#which leads onto their opposing positions in regards to succession

[backjustforberena]

Corlys and Rhaenys at their daughter's wake, with their grandchildren. DO NOT REPOST.

[bidrums]

My idea for the Repo sequel that we’ll never get and if we do probably won’t be like this but it’s my post and my idea so fuck it

Potential title- Repo! The Genetic Opera 2: Great Googly Moogly It’s All Gone To Shit Even More Than The Last Time /j

This will be a bit rambly and all over the place, and I’m going to format it with character arcs rather than plot points. Hopefully that will make this less all over the place.

So without further ado, here’s my idea:

(Read more because this will be loooooong)

General ideas:

-This will focus on the long-term fallout from the Opera Incident in the first film. It will be focused on one event, but on a larger scale

-Two plots: Master Plot and Lower Plot (because there will always be 20 subplots in an opera and I want to distinguish the main subplot from the other 19 lol)

-The themes from the original story of 1. Destiny versus choice and 2. Dystopian Economic Lessons will still be present

-It’s still an opera and we will milk all the opera we can out of it dammit

Master Plot:

-Set this years after the Opera Incident

-Focus on the Largo siblings and have Shilo be more on the side

-Go more into MOS and just how it affects people

-The tension will be the fact that Amber has her brothers on short leashes but is barely able to keep them in line, and it’s obvious to anyone with a set of eyes (so all the poor people)

-Luigi is in charge of the Repo Men, and he’s loving it. Unfortunately, he’s been ramping up their activity and setting them loose on everyone every chance he gets. Over the course of the story he’s shown to be going after people he has personal grudges against, as well as anyone he thinks will bring a profit to Geneco. He’ll get killed by one of his cronies, which he’ll be very shocked by

-Pavi’s in charge of surgery operations, but the messy parts that aren’t glamorous and are more importantly out of any PR fiascos. That doesn’t stop him from getting into PR fiascos, but those are just him being him. He also uses his position for personal gain, having a new face each week and having to replace Genterns and customers each week. His fate will be more ambiguous, but he does lose access to all his faces and will be cut off from the power that let him run around doing it. It’ll be heavily implied he gets MOS.

-Amber is just Not Vibing. She isn’t the star opera singer, having a company to run and all, and she HATES that. She’s good at handling the PR and appearing competent and even has gone without changing her appearance for a month! But she’s also struggling with the management side of things regarding surgeries and the organs and keeping the repossessions on schedule. And her history with street zydrate doesn’t help with the efforts to crack down on illegal Z doings, which she has been doing (the Repo men do more than repossess now!). She also knows her brothers are cooperating until they get the chance to take over and is trying to get that to not happen in her lifetime. At the end she’ll be stripped of everything and will be just another face looking for a hit of z in the crowd

-There’s gonna be a lot of trios and duets about these three, and Amber gets a couple of solos. As a treat.

-The Repo Men play a bigger role in this, obviously. Expand on the lore of the Repo Man, but keep them faceless unless they’re injured in some way (for example, Luigi stabs one to make a point). Make it clear that a good chunk of them are doing this under duress, wether to pay for a surgery or because of blackmail. But those people aren’t distinguishable under the uniforms. At the end they as a collective will be the ones in charge and not just the servants of the company, and everyone will live in fear of the Repo Man regardless of if you’ve paid off your debt or not

-Graverobber is still the narrator and he’s the only character that’s consistently thriving. More bodies to make more Z, after all. He’ll be the one to introduce the concept of an economic bubble, which will build off of the “for every market a submarket grows” deal he had, as well as set the stakes for Geneco. He’s gotten bolder, lurking around company property and doing business in more places than just alleys. No backstory, he doesn’t need one. He’s here to narrate shit and give you the cure. At the end, he’s the king of the streets and if you aren’t one of the people who can afford the ever-increasing expenses of getting treated by Geneco, you go to him. 

-The climax will start with a broadcasted speech by Amber (thinking of something like “An appeal to [something]”. It’ll be right after Pavi gets demoted in whatever way he gets, and it’s intercut with Luigi and the Repo Men. The speech will be a solo set in the Opera and will basically be Amber trying to keep things under control as well as try to get the people who have been starting to rebel to not and work things out. It’s interrupted by the Repo Men stabbing Luigi and tossing his corpse onto the stage. Then we get something called “The bubble pops” or similar, which is the payoff for the economic bubble motif. Maybe something about crashes. People flood the opera from everywhere, carrying Amber and the remaining Genterns with them. It spills out into the streets, where confused and scared people are surrounded by the people hurting. And in the eye of the storm, narrating everything as calm as can be, is Graverobber

-The last song is the aftermath where Graverobber is hanging out doing his thing while the Repo Men prowl the streets. Not everything completely sucks, and you know eventually someone else will take over and build another market that will spawn a sub-market. That’s for another day, however.

