating (I have a mild form, so if you Google it, be warned you’re gonna see some nasty shit). Had it since high school, and it sometimes will go into remission. It is now thought to be an auto-immune disorder of the apocrine system, but not much is known about it. I try to watch what I wear, because certain clothes will rub my skin and cause a cyst to form. If I get a cyst, I usually pop it myself and clean it up. Sometimes it can open a small sinus in my skin, which is gross. I have a lot of scars from it, and some cysts that I’ve popped and drained will sometimes refill. I’ve run across something that says menopause can make it go into remission, so I have that to look forward to. The human body is weird.

20. I have an amazing retractive penis.

Retractive penis. 1in or less flaccid, big 7.5in hog erect. Kinda convenient actually, takes up less space, less likely to get hit, not swingin around wildly, but this tactical advantage is cancelled out by my huge grandpa balls.

21. I can roll my stomach like an Indian belly dancer but I’m a white male.

I can roll my stomach like an Indian belly dancer but I’m a white male. I have no idea when or how I discovered i could do it but I was very young since I remember doing it for show and tell in kindergarten. Edit: Also, my second toe is longer than my first on both feet by a full segment. It makes it difficult to get comfortable shoes sometimes because they’re designed for the big toe to be the longest.

22. I get earth-shattering orgasms when jizz is inside me.

Im a woman and the thing that gives me the best earth-shattering orgasms is when my partner cums inside of me. Not the act of cumming (though I enjoy that too) but the actual jizz makes me orgasm for up to an hour after sex. Never found out of any other women experience this, none of my girlfriends do.

23. I can snap my toe like Im snapping a finger.

I can snap my toe. Like, finger-snapping…with a toe.

24. I can lick my elbow.

I can lick my elbow. This is supposedly physically impossible, and yet…here I am

25. I have a sexually sensitive spot between my clit and G-spot.

Most women have lots of sensitivity in the clit and G-spot. I have a third spot sort of between the two, located right at the top inside of my vaginal opening. Stimulation of that particular spot gives me the BEST orgasms, and when I’m turned on it even feels a little stiffer than the surrounding areas when I touch it with my fingertip.

26. My hands turn blue when it’s cold.

My hands turn blue when it’s cold. When it’s cold they also have orange dots.

27. My penis moves around on its own.

My penis moves around on its own. I get out the shower, towel off and sometimes I sit around butt ass naked and play I’ll look at my dick and it’ll going from one side to the other or going in and out like a turtle. I heard that has something to do with it trying to get cool, but once it finds a cool spot, shouldn’t it stop moving?

28. I have a T-shaped tooth.

I have a T-shaped tooth.

29. I have these chicken-stick calves.

Well, I’m 6’6″, and have a great shoulder to hip ratio, but I have these chicken-stick calves. They refuse to grow. So I like wearing pants to try and cover them up, because it looks really weird if I’m wearing shorts. Also, I sweat really quickly in my underarms, but nowhere else on my body. It could be like jacket and scarf weather, and after like 5 minutes outside I start pitting. It’s so annoying.

30. Im male but my body is shaped like a girls.

Im male but my body is kinda shaped like a girls, in terms of ass, hips, thighs and waist. Someone reposted a picture of my ass/body to gonewild, tagged falsely as a girl, and it got like 50,000 views and universal positive comments, no one knew.

My life sucks.

Here, copying the damn ass pic up a level. NSFW.

31. My face is allergic to sunlight.

Im allergic to sunlight. But it’s local only to my face. I mean, it’s nice that it doesn’t cover all of my body and all, but it’s literally the worst place that I could think of. When I have a reaction I can’t speak for around 1 week, and after that it takes another week until I am at the point where I can utter more than simple words when necessary, as it is very uncomfortable to talk, still can’t say “m”, “p” or “b” though, that takes another week. One time I ended up being unable to eat for around 5 days (more than 120 hours), lost 5kg in that period.

32. I have hair on the penis up until close to the tip.

I have hair on the penis up until close to the tip, and i have to pluck it out every week.

33. My belly is like an unpredictable balloon.

My belly. It’s like an unpredictable balloon.

It will be perfectly flat one day and the next day I’ll look like a 9-month-pregnant man. Doctors are baffled and said its weird but assured me it’s nothing to be concerned about.

It really happens if I drink beer, the next morning my belly is huge and no amount of shitting/farting will make it go away, it just gradually goes away throughout the day or sometimes it’ll stay like that for a few days.

34. I always sneeze twice. No more, no less.

I always sneeze twice. No more, no less. Two shall be the number thou shalt sneeze, and the number of the counting shall be two. Four shalt thou not sneeze, neither sneeze thou once, excepting that thou then proceed to twice. Five is right out. Once the number two, being the second number, be reached, then wipest thy nose on thy friend’s interior, who being naughty in my sight, does not say, bless you.

35. Im allergic to caffeine.

This is more internal, but I’m allergic to caffeine, meaning, give me a large cup of caffeinated coffee and I’ll end up blacking out and doing something/insulting someone and I don’t remember it. It started out with just shaking and irritation, but turned into a full fledged symptom of being wasted.

36. I can roll my eyes into the back of my head.

I can roll my eyes into the back of my head. Decided it would be funny to do this during sex, and to say boyfriend’s name in a creepy voice. He didn’t think it was very funny.

37. I’ve had my ascending, descending and thoracic aortic section replaced with synthetic material. That shit’ll be sitting there in my coffin long after I’m dust.

Probably my aorta. I have Marfan’s syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects the connective tissue. Morphologically speaking people like me tend to be very tall, very thin, pigeon-chested, long-fingered and -toed. Because it affects the muscles we tend to have poor eyesight and we’re not real good at bulking up. We’re usually creepily flexible and our spines are scoliosis city.

The most dangerous symptom, however, is a weakening in the aortic wall which can result in aneurysm (an enlarged bubble sort of) or dissection (a catastrophic tear that’s %40 fatal).

I had an aortic dissection 3 years ago. Since then I’ve had my ascending, descending and thoracic aortic section replaced with synthetic material. That shit’ll be sitting there in my coffin long after I’m dust. That’s pretty weird, I guess.

38. I have a freakishly long wing span.

You know how your wing span is supposed to roughly match your height? Well I’m 6’3″ and my arms are 6’9″. Lots of rolled up sleeves in my world.

39. I am lopsided toward the left.

My entire left side sits about ¼ an inch lower than my right side. My ear is lower, my shoulder, my hip is lower, but you wouldn’t notice unless you looked at how I wear my clothing and that everything on my left side is almost always crooked.

40. I have almost no hair except for the five-inch nipple hair.

I am almost bald, have no armpit hair and very little genital hair. But boy, I do have one 12cm long nipple hair.

