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idreamtofmanderleyagain · 3 years

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Hot takes about Severus Snape are a wierdly decent glimpse into how a person with progressive values analyses things. Literally every time someone talks about Snape, it’s like this tiny window into how one-dimentionally people actually think.

Recently saw a twitter post that was a fantastic example. Here’s how it goes (paraphrasing):

Person A:“Snape is POC and Queer coded, that’s why you guy’s hate him uwu lol.”

Person B: “Actually I hate him because he was mean and abusive to children under his care uwu but go off I guess lol”

Both of these takes are designed to be dramatic and/or reactionary. They each use partial truths to paint very broad strokes. These are get-em-in-one-hit quips. This is virtue signalling, if you’ll excuse that loaded phrase. Nobody had a substantial conversation, but now everyone who sees their statement knows the high ground they took.

At least a hundred other people chimed in to add their own little quippy hot takes into play, none of which add anything significant, but clearly made everyone feel very highly of themselves.

So many layers of nuance and complex analysis is completely lost in this kind of discussion. On tumblr, you get more of this kind of bullshit, but you don’t have a word count limit, so you guys just spew endless mountains of weak overblown evidence backing up your bullshit arguments, none of which was really about engaging in a real conversation anyway.

Here’s the thing about Snape.

He is a childhood domestic abuse victim. His abuser is a muggle.

He becomes a student at a magical school that takes him away from his abuser and immediately instills in him the idea that being a part of this magical world is a badge of self-worth, empowerment, and provides safety and security - provided that he keeps in line.

There is a war is being waged in that world over his right to exist (he is a half blood).

He is a marginalized person within the context of the narrative, forced to constantly be in the same living space as the children of his own oppressors who are being groomed and recruited into a hate group militia (the pureblood slytherins). They are in turn trying to do the same to him.

He is marginalized person bullied by children who are also part of his oppressor group, but who have “more liberal” leanings and aren’t direct about why he’s being targeted (the mauraders are all purebloods, Sirius, who was the worst offender, was raised in a bigoted household, the same one that produced Bellatrix.).

He had a crush on a girl who is a muggleborn, and therefore she is considered even lesser than him and carries a stigma to those who associate with her. That girl was his only real friend. In his entire life.

For both Snape and Lily, allying themselves to a pureblood clique within their own houses would be a great way of shielding themselves from a measure of the bigotry they were probably facing. There would have been obvious pressure from those cliques to disconnect with one and other.

Every other person who associates with Snape in his adulthood carries some sort of sociopolitical or workplace (or hate cult) baggage with their association. Some of them will physically harm and/or kill him if he steps out of line. He hasn’t at any point had the right environment to heal and adjust from these childhood experiences. Even his relationship with Dumbledore is charged with constant baggage, including the purebloods who almost killed him during their bullying getting a slap on the wrist, the werewolf that almost killed him as a child being placed in an authority position over new children, etc. Dumbledore is canonically manipulative no matter his good qualities, and he has literally been manipulating Snape for years in order to cultivate a necessary asset in the war.

He is a person who is not in the stable mental state necessary to be teaching children, whom has been forced to teach children. While also playing the role of double agent against the hate group militia, the one that will literally torture you for mistakes or backtalk or just for fun. The one that will torture and kill him if he makes one wrong move.

Is the math clicking yet? From all of this, it’s not difficult to see how everything shitty about Snape was cultivated for him by his environment. Snape was not given great options. Snape made amazingly awful choices, and also some amazingly difficult, courageous ones. Snape was ultimately a human who had an extremely bad life, in which his options were incredibly grim and limited.

In fact, pretty much every point people make about how shitty Snape is as a person makes 100% logical sense as something that would emerge from how he was treated. Some if it he’s kind of right about, some of it is the inevitable reality of suffering, and some of it is part of the cycle of abuse and harm.

Even Snape’s emotional obsession with Lily makes logical sense when you have the perspective that he literally has no substantial positive experiences with other human beings that we know of, and he has an extreme, soul destroying guilt complex over her death. Calling him an Incel mysoginist nice guy projects a real-world political ideology and behavior that does not really apply to the context of what happened to him and her.

Even Snape’s specific little acts of cruelty to certain students is a reflection of his own life experiences. He identifies with Neville; more specifically, he identifies his own percieved emotional weaknesses in his childhood in Neville. There’s a very sad reason there why he feels the urge to be so harsh.

Snape very clearly hates himself, in a world where everyone else hates him, too. Imagine that, for a second. Imagine total internal and external hatred, an yearning for just a little bit of true connection. For years. Imagine then also trying to save that world, even if it’s motivated by guilt. Even if nobody ever knows you did it and you expect to die a miserable death alone.

There are more elements here to consider, including the way Rowling described his looks (there may be something in there re: ugliness and swarthy stereotyping). These are just the things that stand out the most prominently to me.

J.K. Rowling is clearly also not reliable as an imparter of moral or sociopolitical philosophies. I don’t feel that her grasp of minority experiences is a solid one, considering how she picks and chooses who is acceptable and who is a threat.

All of that said, this is a logically consistent character arc. Within the context of his narrative, Snape is a marginalized person with severe PTSD and emotional instability issues who has absolutely no room available to him for self-improvement or healing, and never really has. And yes, he’s also mean, and caustic, and verbally abusive to the students. He’s also a completey miserable, lonely person.

There are elements in his character arc that mirror real world experiences quite well. If nothing else, Rowling is enough of an emotional adult to recognise these kinds of things and portray something that feels authentic.

In my opinion, it’s not appropriate to whittle all this down by comparing him directly to the real world experiences of marginalized groups - at least if you are not a part of the group you are comparing him to. There have been many individuals who have compared his arc to their own personal experiences of marginalization, and that is valid. But generally speaking, comparing a white straight dude to people who are not that can often be pretty offensive. This is not a valuable way to discuss either subject.

Also, I believe that while it’s perfectly okay to not like Snape as a character, many of the people who act like Person B are carrying Harry’s childhood POV about Snape in their hearts well into their own adulthood. And if nothing else, Rowling was attempting to say something here about how our perspectives (should) grow and change as we emotionally mature. She doesn’t have to be a good person herself to have expressed something true about the world in this instance, and since this story is a part of our popular culture, people have a right to feel whatever way they do about this story and it’s characters.

The complexity of this particular snapshot of fictionalized marginalization, and what it reveals about the human experience, cannot be reduced down to “he’s an abuser so he’s not worth anyone’s time/you are bad for liking him.”

And to be honest, I think that it reveals a lot about many of us in progressive spaces, particularly those of us who less marginalized but very loud about our values, that we refuse to engage with these complexities in leu of totally condemning him. Particularly because a lot of the elements I listed above are indeed reflected in real world examples of people who have experienced marginalization and thus had to deal with the resulting emotional damage, an mental illness, and behavior troubles, and bad decisions. Our inability to address the full scope of this may be a good reflection of how we are handling the complexity of real world examples.

Real people are not perfect angels in their victimhood. They are just humans who are victims, and we all have the capacity to be cruel and abusive in a world where we have been given cruelty and abuse. This is just a part of existing. If you cannot sympathise with that, or at least grasp it and aknowledge it and respect the people who are emotionally drawn to a character who refects that, then you may be telling on yourself to be honest.

To be honest, this is especially true if you hate Snape but just really, really love the Mauraduers. You have a right to those feelings, but if you are moralizing this and judging others for liking Snape, you’ve confessed to something about how you’ve mentally constructed your personal values in a way I don’t think you’ve fully grasped yet.

I have a hard time imagining a mindset where a story like Snape’s does not move one to empathy and vicarious grief, if I’m honest. I feel like some people really just cannot be bothered to imagine themselves in other people’s shoes, feeling what they feel and living like they live. I struggle to trust the social politics of people who show these kinds of colors, tbh.

But maybe that’s just me.

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mrsblackruby · 3 years

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“Here ye Here ye the court is now in session will the defendant Billy Hargrove please stand.”

Me reading to much into the politics of Billy Hargrove / Harringrove

I would first just like to communicate that I recognize there are much bigger problems in the world that we should be focused on organizing against. (capitalism is a threat organize against it) and you are in no way shape or form a bad person for engaging in the behavior I criticize in this post.

Humans have flaws and in media characters having flaws can make them more relatable to the audience. Film and television can offer a way to engage in modern problems that feel way less traumatic. I feel like discussing child abuse through how media portrays it can be less traumatic.

I’m am a Black Genderfluid Queer 18 teen year old and I am a victim of child abuse (You don’t have to believe me but I am) and the reality of my experiences have shaped how I see this character so I wanted to share my analysis on how stranger things treated Billy Hargrove and especially how the fan base has treated this character.

I hope I make my points clear and I’m open to respectful criticism. I’m interested in the conversations we can have about this character. And look maybe there’s no correlation between how you treat human beings and fictional characters but I still think it’s worth analyzing just to be sure.

If you’re a Harringrove Stan I hope this makes your day better. If you’re not, I still hope you have a good day but don’t harass people who do like Harringrove.

Racist?

I personally do interpret Billy as Racist I think it adds dimensions to his character but that’s the thing I interpret it as racism.

I personally think you’re giving the Coke Cola and KFC product placement writers too much credit when you say Billy is a definitive racist. They left it up to interpretation by never explicitly addressing racism in the show. I think it’s heavily implied Billy is racist and it wouldn’t be far fetched based on the time period. I definitely felt the weight in the “certain type of people” comment. That’s the thing tho I felt the weight of the line because it was only an implication not a confirmation. people don’t have to read into it as a criticism of racism especially if it’s not tied to explicit themes on racism in the text.

Also this goes to a much larger critic I have of stranger things. that it doesn’t try to even tackle racism in a big way. The 80s saw crack planted into black communities only for those same communities to be demonized and criminalized. I mentioned that cuz If you are going to present racism in your show about the 80s potentially down playing it into one bigoted character instead of a whole system that everyone in the world building participates in means that subsequently your writing is just beating up on one character but you are not truly exploring the racist system in your fictional world. So you’re definitely not making a smart critic of racism in the real world. Stranger Things just simply fails to explore racism in its cannon and being mad at people for not interpreting something left up to interpretation baffles me. I’m finna get eat up in theses comments

Over-Sexualized?

Billy Hargrove is definitely one of the most sexualized characters in Stranger Things and even though we were introduced to his character when he was 17 the camera frames him in such a hyper sexaulized manner. I personally do feel slightly uncomfortable with the overt sexualzation of Billy's character. I also feel rather uncomfortable by the age gap relationship that they explore in canon between Billy and Karen. I myself find no interest in forming a romantic relationship with someone the same age as my parents.

However I don’t think the exploration of Billy’s sexuality is a harmful thing. I was 17 a couple days ago and I’m 18 now like how Billy was in season three. I’m very aware that teenagers have sexuality. I think there is a cautious step to take when exploring the sexuality of a character who just turned 18 in fandom. I’ve seen things that have made me feel downright disgusted. On the other hand It’s more likely for me to see fans going out of their way to tag their posts , art, and fanfics to create a safe environment to portray Billy's sexuality.

I also see fans trying very hard to be respectful to the actor and not down right sexually harass anyone and if someone does I’m willing to call them out for It and I see others willing to do the same.

All in All, Billy's character is definitely sexualized and the more toxic aspect of that sexualization is not inherent to the Billy Hargrove/ Harringrove fandom but fandom culture at large. I’m also willing 2 die on the hill that season 3 handles Billy’s sexuality worse than many fans. I don’t think ur a bad person if you “ship” (using the definition of ship very leniently) Billy/Karen and can recognize the harmful power dynamics in the relationship. I just think the show fails on many levels to set up the relationship. that they didn’t really frame how toxic an age gap like that could be. The show fails to really hold Karen accountable for crushing on a 17/18 year old and putting him in danger. And Like many other shows in the industry, deciding to sexualize teen characters by having adults play them is a little off to me instead of having less sexualized teen stories. I digress tho we should all be cautious of how we present fictional character’s sexuality at any fictional age.

The Redemption by Death Trope

One valid statement I do believe is warranted is Billy did not have the chance to lead a better life in the fiction. if you think he was completely redeemed I don’t fully agree with you.

This is one reason I hope Billy Hargrove comes back someway in the show because if not he will fall victim to one of the biggest tropes in media. “Redemption by death” popular examples include Kylo Ren, Loki ( too many times to count), Killmonger, etc. This is a very popular trend in Hollywood and it’s not inherently bad. Some people do die without the chance to heal and those stories deserve to be told. However, telling this same story over and over again can make the themes kinda become demoralizing like there is no possible way morally gray characters like this can heal (I will expand on this later).

Now I may have poorly named this trope because there is no redemption in death. Your character arc is finished so the audience doesn’t get to see the work it takes to actively become less harmful just a self sacrifice. And/ or the character does change and the audience doesn’t get to see the work they put in before they die. ( it rubs me the wrong way seeing character’s self sacrifice a lot of the time because it makes me question how much that character valued their life but it’s much more likely that the writers or audience just didn’t value the character. And if that’s the case why is that?)

I connect to everything in canon about Billy’s character. I’ve made worse decisions than we see Billy make in the show and understand that when you make those mistakes it’s mostly likely a call for help. If I were to die before I could say sorry and prove I will never make the mistake again. That would be a tragedy not a redemption.

What does it mean to not be redeemable in fiction?

Now in response to me some people will just say Billy can not be redeemed. And in response to that I ask what do you mean?

I personally believe anyone in the real world can be redeemed as long as they are breathing. They can learn and grow and try not to cause harm. So of course I believe in a constructed world you can choose to give any character a redemption arc.

This is where I will expand on the demoralizing nature of the over use of redemption by death stories. In my opinion I don’t see how anything Billy has done is justification for him to be deserving of death in the media or be left to rot. But sometimes that is the message people get from death in fiction that somehow the character was “deserving” of it. As if it were destined and not constructed.

This saddens me because what message are we sending when we say the actions Billy took in fiction means he was only meant to be left for dead. What could we possibly be saying about our fellow human beings who have made mistakes or abused us in the past?

