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solarishashernoseinabook · 6 months

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Tell me about the process of writing trr 👀

Thank u so much for indulging me 😭

Um. This got very long. So most of it's going under a readmore.

One of the first things I did when I started TRR was come up with three principles for writing autistic!Halt, which I stick to every time I write him:

Halt is an autistic character, not a character who happens to have autism. Essentially meaning: Halt's autism must affect the narrative. TRR (as well as many recent one-shots) would not be the same stories if Halt was neurotypical, and I figure if I did write something where Halt's autism didn't affect the story, then I've written it poorly

Halt's autism can't be discarded for the sake of the story. Pretty self explanatory. In a lot of media with autistic-coded characters, they're portrayed as weird and having some social difficulties or weird interests in a way that can be summed up as being "lolz so QUIRKY 🤪", but those traits can be highly inconsistent depending on what the plot needs. I was determined to not do that in TRR.

Halt's autism is value-neutral. There's two broad camps that a lot of autistic rep or autistic-coded characters fall into, mainly depending on the genre they appear in. If they're in a more serious story, the focus tends to be on how much of a problem they are for their caretaker, and if they're in something comedic, the focus will be on how much of a jackass and/or how clueless they are and the basis of the humour will be other people responding to this. In either case, we're supposed to sympathise with the non-autistic characters and relate to how difficult dealing with an autistic person is. The other alternative is that we get an inspiration-porny depiction of autism where the autistic character is so saintly and good and wonderful and inspiring, which is also pretty damn dehumanising. So for TRR, I tried to avoid both those extremes. If characters had problems with Halt's autistic traits, that was their fault - any problems they have with him are part of a failure to accommodate him, or because they pushed Halt out of his comfort zone. Of course, Halt would have to meet them half-way here: if he's rude, he does have to realise that and apologise for that rudeness. At the same time, Halt isn't better than anyone else by virtue of being autistic. He's not an inspiration to them, nor is he there to teach them how to be better people: he's just another character, just like any of them. Maybe I haven't always pulled this last principle off correctly, but I try.

The rest is going under a cut sorry :"D

Another thing I did really early on was settle on what Halt's autistic traits would be. In canon, Halt dislikes loud noises, doesn't seem to look at people very much, he can talk for a long time on things he knows but doesn't otherwise speak very much, and he loves archery - he's one of the Corps' best rangers. Using this as a basis, I decided Halt has noise sensitivities, generally avoids eye contact unless he knows people well, and that archery is one of his special interests. I wanted to make Halt slightly touch adverse, so I gave him my trouble with being touched around the shoulders. Finally, based on how many times Halt gets quiet and avoids people in loud situations, I decided to have him shut down instead of melt down when he starts to get overwhelmed.

And then I had to decide how to actually write that autism - as in, like, the mechanics of writing. There's a subtle difference between how Halt's POV scenes are written versus everyone else's. When I write from Halt's POV, I don't typically include any emotion from other characters unless it's very obvious, or I describe body language without much detail. If Halt meets someone for the first time, the other character will be described with a hair colour and maybe their general build and that's it - Halt doesn't like looking at faces much, so you won't get details like their eye colour or distinct facial features. This means a lot of perspective-hopping, because if the other characters' emotions are important to the scene, then I either can't tell it from Halt's POV or I need a scene afterwards that backtracks slightly to explain what we missed. I also try to focus more on the information coming through Halt's senses - what he's hearing or feeling, for instance. It was the only way I could think of to actually get across social difficulties and what having sensory processing disorder feels like, lol

More recently, I reread RA's two prequels (which cover the same timespan as TRR) and made extensive notes on the plot/characters...fully knowing I would need to discard 85% of it for TRR. I can at least make shout-outs to it, or use it as a basis for what I write. I turned those notes into a 41 page document that describes characters, locations, and events, complete with sub-headings!