41. I always had dry crusty earwax the consistency and texture of cornflakes.

So when I was a kid I always had dry crusty earwax the consistency and texture of cornflakes. It would build up in my ear canal un til one day it would break off in one huge piece. My doctor said it probably wasn’t a big deal and not to worry about it, and every time I birthed an ear baby my friends would gather around and marvel. No biggie.

Fast-forward to puberty and no one has told me I need to wear deodorant. In fact I never smell. Well my feet do, but I can’t figure out if people are being nice cause I can literally NEVER smell BO on me. I now wear deodorant but mostly because it smells nice and I do sweat a lot. But all my sweat smells kinda pleasant actually.

So two years ago I’m YouTube surfing and find a video about Japanese cultural differences and one thing they mention is how hard it is to find deodorant. Apparently there are two different sweat glands, one that creates a feeding frenzy for bacteria and one that doesn’t. The Japanese just don’t have any of the former genetically. I’m sitting wondering if I have that gene as well when the woman says there is a very easy way to check if you have this gene: crusty earwax.

Mic drop.

42. My left collarbone is about an inch higher than my right one.

My left collarbone is about an inch higher than my right one. It’s not super noticeable unless you’re looking for it, but it’s enough to make me a little lopsided and prone to shoulder pain. Also, I can burp on command.

43. I have an exceptionally stretchy Weenus.

I have an exceptionally stretchy Weenus.

44. Im a girl and I have a little patch of blonde hair on my throat.

Ever since I was really little I’ve grown a little patch of blonde hair on my throat. I’m a girl so it would be where a guy has his Adams Apple. My mom has taken me to the doctor a couple times to ask what it is and the doctors insist it’s just a form of a birth mark. I shave it now because if I don’t you can see the blonde patch of hair. Weird thing is my hair is naturally dark, and even when I shave it it still grows back blonde. And it can get kind of long too, and one time in elementary I was on the school bus and the sunlight had just hit it right and the girl next to me made fun of me and told everyone nobody knows about it now except for all of my new weird reddit friends! (And the mean girl from 4th grade)

45. I have three testicles.

I have 3 testicles. At least I hope the 3rd one is a testicle…! It feels the same as the others.

46. I have a long unicorn hair that grows out of the center of my forehead.

Occasionally I have a single, long, wispy hair that grows out of the center of my forehead. It seems to appear overnight, and can be like an inch long. We call it the unicorn hair. It’s almost invisible, but once my wife saw it, she looks for it all the time.

47. The world will sometimes seem much louder to me for about five minutes, like every noise is pissed off at me.

Ive had this thing, ever since I was a kid, where randomly the entire world would seem and more intense. Usually for about five minutes.

It used to happen monthly when I was a child, but it only happens once or twice a year now. So far I’ve never met anyone else who knew what I was talking about.

It’s like sound and movement becomes . Like every noise is pissed off at me. It’s kinda scary but also damn fascinating.

I assume it means I have psychic powers or my brain is a nest of tumors. Maybe both.

48. Im really stretchy.

I have hypermobile joints, which basically just means that I’m really stretchy. It affects my hands and arms more than anything else. Because of it, my neurologist thinks I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a rare connective tissue disorder.

49. My tongue is probably like six inches long if I pull it out all the way.

I am the opposite of tongue-tied. I have no little connector-thingie so my tongue is fucked. It’s probably like 6 inches long if I pull it out all the way. I’m like Gene fucking Simmons over here and have learned how to do some weird shit with it. When I was younger the big joke was that i’d end up being a lesbian and I haaaaaated it. But I did. Look who’s laughin’ now.

50. My mom did drugs and alcohol while pregnant with me, leaving me with several birth defects.

When I was developing my mom did an unknown cocktail of drugs and alcohol. My ears attempted to form twice then the canals merged together. As a result, I can hear sounds outside normal range on the high and low end but have a very hard time with hearing human speech. I have to be in the room lip reading to really fully grasp it. The little nub in your ear (where you would get a tragus piercing) I actually have two nubs one above the other where the outside of my ear started to form a second time but didn’t.

All my ligaments are either too long or too flexible causing my joints to just slip out sometimes. As a result I’ve sprained one ankle 5 times in one month, dislocated both hips (bucked off a horse), my knee (stepped in a hole while walking), my thumb (grabbing something), and my personal favorite dislocated my shoulder buckling my seat belt. Thankfully I’m pretty good at popping them back in without assistance.

Also due to drugs my gut fauna is a bit fucked. I cannot eat spicy foods, not just like Mexican spices but even like too much onion powder gets me. I end up throwing up immediately after eating it. I have to manage on a fairly bland diet as a result.

Moral of this story, don’t do drugs or drink when pregnant. You can fuck yourself up all you want but when it involves a developing life seriously just don’t do it.

51. God was drunk AF when he made me.

I have one ball, one kidney, and an ecto-spleen (basically two spleens). God was drunk AF.

52. Im immune to mosquito bites and poison ivy.

Im immune to mosquito bites and poison ivy. My friends hate me.

53. My belly button looks like a cinnamon roll.

My belly button looks like a cinnamon roll.

54. I can ensure an entire Q-tip into my left nostril, straight to the back.

My nostril is funny. I can Insert a Q-tip into my left nostril. It just goes straight in, straight to the back. Completely, without being visible. It doesn’t hurt. And my nose works fine otherwise. And no, I never did coke or the like.

55. My body is fucking weird.

Im a 5’7″ woman, wear a size 6/8 in top and bottom (my wedding dress was a size 8 and they’re usually sure sized), and am technically morbidly obese by body fat standards (~40%) . I am the definition of skinny fat. Turns out I have a rare genetic condition that decreases the amount of free testosterone I have to virtually 0, meaning I have a really hard time building and retaining muscle mass. I started taking hormone therapy a few months ago after searching for a doctor that would give a woman testosterone (but not for gender identity reasons). I actually lift regularly and even with such low muscle mass, I can bodyweight squat (~180 lbs) and am pretty close to the 500 club. My body is fucking weird.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/55-people-reveal-the-strangest-thing-about-their-body/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/177250748242

[zennie62vlogger]