Let’s take a look at Billy’s actions because he has done wrong in the fictional world. I personally do headcanon Billy as racist so let’s examine that first. Racism is taught not an innate quality of a human being and can be unlearned. Racism in the real world is built into the foundation of society and we’re all conditioned into it. To fight racism we must be willing to unlearn it and unlearning can be the first part of healing. Racism is so fraught that in unlearning it you must realize the only way to truly destroy racism is by killing/ fighting the systems that manufactures it. So yes I think Billy is racist but he can learn to not be.

The next thing is Billy beating up on kids. I understand the context he is coming from and why he could have responded that way since he was beat up on as a kid but to be able to grow from the situation he must learn that doing something that low again is something he should probably consider wrong, understand boundaries, and the effects his actions had on the group. And clearly learning to not physically assault people is not that linear but I think it can be learned and Billy may not be fully forgiven but he can learn to do better and learn that what he did was wrong. Now the question is are we gonna leave space for characters to be redeemed?

The overt villain coding of My Rat Boi

This will be short but sometimes villain coding can make it hard to sympathize with characters and we start to see them as beyond redemption. I say this because I disagree with the Duffers when they say they wanted an antagonist beyond redemption so they made Billy. Billy is not beyond redemption and even though he is framed that way it is still possible he can be redeemed in the plot line. Also when we code characters as villains we could start to dehumanize them and think of their actions as monstrous evil and think no decent human could ever commit such an act. When the character might just be imitating very common human behavior. I think in a story like stranger things we should be seeing the humanity of all the characters, even the demo dogs. Whatever tho end of short villain coding rant

Queer coding

Alright here it is Harringrove, I am chaotic!!!

Okay so I also headcannon Billy as queer for multiple reasons some being because I connect better to his character. Other reasons being that it adds dimensions to his character.

I personally think it can explain a lot of the actions we see Billy take in the story too. Like I understand how he acts more in the basketball scene if he is repressing a forming crush he has on Steve. However, Billy can be queer and not have a crush on Steve. I just think Billy being queer adds a lot to the story.

I think there is a lot of overlap between Billy acting hyper masculine but also holding a lot of insecurities that I think queer people can relate to. I think it would hurt more when Billy’s father calls him the f-slur. I just think a lot of queer people can read into Billy actions as it being coded that’s all. To me It honestly feels like all his interactions with Steve’s character are obviously sexually charged. “Am I dreaming or is that you, Harrington” “Yeah it’s me don’t cream you’re pants”

Their our so many ways to reimagine their relationships. A story where the two come to terms about their fight and the consequences of it. Our maybe the fight never happens at all and they both learn about each other secrets. Billy learns about the dead demo dog and Steve learns about Billy’s home life. So once again I am baffled on why so many people say if you ship Harringrove you are romanticizing abusive relationships. When clearly that is not the case for every shipper. Look you don’t have to headcanon it but let me reimagine my angsty enemies to lovers.

How Billy and Max’s sibling dynamics map on the real world?

Tw/ indepth reference to child abuse

I was abused as a child. When I was younger me and my little sister had a very toxic relationship. She would snitch on me whenever I did anything against the rules and in turn I would be given an ass whooping. After I was punished I would then get into a physical altercation with my sister because I was mad she told on me.

The complex relationship we see Max have with Billy is sadly more common than some would think in abusive environments. I’m kinda uncomfortable elaborating any further but me and my sister have apologized to each other and I would like to think we have both grown from it.

So the relationship Billy and Max have really speaks to me. I wish we got to see more of it and understand why Max acts so differently towards Billy in season 3. To hear people harass Billy stans who don’t think Billy deserves to die for what he did to Max doesn’t make me feel good. I imagine to a lot of abuse victims in complex family situations it’s very isolating.

End of Tw/ indepth reference to child abuse

How Billy’s trauma responses relate to real world ?

I feel like Billy as a character has a lot of the same coping mechanisms I have. I get angry, impulsive and make a lot of decisions I might regret later. I make stupid mistakes that put me and others I love in harms way sometimes. I’m not perfect but these coping mechanisms don’t mean I deserve death so of course I don’t think a fictional character like Billy does and I just want my RAT boi back!!! Pls stop comparing how other people respond to abuse as if there’s a right way every victim reacts differently and has a different support system and some have no support at all. Best advice meet them where there at or not all. Just don’t demonize their coping as they try to heal and become better (and when I say demonize I mean act as if they are irredeemable, you can still hold them accountable and call out/ call in)

How would you feel if you could relate to a character so many people said deserved to die? If you could relate more to the character if you head cannon their sexuality as being queer like yourself and people say you romanticize abusive relationships? How would you feel if people assumed your entire hyperfixation with a character was solely because they are a white cis gender man you’re attracted to? When it’s actually because so many stories about abuse are given clear black and white portrayals in media and after a lifetime of little to no representation of your experience a more nuanced portrayal (even though it’s not perfect and sadly set in a “race blind” environment) comes around and a community forms where they explore the complex tragedy in abuse. Also I find it hard to hate people who envision a relationship from fiction different then intended or from how I interpret it. But I sure don’t like it when people degrade others for how they choose to connect to the media.

You don’t have to like Billy or his character and your interpretation of his character can be more simple than mine but why harass individuals for their more complex interpretation of Billy? I’m not even saying you can’t have a “harmful” interpretation of the media , just that mine and a lot of people's connection isn’t that harmful of a coping mechanism.

We are all just people and no one is better than you but no one is worse than you either. I find it hard to believe I am the only one to ever cause harm to the ones I love. To deeply regret it afterwards but understand you can never go through life without being hurt or hurting someone but you CAN always grow from it and change.

BUT HEY THAT’S JUST ME READING TO MUCH INTO BILLY

Howdy🤠there do you want more content from me?

*groans and booing*

Alright well since y’all keep begging me. I made a whole case 4 rat man on my blog it’s right here if you’re interested

#harringrove #billy hargrove #anti harringrove #anti billy hargrove #stranger things #personal vent #my first post

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anarcho-smarmyism · 4 years

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Long post heads up

so im assuming this will be controversial but i’ve been thinking about this for a while, so please hear me out on this: pagans, even white American ones, literally are marginalized. now, i realize that by making this post i’m opening myself up to a lot of ridicule and accusations, so i ask that yall please do me the courtesy of actually considering what i have to say before you write this post off completely.

a few things to get out of the way first: to act like it’s equivalent to widespread racialized religious discrimination against well-known established religions such as Judaism or Islam is obviously wrong. to act like modern pagans aren’t mostly white and that our communities don’t have huge issues with racism is obviously wrong. i laugh at most posts criticizing pagans, because i genuinely think most of them are funny; it often comes across to me mostly as bemused roasting more than anything actually hateful. i feel like pagans often just need to learn to take a joke and take ourselves a little less seriously, as many religious people need to remind themselves. also, as someone who’s been hanging out in these groups for about 6 years now, i’ll outright tell yall that most pagan groups have ongoing issues with racism, transphobia, ableism, and other social prejudices, as well as the aforementioned predators and cults. many many pagans really do just go “lols The Spirits Don’t Care About Race silly sjws” and then appropriate the hell out closed traditions and act disrespectful as hell to the people who say it’s wrong; if you’re criticizing us for shit like this, GOOD. That’s legitimate criticism that we choose to ignore far too often.

however, more and more of the “criticism” i see on here toward pagans is just saying we’re crazy, stupid, gullible, or other shitty nu-atheist talking points that have just been repurposed to target a growing fringe subculture that has been widely declared an acceptable target by culturally christian progressives AS WELL AS the religious right.

the justification for this is that no white pagans are discriminated against for being pagan, and i know for a fact that isn’t true. all the pagans i talk to report having to keep it a secret from family, friends, or coworkers -but for this post, i’ll keep it limited to my own experiences. i was abused by my parents as a minor for converting from christianity to a pagan faith, and having to keep my religion and experiences a complete secret from most of my friends and family really did take a toll on me. now, as an adult, i’ve learned to keep my religious beliefs a secret from most strangers and especially anyone who might know me at work, because people will start treating you differently -either like you’re evil, or gullible and stupid in a way they (mostly) don’t accuse mainstream religions of. when i was in the psych ward, i was refused my paperback holy text which i had brought with me for the same reason a christian would bring a bible into a scary and traumatic situation, but because the mainly-christian patients were bullying me for being pagan and the nurses didn’t want to deal with it, so the staff withheld it from me for 3 days until i could talk to a social worker. when my aunt took me in so i could move away from my parents, she coaxed me into sharing about my religion, which i naively did because it was rare for people to take an interest in it, and then the next day she told me if i didn’t get rid of all my “occult” stuff (mostly books and tarot cards), she would kick me out. i can’t get holy days off and in some states i can’t run for a lot of public offices unless I’m Christian. (yeah, i realize the post is talking about atheists, but people use those same laws against pagans as well, because as far as they’re concerned, we don’t believe in God, either.)

if any of this happened because i converted to buddhism or another well-known established open religion, people would call it religious discrimination. non-pagans who talk about this almost always say “yeah well you CHOSE to convert that religion, it isn’t a culture or religion you were raised in”, as though that means we’re under some obligation to quietly absorb any insults or abuse related to something so universally personal as one’s faith -like why does it matter to yall if i was raised in this faith, or converted? why is a faith only “real” if you were raised in it, or are adopting it literally from your direct ancestors?

i realize to people who aren’t religious that this may sound like nonsense, but my experience as a kid wasn’t that it looked cool and trendy and i wanted to feel special. i’m sure that some people are like that, but on the by and large, that’s just a strawman. Personally, whether my experiences that led me to convert were real or not is irrelevant: I was a kid who needed to be able to confide in adults about what i was going through, but the fact that I had started to perceive the world vastly differently than Christians did, and no longer believe in Christian theology, meant it was unsafe for me to do so. not being able to talk to anyone about it without getting either literally accused of being crazy, demonically possessed (happened many times) or like i was just stupid caused real, lasting damage. instead of being the source of stability, comfort, and fellowship that faith can be during difficult times, it’s often been something i feel i need to either hide from others, or defend my right to care deeply about.

as a result of people taking this attitude toward pagans, i and many other young pagans have to rely on online spaces to find any kind of fellowship with people who believe the way that we do. this is isolating and uncomfortable for most, and legitimately dangerous for some. see, if you confine a whole subculture to be either a joke or Satanic depending on your political leaning, the subculture generally develops an Us Against Them in-group/out-group mindset, which makes it much easier for predators and some actual cults to prey on vulnerable people.

keep in mind: pagans are not a monolith; it’s an umbrella term for a lot of different religions. (i don’t claim any kind of ancestral tie to my particular pagan faith, but since it was always an open culture and religion, it doesn’t matter if i have a “hereditary right” to it.) there are a lot of pagans of color, even including Heathenism which has a literal Nazi problem. (i’m referring to people i’ve met irl as well as online here.) lots of young queer people who feel rejected by mainstream religions find a lot of comfort in worshipping queer icons like Loki, Dionysus, Artemis, Set, etc. When you write off pagans as a whole for being just dumb racist white people, you throw them under the bus by erasing them. you isolate them the same way you do me, and they are even more likely to experience the kind of discrimination and abuse i have. is it really worth it to make them feel even more alienated in their religious choices, because they go against the mean-spirited stereotype that secular and non-pagan progressive people have crafted for pagans?

Also, antifascist and progressive pagans are already swimming against the tide to make social prejudices persona not grata within our spaces, and it makes pagan reactionaries’ recruitment tactics WAY more effective when the world around new, insecure pagans tells them they’re automatically racist privileged white people for being interested in paganism. you don’t need to have any sympathy for bigots, but you should at least acknowledge the end result of this kind of rhetoric. i don’t like it either, but most people aren’t going to stop being pagan, or stop talking about it publicly altogether (as that seems to be the only thing that will make yall happy lol) when people make fun of them constantly; they’re gonna dig their heels in and do the in-group out-group thing people always fuckin’ do in these situations. that mindset makes otherwise-normal people, who may have been willing to learn and grow out of their background prejudices under other circumstances, easier for the truly racist monsters in our community to begin grooming.

paganism is a swiftly growing counterculture, and it’s more than likely that at some point it’s going to be part of a larger conversation on religious freedom. i don’t think people on tumblr or twitter roasting pagans is discriminatory necessarily, but life isn’t split up into “discrimination” and “okay things to do”. yall are pretty obviously just petty and excited to make fun of people who you think are weird, because yall can easily insist that every pagan is a privileged racist cis white lady, therefore it’s totally okay to be rude, dismissive, or just outright mean-spirited to pagans as a group because you’re pretending your bullying is enlightened or required by social justice laws. this is what we in pagan culture call “a dick move”.

besides, it’s ten thousand times more accurate and funnier to roast us for being too self important and arguing over whether emoji spells are Serious Magic or not lmao.

#pagan #smarmyanarchist #this ended up really long because im trying to cover all my bases before ppl start twisting my words lmao #ableism

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sortinghatchats · 4 years

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On Slytherin Primaries

Slytherins believe in the importance of taking care of their own. Everyone else is a person, but so are they, so a Slytherin’s job, before everything else, is taking care of them and theirs. This makes what Slytherin are known for, their ambition and ruthlessness, stand out strikingly even while a Slytherin’s core is not inherently selfish or cut-throat.

All of the Houses contain people with great ambitions and great desire for accomplishment and the furthering of their goals. Gryffindors will take on the world to do what they think is right, and are willing to make sacrifices and overrule those who would compromise on what needs to be done, and that’s nothing if not ambition. What makes the Slytherin ambition stand out so significantly is that it’s seen as a selfish ambition, and a guiltlessly selfish one at that. That drive is tied to personal achievement instead of idealistic achievement, and that makes it easier to point at.

But this is key: selfish ambition is idealistic ambition for a Slytherin. A Slytherin’s first priority is to their loved ones not because they love deeper or harder than the other Houses (they don’t), but because it is wrong to betray or abandon your people and right to defend and promote them. Loyalty and defense of your own is an inherent part of the Slytherin morality.

