#they will protect themselves and their investment. and it is not absurd to consider they can still work against him and affect his career | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bloodbenderz · 3 years

Note

humaniterations (dot) net/2014/10/13/an-anarchist-perspective-on-the-red-lotus/ this article from oct 2014 is very dense — truly, a lot to unpack here, but I feel like you would find this piece interesting. I would love it if you shared your thoughts on the points that stood out to you, whether you agree or disagree. you obv don’t have to respond to it tho, but I’m sending it as an ask jic you feel like penning (and sharing) a magnificent essay, as is your wont 💕

article

i know this took me forever 2 answer SORRY but i just checked off all the things on my to do list for the first time in days today so. Essay incoming ladies!

ok im SO glad u sent me this bc it’s so so good. it’s a genuinely thoughtful criticism of the politics in legend of korra (altho i think its sometimes a little mean to korra unnecessarily like there’s no reason to call her a “petulant brat” or say that she throws tantrums but i do understand their point about her being an immature and reactionary hero, which i’ll get back to) and i think the author has a good balance between acknowledging like Yeah the lok writers were american liberals and wrote their show accordingly and Also writing a thorough analysis of lok’s politics that felt relevant and interesting without throwing their hands up and saying this is all useless liberal bullshit (which i will admit that i tend to do).

this article essentially argues that the red lotus antagonists of s3 were right. And that’s not an uncommon opinion i think but this gives it serious weight. Like, everything that zaheer’s gang did was, in context, fully understandable. of course the red lotus would be invested in making sure that the physically and spiritually and politically most powerful person in the world ISNT raised by world leaders and a secret society of elites that’s completely unaccountable to the people! of course the red lotus wants to bring down tyrannical governments and allow communities to form and self govern organically! and the writers dismiss all of that out of hand by 1. consistently framing the red lotus as insane and murderous (korra never actually gives zaheer’s ideas a chance or truly considers integrating them into her own approach) 2. representing the death of the earth queen as not just something that’s not necessarily popular (what was with mako’s bootlicker grandma, i’d love to know) but as something that causes unbelievable violence and chaos in ba sing se (which, like, a lot of history and research will tell you that people in disasters tend towards prosocial behaviors). so the way the story frames each of these characters and ideologies is fascinating because like. if you wanted to write season 3 of legend of korra with zaheer as the protagonist and korra as the antagonist, you wouldn’t actually have to change the sequence of events at all, really. these writers in particular and liberal writers in general LOVE writing morally-gray-but-ultimately-sympathetic characters (like, almost EVERY SINGLE fire nation character in the first series, who were full on violent colonizers but all to a degree were rehabilitated in the eyes of the viewer) but instead of framing the red lotus as good people who are devoted to justice and freedom and sometimes behave cruelly to get where theyre trying to go, they frame them as psychopaths and murderers who have good intentions don’t really understand how to make the world a better place.

and the interesting thing about all this, about the fact that the red lotus acted in most cases exactly as it should have in context and the only reason its relegated to villain status is bc the show is written by liberals, is that the red lotus actually points out really glaring sociopolitical issues in universe! like, watching the show, u think well why the fuck HASN’T korra done anything about the earth queen oppressing her subjects? why DOESN’T korra do anything about the worse than useless republic president? why the hell are so many people living in poverty while our mains live cushy well fed lives? how come earth kingdom land only seems to belong to various monarchs and settler colonists, instead of the people who are actually indigenous to it? the show does not want to answer these questions, because american liberal capitalism literally survives on the reality of oppressive governments and worse than useless presidents and people living in poverty while the middle/upper class eats and indigenous land being stolen. if the show were to answer these questions honestly, the answer would be that the status quo in real life (and the one on the show that mirrors real life) Has To Change.

So they avoid answering these questions honestly in order for the thesis statement to be that the status quo is good. and the only way for the show to escape answering these questions is for them to individualize all these broad social problems down into Good people and Bad people. so while we have obvious bad ones like the earth queen we also have all these capitalists and monarchs and politicians who are actually very nice and lovely people who would never hurt anyone! which is just such an absurd take and it’s liberal propaganda at its best. holding a position of incredible political/economic power in an unjust society is inherently unethical and maintaining that position of power requires violence against the people you have power over. which is literally social justice 101. but there’s literally no normal, average, not-politically-powerful person on the show. so when leftist anarchism is presented and says that destroying systems that enforce extreme power differentials is the only way to bring peace and freedom to all, the show has already set us up to think, hey, fuck you, top cop lin beifong and ford motor ceo asami sato are good people and good people like them exist! and all we have to do to move forward and progress as a society is to make sure we have enough good individuals in enough powerful positions (like zuko as the fire lord ending the war, or wu as the earth king ending the monarchy)! which is of course complete fiction. liberal reform doesn’t work. but by pretending that it could work by saying that the SYSTEM isnt rotten it’s just that the people running it suck and we just need to replace those people, it automatically delegitimizes any radical movements that actually seek to change things.

and that’s the most interesting thing about this article to me is that it posits that the avatar...might actually be a negative presence in the world. the avatar is the exact same thing: it’s a position of immense political and physical power bestowed completely randomly, and depending on the moral character and various actions of who fills that position at any given time, millions of people will or won’t suffer. like kyoshi, who created the fascist dai li, like roku, who refused to remove a genocidal dictator from power, like aang, who facilitated the establishment of a settler colonial state on earth kingdom land. like korra! she’s an incredibly immature avatar and a generally reactionary lead. i’ve talked about this at length before but she never actually gets in touch with the needs of the people. she’s constantly running in elite circles, exposed only to the needs and squabbles of the upper class! how the hell is she supposed to understand the complexities of oppression and privilege when she was raised by a chess club with inordinate amounts of power and associates almost exclusively with politicians and billionaires?? from day 1 we see that she tends to see things in very black and white ways which is FINE if you’re a privileged 17 yr old girl seeing the world for the first time but NOT FINE if you’re the single most powerful person in the world! Yeah, korra thinks the world is probably mostly fine and just needs a little whipping into shape every couple years, because all she has ever known is a mostly fine world! in s1 when mako mentions that he as a homeless impoverished teenager worked for a gang (which is. Not weird. Impoverished people of every background are ALWAYS more likely to resort to socially unacceptable ways of making money) korra is like “you guys are criminals?????!!!!!” she was raised in perfect luxury by a conservative institution and just never developed beyond that. So sure, if the red lotus raised her anarchist, probably a lot would’ve been different/better, but....they didn’t. and korra ended up being a reactionary and conservative avatar who protected monarchs and colonialist politicians. The avatar as a position is completely subject to the whims of whoever is currently the avatar. and not only does that suck for everyone who is not the avatar, not only is it totally unfair to whatever kid who grows up knowing the fate of the world is squarely on their shoulders, but it as a concept is a highly individualist product of the authors’ own western liberal ideas of progress! the idea that one good leader can fix the world (or should even try) based on their own inherent superiority to everyone else is unbelievably flawed and ignores the fact that all real progress is brought about as a result of COMMUNITY work, as a result of normal people working for themselves and their neighbors!

the broader analysis of bending was really interesting to me too, but im honestly not sure i Totally agree with it. the article pretty much accepts the show’s assertion that bending is a privilege (and frankly backs it up much better than the original show did, but whatever), and i don’t think that’s NECESSARILY untrue since it is, like, a physical advantage (the author compares it to, for example, the fact that some people are born athletically gifted and others are born with extreme physical limitations), but i DO think that it discounts the in universe racialization of bending. in any sequel to atla that made sense, bending as a race making fact would have been explored ALONGSIDE the physical advantages it bestows on people. colonialism and its aftermath is generally ignored in this article which is its major weakness i think, especially in conjunction with bending. you can bring up the ideas the author did about individual vs community oriented progress in the avatar universe while safely ignoring the colonialism, but you can’t not bring up race and colonialism when you discuss bending. especially once you get to thinking about how water/earth/airbenders were imprisoned and killed specifically because bending was a physical advantage, and that physical advantage was something that would have given colonized populations a means of resistance and that the fire nation wanted to keep to itself.

i think that’s the best lens thru which to analyze bending tbh! like in the avatar universe bending is a tool that different ethnic groups tend to use in different ways. at its best, bending actually doesn’t represent social power differences (despite representing a physical power difference) because it’s used to represent/maintain community solidarity. like, take the water tribe. katara being the last waterbender, in some way, makes her the last of a part of swt CULTURE. the implication is that when there were a lot of waterbenders in the south, they dedicated their talents to building community and helping their neighbors, because this was something incredibly culturally important and important to the water tribe as a community. the swt as a COLLECTIVE values bending for what it can do for the entire tribe, which counts for basically every other talent a person can have (strength, creativity, etc). the fire nation, by contrast, distorts the community value of bending by racializing it: anyone who bends an element that isn’t fire is inherently NOT fire nation (and therefore inherently inferior) and, because of the physical power that bending confers, anyone who bends an element that isn’t fire is a threat to fire nation hegemony. and in THAT framework of bending, it’s something that intrinsically assigns worth and reifies race in a way that’s conveniently beneficial to the oppressor.

it IS worth talking about how using Element as a way to categorize people reifies nations, borders, and race in a way that is VERY characteristic of white american liberals. i tried to be conscious of that (and the way that elements/bending can act in DIFFERENT ways, depending on cultural context) but i think it’s pretty clear that the writers did intend for element to unequivocally signify nation (and, by extension, race), which is part of why they screwed up mixed families so bad in lok. when they’ve locked themselves into this idea that element=nation=race, they end up with sets of siblings like mako and bolin or kya tenzin and bumi, who all “take” after only one parent based on the element that they bend. which is just completely stupid but very indicative of how the writers actually INTENDED element/bending to be a race making process. and its both fucked up and interesting that the writers display the same framework of race analysis that the canonical antagonists of atla do.

anyway that’s a few thoughts! thank u again for sending the article i really loved it and i had a lot of fun writing this <3

#this is 2.1k words LMFAOO #asks #analysis #do i have an analysis tag?#crit #lok crit

184 notes · View notes

shinidamachu · 3 years

Note

You know what’s sad? I didn’t care for S*ssRin before Yashahime. I didn’t like it but I didn’t hate it. It’s these recent posts where people try to justify this ship with literal grooming tactics that’s seriously grossing me out. 😬

Hey there!

Yeah, I see where you’re coming from and even though I had a different experience, yours is totally understandable. In fact, many people in the fandom are in the same boat as you.

Personally, I first watched the anime when I was a little kid. Like, really young. I didn’t get to finish it then, probably because the TV channel stopped airing it or something like that. Growing up, the story was still on the back of my mind, but Inuyasha, Kagome and their romance were the only things I could remember. As an adult, I finally decided to rewatch the whole thing, start to finish.

That’s when I took notice of the other key characters, such as $esshomaru and R!n, that my young mind had forgotten. Because she was a child, it never occured to me to interpret their bond as romantic. And because he was her guardian, exerted authority over her from the moment they met and their relationship was strictly platonic during the whole show, I couldn’t help but see them as a Lilo & Stitch family: little and broken, but still good.

However, years and years of fandom had prepared me to the real possibility of $esshomaru/R!n being a ship. My fears were confirmed when I joined Inutumblr. Was I still grossed out? Absolutely. But I couldn’t say I was surprised. As much as it hurts to say, the misogynist trope $esshomaru/R!n is based on is not unusual.

And so I hated this ship since I learned it was a thing. Hated its disgusting implications, hated that it defilled such a pure, familial form of unconditional love, hated how cheap and superficial it is. Hated how it strips R!n out of any agency whatsoever, hated that it downplays $esshomaru’s character development and it makes him out to be an absolute creep.

That’s why I did my level best to avoid interacting with shippers as much as I could. I can make friends with them, if they’re not invested in it enough to put it on my dash. And as much as it still makes me uncomfortable, I can look the other way if I’m reading Inukag fanfiction and these characters are portrayed as a couple, as long as they met when she was an adult and they’re not a huge part of it. It's not of my business what people ship, regardless of how unbelievably inappropriate and problematic I find it to be. They stayed in their lane. I stayed in mine. We lived in peace.

Until the sequel attacked and changed everything like some kind of Fire Nation shit.

You probably didn’t care about $essr!n because you didn’t have to. Inuyasha ended and it was a very definitive ending. We had our interpretation of what the finale represented for $essr!n. Shippers had their totally different idea. But there was no point in discussing it because nothing would change regarding the story. We were given what we were given and that was that.

Or so we thought.

Suddenly Sunrise comes along with a sequel, in which $esshomaru had daughters. This statement brought brand new information that effectively shoots down one of the interpretations above: all Sunrise has to do is reveal the mother.

The thing is: if the “$esshomaru and R!n were family” interpretation is the one Yashah!me debunks, it means Sunrise is going to portray in a good light a relationship in which a grown man met a 8 years old child, protected her, gave her gifts, exerted authority over her, established himself as an adult she could trust after all the trauma she went through... only to impregnate her when she was old enough to bear his children. It also means Rumiko Takahashi allowed them to do so.

From this point on, it was impossible for me not to speak up against it. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t. It’s one thing for people to make fanarts and write fanfiction about it. These things can be tagged, filtered, searched for or avoided. Other completely different is the studio that owns Inuyasha turning the ship into official content and addressing it to children.

To make matters worse, some shippers reacted to more that valid criticism by harassing people online and trying to justify why $essr!n is okay when it clearly isn’t. If you’re down with a problematic ship, that’s a you problem. You’re an adult. When you advocate for said ship to be represented in official children media, denying or knowing exactly how harmful it is to the children who are too young to have the same critical skills as you, that’s when I get vocal against it.

And I will be vocal because there are people out there actually believing the absurds some shippers say to try and normalize $essr!n, going as far as comparing it with perfectly acceptable ships or straight up creating their own “facts” to twist canon in their favor. I will be vocal because some of its supporters only ships it because a part of the fandom does it and never really thought about it. I will be vocal because I want this terrible trope to die. It’s more than enough time to kill it, in Inuyasha or any other TV show out there. We know better now. Let’s do better.

As for the shippers, I’m more than happy to ignore their existence, but it seems they are shooting themselves in the foot with how loud and obnoxious they are getting, especially after the infamous last preview, managing to annoy even the people who were staying out of it, such as yourself, anon. At least that’s what it looks like, here from my little bubble.

I’m sorry this whole thing makes you sad, pal. It makes me sad too. And I know if worse comes to worst, it will be hard for some of us to separate the sequel from the original, especially if you’re a $esshomaru stan, because it will be almost impossible to “escape” the damn thing, but hear me out:

R!n can be the mother of the twins or not. However it goes, you don’t have to consider Yashah!me canon at all. I sure as hell won’t.

#Thanks for passing by #I'm always here if you guys need to talk #Anti Sessrin

44 notes · View notes

queenlua · 3 years

Note

Opinions on insect suffering and what to do about it?