Andrew Sullivan hates that Sarah Jeong is on the New York Times Editorial Board, and because, he writes, that she's racist. In his “When Racism Is Fit to Print” column on the website of The New York Times, Mr. Sullivan rants “A series of tweets from 2013 to 2015 reveal a vicious hatred of an entire group of people based only on their skin color. If that sounds harsh, let’s review a few, shall we? “White men are bullshit,” is one. A succinct vent, at least. But notice she’s not in any way attacking specific white men for some particular failing, just all white men for, well, existing. Or this series of ruminations: “have you ever tried to figure out all the things that white people are allowed to do that aren’t cultural appropriation. there’s literally nothing. like skiing, maybe, and also golf. white people aren’t even allowed to have polo. did you know that. like don’t you just feel bad? why can’t we give white people a break. lacrosse isn’t for white people either. it must be so boring to be white.” Or this: “basically i’m just imagining waking up white every morning with a terrible existential dread that i have no culture.” Those Sarah Jeong posts, taken alone, would be strong evidence of racism, without question. But because Andrew Sullivan doesn't know the difference between “racism” and the act of being what I called “race conscious”, he makes the mistake of throwing the entire mix of Sarah Jeong tweets together into what he might call one giant bag of racism. One example of what I am saying is provided by Sullivan and from Ms. Jeong: ““Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.” That is not pointing to all white people and saying they are a something – what Ms. Jeong is doing is describing an observed action by some who she says are white. That's the act of being “race conscious” and not “racist” - she's not putting down an entire group of people, so much as she's complaining about an action she sees certain people doing who are white. Indeed, Sullivan himself wrote that Sarah Jeong expressed remorse for her take, and appologized for words that may have hurt anyone's feelings. Good enough for me. And here is where I hold that Andrew Sullivan, as well as those who tend to be white and react to any comment pointing out a habit done by a subset of a group of people identified by race by saying such comments are racist, are not only wrong, but could be accused of trying to stop others from pointing out racism. Let me give you an example, using a problem I blogged about in Oakland 12 years ago. In 2006, there was a spate of reported crimes committed against white women around Lake Merritt. Sadly, the persons who tended to do the criminal acts were young and black. I pointed that out in a blog post on my Oakand Focus blog at the time. For example, there was this mugging attempt https://ift.tt/2ACgz0H. But then, the same year, I used my Oakland Focus blog (Oakland's first blog) to complain about a racist incident at Easy Bar on Lakeshore (which has since closed and given way to a new place called “The Cat House” at 3255 Lakeshore). https://ift.tt/2vhvUyy But back then, I wrote “A 1998 poll conducted by the San Francisco Chronicle seems still to apply here in 2006. It reported that 62 percent of African American residents experienced an example of racism in restaurants and stores, where only 10 percent of whites, 32 percent of Asians and 41 percent of Latinos did. Notice that the percentage increases as the color of the skin darkens. That's not by accident. A person who only identified herself as an "white woman Adams Point resident" chimed in to explain away the incident -- and she wasn't in the room at all. This is crazy. What sickens me more than anything is that if I tell anyone who's black about this, I get a sympathetic ear, yet the rate of white or non-black Oaklanders who seem to "get it" ranges about 50 percent - a coin flip. That's nuts. What's lost in all this from the "explainers" is that not one -- not one person - bothered to ask me what happened; they just fire off with their steady stream of "maybes" as in "Maybe he this,..." Since then, 12 years have passed, and judging by Andrew Sullivan's post, American society still has a long way to go. There should not a climate where a person can't point out racist actions – from that perspective, Ms. Jeong was right. If you see just some of the examples of racist and sexist trolling she has endured, you'd understand why she went off. But, and again, she did appologize. Now, Andrew Sullivan should express that he understands her pain – he has not done that. Andrew Sullivan's behind the times, but he's right about Sarah Jeong's expressed racism, and wrong for not understanding what racism is. Stay tuned. by Zennie62 Oakland Latest News Today Commentary Vlog

[partlycharlie-archive]

(we ain’t) got no time

chapter one: #fuckhydra #fuckpanicattacks link to chapter two

summary: “Thanks, Shellhead,” Winter mutters, and Tony is once again startled, this time by the unhindered sound of Winter’s voice. He probably should’ve realized, especially considering he was the one who has created the technology, but Winter’s voice modulation is controlled with the mask, meaning that the voice he just heard is Winter’s normal speaking tone. Fuck. It’s fucking gorgeous. word count: 3,513 warnings: panic attack, mention of torture & rape a/n: this was my fic for the @capreversebb ! thanks so much to my amazing artist @massivespacewren and my beta @capolleon <3 love you guys

art!

read on ao3

It starts with…

Well.

It starts with a fall.

A bit more of a literal fall than most falls at the beginning of a story, but a fall nonethe-

Wait.

No.

No, no, no.

Sorry. Wrong timeline.

Anyway -

It starts with a kidnapping. To be fully accurate - not a kidnapping, per say. A little bit less common than a kidnapping (just a little bit), but still very exciting.

So. Setting up the scene:

Picture this: The Asset, sitting in The Chair (as one does, of course), long brown hair flowing majestically past its (because Assets don’t get human pronouns, obviously) shoulders -

(Just kidding, the Asset hasn’t showered in like 60 years, so.)

- long brown hair flowing greasily past its shoulders, hiding its face from view. Handcuffs (metal, but, like, reinforced, obviously, because the Asset has Mad Strength) attached to its arms and legs. The annoying as fuck domino mask still attached to the bottom half of its face (because fuck talking, am I right?). Naked.

No joke - just. Full on naked. Dick hanging out, hairy legs, emasculated stomach, the whole deal. The Asset doesn’t generally get clothes when it’s not on a mission, because its Handlers either hate him or have really weird (or fucked up? AND fucked up) kinks.

Or both?

Ew.

Anyway.

Also: Brock Rumlow (a.k.a Certified AssholeTM) standing in front of it, arms crossed across his chest.

(His muscles bulging, because even Certified AssholesTM work out.)

Rumlow (who will now be known as Handler One because… Asset logic) is talking about the mission, probably. The Asset is listening, of course, probably taking notes in its mind or something (like a nerd), when something interesting is said.

“… and this’ll be a long-term mission, you got it?” Handler One redirects his attention to the agents standing behind The Chair (and yes, The Chair will be keeping those capital letters, thank you very much, reader) and fixes a narrow-eyed glare upon them.

(Is it racist to think he looks oddly Asian like that?

Yeah, yeah it is.

Wait, isn’t his grandfather Japanese?

Besides the point.)

“It’ll be your job to make sure it doesn’t malfunction, yeah? I shouldn’t have to tell you that more time without a wipe equals more memories, so you’re going to need to go for some sort of Dominance Establishment every week or so. Think you assholes can handle it?”

The agents nod quickly, heads bobbing like those little action figures with disproportionately large  heads. Figureheads? Head-bobbles? Bobbleheads? Whatever.

“Alright,” Handler One says, eyebrows twitching momentarily. “Get him suited up. Let’s go.” The Asset is lifted out of The Chair by two of the agents standing behind it.

(What the hell is up with that malfunction, by the way? The Asset needs to get its shit together, honestly.)

“Should we hose it down?” Agent One asks with a raised eyebrow. Handler One shrugs.

“May as well.”

Ugh.

 ---

 After The Asset has been hosed down (always a fun experience, with the freezing water and all), it’s dressed in the customary armor. It takes the guns laid out in front of it and places them in the concealed holsters, grenades in the holders along its waist, knives in the sheathes hidden in its boots and sleeves and torso and pants and -

You get the point.