A Slytherin does not generally feel guilty for valuing themselves, for taking time for their own mental or physical health, or for sacrificing other things for the safety and happiness of the people they love. They might feel vulnerable, or judged, or guilty for not feeling guilty, especially if they live in the kind of family or culture where humility and self sacrifice are seen as the greatest goods– but without watching eyes and the words of peers and authority figures bouncing around their skulls, a Slytherin would feel comfortable and even validated in the idea that they have both a right and duty to take care of their own selves before anything or anyone else.

An exception to this is a Slytherin who’s managed to kick themselves out of their inner circle. For whatever reason, they don’t feel like they deserve their own help or kindnesses. Their “me and mine” priorities are still apparent but now it’s only “mine.” They fiercely and selflessly prioritize the individuals they love, value, or feel responsible for, while excluding their own self. A Slytherin like this can look somewhat like a Hufflepuff Primary, erring towards selflessness, but take a look at how they prioritize between their best friend v. a stranger in need. If they feel guilty for abandoning the stranger, they’re probably a Puff; Slytherins feel desperately like they owe things to their people, but they don’t feel like they owe people in general. (Also keep an eye out for a Burned Hufflepuff in this example, though– a Slytherin wouldn’t care strongly about not helping the stranger, except for general empathetic tickles; a Hufflepuff would be survivably eaten up inside; a Burned Puff would force themselves not to care because it’s the only practical thing).

Not prioritizing their own would feel wrong to a Slytherin. It would feel selfish, and might feel like giving into social pressures instead of standing up for what matters to them. This can hold true emotionally even when logically, prioritizing you and yours is not the best thing to do. In The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen, a Slytherin Primary who only wants her family to be safe, almost runs away from her place as an important political symbol on the chance that she and her loved ones could make it on their own, hiding from the capitol. She doesn’t– but she really wants to, and when things go wrong she feels guilty for not acting to put her loved ones first.

Canonical Basis

Individual loyalty is something tied to Slytherins in the books and movies, but isn’t something that gets focused on. “Or perhaps in Slytherin you’ll make your real friends,” the Sorting Hat says in the song from Harry’s first year. It doesn’t explicitly use the loyal like it does for Hufflepuff, but that’s consistent because often, Slytherins don’t look loyal. If you’re not one of their most important people, who you can often count on one hand, they’re not particularly loyal. Loyalty doesn’t have an inherent worth for Slytherins the way it does for Hufflepuffs. Loyalty is less given and more earned.

And we have canonical examples of Slytherin loyalty, extreme and dramatic as it is. Slytherin loyalty is Narcissa Malfoy abandoning her Dark Lord for the sake of her son. Slytherin loyalty is the way Pansy Parkinson freaks out every time something injures Draco, and the way she was willing to sacrifice Harry to save herself and her friends (and the way she expected other people to agree with that judgement call).

It’s Slughorn’s guiltless willingness to distance himself from Dumbledore’s war–until old Dumbly gave him a reason to risk his own precious skin. It’s Snape, unwilling to let go of Lily Potter even after decades have passed and her son has grown up an orphan; even when there is nothing still to gain from holding onto his loyalty to her, and even when he hates her son.

Moving outside of canon (because there are nearly no positive descriptions of Slytherins with canon– Narcissa is a bigot, Pansy a bully, Slughorn a spineless creep, Snape a child abuser):

Slytherin is Ender Wiggin going back to Battle School not to save the world but because his sister asked him to, and Bean going to Battle School because he could get an education there that would save himself and then staying to save Ender. Slytherin is Pepper Potts telling Tony that, to hell with the world, he needs to take care of himself first. It’s Andrea from The Walking Dead pulling a gun on the people who try to get between her and her sister’s body. It’s Toph Beifong not giving any fucks except that hey, Twinkle Toes needs her. It’s Briar Moss of Circle of Magicplunging into death itself, refusing to let Rosethorn go.

Where Molly Weasley, in HP canon, weeps but drops her son Percy when he turns on them for the Ministry, blood purist and loyal daughter of House Black Narcissa Malfoy betrays the Dark Lord and saves Harry Potter for Draco’s sake. As the final, epic battle of good and evil culminates and commences in Hogwarts, Narcissa takes her family and she disappears. The ideals of her war were only her priority until her son was in direct danger.

Slytherin v. Hufflepuff

Slytherin and Hufflepuff are the two Loyalist Primaries. People, and not ideals, are at the core of their judgement calls. But where Hufflepuffs tend to bond to groups, Slytherins bond with individuals.

Slytherin Primaries are horrified to see someone let down a friend. To turn on a loved one for words as insubstantial as truth or justice or the greater good feels like a very particular kind of madness. Sure that’s what you’re supposed to do, a Slytherin might say, but that’s not what you actually want, is it? Your person is right here. They are real, and they are breathing, and they need you, and they are yours. It’s an extreme Slytherin who would let the whole world burn for the sake of a friend, but every Slytherin Primary would be at the very least tempted.

We discuss in the Hufflepuff Primary post how when someone is dropped from a Hufflepuff’s group of “people,” it is a dramatic fall into becoming a dehumanized “thing.” This Hufflepuff dehumanization can take many forms– outsiders, “other”ing people, having strong beliefs in the justification behind more institutionalized types of exclusion like racism, sexism, classism. But it’s a divide where there are people who are people, and then there are people who are not-people.

The Slytherin divide is very different. There is no mechanism inherent to the Primary that removes someone of their personhood. Rather, they are removed of their status. There is a possessive drive to Slytherin, and while that varies in intensity across different individuals, it puts the divide on the basic line of “mine” and “not mine.” We find it helpful to talk about it in terms of being in someone’s inner circle, but it’s not usually that binary. Like it is with everyone, loyalty comes in a gradient.

But Slytherin’s loyalty is more selective than the other Houses’. Where a Hufflepuff extends some initial degree of loyalty on the basis of your being a person, with a Slytherin any loyalty you gain is earned from the bottom up; you start at 0.

A Decided House

But when the major part of your moral system that you feel viscerally is to protect yourself and your people, there are a lot of gaps in how you interact with the world and with moral situations. What do Slytherins do when confronted with gross wrongs like slavery, like murder, like unjust war–wrongs that don’t touch their people? It depends on the Slytherin. But this is why we count a Slytherin as a Decided house along with Ravenclaw, despite the core of their moral system being very much felt.

Some Slytherins simply don’t care–they opt out of the moral complications of the rest of the world and what touches other people and choose a contented apathy about the things that don’t intrude on their space– but other Slytherins construct ways to interact with these situations.

Perhaps they do so by understanding that other people have connections as strong and important as their own, or by building something more complex. Sometimes Slytherins can build systems that look like Ravenclaw systems– systems based on observational data, on adopted systems, or by keeping the moral guidance that they were taught growing up. The defining difference between these constructed additional Slytherin systems and the Ravenclaw Primary system is that the Slytherins are aiming for function and don’t have the same drive for truth. It matters much less if the system they build is true than if it is functional. The system should optimize for what they care about and what makes them happy, but this moral code is not viscerally driving like a Slytherin’s desire to protect those closest to them.

Some Slytherins latch specifically on to the morality of their most important person (or people), either because they trust them or because they value them. Samwise Gamgee, the loyal hobbit who follows Frodo through hell and back, adopts Frodo’s system. Sam does great good, bravely and well, but he does it, “For Mr. Frodo! For the Shire! And for my Gaffer!” Jeff Winger from Community also sometimes follows this pattern, absorbing the moralities of his study group and best friends. Both these characters are, to put it simplistically, wearing bracelets that read “What Would Mr. Frodo Do?” and “What Would The Study Group Do?” etc. For Jeff, it’s a bit more because Annie will pout at him if he’s doesn’t at least try.

Aang, from Avatar the Last Airbender, builds himself a stunning replica of his beloved deceased father figure Gyatso’s ethical system and he lives in it all his life. Latching onto a parental figure or early (sometimes, in media, deceased) influence’s morality is a form of love common for young Slytherins. Train Heartnet of Black Cat (who Saya changes so completely), Kai of Korra (who takes in Jinora’s culture like it’s his own morality), and Edward Cullen of Twilight (who takes Carlisle’s pacifism to self-hating extremes), are all examples of that.

Alternatively, a Slytherin might spend a lot of their time living in a Primary model–it might matter deeply to them to do good and right. If they have that drive for truth, they might have a Ravenclaw Primary model as opposed to just a Slytherin’s functional construction. They might also have a Gryffindor Primary or a Hufflepuff Primary model. They could even have a Slytherin Primary model– but one that is loyal and dedicated to a larger group of people, like a whole peer group, the population of a whole city, or even humanity in general. (This can look a bit like a Hufflepuff– one major visible difference is that particularly Slytherin sense of possessiveness.) They could live in that model for all conflicts and decisions that are separate from and non-threatening toward their most important people and be very functional with that.

MCU’s Tony Stark is an example of this type. (He’s also an example of a Slytherin who has kicked himself out of his own inner circle). He is a Slytherin Primary dedicated to Pepper and Rhodey (and, as of Avengers 2, he’s likely coming to value the other Avengers this way), but he has built a driving model to allow him to interact ethically with the rest of the world. It is this model that drives Iron Man and his sustainability and charity projects. This model (we think it’s probably Gryffindor Primary) is likely also what will drive him to one side or the other in Civil War. As long as Pepper or one of his own is not in direct danger (though the danger to himself is irrelevant), Tony will act firmly in service of his model.

But dropping that model in order to stand by someone you love, or in order to protect yourself, doesn’t feel like a failing. Sticking to that modelled morality at the expense of betraying or abandoning one of their own would make a Slytherin feel guilty and wrong. Being able to put the things and concepts you like aside for the sake of the people who need you feels more righteous than any moral posturing. It feels practical and it feels right, just as strongly as a Gryffindor Primary’s internal moral compass points them.

It’s a people based system, but it’s still an intuitive model of right and wrong. Betraying your own is the worst kind of crime. Loyalty is precious and terrible; it makes you vulnerable. It’s given sparingly, deeply, and a Slytherin will stand by their loyalties through the same death and fire that a Gryffindor would brave for the sake of doing the right thing, or a Hufflepuff to help someone in need.

In the same vein, when a Slytherin realizes that someone else doesn’t put the same value on the people they profess loyalty to, they might react similarly to a Gryffindor realizing that morality isn’t intuitive to everyone. Some things are just wrong, a Gryffindor might protest. But they’re your child–your spouse–your friend, a Slytherin will cry, confused and unsettled. How could you?

Petrified or Burned Slytherin

While there are certainly Slytherin Primaries who don’t care about any people who aren’t theirs, many Slytherins, especially ones who enjoy being more social, have wide circles of friends and acquaintances; people they will go out of their way to help, and whose company they enjoy, whose confidence they trust (to a point). What defines a Slytherin is not a lack of these concentric circles, but rather how sharply those lines of stratification are drawn. Wanting to help someone doesn’t mean you’re loyal to them. Wanting to help them at the expense of your comforts, your values, your commitments and sometimes even your self–that does.

You end up with Slytherin Primaries on both ends of the spectrum: ones who have decided that a huge group of people are “theirs” (to the extreme of: the world is my responsibility and I have bonded to every single individual contained in it), and ones who have decided that they themselves are not one of their most important people, but maybe a friend or lover is.

You can also get Slytherins whose only important person is themselves. This can be done healthily, especially for short periods of times, but when it’s driven by a fear of those close attachments, it becomes a phenomenon we call the Burned or Petrified Slytherin.

The Petrified Slytherin is a Slytherin who has no inner circle and no plans to get one. Whether through death, betrayal, abandonment (from either side), or through never having had any to begin with, the Petrified Slytherin has decided that having important people is too dangerous. Having those strong ties leaves you open to pain and weakness, and the pleasure of those connections aren’t worth the despair that comes from their seemingly inevitable loss. In this way, they close themselves off to meaningful connections out of what is ultimately fear (though from the inside, it’s far more likely to be experienced as a rational, sensible decision given the circumstances of the world), and gives them a stony exterior that seems impenetrable, resolute, and cold.

Even when not Petrified, though, the Slytherin Primary often seems cold. This comes not from any actual inherent coldness, but because they often show their warmth only to their inner circle. This is hugely influenced by your other houses, especially when you get the warmth of the Hufflepuff Secondary involved, or have a warm model– but even then, there is a special and somewhat exclusive kind of warmth saved for those who are held the closest.

A Slytherin Primary in our system is defined first and foremost by the intensity and priority of their loyalties to individual people, however few or many. And the way to break a Slytherin– whether you’re stopping their plans or crushing their will– is to either take away their people or to threaten to. Narcissa betrays Voldemort, fully aware of what that could mean for the safety of herself and her husband, because Draco was more important than anyone or anything. Azula of Avatar the Last Airbender, for all her coldness and lack of mercy, does what she does because she wants desperately to be loved and accepted by her father. When Annabeth, his friends, or his mother are threatened, Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson loses all other priorities– his canonical fatal flaw is that he would let the world burn to save a friend. Nothing brings out the fierceness in a Slytherin like getting in between them and their loved ones.

To a Slytherin the inner circle of close loyalties is likely to be a much smaller number than the people they care about and consider friends. A petrified Slytherin is therefore not necessarily someone who is friendless, or who has no social ties, or who lacks affection for people. It’s not even a Slytherin without some sort of a hierarchy of important people.

A petrified Slytherin is a Slytherin who has decided, either consciously or not, that letting people into that inner circle– devoting themselves to someone with that deep, thoughtless Narcissa-type or Azula-type loyalty– is too dangerous. It’s too terrifying. When someone is that close, they become a huge risk. They might die, or you they might stop loving you, or stop liking you, or something awful might happen to them and it might be your fault. Something awful might happen to you because someone might threaten your people and use them against you, and you would be helpless. If you couldn’t find a way to maneuver through the situation, you would have to do whatever was demanded of you to keep your people safe, because nothing would be worse than losing them and having it be your own fault.

Surviving a situation like that (losing someone or having their lives used as collateral against you) is one of the ways we see Petrification often happen.

