#this is an ongoing list. i accept criticism

[romanken]

HOTTEST MEN EVER ACCORDING TO ME

1. mandy patinkin in yentl

2. hannibal in fromage after he kills tobias and he daintily takes his handkerchief out of his pocket and knocks over the stand and theres blood on his lip and his hairs all messed up

3. Lalo

4-6. Oberyn. xmen first class when erik calls himself Frankenstein's monster. my chemical romance

7. in velvet goldmine where curt is writhing around on the floor in those gold pants that might as well be spray painted on

8. Daniel kaluuya staring into your soul

9-12. The cop from malignant. Whenever they stick things into jude laws hole in eXistenZ. Hannibal the rest of the show. Lee pace Leg

13. Al pacino in 2019 al pacino in 1983 al Pacino in 1995 al pacino in 1972 al pacino in 2007

14. Man on tiktok with the big real naturals

15. Guy I saw in an aztec docudrama in history class in 8th grade

16. Ethan hawke tying barbed wire around himself and preparing to drink draino

17. Frankenstein's monster

[charcubed]

Disneyland's Rogers: The Musical, propaganda that turns Steve Rogers into more myth than man, and revisionist history (possibly) to a purpose

Any of my thoughts in this post could just be me reading too far into things. I'm very aware of that, and please know that this post exists just because this sort of thing is fun for me! This is a thought exercise where we propose "What if we live in a world where the MCU is actually doing a cool and interesting thing as a longcon?" If you have anger at Marvel, that's valid and relatable, but please don't get angry at me or imply I'm an MCU stan who doesn't think critically about the mouse. Thanks!

Breaking news: I'm back on my bullshit!

A quick personal recap: I infamously hated Avengers: Endgame for a long list of reasons (and I even rewrote the movie). One of those reasons is that I've always taken issue with Steve's ending. But in the years since then, and as the MCU's phase 4 has evolved, my frustration at Steve's "ending" has turned into an ongoing and legitimate theory that the MCU could be slowly leading into a loosely adapted Secret Empire plot line. I know we've all been joking about Steve being trapped or about an imposter Steve since 2019, but uhhh, it's kind of not a joke to me anymore? It feels weirdly plausible at this point and so I enjoy discussing the potential.

You can find a full elaboration on that here, where I wrote out my "Steve was snatched by HYDRA" theory in 2021.

In that post, one of the things I mentioned at the time was Rogers: The Musical being in the Hawkeye trailer.

[The musical's] very existence is an example of how in-universe the stories of the lives of the heroes are being commodified, especially (in terms of how they’re framing it) for Steve’s. The heroes are no longer seen as people, if they ever were. They are, as Kate Bishop says to Clint in a recently released clip, more about “branding.” Sam Wilson will be redefining the shield moving forward in a Cap context, but simultaneously, the world is still enamored by Steve Rogers as a symbol in his own right. And that is ripe for manipulation as a Trojan horse to control public opinion… whether in the context of things like this by themselves (is the musical portraying Steve accurately, or is it painting an inaccurate picture of him the world accepts as fact?) or in future (is this propaganda that makes the public see Steve a certain way and continue to love him, to set up a fake or brainwashed Steve coming on the scene later?).

Now a form of the musical exists in full, at Disneyland and all over Youtube. Considering some of its baffling content – which I will break down below – this perspective seems even more strongly worth considering.

I have two main reasons for why I'm defending examining this musical so closely:

1. It is (arguably) an in-universe piece of media that has bearing on the MCU canon. It isn't like any other typical Disneyland attraction; its very existence is meta and it was in canon first. Obviously it's seen in Hawkeye, but there are also posters for it in several different phase 4 properties. It's lurking in the background indefinitely. So what can this musical tell us about what the wider public within the MCU is being told about the life story of Steve Rogers?

2. This Secret Empire graphic – which is animated in the center of the stage of a prolonged period of time – feels like a literal sign to pay attention.

Granted, this is obviously still ancillary material. 99% of the MCU audience will never see this musical, whether in person or on YouTube. But just because it isn't a vital piece doesn't mean it's automatically an entirely irrelevant piece.

They've given me an inch with that sign and I'm taking a mile.

So if you're interested, please join me on this journey :)

For the record, let me just say that I salute the creative team behind this show. It's pretty fun and the songs are catchy, the sets and costuming are cool, and the cast is overall very talented.

It's also fucking maddening. LMAO.

Why? Firstly, because of the seemingly deliberate ahistorical inaccuracies. We all know Ant-Man is wrongly shown in the Battle of New York, which originally "came from [the Hawkeye showrunner] and Marvel, as something to further aggravate Hawkeye as he watched the show, and also as a comment on how movies and articles and people always get something wrong." It seems like they expanded those meta nods, but most inaccuracies are now in service of glorifying Steve and Peggy's "love story." Yes, romance objectively makes for good theater; but again, I feel that this is worth examining considering the full context.

And secondly, Steve's ending is framed as an offer presented to him, convincing him it's the happy ending he deserves because he's tired. In my mind, these two big elements go together, and I'll walk you through the details of what happens in the musical before I tie the thought threads back around into some theorizing.

For your reference, here's a list of the main songs and story beats:

• "U-S-Opening Night" - the Starkettes (who are basically a Greek chorus) frame the show's story, and then it turns into an ensemble that loosely takes place at the Stark Expo. • "I Want You" – Steve's "I want" song about trying to enlist in the army. • "Star-Spangled Man With A Plan" – Steve performing on the USO tour obviously, and then there's a reprise with an added voiceover that (very briefly) covers the Howling Commandos' rescue + the war via comic book imagery. • "What You Missed" – Fury and the Starkettes tell Steve some pop culture things he missed while he was frozen, + they tell him about the Avengers. Then Fury goes down a list of other hero characters, including the Guardians? Doctor Strange? Wanda?? It plays loose and fast with time, because many non-2012 characters are bafflingly mentioned in this nonlinear Avengers list – including the Winter Soldier (???). • "Save the City" – this is the song seen in Hawkeye, with the civilians + the Avengers all involved, but it's slightly different here and expanded to also reference other battles. • "End of the Line" – Old Steve presents main Steve with the time stone as an opportunity for his happy ending, and they reflect on things together. (Yes, this is insane.) • "Just One Dance" – Steve and Peggy reunite and sing about their love. • And then there's basically a reprise of "Save the City," with the Starkettes and the whole cast closing the finale out.

Right out of the gate, let's address this: the main reason you're going to see some fans pissed about this musical is not only that Steve and Peggy's ~epic romance~ is made a pillar of the story... but also that Bucky's importance/involvement in Steve's life is minimized as much as possible.

And they took Bucky-related elements from canon and made them center more around Peggy instead.

• For some weird reason, Peggy is in the Stark Expo scene. When a soldier is hitting on the Starkettes ("hey sweetheart, I wanna dance!"), Steve tells the soldier to show the ladies some respect. The soldier grabs Steve and throws him down, and then Peggy swoops in to yell "Pick on someone your own size!" and punches the guy before walking away. So she's given Bucky's TFA line verbatim, and she is given the role he had of saving Steve from bullies. There is blatantly no reason they couldn't have had Bucky still serve that function and be truer to "history," because he briefly enters this scene in uniform less than a minute later to announce he's shipping out to the 107th – and then he spins off with a date on his arm. (We don't see Bucky on stage again until the full cast comes out for the finale!)

• After the Star-Spangled Man show, Peggy rushes in to talk to Steve. Steve is excited about his USO performance (???) but she urgently tells him to listen as she says that the 107th has been captured. Peggy apparently knows it's Bucky's division, and she knows Steve is going to go, so she tells him that she's already arranged transport for him. This is a subtle twist from the truth of how it went down in TFA, in which Steve recognized 107 as the number of Bucky's division, and his dogged determination inspired Peggy to relent and help his rescue mission. Here, Peggy is given a stronger role in the Cap origin story. And before Steve rushes off, Peggy sings a short untitled ballad hoping for their dance, so Steve pauses before he leaves to ask her to go on a date with her when he returns. • The most egregious Bucky-to-Peggy change of all is the song "End of the Line," in which the infamous Steve and Bucky line/promise (that broke Bucky's brainwashing...) is re-contextualized to be about ???? Peggy waiting for Steve in the past??? Old Man Steve and regular Steve sing it together. But we'll go back to that in a minute.

Again, I get it, yeah? It's for theater. Whatever. But in reality, the obvious logical truth is that Peggy is centered (to the point of taking elements from Bucky's story, and in turn Bucky is downplayed) because they needed to convince the audience that Steve going back in time to be with her makes sense. Steve's time travel ending had to be justified, so the Peggy and Steve "love story" had to be a pillar in this with everything else being given lesser weight.

And the inherent selfishness of him doing something as big as going back in time also had to be justified... which is why they do their best to convince you Steve fought so much he deserved it.

Let me elaborate on that by describing the lead-up to the "End of the Line" song.

So, right before "End of the Line" is "Save the City" – which includes Steve belting "I can do this all day!" repeatedly, of course. It's the 2012 Battle of New York as the Avengers come together to win.

As they begin to disperse, the song then transitions to a voiceover alert mentioning Sokovia being under attack by artificial intelligence (a.k.a. Age of Ultron). The Avengers group rushes back to center stage to say "Save the city! Help us win!" together for battle again.

And then things get fucking weird.

