#there is literally no good or defensible system of slavery

[lightdancer1]

Unfortunately the article's claim that slavery was peripheral to African states has the problem that the abolition of the trade brought Dahomey, Benin, and the Sokoto Caliphate to near economic disintegration:

This article in turn is a good case of decolonization historiography as applied to the Kingdom of Dahomey. While I consider the claim that 'slavery was peripheral to the economies of African states' to be special pleading given the abolition of the slave trade brought Dahomey, Benin, and the Sokoto Caliphate to major weakness that made the conquests in the Scramble a matter of marching and the butcher and burn approach, it does make the point that to understand the decisions of African rulers the focus needs to be on African, not European, understandings of what their goals were.

It might be more easily noted that the African states did not see the dangers in mortgaging so much of their liquid wealth in the forms of slavery and doing little to build up anything more diverse.....but that should be equally put into the context that the European states only saw this *after* the era of mercantilism and the start of capitalism made it clear that a mono-focused economy is a glass dome waiting a good hit from a sledgehammer. The conditions furthering this shift did not apply to Dahomey, which made its bones and its money by exploiting the slave trade in its classical system and in the pattern most familiarly known to modern eyes.

Namely its soldiers, including the Ahosi, rampaged in the interior of Africa dragging poor sorry saps who couldn't run away fast enough by those human chains to ports and avoiding anything done to their *own* people with Oyo a particular favorite of their raids. It is a not entirely dissimilar result to Bolivarianism in Venezuela mortgaging the economy solely to oil....and then OPEC pushed oil prices off a roof and took the Venezuelan economy with it.

Judging Dahomey by its own standards likewise means recognizing that an autocratic society has all the usual brittleness of autocratic societies, including the endemic risks of military putsches that tended to be key parts in how Europeans finally brought African states over the brink of collapse. When the slave trade would implode in the 1830s the prosperity of Dahomey started to creak with it. 50 years later when European power returned with a deadly vengeance it was not strong states they faced outside of cases like Ethiopia or Kanem-Bornu where the slave trades in Western and Central and Eastern Africa were at their height, it was brittle ones devastated by the loss of much of their mobile capital and the ability to replenish supplies of gunpowder and firearms.

[bandersnatchers]

I think something that always makes me cry about Astarion is just his learning what he can be like when he actually has safety and a support system. (Warning: the admittedly overly long essay has some spoilers)

Like sure in his initial dealings with you, it might look like he disapproves of good deeds if you're not choosing sassy answers.

But the man's been mentally/sexually/physically abused for 200 years and he straight up believes people can't genuinely care. All he has is his survival instinct and the knowledge of what hell is like. You beat a dog enough and all it knows is violent anger, and you meet him after he has just been given a slice of freedom from those centuries of beatings. He's terrified it's going to be taken away from him. Of course hes not going to be wanting to do things that could risk this freedom. Of course he's going to fall back on the only way he knows to barely survive - manipulation and cruelty.

But as the story goes on, if you show him you actually care, that you're genuinely nice, he learns he actually has safety with your character, stability even. This doesn't even have to be romantic, like the scene where you just back him up and say "Astarion is his own person, he makes his own choices" is a literal shock to his system. He has not had simple autonomy in over 200 years, I can't even imagine what that does to your mindset. And if you do go down the romantic route and you're actually accepting of him wanting to slow down and that you still genuinely care about him... He learns that as a survivor he's still worth love even if he doesn't provide sexual gratification. That his companionship is all you need - that he's worth it. That he's more than it.

There was definitely hints of him caring before. I mean I was sitting at high approval with him for a while, and you can definitely see through his sassiness that he is starting to care about the party. After this though, he just genuinely sees your character as someone he can depend on, and he starts approving of good actions ie) giving food to kids, letting yenna stay with you. And he approves because he's not as terrified anymore. He's not frantically clutching at resources or power or safety, because for the first time, with these companions, he doesn't need to. For the first time he sees that people can be genuinely caring and that's okay and good. He sees that maybe even he can be genuinely caring. The bond with the group grows SO much, and he finally has people he can rely on and that rely on him.

And when you get to act 2/3 (depending on where you separate the acts) and you learn what Cazador wants, you see him start to get mean and defensive again and it's because he's terrified he's going to lose everything he just recently grasped. His instinct is to power grab - what he mainly knows is that power means people can't hurt you - means you can hurt them instead. He's up against his abuser of 200 years and while yea, the group is strong and by this point you've likely done some incredible feats, 200 years of abuse makes Cazador the most terrifying monster to him. Furthermore, as you progress towards Cazador, Astarion has to witness what 200 years of his slavery has done to others, has to look them in the eye when he didn't even know they were still alive. He has to contend with what he was forced to do, what this means for others, what this means for him.

Astarion is then given such a potential boon - he can make it all go away. He can make the 7000 spawn go away. He can make Cazador go away. He can make the last 200 years go away. He can be free in the sun. He can make it so no one can ever hurt him again, forever. All he has to do is follow through with what most of his life has taught him - that cruelty and power are the only things that matter. All he has to do is kill 7000 victims (and oh how easily he can spin this to be a good thing), and all he has to do is kill his damned master (this is a good thing I will admit).

But this isn't that story. This is a story about a survivor that finally had the support and love to learn that he is more than what was done to him, and what he was forced to do. This is a story about a person who looks at exactly what terrifies him the most, and decides I will break this cycle of abuse, I will look it dead on, while with my friends, my new family, and I will stop it. This is a story about a person who learns that yes, certainly, there are cruel things in this world, horrors that haunt you, but this is a world full of love and care and he can help it. He can love and care for it, or in the very least start with his companions.

I haven't progressed much past this part yet, but thinking about it always makes me tear up. I know the story going forward could have some devastating twists, but right now I'm just excited to see what Astarion is like with this chapter over. Im very thankful Larian gave us this story of survivorship and love.

[punkeropercyjackson]

Tryna articulate how Jason in canon feels extremely afrolatino to the point he's considered canonically so by black/latino DC fans but nonblack/gringo DC fans' racism causes them to ruin it for us with stereotyping that's so popular it's depressingly more known than literally anything about him and then there's also the hateful anti following it has that's also just racism but with the add-on of concern trolling

This deep dive includes dark topics as it's a breakdown by me as a homecountry raised afrolatina using actual black history.Trigger warnings:Antiblackness,anti latino racism,racialized misogyny,classism,ableism,slavery,csa,incest and sexual harrasment towards a minor of color(Damian).The non-Jason characters have been tagged because they're a major part of this and it includes defending them against Batfanon so i thought the fans will like to read it if they're comfortable reading the content,if not,please skip for your own self-care

So Jason acts a lot like an example of positive black masculinity-He's a huge mama's boy to THREE mom's(Catherine,Nocturna and Talia)and dates woc exclusively(Rose,Artemis and Dana)and respects women tons in general regardless of specific dynamic,has extremely high standards for other men and mouths off to them freely unlike what he's like with female characters including his own dad(this is also a black male thing actually!It's a running joke in black culture that boys will adore their mothers but be little shits to their fathers),has been a huge nerd his whole life both as in 'nerdy interests' and 'super smart' and is unbeliavably tough as a trauma coping and defense mechanism but has no shame in being openly emotional and kind.These aren't exclusively black people things obviously but what ties together for us are the elements of his story

He was born poor and ended up a street kid after Catherine died and Willis was sent to jail.Being poor isn't racist in black/latino characters if it's not used to demonize them and Los Todds did start off potrayed positively before classist propaganda got it's filthy hands on them and black/latino people ARE often poor in real because of colonization and the following systematic oppression.So afrolatino Jason with a respectfully potrayed poor background would be representation and work as good commentary on black trauma!This also applies to The Joker killing him when he was only 15 and him getting victim blaming and lies spread about him post-death to make him look like a bad kid who brought it upon himself when he was an extremely sweet and gentle boy that always had good intentions and makes Red Hood all the more interesting as a black character challenging the justice system and being morally gray but potrayed sympathically and a tragic figure and even getting a redemption arc eventually

There's also the accidental subtext of him beefing with his brothers severely except Duke,who he instantly liked and they're the closest Batboy relathionship the other has and the closest thing to eachother's Robin with Jason validating Duke as a real Robin,Batkid and Batboy multiple times which is exactly what Duke is insecure over in regards to his place in the Batfam and on a way funnier instinence of this,there's the unintentional from og Rhato deblackifying Kory and having her throw herself at Jason with him constantly rejecting her yet Rose doing the same thing and him legit willingly dating her in multiple runs so it brings the implication that Jason wasn't attracted to Kory because they turned her into a white woman.For more defying of stereotypes,he's not into drinking or smoking or casual relathionships and only wants to be with someone for real love and he pushed a guy off a roof as Robin for being a sex ring runner and as Red Hood targeted a pedophillic elementary school teacher to kill him for abusing a student so he takes direct action against sexual abuers instead of being one.Fun coincidences that his birthday is on dominican restoration day,african-american parents commonly give their kids greek names and his Lego movie is called 'Family Matters' which is also the title of a legendary sitcom that's from 80s like he is!

And this is exactly where nonblack/gringo DC fans fail us.His positive masculinity is switched for making him a stereotypical guy and that even includes erasing him being canonically (goth) punk,NONE of them care about Duke and dismiss black DC fans' critisisms because 'it's not that deep' as if they're not fetishizing blackness and latinohood while ALSO erasing it because oh no THAT black character dosen't appeal to my fantasies so ion know about that one,his type is replaced with white cis gringas and men who he can't stand-often for good reasons but nah,that's gay denial guys!!!,his parenthood is made to revolve around JUST Bruce and in addition to the misogyny it's classist to Willis too,has his intellegence and cultured interests and behaviors erased to make him 'the dumb angry one',isn't allowed to authentically keep his kindness in favor of sanitazion and this includes not actually writing as mentally ill but a supersized pissbaby who thinks having symptoms is a female trait(much like this headass fandom),he gets called classist slurs like 'street rat' and reduced down to other stereotypes of poor people for gags,he's reduced down to DITF when he's so much happier as more than just 'The Dead Robin' and his depth from his Robin days is taken from him for the sake of calling a lil romani boy a fucking mini monster,he's not allowed to just NOT smoke and NOT drink because he dosen't fucking WANT to because he has ptsd and it's triggering AND THE WORST PART

I see smut of him EVERYWHERE,non-fucking-stop,he's known as the horndog of the Batkids for baseless and even direct opposite from canon assumptions that're rooted in gender essentialism and ableism(i.e 'That's what REAL men are like😏' and the propaganda that trauma always turn you into a freak in the sheets who can only think about sex)and the way he's thee target of batcest and 'd*ddy issues' shipping when he's said outright he's grossed out at the thought of kissing his brothers-he said he has FOUR brothers too,you 'Batboy means white-I MEAN BLUE EYED' ahh snowroaches-and hates the guts of almost every older man he knows because he pulls people his own age and has a life outside of sex and dating.Plus that as an afrolatino man he'd DEsexualize himself as to not be literally assaulted by white people as they see black people as inherently sexual monsters and how black child slaves were widely csa'd and forced into incest by their owners and like all the fuckass white 'homoeroticism' on here y'all obsses over with him that has never been in Jason's lore is just historical abuse and even murder tactics used against black folks and latinos and afrolatinos by extension.And it's always posted and stanned by cis white women who never learned to explore media outside of men and white dudes that think themselves free of prejudice just because they're trans and autistic

It's performative,violent and just straight up makes them not that good of people seeing as they treat irl black people and latino poc like this too but don't think that gives anybody the right to hate afrolatino Jason.Y'all always nasty asf too-The fury and offense at black people being happy and black characters in your precious lil fancontent is embarrasing as hell and almost all of you don't extempt yourself from gross ships or innapropriate treatment of child characters(See the running gag of Jason telling Damian 'he fucked his mom' when in reality it was anti-arab propaganda,csa AND incest so it's no better than batcest and i even saw Roy say it to Damian over Dick once and i hardly think saying sexual shit to a minor about their family member isn't child abuse in any context,no matter how 'bratty' they're being and you're telling on yourselves with thinking that's 'the right punishment').Afrolatino Jason is black and latino DC fans' as it's creators and biggest content makers so you're both bad and irrelevant.You both ain't shit compared to my nonblack/gringo friends who base their afrolatino Jason off my content because they actually care about us.Be.Quiet.

[ttrpg-smash-pass-vs]

I'm going to be brave (on anon lol) and give the Neogi a little bulwark of defense- the whole master/slave dynamic is clearly a problem of actual literal conceptualization and alien morality, rather than a cultural or personal failing. I'd argue that there's way more morally suspect beings that have made it past muster on this blog; just a little bit before the Neogi poll the Nightwalker got a landslide yes and it's explicitly sadistic and malicious, implying it fully understands the implications of the harm it causes and enjoys it anyway (other guys like demons and devil, drow, and chromatic dragons usually fall into that pot too). So don't write off the Neogi just because of a disgust response based on fundamental cognitive differences.

