#you are not oppressed when the conglomerate supports you

[pinkradfem]

#radem #rad fem #radfems #radical feminist #radical feminism #terf safe #op is a terf #terfs do touch #terfs do interact #trans #trans rights #lili elbe #you are not oppressed when the conglomerate supports you #feminism #gender critical

[alphaman99]

Liberty, Free Markets, and Peace

"Third Wave Antiracist tenets, stated clearly and placed in simple oppositions, translate into nothing whatsoever:

1. When black people say you have insulted them, apologize with profound sincerity and guilt. But don’t put black people in a position where you expect them to forgive you. They have dealt with too much to be expected to.

2. Black people are a conglomeration of disparate individuals. “Black culture” is code for “pathological, primitive ghetto people.” But don’t expect black people to assimilate to “white” social norms because black people have a culture of their own.

3. Silence about racism is violence. But elevate the voices of the oppressed over your own.

4. You must strive eternally to understand the experiences of black people. But you can never understand what it is to be black, and if you think you do, you’re a racist.

5. Show interest in multiculturalism. But do not culturally appropriate. What is not your culture is not for you, and you may not try it or do it. But if you aren’t nevertheless interested in it, you are a racist.

6. Support black people in creating their own spaces and stay out of them. But seek to have black friends. If you don’t have any, you’re a racist. And if you claim any, they’d better be good friends—in their private spaces, you aren’t allowed in.

7. When whites move away from black neighborhoods, it’s white flight. But when whites move into black neighborhoods, it’s gentrification, even when they pay black residents generously for their houses.

8. If you’re white and only date white people, you’re a racist. But if you’re white and date a black person, you are, if only deep down, exotifying an “other.”

9. Black people cannot be held accountable for everything every black person does. But all whites must acknowledge their personal complicity in the perfidy throughout history of “whiteness.”

10. Black students must be admitted to schools via adjusted grade and test score standards to ensure a representative number of them and foster a diversity of views in classrooms. But it is racist to assume a black student was admitted to a school via racial preferences, and racist to expect them to represent the “diverse” view in classroom discussions.

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."

[sentimental-darkness]

Everything Wrong with The Owl House S2

I haven’t written one of these in a long time and Amphibia clearly didn’t deserve any - it was top notch from top to bottom. But I’m sorry Owl House - including well-handled representation that’s crucial part of protagonist’s storyline doesn’t absolve you of your critical writing sins and bad world-building pay-offs. 

Also, before we begin - NO, it’s not merely the result of Disney's abrupt shortening of S3 and potentially portion of S2. Because many of these issues started to resurface earlier in S2 and you can clearly see where episode intros begin to be shortened/abandoned (already aware of the cancellation the crew tried to spare screen time) which only occurs later during the course of the season, starting with episode 12. So I wouldn’t completely blame Disney here... but the creators themselves. As surprising and shocking as it was to me - since Danna looked like someone with solid ideas and worldbuilding abilities - but unfortunately this is the sad truth of the matter and why S2 finale (or even the entire batch of its later episodes!) was hugely dissatisfying. 

So here we go...

1. Everything Wrong with Belos.

(= “Philip” but part of me wouldn’t discard the possibility that Belos=Philip connection was added later, at least in a form that we know of from the show)

Belos design and identity shrouded in mystery was perfect, and a setup for a great, possibly complex, challenging villain. Now, it doesn’t mean I expected a merely misguided guy with pure intentions but actually a complex, interesting, even strongly evil villain (Andrias from Amphibia would be a good example of this). 

But it doesn’t matter what I expected and what could have been, let me just tell you what was wrong with him when coupled with the Philip connection and the portrayal that we got...

From the Magically-Minded Builder of Witch-Empire to the Petty, Bitter, Vengeful Witch-Hater... while living an extended lifespan!

No, it doesn’t work that way - he can’t be both those things at the same time in such extremes at that... If he was what S2 tries to paint him as - with all the Philip stuff - he wouldn’t be able to build a whole Empire in the first place nor would he see any value in doing that. The Empire may be an oppressive force but it doesn’t exist in the societal vacuum, you need to really engrain yourself in local culture, lore, geography, structures and traditions to be able to get support and inspire unification under the banner of progress and expansion, not to mention on the Boiling Isles - a conglomeration of magical beings with magic, which makes the task much more difficult. Earning their respect/support, even if though deceit and with hidden agenda in motion, literally means becoming one of them intellectually exposing your mindset to the whole cultural aspect of magic and different POVs of another world, the world of magic. It was all a ruse cultivated over the curse of centuries, the writers try to say? All fake? All superficial? He just wants everyone gathered at one place so he doesn’t miss any single witch? Are you serious? That’s as cheap as it can get, there is literally no worse way of handling it other than saying outright that S1 Belos was retconned. Which, in a way, he was... although whether intentional retcon or just writers not having a clue the two things don’t fit together (which reflects badly on them and also Alex Hirsh who was a creative advisor on this) - I have no idea.   

Now, I can see how some vendetta types of villains do work under some specific settings: like infiltration of different cultural group/clan with strongly cultivated ties only to strike when least expected to avenge own group or family that upholds different but similarly strongly cultivated values/ideologies. Also, a similar version of this works very well under space settings, like races/planets instead of clans, long time in perpetual rivalry and cycle of vendettas, or a closed-off species finally getting to explore other places out there and eventually becoming an oppressor of other species and/or racist towards them - usually the decisions of the governmental level though, hardly driven by specific individuals, or, if by specific people - they have good enough reason like their closed ones annihilated/genetically transformed by a member of such alien race or in some cases even worse, which contributes to fear/distrust. 

That being said, Belos/Philip WASN’T IT - he existed under the circumstances where it was hard to remain completely stack in such ‘racist’ / ‘vendetta’ mindset at worst or even plain impossible at best - if having to deal with all aspects of building and maintaining an empire, which requires lots of dedication and having to fully dedicate yourself and learn all the ins and outs of the magical peoples, it’s just natural you’re being exposed to all different POVs that you genuinely need to view as integral, honest part of the process else you won’t succeed, heck, you wouldn’t even learn magic if your attitude was so anti. There is no way that this dude from some random Earth town managed to live such extended lifespan and achieved such feats, while remaining completely stack in their old human prejudiced, fear-driven mindset - even if from 17th century, even if heavily indoctrinated into psalms or whatever, but I dislike the idea of painting such parallel for parallel’s sake without it being outright shown, developed and without the bringing of the concept of ‘true god’ into the picture. Also, in all his scenes Philip looked very much like an explorer, intellectual and engineer with an open-mind, not some extreme-prejudice-ridden, unscientific guy. So there is just no way Philip became Belos and then never developed a different way of looking at things after all that time... That’s just the psychoanalysis of interactions-with-your-environment of the Builder Emperor, without getting into the whole ‘behavior gimmicks’ aspect of him...

Belos vs Belos=Philip... both with completely different characterization & motivation.

Look at Belos in his S1 debut. Crazy magical villain, voiced in a very articulated way that was very peculiar and part of his appeal. Some of that behavior still made it into S2, with his ‘knock knock human’ line and a few other scenes. Even some of the Belos/Hunter interactions, while showing a different, less crazy, humanized side of the Emperor, did fit that mental image of the Ominous, Powerful, Eccentric Emperor Ruling with The Iron, Unfair Fist but Exceptionally Competent & Wise that was set up with S1. Although that we only ever saw THAT heartwarming but abusive side of him with his talks... but never the crazy gimmicks and articulated speech patterns from S1... was already kind of alarming. 

Then, once we learn Belos=Philip... it all goes downhill almost immediately. Even when he is supposed to be Belos, parading as Belos, and doing Belos stuff, his dialogues are mostly monotonous or callous, with all of the eccentric flair present in S1 gone here. Seen in his talks with the Collector, some with Hunter, interactions with Luz and all through the finale - where even his appearance gets changed and he gets full-on apathetic treatment, something that wasn’t even a part of Philip in the past to begin with. So unless he has a a very severe over-the-top split personality (...while simultaneously running an Empire, something he earnt/build and not inherited which is an important difference), I really don’t buy it. As discussed earlier - no, it’s not realistic, saying that it was all ‘just an act’ that he was just soooo in-character trying to be seen as someone else that he isn’t isn’t justification enough. Because even if we forget about that previous Builder Emperor psychoanalysis I made above and try to pretend his end goal/lasting ‘witch racism’ seems believable - his behavior patterns still don’t. 