...kinda complicated, actually.

on a practical/pragmatic level: i don’t care; there’s a bunch of other issues i find way more pressing and fraught and would rather invest time/thought toward those, if i’m gonna like, fight for some particular issue in the public sphere.

on a hippie-dippy-philosophical level: i think people who care about insect suffering are onto something, but approaching it from the totally wrong angle? it’s right to be concerned about the moral status of nonhuman entities (a thing that e.g. a lot of pre-Christian religions took for granted), but taking the next step toward some sort of stewardship is... eek.

i think justin e.h. smith is too harsh but he gestures at something that i’m more in agreement with:

A particularly frustrating example of recent moral philosophical engagement with the animal question is Kyle Johannsen’s Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering.

The author begins his work by observing that a great number of sentient biological species —the so-called r-strategists— maximise their reproductive success not by investing care and protection in their offspring, as the K-strategists do, but by having far more offspring than will survive to adulthood, leaving them to fend for themselves from the moment of birth, and relying on their large numbers to ensure that at least a few will get a chance to reproduce in turn. Johannsen notes that for the great majority of such offspring, life is short and characterised principally by suffering, and is thus probably not worth living at all. He proposes that it may therefore be our moral duty to harness science, and in particular the new technologies of gene editing, to alter the natural world around us in order to diminish the number of sentient creatures whose lives are like this.

The argument is prima facie absurd. For one thing, Johannsen is far too easily satisfied that we have a clear idea of what ought to count as suffering in nature, and of how widely the capacity to experience it extends. It is supposed to be a capacity that only “sentient” creatures have, and this capacity is supposed to be anchored in a certain neurophysiological structure. This presumption is all-too common in moral philosophy — for example, when Liz Harman argues that foetuses are no more worthy of an attribution of moral status than plants, she bases her presumption that plants are not worthy of such an attribution on what science tells us, for now, about plant physiology. Here it is worth noting that in the nineteenth century there was a general consensus that plants do not have physiology, that this is something characteristic only of animals. Today a small number of researchers are in turn prepared to say that not only do they have physiology —a point conceded long ago—, but something at least analogous to neurobiology as well. Plants do not have nerves, exactly, but they do duplicate what nervous systems do through complex systems of chemical transmission, and in the end nervous systems are themselves only complex systems of chemical transmission too. So as to the science, we’ll have to wait and see what future discoveries and conceptual shifts reveal.

But even without the science, it is worth remembering that the vast majority of Barbarian philosophers have indeed attributed something like moral status to plants, and it may be yet another consequence of the unecological removal of human beings from the natural world at the beginning of the era of civilisational philosophy that we are able to take it for granted, now, that they do not have such a status. The same goes for bacteria and viruses and all of nature: from a certain point of view, everything suffers — the old “merely” physical notion of suffering —as in the opposite of acting (Latin pati, French pâtir)— is not entirely unconnected to the moral notion. It is by no means clear, when it comes down to it, that suffering is bad, since it may well simply be baked into the sine-qua-non terms of existence, and whatever is necessary, from a certain point of view, cannot properly be considered a misfortune. In terms of theodicy, one might say that it is simply part of the bargain of having a world of variety. In more ancient theological terms, it might be said that this is the condition of the Creation of the material world itself: you could have had no suffering, but only by having nothing at all. If this is so, then I for one really do not know whether it follows that, as Sophocles wrote, “The best thing by far is not to be born.” But I do know the matter is not going to be resolved by someone who thinks the past few years of developments in the biotech field are a game-changer in this regard.

The second, related absurdity in Johannsen’s argument is that if we were to carry it out, it would of course backfire. The baby lizards born of their r-strategist mother do not die in vain. Their death is part of a fragile ecological cycle, with species at different trophic levels playing their respective roles. Johannsen does make some effort to acknowledge the difficulty involved, and not to propose any concrete actions that could have unforeseen ecological consequences. But his caveats are unconvincing. We will never be in a position of sufficient expertise to responsibly begin genetically editing all of the r-species in nature (the majority of species, that is) with reasonable certainty that our intervention will not bring about more suffering than having simply left nature alone.

#quoting from a locked substack eek #hopefully the substack gods will not strike me down #it's only an excerpt! i plead

13 notes · View notes

thespiralgrimoire · 4 years

Note

Would you consider posting your thoughts on the Twilight series? Because the bits and pieces I catch on your main are HILARIOUS though maybe it’s just because I find salt hysterical LOL

Oh good grief

Under a read more for my sake if not anyone else’s

The year was 2007. I was 11 year old, in 6th grade, nursing a substantial superiority complex over my classmates, and idolizing the 7th grade girls. This is where my story begins.

Now I won’t get into all the semantics as to why I was such an insufferable little garbage person in middle school, but I will tell you that I was convinced that I was not like other girls. While this proved true, my reasons as to why were completely off the mark in my tweens. Back then, I thought it was because I was smarter, wiser, and more mature than any of the other 6th grade girls in my class.

But not the 7th grade girls. The 7th grade girls were it, man. Nobody was cooler or smarter or more creative than the handful of ladies who were blessed with the patience to put up with my nonsense in middle school. So naturally, when they read Twilight, I read Twilight.

Twilight, if you have the good fortune to not be intimately aware of it by now, is about the Bella Swan, blandest girl in the entire world, moving to a small town to live with her emotionally awkward father, where she meets the Cullens, a clan of vampires who don’t drink human blood, because they’re trying to be morally upright. Her scent is irresistible to one of the vampires, (the only single one among them because the rest are dating each other) named Edward. Edward has the ability to read minds, and Bella is the only person he’s ever met who is immune to this power. I must stress again that she smells so good that he has to physically restrain himself from eating her, and murdering all witnesses. For reasons I can’t really remember now except “because that’s what the books are about”, they fall in love.

Here’s the thing about these books: Even as I was reading them, they gave me the creeps. Something in my little baby mind was vaguely aware that Edward was a messed up motherfucker, and Bella was a one-dimensional stand-in for the reader, and everything interesting in this story was happening on the fringes, facilitated by the far more interesting side characters. There were parts of these books that were uncomfortable to read. There were parts that made me seriously question why these books were so popular. There were parts that made it physically difficult to keep reading. About 3 things happen in the entirety of this series that feels good and satisfying, and none of them are things that the author, who I will derogatorily refer to as Smeyer, meant to be satisfying.

Two things kept me reading these books. The first was, obviously, the 7th grade girls, and my other friends in other grades who quickly caught the hype wave.

The second. Was the fact. That the writing style of these books, despite being the modem for a story that is absurd at best and a giant, flaming, stinking dumpster fire of bad takes, racism, and sexism at worst, is HYPNOTIC. A lot of my opinions about this series have changed drastically over the years, but this is one that I was acutely aware of even as I was reading these books. No matter how stupid or frustrating or repulsive the things that Smeyer is writing are, her writing style will not let you put the story down once you’re invested. And since I was reading these for social clout, I was invested on page 1. I want to believe that this was a trick played on my young mind, but after reading the first chapter of Midnight Sun (the newly released book that is literally just Twilight from Edward’s POV instead of Bella’s), I can confirm that this woman’s style is genuinely Like That. I enjoyed maybe 6 sentences of the 15-page chapter and I am still frothing at the mouth to read more.

So now that I’ve justified why I subjected myself to this shit in the first place, let’s get to some feelings about it.

Edward is a CREEP. He knows this. His family knows this. His love rival knows this. The only person who does not know this, rendering the fact completely inconsequential to the events of the story, is Bella. I’m not really willing to talk about how Edward is such a disgusting model for what young girls should expect out of a partner that there was discourse for MONTHS over Fifty Shades of Grey, but.... Edward is such a disgusting model for what young girls should expect out of a partner that Fifty Shades of Grey exists. It’s literally Twilight fanfiction. Fact check me. I wish I was making this up.

Bella is, as I said before, a cardboard cutout of a human being. The book is from her point of view, and includes copious amounts of her thoughts, and yet it’s still clear that she has absolutely no personality. She is supposed to be your Jane Everywoman, and yet there is not a single relatable thing about her. Her three personality traits are Brown Eyes, Clumsy (but not in a way that matters often), and Likes Edward. That’s it. This girl has nothing going on, which only draws more attenton to the fact that literally everyone else in the story has a rich and interesting backstory. But they’re side characters and this is about Stale White Bread Bella over here, so go fuck yourself if you want more information on Rosalie using her vampire abilities to get revenge on her fiance and his buddies, who assaulted her to the point of near death, or Alice, who sees the future and spent a good chunk of her life in an asylum, or Jasper, who was a Union soldier fighting the Civil War which was ALSO the vampire war???? Fuck off with that shit, this is about Bella.

But you know who the best characters are? The werewolves. But not REAL werewolves. These are Native Americans whose initial transformation is triggered by the proximity of the vampires, because vampires once terrorized their people and now this ability to turn to wolves is hereditary to protect themselves. The fact that these fellas are not REAL werewolves, and that there are real lycanthropes of lore, is mentioned in passing in the last book and never mentioned by anyone ever again.

One of these wolves is Jacob, Bella’s childhood friend and, for the first two books, an absolute sweetheart. Just a big goofball who’s a couple years younger than Bella, and all he wants is the best for her. Real wholesome shit. When Edward leaves her because he thinks that she’s too attached (SHE IS), Jacob literally talks Bella back from the brink. The wolf pack, and the Native American tribe, welcome her as one of them. They’re adorable. I can’t stress enough that they would have also been an excellent candidate for the focal point of this shitshow.

But it doesn’t last. Edward does some real dumb shit in Italy and Bella has to go rescue him, which tips off the Vampire Illuminati that Edward was trying to get killed by (i.e. the real dumb shit). They don’t like that Bella, a human, knows about them, and demands that she be turned. Edward’s family is divided on this. Eventually they decide that they got time because the Vampire Illuminati are ancient and don’t have a good enough sense of time to hold them accountable immediately.

So Bella is fine and Edward is fine and everybody is back in the same town and they’re dating again and literally everyone in the town is like Bella what the FUCK. Nobody likes Edward because they think he’s no good for Bella. They are written like the bad buys. Jacob especially, becomes a huge asshole. Because he decides that he’s in love with Bella now. Because werewolves can imprint on people, which is just a sloppy soul mate mechanic used for absolute evil in this story. He wants to fight Edward over her. Edward is chomping at the bit to throw down, but pretends to be the bigger person even though he’s just as big an asshole about all this as Jacob is. This is as misogynist as it sounds. From this point on Jacob is now also a creep.

Oh, but it gets worse!

I gotta talk about the last book in the series now, Breaking Dawn. Because this shit was so awful that it made me regret, instantaneously, ever second I spent enjoying Twilight.

Bella and Edward get married after they graduate high school because Edward is a religious virgin and Bella is HORNY. They go on their honeymoon. Bella gets pregnant. This is Not Something That Is Supposed To Happen.

Smeyer tells us WHY this happened post-canon. Edward, the virgin, has never nutted. Because of this, he still has living sperm in his balls. So when he boffed Bella, his 80-year-old sperm made it count. I wish I was making this up, y’all. I’m tearing up thinking about it.

Bella is now pregnant with a half-vampire baby that is destroying her body from the inside out. It is growing at an exponential rate. She’s eight months along after three weeks. Edward can hear its thoughts. It loves Bella. Bella has to drink blood or die. Jacob is like What the Fuck. I am also, pretty thoroughly like What the Fuck. A couple members of the Cullen family are, very quietly, like What the Fuck.

Queue the most forced and ineffectual pro-life discourse you’ve ever read in your life.

All is well and good until it’s not. Baby suddenly wants to get out of Bella RIGHT NOW IMMEDIATELY and thrashes so violently that it shatters every bone in her body between her ribs and her femurs. Edward has to rip her uterus open with his teeth. Baby is out. It has a full mouth of teeth. It bites Bella. Edward whips out several syringes full of his own saliva and injects them into Bella all over to make her change into a vampire. This is all written in disgusting graphic detail that still makes my skin crawl to think about. I cannot fathom why Smeyer was not made to tone this scene down.

So it takes a few days for Bella to change into a vampire, during which time the Cullens (and Jacob) have to look after her hellspawn of a daughter. Jacob decides that he must kill her, because she basically killed Bella. But--- surprise! He wasn’t in love with Bella! He was in love with the eggs in her womb-- particularly this one egg that is now a baby! No more crush on Bella! No more beef with Edward! He’s just in love with a newborn infant. I am, at this point, wondering in my little 12 year old mind, how this was allowed to be published.

Bella wakes up a vampire, and in her first display of rational thought through the entire series, does not like this. Don’t worry though, that’s quickly cancelled out by her naming her baby daughter Renesmee.

Renesmee is clearly supposed to be a sweet and gifted little angel that you’re meant to love, but frankly, all I can picture is the Chucky doll but quieter. She does not talk much, because she has the ability to share thoughts by touching people’s faces. She also grows super fast. In a few days she’s toddler age. Nobody knows what the fuck is going on and nobody has time to worry about it because the vampire Illuminati found out about this (a vampire friend of the family snitched) and they’re coming to fuck up the whole family.

There is a reason why they want to do this but it’s stupid and frankly I’m not going to explain it.

So the vampires mobilize. They call all their vampire friends because their plan is just to fight the thousands-years-old vampire Illuminati over this horrible child. For some reason dozens of vampires agree to this. They’re all smitten by Resume I guess.

So the illuminati comes, the family tells them that Ramune isn’t the problem that they think she is, and they leave.

That’s it. That’s the climax.

And then everyone gets their off-putting happily ever after: Bella and Edward can now fuck as much as they want because neither of them can die. Bella abandons her human life without so much as a second glance. Resonate will physically be an adult by the time she’s 7, which means that Jacob can start fucking her then. Bella’s dad sort of knows what’s going on, but doesn’t. For some ungodly reason I don’t make a bonfire out of these books.

You may notice, if you have any knowledge of Twilight, that there are whole plots that I didn’t talk about. That’s because I’ve surely forgotten things. While I read these books with what I can only describe as a manic fervor in my youth, I could never bring myself to reread them. On God, I tried. Multiple times in the last decade I have pulled my box set, hard covered Twilight books off my shelf, and opened them up. But I never even make it through the first chapter before I am so put off that I have to put them back. The plots are flimsy. The main characters are made of sand. The secondary characters are treated like garbage. The lore is disturbing.

And yet as soon as I heard that Midnight Sun was coming out, I knew that I must read it. I’ve made it through the first chapter. I do not know when and how I will make it through the next, but I know, for little middle schooler Theo’s sake, that I must.

Twilight? Horrible. Twilight Fandom? Geniuses.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

#twilight #spinda tea #shinyshammie #this took a lot out of me #it's not even funny #we never really escape who we were at 12

19 notes · View notes

phroyd · 4 years

Link

Just how badly has American capitalism failed? Consider the following.