That being said, it looks like the way they reproduce is by injecting a substance that causes another Neogi to become bloated and uninterested in anything but food while they get eggs laid in them. And the hatching Neoglings burst out and immediately eat the "mom". So it's still gonna be a no from me dawg, lol.

cw: body horror Now disclaimer. I understand that was just a little defense against my onslaught. A "they're bad, but others are just as bad and not getting the harsh treatment." I know you don't think their beliefs are good or anything. Just want to state that first so others don't go wild, given this is the "piss on the poor" reading comprehension website. That said, a long rebuttal for a long ask.

Yes they have an alien mindset. As do elementals, many demons, insectoid races, etc. But It's still a moral failing even if it's the root of the moral system that's the failure. These are still fully intelligent creatures, and every book that any of them are in goes out of its way to talk about how literally everything in the multiverse hates them. I get they just don't see anything else as people really, but it doesn't take the edge off for me. Others get by through a combination of having plenty of examples who are different, people who just see the picture without reading, and people who see murderers as less bad than slavers. Neogi are such hard passes because it took divine intervention to create a counter example, far fewer people are just slamming smash without reading, and there being no situation where slavery is justified. Loving pain and murder is frankly mundane in the world of monsters. and little more than quirky in the world of adventurers. You kinda accepted that at the prompt. But loving slavery is one of the reddest flags you can get, and hits a biiiiit too close to home.

And yeah, that post was long enough, I just figured the explosive parasitism was overkill. HOWVER I'd argue that since it's a separate process it wouldn't actually be necessary to mate, it's more of a drug they shove inside first to keep the host easy to work with. It's similar to the real-world insects who do this- the poison isn't part of the mating, it's prep to make sure they don't smash the eggs. Besides, reproduction isn't usually considered when people are thinking "smash or pass." It's typically the outcome people are looking to avoid tbh. Besides, there's a lot more to smashing than 1 particular hole. I actually know that's the least important part for many.

[terramythos]

System Collapse by Martha Wells Reading Notes

Full Review Here!

-ohhh fuck new murderbot explodes

Chapter 1

-I am glad to continue the "slightly out of order even in microcosm" style

-ok WHAT is it redacting. It sounds embarrassing.

-"I could have said a one liner but the ag bot scientifically couldn't understand me if I did so why bother" omg

-Another Sec Unit with somewhat heavy focus, which potentially tried to kill Murderbot, I'm sure this will be irrelevant and have no implications

-multiple uses of 'it/us'.

-God I love ART

-well I think one fun idea we could explore is there being rogue Sec Units completely separate from Murderbot (/Three, who Murderbot freed). It is theoretically possible others could have figured out what Murderbot did, or even other methods it didn't.

Chapter 2

-"fuck proprietary software" rant. So real bestie

-the slavery theme continues. Like obviously it's major to Murderbot as a character, but here the surviving colonists are framed as "salvage" to a corporation. So. Yeah looking forward to more of that.

-YEAH MAYBE ART'S PROTECTIVENESS BECOMING HAIR TRIGGER VIOLENT RESPONSES lS A BIT CONCERNING.

-it's giving Rimworld vibes

-yaaaay more neopronouns wooooo

Chapter 3

-ARGUCUSSION. Might steal that

-murderbot I'm beginning to seriously consider that the threat assessment module is just anxiety

-WHAT DO YOU MEAN REDACTED. HELLO?

-murderbot adding increasingly catastrophic hypothetical contingencies to worry about is far too relatable

-ART quantum as fuck

-what does redacted meeeeaaaan why does it keep happening what is going on that murderbot doesn't want the reader to knowwww

-ok there being such a heavy focus on ART and how unusual it is and how much it is capable of doing and being at once… in conjunction with the title… is a little. Hm!

-Ratthi my friend Ratthi

-"HUMANS CAN ALSO HAVE AUTISM ITS NOT JUST ME" ok go off mb

-was redacted a nervous breakdown or something?

-Ratthi getting defensive about Murderbot 💖

-"at least nobody had noticed" lists 3 of the 4 people as probably having noticed

Chapter 4

-"I don't know how to respond when humans say [be safe]. It was always my job to get hurt". :(

-ok why would a pre-CR ruin be actively powered. That's a little. Odd.

-i know this is just a reminder expository dump but I do still enjoy the concept of alien material just causing weird shit to happen to human biology and technology sometimes.

-MB precisely citing a historical reference is. Something. Did it suddenly gain an interest in this

redacted

-Tarik going from "random extra red shirt coded character" to "oh wait you have a backstory and thematic character foil shit going huh". 👌 the good shit

Chapter 5

-its been spelled "hanger" not "hangar" a couple times which feels like an error

-'murderbot, why are you like this' I mean

-oddly specific media similarity queries is oddly relatable

-murderbot low self confidence is :(

-framing its friends helping it in a difficult time as covering for its mistakes sure is a way to look at things

-ok so I guess murderbot is having like. Ptsd related stress nightmares? Hence the redacted ("inaccurate") memory? Murderbot doesn't dream like a human as far as we know so it wouldn't be a shock that everyone is confused about it.

-I guess there could be another explanation but

-yeah the story describes it as a "flashback" which is a ptsd thing. But I guess then I'm surprised murderbot hasn't had something similar happen before considering some of the things that have happened in the series. I guess it isn't nearly predictable in humans irl either, but still.

-poor murderbot

-ok so when it said "I froze" it meant that literally in like a computer sense

-"I guess machine intelligences of that era were too polite to say 'that sounds fake but okay'" LMAO

-the pre CR system seems interesting and I like the framing of their convo in an extremely basic programming language (if that's the right term for it)

-telling that it doesn't have a word for 'client'

-and how did BE get there so fast…

Chapter 6

-not Tarik sitting like me

-GOD why did "explaining the existential horror of the governor module in LanguageBasic" make me laugh so hard

-so I'm pretty sure the implication is one of the main humans sold them out to BE, which is how they knew where to look for the separatists. Though since ART speculates they got there early, I guess the main colonists could have as well, but that doesn't explain the BE SecUnit trying to (presumably) hurt Murderbot.

-on that subject, that SecUnit might have (1) immediately identified Murderbot as an altered SecUnit and (2) that's the reason it attacked the ag-bot how it did, either to test the theory or because it knew MB would be okay. But that also doesn't explain how it would have avoided the automated report to its governor module.

-AdaCol2 being horrified about a governor module even existing:(

-OMG AdaCol2 having its own extensive media storage. That's so cute omg.

-so to this point in the series MB hasn't been characterized as "part human" despite being partially made of human material. It's always considered itself more of a bot with mostly inconvenient human neural tissue. And now that human neural tissue is causing worse problems than it has before (PTSD/flashbacks).

-SO when ART here says "the part of you that is human" that's significant. It makes me wonder if MB is going to be reframed as "part human" in a way the series has avoided so far… or if ART is genuinely just wrong about that.

-but MB's resistance to even being treated as a human indicates SOMETHING there… compared to its acceptance of being repaired and healed while framed as a bot-- and its fixation with being 'broken' like a machine when that's not really the problem.

-just. Very interesting to think about.

-MB did mention just before this scene that human neural tissue is essential to understanding visual media like TV shows. And we know how important that is to MB. So I also wonder if that is a factor in characterizing MB as "part human" (maybe even retroactively).

-OK the little cut in with Mensah saying "you just don't want to talk about [whats wrong with you]" supports the entirety of the above. So.

-& leaning heavily into the theming outside that… and Considering the title…

-oh Ratthi & Tarik having Something Going On recontextualizes some earlier scenes

Chapter 7

-ok this is the second hint that someone is leaking info to BE. And like the OBVIOUS candidate would be Tarik. But I kind of hope it isn't, if thats where we're going.

-'would it have been kinder to kill you, before you disabled your governor module?' 'yes.' What a fucking gut punch. Jesus. The whole exchange.

-Murderbot is not okay :(((

-inspiring change through the power of media! Yaaaaay

-I like the implication that MB used Sanctuary Moon to kinda.. rewire its brain after the governor module. To heal, I guess. Like that's pretty obvious if you think about it, but I like seeing it acknowledged directly.

-what a cool way to potentially solve the main conflict. It's so character appropriate. I really like this

Chapter 8

-"die trying. It's not the worst thing that could happen." AAAAAAAAA

-ratthi my friend ratthi

-i like the bit about media analysis and applying that to your own craft. Relatable

-last minute group project energy

Chapter 9

-'the documentary explained the reality of the situation. I think that's the opposite of a sales pitch.' LMAO

-he shot at Leonide? So… inner BE politics?

-there is something grimly funny to me about the shortening to "BE" for Barish Estranza for purely personal reasons 1 person maybe reading this will also understand.

-i think it's interesting that we mostly use terms like "forcible indenture" in place of just "slavery". It gets called slave labor, yes, but the corporate-whitewashing term being juxtaposed with the horrible reality of it is quite striking.

-more about ART being quantum. For lack of a better word as the narration hasn't used that term yet. But idk how else one would describe that

-i have a dreadful feeling Iris might get killed off but that would be one hell of a thing to drop this close to the end. She just gets a lot of characterization this book and there's a heavy emphasis on her importance to ART. and we already saw what ART was capable of just thinking MB got hurt or killed last book.

-sees 'Hostile!SecUnit' explicitly written in the text looks at Martha Wells I Know What You Are

-i know they're friends and that's like a predictable thing but I like how MB and ART have gradually changed to be more like each other

-i think AdaCol2 is just out of commission despite MB assuming it betrayed them. But ART had that comment about it being more sophisticated than it let on… but I don't think it would betray them based on the characterization so far, like its horror at the mere concept of a governor module and uploading the documentary for them.

-did we know SecUnit hands are metal

-Tarik being badass as a background detail

- YAY AdaCol2 back

-the idea of a human augmented to be the HubSystem is a little horrifying. And introduced in media res so like "don't think about it"

-ok a reasonable justification for not freeing the two SecUnits. Like it can't happen all the time. But it's still upsetting knowing what it's like to be one.

-BUT giving them the means to do so later like MB did with Three in Network Effect is nice. If ill advised as it realizes later lmao

Chapter 10

-if Leonide doesn't piece together that MB is rogue ill be shocked

-THE FREED SECUNIT HELPING THEM SCREAM CRYING

-ART drone is like. Drunk

-i kinda like the framing of the humans taking over to help SecUnit and ART

Chapter 11

-MB was worried about Ratthi :(

-'booped by the pathfinder' god why is that funny

Chapter 12 -oh no is Holism like. Another ART

-yeah, confirmed. Huh. So there's more than one semi omniscient space ship hanging around. It's not just Peri. I didn't even suspect that.

-yeah honey you DO need therapy.

The end!

Ok so. Thoughts. We kind of end in a similar place as Network Effect, with Murderbot deciding to leave the Preservation team to go with ART. This story feels like a character

development add on and I'm not sure if it was originally planned when Network Effect was written.

That's not really a criticism because we do learn interesting things. There's a heavier lean into ART and its functional existence. MB has a realistic response to the traumatic events of Network Effect and we have to deal with the fallout of it. Which I think is important instead of jumping to the next arc right away. We also get heavy characterization of 2 newer characters, Iris and Tarik. Tarik especially gets a lot of development. I legit can't remember if he was in Network Effect. But he's a human character foil to MB which I think is a good addition to the story. We have had multiple bot foils for MB so having a human one is good (Gurathin doesn't really count imo) Since as this book emphasizes, MB is kind of both.

My speculation on what we go to next? This book had a heavier emphasis on MB being partially human. That's always been true but not something MB likes to think about or identify with. And the trauma response to Network Effect is framed as a human part of MB. So how do we explore that in the future? I think back to how MB talking to Bharadwaj was integrated into Network Effect and how that explored its trauma and past. Now we have trauma and the present, and the implication that MB will get actual therapy, so will it be similar?

We can obviously examine a lot about the University. We got a taste that there's more to it right at the end with Holism's existence reveal. That's pretty major and there may be way more to it. All we know about the University really is ART and its humans. We could conceivably have non ART/Peri ship characters that are similar to it.

The big elephant in the room mentioned in this book is the ComfortUnit MB freed early in the series. What happened to it? And this book adds another SecUnit to that (2 technically but we only see one do something with its freedom). Will they come back into the story? And since they know how to free themselves will they spread that to other constructs? Will MB helping others on its journey have a knockdown effect throughout the Rim? That seems like the most likely solution to construct slavery, which is like the MAIN CONFLICT/problem of the series.

One thing MB has mentioned a few times is that some rogue Units do respond to sudden freedom with violence-- which is an understandable response, honestly. But that isn't something we have seen. MB just… kept doing its job for 4 years before the Preservation team discovered its secret in

the first book… and it's implied the one it freed in this book plans to do the same thing. Three wasn't violent either and is characterized as more… childlike, I guess? The ComfortUnit just fucking booked it the second it could. So we haven't seen violence happen with Three and the other Units MB directly freed but it's something that could be a conflict later on if suddenly a bunch start going rogue in that kind of ripple effect. There's the CombatUnit from book 4 that I vaguely recall had no interest in being freed and was incredibly violent. So who knows.