Lower Plot

-A few side characters that work for Geneco will have some focus, mainly in the departments of “trying to keep this company going” and “trying not to die due to the Largo siblings”. They’ll be used to show how the power struggles trickle down through the company until they alongside the Repo Men take that power away.

-But the lower plot belongs to my girl Shilo. 

-Poor Shilo can’t catch a break ever and I’d like to apologize for adding to that fact

-Shilo, having reclaimed her identity and her destiny, is still scared of what her father’s legacy will do to her and how people perceive her. So she swaps out one form of isolation for another, this time doing as much as she can to donate and start things to curb the need for Repo Men. They’re not very successful and have become something of a joke or just a hollow way to act like she’s doing something. Which she’s trying to do, she really is. She’s just not very successful

-She’s kept the holograms of her mom but has added a few of Nathan as well. The basement kill room is now her bug collection room. Small changes like that, but it’s not that changed

-She doesn’t really go out during the day that much, and only sticks to a few locations at night. She will hang out with Graverobber for a chat and cryptic narration, but she’ll be as detached of an observer as she can be

-Towards the climax, her health takes a sharp downwards turn and she has to go into public. Turns out she did inherit Marni’s blood disease, which manifests later in life. Just a freak accident of the genes

-Desperate to keep public faith, Amber offers to pay for the surgery and cure to the disease. Shilo’s faced with the conundrum of what to do

-She decides to just take medication (real medication) and attempts to not believe that it’s secretly poison like she took her whole life. It help her, but it severs her ties with Geneco, leaving her to survive on her own

-The new lead opera singer is the one to warn Shilo of the impending disaster that is the climax, and she’s faced with another choice: bar herself in her house and accept the life she’s made as a shut-in, or brave the mob and actually be involved with public life once again

-She chooses the latter, and is the second, smaller eye of the storm. She and Graverobber make eye contact, he knowingly nods in a silent promise to keep her safe, and she runs into the Opera to see what the damage is

-Reprise of a solo she had, and maybe have a callback to the Opera incident in it

-After everything, Shilo is shown to be an opposing force to the Repo Men; a small force, but a force nevertheless. She’s turned her house into a kind of sanctuary where people are actually protected without a ruler, and has started to campaign for change. For people to decide what happens to their genes

So yeah, that’s what I imagine. Sorry that it’s all over the place! Let me know what you think

[fmdseolhwa]

30 5 DAYS OF CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT: THE IDOL EDITION : DAY ONE

+ Day One: Introduce your muse. Are they solo or in a group? What is their position in the group? Consider this day the day for writing the basics.

Seolhwa is the main vocal and lead dancer of Femme Fatale under Gold Star Media. She debuted on December 31, 2017 and is currently twenty-four years old (twenty-five Korean age).

+ Day Two: Talk about your muse’s childhood. Where did they grow up? Did they have any dream jobs besides being an idol? When did they realize they wanted to be an idol?

Seolhwa had a cushy childhood, raised within a family that was pretty well-off. There was a lot of pressure placed on grades and career success within the Moon household, as the Moon patriarch had a high-level career status position as the main executive and owner of a bank and their mother had been a successful television news announcer. Seolhwa’s first dream job was being an engineer. It’s a dream she held onto all through her teens, though she also developed an interest in international politics in her teens. Seolhwa decided on a whim that she wanted to be a famous singer when she was thirteen, but she’d never really fully planned on being an idol until she, once again on a whim, signed on as a Gold Star Media trainee.

+ Day Three: Take us back to when your muse was either recruited or auditioned to become an idol. How did that go? How did they feel getting up on stage for recruiters? If your muse could give their younger selves advice before the audition, what would they say?

One thing Seolhwa’s parents taught her growing up was to be confident in her own competence. Those who are insecure in their own abilities don’t get anywhere with them. Because of that and the fact that, at the time, her entire future wasn’t riding on being accepted into Gold Star, Seolhwa wasn’t that nervous. She was more determined to prove herself than anything. It was only five years ago that she auditioned and while she has grown in that time, there isn’t any advice she’d retroactively want to give herself.