Oh, and they’re all instances in S1 where he doesn’t really need to pretend because he doesn’t gain anything from it, besides they do sound like more genuine one-liners from him. So nothing there aligns too well with S2 Belos=Philip.

Your side where you’re the only one left alive? Sure, makes sense... it’s totally the same racist dude from S2... Also, what would be the point of keeping her in service and then doing the loyalty test since Philip already knew Lilith was there in the past with Luz....... so hmm, is that Philip?

Why though? And where all the symbology used by the Empire comes from? (that was all over the place in ancient structures and crypts)

The entire emphasis on the Wild Witches being a threat to the Day of Unity is pretty much pointless - they are not a threat to the spell. So doesn’t make sense other than some kind of weird obsession of “witch hunter” Philip with killing all of them with one push of a bottom, maybe... but that’s silly, since the entire goal in the first place makes little sense in the entire context of the Builder Emperor as discussed. So not satisfied with that piss-poor explanation.

Why should Hunter be careful with Wild Magic? Why does Belos even care? Why spit the nonsense about “our family gone because of Wild Magic” at all? After all, he supposedly created hundreds of them within his time as Emperor during his 50 year long reign (based on all the masks and bones, yes there was quite a lot of them LOL). So what’s one more? Why show care in this particular matter? This really looks like a forced red herring aimed at your viewers without respect/much thought given to actual characterization. OR this was still the writing for a different kind of Belos... who wasn’t just a witch-hunting Philip. This scene was a bit earlier in S2, so who can tell for sure.

and the way he magically enjoys all that in S1... kinda amusing that he would be a witch-hater and witch-hunter (to the core! 100%!), but obviously “you can’t reason with crazy writers”

Also, if he was 100% S2 Philip in body and soul, why wouldn’t he go back to retrieve his own portal years ago where he once left it? Before Eda got her hands on it? Really, assuming Belos=Philip it just screams ‘he had no intention to return/use the portal’ until the whole new plan about the Day of Unity was born but then the portal was already gone. Which would also explain why he was after Eda and wanted her to join the coven, initially, because maybe he heard she was using that portal. But that implies he initially built the Empire with completely/partially different motivations than lame ‘murder all witches and return home as a hero lolz’ but THAT would actually invalidate his entire S2 goal/characterization entirely. So yes, absolute mess!

Also, ironic... THIS a dude who wants to become a witch-killing hero and ‘savior’ of... humanity? For some reason? 

More needless talk about Titan’s Will where he doesn’t need to do that, if he was S2 Belos=Philip. As already an almighty, established Emperor talking to Earth teenager in a catacombs.  

Also, my personal favorite... He thought Luz thought “they want to invade human realm”

Yes, turned out the Titan’s Will wasn’t even a thing, in any shape nor form, but the end goal was total annihilation of all life on Boiling Isles because you hate witches. So I don’t understand. ‘Not so boarish’ after all... Lmaof. Was Philip on drugs here? In S1? Or... maybe... just maybe...

Belos as originally conceived got completely different characterization and enigma surrounding him with set up for more complex stuff along the way, perhaps something that DID actually had something to do with Titan, but then... once Philip came into the picture Belos got retro-backtracked to become witch-hating Philip with a pseudo murder-crime ‘characterization’ in which he killed his own brother due to prejudice and then had him recreated as a construct only to kill him all over again in a weird display of love depravity... which is hardly even explored on the show but sure, ‘cool’ idea which sounds 100% human and believable (no, not really). Also, the personality shift is even reflected through his design from the reveal of the face to complete attire change, all accompanied by total characterization/motivation shift (kind of)

... because it was ALL a dishonest ruse and he even wears THAT fancy 16th century attire under his Belos disguise, geez, it has Benny Hills and all kinds of unserious, laughable, joke character take all over it (like maybe he has yet another disguise underneath that 16th century one and he is someone else entirely?) except it’s intended to be this “serious, dark” take on a “complex” evil villain that everybody seems to be in love with and take it for granted even though it’s not complex take and can’t be enjoyed as such when viewed properly. Amusing.

His lines in the climax literally being a contest for the “most evil, cruel one liners we can conceive” but hardly make sense within the narrative of the Builder Emperor

Dude, she was LITERALLY your right hand and helped to keep the Empire machine going which screams competent as hell. But evidently that’s no longer the S1 Belos and - which I’ll get into - no longer S1 Kiki. Note how this looks like a forced parallel to how Toffee discarded Ludo in Star vs the Forces of Evil, with the following “find a hole to rot away in” he is even colder than Toffee!

Even if I take his goal seriously, this doesn’t make any sense, the dude was Emperor and had all the resources to gather intel about present-day Earth (from 21st century books that made it through to the knowledge about his own portal that he could actually build all over again if he only wanted to to Luz being A Walking Source of Knowledge On the Subject). So this is just freaking dumbass and laughable at best, that he hasn’t prepared for this. Not to mention... 

... even for 16-17th century idea of how Earth works... this is just ridiculous, there was nothing like “Witch Hunters” to begin with, with lots of different Earth kingdoms busy at war with each other, usually, with some places even less fair than the coven cast system that he created on Boiling Isles. And if the motivation was being praised as a hero by a literal village squadron of dump peasants - after ruling over a literal magical Empire - there is really something seriously wrong with the dude’s head and not in the “interesting, complex” way...... more like ‘my brain is the size of tiny nut’ way. Or “I’m really a cyborg looking like a human programmed to kill witches in this world” - I guess that would work much better here.... to be honest...

Also, the serious way he says that line is just so incredibly pathetic that actual Emperor Belos from S1 as characterized in S1 would just have a good laugh with a sophisticated one-liner and told him that Titan’s will isn’t so boarish and boring. Probably.

Ah, there is another interesting thing too. The above, the way he says things and his other expressions...

Again, note how this all looks like a forced Toffee characterization from Svtfoe - the way he moves, the dominance, the apparent cruelty mixed with indifference having achieved all his goals, the face closeups, annoyed expressions, even the fashion sense and the way he discards the Collector with the “goodbye”! Also the goo...

Except Toffee was actually an actual part of a Lizard race that was once in a dominant position / badly hurt by the arrival of humans gifted with magic - with that entire conflict not being as black and white to begin with, at least prior-S4 - so his motivation to eliminate magic as their source of power, his sense of superiority and his kind of racist stance... did work within the narrative of Star vs, it was nuanced. Philip just... doesn’t work... at all... within his own narrative of the Builder Emperor...

and the entire “you’re Witch Hunter” thing that appeared in this scene... came completely out of nowhere. Never before did Emperor Belos (or Philip for that matter) ever strike me as someone who could even conceive of such an idea but all of a sudden he says something about ‘witch hunter’ and Luz is like ‘oh, so you’re just a witch hunter!’ like there is completely nothing off with it, like it is “a thing” or something! Ridiculous. But what mattered is that everyone repeated it after Luz and now everyone was totally aboard to defeat the evil racist ‘witch-hunting’ Belos! Oh so messy so messy Owl House...

All of that seemed like some kind of a forced black-and-white racist-vs-representation statement... that Belos must be this witch-hateful “witch hunter” all of a sudden, so the “diverse” cast of witches and characters and the lgbt pair of heroes must come together to defeat him and his “ideology”... or straight white male ideology? Which sounds like the equivalent to the disaster of last season’s of Svtfoe, which also went the similar “forced irl politics” route while completely ignoring previously established loose ends, characterization and its complex lore, making everything as simplified as it gets and many characters as dumb as a piece of rock. Kinda... and sounds like this happened to second season of TOH too... 

Belos and Titan’s Heart Are Connected

Hey, remember THIS? How the first thing we ever saw was the Titan’s Heart, above Lilith’s head, before we even saw the silhouette of Belos? 

With the Castle being literally placed in Titan’s chest for this very purpose, obviously to get access to heart, with sinister pipes running all over the place, connected to heart?

And Belos heavy breathing with heart rate increased when Belos was being threatening or under stress?

The heart beating being heard when he frivolously announced (completely out of nowhere!) he knows everything that happens in his castle, further painting the Titan/Belos connection...

Yeah, totally doesn’t matter! ;) Belos is Philip, he wants to be a ‘Witch Hunter General.’ Never spoke to a Titan... Titan’s will was all fake... there was never a Titan connection here... ;)

Interesting that we hardly saw the heart and throne room in S2... Also, the heart beating was gone for the ENTIRETY of S2... so pretty suspicious...

Bad writing and bad pay-off all over it.