WHEW okay thank you for enabling me :D I mainly focussed on character creation i know but i had the most to say about it 😭

#asks #i've got some more to say on other characters but you haven't read to that point in the series 😭😭#ra #rangers apprentice #halt o'carrick #autistic!halt

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tfrohock · 3 years

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Fieldnotes: Pervitin in Carved from Stone and Dream

Writing historical fantasy—or alternate history, as it’s sometimes known—includes a lot of what-ifs. What if the British Army had a division called the Spirit Corps during WWI such as in Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal? Or what if in 1939, the British used demons as weapons while the Nazis employed supermen in their ranks as Ian Tregillis surmised in his Milkweed Triptych?

Both Ghost Talkers and the Milkweed Triptych are firmly based in the modern world. The wars and their respective worlds are our own, and both entwined fantastical elements with historical events, blending the surreal with the real.

Likewise, I pulled the same sleight of hand with Carved from Stone and Dream, which is the only true war novel in this cycle of the Los Nefilim books. I wanted Carved to have the same feverish intensity as a war movie, so I set the events during that fragile period between the end of the Spanish Civil War and the beginning of World War II.

All wars, but especially the global conflicts of the early twentieth century, are messy sprawling affairs. In order to pull off a tight novel, I had to zero in on specific points from that period. I wanted to cover la retirada, the Spanish exodus from Spain into France, which began as a major part of the plot, but as I continued to work on the manuscript, I was forced to move the French concentration camps of the post-Spanish Civil War period into the periphery.

Pervitin, which began as a subplot, turned into linchpin that fed the main plot, much as Pervitin launched the Germans to success during the early forties. Experimentation with synthetic drugs was nothing new. As early as 1887, Japanese researchers had synthesized the natural substance ephedrine into N-methylamphetamine, and by 1919 had crystallized it in it’s pure form.

Long been known to folk medicine in Europe, America, and Asia, ephedrine was used to clear the bronchia, stimulate the heart, and inhibit the appetite and is most associated with the so-called Mormon tea. In 1937, Dr. Fritz Hauschild, the head pharmacist at Temmler in Berlin, built on the Japanese success by perfecting a new method of synthesizing methamphetamine. This new drug, methylamphetamine, was patented as Pervitin.

Pervitin passes easily to both the blood and the brain, because it’s molecular structure is similar to that of adrenalin. However, where adrenalin works more gently and lasts longer, methamphetamine is like setting off a series fireworks through the synaptic gaps in the brain. Norman Ohler, the author of Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich, describes the intensity of Pervitin hitting a person’s brain as if a “neural firework explodes and a biochemical machine gun starts firing an uninterrupted sequence of thoughts … a state of emergency is experienced, as when one faces a sudden danger, a time when an organism mobilizes all its forces—even though there is no danger.”

While civilians might not find much use for such a drug, the military—always on the hunt for the perfect soldier—found Pervitin to be a game changer during the German invasion of France, which has been discussed ad nauseam by military historians, primarily because of Germany’s lightning strike across the French countryside. Don’t get me wrong, superior German logistics was a large part of the process—I never want to discount strategy and military planning—but the one point most historians have neglected in the past evaluations is the role of synthetic drugs in aiding the German army’s advance, which came to be known as the Blitzkrieg.

The medical historian Dr Peter Steinkamp is quoted as saying “Blitzkrieg was guided by methamphetamine. If not to say that Blitzkrieg was founded on methamphetamine.” [emphasis mine]

Pervitin was mass produced and given to soldiers, including officers. Once the maneuvers began, the Wehrmacht gained more territory in a hundred hours than they had managed in over four years of World War I due to the fact that the army moved day and night without sleep. Howver, the ability to stay awake for days at a time wasn’t the only effect of Pervitin. The drug also enhanced the soldiers’ aggressiveness to the point of brutality and sent them on an orgy of violence.