Because the next voiceover threat is "Washington DC. Attack: the Winter Soldier." This is not accurate to the order of events! The Winter Soldier events were before Age of Ultron; the public of the MCU would also know this.

And suddenly on stage Steve is now in the center while everyone else gestures to him. Instead of singing with him, they're telling him "Save the city! Help us win!"

Then, another voiceover: "Wakanda, under attack" (Infinity War) and again, Steve is centered while everyone else points to him. The ensemble says, "Save the city, help us win! Save us all from the state we're in! Got to hear you, got to hear you, got to hear you say..." as Steve is buckling to his knees under their pointing. And as the lights go down to one spotlight on him and everyone else leaves, he says "I can do this all day" one last time, but now it's subdued.

The implication is that Steve has been fighting and fighting, people leave him or he loses them, and he's tired.

And then fucking Old Man Steve arrives.

He says "On your left," because yes, they gave him Sam Wilson's line. BATSHIT.

So now there's two Steves on stage! There has been no mention of Thanos or infinity stones or anything up to this point! (I can only assume that's because in the MCU universe no one would want to be reminded of the trauma of "the Blip" – though it's pretty wild that they're allowed to know about magical time travel?)

Steve is baffled by Old Man Steve's arrival. I, too, was baffled by Old Man Steve's arrival.

As Steve questions how this is possible, Old Man Steve shows him the time stone from his pocket – and only the time stone – which Steve recognizes.

OLD MAN: "You've got to remember where you've been to know where you're going." STEVE: "Where am I going?" OLD MAN: "A date with destiny." STEVE: “Destiny. So we’re the hero till the end?” OLD MAN: “That’s the thing about endings, Steven. They can be rewritten.”

Lmao???????

Steve starts singing about how he hopes this means they "win" and calls himself a "tired hero."

STEVE: "But sometimes I wonder, who will save the savior? Can we really do this all day? So here I am, now and also then. Just a man, looking back at where he's been." OLD MAN: "The road is rough but wounds are healed by a thing called time. You can't forget what's waiting at the end of the line."

Me, watching this: the fact that he says this out of the blue makes absolutely no sense.

There's a bit more singing, including "end of the line" repetition, and then Old Man Steve pulls out the time stone to essentially show visions of... I don't fucking know. Past, present, and future?

That's pre-serum Steve, Steve with Mjolnir, and Sam Wilson as the new Cap. This is the only reference to Sam in the whole thing.

More singing, and then: Peggy's silhouette.

OLD MAN: "Can't forget who's waiting..." STEVE: "I can't forget who's waiting..." BOTH: "Don't forget who's waiting..." STEVE: "At the end of the line."

At this point I'm like, what in the hell?

Did Old Man Steve just brainwash normal Steve into thinking "end of the line" is now about Peggy? Because uhhhh, sorry, that's what it feels like!

Then Steve uses the stone to go back in time, reunites with Peggy, etc. etc. finale.

It's truly some crazy shit.

[drags hands down face]

Look... there's a lot to unpack here, and there's a lot that gets me about it. I know this is dramatized for the stage! I KNOW! But the fact that Old Man Steve shows up to convince Steve he should go back in time makes me want to gnaw on furniture.

Another person essentially uses the lure of a life with Peggy to tempt Steve into doing this, dramatized or not. That is how it's framed.

It's a hell of a way to frame it, and it makes Steve's ending stand in even starker contrast to so many other things in phase 4. Desperately trying to go backwards when you shouldn't or to bring back a lost lover is an evil temptation, and it results in a trap or negative cosmic consequences for basically all of the other characters in the MCU.

• In Shang-Chi, Wenwu is tempted by the Soul Eaters beyond the Dark Gate. They use the voice of his deceased wife to convince him to set them free. • In "What If" episode 4, Doctor Strange becomes evil in a desperate bid to save Christine and he destroys his universe. Along the way, he tries to tempt/trap the good Strange who's fighting him by using visions of Christine, but good Strange knows she isn't real. • Wanda's grief and desire to bring back Vision leads to – well, you know. • In No Way Home, Peter trying to undo things is what causes the multiverse problems.

And the fact that they frame it as Steve being tired, so basically the argument is he deserves that time travel ending (just like MCU fans who defend Endgame say in real life)... Well.

There's no way to make it hold up, especially because in "What If" they explicitly subverted that and had Captain Carter not go back in time despite how she felt she'd "earned" it.

Lastly, in this musical as Steve decides to pursue time travel as his course of action, he basically has the meaning or memory of "end of the line" rewritten for him. I refuse to not think that is some nefarious shit. Yes, it's not out of the realm of possibility that it's just some general Disney erasing Steve and Bucky nonsense.

But... this is on another level to me. I do think that it's a blatant choice that they had to be aware even general MCU fans would call bullshit on. Everyone knows it's inaccurate. "End of the line" is embedded in pop culture consciousness as being connected to Bucky. It just is! Surely that means it's not a stretch to theorize it could be deliberate meta commentary.

How, in the MCU world, would the in-universe playwrights even know the phrase "end of the line"? How the fuck would it be accidentally applied to Steve and Peggy? Not to sound like a crazy person, but who the fuck was rooting around in Steve and/or Bucky's personal business or their brains in order to obtain that knowledge and then remix it, and why? Neither of them would flippantly mention it in the public eye or interviews ever. So where did its inclusion come from?

And in the finale ensemble, this is Bucky's line when he comes out on stage and salutes + points to Steve: "Don't forget who's waiting..." And Old Man Steve completes it with "...at the end of the line."

What on God's green earth am I meant to do with THAT?

Smh.

The vibes are fucked, folks.

The MCU public wouldn't know enough to say the vibes are fucked. The MCU public wouldn't know the origin of "end of the line" as a phrase. But us? The ones who know the "true story" via the movies? We can call bullshit.

Whether the creative team behind this musical did every aspect of this consciously or not, in my opinion the fact that they had to tweak canon "history" to A) make Peggy's involvement in Steve's life more central and B) emphasize Steve as a tired hero all works as commentary on and almost a condemnation of Endgame's frustrating ending. In a way, it's also what Endgame did with the compass and 1973 moment with Peggy as well.

Steve's ending had to be convincing.

It's theater.

And so, maybe the same is true for the in-narrative perspective of this musical in the context of the MCU world. What purpose would it serve to tell the MCU public a feel-good narrative about how all Steve Rogers wanted was to no longer be a tragic man out of time and get to make a life with his best girl? To frame it as being about how he fought so hard for years and so he earned a happy ending? To minimize and nearly erase Bucky's importance in his life?

Who would want to do that sort of propaganda, and why?

The MCU civilians are given this happy explanation and maybe don't widely question it. Who cares about the details or logistics if it makes a good story, I guess. It's a stretch, but maybe they mostly applaud it. Maybe they're happy for "America's favorite son" (not unlike people who uncritically liked Endgame). In a way, it's even a rehabilitation of his image (after the Accords) like putting the shield on the Statue of Liberty. And maybe they'd even be ready and waiting to applaud if Steve ever made a dramatically selfless and de-aged return to the spotlight or a position of authority.

But mostly, the public is being conditioned to not know or to forget that anyone else like Bucky Barnes or Sam Wilson would possibly know Steve Rogers the person well enough in the modern day to call bullshit on any of this – or on his hypothetical miraculous future return.

So. Sure, it's probably nothing.

But what if it's not?

-------

UPDATE: @faeriecap added to this post with some incredible information and further behind-the-scenes context about the MCU/Marvel stuff at Disney parks! Check it out here :)

[mythserene]

I got a message I figured I would try to answer out here because updating my less-informed, earlier Lewisohn musings has been on my To Do list for a while.

From anonymous:

I am enjoying your Lewisohn analysis. Do you think he has taken a bribe from the Lennon estate to play down J&Y’s heroin addiction? I can think of no other reason he would lie about this. He is obviously aware how stupid it makes him look.

Thank you for the question, anonymous. Back in October when I first started publicly posting about Mark Lewisohn I knew a lot less about him and hadn't been able to form any sort of picture about what happened between him and Paul/Apple. Or the ongoing and seemingly increasing enmity between he and Paul (+ the Beatles' families), or the anger that seems to be almost boiling over in Lewisohn these past few years.

And for what it's worth—as far as I can understand—even Yoko has locked Lewisohn out. Apple is a unified front on this one.

I do not think that anyone has gotten to Lewisohn to make him say these things, or even that he is aware that he looks stupid. I think that Beatles' fans are extremely straight-laced in the best way, and that the habit of trusting someone like Lewisohn dies hard. Until AKOM's Fine Tuning series I'm not aware of anyone ever putting forward a concerted challenge to even his most extreme narratives. The voluminous word count of the book and the simple fact of all those citations lulled most people into complacency. Until Fine Tuning no one had looked further, or if they did they were shy about stating it. People in the Beatles' community are afraid of criticizing Lewisohn, and I've heard that again and again these past few months. But AKOM went for it, made a persuasive case, and opened the floodgates. (And gave me an opportunity and an outlet for the problems I had been finding, and supported me. Phoebe and Daphne are the only reason you're reading this.)

Back to the question.

First of all, I think that Lewisohn genuinely idolizes John, and I think he is fanatically committed to the narrative of John-as-demigod. And I tend to think that he is now perhaps more committed to his telling of the Beatles' story than even to the beliefs that undergird his narrative. But the other half of the equation that the Solomon-like part of my mind failed to accept for a long time is just how much Mark Lewisohn seems to hate Paul McCartney. And I do not use that word lightly.