There was also the fact that we see all the Titan gore everywhere, actual flesh not just bones, with Belos being able to control it in his fight with Luz. Which paired with a living, beating heart was suspicious and implied Titan wasn’t truly dead but clinging to life/growing back/artificially sustained and experimented with/something else. In any case, it’s gone... like it never happened...

Also, during the Day of Unity even the Emperor’s Castle was gone...

Looks like all these people had gathered in some kind of open space... where the Castle used to stand, with the Heart inside it... but now it’s all gone... apparently?

Are people who praise this show blind or something? I honestly can’t tell. You can enjoy it for simplistic themes of course or even just for representation’s sake - but lots of people praise it for ‘complexity’ and good writing which is just... NOT THERE!

That Danna had the audacity to claim S2 will be “darker than S1″ is kind of a shocker. Because nothing that came out of S2 was as disturbing and closer to “Final Space vibes” as the S1 climax. OK, maybe the King’s birthplace in S2, I’ll give them that. But heck, even lots of King’s shenanigans in S1 - while subtle - had more of a darker tone than most of S2! Which I find truly funny and surprising that people can’t see this.

Speaking of King’s birthplace and Belos...

It’s not the exact same look but looks kind of... familiar? 

Like the thing from the Mural?

Sounds like the creature indeed doesn’t belong here... because it was there in ages past, much bigger, and evidently NOT Philip or Palisman. It doesn’t look the same of course but the overall appearance is strikingly similar to the final Belos form - looking like it could be made from the same green goo, lengthy arms and legs, thick like that of an insect, visibly elevated shoulders, thickness closer to legs etc. Not the same exact look but could be more like a nefarious evil entity? That was - originally - perhaps part of Belos too? Instead of some angry Palismen? Something relevant to the plot that even the King of Demons/Titan/King’s Dad/King’s Previous Incarnation needed to do battle with? (because who knows what was the actual original idea behind King’s origins anyway... because I have my doubts after S2 that we’re getting the original conception here).

I guess it’s possible Belos/Philip was supposed to be sort of a Host for this ancient entity... maybe... or he used its power... or perhaps that entity had something to do with the titan of the Boiling Isles too? Which is how the Heart connection tied into this... with King being something different entirely or perhaps a reincarnation of sort, rather than actual flesh and bone conceived in a normal, biological way. Maybe. With Belos consuming the Palismen magic to heal the outbursts which were the results of something else entirely, not just to gain power - which I have no idea how the Palismen are even supposed to allow him to do the gooey thingy like it’s some sort of a rule? Also how does the Bat Queen ties into all this? I guess she won’t appear again and even if - it’ll be something inconsequential. Oh, and also we’ll never hear about that Mural again. Most likely.

So something was evidently abandoned here. Unless after the King’s birthplace episode they suddenly started to contradict their previous episodes without even knowing it and there was never a plan for all of these to mean anything, with Belos=Philip always supposed to be just a witch hunter.. but excuse me if that idea sounds unbelievably bizarre after what I just described here digging out all of the previously established pieces of the lore that hardly anyone talks about anymore.

In any case, a giant mess and no pay-offs here!

2. Everything Wrong with the Empire.

In “Savage Ages” there was no crisis.

In S1 we’re told there was some kind of event/bad stuff related to Wild Magic which was how Belos Regime could rise to begin with, with promises of stability, progress and order - on which they actually delivered, in part, judged by the technological progress and strict laws. Now, I’m not saying there couldn’t have been something nefarious/manipulative behind the scenes, with the crisis being engineered somehow...

But THAT entire backstory with Philip parading as Belos from village to village, blowing them up and murdering people? Because earlier he was already run out of too many villages as Philip? Looked like a joke and not the kind of ‘crisis’ you would need to garner support on a mass scale. You can’t just approach a bunch of villagers who lived as one with nature or vile demons... and spat some nonsense about Titan/Wild Magic being bad and reasonably expect them to take you seriously... without any sort of nuance and partial truth to it... without any witnesses or allies who could vouche for your version of the story... without any sort of chaotic magical menace plaguing some parts of the Boiling Isles, like Eda’s curse, for example... The moment the show decided to portray everything as ‘part of Philip’s grand plan’ was the moment it erased any sense of complexity and decent, intriguing, believable lore. From this point onward it’s just simplistic nonsense upon nonsense... with the creation of the Empire and the Coven System, in a social sense, as completely unbelievable, impossible events.

Kikimora gets turned into unfitting of her station.

Kikimora looks and acts like a competent figure put in administrative position, with S2 opening even implying that - as a demon picked by Belos - she has this scary, angry, more powerful form so she can kick some ass too, potentially. This all sounds good until...

... she gets turned into an adolescent with teenage dramas, she has a rivalry with the Golden Guard (which wouldn’t be so bad... if it wasn’t confirmed that she knows they always end up as a pile of bones in a pit!), seems completely powerless on many occasions and doesn’t use her scary form, starts to act incredibly annoying and dumbass and like she has no competence at all, and is THEN confirmed to know everything about Philip, the Collector, fakeness of Belos, his true appearance, Day of Unity aka The Witch Hunter Will Kill You All, hundreds of dead Golden Guards and them being most likely constructs, and all sorts of stuff no one should have known... GEEZ, HOW DUMB WAS SHE EXACTLY? What was even her motivation to serve the Empire? I’m surprised the Empire and Coven System haven’t crumbled years ago... to be honest... if she was such a teenager but apparently knew it all...

But yeah, in a simplified version of the show the administration and characterization of its members doesn’t matter, because Philip can evidently create empires out of nowhere, singlehandedly, no allies needed.

The Coven Heads don’t have a clue, they’re literal dumbasses.

Next in line for the dumbass title of the year and hard to decide who would win. Even Darius and his pal 'are actually rebels reveal’, while makes sense... felt kind of out of place and abrupt, especially with Darius and Hunter interactions earlier in the castle. Where you get this sort of “Darius doesn’t care, may betray Belos” vibe from him but not necessarily “Darius is a complete good guy, doesn’t like Empire and its methods at all!” which was something that Rain represented, not Darius. Not even getting into the fact that the previous Golden Guard was supposed to be his mentor? With the Flower Lady probably living through a couple of those? Which is like a plot hole because that implies they ALL have seen and knew a previous Hunter/Hunters as prominent figures of the court but now they see a teenager with the same face and think it’s the ‘nephew’? Also, the sheer number of the Guards’ remains in the pit is clearly overdone, there couldn’t have been more than merely a couple of Guards through the lifespan of this young Empire. But nevermind, let’s talk about something else...

The Heads are literally so dump that after Belos had showed them “the paradise”

and said THIS:

They’ve never wondered what the heck he meant and what the heck is he???

Which btw, I have no idea, yet again, what he meant by it and what the Coven Heads thought his plan truly was?

Sounds like they know he is from Earth? Another Realm? Like the Paradise has something to do with Earth and they never questioned him as their Emperor huh? Never questioned his plans? Or the Covens? Unite the realms? For what? Because they wanted to become “royalty”? LIKE, THEY WERE ALREADY THE LITERAL ROYALTY THROUGH THE COVEN SYSTEM, EVEN WITH SOME WILD WITCHES AROUND. They had nothing to gain from this “day of unity” - what nonsense.

Also, yeah, Kiki knew everything abut the “Witch Hunter” but never told anyone, and Coven Heads were all as dumb as bricks, except they didn’t look like they were that intellectually incapable. The old Flower Lady certainly DIDN’T look like she was, in any case. She seemed crafty, manipulative and like she is supposed to be ahead of others. Also, one of the oldest members so probably working kind of more closely with Belos for a long time...

But yeah, she really wins the dumbass of the year here, because for all that evil scheming she couldn’t figure out a simple universal truth... that there was actually a good enough reason someone who isn’t wild magic would want to prevent the day of unity... Yikes.

Nothing here makes any sense. Those characters are unbelievably butchered. If they were not, who knows what would actually happen, which further brings into question Belos=Philip’s ability to even create and run the Empire unchallenged and successfully in the first place. It’s THAT bad!

It’s a Demon Realm but hardly any ‘big’ demons that matter.

Season 1 had more demon shenanigan but once Emperor Coven’s entered the fray we never really got a clue about what happened with all those dangerous demons King once spoke of. With Kiki there was like a clue that maybe Belos forced them into his service/made vassal states of them but... it was really poorly explored and as stated previously... Kiki turned into a raging teenage drama queen, not really a legit demonic being competent enough to find herself in Emperor’s service as high-ranking administrative official!