According to Handler One, this mission is an in-and-out - in New York - Manhattan, specifically -

(Brooklyn’s better, but it guesses it can deal with the city.)

(Wait, what?)

- on the East Coast of the United States.

A minor government official, supposedly covering as one while in reality being the head of an organization called the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division (more commonly known as SHIELD by those aware of its existence). Colonel Nicholas Joseph Fury, known as Nick Fury by associates. Despite his title, a severe lack of security has been noticed - possibly because of his capabilities as a military official, possibly because of the need to maintain his cover.

The Asset’s job is not to kill (fortunately, as killing tends to lead to an odd churning in its chest area), but to only temporarily injure and (if possible) tranquilize, leading to the kidnapping of Colonel Nicholas Joseph Fury. If all goes well, its mission will result in the conversion of Colonel Nicholas Joseph Fury into a Hydra agent, used as a double agent to further infiltrate SHIELD.

The Asset tugs on the sleeves of its suit, futilely attempting to straighten out the wrinkles in the crisp white shirt caused by the plates of its metal arm. It smooths down the lines of its slacks, adjusts the way the socks slide into the dress shoes (uncomfortable as they are), and uses the black hairband provided to it to tie its hair into what is referred to in modern culture as a "man-bun". It is suddenly reminded of red hair, pulled tightly into a - ballerina bun?

To be ignored.

 ---

The Asset is transported via Agents One through Five into what Handler Two calls a "Quinjet", a flying device piloted by Agents Three and Four, with Agent One to its right and Agent Two sitting in a reclined position across from it.

"Why the hell did Rumlow decide we all needed to be here, again?"

Agent Two responds in kind. "Fuck if I know. The bitches in Asset Chem told Rumlow it gets aggressive when it goes too long without a wipe or something." Agent One nods.

"So what, you think he wants us here to fuckin' secure it if it goes wild? Guy's gotta know we can't take it when it gets like that, Jesus Christ."

Hell yeah, you can't, crosses its mind, and then abruptly -

Where the hell did that come from?

To be ignored.

 ---

 The Asset pulls at the cuffs of its stark white sleeves, face twitching at the way the cuffs itch against its skin.

“Oh - fuck, bro.” Agent Two glances up from his tablet.

“Yeah?” he asks, eyebrow twisting in confusion. “What’s up?”

“Are we gonna have to cut his fucking hair?”

Fuck.

 ---

 Hair freshly shortened (shunned? Shorned? Cut. It was fucking cut.), the Asset cringes at the way the tiny hairs feel against its neck when it shakes its head back and forth and back and forth -

It forcibly stops the movement of its head, holding both of its hands to the sides of its heads to stop the almost subconscious shaking.

Phew. Much better.

 ---

 The lights were too bright, so the Asset (“Alexander Davidson” for tonight - but “his” friends all call him Alex, so everyone he meets should too) pulls out the sunglasses stowed in the lining of his jacket and slips them on. If it had the added benefit of hiding nervous eyes from the agents, who were almost definitely looking for an excuse to practice their BDSM bullshit (wait - BDSM? The Asset… probably shouldn’t know what that is) on him, well. It couldn’t hurt, right?

Yes, it could. Oh well.

“Fury’s out on your seven, Asset,” Agent Two says into his microphone. The Asset readjusts its earpiece (manipulated to look like a hearing aid in order to allay suspicion) to show that he heard.

“… and we said, ‘If the U.N. won't remove those landmines, we will.’ And we personally dug up over a thousand unexploded land mines from the area surrounding the orphanage.”

The Asset smiles widely, pulling out the Brooklyn charm it knew so well. “That’s… wow, Rachel, that’s amazing.”

Wait. Brooklyn charm?

To be ignored.

Rachel smiles demurely in return, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “Thank you so much! What did you say you did, Alexander?”

The Asset is probably supposed to say something like “Please, call me Alex,” maybe accompanied by a wink, or a lascivious smile, or something along those lines, but honestly it can’t be bothered.

Instead, it brushes a hand through its (unbearably short, this is ridiculous) hair, shrugging mildly. “I have a minor position in the government. Nothing big, though -” it leans in close as if sharing a secret, and Rachel’s eyes widen, “- I have met the president.”

Technically, it isn’t even a lie. He did meet the president, but it was less meeting and more observing through a rifle scope, and the president wasn’t alive by the time the meeting was over.

Yes, the Asset killed the president. Any problems?

It doesn’t think so.

“Wow, really?” Rachel lays a ring-adorned hand on her chest, leaning back as if to confirm the honesty of the Asset’s statement (by looking into its eyes? Okay, sure.)

(Also. This woman is married and trying to pick up Alexander Davidson? Jesus Christ.)

Her eyes crinkles. “What’s he like?” she asks, her head bobbing a little.

The Asset’s eyebrows raise, and it considers its words. Who’s the president right now? There’s something important about him, too…

Ah! Obama, Barack Hussein. The first black one, at least for America.

What a backwards country.

“He’s nice. Very - honest? Yes. Honest. A good man, I’d say.”

Rachel smiles widely, the red lipstick on her teeth shining brightly in the lights of the party. “Oh, well, I’d hope so - he is our president after all!”

It glances off to the side. Don’t jinx it, Rachel.

“… right. Well. I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid I must go… mingle some more.” It gives her the most sincere apologetic smile it can muster (which isn’t much, to be honest), and turns away as fast as it can.

“Mister… Davidson, am I right?” The Asset glances around hurriedly, and - there, on it’s three - Colonel Nicholas Joseph Fury.

“Yes, that’s me,” it says, smiling widely.

(Not too widely - the Asset had been given lessons on how to smile properly in certain situations after almost ruining a mission because “it smiled like a fuckin’ psycho, Jesus Christ”.)

“And you are - Nicholas Fury?”

“Yes. You, though - you can call me Nick.”

Damn it. The Asset knows it should’ve given that line to Rachel. It would’ve worked like a charm, just like it is for Colonel Nicholas Joseph Fury.

Wait. Is it working? What is Colonel Nicholas Joseph Fury trying to accomplish here?

Is this mission turning into a honeypot?

“Holy fuck, this mission is turning into a honeypot!” Agent One’s nasal voice blasts through the comms. The Asset winces, reaching up to its ear to lower the painful volume.

Colonel Nicholas Joseph Fury frowns. “Is everything okay? Mr. Davidson?”

“Please - Alex is fine,” it says, shaking its head as if to shake away flies.

“No worries - my hearing aid went a little rough, sorry.”

“Asset - Asset, you have to fuck him!”

Agent One snorts, soft in the Asset’s ear. “See - oh my god, Asset - ha, see if you can get a visual!”

It tunes them out.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Would you rather talk somewhere more… quiet, then?”

The Asset’s smile is almost genuine.

“Of course.”

 ---

 five years later

It starts with…

Well.

It starts with a fall.

A bit more of a literal fall than most falls at the beginning of a story, but a fall nonetheless.