When AKOM started their Fine Tuning series I was half-excited and half-nervous. I am a citations freak. I like original sources and I basically mine books and podcasts to find sources and hunt them down. I also came into the Beatles without the background that most fans have. I didn't understand the John vs Paul fight in Beatles historiography. I loved John and Paul both, for different reasons, but mostly I loved them together. What initially caught me about Tune In were all the claims that were completely unsourced, and before long I began discovering more troubling issues, but after a while I forced myself to set it aside because I was just frustrating myself and it seemed like a waste of time to argue with Mark Lewisohn on my computer.

It was Shells and Barriers that made a new thought intrude and begin to become inescapable: Mark Lewisohn must genuinely detest Paul McCartney. This was the episode I most dreaded because, well, because I was ignorant of a lot. I expected it to be the most subjective, and I have a lot of empathy for John as I am an only child who lost both parents a month apart. It makes you feel like you have no tether at all. Like you're floating in space and that any breeze might carry you off. There's no cushion and you feel exposed.

But that episode did something that I was unable to do on my own—that I didn't have the breadth of knowledge to comprehend on my own—it filled in a lot of gaps that I was unaware of. And I simply could not fathom any reason for most of how Lewisohn framed Paul's childhood besides pure loathing. Daphne's word counts are pretty incredible, too. John is jealous twice, both times of Cynthia. (+a "Jealous Guy" mention.) The numbers that stood out to me right away and have stuck in my memory were Paul being "jealous" eight times and "envious" five times = thirteen. And even beyond Lewisohn making Paul out to be completely unmoved by his mother's death and painting the aftermath as safe and comforting, it's notable that Paul is only said to be "loved" four times in the entire book, and he is only said to be loved by John. (Stu is said to be loved nine times.) I realized when I listened to that episode that my picture of Paul's relationship with Mike had been refrigerated and flattened out by Tune In, all without me noticing it. Because Lewisohn doesn't hit you over the head with things, instead he subtly and slyly frames things in a careful and deceitful way, and that framing shapes the reader's opinions.

The case of bias in his writing about John and Paul's childhoods is not easy to make, especially in the ways I like to make a case—finding discreet objective evidence that can be straightforwardly disproved—but AKOM's overall case in that episode was devastating, and there were several details that stood out to me and have stuck with me. Jim hitting Paul until Paul basically threatened to hit back as a teenager and the unnoted redaction of that in a John quote Lewisohn uses is fairly indefensible, and the choice to leave out that Jim was suicidal after Mary's death and to instead paint a picture of a loving and nurturing extended family swooping in that almost sounds better than what the boys had had before losing their mum impressed me as almost malicious when patiently laid out. And then there were a lot of smaller details that struck me. Lewisohn describes Mike as "shattered irrevocably" by Mary's death, which is contrasted with Paul's callousness. (And the way the "shattered" sentence is written it also leaves the impression that Paul wasn't that close to his mum, although Lewisohn is careful not to say that in so many words.)

Jim broke the news to the boys. Mike, who was especially close to his mother, burst into tears, a core part of him shattered irrevocably. Paul's response was less expected and not at all what Jim or anyone else wanted to hear. ... Eight years later, Mike looked back with candor on these first few days ... "Paul made some flippant remark which sounded pretty callous at the time" ...

(Emphasis mine)

Then in a Frankenquote that is half author interview, Paul is quoted as saying about both he and John losing their mothers:

“We had a bond there that we never talked about—but each of us knew that had happened to the other ... I know he was shattered, but at that age you're not allowed to be devastated, and particularly as young boys, teenage boys, you just shrug it off.”

And Dusty Durband, Paul's English Master, was quoted in Chris Salewicz's 1986 biography of Paul describing him as “shattered.”

“Paul had a bad break, his mother had died. He did go through a bit of a rough patch then. I think it shattered him a lot. Maybe it made him turn to other things like practicing his guitar...”

It's like Lewisohn is screwing with Paul by keeping that adjective away from him and even teasing him by handing it to his brother, just out of Paul's reach. I hesitate to write that because it probably sounds as extreme as some of Lewisohn's conclusions, but my Lewisohn immersion has made it seem completely logical, and in fact, almost undeniable. It's a small detail that doesn't seem that important in isolation, but even with just the context of the rest of that AKOM episode it was a piece of evidence that my mind caught and held onto. Lewisohn, by his own testimony, is a Paul watcher. He obsessively listens to, watches, and reads McCartney interviews and is forever bringing them up on podcasts, waxing on about how he understands Paul McCartney like no one else. (This is invariably followed by an example that is freakishly twisted inside Lewisohn's mind to reveal some negative aspect of Paul's character.)

I don't think that Paul and Mark Lewisohn had some great falling out. Instead what I think occurred added up to a thousand paper cuts in Lewisohn's very thin skin. He felt humiliated by Paul one too many times, and he pushed every humiliation down into his gut, coated them in bile, and remembered them.

Last November there was a Lewisohn interview in a Spanish language magazine, Jot Down, where Lewisohn tells one of these little anecdotes. They're always couched in neutral language, and he usually says how whatever happened was understandable, but the theme is the same: some perceived slight by Paul that he had to swallow in silence. (The translation is 98% Google translate. I corrected three or four pronouns that it had mistranslated, but nothing else.)

“He didn't say goodbye to me, he didn't give me a hint of grace.”

Q. I remember a television program in which Paul was asked for a detail of his own life, and he answered "ask Mark Lewisohn." LEWISOHN: Yes. It was a little weird, sometimes. On one occasion, for example, I worked with George Martin on a television documentary about Sgt. Pepper. But he also kept working with Paul. So there we were, on Abbey Road interviewing McCartney with all the equipment, the television cameras and everything else. Then the director of the documentary tells me to let him know if Paul makes a mess with any information, so that I can ask him to repeat his answer with the correct information. I sat there, hoping that I didn't have to intervene. But Paul said he had the idea of making the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band flying back from the United States. And I knew that hadn't happened like that. Let's see, I wasn't there, but I know he had the idea coming back from Nairobi. In fact, he didn't fly to the United States until Sgt. Pepper was finished. And, on the return trip, he was already thinking about the Magical Mystery Tour. I usually let these details go, they're really not that important. Except if they are recording him for a documentary about the 25 years of Sgt. Pepper that was going to be broadcast on television. So, while the cameraman was changing the movie roll, I approached the director and said "Paul was coming back from Nairobi and not from the United States when he had the idea for the album, I don't know what you want to do about it." And the director goes and releases him, "Paul, Mark says you didn't understand it well. That you didn't have the idea when you were flying back from the United States." To which Paul stared at me and replied "Yes, I did." It was a very uncomfortable, difficult and embarrassing moment when I wanted the floor to swallow me. He didn't say goodbye to me, he didn't give me a hint of grace. And I had to learn when to say something and when not to. But, in that place, my job was to say something. I was paid to say something. So I said something, and he didn't like it. Nobody likes to be corrected.

Sorry, anonymous. I wrote far more than an answer because I used your question as an excuse to get on the record an addendum and some corrections to my earlier musings, but I do not think Lewisohn has any idea of how ridiculous he sounds. He is insulated from almost all criticism and is constantly praised as a sort of Beatles' god. He worships John and wants to shape the Beatles' story to redeem him, but I also think he believes in the story that he has shaped. I think he is lost and frustrated at being locked out by Apple—and actively thwarted by them—and that has made his criticisms of Paul much more public. It's as if his new job is just going on podcasts and taking pot shots at Paul McCartney. And for Mark Lewisohn it's clear that the Holy Grail is the breakup. He is intent on recasting Allen Klein as much more of a positive force than history has given him credit for, and Lewisohn has foreshadowed a parallel between Klein and Epstein by manipulating all the evidence about Paul and Brian. He is going to cast Paul as the bad guy and John as the hero. As always. And if John and Yoko are addicted to heroin that throws his whole rewrite into chaos. He simply cannot concede that there was a real issue. John cannot be fully human. He robs John of what makes John so magnificent.

So everyone else has to be wrong.

Just for fun before I go, another narrative Lewisohn was working on putting forward in this “John was actually right” case, was rehabilitating Magic Alex. “Get Back” seemingly thwarted this line of nonsense, but after bingeing the Nagras Lewisohn was seriously pushing the idea that Magic Alex had been slandered by history and that John's judgment about him had been vindicated. It takes listening to a lot of these interviews—something that I can only do in small doses—to begin to see the fuller picture that Lewisohn was wedded to, and Magic Alex is as much a part of that as the heroin comments are. They are all of a piece.

“And they just had to get mobile gear in. So, big deal.”

In the end, I think what Mark Lewisohn means by “right” is different than what “right” means to everyone else. “Right” to Mr. Lewisohn means warped quotes that tell a fabricated story of Paul McCartney not wanting Brian Epstein as his manager. “Right” means Magic Alex being a wizard, unfairly tarnished by the lesser Beatles. “Right” means Yoko being John's artistic savior, and of a heroin addiction dreamed up by bad actors who don't understand things the way he does. A myth perpetrated by those who cannot grasp the truth. And I genuinely believe that Mark Lewisohn revels in the power of being able to take Paul McCartney's own story away from him and use it to hurt him and to hurt his legacy. To use his power over the Beatles' story to wound Paul, the way he feels that Paul wounded him. In so many interviews when Lewisohn talks about Paul he seethes. (It's quite impressive.)