Erwin Rommel, who was later known as the Desert Fox for his leadership in the African campaign, led the 7th Panzer Division during the invasion of France. Ohler recounts the following incident that happened on the morning of May 17, 1940:

Rommel, no longer answerable to any of his superiors, tore along the road from Solre-le-Château, right in the north of France, toward Avesnes. As chance would have it, the 5th Infantry Division, parts of the 18th Infantry Division, and the 1st Infantry Division of the French Army had struck their bivouac on that very spot. Rommel didn’t hesitate for a second. He dashed through them, crushing everyone and everything, fired broadsides, and over the next six miles he pushed hundreds of vehicles and tanks, along with the dead and wounded, into the ditches on either side and rattled on with blood-smeared tracks, standing between two officers from his staff in the armored command post vehicle, his cap pushed to the back of his head, leading the attack. (Ohler, 75)

Aided by Pervitin’s dynamic effects on the body and brain, the German Army tore through France in just six weeks to reach Paris and corner the British on the beach at Dunkirk. It was a shocking victory that stunned the world.

So what does all this have to do with Carved from Stone and Dream? After I read Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler, my big what-if turned into: What if supernatural creatures such as Nephilim took a drug that enhanced their already powerful songs? What would be the side effects? After all, they are mortal, too. Would the drug cause blood pressure spikes and heart attacks as it did for mortals? Was the risk worth the outcome?

These questions and more are answered in Carved from Stone and Dream and in A Song with Teeth.

If you want the historical goods, I highly recommend Norman Ohler’s Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich. I also keep a brief bibliography of non-fiction books that I used when writing the Los Nefilim series on the site. Head that way if you want to see the nonfiction that inspired the novels.

#Mary Robinette Kowal #Ian Tregillis #Ghost Talkers #Milkweed Triptych #fantasy #historical fantasy #Los Nefilim #Carved from Stone and Dream #A Song with Teeth

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winchestcr · 3 years

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the mirrors surrounding you did as they were meant to, reflecting back a spitting image of JENSEN ACKLES - but it’s clear something is wrong from the moment that a vision of JACK BECOMING GOD strikes you. perhaps it was a passing daydream in the frenzy of the funhouse. you reassure yourself - you’re DEAN WINCHESTER, a FOURTY-ONE YEAR OLD USMC CAPTAIN whose virtue lies in your + LOYALTY & BRAVERY, although you’ve been told that you tend to be quite - STRONG & INSECURE, and you’re associated with FAMILY PICTURES, MARINE CORPS SYMBOL, AND THE AMERICAN FLAG by those around you. suddenly, however, you’ve found AN ANTI-POSSESSION TATTOO on your person - was that always there? from the moment you leave the funhouse, memories from your life in SUPERNATURAL have begun to return - leaving whoever you had been before in the mirror’s reflection behind you. you can almost hear CARRY ON WAYWARD SON by KANSAS following in your wake.

Canon points-

He was born in Kansas to Mary and John Winchester. Brother to Sam and half brother to Adam Milligan. His mother was killed when he was 4 years old by a demon his father spent the majority of his childhood life seeking revenge.

His dad expected a lot out of Dean as a result, like looking out for his brother and he feels he never really got to be a kid

Plagued with daddy issues because he never felt good enough for him or anyone including Sam when he went off to Stanford and ‘abandoned the family’

Lost his dad when he was 26

Became a monster/demon hunter and feels that is his primary destiny along with watching after Sam, it brings him purpose.

Feels he is a monster the belongs in hell and purgatory two places he has been before and why he feels his life is so expendable for the greater good

His 67 Impala is the first ‘woman’ he ever loved and affectionately refers to her as baby

Loves pie, beer and burgers

Will do anything for his brother including sacrificing his own life

Family is very important to him

Loves classic rock

Cas is his best friend

Bobby Singer is like a second father to him

His mother is his hero

Has a talent in mechanics

Alternate life points:

His parents are still Mary and John and his brother is still Sam

He DID go to college for a grad certificate in American History and a Bachelor’s in Military History

He enlisted into the Marine Corps at the age of 18. It was a life long dream of his to serve the country as his way of making a difference.