3. Noticeable Tone Shift with King in S2.

Talked extensively about it here, so go ahead and give it a read. But basically, he is this baby puppy for the most part of S2 and even his scared, disturbed characterization throughout the finale and then in the pit with bones of the Golden Guards kind of... seemed out-of-character? Like I said in my linked post, I don’t mind the development in regards to Luz/Eda/their friends and his caring/worrying attitude in such situations, but he was just too much of a scaredy cat and helpless puppy throughout the whole thing, all of the things that made him so intriguing/more unique (with darker tones) in S1... gone completely. Through some part of his stronger, cunning, lordly, demonic, uncaring S1 personality got to shine through sometimes - with things like the casual “oh geez, let’s just say there isn’t gonna be the after the day of unity” or his manipulation of the Collector. But it was just a tiny bit... and not much overall. With a noticeable difference in tone, while during the curse of S1 there was clearly more to this character than meets the eye, not just a kid “play-pretending being evil-minded.” While this is something that I think might have changed and there will never be a King that needs to face this dilemma and choose between his demonic, kingly destiny and his friends... it was funny that the Hunters episode actually went out of its way to outright state Titans are lordly and worse than Belos... Is the show having an identity crisis or something? Because honestly I can’t tell, unless something extraordinary happens in the shortened S3 - I think it’s just more of the mess.

4. The Collector Is Ok But Still Kind Of Messy?

The moon and stars seem to be all over the place in places of significance, so there should be a connection. The Hunters were like worshipping the Collector apparently? Which was strange because they knew him as the Great Huntsman and the “Huntsman” has promised them to take part in his big Hunt once they freed him. Which doesn't make sense if the Collector is supposed to be just childlike and so easily exploited/manipulated with promises of tag and other games. Honestly, even in their talks with Belos, before Belos betrayed them, the Collector looked like they’re fully aware of everything that transpires, of all the manipulation of Hunter and even found it amusing suggesting Belos enjoys destroying his creations. Which is the complete contradiction of a popular theory that “it’s a Bill Cipher who doesn’t know how to enjoy cruelty and just wants to play tag” or something like that. So already alarming, that kind of undecisive writing and how in the final scenes the Collector is all about games, playing and seemingly uncaring for the annihilation of the Isles... which in the previous scenes they rhyme about and can’t wait any longer for it to happen? Weird.

Also, why would the ritual sacrifice of the titan get the ‘Huntsman’ freed anyway? What was the influence the Collector had on the Hunters? How did they commune? What’s up with the Collector hunting for Owl Beast and why does it matter? Well, probably it doesn’t... because this shows is the complete opposite of consequential...

Taking into account how abrupt was the introduction of the Collector into the plot, seemingly out of nowhere in the Titan’s skull and no connection to their short-lived strange appearance in the Owl Beast dream... it all seems, so far... like a couple of plot hooks poorly put together but none of this even have any consequence on the Collector’s characterization as the true villain of the show. So hmm, not positive about the Collector in the finale but we shall see. 

Even though, all of the above points taken into account... this show is pretty dissatisfying anyway... so I doubt S3 can change much here because even if it wasn’t shortened - it most likely couldn’t fix all this. 

Sounds like the writing was bad to begin with in many places and its magical fantasy worldbuilding pretty inconsequential - it’s not on the same level as Amphibia here, not on the same level as She-Ra... sadly...

#the owl house #toh review #toh #toh belos #toh collector #toh philip #toh king

[wordwizards]

Cool article transcript under cut if Atlantic won't let you read the actual page.

In the dystopian imagination, corporations reign supreme. It’s become so cliche to have faceless, heartless, and soulless corporations conspiring against their employees and consumers that the concept is considered simple and digestible enough for inclusion in children’s movies. 2008’s Wall-E, for example, revels in such tropes to warn against the catastrophes caused by unlimited greed: The film’s uninhabitable Earth, viewers learn, is the result of Buy n Large, a conglomerate that spans the globe, taking over all sectors of business and government.

Contemporary corporations are more than familiar with these accusations: Google used “Don’t Be Evil,” as its official motto (recently dropped by its new parent conglomerate, Alphabet, which decided on “Do the right thing” in its stead). Whatever the consequences of corporate power are in reality, these dystopian narratives have largely been fueled by the popular imagination. The evil corporation is so deeply embedded in the landscape of contemporary culture—populating films, novels, videogames, and more—but how did ill intent become the expectation?

To answer that, it’s useful to consider a time when the pop-cultural imagination was more fixated on the state than the private sector. In the ’50s, popular culture still largely imagined the state as the enemy of the citizen, as fiction such as Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 or Philip K. Dick’s short story “The Minority Report” suggest. It’s easy to see where these fears came from: In the aftermath of World War II and the wake of the Cold War, anxieties over authoritarianism flourished. Postwar culture worried about dystopian states legislating the end of personal freedom; corporations were merely a supporting player in the war against individualism.

That’s not to say that, at that time, corporations didn’t have their critics as well, as public intellectuals such as C. Wright Mills and John Kenneth Galbraith warned against the rising political influence of private enterprise. And so too, the corporation lulled workers into collective conformity, as described in William Whyte’s 1956 book on management, The Organization Man. While America once valued individualism, he argued, the new class of American worker was now committed to “groupthink,” a term Whyte coined in a 1952 article for Fortune magazine. Corporations transformed workers into mere cogs in the system, unable to think for themselves or to take responsibility for their own actions. Accordingly, most of the literature of the period reflects these anxieties, as Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road chronicle the white-collar worker’s dissatisfaction with corporate culture.

The corporation might have been soul-sucking, but it also held a certain (if fringe) appeal when contrasted with the power of the state. Take, for example, Ayn Rand’s 1957 bestseller, Atlas Shrugged, in which a dystopian state all but destroys American freedom through economic regulation. In Rand’s world, government creates oppression and corruption as the nation declines without its captains of industry at the helm. Arguing for privatization’s importance to society, Atlas Shrugged fantasized about corporate CEOs as heroic leaders. Rand’s belief—that business should be left to, well, mind its own business—offers an idealized portrait of an unhampered economy, in which corporations act nobly through their commitment to free markets.

This sentiment seems slightly more sinister when removed from Rand’s romance and placed within the context of Milton Friedman’s 1962 book, Capitalism and Freedom. As Friedman argued, “there is one and only one social responsibility of business”: to make money for its shareholders. Anything else, Friedman suggests, would be irresponsible. His insistence upon shareholder value mostly ignores anything other than the financial interests of corporate owners, but it’s worth noting though that his argument is slightly more nuanced than the “greed is good” mantra that has become cultural shorthand for neoliberal economics. At the heart of Friedman’s argument is the belief that corporations are indeed not people, but a group of executives and employees working to maximize the profit of their shareholders. Like Adam Smith before him, Friedman believed that individuals act in self-interest, creating an economy that is mutually beneficial to the individual and society.

Friedman’s argument requires faith that individuals will “do the right thing,” but he emphatically believed that companies could not be expected to behave that way (no matter what Alphabet may say). Friedman had few reservations about corporate managers adding to the coffers of their owners, but he did fear placing power in the hands of corporations themselves. By letting executives—rather than their owners—decide what constituted social responsibility, corporations would also threaten the autonomy of individuals and would instead lead to potentially dangerous corporate states.

Much has already been said about the effects of Friedman’s own argument in practice, but it’s the imagined consequences that have proliferated in popular culture in the several decades since. Movie upon movie, the question seems to be: What happens when Friedman’s argument is taken to its logical conclusion?

Science fiction, with its emphasis on technological development and the future, provided a rich site to explore this dystopian question. And so, the evil corporation was born. Consider 1973’s cult classic, Soylent Green, in which right and wrong become distinctly blurred when corporate interests are at stake. In one of the film’s early scenes, William Simonson, a member of the Soylent Corporation’s board of directors is about to be killed by a hired hand because, the assassin says, his knowledge has become a “risk” to the company’s interests. After delivering the explanation to Simonson, the befuddled killer asks, “Then this is right?” “No,” Simonson responds, “necessary.” It’s the same response that the Soylent Corporation would give. A threat to the success of its newest product, Simonson must be eliminated.

However extreme, Soylent Green’s suggestion that corporations conspire against the broader public good was undoubtedly motivated by real concerns over the effects of unregulated corporate power. Released only three years after the founding of the Environmental Protection Agency, Soylent Green depicts a dystopian future (it’s set in 2022) in which industrial capitalism has left Earth overpopulated, overheated, and underfed. Meanwhile, the Soylent Corporation profits from its access to the resources the rest of the population is denied.