The White House backed out of a deal to manufacture ventilators because the price tag was too high. Go ahead and guess. Ready? It was…one billion dollars. Sound like a lot? Too much? For ventilators for…the entire country…in the middle of a pandemic…that’s already spiraling out of control?

Then think about this.

Jeff Bezos is worth $113 billion. Zuck, about $60 billion. Warren Buffett, about $70 billion. Are you seeing my point yet? Let me make it clearer. Either Bezos or Zuck or Buffett — or any number of penny-ante mega-billionaires — could pay for all the ventilators America needs right now, and not even blink. Not even think twice.

Take Bezos, for example. That one billion dollars to supply the country with ventilators is less than one percent of his net worth. The net worth of the average American household is about $100K. That’s like the average American spending…a thousand dollars. The net worth of the average millennial is about $10K. That’s like the average millennial spending…one hundred dollars.

That’s how trivial it is for a Bezos to literally supply the entire country with ventilators. It’s pocket money. To call it chump change would be an overstatement. He could do it and he’d literally never even notice the money was gone. It would take his accountant a lifetime to even begin to care.

Is your head spinning yet? What on earth? It should be.

All that, my friends, is an object lesson in the profound and surreal failure of capitalism. Let me now put it in simpler terms.

Capitalism is adding disaster to tragedy, by way of needless scarcity.

Suddenly, a society experiences a catastrophe — in this case, a pandemic. That would be bad enough. But because a tiny number of people in society have hoarded all the resources — in this case money, which really just means foregone ventilators — a society cannot respond to its catastrophe well at all. What happens next? What happens is what’s going to happen.

People are going to die. In fact, they already have. Perhaps you read about the poor kid who was turned away from an urgent care center for a lack of insurance. That’s not a ventilator, but it’s not exactly hard to see how a lack of ventilators is going to start killing Americans en masse very, very soon, if it hasn’t already.

Capitalism is adding disaster to tragedy…by way of needless scarcity.

How much is one billion dollars, anyways? The American economy is worth about $20 trillion. One billion is a vanishingly small fraction of that. How small, exactly? One twenty thousandth, or .00005%. It’s so small, I might have missed a decimal place there — and it doesn’t matter, because it’s that miniscule.

And yet the government can’t raise one twenty thousandth of the size of the economy in order to provide society with the one resource it needs most to survive a pandemic — ventilators.

Think about that math for a second. Really just think about it.

What would it say about you if you couldn’t raise one twenty thousandth of your income to, say, give your kids life saving medicine? That’s a flawed analogy, but I struggle for anything — anything at all — to express the magnitude of this failure well. I literally can’t think of anything remotely close to it, so let me simply try to express it again, even more concisely.

The government can’t raise one twenty thousandth of the whole economy’s income to pay for a critical resource during a pandemic — ventilators — while it would cost a Bezos maybe one hundred of his wealth to provide them for the whole country.

What on earth? My head is spinning. Is yours? It’s so grotesque, baffling, obscene, it’s literally impossible to process. How is it that in the richest society in human history, apparently — pennies can’t be found for ventilators? And yet it’s wealthiest man could single-handedly provide them, and never even notice?

Now, here’s the even more distressing part. Bezos (or Zuck, Buffett, etc) can’t spend all that money anyways. There is simply no way that you can spend a hundred billion dollars. What would you do? You could buy up all the luxury properties and mega yachts, and you’d barely have made a dent. You’d have to buy entire cities, nations, and whole social systems. Which is effectively what a Bezos has done. Americans don’t have ventilators because Bezos has hundreds of billions. Americans don’t have healthcare because billionaires have all the money in their society.

When I have more money than I can ever spend, then there is no real cost to me to supply you, say, with ventilators. Do you see how grotesque that paradox is? That is what “artifical scarcity” means. Jeff Bezos having a billion less wouldn’t actually cost him anything, because he can’t spend it anyways. All him having those billions does is cost everyone else life-saving resources, like ventilators in a lethal pandemic.

So let’s put this epic failure in more technical terms.

Capitalism has misallocated capital on a truly stunning and surreal scale in America. It’s created a system where an entire nation goes without the critical, life-saving resources they need, in the midst of a lethal global pandemic — while the wealthy could literally buy Americans those resources single-handedly, and doing so wouldn’t make a dent in their fortunes. But the wealthy can’t spend all that money to begin with. It’s literally just sitting there, going to no good use. Like, say, the critical one of ventilators. The result will obviously be needless death on a massive scale.

Economists call all that a “deadweight loss.” If American economists were actually good ones, they’d immediately understand that capitalism is a colossal and tragic failure. Consider the Soviet Union — Americans used to make fun of it for breadlines. But now Americans are the ones beset by artificial scarcities. What’s scarce in America? Yesterday — healthcare, retirement, decent work, education, good food, and so on. The basics.

Today? The critical, life-saving necessities. Ventilators, masks, protective equipment.

Capitalism — as an economy — literally cannot supply these things to society. It is more interested in billionaires hoarding as much wealth as possible — and then crafting political mechanisms to protect that wealth. And yet that wealth is too much, in the simple sense that nobody can even spend it.

But when I have too much money that I can never spend, of course you will go without — because the economy slowly grinds to a halt, as my money simply sits there idle, instead of being invested in the things you need. That is what “artificial scarcity” means: ventilators aren’t really scarce, we just can’t make them because only Jeff Bezos can afford them, since he’s now as rich as…a whole healthcare system, which Americans now go without, since those resources belong to him.

What we see at this dire stage of American capitalism is a kind of evolution, backwards, devolution. Yesterday, basics were in perpetual, artificial short supply — money, retirement, healthcare, etc. But you can eke out a life without basics, still. Just one without dignity and meaning and happiness. Yet today, the situation is much worse. Critical, life-saving resources are now artificially scarce. And you can’t live without those.

The result? People will die — needlessly, on a staggering scale.

I can’t think of an economic system failing in a more disastrous way than that. A truer way than that. You don’t have a ventilator that might save your, your kid’s, your partner’s life — meanwhile, the wealthy could buy them for all, for every single person in society…at literally no real cost to themselves. There is literally no better example of what Marx famously called “exploitation” than all that: you dying, during a pandemic because the super rich have such an absurd amount of resources in society that they could literally buy everyone life itself, and not even notice, yet won’t, because, well…why care? Americans are being exploited and abused by capitalism now not just into poverty and overwork and social disintegration — but into lethal illness and death itself. Yes, really — in hard, cold, absolute, unforgiving terms.

Let them eat ventilators? It puts Versailles to shame.

I have few word left to express how I feel about all this. But I am not the point. You are. Some day, the world hopes, Americans will understand just how badly capitalism has abused and exploited them. Because the world is made of good people, who want the best, still, even for Americans. The question is whether Americans want that for themselves.

Umair Haque March 2020

Phroyd

#captalism #covid #failure

62 notes · View notes

inventors-fair · 4 years

Text

A Second Chance at Commentary Part 1/2

Here’s the commentary for all our entries for the Second Chance to be Legendary contest!

Due to popular request, this will be a longpost with the commentary directly under each entry.

Momir Vig, Perfect Evolution by @aethernalstars This was a great idea that’s a little oddly costed. A 5-mana 2/2 with a biomancer effect that only triggers once you’ve payed another 6 mana is really steep. That being said, a biomancer that also gifts keyword counters is really cool. A great idea that didn’t quite hit the mark.

Pianna of the Order by @antediluvian-microchip I get where you were going with this card, but I think this really needed something to make it stand out. It's not really doing anything we haven't seen before, and I wish you would have taken a bit more of a chance. A good idea, if a little safe.

Daxos, Forgotten by the Sun by @big-think This entry surprised me, considering Daxos has two fantastic commanders with Daxos the Returned being one of the powerful experience counter commanders, and Daxos, Blessed by the Sun being a very powerful soul sisters-esque commander. As for the design itself, having to pay 3 each trigger for an enchantment-specific Yarok trigger is really exspensive, and this card not being in green means we miss out on the vast majority of enchantress effects.

Torsten, Winged Cavelier by @dimestoretajic This was a solid design that just didn’t stand out. Torsten’s two abilities means you can focus on either going wide or going tall, which is a godsend for token decks, but unfortunately he’s competing against other incredible token commanders that just do things Torsten just doesn't. Good design that just missed the mark.

Dakkon, Blacksmith by @driftingthroughthecosmos This design is... busy. The first ability is trademark Dakkon, but the second ability being a universal artifact tutor that re-triggers itself makes it very easy to abuse, and the third is just... woof. I would be very surprised if anyone using this just dumps a whole hand worth of artifacts just to ramp impossibly hard, then using the new boatload of mana to recur those artifacts to either keep abusing the third ability or to start pumping absurd amounts of mana into the second ability.

Malfegor, the Devourer by @emmypupcake

When looking at designs this week, I had two criteria I couldn’t ignore as a commander player: The designs should be fun to play with, and play against. This entry violates the second criteria. 3 mana to force a sacrifice is both incredibly powerful, and incredibly unfun, especially considering the first ability is prompting players to build a death and taxes style deck that forces sacrifices out of your opponents.

Crovax Windgrace// Crovax, Compleated Tyrant by @fractured-infinity I love, love, LOVE this design, but it had a single fatal flaw that let it down. 2 mana for a repeatable fling effect is far too cheap. This was a fantastic design, and you should be proud of it, but it just crosses the line in terms of power for cost.

Thalia, Veteran of Thraben by @gollumni While I’ll always champion for white to get card draw, this is very commander-unfriendly. While not a bad idea, I’d argue that it’s basically just a legendary white Rhystic study without the pay mana option, as I can’t imagine any scenario where an opponent doesn't just let you draw the card rather than have their spell countered.

Karametra, of Bountiful Harvest by @hypexion I’m not quite sure why you chose Karametra, a uniquely land and creature spell based commander, to make another generic green/white token commander. This design is rather on the safe side, and doesnt do much to make itself stand out from the massive pool of green/white token commanders.

Ixidor, Maddened by Despair by @i-am-the-one-who-wololoes This was a really cool idea (with very squicky art) that was let down by a single detractor: 3 mana to turn an opponents creature into a 2/2 with no abilities in insanely powerful, considering your deck is likely to be full to the brim with morphs. You can also target an already face-down creature you control, as a face-up creature is not part of the targeting conditions.

Hythonia the Wicked by @ignorantturtlegaming While I love the idea of a commander-worthy Hythonia that isnt just “Haha boardwipes go brrr”, I’m not quite sure what you were aiming for with her first ability. Is she supposed to be turning herself to stone to protect herself? Also, a 4/3 with deathtouch isn’t going to be able to leverage that deathouch very well.

Phage, Avatar of Death by @illharg-the-rave-boar While I love the idea of a playable Phage commander, and I understand that she had to be expensive for her multi-quietus spike ability, 9 mana is far too expensive for a mono black commander without investing in a lot of blacks sparse and/or expensive mana generation. This is a kill-on-sight commander, and she’ll very quickly become too expensive to cast reliably. A great design, but maybe not designed perfectly well for commander.

Norin, Fearful Tactician by @ishouldgetatumbler I’m not quite sure what you were going for here. This is literally just Norin with +1/+1. The addition of the blocks trigger is pointless because Norin will exile himself whenever a creature attacks anyway, and any deck built around this card will be the exact same gimmicky Norin deck that already exists. If anything, this design is worse because original Norin trigger himself when he attacked.

Ludevic, Grave Stitcher by @karkatvantasticvantas While this isn’t a bad design, I’m not sure why you’ve made the Blue/Red Ludevic into a Blue/Black card. This feels more like a Geralf card with the stitcher-like focus.

Temmet, Vizier of Ruins by @kavinika I really love the idea of a blue/white zombie commander after Amonkhet’s fantastic zombies, but this design was let down by how incredibly powerful the third ability is. A repeatable reanimation effect that fuels itself and that can lift creatures out of any opponents graveyard is far to strong not to require either mana or a tap of Temmet Himself.

Rakka Mar, Hate Summoner by @koth-of-the-hammerpants I’m so glad someone tried to give Rakka Mar a second chance. Unfortunately, this otherwise fantastic design is let down by turning the tap of any creature with haste into a lightning bolt is incredibly powerful, which is then amplified by the fact that the creatures themselves do the damage, making the 2-mana 3/1s that Rakka makes into repeatable Dreadbores, that also let you loot off Rakka’s second ability. All in all, this effect is far too strong for just 4 mana.

#mtg #inventorsfair #customecard #commentary

9 notes · View notes

sirfluffig · 4 years

Text

HPMA Character Profile: Theodore Ceccere (OUTDATED)

Art by the amazing and more than adorable @jayrart

Profile made by @hogwartsmysterystory

~Identity~

Name: Theodore Logan Ceccere

Gender: Male

Age: 11

Birth Date: 26th September

Species: Human

Blood Status: Pureblood

Sexuality: Bisexual

Alignment: Lawful / Neutral Good

Ethnicity: Caucasian

Nationality: Scottish

Residence: Dundee, Scotland

Myer Briggs Personality Type: INFJ- The Advocate

~The Mage~

1st Wand:

Wood: Strawberry

Core: Kelpie Hair

Length: 13 ¼ ”

Flexibility: Flexible

→ “Witches and wizards who lack confidence or are riddled with insecurities may find themselves chosen by a strawberry tree wand. This wood likes to play a supporting role, and wands with this wood tend to pick people who need someone (or in this case something) in their corner cheering them on.” (Extract from cloverywands Wand analysis! Check them out!)

→ “These witches and wizards tend to be lonely. It can be difficult for them to make friends.They are cautious when meeting people and it takes them a while to feel comfortable around a person enough to open up to them. They can be incredibly sweet to those close to them. They may unintentionally push other people away. Awkward outbursts are also common when theyare feeling pressured or afraid of their feelings.” (Extract from cloverywands Wand analysis! Check them out!)

2nd Wand - (Year 3+) :

Wood: Blueberry

Core: Kelpie hair

Length: 14 ½”

Flexibility: Flexible

→ “Blueberry wands weave together practicality and caring. The witches and wizards chosen by wands of this wood are most famous for their nurturing nature, stoicism, and reliability. Persistent as well, these people will trudge through any difficulties or obstacles they face on the way to their goals.

They are great to have in a crisis, as they tend to react calmly and sensibly. Comforting and caring for people comes naturally to them. They care deeply about their loved ones, and are very protective of them. Being overprotective can be an issue.” (Extract from cloverywands Wand analysis! Check them out!)