He met his wife, Laurel, while he was studying for his Bachelor’s

They have been married for three and a half years all three of them he was serving overseas so they got married right before he had to leave.

Now they have a baby daughter named, Mary Elizabeth, who is six months old

His parents are still alive

He also has a dog he shares with his wife named Miracle (because had to)

His best friend for life is still Castiel

He was very much a ladies’ man during his college years until he found that RIGHT one to change his mind.

Very skilled fighter and got to serve as a Drill instructor for a brief period of time

Recently got promoted to Captain

Him and Bucky Barnes also have loyalty to each other. Him, Laurel and Bucky will be considered kind of like the three musketeers.

Still has mechanic skills

Wanted connections:

Teachers

Old friends

Military friends

Mentor/Mentee from Boot camp

Ex flings

Frenemies

Bitter rival?

I suck a lot at plots and I already screwed up what was supposed to be a plot call before LOL. I have literally never done one before so sorry about that. If anyone else has ideas for connections, I am totally open just give this a like or drop me a comment and I will slide into your dms.

Unpopular opinion I think but I was actually pretty happy with the way the show ended. There were parts that did upset me but over all, I feel satisfied and therefore plan to include it into his canon history so his canon point will be post 15.20, however, I plan to bring his memories back in chronological order ish to the best of my ability to keep myself sane.

I wanted to make his personality different between his canon life and alternate one but the muse says no so he is still hot-headed, impulsive, abrasive, over-protective and loyal self with a side of cocky and selflessness.

#duality.intro

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attackontitanfandomartefact · 2 years

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The controversy over The Attack On Titan

The original worldview of the attack on titan began 107 years ago when Titan, the natural enemy of mankind, suddenly appeared in the world, which was huge and almost invulnerable and its only food was human beings. Faced with an existential crisis, the remaining humans fled to one place and built three huge walls. These people always believed that the city within the three walls was the last place humans could live. The soldiers of the world inside the wall belong to four different regiments, with the gendarmerie controlling the entire population as well as the military regime. However, the main character joins the Investigative Corps, which is dedicated to exploring the world beyond the walls in search of freedom. As the plot progresses, the people inside the walls discover the truth that they live on an island, and beyond the sea is a wider world. The people within the walls were members of a persecuted race known as the Eldians. The Eldians diaspora on the mainland is scattered in detention areas and refugee camps, this is because in the past, when the Eldian empire ruled over much of the world, other countries were dissatisfied with this history and used it as an excuse to bias against them.

It is obvious that there are political, national, and historical coincidences in The Attack On Titan. It is easier for the audience to bring their own ideology into the work. These vague political messages have been the subject of discussion among viewers.

Most of the audience thought The Attack On Titan was an anti-war animation. Throughout the whole work, Isayama used a lot of space to describe the invasion of the people caused by death and harm. Despite its pro-imperial style, its extremely violent gore often accentuates the brutality of war rather than turning the thrill of combat into a spectator sport. However, Allen, one of the protagonists of Attack On Titan, is a radical far-right. The reasons for his almost insane idea of destroying the world are shown below.

Isayama said that the massacre and forced reproduction of The Eldians in history were the mistakes of the past people and should not be carried by the Eldians of later generations.

The people of the world remember the mistakes made by the Eldians in the past. Although the most powerful king in the world, king 145, sealed himself, even signed a non-war contract, the Eldians of the world lived like slaves.

Therefore, for Alan, the Eldians had to rebel and destroy the world, reducing the human population by 80%, so that they could be truly free.

In addition, Isayama repeatedly emphasized the sacrifice made by a woman and her descendants but downplayed the huge casualties it caused to a large number of people on their territory that could have been avoided. He uses his characters' mouths to tell the story of the cruelty of war while reinforcing the possibility of destroying the world through various plots and Settings. For white supremacists, right-wingers, and some extremists, the cartoon was a great way to moderate their ideology. In their eyes, The Eldians are an alternative to white people in western countries.