And I think the thought of Lewisohn's retelling slipping away or being supplanted is a very threatening idea in his mind. I think it scares him. I think he is holding onto a delusion of his own making, and he fears that he will not be able to finish his life's work of solidifying that warped tale into historical fact.

Nothing is Real - Lewisohn seethe quick mix

[rosewaterandivy]

Through Me masterlist

pairing: steddie x fem!constantine!reader

🎶 I looked down into the depths when I met you, I couldn't measure it 🎶

summary: Something isn’t right in Hawkins, IN. Sent by that powers that be to check in on things, you encounter a town on the brink, perpetually so. Unfortunately, whatever evil permeates this small Midwestern town is, apparently, not a top priority for you to deal with. Infrequent drive-bys are all you can afford, before the things that go bump in the night draw you far and away from Hawkins. But trouble has an uncanny ability of finding you, luring you back time and time again through the guise of one Steve Harrington and Eddie Munson. 

Through Me

word count: ongoing

warnings: 18 + for eventual smut, constantine!AU// violence, body horror, blasphemy, heresy, apostasy, mentions/criticism of christianity, etc., cursing, name calling, vague mentions of crime

authors note: My baby, the Constantine!AU 😍 Not strictly pulling solely from the world of Constantine; you'll see vestiges of your standard supernatural/fantasy/vaguely & explicitly religious fare here. 

Playlist | Currently spinning: through me (the flood) by hozier

(*) denotes NSFW

Prequels:

i. the hanged man* - posted 9/25

i. the fool* - posted 1/28

ii. justice - posted 6/11

Through Me:

I. TBD

drabbles/hcs: (un)holy verses

inspo

currently accepting headcanon/drabble requests and discussions for this series, feel free to send something in!

P.S. I do not do tag lists, if you want to keep up with this fic, please bookmark this post or follow me directly, thank you.

Nota bene: Reblogging, commenting, and liking my work is always appreciated; reposting, however, is not. Enjoy! 💜

[wheelie-butch]

This is one of the families I've been donating to, unfortunately their latest update is really sad. One of the boys has been injured and they need to evacuate him so he can get medical treatment and not lose his foot. I'll put the whole update below:

Dear Supporters, As we marked the end of Ramadan four days ago, our family faced another heartbreaking challenge. My youngest brother, Mahdi, sustained a severe injury to his leg while waiting for aid trucks at the Kuwait roundabout in Gaza City. His injury involves broken bones, torn ligaments, and a severed main vein in his Talus bone, putting him at high risk of losing his foot. Currently, all hospitals in the Gaza City and north of Gaza are overwhelmed, under-equipped or out of service due to the ongoing genocide, and are unable to provide the necessary medical care to save his foot. The doctors have mentioned that without the proper facilities, amputation might be the only option—a decision we are not willing to accept, especially given Mahdi's passion and potential as a football player, dreaming of one day playing for clubs like Barcelona. In light of this, we are urgently working to move Mahdi from Gaza City to Rafah in the south, where we hope to find a way to evacuate him to a country that can offer the needed medical treatment. His condition requires an ambulance for safe transport, and we are reaching out to anyone who has connections or can assist in placing him on the list of injured needing evacuation. We are now directing all funds from this campaign towards securing the medical care necessary to save my brother's foot. The situation is dire, and we need all the help we can get. If you have any connections or know of organizations that can assist in medical evacuations, please contact us immediately. Moreover, I ask each of you to help by sharing this campaign and spreading the word. Your support is not just appreciated; it is crucial at this critical time. Together, we can give Mahdi a chance to recover and chase his dreams without the shadow of this injury. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your continued support and kindness during this harrowing time. Hani

Please donate if you can or share.

[supakixbabe]

So, it’s come to my attention that some are a bit confused on the Young Bucks’ new personas and I am here to explain how I see it.

For years, the Bucks have been accused of being selfish and cocky men who politicked themselves to be the best tag team in the business; whether it was winning awards, being in PWI’s top list, main-eventing pay-per-views, or “booking” themselves to win championship gold. They’ve been accused of favoritism and unprofessionalism, because according to guys like Jim Cornett, Bully Ray, Vince Russo, etc, the Buck’s can’t just be good at what they do. There’s always some reason behind it— their accomplishments. Cause it’s clearly not uncommon to be actually good at what you do, right? This ongoing hate towards the Bucks had started from the beginning of their careers. (They talked about it in their autobiography and many interviews, and the OG fans remember everything from social media, etc). Doubted and told they’d never make it or they’d never change the world. They were told that wrestling should be done this way and any other way is wrong. So when they broke the mold and branched out, doing whatever the hell they wanted regardless of veterans and part-timers taking their shots at them, they became a very hated tag-team. Why? For shattering the norm and changing the world of professional wrestling— doing what no other athlete had the balls to do. (I admire the hell out of these men; they took the risk and it paid off).

They changed the world of pro wrestling, but it wasn’t enough.

Hate came through more and more. Death threats. Hell, people have taken screenshots off Google Maps of their homes. Sick shit. They realized they couldn’t be as open with their “fans” because of the sick and demented people. They had to protect their peace and their families. I’ve seem this first-hand and it was so heartbreaking..

And the stuff with “Muffins”, I truly believe made them mentally check out for a while. The career they built, forever marked because of a selfish man.

When they stopped giving a shit about the critics and the haters, the hate increased tenfold. Because as Matt referenced in his interview with Swerve Strickland, “If I could walk on water, critics would say it’s because he can’t swim.” They will never get the flowers they deserve until they are six feet under. And I believe they accepted that, so they decided: “If they’re going to give us a role, let’s nail the audition.” Thus creating the arrogant, cocky and politicking- EVP’s. As much as people hate this gimmick, they created them — they caused this.

While yes, it’s a friendly gimmick of kayfabe and wrestling, I truly believe they are playing the part everyone assumed they were.

Nicholas and Matthew Jackson are basically anti-Nick and Matt Jackson. This is just my take on everything. Obviously, I do not know how they feel.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Anonymous

Published: Feb 8, 2023

• An anonymous student speaks out about transgender ideology in her school  • The student, aged 14, attends a state secondary school in South-East England • Claimed teachers say Lady Macbeth non-binary and girls wear breast binders

She’s 14 and attends a co-educational state secondary in South-East England — where she says one in ten children in her year identifies as trans or non-binary. After becoming increasingly upset by the school’s acceptance of transgender ideology, this female student has decided to expose the truth about life in an ongoing culture war.

The other day, I went to the school office to get a new copy of the timetable. The teacher I spoke to used ‘they/them’ pronouns about me, asking another member of staff, ‘they have lost their timetable, can they have a new one?’

He knows me really well and it’s clear that I’m a girl. I felt furious he didn’t just say ‘she’. But it’s not just the odd teacher here or there; I am regularly asked if I am in the process of transitioning.

There is a gender-neutral uniform policy at school and lots of the girls wear trousers. Those of us that do are often asked if we are transgender, especially if we have short hair, as I do.

The fact a girl likes playing video games, or doesn’t like feminine clothes or make-up is enough to be seen as potentially trans. When my mum complained about me being called ‘they’, the teacher apologised but explained he was being cautious in case I was transitioning. He said the teachers are treading on eggshells, scared of being labelled transphobic.

It feels like trans is all anyone talks about. The library has a section devoted to LGBTQQIA+ books and there is a display for Pride in the school entrance, with rainbow flags and words and terms such as ‘non-binary‘, ‘polysexual’, ‘demiboy’, ‘demigirl’ and ‘pansexual’. These words come up in lessons, too. I’m now in Year 10, and the other day a girl in my English class asked if the Greek god Zeus was a man or a woman and the teacher replied that Zeus could have ‘identified as non-binary’.

More recently another teacher said Lady Macbeth was ‘neither a man nor a woman’. I think most parents will have no clue this is what their kids are being taught.

So I’m glad the Education Secretary Gillian Keegan is set to tell schools they must be more open about their handling of trans issues. I would be too scared to say this at school, though. I would lose my friends if I did, as they’re completely intolerant of anything they think is transphobic.

That’s what made me decide to speak out here — without giving my real name.

When I started at my secondary school four years ago, I didn’t even know what ‘transgender’ meant. It hadn’t been talked about in primary school or at home. But within days, we were told by a teacher in our PSHE (personal, social, health and economic education) class that we would be seen as ‘transphobic’ if we used any of the ‘offensive words’ from a long list, which included ‘gender bender’ and ‘butch’.

I had no idea what transphobic meant, but I could tell it was definitely something I didn’t want to be seen as. At that age, when you are told something at school you just believe it. We trusted that what the teachers told us was true. 

But I did ask my mum about it later. She is a feminist and is critical of students being dictated to. She said that often it depends how you use words — that people within queer communities have used ‘gender bender’ as a positive way to describe themselves and that ‘butch’ is used by lesbians to describe other lesbians who are quite masculine in appearance.

While still in my first year, 11-year-old girls in my class began asking to be called ‘he’ or ‘them’.

Soon afterwards a number of others were doing the same. It felt as if they joined in because it meant they were seen as cool.

You get special treatment if you say you are trans or non-binary and suddenly become the centre of attention when you ‘come out’.

As soon as a girl says she is a boy, her name is changed on the school register and students are told to use their chosen boy’s name.