+ Day Four: Remember the trainee days? What are some of your muse’s memories of being a trainee? How long were they a trainee? Were they worried about potentially not making a debut? Talk about any challenges they might have encountered.

Seolhwa was a trainee for about a year and a half. Most of her memories are in regards to extremely long hours. She had no real professional training in singing or dancing and she had to work hard to catch up to those around her. Seolhwa refused to be seen as a weak link among the trainees, so she dedicated everything she had to getting better, which meant, at times, getting very caught up in the toxic atmosphere idol training can be. If she’d stopped and given herself time to consider the possibility of not debuting, she would have worried, but she didn’t let herself consider that as an option.

+ Day Five: Recall your muse’s debut. What was the song they debuted with? How did it feel performing for the first time on stage as an idol? Feel free to bring up their thoughts about the concept, choreography, lyrics, music video, or other components.

Femme Fatale’s debut songs were “Boombayah” and “Whistle”. Seolhwa far preferred the latter song and still does to this day, but she was excited to debut with songs that felt so impactful. She took Femme Fatale’s immediate success as a sign of all of her hard work paying off, and the group’s debut era was one of the times she felt the most optimistic about the group. There haven’t been many of those in the time since.

+ Day Six: What concept does your muse think they can pull off best? Cutesy? Manly? Sexy? What concept do they have a hard time pulling off? What kind of concept would they want to do at some point?

Seolhwa believes she fits Femme Fatale’s concept well, but would like to try something more stripped back sometime. Something like “Stay” again would be nice, because she felt that fit her. She’d struggle the most with something full-on cute or something very in-your-face sexy as opposed to sensual.

[pauladchnd2c]

Something Told Research

Conceptual still life photography

Tips:

1. Choose Subjects that Speak to You

What you photograph is completely up to you. Have a search around the house to see if you can find something simple but interesting to start with. Please don’t feel like you have to take photos of fruit or flowers just because everyone else does: think outside the box without being overly ambitious.

If when you’re out and about something catches your eye, take it home with you (don’t steal it!) or make a note of it so as to remember to try photographing it in a still life context. Try to avoid reflective surfaces such as glass and metal to begin with, as they will be extremely difficult with regards to lighting. Once you’ve mastered the single object shots, try mixing it up, combine objects of contrasting shape, colour, texture and see what you can come up with.

2. Get Comfortable with Light and Lighting

Lighting doesn’t have to be expensive. I know certainly for me that a set of studio lights aren’t really within my budget, so for still life shoots I need to utilize all the light I can get my hands on, and that often means sunlight.

Remember that you have full control over the shoot, so if you want, find a room in which you can block out all natural light by using shutters or curtains, this way you will have complete control over the light upon your subject.

Using standard table lamps can work extremely well if used effectively. Be sure to try multiple positioning set ups, not all light has to come from the front of the object, side and back lighting will add interest, shadows and depth to the shot. Alternatively, choose a room that is well lit via a window, and use this to your advantage. The natural light from one side will comprehensively light your subject and you can compliment this with a lamp or reflector.

3. Get a Good Tripod and Work Your Angles

Depending on your lighting situation, you may or may not need to use a tripod and shutter release. I would recommend using these as they will allow you to observe and work with your subject matter. This set up will also allow you to use slightly longer shutter speeds than usual to ensure a small aperture allowing the image to be in focus front to back, if you so choose.

However, please don’t let a static camera stifle your creativity, it quickly gets forgotten that your camera has been sat in the same position for the whole shoot. Be sure to vary the angles and heights at which you are shooting. Otherwise, before you know it, you’ll have a whole collection of shots all take from the same point with little or know variation. Mix it up a bit. Try shooting at the level of the subject or try a bird’s eye view, looking down onto the subject, but be careful if you are moving around not to cast any shadows on your subject!

4. Get the Backdrop Right

Having a suitable backdrop for your subject matter will play a crucial role in the overall success of your shots. It’s best to keep it nice and simple, so it doesn’t interfere with your subject. A plain painted wall or a large sheet of white or plain colored paper would be ideal.

Think about how your choice of background contrasts the subject, do you want a neutral background, or are there tones that may work in complimenting the shades within your subject. For smaller objects, you may not need a backdrop as such, but instead require a surface to place the items on, for which something like black velvet is ideal, as it absorbs light and looks like a solid black surface.

5. Compose the Shot

The compositional element of your still life work is an absolutely crucial part of ensuring that your work is engaging and unique. Consider the rule of thirds, how can that be applied to your shoot to create a strong composition. Ensure there are no distractions within the frame, just the subject and the backdrop.