[boethiah]

So, I agree Tiber Septim was a piece of shit, even ignoring his specific evils, just on "creating empire through conquest is bad" principle alone. I do not get how that isn't true of the Tribunal on "slavery is bad" alone and seems to me a lot of people who think the former do not agree, insisting they are "morally grey", even when the former is black. The former god-king conquered Tamriel, latter god-kings had Dunmer enslave others for millenia and insisted on keeping it even after becoming imperial province. Like, both stems for putting their people above others and much like folks didn't wanna get conquered, they didn't wanna be treated as literally less than people and it's NOT matter of them living in times alien to us where that is normal, most of Tamriel thinks it's fucked up, we know even some Dunmer themselves thought it was fucked up (not that "these divine beings of human origin who expect to guide their people and be worshipped by them are just too stupid or apathetic to figure out slavery is wrong" is a great argument in the first place).

I'm not gonna be an asshole and hold ESO against them, but we've been talking about it this whole time, and I could see someone using it in their defense, so I guess worth noting as an aside-slavery actually being outlawed in their time for a while before things going back to business makes them look worse, not better.

And maybe part of it is people feeling the games are being unfair, treating Tiber/Talos positively in a way they don't Tribunal, and I get that, but I think it goes beyond it, with these fans acting as if they are morally ambiguous anti-heroes to his Palpatine and you are dumb for not seeing it the same.

And no, I am NOT saying people shouldn't like them, or need to talk about how they don't aprove of their actions, and I don't mean people just being fans, treating them as funny weirdoes, fanficcing about them or arguing about characterization, nothing wrong with that. I mean when people specifically discuss morality of characters.

Man, this monster ended up like 4 times longer than I thought, already sorry for wasting your time just reading it. Hope you see where I'm coming from. Thank you.

okay honestly i'm not sure we even disagree on this. i'm a massive tribunal apologist and i'll joke about how almalexia was right about everything but the slavery thing is morally indefensible. the tribunal are not morally good people, i don't think it's productive to argue that they are. even trying to compare whether they're better or worse than tiber septim gets down to splitting hairs, because while the tribunal weren't imperialists or expansionists, they participated in the colonization of traditionally ashlander territories. the tribunal's regime had its flaws to say the least

that said. i don't think it's fair to hold eso's slavery ban against them outright, because it's actually kinda revealing about how the tribunal works, vs how septim's empire works: for one, that it wasn't the tribunal's slavery ban, it was specifically almalexia's; that vivec opposed it (or at least didn't enforce it)* and sotha sil held no position on it; that at the height of her powers and riding a massive political victory, almalexia barely succeeded in getting a reduced form of the ban passed, and even then she lost house telvanni in the process. the tribunal may be gods but they aren't dictators in the way tiber septim was a dictator. there's no imperial decrees in morrowind

so if we're determined to split moral hairs, the question might be: is it worse to inherit and perpetuate an evil system, or to invent one and impose it on the rest of tamriel?

because i think that's why fans find the tribunal more sympathetic: they lived under an oppressive foreign regime and their decision to take godhood was motivated by extensive personal experience with tragedy. they took over a collapsing system in an attempt to prevent further collapse. tiber septim, meanwhile, is a dude who wanted everything and then got it. he invented a system that made him a god because He Felt Like It. the tribunal's lore is riddled with suffering and humiliating hardship and senseless loss, while one of the few lorebooks portraying tiber septim involves him kidnapping a child and then sexually abusing her as a young adult.

people treat the tribunal as morally grey because there's signs of good amongst the bad-- at the very least, they had good intentions and lofty goals. tiber septim colonized a continent via unspeakable brutality, just cause he kinda wanted to. good intentions aren't an excuse obviously but like, it's easier to find something sympathetic in the former.

but yes, strictly in terms of morality, the tribunal are not good people. tiber septim is not good people. can't really argue about that

*this is off topic and only just occurring to me, but considering that allowing the perpetuation of slavery was a clause vivec specifically put into the armistice, and the fact that there are no slaves in mournhold in tes3, i wonder if this split didn't perpetuate into the third era-- vivec condoning slavery on vvardenfell, almalexia opposing it in deshaan. but this is kind of beside the point lol

[c-is-for-circinate]

Thinking today about viruses, allergies, oppression, and anti culture.

(under a cut because WHOOOPS this got long)

Racism is a virus. Homophobia, transphobia, sexism, antisemitism, ableism, etc etc etc, they are all viruses--a topic that many of us have learned a great deal about in the past year. They are ideas, yes, not literal physical diseases, but the analogy holds up. They are infectious, and often spread from person to person without anyone involved realizing they have it. They can sit latent for years, never showing up because the carrier never finds themselves in a situation where the issue comes up, only to flare up and take over when you least expect it. And they mutate, just like the flu, just like the common cold; they put on a new jacket every year and slide in undetected yet again, slip past our internal sensors and bury themselves in our brains until we go in and deal with them as best as we can.

One more thing we've learned about viruses this year is how we can fight them. The viruses of oppression are a little different because they tend to hurt the people around their carriers even more than the people they've infected (although let's talk about internalized anything-ism sometime), but in a lot of ways the attack is the same. You treat the symptoms even when you don't know how to cure the disease: we invest in respirators, antiviral treatments, hospitals; we create and sponsor programs to help those who've been hurt by various oppressions, we uplift our neighbors, we try to keep people safe from violences both big and small. You work to stop the spread: we wear our goddamn masks, we stay home when we can; we train ourselves not to say racist shit that might foster a culture of hate, we stop that guy in our office from making rape jokes, we make slurs unacceptable. You pay attention to your immune system: we seek medical attention when we experience symptoms, we get COVID tests, we talk to our doctors before the symptoms get deadly; we protest and we pay attention to the people who do, we take them seriously when they tell us that something is wrong.

You vaccinate. We train ourselves and our immune systems to recognize the thing that infects us, the thing that we fear. We try to teach our children about history, bit by little bit, on fragments of dead violence the same way we train our bodies on dead virus shells, so that someday they'll recognize the live disease when they see it. We learn about slavery and Jim Crow and the Holocaust. We tell kids bedtime stories about why hitting and bullying is bad, before we ever start teaching them the specific shapes that violence so often takes. As we get older, as we get stronger, we learn about the living stuff, all the new forms that same old virus has mutated into; we educate ourselves, we listen, we read. Just like vaccines, of course, there are anti-vaxxers and denialists shouting about how racism and sexism are already dead and they don't need any propoganda besides Fox News. Hell, just like anti-maskers, there are plenty of people screaming about how political correctness is ruining the world and they demand their right to spread their virus to anyone they can. Often these are the same people.

But we try. And make no mistake, we all of us are already infected, and just like a real virus, once you've caught it once it probably won't ever go away again--but we can prepare, and we can try to lessen the severity of our cases, and we can support our immune systems of activists and protesters and our own internal sense of this is wrong, and we can work, bit by bit, if not towards eradication (not yet, not in this world, but maybe someday in another), then at least towards control.

And then there's allergies.

An allergy is what happens when a human body's own immune system freaks out over an enemy that wasn't particularly harmful in the first place. All our immune defenses--those precious immune defenses, which work so hard to protect us against all those viral, deadly ideas--go screaming into high gear. All of that fear and fury and attack power gets brought to bear all at once, against a bit of pollen or bee venom or cat dander or peanuts, and your body is left itchy and runny-nosed and gasping--sometimes literally--as it tries to keep up. Allergies are miserable. Sometimes they're life-threatening. And the biggest danger isn't the foreign agent that triggers the allergic reaction; it's the immune system trying to fight it in the first place.

Which, yes, brings us to anti culture--but not JUST anti culture. It's a good example, a little internet-centric microcosm of the same force that drives progressives to tear bloody shreds out of moderate liberal politicians. Hell, it's the same force that enables both TERFs and the Capitol rioters. It's a combination of an immune system that points in the wrong direction, flagging the wrong thing as bad, terrifying, danger, NO, and a freaked-out response that can manifest as anything from mildly irritating to absolutely deadly.

To be clear, I am not by any means equating the scale or even the source of these things, any more than hayfever is the same as anaphylactic shock. Likewise, the sources are different. Sometimes, a disease can infect an immune system and point it in the wrong direction. (Terror of the other is the absolute cornerstone of white nationalism, and when that terror gets triggered by a harmless environmental condition like, god forbid, other people asking for rights, the allergy response can be deadly.) Other times, it's the other way around. Our internal immune systems, so well trained to protect ourselves and those around us from the insidious viral ravages of prejudice and oppression, start seeing traces of it everywhere.

And they freak out. And we suffer for it.

We talk a lot of well-deserved shit about TERFs, but it's useful to remember how much their nastiness feels to them like activism. Their immune system, trained and primed and sensitized over years of exposure to misogyny and sexism, catches the tiniest whiff of something that might seem at some point to have possibly been taken for male, and freaks out, because why is that trying to get into our system. Never mind that they're wrong. An immune system that flips out over penicillin is wrong, too. It's still trying to help, and it's still doing more harm than good trying it.

So bringing this back around to anti culture, which was absolutely where I started thinking about all of this this morning: anti culture, the terror of porn and the attempt by antis to protect themselves an other people from sexual content, is an immune response. It is a trained immune response, in people who have been taught and re-taught again and again that rape culture is a dangerous insidious virus that should be fought at all costs. And, right, there's more than a bit of 'the sexism virus infected this immune system and reprogrammed it to fight itself' involved here, but look, we are all of us infected with all of the viruses at least a little bit everywhere. If we tried to direct our immune systems to rip every last shred of -ism out of every last bit of us, we'd rip ourselves apart. Which is exactly the problem.

Porn, in and of itself, is natural. As natural as environmental pollen, and living near dogs and cats, and eating wheat or nuts or citrus fruit. It's even healthy, for a whole host of reasons that belong in another essay. And citric acid and nut-based proteins and whole grains are nutritious, and pets are physically and psychologically helpful, and being exposed to lots of different environmental substances as a child can actually help train your immune system in the first place. Porn can help us figure out what we like. It can help us figure out what we don't like. And while the processes that create it are sometimes unethical and awful, we don't condemn all dogs because puppy mills and dogfighting rings exist, even if we do have dog allergies.

What we see in anti culture is often a good-faith attempt on the part of antis to attack and subdue an environmental trigger that they read as dangerous. It's a panic attack over something that is by nature harmless or mildly harmful, blown out of proportion by the very instincts that are supposed to keep us safe. It's the response of an immune system that's been taught over years and years, by everyone from parents to school systems to the activists they look up to, that negative stimulus is to be feared, avoided, and fought. Of COURSE they're going to freak out.

And of course, early exposure to controlled amounts of allergens can help prevent later allergies from developing. Of course when kids are raised with abstinence-only education, sheltered from the very concept of sex, they're going to grow up allergic to it. (Of course they're going to try to protect other kids from the same, like worried mothers who refuse to let peanuts or wheat products or dirt near their precious babies, whose kids grow up with a whole suite of allergic triggers because their bodies never learned what was okay in the first place.) And no, that doesn't mean we hand pornography to ten-year-olds any more than we should give raw honey to an infant--but of course if our culture refuses to introduce kids to the fact that sex and desire and the inside of their own brain can be messy and silly and kinky and downright weird, we're going to have a higher rate of allergic reaction to the entire concept in adults.

I wish I had a better answer for what to do with understanding that this is what's going through so many people's brains. The best I have is a prescription for allergy-sufferers, who probably haven't read this far through this wordspew of an essay in the first place--but we all get a little hayfever once in a while, and we all sometimes run into content that makes us angry. So some thoughts on how to deal with metaphorical allergic reactions, inspired by the ways we deal with literal ones?

First: we recognize that what is happening is an allergy. The thing we're reacting to might be gross, or irritating, or even unpleasant, but the danger is not and never has been the thing itself. Whether it's triggering a response because of its similarity to an actively dangerous pathogen, or our immune system just doesn't like it, our aversion to one kind of story or another universally says more about us than about it. Luckily, we have a lot more control over our social responses than our biological ones!!! If vocal activism is our sociocultural immune system firing itself up to fight an infection that may or may not exist, then we get to tell our metaphorical white blood cells to stand down. We get to decide.

Second: we get some space. The funny thing about allergies is, while early exposure to allergens can help prevent them, re-exposing yourself to dangerous allergens after you've already developed a reaction to them can make them worse. Anaphylaxis is always more likely after someone's experienced it the first time. Repeated exposure to triggers, whether biological or psychological, can make the effects worse. So stop exposing yourself.

If something makes your throat itch every time you eat it, stop eating it. If something makes you mad every time you read it, stop reading it. Obviously this can be easier said than done in a world that's a lot worse about warning labels on stories than ingredients labels on foods, but that's why fic tags exist. And: sometimes, the croissant is delicious enough that we decide we're willing to suffer through the way the almonds make us feel, just this once. Sometimes the ship or the characterization or, hell, those other kinks that we really like are tasty enough that we'll put up with the trope we hate. We're allowed to do that. But we do it knowing there will be consequences, and we don't blame the baker when they hit.

We also don't have to blame ourselves. It sucks to be allergic to shellfish when all your friends are raving about the new seafood place. But that's not our fault any more than it's theirs.