Now, out of 200 students in my year, at least 20 say they’re trans — almost all are girls claiming to be boys or non-binary. Although there is one boy saying he’s a girl, this really is largely about girls saying they are boys. The kids in my year don’t say they are lesbian or gay, because those words are thought to be an insult.

There is a straight boy going out with a straight girl who says she is trans, so he now has to say that he’s bisexual. It’s often said by my schoolmates that trans girls are ‘better’ girls than ‘other girls’. I find this insulting. But the teachers don’t take any action even if they do hear conversations like this.

Recently, I was watching a news item with friends about the changes to the Gender Recognition Act in Scotland and every time a guest on the programme said, ‘this is a threat to sex-based rights’, my friends were sneering and laughing. It made me feel as though girls have no rights and are not respected in my school.

There is constant talk of transphobia and bigotry and many of the students who say they are trans constantly talk about being ‘victims’, with anyone who isn’t trans being the perpetrator.

Coming out as a lesbian or gay doesn’t have the same effect, but barely any students do, in my experience.

My friend Kelley* was ‘affirmed’ [accepted without question] as a boy in Year 7. She has serious mental health issues and is regularly off school as she self-harms.

Kelley socially transitioned without any teacher challenging her. She has a new name and can now use the boys’ changing rooms. All my friends pretty much believe in ‘gender identity’. Girls and boys are referred to by teachers and students as ‘assigned female at birth’ or ‘assigned male at birth’. This is shortened to AFAB and AMAB.

There is also confusing language such as the word for being attracted to non-binary people, ‘skoliosexual’. I find it ridiculous — but can’t say that.

There is a lot of breast-binding going on, too, but we don’t know who might be on puberty blockers because no one talks about that. One trans-identified girl wants to get a breast binder, but was complaining that her parents would not want her to.

I joined the Equalities Club because I believe in equal rights for all, then found it was impossible to talk about any group, other than trans people, that was discriminated against. There’s a rule against wearing badges in school but some students wear trans flag and pronoun badges and nobody tells them off.

Recently, a group of us were watching Prime Minister’s Questions and when MPs talked about maternity care, using the terms ‘birthing partner’ and ‘non-birthing partner’, I wondered out loud why they didn’t just say ‘mother’.

I was told off by a friend who said that not everyone with a cervix is a woman. I didn’t want to disagree because I knew what would happen — I would be publicly humiliated.

Until now, I’ve just gone along with most of it. But there are some things I can’t leave alone. For example, I really like J. K. Rowling but she was called a ‘TERF’ (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist) by a friend, who said she was heartbroken to hear that J.K. was ‘anti-trans’.

I asked in what way J.K. was transphobic but this friend couldn’t give me an answer, she just said: ‘I hope all TERFS drop dead.’ I was shocked by her anger.

There have also been violent comments on social media towards ‘transphobes’ with students from the school threatening to strangle them.

That’s why I’m writing this piece anonymously, although I believe I should be able to say these things without fear of attack. I want adults to know what it’s really like in schools like mine now.

*Names have been changed.

==

This confusion, this uncertainty isn't a bug of Queer Theory, it's the explicitly stated intent. When nobody can trust anything about the world, they can't know whether to oppress you or to give you the privileges associated with being an oppressor. No more "systemic" oppression. One of the big problems is that this constantly questioning your own perceptions is a tactic of Malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It's no wonder it attracts narcissists.

https://segm.org/England-ends-gender-affirming-care

The new NHS guidance recognizes social transition as a form of psychosocial intervention and not a neutral act, as it may have significant effects on psychological functioning. The NHS strongly discourages social transition in children, and clarifies that social transition in adolescents should only be pursued in order to alleviate or prevent clinically-significant distress or significant impairment in social functioning, and following an explicit informed consent process.

It's Psych 101 that affirmation solidifies belief, because it wires the amygdala to accept the belief as reality. If you keep telling someone "yes, you are a victim, the world is out to get you," they'll become helpless and incapable. If a therapist actually recommended affirmation therapy for those with anorexia nervosa - "if you think you're overweight, you must be, since you're the expert on you. In fact, you could probably even stand to lose a few more lbs" - we'd know they were incompetent and dangerous.

https://cutdowntree.substack.com/i/54708841/metaphysics-of-marginalization

If those who are born Black or disabled are the chosen, trans people are the converts who have voluntarily accepted Marginalization. They choose to suffer more from their involuntary embodiment. Because of this, they become virtuous. They are saved.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Bill Bramhall

* * * *

Become a warrior for truth!

May 18, 2024

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

I have been reflecting on why Democrats feel so besieged by the news. One obvious explanation is the patent bias against Biden and the double standard employed by the major media. However, it is also that the news outlets that are supposedly more liberal in their editorial policies and news reporting are sliding into “both siderism” and false equivalencies.

In Michael Cohen’s testimony on Thursday, he said that he would call Maggie Haberman of the NYTimes and Katie Tur of MSNBC when he wanted to plant “pro-Trump” stories. (I don’t have the actual testimony; I would appreciate it if a reader can send to me or post the testimony in the Comments section. I will pin it to the top.)

Maggie Haberman is no surprise. She is a former Daily News political reporter who thrived at the Times by engaging in “access journalism.” Haberman was brutal in her reporting on Hillary Clinton’s non-scandal relating to emails, but passively supportive in her reporting on Trump, withholding some of the most damning details discovered during her interviews and investigations.   

Katie Tur was a surprise—but not really. Nancy Pelosi recently scolded Tur on-air for being an “apologist” for Trump. On another occasion, Tur mused whether it was “fair” for New York to charge Trump with business fraud. Katy Tur Asks Whether It's Fair to Charge Trump For Fraud (mediaite.com).

But it doesn’t stop there. Ari Melber frequently platforms pro-Trump surrogates or Republicans who oppose Trump but are happy to trash Joe Biden (like former Governor John Kasich). Alex Wagner hosted a Republican consultant on Friday evening and allowed the consultant to expound on Joe Biden’s alleged weaknesses as a candidate. Wagner either didn’t care to contradict his misstatements or was not equipped to do so. Either way, she platformed a Republican operative and failed to fact-check him.

So, yeah, it feels like the leading news organization on the side of democracy and decency is giving unchecked airtime to Trump surrogates, current Republicans, or former Republicans who will rejoin the GOP when Trump is gone. The MSNBC hosts rarely challenge the anti-Biden bias of those guests. (Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, and Lawrence O’Donnell are exceptions.)

What should we do? On the whole, outlets like MSNBC deserve our support. Without it, the leading source of criticism of Trump and MAGA extremism may disappear. But be prepared to send critical emails and turn off offending programs when they drift into placid acceptance of lies about Biden.

Also, support independent writers like Heather Cox Richardson, Simon Rosenberg, Joyce Vance, Jay Kuo, Jessica Craven, Dan Rather, Robert Reich, Judd Legum, Lucian K. Truscott IV, Dan Pfeiffer and others on Substack who are striving to bring balance to reporting on the news. Talking Points Memo and The Guardian are also high on my list of objective sources.

Most importantly, you must become a reliable news source for friends and colleagues. If you read a factual, well-written article, op-ed, or newsletter, do not hesitate to forward it to others. I know that thousands of you forward this newsletter to friends and family—and I encourage more of you to do so!

Millions of people are hungry for objectivity, balance, and hope in the face of a news industry that profits from cynicism and negativity. Do friends and family a favor by giving them something positive to hold onto during challenging news cycles.

We are engaged in a permanent information war. You must be a warrior for truth in that ongoing struggle. I wish it were otherwise, but here we are. If you become a source of truth and hope for others, you will feel less besieged by the misinformation and bias that washes over us daily. Instead, you will take charge of the narrative in your life, a narrative grounded in truth and accuracy. It doesn’t get any better than that!

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

+

“World War III will be a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.”

~ Marshall McLuhan (some decades ago)

[ktempestbradford]

Content Moderation Isn't As Hard As They Say

Another issue from the Atlantic article on Substack that bears discussing is this bit:

Moderating online content is notoriously tricky. Amid the ongoing crisis in Israel and Gaza, Amnesty International recently condemned social-media companies’ failure to curb a burst of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic speech, at the same time that it criticized those companies for “over-broad censorship” of content from Palestinian and pro-Palestinian accounts—which has made sharing information and views from inside Gaza more difficult. When tech platforms are quick to banish posters, partisans of all stripes have an incentive to accuse their opponents of being extremists in an effort to silence them. But when platforms are too permissive, they risk being overrun by bigots, harassers, and other bad-faith actors who drive away other users, as evidenced by the rapid erosion of Twitter, now X, under Musk. In a post earlier this year, a Substack co-founder, Hamish McKenzie, implied that his company’s business model would largely obviate the need for content moderation. “We give communities on Substack the tools to establish their own norms and set their own terms of engagement rather than have all that handed down to them by a central authority,” he wrote. But even a platform that takes an expansive view of free speech will inevitably find itself making judgments about what to take down and what to keep up—as Substack’s own terms of service attest. ... Ultimately, the First Amendment gives publications and platforms in the United States the right to publish almost anything they want. But the same First Amendment also gives them the right to refuse to allow their platform to be used for anything they don’t want to publish or host.

I don't agree that moderating online content is "tricky" in the way that the article writer posits it. Even that first example is presented as if it's somehow talking out of both sides of one's mouth to condemn social media companies for allowing anti-Semitic and Islamophobic speech while suppressing pro-Palestinian posts and accounts. What?

