#my point is not that anything set in the past has to be brutally racist for it to be historically accurate but that doesn't mean you can

[mazhai]

saw a post about how bridgerton is liberal white escapism trash bc it implies that anything other than being a virgin or a wife to a rich man would bring you certain doom and like. girl. no fucking shit.

#“the show is only about preserving social order and maintaining the nuclear family” #what did you think it was about? racial equality and its widespreadedness in the fucking 1800s? #bs. #my point is not that anything set in the past has to be brutally racist for it to be historically accurate but that doesn't mean you can #ignore that facet of society completely #im curious how do you consume media if you throw a tantrum whenever a character makes an ethically questionable decision?

[majorasnightmare]

Inevitable Gerudo Headcanon Posting

i spend too much time thinking about the gerudo like genuinely theyre one of my favorite recurring tribes in the zelda series, which as we all know is a form of suffering because god forbid nintendo stop relying on racist tropes and caricatures.

keeping in line with this nintendos portrayal of the gerudo tends to either be 1) why theyre bad, and/or 2) how a culture of all women has kids. like thats an oversimplification of ALLL the problems present in the gerudos portrayal but thats a different post for another time. in general i bring this up because it means, for me as well as any others interested and invested un the gerudo, that there is a kind of generalized lack of pre botw characterization or cultural concepts to work with, esp when compared to the other tribes of hyrule. (looks pointedly at how theres no gerudo in the gerudo desert but there is a prison slash execution site where their king was held. LOOKS AT WHO SURVIVED THE PROLOGUE CUTSCENE IN WINDWAKER)

ANYWAYS. botw was really fun because, while it had plenty of its own issues with the gerudo, they were at least non hostile! so with that in mind, the headcanons and worldbuilding i write primarily apply to the wilds era gerudo, which spans the timeframe between ganondorfs reign as king to totk (suspending disbelief because that timeframe is. by all accounts. longer than recorded human history. friendly reminder ganondorf does All That before we even get sheikah wifi towers. christ.)

anyways. second verse same as the first, core assumptions and then a readmore

Some core assumptions:

The BotW branch of the timeline is chronologically set AFTER the previous timeline, ie the events of ToTKs ancient past is set AFTER the last event of the Hyrule Historia timeline. essentially they all come back together to form one line that makes up ToTKs ancient era

The biggest effect on Hyrules topography was the flooding in Wind Waker. after an unknown point, the flooding ocean receded leaving behind the ruins of ancient Hyrule. at some point after that, the zonai settled parts of it and made the buildings wed see as ruins by the time of BotW. slowly the various tribes of hyrule immigrated back

all peoples within the setting of hyrule are loosely grouped into categories called tribes. in this sense, tribe refers a collection of peoples with shared traits, without anything concretely set in stone (for example, hyrule includes the tribe of hylians, the tribe of gorons, the tribe of koroks, etc etc). the main six who show up repeatedly can be considered the sage tribes (gerudo, hylian, sheikah, rito, goron, zora), and the various types of enemies can be considered the monster tribes (the blin tribe of bokoblin, moblin, bulblin, etc)

so. starting at the beginning. near entirely headcanons

in ocarina of time, we see the spirit temple, where Nabooru awakens as a sage. this temple features a MASSIVE statue of a woman adorned with a snake and its primary mechanic centers around mirrors and reflected light. while the mirrors return, we dont really get that same kind of implied spiritual/religious focus again. so instead im going to make a mountain out of a molehill and position her as the primary spiritual figure here. im running low on name ideas tho so suggestions are much appreciated. for right now ill refer to her as the serpent goddess

the gerudo are culturally a people of function over form, practicality over whimsy, but when circumstances allow for it, are drawn like any other to arts and music and decoration. they have a long history of bloody, brutal battle, and while the war has long since ended, its kings buried and its warriors naught but ghosts, the desert remembers. its sands haunted by the bloodstains of conflict past, and echoes of ancient tragedies. the gerudo here in the era of wilds may have lost their records of their ancient history of conflict, but some aspects, preserved by the sands, have managed to survive the onslaught of time

surviving all this time is the ancient creation myth of the gerudo people. as legend tells it, long ago in the time before myth, there existed a goddess whos power was transformation. she was possessed of two forms, one a proud humanoid figure, the other a striking serpentine form twisting through the heavens with ease, her scales glittering with mirror sheen. to shift from serpent to human, she would shed her skin, and grow it back again to embrace her serpentine form anew

seven times she shed her skin, and from these shed skins rose the first gerudo, each embodying a key aspect of their sacred mother. the serpent goddess's scales are each a nascent soul of a gerudo, and when those scales are shed and fall to the land below, a new gerudo is born. likewise, when a gerudo dies, their soul returns to the scales of the serpent goddess, to await until they would descend again and reincarnate once more. the seven daughters of the serpent goddess led these gerudo as their guardians, leaders, and protectors. but, away from the seven heroines and their new people, the goddess shed her skin an eighth time. this daughter was born alone, and while her sisters embodies the strengths of spirit, flight, endurance, knowledge, motion, skill, and gentleness, the eighth was born with insatiable wanderlust. learning of this, the seven sisters cursed her name for leaving them and their people behind, and despite their shared ancestry, the eighth was forbidden to be spoken of. this suited her just fine, and the eighth was free to walk the land and learn all of its hidden paths

in time, war came to the gerudo, as it often does. though they were united, and strong, they were a small collection of people, and thus despite their proficiency were threatened nonetheless. it became clear at last that they could not stand and fight, and that to survive, they could not remain in place for long. but the enemy had pushed them deep into their home, and knew all the paths back. as hope seemed lost, as if summoned by call, the eighth sister at last wandered home. calling her seven sisters to her, she proclaimed that every hidden step was known to her, and while she lacked the power to guide them on her own, together they would escape unseen into the night, their enemy none the wiser. thus, skillfully guiding the skills of her sisters, the eighth heroine led the gerudo into safety, and the seven were humbled from their pettiness. seeking to apologize to the sister they had banished and forgotten, the seven sought to make amends, but the eighth was content merely to have a place of remembrance among them. to wander is not a sin, as long as one remembers where their home lies.

the eight heroines have long since passed and returned to their mothers scales, but the virtues they embody are cherished by the gerudo family they left behind, seeking to hold their memory close even as the years wear on

to the gerudo was bestowed the blessing of the element of Spirit, embodied by their iron wills and manifesting as crackling lightning. this spirit lightning is the gerudo's will made tangible, arcing out towards their target as an extension of their focus and sheer determination. to a gerudo, nothing is impossible until one has devoted themselves entirely to it, giving it their all, and only then may it be conceded

a long history of persecution has resulted in the gerudo being increasingly insular and isolationist. their admiration of the art of combat and how it can bring forth an individuals talents, achieving a perfect harmony between body and will as the weapon became an extension of ones limbs, was often perceived as aggression by outsiders, who would react as if to defend their own interests. the gerudo have suffered much at the hands of hyrule at large, and have pulled further and further away.

as the gerudo pulled away from hyrule, and hyrule from them, they devoted most of their attention to themselves. cooperation amongst themselves is seen as paramount to their survival, and familial affection often extends well past ones blood relations.

the gerudo value family, and loyalty, alongside independence and cooperation. everyone should have the opportunity to pursue their goals, but if someone is struggling, it is the responsibility of everyone to help. children are raised by as many people as are available, and even in the times of monarchy, the palace was less a formal dwelling place belonging to the gerudo ruler and more a public forum that the ruler simply happened to live in

most of the palaces amenities are fully public, a tradition that has carried on to riju's time. meals are communal and the kitchens open to all, and the palace has no strictly dedicated servants, merely a collection of amenities the gerudo people are free to use at will and often do so together. what this means is that there is no servant, for example, dedicated to preparing riju's meals but instead a collection of people willing to cook and willing to eat making meals riju partakes in, and this applies to most other menial tasks as well. the throne room is where the leader of the gerudo engages in their job as public servant, attending to the needs of the gerudo at large and responding to crises as they arise.

as nintendo is keen to point out, the gerudo are a people that are predominantly "all women", and thus spends plenty of time going over dialogue wherein people wonder how they have children and including a plethora of sidequests in the wilds era about acquiring partners. im ignoring all of that and instead going by lizard rules, in part because here theyre descended from a serpent dragon goddess, wherein a population of all female lizards were able to successfully maintain a stable population and have children without major issue. gerudo like ganondorf are the equivalent of a rare genetic mutation that flips some other genes on and has a different result, that really doesnt affect anything besides this one kid and doesnt have any major effects or differences in their life. two gerudo are perfectly capable of having kids together, having relationships as usual, and on the topic of "how do the gerudo have kids", thats all i really feel like exploring that topic

with an insular, isolationist culture that appeared for all intents and purposes to be all women, the gerudo were often a source of major culture shock when interacting with the other tribes of hyrule, most notably hylians

bonus hylian lore: hylians experience an even greater lack of sexual dimorphism than irl humans do, so gender presentation is near exclusively presentation based, with a heavy emphasis on clothing. showing skin is considered an act of emotional intimacy, and most hylians opt to cover as much as they can. the intensity of presentation scales upwards with their role in society, with the royal family having the most extreme form of gender presentation. gender is presented through clothing style and hair length, with ornamentation, jewelry, and piercings serving as a kind of intensifier, and hylian culture at large tends to operate on a sliding scale of masculine to feminine, with the middle androgynous zone being a weird gender spot for them

the gerudo, by contrast, never really developed a concept of masculinity versus femininity. gender pronouns in gerudo are based on personal proximity, occupation in society, and familiarity. these barely translate at all into hyrulean.

as the gerudo, by circumstance or by choice, interacted with hylians and the tribes of hyrule more and more often, some kind of understanding had to be reached with regards to translation. as relations were already terse, making an attempt to fully translate the gerudos understanding of gender to your average hylian was considered a fools errand, and thus translation was done in broad strokes, giving hylians the simplest root form of gender pronouns (and none of the increasingly specific declensions). loosely, the term vai is closer in concept to "us" and voe is closer to "not us" "foreigner" "outsider", and has taken on a connotation of " forbidden" or "taboo" (leading to wilds era gerudo secret clubs often imploying translatable Adult Puns regarding their catering to voe and the overall titillating atmosphere they tend to put on for customers). with regards to hylians, the feminine princesses and queens had more in common with the gerudo and were thus "vai", but the masculine kings and soldiers, who were often the main figures pushing aggressive efforts into conquering or otherwise absorbing the gerudo into hyrule, were "voe". this was then distributed in various guides to understanding the gerudo language as " vai" meaning "woman" and "voe" meaning man

gerudo town, as the capital of their people and general hub, has a law banning the entrance of voe. at the time if its writing, this was a fairly obvious law, because most "people who are forbidden" are forbidden from entering. as time has passed, hostilities cooled, and relations warmed, this law has been the subject of a long struggle of interpretation. it doesnt translate well into nearly any other language, and thus who counts as "voe" and "vai" is subject to endless debate. the differences in gender perception are most clearly on display with the admittance of the gorons. one might assume that the gorons, being a monogendered people who typically use masculine terms of identity and endearment in hyrulean, to thus qualify as voe, but the gorons cooperative nature, near uniform monogendered culture, and emphasis on hard work and independence has enough in common with your average gerudo that considering them as vai is a no brainer

ganondorf thus is also, clearly, considered vai. the specific pronouns he uses in his native gerudo include declensions regarding his position as royalty (one that has since gone out of use and is fairly archaic now, only really being used as a kind of neo-pronoun by current era gerudo as a rebellious self identification thing), his relation as the only child of koume and kotake, and are conjugated based on relation between the speaker and him. in the ancient era, calling ganondorf voe would be so confusing as to not even read as an insult. if one really wanted to refer to ganondorf with a tone of insult, theyd substitute the declension of familiarity with one used for strangers

ganondorf achieved his position as king the old fashioned way: a gift from his moms. ancient era gerudo practiced typical monarchy with a line of succession, and koume and kotake named him as the next royal of the gerudo as their heir. the hyruleans, seeing a masculine gerudo of royal birth, referred to him as "king", and correcting a culture of people he had little respect for was just a waste of ganondorfs time. after ganondorfs sealing, the gerudo changed to the current system of chiefs, wherein the current chief names a successor, or by default passes it onto their living heir. a system is in place to democratically install a new chief if the current one passes without naming a child their heir, or naming a successor in their place, a system drafted and then used in ganondorfs absence. riju thus inherited the mantle from her mother, but could opt instead to force a vote, or have such a vote forced on her due to her age, leading to much of her insecurity seen in BotW. this system has proven to be relatively stable, especially coupled with the continued tradition of keeping the palace an open public forum

the first chief of the gerudo was nabooru, advised by the sage of lightning we see in totk, following ganondorfs sealing

the gerudo are very familiar with the souls of the dead. poes, souls lost and aimless, wander the desert after millennia of bloodshed. thus their funerary customs have persisted, even as the folklore behind them fades in and out of memory.

a person perceives reality through their body. they know the sky is above them both by craning their neck up, and by the sensation of ground beneath them. in death, one is bodiless, and sensation becomes a confusing, directionless onslaught. it is so easy for a spirit to become lost, unable to orient themselves. the gerudos funerary rites seeks to aid these souls in their journey towards returning to the serpent goddess, as without guidance they are liable to become poes. the body after death is merely an empty receptacle, and on a practical level is a potential draw for dangerous desert scavengers seeking an easy meal. the shifting sands and hard soil makes burial difficult to impossible, so instead the gerudo burn their dead. smoke is ephemeral and thus able to be seen by spirits, and even as the wind rushes, smoke will still travel upwards towards the heavens. a spirit will linger by its body for a time, and thus cremation helps provide guidance to the dead. unable to feel the earth beneath them, the dead can follow the trails of smoke to orient themselves upwards, and dispel lingering confusion

as the body is burned both to guide the departed's soul and to ward away scavengers, the gerudo inter their belongings into gravesites instead, usually one or a small collection of items that the deceased valued or were considered emblematic of them. having a proud history of warriors, many gerudo consider their weapons extensions of themselves, and thus many gravesites will consist of a single weapon.

the sage of lightnings temple served as the primary gravesite for many gerudo, and in its heyday was decorated with love and care as befitting its role. torches burned bright in its sconces and the walls painted with care in massive sweeping murals. here in the temple, a foreigners idea of the gerudo as austere and practical would fall away, as the halls shone with warmth and color, taken from their desert home

lost souls that become poes often end up becoming consumed by their regrets and despair at their inability to find their way back to reincarnation through the serpent goddess's scales, and from there turn to rage and aggression. the sunlight glinting off of the goddess's mirror scales will blind and disorient the dead who have lost their way, as they try in vain to rely on their half forgotten senses, and thus poes eschew the day in favor of the cover of night. though incorporeal, poes move as fast as the desert winds, and try all they can to cause mischief and havoc. usually the end result of their shenanigans is light injuries and scratches, but it isn't uncommon for a waylaid traveller or adrenaline seeking youngster to suffer fatal consequences. despite this, poe hunting tends to be the go-to act of rebellion for antsy teenagers with a taste for danger. in general, one of the only things fast enough to strike a poe is a fired arrow

as the sands grew and the desert expanded, it grew more and more difficult for the steeds of the gerudo to gallop across the dunes, and they were driven further and further back until the gerudo phased out their horseback traditions entirely

and as an AU specific trivia tidbit

after ganondorf's sealing, nabooru grieved the loss of her childhood friend by constructing a dedicated tomb to house ganondorf's gravesite. even though he wouldn't die, nabooru would never live to see him again, and in traditional gerudo fashion, his gravesite is marked by his signature trident, further imbued by nabooru's blessing of lighting (in a similar fashion to urbosa's fury, despite urbosa not being a sage).

#totk headcanons #totk spoilers #loz gerudo #gerudo #ganondorf #totk au #loz headcanons #i THINK thats all the relevant ones #god i hope the readmore works. guess ill find out #BUT ALSO. GANONDORF NEOPRONOUNS REAL IN MY HEART. HES VAI. HES AN INCREDIBLY NICHE AND ARCHAIC FORM OF VAI #THAT HIGHKEY ISNT EVEN RELEVANT ANYMORE. biographies about him confuse+anger gerudo scholars because translating his pronouns is a BITCH #it also makes riju removing the voe restriction more impactful imo because its a symbol of how far the gerudo have come- #-in their relations to hyrule. because the voe rule is almost entirely like. a no hyrule thing snfnsndhdbf #so hyrule finally like! not being so much of a threat that the gerudo feel they have to stay closed off! going from oppressor to ally! #LET IT MEAN SOMETHING NINTENDO G O D #anyways. ganondorfs so gender. #nvm got the readmore to work c: #loz totk

[princesssarisa]

A defense of the ending of “Wuthering Heights"

@astrangechoiceoffavourites, @theheightsthatwuthered, @wuthering-valleys, @heightsandmoors, @incorrectwutheringheightsquotes

 I’ve been reading other people’s opinions on Wuthering Heights this past year, I’ve noticed a small recurring theme.

It’s the idea that the ending feels out of place; tacked on; anti-climactic; too tame compared to the rest of the book. That it feels wrong for Heathcliff to simply lose interest in his revenge and then lose the will to live, or for the surviving characters to have any kind of happy or hopeful ending after so much brutality.

One book I read excerpts from on Google Books (I don’t remember the title or the author) suggested that maybe Emily Brontë originally wrote a very different, more brutal and Gothic ending, now lost. The author proposed that the final ending was probably the result of Anne and/or Charlotte urging Emily to tone down the book’s “immorality.” Of course this is pure conjecture. This same author also speculated that in the novel’s first draft, Heathcliff was explicitly Mr. Earnshaw’s illegitimate son, but that Anne and/or Charlotte persuaded Emily to change it. I’m not at all convinced by that theory, since @astrangechoiceoffavourites has argued very eloquently that to make Heathcliff and Cathy’s love forbidden because of the incest taboo rather than because of social class and race would go against the plot’s main themes and make nonsense of Heathcliff’s revenge on the Lintons and Earnshaws.

Still, this theorist isn’t the only person to think the ending (and possibly the whole second generation storyline) feels like the work of a different author than the rest of the book. Just recently I read a comment on Facebook arguing that a more cohesive, consistent Wuthering Heights would have had “a much darker and more explosive ending.” I assume a similar mindset is why some theorize that Branwell wrote the novel’s first half and Emily wrote the second. (I think I hate that theory even more than I hate the theory that Branwell wrote it all – “He didn’t write the whole book, but he did write the part everyone likes best.”) And if we compare the various adaptations’ endings to the ending of the book, there’s definitely a trend of giving Heathcliff a more brutal death.

I understand all of this. The ending of the book is ironic. Heathcliff himself knows it’s ironic: “It is a poor conclusion, is it not?” he asks Nelly, “an absurd termination to my violent exertions?” We don’t expect a towering, terrifying yet fascinating Byronic anti-hero like Heathcliff to become apathetic and ineffectual in the end and then die quietly (albeit mysteriously and eerily) in bed. We’d sooner expect him to freeze to death chasing Cathy’s ghost through a blizzard, or to be shot by his worst enemy, or to be lured by Cathy’s ghost to commit suicide by gunshot.

But I know I’m not the only person who thinks the entire book is fully cohesive and who sees nothing wrong with the ending whatsoever.

As far as I’m concerned, Heathcliff’s “absurd” end is more interesting than anything “darker and more explosive” would have been, precisely because it’s unexpected and yet makes perfect sense. Revenge never makes Heathcliff truly happy or brings him peace of mind: we know that all along. It might distract him from his pain, but it can’t cure it. While initially surprising, in hindsight it’s not surprising at all that, with no out-of-character repentance or remorse, he eventually loses the will to seek any more revenge. At heart it was never what he really wanted most; his real greatest desire is and always has been to be with Cathy.