Third: sometimes, if we need one, we go to the doctor. Or a therapist. Yes, really.

Not because there's anything really wrong with an aversion or even mild breakouts of hives, annoyance, and bitching in your friends' DMs--but it sure isn't pleasant, and sometimes your doctor might have a better solution than 'avoid it and take a Benadryl' that makes you feel a little better in the long run. And sometimes, it's not a mild breakout. Sometimes it's the kind of story that lingers with you for days, makes your skin crawl; sometimes your throat swells up and it gets hard to breathe. Sometimes we get angry enough about something we've read that we can't stand down our immune system, don't want to stop ourselves from writing that angry comment, that tumblr post, that abuse report to the mods for something that didn't actually break any rules. And that's dangerous, because when our immune response can flare out of control like that, we don't always know where and when it will happen next, and the risk of what we'll do if it happens gets way, way higher.

Sometimes it really is worth getting a second opinion. Sometimes you need somebody to tell you, "actually, it is not normal to get tingly and sweaty every time you eat potatoes." There are ways to train your brain and leash your white blood cells that I sure as heck am not expert enough to address. There are, it turns out, ways to feel better. There are ways to mitigate the damage your own well-meaning defense mechanisms might do to yourself or other people along the way.

And: we can take a deep breath when someone with an allergy to something we've baked, something we've written, something we like, is lashing out trying to protect themselves and everyone around them from something they've registered as a threat. Of course they're wrong. Yes, we told them there were tree nuts in the brownies ahead of time; yes, they chose to eat them anyway. But it can be worth reminding them and ourselves that there's a difference between "this thing is toxic" and "this harmless thing has driven my own system into a defensive response that sure makes it feel like I've been poisoned." And it can be worth reminding ourselves as well as them that sometimes, that difference can be really hard to spot.

[dalekofchaos]

Rey’s lack of motivation and stake in the Sequel Trilogy

I have a question to ask you. What are Rey’s motivations? What are her wants and goals and why is she even drawn to the conflict between The First Order and The Resistance?

Rey’s motivations in the Sequels.

Rey wants to find her parents.

Wants to bring back Luke Skywalker

Rey wants to find her place 

Wants Ben to return to the light

Has no real motivation to be on either side of the conflict, but chooses The Resistance anyway

Says she wants to kill Palpatine in cold blood, was close to giving in

Now she chose to fuck off to Tatooine and we see very little in her motivation to do....ANYTHING

Let’s compare Anakin and Luke’s motivations.

What are Anakin's motivations?

Wants to leave a life of slavery and come back and free his mother

Wants to become a Jedi and become a hero

Wants to protect Padme

Wants to save Obi-Wan

Wants to stop Dooku and end the war before it can begin

Wants to be a good master to Ahsoka

Wants to clear Ahsoka’s name

Wants to stop the war

Wants to save Padme and his children's lives at the cost of the Jedi and doing whatever it takes and becomes Darth Vader

What are Luke’s motivations?

Luke is a farm boy who dreams of leaving his mundane life.

Luke discovers that his father -unlike what his uncle told him, was a heroic Jedi Knight

Luke, is reluctant and refuses the ‘call to adventure’, but after the Empire murders his Aunt and Uncle, he decides to Join Obi-Wan on the quest.

Save the Princess

Luke is angered by Obi-Wan’s death at the hands of Darth Vader, and seeks retribution.

Destroy the Death Star and save the Rebellion

To be trained by Yoda

Save Han and Leia

Luke discovers his father, the heroic Jedi, is none other than Darth Vader. After years of training, he sets out to redeem his father and turn him back to the light.

After the redemption of his father and fall of the Empire, Luke goes on a journey to restore The Jedi Order

Compare Rey and Luke’s journeys in ANH and TFA. Rey wanders around and stuff is handed to her. Luke takes initiative and works for what he has. Let's compare ANH with TFA

Luke screws up on watching R2, then chooses to chase him down. He makes another mistake by spying on the Tusken Raiders instead of getting the hell out of dodge. This leads to him being knocked out, and rescued by Ben Kenobi.

Luke initiates the meeting with Ben Kenobi, and it happens because of his early bad decisions.

His aunt & uncle are killed, but thanks to his screw-up with R2 & the raiders, he and the droids are spared.

He chooses to follow Kenobi to Alderaan instead of staying on Tattooine.

He chooses to accept Kenobi's instruction in the ways of the Force, even though most people think it's a myth and a joke. Even though he's bad at it and doesn't seem to get any results at first.

He makes the decision that they're going to rescue Leia, potentially dooming their escape from the Death Star. This sets off a chain of events that leads to Kenobi's death.

Then he chooses to help fight the Death Star, even though he's not a member of the rebellion. He was offered a job with Han, and he could have ensured his safety by leaving with them. Instead he chose certain death.

Finally, he chooses to trust a literal voice in his head instead of the targeting computer.

Let's contrast that with Rey.

BB-8 runs into her. She tries to send him away, but relents and lets him follow her home.

She chooses not to sell him for food.

Finn wanders into camp on his own initiative.

The camp is attacked because BB-8 is there. The camp would have been attacked no matter what Rey did. The other scavenger was, I'm pretty sure, from the same camp. And if she'd sold him, BB-8 would also have still been in the camp.

She is forced to take the Millennium Falcon when the ship she wanted to use was blown up.

She chooses to go with Finn and bring BB-8 to the Rebellion Resistance.

She stumbles upon Luke's lightsaber, and runs away from it.

She accidentally runs into Kylo Ren while hiding in the forest.

He chooses to kidnap her because he senses something special about her.

After her first exposure to the Force, she learns how to use some of it, successfully, and escapes from Ren. And to her credit, escaping and trying the Force out is a choice she made, rather than something that passively happened to her.

Then she, um, is standing there when Han is killed.

She chooses to fight Kylo Ren, and beats him in her first lightsaber battle after closing her eyes and thinking about the Force.

She sort of chooses to go summon Luke back to civilization - I say sort of because it's not clear why she was picked to go over, say, Leia.

Luke makes mistakes, and he is an active participant in his story. Rey is just kind of there, most of the time. She doesn't make mistakes, but she doesn't really do much else.

Rey has no personal stake in this war or motivations and she’s supposed to be the main protagonist.

Rey has never left Jakku before TFA and she tells Han that ”she never knew so much green existed” when they go to Maz’s castle.

In other words Rey must have had very limited knowledge of the world outside of Jakku and all she has heard from it are stories.

Rey who barely knows anything about the rest of the galaxy, to the point that she didn’t even know that forests existed what exactly is her personal stake in the current galactic conflict?

In TFA we saw The New Republic’s capital systems blown up by Starkiller Base and we never saw a reaction from Rey. We do see Finn and Han’s reactions. Also worth noting about Rey is that if she was unconscious throughout her involuntary travel to the Starkiller Base she was never actually aware of the Starkiller Base until just before Han, Finn and Chewie started planting the explosions in order to sabotage it.

Luke, while he had no personal attachments to Aldeeran did actually get to see the horrible aftermaths of it’s destruction.

But Rey was barely affected by the destruction of the Capital systems. Most characters were not as affected as they should have been in my opinion but we didn’t even get to see her have an emotional reaction to it.

This was probably the greatest genocide in Star Wars history and our main heroine is unaffected by it? Finn has a reaction to it and he’s supposedly NOT the main protagonist?

Rey really has no reason to care about the state of the galaxy. She only seems to care if people she knows are in danger.

The fact that she is supposed to be our main hero of this trilogy when she has next to no personal stakes in the well-being of the rest of the galaxy feels wrong to me.

Finn actually has stakes in this conflict since the FO took his family and childhood away from him and Poe has stakes because he actually lives in the New Republic and doesn’t want it to be under FO’s rule. Yet neither Finn nor Poe are considered the main protagonist? But oh wait, I forgot we can’t have a black or Latino man be the leading protagonist in Star Wars

The more I think about it is Rey has no goals or agency as a protagonist. She’s just whatever the plot demands her to be. Rey doesn’t actively take the initiative and make decisions, and simply react to the world around her. There is never a reason given as to why she wants to be a Jedi. Sure, she’s heard the stories about them, but she doesn’t dream to be one like Anakin, and the writers are so obsessed over her parents that they never develop any other motivation besides that. She has to be strung along the story so she can take part in it, hence she is repeatedly chased and kidnapped throughout TFA to get her to the Resistance where she decides to find Luke because she has nowhere else to go. Part of the reason she doesn’t even train with Luke is because she has no reason to, as she’s just supposed to find him. Rey joins the fight simply in reaction to learning that Luke is responsible for Ben’s fall. She’s only ever a Jedi and a member of the Resistance out of necessity- she has no where left to go and has to fight in self defense- so they try hamfist in some motives that she needs to stop herself from becoming like Palpatine but there is no tension as it’s the final act. By the end of the trilogy it’s not even clear if the Jedi Order will return because Rey never seems to want to be one and we can only assume they will return for meta reasons- because the audience knows the ST is a copypasta of the OT.

What exactly was Rey’s motivation for getting involved in the Galactic conflict before TROS? Luke was told that his father was killed by Darth Vader and later his family gets murdered by the empire so he had personal stakes to get involved in the conflict.

Anakin was a Jedi and had lived in the Republic for ten years by the time of the Clone Wars begun so he had personal reasons to get involved in the conflict.

Rey meanwhile grew up so isolated of Jakku that she had no idea forests existed and she didn’t lose anything and the FO attacked her on Jakku. In fact she wanted to return to Jakku after she had dumped BB-8 with the Resistance. Her primary motivation in TFA was to reunite with her family but the movie never establish that her family’s absence was connected to the galactic conflict in any way.

That connection isn’t established until TROS so what was her motivation until than? The Death of Han? A guy she had known for two hours? Finn? A guy she also had maybe only knew for about two hours total by the time of their hug in TLJ? Also she seemed to have completely forgotten about Finn by the time she want on a quest to redeem the guy that has far as she should have known by that point was still in a coma with his spine permanently damaged because of Kylo.

Rey’s motivation seems to either be finding her family or her dealing with her existential crisis neither had much of a connection with the galactic conflict until TROS

[becuzitisbitter]

All Cops Are Bad

The last of the essays i will be posting that I wrote for school, this one is an attempt at an approachable ACAB argument (my professor said that she was persuaded, at least)

    There is an old slogan with roots at least as far back as the 1920’s and is yet becoming more and more popular across the globe today: “All coppers are bastards.” Of course, most people just say “cops” these days.  The extensive history of the slogan might even make one stop to wonder why the police have been the object of such long-standing antagonism, if one isn’t the sort to grasp the slogan’s truth intuitively.  The reality is that all cops really are bastards, not in a literal sense, of course, but in the derogatory usage which communicates despicability.  The goal of this essay is to convince the reader that the police are bad and that policing should be done away with entirely.  After all, the police present themselves as the vanguard of the state’s repressive urges and as the guarantors of an order defined by deprivation and violence.

    Olivia B. Waxman, writing for Time Magazine, points to economic forces as dictating the development of the means and aims utilized by policing institutions in the U.S.  She writes that businesses had already been hiring private security to protect the transport and storage of their property, and that, “These merchants came up with a way to save money by transferring to the cost of maintaining a police force to citizens by arguing that it was for the “collective good.” (Waxman) In other words, America’s first publicly funded police force was simply picking up after the work of private businesses to protect their own property, but with the cost foisted upon those who were being kept out. She continues this economic argument as she traces the lineage of the modern police force back to its forerunners in the Southern runaway slave patrols. She writes, “the economics that drove the creation of police forces were centered not on the protection of shipping interests but on the preservation of the slavery system”. Thus, the primary policing institutions in the South were the slave patrols, the first of which was formally established in 1704. (Waxman)

    The police developed historically to enforce property rights rather than to ensure the wellbeing of the populace.  If it is understood that white supremacy encodes human skin with either privilege or dispossession, it should be understood that, as Mariame Kaba writes in an opinion piece published by the New York Times, “when you see a police officer pressing his knee into a black man’s neck until he dies, that’s the logical result of policing in America. When a police officer brutalizes a black person, he is doing what he sees as his job.” (Kaba) Kaba is an organizer against criminalization and a self-described police abolitionist because she believes that “a ‘safe’ world is not one in which the police keep black and other marginalized people in check through threats of arrest, incarceration, violence and death.” The police, then, are not focused on creating a safe world. They are interested in preserving the world as it is, which demands a tacit defense of misogynistic and white supremacist institutions.

    Regardless of personal attitudes or goals, the undeniable outcome of two hundred years of policing in America has been an uninterrupted avalanche of mostly arbitrary violence aimed at preserving the rule of law, that is, the sanctity of private property. In just the last year, the discourse about the role and place of police in our society has exploded with new questions and new ideas. What makes this conversation so powerful is that the police are considered so essential to the functioning of the modern world that the abolitionist movement must necessarily carry indictments on many other institutions and ways of relating that are bound-up with policing.