And that bit about partisans using a network's propensity to use the banhammer as a tool to silence their opponents is indeed a thing, but is only effective if the network's banning "policies" (used very loosely here) are vague and mostly run by bots. It can even be a problem when humans get involved in the moderation if said humans don't truly understand what they're looking at or they have been trained improperly.

Back in 2017 ProPublica published a deep dive into what people who are tasked with reviewing flagged content are trained to see as appropriate or not. It wasn't a pretty picture.

There's also the part about language and cultural understanding. If a platform outsources their content moderation to a country where they can get that labor for "cheap", the individuals reviewing the content may not know English well enough to spot a problem or know the culture of the post origin well enough to understand dog whistles or even outright bigotry if it's not on the list given to them of what's not acceptable.

For issues at the scale of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and other very large networks, the main solution is and has always been money. Money to pay people inside of a country or culture to review the materials. Money to train them properly. Money to support the mental health tolls this work takes on people. You know what companies hate to do? Spend money on stuff that isn't CEO pay.

But let's be real here: the ultimate problem in content moderation isn't that it's tricky, it's that corporate owned networks aren't willing to take an ethical stand on things like what constitutes racism, sexism, homophobia, or any other true bigotry. They're also not willing to take a stand against ideas like "reverse racism" or "reverse sexism" and similar. You won't see them saying: Those reverse isms aren't a real thing and we won't tolerate that crap around here.

You can't create a moderation policy that covers every tiny detail of what is and isn't okay and what words are and aren't okay and such granular stuff as that. You can have a code of ethics and a morality that prioritizes harm reduction, especially for marginalized groups. Not so ironically, I've seen these kinds of policies most when looking at various Mastodon instances suggested to me and others. Here's a good example.

Yes, I know that scale is a huge factor here and I don't discount it. Scale doesn't mean this kind of moderation is impossible, just more difficult or costly as things grow. Yet it's not difficult to take a stand and say: We don't want white supremacists or Nazis on our platform, period. As The Atlantic points out, platforms and social networks have a First Amendment right to do that.

The Substack CEOs? Aren't willing.

[ocean-in-my-rebel-soul]

Ocean's Writing Commissions Sheet 2023

I’m taking ongoing commissions for both fanfic and original fiction. I’ve built my pricing list and info sheet below! [updated as of 3/22/2023]

For examples of my writing, check out my AO3 account or my writing tag 1 and writing tag 2.

How to Commission:

The commission process is fairly simple!

Message me here or on Discord (Ocean#0483) to discuss the potential project

We will set an estimate and I’ll send a payment request for the deposit (if required)

I’ll send you a rough outline and you can make any changes needed in order to best fit your vision

After the outline is accepted, I’ll finish writing up your fic within 1-3 months 

Final/full payment due before posting

I’ll be in contact with you through the writing process, especially if we’re working with OCs, so make sure you’re able to keep an eye on your messages!

Current Fandoms

Dragon Age (all games, some novels)

Critical Role (Campaign 2, The Mighty Nein)

Voltron: Legendary Defender (the Netflix series)

Pricing and Payments

Pricing in USD. Orders of $50 and up may require a deposit of 50% upon commissioning.

All invoices will be paid via Paypal. 

Price is per 1500-2000 words: $25

Totally will write these things/topics! (Not an exhaustive list)

See “will not write” list for items marked with an asterisk):

Smut

BDSM/some kinks*  

Angst/pain/unhappy endings

LGBTQIA+ characters

Neurodivergent characters

Canonically straight characters written as bi/pan or exploring/curious

Age gaps (as long as the younger party is over 18)*

Power dynamics and kink fantasy

Canon characters

Original/own characters (will need reference materials for OCs)

AUs  

Rarepairs and crack fics

Some crossovers

Will not write these topics/things! (Not an exhaustive list)

= Horror genre (some blood/gore is fine)

= Canonically queer characters written as straight

= Western genre

= No sexual relationships with parties under 18 years old  (Exception: both/all parties being of similar age with fade-to-black scenes, still no explicit sex with characters under 18 years old)

* Kinks I will not write (not an exhaustive list):

= Scat/waterplay/emetophilia

= Age play (not including consensual scenarios using adult characters with an age difference)

If you have any other questions, feel free to send me an ask, a message, or a Discord message (Ocean#0483)!

[essayofthoughts]

Hi! I just stumbled on your Little Moments In The Quiet series on ao3 and I wanted to drop by and tell you that your Critical Role fic is great! I'm really interested in your "Sylas Briarwood Gets To Live, Bitches" AU, and anything you have planned for Zahra and Kash! Thanks for sharing your writing!

Aw thank you! I'm glad you enjoy it so much; I've had a lot of fun with each of those fics and it's always nice to know when others have enjoyed them. I'm actually working quite a lot on the Zahra and Kash fics right now, so with any luck there should be some additions to Little Moments In The Quiet relatively soon, while Sylas Lives, Bitches is much farther down the list.

So hows about a few snips for you?

From the ongoing Zahra and Kash fic, which starts when they meet on the job where Zahra saves his life:

“This is stupid,” he says, cutting through everyone else. “We’re not gonna get anywhere by digging; this is-” He pauses, glances to see if anyone is too close by before continuing more quietly. “This is a fucking cult. Trust me - they won’t tell us shit. They’ll only talk if they think they can convert us, in which case you should fucking run.” He meets Hydris’ eyes. “This is a lost cause. I’d rather go back to the Take and accept the slap for failing than continuing. We’re not gonna get jack shit and if we do, we’ll have the whole village bearing down on us. It isn’t worth it.” Keith scoffs. Kash doesn’t bother looking over at him. “I know cults,” he says. “This has the word written on it in great big capital letters.” Laralel is listening, and Fenick beside her. Serhan’s eyes are narrowed, but she’s a suspicious lady, he knows she’ll be thinking about it. Keith doesn’t give two shits but then Keith is a dick so who cares. Boldar just seems bored if anything. “I appreciate the input,” Hydris says and oh great, that means she’s gonna ignore him, and he can’t help his scoff as she turns to the others. “Do we have anything else to go on?”

And from Sylas Briarwood Gets To Live, Bitches, (uncommon find: Pike POV!):

Her amulet feels warm in her hands - of course it is. Here, in this form, it is light and her goddess’ power. Back with her body, her amulet has been clasped in her hands for hours. Sarenrae, she thinks, prayer beyond spoken words and instead simple intent and concepts. You are of redemption. Bring them back to when they did not need this from us. A prayer. A prayer of kindness and of hope, a prayer that Sarenrae’s eyes will watch them through the Raven Queen’s veil of feathers, will perhaps take them up as projects so they do not fall to the pits of hell- Pike does not expect the surge she feels, something bright and wonderful, something more. She opens her eyes, and the vast reaching gloom of the cavern is suddenly lit with daylight. Up the stairs, Sylas Briarwood cringes back - but this light does not burn him, not as Pelor’s sun does. Sarenrae does not harm. Sarenrae helps. As Pike watches, Sarenrae’s hand, immense as a house, descends, fingers gentle as they touch Sylas Briarwood. He does not disintegrate. He does not burn or fade or vanish. As they watch he falls heavily to his knees, gasps audible as they echo off the stone, and Pike doesn’t need Sarenrae’s words, echoing through the chamber to know what has been done. “To you, I give you back a life lost,” says the echoing voice like sunlight and honey and healing. Sylas Briarwood breathes with gasping need, with the desperation of someone not used to it. How many years, Pike wonders, has he been dead? How strange must it feel, to be alive again?

Hope you enjoy these, because I've no idea when exactly any of my WIPs will be done! I am chipping away at Ghost Cass, Delia AU, the Kashra fic and a rotating set of other small WIPs.

[blackdiscoveries]