Then there’s the strongest factor in his loss of his will for revenge: his grudging empathy for Hareton. Again, as far as I’m concerned, this is fascinating irony. Heathcliff has purposefully set out to shape Hareton into a copy of himself. Ultimately, that scheme “goes horribly right,” because he sees too much of his younger self in Hareton to hate him as much as he wants to, or to have the will to separate him from Cathy II the way he himself was separated from Cathy I. Then there’s Hareton’s resemblance to his aunt, Cathy I; even though Heathcliff’s passion for Cathy has been the motive for all his revenge on the two families that separated them, in the end it’s what makes him unable to ruin the lives of her lookalike nephew and her daughter, even though they’re also the children of the two men most responsible for taking Cathy from him. Again, it works because it’s handled delicately and without sentimentality. He still shows no remorse or regret for his past actions, and never shows any real kindness or fondness to Hareton or Cathy II, but despises the conflicted feelings they stir in him. But the fact remains that, despite all his efforts to be a monster over the years, he’s still a human being, capable of some empathy for people in whom he sees aspects of himself and of his beloved Cathy. I think it’s fascinating that this humanity, and not his monstrous actions, is what undoes him in the end.

Also, as some critics have pointed out, the very fact that Heathcliff receives no punishment for his sins (apart from his inner torment) makes the ending subversive by Victorian standards. If he had died a brutal death, it could easily have been viewed as his comeuppance, demonstrating God’s justice. From a moral and religious perspective, it might be all the more disturbing that instead he gets to die as close to a peaceful death as his character allows, with a devilish smile on his face.

Moving beyond Heathcliff’s death, I don’t see anything wrong with Hareton and Cathy II′s ending either.

First of all, it isn’t necessarily a straightforward happy ending. It’s definitely bittersweet if we have any sympathy for Heathcliff, and not just because he dies. This penniless, abused, disdained orphan of color defied the classism and racism of his society by clawing his way to wealth and status and by bringing down the two families who once oppressed him, but in the end, it’s all for nothing. Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange go back to the Earnshaw and Linton heirs and the only trace left of Heathcliff is a single name and death date on a tombstone. He’s just as much of a “nobody” in death as he was as a homeless child. Of course it’s tempting to cheer for this fact because of his cruelty and because Cathy II and Hareton are sympathetic, basically innocent young people whom he unfairly punished for their parents’ sins. But in a way at least, especially in Marxist readings of the book (which I don’t fully agree with but do see validity in), the ending can be viewed as the triumph of the classist and racist status quo.

Nor, as some critics have argued, is it guaranteed that Cathy II and Hareton will live happily ever after. First of all, the fact remains that Hareton loved and loyally served Heathcliff to the end, and to please Hareton, Cathy had to stop speaking out against Heathcliff even though he had horribly abused her. There’s also the fact that Hareton once hit Cathy himself; only once, and before they were even friends, let alone lovers, but in the real world it rarely bodes well for a woman to marry a man who once slapped her. A few critics have wondered if Hareton is really permanently “tamed” in the end, or will eventually revert to the roughness Heathcliff bred in him and abuse his new power and status the same way Heathcliff did. On the flip side, there’s the fact that apart from her conceding not to criticize Heathcliff, Cathy seems to rule over Hareton almost as much as her mother did over Heathcliff when they were children. She educates him, he craves her esteem and does her bidding, and in his lessons she meets his mistakes and inattention (however playfully) with “smart slaps” and threats of hair-pulling. Some critics have wondered if we should view these as red flags; if Cathy II is destined to be an emotional abuser like her mother was.

But even if you don’t subscribe to those darker interpretations of the ending... even if you view Cathy and Hareton as fundamentally good people who genuinely grow and change for the better, find a healthy balance between the worlds of Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights, and will be truly happy together... well, what’s wrong with that?

Is it really so impossible to believe that sometimes the cycle of abuse can be broken, or so “out of place” to show it being broken at the end of a book that shows its horrors? Is it just naïve delusion to hope that, with effort, children can avoid repeating their parents’ mistakes and opposing social structures like the Heights and the Grange can be reconciled? That at least one young couple might manage to combine the good aspects of both worlds while discarding the bad, rather than combining the worst of both worlds the way Heathcliff did? Just because the book is dark as a whole, do we really need to be so cynical when reading it that we can’t allow it to end on a note of hope?

Besides, I’ve written before about the mirror-image character arcs of the two Cathys. Cathy I is born and raised at Wuthering Heights, but eventually leaves it for Thrushcross Grange when she marries the latter household’s heir; she initially loves the rugged dark-haired Heathcliff and wanders the moors with him, but then gains snobbery, treats Heathcliff with increasing disdain, and shifts her attentions to the prissy blond-haired Edgar, whom she marries; as a result, her life ends in misery. Cathy II is born and raised at Thushcross Grange, but eventually she leaves it for Wuthering Heights when she marries the latter household’s heir; she initially loves the prissy blond-haired Linton, whom she marries, and treats the rugged dark-haired Hareton with disdain, but eventually she loses her snobbery, learns to love Hareton, and wanders the moors with him. In no way is Cathy II’s positive ending “tacked on” – her entire character arc is structured to be the opposite of her mother’s tragedy.

I understand why some people don’t care for the ending and think it feels anti-climactic or out of place. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s a thoroughly effective ending and fully consistent with what came before.

#wuthering heights #meta #emily bronte #heathcliff #catherine linton #hareton earnshaw #tw: death #tw: abuse #literature

[protectwoc]

why all reylos are racist

y’all can go ahead and cancel me now because some of you are not going to like what i have to say and i am completely okay with that.

this recent gq interview with john boyega has incensed me. hearing all the things he went through, from disney and from “fans” and with no support from anyone… i’m livid. sometimes when i think about it for too long i start shaking, i’m so furious. and the response from the reylo fandom has infuriated me to a degree i honestly didn’t know was possible.

some of you may have seen my recent tumblr rampage. it’s reylo bullying hours here on my blog, and i’m not sorry either. one person threatened to post screenshots of my comments, which like… okay? i know what the fuck i said, it wasn’t that long ago. in fact i was going to include the screenshots in this post right here, but they blocked me before i had the chance. sorry. i’m sure somebody has them. anyway…

over the past two days in the star wars fandom we have seen something unprecedented: an outpouring of support for john boyega. both reylos and anti-reylos have joined forces to voice support for john in the wake of the gq interview (and the blm protests, let’s be real, some of y’all would not have given half a fuck if it wasn’t suddenly cool to be antiracist). and this showing of unity is one of the most rage-inducing things i’ve ever seen in a fandom (which is saying something; i have seen some shit).

reylo fandom, full offense intended, but where the fuck do you get off? you’re supporting john now? where was this support when tfa came out and you couldn’t stand the thought of him next to your white-girl-self-insert? where was it when tlj came out and your boy ryan completely sidelined him? where was it earlier this fucking year when y’all twisted a harmless joke (like yall haven’t spent years writing reylo-throne-room-sex-meta BULLSHIT) and ignored the vile racist shit coming from your own fav’s mouth? but you’re supporting him now? now that being antiracist is trendy? fuck outta here with that bullshit.

your fandom is the reason for the vast majority of the absolutely subhuman treatment john has endured over the last few years. your fandom influenced ryan (yes i know what his name is) to write tlj the way he did, you have behaved indefensibly here on tumblr.hell writing and drawing and fantasizing about all sorts of racist bullshit, and y’all have STAYED in his twitter mentions spewing hatred seven ways to sunday. but NOW, without a shred of self-reflection, you’re supporting him? now his experiences are valid?

the way that your fandom refuses to take accountability for its actions makes me see red. y’all stay on some “not all reylos” nonsense and i am SICK OF IT. i’m only gonna say this once, and i want you to hear me: you cannot be a reylo and be “antiracist”. you cannot participate in a fandom that has behaved the way yours has and say “blm, uwu acab.” you can’t. like do you think black people are dumb? that we can’t see right through you? we can.

“but rae,” i hear you whining. “you’re gonna say just because i like two characters together i’m a racist?” and of course not. that would be ludicrous. i think just because you knowingly engage and participate in a fandom that has racism encoded in its dna, you’re a racist. i think because y’all are in bed with racist harassers, racist trolls, and racist content creators, you’re a racist. that’s what the fuck i think. y’all lost the right to “it’s just a ship” me the instant you dragged john boyega into this.

here’s an example: i watched tfa about three days after it came out. i watched the first half, saw the obvious relationship set up between finn and rey, and thought, “aw, cute.” then i watched kylo and rey fight, watch him offer to teach her, and thought, “... interesting.”

when i got home i checked tumblr for finnrey content, saw the outpouring of love from black fans, all the cute fanart and fics blooming, and smiled. then, slowly, guiltily, i searched “reylo.”

BOOM. racism. the things i saw in the tag that night are tattooed on my brain. reylos rejoicing about the obvious rey/kyle pairing because “sw would never put her with that monkey finn”. calling him an “oaf”, “useless”, “bumbling”, “stupid”. reylos joking about how “when they talked about the Dark side, [they] didn’t think they meant that kind of dark.” “woke” reylos pretending to ship stormpilot in an obvious ploy to get finn away from kylo. and in between all of that, cute ship art. fun fics. talented gif makers. and nobody saying shit about the reprehensible behavior going on in their tag.

reylo is built on a foundation of racism. from that first week, racism has been woven into the fabric of your fandom, and it’s been going unchecked. and i don’t mean calling out other reylos. that’s not enough. i mean taking actual steps. y’all have been sitting in a cesspool of racism for five years, and its time for you to get the fuck out or shut the fuck up about being an “ally”. y’all need to leave this fandom.

don’t agree? here’s another story. in 2017, when i still watched supergirl (before i grew taste) i shipped karamel. for those of you who don’t know, karamel is the ship of kara zor-el (supergirl) and mon-el, her second love interest. when supergirl was moved to the cw for its second season, the decision was made to abruptly end her romance with jimmy olsen, played by mecahd brooks (a black man) and replace him with mon-el, played by chris wood, a white man, who was revealed to be, among other things, an alien slaveowner, as well as a playboy and all-around terrible person. and i shipped them. look, i’m not defending myself, but i never really bought the chemistry between jimmy and kara. even though mon-el’s introduction and the way that they carelessly disregarded kara’s feelings for jimmy made me uncomfortable, i thought the way melissa played her attraction to chris wood was more believable (and again, i’m not defending myself, but they are now married so it’s not like i was wrong). so i shipped them. simple as that, right?

well, no. not really. because the inherent racism in the way the writers wrote out her admittedly sweet romance with a black man in favor of a white slaveowner jerk kept bothering me. and finally i decided that it made me too uncomfortable to participate in. i never really reblogged any karamel fandom stuff, but i completely divorced myself from the fandom. i stopped reading karamel fic, and i switched to reblogging exclusively jimmy/kara content until the fandom died out/i stopped watching. i made a choice that real life racism is more important to me than a fucking fandom or a ship, and then i acted accordingly. simple as that.

and i’m not saying you have to stop liking the reylo dynamic. i still like the chemistry between kara and mon-el. i’ve shipped problematic ships before (bamon comes to mind) and i don’t think there’s anything wrong with that (to a point). but there’s a difference between liking a ship dynamic and engaging and contributing to a fan culture of racism. you have to stop participating in the fandom. y’all are in bed with people indistinguishable from confederate-flag-waving-all-lives-matter-touting racists and you don’t feel the need to get out of that environment? there comes a certain point where you have to decide if fandom bullshit is more important to you than fighting racism, and unfortunately, reylos have chosen wrong. that, ladies and gentlemen, is why all reylos are racist, regardless of what they say. roll credits.

except i have more to say, so i’m gonna say it. first of all, i’m not trying to hold myself up as some kind of paragon of virtue. i’m not holier-than-thou because all my ships are “woke” or whatever. chemistry is subjective, and we’re all going to be attracted to different ship dynamics, and there’s nothing wrong with that in theory. what matters is the execution. i finally had to say one day, “you know, this ship and the racist baggage it carries is actually less important to me than battling systemic racism on every level, including the fandom level”. y’all thought being antiracist was gonna be easy? that you wouldn’t have to make some actual changes, to make some actual sacrifices? sorry not sorry to disappoint. and if i, a normal-ass person with flaws and problematic thinking that i’m still dealing with and the whole ine yards, can make that decision, then other people should be required to as well.

(what really irks me is that the karamel fandom wasn’t even really that bad! i definitely could have gotten away with being a karamel stan in 2017. thankfully the supercat and supercorp shippers were doing the lord’s work and bullying them into submission (don’t think i’m letting y’all off the hook either, y’all have got some racism to deal with as well but that’s an essay for another day) but like most of the racism happened at the writing level; the fandom itself wasn’t engaging in racist clownery on the regular. but like the reylos are. y’all see racist bullshit coming from your neighbor, fav fic writer, artist, gif maker, whatever, and don’t say shit? don’t feel the need to distance yourself from them? gtfoh.)

i made this argument earlier when i was on my rampage (which i’m still on btw so don’t clown in my inbox, you will get your shit rocked) but i’m going to make it again because i feel like its important to note. when i pointed out that existing in the reylo fandom while you are aware of its racism makes you complicit in that racism, a white reylo told me earlier that (paraphrasing, my memory’s not as good as it used to be and i did mention that they’d blocked me) “you don’t solve a problem like systemic racism by ignoring it. leaving the fandom would be allowing it to happen.” when i pointed out that that’s police officer rhetoric almost verbatim, she (a white reylo) admonished me (a black woman) not to compare police brutality to a “ship war.” lmao.

look, clearly y’all need a refresher on what “systemic” means. it means, quite simply, that there are systems, large and small, allow for racism to exist, and it also means that allowing for racism to exist on the small scale means expecting it on a large one. like you think police officers spring fully formed from the head with racist ideals already ingrained? no! they learn it and learn to justify it with “well just because my friend made a racist joke doesn’t make me a racist” and “just because i laughed at my friend’s using a racist term in my video game doesn’t make me a racist” and “just because my friend is a racist doesn’t mean i’m a racist” and then we have people watching their coworkers kneel on a man’s back for 8 minutes with no remorse. i’m not gonna solve police brutality by fighting reylos on tumblr, but fandom racism is real racism with consequences on our world, and i don’t tolerate ANY type of racism. and the fact that you are so willing to not just tolerate it but justify it should say something to you.

and not all reylos are like this. similar to cops, good reylos don’t last. i have seen people grow so disgusted by the racism in the reylo fandom that they publicly turned their backs on it, and those reylos i respect. you’ve heard of “the only good cop is an ex-cop” well get ready for “the only good reylo is an ex-reylo”.

(and also like far be it from me to justify a cop but one could at least say they have their livelihoods to think about (not like they couldn’t just pick a nonmurderous profession but i digress) but you reylos can’t even choose between taking a stance against the hateful and unjustified bullying of a man who had the audacity to… get a job (?)... over a ship? come on now.)

the point of all this is, for all their posturing about “being antiracist” and “fuck 12” and “support john boyega”, reylos have decided that a relationship between two fictional people is more important than all the black and brown people who are hurt by that decision and the consequences of that decision. and before y’all pull some “b-but there are POC reylos!” (stop fucking using poc as an adjective, its a noun, it stands for person of color, please use it as such) internalized racism is a thing. busting out your token “reylo of color” (see how easy that was?) is not going to change my mind. all reylos are complicit in the racism of their peers, and being complicit makes you culpable. full stop.

and that is why the public support of john boyega from the reylo fandom has me seeing red. renounce your fandom or keep that man’s name out of your mouth. anyway, this was long and ranty and entirely stream-of-consciousness and i’m refusing to edit it so it’s probably completely incomprehensible to anyone besides me but if you made it this far thanks for reading ig. all reylos are racist, blm, fuck 12, acab, stan john boyega, don’t clown in my inbox unless you’re coming to bully me for being a karamel shipper, which i deserve (or do, i couldn’t give less of a fuck). good night.

#john boyega #anti reylo #raetalks

[whitehotharlots]

The triumph of lunacy

There’s a trend in the social justice sphere that encapsulates the self-defeating idiocy of our present moment. During official meetings meant to address or raise awareness of issues of racial justice, all the white people present are expected to call themselves racist, provide examples of their racism, and explain what they’re doing to avoid being racist in the future. 

I am not exaggerating, and this is as cult-like as it sounds: to enter into the discussion, you must start by saying “My name is Mark, and I’m a racist.” 

This is not a fringe activity. It’s a completely mainstream part of racial justice programming. A student in Nevada is suing his school after administrators threatened to deny him graduation because he refused to call himself racist. A quick twitter search reveals dozens of examples (which I am omitting to avoid accusations of “generating death threats” or whatever), and this has been covered extensively in right wing media. This is mainstream, even if we want to pretend that it’s not.

Now, looking at this just in the abstract, a few seconds of scrutiny shows us how idiotic and self-defeating this practice is. I accept the notion that everyone is prejudiced to some degree and that most white Americans receive some structural advantages in some spaces. In this very obscure sense, you can argue that all white people are racist. Fine. But if a term is applied to literally everyone and everything, it loses its utility. If everyone is racist, then “racist” is a meaningless designation. 

In practice, however, this is even more insane than it sounds. Because of course the purveyors and participants in these ritualistic humiliation sessions don’t really think that everyone is racist. If they did, they wouldn’t go through the ritual. Obviously, the people calling themselves racist are being coerced into doing so. Every person who says “My name is Mary, and I’m a racist” is thinking in the back of their head that they’re not really racist, that this confession serves as an act of ablution. And, in a truly lunatic twist of irony, the people who are regarded as racist after these sessions are the ones who did not call themselves racist. 

Madness. Absolute madness. 

This is precipitated, of course, by guilt. White liberals realize, correctly, the the world is fucked. The politicians and organizations that putatively represent their views have done the opposite and accelerated widespread brutality. The man who invented mass incarceration was sold as the only way to avoid “fascism.” There’s no hope of a more decent future. They feel like shit and will do anything, even self-flagellation, to glimpse the feeling that maybe they’re kind of sort of partway making the world less horrible. They’re not--objectively, this type of gross bullshit is alienating, makes non-insane people disengage with the movement, and has been empirically proven to reduce empathy and make people more hateful. But they feel a little better for doing it. 

Beyond guilt, however, lies coercion. I’ll bet the vast, vast majority of people who have subjected themselves to these struggle sessions didn’t believe a word they were saying but were just going along to avoid getting in trouble. Personally, I’m not going to lose my job and my healthcare just to avoid a few moments of cynical embarrassment. Very few people would.

It was just today that I realized how commonplace this type of dishonesty has become. If you live or work in a liberal space, ask yourself this question: how many times in the last few years have you professed a belief in something you knew was crazy? How many times have you been made to signal approval for ideas that you knew to be harmful, impossible, or reactionary in order to avoid being branded an Enemy of Social Justice? How many times have you stayed silent and let yourself be bullied into feigning support for policies and procedures that contradict your beliefs?

More than a few, I’ll bet. Now ask yourself: what has been gained from this? Is the world more just or safe or equal than it was before this type of shit was made commonplace? Do you have more hope for the future, or less? 

The only political effect of this normalization of dishonesty has been the ascendance of the most reactionary faction of the Democrat party. A left that had not been trained to hate itself would not have voted for Joe Biden. 

This is what happens when a movement places zero value upon honesty and decency. When all conflict becomes understood as abuse, when all criticism is regarded as violence, the most sociopathic and violent members of a community are the ones who get to set the agenda. No one can push back. No one can dissent. The demand for absolute uniformity cripples the movement’s ability to accomplish anything beyond enriching a handful of the very worst people on earth. 

We did this to ourselves, and I worry we might be past the point of no return. Just a few months ago I still held some hope that we might see a turn around, that saner and more decent voices might take control and actualize our widespread disgust and discontent toward policies that would actually help people. That’s not going to happen. The sociopaths have won. Their candidate is president, their ideology is mandatory, and their ability to hurt anyone who crosses them is stronger than ever.