The Soylent Corporation acts as a benevolent supporter of both life and death, providing large portions of the world’s food supply as well as a modern euthanasia clinic for those too tired with the world to go on living in it. An oasis of cleanliness and air conditioning, the clinic promises a few painless, beautiful final moments to give its patients glimpses of the world it has robbed from them.

But as Detective Thorn (Charlton Heston) investigates Simonson’s murder with his assistant Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson, in his final role), the two find that such compassionate gestures will inevitably reveal themselves to be hollow, as long as profit-maximization is involved. As Thorn learns, Soylent takes away the bodies from its clinics and processes them into food for the starving masses. With so little regard for its social responsibility, Soylent has no qualms about turning its consumers literally into its products, and in one of the film’s most moving scenes, Roth elects to euthanize himself after learning Soylent’s secret. Soylent Green’s then-shocking revelation has since become more widely known than the rest of the film itself. (So too has it become a truism that people are products, but Heston shouting, “Facebook is people!” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.)

Soylent Green cynically reveals the dangers of corporations that are only committed to profits. The well-being of anyone else matters little, a recurring theme that also informs Jurassic Park’s depiction of the InGen corporation, or the Alien franchise’s Weyland-Yutani corporation. In the Alien universe, the corporation privileges profits over its own employees—lured by the promise of bonus shares in the company—who are ultimately expendable.

As the reach of corporations evolved, so too did their depictions in pop culture. The “socially responsible” corporate state is most dramatically realized in 1987’s RoboCop, a grimly comic critique of the Reagan administration. In RoboCop, Omni Consumer Products (OCP) promises to replace the crime-ridden ruins of “Old Detroit” with a new “Delta City,” run entirely by OCP and without the U.S. government’s oversight. In the interim, however, OCP has privatized public services, including hospitals, prisons, and the police force in Old Detroit.

While OCP benefits from the privatization of services, it’s the public that suffers: RoboCop asks what happens when public servants become corporate employees, as the police union goes on strike—a nod to the 1981 air-traffic-controller strike—leaving Old Detroit in further disarray. Yet if employees can fail to do their duty, they are also easily replaced. When Alex Murphy, one of Old Detroit’s young cops, is brutally murdered by a local crime boss, he’s effectively transformed from an employee into a product. Murphy is reborn as RoboCop, a cyborg officer programmed with three directives: “serve the public trust, protect the innocent, and uphold the law.”

At first RoboCop’s efforts dramatically lower the city’s crime rates, but the film also makes clear that OCP’s activities are criminal themselves. OCP not only profits off of the very crime it is supposedly sworn to combat, but it is also directly responsible for creating that crime: The cartel that orchestrated Murphy’s murder conspires with OCP’s corrupt vice president, Dick Jones, to develop new markets of potential drug buyers, who will build Delta City. From OCP’s perspective, everything and everyone can be turned into an asset.

RoboCop, like Soylent Green, shows how “social responsibility” may be a myth, but it also stresses the way in which corporations act above the law. A classified “Directive 4” is put in place to prevent RoboCop from taking any action against a member of the OCP board. When Murphy (who eventually regains some of his previous human consciousness) confronts Jones with evidence that he is responsible for another executive’s death, he is unable to arrest him. If Directive 4 suggests the limits of the state under corporate rule, the solution to RoboCop’s problem is also necessarily corporate: When the company’s chairman bellows, “Dick, you’re fired,” Directive 4 becomes moot and Murphy is free to gruesomely terminate the evil executive. RoboCop ultimately recognizes the fear of corporate states run amok, but it also imagines their potential appeal, save for a bad egg or two. It’s a system where simple edicts can solve problems while circumventing the state.

The dystopia that RoboCop dreamt up in 1987 seems not so distant today, following real-life Detroit’s filing for bankruptcy in 2013. And RoboCop’s vision of privatized services is all too familiar, following the restructuring of schools in post-Katrina New Orleans. Or, consider the very real Corrections Corporation of America, the largest supplier of private prisons. Founded just four years before RoboCop was released, the company and other for-profit prisons now house close to 20 percent of federal inmates in the United States. RoboCop made OCP a caricature of sprawling corporate enterprise, but time has seen parody turn into reality.

It’s been difficult to anticipate where else the trope of the evil corporation can go now that it has seemingly gained a status that even Friedman couldn’t have imagined, when the Citizens United ruling led Mitt Romney to infamously declare, “corporations are people, my friend” while campaigning in 2012. In this way, the corporation becomes its own kind of irrepressible entity.

This nightmarish vision plays out in 2015’s Ex Machina, an allegorical examination of how corporations have been freed from all forms of social responsibility in the digital age. Ex Machina’s BlueBook—a Google-esque company—freely collects data on the 94 percent of global search traffic that it serves. If the company, founded by CEO Nathan Bateman, is not exactly interested in what is best for society, it is intent on delivering the things that consumers want most, however unconscious these wants may be.

That’s the impetus for Nathan’s new artificial intelligence robot, Ava, which in a test run is programmed specifically to the desires (some more lascivious than others) of Caleb Smith, a BlueBook employee. Ava may have her own developed consciousness, but it also is born out of Caleb’s search history and personal data, mined by BlueBook. In Ex Machina’s world, the company may be playing god, as Caleb and the film’s title observe, but it also excuses the corporation from managing its consumers’ individual fantasies and the dangers that come with indulging them.

Ex Machina’s most pressing question is not just about whether corporations are evil agents conspiring against the individual (although it certainly asks this too), but also about the individual’s complicity in that evil. The problem of the 20th-century corporate dystopia was one in which people can become products, but its 21st-century counterpart asks what happens when products become people, when the non-sentient become sentient, and when CEOs, shareholders, and customers alike allow corporations to take on a life of their own.

Angela Allan is a lecturer on history and literature at Harvard University.

#wiz.txt

[strokes-of-everything]

Sometimes I think the only way we’re going to make it out of the oppressive hell hole that is our current society is by making a parallel one that doesn’t operate by the same rules.

We have a global issue of what is, essentially, a Uniparty of politicians screwing over the masses at an alarming rate. They give us the illusion of choice—Red v. Blue! But we’re still going to fuck you.

I say this as a someone who is finding it incredibly difficult to “re-enter” society after a major injury. I never should’ve graduated from college, but I did so with highest honors despite having the reading speed of a third grader because of what happened. I took time off during the pandemic to heal the remaining issues that needed to be resolved.

Because of those two years—when the world was essentially shut down—my resume gap has made me a less desirable candidate. Even though I basically cheated death by the grace of God and accomplished more than my normal peers.

The same issue is faced by people in the prison system who have reformed/have been rehabilitated. You get one bad mark on your record, and bam—you’re officially an outcast of the system.

I think it’s time we just form a new system, outside of the rules.

Insurance companies a pain in the ass? New conglomerate of doctors and labs going back to how medicine used to be: community focused and pay according to your agreement with your doctor.

Unable to get a formal education because you don’t fit the normal applicant profile? Apprenticeships are back in action.

The only way we get rid of the shit we face today is to completely uproot the system supporting it.

#political #politics

[fukdiplomacyphoenyxedtruth]

Authenticity is never Easy

©️®️Being an #authenticself is more difficult than it sounds. What I mean by this is that sometimes we might not know exactly who we are at any given #moment . Moment to moment things change which is the only true constant in life, #CHANGE . Being just you as we are a conglomeration of our experiences, our teachings plus the teachers who taught us, our memories accurate or subjective, our likes or dislikes (plus those acquired from or by others, or “having” to like _, I asked about having to like Lord Byron be a we are supposed to etc.) our limited exposure to everybody of everybody, our inner children getting in the way, our fears or insecurities also getting in the way, Who we Have to be vs. Who we are or Want to be, even job me versus parent me etc…Sometimes we have help in the wrong direction that cries out some High School stuff like this is how you do this______, you have to like these people or admire this, you have to hang with these people, you need to dress this way, eat this don’t eat that, only this is valued, narrow views and those viewed as popular are the most common in that age area in the U.S. So knowing really knowing that you deserve healthy, supportive people in your life who bring out the real you, the unique positive person you are is a big step to overcoming the pitfalls of “thinking”, “acting”, or “being” like other people just because it is popular, new, in, easier, will get you , will hide who you are, etc. Authenticity is your own brand of you, not other peoples wants, desires, visions, hopes, dreams, demands, lies, delusions, commands or dictates, following of , etc. It’s you when nobody’s looking and hopefully when everybody is because if you are doing things that you hide I hope that you can talk to somebody about it. Like your self, cheer yourself, support yourself and others in their quests for Truth, Self Discovery, and the Journey to their Authentic self where you both can be Free of the constraints of needing to feel, be, or do __. “Reflection upon the past, can help shape a ______________ future(more worldly future*, person’s*, future based upon need not greed, a future where we hopefully fight for and defend equality, justice, liberty, and freedom for all.” Jade Raven Pelton. Control is an elusive #illusion that we sometimes delude ourselves into thinking that we need and not just about ourselves, but others, the weather, the world around us, our job, our school, our community, our family, our friends, our society, our continent p, our culture, our civilization (if you want to call the inhumanity that I see daily civilized?), our nation, our race, our gender, our sexuality, our government, our military, our circumstances, our memories and/or experiences, our state of mind, our bodies, our living situation, our partner, our spirituality/religion/faith/atheism/or other views, our ingrained indoctrinated __________(beliefs, foundations, hates, discriminations, notions*, delusional __________, mindsets, opinions, decisions, actions, indecision(s) or sidesitting etc,), our childhood, our youth, our children, our world, our city (even of just visiting not actual residence), our C(O)untry (trying to take the O oppression out of it and cut down to Try to do right by ALL the peoples with Liberty Justice Equality Freedoms) etc...