Not all Slytherins will Petrify in such a situation– Finnick from The Hunger Games, a Slytherin Primary whose only people are Mags and Annie, has resisted Petrifying even when there are good arguments that it would be a far more adaptive thing to do. The Capitol’s only way of controlling him is by threatening to hurt the people he loves, and even after Mags is killed, he stays resolutely attached to Annie. It gives him the strength to carry on, but is also the weakness that the Capitol is exploiting. If Annie died, Finnick would be very likely to Petrify.

Bean, in Ender’s Shadow, is a Petrified Slytherin for most of the book. He likes people, and sometimes idolizes people, but their main purpose in his life is the utility of them. His connections are a cold, logical thing, closer to an alliance than to a friendship, and often not mutually so. Bean is interesting because we never see the Petrification process. He’s born into a survival situation and is cold and hard and determined to live from the first page. It is only at the very end, when he grows attached to Nikolai and allows himself to consider the possibility that he, too, could have a family who he loves and who loves him, that we see that Petrification begin to melt away.

Jeff Winger from Community is another example. A ruthless lawyer only out for his own gain and without an attachment in the world except to maybe his car, he’s the perfect example of a Petrified Slytherin. His tentative, slow-moving back and forth journey into attachment to the other characters is a character arc of un-Petrifying. He’s better at it some days than others.

With female characters in particular, the petrified Slytherin is hugely tied to the trope of the Ice Queen. From TV Tropes: “Her signature characteristic is that she is cold; the ambiguity comes from what “cold” means. She has a cold heart, a frosty demeanor; she attracts but will never be wooed.” Characters who fit this trope are not always Petrified Slytherins, but the trope is an important parallel if not just because of the imagery they share: cold, hard, unyielding, nothing to lose.

When a Slytherin loses their closest attachments, they are left with only their personal ambitions and with the morality system that is usually constructed around those loyalties. In the sense that the way that they now primarily frame their interactions with the world is constructed, they often appear to look like Ravenclaw Primaries here. The most visible and useful difference here, especially from the outside, is that they don’t have the Ravenclaw drive for truth. Their system doesn’t have to be true or right, but simply functional. If they have a Ravenclaw Primary model that gives them some of that drive, then they might be indistinguishable from the Ravenclaw Primary unless there are are counterexamples of Slytherin loyalty from other points in their life.

Despite it seeming to at least be a trend, not all Petrified Slytherins look like Ravenclaw Primaries. Petrified Slytherins with models of other Primaries might happily and healthily inhabit those models as their main way of interacting with the world, and this has the potential to be entirely functional. The reason that the model would remain a model though, and not indicate an actual change in Primary, would be that first, there still remains the possibility to un-petrify, and second, even if there is nothing substantial underneath it, the model could still be dropped.

This potential for to drop that model and fall to an underlying lack of structure and direction is part of what gives desperate Slytherins their reputation of being fearsome. Azula is a great, if extreme, example of this when she loses everything at the end of season 3 of Avatar. Mental illness (in the form of at the very least hallucinations and almost definitely a lot more) and trauma also have of course a huge influence on the intensity of everything that happens, but that basic directionlessness, the way that Azula has nothing left after she loses her father, the way she’s so susceptible to being haunted by her mother’s memory, hits so hard because she had structured everything around her Slytherin morality. She had no real goals or ideals underneath that, and so she had no structure to keep her up when that crumbled.

One of the good things about Petrification, as scary and awful as it is, is that it’s a good way to survive a bad situation and it’s possible to un-petrify (see: Defrosted Ice Queen). Because fear of attachment is at the heart of petrification, instead of needing reality to prove your doubts wrong (as the other fallen Houses must), you only need one person to prove that attachment is worth the risk.

Elementary’s Jamie Moriarty follows a common path here in that, despite her pretending to be un-petrifying for our protagonist Sherlock, the one person she ends up actually attaching to her is her daughter. She is the Slytherin woman who un-petrifies upon becoming a mother. Regina in Once Upon a Time also follows this path, becoming through that a subversion of the Evil Queen, who is often a Petrified Slytherin who does not un-petrify (see her mother, Cora, and the symbolic plot of removing her heart so that no one can use it against her).

It’s really common in media for characters who have closed themselves off to attachments to be called psychopaths, both by the fans and the writers, when they are, in fact, not. A lot of them have empathy, or at least the capacity for it, and are instead Petrified.The definitive and intentional split between the self and meaningful attachments, due to loss, trauma, selfishness, or fear, is different from the inability to intuitively create those attachments. Calling this “petrification,” rather than inaccurately calling it “psychopathy,” gives the character flexibility to recover from it that doesn’t end up as either a contradiction of established character or as a downplaying of actual serious mental illness.

To sum: Petrification happens when a Slytherin cares about their important people so intensely that pain from their loss, or the potential for future loss, outweighs the positives of having important people. It stops being worth it. Even if it leaves the Slytherin with a directionless system and a cold center where there is an aching potential for great warmth, it feels safer and better to not attach to anyone that strongly.

tl;dr Slytherin Primary

Slytherin is a Decided House, and Internal House, and a Loyalist House.

As a Decided House, Slytherins, unlike Hufflepuffs (our other loyalists), prioritize "their" people first. Those people are found and chosen by the Slytherin. It's not about who is in front of them, or who needs them most, but who they have decided to love.

As a Internal House, like Gryffindor, Slytherin Primaries carry a certainty and a moral fortitude inside of themselves. When they are sure they are right, in the defense of themselves or their loved ones, they will not be swayed by outside influence or pressure.

As a Loyalist House, Slytherin puts people first. Unlike the Hufflepuff, they put their people first. They’re content with valuing some people over others without necessarily thinking some people are better than or worth more than others. In fact, putting their own people first feels right. This is something owed. Not valuing the people you profess loyalty to most would be a betrayal, a cowardice, an abandonment. The best thing you can be is there for the people you love.

Ambitions live in all Houses but Slytherins’ is notorious because it often looks the most selfish– it often is the most selfish. Part of a Slytherin’s morality is understanding that your first duty is to yourself and the people you love– higher minded goals are all pomp and circumstance, trying to make yourself feel good. At the heart of things, this is why we are here: for ourselves.

#sortinghatchats #sorting hat chats #slytherin

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metvmorqhoses · 4 years

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Why do you think Voldemort never hooked up with another woman but Bella ? Were his choices limited to his ranks ? Were most women afraid of him ? Did he find Bella convenient since she was his DE and married? Don't men get bored with too much devotion ? She let him know how much she cared about him . Was she simply good in bed so he didn't need to look elsewhere? Was her being married another thing he found convenient? Was she convenient or special ? How was he as a 'lover' in your opinion ?

well, you provoke me and i oblige - or as i like to call it: the 100th novel-length essay on bellamort.

the reasons that in my eyes ultimately made bellatrix “the only one” for voldemort are many and various, but at the end of the day it has everything to do with who and how i think he was as a person.

as i said many times before and i feel the duty to keep specifying, over the years i started to consider these characters in a more adult and complex way, imagining them as real life persons and not fairy-tale villains and that’s where my analyses of them come from. sadly what jkr told us about their relationship is close to nothing, so all we have here is thought processes and fervent opinions about their few, filtered by harry’s eyes and painfully public interactions.

now, voldemort’s character, if looked at beyond the pure ideal of power and darkness that he so carefully built around himself, is clearly a human being as deep as the very pit of hell and full of contradictions, twistedness, beauty and voids to fill.

bear with me, because you cannot really understand what i think bellatrix was for him without explaining how i see his psychology first, which i think many many times is overly simplyfied and excused with a shrug and a “well, he’s evil”:

voldemort was born with a genius intelligence and magical talent, the most handsome looks and yet he was not only completely and utterly alone, but also a completely broken human since birth. his mother porpuselly conceived him putting his muggle father under a love potion, so he’s basically the direct offspring of the worst kind of rape: not only his mother abused his father physically, forcing him to have sex with her without his consent, but even emotionally, because she forced him to have feelings for her - as untrue as they might have been. not only that, but voldemort was clearly unloved by his parents from the very start, abandoned by them both in different ways before he was even capable to remember them. he had then been raised and abused since the most tender age in a filthy orphanage where everyone shunned and feared and made him believe he was insane, treating him god’s knows how badly, because he was able to do “things” no one else could, things that made people uncomfortable (think at how bigots can abuse children nowadays with the excuse of possession without magic or the devil even existing, i wouldn’t be surprised if tom as a child was put under monstrous rituals with the hope of exorcising him, it was after all the 30s in a really degraded and poor environment). imagine the hate, the resentment, the fear, the basic instinct to survive and only caring about himself that must have started to boil inside of him in the most dangerous of ways. he surely had the inclination to became what he ultimately became from birth, but goodness how life helped him. he learnt to defend and avenge himself from such a hostile world from the very start, it was a matter of surviving or succumbing. and then, at some point of his young age, he finally started to master and taste something that made him feel good, that made him feel right about himself, he started to enjoy the feeling of being in control of his abusers, of manipulating them, of hurting them, of taking what he wanted from them, the feeling of power - and moreover, a power that directly originated from inside himself - his power. he obviously started to consider himself his own savior, he started to intimately feel special, better than anyone, superior. at the same time he started to hate muggles, because muggles had been his first real source of utter isolation and pain (thing reinforced by the discovery, many years later, that his father, the reason he had to go through all that, was one of them). then, out of the blue, he was told that “more” he had so strong inside of himself was indeed magic. imagine the feeling of validation he must have felt about his uniqueness and superiority, imagine how powerfully his addiction to this wondrous thing he could finally name must have taken definitive root inside of him. magic became his everything, his religion, his purpose, his assurance of never having to feel weak, vulnerable or defenseless ever again. magic was the fuel that alimented everything he literally had in the world and that he ever felt comfortable to ever want (uniqueness, power, superiority, extraordinariness). human relationships were ludicrously out of the question in his eyes since he was a child. human beings were not reliable nor trustworthy. human beings were an utter disappointment, everyone was beneath him and no one really deserved his consideration anyway. magic was everything that really mattered. without magic, he was literally nothing - or at least that’s what life had convinced him of. an existence of his not desperately clutched on and inextricably intertwined with it was not something he even dared to fathom for himself. if you understand this, if you understand the perversion of his dependency towards magic, everything he ever did becomes painfully clear. magic for him was something so fundamental, so deeply mingled with his very being (and this is probably also the reason he indeed was the most powerful wizard that ever lived), that growing up he became more and more desperately obsessed about preserving and strengthening it. this is the root of his every choice, from venturing into the dark arts turning out completely disfigured but incredibly more powerful, to believing he could actually be the first immortal in history, to his entire anti-muggle politics. not only muggles were inferior and disgusting to him, but their mingling with wizards was in his eyes a dreadful threat to the very existence of magic and therefore everything special he ever had been. as a result, he ventured deeper and deeper into it, never to come back. no magic act seemed against nature to him, because he considered himself one with it. this is where his iron-rooted god complex comes from and i think it’s something a little more complicated than simple megalomania. but this is also where his problems with his own humanity (and other’s) started. at some point he really considered himself more than human, of a different species. no aspect of humanity meant anything to him, on the contrary, i think he had terrible problems with every basic human behavior, from caring, to having to eat and drink to survive, to sweating and having sexual impulses - and, of course, to the ultimate form of humanity, dying. i think he was profoundly disgusted by his and other’s physicality, to anything that could remind him of his mortality, even a breath.

and that’s why i don’t really think even as a most handsome young men he even spared girls or women a glance. i think he considered the whole thing far beneath him, as if a god was interested in exchanging fluids with worms. i also think deep down there was simultaneously an intellectual and not only a physical element in his disgust: i think he considered his good looks something pleasant to look at in a mirror (he only deserved the best, even in a face), quite useful, but in general absolutely meaningless and void. not to mention that was his muggle father’s face, the revolting beauty that doomed it as a child and that shamed him every day looking back at him in the mirror. the entire crowds of girls that without any doubt must have fawned over him at school were probably amusing to him in rare particularly good days and insufferable and despicable the rest. no one deserved to be around him, no one could understand his real greatness or void anyway, no matter how low they rightfully bowed - and they had to bow, but from a fair distance. i think the mere thought of sex was something absolutely revolting to him.

until.

now you are probably starting to understand why i needed this endless preface to answer your question.

i think bellatrix was something really unexpected for him, that came relatively late in his life while he was busy with everything else, building an empire and becoming a most powerful immortal creature, and it was extraordinary enough to enkindle something in him, in his humanity, at first even without his consent or him even noticing.

yes, you heard me right, despite all i have just written, lord voldemort was still human being and of a really damaged and flawed kind, no matter what he stubbornly wanted to believe about himself.

i think the first immediate reason that sparkled voldemort’s interest was that bellatrix somehow reminded him of himself. and we do know that he was really able to love only himself. this is the ultimate narcissistic thought process. she was everything he admired of his own qualities: beautiful, dark, incredibly intelligent and magically skilled, proud, ambitious, ruthless, power-angry. they were incredibly similar. but she was at the same time somehow more than him, she actually was what he thought he was supposed have been: the heir of one of the most noble and ancient magical families of britain, pure powerful blood in her veins. it’s obvious he took her under his wing, thinking such a talent was a most valuable addiction to his cause, especially because along all that, bellatrix was able from the start to show him a loyalty, usefulness and adoration of a different, truer kind from all the others. and i think he really valued that, i think he was completely aware she was the only person he could really trust and i think it wasn’t a secondary thing for someone who had never really trusted anyone from the day he was born - that he was aware of it or not. one thing is believing your followers are loyal to you and your cause (an example is snape), another is having the absolute certainty that someone will always be at your side, no matter how desperate the situation - and only bellatrix was ever able to provide him that. he was intelligent enough to tell the difference. i think bellatrix’s unfaltering loyalty and mind-presence at azkaban for fourteen years after his apparent demise was something that really won his respect and admiration. and no, i don’t really think voldemort was the kind of person that gets tired of too much devotion, at least not a true, sincere one, as the kind bellatrix’s provided him from day one. i actually think he was in desperate need of it, consciously or not. voldemort probably had, in my vision, a peculiar relationship with devotion and servility: he thought everyone owed him as much, but was at the same time quite annoyed by too much of it (killing people who said too much “my lords”). but not too much of bellatrix’s, and it’s probably because of the fact hers was of a deeper and more honest kind of devotion.