At the same time, the Eldians were considered a symbol of the Jewish people. Not only did the Eldians have a genetic predisposition to become Titans, but the Malay Enns were unhappy with the eldian empire during its reign. Negative stereotypes about jewish racial identity and unfounded plots about Jewish world domination persist to this day.

There are also similarities between the attacking giants and the Japanese Empire, and Isayama clearly states that the heroic general in the anime is based on the Japanese Imperial Army general Akiyama Yoshiko. In addition, one of the main characters, Mikasa, seems to be named after a famous Japanese warship, or perhaps a crown prince.

However, Isayama seemed surprised by these remarks, and when told that some people saw his creation as an endorsement of imperialism, he expressed shock and denied it. When asked what he thought people should think of his work, he replied: "Being a writer, I believe it is impolite to instruct your readers the way of how to read your story."

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silvermuffins · 2 years

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Pokemon Legends Arceus: please don't eat me

If I recall, I ran off to D&D when I was waiting for an Alpha Pokemon to turn around. I tried to battle a wild one, it was a level 40 Luxio. no thank you.

i am Ready to explore the wilds

starting to feel like i Have to battle the Alpha to get the satchel, which is likely how the satchel got lost to begin with. maybe we come back later.

night is falling again aaaaaaa

starting to realize why dress like ninjas

ooooh okay i see the pros and cons of the crafting table and portable kit now

cyndaquil can evolve!

oh that parasect sounds like a demon

oh fuck there's paras around here i have hEARD THINGS--

TRYING TO KILL PARASECT SEND HELP

i doooone it

right okay back to camp to put some stuff in a box, every time i THINK im gonna make progress.....

paras ARE scary in this game

i am in a new place at night and this buneary is trying to drown itselfj

jjjjjjgghhhh

Blink says hi

oh no. lian is THAT type. hooboy.

i kind of like that i'm not dignifying this kid with clearing up the misunderstanding

Suddenly Irida

gonna get me a new star sooooon

i can't believe laventon's solution is "start a food fight with a demigod"

ooooh new clothes! am now a fancy ocean lass

wyrdeer! LET ME RIDE YOUUU

nobody gonna let me forget im an isekai huh

btw i have some, um, concerns, that so far the two pokemon explicitly identified as descended from ones who got some divine power straight from almighty Sinnoh....are two of the new species that to the best of my knowledge go extinct between now and mainline pokemon

anyway that is a weird ass way to hold a flute, also where are the holes

he gave me a Mind Plate!

holy fuck psyduck gone psycho

oh now irida wants to fight me. okay.

....glaceon. hm. okay.

easy

okay.......let's see if i can handle kleavor

ooof okay i got chopped a few times but i did it on my first go! And got another plate

eeeeee this game just makes me so happy

volo why do you know things

he has cynthia's passion for old things

tbh volo sounds like a student of Night Raven College

....i'm not 100% sure when new sidequests become available. gamefreak wouldn't put missable ones in, would they? surely not. surely not....

man kamado is so fuckin cool

also it's a treat to meet ancestors of folks. like, cyllene and cyrus, kamado and rowan, volo and cynthia, mai and the one girl from victory road, those are all painfully obvious. but lian was clearly an ancestor of clay and dude that's a whole different generation!

oop suddenly horror movie vibes. who is this child,

vessa has been waiting for me. stranger danger,

EVERYTHING IS ECHOING WEIRDLY AND I DON'T LIKE IT

girl i already have a mission from god who ARE you

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK ODD KEYSTONE

SHE LOOKED SO FUCKING CREEPY WHEN SHE GOT HAPPY

mistakes have been made

someone help meeeeee

....i really hope there are 108 wisps tho....wait, 107? squints...

fuck she's the 108th isn't she

ohhhh that went into my chest like a spirit orb. dislike,

like yeah it SAYS it went into the odd keystone but NO TRUST YOU, CHILD

good morning mars's ancestor

ginter looks familiar....

who is he

and who is Tao Hua

oh no the NPCs say new things....here we go again

i just noticed in a house your shoes disappear the moment you get on the wood, and not just when you enter the house. nice touch.

i should get to go somewhere new soon.....i hope.....