Animagus: Thanks to his afflicted lycanthropy, Theo lost the ability to change his shape willingly already at young age. Therefore he is more or less incapable of becoming an Animagus. Well technically he could become one, but that would just be way too hurtful for him to endure on a longer basis, because, something not many wizards and witches know is that the werewolf gene manipulation of a person would play into his Animagus form as well, making him some kind of a mutant or abomination. So this inability leads to the inflicted being damned to become a nightmare for other children, over and over again, every full moon night. A sad fate for such a free spirited and innocent child, that was ripped out of his own life, way too early. This..situation isn't exactly the kind of shape-changing Theo hoped he would achieve in his later life. He traded his greatest wish, for his greatest regret.

Misc Magical Abilities:

→ Legilimency: Like his father and their father before, Theo is a born Legilimens. It's a blessing and a curse to have this as one of the dominant traits of the Ceccere Bloodline, though you wouldn't suspect the youngster to be a mind reader at all, because he usually takes great respect in anyone's privacy. Especially since the only times Theo actively and knowingly uses his legilimency on others is to find out what they wish for their birthday or what kind of cookies they prefer to eat. Otherwise it would just be disrespectful to search in the minds of unsuspecting bystanders for information, that doesn’t belong to him.

→ Lycanthropy: Some might think that this curse originates from his mother, who herself suffers from lycanthropy, but you couldn't guess more wrongly. Chiara took no part in the boys fate, even though she wishes, she could have protected him from becoming what she is, that very night. Theo afflicted lycantrophy at the age of 7 when the young boy sneaked out of the gigantic manor at midnight to search for the unicorn that was said to roam the forest around the property. Between a few trees, Theo hid, to make sure, the majestic beast wasn't scared of his appearance before the unsuspecting Ravenclaw was attacked by a rampaging werewolf . Theo only survived because his attacker was scared off by a white furred werewolf, which Theo of course didn't knew, was his mother. This was the moment, that basically, turned Theo’s entire life to the worse in his eyes.

Boggart Form: Theo’s boggart takes the form of a particular small blonde haired girl with charming green eyes and colourful freckles centered around the nose, which wears a thick red woolen sweater with some white letters adorned to it. If looked at it correctly, you can discern that the letters form the word “Monster” under her dark blue overall, which reminds you kind of a farm girl. She wears this outfit paired with a pair of worn out and poorly tied brown leather boots. Her youthful eyes are widened in shock, her mouth formed as if she wanted to start screaming something and just start crying alone from the pure sight of the Ravenclaw. Something must have happened in the past of the yet so soft student, that traumatized him like that because the boggart starts running away from Theo, while ominous sounds of “Monster! Monster! Monster!” slowly surround the boy, trying to break his composure and lastly his mind.

Riddikulus Form: Considering all the negative feelings that Theo connects to this very “special” and emotionally hurtful event, which also can be counted as the begin of all his senseless self-loathing and his overly prominent insecurities, there is no possible way for this young boy to cast a successful Riddikulus spell on his cruel and unapologetic boggart, at least for now. He is just too emotionally invested and fed up in his own pain and feelings to really cope with that problem and the feelings he still has towards that girl per say. It will probably get better in the following years, but his inability to cope with this rejection because of his natural behaviour or him just being a werewolf will always stay somewhere in his mind.

Amortentia (What he smells to others): If Theo was smelt in one other’s Amortentia he would have rather nostalgic scents paired with other, really absurd smells. This includes but is not limited to the sweetest and most sticky bubblegum toothpaste that burns into the nose of the student.The toothpaste is not only the most prominent but also the most nostalgic scent provided in the entire potion. It’s also paired with fresh baked gingerbread cookies, adorned with all kind of sweets and christmas atmosphere. But these two only increase the smell of something the student connects with warmth and coziness, like their favourite blanket or a jacket that was handed to them on a specific occasion. On the other hand, people might catch a whiff of old and weathered books, like the ones that are towering in the Ceccere Family library back in Dundee, Scotland or the cold and windy midnight air outside of the Hogwarts castle that Theo always carries a few days after a full moon. There are endless possibilities. Just find it out yourself.

Amortentia (What he smells): The young Ravenclaw prefers so said aesthetically pleasing scents in his Amortentia, a lot of the smells that run through the thick magical liquid therefore are rather unique, the best examples for that are freshly grown orchids. Theo developed his affection for that kind of scent through the time he spent in the gardens back home, which featured orchids especially. Another possibility would be croissants, which remember Theo of the time, he, his sibling(s) and parents were on vacation in france. It was the first and probably last time, that the family did something together but that doesn’t mean it's not important to the shy and reserved young boy. When his father smelt old books and coffee in his amortentia, the next generation Ravenclaw has a similar taste. His amortentia includes a thick and almost burning scent of parchment and ink, that only gets outdone in strength by the hot and steamy feeling and smell of Theo’s favourite tea.

Patronus: Great Grey Owl

→ The patronus of a Great Grey Owl symbolizes a strong aura of wisdom, and individuals with it shine intellectually. They are not very social people, but they tend to be very admired for the impression their blatant knowledge of the world. Others tend to be comfortable going to these persons for advice, because they know they are trustworthy.

Patronus Memory: Theo’s patronus memory plays around the evening of the first november 2006, when he and his mother sat down in a corner, adorned with blankets and pillows and they read Theo’s first book together, it was nothing less than the story of “The beauty and the beast”. Till today, this book is his all time favourite and one of the cornerstones of his happiness.

Mirror of Erised: Theo sees himself standing in front of the mirror, the three scars that run across his face and usually are concealed by a spell beginning to glow in a celestial white light before the bright light and with it the scars begin to shrink and shrink until they entirely fade. This symbolizes Theo’s deepest desire to be a normal student and not someone others need to be afraid of.

Specialized/Favourite Spells:

Calidum potum para: A modified version of the spell “Capulus para” which was invented by his father, who works as a high ranked ministry member. While “Capulus para” only conjures coffee cups with hot and steaming coffee and dissolve as soon as the cup is empty, “Caldium potum para” works with every hot beverage and comes was more in handy for the most people, who just don't like coffee.

Orchideous: Theo loves flowers, orchids especially since they have such a beautiful colouration, so it's no wonder that he wants to use this spell on every possible occasion especially when people around him feel bad. He might be a bit naive and not think through what he is doing in that moment, because his father-senses are moving in. He just likes to make people happy and there is nothing better to make people happy than showing that someone else cares. Some though, get the wrong idea of this gestures and cut the connection to him off.

Stupify : You wouldn't suspect it but even this timid, young boy can be a fierce warrior in times of fear and danger. He often resents from using offensive spells against others especially in friendly duels or during everyday activities but! should his friends or ...someone special be in acute danger, he would stop at nothing to save them, even if it would cost his own life in return. The people loyal to him are more worth to him, than his own health and their safety is his highest priority. He doesn't want others to be hurt when he could be instead.

~Appearance~

Face Claim: Axel Auriant (without his white streaks of course)

Voice Claim: Taylor Henderson

Game Appearance: Not existing yet.

Height: 5’4” feet - (163 cm)

Weight: 115 lbs - (52 kg)

Physique: Theo’s build is rather slim and somewhat scrawny and he lacks of strength in the arms.

Eye Colour: Glowing light blue with black elements that were caused due to the lycanthropic stains in his genes.

Hair Colour: Theo has fluffy and somewhat orderly combed chestnut brown hair with a natural white tone at the peaks of his hair streaks and his fringe.

Skin Tone: Pale ivory

Body Modifications: None

Scarring: Theo has three claw scars straight across his face, which he usually conceals with a lot of different charms, that he learned from his mother in early years. He also has a few deep scratches on his forearms which he often hides under bandages and long sleeves.

Outfit: Theo’s signature looks contains a dark grey cardigan, worn open as some kind of a sweatshirt jacket with rolled down sleeves as well as a white shirt paired with his house tie and most of the time his house scarf. Around his neck hangs a silver chain that ends in the form of a purple full-moon,a gift from his mother, after he was attacked by the werewolf and recovered in the hospital. Theo’s legs are covered in fine tailor-made black pants and adorned with a wand holster which fall onto his black suede shoes.

Inventory: (what do they carry on them?):

→ His loyal wand: A simple yet someone intriguing looking wand made from Strawberry (Blueberry at 3rd year +) wood. The combination of its magical reddish wood and the purity of the unicorn hair string was exclusively meant for Theodore Ceccere.

→ “La Belle et la Bête” : A book with dark blue cover and golden linings. With big golden letters the name “La Belle et la Bête” is engraved on it, while on its back, the initials T.C. find their place.

→ 3 wine red-purple Notebooks all having the crest of the family Ceccere on its covers. They magically add pages to it, once all pages are written full without growing physically or getting heavier.

→ Wolfsbane-Potions which he got from his mother before he boarded the train to Hogwarts. The flasks are filled with a silvery thin liquid that contains slight stains of a full moon’s light. These apparently should help one with their lycanthropic condition.

→ Full Moon-Necklace: This necklace is a basic replica of his mothers necklace with some added silvery ornaments and sorts of magical properties . The necklace itself, represents the full-moon but in another stage. Instead of the usual shining light blue stone set into it, this stone has a beautifully mysterious purple colour. As for magical properties this beautifully crafted necklace has the ability to predict in how many days and hours the next full moon will arrive over Hogwarts.

~Allegiances~

Hogwarts House: Ravenclaw

Ilvermorny House: Pukwudgie

Affiliations/Organizations:

Great Britain

Family Ceccere

Family Lobosca

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

House Ravenclaw

Professions:

Freelance Historian (Often working together with archaeologists)

Professor at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry

Transfiguration Professor

~Hogwarts Information~

Class Proficiencies:

Astronomy: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (E)

Charms: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (O)

DADA: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ (E)

Flying: ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ (A)

Herbology: ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ (A)

History of Magic: ★★★★★★★★★☆ (O)

Potions: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (E)

Transfiguration: ★★★★★★★★★★ (O)

Electives:

Divination: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (O)

Arithmancy: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ (E)

Quidditch: Judging by Theo’s figure and the muscles that are placed upon his arms, it's highly unlikely that he will ever be able to play Quidditch also, by that amount of extracurriculars it's unlikely for him to even be able to attend the training .

Extra Curricular:

Book Club - [President]

Magical Theory Class

Ghoul Studies Class

Wizarding Chess Club

The Slug Club

Favourite Professor: Professor Felix Fiddlewood.

→ Professor Fiddlewood is a rather new teacher, so energetic and enthusiastic that he sometimes reminds Students of Professor Flitwick. As the successor of Professor McGonagall, he tries to keep the Transfiguration class as entertaining as possible with little games and quirks, because he fears that his students would fall asleep in his class, as he did back then as a Student in History of Magic. Theo really likes him, not only because Professor Fiddlewood is caring and empathic but he also has a knack for teaching. His calm and soothing voice makes it easy to understand what he says, so the notes taken in class, even by the greatest jocks, are pretty detailed.

Not only does Professor Fiddlewood teach very well, he also supports Theo on a personal level. He lets Theo stay after class, first to the Students shock, later to his enjoyment. The Professor then tries to help the werewolf, to feel more comfortable being himself and to say what he thinks, without closing off. This man has done so much for Theo and he could never repay that.

Least Favourite Professor: Madame Hooch

→ An unlikely choice but not an unexpected one. Theo as a very timid student has a problem with people that yell and scream. That's just a fact. But it's ten times worse when the person sounds like an angry bear and yells at you, to stay safe and keep calm. It just doesn't work like this for him. The young Ravenclaw would often slip and fall, just because he gets scared or startled by Madam Hooch’s Voice droning up to him, yelling to do something more or less right or wrong.

It's not that Theo thinks she’s a horrible student eating monster (like him…) or he hates her class, it's just the fact that she has such a loud and imposing voice that often rips Theo out of his new won courage and makes him slip and fall…

~Relationships~

Younger Sister: Annabelle “Anna” Ceccere

Pureblood Witch

Gryffindor

Natural Occlumens, Future Animagus [Tonkinese Cat]

Chestnut-brown long straight hair with white streaks that falls down on her shoulders paired with teal eyes which almost invisibly squint and light freckles over her cheeks and especially prominent on her nose. Lowkey a tomboy

Anna is the life of the party, she is the charming, outgoing and social student, everyone has heard about once at least and that not only hence her father's reputation. She is rather imaginative and a bit naive but she plays it cool every single time, with her incredible improvisation talents.

Once Anna showed her courage and loyalty to her family when Theo was attacked by a wild dog in an alley and she took up an improvised weapon, which she can't even remember herself and made the beast turn tails. Obviously she loves to tell that story over and over again because that was in her eyes, her first act of “heroism”

She is the living and bubbly opposite of her one year older brother with a bit of a teasing side as well. She likes to annoy Theo on a daily basis because that's how she shows her big brother her affection and Theo of course knows she does mean well after all, even though she caused the one or other embarrassing moment in his life.

Father: Flavius J. Ceccere

Pureblood Wizard

Former Ravenclaw

Natural Legilimens, Animagus [Crow], Trained Occlumens

Short and spiky dark coffee brown hair on a very pale complexion with dark brown eyes and a very prominent pair of brown glasses. Has a bit of a stubble instead of a beard, but that still has time, doesn't it?

Head of Obliviator Headquarters and Head of the Department for Magical Accidents and Catastrophes.

Flavio seems like a rather cold and distant person, his colleagues could swear they have never seen him blink or even smile, because of his usually so monotone and indifferent face. Sometimes Flavio appears as if he wants to murder you, when he is actually pretty proud of you, you can't really discern that other when he wants you to. That doesn't mean he is like that all the time though. Mostly this behaviour appears on important meetings or dangerous situations. He doesn't want others to be manipulated by his emotions and stop working to comfort him for example. In a familiar environment, for example on a mission with his well attuned team, he can be seen as a more or less emotional person, even if these emotions cut down to the most simple ones.

Yet he is a more than caring and understanding father at home. Flavio only wants the best for his children , especially since his job asks so much of him and consumes hours over hours of time and dedication which leads to Flavio coming home late at night or rather early in the morning, in the most cases. He tries to spend every free minute with his family, he gave up parts of his job and let others direct these operations, just to see Theo and Anna growing up and not be the distant relative, his parents were to him.

Mother: Chiara Lobosca

Supposedly Pureblood Witch (Doesn't like to talk about that.)

Former Hufflepuff

Lycanthrope, Extraordinary Healer

Soft white hair hanging down the sides of her head in medium length. Soft and soothing light blue eyes and a clean complexion without any sign for wrinkles. The most catching though is her charming and heart melting smile.

Healer at St. Mungos. Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries

Chiara was often known as an isolated and shy girl. She wanted nobody around her and she spent most of her time alone in the forest, making her a rather special student at Hogwarts.

But once she found someone,who wasn't afraid to be around her and she wasn't afraid to be around she became a bit more positive and open about herself and her situation. She started to spent more time with others, even though she still needs time to get familiar with it...but the way for a new, more positive future was made for her.