Be sure to vary the composition of the subject matter through the shoot and think outside the box. Where are you leading the eye within the image? Are you utilizing negative space or might it work to try and fill the frame? Engage with the subject, what are its defining features? What is it used for? Are you able to put it into context or does it work as a stand alone subject?

6. Take All Day Over It, If You Need

I often find that my mentality surrounding a shoot is dependent on the reason for the shoot. If I am simply taking photos for pleasure or for myself (as opposed to being assigned work by somebody else), I will be less stringent with ensuring that all the aspects of the shoot are as well executed as they can be. This is obviously a bad habit that am aiming to shed, but when it comes to still life photography, there is no reason not to get it right. You have as much time as you need to do a good job!

Unlike a landscape shoot, the light isn’t rapidly changing and unlike a portrait, you’re subject isn’t going to get bored of keeping still for long periods of time. Take advantage of this, set up your subject, lighting, backdrop and camera, try a few shots, then move things around a bit and have another go. If you get to a point where you feel like things aren’t going quite right, you can just leave everything set up, make yourself a cup of tea and come back to it refreshed later on.

Another advantage is that there’s no excuse not to have clean and sharp images, take time to get the lighting and focus just right. If you can get your hands on one, a macro lens will be ideal for this sort of work, however, if not, try selecting macro mode on your camera to give you the best chance of capturing the close up detail in your subject.

7. Get Inspired by the Masters

If you’re struggling with the lighting, composing or structuring of your shots, then you need to find some inspiration, and where better to look than to the original still life masterpieces of years gone by. Have a search online for renaissance still life artists and observe the elements of the pieces.

Studying these paintings will help you to think about form, shades and how the colors work together and will hopefully give you a few ideas on how you can shape your photography work to form strong and engaging images.

8. Develop Your Eye for Still Life Scenes

Now it’s time for you to have a go yourself. Find a quiet day in your schedule and set aside some time to practice. Try setting up your camera and backdrop by a suitably light spot next to a window and get snapping!

Once you’ve mastered the basics, try getting creative, experiment with camera angles, lighting angles and alternative light sources such as candles and lamps. You could even try getting creative with apertures and use a f/1.8 prime lens to achieve an artistic shallow focus. However, if you take one thing from this tutorial, let it be this: still life photography does not have to be of fruit and flowers! Find some unique and inspiring subject matter that gets you excited and start shooting!

9. Perfect Your Post-Production Process

Working with your pictures after the shoot shouldn't feel like a chore. It should be fun!

Photoshop actions are often touted as a great time-saver, but to my mind the biggest advantage they give you is a highly repeatable workflow. Instead of having to work through all the steps from scratch, and action makes a set of choices for you, then you teak and adjust to make things perfect.

https://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/10-tips-to-get-started-with-still-life-photography--photo-8278

Some examples:

Liam J Curtin

Dave Bradley

[basicsofislam]

ISLAM 101: Muslim Culture and Character: IDEAL GENERATIONS

On the eve of the beautiful days of the future, days whose dawns are breathing festivities, it is clear that we face crises that seem insurmountable. Like social troubles, national problems, and natural disasters, the crises that besiege a society cannot be overcome or resolved by mundane measures. Solutions for such crises depend on insight, knowledge, and wisdom becoming widespread. It is of no use—indeed, it is a mere waste of time—to try to solve such crises with aimless, limited, unpromising policies that are like mundane political maneuvers. From the past to the present, people of spirit, essence, and insight have resolved the commonest and most widespread depressions and crises with their immense horizons and zeal with unimaginable ease by using and activating the present day sources of power for the future. Some laypeople suppose that their own ingenious measures are superhuman and have admired and marveled at them as such. However, all they are doing, like all other successful people, is to use fully and efficiently the capacity, talents, and opportunities granted them by Almighty God.

People of discernment are always, in all their acts and manners, busy and preoccupied with plans and projects for today and tomorrow; they use all they have and all possibilities and opportunities as material to build the bridge to cross over to the future; and they always feel the pain and distress of carrying today onto tomorrow; to resolve the problems depends, to a certain extent, on overcoming or passing over the present time, and in fact being beyond time. That is, being able to see, foresee, and evaluate today and tomorrow in the same way. You can call such scope of thought, which entails embracing tomorrow from today and comprehending the future’s spirit and essence and content, an “ideal,” if you so wish. One who does not have such a horizon can neither overcome a multitude of problems nor promise anything for tomorrow. Even though some simple people have assumed great proportions like these, the pomp, circumstance, and magnificence of the Pharaohs, Nimrods, Caesars, and Napoleons, their noisy and hectic lives, which bedazzled so many, never became, and can never become, promising for the future in any way. For those people were the poor, the wretched, who subjugated truth to the command of might, who always sought social ties and congruity around self-interest and profit, and who lived their lives as slaves, never accepting freedom from spite, selfishness, and sensuality.