Rep. Summer Lee Fires Back: Defending Fair Education for All

Rep. Summer Lee Fires Back: Defending Fair Education for All https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjfF-DF5UOw In this video, titled "Rep. Summer Lee Fires Back: Defending Fair Education for All," we look at the heated exchange between Rep. Summer Lee and Rep. Glenn Grothman during a recent congressional hearing. Rep. Lee passionately defends the importance of fair education for all students, standing up against Grothman's concerns about school funding and educational standards. This video breaks down the key moments and highlights why Rep. Lee's voice is so crucial in the fight for equality in our schools. Don't miss this insightful discussion on the ongoing debates in Congress, especially when it comes to critical topics like school funding, CRT, and educational fairness. 🔍 Timecodes 0:00 - Intro 1:16 - Rep. Glenn Grothman 6:35 - Rep. Summer Lee 12:26 - Stay Woke, Addressing Real Issues 🔔 Subscribe to uncover the untold stories of Black heroes, activists, and cultural pioneers! Don't miss out on captivating & powerful Black documentaries! https://www.youtube.com/@BlackDiscoveries/?sub_confirmation=1 ✅ Important Link to Follow 💰 Cashapp https://ift.tt/Ok4BoWM ✅ Stay Connected With Me. 👉 Facebook: https://ift.tt/um6wr8Y 👉 Instagram: https://ift.tt/LAIMXk9 👉 Website: https://ift.tt/iY9yKsJ 📩 For Business Inquiries: support@blackdiscoveries.com ============================= 🎬 Recommended Playlists 👉 Black History Stories https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3tHNA-3FfE7IYxdXJoCq0vQTcOU_Gn0j 👉 Black History https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3tHNA-3FfE7WdbG0bcc4P070xSIV2yAc 🎬 WATCH MY OTHER VIDEOS: 👉 West Virginia: Couple Accused of Enslaving Adopted Kids https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPUM52HVK9c 👉 Jasmine Crockett Unscripted and Still Called Out Their Lies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_KfzcQxJ3U 👉 Jasmine Crockett Didn’t Come to Play Games https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfrkLrGGVgI 👉 Malcolm X: Collective Disasters are Acts of God https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWgllR_91bs 👉 Health ALERT: Black Women & Girls at RISK from Hair Products https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOyasMYKF1A ============================= ✅ About Black Discoveries. Welcome to "Black Discoveries" - Your Gateway to Black Documentaries! 🔍 Explore the forgotten narratives of heroes, activists, and groundbreaking pioneers who shaped history. Witness the Civil Rights Movement's triumphs and struggles and celebrate the Harlem Renaissance's cultural awakening. 🔔"Black Discoveries" is more than just a channel; it celebrates Black excellence, creativity, and resilience. My documentaries aim to enlighten, educate, and inspire viewers of all backgrounds. 🌎 Together, let's embark on a transformative journey of knowledge, empathy, and understanding through the lens of Black Documentaries. Join "Black Discoveries" today and participate in the movement to celebrate and honor the rich heritage of Black Americans. For Collaboration and Business inquiries, please use the contact information below: 📩 Email: support@blackdiscoveries.com 🔔 Subscribe to explore inspiring black documentaries on the Civil Rights Movement and powerful stories of heroes, activists, and cultural pioneers. https://www.youtube.com/@BlackDiscoveries/?sub_confirmation=1 ================================= ⚠️ Disclaimer: I do not accept any liability for any loss or damage incurred from you acting or not acting as a result of watching any of my publications. You acknowledge that you use the information I provide at your own risk. Do your research. This video is intended to be informative and respectful of all viewpoints. Copyright Notice: This video and my YouTube channel contain dialogue, music, and images that are the property of Black Discoveries. You are authorized to share the video link and channel and embed this video in your website or others as long as a link back to my YouTube channel is provided. © Black Discoveries via Black Discoveries https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTNr0N__QwstBhgCtvQcjhA August 28, 2024 at 05:30AM

[permanentlyexhaustedpigeon88]

Just me, screaming into the void to get something off my chest.  Read more beneath the cut?

Like many out there, I am an adult child of some very authoritarian parents.  “Do what I say, when I say, because I say so.”  No room for questions.  Questions equate to “back-talk”, and that will be punished, sometimes severely.  Discipline the child for any transgression, because they are a child, and we are adults, and complete obedience is paramount.  Anything less is simply not acceptable. The list goes on and on.

It’s taken me a while to realize exactly how that’s impacted me, over the years, and the number of my personality traits I can attribute to how I grew up is astonishing, to say the least.  I’m not saying this or posting this to place blame, since everything that happened is in the past, and cannot be changed, and now I would much rather just move on, and try to better myself as much as I can.  I guess I’m just trying to sort out my ongoing thoughts on everything I’m learning as I’m trying to improve?  And this seemed like the best space to do that, at least for now.

The last two times I’ve seen my parents, it’s been like something has possessed me to try and talk about this with them.  In the past, it absolutely would’ve been coming from a desire to lay on the blame, or desperate need for an apology; basically just approaching it all from a very negative area in my own heart and mind.  But these two specific instances were completely different.  I came at it from a completely hypothetical angle, trying to make it very clear that I was not putting them on trial for anything they did, specifically.  For his part, during all of this, my father remained almost completely silent, the entire time, but my mom?

Oh wow, did she ever get defensive.

Retrospectively, I suppose I should’ve seen that coming.  It’s not like it’s a secret that she’s never been open to perceived criticism of any kind.  But what really threw me was her absolute refusal to even consider that any of what she did might’ve been handled in a different way.

“I refuse to apologize for how I raised you.”  Her exact words.  She then went on to bring up a time when she and my father had blamed me for something I truly did not do (I was around five when this happened), and punished me for it accordingly, as though this somehow had any relevance to what we were trying to discuss at the time.  Still trying to make sense of that one.

Anyway, compared to how I would’ve reacted to this a year ago, I did not respond with anger.  Both times, I allowed her to say her piece, vent, release her own anger, or whatever you want to call it, and remained completely calm.  It did not turn into a huge fight that ended in name-calling, or someone storming away, and the subject was changed to something else not long after.  But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

Maybe it’s yet another result of said authoritarian parenting, but I cannot fathom the complete inability to accept that she might have been wrong, at least once.  As someone who has always erred on the side of assuming that I am always wrong, it completely boggles my mind.  My gut instinct whenever I detect even a whiff of wrong-doing is to apologize, even if it’s not really needed (I’m that person that says ‘sorry’ for saying ‘sorry’), so the idea that admitting to being ‘wrong’ is the end of the world is just something I cannot wrap my mind around.

What I’ve learned from this, I suppose, is that I should stop trying to bring the topic up at all, from any angle, and I fully plan to work on starting to accept that right now.  But I've discovered that it all still boils down to an authoritarian mindset, even though my parents are in their sixties, now, and I am thirty-five.  It’s still very much the mentality of “what we say is law” even though I haven’t lived under their roof in ten years.  Discussion is not an option.  In essence, I am not, and never will be an adult with a right to my own opinions in their mind (at least not if they differ from theirs).  But where a year ago that would’ve made me incredibly angry, now?

Now it just makes me sad.

So what is the point of this post, you might ask?  Honestly?  Other than for me to just toss all of my jumbled thoughts into the void, I don’t really know.  I guess at the very least, I’m just trying to advocate for change.  At its core, discipline is not inherently wrong, but it should be done in a way that is appropriate for the child.  In a way that encourages them to learn about the world, and their place in it, instead of preaching mindless submission.  

As a disclaimer, I am not a parent, and likely will never become one, so I don’t know the first thing about the difficulties raising tiny humans can bring.  I don’t know how terrifying it can be to know you are responsible for molding them into the human that they might one day become.  But there has to be a way to find balance between ensuring your children know right from wrong, and ensuring that they grow up thinking they are inferior in every possible way.  Because it’s taken me thirty five years just to start trying to move forward. To start trying to change how I view not only myself, but the world as a whole.  

And I won’t even pretend to think that would have ever happened if others (you know who you are 💕) hadn’t been patient enough to guide me there, first.

[pears-trinkets]

Its honestly unsurprising but still disappointing how many white (especially us & uk) disability content creators with a big audience conveniently ignore the ongoing genocide in Gaza and everything that is connected to it. Especially because its a mass-disableing event that often leaves survivors with one or two amputated limbs (making Gaza the place with the most amputations on children in the world), infections due to lack of healthcare, horrible living situations, malnutrition and a weak immune system and more.

But these influencers or YouTubers or TikTokers that got rich off of "how it is to be disabled" videos and making themselves the voice of a whole community/minority are completely looking the other way.

They only open their mouths when pressured and then their "support" remains mainly on the surface level, without action or change. Meanwhile they also look away when they're being critiqued for taking sponsorships from brands associated with Israel and the genocide or don't even feel ashamed to collab with companies on the BDS boycott list and sell the consumption of their product as a lifestyle.

Its okay to not know something, most of us started learning in October too. But you have to listen and learn.

I'm sick of hearing "being disabled is hard, that's why should sign up with today's sponsor betterhelp!!" while this burning garbage dump of a company is gifting all the IOF soldiers free therapy because the war they started is affecting them. I'm not even gonna go into betterhelp selling their most vulnerable patients' data that could be seriously harmful. And im not only talking about disabled people or people with any kind of migration background, its a lot of LGBTQIA+ people too. But those creators don't care about that while milking pride month until the last drop.

They are part of the LGBTQIA+ community themselves. But the only people they care about is themselves and their family. If someone else is endangered by the content they're promoting its none of their business anymore and gets you blocked.

Which is another great example of being one minority doesn't mean you can't be homophobic/racist/ableist/etc. Especially if you're while and wealthy.

I don't care that you have a family to feed or bills to pay if you're doing it by exploitation and endangerment of others.

You can't claim you're fighting for a community and just putting information out into the world while your life is paid by brand deals with Starbucks where you make a quirky WORKING AT STARBUCKS FOR A DAY video. Meanwhile everyone who keeps up with news and recent events has been criticizing and boycotting them for years because of their mistreatment of workers and killing every chance of unionization.

Yeah, you can argue "its not an influencers job to speak out on events like this" with people who do quirky humor skits or make up videos or something, even though I don't agree with that stance either. (Let's remember how a lot of make up and beauty products are made in Israel or with resources they stole, same with food, clothes, etc etc etc) But if you're a disabled content creator who makes money off of that title its literally the kind of content you make. Its literally what they talk about in every post, every video, every podcast. And them getting selective about their support and acceptance and awareness tells you everything you need to know.

No, not every disabled person has to be an activist and take it up to themselves to educate other people. Yes, most of them make content about their own experience only. But none of that exists in a vacuum where you get to profit off of one part while looking the other way. No one expects a big speech, a ted talk about whats going on or even an apology. Just acknowledgement and harm reduction, but apparently thats too much to ask already.