we don’t have to forget bellatrix was almost as egocentric, proud and vain as him, this is the woman who sits on chairs as if they were thrones. she was wizarding royalty and she sure as hell acted accordingly, she was used to have everyone bow to her (and if they didn’t, she made them). and the fact that she, this fearless tigress, only bowed to him, out of admiration and not blind fear (even if a healthy component of fear was indeed present in her as well), was certainly a reason of great pleasure and amusement to him. don’t even forget i totally believe bella amused him as hell. can you imagine anyone else rendered a blathering idiot in front of him, following him so closely, too closely, speaking without asking, etc, who would have lived to tell the tale? bella was allowed things no one else was, pet name included.

she was one hell of a woman, painfully like him, that literally melted and would have died any moment for him. this started to move things inside of him that i’m sure at first he didn’t like, especially the physical impulses. i said many times i’m convinced at first he was resolute into killing her. the fact that in the end he didn’t tells the tale for me. who knows, maybe the killing in the middle turned into other primordial activities. sexually, i do think he had the need to use a fair amount of violence, not so much because he wanted to hurt her, but to deal with the mortality/humanity aversion, and i think bellatrix was the only woman who was mentally built to not only understand, but enjoy that. i think bella’s legs went week in front of his displays of power, no matter if the victim was her. i wasn’t really a matter of dominating her spirit, but totally possessing her body for him. funnily enough, i think he absolutely respected her in his own twisted way and that she totally thought the same. that respect had nothing to do with their physical and political power dynamics.

again, they were absurdly similar and well-matched. i think at some point she became invaluable to him in a similar way magic was, so much he actually risked his own life and failure to ensure she wasn’t captured again. everyone else was disposable, but not his bella. he could have punished her the rare times she let him down, but as a death eater, not as a person. i think bellatrix was the only case in which the two things in his mind were actually separate even if linked.

they fond each other in darkness and voldemort, lover of uniqueness, surely understood the extraordinary quality of such a relationship. he wanted only the best for himself, he deserved as much, and bellatrix was the actual best in his mind. she, having a similar thought, had inside of her a dramatic and overwhelming pull towards darkness, power and violence, and he embodied them all and much more in her eyes.

so, in conclusion (because i could go on for several other hours), for sure bellatrix was also, along with all the other things, convenient to him, not so much because she was married, because i think neither of them gave an effing fuck about it, but because she was perfect for him in basically every single way (best death eater, genius, skilled, pureblood, devious, not afraid of his darkness but drawn to it, loyal, submitted to him but only to him), as if he himself had carefully molded out of clay his ideal match.

as to how i think voldemort was as a lover - really, really painfully disturbing, as his whole character. i don’t think him really able to separate passion and violence, for example, and i see him really prone to dangerous mood swings, trust issues and destructive tendencies. he was also surely overly possessive of bellatrix, his bella. he was the only one entitled to treat her as he pleased, no one else, no matter if he had just crucioed the hell out of her. lay a finger on her and you are dead. also, i don’t really think he ever told her just how much she meant for him, on the contrary i think whenever he thought she was getting too close and him too attached, he would mercilessly push her away, even violently.

but at the same time i see him quite thoughtful and appreciative of everything bellatrix was, much more than any other man or husband of that society. he really thought she was the best besides himself. that he told it out loud or not, i think he was well aware of all bellatrix’s qualities, especially the ones she directed towards him, and was intimately and very deeply proud of her. i think he was really grateful for her existence and the moment she died he just knew everything was lost.

#bellamort #here i am voldemort's psychologist welcome to my office #lord voldemort #tom marvolo riddle #bellatrix black #bellatrix lestrange #hp #in the land of gods and monsters #villains #one and one thousand stories lis told #asks/replies #anon

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logicalstansadvice · 3 years

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No, I am not american so it has nothing to do with politics. Snowflakes = Gen Z

Anon #2

Dear heroine, gen z is offended by everything. No one likes them. That's not critical thinking. They are bullies and promote cancel coulture for stupid reasons like people disagreeing with them. But yeah, in their snowflakey minds they think they are better than everyone and see their own sociopathic behaviour as critical thinking probably. Also, who said hate? Did you ever hate anyone. This ain't hate. It's my opinion. Exactly what I was saying. Disagree = hate = let's shut them up

Anon #3

Hey, diff anon here, but really? A generation that does more critical thinking? No one is hating them, Gen Z are the ones who spread hate even if they claim to do the exact opposite. EVERYTHING offends them and they have no tollerance whatsoever for anyone who dares to disagree with them. So sorry but I'm with the first anon on this matter.

So I see we opened up a can of worms...

Ruby Woo

Okay. Maybe not better at critical thinking but definitely better at noticing that society is a shithole for most people.

Also, none of the things these young adults are speaking out about are new. The only real difference between older folks and them are the fact they (& Millennials and Gen X) have easier access to media.

POC, Femmes, Queer, & disabled folks are harder to ignore today. Gen Z aren’t snowflakes they’re just harder to ignore. They’re not offended. They’re just being honest about how this world works for people who are not white, affluent, able bodied, cishet men.

And another thing, cancel culture is not real. People just don’t like being held accountable. There are consequences for saying or doing bigoted/abusive things. Criticism is not canceling. The people who scream about freedom of speech are just being whiny about people who use theirs to let them know they’re trash.

Just so you know those #canceled #So&SoIsOverParty tags are all jokes. Can’t you all just take a joke and get over it? Or is taking a joke reserved for groups of people who have actual lynchings in their history?

Heroine

#anon asks answered #asks answered

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greatfay · 3 years

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controversial opinions?

Cold pizza actually not good. Tastes like angry bacteria.

There’s a completely separate class of gay men who are in a different, rainbow-tinted plane of reality from the rest of us and I don’t like them. They push for “acceptance” via commercialization of the Pride movement, assimilation through over-exposure, and focus on sexualizing the movement to be “provocative” and writing annoying articles that reek of class privilege instead of something actually important like lgbtqa youth homelessness, job discrimination, and mental health awareness.

Coleslaw is good. You guys just suck in the kitchen.

Generational divides ARE real: a 16-year-old and a 60-year-old right now in 2021 could agree on every hot button sociopolitical topic and yet not even realize it because they communicate in entirely different ways.

Sam Wilson is a power bottom. No I will not elaborate.

Allison’s makeover in The Breakfast Club good, not bad. She kept literally and metaphorically dumping her trash out onto the table and it’s clearly a cry for help. Having the attention and affection of a smart, pretty girl doing her makeup for her was sweet and helped her open up to new experiences. Not every loner wants to BE a loner (see: Bender, who is fine being a lone wolf).

Movie/show recommendations that start with a detailed “representation” list read like status-effecting gear in an RPG and it’s actually a turn-off for me. I have to force myself to give something a try in spite of it.

Yelling at people to just “learn a new language” because clearly everyone who isn’t you and your immediate vicinity of friends must be a lazy ignorant white American is so fucking stupid, like I get it, you’re mad someone doesn’t immediately know how to pronounce your name or what something means. But I know 2 languages and am struggling with a 3rd when I can between 2 jobs and quite frankly, I don’t have the time to just absorb the entire kanji system into my brain to learn Japanese by tomorrow night, or suddenly learn Arabic or Welsh. There are 6500 recorded languages in the world, what’s the chance that one of 3 I’ve learn(ed?) is the one you’re yelling at me about. Yes this is referring to that post yelling at people for not knowing how to pronounce obscure Irish names and words. Sometimes just explaining something instead of admonishing people for not knowing something inherently in the belief that everyone must be lazy entitled privileged people is uh... better?

Stop fucking yelling at people. I despise feeling like someone is yelling at me or scolding me, it triggers my Violence Mode, you don’t run me, you are not God, fuck off. Worst fucking way to "educate” people, it just feels good in the moment to say or write and doesn’t help. Yes I’ve done it before.

Violence is good actually.

Characters doing bad things ≠ an endorsement of bad things. Characters doing bad things that are unquestioned by the entire rest of the cast = endorsement of bad things, or at the least, a power fantasy by the creator. See: Glee, in which Sue’s awfulness is constantly called out, while Mr. Shue’s awfulness rarely is because he’s “the hero.” See also: the Lightbringer series, in which the protagonist is a violent manipulator who is praised as clever, charming, diplomatic, and genius by every supporting character (enemies included), despite the text never demonstrating such.

Euphoria is good, actually. It falls into this niche of the past decade of “dark gritty teen shows” but actually has substance behind it, but the general vibe I get from passive-aggressive tumblr posts from casual viewers is that this show is The Devil, and the criticism of its racier content screams pearl-clutching “what about the children??” to me.

Describing all diagnosed psychopaths as violent criminals is a damaging slippery slope, sure. But I won’t be mad at anyone for inherently distrusting another human who does not have the ability to feel guilt and remorse, empathy, is a pathological liar, or proves to be cunning and manipulative.

It’s actually not easy to unconditionally support and love everyone everywhere when you’ve actually experienced the World. Your perspective and values will be challenged as you encounter difficult people, experience hardship, are torn between conflicting ideas and commitments, and fail. My vow to never ever call the cops on another black person was challenged when an employee’s boyfriend marched into the kitchen OF AN ESTABLISHMENT to scream at her, in a BUSINESS I MANAGED, and threaten to BEAT the SHIT out of her. Turns out I can hate cops and hate that motherfucker equally, I am more than capable of both.

Defending makeup culture bad, actually. Enjoy it, experiment, master it, but don’t paint it as something other than upholding exactly what they want from you. Even using makeup to “defy the heteropatriarchal oppressors!” is still putting cash in their pockets, no matter how camp...

Not every villain needs to be redeemed, some of you just never outgrew projecting yourself onto monsters and killers.

Writing teams and networks queerbaiting is not the same as individuals queerbaiting. Nick Jonas performing exclusively at gay clubs to generate an audience really isn’t criminal; if they paid to go see him, that’s on them, he didn’t promise anyone anything other than music and a show. Do not paint this as similar to wealthy, bigoted executives and writing teams trying to snatch up the LGBTQA demographic with vague ass marketing and manipulative screenplays, only to cop out so as not to alienate their conservative audiences. And ESPECIALLY when the artists/actors/creators accused of queerbaiting or lezploitation then come out as queer in some form later on.

Queer is not a bad word, and I’ve no clue how that remains one of few words hurled at LGBTQA people that can’t be reclaimed. It’s so archaic and underused at this point that I don’t get the reaction to it compared to others.

People who defend grown-woman Lorelai Gilmore’s childish actions and in the same breath heavily criticize teenage religious abuse victim Lane Kim’s actions are not to be trusted. Also Lane deserved better.

Keep your realism out of my media, or at least make it tonally consistent. Tired of shows and movies and books where some gritty, dark shit comes out of nowhere when the narrative was relatively Romantic beforehand.

Actually people should be writing characters different from themselves, this new wave in the past year of “If you aren’t [X] you shouldn’t be writing [X]” is a complete leap backward from the 2010s media diversity movement. And if [X] has to do with an invisible minority status (not immediately visible disabilities, or diverse sexual orientations and gender identities, persecuted religious affiliations, mental illness) it’s actually quite fucked up to assume the creator can’t be whatever [X] is or to demand receipts or details of someone’s personal life to then grant them “permission” to create something. I know, we’re upset an actual gay actor wasn’t casted to play this gay character, so let’s give them shit about it: and not lose a wink of sleep when 2 years later, this very actor comes out and gives a detailed account of the pressure to stay closeted if they wanted success in Hollywood.

Projecting an actor’s personal romantic life and gender identity onto the characters they play is actually many levels of fucked up, and not cute or funny. See: reinterpreting every character Elliot Page has played through a sapphic lens, and insulting his ability to play straight characters while straight actors play actual caricatures of us (See also: Jared Leto. Fuck him).

I’m fucking sick of DaBaby, he sucks. “I shot somebody, she suck my peepee” that’s 90% of whatever he raps about.

“Political Correctness” is not new. It was, at one point, unacceptable to walk into a fine establishment and inform the proprietor that you love a nice firm pair of tits in your face. 60 years ago, such a statement would get you throw out and possibly arrested under suspicion of public intoxication. But then something happened and I blame Woodstock and Nixon. And now I have to explain to a man 40 years my senior that no, you can’t casually mention to the staff here, many of whom are children, how you haven’t had a good fuck in a while. And then rant about the “Chinese who gave us the virus.” Can’t be that upset with them if you then refused to wear your mask for 20 minutes.

Triggering content should not have a blanket ban; trigger warnings are enough, and those who campaign otherwise need to understand the difference between helping people and taking away their agency. 13 Reasons Why inspired this one. Absolutely shitty show, sure, but it’s a choice to watch it knowing exactly what it contains.

Sasuke’s not a fucking INTJ, he’s an ISFP whose every decision is based off in-the-moment feelings and proves incapable of detailed and logical planning to accomplish his larger goals.

MCU critique manages to be both spot-on and pointless. Amazing stories have been told with these characters over the course of decades; but most of it is toilet paper. Expecting a Marvel movie to be a deeply detailed examination of American nationalism and imperialism painted with a colorful gauze of avant-garde film technique is like expecting filet mignon from McDonalds. Scarf down your quarter pounder or gtfo.

Disparagingly comparing the popularity and (marginal) success of BLM to another movement is anti-black. It is not only possible but also easy to ask for people’s support without throwing in “you all supported BLM for black people but won’t show support for [insert group]” how about you keep our name out your mouth? Black people owe the rest of the world nothing tbh until yall root out the anti-blackness in your own communities.

It is the personal demon/tragic flaw of every cis gay/bi/pan man to externalize and exorcize Shame: I’m talking about the innate compulsion to Shame, especially in the name of Pride and Progress. Shame for socioeconomic “success,” shame for status of outness, shame for fitness and health, shame for looks, shame for style and dress, shame for how one fits into the gender binary, shame for sexual positions and intimacy preferences, shame for fucking music tastes. Put down the weapon that They used to beat you. Becoming the Beater is not growth, it’s the worst-case scenario.