Joe Biden will be the most austerity-minded president since Herbert Hoover. His reign is going to be disastrous for everyone, especially those who are already vulnerable. His supporters, secure in their positions within media and NGOs and academe, will need to fabricate more scapegoats to explain away the failures and brutalities of their leader--to convince everyone that they deserve the punishment they are receiving. They’re going to demand and receive more intrusive means of ensuring ideological uniformity. And there’s nothing we can do to stop them.

[danwhobrowses]

America, We Need to Talk

For some reason in these past years the concept of ‘Reason’ and ‘Sense’ has departed your country, I’ve hissed, I’ve simmered, I’ve hit my head against the wall hoping that in the end IN THE END the collective mass of the American People will open their eyes, stop making excuses and realise that for 4 years, America has not become ‘Great Again’ I’ve resisted the urge to unload many a time, but news that Donald Trump is to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize is just too much, because this is literal horseshit. For some part it feels like they’re only trying it just so Republicans can force a rhetoric as if Trump did a better job than Obama - who won in 2009 for easing religious tensions, preventing Nuclear Weapons distribution and profiting, working towards fixing climate change and assisting with the UN - as people die of COVID, cities burn and violence against peaceful protests continue to ravage your country.

I have to say that again, Ravage, because I feel as though some people are blind to the matter at hand. Donald Trump will say something and his cult of followers will believe it, when someone disagrees and presents evidence it’s deemed irrelevant or forged, if a Democrat says something on the contrary they need a full powerpoint presentation to prove it, somehow this mentality has poisoned the American society when the louder people will say something in confidence only for the rest of the world to read and think it’s one of the dumbest shit they’ve ever read. This isn’t just coming from a Brit, this is coming from family in Chicago, a co-worker who moved out of America and worked in the army, Italians, Greeks and someone who was in Hong Kong during the riots. The people who believe in Democracy, Majority Vote, Free Healthcare, Fair Wage, Equal Rights AND international peace that doesn’t look towards World War Fucking Three look at your country in shame because the state of your leadership and how it’s been allowed to continue with ridiculously boneheaded and stubborn reluctance to see the truth. So let’s start with the boiling point shall we, a Nobel Peace Prize Nomination? Have you learned anything from the last year? Or has the far-right got the prize so by the balls that this nomination is used as a cheap add-on to coincidentally peacock the Trump administration in its build to an election. The nomination to Trump has been cited to be in favour of the following things; Israel-UAE relations (aka ‘Saving the Middle East), Serbia-Kosovo deal (aka ‘Saving the ‘Middle East’’), Inter-Korea relations and likely the support of Jerusalem and Hong Kong, and in face value that may sway the common person who knows nothing about these deals. But a simple amount of research cuts most of these at the legs. Let’s talk Serbia and Kosovo, since it’ll directly involve Israel, relations were tense but they have not been at war, they are peacefully not talking to each other. The media will have you think that Peace has been brokered by Trump only in this but in reality Serbia still refuses to recognize Kosovo’s independence, the tensions are still there you can just travel there now. This is an agreement that’s been build up since the economic and trade agreement in 2013. If that year isn’t surprising you that is 3 years before Trump was elected, when Barrack Obama was in office - Republican Public Enemy Hillary Clinton was at the forefront of that when she was Secretary of State. So no, Trump hasn’t saved the Middle East by this deal, mainly because Kosovo and Serbia are in Europe, they have been part of the EU for quite some time and the deal is already jeopardized since Serbia won’t build an embassy in Jerusalem if Israel recognize Kosovo as independent - which was part of the original deal. Also for all the Republicans’ use of ‘fear by Communism’ to slander their opponents they sure love to rub shoulders with countries also rubbing shoulders with Russia and China. So this segues into Israel-UAE, the Arab Nations have mainly been reluctant to recognize Israel as independent. On the 13th August a deal was struck called the Abraham agreement establishing Diplomatic Relations. Except, this was in the making since 2012 and only delayed to help progress Israeli-Palestine conflicts (which Trump’s actions with Israel led to Palestine cutting ties with the administration and his ‘Peace Plan’ falling apart 3 years after announcing it). UAE and Israel had been in conversation before Trump was signed in, but only made headway when the FDD - already funded by the UAE - took over. For 3 years USA did little for the relations, UAE and Israel doing it themselves, it’s only now do the US mediate a peace agreement, which meant that Trump didn’t really do much in terms of convincing both sides, he just made sure things didn’t get out of hand - which was never close to happening since there is little tensions. It was Kushner who requested the meeting and Mossad also had a huge part in it. Also I want to add that the US are only buddied with these two out of fear of Iran - you know, that country that Trump almost goaded into war in January after bombings and the death Assassination of General Soleimani who helped the US in the wake of 9/11 track and hunt down the Taliban, as well as fighting ISIS, how peaceful was that? The Middle East is still in Civil and Proxy Wars, no saving has been done there, the US just were there for Israel and UAE to confess that they’re friends. Which leads me to Korea. The Olympics helped more than Trump did, a shared effort where both countries had to travel and accommodate each other. Tensions may’ve eased in 2016 but they were far from resolved and in 2020 not much is better. Korea still antagonize one another and the North still antagonizes the US, any ‘peace’ the Trump Administration will claim to towards Korea faded quickly. And finally, Hong Kong, the US may be supportive and rightly so but this is again fear of Communism, it should’ve happened sooner but the US was hoping for that big and meaty trade deal with China. And this isn’t months I’m talking about it’s years, the proposal first took place after the Umbrella Movement...in 2014, it was annually brought up in Congress but postponed until the Senate decided to. And after Trump signed it he said he might veto it in favour of the China trade deal

“We have to stand with Hong Kong, but I'm also standing with President Xi: he's a friend of mine." - Donald Trump, November 2019

So really, this Nobel Peace Prize is the product and efforts of other people that set events in motion that Trump was there just to sign his name on. Meanwhile, in the country he is President of, the COVID Death toll has officially risen to 190 Thousand. 20% of COVID deaths are in the United States. Tear Gas/Pepper Spray - which is a recognized chemical weapon not allowed to be used in warfare - is used by Trump Supporters along with paintballs to attack peaceful protesters and Trump calls that peaceful because ‘Paint is not bullets’ - as someone who has been hit with Paintballs from safe range, they will hurt like a bitch and if you don’t wear protective gear they can do enough harm to crack and sometimes even break bone, the asthmatic co-worker I aforementioned that was in Hong Kong also notes that Tear Gas is awful, it may not kill you but it is far from peaceful. In the same breath Trump refuses to condemn a 16 year old carrying an AR and shooting someone in the head. He has also refused to condemn Epstein’s financier Ghislaine Maxwell and ‘hopes that she’s well’...the sex trafficker, but when you mention late Civil Rights leader John Lewis and his words are ‘can’t say one way or the other...he didn’t come to my inauguration’. This is your leader. The embodiment of the standards the country upholds itself to, it baffles me and many many others that the American People Chose a racist, bigoted, misogynistic, careless, self-important, naive, power-mad, severally-bankrupted, reality tv personality man-child, who is also intending to use US Taxpayers money to cover lawsuit fees against him alongside all his other golf trips. The man literally said that no other president has done more for Black People than he has, this is while he profusely condemned Kaepernick taking a knee to protest Police Brutality against Blacks and POC only for years later the world support it as BLM protests still happen because action has not been taken. We’ll also see what happens on the 14th regarding the Felony Hearing of the officers in Buffalo who pushed over Gugino and gave him a brain injury which he is still rehabilitating from after Trump tried to sell him as an Antifa member. Just in case you’re unaware, antifa stands for anti-fascist but Trump will paint that again in ‘Fear of Communism’. If you actually look up this stuff, the web of Trump’s lies unravel, and yet people just forget about. The man is a pro at gaslighting I’ll give him that, I mean leaking e-mails that condemned Clinton right at election time was some cutthroat stuff, but a man who needs to rely on preying on xenophobia, paranoia, fear, racism and invests mainly on smear tactics and dismantling, is not someone who can lead a country to prosperity, the amount of leeway this man gets from his supporters just hurts my head. So let me ask you America, truly, what is it that you want? Because it can’t be this, can it? Protests, Riots, people refusing to wear a simple face mask to limit the spread of a deadly virus because they think it’s a fake thing that the entire world decided to get in on with WHO just to spite Trump? Teenagers carrying guns? Refugees refused asylum and kept in cages? Do you want to keep spending your savings just to go to the doctors? or do you think that ‘Patriotism’ is blindly defending your country’s flaws and clinging to archaic and outdated thinking because centuries ago your country prospered in it? I’ll tell it to you straight: America is not the greatest country in the world, it hasn’t been for a long time. I don’t know what your history books tell you; that Native Americans were fine with slaughter, that the US won WW2 with the military might they always had, that Vietnam was a moral victory, but the present day should tell you that your country is a mess, and the man who has been at the helm for 4 years will not fix it in another 4. There’s only so much of Obama’s policies he can plagiarize as his own; he has left the UN, left the Paris Agreement for cleaner air and energy and all his original campaign members have been arrested, an alarming amount of people associated with him are facing criminal charges - is that not a red flag? Don’t let your thoughts that as a patriot you have to support your country no matter what, true patriotism is not just the love of your country but the hope and strive to better it because you can love it but accept that it has flaws. I mean even I’ll admit that the UK has a lot of its own shit to deal with, doesn’t mean I hate where I live I just know it can be better. If this were anyone else, hell if this were a Democrat the Republican party would be booking them a flight to the other side of the world with the stuff Trump has done and let to continue on with afterwards, through him you went from the United States to an Absolute State and the rest of the world wonder if this will either lead to World War 3 or a Second American Civil War You don’t have to like Joe Biden, but he clearly looks like the lesser of the two evils here, and at least in 4 years time America under him won’t be on fire. If you still don’t like him someone new could be elected after, but right now you are on a downward spiral and need someone who can put you back into a stable place, that man is not Donald Trump. The man who wants to intercept mail-in voting and outcry its ‘risk’ of tampering when he himself voted by mail is not a truthful leader, the man who tried to cancel the World Health Organization when they simply asked to not call COVID a racist name that incited xenophobia after decrying cancel culture is not a moral leader, and the man who said that COVID would peter out and suggested injecting disinfectant into the lungs to combat it only to now suddenly buy out all the experimental treatment so that they can try and engineer a cure in time for the election campaign, is not a wise leader. All the stuff you see in these coming months is just an attempt to win your vote, for the most part it’ll be Trump stamping his name on something other people worked on for years and claiming that he did all the work. So make sure you actually check the truth of these things, research and fact-check yourself with valid, neutral sources. Take off the blinders, take a breath and actually see the full picture. And please, as well as not letting this man have the Nobel Peace Prize Don’t give this guy have a Second Term

#politics #political rant #let sense prevail for all our peace of mind

[godsofmonster]

Bangtan MC ≽ VI.

Reader x Bangtan- Motorcycle Club

Word Count- 7.1k

Warnings- sexual content, death, murder, guns, drugs, violence, betrayal,  mentions of suicide, mentions of rape, etc.

For as long as I can remember back, I always wanted to be in a motorcycle club. Since I was six years old, the only thing on my mind was getting my hands on a Harley and a cut. I was a wolf, a wild cur, cut from the pack with bloodstained on my fur. Every wrong has marked a debt because a beaten dog never forgets.

The sun was gone, but its light reached for the last bit of sky it could find. The road was practically deserted, I passed a total of four cars on my ride to 18th street. 

My father's motorcycle felt foreign under my touch, and as much as I wanted to make it mine, I couldn't find its compassion. At any minute, I felt it would flip on me, shutdown, or crash. I was riding with no helmet and prayed no police would pull me over. As much as I wanted to race down the road, I took the ride with ease. I could not act relentless, the world was not in my favor as of late. 

Coming up on Charming street, I spotted an old Chevy Impala that was tinted dark. It wasn't black, but it appeared that way in the moonlight. The extravagant ride stood out like a sore thumb in a small town like this.

Once he spotted me, as well, he proceeded to turn on his engine. I parked on the opposite side of the road, and his headlights flashed on as mine went out. My eyes scouted the environment, peering over both shoulders, as I unmounted the bike. Even while knowing that this road would be vacant at night, my paranoia was louder than any voice of reason. 

My feet paced quickly for the passenger seat. I pulled on the handle and almost had a slight heart attack to find that it was locked, I pulled it again, yanking it out of temporary distress. Upon closer observation, I noted his car was a deep moss color before finally hearing the click of the lock open. 

"What the hell is this?" I questioned, while plopping into the seat, and swiftly shutting the door. 

"What?" Romero asked, clueless.

"This," I gestured to the vehicle that encased us. He glanced about as if he could not see what I was suggesting. "This car- it's obnoxious!"

The seats were a custom leather, a soft cream color. Personal articles decorated the car’s interior space, novelty items, and religious emblems. "What? Are you infiltrating the cartel?"

Agent Romero stared at me with puzzled eyes, shortly before a chortle erupted from his lungs. He raised his hand at me as if to ask for a minute, while he allowed his giggles to run their course. However, I was not laughing.

"That’s racist,” He pointed out in the midst of his laughter. He leaned forth, stretching his hand to tenderly stroke the skin of his dashboard. "Don't hate the car,"

One would think that I would be more understanding given my choice of lifestyle. Except, for the fact, that my brain was screaming with anxiety and frustration.  

"You couldn't pick something more... appropriate?" I said trying to push my emotions away. Romero shifted the gear into drive, and pulled out of the parking space.

"What? Like a police car?" He joked.

I don’t know if it was just by comparison, but Romero seemed to be in a rather good mood tonight. I, on the other hand, was a panicking mess in the seat beside him. There was little to no tolerance for joy on my side. Any trace of it registered into further panic and uncertainty. It was apparent in the way my leg bounced in place, and it was noticeable enough for it to catch his attention. 

"Try to remain calm," He said in a tone of encouragement. 

I was in no place to accept guidance. The last thing I wanted to hear was the cliche crap that everyone knew how to spill. We were here to do a job, one that risked my life in every possible way. I didn’t want his encouragement, I wanted his understanding. If he was going to use me to his advantage, he needs to know that I had the most to lose. My life was on the line, in more ways than one. 

"Can you at least tell me where we are going?”

As much as I wanted to sit in silence, I had to fill him in on everything that had happened since our meeting this morning. 

"Down Riverside road," I tried to reduce the coldness in my voice. 

I rolled my head against the headrest, squeezing my eyes shut, and attempting to dismiss all of the tension and panic from my consciousness. It was seemingly coming from nowhere and yet, everything stressed me more. 

My entire life, I only ever heard stories of things the club did. They always came from third, outside parties that were biased against them. I told myself a number of things to find reason in the terrible stories I heard. 

Bangtan wasn't full of doctors or lawyers, they were blue-collar guys. The way we saw it, they were out there risking everything to protect our way of life. Everyone knew they cut some corners, sold a few things on the side, and asked for their money in violent ways. It was all to get a few extra bucks and perks. When you lived in a community like that, everything seemed normal, even crime. There were never any outsiders with a different perspective, never.  It used to make me proud to have the kind of father I did. 

Though, now I was the outsider with a new perspective.

I was terrified of what I might see, the corrupt and brutal choices that they could make. I was afraid that Bangtan really had turned into the gang Romero mentioned. Comparing a group of individuals I always admired to some of the foulest scum I’ve learned about would be earth-shattering.

"Do you mind filling me in?" He asked after I failed to, myself. 

My eyes reopened, and found him focused on the road ahead. He held the steering wheel with a single arm at the twelve o'clock position. He was mostly a combination of darkness and a dim outline. The fake lights from inside the car did little to illuminate him.

"After our meeting, I ran into two of the club members," I began to explain, reliving the event like a movie in my mind. "We witnessed a deal go down, and they handled the situation as you would expect."

He wasn't looking in my direction but I could tell he was paying close attention to my words. Not only for information on the club but information on me. 

"What were you doing?" Romero was concerned about my behavior in the field. He had a right to be, but it still bothered me. 

"Babysitting some bimbo who was with us," I muttered annoyed at just the thought. I could have left it there but I knew I couldn't lie to him. "Until, I saw a PB member approaching them..."

He recognized the tone in my voice, and took his eyes off the road for a second to ask,

"What did you do?" He sounded like an angry parent, on the verge of lecturing.

"What was I supposed to do?” I attempted to remain calm. I thought he might see things from my point of view. “I had to interfere, or they could have been hurt." 

"You shot him?" He asked in disbelief and quick anger.

"Not dead!" I clarified, defensively. "I!- I just injured him."

I could see his demeanor change, that good mood I suspected earlier was gone. His fist tightened around the steering wheel, veins popping and outlined by the faint lighting.

"Are you insane?" His voice was rough, bossy, and cold. "You're an unauthorized federal agent and you fired rounds, on the street, in the middle of the day?"

I found myself, once again, being lectured about the same event. I was criticized for saving lives and doing my job. Neither of them were in a place to talk down on me.

"I did what I had to do!" I yelled. "If it wasn't for that- we would have no idea that the PB was cooking meth in Blackburn. We wouldn't have the exact address and time Bangtan was planning their retaliation."

I reminded him of the facts, what actually mattered at this moment. "If you wanted a traditional agent, then you should have gotten one!"

Romero didn't say anything in response. He didn't know what to expect from me. I was raised with a set of beliefs that were different than his own, but that was exactly why he needed me. 

I was here because of my connection and inside knowledge of the club. I knew how they thought and operated, I could speak their tongue. What I did today, established trust between me and them. One that I certainly needed,  after learning about Yoongi's suspicions. If he could doubt me, so could have the rest of them. Bangtan didn’t believe in coincidences and they left no loose ends. I could no longer raise any more suspicions.

"Take the next left," I sighed, after taking a moment to notice our surroundings. 

"Riverside road is still up ahead," He stated as if I didn't know.

"I know that," I said bitterly, wondering why he continued to question me. "This is another way there. If we go down that way, there is a chance we might run into the club."

That was the last thing we needed. The house was in a rural part of town, at the very edge of Blackburn by a lake. Not many people lived by that area, and with a car like this, we would be suspicious for sure.

-

The roads on this side of town were made of only dirt, they were bumpy and uneven. The night fell heavier, with the tension of the forest, it crept on a single side of the path. The lights beams were soft, we couldn't see more than three feet in front of us. Romero worried about the condition of his wheels and took the drive gently. 

"That's got to be it," I muttered, staring out the window. 

Romero drove the car slowly past a driveway that led to the house. It was small, red brick, and cabin-like. It was invisibly ordinary. 

To common folks, there was nothing about this residence that raised eyebrows. To the trained eye, however, a small detail stood out instantly. "Look at that- industrial filters,"

They were large black tanks that were attacked to the side of the home. By the looks of them, they were cooking deadly amounts of meth. 

"Any sign of life?" He asked as he was keeping his eye on the road in front of us. 

"The lights are on, but the blinds are shut," I informed him. There was only a blue pick-up truck beside the house. No other vehicles in sight. "The club will be in a black Nissan NV200." 

It wasn't long before some trees cut my line of sight from the property. I leaned back in my seat and looked at the surrounding area. "Turn into the field right here,"

The car bounced as we went off the trail. The left side of the house was blocked by a few oak trees and bushes. It wasn't dense enough to cover the house, but just enough to set the property boundaries. In the dark, it was the perfect place to hide behind. We were at least twenty yards from away. 

"Now, we wait," Romero muttered to himself with a sigh. 

He shut off the engine, the interior lights went dark, and we were hidden in the night. 

"Do you have the papers?" I said, turning to look at him. The only light source came from the nearly full moon in the sky. It was pale on his tan skin. 

"In the glove compartment," He instructed, keeping his eyes on the house.

I leaned over and popped open the chamber, where a stack of papers and a few CDs, was all I could feel with my hand. The contract was stapled together, but it was difficult to make out the small print in the dark.