As a healer Chiara is nobody else than the altruistic and motherly woman, she is at home. She takes care of her patients as if they were her children and tries to make them their stay as comfortable as even possible. Yet she isn't the greatest at solving loud and vivid conflicts but that doesn't mean she wouldn't try to calm the situation after all. Through the entire stress at St. Mungos, Chiara often is very tired when she comes home and has little to no energy to take care of her kids, but she does it nonetheless, because she knows how it is when nobody is there to take care of you.

Love Interest: None at the moment, but that may change in the future.

Rival: None to the current moment

Enemy: Dennis Fayez : A young black haired Gryffindor with lime green eyes that meant it would be fun to pick on Theo’s friends, when Theo began to defend them, Dennis pushed the Ravenclaw on the ground and laughed at him.

Dorm Mates:

Daniel Pages

Unnamed Ravenclaw Student

Pets: Theo's best friend is his small rabbit named Mr. Nibbler who has a fluffy and soft white fur with a few dark brown specks upon it, one of the brown spots is around Mr Nibbler’s right black beady eye. Theo got this little baby for his eleventh birthday, because his parents were concerned that Theo might not be the most social person and make the most friends. To prevent that their son, is alone like they were, Flavio and Chiara decided to buy him a little bunny to spend him support.

Closest Canon Friends:

Daniel

Lottie

Robyn

Kevin

Closest MC Friends:

Alaire Whitecross ( @hogwartsmysterystory )

Almeta Yu ( @phyl-the-gryffinclaw )

Belladonna Moonweaver ( @jayrart )

Dafne Arcano (Also Lari’s)

Elvira Damon ( @montdiarts )

Estella Lovegood ( @raeamtrick )

Gavin Rohesia ( @catherinestark-hphm )

Hester Huckabee ( @insufferablegryffindor )

Kiri Amaryllis ( @kathrynalicemc )

Mara Malin ( @zuulosdovah )

Nessi Lucerne (Also Lari’s)

Rana Caplan ( @cursed-ice-spirits )

Sophia Alexeev ( @hanihonii )

If you want to be his friend, please tell me!!

Background/History:

Theo comes from the noble House of Ceccere associated with extraordinary intelligence and quick wit, but especially prominent for the apparent supernatural ability to discover and manipulate a persons mental state and even their dreams. These are mostly rumours but as anyone knows, there is always a bit of truth in a rumour

His parents both have more than mentally and physically stressing jobs and have problems with being at home all around the clock hence the importance of both their occupations so Flavio's younger sister Sarah often took care of the Ceccere kids when their parents weren't home on time or had to work extra shifts.

When the Obliviator and the Healer were home though, they tried their best to spend the entire time with their beautiful and creative kids and fulfil their every wish. That often included reading old and dusty books to Theo about mighty knights and cunning wizards that defeat dragons and monsters that come right out of the darkness, while Anna prefered to draw or build things with boxes in her room.

While the Manor of Family Ceccere actually stood on top of a hill which was surrounded by a gigantic graveyard, it was relatively close to the scottish muggle cities and therefore Theo even had the possibility to befriend a few of the non magical inhabitants of this world, which he did, rather careful but not too careful, he was curious after all.

He got to know a charming girl with sunlight blonde hair and green eyes whose name was “Aliciana” but prefered to be called Alice, they became friends quickly, because they shared so many interests while being so different people. While Theo was a full blooded nerd, she was more of a jock-y fellow. They grew on each other rather quickly, They had sleepovers at Theo’s place and Alice took him to one of her soccer games. It was bound to be a great friendship.

At the age of six years old Theo heard a strange sound from outside, he decided to be like one of the chivalrous and brave knights he heard so much about and investigate, to maybe even save a princess! As he left the door and strived through the forest, he noticed an odd little ball at the sky. It was white and round… his fascination distracted him so much he didn't even noticed the creature that doomed him once and for all coming

When Theo stood eye to eye with the roaming free werewolf he startled and froze in the stop, which didn't stop the lycanthrope of course. It stroke at Theo with its paw and hit the boy in the face, knocking him out. Luckily it only left a few scars

When he woke up in a hospital his parents looked at him concerned, slightly admonished him before telling him that they were glad he was safe. As soon as Theo saw what the creature did to him though, he panicked. He couldn't go out like this. People would be scared of him, so he asked his mother to conceal his scars with a concealment charm when he leaves the house, she agreed.

This did work out until Chiara and Flavio weren't at home due to work and Alice asked Theo over phone if he wanted to come to play Knight and Princess in the big forest. Even though, he still was a bit scared of that forest, Theo agreed. As soon as he arrived at the forest, not only wanting to play but also...telling Alice how much he actually likes her, she saw him… and his scars.

She began to tear up, scream and run away, yelling “Monster! Please don't! No! Mom!!” over and over again. Theo was heartbroken, why did she react like that? Then he realized that he had his scars showing. This event was a bit traumatising for both of the ten year old children.

As soon as Theo was home, he wasn't the same anymore. His curiosity had brought him more doom than luck, he became highly insecure about his appearance and wanted to seem perfect for everyone.

This went on, till Theo got to board the Hogwarts Express at Kings Cross…

Personality:

Insecure: Theo almost drowns in insecurities as much in public as with his few friends and it already began to control his life. He feels more than uncomfortable being himself and showing his flaws around people, no matter how good he knows them than it would be normal for a teenager. This can be dated back to the first time Theo showed someone how he really looked without concealment charms that keep his outer image. The reaction from then, still traumatised the young Ravenclaw and he tries his best not to relive that. That's why he often uses concealment on every part of his body, that could spark negative attention or disdain .

Socially Awkward: Because both of his parents were introverts and all the outgoing genes were apparently used on his little sister, Theo is a mental wreck in company of any other humanoids. He feels so pressured to count as a member of his peers and tries everything to an unimaginable extend that they accept him. Sadly, he has little to no real social competences, so he often causes awkward situations in his peer groups without any intention to do so.

Curious: Curiosity killed the cat, but the satisfaction of knowing didn't bring back this one. Theos naturally nosy personality was a big part of the way he interacted with the things and people around him in his younger and more foolish years. When he didn't need to worry about anything. But since the accident, the creative and curious aspect of the boy seemingly disappeared….Something many don't know...some aspects of a personality… never vanish for long.

Caring: After everything that happened, all the times I told you that Theo is a useless wreck around others, I dare to claim he is social and caring? Yes I do. He might be very anxious around interacting with people but he actually is the absolute mom friend and as soon as you befriend him, he’ll show you that. He will bake you cookies, brink blankets and good books if you feel lonely and over all, will jump over his own shadow so that others feel good and loved. But sadly he can't accomplish that for himself.

Misc:

Theodore actually means “God-given” and is a reference to the generally pretty pure personality and how others in his peer group see him.

Logan is Theodore's second name as an homage to Flavio’s older brother Logan. Funnily the name fits Theo pretty good anyways. After all it means “Hollow” and represents how Theo sees himself. He doesn't accept himself, he feels dump and insignificant … just empty.

Theo has an incredible memory of names. He could tell you the names and a few characteristics about every of his 100+ family members from the most ridiculous branches because he connects something with their names, which makes it in return easier to remember them.

He is not capable of cursing. Like literally, as much as Theo would like to, something inside of him denies it. May it be his education or even a physical disability , sadly this takes away a lot of intimidating aspect, the otherwise tall and mysterious looking student would have.

Something not many know is that Theo absolute favourite colour is a cold-ish type of purple, the only people that know it already were at Theos home because this purple is also the colour his walls are painted at home.

Theo learned how to play the piano very early because he always was interested in music and how its made. He studied the most different songs and was more or less naturally gifted at it, sadly he involuntarily abandoned this hobby because he lacked the time to actually continue practicing. But the proficiency is still somewhere in him.

The Ravenclaw is really talented at Calligraphy which leads him to having a really beautiful and orderly yet unique handwriting. Nobody asks Theo anymore if he can do their homework because the teachers always recognize when Theo wrote something. But his graceful hands and fingers won't protect him from his overall clumsiness

More to be added!

#HPMA #HPMA MC #Theo Ceccere #Belladonna Moonweaver #Flavio Ceccere #Chiara Lobosca #Anna Ceccere #Kiri Amaryllis #Nessi Lucerne #Assia Alshaahin #Estella Lovegood #Sophia Aleexev #Hester Huckabee #Gavin Rohesia

48 notes · View notes

gg-astrology · 5 years

Note

Can I request a Capricorn sun Virgo moon combo?? There isn't much on them and I love your in depth descriptions 💕 (my ascendant is libra if that's important lol)

Aaaaah I’ll love to help out!! 💜💜 As for your asc here’s a post about it:

Libra ASC ❤️

I’ll do the Capricorn-Virgo moon combo now!💜💜

[Below Cut: Capricorn Sun - Virgo Moon 🍯]

The Grind Never Stops

With the mental busybody attitude of Virgo combined with Capricorn-- this is the kind of person who would be restless staying ~relaxed~ for a long time thus they’re always on the Grind, finding something to be Interested in and Do

Likes to be stimulated, or at least like moving. It can be something as simple as moving from the bed to the couch, or noticing the stain in the kitchen counter and then taking the time to clean it off, finding a hobby or activity they could enjoy alone/spend their time productively

Most Virgos aren’t like-- super cleanly people anyways, but with the Capricorn/Virgo combination they’re most likely to be ‘busy’ because they’re bored.

Boredom is essentially-- their biggest enemy, with nothing to do/pursue in their immediate horizon, these people get restlessly frustrated with their freedom and needs to like-- find SOMETHING to work on/add to their talents

They’re either always learning/studying something, or they just have to do/run around and do chores in order to keep busy

It’s never a good idea for a Capricorn/Virgo to stay still for long and while sometimes its like ‘hey social interactions :)))’ for friends (rejoice!!) -- most of the time they just-- do things alone/at their own time-pace y know ( ‘oh we’re uninvited :((’)

They’re adamantly self-sufficient, stubbornly independent. They don’t need you but you kinda need them. The type of people who’ll probably self-study or read self-help books, and take up a new hobby.

Probably search the internet ---wikihow/youtube tutorials to do things--- rather than ask someone else to teach them/guide them

Although they’re quite self-sufficient, and is mostly willing to give you some tips/guidelines if they care about you. If you bother them too much, they can get frustrated with ur lack of self-sufficiency and that is the start of a ranting session

If there’s any placement that can be considered practical, pragmatic and demonstrative-- it’s this one. They’re systematic and methodical, have their own ways of doing things/their own methods and techniques, can be sly, street-smart, cunning. But most often than not-- they’re very protective of their private space/autonomous being

You can’t force them to be in a group, they have to choose to do so. You can’t force them to abide by societal norms/assume things about them, they’ll hate being ‘assumed’ things about or losing control of certain things.

It’s like....sometimes Capricorn/Virgo doesn’t even like people doing stuff for them, they’ll just look at you and say ‘did I ask for this??’ because thats the kind of person they are--- independently self-sufficient. To the point where they want to have a say, an in, a voice in whatever it is they want/do/going to get.

These people would be the kind to say no to dirty money, dishonest plans or anything of the like just because it goes against their control/way of doing things.

I’m not saying they’re morally upright all the time, I’m just saying that if they don’t feel like they’re working for something that’s going to be personally fulfilling to them (emotionally, Virgo moon -- productive/efficient energy) -- they’re the kind of people who values themselves/their own fulfillment more than the end results.

Sometimes you see them turning down absurd once in a life time opportunities/deals -- mostly because the cost of it out-weighs their emotional gain. They’re in the search for fulfillment, and if it’s going to cost more than what will make them feel best (or can handle) in themselves-- then these people won’t likely say yes to it.

They’d rather cut the problem at the stem than wait for it to blossom and hurt others/them, which can--- y know, make them really blunt and straight-forward individuals. Sometimes it comes out harshly because they’re just so straight-to-the-point, although Capricorn/Virgos will generally try to explain their truths/honesty out so the other person get that they don’t mean any harm.

If it’s something they’re avoiding, or procrastinating from-- then these Capricorn/Virgo has a habit of looking the other direction and acting busy with other things instead of dealing with their own situation. Denial and conscious ignoring of something is strong in this one, and they’d rather fall into existential dread/cold sweat as the times grows longer-- than having to deal with something on the get go (esp. emotions)

Disassociation-- like mentally disconnect and you can see it physically in their face is also a hallmark of Capricorn/Virgo. They’re the type where they get anxious/frantic and feel dread creeping up their backs/necks-- they turn light/playful try to elevate the situation so they don’t freak out ( ‘ this is fine’ ) -- they have a habit of making things more serene, calming when they’re actually panicking. It’s like their default to panic is to just-- meditate and keep this posture that if they can ‘fake it then they’ll make it’

If there’s any advice i can give to them, is that you’ll notice that you’re sensitive to your own failures. You’re very critical of yourself, and you’re motivated by your own fears/insecurities. Striving to be perfectionist at something, but indecisive and can sometimes throw yourself (cut yourself off) into a job/work/project.

You are sometimes a little too harsh, and can’t understand what it means to fail and be ok with something. Your pride, ego and hallmark are put on your achievements, pursuits and your success in life. Thus sometimes, when you invest so much into something-- it’s the fear/self-limitations that makes you nervous/cower and motivates you to do more things to ‘prevent’ failure from happening

Accepting yourself and being nice to yourself is hard, in a way that you’ll need to learn how to be ok with not having material success all the time. You’ll need to learn how to not be prudent/frugal with your interests, instead of sharpening your focus in one direction and cutting everything else off-- you will need to know how to find balance and harmony with giving importance (emotionally, psychologically and spiritually importance) to everything else as well

Broad-- not narrow, which you can sometimes do. Learn how to accept yourself so that you can accept others too.

I hope this helps!! 💜💜💜

#capricorn sun #virgo moon #capricorn #virgo #capricorn-virgo #anon #asks

62 notes · View notes

meeedeee · 5 years

Text

Cancel Culture: The Internet Eating Itself RSS FEED OF POST WRITTEN BY FOZMEADOWS

As social media platforms enter their collective adolescence – Facebook is fifteen, YouTube fourteen, Twitter thirteen, tumblr twelve – I find myself thinking about how little we really understand their cultural implications, both ongoing and for the future. At this point, the idea that being online is completely optional in modern world ought to be absurd, and yet multiple friends, having spoken to their therapists about the impact of digital abuse on their mental health, were told straight up to just stop using the internet. Even if this was a viable option for some, the idea that we can neatly sidestep the problem of bad behaviour in any non-utilitarian sphere by telling those impacted to simply quit is baffling at best and a tacit form of victim-blaming at worst. The internet might be a liminal space, but object permanence still applies to what happens here: the trolls don’t vanish if we close our eyes, and if we vanquish one digital hydra-domain for Toxicity Crimes without caring to fathom the whys and hows of what went wrong, we merely ensure that three more will spring up in its place.