Works by minorities do not have to be focused on their marginalized identities. Some ladies want to ride dragons AND other ladies. The pressure on minorities to create the Next Great Minority Character Study that will inevitably get snuffed at the Oscars/Peabody Awards is some bullshit when straight white dudes walk around shitting out mediocre screenplays and books.

Canadians can stfu about how the US is handling COVID-19 actually. Love most of yall, but the number of Canadian snowbirds on vacation (VACATION??? VA.CAT.ION.) in the supposed “hotbed” of my region that I’ve had to inform our mask policies and social distancing to is ASTOUNDING. Incroyable! I guess your country has a sizable population of entitled, privileged, inconsiderate, wealthy, and ignorant people making things difficult for everyone, just like mine :)

No trick to eliminate glasses fog while wearing my mask has worked, not a single one, it actually has affected my job and work speed and is incredibly frustrating, and I have to deal with it and pretend it’s not a problem while still encouraging others to follow the rules for everyone’s safety and the cognitive dissonance is driving me insane.

It’s really really really not anti-Japanese... to be uncomfortable with the rampant pedophilia in manga and anime, and voice this. I really can’t compare western animation’s sneakier bullshit with pantyshots of a 12-year-old girl.

Most of the people in the cottagecore aesthetic/tag have zero interest in all the hard work that comes with maintaining an isolated property in the countryside, milking cows and tending crops before sunrise, etc. And that’s okay? They just like flowers and pretty pottery and homemade pastries. Idk where discourse about this came from.

You think mint chip ice-cream tastes like toothpaste because you’re missing a receptor that can distinguish the flavors, and that sucks for you. It’s a sort of “taste-blindness” that can make gum spicy to some while others can eat a ghost pepper without crying.

Being a spectacle for the oppressive class doesn’t make them respect us, it makes them unafraid of us. This means they continue to devour us, but without fear of our retaliation.

Only like 4 people on tumblr dot com are actually prepared for the full ramifications of an actual revolution. The rest of you just really imprinted onto Katniss, or grew up in the suburbs.

Straight crushes are normal. They’re people first, sexual orientation second. Can’t always know.

The road to body positivity is not easy, especially if what you desire is what you aren’t.

You’re actually personally responsible for not voluntarily bringing yourself into an environment that you know is not fit for you unless you have the resolve to manage it. Can’t break a glass ceiling without getting a few cuts. This one’s a shoutout to my homophobic temp coworkers who decided working a venue with a drag show would be a good idea. This is also is a shoutout to people who want to make waves but are surprised when the boat tips. And also a shoutout to people who—wait that’s it’s own controversial opinion hold up.

Straight people can and should stay the fuck out of gay bars and queer spaces. “yoUrE bEInG diVisiVe” go fuck yourself.

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bloodraven55 · 4 years

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Analysing Blake’s Taste in Literature

Okay so this title is a bit misleading, but basically I want to go through each of the books that Blake talks about in the latest issue of the DC comic and consider what they might be referring to in terms of her character and the wider story. Other people have already figured out what real world novels they match, but I want to look at their meaning now.

First, we have THE CORPSE DOCTOR, which Blake describes as being about “the horror and responsibility of creation.”

This one seems fairly simple to me. The God of Darkness created the creatures of Grimm, which are certainly horrifying, and both he and especially the God of Light refuse to take responsibility for humans, a.k.a. their creation, and their part in causing the world’s problems, choosing to abandon Remnant entirely instead.

As for how this relates to Blake specifically... well, she’s always been the member of the team with the strongest sense of purpose, and she’s been politically active since she was a child, meaning that she feels the most social responsibility of the main characters. And she signed up to fight Grimm as a way to atone for her past, meaning that she is fighting both the Grimm, which are a physical manifestation of horror, and her own personal demons, which are a mental/emotional/psychological manifestation of horror.

Second, we have THE UNDEAD, which Blake describes as being about “[one’s] fear of other people.”

Again, to me this is quite clearly pointing to racism against the Faunus and prejudice in general, suggesting that those who are bigoted see people who are different to them as subhuman somehow.

Blake’s link to this story is even more blatant since most of her life has been spent in the White Fang working to achieve equality for her people and her desire for justice for the Faunus is one of the most defining parts of her character.

Third and last, we have THE VAMPIRE COUNT, which Blake describes as being about “the fear of the other, contamination, and the loss of control over women.”

Now there’s a bit more to unpack here to let’s go piece by piece. Where the first two titles mostly touch on more generally applicable themes, this one is almost exclusively dealing with Blake’s deepest personal issues.

For a start, “the fear of the other” represents her fear of becoming like the monsters she seeks to fight— like Adam. Then “contamination” symbolises Blake’s previously established belief that she is a toxic influence on others and that she poisons the lives of anyone she gets close to. And finally, “the loss of control over women” is a blatant statement regarding her breaking free from Adam’s abuse and manipulation.

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that she talks about that book specifically with Yang, Adam’s foil and her current love interest who he becomes exceedingly jealous of because she’s a symbol of Blake’s power to make her own choices. Totally a complete accident and not some sort of message whatsoever.

Anyway that was my take on what the various books that Blake talks about mean— oh wait, there's one more to cover, and it’s maybe the most interesting. I am of course referring to THE MAN WITH TWO SOULS, which is the book that Blake gives to Yang, and which she describes in Volume 1 as being about someone with two souls that are “each fighting for control over his body.”

Now the most obvious application of this to the show’s narrative is as foreshadowing for the Ozpin/Oscar situation, which it definitely is, but I think it applies to Blake herself too. We know from Monty’s notes that Blake is both Beauty and the Beast in one, so I believe that this story is also meant to be a metaphor for her duality in that regard, particularly since the novel is so strongly connected to her throughout canon.

Okay, that's actually the end now. Hope y’all enjoyed my little analysis here.

#rwby #bumbleby #blake belladonna #yang xiao long #adam taurus #rwby analysis #my analysis #rwby meta #my meta #rwby spoilers

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arcticdementor · 3 years

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One can divide antiracism into three waves. First Wave Antiracism battled slavery and segregation. Second Wave Antiracism, in the 1970s and 1980s, battled racist attitudes and taught America that being racist was a flaw. Third Wave Antiracism, becoming mainstream in the 2010s, teaches that racism is baked into the structure of society, so whites’ “complicity” in living within it constitutes racism itself, while for black people, grappling with the racism surrounding them is the totality of experience and must condition exquisite sensitivity toward them, including a suspension of standards of achievement and conduct.

…

I suspect that deep down, most know that none of this catechism makes any sense. Less obvious is that it was not even composed with logic in mind. The self-contradiction of these tenets is crucial, in revealing that Third Wave Antiracism is not a philosophy but a religion.

The revelation of racism is, itself and alone, the point, the intention, of this curriculum. As such, the fact that if you think a little, the tenets cancel one another out, is considered trivial. That they serve their true purpose of revealing people as bigots is paramount—sacrosanct, as it were. Third Wave Antiracism’s needlepoint homily par excellence is the following:

Battling power relations and their discriminatory effects must be the central focus of all human endeavor, be it intellectual, moral, civic or artistic. Those who resist this focus, or even evidence insufficient adherence to it, must be sharply condemned, deprived of influence, and ostracized.

Third Wave Antiracism is losing innocent people jobs. It is coloring, detouring and sometimes strangling academic inquiry. It forces us to render a great deal of our public discussion of urgent issues in doubletalk any 10-year-old can see through. It forces us to start teaching our actual 10-year-olds, in order to hold them off from spoiling the show in that way, to believe in sophistry in the name of enlightenment. On that, Third Wave Antiracism guru Ibram X. Kendi has written a book on how to raise antiracist children called Antiracist Baby. You couldn’t imagine it better: Are we in a Christopher Guest movie? This and so much else is a sign that Third Wave Antiracism forces us to pretend that performance art is politics. It forces us to spend endless amounts of time listening to nonsense presented as wisdom, and pretend to like it.

…

Many will see me as traitorous in writing this as a black person. They will not understand that I see myself as serving my race by writing it. One of the grimmest tragedies of how this perversion of sociopolitics makes us think (or, not think) is that it will bar more than a few black readers from understanding that I am calling for them to be treated with true dignity. However, they and everyone else should also realize: I know quite well that white readers will be more likely to hear out views like this when written by a black person, and consider it nothing less than my duty as a black person to write it.

A white version of this would be blithely dismissed as racist. I will be dismissed instead as self-hating by a certain crowd. But frankly, they won’t really mean it, and anyone who gets through my new book on this subject, which I am now publishing in serial, will see that whatever traits I harbor, hating myself or being ashamed of being black is not one of them. And we shall move on. As in, to realizing that what I am documenting matters, and matters deeply. Namely, that America’s sense of what it is to be intellectual, moral, or artistic; what it is to educate a child; what it is to foster justice; what is to express oneself properly; what it is to be a nation—all is being refounded upon a religion.

This is directly antithetical to the very foundations of the American experiment. Religion has no place in the classroom, in the halls of ivy, in our codes of ethics, or in deciding how we express ourselves, and almost all of us spontaneously understand that and see any misunderstanding of the premise as backward. Yet since about 2015, a peculiar contingent has been slowly headlocking us into making an exception, supposing that this new religion is so incontestably good, so gorgeously surpassing millennia of brilliant philosophers’ attempts to identify the ultimate morality, that we can only bow down in humble acquiescence.

But a new religion in the guise of world progress is not an advance; it is a detour. It is not altruism; it is self-help. It is not sunlight; it is fungus. It’s time it became ordinary to call it for what it is and stop cowering before it, letting it make people so much less than they—black and everything else—could be.

…

However, there is nothing correct about the essence of American thought and culture being transplanted into the soil of a religious faith. Some will go as far as to own up to it being a religion, and wonder why we can’t just accept it as our new national creed. The problem is that on matters of societal procedure and priorities, the adherents of this religion—true to the very nature of religion—cannot be reasoned with. They are, in this, medievals with lattes.

We need not wonder what the basic objections will be: Third Wave Antiracism isn’t really a religion; I am oversimplifying; I shouldn’t write this without being a theologian; it is a religion but it’s a good one; and so on. I will get all of that out of the way as we go on, and then offer some genuine solutions. But first, what this is not.

…

My interest is not “How do we get through to these people?” We cannot, at least not enough of them to matter. The question is “How can we can live graciously among them?” We seek change in the world, but for the duration will have to do so while encountering bearers of a gospel, itching to smoke out heretics, and ready on a moment’s notice to tar us as moral perverts.

One more thing: We need a crisper label for the problematic folk. I will not title them “Social Justice Warriors.” That, and other labels such as “the Woke Mob” are unsuitably dismissive. One of the key insights I hope to get across is that most of these people are not zealots. They are your neighbor, your friend, possibly even your offspring. They are friendly school principals, people who work quietly in publishing, lawyer pals. Heavy readers, good cooks, musicians. It’s just that sadly, what they become, solely on this narrow but impactful range of issues, is inquisitors.

I considered titling them The Inquisitors. But that, too, is mean. I’m not interested in mean; I want to get these people off the bottom of our shoes so we can actually move ahead. Whoops—that was mean. But I intended it as an accurate metaphor—this ideology impedes moving ahead.

The author and essayist Joseph Bottum has found the proper term, and I will adopt it here: We will term these people The Elect. They do think of themselves as bearers of a wisdom, granted them for any number of reasons—a gift for empathy, life experience, maybe even intelligence. But they see themselves as having been chosen, as it were, by one or some of these factors, as understanding something most do not.

“The Elect” is also good in implying a certain smugness, which is sadly accurate as a depiction. Of course, most of them will resist the charge. But its sitting in the air, in its irony, may also encourage them to resist the definition, which over time may condition at least some of them to temper the excesses of the philosophy, just as after the 1980s many started disidentifying from being “too PC.”

…

But there is a difference between being antiracist and being antiracist in a religious way. Following the religion means to pillory people for what, as recently as 10 years ago, would have been thought of as petty torts or even as nothing at all; to espouse policies that hurt black people as long as supporting them makes you seem aware that racism exists; to pretend that America never makes any real progress on racism; and to almost hope that it doesn’t because this would deprive you of a sense of purpose.

Elect ideology affects people in degrees. There are especially abusive Elect ideologues. Some are comfortable ripping into people in person; more restrict the nastiness to social media. Other Elect do not go in for being mean, but are still comfortable with the imperatives, have founded their sociopolitical perspectives firmly upon them, and are hard-pressed to feel comfortable interacting socially with people in disagreement. They allow the openly abusive Elect to operate freely, seeing their conduct as a perhaps necessary unpleasantness in the goal of general enlightenment.

I do not wish to imply that The Elect are all of the especially abusive type; the vast majority are not. The problem is the degree to which the perspective has come to influence so many less argumentative but equally devout people, whose increasing numbers and buzzwords have the effect of silencing those who see Elect philosophy as flawed but aren’t up for being mauled.

The Elect are, in all of their diversity, sucking all the air out of the room. It must stop.

#john mcwhorter #read the whole thing

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bustedbernie · 4 years

Link

Oh hai. Lately there have been a slew of think pieces about Bernie Sanders being the front-runner, discussing how his movement has threatened to withhold their votes from Democrats if Bernie isn’t the nominee. Hidden between the lines is the idea that Democrats, in general, owe their votes to Sanders if he is the nominee, regardless of the fact that his voters do NOT owe Dems their votes if he is not. So, rather than call them out for using the same tactics that lost the 2016 election, there is a faction in the media that is growing more and more permissive to the idea that Bernie and his Revolution are somehow the victims in all this, and that mainstream Dems have done them wrong time and time again when picking a candidate that appeals to the Dems masses.

Let me let you in on a little secret.