"They agree with all your terms. None of the information you give us on the mc can be used against them in a court of law. However, any drug-related crime that may occur with the Camilo Cartel is still our jurisdiction."  

I planned to stop that before it could happen. If it got that far, then I have already failed them. 

"What are their conditions?" I asked, knowing very well that they would have a few. 

"That you don't withhold any information," His voice was skeptical of that happening. He turned my way but looked back forward before I could do the same. "You also can't take part in any illegal activity, or report yourself as a D.E.A agent." 

The D.E.A was very particular about their image, having someone like me on their team, had to be kept confidential. But I didn't care. I wasn't doing this for any kind of recognition on their part. 

"I'll also be administrating you a drug test every week for the remainder of the investigation," When considering my past, it was no wonder why Romero and the higher-ups were cautious. “If any of these rules are broken, the deal goes out the door.”

I was an agent who was never meant to see the light of day in this job. I was a gamble, and they desperately needed the odds to go in their favor. 

I was being observed on either side of this situation. My will had to be strong to voluntarily put myself in this position. Trusted by no one, and yet, needed by everyone- I was the help no one wanted to thank. 

I grabbed the pen that was sticking out of the cup holder between us. Turning to the very last page, where at the bottom, was a line waiting for my signature. 

When I scribbled my name onto that piece of paper, I felt as if I was sighing my own death certificate. 

"(Y/n)..."

His voice had shifted into a low pitch, steady and cautious. I turned to see what had triggered this behavior. I followed his gaze, out his window, to the dirt road we had just stirred out of. There was a black van stalking down the path, with its lights shut off in the middle of the darkness. 

"Oh shit," I whispered. Even from this far away, at night, I could make out Taehyung's familiar head through the passenger window. "What do we do?"

"Nothing." He was firm, eyes glued to the movement of the approaching vehicle. "Absolutely nothing,"

He looked back at me to ensure that what he spoke was understood thoroughly. "No matter what happens- we cannot interfere, (Y/n)."

That meant, even if someone got hurt. 

"Okay," I responded. 

Though, I worried that my emotions were still much out of my control. I wanted to do my job, but I was being asked to stand by and do nothing. 

"They're passing the house," Romero stated. 

It was getting more difficult to see through the thin patch of wilderness that protected us. The road, directly in front of the driveway was almost impossible to see. Especially, with such a dark vehicle and no headlights. 

"They aren't going to park in the driveway," I thought as I spoke. "The van would be right in the line of the crossfire." 

"But if they leave the driveway open, there is a chance for the PB to escape." He contradicted. 

They must have known that, so why would they do it anyway? Were they that confidante that they could take them out? 

Our eyes stared into the darkness of the driveway. The dirt leading up to the house was visible enough to see shapes and shadows the ground. We watched for any sudden movement on either part. I also tried to foresee the plan that Bangtan had in motion.

"Unless they want them to," I suggested.

"What are you talking about?" He wasn't very convinced. "This is supposed to be retaliation for the shooting at your house."

"But killing foot soldiers who run a small lab isn't much of a statement." I know the idea didn’t make any sense, and I didn't know what the right answer was but there was something we were missing. I was sure of it.

"A lab in Blackburn, (Y/n)." He sounded annoyed by my doubts. "That goes against their deal, of course, they are going to kill everyone in that building!"

Romero simply assumed that I was sugar-coating the events that were about to take place. That I didn't want to see Bangtan for the killers they were. But I knew that they were much more than that. 

Brains before bullets. 

That is what hung behind the table of their meeting room. They weren't some unorganized street gang. There was a reason they had made it so far in the arms dealing business. 

I wasn't known for holding my tongue during an argument, however, we both were quick to do so. 

There were four male figures quickly approaching the house. They were dressed from head to toe in black, shielding their face, and wearing ski masks. There was a large gap between where they stood and the red house. 

"Where are the other three?" Romero asked as we continued to watch. I wasn't sure, but I thought I could make out shadows in the bushes at the front of the driveway. 

Based solely on height and posture, I thought I could make out Jimin and Taehyung. The other two could have been Jungkook and Yoongi. Though, that didn't matter for long. The figure I deemed to be Taehyung, looked back to the bushes, where I had seen the shadows. He seemed to be making sure everything was set. 

Then he nodded to the others beside him.

All four figures brought a KG9 below their chests. Their aim was the building right in front of them, and the night seemed so calm before they pulled the trigger.

Fully automatic weapons ripped through the silence, the flashes coming from their muzzles were like the Fourth of July. 

Even this far, the sound surprised me. It illuminated the surrounding ground as if a lightning storm had formed on Earth's surface. The details of their black clothing were visible with every burst of light. I could make out each individual set of eyes glowing in the dark. 

The windows into the house were pierced and shattered by the ammunition. The boys began to step back, slowly, keeping their fingers tight around the trigger. It didn't take long to hear the response of those who were inside. 

The front door was kicked open, out came pouring about five or six PB members. All they had to buy them some time were a few FN-57s while they made a run for it. By that time, the four bodies were seeking cover behind a large stake severed tree trunks. The other three came out as their replacement, returning fire while the others reloaded. 

The PB made it into their truck, two in the front, and three in the exposed back. All of them continued shooting except for the one in the driver's seat; his shadow was frantically attempting to get the engine started. The wheels screeched dirt into the air, almost as loud are the gunshots.

The truck shot down the driveway, threatening to run over anything in its path. Though the blasts remained, I couldn't see any indication of injured bodies. 

"What the hell is this..." I heard Romero say as the scene unfolded right before our eyes. 

All of the seven boys gathered in front of the house. Three of them ran into the open residence, while the rest stayed on the lookout. 

"They aren't going after them," I stated. I felt relieved seeing that the dangerous part had passed. However, the question remained, what were they going to do now?

"This doesn't make any sense," Romero sounded irritated. 

My eyes remained on the outside figures, taking note of the tall man with long legs. The others seemed to be working around him. Namjoon was the only one who ever stood that way, with so much authority.

The other three members came out of the house shortly. It appeared to have exchanged some words as they walked down the porch. They didn't appear to be worried about any other unwanted company. They felt safe enough, that they removed their masks. 

Jimin, Taehyung, and Jungkook were the three that searched the house. They gathered around the rest of the guys in conversation. 

"What the hell are they doing?" Romero asked me directly. He looked at me as if I had all the answers. 

"I don't know, " I assured him.

In between the group, stood Hoseok, with a black box in the grip of his hand. We watched carefully as he handed the mysterious case to Jimin. Jungkook stood at his side and encouragingly patted his shoulder.

The group disbanded. Everyone began to make their way back down the driveway, their feet racing to the shelter behind the bushes. 

Everyone, except for Jimin. 

He, instead, returned into the house with the case in his hand. I thought about anything and everything in that house that could be valuable. Something that would be worth risking their lives to obtain. The only thing in there, that could be worth anything, was the methamphetamine they were manufacturing. 

"They're taking the drugs," Romero reached the same conclusion I had. But why would they? Bangtan did not need it.

"They're going to sell it themselves," He told me. The tone of his voice was almost positive as if he was happy for me to see them in a bad light.

"No," I replied, even though it wasn't a question. "That can't be it,"

When I looked at Romero, he was watching me with aggravation, my constant denial of all his claims were frustrating him. 

"(Y/n), look at them!" He raised his tone. "They didn't break into a drug lab to leave empty-handed!"

His words fell on deaf ears, there was nothing he could say to change my mind. I knew, in my gut, that it wasn't the case, but I couldn't escape the dreadful feeling beside it. 

"If you can't start to see them for what they are- we're going to have some serious-"

"Wait-" Just then, the idea clicked in my head. My heart began to race, like a drum line marching in my chest. The dread in my stomach was replaced with pure terror. His racing figure was running out the front door. I gasped, 

"Jimin!" 

It was as if daylight had emitted from the house. It was as blinding as the sun and powerful as a volcano. The explosion trembled the atmosphere, the ground rumbled and shook the vehicle. Romero's arm reached over me, instinctively, shielding me from any threatening shock-waves.

The house was set ablaze. It was an empty shell of stone, consumed by smoke and fire. There was so much smoke that it was difficult to see any details on the ground. It was a sight straight from the underworld. 

After the initial fright, a new one consumed me entirely. 

"Oh my god, Jimin..." 

I re-assembled in my seat and directly lunged for the door. My hand wrapped around the handle and it clicked open.

"(Y/n)!" 

Romero surged forward, grasping for the base of the window, and slamming the door shut. "You can't."

"B-but he-" I stuttered with panic.

"He made it out of the house, (Y/n)." He tried to soothe me, spoke to me calmly and reassuringly. 

"What the fuck is he thinking?!" My head spun with a muddle of fright and anger. "Why wouldn't he use a remote detonator?! Is he insane?!"

I yelled as if Romero would care about their well-being. He watched me panic and fear for the safety of Jimin. I continued to search for movement through the cloud of dust and smoke.

"Maybe... there was no time?" He suggested, trying to figure it out for profiling purposes. "This was just decided today."

I understood that they felt the need to act fast, but that didn't mean they had to act recklessly. Putting Jimin's life in danger like that was idiotic. The worst part was that it was probably his idea in the first place. I could imagine him declare that he had it perfectly under control. 

"Look," Romero called.

A strong wind had come toward the property, blowing the smoke toward the back of the home, and leaving the front clear for sight. I made out Taehyung's form running toward the house, where, getting up from the floor was Jimin. 

I sighed a deep relief in my chest that was almost overwhelming. Taehyung ran up to Jimin, placing his hands on his shoulders and checking on him. Once Jimin reassured him that he was alright, Taehyung assisted in getting away from the burning building as fast as possible. 

"Goddamn idiot..." I cursed him for scaring me. I never wanted to so badly hurt, and embrace, someone in the same breath. 

-

After that, the events that followed were rather simple. Bangtan gathered themselves and left the property as soon as Jimin was on his feet. Even in that rush of violence, it was nothing compared to what they could have done. All they left behind was a single drop of the rage that fueled them. That was the warning they were leaving for the PB.

Agent Romero and I didn't speak much on our return to 18th and Charming street. There was tension inside of the vehicle that made the silence appear like the best selection. 

I assumed we were both left with a confusing haze in the back of our heads. Nothing of what we expected had happened tonight. His knowledge of a field agent didn't assist him in this investigation. Neither did my connection with the members of the club. We were left to re-think everything we thought we knew. 

"How did you know?" He asked out of the blue. We were merely two blocks away from my drop-off point. 

My gaze turned away from the deserted stores that drifted away, as we passed them by. His exterior appeared unbothered as if he had continued our streak of silence. 

"Know what?" His question was unclear. 

He remained expressionless and without any new movement. I almost questioned if he said anything at all, but he was only hesitating. 

"How did you know Bangtan wouldn't kill them?" He asked more specifically. He asked as if I had some kind of psychic vision into the future. 

"I- I don't know," I replied, honestly. I could have explained it as some kind of outlaw intuition. "It just didn't feel like they would..."

I knew that wasn't helpful, nor something he wanted to hear. His distrust in me came from the connection I held with the club. Especially now, I've been home after so long. But it was the truth, they weren't as thoughtless as outsiders thought. 

It was easy for Romero to group Bangtan with every other organization he's dealt with before. That would be his downfall, though. Bangtan was different. 

"Why would they wear masks- if they planned on killing everyone?" 

Romero turned his head at my rhetorical question. That detail was the only thing I took notice of. However, I wasn't sure when I precisely figured it out. 

"So, why didn't they kill them?" He asked, actually looking for my opinion this time. "Why would they let everyone go and just blow up the place?"

That was the question we needed to figure out. I understood that it wasn't the typical response for a gang. Especially for Bangtan, who were capable of doing much more damage. 

"If they covered their identities, then it means they don't want the PB to know it was them," I stated the obvious. Romero nodded his head and agreed. 

"Who else could they blame it on?" He continued the train of thought. 

"The Camilo Cartel is the only significant group that is fighting against the PB," I mentioned, as they were the only ones that mattered. Was Bangtan trying to put the blame on them?

"Blowing up a lab and letting people escape in the process, isn't part of the cartel’s MO," Romero pointed out. "They are more 'cut off your limbs' type of organization."

The visual idea gave me chills. "Do you think the club would know that?"

"I don't know, maybe it could have slipped their mind," I thought to myself, recalling back to their brilliant idea of manually detonating the bomb from the inside, instead of having an outside detonator. 

When time had passed after my words, I figured he didn't need any more convincing of my observation. We continued our silent drive.

The street was exactly as we had left it hours ago. No cars in sight and the only light came from the street lamps that lined the sidewalk. His car came to a gentle stop and lazily pulled into the curb. 

"I apologize about before," He said before I made a move to the door. I watched him sigh in the seat. "I just thought that you-"

"I know," He didn't have to explain himself. It was easy to see that his trust in me was delicate. "You aren't the first person to question everything I do." 

I didn't mean for my exit to sound so dramatic, but there was nothing else he could say. I knew how to function under the opposition of those around me, it wouldn't stop me from doing what I had to do. 

I let the passenger door shut behind me. A cool breeze ran up my arms as I stepped onto the empty road. My father's Dyna sat, waiting for me, exactly where I had left it. 

The streetlight above illuminated the bike, like a sentence from God, its metallic structure reflected the luminosity. I mounted the machine, its seat feeling cold under my weight. 

"Hey," Romero had rolled down his window. His face was almost canceled by the shadow that his roof cast. I met his black eyes. 

"Next time, I'll listen to your judgment," He spoke with a bit of shame in his voice. "You did good work today... thank you." 

I rode off feeling satisfied that night.

-

The night had gone by quickly once I returned to the House of Cards. I arrived at the crowded bar but was vacant of any comforting life. There wasn't much left for me to do than to sleep for the night, in hopes, of being a different person in the morning.  

It didn't take long for daybreak to come by the sheer curtains of the two windows. The light illuminated my face, making my body stir within the sea of bed-sheets. I had forgotten the benefits of getting a good night's rest. 

I also underestimated the blessings of a warm hot shower. All the past tension and worries of the past few days were stripped away with the heat. After the events of yesterday, I was expecting today to be more on the ordinary side. I was praying for it. 

It was early in the morning, and the bar wouldn't be open until noon. Which meant I had until then to be alone and collect my settling thoughts. There were so many blurred lines I could not see the edges to, where I stood in certain situations. My job, the club, my worries, the doubts; they all seemed to merge into one. An unhealthy mixture of morals that contradict one another, they fought for the steering wheel that was my life.

When I stepped out of the room, feeling rejuvenated, I thought I would walk into a peaceful, empty space. However, I was met with a quite disturbing sight, instead. 

"Mornin, sweetheart." 

Jaeeun was seated at the edge of the bar. She wore a pair of reading glasses, resting low on the bridge of her nose, and a stack of papers in her hands. Even the terms of endearment that came from her mouth seemed to be demeaning. 

What had I done to deserve such misfortune?

"Morning," I replied shortly after the shock, walking toward the back of the bar, where the coffee machine had become enticing. 

There was a freshly brewed pot already made, the black liquid was threatening hot, and a third of the way full. I found a few empty mugs right beside the machine and poured a cup tentatively. 

"There's some food there," She spoke directly behind me. 

I looked over my shoulder and spotted the plastic bag not far beside her on the bar. The bag held no identifying writing, simply a 'thank you' printed in red. I was wary of accepting food from Jaeeun. I could not see her missing out on a chance to poison me. My suspicious eye was no secret. "Namjoon brought it,"

She rolled her eyes at me as if she would actually bother, but I was sure she would. The possibility of her lying crossed my mind. However, my stomach was rumbling for anything, even if it was poison. I would die happily for whatever smelled that good. 

I took a seat two stools from her, using a napkin as a coaster, and digging into the bag. It was a standard breakfast platter, barely at that point between warm and room temperature. My mouth watered at the sight.

While I stuffed food down my throat, Jaeeun remained silent and inspected her documents, and my mind began to wonder. 

"Namjoon's here?" I tried to remain casual as if Namjoon wasn't one of the topics raging through my mind. Jaeeun saw right through me, of course.

"He was," Her eyes remained glued on the paper. "He mentioned I would find you here,"

The bitter tone in her voice was a clear indication that she was not pleased with my new living arrangement. Hell, if it were up to her, I wouldn't be living at all. 

"I'm not staying here for free," I felt the need to explain myself. 

"Believe me, I don't want to know how you'll be repaying him." She said suggestively. 

Heat rose to my face immediately, as I had trouble swallowing my food at her words. I imagined, in her head, I was doing all I could do to be close to Namjoon. Though it was not completely wrong, it was not for the reason she thought.

"It's not like that," I muttered, embarrassed that the words embarrassed me in the first place. "I'm going to be helping him with the bar."

The scoff from her lips seemed unconvinced by my statement. She simply thought I was lusting to ruin her life. Explaining that it was not all about her would be a mission impossible. Her narcissistic behavior would not allow her to believe anything else, even if it was the truth.

"What are you even still doing here?" She spat, finally blessing me with her piercing eyes. "Do you really have nothing to go back to?"

One would think I would have grown accustomed to Jaeeun’s spiteful words. But there was always something about her that just struck a nerve. It was a never-ending argument with her, and I had even lost my appetite.

"You know, you seem to be spending a lot of energy worrying about my life." I wished I was as composed as her, but my anger was rising to the surface, and she loved to see it. 

"I don't care about your life," Jaeeun smirked and removed her glasses, making sure nothing would distort the resentment emanating from her eyes. "Just the people you dare to touch." 

She settled her feet on the floor underneath, her leather heel boots clicking on the tile surface. Her body followed in walking toward me, wanting me to squirm in my seat, with each step. She granted herself the open seat beside me, giving our conversation the attention I didn't want.

"Namjoon has enough going on," She warned me. "He just lost a father for the second time." 

She pulled out a single cigarette from behind her ear, holding it between her fingers and looked at me like I was nothing. "He already inherited his responsibilities- he doesn't need his burden too." 

Sometimes I underestimated just how terrible she could be. Her lips painted dark stained the foot of the cigarette. A lighter flickered a heat source for her to enjoy her taunting with an extra kick. 

I swallowed my temper and dared to remind her,

"I'm not the one looking for him." 

 She continued to hold her poker face as if she already knew. Her porcelain cheeks hollowed in with a smooth drag, nicotine was like oxygen for her lungs.

"His head is twisted, he doesn't know what he wants." She justified him, smoke escaping passed her lips, unworried. 

"And you do?" I asked her to see the absurdity that I did. "You can't dictate his life forever, Jaeeun."

I was gravely mistaken. Jaeeun believed, wholeheartedly, that she could. Namjoon might not have known but his mother's influence was always there. In her eyes that was not about to change. My very doubt meant challenging her. 

"I’m his mother, and until I am dead and cold, I'm going to do anything I have to do to protect him." Her voice went from taunting to threatening. The words practically hissed out of her mouth, then I remembered what Jimin told me.

"I must really scare you, huh?"

I found a smile sneaking onto my lips at the thought. Jaeeun was much less frightening when she let her emotions seep through, it reminded me that she was human as well. 

"You're a greedy whore," Her black eyes leaned in, her poisonous tongue whispered like an empty threat. "And bad shit happens to greedy whores."

Her aggressiveness only confirmed my suspicions. 

She flicked her young cigarette into my mug of coffee, tainting the drink with its ash, before rising from her spot. While watching her walk back to her stack of papers, I realized I was not left with the same drained feeling that our conversations had in the past.

In the stillness of our talk, I began to see us for what we truly were, just two little girls fighting for the attention of a man. Even with her age, it never stopped being that, and I was going down the same path. 