In contrast, first the Four Rightly-Guided Caliphs and later the Ottomans presented such great works, whose consequences exceed this world and reach to the next, that these works are in essence able to compete with the centuries; of course, only for those who are not beguiled by temporary eclipses. Although they lived their lives and duties fully and passed away, they will always be remembered, talked of, and find a place in our hearts as the good and the admirable. In every corner of our country, the spirit and essence of such people as Alparslan, Meliksah, Osman Gazi, Fatih, and many others, waft like the scent of incense, and hopes and glad tidings flow into our spirits from their vision.

Caesar trampled down the ideal of Rome with his whims and desires; Napoleon imprisoned and killed the ideal of Great France in the net of his greed and ambitions; and Hitler consumed the aim of Great Germany with his rash madness. On the other hand, the ideal, which is open to continuity, of our people, whose heroism expresses integrity and continuousness, has always been held high and above all meanness or vulgarity, whether in victory or defeat; it is held dear, beloved, sacred, and highly esteemed, like a banner for whose sake lives are given. Under such a banner, Fatih walked through Constantinople, Süleyman the Magnificent advanced in the West, and our people during the First World War and the National War, for another time, maintained their loyalty and gave their lives for the understanding that the banner must wave so forever.

An ideal in the hands of an ideal man reaches the most elevated values and turns into the charm of victory and accomplishment. If the people who represent such an ideal are not the correct people for the task, then that banner or standard turns into a pennant under which common low whims and ambitions are expressed. Although such a pennant is able to bring together the children in the street, driving them to strike the targets, as if in a game, it is not capable of realizing the emotions and aspirations that reside in the depths of the souls of our people.

A person of ideals is, first of all, a hero of love, who loves God, the Almighty Creator devotedly and feels a deep interest in the whole of creation under the wings of that love, who embraces everything and everybody with compassion, filled with an attachment to the country and people; they care for children as the buds of the future, they advise the young to become people of ideals, giving them high aims and targets, who honors the old with wholehearted regard and esteem, who develops bridges over the abysses to connect and unite the different sections of society, and who exerts all their efforts to polish thoroughly whatever may already exist of harmony between people.

A true person of ideals is also a person of wisdom. While observing everything from the comprehensive realm of reason, they also assess everything with the measures of their appreciative heart, testing them through the criteria of self-criticism and self-supervision, kneading and forming them in the crucible of reason, and always trying to possess and take further the radiance of the mind and the light of the heart in equal harness.

A person of ideals is a true example of responsibility to the society in which they live. To reach their targets, the first of which is, of course, the pleasure of their Creator, they sacrifice everything that God has bestowed on them, without giving the matter a second thought; they have no fear or concern for anything worldly, their heart is captivated by nothing other than God; they have neither ambition for individual happiness nor worry about unhappiness; they are a savior, a hero of the spirit, they do not mind being in hellfire, so long as their ideals and their country are everlastingly firm, stable, and permanent.

A person of ideals and high standing feels respect for the values they are attached to with profound self-supervision, performing their duties in the exhilaration of worship, and living as a hero of love and enthusiasm. Agreeing with and abiding by the truth with minutely meticulous sensitivity they always exercise their preference for sublime ideals. They are always in a struggle in the depths of their heart, a struggle to be the master of their self at all times; they have been sentenced to being a slave to the truth, they are disinterested and indifferent to positions and titles, and they see fame, covetousness, and fondness of comfort and ease as a fatal poison. That is why such people always win where they have an opportunity to win and turn unfavorable circumstances to their advantage.