[scary-movies-on-netflix]

"The Zone of Interest" (2023): response to a terrible movie review

I don't usually do media criticism, but this "review" of "The Zone of Interest" (2023) has irked me since reading it in March. You'll excuse me whilst I rant about it a bit, ok?

Director Jonathan Glazer’s acclaimed movie “The Zone of Interest” recently won two Oscars — for best international feature film and for sound. Steven Spielberg has declared it to be the best Holocaust film since his own “Schindler’s List” came out in 1993. In his Oscar acceptance speech, Glazer, who is himself Jewish, invoked the Holocaust to criticize Israel’s military actions in Gaza. His speech drew some praise but also criticism from the Jewish community — including from the movie’s executive producer, Danny Cohen. But in some important respects, the film is even more troubling than Glazer’s speech.

Got it. This isn't really about the movie. It's about the fact that Jonathan Glazer dared to criticize the ongoing humanitarian disaster in Gaza. The author of this piece, this hit piece, is Peter Rutland. He's a professor of some sort at "Wesleyan University." As far as I can tell, he's never written a movie review before. He has written some other op-eds for CNN, including at least one acknowledging grievances on both sides of the Gaza conflict. That's actually a more measured statement than you'll see from most pundits these days, so the one-sidedness of this movie review is just confounding.

Let's continue:

The film documents the mundane life of the family of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss (played by Christian Friedel) and his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), while the atrocities themselves are kept out of sight behind the concentration camp wall. It was inspired by the 2014 novel “The Zone of Interest” by Martin Amis, the enfant terrible of English letters whose works use satire as a vehicle for reveling in money, sex and power. What the satiric movie “Saltburn” does for the English upper class, “The Zone of Interest” is doing for National Socialism. While the evil of Nazism is an abstraction in the movie, out of sight and out of mind, viewers are invited to identify with the daily life of the family Höss. The lush images of the film convey an idyllic family life, with an immaculately clean house and bountiful garden. The Nazis loved their children and their pets. They played the piano.

The audience is not being "invited to identify with" the Höss family. We are being invited to pierce through their self-deception. Their existence is not "idyllic." Herr Höss is cheating on his wife. Frau Höss is brittle and mean. The children (the boys at least) are traumatized. The family has material wealth, including a "lush" garden and "immaculately clean house," but that's produced on the backs of slave labor. These are fairly obvious points. Frau Höss's mother understood (which is why she snuck out in the middle of the night), but this is apparently too obscure for Rutland to grasp.

Glazer has explained that his goal was to show that the perpetrators of the Holocaust were not monsters but humans, just like us. It could have happened anywhere: to anyone, by anyone. Viewers are invited to consider that as we go about our mundane lives, evil is taking place somewhere behind a wall, which we chose not to look over.

Yes! That's the point! Atrocities aren't committed by monsters. They're committed by people. Actual people.

But the whole idea of making a Nazi pastoral film is historically misleading and frankly offensive. As Israeli film critic Avner Shavit has pointed out, Glazer has managed to make a film about the Holocaust in which we never see any Jews.

First of all, "the idea of making a Nazi pastoral film" might indeed be "frankly offensive," but art has no obligation to make you feel good about anything. Good art challenges you and forces you to consider strange perspectives. Sometimes it might offend you! Second, why is "the idea of making a Nazi pastoral film" "historically misleading?" The Nazi government had an entire government ministry dedicated to pumping out propaganda, including pastoral films.

The second point (that "Glazer has managed to make a film about the Holocaust in which we never see any Jews") is just boring and tendentious. Peter Rutland, people have multiple senses. No, we don't see any Jews. We hear them. Their suffering is ever present. The film was praised for its sound design, which included and highlighted the horrors being inflicted upon the Jews. Apart from that, yes, Peter Rutland, you actually could make a Holocaust movie without any Jews in it. (Has Peter Rutland seen "Conspiracy" (2001)?) That's called art.

Likewise, in a 45-minute discussion of the film by the cast and crew at the Cannes Film Festival in May, the question of Jews never came up. Instead, producer James Wilson talked about how white racism and colonialism were driven by beliefs “that were very similar to the ideas that were propagated by National Socialism in the 1930s.” An audience member saw connections to the “Don’t say gay” law in Florida.

This point has nothing to do with the movie. Peter Rutland, pedant, is just upset about the statements made during one press conference. Again, this is not a movie review. It's a hit piece.

But the Holocaust happened to the Jews, at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators, and its specificity should not be diluted into a general meditation on the banality of evil.

The Holocaust happened to the Jews. This is not disputed. This movie does not make light of that fact. But Peter Rutland continues, "its specificity should not be diluted into a general meditation on the banality of evil." Why not? No, really. Why not?

Peter Rutland is once again demonstrating that he's angry about Glazer. Instead of complaining directly about Glazer, he's bitching about a movie he clearly doesn't understand. I'm actually questioning whether he understands art at all. The Holocaust "should not be diluted into a general meditation" on things. Really? "Schindler's List" (1993) is a movie about the Holocaust and a meditation on the nature of evil. No movie needs Peter Rutland's permission to be about multiple things at once.

The movie’s conceit is not a particularly clever or original take on history. The fact that the guards had happy moments during their time at the camp was vividly revealed by the photo album of deputy commander Karl-Friedrich Höcker that was donated to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2007.

I don't really care for Peter Rutland's thoughts on what's "clever or original." He sounds like a bore and, as explained above, barely seems to understand the nature of art.

Glazer is echoing elements of the “banality of evil” argument laid out in Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem.” In his 1961 trial, Adolf Eichmann’s defense was that he was just a bureaucrat carrying out orders. But Arendt was wrong. Due to the release of long-hidden tapes that started to become available in the 2010s that the Nazi official made while in exile in Argentina, we now know that Eichman, the chief logistics officer of the Holocaust, was an ideological zealot deeply committed to National Socialism.

Peter Rutland misspelled Eichmann's name. Ha ha.

For some time scholars have studied “banal nationalism”: the expression of national identity in everyday life. But there was nothing banal about the Holocaust. Indeed, the film implies that Höss was just doing his job. But Höss was not just a bored bureaucrat and family man. He was a fanatical Nazi who had joined the party in 1922 and was sent to jail for participating in a political assassination the following year.

What even is the point of these two paragraphs? Peter Rutland realizes that isn't actually Höss on the screen, right? This is a work of fiction. Moreover, this doesn't diminish the point that people committed the Holocaust. People like, yes, Höss. They weren't literal monsters. They were men and women with jobs and families and pets. I went to a museum in Erfurt, Germany, where they built the furnaces for the death camps. They were designed by engineers, built by workers of various types, and then delivered by truck or train by drivers. That's the "banality of evil": regular people mindlessly and unquestioningly performing all the little necessary acts that it takes to produce industrial-scale evil.

People need to be reminded that this capacity for evil can exist inside them. We can't just assume that this evil will never emerge, hope for the best that we can keep it inside. It's always going to be a struggle to control this side of our nature.

“The Zone of Interest” is rather tedious as a film. It barely has a plot, and the conversations and daily routines are repetitious. Several scenes will leave viewers confused, such as the one where Höss finds a jawbone while fishing in the river and drags his kids out of the water. I would not have known what was happening except I had previously read in a review that there are supposedly human remains being dumped in the river.

Peter Rutland's article is rather tedious as a movie review, because it's not a movie review. This man does not understand film.

Likewise, the local girl going out at night to leave food for the camp inmates (based on a true story) will have mystified most of the audience. The scene will have pleased the Polish authorities who helped to produce the film, since it portrays the Poles as helping the Jews. Yes, some Poles did heroically help Jews. But some joined in pogroms, or betrayed Jews in hiding to the Germans. These grim facts have been documented by historian Jan Gross, provoking intense controversy in Poland. No sign of that in this film.

This is a ludicrous complaint. Did Peter Rutland run this by anyone before sending it to CNN? Did any editor at CNN suggest that maybe a movie doesn't have to address every single historical point that could be possibly be raised about a particular time period? This is a tightly-constructed movie about a specific set of characters, but now he wants it to suddenly expand in scope to address how some Poles were collaborators of the Holocaust. Does Peter Rutland raise this same complaint about every movie he sees? Did he watch "Schindler's List" and seethe that it didn't include information about Polish collaborators? Did he watch the beginning of "Saving Private Ryan" (1998) and rage that it didn't focus enough on the brave Canadian soldiers fighting on Juno beach? I doubt it. He just wants to whine about this movie because he disagrees with some statements by Glazer.

There is a long history of fascination with the aesthetics of the Third Reich, as in the films of Leni Riefenstahl. Back in 1975, Susan Sontag wrote a perceptive essay condemning the fetishization of Nazi paraphernalia. “The Zone of Interest” will certainly appeal to those who admire the aesthetics of Nazism: the striking uniforms, the distinctive “fashy” (short for fascist) haircuts, the nice animals. It will also appeal to people who like gardening.

This movie is a meditation on character and memory, but Peter Rutland repeatedly demonstrates that he doesn't understand that. He collapses everything to a mere celebration of aesthetics, because, based on everything he's written, he only comprehends the surface details of what he's seeing on the screen, and even that comprehension is clouded by his personal animosity toward Glazer.

But viewers who want insights into the tragic history of the Holocaust should look elsewhere.

This is a pathetic. Peter Rutland offers no insights into this movie. This is a political op-ed disguised (poorly, I might add), as a "movie review." Both the author and CNN should be ashamed for publishing this piece of shit.