In a normal relationship, two people entrust each other to respect the love that they share. That meant listening, understanding, and being faithful. That, however, was not the deal when it came to an mc like Bangtan. Women were objects to share, possessions to show off, comfort to lean on when times got hard. If you were able to marry one of them, you got the title of old lady, which just meant you belonged to one specific member. But even as with an old lady, their picking of women did not stop, if anything, it increased. Groupies that hung around the club wanted nothing more than to get that title. The security that a relationship was supposed to give you was nonexistent.

Jaeeun had been the president's old lady, that came with a lot of respect and constant threats. It was a fight for your place, or someone might take it, which is why she was so defensive. I don't think she was ready to give that up just yet.

"How did you handle it?" I was curious about how someone could live like this for so many years. If I had never left, I probably wouldn't have noticed. "This life is intoxicating- it kills you from the inside out while giving you the best high of your life."

Jaeeun didn't respond aggressively to the question. In fact, it appeared to cause a deep stage of nostalgia, taking her back to the struggles that this life brought her. True wisdom conceived by the most painful teacher- experience.

"There are only two ways an old lady makes it in this life," She answered quietly. When her eyes locked with mine, I found a different kind of hate within them. "You tell her nothing or you tell her everything."

I imagined neither option was comfortable to live with. But I knew that if you loved the man, then you learned to love the life. Then there was no truth you couldn't handle. 

"You have no idea what it takes- what it will cost you to be his old lady."

Jaeeun looked at me with pity, with actual pity from a place of true understanding. 

"Old ladies can make or break a club, (Y/n)." She shook her head. When she spoke, it was no longer an attempt to scare me away. For the first time, I felt that she was being sincere, even if it isn't what I wanted to hear. "You'll ruin him."

"You don't know that," But neither did I. 

I had always been so disinterested in love. This way of life dissolved any chance for trust. The choices seemed to be, live as a fool or be doomed to die alone. Jaeeun had made her choice a long time ago.

"I know that you need someone to tell you the truth," She once again approached me. This time, as if she wanted to comfort me from her own words. "Namjoon and you, together, are a recipe for disaster." 

The silence that followed had never been so tormenting, the notion of not even knowing why was alarming. Why? Why when I wasn't even supposed to care? Namjoon represented everything I hated about this life; the secrets, the lies, the sexism, the violence. He was forbidden, just like my rightful place in the club. 

Why did I only want what I could not have?

Then, like the sick joke that was my life, the doors to the bar opened, and his presence came into the room. I didn’t have to even turn around to know, for certain, that it was him. I only ever felt this way when he was around.

"You should get out while you have the chance, sweetheart." Jaeeun whispered as she walked past me.

In a tunnel-like hearing, I could make out Namjoon and her greeting each other. She informed him that she was on her way out. The words they spoke faded in and out as I realized Jaeeun was giving me no time to contemplate. She would be leaving us alone, forcing me to make a decision right here, right now.

The doors closed, and I could feel it was just the two of us now.

Masterlist ≽

#Bangtan MC #bts x reader #got7 #bts #bts fanfic #bangtan scenarios #kim namjoon #kim seokjin #kim taehyung #park jimin #jeon jungkook #Jung HoSeok #min yoongi #bts angst #bts fluff #bts smut

[mattbrothersscriptwriter]

My Top 20 Films of 2019 - Part Two

I don’t think I’ve had a year where my top ten jostled and shifted as much as this one did - these really are the best of the best and my personal favourites of 2019.

10. Toy Story 4

I think we can all agree that Toy Story 3 was a pretty much perfect conclusion to a perfect trilogy right? About as close as is likely to get, I’m sure. I shared the same trepidation when part four was announced, especially after some underwhelming sequels like Finding Dory and Cars 3 (though I do have a lot of time for Monsters University and Incredibles 2). So maybe it’s because the odds were so stacked against this being good but I thought it was wonderful. A truly existential nightmare of an epilogue that does away with Andy (and mostly kids altogether) to focus on the dreams and desires of the toys themselves - separate from their ‘duties’ as playthings to biological Gods. What is their purpose in life without an owner? Can they be their own person and carve their own path? In the case of breakout new character Forky (Tony Hale), what IS life? Big big questions for a cash grab kids films huh?

The animation is somehow yet another huge leap forward (that opening rainstorm!), Bo Peep’s return is excellently pitched and the series tradition of being unnervingly horrifying is back as well thanks to those creepy ventriloquist dolls! Keanu Reeves continues his ‘Keanuassaince‘ as the hilarious Duke Caboom and this time, hopefully, the ending at least feels finite. This series means so much to me: I think the first movie is possibly the tightest, most perfect script ever written, the third is one of my favourites of the decade and growing up with the franchise (I was 9 when the first came out, 13 for part two, 24 for part three and now 32 for this one), these characters are like old friends so of course it was great to see them again. All this film had to do was be good enough to justify its existence and while there are certainly those out there that don’t believe this one managed it, I think the fact that it went as far as it did showed that Pixar are still capable of pushing boundaries and exploring infinity and beyond when they really put their minds to it.

9. The Nightingale

Hoo boy. Already controversial with talk of mass walkouts (I witnessed a few when this screened at Sundance London), it’s not hard to see why but easy to understand. Jennifer Kent (The Babadook) is a truly fearless filmmaker following up her acclaimed suburban horror movie come grief allegory with a period revenge tale set in the Tasmanian wilderness during British colonial rule in the early 1800s. It’s rare to see the British depicted with the monstrous brutality for which they were known in the distant colonies and this unflinching drama sorely needed an Australian voice behind the camera to do it justice.

The film is front loaded with some genuinely upsetting, nasty scenes of cruel violence but its uncensored brutality and the almost casual nature of its depiction is entirely the point - this was normalised behaviour over there and by treating it so matter of factly, it doesn’t slip into gratuitous ‘movie violence’. It is what it is. And what it is is hard to watch. If anything, as Kent has often stated, it’s still toned down from the actual atrocities that occurred so it’s a delicate balance that I think Kent more than understands. Quoting from an excellent Vanity Fair interview she did about how she directs, Kent said “I think audiences have become very anaesthetised to violence on screen and it’s something I find disturbing... People say ‘these scenes are so shocking and disturbing’. Of course they are. We need to feel that. When we become so removed from violence on screen, this is a very irresponsible thing. So I wanted to put us right within the frame with that person experiencing the loss of everything they hold dear”. 

Aisling Franciosi is next level here as a woman who has her whole life torn from her, leaving her as nothing but a raging husk out for vengeance. It would be so easy to fall into odd couple tropes once she teams up with reluctant native tracker Billy (an equally impressive newcomer, Baykali Ganambarr) but the film continues to stay true to the harsh racism of the era, unafraid to depict our heroine - our point of sympathy - as horrendously racist towards her own ally. Their partnership is not easily solidified but that makes it all the stronger when they star to trust each other. Sam Claflin is also career best here, weaponizing his usual charm into dangerous menace and even after cementing himself as the year’s most evil villain, he can still draw out the humanity in such a broken and corrupt man.

Gorgeously shot in the Academy ratio, the forest landscape here is oppressive and claustrophobic. Kent also steps back into her horror roots with some mesmerising, skin crawling dream scenes that amplify the woozy nightmarish tone and overbearing sense of dread. Once seen, never forgotten, this is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea (and that’s fine) but when cinema can affect you on such a visceral level and be this powerful, reflective and honest about our own past, it’s hard to ignore. Stunning.

8. The Irishman

Aka Martin Scorsese’s magnum opus, I did manage to see this one in a cinema before the Netflix drop and absolutely loved it. I’ve watched 85 minute long movies that felt longer than this - Marty’s mastery of pace, energy and knowing when to let things play out in agonising detail is second to none. This epic tale of  the life of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) really is the cinematic equivalent of having your cake and eating it too, allowing Scorsese to run through a greatest hits victory lap of mobster set pieces, alpha male arguments, a decades spanning life story and one (last?) truly great Joe Pesci performance before simply letting the story... continue... to a natural, depressing and tragic ending, reflecting the emptiness of a life built on violence and crime.

For a film this long, it’s impressive how much the smallest details make the biggest impacts. A stammering phone call from a man emotionally incapable of offering any sort of condolence. The cold refusal of forgiveness from a once loving daughter. A simple mirroring of a bowl of cereal or a door left slightly ajar. These are the parts of life that haunt us all and it’s what we notice the most in a deliberately lengthy biopic that shows how much these things matter when everything else is said and done. The violence explodes in sudden, sharp bursts, often capping off unbearably tense sequences filled with the everyday (a car ride, a conversation about fish, ice cream...) and this contrast between the whizz bang of classic Scorsese and the contemplative nature of Silence era Scorsese is what makes this film feel like such an accomplishment. De Niro is FINALLY back but it’s the memorably against type role for Pesci and an invigorated Al Pacino who steals this one, along with a roll call of fantastic cameos, with perhaps the most screentime given to the wonderfully petty Stephen Graham as Tony Pro, not to mention Anna Paquin’s near silent performance which says more than possibly anyone else. 

Yes, the CG de-aging is misguided at best, distracting at worst (I never really knew how old anyone was meant to be at any given time... which is kinda a problem) but like how you get used to it really quickly when it’s used well, here I kinda got past it being bad in an equally fast amount of time and just went with it. Would it have been a different beast had they cast younger actors to play them in the past? Undoubtedly. But if this gives us over three hours of Hollywood’s finest giving it their all for the last real time together, then that’s a compromise I can live with.

7. The Last Black Man in San Francisco

Wow. I was in love with this film from the moving first trailer but then the film itself surpassed all expectations. This is a true indie film success story, with lead actor Jimmie Fails developing the idea with director Joe Talbot for years before Kickstarting a proof of concept and eventually getting into Sundance with short film American Paradise, which led to the backing of this debut feature through Plan B and A24. The deeply personal and poetic drama follows a fictionalised version of Jimmie, trying to buy back an old Victorian town house he claims was built by his grandfather, in an act of rebellion against the increasingly gentrified San Francisco that both he and director Talbot call home.

The film is many things - a story of male friendship, of solidarity within our community, of how our cities can change right from underneath us - it moves to the beat of it’s own drum, with painterly cinematography full of gorgeous autumnal colours and my favourite score of the year from Emile Mosseri. The performances, mostly by newcomers or locals outside of brilliant turns from Jonathan Majors, Danny Glover and Thora Birch, are wonderful and the whole thing is such a beautiful love letter to the city that it makes you ache for a strong sense of place in your own home, even if your relationship with it is fractured or strained. As Jimmie says, “you’re not allowed to hate it unless you love it”.

For me, last year’s Blindspotting (my favourite film of the year) tackled gentrification within California more succinctly but this much more lyrical piece of work ebbs and flows through a number of themes like identity, family, memory and time. It’s a big film living inside a small, personal one and it is not to be overlooked.

6. Little Women

I had neither read the book nor seen any prior adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel so to me, this is by default the definitive telling of this story. If from what I hear, the non linear structure is Greta Gerwig’s addition, then it’s a total slam dunk. It works so well in breaking up the narrative and by jumping from past to present, her screenplay highlights certain moments and decisions with a palpable sense of irony, emotional weight or knowing wink. Getting to see a statement made with sincere conviction and then paid off within seconds, can be both a joy and a surefire recipe for tears. Whether it’s the devastating contrast between scenes centred around Beth’s illness or the juxtaposition of character’s attitudes to one another, it’s a massive triumph. Watching Amy angrily tell Laurie how she’s been in love with him all her life and then cutting back to her childishly making a plaster cast of her foot for him (’to remind him how small her feet are’) is so funny. 

Gerwig and her impeccable cast bring an electric energy to the period setting, capturing the big, messy realities of family life with a mix of overwhelming cross-chatter and the smallest of intimate gestures. It’s a testament to the film that every sister feels fully serviced and represented, from Beth’s quiet strength to Amy’s unforgivable sibling rivalry. Chris Cooper’s turn as a stoic man suffering almost imperceptible grief is a personal heartbreaking favourite. 

The book’s (I’m assuming) most sweeping romantic statements are wonderfully delivered, full of urgent passion and relatable heartache, from Marmie’s (Laura Dern) “I’m angry nearly every day of my life” moment to Jo’s (Saoirse Ronan) painful defiance of feminine attributes not being enough to cure her loneliness. The sheer amount of heart and warmth in this is just remarkable and I can easily see it being a film I return to again and again.

5. Booksmart

2019 has been a banner year for female directors, making their exclusion from some of the early awards conversations all the more damning. From this list alone, we have Lulu Wang, Jennifer Kent and Greta Gerwig. Not to mention Lorene Scafaria (Hustlers), Melina Matsoukas (Queen & Slim), Jocelyn DeBoer & Dawn Luebbe (Greener Grass), Sophie Hyde (Animals) and Rose Glass (Saint Maud - watch out for THIS one in 2020, it’s brilliant). Perhaps the most natural transition from in front of to behind the camera has been made by Olivia Wilde, who has created a borderline perfect teen comedy that can make you laugh till you cry, cry till you laugh and everything in-between.

Subverting the (usually male focused) ‘one last party before college’ tropes that fuel the likes of Superbad and it’s many inferior imitators, Booksmart follows two overachievers who, rather than go on a coming of age journey to get some booze or get laid, simply want to indulge in an insane night of teenage freedom after realising that all of the ‘cool kids’ who they assumed were dropouts, also managed to get a place in all of the big universities. It’s a subtly clever remix of an old favourite from the get go but the committed performances from Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein put you firmly in their shoes for the whole ride. 

It’s a genuine blast, with big laughs and a bigger heart, portraying a supportive female friendship that doesn’t rely on hokey contrivances to tear them apart, meaning that when certain repressed feelings do come to the surface, the fallout is heartbreaking. As I stated in a twitter rave after first seeing it back in May, every single character, no matter how much they might appear to be simply representing a stock role or genre trope, gets their moment to be humanised. This is an impeccably cast ensemble of young unknowns who constantly surprise and the script is a marvel - a watertight structure without a beat out of place, callbacks and payoffs to throwaway gags circle back to be hugely important and most of all, the approach taken to sexuality and representation feels so natural. I really think it is destined to be looked back on and represent 2019 the way Heathers does ‘88, Clueless ‘95 or Easy A 2010. A new high benchmark for crowd pleasing, indie comedy - teen or otherwise.

4. Ad Astra

Brad Pitt is one of my favourite actors and one who, despite still being a huge A-lister even after 30 years in the game, never seems to get enough credit for the choices he makes, the movies he stars in and also the range of stories he helps produce through his company, Plan B. 2019 was something of a comeback year for Pitt as an actor with the insanely measured and controlled lead performance seen here in Ad Astra and the more charismatic and chaotic supporting role in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood.

I love space movies, especially those that are more about broken people blasting themselves into the unknown to search for answers within themselves... which manages to sum up a lot of recent output in this weirdly specific sub-genre. First Man was a devastating look at grief characterised by a man who would rather go to a desolate rock than have to confront what he lost, all while being packaged as a heroic biopic with a stunning score. Gravity and The Martian both find their protagonists forced to rely on their own cunning and ingenuity to survive and Interstellar looked at the lengths we go to for those we love left behind. Smaller, arty character studies like High Life or Moon are also astounding. All of this is to say that Ad Astra takes these concepts and runs with them, challenging Pitt to cross the solar system to talk some sense into his long thought dead father (Tommy Lee Jones). But within all the ‘sad dad’ stuff, there’s another film in here just daring you to try and second guess it - one that kicks things off with a terrifying free fall from space, gives us a Mad Max style buggy chase on the moon and sidesteps into horror for one particular set-piece involving a rabid baboon in zero G! It manages to feel so completely nuts, so episodic in structure, that I understand why a lot of people were turned off - feeling that the overall film was too scattershot to land the drama or too pondering to have any fun with. I get the criticisms but for me, both elements worked in tandem, propelling Pitt on this (assumed) one way journey at a crazy pace whilst sitting back and languishing in the ‘bigger themes’ more associated with a Malik or Kubrick film. Something that Pitt can sell me on in his sleep by this point.

I loved the visuals from cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (Interstellar), loved the imagination and flair of the script from director James Gray and Ethan Gross and loved the score by Max Richter (with Lorne Balfe and Nils Frahm) but most of all, loved Pitt, proving that sometimes a lot less, is a lot more. The sting of hearing the one thing he surely knew (but hoped he wouldn’t) be destined to hear from his absent father, acted almost entirely in his eyes during a third act confrontation, summed up the movie’s brilliance for me - so much so that I can forgive some of the more outlandish ‘Mr Hyde’ moments of this thing’s alter ego... like, say, riding a piece of damaged hull like a surfboard through a meteor debris field! 

3. Avengers: Endgame

It’s no secret that I think Marvel, the MCU in particular, have been going from strength to strength in recent years, slowly but surely taking bigger risks with filmmakers (the bonkers Taika Waititi, the indie darlings of Ryan Coogler, Cate Shortland and Chloe Zhao) whilst also carefully crafting an entertaining, interconnected universe of characters and stories. But what is the point of building up any movie ‘universe’ if you’re not going to pay it off and Endgame is perhaps the strongest conclusion to eleven years of movie sequels that fans could have possibly hoped for.

Going into this thing, the hype was off the charts (and for good reason, with it now being the highest grossing film of all time) but I remember souring on the first entry of this two-parter, Infinity War, during the time between initial release and Endgame’s premiere. That film had a game-changing climax, killing off half the heroes (and indeed the universe’s population) and letting the credits role on the villain having achieved his ultimate goal. It was daring, especially for a mammoth summer blockbuster but obviously, we all knew the deaths would never be permanent, especially with so many already-announced sequels for now ‘dusted’ characters. However, it wasn’t just the feeling that everything would inevitably be alright in the end. For me, the characters themselves felt hugely under-serviced, with arguably the franchise’s main goody two shoes Captain America being little more than a beardy bloke who showed up to fight a little bit. Basically what I’m getting at is that I felt Endgame, perhaps emboldened by the giant runtime, managed to not only address these character slights but ALSO managed to deliver the most action packed, comic booky, ‘bashing your toys together’ final fight as well.

It’s a film of three parts, each pretty much broken up into one hour sections. There’s the genuinely new and interesting initial section following our heroes dealing with the fact that they lost... and it stuck. Thor angrily kills Thanos within the first fifteen minutes but it’s a meaningless action by this point - empty revenge. Cutting to five years later, we get to see how defeat has affected them, for better or worse, trying to come to terms with grief and acceptance. Cap tries to help the everyman, Black Widow is out leading an intergalactic mop up squad and Thor is wallowing in a depressive black hole. It’s a shocking and vibrantly compelling deconstruction of the whole superhero thing and it gives the actors some real meat to chew on, especially Robert Downy Jr here who goes from being utterly broken to fighting within himself to do the right thing despite now having a daughter he doesn’t want to lose too. Part two is the trip down memory lane, fan service-y time heist which is possibly the most fun section of any of these movies, paying tribute to the franchise’s past whilst teetering on a knife’s edge trying to pull off a genuine ‘mission impossible’. And then it explodes into the extended finale which pays everyone off, demonstrates some brilliantly imaginative action and sticks the landing better than it had any right to. In a year which saw the ending of a handful of massive geek properties, from Game of Thrones to Star Wars, it’s a miracle even one of them got it right at all. That Endgame managed to get it SO right is an extraordinary accomplishment and if anything, I think Marvel may have shot themselves in the foot as it’s hard to imagine anything they can give us in the future having the intense emotional weight and momentum of this huge finale.

2. Knives Out

Rian Johnson has been having a ball leaping into genre sandpits and stirring shit up, from his teen spin on noir in Brick to his quirky con man caper with The Brothers Bloom, his time travel thriller Looper and even his approach to the Star Wars mythos in The Last Jedi. Turning his attention to the relatively dead ‘whodunnit’ genre, Knives Out is a perfect example of how to celebrate everything that excites you about a genre whilst weaponizing it’s tropes against your audience’s baggage and preconceptions.