Is the internet a private space, a government space or a public space? Yes.

Is it corporate, communal or unaffiliated? Yes.

Is it truly global or bound by local legal jurisdictions? Yes.

Does the internet reflect our culture or create it? Yes.

Is what people say on the internet reflective of their true beliefs, or is it a constant shell-game of digital personas, marketing ploys, intrusive thoughts, growth-in-progress, personal speculation and fictional exploration? Yes.

The problem with the internet is that takes up all three areas on a Venn diagram depicting the overlap between speech and action, and while this has always been the case, we’re only now admitting that it’s a bug as well as a feature. Human interaction cannot be usefully monitored using an algorithm, but our current conception of What The Internet Is has been engineered specifically to shortcut existing forms of human oversight, the better to maximise both accessibility (good to neutral) and profits (neutral to bad). Uber and Lyft are cheaper, frequently more convenient alternatives to a traditional taxi service, for instance, but that’s because the apps themselves are functionally predicated on the removal of meaningful customer service and worker protections that were hard-won elsewhere. Sites like tumblr are free to use, but the lack of revenue generated by those users means that, past a certain point, profits can only hope to outstrip expenses by selling access to those users and/or their account data, which means in turn that paying to effectively monitor their content creation becomes vastly less important than monetising it.

Small wonder, then, that individual users of social media platforms have learned to place a high premium on their ability to curate what they see, how they see it, and who sees them in turn. When I first started blogging, the largely unwritten rule of the blogsphere was that, while particular webforums dedicated to specific topics could have rules about content and conduct, blogs and their comment pages should be kept Free. Monitoring comments was viewed as a sign of narrow-minded fearfulness: even if a participant was aggressive or abusive, the enlightened path was to let them speak, because anything else was Censorship. This position held out for a good long while, until the collective frustration of everyone who’d been graphically threatened with rape, torture and death, bombarded with slurs, exhausted by sealioning or simply fed up with nitpicking and bad faith arguments finally boiled over.

Particularly in progressive circles, the relief people felt at being told that actually, we were under no moral obligation to let assholes grandstand in the comments or repeatedly explain basic concepts to only theoretically invested strangers was overwhelming. Instead, you could simply delete them, or block them, or maybe even mock them, if the offence or initial point of ignorance seemed silly enough. But as with the previous system, this one-size-fits-all approach soon developed a downside. Thanks to the burnout so many of us felt after literal years of trying to treat patiently with trolls playing Devil’s Advocate, liberal internet culture shifted sharply towards immediate shows of anger, derision and flippancy to anyone who asked a 101 question, or who didn’t use the right language, or who did anything other than immediately agree with whatever position was explained to them, however simply.

I don’t exempt myself from this criticism, but knowing why I was so goddamn tired doesn’t change my conviction that, cumulatively, the end result did more harm than good. Without wanting to sidetrack into a lengthy dissertation on digital activism in the post-aughties decade, it seems evident in hindsight that the then-fledgling alliance between trolls, MRAs, PUAs, Redditors and 4channers to deliberately exhaust left-wing goodwill via sealioning and bad faith arguments was only the first part of a two-pronged attack. The second part, when the left had lost all patience with explaining its own beliefs and was snappily telling anyone who asked about feminism, racism or anything else to just fucking Google it, was to swoop in and persuade the rebuffed party that we were all irrational, screeching harridans who didn’t want to answer because we knew our answers were bad, and why not consider reading Roosh V instead?

The fallout of this period, I would argue, is still ongoing. In an ideal world, drawing a link between online culture wars about ownership of SFF and geekdom and the rise of far-right fascist, xenophobic extremism should be a bow so long that not even Odysseus himself could draw it. But this world, as we’ve all had frequent cause to notice, is far from ideal at the best of times – which these are not – and yet another featurebug of the internet is the fluid interpermeability of its various spaces. We talk, for instance – as I am talking here – about social media as a discreet concept, as though platforms like Twitter or Facebook are functionally separate from the other sites to which their users link; as though there is no relationship between or bleed-through from the viral Facebook post screencapped and shared on BuzzFeed, which is then linked and commented upon on Reddit, which thread is then linked to on Twitter, where an entirely new conversation emerges and subsequently spawns an article in The Huffington Post, which is shared again on Facebook and the replies to that shared on tumblr, and so on like some grizzly perpetual mention machine.

But I digress. The point here is that internet culture is best understood as a pattern of ripples, each new iteration a reaction to the previous one, spreading out until it dissipates and a new shape takes its place. Having learned that slamming the virtual door in everyone’s face was a bad idea, the online left tried establishing a better, calmer means of communication; the flipside was a sudden increase in tone-policing, conversations in which presentation was vaunted over substance and where, once again, particular groups were singled out as needing to conform to the comfort-levels of others. Overlapping with this was the move towards discussing things as being problematic, rather than using more fixed and strident language to decry particular faults – an attempt to acknowledge the inherent fallibility of human works while still allowing for criticism. A sensible goal, surely, but once again, attempting to apply the dictum universally proved a double-edged sword: if everything is problematic, then how to distinguish grave offences from trifling ones? How can anyone enjoy anything if we’re always expected to thumb the rosary of its failings first?

When everything is problematic and everyone has the right to say so, being online as any sort of creator or celebrity is like being nibbled to death by ducks. The well-meaning promise of various organisations, public figures or storytellers to take criticism on board – to listen to the fanbase and do right by their desires – was always going to stumble over the problem of differing tastes. No group is a hivemind: what one person considers bad representation or in poor taste, another might find enlightening, while yet a third party is more concerned with something else entirely. Even in cases with a clear majority opinion, it’s physically impossible to please everyone and a type of folly to try, but that has yet to stop the collective internet from demanding it be so. Out of this comes a new type of ironic frustration: having once rejoiced in being allowed to simply block trolls or timewasters, we now cast judgement on those who block us in turn, viewing them, as we once were viewed, as being fearful of criticism.

Are we creating echo chambers by curating what we see online, or are we acting in pragmatic acknowledgement of the fact that we neither have time to read everything nor an obligation to see all perspectives as equally valid? Yes.

Even if we did have the time and ability to wade through everything, is the signal-to-noise ratio of truth to lies on the internet beyond our individual ability to successfully measure, such that outsourcing some of our judgement to trusted sources is fundamentally necessary, or should we be expected to think critically about everything we encounter, even if it’s only intended as entertainment? Yes.

If something or someone online acts in a way that’s antithetical to our values, are we allowed to tune them out thereafter, knowing full well that there’s a nearly infinite supply of as-yet undisappointing content and content-creators waiting to take their place, or are we obliged to acknowledge that Doing A Bad doesn’t necessarily ruin a person forever? Yes.

And thus we come to cancel culture, the current – but by no means final – culmination of previous internet discourse waves. In this iteration, burnout at critical engagement dovetails with a new emphasis on collective content curation courtesies (try saying that six times fast), but ends up hamstrung once again by differences in taste. Or, to put it another way: someone fucks up and it’s the last straw for us personally, so we try to remove them from our timelines altogether – but unless our friends and mutuals, who we still want to engage with, are convinced to do likewise, then we haven’t really removed them at all, such that we’re now potentially willing to make failure to cancel on demand itself a cancellable offence.

Which brings us right back around to the problem of how the modern internet is fundamentally structured – which is to say, the way in which it’s overwhelmingly meant to rely on individual curation instead of collective moderation. Because the one thing each successive mode of social media discourse has in common with its predecessors is a central, and currently unanswerable question: what universal code of conduct exists that I, an individual on the internet, can adhere to – and expect others to adhere to – while we communicate across multiple different platforms?

In the real world, we understand about social behavioural norms: even if we don’t talk about them in those terms, we broadly recognise them when we see them. Of course, we also understand that those norms can vary from place to place and context to context, but as we can only ever be in one physical place at a time, it’s comparatively easy to adjust as appropriate.

But the internet, as stated, is a liminal space: it’s real and virtual, myriad and singular, private and public all at once. It confuses our sense of which rules might apply under which circumstances, jumbles the normal behavioural cues by obscuring the identity of our interlocutors, and even though we don’t acknowledge it nearly as often as we should, written communication – like spoken communication – is a skill that not everyone has, just as tone, whether spoken or written, isn’t always received (or executed, for that matter) in the way it was intended. And when it comes to politics, in which the internet and its doings now plays no small role, there’s the continual frustration that comes from observing, with more and more frequency, how many literal, real-world crimes and abuses go without punishment, and how that lack of consequences contributes in turn to the fostering of abuse and hostility towards vulnerable groups online.

This is what comes of occupying a transitional period in history: one in which laws are changed and proposed to reflect our changing awareness of the world, but where habit, custom, ignorance, bias and malice still routinely combine, both institutionally and more generally, to see those laws enacted only in part, or tokenistically, or not at all. To take one of the most egregious and well-publicised instances that ultimately presaged the #MeToo movement, the laughably meagre sentence handed down to Brock Turner, who was caught in the act of raping an unconscious woman, combined with the emphasis placed by both the judge and much of the media coverage on his swimming talents and family standing as a means of exonerating him, made it very clear that sexual violence against women is frequently held to be less important than the perceived ‘bright futures’ of its perpetrators.

Knowing this, then – knowing that the story was spread, discussed and argued about on social media, along with thousands of other, similar accounts; knowing that, even in this context, some people still freely spoke up in defence of rapists and issued misogynistic threats against their female interlocutors – is it any wonder that, in the absence of consistent legal justice in such cases, the internet tried, and is still trying, to fill the gap? Is it any wonder, when instances of racist police brutality are constantly filmed and posted online, only for the perpetrators to receive no discipline, that we lose patience for anyone who wants to debate the semantics of when, exactly, extrajudicial murder is “acceptable”?

We cannot control the brutality of the world from the safety of our keyboards, but when it exhausts or threatens us, we can at least click a button to mute its seeming adherents. We don’t always have the energy to decry the same person we’ve already argued against a thousand times before, but when a friend unthinkingly puts them back on our timeline for some new reason, we can tell them that person is cancelled and hope they take the hint not to do it again. Never mind that there is far too often no subtlety, no sense of scale or proportion to how the collective, viral internet reacts in each instance, until all outrage is rendered flat and the outside observer could be forgiven for worrying what’s gone wrong with us all, that using a homophobic trope in a TV show is thought to merit the same online response as an actual hate crime. So long as the war is waged with words alone, there’s only a finite number of outcomes that boycotting, blocking, blacklisting, cancelling, complaining and critiquing can achieve, and while some of those outcomes in particular are well worth fighting for, so many words are poured towards so many attempts that it’s easy to feel numbed to the process; or, conversely, easy to think that one response fits all contexts.

I’m tired of cancel culture, just as I was dully tired of everything that preceded it and will doubtless grow tired of everything that comes after it in turn, until our fundamental sense of what the internet is and how it should be managed finally changes. Like it or not, the internet both is and is of the world, and that is too much for any one person to sensibly try and curate at an individual level. Where nothing is moderated for us, everything must be moderated by us; and wherever people form communities, those communities will grow cultures, which will develop rules and customs that spill over into neighbouring communities, both digitally and offline, with mixed and ever-changing results. Cancel culture is particularly tricky in this regard, as the ease with which we block someone online can seldom be replicated offline, which makes it all the more intoxicating a power to wield when possible: we can’t do anything about the awful coworker who rants at us in the breakroom, but by God, we can block every person who reminds us of them on Twitter.

The thing about participating in internet discourse is, it’s like playing Civilisation in real-time, only it’s not a game and the world keeps progressing even when you log off. Things change so fast on the internet – memes, etiquette, slang, dominant opinions – and yet the changes spread so organically and so fast that we frequently adapt without keeping conscious track of when and why they shifted. Social media is like the Hotel California: we can check out any time we like, but we can never meaningfully leave – not when world leaders are still threatening nuclear war on Twitter, or when Facebook is using friendly memes to test facial recognition software, or when corporate accounts are creating multi-staffed humansonas to engage with artists on tumblr, or when YouTube algorithms are accidentally-on-purpose steering kids towards white nationalist propaganda because it makes them more money.

Of course we try and curate our time online into something finite, comprehensible, familiar, safe: the alternative is to embrace the near-infinite, incomprehensible, alien, dangerous gallimaufry of our fractured global mindscape. Of course we want to try and be critical, rational, moral in our convictions and choices; it’s just that we’re also tired and scared and everyone who wants to argue with us about anything can, even if they’re wrong and angry and also our relative, or else a complete stranger, and sometimes you just want to turn off your brain and enjoy a thing without thinking about it, or give yourself some respite, or exercise a tiny bit of autonomy in the only way you can.

It’s human nature to want to be the most amount of right for the least amount of effort, but unthinkingly taking our moral cues from internet culture the same way we’re accustomed to doing in offline contexts doesn’t work: digital culture shifts too fast and too asymmetrically to be relied on moment to moment as anything like a universal touchstone. Either you end up preaching to the choir, or you run a high risk of aggravation, not necessarily due to any fundamental ideological divide, but because your interlocutor is leaning on a different, false-universal jargon overlying alternate 101 and 201 concepts to the ones you’re using, and modern social media platforms – in what is perhaps the greatest irony of all – are uniquely poorly suited to coherent debate.

Purity wars in fandom, arguments about diversity in narrative and whether its proponents have crossed the line from criticism into bullying: these types of arguments are cyclical now, dying out and rekindling with each new wave of discourse. We might not yet be in a position to stop it, but I have some hope that being aware of it can mitigate the worst of the damage, if only because I’m loathe to watch yet another fandom steadily talk itself into hating its own core media for the sake of literal argument.

For all its flaws – and with all its potential – the internet is here to stay. Here’s hoping we figure out how to fix it before its ugliest aspects make us give up on ourselves.

from shattersnipe: malcontent & rainbows https://ift.tt/2V13Qu4 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #shattersnipe: malcontent & rainbows #RSSFeed

11 notes · View notes

postmodernmulticoloredcloak · 5 years

Text

I found a few thousand words - the beginning of a fic - I apparently wrote between the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016, which I didn’t remember writing. There was also a summary of what the story was going to be, and it’s funny - while I wasn’t planning on making the fic particularly angsty, the main source of conflict was going to be due to a lowkey emotional manipulation of Bucky by Alexander Pierce, which was a pretty ubiquitous element in pre-Civil War Stucky fanfiction. Before Civil War, most fics (the ones with plot...) revolved more or less heavily about abuse. Then the fandom collectively said, fuck you, and started aggressively making predominantly fluffy content. Which I whole-heartedly endorse, but it’s a bit sad (read: I’m furious) that the canon content crossed a line where the fandom reacted to it by curling around the characters and hissing protectively. And not because the canon content was angsty, because the fandom reveled in the angst of The Winter Soldier, but because it was bad.