    Of course, many readers will be quick to react defensively.  Most disagreements with the argument presented here will take one of two forms: the claim that the argument over-generalizes police, and the claim that the police fill such an essential role that society couldn’t hope to provide an acceptable standard of life in their absence.  Both will be addressed below.

    The former argument comes in many varieties.  One might even say, “It is unfair to judge such a large group by the actions of a few bad apples,” without being aware that they were reversing the meaning of the idiom they are attempting to make use of, which actually originated as “A rotten apple quickly infects its neighbor,” according to Ben Zimmer, who is a linguist and language columnist for The Wall Street Journal. (Cunningham) Regardless of the backwardness of this idiom, many would maintain that it is wrong to generalize police or stereotype their actions based on our perceptions of a few bad actors.  Some police may abuse their power, or harbor prejudice, many readers would contend, but most police officers are decent people doing their best under difficult conditions.  The truth, however, is that literally all cops bring about harm simply by doing the jobs that they signed up for.  To go a step further, even if every police officer were to act in good faith, the task of maintaining a status quo defined by inequality would still force officers into the position of beating the cold, poor, and hungry back from the resources they need to live comfortably. This world of deprivation is not worth defending, and yet every cop has signed up to defend it.  Some readers might still say that to pain the police with such a broad brush, is to commit an act of prejudice on par with the attitudes the police are criticized for, but they are grasping at straws. No one becomes a police officer by accident.  By switching careers, they could avoid such judgement entirely.  One wonders if they would feel the same about criticizing other groups which are entirely opt-in, such as MS-13 or the Taliban.

    Could there ever be such a thing as a good cop? No.  Here is one example that I think demonstrates a larger principle: even if a given police officer is a dedicated and educated anti-racist, the logistical deployment of police departments across the US places more officers in poor neighborhoods and communities of color than in wealthy or majority-white areas. This means that even the most kind-hearted police would be more likely to detain or arrest poor people and people of color than affluent whites.  This is only one facet of a fundamentally unjust system.  The development of police departments as racist and anti-working-class institutions across History means that they are structurally and institutionally racist and anti-working-class in the here and now.  Police departments continue to defy reform because the problem is intentionally encoded into their purpose. They must be done away with entirely.

    When a protestor or graffiti artist echoes the old slogan that, “All cops are bastards,” it is an expression of a tautology.  Like the phrase “All triangles have three sides,” the slogan contains its own truth.  All triangles have three sides because it is part of the definition of triangles to have three sides.  We can’t even conceive of a triangle with four sides because by having four sides, it would cease to be a triangle.  Despicability is written into the definition of policing because the aims of policing are themselves despicable.  Any cop that ceased to work toward the aims of policing would cease to be deplorable, maybe, but he would also cease to be a cop as surely as a triangle with four sides would cease to be a triangle.

    The second primary counter argument to criticism of the police is that the police are a necessary evil, essential to protecting us from a rousseauian war of all against all.  This assumption that humanity could not get by without police seems silly, after all, the police are only a modern institution, hardly a blip in humanity’s story.  It has already been shown that the police were not created to protect the average person from harm, but to protect private property rights.  In any case, a counter argument from consequences is not the same as a refutation.  One need not know the correct answer to a problem to recognize a wrong one.  When asked, “What would you do with the psycho serial killers?” one should be unabashedly honest about not knowing the answer because there is no one answer.  The answer to each problem can only be located in the context in which the problem occurs.  This reflex to reach for a one-size-fits-all answer for all of life’s problems, along with its concomitant desire to preserve the tedious “peace” of the status quo, do a lot to explain the psychology of pro-police arguments.

    Neither the means nor ends of policing are acceptable.  The forces that shape and control our world, be they corporate or political, tower over us such that we only ever meet with their basest appendages.  The police are their piggy-toes, pun-intended.  Admittedly, the arguments presented here will be significantly weaker in the mind of anyone who really feels good about the state of the world which police maintain, however little is likely to be gained in dialogue with someone who could maintain a positive view of concentration camps, needless and ceaseless killings, the continuation of slave labor in the prison system, mass food-insecurity, etc.      

    It is incumbent upon each of us to improve the world around us.  The police are an impediment to a better, safer, freer world.  They are antithetical to equity, autonomy, and community; that is why all who fight too hard for a better life eventually find themselves faced with the police, one way or another. Nevertheless, while so much hangs in the balance, we can’t let the bastards get us down.

    Works Cited

Olivia B. Waxman. “How the U.S. Got Its Police Force” Time Magazine, https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/ Published: 5/18/2017, Date of Access: 12/2/2020

Mariame Kaba. “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html Published: 6/12/2020, Date of Access: 12/2/2020

Malorie Cunningham. “'A few bad apples': Phrase describing rotten police officers used to have different meaning”

https://abcnews.go.com/US/bad-apples-phrase-describing-rotten-police-officers-meaning/story?id=71201096 Published: 6/14/2020, Date of Access: 12/2/2020

[narrowtriangle33-blog]

Please share this article, it important that you do so. These truths have to be told.

"Bethune’s name appeared in six reports in the House Committee on Un-American Activities and five times in Senate reports on people suspected of communist activity. While she was cleared of any involvement, the message was clear: Confronting racism and white supremacy is un-American."

"This is why white people are my bellwether."

"Whenever I am trying to decide whether or not a particular movement, policy or person benefits Black America, I wait and see what white people think. While that might sound racist, there has never been a movement, policy or person that benefitted Black America who was simultaneously embraced by white America. In this country, a stance against the trauma-inducing brickbat of whiteness is perceived as a stance against America. And anyone who disagrees can feel free to prove me wrong. Name one person who fought for Black liberation who white people agreed with."

"Whenever anyone does anything that includes the word “Black,” it immediately falls under the classification of Marxist and anti-whiteness. White people hate being left out, even though they are acutely aware that there is nothing more valuable in the known universe than a white life. White people will slit a Black baby’s neck for a white woman’s life."

"Let’s just say they will beat a Black baby to a bloody pulp, tie him to an industrial fan with barbed wire and toss his lifeless body off a bridge. Is that better?"

"But I understand why they vilify Black movements with Marxism."

"White people don’t know what Marxism is."

"According to a 1970 Harris Poll, 64 percent of Black Americans had a favorable view of the Panthers, while 92 percent of white Americans had a negative view. It’s probably because a lot of members of the Black Panther were Marxists, which is different from communism. Basically, Marxism is a way to examine history, economics and societies through the lens of class, while communism is actually Marx’s economic and political theory in which...wait. For a second I started to believe that there was some logic to white supremacy."

"White people hated the Panthers because they had guns and pushed for armed self-defense. For some reason, those America-hating negroes believed “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”"

"I have no idea where they got that crazy idea from."

"Black people voting"

"Why white people don’t like it: States’ rights, something something, communism, something something it was a different time."

"When Black people marched on Selma for voting rights, they were called “communists.” The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was called “Un-American.” Of course, the 2020 election was about “socialism” because so many Black people voted."

"Southerners, conservatives and white people, in general, have never pushed for a single law to expand the electorate because they are the only true Americans."

"Critical Race Theory"

"Why white people didn’t like it: Because they don’t know what it is."

"This one is easy."

"The one thing that dumbfounds me about white supremacy is how much white people trust each other. They just trust the explanations for their fellow white people. In all this debate about CRT, I have yet to see one person who opposes CRT who can also explain what CRT is. And many of the legislators who are against funding K-12 teachers who absolutely do not teach CRT are already funding the leaders’ movement, such as Richard Delgado, the professor at state-supported Alabama Law School who wrote a little book called Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. "

"All they know is that it has the word “race” in it, so it must be bad."

"Legislators opposed the Civil Rights Act because it was “Marxist.” The House Committee on Un-American Activities investigated the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for communism. The FBI did, too."

"In a 1964 New York Times survey, a majority of white people said that the “Negro civil rights movement had gone too far,” and a quarter of those people said their resentment was growing. They were right. Two years later, a 1966 Harris Survey, revealed that 85 percent of white respondents thought civil rights demonstrations “hurts the negro.”"

"Apparently, to white people, fighting racism is worse than racism."

"And if you think I’m kidding about white people not thinking Black people were smart, according to the National Opinion Research Center, it was not until 1963 that 50 percent of white people believed “Negroes” were born with the same intelligence as whites."

"History"

"Why white people don’t like it: Because white people might find out about some of the things white people did, which is racist."

"The fight against what politicians have deemed the Marxist, Un-American 1619 Project is actually a fight against teaching the history of slavery more accurately. And it is not new. White people said the same thing about teaching abolition. The United Daughters of the Confederacy said the same thing about the Civil War. White school districts in the North and South said the same thing about Jim Crow. And Black History Month."

"Plus if white kids learn about America’s racist past, they might start saying: “I’m not going to do that again,” and then, what will happen to white people?"

"Martin Luther King Jr."

"Why white people didn’t like him: He was a communist. He was anti-white. He was a Marxist."

"In 1966, a majority of white Americans had a negative opinion of King. When he died in 1968, 75 percent of Americans disapproved of him. Now they love him..."

"Because he’s dead."

"This is why we must never ignore white people."

"While we should never, ever do what white people collectively want, history has shown us that if something is good for Black people, white people will hate it. And if they vilify something as racist, communist or anti-white, you should take a second look because, nine times out of 10, it might be worth considering. When it comes to freedom and equality, the easiest thing to do is to see what white people have to say...

Then do the opposite."

I copied a lot of his article word for word those are Michael Harriot's words not my own.

The word's of people who commented.

"I was asking one of the few people on the Right side of politics I am still in touch with about why he hates CRT, and he sent me a link to a whole essay. It boiled down to a few leaps in logic:"

"1) the USSR used US race relations as a shield to deflect criticism of their own human rights record (“And in the USA, they hang n-words”)"

"2) therefore, any criticism of race relations was caused by Soviet propaganda (not, you know, by actually HANGING BLACK PEOPLE)"

"3) therefore any discussion of race relations was commie propaganda."

"4) therefore, any movement that calls attention to race is communist."

"It’s very similar to how the Communist League fired the original writer of The Communist Manifesto because he brought up ethnic minorities and racism and replaced him with Marx, outright rejecting any factor that so much as complicated their preconceived model. It also shares many of the issues raised in the “grievance studies” affair, being exegesis to elaborate and propound upon a founding scripture."

"That’s the most idiotic line of reasoning I ever heard. It’s so typical of white people as a group in this country that when someone points out some shit they did that’s fucked up that instead of you know, stopping the fucked up thing they basically say that the entity pointing out their fucked up shit is bad therefore bringing up solutions to the fucked up thing they did is wrong."

"Fuck the trolls, but if anyone is actually confused about the likelihood of any white person to trust any other white person over anyone at all who is even POSSIBLY not white, please refresh your memories regarding the multiple instances in the last several years of a Black person being anywhere near a house or building, then being approached by either a white guard, cop, or other self-important deputy of white fragility."

"In these instances, Black people are often believed to be up to no good even after they show ID proving they live in the building some white person has decided they don’t belong in. No amount of proof will have a fragile white self-deputy believing that even state-issued IDs are a real thing and this Black person lives in their own home."

"But when any white person walks by and says “Oh, this is _____, they live here”, immediately, that’s good enough to let this perceived criminal go into their home."

"Because any white stranger vouched in any sort of way."

"Literal evidence of address means nothing, but the word of ANY white person, with no proof of their authority, no hassle about “Well what are YOU doing here?!?”, just...instant belief of any white skin."

"Also, the main difference between Angela Davis and Assata Shakur is that Ms. Davis beat the system at its own game, the “proper” way. Racism couldn’t even beat her at their heavily-rigged game. Ms. Shakur ALSO beat the system, but because she didn’t get to win at a fully-rigged game, she found her own loophole and got out of this racist hellhole."

"Not that it matters, because they’re both the same to any racist. To me, they’re both brilliant heroes."

"If you asked these mouth breathers what they hate about CRT not only could they not tell you, they would call you “the real racist” for asking. There is no winning with these people because they refuse to see themselves as ANYTHING other than the good guys in any situation. It is fucking tiring to deal with this shit and yet they seem to not understand that we are more fucking tired than they are. With each comment, committee and talking point they pretty much prove that no white person could handle being anything other than well, white."

"To admit anything else would result in a reckoning. It will never happen and America will remain a racist society, with white culture pushing back and getting more extreme as each generation of BIPOC become more aware and angry over white supremacy. America will implode and whatever rises from the ashes will either be that reckoning with real change or a third world country."

Again I quoted these people

[lnterjection]

Regarding canon!Techon, VoS!Techno, and anarchy

Someone told me the way Techno’s anarchy ideals were presented in Chapter 34 of Valley of Serenity (wherein he admitted “I can want anarchy to be the predominant reality because it benefits me the most while also understanding that it would not be the best thing for most other people”) were, to quote - “All wrong here. Have you watched any of the syndicate streams? Cuz its clear techno actually believes in anarchy and that it's good for people. I understand he's missing some of the development from post pogtopia to the syndicate due to this being canon divergent, but that doesn't change the fact he's always actually believed in his anarchist ideals.”