An impeccable cast have the time of their lives here, revelling in playing self obsessed narcissists who scramble to punt the blame around when the family’s patriarch, a successful crime novelist (Christopher Plummer), winds up dead. Of course there’s something fishy going on so Daniel Craig’s brilliantly dry southern detective Benoit Blanc is called in to investigate.There are plenty of standouts here, from Don Johnson’s ignorant alpha wannabe Richard to Michael Shannon’s ferocious eldest son Walt to Chris Evan’s sweater wearing jock Ransom, full of unchecked, white privilege swagger. But the surprise was the wholly sympathetic, meek, vomit prone Marta, played brilliantly by Ana de Armas, cast against her usual type of sultry bombshell (Knock Knock, Blade Runner 2049), to spearhead the biggest shake up of the genre conventions. To go into more detail would begin to tread into spoiler territory but by flipping the audience’s engagement with the detective, we’re suddenly on the receiving end of the scrutiny and the tension derived from this switcheroo is genius and opens up the second act of the story immensely.

The whole thing is so lovingly crafted and the script is one of the tightest I’ve seen in years. The amount of setup and payoff here is staggering and never not hugely satisfying, especially as it heads into it’s final stretch. It really gives you some hope that you could have such a dense, plotty, character driven idea for a story and that it could survive the transition from page to screen intact and for the finished product to work as well as it does. I really hope Johnson returns to tell another Benoit Blanc mystery and judging by the roaring box office success (currently over $200 million worldwide for a non IP original), I certainly believe he will.

1. Eighth Grade

My film of the year is another example of the power of cinema to put us in other people’s shoes and to discover the traits, fears, joys and insecurities that we all share irregardless. It may shock you to learn this but I have never been a 13 year old teenage girl trying to get by in the modern world of social media peer pressure and ‘influencer’ culture whilst crippled with personal anxiety. My school days almost literally could not have looked more different than this (less Instagram, more POGs) and yet, this is a film about struggling with oneself, with loneliness, with wanting more but not knowing how to get it without changing yourself and the careless way we treat those with our best interests at heart in our selfish attempt to impress peers and fit in. That is understandable. That is universal. And as I’m sure I’ve said a bunch of times in this list, movies that present the most specific worldview whilst tapping into universal themes are the ones that inevitably resonate the most.

Youtuber and comedian Bo Burnham has crafted an impeccable debut feature, somehow portraying a generation of teens at least a couple of generations below his own, with such laser focused insight and intimate detail. It’s no accident that this film has often been called a sort of social-horror, with cringe levels off the charts and recognisable trappings of anxiety and depression in every frame. The film’s style services this feeling at every turn, from it’s long takes and nauseous handheld camerawork to the sensory overload in it’s score (take a bow Anna Meredith) and the naturalistic performances from all involved. Burnham struck gold when he found Elsie Fisher, delivering the most painful and effortlessly real portrayal of a tweenager in crisis as Kayla. The way she glances around skittishly, the way she is completely lost in her phone, the way she talks, even the way she breathes all feeds into the illusion - the film is oftentimes less a studio style teen comedy and more a fly on the wall documentary. 

This is a film that could have coasted on being a distant, social media based cousin to more standard fare like Sex Drive or Superbad or even Easy A but it goes much deeper, unafraid to let you lower your guard and suddenly hit you with the most terrifying scene of casually attempted sexual aggression or let you watch this pure, kindhearted girl falter and question herself in ways she shouldn’t even have to worry about. And at it’s core, there is another beautiful father/daughter relationship, with Josh Hamilton stuck on the outside looking in, desperate to help Kayla with every fibre of his being but knowing there are certain things she has to figure out for herself. It absolutely had me and their scene around a backyard campfire is one of the year’s most touching.

This is a truly remarkable film that I think everyone should seek out but I’m especially excited for all the actual teenage girls who will get to watch this and feel seen. This isn’t about the popular kid, it isn’t about the dork who hangs out with his or her own band of misfits. This is about the true loner, that person trying everything to get noticed and still ending up invisible, that person trying to connect through the most disconnected means there is - the internet - and everything that comes with it. Learning that the version of yourself you ‘portray’ on a Youtube channel may act like they have all the answers but if you’re kidding yourself then how do you grow? 

When I saw this in the cinema, I watched a mother take her seat with her two daughters, aged probably at around nine and twelve. Possibly a touch young for this, I thought, and I admit I cringed a bit on their behalf during some very adult trailers but in the end, I’m glad their mum decided they were mature enough to see this because a) they had a total blast and b) life simply IS R rated for the most part, especially during our school years, and those girls being able to see someone like Kayla have her story told on the big screen felt like a huge win. I honestly can’t wait to see what Burnham or Fisher decide to do next. 2019 has absolutely been their year... and it’s been a hell of a year.

#top 20 #films of the year #films of 2019 #10-1 #toy story 4 #the nightingale #the irishman #the last black man in san francisco #little women #booksmart #ad astra #avengers endgame #knives out #eighth grade

[arcticdementor]

It’s easy to decry cancel culture, but hard to turn it back. Thankfully, recent developments in my area of academic specialty—artificial intelligence (AI)—show that fighting cancel culture isn’t impossible. And as I explain below, the lessons that members of the AI community have learned in this regard can be generalized to other professional subcultures.

…

It’s a tale that illustrates a number of useful principles for those seeking to combat cancel culture. These include:

Find your friends. There’s nothing worse than facing a mob alone. Build your network in advance, so that you don’t have to cold-call free-speech advocates when a crisis already is upon you. Create relationships with people in your workplace and field who share your views. Find out whether there are unions or other groups that are responsible for protecting your rights, and find out what they can do to help if a mob ever comes after you. Join and support organizations such as Heterodox Academy, the National Association of Scholars, and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Connect with like-minded people on social media. Your friends may come to your aid publicly or privately. Both are good. Even just receiving words of encouragement from like-minded individuals can make a big difference when you’re under attack.

Pick your battles. All workplaces and professional fields can present their share of dogmatists and unpleasant personalities. You can’t take on all of them, and not all battles are worth fighting. Pick the ones with high symbolic value—which is to say, battles that act as proxies for some larger principle—and which you think you have a reasonable chance of winning. In my case, I knew that taking on a notorious bully in the AI community was worth it because her rout would send a message to imitators. I also knew we had an advantage going in, because this individual already had hurt and angered many people. Moreover, her position as research director at a prominent company made her more vulnerable than me.

Know what to expect. The cancel crowd has its own bullet-point playbook. And they’ll respond aggressively to any symbolic act that threatens their status, or erodes the impression that they are the ones calling the shots. Remember that behind the social-justice veneer lies the brutal logic of power and ego. To maximize the pain you feel, they’ll tag activist groups on social media to inflate their numbers and reach. They’ll bombard every organization you’re part of with demands to censure, discipline, disown, fire, or expel you—often phrasing their appeals in the passive aggressive guise of “concern” and “disappointment.” At other times, they will insult, taunt, and, threaten you in a manner resembling middle-school children having a recess meltdown. In my case, the ringleader called me “a full on misogynist and racist,” “shameful bigot,” “hypocrite,” “clueless,” “tone-deaf,” “snowflake,” and “soulless troll.” She assailed my “privilege and patriarchy,” “lack of basic empathy and ethics,” and “zero self-awareness.” She also questioned whether I’m really a human, and called on NeurIPS to ban me, and for my department to expunge me. Her goal, in short, was to ruin my life. The cancelers will dig up anything they can from your past. And if they can’t find any, they’ll make it up. This will all seem terrifying, but much less so if you realize that you’re just the latest victim in what is basically a mechanical and dehumanizing process. Insofar as you don’t actually get fired from your job or suffer some other equivalent setback, these are all just words, and they don’t define who you are.

Don’t back down. Don’t apologize. Don’t make clarifications, and don’t try to appease the mob. All of these will only be taken as concessions, and embolden the mob to demand more. The real Achilles’s Heel of the cancel crowd is its short attention span. Once they bully someone into submission, they move on to the next victim. It’s a system designed for quick wins. If you don’t back down, they’ll raise the pitch as far as they can—but eventually they’ll be at a loss for what to do next, and all but the most fanatical will lose interest. The few that remain, now bereft of their backup, are just what you need to teach all of them a lesson, as we did in my case.

…

Mock them mercilessly. Fear is what keeps the silent majority from speaking up, and laughter is the best antidote. The cancelers take themselves extremely seriously, imagining themselves to be social-justice angels whose holy ends justify every imaginable means. Their sanctimonious spirit is a gift to you, if you call it out instead of playing along with its conceit.

Don’t let their narrative outrun yours. Once a false narrative is entrenched, it’s hard to overturn, no matter how many facts you have on your side. So while, as noted above, I generally would discourage you from focusing too much on defending your own actions, there should be some resource you can point to so that everyone can know the truth. Once you have established that resource—a blog post, a published article, a podcast, even a set of tweets or Facebook posts—point people to it where necessary, including your own professional contacts and potential allies. Keep it short, crisp, and compelling so that it gets widely circulated and isn’t thwarted by short attention spans. And keep the tone confident (and possibly even funny), so that it’s clear who the real inhuman fanatics are.

Goad them into overreaching. The cancelers’ overconfidence is your greatest asset, as I learned when the ringleader of the mob that came after me resorted to posting the above-referenced list of people whom she wanted canceled, many of them junior researchers whose only crime was to have followed me or liked one of my tweets. This crossed a line for a lot of observers, and of course the people on the list itself were aghast. Word spread of the shocking behavior. Even people on her side started turning against her.

Turn their weapons against them. You may find this to be the most controversial principle, but it’s also arguably the most crucial—as the cancelers won’t stop until they fear that they’ll endure the same consequences that they seek to impose on others. In my case, I watched as investors and customers leaned on the ringleader’s company to rein her in. Even companies that posture heavily in the area of social justice don’t actually want to be stained by the disgraceful behavior of mob leaders. Indeed, I have no doubt that it was an ultimatum from her employer that finally led the ringleader to stop her Twitter outbursts and apologize publicly to her victims, for all to see. Some will say that once we resort to this step, we become as bad as the cancelers. But that’s a false equivalence. The cancel crowd tries to ban people because of their views. We try to stop bullying—behavior that is reprehensible regardless of ideology.

…

Get the majority on your side. In the end, most cancelers can’t be dissuaded in the short run: They’ve invested too much in their roles as inquisitors to give them up easily. The goal isn’t to win them over—you won’t—but rather to persuade the much larger number of people in the middle. Just because these people aren’t vocal doesn’t mean they aren’t out there watching, reading, thinking.

#pedro domingos #quilette

[theyearoftheking]

Book Thirty-Nine: The Green Mile

Hoooooly crap, y’all! This is the halfway point of this project: I’ve read thirty-nine books, and I have approximately thirty-nine more to go (depending what Steve releases before the end of the year). And honestly? If it wasn’t for COVID, and quarantine, and lots of time traveling (pre-COVID, of course); I wouldn’t have reached the halfway point. This probably would have turned into a two year project. But here we are, diving into The Green Mile!

Of all the Steve books, I dreaded re-reading The Green Mile the most. I had originally read it when it was first published, and it came out in chapters every few weeks. I’d breathlessly tear through a chapter, only to have to wait for the next one to be released. It was a pretty fun format, and I really wish I still had my original chapters. Oh well. 

But this time around, I didn’t think I was in the right head-space to read it, and the world sure as hell isn’t in the right head-space. The Green Mile was published in 1996, and takes place in 1932. It could very well have been set in our current climate. Just a few quotes for you...

“He got (his sentence) commuted mostly because he was white...”

“I think we have to be humane and generous to solve the race problem. But we have to remember that your negro will bite if he gets the chance, just like a mongrel dog will bite if he gets the chance and it crosses his mind to do so.” 

“John Coffey is a Negro, and in Trapingus County we’re awful particular about giving new trials to Negros...” 

NOTHING HAS FUCKING CHANGED SINCE 1932!! We are still hearing these same sentiments from people claiming, “I’m not a racist, but...” Our judicial system is still biased against POC, and the rate of incarceration for POC compared to whites is staggering. 

NOTHING HAS FUCKING CHANGED. And that’s the part that makes me the most sad. So, yeah, I wasn’t looking forward to cracking The Green Mile in our current climate. 

Few Steve books have touched me the way this one did. A fellow Constant Reader pointed out, “This is one of the only stories where he showcases the forces of good. We usually get ghosts and demons, but John Coffey may be the closest thing he has ever wrote of an angel...” Hot damn, Sam Beall, you’re not wrong. 

But in addition to forces of good, we’ve also got Percy Wetmore; who I feel is the nastiest Steve villain ever... he makes Randall Flagg and The Crimson King look like dudes who drink matcha lattes at a cat cafe, and compare notes on their polarized sunglasses. Percy Wetmore immediately activates my, “must kick hard in the junk” reflex. He. Is. The. Worst.

The Green Mile is told from the POV of Paul Edgecombe; a prison guard on “the green mile;” which is where convicted killers awaiting the death penalty are housed. “The green mile” refers to the long hallway inmates have to walk down to get to the electric chair.

 The story kicks off when John Coffey (like the drink but spelled different) is accused and found guilty of brutally raping and murdering two little blonde twin girls. He’s found on a riverbank, clutching their bodies, and crying, “I couldn’t help it, I tried to take it back, but it was too late...” 

So, Coffey makes his way onto The Mile, and shares space with Eduard Delacroix and his pet mouse Mr. Jingles; and William Wharton (Billy the Kid, or Wild Billy, depending on the day). Delacroix is French southern gentleman found guilty of murder, and then arson to hide the murder scene. He’s a bad guy... don’t get me wrong... but there’s something intensely likable about him. Maybe it’s the pet mouse he’s trained, maybe it’s his meek nature that Percy (another prison guard) takes advantage of... I don’t know. But you grow to like him, and the relationship he has with Mr. Jingles. Mr. Jingles randomly showed up one day, and the guards (except Percy) were all taken with him. After Percy attempts to smash him with a club, he takes to Delacroix and whispers in his ear that his name is Mr. Jingles. 

William Wharton is another story. He’s a wild card, who upon his arrival, promptly tries to strangle a prison guard. He also spits masticated Moon Pie at another guard. Sooo, he’s a lot of fun. 

The three of them live on the wing, and the first up for execution is Delacroix. Percy has a particular hatred of him, he claims he tried to grab his junk once. It didn’t happen... Del just got yanked along when he was in handcuffs and fell in Percy’s lap. The day before his execution, Percy thinks it might be fun to kill Mr. Jingles. Like I said... total fucking asshole. He stomps on him, and Del loses it. Mr. Jingles is the only thing he loves in the whole world... and maybe the only thing that loves him back. 

Thinking quickly, Coffey asks for Mr. Jingles little mousy body. Speaking of junk grabbing, he grabbed Paul and cured the UTI he had brewing for weeks. So, Paul is hopeful Coffey can use his miraculous healing abilities to do it again. And he does! Mr. Jingles lives!

But Percy’s not done being a scab on the balls of society. The night of Del’s execution, he tells him Mr. Jingles isn’t going to Mouseville like Paul promised he was (total lie- like telling kids a dog is going to live on a farm). And then, Percy doesn’t wet the sponge before placing it on Del’s head prior to his execution, so it’s horrible, painful and just horrible. So, Del is dead, Percy plays the, “I don’t know what happened!” card, and Mr. Jingles is gone. My heart. Of all the scenes in the book, I was dreading this one the most. 

Meanwhile, the prison warden, Hal Moores is struggling with the fact his wife Melinda has a massive brain tumor, and it’s starting to change her personality. He doesn’t know what to do. Paul thinks they should pack Coffey up, and take him out to the Moores’s house and have him heal Melinda. 

It’s a crazy idea, but it ends up working. The other prison guards drug Billy; and  put Percy in a straitjacket and throw him in the supply closet so he doesn’t notice anything is amiss. They tell him it’s payback for how Del’s death went down. So, they race out to see Hal and Melinda, and Coffey does his thing. They race back to the prison, and no one notices they’ve been gone. However, Coffey is in a bad way. This was much more healing than he’s used to doing, and he’s mentally and physically exhausted.

After they release Percy from the supply closet, Coffey grabs him and “kisses” him: which transfers the sick energy he got from Melinda into Percy. Percy then turns around, and shoots Wild Billy/Billy the Kid dead; and then becomes catatonic. 

He’s then carted off to the psych ward, which is too good for him. Fiery pits of hell would have been better. 

But wait!

Plot twist! Billy the Kid had briefly touched Coffey, and Coffey learned HE was the one who had killed the two little girls.  Paul puts this together as well, and tries to fight for Coffey’s release. He realizes Coffey’s words,  “I couldn’t help it, I tried to take it back, but it was too late...” were about his inability to heal the girls, not his guilt.

 When I had read the revelation the first time, I flew through the end, hoping and praying justice would be served, and Coffey wouldn’t be executed. Bad things didn’t happen to good people like John Coffey, right? Oh, how naive. There were A LOT of tears. 

But Coffey is at peace with his upcoming execution. He tells Paul, “I’m rightly tired of the pain I hear and feel, boss. I’m tired of bein on the road, lonely as a robin in the rain. Not ever havin no buddy to go on with or tell me where we’s comin from or goin to or why. I’m tired of people bein ugly to each other. It feels like pieces of glass in my head. I’m tired of all the times I’ve wanted to help and couldn’t. I’m tired of bein in the dark. Mostly it’s the pain. There’s too much...”

That right there makes me cry every damn time I read it. 

So, Coffey is executed, and life continues on; as it always seems to do. Paul is actually writing this story in his old age, at the  Georgia Pines nursing home. There’s an orderly there who’s just as evil as Percy, and he keeps trying to follow Paul on his daily walks outside. Where’s Paul going??? 

TO SEE MR. JINGLES!!! 

Yes! He’s still alive! It seems when Coffey healed people, it added onto their life expectancy. Mr. Jingles was still alive, and Paul was one hundred and four years old. But he knew his time was coming. He reflects on the loss of his beautiful wife, the people he knew on the Green Mile, the guards he worked with, and that mile seems LONG. 

Such a sad, beautiful end to an incredible work. This is another one I recommend to people who tell me they don’t like Stephen King. Try it... you’ll like it... when your heart is done breaking that is...

Total Wisconsin Mentions: 27

Total Dark Tower References: 38

Book Grade: A+

Rebecca’s Definitive Ranking of Stephen King Books

The Talisman: A+

Needful Things: A+

The Green Mile: A+

Rose Madder: A+

Misery: A+

Different Seasons: A+

It: A+

Four Past Midnight: A+

The Shining: A-

The Stand: A-

The Wastelands: A-

The Drawing of the Three: A-

Dolores Claiborne: A-

Nightmares in the Sky: B+

The Dark Half: B+

Skeleton Crew: B+

The Dead Zone: B+

Nightmares & Dreamscapes: B+

‘Salem’s Lot: B+

Carrie: B+

Creepshow: B+

Cycle of the Werewolf: B-

Danse Macabre: B-

The Running Man: C+

Thinner: C+

Dark Visions: C+

The Eyes of the Dragon: C+

The Long Walk: C+

The Gunslinger: C+

Pet Sematary: C+

Firestarter: C+

Rage: C

Insomnia: C-

Cujo: C-

Nightshift: C-

Gerald’s Game: D

Roadwork: D

Christine: D

The Tommyknockers: D-

Next is Desperation, which I know nothing about, other than it’s a real chonk of a book. 

Do me a favor, please? Stop being ugly to each other. Stop hurting gentle people like John Coffey. Please and thank you.

Until next time, Long Days & Pleasant Nights,

Rebecca

#the green mile #stephen king #constant readers

[keeperofsparks]

Toxic Twitter/The disturbing cult like mind set of the far left

So after joining the great migration to Twitter due to the NSFW ban, I’ve decided to crawl back here due to how toxic, hypocritical, and self righteous, cult like mindset the far left on Twitter has. Due to how dismal the site was I’m writing this post as a warning to any young liberals, LGBTQ, POC, and in general any one else who comes across this post, please be careful with who you group your self with. This is going to be a fairly sizable and do keep in mind this isn’t a “Well being a conservative is better” post, cause those people got some issues as well.