Walking on this path along with the glorious spirits, such a person is so sincerely devoted to the Will of God that the storms of ambitions which hit them intensify and consolidate their sense of right, justice, and right-mindedness; floods of hatred, grudge, and malice enthuse the springs of love and compassion in their soul; they ignore and tread upon the gifts and blessings that ordinary people are caught up with and they oppose retaliation. If we are to think of such heroes of ideals at their true horizon, a place which perplexes the mind, then we are able to picture a person with an almost prophet-like resoluteness; superhuman pictures flow into our feelings from the doors which have been opened by these associations, and our house of imagination overflows with historical examples of heroism. Thus, are we enthralled by the loyalty and sincerity of Uqba ibn Nafi in the African deserts, enraptured by the bravery and intrepidity of Tariq ibn Ziyad after crossing Gibraltar, lost in admiration of Fatih (Mehmed II) and his resolution, entranced by Gazi Osman Pasha in Plevne, and we salute with reverence the lions of Gallipoli on whose heads bombs and shells were showered and who faced onslaught with a smile on their face.

We do not need anything else but exemplary people of high character and ideals. These exalted souls of the highest ideals will realize the re-establishment of our nation in the coming years. These heroic people, the yeast of whose existence is faith, love, wisdom, and insight, have not yielded to or been shaken by the numerous attacks that came from within and without over almost ten centuries. Perhaps they have shrunk a bit and become a little smaller. However, by acquiring some strength and firmness, they have come to a level where they can settle their accounts with the future, and have observed the age and bided their time to take over the duty with an extraordinary power of spirit.

It is a fact that over the last few ages, love, wisdom, insight, and the consciousness of responsibility have shrunk and simple daily matters have replaced the great ideals. Of course, it is not possible to say that we have done nothing in the name of reform within that period. However, the things put forward remain nothing more than low mimicry and sound effects. Such blind imitation, as a disguise for the introduction of vice and immorality into the thought of the nation, and as a means that leads to the destruction of its spirit, has brought about more harm than good. When the nation was bleeding from the injuries inflicted, one after another, on community’s stamina, the real problem was not diagnosed, the way to cure and treat it was not known or defined, and incorrect treatment and meddling caused the masses to be paralyzed. The effects of the crises of the last few ages are still making themselves felt today in flares, eruptions, and centrifugal outbursts of rage.

Therefore, just like before, if we do not deal with the true causes of the problems, if we do not approach and treat individual, familial, and social problems with the ability, sensitivity, and skill of surgeons, if we are not saved from the swamp of vice, immorality, and filthy affairs and dealings from which we have been struggling to extricate ourselves for the last few ages, we will run into errors, one after the other, while looking for remedies; our crises will get much worse and deepen, and we will never be relieved from the vicious circle of crises and depressions.

It doesn’t matter if those who hold the reins continue in their age-old obstinacy. We have deep absolute trust in the ideal generations whose thoughts, feelings, and actions turn to the future, who are attached and devoted to their country, people, and ideals, who are focused to serve and contribute to people, indeed to all of humanity, who are taut and ready to be released, like the string of a bow, to serve all with the understanding and consciousness of responsibility. We trust that they will tackle and overcome all negativity and make the newest developments come true. One day, their strong desires and wishes, their love and longing to serve people will penetrate into all sections of society and will turn into seeds that flourish wherever they fall. This approach, which will eradicate the so-called realities of materialism and corporeality, will certainly embroider once more the canvas of its spirit with its own worldview and plan of action.

[queernuck]

What To Do In November: On The Critique of Pornography

Recognition of the origin of a critique, what the genealogical structure of surrounding ideological and epistemic claims imply about it, and how exactly to draw that out and oppose it to the intended reading of a critique is a process which cannot be neglected when discussing contentious issues. it is so often neglected when it should be heavily involved in enacting important acts of critical inquiry, as the content of critique and the arrangement thereof can function as part of a series of binary-machines, a series of machines through which the critique flows such that the enacting or appropriation of potentially fascist or despotic structures of critique will lead to an eventual stoppage of any liberatory potential, a kind of replication of a certain desire. When this is a discussion of doubled-desire, desiring-desire in relation to desiring-repression as a fascist ideological position, the means by which sexual desire is itself restructured into apparently-neutered flows of resignification which in turn become sexual through invocation of a phallic lack, the care with which one’s critique is offered and redoubled, what exactly one discusses regarding it is a highly important matter of contention.

The paradigm of deviancy, degeneracy, the means by which it is named and aestheticized, how that aesthetic function is used to signify a specific sort of unwellness, a certain and rather particular framework for looking at structures of power and flows of desire, makes it such that the implications of one’s desire, decision to apply a certain framework, raises questions about exactly what surrounding suppositions are also implied specifically because of what languages “degeneracy” finds itself most comfortable within. Certainly there is the relatively symbolic, perhaps even masturbatory pride-in-degeneracy most associated with anarchists, and its reactionary mirroring in the National-Anarchist or “Apolitical Anarchist” irony wherein either a black metal Paganism or Satanism is used to describe a hedonistic-but-not-degenerate series of becomings, or the mirroring in various sanctimonious politics of the body and sanctification thereof, anarchist or not, which ascribe these tendencies to authority and sees a control of self-in-self, becoming-unlike-others as the most anarchist of acts. Regardless, there are singularities around behavior and its realization, the intensity of identity and exertion, but “degeneracy” is a term most associated with fascist vocabularies, and for good reason. 