#authentic #authenticity #unique #personally #mind #identity #humanslavery

[luna-rainbow]

your words on the tfatws finale - FUCKING PERIOD. it was an amazing buildup for 5 episodes to such a boring ending that felt rushed, redeemed the wrong people, and killed the wrong people. I also felt like the directing of the story fell off in this episode, like the creators were great at creating suspense but not at typing it up. So many wtf (derogatory) moments, WHERE IS THE FLAVOR?

Thank you! I’m glad I’m not alone.

It had a similar problem as the Wanda Vision finale - a fantastic build up, ending in a perfunctory battle and an ending that didn’t acknowledge the ethical ramifications of what the characters did.

The problem is made worse by TFATWS wanting to portray a specific message about oppression and inequity, but the treatment of this particular subject is inconsistent and there is a lack of world-building to properly illustrate what this means. Unfortunately this makes the plot frequently undermine itself and the message it wants to get across. Ultimately it was a noble venture that lost to the demands of a conglomerate that needed certain in universe events to happen in order to push their products forward, and that in itself is ironic.

At least with WV the stakes were Wanda losing Vision for the 3rd time (!) but what were the stakes here, really, for our characters? Were we really supposed to care about the members of the GRC? Of course not. Were we ever worried about our main characters dying? Again no. It was a classic MCU 3rd act (Endgame excluded) with zippy dialogue, bloodless explosions, death of the (perceived) villain and a triumph of ideals.

Call me a cynic but as eloquent as Sam’s speech was, would that really change anything in real life? World councils are notorious for their inability to agree with each other, particularly when economic loss is projected. And do we really think, for a guerilla organisation with so many supporters, they’re just going to quietly accept their leaders’ suspicious deaths and accept that the GRC will now look after them? So many conspiracy theories can come of this (and they’d be mostly right given who Karli and her gang were killed by!)

And yes it felt rushed. I didn’t even have the chance to address Sharon being the power broker. Why did she help them kill her golden goose (Nagel)? Did we really need a Walker redemption? What was the point of Batroc? And who was the random woman who handed a phone to Bucky?

#tfatws #mcu #the falcon and the winter soldier #falcon and winter soldier #sharon carter #bucky barnes #sam wilson

[mythgirlimagines]

Here’s a brand new talentswapped Myth, just for this Tuesday! Get ready to dive into to a world of fantastical beings, for you are about to meet Myth, the Former Ultimate Novelist!

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BACKSTORY AND TALENT

With a rich inner world and a love for all things creative, Myth has been destined towards the arts, ever since she could hold a pencil. Despite her rather isolated childhood, Myth had a great starting support system in the form of her parents, elder sisters, and childhood friend Wyre. While Myth had a great variety of genres in her vast collection of works and future works, her main genre is a toss-up between romance and fantasy, with both of them being really passionate interests for her. Some of her most famous works include “Whispers of the Rain”, a mystery book series centering around a ragtag team of investigators snooping around for clues centering around supernatural happenings at the summer camp they attend, and “H34RT63AT”, a speculative sci-fi fiction work on a robot society that is capable of romantic feelings and copulation. Besides being famous for her literary works, Myth is also famous for her hospitality towards her fans, despite her eccentric attitude.

——————————————————-

RELATIONSHIPS

Wyre Anon, Former Ultimate Idol

As well as being Myth’s childhood friend and the only one of the Anons to know about Myth’s mysterious “base personality“ (aka. the personality Myth had before she started her illustrious career), Wyre is also the leading lady of the rock-idol group, “Saurus”. The members of Saurus, but Wyre in particular, are famous for their boyish charm and wild vocal performances, which matches with their punk aesthetic and appearances. Whenever either Myth or Wyre need privacy and time away from their massive fanbases, they regularly visit each other’s houses and relax with a good book to some good ambience music. 

Outfit: A sleeveless black leather jacket over a ragged white shirt with her group‘s logo on the front, black pants with a red stripe on either side, black buckled boots.

Anon Scar, Ultimate Baseball Player

Despite her eccentric fashion and speech patterns and continual talks of an “eye of power”, Scar is famous amongst baseball fans for her strong throws and accurate bat swings. Off of the diamond and on the sidelines, Scar is commonly regarded amongst her team mates as being the “team mom”, always prepared with cold compresses and water bottles to her sore and dehydrated teammates. Despite her own eccentricities, even she is weirded out by the eccentric personalities of Myth, even if Scar considers Myth’s books amazing. Scar reminds Myth of her Fantasy persona, and wishes to combat with Scar, sword-to-bat.

Outfit: A purple and black baseball cap, a matching eyepatch on her left eye that she claims hides the “eye of power”, a white baseball uniform with a big purple “6” on the front and back, black shoes, scarf from original design.

Fusion Anon, Ultimate Fanfiction Author

Underneath the internet pseudonym of “FatherFigureFusion”, Fusion garnered fame for his well-written online stories that are beloved by mutual fans of his favorite works, whether they’d be cartoons, video games, or books. Upon finding out that one his favorite novelists is present at the Kibo-Con, this gentle giant just couldn’t hold still and wishing to bombard Myth with questions. Luckily, Myth has endless patience for her fanbase, and happily obliges to answer her underclassman’s questions. They love talking to one another about the trials and tribulations of the writing process, and regularly exchange their beta works together. 

Outfit: Same outfit from his original design, but with fandom pins all over his hoodie and backpack.

Fusion Anon II, Ultimate Detective

Being one of the most competent homicide detectives in her hometown, despite her age, Fusion II has a great eye for investigation and an analytical mindset, just like her crime-solving parents. As hard as she tries to play up the “rebellious problem child and hardened grizzled detective” image, upon finding out that her favourite mystery novelist is attending the convention that she’s attended, her inner nerd and mystery geek just springs out, much to the detective’s embarrassment. Every time Myth talks to Fusion II about on-the-job incidents, Myth gets brand-new ideas for her future mystery novels, much to the excitement of II.

Outfit: Same outfit from the original but with a white trench coat and matching fedora, as opposed to a gakuran.

Just Anon, Ultimate Swimmer

Famous amongst the athletic community for his speedy movement through the pool, Janon seems to be the complete opposite when on the land: sluggish and lethargic. If it were up to Janon, he would gladly spend the rest of his life under the sea, without any annoying paparazzi and teachers to bother him. Because of the differing domains of their talents, Janon and Myth don’t interact much with each other, but Myth could sympathise with Janon’s struggles with an adoring fanbase. What Myth doesn’t know, is that Janon is a fan of one of Myth’s fantasy books, more specifically “Attack on Aquarius”, a story on the misunderstood mersharks.

Outfit: A blue and white shark hoodie (gawr gura) with nothing but pink and blue swim trunks underneath and matching flip flops on his feet.

Sparkle Anon, Former Ultimate Martial Artist

Sparkle is commonly known in tournaments by the self-made epithet, “THE COMBATIVE QUEEN”. Despite her eccentric attitude, her sparkly fashion and her genuine belief in magical girls and childhood desire to become one, Sparkle’s prowess in martial arts is nothing to be laughed at, for she dominated tournament after tournament with her combat skills. Just like with Scar, Sparkle reminds Myth of her fantasy author personality, who Sparkle happens to be a mutual fan of. Because of the martial artist’s emotional and over-exaggerated personality, both Horror and Romance Myth‘s interactions with Sparkle lead to inevitable comic gold.