To begin with, let’s talk about how many of the far left Twitter users get people to join their cause and how they keep people from leaving due to differing ideas. During my time there I saw a lot of vulnerable people joining due in part to how vocal the far left can be. There was always a post or thread about how certain groups are persecuted due to a variety of reasons. The vocal group will then sugar coat their approach and make it seem like they wouldn’t do those types of things and would protect them if the individual joins them. It might sound like a safe haven, but the person has now ended up in an abusive relationship and the once warm embrace will inevitably grow cold if they don’t agree with the vocal group. Yes, these vocal groups encourage some very deplorable thing and encourage these newbies to do the same. They’ll then use those same tactics on an individual in their group if they disagree with and they use that fear of being turned on as way to keep these newer people and to silence them in the process. It’s a very hypocritical approach even though the shout how they are a safe place and the world is out to get them.

Now speaking of hypocrisy, in the two or so years that’s I was actively on Twitter, there was plenty of it along with double thought. These individuals state how righteous they are but will find a excuse or shield to get away with doing what their “enemies” are doing. Caught stealing? It’s a trans issue. Drive a person to suicide? That’s a gender issue. They consider them self morally supior and insist that they should not be held held accountable for their actions. If you bring up that’s some of the same tactics used by overly religious folk and hate groups, they’ll attempt to tear you limb from limb. They have no issue with using what ever or who ever as long as it can push them forward.

Probably the most used group to push their agenda is anyone who is a minority, though specifically the majority minority. The most sickening thing I saw on twitter was that the far left basically had a tier list for races and will use it if said minority does agree. “Your voice doesn’t count, cause your Asian there for one of the smallest minorities.” “Well you’re mixed ethnicity, so of course you’d agree with that idea because your half white.” Those were some of the common sentence spoken when it came to minorities disagreeing with the far left. There even were a few articles written to try and say “Asians are actually whites” as for what ever reason despite the far left claiming they support racial equality but at the same time not a too subtle beef with people of Asian decent. Now the black community might have it the worse as they are sort of seen as a meal ticket. They’ll constantly act like any black success story is a fluke, they act like the black community doesn’t have a voice so they must speak for them, they fetishise the black community to the point where they stereotype them. I’ve seen several of these people say stuff like “They don’t sound black enough.” “If you use anything other than curly hair or afro like styles then your racist.” “Black people cant have these body features.” On top of it they’ll go after cultures that don’t share similar histories to America and call those cultures backwards, Japan is usually the one constantly getting the most heat. A bit more disturbing is they view that any race with darker skin must be black. These people are pretty much race profiteers, as long as they can use the suffering of others they’ll still be relevant. Though the past examples are very hair raising, I think it’s the lack of solidarity is what is the scariest.

The past month after the death of George Floyd is where I saw many of the above issues played their hardest and they only way I can explain why all these things are happening is due to a lack of a solidarity. As the protests moved forward “We” became “Me” and they still argued that it was a “We” issue. The issue of police brutality quickly spiraled into a bunch of smaller issues and diluting the large issue. There were so many tweets stating that we should cancel voice acting, how it actually a trans issue, oh it’s a go sign to start creating anarchy and look stores, let’s look at how problematic other people are, fuck every white person, people and organization can’t change, let’s STAN these companies and their thinly veiled use of this tragedy to boost profits or to get in the spot light again, the list goes on and on and on and it goes back to my first point, if you don’t agree with all of these you’ll be torn apart. It’s this sad sort of mentality of “We’re making the world a better place while not putting in a lot of effort. Please ignore the trail of bodies that we made.”

Now I can go into more details like how the character limit prevents expressing complex ideas and make it easier for cancel culture to thrive or how they bend fiction into fact, but I honestly think that the above points are why people should avoid Twitter altogether. It brutal if you don’t agree with them and if you do agree with them you’re bound to loose a limb when you do disagree with them or completely loose individual thought and become a puppet. What scares me even more if that what I saw was probably just the surface level toxicity and it’s even worse the deeper you go in. Please be safe out there and be careful of those who say “Everything will be fine once you join us, we’ll take care of you.”

#Twitter #the toxic far left #stay safe #Don't give into hate #beware #soapbox

[robert-c]

The ‘Culture War’

I am an early ‘Baby Boomer’, born late in 1947. I grew up in that fabled “utopia” of the 1950’s and came of age in the turbulent 1960’s. I was a sophomore in high school when JFK was assassinated and graduated college in the middle of a recession that preceded our final exit from Viet Nam.

Just the same, as most people, I have fond memories of those years when I was 18 to 25. It is that magical part of one’s life where we are at last old enough to pursue whatever dreams we want, and at the same time still young enough to imagine that we will actually achieve them.

It has long been an idea of mine that many conservatives are simply trying to preserve or restore the world they lived in at that time in their lives. Some perhaps are even trying to restore the world they believe their parents or grandparents lived in at that time in their lives, because they have heard so much about it. This is completely understandable. Unless your personal life is a complete tragedy in that period, those years will likely always hold a special appeal in your memories. It is a time in our lives when we are old enough to do pretty much anything and where we still have the energy and optimism to believe that we will achieve what we want.

However, I must be honest, and admit that while those were good years for me (a white male in America) those were far from ‘perfect’ times. Imagining that period as one in which “America Was Great” is at the least dishonest, and at the worst a betrayal of the greatest principles this country stands for. I now also believe a lot of conservative sentiment is simply fear of change.

I understand, change is fearful. Everything in our evolution, our history, tells us that the common and the familiar is the safest. And yet, it was fearful to leave the trees and survive on the plains, or if you prefer, it was fearful to leave the Garden of Eden. Yet, all of what we have become, all of what we are, is due to facing the fear of something new and moving forward in spite of it.

I remember that each day our first grade class began with the pledge of allegiance to the flag. Recall with me the last lines of that pledge…“with liberty and justice for all.” Now that was and is important, because I bought (and still do) the idea that this was the place where that was true, or at least where we sought to make it true.

A lot gets made of the “generation gap” of the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s between my generation and my parents (the “greatest generation”). The Viet Nam War usually takes the “credit” for this gap, but my take on it is that the gap began when we realized that as a nation we weren’t living up to the creed our parents told us it stood for. That felt like betrayal, compounded by the fact that so many of our parents couldn’t see that underneath the unconventional clothes and hair, the principles we were espousing were essentially the ones they had taught us.

Nevertheless, change is difficult for people to accept. It is always easier to stick with the familiar, hence the old saying “better the Devil you know”. Not that any of this should be an excuse for not making things better, let alone for tolerating injustice. The core of the problem is rather than see ourselves as merely holding onto the familiar because the unfamiliar is scary, we make that fear about something else. “These changes will undermine the fabric of our society.” “It will lead to lawlessness and disintegration of the family.” And similar exaggerated and baseless claims. Few of us are going to admit to being tolerant of wrongs, so we tell ourselves stories to justify our feelings. “Those people are all criminals, you can’t trust them.” “They are inherently lazy, just doing the minimum to get by.” “They are all perverts and deviants.”

Sadly we have entered a period where too many do not trust facts, and look only for the “evidence” that supports our preconceived ideas. I believe it was George Bernard Shaw who said “for every problem there is a simple solution, and it is wrong.” This is where we have gone astray, we lazily latch on to simple, even simplistic, solutions and explanations, and then invest them with the absolutism of moral certainty so we don’t have to doubt or question ourselves again.

This thinking pervades everything from repeating the failed experiment of prohibition with drugs, to imagining that preventing women from having abortions will somehow make them financially and emotionally capable of being good mothers (up to and after the birth), to thinking that a wall is a solution to any real immigration problems.

Underneath it all, I think, is a simple fear that the world is changing and we don’t know what the new one will look like, or what place we can make for ourselves in it. This fear then gets covered by anger, because anger feels strong and invigorating, and fear feels helpless. Of course the anger has to find a target, a scapegoat, and these are always easy to find if you are looking for them. Then we justify the anger and the scapegoating with simple, “it stands to reason” sort of “made to order logic”.

It is the same fear of change that spurred many whites who weren’t ardent racists to support the separate lunch counters, restrooms, etc. Because there was simply no real reason to see harm in this sort of mixing, incredibly vicious lies had to be created – stories of diseases, uncleanliness etc. were common. No one could produce a single piece of proof that any of it was real or common, but it was a “safe” excuse for the anger that covered a simple fear that the world will be different than we were used to seeing. Typically these fears have to present themselves as if they are the ones being victimized unfairly, while in fact it is they themselves who will be the victimizers of others.

I remember a lot of negative comments when commercials and even some TV shows began to show attractive and educated black women. But those were important steps because it showed us that the stereotypes were wrong. Until I saw Nichelle Nichols portraying Lt Uhura on Star Trek I didn’t know that there were any black women who didn’t look like “Mammie” (from Gone With the Wind) or Aunt Jemima (the 1950’s version, not her updated image). That visual alone, helped undo a lot of the underpinnings of racist stereotypes and gave us a hint of a world that was more than just equal opportunities for all. We must first be able to imagine a different future before we can achieve it. Again as George Bernard Shaw said (and was quoted by both Jack and Robert Kennedy) “I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’”

If there is to be a single culture in the US it can only be one of inclusiveness and diversity or else we aren’t different or special, and certainly more likely than not to devolve into either neighborhood against neighborhood civil war or a tyranny of conformity. I know that sounds good to those who expect to be in the majority, in control; but I ask those people to be brutally honest and ask what if they weren’t the ones in control; now which culture do you want?

An official culture of “tolerance” and diversity doesn’t mean you personally have to agree with everyone’s point of view, only that you don’t get to punish them for it. But then that’s back to why some people’s insecurities make them feel threatened when others don’t agree with them.

I don’t have a “crystal ball”, I am not sure what the future holds. I don’t know what a multicultural, diverse America looks like at the end of the 21st century. Maybe it means a dual language world, maybe it means that there are as many stores selling cards and gifts for Eid Al-Adha as for Christmas or Easter. I don’t know, and I don’t care, because as long as one group does not have the power to force its beliefs on the rest, then America is what it always promised itself to be; a place …“with liberty and justice for all.”

I do know that when America works like it should we end up incorporating the good from other cultures into our own with our own flavor. This is true of food, traditions and celebrations. It’s why people with no Hispanic ancestry at all will celebrate Cinco de Mayo and those with no Irish background will celebrate St Patty’s Day with green beer. And when we give into the fear of change and demonize the new, we bring out our darkest and worst aspects – things we eventually (but not soon enough) recognize as shameful and unworthy of the lofty ideals on which this country was founded.

America is always at her best and greatest when we respect and embrace our different segments and work together. I always thought of it as true capstone to our way of life – a real life demonstration that all kinds of people with different beliefs could get along, be free and prosperous together. It made me think of us as an example to the world of a better way to live, to organize a society and government. I even thought that our diverse ethnic and cultural segments might give us some advantage in finding ways to communicate those values to other countries who have been plagued with religious or other internal strife. Look at those movies made during and immediately after the second world war; while they didn’t go far enough in showing diversity, you can see that they were showing a group of American fighting men from different ethnic and social backgrounds, all united in defending the American way of life, and against those who would impose a single vision of what it meant to be a worthwhile person.

Writing that all out now it almost seems naïve and idealistic, especially in a world filled with cynicism and hate, but I still believe it. I still think it is the only way out. Yes, we have never consistently or completely lived up to those ideals in the past. But that is no excuse for giving up on them altogether; especially when the alternative is so bleak.

Our nation’s founders set up a system where essentially rich, property owning men would be the most likely holders of public office; for Congress, the Supreme Court and the Presidency. They thought this system would prevent demagogues from preying upon the public’s irrational fears and biases. Right motive, wrong and ultimately unsuccessful methodology.

While I think our Founders could never have anticipated the America of today, I do think they understood and anticipated that the unfounded fears of a mob could be easily exploited by some for personal gain. Whether these “leaders” actually share the fears and concerns of their followers, or merely exploit them makes little difference, the damage they can do to the rule of law, to due process, and ultimately to liberty is immense.

My plea to my fellow countrymen is simple. Before this goes too far, let’s set aside our fears, and find the whole truth (not just the facts that support our fears) and see what will truly support freedom of belief and liberty for all. Let’s not forget that we are involved in an experiment that is still in progress. No where in the history of the world has there ever been a place that more fully embraced the ideal of “liberty and justice for all” than the United States of America. I would like to see us continue to be that unique example to the world for the future.

#culture war #generation gap

[vividfragments]

21 Questions!

I was going to take a break from this website but @surrealistwaltz tagged me for this 21 questions quiz, thank you!! This is gonna take me back to those 2005 Myspace days, these are fun.

Nicknames: My names Philip so a lot of family and even a few coworkers call me Philly which is nice, it's comforting and endearing. Also one of my friends mom called me Philomena and another friends Dad would call me Philbert which made me laugh. Also probably some bad ones lol.

Zodiac: I don't really put a lot of stock in zodiac signs but I'm a Leo

Height: I'm 6 feet or 1.82 (omg) meters tall.

Amount of sleep: I dunno what this is asking but I got like 4 hours last night?

Last movie I saw: I just recently watched deadman, its one of my favorites. It's kinda like an artsy, psychadellic, like, I dont wanna say western because that genre has an lot of tropes and cliches that this movie doesn't really have but it's set when industrialzation was starting to spread towards the west, more specifically to the film, the Pacific northwest of the US. It's a good movie to watch on a rainy, chilly night.

Last thing I googled: what 6 feet is in meters ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I suck at math.

Favorite musician: I'm taking this question as favorite single musician and I have lots but the first 2 that come to my head are Chopin and Klaus Flouride (one of my fav bassists)

Song stuck in my head: literally Voices Carry by 'Til Tuesday. I was in the market today and it was playing and I was singing it to myself, then I noticed a lot of people were doing the same and they were all different age groups and genders, it was cute. Damn that song is catchy... ~oooooooooh shush...

Other blogs: This is my only blog!

Do I get asks: Lol I actually haven't had an ask yet. Wish I did though, I can be fun sometimes.

Blogs following: I like following lots of different stuff. This is a place I like, try to expose myself to art, music, and other things that put my heart in a nice place. It can backfire sometimes though, whether its something that puts me into feelings or seeing people being stupid in comments or you know, the fact racist blogs can exist on here. I'm happy I made this though, it's been more positive than negative for sure.

Lucky numbers: 4, 33, and 44

What I'm wearing: I'm wearing some sort of cardigan like sweater that doesnt open up or have buttons and its burgundy (my fav color) with black jeans and socks tbh. Also my glasses.

Dream trip: Prague would be interesting, theres a lot of cool art and architecture there. I'm not religious or anything but I feel like visiting St. Peter's Square would be really surreal and kind of creepy? Going to a place like Australia or what @surrealistwaltz said, Greenland would be neat. I feel like those places could make you feel as though you're on a completely different planet.

Dream Job: I wanna teach history! Preferably high school, then if I cant stand how kids act I'll work my way up to the collegiate level. I wanna teach history because looking back at what we learn in schools here in America is watered down, especially when it comes to the bad that Americans have done and the negative impact its had on groups of parole and honestly, bug chunks of the globe.I believe there needs to be at least on teacher in a students k-12 scholastic career who calls out the borderline history revisonment that is being taught to kids so wrecklessly. The United States definitely needs to do what they do in Germany when it comes to teaching about atrocities committed in the past. Whomever is on the winning side of history should NOT MATTER. If theres a group of people that has been suppressed or continues to be suppressed, there needs to be at least ONE person who introduces the brutal hard truth of what happened. Here in the states you get the "I didn't participate in slavery or the genocide of Native Americans, it's not something I need to hear in detail" and it literally pisses me off, it misses the whole point of education. This fires me up, sorry.....

Favorite food: literally any type of pasta or noodles. It doesnt matter if it's in soup, if its Italian, Chinese, Japanese, vietnamese, if it has noodles and doesn't have meat then I'm so happy to just demolish whatever is in front of me. Also chips and salsa is refreshing and satisfying. I'm half Mexican so any type of Mexican food that doesn't use anything from animals is always a go to. My fav fruits are cherries, tangerines, and pears. My favorite veggies are asparagus, green beans, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts. I can make some v good Brussels sprouts.

Languages: ehh I speak pretty bad Spanish but the foundation is there so when I decide to take it back up when I go to a university, I should be able to learn a lot easier than I did in high school. If not because I have foundation and basic understanding of the language then its because I actually WANT to learn it as opposed to when I was a teenager. German would be really cool too because if I teach and I get upset I can just yell in German and people would think I'm actually insane and hopefully would cut out whatever nonsense they were doing.

Play any instruments: I play Bass off and on. I first got my bass when I was 12, I would just mess around until I was like 14, then I taught myself how to read bass tabs so if there was a song I really liked, I could look up the tablatures and teach myself how to play it and still do that. I wish I would've taken lessons though.

Favorite songs: I have a lot but I'll give a top 5 that I listen to regularly and/or have a special connection with:

Joe Lies by the Bouncing souls

Happy When it Rains by The Jesus and Mary Chain

Bad by U2

When You Sleep by My Bloody Valentine

Oh me, Oh my by Streetlight Manifesto

*bonus guilty pleasure* The One by Backstreet Boys

Random Fact: I can pop my knuckles by just clinching my fist tightly? Also I'm really into ceramics so if I have some clay, kiln, and some glaze I can make stuff on a pottery wheel or hand build it. Mmmmmm also I'm like, really into quoting spongebob. It's kind of gotten out of hand. Also I'm using this question to give a shoutout to my dog, ABBY I LOVE YOU!! I love my dog, she's a ham.

Describe your aesthetic: ...Artsy and rebellious dad... who's cool with you smoking weed as long as you keep your grades up.....

THAT WAS FUN AND MADE ME GENUINELY HAPPY THANK YOU FOR TAGGING ME!!!!

Since I brought up Myspace I'm not tagging anyone, we're doing this the 2005 way. If you follow me and are bored or wanna talk PLEASE do this, I wanna read your answers :)

#fun #21 questions #do this #why are quizzes so much fun

[radramblog]

we live in a society (that has progressed)

There’s always an interminable shift, a flux, in culture that can be hard to spot if you don’t quite know what you’re looking for. As times change, people grow, and media is released, causing perspectives and opinions in the general psyche to sway over the course of human cultural history.

Basically, the Joker is allowed to be funny again, and that’s a good thing.

I’m not going to bother explaining who the Joker is to you, like I often do when I’m introducing a post like this. It’s the fucking Joker, I’d be shocked if you didn’t know what the character is. You have to be online to see this post, after all, and if you’re on the obscure rabbit-hole known as My Tumblr, you’re online enough to see Joker memes and such.

The Joker is an inherently ridiculous character. He’s literally a clown man, a foil to the deadpan Batman, humour literally written into his name. And while I cannot possibly capture the full breadth of his various iterations and interpretations over the course of DC Comics’s long history, a lot less people are going to have read the comics than seen the adaptations of such, and those are what has stuck out in the public consciousness. There’s a few versions in particular I’d like to highlight before I get into the meat of this.

In particular, the early visual interpretations of the character are, well, monumentally silly. It’s impossible to talk about the 1966 Adam West Batman series without an understanding of just how camp the whole thing was, and the Joker is no exception to this. Even Jack Nicholson’s performance in the 1989 film is inherently silly despite it’s overall serious tone, a villain who kills people with a chemical called, I shit you not, Smylex. Considering the actor, and especially considering what came just a year before that film, such a portrayal is actually kind of a confusing cultural milestone.