You see, dear reader, Tony Stark is a genius.

(Real facts right here.)

As a genius, it’s part of his job to think of solutions to problems nobody else would even be able to dream of.

Yes, he’s serious - it’s in the job description. Look it up.

At any rate, Tony spends a shit load of time, figuring out solutions (too much time, if you listen to Pepper - but Pepper’s not the (only) one keeping the board happy, so Tony usually doesn’t bother).  His most recent stroke of genius?

Altitude trackers.

Altitude. Trackers.

!!!!

Like a regular tracker, right? But with altitude, too!

Are you clapping yet?

No?

Well.

Oh - you don’t understand why!

Of course.

As you have almost certainly noticed by now, the non-flying Avengers (and even sometimes the flying ones - damn it, Sam!) have started habitually jumping off buildings, apparently with the (totally and absolutely ridiculous) assumption that someone would be available to catch them before they fell to their DEATH.

Sure, they’d been lucky so far, but certain… events, let’s say, had convinced him it was only a matter of time.

 ---

 “Ew.” Tony’s nose crinkles severely as he examines the slime on his suit. The comms crackle suddenly, and Clint’s voice floods into his ear.

“Listen, y’all - ew, Jesus - as long as you don’t - oh my God, eugh, holy shit - get any of the slime on your skin, you’ll be fine. Probably.”

Tony snorts. He blasts up into the air and shakes his body furiously, something about the action reminding him of a dog, as he watches with a sort of morbid fascination as the specks of slime come flying off him.

“What exactly happens when the slime gets on you?” he asks, landing softly back down on the ground (and on top of a dead slug, ew).

There’s a hesitation coming from the other end, but finally Steve speaks.

“Well. You start, um. Throwing up slugs.”

Jesus Christ.

Someone reads too much Harry Potter in their free time.

“Yikes. Be sure to avoid that, then.”

Tony finds himself settling into a sort of rhythm: repulsor blast, gunshot, building jump rescue (the assholes), then a flight to a different area to start the whole process all over again. He’d just fired off a repulsor blast towards one of the slugs when -

“WINTER!”

Tony swivels around and - there, right behind him, the Winter Soldier free falling from a building half a mile away from him. He glances around as quick as he can, but there’s no sign of anyone who can stop Winter’s fall.

He starts flying -

Ten seconds until arrival.

Two thousand feet and six inches to impact.

Nine seconds until arrival.

One thousand eight hundred eighteen feet and seven inches to impact.

- just a little bit farther -

Eight seconds until arrival.

One thousand six hundred thirty six feet and nine inches to impact.

Seven seconds until arrival.

One thousand four hundred fifty four feet and eleven inches to impact.

- and he can see the fear pooling in Winter’s eyes -

Six seconds until arrival.

One thousand two hundred seventy three feet and one inch to impact.

Five seconds until arrival.

One thousand ninety one feet and two inches to impact.

- his heart pounding in his ears -

Four seconds until arrival.

Nine hundred nine feet and four inches to impact.

- and he pushed the blasters just a little bit farther -

Three seconds until arrival.

Seven hundred twenty seven feet and five inches to impact.

- come on come on come on -

Two seconds until arrival.

Five hundred forty five feet and seven inches to impact.

- and -

One second until arrival.

Three hundred sixty three feet and nine inches to impa-

“Gotcha,” he murmurs, catching Winter with one metal-covered hand. He notices with a start that Winter’s mask (new and improved by yours truly) is hanging off by one strap attached to his right ear, but Winter’s hair is being blown into his face by the wind, so Tony isn’t too worried.

“Thanks, Shellhead,” Winter mutters, and Tony is once again startled, this time by the unhindered sound of Winter’s voice. He probably should’ve realized, especially considering he was the one who has created the technology, but Winter’s voice modulation is controlled with the mask, meaning that the voice he just heard is Winter’s normal speaking tone.

Fuck.

It’s fucking gorgeous.

All baritone and shit - God, Winter sounds like he just got out of bed. Maybe it’s the two-thousand-foot fall? Maybe he’s just surprised? Whatever it is, it sounds fucking amazing.

Tony can’t believe it’s been five years and that’s the first he’s heard of Winter’s voice.

He needs to hear that way more often.

 ---

 So.

Yeah.

He decided, right there and then, that he needed to make altitude trackers.

In his defense - that had been scary! Yeah, so he knew that people fell at an average of 181.86 feet per second, and that he was only around ten seconds away, and that at most he would’ve gotten to maybe 200 hundred feet above the ground before someone managed to catch him, but. Still.

At any rate, that’s what he’s doing. He had needed to redesign Clint’s armor at some point (after the slug incident, Clint had blatantly refused to wear armor that showed any skin below the face), and this provided the perfect excuse.

“J - give me some AC/DC.”

Shoot to Thrill starts blasting through the workshop speakers, and muscles that he didn’t even realize were tense start relaxing of their own volition.

“Okay, so… stretch vinyl for the sleeves, because of course he wants sleeves, maybe cotton for the legs? Cotton spandex maybe… I should give him a fucking ass cutout, see how much he likes that… maybe the tracker in the forearm stitching? No, his arm guards… maybe the middle of his chest? That’d probably be the most accurate…”

“Sir?”

Tony’s head jerked up from where it was stubbornly stationed, buried deep in holographic designs.

“Yeah?” After answering, Tony absentmindedly notes that the music’s volume has been turned down.

“The Winter Soldier is requesting entrance, Sir. Shall I allow him to enter?”

Tony waves a hand, already turning back to Clint’s armor designs. “Yeah, yeah, let ‘im in.”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Tony registers the quiet noise of his workshop doors entering, but he doesn’t bother looking up just yet. When he does, though, he finds the soldier sitting on his ass (on the floor, no less), knees cradled to his chest and head buried in between his thighs.

Tony hurriedly grabs the digital notepad he had been using to take notes and scribbles something down.

@j wht tm dd he cm dwn

Bright blue words appear quickly, a ding sounding that would’ve alerted him to their presence if he hadn’t been staring intently at the screen.

~3:20 PM. Time now is 4:17 PM.

hw long bn sitting ?

~50 minutes.

“Shit”, he mutters, and scrambles over to where Winter is crouched.No response, but that’s okay.

“Hey, buddy,” he says in as calming a tone as he can manage, “I’m gonna rest my hand on your thigh, okay?”

He places his hand delicately on Winter’s thigh. Almost immediately, Winter’s hand - flesh, this one, which means it’s bad - grasps his, but Winter had taken his goggles off and Tony can see that his eyes are firmly clenched shut.

Without moving his hand from its precarious position, he arranges his legs into a more comfortable position, laying his other hand on top of Winter’s to sweep his thumb back and forth in a soothing gesture. He’s never done it before when the soldier is in the midst of one of his panic attacks, so he doesn’t know how it’ll affect him, but at this point (fifty minutes!) Tony’s willing to try anything?