Not counting all the other aspects of bad, the fact that Civil War tried to make Bucky’s angst “I blame myself because I hold myself accountable” is, while not absurd logically (it's not like it doesn’t make sense, from a factual point of view) is bad, because the natural progression from The Winter Soldier was to make his angst “I blame myself because I believe I was weak”. “Is Bucky responsible for the actions he did under brainwashing” is not an interesting narrative question, because The Winter Soldier already answer it clearly, at least for anyone that has experienced abuse or possess a small shred of empathy for those who have. The Winter Solder framed Bucky as a victim of physical and psychological/emotional abuse, and the natural development from there would have been a victim’s emotional reaction after escaping abuse. Why have I let them do those things to me? Why wasn’t I strong enough? Why didn’t I fight back? How could I let those things happen?

But of course a narrative like that would be inherently radical, and Civil War is a conservative product. Bucky is turned into an object for the story, which even less agency than in the movie were he was literally objectified, and the emotional conflict he experiences is reduced to a small scene where he expresses that he holds himself accountable for what he did as the Winter Soldier, and the narrative says nothing about that. The exchange “What you did all those years… It wasn’t you. You didn't have a choice” “I know. But I did it” is just bad. Having Bucky get the last beat of the exchange means that his words are framed as not having a counterargument. It’s basically “you are not accountable for those things” “But consider this: I am” DUN DUN DUN. The narrative leaves us there. The narrative holds him accountable in some form. It’s bad. Steve is framed as fighting for Bucky just because -- because he’s personally invested, not because it is the right thing to do. That’s also bad. Steve is framed as fighting for Bucky because he’s his frieeend, screw everything else (libertarian proto-fascist narrative) instead of because Bucky is a victim (radical anti-fascist narrative). (Those terms are my own categorization of how you can write a superhero story, I haven’t written about it yet though.)

And then there’s Bucky’s brain. In The Winter Soldier, Bucky is made into Hydra’s weapon through torture and psychological manipulation. In Civil War, what Hydra did to Bucky is framed in much more physiological terms. Hydra did something to his brain that (I don’t blame Black Panther for this because Civil War went there) requires a biomedical engineering expert to fix. Bucky gets fixed because his brain was fixed. The codeword thing makes his Winter Soldier condition as something extremely mechanic, throwing all complexity and subtlety out of the window. It’s like Hydra put a switch in his brain that turns him back and forth from Bucky Barnes to Winter Soldier, which is exactly the opposite of what the Russo brothers themselves had promised us that narrative would be, but okay, I’m not still salty about that (read: I am, a lot). While there is no real plot hole, the subtle connotations that run through the narrative do contradict the sense of The Winter Soldier. Out with the psychological abuse, in with the biomechanical programming of his brain. In The Winter Soldier, Hydra treats Bucky as a machine to be programmed over and over. In Civil War, the narrative treats Bucky as a machine. Do you see what I mean? It’s not technically a contradiction of previous canon, but it’s... not good. Bucky’s problem becomes that he still has the “switch” in his brain, which makes him dangerous! Bad storytelling.

Oh no, I did The Rant(TM) again.

#my mcu thoughts #not civil war friendly #mcu

21 notes · View notes

orbemnews · 3 years

Link

Myanmar’s Army Is Back in Charge. It Never Truly Left. The men in army green never truly retreated. As Myanmar presented a facade of democracy to the world, the generals who had ruled the country for nearly half a century still dominated the economy and the halls of power. They even got away with what international prosecutors say was genocide in their murderous offensives against Rohingya Muslims. With its pre-dawn coup on Monday — unseating an elected government and putting Daw Aung San Suu Kyi back under house arrest — the military, led by Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, was once again flaunting its ultimate authority. By Monday evening, with most of the country’s civilian leaders detained, the army, known as the Tatmadaw, had unveiled a new cabinet for Myanmar. Every minister was either a former general or a current one. Yet in the process of reasserting their command, the generals have ripped apart a prized project: a carefully constructed political system decades in the making that allowed them to camouflage their fists behind a veneer of democracy. The Tatmadaw called it “discipline-flourishing democracy,” an oxymoron baked into its very name. Though they allowed elections, army officers also reserved a quarter of the Parliament’s seats and crucial cabinet positions for themselves. Veering from that political strategy could be disastrous for Myanmar’s economy, which was already battered by the coronavirus pandemic. The public, which felt like it could express its political aspirations by delivering landslide victories to Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, is furious. And the international community, which chose to focus more on the civilian part of the country’s civilian-military system, is now aware that one side of the scale clearly outweighs the other. “With this coup, the military’s entire vision of a hybrid civilian-military democracy, the entire structure, could evaporate, sending the country decades back,” said Gerard McCarthy, a postdoctoral fellow at National University of Singapore’s Asia Research Institute. “And we may have found ourselves in this totally absurd situation because one man, Min Aung Hlaing, felt disrespected by Aung San Suu Kyi and could not put country above ambition.” Politics in Myanmar are never bound by simple logic. Though the top brass had worked for years to design a system for their enduring benefit, they had also invested just one man — General Min Aung Hlaing — with the power to tear it down. Myanmar’s modern history is filled with generals who have single-handedly redefined the country’s circumstances. One previous army chief was a megalomaniac whose obsession with numerology crashed the nation’s currency when he decided to denominate it by nine. Another was a slaughterer of student protesters and believed he was the reincarnation of an ancient king. General Min Aung Hlaing, 64, rose unobtrusively — and largely unremarked — through the army’s ranks, according to some who know him. Early in his career, some of his peers stuck him with a nickname that referred to cat feces — something deposited quietly but leaving a powerful stink. After his rise to senior ranks, and more public stature, he courted the Buddhist laity in Myanmar by financing what will be the largest marble Buddha statue in the country. But the display of piety has done little to mask that the army chief has much to atone for. Rohingya Muslims had faced decades of persecution under Tatmadaw rule, but it was General Min Aung Hlaing who masterminded a campaign of terror that forced more than three-quarters of a million Rohingya to flee the country. As Rohingya villages burned, nationalists rejoiced at the expulsion of Muslims, who were considered foreign interlopers. The army chief’s popularity soared. Soon, General Min Aung Hlaing was coveting the position of president, which he hoped to fill after retiring from the army this summer, military insiders said. But since 2015, when Myanmar’s first civilian government was voted in, the presidency has gone to loyal lieutenants to Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who is constitutionally barred from the post. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi declined to meet the army chief to discuss his political aspirations, her advisers said, a snub that wounded his pride. But if Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of the country’s assassinated independence hero, saw herself as the rightful ruler of Myanmar, so did General Min Aung Hlaing. Both are products of a country where the Tatmadaw continues to permeate every facet of life, even if its soldiers were rarely in evidence during the coup on Monday. “The military is woven into the human fabric of Myanmar society,” said Richard Horsey, a political analyst in Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar. “Not only does it have its own schools, hospitals and food production system, its elite are intermarried with business families and N.L.D. families, creating an integrated fabric that’s almost impossible to undo.” The military’s dominance extends beyond the firepower of its half a million soldiers, whose assaults on ethnic minorities have intensified during General Min Aung Hlaing’s tenure. The country’s two most powerful conglomerates are under army command, controlling a vast fortune that includes jade, timber, ports and dams. The Tatmadaw dabbles in banking, insurance, hospitals, gyms and the media. It is the largest landowner in the country. It’s no coincidence that the Mytel mobile network was the first to spring back to life on Monday after telecommunications were disrupted nationwide by the coup. Mytel is owned by the military. But the army’s seizure of power is likely to undercut Myanmar’s economic expansion, which bloomed after the generals began loosening their grip on the country. And it will almost certainly lead to renewed economic and personal sanctions from abroad. The State Department said on Tuesday that it has determined that the military’s actions constituted a coup d’état. That assessment will automatically cut off some U.S. foreign aid to the country, and trigger a review of all aid programs, said State Department officials speaking on background. But the effect of that action will be limited: The United States sends little aid to Myanmar’s government and none directly to its military. American humanitarian and pro-democracy programs will not be affected, the officials said. Fewer foreign investors will want to risk putting their money in a country where a putsch imperils contracts inked with the civilian authority. The daughter of one prominent tycoon went on social media on Monday, flashing the hashtag #savemyanmar. The fallout of the coup could further damage an economy already ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic. One survey said that as many as eight in 10 people in Myanmar were already limiting their food intake, as the coronavirus has wiped out key sectors like tourism and garment manufacturing. For the generals, most of all General Min Aung Hlaing, the coup may help protect the patronage networks they have spent years constructing. The commander in chief’s stalled communications with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi didn’t just foil his political hopes, they also may have put the wealth of his family and partners at risk. Some powerful generals had retired, only to lose their wealth and status in political purges. General Min Aung Hlaing was determined to shield himself from a similar fate by guaranteeing from Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi a safe exit, military insiders said. But the leader of the National League for Democracy did not survive 15 years of house arrest by bowing to anyone. And Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s character is also steeled by military resolve: Her father founded the country’s modern army, and even though he was assassinated when she was 2 years old, she has called him her political role model. The National League for Democracy was co-founded by another former army chief, and the party places one woman as its undisputed commander. By Tuesday, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was again confined to her villa by the generals. National League for Democracy lawmakers were temporarily sequestered in their living quarters in Naypyidaw, the country’s capital that was built by military fiat early this century. “We are all still waiting for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s command,” said Daw Win Mya Mya, one of the lawmakers. “We will all follow her.” Michael Crowley contributed reporting from Washington. Source link Orbem News #Army #Charge #left #Myanmars

0 notes

sosafeuae-blog · 4 years

Text

Health is At Risk in the Absence of RO Water Filter System Dubai

Families have run out of excuses in defence of not buying RO water filter system Dubai. They should accept a lack of effort or intensity for missing it again this season. The lamest excuse is it is the same water the whole family grew up drinking. They do not think for a minute how absurd, irrational it sounds. There is a tinge of arrogance in that statement too. You could spare them a harsh penalty knowing the system has let them down too. Brands played a role in delaying the movement to some extent. Water filter systems have become a part of kitchens worldwide now.

1. Do not Compromise with Health Standards by Picking Outdated RO Water Filter System Dubai Families have become victims of water-borne health issues in the past. What seems like an ordinary condition turns into severe pain or suffering in no time. RO water filter system Dubai protects your health against innumerable health conditions. The investment in the right model makes all the difference.

The latest technology offers better safety standards. What is the point in buying something you were interested in five years ago? It's not about serving the ego. Living conditions have changed. You can't expect an old model to offer the same benefits as an updated one. The difference in costs cannot justify the decision too. It is a poor decision on all fronts.

Top brands offer water filter equipment at affordable prices. Families get several choices in each category. They don't have to lower their expectations. The budget wouldn't stop them from making the right decision. Brands brought advanced technology to RO water filter systems. They know people have built faith, trust in the respective water filtration technique. It was an opportunity to capitalize and become a leader in the market.

2. Investing in Top RO Water Filter System Dubai Secures Happiness to Health Families would never realize the extent of the threat coming from unfiltered water. With soil pollution and air pollution, our body is the likely candidate. A single mistake or error in judgement could put the health of the family at risk. Investing in a top RO water filter system Dubai offers unmatched safety standards.

Families have a precarious situation in front of themselves. They struggle to identify the right model. It's a valid question. You should begin with your family needs. Buying a water filter equipment is about knowing local conditions. The safest bet is to rope the services of an expert and take his suggestions on water filter equipment. Your doubts would guide you in the right direction in this case. The experts would consider the inputs and offer the best products.

#ro water filter system dubai #Water filter equipment #ro water filter abudhabi #ro water purifier uae #ro water purifier in dubai

0 notes

sandovalenst1000 · 4 years

Text

What should be considered when we think of the future?

While the future of our earth seems largely uncertain, one thing is for sure: we need to help save our planet now. If we do not take action soon, any and all damage to our earth that we have caused can become irreversible, which will only harm our future as a human race. In Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin’s The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene, they focus on the human race’s role in the current time period, the anthropocene, which is “the epoch where the human component of the Earth system is large enough to affect how it functions” (Lewis & Maslin, p. 399). Lewis and Maslin look to the future and lay out the possibilities, including business as normal, a societal collapse akin to the Mayan and Roman Empires, or a transition to a completely new society with a different living style compared to present day society. In order for business to continue as normal and for society to maintain its current outputs and consumption habits, consumerism must tackle the most pressing issue of the environment and the harm that humans have caused to avoid societal collapse or switching to a different way of living, which is possible considering new governmental reforms, increased health and lifespans, improved nutrition, and more.

If collapse was to occur, it requires a drastic decline in societal complexity, which is unlikely, but will most likely “take the form of private property and a free labor based capitalist mode of living” (Lewis & Maslin, p. 370) in the event of its occurrence. However, the authors estimate that it is more likely that, as humans, we will have to address the harm we have caused to the environment and transition to a different way of life that will highlight sustainability and efficiency. The authors particularly contribute to the future switch to a more efficient and sustainable society to the current process of a positive feedback look in our capitalist society, which tends to move towards new standards for stability. As capitalism currently develops, it utilizes the scientific method to improve current technologies and depends on the constant cycle of investing profits into products. Our current society will eventually transform society into something more elevated than what we have now if we address our earth’s environmental issues. In order to preserve our earth, we must recognize its issues, adapt, and collaborate as human beings with an interconnected web of ideas. Currently, we utilize our developing technology to manufacture and advance renewable energy as an attempt to minimize carbon emissions and our fossil fuel usage. Minimizing fossil fuel usage allows the human race to begin its journey towards more sustainable living.

Deepwater Horizon oil spill by BP in the Gulf of Mexico in 2011 (Broder, 2011)

However, minimizing fossil fuel usage is more complicated than we would think. Lewis and Maslin identify geopolitics as a barrier to fully eliminative fossil fuel usage, which is subsidized at about $5 trillion USD per year and most of the oil and gas companies worldwide are “partly or fully nationalized” (Lewis & Maslin, p. 383). Usage of fossil fuels not only has carbon emissions, but also causes land degradation, water pollution from leaks or spills, and wastewater from fracking. A widely recommended idea on minimizing fossil fuel usage that is more attainable than fully eliminating it is to invest in renewable energy and/or to create a carbon tax, which is backed by energy economists like MIT Sloan School of Management’s Christopher Knittel (Dizikes, 2016). Despite all the negatives on fossil fuel usage, we are making progress, with prices of renewable energy technology decreasing over the past decade and making it more accessible. Lewis and Maslin additionally highlight the negative feedback cycles on earth, which affect human supplies like crops. Negative feedback cycles work to stabilize climates, but overcorrect and leave weather patterns to become more unpredictable. Negative feedback cycles also increase the frequency of large climate events like drought, increase extreme weather events like tsunamis, which can disrupt the global food supply, cause rise in food prices, and result in civil unrest and refugee flows between countries to avoid conflict (Lewis & Maslin, p. 385).