And that thing that came a year beforehand is The Killing Joke, potentially the most iconic Batman comic, nay, DC comic there is. And with it, potentially the most sympathetic portrayal of the Joker that there had been so far. A man driven mad by exposure, a situation he was only in to afford his family’s bills. It presents the most clear image of him as Batman’s mirror- literally, at times, and yet shows some of his most shocking brutality at the same time. The idea of the comic, if I may be so bold, is to imply that the line between Batman and the Joker isn’t quite so thick as it appears at first glance.

We don’t talk about the animated version of the Killing Joke.

I’m going to move right past the Animated Series in general, not because it’s bad or anything, but because I’m relatively unfamiliar with it (this may be a reoccurring theme) I’ve only seen a handful of episodes, the ones my family had on VHS, and they sure didn’t have the Joker in them. (The Gray Ghost and….I think a Scarecrow episode? Which was a hell of a thing to see as a kid). It does have his portrayal with Mark Hamill as the voice actor, though, which is frankly such a choice decision.

The thing that made the Joker, and the Batman franchise as a whole, come back into the limelight was obviously the Nolan movies, specifically The Dark Knight. Being the face of such a critically acclaimed movie with such an incredible performance by Heath Ledger (I am obliged to stan, he’s from Perth, I’ve met his stepdad) is obviously going to get the name back in the books, even if it’s such a different version from what had previously been seen.

Ledger’s Joker has a humour, sure, but it’s a significantly more morbid one than previous incarnations. Previous Jokers killed people, sure, but The Dark Knight added a level of brutality to the whole thing that made the character so much more serious, pun not intended. One can largely attribute this to the darker tone of the film he appears in compared to previous Batmans (especially the 90s films), because in those versions the Joker was, well, not a serious character. He doesn’t interact with the world in the same way other people do, his values are completely alien. Ledger’s Joker has a very specific ideology, one people can understand, and more relevantly, one people can misunderstand.

The actual post begins here.

Ledger’s Joker has been the icon of the edgy teenager since The Dark Knight came out and was watched by millions of them. Something about the character speaks to them, something about being an outsider, not like the other people, and also both smart and violent, which are attributes that 13-year-olds idolise.

A Joker profile picture has long been one of the biggest red flags on the internet. A sure sign that someone is going to say the dumbest fucking thing imaginable, or something hideously offensive apropos of absolutely nothing. This isn’t even getting into how the character became an icon for the Gamers Rise Up movement, which I will remind you that a fair few people actually took seriously. A legion of the worst of nerd culture- misogynistic, racist, and toxic folks who have nothing better to do than yell at people on Reddit.

Where as I, the cultured individual, explain things to people on Tumblr. Very different. But the point is, this specific version of the character is an anarchist, out to prove that, at the end of the day, every single person has the potential to become a monster, that chaos is the nature of humanity, somewhat akin to his portrayal and point in The Killing Joke- all it takes is the right thing to set you off. This twisting of the message into “im better and smarter than u also I will kill u” is frankly kind of disgusting.

The point I’m trying to get to is that for the last decade-ish, The Joker, a character built around humour and gratuity, has become incredibly unfunny. From the internet fuckwits to the grim Ledger portrayal, the character with Joke in their name has been impossible to laugh at.

Another factor contributing to this is the growing awareness and increased sympathy for mentally ill people, which is where Joker (the film) comes in. Now, obviously, the understanding of mental issues is not a bad thing, and I’d love to see this trend continue. But my understanding is that Joker and its titular character are not a particularly humourous time, despite the character literally being a comedian this time.

To be clear, I have not seen the movie, and I have no intention to, so feel free to completely ignore my opinion on this. But the fact that the film seemed to have made all the GRU stuff worse is not a good sign for it.

However, as in life and in media, all things shall pass, and that does include the Joker. Ignoring Suicide Squad (because I know like nothing about the Joker’s place in that film and don’t want to research it), late 2010-s on portrayals of the Joker appear to be returning to the characters roots somewhat, though to be fair, both of the things I’m basing my judgement are comedy features.

The first is, oddly enough, the Lego Batman movie. I can understand not having seen this film, because from the outside, it didn’t look or sound good, but the whole thing is basically a love letter to Batman/DC as a franchise, complete with possibly the silliest incarnation of the character so far. This Joker is utterly obsessed with proving himself as Batman’s equal, as the greatest villain to rival the greatest hero. He’s probably the most potentially homoerotic interpretation, which is kind of silly considering he’s literally a Lego dude. But the movie is funny, and so is he, which is the key point.

The other recent addition to this list is the Harley Quinn animated series, where the Joker obviously plays a significant role. Now, I’m not really familiar at all with this interpretation, having not seen the show, but considering the memes going around about Batman apparently not doing oral, and that having stemmed from this show, it’s not hard to imagine the Joker’s portrayal being similarly silly- even if his canonical abusee is the protagonist. Like, I’m pretty sure he’s a bastard in this one, but he’s also the butt of the joke, considering the series is in large part about Harley getting over him and moving past that part of her life (and ideally hooking up with Poison Ivy, because, come on)

I guess my point is that the Joker is an inherently comic character, in all that entails. You cannot have the Joker not be in some way silly without making massive changes to his design, his characterisation, and his ideals- which is pretty much what has happened in the past few years. I mean, the guy’s got bright green hair, he wears purple suits, he kills people with laughing gas.

This comic, by artist FruitEater, is kind of what inspired this whole post. It’s such a silly little thing from a silly little trend, but it really stuck in my head, and not just because it reminded me of my past self- a child who was super into Crazy Frog when I was, like, 10. It’s a comic that couldn’t exist were it not for the passage of time beyond the era of edgy Joker. Time has moved on- Gamers Rise Up is dying (the subreddit got banned, where else are they supposed to go?), cringe culture is dying, and the Joker is a character that’s allowed to be funny again.

We can laugh with the Joker again.

#ramble #the joker #god that's a tag i didn't expect to put on this blog #batman #(i guess?) #clearing my search history after posting this so the government doesn't think i'm a scumfuck

[theliterateape]

The Therapeutic Approach to Nationalism

by Don Hall

When it came to Chicago Thanksgivings, I could be a real cunt.

Sure, Jen and I would host Orphan's Gatherings—Thanksgiving for people stuck in Chicago and unable to travel to their family's homes over the holiday. I would drop a couple of hundred bucks and make a huge spread of food but the transaction for coming was to have to listen to me bitch about how shitty the holiday was.

"Enjoy the turkey. Afterward, I'll be providing each of you blankets covered in small pox and steal your property. I mean, I'm thankful for a lot but I'm mostly thankful I wasn't native to this country because, man, then I'd be fucked, amiright?"

This screed went all day long and became more and more incessant as I drank Scotch and beer and cooked. Depending on the year, it would spread out from the genocide of Native Americans to the American military industrial complex, the woeful state of our civil rights, and how evil the Republicans were.

"Here's some food and some vitriol as gravy. Happy Fucking Thanksgiving!"

What an asshole. It's hardly a surprise that most of those people in those early days don't bother to talk to me today.

I used to think that blunt honesty was always the best approach to all situations. It's, well, honest, and it's mildly therapeutic to simply air your truth to those around you. I used to believe that until I lived with Alice.

Alice was like me at Thanksgiving but every day of the year. Her inability to accept less than exactly how she wanted things was maddening. She was always brutally honest about her feelings (unless it was something she decided needed to be kept a secret and then it was as if she locked it away in a trunk she bought at a yard sale and hid under the stairs).

"I hate your hair." "This is a stupid Christmas gift." "I can't believe you're wearing that to dinner." "Wow. You're really getting fat." "Don't embarrass me by talking politics with my University friends, OK? You're practically right wing."

After a few years of this constant honesty, I found myself walking around like Eeyore, head down, eyes on the ground, feeling a sense of dread overcoming me with the now drilled-in idea that nothing I did could possibly be enough or correct. If Alice wasn't happy it was because I was inadequate. She now had someone to blame for her disappointments in life.

What I learned from Alice was that for blunt honesty to be effective and useful rather than merely a bludgeon of self importance leveled upon those who are willing to put up with it, it was about seeing how that honesty could be used by them.

If the criticism couldn't be utilized for the betterment of someone or something, it was just noisy, pointless bitching. Childish complaint and attempts to beat down those around into some aspect of submission. Looking for someone to blame as if the recipient's guilt and subsequent anguish could be healing in some way.

Common wisdom suggests that by thoroughly revisiting our traumatic experiences to understand why they happened and how to move past them is therapeutic. Unfortunately, like the movies in the 1980s subsidized by the Pentagon to help recruit kids with a Top Gun drumbeat of "How Cool is War, Right?," the therapy industry proliferates this constant vomiting of pain and search for who to blame for it is in contrast with new research.

"New research is showing that some people only get worse by continuing to brood and ruminate,” Stanford psychologist Mischel said. “Each time they recount the experience to themselves, their friends or their therapist, they only become more depressed."

SOURCE

It's quite possible that I have had uniquely bad therapy experiences. A few when I was younger felt pointless, the couple's therapy I went through with my first and second ex-wives felt disingenuous. While skewed for maximum satire, the talk therapy groups in Fight Club ring more true than anything else—sad, busted up people sitting in a circle complaining about how hard their life has been next to another room with another circle complaining about theirs next to another.

Talking about your problems to be heard seems fine but it also a cul de sac of constantly re-opening the wounds over and over without any sort of solution provided. Even if one discovers an abuser in their past to pin the blame upon, even if there is some sort of reckoning and accountability, neither talking about it or understanding your place in the grievance hierarchy manages to solve the inability to move past the trauma.

That's the goal, right? Move past it? It may not be an easy task but, at the end of the process, learning to get on with things, heal the pain, live with the scars is the goal, yes?

It is the same when it comes to big picture items as well.

As someone decidedly Left in political views, I can't say I've ever been in a huge Bitch Session of Truthtelling with anyone right wing. Not my monkey, not my circus. On the hand, I can't count the number of Leftist circle jerks I've been mired in, often contributing more than my fair share of discourse and blockading to the mix. It is the Choir Preaching to the Choir so that One Solidifies Membership in the Freaking Choir.

So many of these sessions amount to telling the truth and identifying who is to blame for that truth.

"There is no reason for the evil that is represented by the Billionaire Class. How much money does anyone need? And at the expense of everyone else? The System is rigged by the wealthy, for the wealthy."

"The systemic racism in the country's policing stems from its racist beginnings and that's why so many black men are indiscriminately killed by cops. How many videos do we have to endure before things change?"

"Fossil fuels are the source of climate disaster. Everyone can see that. If we don't change course, the planet is going to be destroyed in our lifetime!"

All true, I'd think. But I heard that last week and the week before and the week before that. Sort of like my Thanksgiving rants.

Who’s to blame? The rich. The police. Big Oil. Where are the solutions to the problems?

Playing the blame game never works. A deep set of research shows that people who blame others for their mistakes lose status, learn less, and perform worse relative to those who own up to their mistakes. Research also shows that the same applies for organizations. Groups and organizations with a rampant culture of blame have a serious disadvantage when it comes to creativity, learning, innovation, and productive risk-taking.

Harvard Business Review

Blame, beyond personal accountability, is likewise pointless without a plan and “Hold Those to Blame Accountable!” isn’t a great plan.

Truth without pragmatic action is meaningless.

And so … the birthday of the nation comes up. The therapeutic gripe sessions begin. Instead of celebrating the country’s progress, the ideals it is founded upon, any sense of national pride, we have a host of Thanksgiving Don Hall’s pissing and moaning about the missteps and outright horrors committed by those long dead.

There is a lot of blunt trauma truth tossed out just before, during, and after our national day. Things like the fact of indoctrinated worship of the Founders without some serious views upon their flaws as human beings. Like the intentional absence in our collective history of the contributions made by those not in the majority. As I would've said on a typical Thanksgiving, an absence of any genuine reflection on the near genocide of the natives.

Not so much the next step of how to fix the issues or even the simple truth that most of the problems in the past cannot be fixed rather the recurrent results modified for a more just and equitable nation. Lotsa bitching. Not lotsa solution building. Tons of blame. Ounces of creative problem solving.

A whole bunch of Thanksgiving Cunts holding court and demanding that if you want to shoot of fireworks, wave the flag, eat some grilled meat, and get a bit drunk in celebration of the enduring experiment in democracy and multi-culturalism America strives to be, you are forced to listen to them piss all over the parade.

The thing about Alice was that for all of her brutal honesty, none of it made me want to change my hair, I stopped buying her gifts altogether, I intentionally wore things and said things that would embarrass her and the only reason I lost weight was because the gym was a place I could escape her for a few hours. Her mean spirited honesty accomplished the exact opposite of what she was aiming for.

The United States ain't so united and maybe it never has been but wallowing in the painful trauma of the past only has value if the next step is to focus on what we can do together to avoid the mistakes made by our elders. That's the entire point of America in the first place.

So, Happy Birthday, America. Let's keep trying to improve.

#July 4

[ayy-this-is-a-blog]

Main character of my Stardew Valley fic! Her name is Joey and she’s had a hard life.

Here’s a sneak peek about her for those reading the story!

Full Name: Joey Marie Gruft    Nickname: Jo, Thrasher, Shaddy Age: 24 Gender: Female Height: 5′6 Eye Color: Blue Other: Tattoo on shoulder Personality: [ Allocentric ] - [ Goofy ] - [ Moralistic ] - [ Leaderly ] - [ Competitive ] - [ Compulsive ] - [ Anxious ] - [ Crass ] - [ Brutal ] - [  Fawning ] •  Allocentric | “No matter how good you think you are as a leader, my goodness, the people around you will have all kinds of ideas for how you can get better. So for me, the most fundamental thing about leadership is to have the humility to continue to get feedback and to try to get better - because your job is to try to help everybody else get better.” | Joey wants everybody to be included and treated equally. She will not stand for racist, sexist, or ableistic comments about those that have no discipline in their life. In a sense she is often seen as a 'White Knight' for those that don't have the voice or means to defend themselves. • Goofy | “At this point, I feel like I can allow myself to be goofy and take more risks, and even if I do fall on my face, I know it's not the end of the world and at least I tried to do something different.” | Joey is a little goofball. She likes to bounce around and try to make the people around her happy. She enjoys being silly and drawing hearty laughter from those around her, even at the cost of her own health. • Moralistic | “On the surface we all act like we all love each other and we're free and easy, and actually we're far more moralistic than any other society I've ever lived in.” | Inkeri is very strong about doing things right by her mind. She believes that people need to be cared for and led themselves to helping those out around them. • Leaderly | "A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way." | Joey takes charge in situations where people are lost. Head sound tech quit minutes before show time? Joey will step in and direct people on what needs to get done and isn't shy about stepping up when things need to get done. • Competitive | "I am competitive and I feel bad when we lose. You can see it in me when we've lost. I'm in a bad way. I don't like to talk to anyone. " | Growing up with two older brothers and a younger sister, made Jo very competitive from an early age, having to fight for a place at the dinner table. It's a trait she still carries to this day. • Compulsive | “I think that the romantic impulse is in all of us and that sometimes we live it for a short time, but it's not part of a sensible way of living. It's a heroic path and it generally ends dangerously. I treasure it in the sense that I believe it's a path of great courage. It can also be the path of the foolhardy and the compulsive.” |  This is a thing that can get her in trouble. She tends to jump without thinking, and this has landed her in a few sticky situations before. Joey can make impulsive buys on the fly only to end up regretting it later on, this is why she has a drawer full of junk that she's never used ever. • Anxious | “I think it would collapse my heart if I was super famous. I don't have the nerve for it, I'm too anxious. I don't know how you're not obsessed with how people perceive you, because they're real people, you know? You can convince yourself that they don't really know you, and that's true, but how can it not hurt your feelings?” | Jo has anxiety about having to suddenly leave home. She does not do well being away from her place of residence for long spans of time if its uncalled for or unplanned. In foreign settings, Joey is insecure and scared and tries to keep to herself. • Crass | “Being an adult is like being in a Quentin Tarantino movie. It starts out cool, there’s lots of swearing, then it gets weird and confusing as fuck, and everyone dies.” | Joey has very little filter, and what filter she has quickly erodes when her temper rises. She usually ends up dropping the F-bomb every other word when excited or hyped. • Brutal | "I knock heads and crack skulls, even if the other party is begging for mercy." | Jo doesn't take shit from people who challenge her and everything he stands for. She's broken bones and hurt plenty of people out of a bullheaded rage in the past, but seems to keep a cap on her anger better than ever before. But if it comes down to it, she will not hesitate to kill someone if it's either her life or theirs. • Fawning | "I am called a dog because I fawn on those who give me anything, I yelp at those who refuse, and I set my teeth in rascals. " | Joey tends to love blindly if people give her affection. Male, Female, or whatever the other individual identifies as, she will fawn over them for given affections. This isn't because her parents didn't love her, but rather this was how they raised her to be. Themesong: Periscope - Papa Roach Voice Actor: Hasley Playlist: Jo's Playlist  Sexuality: Pansexual Character Alignment: Chaotic Good Likes: • Papa Roach / Escape the fate / Ot3p / Other Post/Hardcore bands • Concerts and Mosh pits • Oversized hoodies • The game Stardew Valley • Cats • Helping those down on their luck • Tattoos and scruffy beards Dislikes: • People with no manners • The Patriarchy • Capitlisim • Bigots / Terrorists • Sand • Animal abusers • Donald Trump Strengths: • Versatile • Self Sufficient • Honest • Hard working Weaknesses: • Can be short tempered when dealing with people she doesn't like. • Takes too many risks • Overly confrontational • Cynical Quirks: • Extremely loyal to friends and family • Can't stand when people chew with their mouth open • Celebrates all holidays on the wrong date [Save for halloween] • Oddly fascinated by natural disasters. • Tends to pull faces when worried about people she cares about. • Never seen without her knit hat • Likes touching peoples faces, arms, or clothes if they're close • Not open to having a child. but seeks a relationship Hobbies: • Going to concerts • Collecting Gemstones / Minerals / Antiques • Stargazing • Keeping A Journal • Dancing • Cooking • Gambling • Impersonations • Pyrotechnics • Playing guitar Skills: • Adapts to change quickly • Able to effectively think, speak and act without preparation. • Can confront others if they become a problem • Can take a leadership role if asked to • Handles pressure well Fears Fear of Being Alone Mild • • • • • - • • • • Severe Fear of Falling Mild • • • • • • • • • - • Severe Fear of Pregnancy/Having Kids Mild • • • • • • • • • • - Severe Fear of The Fututre Mild • • • • - • • • • • • Severe Short History: Joey Marie Gruft was born December 15th, 1994 to parents Leonard and Gabrielle Gruft. She was rasied the way of a typical 90's child that fell hard for the punk scene that her parents were a part of. As the youngest child she was often taken to concerts of her parents favorite punk bands from Green Day to Blink-182, but for as long as she could remember, her all time favorite band was Papa Roach. She just felt that their music understood her days as an angsty teen that struggled with anxitey, and she wasn't too far from wrong on that point. In her later teens and early adulthood, Jo moved away from her parents and started up her own rock band with a few of her close friends, even if it never really went anywhere other than the local scene. Still though, she liked the challenge of starting a rock band and coming up with their own music that actually meant something. In late 2017, her and her band, Hold your Breath, got the break they'd wanted and ended up getting a record deal with a local company that had helped other bands climb the ladder of fame. Her older brother resented her for taking the spotlight with their parents, even though he was already at the age of moving out when she was born. Joey still loved her big brother even though he pushed her away and shunned her for taking "his" place. Why she moved away: Joey was attending a local concert where she was playing with her band when her brother had ended up having enough of his sister. In a delusional rage, Joey was shot nearly and killed by her brother before he escaped. She soon found out that her brother had ended up killing their own parents in that same fit of rage. Joey's brother is now spending life in prison on two counts of firs degree murder charges and Joey herself has moved to Pelican town and is trying to start a new life as a farmer on her grandfather’s old plot of land.

#Stardew Valley #Female Farmer #Stardew Valley Farmer