....kneeeew it. beautifred evolved into cascoon.....

people keep tryna tell me i should be in the security corps not the survey corps

to which my brain inevitably goes SIE SIND DAS ESSEN UND WIR SIND DER JAEGER

ground types.....sir i have several geodude please take one

okay minigame time!!!

that one's fun tbh.....annnd that's all the village wisps

doodedoo sidequests and commentary....

MARLEY that's who mai resembles. discovered when i looked up the name of Mira, who Peselle resembles!

Sanqua looks kinda like Karen doesn't she?

plot time! Ursaluna....... Ursaring evo? Or alternate???

solaceon ruins!!!! ooooh....

i have a great many things to do!

oh....oh honey no.........you can't beat me

back to the fieldlands for some loose ends.....oh. it's raining....

wahaha! lost satchel retrieved!

oh fuck this heracross is level 45......i do not think i can do this

jesus why does everything in this game hit so hard

! Chimchar!

SHINY PONYTA

uuuuugh will one of these buizel please just be huge

spacetime rift.....explorable....the music's all dark and spooky but otherwise i don't see anything special happening?

o. oh. i see now.

giratina what the FUCK

i got some shit tho! wish i'd gone in with more space in my satchel...

back to the village to hand in a couple of sidequests and then i think i might check out the new field....

the fuck was with the mirror in Sanqua's room...

oh that's wholesome as fuck

Beauregard and his cascoon are adorable too

i want more space in my satchel but ouch my wallet!

let's check out the new area and pray not to die

on the one hand i love that this game is less menu navigation and more buttons doing things....on the other it's so damn hard to get used to

anyway yes please new base camp please

and now i go back and head into the ruins!

old lady with leaf umbrella. not sure if she's someone's ancestor but i'm pretty sure i've heard of something from Japanese folklore with the leaf umbrella thing? specific to hokkaido? am i remembering wrong?

anyway she called me a bully. kamado already called her closed-minded

volo's togepi's accuracy wasn't reduced at all by two mud slaps so it's time to overwhelm with agile style aqua jets

Miss Fortunes......oh my god

calaba is 99?!

anyway time to hunt down some thieves

ancestors of candice, saturn, and.....someone else?

Coin down. Fragment get. Ladies, you three are lovely and I'd be happy to join you or just, help you out, but I have a mission from god that happens to align with the Galaxy Team so, you know, I'm taking the offer that puts food in my mouth and a roof over my head.

also i need to find cherrim somewhere

old lady learned???? that's how you know this is fiction

okay time to do the next bit, with ursaluna, and hope i'm not underleveled because hooboy EVERYTHING hits like a truck? my level seems to be about right but god my pokemon keep getting hit hard

k yeah that was.....relatively easy but ursaluna still hit like a truck. which i expected, but also regular pokemon have been hitting like trucks.

yaaaay i get ursaluna at my beck and call now!

what's he do

gib earth plate

ohhhh he's like stoutland in alola

....i got followed by an unown,

im good at reading unown script because ive been playing since gen 2 this should be easy and fun

brb taking a break to celebrate my brother's birthday

much indian food later!

hm rezu seems to be up to something.

lady of the ridge....

gets to Arezu the wrong way. let's go thorugh the bog this time,

oh she's NOT up to something

when did he get here

okay lilligant next

seriously at level 25 i don't think i should be getting ohkod by one supereffective move

oh! i found the diamond clan's village!

and a poster of a guy who resembles Alder

he's in every house

getting sleepy but im Investedddd

#letty plays shit #letty plays pokemon legends arceus #pokemon legends arceus #long one today #maybe get another long one in tomorrow #gonna do my best anyway #i got nowhere to be

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filipfatalattractionrblog · 7 years