To benefit our earth, Lewis and Maslin identify the issue: the Anthropocene conundrum. The Anthropocene conundrum is how to equalize resource consumption across the world within sustainable environmental limits, which the authors believe the solution is primarily with globally coordinated action towards equality between more developed and less developed nations; specifically, more developed nations (high-carbon emitting countries) should be doing more than others to reduce emissions and providing support to less developed nations to transition to renewable energy.

While Lewis and Maslin identify various possibilities surrounding our earth’s and society’s future, they do not propose a definite plan but just suggestions with its possible positive and negative results. E.O Wilson, a biologist and professor emeritus at Harvard University, proposes to devote half of the earth’s surface to nature to avoid mass extinction of species; specifically, Wilson proposes that we devote biological hotspots to protect those species of animals and elaborates on his Half Earth idea in his book, Half Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life. Lewis and Maslin discuss E.O. Wilson’s Half Earth proposal, but determined that it is too large of a step for society and, while it would be effective, it would be more complicated to integrate than how Wilson proposes it.

Andrew Yang in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park during a presidential campaign rally in 2019. (Stevens & Grullon Paz, 2020)

Lastly, Lewis and Maslin discuss implementing a universal basic income to decrease interdependence in society, which would decrease the likelihood of massive societal collapse. Most recently, universal basic income has become a hot topic with former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang making it a central point for his campaign. Yang’s focal point was a universal basic income of $1,000 per month, but Yang pressed for this because he argued that soon there would be increased automation in lieu of jobs and Americans would find themselves out of work. While in the current situation people are not losing their jobs for automation, but they are losing their jobs due to the current COVID-19 pandemic. With the CARES Act passed in March 2020, there has been an increased push for a universal basic income into legislation with unemployment being projected up to 16% later in 2020 (Solender, 2020). The benefits of a universal basic income include bringing many out of extreme poverty and providing a better alternative than the United States’ current unemployment program. I am not personally an Andrew Yang supporter, but he raises an interesting idea that should be considered. Despite not knowing what the future holds for our earth, we can reduce our own created inequality by implementing a universal basic income and allowing some individuals the luxury to begin to worry about something else other than where they will get their next meal from. We can heal our earth, but only by healing the divides between one another first.

Word Count: 1171/1100

Question: How can we begin to implement a universal basic income in the United States with people being so hesitant to embrace Andrew Yang’s platform when initiating the push for a UBI?

Bibliography

Broder, John M. “BP Shortcuts Led to Gulf Oil Spill, Report Says.” The New York Times. The New York Times, September 14, 2011. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/science/earth/15spill.html.

Denchak, Melissa. “Fossil Fuels: The Dirty Facts.” NRDC, July 16, 2019. https://www.nrdc.org/stories/fossil-fuels-dirty-facts.

Dizikes, Peter. “Will We Ever Stop Using Fossil Fuels?” MIT News. MIT News Office, February 24, 2016. http://news.mit.edu/2016/carbon-tax-stop-using-fossil-fuels-0224.

“Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life.” EO Wilson Biodiversity Foundation. Accessed April 27, 2020. https://eowilsonfoundation.org/half-earth-our-planet-s-fight-for-life/.

Lewis, Simon, and Mark Maslin. The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene: a Pelican Book. Pelican, 2018.

Solender, Andrew. “Pushing Universal Basic Income, Andrew Yang Supporters Get #CongressPassUBI Trending.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, April 24, 2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/04/24/pushing-universal-basic-income-andrew-yang-supporters-get-congresspassubi-trending/#a6984925d30c.

Stevens, Matt, and Isabella Grullón Paz. “Andrew Yang's $1,000-a-Month Idea May Have Seemed Absurd Before. Not Now.” The New York Times. The New York Times, March 18, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/us/politics/universal-basic-income-andrew-yang.html.

0 notes

necrowriter · 7 years

Text

Fog and Fire: 1.1

Chapter One: A Heist Underway

It used to be said that you could always tell a magician by his hands. In fact this was still said, but in modern enlightened times the words had something different behind them. Most people had forgotten that the saying had once referred to scars.

The hands of the Lord Rector of the Most Ancient Iron University of Magic were pale and fair and smooth as paper, unmarked by anything save a delicate tattoo of interlocking rings running down one forefinger. He held these hands carefully around his white porcelain teacup as he smiled graciously at the man sitting across from him.

“I am terribly sorry that I must decline your request like this,” he said. “A pity. It's a very good letter. That is to say, very convincing. But I'm afraid we simply cannot allow it.”

The man sitting across from him wore gloves. They were a pale lilac color, and rather threadbare.

“It's university policy, you see,” the Lord Rector went on. “We have some very strict rules regarding access to the Inner Library. We don't even allow students to visit until their fourth year. We must be cautious, you know.” He chuckled ever so slightly. “Someone might take it into their head to attempt to perform magic.”

The man before him blinked in apparent surprise. He wore dark glasses as well, and behind them his eyes were pale and bloodshot. “My goodness,” he said. “Does that still happen in this day and age?”

The Lord Rector tapped one finger against his cup. There was a ring on that finger, gold in a complex and intricate shape, and it clinked gently against the porcelain. “Not very often, I'm glad to say,” he said, not sounding very glad that he had to say it at all. “But there are fools in every day and age. Some people will attempt things simply because they should not be done.”

“I see,” the man said. “How dreadful.”

“Quite.” The Lord Rector picked up the letter laying unfolded on the desk before him and glanced at it perfunctorily. “I do apologize, Mr-” he paused for the briefest moment as his eyes flicked across the page “-Vervain. Dean Ginseng has nothing but praise for you. But I simply cannot accommodate your request.”

“I understand,” the man said. He had a very quiet voice and everything he said seemed to come out as a low murmur. “May I remain a while longer? There is a lecture I would quite like to attend while I am here.”

“Of course, of course. Stay as long as you like.” The Lord Rector shifted slightly. A natural talent honed over long years of practice had made him able to signify that a conversation was over by the merest straightening of his spine. He did so now, and his visitor acquiesced in good grace. He thanked the Lord Rector for the tea, and for the meeting, and made his polite farewells. The Lord Rector watched him go, his boot heels tapping ever so faintly against the long rows of polished tiles stretching across the office. When he was gone the Lord Rector shook his head with mild distaste and returned to his work.

It was a long way down from the Lord Rector’s office, which was perched at the very top of the university's highest spire. Tall windows were set within the helictical stairwell, providing a continuous and dizzying view of the university grounds from on high. Mr. Vervain did not look out the windows even once as he descended. His eyes were cast downward to his boot-tops, squinting half-shut behind his glasses as though he were in some pain.

He walked in this way all the way down the stairwell, and all the way across the great hall on the ground floor, which was busy and bustling with people, full of the ringing of boots on the broad slate-blue tiles and the dappling, shifting light dancing in from the tall rain-streaked windows. People brushed past Mr. Vervain with muttered apologies, leaving damp footprints in their wake. He walked past it all without seeming to notice any of it and slipped quietly out into the courtyard.

Only when he had walked a little way out from the spire, down a path overlooked by many other university buildings, did Mr. Vervain pause. He was in a quiet spot, attended by no one but a few damp birds and the pattering of a fine misty rain against the pavement. Mr. Vervain removed his glasses, cleaned them absently with the end of his sleeve, and glanced down at his reflection in the puddles at his feet.

“I suppose,” he said, apparently to no one at all but the wind stirring little wavelets in the gathered water, “I shall simply have to break in.”

---

The last time a break-in at the Iron University’s Inner Library had been known to occur was fifty-seven years prior, when a student was found desperately struggling with the inner doors in the middle of the night, in search of some deeply hidden secret he meant to uncover within. He had employed a great deal of ingenious methods to attempt to break the library's wards, absolutely none of which had worked, and was taken away in great disgrace.

Mr. Vervain considered that being found anywhere in the middle of the night but one's own bed was hardly a useful tactic for deflecting suspicion. Consequently he went back to the university lodging-house, cleaned himself up as well as he could, had dinner, and then attended the lecture he had mentioned to the Lord Rector. It was a public lecture, of the sort the university frequently held, none of which attracted enough of the public for the university to bother with restricting attendance. Mr. Vervain therefore had no obstacles to slipping into the hall and finding a good seat at the back by the aisle. He sat with his fingers tapping against the mirror-polished surface of the brass railing beside him and politely and attentively listened to an extremely dry lecture on the sub-classifications of invocation. He took considerable notes, which were accompanied in the margins of his notebook by a strange shorthand that would have been utterly incomprehensible to anyone looking over his shoulder, if anyone had been there to look. With that activity over with, he did nothing more suspicious for the rest of the night but to drink a cup of chamomile tea and stay up reading for a while.

The following morning, Mr. Vervain had breakfast and then carefully packed everything he had brought with him into a traveling satchel. This did not take long, as there was not a great deal to pack. He checked out of his lodgings, adjusted his coat, and strode casually over to the library.

It would have been quite impossible to miss the university library. It dominated the campus. In some ways it was the campus; it had certainly been there long before anything else, back in the days when magical knowledge was rarer and more jealously guarded than any gold, so that the smallest collection of magical books was worth protecting with a fortress. And a fortress it still was, this library, at its heart, but over time other things had grown around it. Aisles and halls and facades had been added on bit by bit until the solid glaring core was completely hidden behind the gilt of modern architecture. The library nowadays was much better known for its theoretical texts, which far outstripped the original inner section and overflowed through aisle upon aisle; and it was known for its work rooms and classrooms and meeting rooms, and of course its public lecture halls, such as the one in which Mr. Vervain had sat the previous night, taking notes on the wards surrounding the Inner Library nearby.

The wards were quite impressive by any measure. They had been set long ago by powerful magicians who were very well invested in keeping prying hands and eyes away from their precious knowledge. And they had been faithfully maintained all down the years by the university librarians, who were known across the city-indeed, across the archipelago-as being the sort of people who were not to be crossed, as that unfortunate student had discovered fifty-seven years ago. The notion of trying to break the library wards was patently absurd, and as for removing books, it was the subject of a frequent and black joke among the more morbid-minded students regarding creative ways to end their suffering around midterms.

Mr. Vervain had no intention to distress any librarians, or to break any wards, nor was he especially concerned about midterms. He did intend to perform the first active spell on university grounds in some three hundred years, but his hope was to avoid any special recognition for this effort.

On his way across the courtyard, which was very expansive so that people might have a long period of anticipation before actually reaching the library, Mr. Vervain stopped and looked at his reflection in a large puddle that had formed off the side of the path. The rippling water showed a slim young man with a fair complexion and pale blonde hair of the sort that was regrettably prone to fall into disarray and tangle around his face no matter what he did to attempt to tame it. He had a thin, pointed sort of face, prone to some hollowness around the edges, and under the eyes. His clothes were just about good enough to be respectable, or at least would have been if they had not been quite so worn out.

He stood there for some time, toying with the pale purple scarf he wore in place of a more sensible tie or cravat; in fact he was there for so long that anyone watching him would surely have believed him to be extremely vain, or perhaps extremely fascinated with water.

But at length he turned away, looking perhaps a little sad-although, truth to be told, Mr. Vervain was the sort that always looked a little sad-and continued on his way. No one paid him much attention. Melancholy young men lost in thought were not exactly uncommon on the university grounds.

He ascended the broad white steps of the library, mingling with students coming and going, chatting animatedly with each other or clutching papers to themselves and looking distressed. Here and there were various others, visiting scholars or city magicians. Among them Mr. Vervain did not especially stand out. Once inside, he spoke to a librarian on duty, showing his letter from Dean Ginseng, and was given an access token and escorted to the outer stacks. These were guarded much less jealously than the Inner Library, but they were still guarded. After all, magical knowledge couldn't simply be freely given out to just anyone.

Mr. Vervain perused the stacks for a while, looking through shelves and cubbieholes, running his finger down the spines of books as if carefully considering the titles before moving on. He did not move on carelessly; his meanderings took him slowly but surely inward, circling around and around until he reached the Inner Library.

The inner doors were set in a large, impressive room, with an arched entrance watched over by a pair of impeccably turned-out university guards. At the far end was a dais where stern librarians examined the credentials of anyone who intended to pass through the heavy iron-bound doors. Small study tables lined the walls in-between for students to wait their turn at entry, or discuss research with the librarians on duty, or simply admire the old and detailed carvings on the doors.

Having acquired a few books during his wanderings, Mr. Vervain sat down at an empty table near the end of the hall and began to look through them, listening to the students who spoke to the librarians as they came and went, each describing the section of the library they wished to visit.

He had anticipated a long wait, but in fact he had only been there a little over an hour when his opportunity arose. An expensively clothed young woman with warm brown skin and her hair worn under a scarf and cap showed the librarian on duty a fourth-year student’s badge and said that she needed to see the section on divination.

Mr. Vervain looked up.

The librarian was frowning at the student. “What do you need a thing like that for?”

The young woman sighed and pulled out a sheaf of papers.

“Fairtree,” she said heavily.

Evidently this meant something, as it caused the librarian to look rather knowing and sympathetic. “Still assigning that sort of thing, is he?” he said, looking through the papers and shaking his head. “Well, good luck to you.”

The student groaned hopelessly and took the papers back along with a writ signed by the librarian in ostentatious gold ink. By this time Mr. Vervain had stood up, tidied his books to one side of the desk, and walked quietly over to the dais. No one paid him much attention. People rarely did.

In one hand he held the letter from Dean Ginseng, as though it might be some kind of permission slip; the other hand was in his pocket. He stepped up onto the dais, smiling at the other librarian as though about to speak to him, but as he stepped behind the student his hand came out of his pocket and made a brief, strange gesture in her shadow.

The librarian blinked and returned to his work.

When the student walked through the doors a moment later, after the attending librarian had unlocked them with a large and ceremonial-looking key, Mr. Vervain walked in behind her. No one noticed.

No one noticed as he strolled behind the student through the tall looming bookcases, down dark tiles that were dimly lit, the better to preserve the old and delicate books on their locked shelves. No one noticed that he stood nearby while the student looked up and down the shelves, his eyes behind his dark glasses searching for something of his own. No one noticed that, when the student showed her writ to a librarian and had a shelf unlocked and the glass pane slid back, Mr. Vervain removed a few books as well. No one noticed him at all, standing quietly and calmly in the aisle running his eyes up and down the pages of his books, having performed the first successful unauthorized entry in the Iron University Inner Library for over three hundred years.

Unfortunately, while no one noticed Mr. Vervain, they did notice the student, which proved to be the undoing of them both.

#writing #serial writing #Fog and Fire #Fog and Fire: C1 #fantasy writing

59 notes · View notes