Degeneracy as a paradigm is particularly associated with repression-desiring, with a certain sort of limitation of desire only possible through the desiring, inviting of such a turn, the necessity of mapping that turn onto one’s potential for the body. Thus, one enters into a fetishistic relationship with degeneracy, as seen with the fascist concepts of degenerate art, or degenerate sexuality, or degenerate lack-of-morality. Indeed, the relationship between sexuality and art is one which is found in the sort of ironic return that conspiracy theories regarding the porn industry and antisemitic tropes about porn (and Hollywood) frequently return to: scholarly work has been produced on the way that various figures in the creation of the porn industry as-such were Jewish, and to deny this would be to deny the wrong aspect of the conspiratorial thinking. In large part as an extension and repetition of the influences that lead to Jewish presence in filmmaking in the US at the beginnings of the Hollywood era, the respectability of the industry was low, as were the overheads, leading to decent profit margins and when technical knowledges, techniques and Virtual spaces of creation were carried over in filmmaking, that pornographic films were made with little distance from other movies of the time is hardly surprising. 

However, and this is an incredibly important distinction, the way that even this acknowledgement is resignified as a kind of kernel of truth, as a means of “redpilling” those who will eventually turn toward conspiracy, and an acceptance of the outright conspiracy predicated on this initial rejection. The turn occurs later on, once a kind of barrier has been passed, as with the sort of conspiratorial thinking that leads one to read within Behold A Pale Horse for a sort of foolish socialism which claims that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are in fact a genuine document, simply a misattributed one: this lures in those who have an obvious and meaningful interest in anticapitalist critique due to the means by which the conspiratorial structure is mapped onto ongoing imperialist violence, but from there, one eventually turns and reveals that in fact, the conspiratorial turn that was originally rejected is the more genuine one, that it is in fact the genuinely held belief at the core of the claim. Similarly, discussions of “pedophile rings” that turn to “satanic cults” are ones where the same process endures: once a certain level of commitment is sustained, once one has shown sufficient buy-in to the structure which has been named as such, it is then revealed that this is simply a stand-in for pedophilic blood libel, as seen with much of the discussion surrounding the death of Jeffrey Epstein. Without the contextualization of not only the notion that his death is suspicious (and that he very well may not have committed suicide) the notion that, regardless of his suicide there were likely very rich people with some stake in his death is one which on its face is unobjectionable simply because of how rich he was, how his wealth was used to create a terrifying sort of power, and the desire (flowing through fascist machines of resignification) to believe that it is not simply accumulation that allowed him to exert this kind of power, that there must have been some sort of organ through which it was conducted.

This refusal, the refusal to believe that in fact capitalist violence can account for a great deal of the violence raised with any of these critiques, leads to the means by which fascist appropriations of the discourses surrounding sexual expression, “degeneracy”, pornography, trans and LGBT identities, and kink are restructured into a demarcation of a profoundly violently restricted body. To recognize that “kink” is a relative structure, relative subject, one needs only to look at how trans women most generally have sex: that is, pornographically, outside themselves, for the benefit of men, as an extension of pornographic bodies of work and pornographic restructuring of the body such that becoming-woman and becoming-trans is a new sort of transition from one violently marked body into another, both sharing the structural position of “failed masculinity” and the same kinds of spaces as gay and bisexual men in relation to certain kinds of kink, and to submissive or fetishizingly dominant women in others. There are certain acts of humiliation and appropriation of the body for oneself going on in most acts of interaction with trans women that one sees. This is specifically because of how trans women are so rarely depicted outside of the pornographic, and how as a result trans women are drawn in a sense toward embodying the pornographic in order to make themselves intelligible by at least some fashion. If by nothing else, then, the pornographic stands as an example of what one can become. 