I don’t owe Bernie Sanders or his fucked off revolution of stanerific emo-marxist cyber-terrorists a goddamn bit of shit the fuck all. When these utter fucking geniuses in the media reflect on how energized and dedicated his enthusiastic fans are when engaging in their harassment of the average Dem, they seem to think the people who have been abused don’t fucking matter. These Dems are people who have never done anything whatsoever to deserve the constant bullying, cyber-stalking, targeting, threats, or in my case, being falsely reported to the FBI by fans of Bernie who seek to silence dissent. What these media personalities don’t understand is that the abuse by Bernie fans, in his name, actually causes the gap between MAGA and Berners to shrink to the point where it is non-existent. There is no real difference between the abuse from either side, and since Sanders isn’t the warm and fuzzy type that reaches out to the people who have been abused, often there appears to be no real difference between Sanders and Trump.

Slate:

Still, the Bernie-or-Busters, small as they may be, have spun their position into an argument for why others should vote for Bernie Sanders too, regardless of the platform they prefer. As efforts in political persuasion go, this contingent puts forward an openly hostile argument. Sanders is the only electable candidate, they suggest, not just because of his policies, but because of the single-mindedness of his followers. The reason you should vote for Sanders is that we won’t vote for anyone else. You don’t want Trump to win again, do you?

No. But I also don’t want Bernie Sanders to win. In a case of one not liking either candidate, people look to see which movement they feel most comfortable with, Bernie’s or Trump’s. If it turns out that both movements engage in racist behavior, sexism, and homophobia, it really doesn’t matter what they profess to be in favor of as far as policy is concerned, what matters is how they treat their fellow citizens by and large. We all know that unless we take back the Senate with a large majority that can defeat Republican attempts to stop legislation from hitting Sanders’ desk, nothing will pass anyway. So, if you’re not in favor of Bernie’s policies in the first place, and do not like him or his movement, why would you be enthusiastic about showing up for the guy who leads the movement that engages in attacks on you?

Yes, it sounds like ugly hostage taking—not a brilliant persuasive strategy but a crude ego-boosting exercise for a group of leftists who can’t resist the impulse to lord some power over an electorate that doesn’t normally consider them relevant. But that’s exactly what makes it so normal, even understandable, in a depressing “we’re all human” sort of way. [NO.] Because the truth is this: Every threat these Sanders stans are explicitly making is one the venerated Centrist Swing Voter makes implicitly—and isn’t judged for. The centrist never even has to articulate his threat.

Excuse me, it IS ugly hostage taking, it is NOT normal, and no, it doesn’t make me see them as more human.

Another thing is this: not everyone opposed to Bernie Sanders is a Centrist, Moderate, or a Swing voter. Many of us are as far left or to the left of Sanders, I for one am definately to his left, and had supported him in 2015. That was until his racist abusive Bern Mafia targeted me for expressing concern about his lack of outreach to black voters. I noticed his lack of history in hiring black people (D.C. is Chocolate City, we could not find one black staffer in 2015; I am open to correction on this point; if he had black staffers prior to 2015, please send me receipts because I have been looking for them.), lamented and mocked his poor showing at Netroots, fumed over his constant MLK appropriation, jeered at his white ass crowds, and felt humiliated by his inability to discuss black people in ways that were not centered on Poverty or Prisons. It is HIS FAULT that his voters have no clue how to engage Black people without resorting to stereotypes and outright bigotry, because he does the same thing.

Buzzfeed:

Sanders, seated across the table, a yellow legal pad at hand, responded with a question of his own, according to two people present: “Aren’t most of the people who sell the drugs African American?” The candidate, whose aides froze in the moment, was quickly rebuffed: The answer, the activists told him, was no. Even confronted with figures and data to the contrary, Sanders appeared to have still struggled to grasp that he had made an error, the two people present said.

No. He did not apologize for spreading this stereotype, and yes, it shows how he views black people in general.

Slate:

One of many disorienting factors in this election cycle is the fact that the left is more popular and more viable than it has been in a long, long time. They have not one but two exciting candidates, and both are offering policies closer to what leftists actually want than most presidential contenders in U.S. history have.

I wanted the party to move to the Left towards the direction of where I stood too. I can’t really name my ideology because it’s so far left I am almost hitting the wall. Additionally, I am more Libertarian than Sanders, who trends more authoritarian. Yet, I instinctively know that playing a game of “my way or the highway” won’t lead to a place where poverty programs are expanded up and out, ensuring all necessities of life are provided. It will lead to gridlock and we will make zero progress.

Because folks at the center tend to be wooed by multiple candidates, they’re used to having options, and they’re used to the experience of their vote determining who ends up with the nomination. This means that they usually like the candidate they vote for, in the primary and in the general. Not so for leftists, who get to merely tolerate the candidates they end up having to vote for in order to mitigate the damage from a worse result.

Here’s the rub… I’m Black. None of this shit applies to me, because as a Black person, I rarely even LIKE or TRUST any of the candidates I have been voting for over the years. I also usually, especially in State and Locally, don’t have any say so in determining the nominee of any race. I am always stuck voting for whoever White People choose as the candidate, and as such, am merely tolerating whoever is chosen to prevent a worse outcome, which usually means preventing a racist shitmonger from winning a race.

Speaking of race… Progressives refuse to address race as a factor in anything; they like to ignore race in everything they do and allow Prison Policy to stand in for Racial Policy, so it’s impossible to get them to see my reality. They get this shit from Bernie.

From Buzzfeed:

“The real issue is not whether you’re black or white, whether you’re a woman or a man,” he said in a 1988 interview. “The real issue is whose side are you on? Are you on the side of workers and poor people or are you on the side of big money and the corporations?”

Not much has changed with Bernie, as you know, Bernie never changes, because he was born as a 72 year old yelly man, just like Benjamin Button, but louder and not as cute.

“It’s not good enough for someone to say, ‘I’m a woman! Vote for me!’” No, that’s not good enough. What we need is a woman who has the guts to stand up to Wall Street, to the insurance companies, to the drug companies, to the fossil fuel industry,” the Vermont independent senator and former Democratic presidential candidate said in a not-so-subtle rebuke to Hillary Clinton”

Bernie’s attacks on Identity Politics filtered down to his base, causing them to feel confident in their attacks on Blacks, LGBTQ, and Women who brought up issues of race, sexuality, and gender over the past few years. They love to say shit to black people online that they would never say to an actual Black person IN PERSON, because they are scared as fuck of Black people. Kinda like Bernie. The refrain of “that’s identity politics, not real policy’ rang out constantly on social media the past few years to the point where pointing out racism, homophobia, and sexism was met with swarms of white men attacking Black people, All Women Who Dared To Be THAT Bitch, LGBTQ, and really, anyone worried about social justice issues that focused on identity. The attacks were and ARE bigoted in the extreme.

This is racist as fuck and is one of the ways the Bernie Titty-Babies managed to marginalize Kamala Harris and drive a wedge between her and Black Voters. Somehow they thought keeping it going would make us like dusty ass Bernie more, but they’re stupid, because we don’t even like that geriatric Bernadook now.

This is homophobic.

Bernie’s supporters are engaging in a hate campaign against Mayor Pete and are trying to convince the world that they are not being homophobic, they are just saying Pete is suppressing his dangerous serial killer nature by being so straight laced. This is fucked up because they are attacking a gay man for being “straight appearing” in spite of the fact that his seeming straightness is how he interacts with a world that hates gay people, and has at times (and Still Does) MURDERED men and women who are gay for not assimilating or conforming to hetero-normative stereotypes. Bernie ignores this behavior from his fans like he ignores all of their nasty hate campaigns. I blame him.

This is misogynistic. No explanation needed.

Racist and fat shaming. Black hair is not your fucking business, bitch. Back the fuck up.

This is just blatantly false and caused people to harass Kamala Harris supporters until they stopped using the Yellow Circles she asked supporters to wear, it stems from the misogynoir his fans engaged in towards Kamala. Bernie has never said shit, so I blame him.

Bigotry. Also erasure of Biden’s Black support in a effort to make it seem as if Bernie is the candidate of diversity. Bernie is at fault, he also erases minorities.

Sexist. Also, damn near all of his fans seem to hate Obama on the same level and with as much heat as MAGA. Why the fuck would we want to join in unity with this man when his fans HATE the first black President. Oh, you think Bernie has nothing to do with setting the tone?

“The business model, if you like, of the Democratic Party for the last 15 years or so has been a failure,” Sanders started, responding to a question about the young voters who supported his campaign. “People sometimes don’t see that because there was a charismatic individual named Barack Obama, who won the presidency in 2008 and 2012.

“He was obviously an extraordinary candidate, brilliant guy. But behind that reality, over the last 10 years, Democrats have lost about 1,000 seats in state legislatures all across this country.”

Bernie doesn’t fucking like Obama either.

Sexism. Racism. Bernie does the worst with Black Women, and is often dismissive when asked a question by one of us. So, his fans see nothing to lose by targeting us in particular, and we in turn are likely the largest group of people willing to sit this one out if Bernie manages to come out on top. The media is no help whatsoever to marginalized people, because they ultimately weave a narrative where Bernie comes out the victim.

We can already see it happening amongst the Children of the Bern, where they have taken to labeling K-Hive, a movement started by a Black Woman (Me) for a Black Woman (Kamala Harris), “Liberal ISIS” for our resistance to Bernie and willingness to defend the other candidates from the attacks levied by the Berner Swarm.

Oh, cry me a fucking river! We don’t dox, cyberstalk, harass, abuse, try to get people fired, engage in bigotry, we learn from our mistakes, and we never make it our mission to ruin someone’s life.

We simply turn the tables on the bros and ask tough questions, like Kamala Harris. If that breaks you down, you were already broken before you found us. Oh, yeah. That’s another thing. We don’t go looking for Berners to abuse; we wait until they come to abuse US and refuse to play along.

Regardless of what poor Peter Daou says, there is no “Unadulterated Hatred” in asking if someone has checked on him.

So, yes, I can blame Bernie for the nastiness of his movement and choose not to ever join it no matter what. Progressives love to play forever victims, even while they engage in their vile abuse, but I do not have to empower their movement or help them elect Bernie. Maybe if enough people sound the alarm and let him know we will not be helping him in November while suffering constantly at the hands of his Branch Bernidians, then he will have no choice but to be a leader and fucking lead these assholes into being decent people. I don’t expect the abuse to magically end if Bernie becomes President or loses to Trump, and I also don’t expect him to do shit about it, so I guess I’m just Never Bernie. What I am now stuck with is the same as always; White States get to vote first and create the narrative that Dem voters are in favor of whoever these powerful white voters choose, and I am sick of it and sick of Sanders. I didn’t become a Democrat to not only be marginalized by the White Moderate, but to also suffer abuse from the punk ass White leftist bitchmade humdinger of a Revolution. I’m not here to empower shitfucks that search me out no matter where I am just to heap abuse on me, threaten me, or report me to the FBI as a possible MASS SHOOTER, all because I think Bernie is an old bigot who minimizes Black oppression to appease the white voters he thinks he’ll need to win the General.

I’m just Never Bernie, deal with it or die mad about it. I don’t care which.

#neverbernie #bernie #berniesanders #bernie sanders #berniebros #bernie bros #notmeus #feelthebern #long post #longpost #faq

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toxicbolts · 5 years

Text

It has been more than four months since I left this blog.

I have had more than enough time to think. I mostly left this blog because of two main reasons:

1. Toxic environment that was making me unhappy, and yes, that includes mob mentality that is so so so prevalent in online activism. I was fed up, I am still fed up, and it drained my critical thinking skills to a point that I only did things or said things because others said it was the right thing to do. I consider myself clever enough to look for my own answers, without feeling that I have to feel continuously guilty about it or I’m idk angering the greater good. That having doubts is normal and human, that arguing and wanting explanations is the best way to overcome your own ideas and to become a better person.��

I was raised to obey, and that was what I was doing here. Me engaging w people online like, arguing w them in kind of violent ways was another symptom. I almost got in legal trouble because of it

2. The “what happens next” feeling. Leaving or remaking most of my social media accounts meant losing contact with lots of people that I had considered close mutuals. And it also meant forcing myself to move on. I have had two jobs since then. Done an official language exam, and another statal one. I’m studying another degree right now.

When I left, I left my discord username and number here. I was even open for people to get my phone number if they wanted to. I really did want to leave an open door for anyone who wanted to contact me. I had to block a couple of people who did have an absolutely unhealthy way of treating me, and I didn’t have the patience to deal with it in a... well, patient way.

The thing is, I had more than 700 followers back then. Not too many, but more than enough. Most of those were mutuals. I felt liked. My stuff was reblogged often. I got asks almost every single day. I truly, truly felt liked, like I was a part of something.

The moment I had doubts, even if I was... open to keeping in touch, most of them disappeared. I still write, my ao3 has not been deleted, and my fanfics are in the tags I used to write for. The support is mostly... gone. And again, almost nobody contacted me after it all happened. I felt devastated, and I realised that what I thought that was something beautiful, meant nothing.

I mean, after reading this, I’m sure that most of you have forgotten about me. Or outright hate me now. That my follower count will drop again, that I’ll get hateful messages, if I do not get what I got back in the day, which was... well. Almost absolute silence.

The truth is, most cyber activists dislike... dissidents. I realised that the more vocal I was about my doubts, the less support I got about basically everything. The truth is that I was seen as a traitor back in the day.

But you know what, this is about my happiness. And I’m not going to let myself drown because of the need of doing the “right” thing, or the need to be liked and accepted. I have accepted I am a grey person, like every fucking body. And that it’s my turn to learn on my own, not to just repeat EXACTLY what a self righteous dumbass has said online because if I don’t, I’m a bigot according to whatever rules. And no, I’m not talking about political correctness, nor I have suddenly become an asshole. You all know exactly what I’m talking about, but you can pretend otherwise. Your problem, not mine, not anymore.

I’m not letting anyone ruin my life any longer. Yesterday I laughed sincerely in front of my abuser’s face, a famous Spaniard fanartist (who is also a bi activist and whose activism mostly consists in such complex statements such as “transphobia is bad” and “aw bigotry makes me sad”), who got no backlash even when many people know what she did to me. The one who is successful in fandom spaces because of her shitty drawings that have no feelings at all. The one who showed me better than any words how rotten both activism and fandoms are. A gal who is in her 20s, speaking like a goddamn teenager and rejecting the real world because she is nothing without online communities. Unhealthy, cold, and feeling at home in an empty world. I realise I deserve more than what she is, and what those spaces have to offer.