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First off: Donald Trump is a moron. No matter how much time and effort pundits and democratic party officials try to gin him up as some conniving mastermind so they can convince themselves their candidate didn’t get beaten by a man who thinks health insurance is dirt cheap because he sees life insurance for babies advertised on Fox News, he is an ignorant dipshit of the highest order. His attention span is nil and his ideas can be changed by whoever talked to him last, or whoever just butters him up enough to play to his ego. He is not a clever man, or a consistent one. He’ll say anything, then change it in the next minute. The few things he sticks consistently to are his ego, his bigotry, and his predatorial behavior towards women. Steve, on the other hand, is portrayed as a very clever man. Not just historically as Captain America, but here in the modern Secret Empire arc and everything leading up to it. How he plays people against each other, manipulates connections and government power to get what he wants, putting together all sorts of tricky plots to end up deposing the Red Skull and also taking over America. The way Donald Trump rose to power was heavily pinned on old fashioned bigotry. Not just his personal bigotry either, which he’d use to fire up overt and latent racists, but how the GOP has spent decades suppressing minority vote, especially black vote. And when keeping them from getting to the ballot isn’t enough, just straight up purging votes, or them ending up getting ‘lost’. Manipulation of the right to vote itself, and also, fostering state level power via gerrymandering and more, continuing to play to bigoted ends, to prop up their own power and also continue to use racism and other forms of bigotry to solidify their base. We did not put some too-clever-for-us genius in power. We elected a short-sighted moron who was willing to tear all the dogwhistles off on standard southern strategy GOP campaign racism, whose power was solidified from a local to national level with a GOP who stand behind his actual policies and decisions 100 percent even if they may dislike how erratic he is as a person. Which leads nicely into the next way Steve is a poor fit as a representative for Trump: Steve isn’t racist. Steve isn’t even secretly racist, as Spencer will tell us over and over again, and that Hydra is actually the wokest fascists in the world and more socially progressive than the standard democrat. Steve is so much not-a-racist that even while using Inhumans being shoved into concentration camps as minority metaphors, and mutants being exiled to their own nation as another set of minority metaphors, none of the writing will take the leap to say that Steve is bigoted against these minority metaphors. Even while using them as symbols of the damage bigotry does, Steve himself, fascist in charge of it all, gets to stay clean, gets to be “I don’t personally have anything against mutants and Inhumans…” Trump, on the other hand, is a racist in the extreme. Not a secret racist, not a dogwhistle “welfare queens” and “urban youth” racist, he is very publicly a racist. He has been for decades. He called for the death of the Central Park 5, even took out ads for it, no matter how thoroughly their innocence was proven. He got a federal investigation into the fact that he wouldn’t allow properties to be rented out to black people. Before he started his 2016 campaign, he had spent years and years railing against Obama, calling for his birth certificate, believing and inflaming a racist conspiracy theory that Obama wasn’t an actual American citizen. A racist conspiracy theory that even “mainstream” GOP members found themselves having trouble explicitly denouncing. He kicks off his campaign early calling Mexicans rapists and criminals. He casually puts out the idea of Muslims having to be registered in America. And that’s not even getting into his sexism, either, which modern Steve Rogers would be painted as being totally devoid of. Trump preys on women, talks about them like objects, sexually assaults them, and when one of them infuriates him, his misogyny is constant, even against conservatives who would be believed to be on his “side”. And even all that wasn’t enough to stop him from getting the majority of the white women vote, which shows a hell of a lot of the power of explicit racism. The stunning reality of how much people will tolerate or even cheer for. Then there’s the fact that while both Hydra Steve and Trump are fascists, Steve was a secret fascist the whole time, and Trump was very much publicly so. So much so that there was whole debates on “should we call him a fascist?” while the campaign was still going, and if there was any foolish doubt left before he got elected, the time inbetween certainly removed it. America did not elect someone who hid his true, fascist intentions, relying on their belief in him as a good, moral, and certainly