Outfit: Hair cut into a bob, a sequinned leotard with a pink to blue gradient and magical girl frills, bandages tied around her arms and legs, contacts.

Egg Anon, Former Ultimate Programmer, and Wet Sock Anon, Former Ultimate Clairvoyant

Egg and Wet Sock are as different as night and day, with Egg being energetic and all about tech, and Wet Sock being more sullen, aggressive and all about the supernatural. Despite the two differing domains of the twins‘ talents, there is one particular thing that they both have in common: their shared penchant for inserting unnecessary and cursed comments into every conversation they enter. While they love to playfully tease Myth with her cursed comments, when Myth switches to Horror Myth, they quickly submit to the true Queen of Cursed. The Queen of Cursed and her twin minions set out to spread the cursed, much to the dismay of the other Anons.

Egg’s Outfit: A green and blue tracksuit with pixelated earrings and white sneakers, glasses from original design.

Wet Sock’s Outfit: A black and white tracksuit and an ominous black cloak that goes over their head.

Curious Anon, Jr. Ultimate Lucky Student

With a passive and go-with-the-flow personality and a love for whatever is popular these days, Curious is as normal as one could get these days. In fact, winning the Hope’s Peak Middle School lottery was the most monumental event of Curious‘s entire life. Curious seems to be a people-pleaser, for they regularly flatter others and go along with what others say, which has a tendency to breed trouble. Because of Eldritch, Curious seems to be convinced that all of Myth‘s personalities are four separate people, and Myth has since given up trying to convince them, and now plays along with the separate people schtick.

Outfit: Same outfit from the original but with messier hair, patchy overalls and a clover design on their tie. 

Anon Nerd, Former Ultimate Affluent Progeny

As the most prolific child in an already prolific family, Nerd is the vicious and ambitious head of the DEXTER conglomerate, only the prime company when it comes to technology. Nerd always has at least one piece of his company’s technology on his person, just so he can blast away annoying peasant that get in his way, with Myth (Romance Myth in particular, with her alluring figure and maternal energy) being the number one target for his ire, much to the anger of her over-protective childhood friend. Myth isn’t stupid, and knows that Nerd just needs a little redemption arc to help him loosen up and realise his true feelings for her.

Outfit: Same outfit from the original. 

Eldritch Anon, Ultimate Biker Gang Leader

Mysterious sightings of a large group of helmeted people were spotted all throughout several towns in the area, and eventually they were traced back to the “Apocalypse NO” gang, a band of secret apocalypse preppers, who wish to topple the “oppressive“ government they claim to be living under. Eldritch is currently trying to indoctrinate the other Kibo-Con members into his biker gang, but only succeeded in indoctrinating Curious. Myth may not understand a good majority of Eldritch’s anti-government rambles, but she thinks that his biker gang would make for a good sci-fi plot. If only she can convince him that her alternate personalities are all the same people.

Outfit: A black motorcycle helmet that covers his face, an entirely black jumpsuit, spiky black boots, and a red scarf.

Dream Anon, Ultimate Soldier

Seeing Dream in person and hearing about her talent would leave one feeling shocked and confused. When you look at this bouncy, cheery, and childish little lass, you would never guess that she is a master at piloting tanks and aiming fire at foreign combat enemies. Now that she is off of the battlefield and into a school environment, she’s trying her best to adapt from the life of warfare that she was forced into at a young age. Myth may be no expert on warfare, but she did her research and even she knows that being exposed to such violence at that age can’t be good for a young girl’s mind, no matter how many times Dream denies it.

Outfit: A barrette that resembles a sniper’s scope, a dark brown sleeveless parka over a camo hoodie, blue jorts, and black army boots.

Iris Anon, Jr. Ultimate Fashionista

Iris has had a passion for fashion ever since she was little, and with that passion, came a passionate following of like-minded people. With a belief that there is no such thing as a “fashion curse”, Iris carries herself with confidence and optimism that can be seen, even in pictures. When Myth first met Iris, the first thing the fashion icon did was compliment Myth’s patchy hand-me-down jacket, and how it went well with her otherwise high-class appearance, and that compliment makes Myth smile, just by thinking about it. Iris also appreciates how, just by a little change to her hair and jacket style, Myth can almost become a different person.

Outfit: A white beret on her head, a white jacket with a pink trim over a pink t-shirt and matching shorts, white boots, glasses and barrettes from original design. 

Purple Anon, Ultimate Gambler

Despite looking and acting shy and innocent, in a good majority of situations, Purple is a mastermind, when it comes to the underground hive of gambling. With a hard-to-read expression and vocabulary, Purple is an enigma, even amongst her fellow gamblers. Fortunately, because of her talent, Myth can understand exactly what the verbose gambler is trying to say to her. According to the gambler, Purple came from a formally-wealthy family that lost all of its riches, and Purple resorted to gambling in order to win her family’s riches back. Needless to say, Myth both feels sorry for Purple and inspired to write a brand-new story.

Outfit: A black scarf with a card suit motive that makes her expressions harder to read, a black vest over a red tie and purple dress shirt, a black skirt, leggings and shoes from original design.

This series centers around an “eccentric” novelist, as she gains inspiration from the colorful individuals around her, and weirding the colorful individuals out with her odd personalities.

——————————————————-

APPEARANCE

Myth normally keeps her purple-dyed hair that reaches to her mid-back down, only to tie it up in different styles, depending on which “personality” takes over. As for clothing, Myth wears a brown and patchy jacket that belonged to her father, and has writing supplies stashed in her massive pockets, over a black vest with blue outlines, which in turn, is over a white dress shirt and a pink necktie. Myth wears a skirt that’s the same color as her vest, baggy gyaru-style socks and black loafers. 

——————————————————-

PERSONALITY

The odd part about Myth’s personality and appearance is that it shifts, depending on what the genre of her latest work is, which, according to Myth, is meant to be “getting into the genre” and a sort of immersion/method acting. 

Her personalities and genres go as followed:

Romantic!Myth: Wears her hair in a side plait, switches to contact lenses and ties her jacket around her waist. Carries herself with an almost maternal air. Very teasy and flirtatious, and loves to toy with others, gives off serious “Ara, ara!” vibes. A massive sucker for suckers.

Fantasy!Myth: Wears her hair in a ponytail and wears her jacket like a cape. The “Chuuni” of the personalities, acting like a ruler of a fantasy land and refers to others by similar fantasy-esque terms.

Horror!Myth: Puts her hair into pigtails, lets some of her bangs down and slouches down. The most cursed and pessimistic of the personalities, interested in the supernatural and prone to adding horrific and cursed comments to any conversation, much to the dismay of the Brain Cells.

Mystery!Myth: Pops the collar of her jacket, so it resembles a trench coat, puts her hair into a bun and wears a white fedora, so she basically resembles Carmen Sandiego. Very calm, pensive and analytical, and all about the academia aesthetic, acting like a hardcore and grizzled detective. Also a massive sucker for suckers.

——————————————————-

I have a feeling that you would enjoy this talentswap, considering this is one of your dream careers! Let me know what you think of this swap!

-Fusion Anon

#i keep forgetting its tuesday lol #submission #anon #fusion anon #talentswap tuesday #art #not my art #fusion anon ii #curious anon #purple anon #wet sock anon #egg anon #iris anon #dream anon #sparkling anon #eldritch anon #anon nerd #anon scar #just anon #my evil twin #anon kg

[dannypolicy]

Politics as an Arena and a Process

by Dannica Batoon

Politics as an arena depends on the location where political behavior occurs. Often, politics happen in the Congress chambers, the President's office, and administrative courts. However, politics take place anywhere.

Social media is not inherently political because people typically use it for personal or private pursuits. Reddit could merely be a discussion website, live streaming site, or a social news aggregation. You don't even need to introduce yourself on Reddit before you could participate in it. Anonymously, you can start an event by telling where it would take place, the date and time, and what would happen or what to bring. People can do this on most social media platforms before technology conglomerate restricted political activities. Previously, they just cracked down disinformation.

Social media was pivotal in mobilizing people for a political cause in two of my examples: the Umbrella Movement and the 2021 Capitol Riot. The purpose of these events was to overthrow a government. The national election was also a reason for mobilization.

On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump tweeted allegations of vote fraud ahead of his rally. He knew that his supporters would walk towards the Capitol building. That was the start of his speech. He added that he would never give up and concede.