Now, while I hadn’t considered this specifically before writing the chapter, I had considered enough of the factors surrounding Techno’s characterization in both canon and Valley of Serenity to respond with this:

Ironically, Techno's lore streams are the only ones that I've consistently watched. He's literally the only person where I've watched every bit of lore he's streamed.

And I came to this mindset for Techno in this fic specifically because I believe the events after Nov 16 in canon, of the Butcher Army, the Community House debacle with Tommy betraying him, and Doomsday were huge influences in how much he believes in the good of anarchy for the common person. Remember, he was willing to retire and let go of the whole anarchy thing to live in peace for a while, after seeing the disaster that was Nov 16th. It's only after S2 he starts gathering up people to form the Syndicate, committing fully to his ideology. Before he was content to chill in the Arctic with Phil.

With this background I have three points of contention to make-

Firstly, something I've always found interesting about Techno's character is how his anarchy thing might clash with the people he cares about. More specifically, I always wondered "if Techno was forced to choose between upholding anarchy and Phil, who or what would he choose?" Post Season 2 Techno I'm unsure of, but given the limited amount of lore from Season 1 about Techno I'm going off of to build his character, I'm writing his character arc in this fic to be him coming to the realization that he cares more about his family's wellbeing more than he does anarchy or upholding his whole blood god thing. It's a realization that Techno would have needed to spend months with his family again, living with them, to make and have him commit to. Techno back in Nov 16 would have been unsure what he would have picked.

Secondly, we don't have confirmation about where Techno got his anarchist ideals from, which is important because motivation is important. We know at this point in canon he strongly believes in them for real, but we're not given backstory on why that it. There's hints and theories, some of which are far more plausible than others - I've chosen to set the root of his anarchy belief in what he says in this chapter - governments are the only ones strong enough to take him down as an organized group of power. Governments have tried to take him down and nearly succeeded - that's what the Butcher Army was. That event was what brought him out of retirement to turn L'Manberg into L'Hole. And Techno in canon is reinforced in the belief that anarchy's best for everyone because of what it did to Phil and Tommy. He sees how both of them were hurt by L'Manberg's system of power, something that once again Techno in this fic didn't experience. We don't know what's happened in his backstory to make him stand on his anarchy thing, but that also means we don't know how easily Pogtopia Techno would have been convinced to give up on it. He believes it, but why and how much? I've made my choice of interpretation in this fic precisely because we don't know, and his canon decision to go into retirement was what influenced my writing here. I genuinely believe if L'Manberg hadn't attacked in, but instead turned out to be a functioning government like they could have been, his anarchy spiel about bad government is for at least other people, if not himself, would have subsided. But that's not the sort of plot that runs a livestream, is it?

Thirdly - and this ties into point 2 - probably at some point in canon Techno's past government has wronged him and he's seen government repeatedly wrong other people, hence his beliefs that again, the Butcher Army and New L'Manberg under Tubbo only strengthened when it had the chance to subside them. You could even draw allusions back to his skyblock series and take the quote "If skyblock has told me anything, it is that if you have a problem, the answer is slavery" to mean that he's seen the governmentally structured system of skyblock drag its players into an endless, pointless competing grind whilst also committing mass slave-related atrocities, which would be one of the more plausible backstories for Techno and explain where his anarchy ideals might have developed. But we're still operating canon Techno under the rules of the Dream SMP, and the Dream SMP's world is very much not the world presented in Valley of Serenity.

See, my decision - very conscious, deliberate, developed decision - to worldbuild Valley of Serenity in a way that's more akin to a fantasy world in the midst of their equivalent of the Age of Exploration instead of modeling it off how the Dream SMP worlds has definitely also influenced the way I plan the character developments in this fic. Valley of Serenity's world has nations, economies, established ethnic groups and populations and cultures and systems and thousands of years worth of history. L'Manberg started out as a city-state with some surrounding farmland area that had its own history and a decently sized population before Wilbur got there. The Dream SMP canon, meanwhile, has none of that established. You could argue there were civilians on the sideline that just aren't named, or that the Twitch viewers are just civilian in this world because Wilbur did the whole election thing (something that becomes increasingly unlikely each time a new streamer canonizes their stream chat as something that is decidedly not a country's population), but there's no canonical establishment for any of that. I don't think there is any hidden population of nameless background people in the DSMP lore. The lore makes far more sense without it, even with all the "political" drama. It would explain how people keep forming and abandoning and destroying new countries every other week and just.. getting away with it, and how Dream is able to spend so much time obsessing over one child in exile if he really has a country he's supposed to be the shadowmaster of, and how the whole clusterfuck of the Quackity Karl Sapnap marriage is even possible.

In a world like that, it's plausible for Techno's anarchy to be defensible to him, and to the other members of the Syndicate. However, in Valley of Serenity's world, his anarchy view makes absolutely zero sense, given how government is basically a natural result of humans settlings down to farm in large groups together. Most of DSMP's people can decide to just quit and wander off to live alone for the rest of their lives, no problem, but in a world like VoS or the real world? They are very fucked and so stay in large groups, which then, as history shows, results in some authority being assigned to a group of people to administrate things once the group becomes large enough... and boom. Government, and the start of civilization.

The only way for Techno in Valley of Serenity's universe to plausibly believe in the government stuff, especially after all those talks he had with Wilbur about L'Manberg, would be for me to write him as a completely idiot who's utterly unaware of how governments actually work.

If there's one thing I hate it's writing Techno as an idiot. The same Techno who dominated MCM and Skyblock and prepared for weeks for battle against L'Manberg and managed to successfully build a hidden piston door concealing wither skulls and had the foresight to write a will with "instructions" for Phil because he knew the prison was likely a trap and who has enough battle strategy to defeat Dream and also know not to trust him and thought up contingency plans to escape the Butcher army with the totems and who regularly makes the most intelligent, witty, sarcastic and well-timed remarks with dialogue - Techno is not an idiot. He is far, far from it. In the DSMP universe his anarchy ideals would be defended. In VoS'? Absolutely not. And if Techno has any amount of sense at all in this universe, which he does, he knows it too. I made a choice when I wrote this fic's world the way I did, and I'm am committed to seeing the choice through. Part of the reason why I did it? It was because I wanted to explore the way events like L'Manberg and Pogtopia would have affected the characters in their beliefs and trauma in a realistic setting of war and rebellion and political battles, and DSMP's world was just not a good conduit for that. Places like Sanctuary and arcs like Tubbo's struggles back in L'Manberg wouldn't be able to exist if I didn't go down this route, note to mention how wrong it felt to me to write Wilbur's presidency heavily affecting him when the people he's presiding over is just his friends. Everything would have felt cheaper, faker, more simulated if it had been in a world with Minecraft and DSMP rules. I knew this would require some reinterpretation of certain characters' motivations, but it was worth it to me to give their recovery a sense of weight and realism I felt the DSMP world wouldn't have been able to deliver. (I'm not making any point on how realistic or "heavy" DSMP does its trauma - livestreaming is a vastly different medium than writing and some points here would need to be translated differently when applied to livestream, just as a good book doesn't always make a good movie).

Hence, combined with points 1 and 2, the differing characterization between canon Techno and here.

It's important to note that Techno, Phil, Tommy, and Wilbur are a family unit here in a way that's been completely disproven in canon. They have a backstory that ties them together. This has also definitely influenced Techno's priorities and nudged him towards the path of conscious realization about his anarchy thing here, though it's not a point because it doesn't factor too much into the relevant mentality of Techno's character in terms of how much he believes in the anarchy thing.

So yeah, I hope this clears up some stuff for you! Or that you understand at least why I made the decision with Techno's character.

there were definitely typos in this reply. no im not going back to reread and fix them.

[astrabear]

The Archive actually has multiple options that help users to educate themselves on how to navigate the Archive, and I hate to say it but a lot of user responsibility comes from the ability to operate independently and to actually research and access data without needing to be spoon-fed everything.

@ao3commentoftheday is a blog that offers interactive assistance on navigating and understanding the Archive. Users are encouraged to read the News and Twitter + Twitter2 feeds to keep up to date on recent developments, features and updates, both of which are accessible straight from the home page when you access the Archive. The Archive also has the Site Map, accessible from any page on the Archive. This is alongside the FAQ page, where you can find answers to quite literally any question you could think to ask in regards to Archive, via drop-drop menus.

All the information you're looking for is right there--you just haven't actually been taught how to look for it, and that is not the fault of the Archive but of the current education system where basic skills like data collection and research aren't taught unless you're paying out the ass for a college or University course that specifically requires said skills.

In some cases it can literally be as simple as Google-searching; 'how do I find tags on the Archive?' and, thanks the Google's algorithm doing everything for you, the top result will be the tags collective page on the Archive platform itself.

The Archive is transparent in how to use it. The Archive has given you all the necessary materials to be able to navigate it accurately and safely.

Well. In the words of Princess Kate after she and Tahani came back from their shopping trip in Ibiza: There’s a lot to unpack here!

I must say, I am inordinately amused by the "kids these days" aspect. You are correct that my formal education did not include how to research stuff online; that's because search engines were just taking off and we were figuring out if it was better to use Yahoo or Ask Jeeves. But that's neither here nor there.

The fact is that I have spent a ton of time going through Ao3's FAQ and looking up how to do things and what certain terms mean. And the information that is readily available does not address the issues that I posted about. (For instance, Googling "how do I find tags on the Archive" just gets me the FAQ pages I've already seen. I'm talking about a cheat sheet that says "hey, it might not have occurred to you that 'sexual slavery' is a trope that some people use for titillation, so if that's going to be upsetting for you or bring up generational trauma you should probably exclude that tag from all your searches.")

That's without getting into questions about how much is reasonable to expect of new users, issues of accessibility and privilege, and why some people get so defensive at the idea that folks might have legitimate gripes about Ao3.

So congratulations, you managed to be condescending while also being completely unhelpful and providing no new information. Which is more or less in line with what I've come to expect from anonymous asks at this point. (Anonymous, not pseudonymous; you're gold, S.) People who are engaging in good faith generally don't mind being known.

(Same issues with your second ask. The description of work skins in the FAQ gives no indication that they can be used the way you claim. Bookmarking your filtered search in one fandom doesn't help you filter those tags from other fandoms; I'm talking about letting people set their Ao3 experience so that they never see those things unless they change their settings.)

[mandaloriangf]

Death Star, the most unambiguously evil weapon created in fiction by genocidal space fascists for the purpose of genocide: [committed a genocide of billions on Alderaan in one fell swoop, literally in the process of committing a genocide against another planet’s population]

Luke Skywalker: [blows up the Death Star both as an act of self defense for him and his feuds as well as an act of saving potential trillions of lives from genocide]

Sequels Fans: Wow, Luke Skywalker sure is a monster!!!! I can’t believe he did that!!!!!!! He’s the real villain all along!!!!!! 🤬

Kylo Ren: [directly facilitated the genocide of the Hosnian system, personally massacred a whole village of adults and children, and, as the top leader of the First Order, perpetuated crimes like child slavery, continued genocide, etc]

Sequels Fans: Poor baby boy....... he was a bit confused and might’ve done some oopsies, but he’s a good baby boy actually 🥺

...... why can’t people just let villains be villains, for the LOVE OF GOD

i honest to god makes me sick to my stomach because these aren’t some edgy internet trolls who are trying to rile people up. they actually think this shit.

[real-jaune-isms]

RWBY Volume 8 Chapter 6 Review/Remix

The day finally came, and for some it was far far too late coming. Personally, I think this was a damn good time to get the story we got, but to each their own. It’s time to weave a wicked fairy tale, a twisted Cinderella Story without a happily ever after. Join me, won’t you?~

We open on a sight not terribly unfamiliar this Volume, young Cinder washing and scrubbing a wooden floor in raggedy clothing. A single tear seems to fall among the water, but she continues on. For a split second, we see a woman’s lower half as she walks through this barn setting before getting an exterior shot that yes this is a barn on what looks to be a very sparse farm. We get several quick cuts like this, and from what we see in them it becomes quite clear what sort of life Cinder is living. An orphan ostracized and bullied by other kids, already with a violent streak as she’s shown tackling one of her aggressors rather than passively taking the pain. She’s still fairly weak and starved compared to the others, since she gets pulled off her victim and tossed aside easily, and a closeup of her face shows some gaunt features. All that misery seems like it might turn around when the mystery woman we saw briefly decides she’ll take Cinder. Next thing she or the audience know, Cinder is in Atlas, standing outside a big fancy hotel and staring at the opulence with no small amount of wonder. Immediately, my thoughts shift from Cinderella to little orphan Annie and I gain some small measure of hope. But it cannot last, and the Madame (as she is solely credited despite clearly being our Lady Tremaine in this story) sternly ushers her inside the Glass Unicorn (I’d like to thank the person who helped me read that cursive golden light lettering). Once inside, Cinder is rather awestruck at the lavish lobby and all the happy people she sees within. (Meanwhile I took notice of the sign on the front desk openly declaring that they do not serve Faunus. Hooray for blatant systemic racism...) But she doesn’t have much time to look around, because she’s again brought deeper inside to the kitchen where we meet her new stepsisters. And what a pair, green eyes and light brown hair just like their mother, with devilish smirks of condescension. All Cinder can think about as she’s given her list of grueling chores is the platter of bread and cheese behind the twin devils. Priorities in a palace of plenty like this. You might think to yourself, well now that’s a little harsh for a couple of girls we’re literally just meeting. But don’t worry, they immediately prove how spiteful and cruel they are by laughing at Cinder for asking for food, and laughing even harder when the Madame throws a bread roll for her on the floor she just said was filthy. Great first impressions indeed, and I don’t think there’ll be a direct to DVD sequel to redeem either of them through time travel shenanigans... god I’m old.