not bigoted man; we elected someone who publicly called for reporters and protesters to be assaulted, that said he’d pay for the legal troubles of anyone who beat up people at his campaign stops he didn’t like. We elected someone whose racist behavior was publicly documented daily and decades ago in legal courts. We elected someone who talked about registering Muslims, who talked about building a wall to block out Mexico and forcing them to pay for it to boot. We elected someone who did absolutely nothing to hide his beliefs, or his intentions. He shouted them out, and loved the attention it got him. He did not go through backdoors, and he did not use socially acceptable dogwhistles the way types like Paul Ryan might have. He just threw it all out in the open. He was what he showed us to be. He called for his own opponent to be thrown in jail while he was campaigning. His fascism was naked. Which leaves the other thing. Steve wasn’t elected, he was appointed. The way Trump takes power is far more banal than Steve’s byzantine plot and use of Hydra soldiers to take the country by force. Trump was elected, and despite the fact that yes, there was meddling from various Russian interests, that cannot, and does not, explain the whole situation. If GOP hadn’t been suppressing black vote year after year after year, this wouldn’t have been a contest. You can blame hacking on political interests from another country, but you’re going to have a hell of a time trying to blame GOP racism which has been in action for longer than I’ve been alive on Russia. Trump didn’t need soldiers on the ground either, though there was plenty of random racist civilians trying to intimidate people at voting booths. People tend to imagine fascism can only come into power by sheer military force, but here it is, through vote suppression of various flavors, through rallying of bigoted interests all across America, from a fucking presidential campaign that was allowed to do whatever the hell it liked, and given infinite coverage by networks because it was too good for their ratings. Hell, even extends to social networks like twitter, which could’ve cut off his influence forever ago because of his racist and abusive comments breaking the TOS, but twitter never wants to rock the boat there, and is constantly scared of ‘losing’ users, no matter how much people like Trump and his followers drive others off. There are people who actively collaborated in Trump’s win, and there are people and corps who enabled it, and there’s even liberals like Spencer who tsk-tsked protesters who shut down a Trump rally because it was “bad optics” and “giving Trump what he wants”, instead insisting on some meaningless silent protest that would’ve been ignored by CNN anyway. It’s not hard, either - news networks ignored the massive anti-war rallies when Bush was pushing it. Whether protesters did anything or not, Trump was still getting that media attention, cuz media wanted to give it to him. Trump didn’t need a bunch of costumed goons with guns to take America for him. All he needed was the fact that America can and does vote for racist fascists, and even supposed liberal, progressive people and groups will sit back and let him do and say what he likes because they fear disrupting order and comfort more than they fear the damage of what Trump and his followers were doing and still are. If you wanted to tell a story about American style fascism, you’d be better off talking about elections and how much bullshit America is actually willing to tolerate, or even enthusiastically vote for. Hell, you can look back at the original Secret Empire. The guy in charge of that entire plot was already in office. America doesn’t need to be tricked into fascism, we vote for it. We vote for it regularly, and often, enthusiastically. In all these ways, Steve Rogers is a terrible fit as an analog for Trump. But the racism, the bigotry, sticks out a lot. Intentionally avoiding grappling with bigotry in Steve Rogers’ Hydra, his ascent to power, and his rule over America means what you have to say about America? About American fascism? About fascism at all? Is fundamentally dishonest. It omits some of the most important things. You cannot have effective fascism without bigotry of some form. It just doesn’t happen. No bigotry? You’re not taking the throne, that’s for sure. If Trump wasn’t as racist as he was? If Trump was, in some bizarre alternate universe, not racist at all the same way Steve is portrayed as? He never would’ve stood a chance at getting elected.He would’ve never been allowed to get anywhere near power in America. His racism did not fell him, it empowered him, because we, as a country, are racist as hell. Our history is racist, our government is racist, our present reality is racist.

Colin Spacetwinks, Comics and Cowardice

#comics #fuck secret empire #fuck donald trump #racism #misogyny #long post

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