“Winter? How you doin’?”

It takes a few seconds, Winter’s mouth opening and closing as he tries to find his voice, but finally he says, “Winghead.”

Tony has to hold back a cringe (Winter’s voice is hoarse as fuck) as he pushes himself off of the floor, already heading towards his private exit. “Yeah, yeah - of course, why would you - aha, yeah, yeah, I’ll go get him, he’ll be right back - here, sorry, yeah, okay.”

He slips quietly through the door in the back of his workshop, and the suit is already there waiting for him to step into it.

“Thanks, JARVIS,” he whispers, stepping carefully into the suit and watching as it closes around him. Holograms pop up around him as his faceplate closes, showing him his vitals and the dimensions of the room he’s in.

He opens the door again to find Winter in the same position, hand still resting on his thigh where Tony’s was before.

Ugh.

He stomps over, trying to be as quick as possible. “Hey Winter - y’ think maybe we should head on over to the couch?”

Winter nods, nothing more than a tiny shake of his head, and Tony picks him up almost immediately, easy as anything. He heads over to the couch he keeps in the workshop (usually for when he’s too tired to head up to his floor, though it does help for times like these) and sits down, placing Winter down to his right as gently as possible.

The soldier almost immediately curls up into Tony’s side (always surprising, considering his side is made of metal) and lays his hand (skin-and-bone, again) on Tony’s chest, right above the arc reactor. Almost without him thinking about it, the gauntlet on his left arm retracts, leaving his skin bare from hand to elbow. He grabs Winter’s hand and entwines his fingers with Tony’s own, resting their hands on his knees.

With Tony’s right arm free, he lays it across Winter’s shoulders and the soldier almost immediately curls his head into the junction between Tony’s armpit and chest. Tony’s mouth curls into a sappy smile (ew), and he almost tries to tamp it down before realizing that Winter can’t see it.

“Everything’s okay, sweetheart, everything’s fine.”

[jobsinchina-dbestinfo-blog]

Before you want to teach in China, read this

Teach in China---So many websites and bloggers extol the virtues of teaching overseas. Reach to Teach is one example. The writer of this blog post tries to convince you with six reasons to teach abroad.

Teaching can be rewarding, but my experiences in China have been polarizing.

When I first arrived, I taught at Jiangnan University, the largest university in Wuxi. The students were enthusiastic, serious and hard working.  Jiangnan management treated the teachers fairly well. I was wined and dined at special occasions and was even taken on a weekend excursion to Yangzhou. My colleagues were kind enough, kept to themselves. It was fine.

Then things switched at North American College (NAC), formerly Lambton College. NAC is a private college on the same campus as Jiangnan, so I didn’t have to change cities or residences. Here’s the reality about some private colleges, many students that attend have failed or scored low in the Gaokao, so this affects their attitude. My students cared less about the course. They would play on their smartphones constantly, not show up, speak to their classmates when I would speak. One had a tantrum because of something his friend said and stormed out. Oh, and sleeping. They loved to sleep in class, rather than outside of class. The sleep thing happens in Chinese classrooms, but it exacerbated me — I was already on edge. Management was ineffectual and at the same time confusing. They’d assert one rule, only to break it later, because wealthy parents are paying and that’s all that matters. Now, my colleagues? That was another story.

I’d like you to meet Lynn. I won’t use her real name, though it’s tempting. This was June, about two months ago. I sat in front of my computer in shock, mouthing the words from her email. “It’s clear you don’t know anything about writing an exam.” I could quote more from that poison pen letter, but let’s zoom to earlier that same day when she stopped me outside our apartment complex and started berating me, her tone laced with condescension. Oh, always the sarcasm. Some other teachers were also outside at the same time and heard every word.

It was awful. Embarrassing. For her to speak to me like I was an idiot savant, a mewling 5 year old in front of our colleagues. This was probably the umpteenth incident with Lynn, there had been several. Always approaching me with disdain and hostility. From the day I started the semester.

Who is Lynn? A retired teacher of 30 plus years, a woman who’d walk around with a bent back and smelled of Bengay, she’d come into the teacher’s lounge and in her booming voice, utter something inappropriate. Usually offensive. Not always at me, but at someone.

Lynn was the coordinator of the program I taught, but more a figurehead rather than someone with a decent pay cheque behind her. Lynn imagined herself as someone in an elevated position above me. Even though I’m older than her eldest son. Even though I have years of experience in the corporate world and know discipline. She berated me for infractions that other teachers committed (letting students out five to ten minutes early), yet I never heard of them being taken aside by her. By the way, she committed this infraction herself. She even began to invent things that I supposedly did. One hilarious accusation was that I texted in class. I use my iPhone for a clock because I don’t have a watch. And dude, this is China. A Chinese person will literally spend hours sitting at a mall on their phones. Just on their phones. Not walking around or exploring. 90% of the time I was the one telling my students to get off their phones.

The saddest part? Lynn is Canadian. She had a personal wish to exert her 30 plus years of teaching over my one plus year of teaching. How could I possibly win? Management at NAC hadn’t even bothered to hear my side of the story, even though I tried to broach it with the Vice-Dean.

It sounds like I’m whining and maybe I am. I certainly made mistakes as a teacher. Nobody is perfect. But the universal truth is it’s a basic human right to be treated with respect. I’d call it an inalienable right. I got neither respect or courtesy from that woman.

So before you charge into China thinking it’s the land of milk and honey for teaching, you should be aware of a few things. Ask yourself some honest questions.

1.  The Reputation of the School

The truth of NAC is I pretty much walked into it. I was already living on the same campus when I heard some negative stories. Many teachers will get jobs through recruiters and teaching websites like Serious Teachers or TEFL.com. Those are fine to find a job, but then what are you walking into? You know I’m all for adventure, but when you’ve signed a contract and have to live there for a year, things get sticky.

My tip: Once you’ve been offered a contract from a school, try to search forums from that city to find out what outsiders or former insiders say about the school. Chances are, a foreigner or two has worked there or is currently working there. A very good place to start is an expat website, they usually have forums. I found a fairly negative comment about NAC on Wuxi Life. Oh shame, why didn’t I listen to my inner voice?

2.  The Location of the School

Chinese cities are broken into three tiers. First tier cities are the most populous and have the highest GDP — Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. Second tier cities are like Dalian, Wuhan or Chongqing. I was offered a job in Jiangmen city in the province of Guangdong. Sounds great because it’s so near Hong Kong, but when I spoke to Becky, one of the current teachers there, the truth came out. “Well, I’m 55 (crackling phone line) and there isn’t really a direct railway from here (more crackling), you gotta take a bus to Guangzhou. It’s a quiet place, not much to do, if you like that sort of thing (mind numbing deafening white noise)….” Definitely three tier.