We get a montage of Cinder in her new working uniform doing various jobs around the hotel for very little reward or praise. The guests don’t care, her stepsibs give her a slap on the wrist for trying to snack on one of the strawberries she was decorating a cake with... only to turn around and have one of them eat that same strawberry herself right in front of her, and any painful accidents she suffers in the line of duty are met with only disapproval and mocking laughter. She eats guests leftovers, and it seems like she’s the only employee here besides her new family, not that they’re doing much of the work. What really ties this sad montage together is an as of yet unnamed song to that has been serving as Cinder’s leitmotif for years but now has lyrics. Those lyrics, as poor luck would have it, are insults and orders that Cinder must have heard everyday in this life of slavery and misery. “Do your chores, rub my feet, no one said that you could think, no one’s ever loved you, etc.” There’s obviously more of an order and rhyme to them, but I wanted to lay out some of the harshest kickers. We see a particular instance of suffering where she’s cleaning the carpets on the second floor and her sisters start stomping mud right in front of her just to mock her with “You missed a spot~” and give her more work to do. Cinder has taken just about enough now, and her Semblance kicks in for what might be the first time as she starts heating up the wet brush in her hand. She throws it at them in anger and it creates a cloud of steam and possibly smoke depending on how much of that wooden brush she burned. This gets the attention of her stepmother of course, but also that of a mysterious huntsman who had been showing off a new sword in the lobby much to Cinder’s earlier distant amazement. The Madame is none too happy with the scene Cinder has just caused or the fact that she lashed out against her actual daughters. So she gives the poor girl a necklace... with a stone of electric Dust in it. It’s a shock collar, and every time Cinder acts out from this point on, or just doesn’t do well enough for her stepmother’s standards, she will be painfully shocked and forced to apologize with a mantra we’re now all too familiar with. “Without you, I am nothing...”

Next thing we see, Cinder is crawling through a vent into a secret room in the back of the hotel. Based on the tons of furniture covered in sheets back here and the mattress with a couple pillows, I’d say this is what passes as her bedroom with how little fucks her adopted family gives. The Huntsman from earlier is heard being rather pissed that one of his swords is missing, and I get a small amount of sick satisfaction hearing one of the stepsisters panic in the face of his complaints and deliver a trademarked customer service line, “I apologize for the inconvenience”. I hear that every damn day in my day job, and I know how it feels to be where she is. After tormenting Cinder, they deserve to squirm. Naturally, Cinder was the one who took it, but is caught admiring it in her little hideaway by the Huntsman it belongs to himself. In the credits and subtitles his name is revealed to be Rhodes, and the public opinion on him becomes... mixed at best as time goes by. At the very least, here he confronts her without fighting her and disarms her with reassuring words. He knows she’s getting an awful deal here, but hurting these people and running away will solve nothing. She’ll be running for the rest of her life if she did that, never having a place to safely call home. He offers her an alternative, one she seems to pick up on quickly. Becoming a Huntress and gaining her freedom through that official title. But here we get a real sudden kick in the teeth. At this point, Cinder is only 10 years old. No 10 year old should be suffering the way she is, and if I were Rhodes I would try and have the Madame exposed and arrested for her abusive crimes. But we unfortunately don’t know if any child protective services exist that he could go to about this problem, and instead he tries a different approach. He’s not going to be staying here forever, but he’ll be back and forth over the next 7 years, and during that time he’ll train her to be ready for the Huntsman exams. This sounds like a good plan on paper, but then you realize what it means for her. Enduring 7 years of this abuse and pain, on the dangling carrot promise that she can leave one day and finally have some chance at decency. It’s the bare minimum effort on his part, and it makes him feel like a hero without having to actually inconvenience himself and fight for her freedom. She deserves better, but she’s sadly not getting it. Still, she does get training. 

We see time pass, he comes and goes, she keeps getting shocked and her resentment keeps growing. She gets older, her uneven pigtails become a short ponytail, and one day he gifts her the sword she had once stolen. She’s earned it, and in a couple more years she’ll be free to use it for her dream job. Too bad this was entirely the wrong move on his part. Cinder has something nice, and the stepsisters won’t stand for that, especially since it’s a dangerous weapon. They tattle to the Madame, and Cinder’s punishment is soon to come worse than ever before. Or so they would like to think. They go into the back to confront her at 11:40, and Rhodes walks in the front door at 11:56. There’s no one to greet him, not a sound to be heard until he gets to the front desk and picks up a distant crash. He gets to Cinder’s room, all too late. The stepsisters lie dead on the floor while Cinder is choking her stepmother to death with her bare hand. She tries in vain to subdue her with the remote for her shock collar, but the pain is just a stinging motivator she’s grown to tolerate. She may have been made to feel like she is nothing without the opportunities given to her by this woman, but now she is EVERYTHING because of what hell she has been through. Cinder snaps her neck and tosses her aside to be faced with her mortified mentor. The clock is striking midnight, and Cinderella did not use her gifts wisely at the ball. But it’s okay, right? Now her tormentors are gone and she won’t have to run anymore, right? Right, Rhodes??? No. Now he’s decided she’s too far gone and he has to fight her, to arrest her for the triple homicide that was most assuredly a mixture of self defense and cathartic revenge. Cinder realizes that even this man she trusted is her enemy, and with the last chime of the clock the spell of her temporary happiness is broken. The two fight, and seem evenly matched for a time, Cinder countering his Semblance of turning his skin to metal by using her own to heat the metal and still hurt him. I should like to point out that this power of his makes for a great layered pun, as it is similar to the mutant power of the X-Men character Colossus, and there is a famous Greek statue of the sun god Helios known as the Colossus of Rhodes. Back to the fight, Cinder temporarily blinds him by throwing a sandbag that he slices into, and in that confusion swipes his second sword so they can both dual wield since he primarily uses a set of maces. She gets a few clean slices in and takes out his Aura, but he bashes her away to hit a chest and there goes her Aura in return. He assumes the fight is over and goes to collect her unconscious body, but she was playing possum and stabs him in the gut with both swords. In his final moments, he lays a hand on her head as if saying he’s proud of her for growing so much. You may have had good intentions, Rhodes, but you were not a very good person and didn’t do enough to call yourself a Huntsman. I can’t imagine what kind of hell a Chaotic Good huntsman like Qrow would have done if he had been the one to find Cinder, but it probably would have been better than the surface level hero work this guy did. As things stand, we know Cinder is heading down the bad path and takes one last sad moment to finally tear her necklace off and cry a single tear up at the moon. 

We cut back to present as she wakes up in what I assume is her room aboard Monstra. Emerald is happy to see her awake, but Cinder chastises her for bringing them back to Salem emptyhanded. Em tries to assert that she put her concern for her mentor above the mission and its the sole reason they’re free and alive at all, but Mercury comes in to remind her that a repeat failure like Cinder doesn’t deserve that help. Em tries to stand up for her boss, to say that she was right to go attack Amity because the goodie goodies were up to something and they did a lot to stop it, but Mercury lays the heavy truth bomb on her again. Don’t defend Cinder, you’re not gonna win her love and support because she doesn’t give a shit about you. Cinder shuts them both up and dismisses them until she has need of them, much like the dismissive way Salem treated her a few episodes back. But Mercury got promoted, Cinder’s not his supervisor anymore and he doesn’t have to listen to her. Hearing that takes some wind out of Cinder’s sails, and she’s left alone to stew about this turn of events as Merc tells her everyone is needed on the bridge cuz something big is gonna happen.

Shifting to another room, Oscar is lying on the floor with a black eye and some blood on his lip, and probably a bunch of broken bones and internal bleeding. This poor poor kid... He and Oz are having a discussion about who should be the one in the driver’s seat for these beatings. Oscar sure as hell doesn’t deserve it, but since he’s not the one Hazel is mad at he’s not getting roughed up quite as much as if Oz was present. Oz wants to take over, to try and get them a way out of here, but Oscar thinks they have a golden opportunity if they stay. Oz is initially unsure what that means, but Oscar has some solid reasoning. Salem doesn’t do the fighting herself, she turns people to her side and has them fight her battles. Her spies sow seeds of chaos and discourse among her enemies, and now Oscar can do the same. They can try and talk some sense into Hazel or the kids and turn them against Salem. She won’t be beaten, surely, but she’ll be crippled without her eyes ears and devious hands. No time like the present, as Hazel comes back in for round... idk, maybe 10? Oscar gives Oz control again and Hazel is immediately pissed to recognize that tone of voice again. He assumes Oz had been hiding inside Oscar and forcing the kid to endure the pain instead of him, not realizing it was the reverse and Oscar was being selfless. But rather than argue that, Ozcar tries to get Hazel to see the cruel reality of it all. He won’t deny he has done wrong by this man, but how is Salem somehow the better choice? He should be fighting to stop her and her evils. Hazel stops for a moment, reveals his feelings on the matter. She can’t be stopped, he’s seen that himself. She’s an unstoppable force, and Oz is the worse of the two for knowing this and still sending people to try and stop her. Oz argues that someone has to at least try, that yes she actually can be fought and slowed and steered astray. But if she gets what she wants and gathers the relics... well, he doesn’t get a chance to reveal that much because Salem herself enters the room and welcomes her old love back to the grace of her company. It’s time to bring him to his front row seat for the impending show. 

It begins with a show of force and loyalty, all her underlings bowing before her on her throne. Em and Neo are off to the side and Hazel is forcing Oscar to bow too, but Mercury Cinder and Tyrian have all taken a knee right in front of their queen. Good news everyone, Watts presumably got Ironwood’s Scroll working and reported his successful takeover of Penny back to Tyrian and thus to Salem. Both men have proven their value, while Cinder’s rogue stunt has put her worth to the cause in serious question. Just like so many years ago, Cinder starts writhing in agonizing pain, this time inflicted by her own Grimm arm. Good to know Salem’s gift of a new limb was also a way to enforce punishment... But unlike the Madame, Salem claims to blame herself for Cinder’s disobedience. She’s been stifling Cinder’s drive for power and freedom, it’s no wonder she did what she did. She should be giving her chances to grow and rise, and so now she is. Cinder’s new mission is to go free Watts from jail and with his help murder Penny for the Winter Maiden powers. But it will be a challenge to prove herself, because Salem is also sending the Hound for the very same job. Both outcomes will result in Cinder getting the powers and Salem getting the Staff from the Vault, but only one will truly be an earned victory for Cinder and she damn well knows it. Ozcar tries to object, to say getting the Relics will doom them all, but hush now little fool~ You’re too late.

Cutting immediately away from that frightening situation, we get Winter and the Ace Ops flying out over the tundra in search of Penny. Elm is complaining about having to retrieve “broken junk” and how they shouldn’t trust Watts or his technology. Good point about trusting Watts, but we’re well past that problem now. Winter barks at Elm to stop whining and act professional. They pick up a comm signal, and it turns out to be from Jaune warning anyone who can hear it about the Grimm river. They head for the source of the signal, and the two groups cross paths under the most tense of tenses. Jaune gets to business and tries to get these professional huntsmen, public servants of their kingdom, to come deal with this unprecedented threat. But Harriet just wants to know where Penny is and refuses to acknowledge any problem except the one she was sent to deal with, so she blames these three kids who haven’t seen Penny in like 12 hours for whatever danger there is. Thankfully, she shuts up when a tremor rocks all of Mantle. The tremors keep building, even the Grimm take some amount of notice. Then it stops again. Then the biggest one yet hits, and suddenly the riverbed is empty. A geyser of primal Grimm goo blasts up into the side of Atlas, and it’s persistent enough that a big splash of it gets through the Hard Light shields. Out of the goo comes a swarm of centinels, who crawl up to the towers projecting the shield over the Kingdom itself and burrow into the ground around one of these towers. An airship blasts a laser down, but it can only get one target at a time and the rest burrow in. Down plummets one tower, and with it goes the entire shield. It’s like a string of Christmas lights with a single bad bulb, and that’s not a design flaw you want in the first line of defense around a major metropolitan area. As people across the Kingdom, including the team hiding out in Schnee Manor and a for once knocked off kilter General Ironwood, watch on in horror, Salem makes her move. Monstra swoops in and crests beautifully over the edge of Atlas, and then comes crashing down in the midst of the farmlands on the edge of the city with a bellyflop. The colossal aquatic mammal of the air opens its dark maw, and out floods a wave of more grimm sludge. From that primordial ooze arises just about every variety of Grimm we have ever seen with the exception of Kevin, Jim&Randall, Levi, and the Hound. The battle for Atlas has begun, and there are a wardrobe’s worth of white Atlesian military pants to be darkened. And this isn’t even the mid-season finale! So there’s even worse things sure to come! Can’t wait~

[atheism-populism-egalitarianism]

A comprehensive explanation of why being actively against the BlackLivesMatter movement makes you a racist written by someone who used to be against BLM

First, saying you are actively against the BLM movement means you are against their goal. Their goal is to end police brutality, especially (not limited to) towards black people who suffer police brutality as disproportionate rates. That's pretty racist in and of itself.