I deserve better. That’s why I left, and that’s why I now have a new tumblr with like 20 followers in which I post just a little about fandoms, in which I don’t give my personal info to every dumbass that thinks they have the right to know everything about me. I write what I want to write, being respectful but also not feeling guilty.

Do whatever you want with this post. Get angry at me, block me because of it. Take my experience and start creating your own. Whatever makes you happy.

What I do know is that I’m out of this hellhole and I’m not coming back. My discord is still there, even after four months of silence. I doubt that anyone who hasn’t talked to me in four months wants to do it now, even less after reading my post.

If it makes you happy, keep pretending to like people and patting them in the back ONLY if they say what you want them to say. Keep not caring about them as people, keep pretending you care about justice when you only care about looking good, about hurting people because you feel you’re rightful, because the world is evil and you have suffered so so so much. Keep being exactly like your tormentors, who also believed they had the right to hurt you. Being a dick to people who care about you is not going to undo what happened to you.

You have suffered a lot? Welcome to the fucking club. You still don’t get to be the one pulling emotional triggers now.

#i dont even remember my personal tag #but you know what #here it is #idk if im gonna queue it #again this blog is gonna be an archive #as a reminder too #that i shot the wolf in the fucking face #and that im ready to do it again #and again and again

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crxmsxnmemories · 4 years

Photo

Did anyone else just see SLOAN WASHINGTON ? I hear from the WASHINGTON family they can be a bit OVERLY CRITICAL & DEMANDING. But I also heard they can be ELOQUENT & INQUISITIVE. If you dare I hear they frequent CHITOWN PARK in their spare time when they aren’t being an INTERIM MAYOR. Tread carefully or else you might be next on their

Sooo here is my fourth kiddo. This intro is really long sorry lol but she will have connection that I would like for her pertaing to her backstory. I’ll leave that in the discord channle when it’s ready. But right now I’d love some Washington family connections, gang connetions as well for her. So let me know if you want to meet your new intrim- mayor!

INTRODUCING:

LA BALLERINE PRIMA MEUTRIERE

QUICK STATS

Name : Sloan Ray Washington

Nicknames :

Age: 36 years old

D.O.B : Aug 8th 1984

Eithnicity: Black

Nationality : American

Height : 5′5

Fun Fact: Her favorite color is pink, and so you will always see her with some kind of pink accent on her when in her suit jackets and such

Drug Use: None

Alcohol Use : Red Wine and popcorn

BACKSTORY

Ever since Sloan could remember she wanted to be a ballerina. Begged her mother and father to take her to lesson. It was her uncle that had finally helped make a young Sloan’s wish come true. It wasn’t how she pictured it; in fact it was hard. And she often got picked on by other girls in her class. So much so that she came home one day; she declared she would never dance again and ran up to her room. Her father came in later. To find a weeping Sloan clutching a toy ballerine in her hand. Tears streaming down her face. He sat down next to her, gently stroking her curly hair. “ You are a Washington my dear. We don’t give up because things are hard. We strive to do better, to be better. Because no one will give you anything in this life. You have to be willing to fight for it. You fight for your dreams and you hold them close.” She went back to class the following day. When she was sixteen, she was scouted by a french dance company. During one of her ballet camps held by the American Ballet Dance Company. Even though she was in Corps de ballet during camp. Sloan had been offered an exclusive contract to dance for the Paris Opera Ballet. Both she and her mother were so excited for the chance. However, her Father Authur, was harder to sell the idea to. She was born a Washington. A political career was a family tradition. They didn’t need to try and make change around the world. Not when America was still so bigotted, racist and prejudice. In his mind, he thought that dance would be a hobby. One that she would leave behind after high school. To join a company all the way in Paris. To live there on her own, he didn’t like the idea. “ This is my dream, I’m just holding on to it and fighting hard to keep it like you taught me.” Authur had no choice but to let her. The contract was signed and a now 17-year-old Sloan hopped on a plane to start her new life doing the thing she loved most. Dance. She trained and trained. Watching Prima’s dance, each one better than the next. Sloan invisioned herself as a principle dancer one day. Owning the stage like the diva she watched. That was when she met Christian, he was 21 and already a principle dancer and a popular one. Women and men came to see him. And of course, he lapped up the attention. He’d arrive back at the dorms every night. Sneeking a new boy or girl into his room. She didn’t know how he got away with it but he did. The one time she caught him in the hall kissing a man who had to be at least 10 years his senior. She averted her eyes as she went down the hall. Only to turn back to find Christian still standing at the door; giving her a wink before he disappeared behind it. Sloan blushed for days after that. But also, Christian started to talk to her more and more. She had only been there for a year. Not even Demis and Soloist paid her any attention. But Christian did, he would help her with her positionings. Giving her tips that would make her stand out to the dance directors and choreographers. Things that would make them notice her in a good light. “ You have such pretty lines, Mon petite. You have to show them with boldness. You have something no other girl has here.” Sloan looked at him through the mirror wating for him to tell her. Leaning forward, his lips against her ear he whispered “ Me.” And she kept him. With Christians help, Sloan slowly rose up the ranks. From Corps de ballet to demi, to soloist. Until finally, at the age of twenty-three. She took the stage as a Principle... with Christian by her side. Christian open a whole new world to her. Sure he wasn’t always the nicest, sometimes he pushed her to hard. But that was the price you paid wasn’t it? To hold onto your dream. So she took him yelling at her, took the constant cheating, the emotional abuse, the mental abuse. She took it all because she was doing what she loved and he... he had helped her get there. She was indebted to him now and forever But forever came a lot sooner then she would have thought. The company had grown tired of Christian and his antics. Finally releasing him from his contract. He came to their paris apartment in a rage. Drunk, high, looking for a fight. With Sloan as his target. He told her to pack her things, that they would be leaving paris and going to Russia. That they would dance there, but Sloan said no. She loved him; she would always love him. But, this was where she wanted to be and the company hadn’t fired her. This engradged him and he lashed out. The beating was so bad Sloan didn’t know how she had been able to fight him off enough. But she did... she was a fucking Washington and enough was enough. Christian grabbed her by the hair, pulling her towards the kitchen. Saying that if her face was ruined then no one would want her. No one would love her except him. Sloan was screaming, arms flaying as he pulled her closer to the stove. She saw the kitchen kneif she’d been using. Quickly reaching for it, she swong at him. Cutting his arm that held her. When he let go, she lept at him. Even to this day she couldn’t tell you how many times she stapped him. All she remebers is that there was so much blood. It covered her, and that he had long stopped moving evern as she continued to stab his dead flesh. When she arrived at the dance company the next day. She was bombarded with questions. People asking if she was alright, where was she staying. How the fire started. Sloan, was the picture of a devesated woman. Because she was. She had killed a man she fallen in love with. And the sick part about it was, she still loved him. Christan had given her her dream and he paid for it with his blood. PRESENT

Sloan returned to Chicago. After retiring from ballet at the age of Thrity- two. She had a fullfilling carree and now lived with her mother. Returning to her hometown was bitter sweet, she had always thought she would stay in Paris forever. But that was something she just couldn’t do. Upon returing, she found that her family has grown in power in Chicago; significantly. Which wasn’t surprising , Her uncle and father always being one to push for change. Sloan longed for change for the city. Real change it didn’t help that her past was like a looming shadow off in the distance. So she distants herself for the Ballerina that she was. Helping out in the Mayor’s office. Going to political rallies and events. The picture of a Washington child , the picture of perfection. After so much training from Christian she was a natural at it. Smiling to hide the fears and worries that haunted her ever night. But did nothing to wash away the blood on her hands. Looking for anyway to quite her demons, Sloan took the intrim Mayor postions. In the hopes that if she could help stop the blood shed done by the gangs. That it could possiable attone for her own sins - that night in paris all those years ago.

#⎮⠘⠘ᴸᴬ ᴮᴬᴸᴸᴱᴿᴵᴺᴱ ᴾᴿᴵᴹᴬ ᴹᴱᵁᵀᴿᴵᴱᴿᴱ #crimson.intro #⎮⠘⠘ᔆᴸᴼᴬᴺ ᵂᴬᔆᴴᴵᴺᴳᵀᴼᴺ #tw: blood #tw:death #tw:domestic abuse #tw:murder #tw: violence

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letterstomycountry · 5 years

Text

On Cruelty

It’s been awhile since I last posted around these parts. Awhile ago I swore off posting about politics on facebook (you know how that goes), which has reduced my social media stress substantially. But occasionally, I still see something that grinds my gears enough that I feel like I need write about it somewhere.

I guess this is a sign that the afore-mentioned compulsion has finally hit it’s fever pitch and, consequently, like a refrain from an old Marshal Mathers single, I’m back to sing the tune.

We are living in strange times. White Nationalism, an ever-present but (until recently) largely marginal cultural phenomenon in the modern era, is on the rise. While the stain of White Supremacy has always been with us in a cultural sense, White Nationalism--as a political force--has been largely confined to the fringes of society in the past few decades.

We can see its manifestations bubbling up in milder forms as bigots scream at brown-skinned people in public, presumably because they believe they can intuit a person’s nationality or legal immigration status simply by the color of their skin. We also see it in its more catastrophic forms like mass shootings fueled by hatred of immigrants, where American citizens are also liable to be shot and killed.

White Nationalism and White Supremacy are inter-linked but separate ideas. White Nationalism is a conscious socio-political ideology. White Supremacy, however, is a cultural force that permeates our collective decision-making and choices. It is a presumptive sense of subjective “normalcy” that blinds us to our own discriminatory behavior. It is the reason why Police officers are more likely use force against Black citizens, and why employers are more likely to hire a similarly-educated White job applicant than a Black job applicant. We can charitably assume that police and employers are not consciously deciding to treat Black people differently. But the data shows that they often do. That’s because White Supremacy is a disease of cognitive dissonance. We often don’t realize we’re treating others differently in the moment, but upon reflection and self-analysis, the same becomes clear.

To put it bluntly: White Supremacy is what happens when you live in a world where the majority of your peers are White, and stereotypes about minorities are culturally ubiquitous. It is what happens when your interactions with others are gilded with assumptions drawn from the family you were raised in, the media you consumed your whole life, and your own limited personal experiences. These are the shadows on Plato’s cave that we use to construct our reality.

White Supremacy can blind us to the humanity of others. Offenses that we might feel the desire to treat with compassion when committed by one group suddenly become intolerable transgressions when committed by another group. The concept of “legality,” which we often loosely apply to our own actions, becomes a justification for the most exquisite cruelty when applied to other human beings.

Which brings me to this headline:

There are, generally, two types of reactions to this headline:

The viewer feels a sympathy for the suffering visited on these children and a sense of confusion and outrage.

The viewer feels not an ounce of sympathy for the children or, if they do, they dismiss it by suggesting that the parents are responsible for their children’s plight by living as undocumented immigrants and raising children in America.

You can browse my immigration tag for a fairly thorough discussion of why I feel being undocumented is not a crime at all in any meaningful ethical sense (while you’re at it, I recommend you take a gander at Economist Bryan Caplan’s academic article, which notes that there is a consensus among the majority of economists that open borders would literally double world GDP).

But let’s be clear: what happened here is that Trump’s ICE performed a raid that swept up a bunch of undocumented immigrants and left a lot of young kids without parents. We’re talking elementary-school aged kids in many cases. Many of these families have been here for years. And aside from their immigration status, the parents have minded their own business and have clean records:

..[T]hose children and families who spoke to 12 News impacted by each raid stressed their parents and friends are good people.

“I need my dad and mommy,” Gregorio told 12 News. “My dad didn’t do anything, he’s not a criminal.”

“Their mom’s been here for 15 years and she has no record,” Christina Peralta told us. “A lot of people here have no record they’ve been here for 10-12 years.”

There is no good policy reason for this. There is no good ethical reason for this.

The fact that “it’s the law” is not a response here. I know it’s the law. I am suggesting that the law is wrong.

Furthermore, even if it is the law, the Executive branch has a lot of discretion with how it enforces the law. As former Supreme Court Justice Jackson explained, the decision to prosecute is a policy choice, not a stiff obligation:

If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his cases, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm—in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself.

In other words, the decision to harshly enforce immigration laws is a policy choice. It is a policy choice the same way that it is a policy choice when a police officer decides to let you off with a warning rather than give you a ticket.

Let me say this loud and clear: being undocumented in of itself should not be a crime. The reason is simple: nobody is responsible for where they are born. In many cases, undocumented immigrants are born to places with extreme poverty and violence in their native countries. Conversely, you committed no heroic or respectable act to be born in America. Your parents had sex on American soil and now you’re here. That’s it. Your entitlement to the rights and privileges of American citizenship is an accident of the birth you had no control over.

Now imagine being born into a place with endemic violence and little economic opportunity. Your family lives at constant risk of violence and starvation. The conditions are so bad that you would travel 1,500 miles knowing that you could be turned down at the border or that your children could die in the journey. And yet, it is still a more preferable risk than staying where you are. Imagine you lived in similarly desperate conditions. Would you do that for your family?

Of course you would.

Make no mistake: this is how desperate these people are. And our government is turning them away.

It makes little sense to say that the parents are responsible for this from an ethical standpoint. In most cases, immigrants from Mexico and Central America are coming here to flee poverty and violence in their home countries. So by all accounts, as parents, they are doing the right thing by trying to get to America to save their kids from a terrible fate. I am fairly certain most people would do the same if faced with similar circumstances.

Even when considered from the perspective of a person who wants to “Make America Great Again,” deporting undocumented immigrants still makes little sense. These are people who are thankful for America and desperate to live and work in it. Aren’t these the type of people you would want here?

And if not, what’s the reason?

Seriously. I wish people who view headlines like this without a hint of sympathy would think really hard about why they don’t want Mexican/South American immigrants here. Because that’s largely who we’re talking about here.

Because in my mind, I can only think of one reason.

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#immigration #white supremacy #white nationalism #trump

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