My tip: There’s nothing wrong with a third tier city, you can have enriching experiences, but it’s not my cup of tea. For a place I intend to live for a year, I prefer a mix of stimulation and quiet. My suggestion is research deeper on wikipedia, travel websites and again, forums, to read up on the location of your school. Make sure it suits your personality.

3.  Where Will You Live?

Remember that nasty email I got from Lynn about my hapless skills at crafting a suitable exam? I owe it all to Pat, my co-teacher. Pat and I taught the same level of students and he became like me, more and more disgruntled at management and the lack of resources available to us until one day he screamed expletives in my face and all we were doing was discussing how to administer the final exam. I asked a question, he responded with fuck this, fuck that, fucken told you already and fucken not telling you again. He was so disruptive and angry that students in the hallway turned to us and stared. We were supposed to write the exam together, but I had to by myself and culled it from exams he’d written and from past teachers, so it’s interesting that Lynn thought it sucked. Anyway, my point is there we were, the three of us, coagulating with tension and the most uncomfortable part was we lived in the same apartment building and I couldn’t escape these crazy people.

My tip: If you teach at a college or university, 100% of the time you will live on campus with your colleagues or in some cases, where students also live (depends on the size of the institution). I HATED this. Violently. Because when there’s tension at work, there’s no physical distance from your colleagues. AT ALL. The free apartment sounds like a perfect score, but think about it. When you work at an office and you don’t get along with someone, you get to leave and not see that person for another 14 hours. I never had that luxury. The complex I lived at had no other entrances to enter unseen and there were these picnic tables out front where Lynn and Pat would sit and hover. This made my home life miserable. To have to deal with them outside of teaching too? I’d never do it again. I recommend you think carefully about the living situation and if it suits your mental and emotional needs, not just how much you will save. The benefit of teaching at a high school (besides higher pay) is that you usually won’t live in the same building as your coworkers, but in many cases far apart.

4.  Who Are Your Colleagues?

Besides the horrific Pat and Lynn situation, living at NAC was like living at an old folks home. Most of the teachers at the college were 50 years or older and there were endless complaints. “Oh, I know it’s minus 15, but your heater is so noisy, could you turn it down?”  “I hear you walking to the bathroom every night, could you be more quiet?”  “Yesss, it’s only 6 pm, but your music is a bit loud.”

My tip: Ask the Dean or your supervisor about the demographics before you take the job. This will give you an idea on whether you’ll get along with everyone. As for sussing out the crazy, I got lost in it for a while, really wondering if I was nuts and that it was normal to yell ‘fuck’ in people’s faces and make up bullshit accusations or watch other teachers like they are criminals through the window of their classroom. Nah, based on this, I’m perfectly sane.

5.  What Color is Your Skin?

I can’t really sugar coat this. China is a burgeoning nation with preconceived notions of race. These biases extend to race being associated with competence. I already wrote about the insane flip of events I experienced — how my Asian face is unwanted as a teacher in some quarters. I urge you to read Marketus Presswood’s article about his experience living as a black man in China.

An excerpt from Presswood’s article:

“I overheard students speaking in Chinese about how they were paying so much money and wanted a white instructor. One student went so far as to say, “I don’t want to look at his black face all night.” There was nothing my supervisor could do. The market was demanding white teachers and the company was responding to that demand.”

My tip: If you are a person of color and want to work as a teacher in China, I can’t lie. You will be marginalized at times. For every recruiter or potential employer who has judged me, I’ve also received streams of compliments about my teaching skills, when those people were able to look beyond what the market is demanding. The times I’ve been unfairly scrutinized were very uncomfortable. That has to be the worst part of experiencing racism, this sinking feeling of being powerless. Come here with open eyes and try to forgive employers/recruiters a little. Racism exists in many developed countries, so China’s struggle is she’s only been open to the world for a tender 34 years. She has a lot of growing up to do.

6.  You Can’t be Fughly

Now that I teach pilots, it sounds like a glamorous job and truth is, it sort of is. Last weekend I attended a gourmet Chinese meal with my female supervisor, some Chinese colleagues and an American pilot. When I walked in wearing a little black number my female supervisor said emphatically, “You look beautiful tonight.” This rings like an innocent comment and I’m sure it is, but her compliment fired up a story in my mind. I was in Shanghai having cocktails with some teacher friends one weekend. A long time friend who is a director at a private school told us how frustrating her bosses were because she had to defend a hiring choice. When we asked why she had to defend the choice, I nearly spit out my margarita at her reply, “Well, because they told me that she is mousy and unattractive, that basically she’s ugly and the parents won’t like this.  I told them I didn’t care what she looks like because she’s a damn good teacher.”

My tip:  I’m not trying to say I’m hot and you’re not. This isn’t a one off thing either. It seems like it is, but I’ve heard these stories before. I don’t even know how to address this. My only take is the Chinese care about the appearance of perfection. I have a good job, enough money, dutiful wife/husband and an obliging child. So I suppose this ideal permeates the workplace. You know, based on one’s outward package. I think it’s downright weird to judge someone’s competence on their looks. Perhaps we all do it, but in China it’s more pronounced. As for a tip, um, ditch the hipster clothes and hit H&M maybe?

I’m sorry if this post has turned you off to the idea of teaching in China. I hope not. As much as these aspects exasperate me, it’s fairly easy to save money here and enjoy the opportunity to travel to some legendary sites. Like anywhere, China has it’s pluses and minuses. I’m just relaying what I’ve experienced.

The rest is up to you

[wnmnblog]

Andrew Sullivan Column Saying Sarah Jeong Is Racist Is Both Right And Wrong

Andrew Sullivan hates that Sarah Jeong is on the New York Times Editorial Board, and because, he writes, that she’s racist.

In his “When Racism Is Fit to Print” column on the website of The New York Times, Mr. Sullivan rants “A series of tweets from 2013 to 2015 reveal a vicious hatred of an entire group of people based only on their skin color. If that sounds harsh, let’s review a few, shall we? “White men are bullshit,” is one. A succinct vent, at least. But notice she’s not in any way attacking specific white men for some particular failing, just all white men for, well, existing. Or this series of ruminations: “have you ever tried to figure out all the things that white people are allowed to do that aren’t cultural appropriation. there’s literally nothing. like skiing, maybe, and also golf. white people aren’t even allowed to have polo. did you know that. like don’t you just feel bad? why can’t we give white people a break. lacrosse isn’t for white people either. it must be so boring to be white.” Or this: “basically i’m just imagining waking up white every morning with a terrible existential dread that i have no culture.”

Those Sarah Jeong posts, taken alone, would be strong evidence of racism, without question. But because Andrew Sullivan doesn’t know the difference between “racism” and the act of being what I called “race conscious”, he makes the mistake of throwing the entire mix of Sarah Jeong tweets together into what he might call one giant bag of racism. One example of what I am saying is provided by Sullivan and from Ms. Jeong: ““Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.”