"But, I can be against police brutality without supporting their movement!"

Sure you can, but what's your answer to that? Why make a separate movement against one that already has support? There is literally no point in it.

"All Lives Matter is better to me!"

Refer to the point above. Also, where are the ALM protests that are protesting against police brutality? They're not. They only protest against the black lives matter movement. They want black people, and their allies, to shut the fuck up so they can continue being ignored. Saying "ALM" is your way of saying you are against the goal of ending police brutality without having to say it. The Blue Lives Matter crowd, which the ALM croud will NEVER confront, is open and honest about not wanting to end police brutality. So pick a side, tbh. Be open about your cop fetishism or be against police brutality. Staying the middle on issues like that is always supporting the oppressor in power, whether you think it is or not, whether you want it to or not, whether you're willing to admit it or not.

"BLM is violent!"

So are the police. And 99% of all BLM protests have been peaceful, (compare that to 40% of cops being domestic abusers) and every single one that wasn't peaceful, I repeat EVERY SINGLE ONE THAT WASNT PEACEFUL started peaceful and turned violent after either cops attacked peaceful protesters, or undercover white supremacists started it. That one umbrella man was confirmed by the local police department to have been a white supremacist, but it was obvious with how confrontational he was against the protesters telling him to stop smashing windows.

All the "violence" coming from BLM has been self defense. All of it. ESPECIALLY against Kyle Rittenhouse (instablock if you defend him, sorry not sorry lol, you dont come start violence in a state u dont live in then claim self defense, that's not how it works)

If you actually gave a fuck against violence, you'd be against the police because we have one of, if not the most violent and murderous police in the world.

"BLM is racist against white people."

Are some of the members racist? Yeah. But white supremacists literally invaded the police force, they started as slave roundup. Maybe you should figure out your priorities and think about which one is a bigger threat to society, the government run, facist, white supremacists thugs, or the majority peaceful protests who just want to be treated fairly.

"PrOpErTy DaMaDgE!!"

Human lives are more important than any business, any corporation, any property. If you're madder about the property damage that comes as a result of people being angry about the death of an innocent human, than you are about said death, then you're part of the problem.

"Not all cops are bad!"

They don't have to be. The system itself is corrupt. The system demands corruption and breeds bad cops. Good cops get fired, harassed, or killed. Good cops exist, but they don't stay cops for long. Whistleblowers get killed. Cops who support BLM get fired. Cops that push an old man to the ground and get fired for cracking his skull has the rest of the department quit in protest when he gets fired. That's the reality of the situation. Cops are given a free pass that they do not deserve. Furthermore, their job is not, and never has been, to protect you. The supreme court ruled on that. Their job is to enforce the law, no matter how unjust, no matter how hamfisted, and no matter how immoral.

"Black people commit more crimes which is why they're affected more."

That's also really not the point, nor does it actually represent the reality of the world around us. When you look at crime rates by poverty, the numbers make more sense. Poverty is what causes in crime, not having darker skin. However, as a result of history, including but not limited to segregation and slavery, most black people in America live in poverty. So, since there is a higher rate of black people living in poverty, and crime is directly correlated with poverty, you can clearly see black people aren't inherently more criminal than any other race.

As anyone with a brain knows, poverty and wealth are largely generational. 70% of all wealth in America is inherited, not earned. There for it stands, logically and also factually, that poverty is generational. Education can help someone get out of poverty, but oops! Our school system requires you to go to schools within your district! And OOPS those schools are funded by property taxes. So what happens to schools in impoverished districts? They're underfunded and are often improperly equipped to handle students. Teachers are overburdened with 30, 40, sometimes 50 students in one class.

So, maybe if the ALM crowd actually did anything besides protests against BLM, then maybe you would have a case for opposing BLM as a movement. I would suggest moving towards an economic equality goal, but guess what? BLM already has that covered, they're already advocating for the things that are needed to fix the issue. And yes, that includes defunding the police.

I'll probably make a post explaining why Defund The Police is a fair, valid movement that needs to be taken seriously and why, if you're against it, then you probably don't understand what it means, but theres that.

I'll respond to any questions asked that were not addressed in this post.

[scripttorture]

Hi, how are you? I hope you're having a great day. If it's not too much to ask, I read the articles you linked about child soldiers, and they were very helpful, but not exactly what I'm looking for.. Do you happen to have links of first account stories or diaries of child soldiers? Two lead characters in my wip have been child soldiers in multiple wars in their country. (The setting is light fantasy, think non-European medieval times) (Child soldiers ask/1)

(Childsoldiers ask/2) Theyserved their country, and outside of war time, they received militaryeducation but were under significantly less pressure and stress, sowhile they never felt patriotic toward their country, they didn’tfind a reason to leave yet. That is until they turned 15-16 and wereforced to fight in the front field, where they saw the brutality oftheir own country by themselves, they tried to escape right then andthere, – (Child soldiers ask/3)–but were Captured by the enemy and spent a few weeks doing forcedlabor in an enclosed camp, before they were sold into slavery andbecame house slaves for a nobleman of their country’s enemies. Theymake friends with a slave there, who with a story of his own, hastried multiple times to escape but was always captured, punished(whipped), and forced to work right away. (Child soldiers ask/4)Theyfinally escape when the nobleman’s child bride kills him on the veryfirst night and joins them in a long escape out of the country,before they were rescued by the other slave’s friends. The storydoesn’t go too far in terms of time span, they don’t finish a year inslavery and then after that they help out (but don’t participate inbattle) in another war, before the story ends, maybe another 6months. (Child soldiers ask/6)Sowhile I have the elements of their rehabilitation into the peacefulcivilian life completed, I’d like more in-depth information about howthey would personally feel in that situation. The girl feels a lot ofshame for leaving her country, but has no wishes to return until theyfix the system, while the boy absolutely hates it and – (Childsoldiers ask/7)–onlyfeels resentment for it because of the abuse he suffered, but that’sonly after they learn what normal children their age should be doingand how they’re treated. Symptoms of anxiety and PTSD are prominentin their lives, but should I add more? And would the abuse the boysuffered from be counted as torture? I know this is long so thanks inadvance for your patience :) (Child soldiers ask/8)

-

I don’t think you will find the kind of in-depth first hand accounts you’re looking for without paying for them. That said there are books by former child soldiers that might fit.

 I’m not aware of any diaries, most of these books were written years or decades after the fighting stopped. On a basic level I’m not sure many children that young keep a regular diary and many adult diarists have found it impossible to keep one going through a war.

 This is a research book based on interviews with child soldiers that I’m ordering (M Wessel’s Child Soldiers: From Violence to Protection). This one is a first hand account, I Beah A Long Way Gone. There’s also E Jal’s War Child: A Child Soldier’s Story. Girl Soldier co authored by G Akallo and F J H McDonnell might also be useful, it draws heavily on Akallo’s experience as a child soldier. Child Soldier by C Keitetsi may also be useful.

 I have not read any of these first hand accounts. I find it… telling that all of the detailed first hand accounts I can find in English are by Africans. The difficulty finding accounts from European and Asian child soldiers may reflect a bias in the publishing industry, or simply one in the search engine I’m using.

 Searching for the Khmer Rogue, recent conflicts in the Balkans and memoirs from Poland during world war two will probably all bring up more memoirs from child soldiers. However those available for free may be shorter and vaguer, while more detailed memoirs may be untranslated.

 You can also find accounts by using Amnesty International’s search function. There are 171 results relating to child soldiers. I have not read all of them and Amnesty’s interviews tend to be on the short side but these do contain useful first hand accounts.

 In terms of whether the characters ‘count’ as survivors- I think it’s important to remember that we’re talking about a purely legal distinction and I think you could argue the case either way.

 The UN declaration against torture says that to be torture something must cause severe pain or suffering. But it explicitly says that need not be physical. Something that is intended to cause mental distress (desecration of corpses or religious sites, forcing Hindus to eat beef or Muslims to eat pork, etc) can be defined as torture.

 I think that the systematic exploitation and bullying of a child by armed forces could count under modern law.

 However there’s no indication in this that these soldiers have been ordered to bully this child or that they’re doing it for one of the four very well defined motivations the UN declaration outlines.

 But the argument about whether it meets the strict legal definition seems like a distraction from the real question here which seems to be: ‘how traumatising is this scenario? Is the symptom level appropriate?’

 I think it could be however it’s unclear to me whether the characters are both suffering from PTSD and anxiety or whether one has PTSD and the other anxiety.

 I don’t think it’s a good idea to give all the survivors in your story the same symptoms. There is variety in survivors in real life. If you’re writing multiple survivors in the same story then it’s important to try and reflect that variety.

 Two symptoms seems like a perfectly reasonable level for the girl to me. It could also work for the boy. But personally if I was writing this scenario and trying to put forward the idea that the boy has lived through more I would give him more symptoms as well. If you are trying to establish something as ‘worse’ in the narrative then you should be prepared to back that up with consequences for the characters.

 The slave character, who has been tortured and forced to work for a relatively long time, should definitely have more then two symptoms. I think something more in the range of 3-5 would be appropriate.

 I get the impression from the other asks you’ve sent that you tend to consistently underestimate symptoms.

 Try not to look at symptoms as flaws or limiting factors on your characters. They are not things that you have to struggle to reduce.

 Try instead to think of them as opportunities for you, the author.

 Disability and mental illness should not be an insurmountable barrier to the plot. Because it is not an insurmountable barrier in most people’s lives.

 These things do create difficulties and problems, often problems that are socially constructed. But people who live with disabilities and mental illness find ways around these problems every day. This necessary creative thinking is an addition to any story.

 If your character is in a wheelchair and the important plot device is up a flight of stairs then that shouldn’t mean the character can’t succeed. Instead it means they need a different, less obvious, way to get what they need.

 And the solution you choose tells readers more about the character. They might build a device that lets them glide right to the top or plant explosives around the foundations and bring the tower down or hire someone to carry them up. Each of those solutions tells you something about the character as a person.

 Symptoms are like that. They are narrative opportunities.

 Think about why you’ve chosen PTSD and anxiety. Think about which character they work best with. Think about what those symptoms add.

 And consider the other common symptoms and the common memory problems your characters could have. Use them to create varied survivors with different responses.

 I worry any time I see an author say their character ‘only feels’ a particular emotion. Because this is never true for people. And while authors often mean ‘this character feels that particular emotion a lot’ sometimes they mean it literally.

 A well-written character is not one emotional note, whether they’re a survivor or not.

 Resentment towards the adults who exploited and hurt him isn’t unreasonable. Shame about the atrocities she was forced to participated in isn’t unusual.

 Think about how to build on these starting points.

 If the girl feels ashamed about what she did how does she feel about the people she left behind? Does she think they’re immoral or does she feel sympathy for them and the way they’ve been manipulated?

 Does the boy primarily resent the people or what happened to him? Does he associate everyone from his country with what he endured? If so does he view the country that enslaved him differently? Does he see the girl he’s escape with as an exception or does his view of his country effect how he sees her?

 Even if these emotions are experienced more often these characters should feel more then one thing. Think about what might prompt other feelings.

 If the girl is trapped in a depressive spiral what could pull her out of it for a while? Anger or defensiveness on behalf of her friend? An odd incident that prompts a laugh? Awe or pride at the realisation of how much she’s already done? Because by escaping an active army and enslavement in a foreign country she has already achieved much more then most.

 Similarly what could puncture the boy’s rage? What would shock him? What would make him cry?

 Is he holding on to anger because he’s afraid of what he might be or feel without it?

 A lot of this boils down to standard writing advice for any character: they should feel like complete people.

 That doesn’t mean they can’t be flawed, or wrong or missing something important in their lives. It means that they need to feel ‘real’; as if they have dreams and fears and personalities that are possible.

 Writing survivors is more complicated but that doesn’t mean the usual approaches to character creation don’t apply. Personal history or traumatic events shouldn’t replace a character’s personality, wants or worries.

 And that can be hard to write. Because you’ve got to do all the same work you would for a non-traumatised character, then add another layer of work on top of that.

 In fact it’s more then that, because you have to merge all these things and make it look seamless, effortless for the reader.

 I emphasised a lot of the planning and thinking part of character creation here. And that is important.

 But if you’re struggling with your confidence or character creation generally there is no substitute for practice.

 Give yourself permission to experiment, to learn, to get things wrong. This is part of everyone’s writing process.

 So yes, think, plan, search for opportunities with things like symptoms. But also practice. Write short scenes or stories. Write multiple versions of the same scene. Try out writing the same character with different symptoms to figure out which you like best.

 I hope that helps. :)

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