This is true as well for many gay men, for lesbians, is true along lines of race and most of all is the sort of critical violence, ideological fetishization that is misunderstood by critical reactions to kink and pornography. Instead, many follow specific genealogies of radical feminist thought which follow from a notion that heterosexual sex is still the only moral sort, but that this too must be excluded, and as a result either only approximations of sex made sexless (the sexless and neutered top and bottom, the sort of ideation of a never-present ever-rigid “butch and femme” scene that some radfems seem to think they fit into) or a genine sexlessness is offered as identity. So often, there is no room for sex to be made meaningful, beautiful, for sex that is not “kink” to be discussed specifically because all gay sex is already a priori a sort of kink, a subgenre on a porn website intended to steer white men away from investment in fascist structures of reproductive labor.

The structuring of a kind of false division between being against fascist ideation of "degeneracy" around masturbation and porn, and supporting businesses like PornHub or xHamster is one that has cropped up in response to the successful liberal signification of “wokeness” by such companies, alongside the revelation of exactly how these sites operate, means that the rift created by reactionary positions is ever deeper, ever more obvious, ever more important. When speaking of these companies, some will mention various marketing gimmicks, such as planting trees or plowing roads, intended to specifically juxtapose the ill repute of the porn industry with the apparent good of the deed. There is an irony there, and it is what is relied upon for the PR stunt to function as such. However, at the same time it has recently been confirmed that both of the aforementioned companies have been involved in specifically coercing nonconsensual performances from women lured in with “modeling” gigs and pushed toward taking part in sex acts, which are then spread with the intent of associating them with them in a fashion that is difficult to break. These women are trafficked, abused, and xHamster, PornHub, along with other popular porn websites profit off of trafficking, and affirming this, affirming that they are not part of a harmless industry but rather that there is a definite, sexualized, violent element is obviously important. 

In an attempt to distract from this, xHamster may discuss the right-wing Manosphere roots of “No Nut November”, both playing on its business model and lessening the seriousness of its own support of sexual violence. In turn, the right pushes back not on its own terms, but rather by couching its response in ambiguity, disguising that this is indeed a right-wing offering. But making it such that the right wing ideology at hand has a monopoly on the ideological framing makes it so that when one begins to critique it, there are continuous implications of antisemitic conspiracies, homophobia, race replacement theories, and other acts supporting an ideology which is not developed from a genuine act of caring about the women harmed by porn and trafficking for it beyond some sort of nebulous invocation of them for white dudes and their virility. The prevalence of “cuck” as an insult is itself tied to this: it is highly racialized, as is most cuckold pornography, and in turn is linked to “breeding” as a fetish, which itself is a kind of libidinal acting-out of the replacement anxiety that fascist desire operates on. It has created a language of its own to speak to itself, to create a representation of the very fantasies it fears. In turn, it then accuses its enemies of creating this in order to act in favor of indoctrination, to act as if the way in which these desires have been cultivated has nothing to do with reactionaries’ own languages of desire.

Reactionaries have been allowed to dominate critique of porn for so long that it seems natural to allow them to continue to dominate it, rather than to question that dominance, to realize that xHamster is happy to support genuinely harmful practices and pretend to make them "woke" with the help of "leftists" who either buy into them outright or let reactionary ideology go unchecked so that the material conditions at hand are not critiqued, just renamed in a fascist vocabulary. Similarly, when offering a critique of the porn industry, sex work, or the means by which criminalization and violence are inextricably tied to these, the way in which the very concept of the carceral is invoked within (and then sexualized by) this discussion contributes to the referencing of certain anxieties as desires: trans women are degenerates, pornsick, cumbrained, are only possible as kinks, in inherently sexual existences. By extension of eliminating these other supposed-pornographic experiences, trans women too much be exterminated, along with gay men, along with lesbians, along with gender nonconformity that does not itself restructure a certain acceptable heterosexuality. 

Effectively, the means by which antisemitic theories on the origins of sexuality and pornography become repeated in mainstream discussions contributes to an eventual willingness to accept fascist demarcations of how “degenerates” are to be marked, to be treated, and most of all to refuse to meaningfully examine why kink may be harmful, but additionally to accept that difference insofar as it is strange rather than based in drawing out and emphasizing a desire for repression, is perhaps not as horrifying as it is made out to be. Being clear, being open, and most of all affirming that the antisemitic, homophobic, racist ideological forebearers of a given insight are condemned, and that one does not link the machines of critique to these bodies, to fascist embodiments of opposition to degeneracy, means a genuine turn toward caring about women, about those harmed by pornography, about how this fits into capitalist accumulation and in turn how sexual lives are one part of the many sorts of lives and acts of living commodified and made into discrete, purchased and resold and resignified sorts of concept-objects, products of experience to be played with.