That is not pointing to all white people and saying they are a something – what Ms. Jeong is doing is describing an observed action by some who she says are white. That’s the act of being “race conscious” and not “racist” – she’s not putting down an entire group of people, so much as she’s complaining about an action she sees certain people doing who are white. Indeed, Sullivan himself wrote that Sarah Jeong expressed remorse for her take, and appologized for words that may have hurt anyone’s feelings. Good enough for me. And here is where I hold that Andrew Sullivan, as well as those who tend to be white and react to any comment pointing out a habit done by a subset of a group of people identified by race by saying such comments are racist, are not only wrong, but could be accused of trying to stop others from pointing out racism. Let me give you an example, using a problem I blogged about in Oakland 12 years ago.

In 2006, there was a spate of reported crimes committed against white women around Lake Merritt. Sadly, the persons who tended to do the criminal acts were young and black. I pointed that out in a blog post on my Oakand Focus blog at the time. For example, there was this mugging attempt https://ift.tt/2ACgz0H. But then, the same year, I used my Oakland Focus blog (Oakland’s first blog) to complain about a racist incident at Easy Bar on Lakeshore (which has since closed and given way to a new place called “The Cat House” at 3255 Lakeshore). https://ift.tt/2vhvUyy

But back then, I wrote

“A 1998 poll conducted by the San Francisco Chronicle seems still to apply here in 2006. It reported that 62 percent of African American residents experienced an example of racism in restaurants and stores, where only 10 percent of whites, 32 percent of Asians and 41 percent of Latinos did. Notice that the percentage increases as the color of the skin darkens. That’s not by accident. A person who only identified herself as an “white woman Adams Point resident” chimed in to explain away the incident — and she wasn’t in the room at all. This is crazy. What sickens me more than anything is that if I tell anyone who’s black about this, I get a sympathetic ear, yet the rate of white or non-black Oaklanders who seem to “get it” ranges about 50 percent – a coin flip. That’s nuts. What’s lost in all this from the “explainers” is that not one — not one person – bothered to ask me what happened; they just fire off with their steady stream of “maybes” as in “Maybe he this,…”

Since then, 12 years have passed, and judging by Andrew Sullivan’s post, American society still has a long way to go. There should not a climate where a person can’t point out racist actions – from that perspective, Ms. Jeong was right. If you see just some of the examples of racist and sexist trolling she has endured, you’d understand why she went off. But, and again, she did appologize. Now, Andrew Sullivan should express that he understands her pain – he has not done that.

Andrew Sullivan’s behind the times, but he’s right about Sarah Jeong’s expressed racism, and wrong for not understanding what racism is.

Stay tuned. via IFTTT https://youtu.be/-LZWtFeperc

[wnmnblog]

Andrew Sullivan Column Saying Sarah Jeong Is Racist Is Both Right And Wrong

Andrew Sullivan hates that Sarah Jeong is on the New York Times Editorial Board, and because, he writes, that she’s racist.

In his “When Racism Is Fit to Print” column on the website of The New York Times, Mr. Sullivan rants “A series of tweets from 2013 to 2015 reveal a vicious hatred of an entire group of people based only on their skin color. If that sounds harsh, let’s review a few, shall we? “White men are bullshit,” is one. A succinct vent, at least. But notice she’s not in any way attacking specific white men for some particular failing, just all white men for, well, existing. Or this series of ruminations: “have you ever tried to figure out all the things that white people are allowed to do that aren’t cultural appropriation. there’s literally nothing. like skiing, maybe, and also golf. white people aren’t even allowed to have polo. did you know that. like don’t you just feel bad? why can’t we give white people a break. lacrosse isn’t for white people either. it must be so boring to be white.” Or this: “basically i’m just imagining waking up white every morning with a terrible existential dread that i have no culture.”

Those Sarah Jeong posts, taken alone, would be strong evidence of racism, without question. But because Andrew Sullivan doesn’t know the difference between “racism” and the act of being what I called “race conscious”, he makes the mistake of throwing the entire mix of Sarah Jeong tweets together into what he might call one giant bag of racism. One example of what I am saying is provided by Sullivan and from Ms. Jeong: ““Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.”

That is not pointing to all white people and saying they are a something – what Ms. Jeong is doing is describing an observed action by some who she says are white. That’s the act of being “race conscious” and not “racist” – she’s not putting down an entire group of people, so much as she’s complaining about an action she sees certain people doing who are white. Indeed, Sullivan himself wrote that Sarah Jeong expressed remorse for her take, and appologized for words that may have hurt anyone’s feelings. Good enough for me. And here is where I hold that Andrew Sullivan, as well as those who tend to be white and react to any comment pointing out a habit done by a subset of a group of people identified by race by saying such comments are racist, are not only wrong, but could be accused of trying to stop others from pointing out racism. Let me give you an example, using a problem I blogged about in Oakland 12 years ago.

In 2006, there was a spate of reported crimes committed against white women around Lake Merritt. Sadly, the persons who tended to do the criminal acts were young and black. I pointed that out in a blog post on my Oakand Focus blog at the time. For example, there was this mugging attempt https://ift.tt/2ACgz0H. But then, the same year, I used my Oakland Focus blog (Oakland’s first blog) to complain about a racist incident at Easy Bar on Lakeshore (which has since closed and given way to a new place called “The Cat House” at 3255 Lakeshore). https://ift.tt/2vhvUyy

But back then, I wrote

“A 1998 poll conducted by the San Francisco Chronicle seems still to apply here in 2006. It reported that 62 percent of African American residents experienced an example of racism in restaurants and stores, where only 10 percent of whites, 32 percent of Asians and 41 percent of Latinos did. Notice that the percentage increases as the color of the skin darkens. That’s not by accident. A person who only identified herself as an “white woman Adams Point resident” chimed in to explain away the incident — and she wasn’t in the room at all. This is crazy. What sickens me more than anything is that if I tell anyone who’s black about this, I get a sympathetic ear, yet the rate of white or non-black Oaklanders who seem to “get it” ranges about 50 percent – a coin flip. That’s nuts. What’s lost in all this from the “explainers” is that not one — not one person – bothered to ask me what happened; they just fire off with their steady stream of “maybes” as in “Maybe he this,…”

Since then, 12 years have passed, and judging by Andrew Sullivan’s post, American society still has a long way to go. There should not a climate where a person can’t point out racist actions – from that perspective, Ms. Jeong was right. If you see just some of the examples of racist and sexist trolling she has endured, you’d understand why she went off. But, and again, she did appologize. Now, Andrew Sullivan should express that he understands her pain – he has not done that.

Andrew Sullivan’s behind the times, but he’s right about Sarah Jeong’s expressed racism, and wrong for not understanding what racism is.

Stay tuned. via IFTTT https://youtu.be/-LZWtFeperc