Before that, a Reddit community posted threads about the Capitol overthrow if the Congress and former Vice President Mike Pence would validate Biden's victory after an electoral count. When Congress started counting the vote for each state, the mob stormed the Capitol building. The Capitol police evacuated Pence and the lawmakers when the protesters breached the complex. The event injured at least 140 people, and five people died.

Trump supporters organized the deadly riot on Reddit, Twitter, Telegram, Parler (a right-wing website), Gab, TikTok, and TheDonald.win. Trump even urged Qanon, an influential conspiracy theorist, to gather support for the Capitol siege. Qanon blogged about it before January 6 and bragged of bringing thousands of protestors.

In Hongkong, the Hong Kong Federation of Students and Scholarism, a student activist group, and the Occupy Central with Love and Peace movement gathered supporters by digital means.

Twitter reported that 1.3 million tweets about Hong Kong were recorded between September 26-30, the beginning of the Umbrella Movement. Tracy Loh, visiting fellow at the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore, told CNBC that social media "was definitely a documenting function, and it also helped in coordinating and mobilizing the protesters, especially when there were several protest sites."

The Arab Spring in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain did not start on social media, but they contributed to counter-revolution. That is why Arabian governments controlled the activities of citizens in social media. Social media platforms suspended and removed thousands of accounts of political dissidents in Tunisia, Palestine, Egypt, and Syria. Lebanon-based organization SMEX, which advocates for digital rights in the Arab region, published an open letter signed by more than 40 civil organizations, calling on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to stop silencing critical voices in the Middle East and North Africa.

Politics also can happen in a schoolyard. Eleven years ago, Mouawiya Syasneh painted graffiti against President Bashar al-Assad. The police kidnapped and tortured the boy, which sparked civil unrest in Deraa. It spread across Syria, which people did not expect even if the Arab Spring was already happening in Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt.

Now, we go to politics as a process.

Across the world, women are on lower incomes than men. According to UN Women, men's average wages are higher than women's in rural and urban areas. Rural women typically work longer hours than men due to additional reproductive, domestic, and care responsibilities. In Benin and Tanzania, women work 17.4 and 14 hours more than men per week, respectively.

Women have narrowed legal and political rights and are subject to various forms of cultural oppression. In this context, feminist interpretations of political problems contributed to political theory and inspired generations of political thinkers and movements. Kate, Brittany Higgins, and Grace Tame's cases exemplify politics as a process of Feminism.

Australia is currently facing cultural protests against women's discrimination in schools, the federal government, and the overall social sphere in the country.

Just this year, Australia recognized Grace Tame as the Australian of the Year. Tame was a victim of sexual assault by her school teacher. She became vocal about it after being quelled by police authorities and laws. Since then, the media has been exposing sexual assault allegations in schools and the Australian government, helping female victims voice their concerns.

Related to Tame's narrative was the historical rape allegation to Christian Porter and the case of a former Liberal staffer, Britanny Higgins.

Attorney-General Christian Porter allegedly raped his colleague, Kate, when he was 18. Kate became a history professor and suffered from mental problems after Porter's crime. People predicted Kate would be a top government official if Porter did not rape her 33 years ago. Porter, meanwhile, succeeded in the Australian government. Kate took away her life after a prolonged investigation caused by the pandemic. Porter, being the Attorney-General, also prevented the inquiry.

Brittany Higgins, a former ministerial staff, experienced delays that lasted for two years. On March 22, 2019, an adviser of Minister Linda Reynolds raped Higgins in her office. The Finance Department covered up the crime, and the Morisson administration terminated the perpetrator for a wrong cause, a security breach in the Parliament House, to hide the rape incident.

Kate's suicide and Higgin's unsolved case reported by the media triggered Scott Morisson's government to act. Now, Australian women are calling for the protection of women in Australian public policies and laws.

Many girls experienced sexual assault in Australia because sexual consent is not taught early in schools. Students in Sydney advanced their calls for women's protection against sexual perpetrators and sex education in social media, particularly on Instagram, spreading across Australia and made as a media agenda.

According to a political communication and psychology theory, agenda-setting influences policies when an issue becomes dominant in the news and public communication or rhetoric.

In the examples that I have given, you can see the interplay between feminism and media effects, and that's how you explain a political process and develop an original conceptual framework in political science.

#Feminism #Everyday feminism #politics #capitalism #journal #bujo journal #IR #iris west #Political Science nerd #ir event: maskerade #studyblr #studyspo

[southeastasianists]

It was 22 years ago this month when racial violence against Chinese Indonesians broke out in Indonesia. Amid the violence, over 1,000 died and thousands were more bankrupted or fled the country.

People who had not been born then – Generation Z or Gen-Zers — are highly aware of this side of history despite having no direct experience with the event. Supported by their tech savviness and influenced by global movements, young Chinese Indonesians are forming new social alliances and building their own narratives.

They no longer only see race as their sole identity. They are becoming more and more critical of intersectional identity, incorporating class, privilege, gender, and sexual orientation.

Older conversations about racism and discrimination against Chinese Indonesians tend to avoid the class issue, mainly because of the prevalent stereotype that all Chinese Indonesians are wealthy.

But to make the case of their own discrimination, young Chinese Indonesians today will have to break the taboo and talk about class and privilege, researchers say. To beat the ghost, don’t run away; run towards it.

After the fall of Indonesia’s first president Sukarno and his leftist allies, right-wing Chinese Indonesians moved closer to General Suharto, who rose to power following the 1965 communist purge. Suharto then utilized Chinese Indonesian businesses to execute his economic development programs, while actively distinguishing their ethnicity from the so-called “native Indonesians,” or pribumis.

The businesses grew into conglomerations — the likes of Salim Group, Astra International, the Sinar Mas Group, Gudang Garam, Sampoerna and the Lippo Group — all owned by ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs.

Indonesia’s economy grew, but inequality deepened.

When the economic crisis hit in 1998, food shortages and mass unemployment triggered riots that targeted ethnic Chinese throughout Indonesia, mainly in Medan, Jakarta, and Solo. Property and businesses were looted and burned with men, women and children still inside, while over a hundred of women were raped and thrown into the fires. Casualties included both Chinese and non-Chinese.

The memories are painful. Outside of Indonesia, there have been efforts to preserve these memories through art, such as Rani Pramesti’s Chinese Whispers graphic novel, performance, and installations in Australia. Back home, the whispers are far more quiet.

The Diplomat spoke to about a dozen Chinese Indonesians between the ages of 16 and 22 years old in Indonesia, and found that they were aware of the events of May 1998. They, too, felt the sting when stories were passed down in a hushed manner by parents and teachers.

When asked about what to do about the unresolved cases, they are divided. Some strongly believed in pressuring the government for justice; others took a more pessimistic view.

Today, the middle class and the wealthy Chinese Indonesians living in the cities remain segregated. They live in different neighborhoods and go to different schools from the so-called pribumis. They have limited interaction with people outside of their own ethnicity.

Some still experience being called “Cina” (Chinese), a derogatory racist term. Many understand that they belong to a different ethnicity and class than most Indonesians, but are unsure what to do with that knowledge. They do not speak Mandarin and feel out of touch with their ancestors’ culture.

At the highest level, wealthy Chinese Indonesian business elite are again assisting President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s ambition to attract investments and build infrastructure. The conglomerates formed during the Suharto era are alive and well. They remain at the top and are positioning themselves as “the bridge” in contemporary Indonesia-China relations.

As the result, Jokowi’s administration has forged closer ties with Xi Jinping’s China, which the president’s critics claim is giving more advantages to Chinese investors and businesses.

“Those outside of this exclusive group (of business elite) have expressed discontent over the direction of Chinese Indonesian identity politics, and these internal divisions may widen even further in the future,” Indonesian scholar Charlotte Setijadi wrote in a 2016 research paper.

Now with Gen Z in the picture, it does not seem that younger Chinese Indonesians would, or should, stay passive and let their identity be directed by a handful of their older, wealthy counterparts — again.

Thung Ju Lan, a researcher at Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), pointed out that the main gap in Indonesian society now is less about race than it is about class.

“If you compare with the politics in the ‘60s, today’s gap is no longer a divide between the Chinese and the non-Chinese, but between social classes. The wealthy are friends with each other regardless of race; they hang out together in Singapore and whatnot,” Thung said.

Human rights groups have strongly criticized Jokowi’s administration as favoring large businesses — Chinese owned or not — over the people’s welfare.

Hoon Chang Yau, researcher at Universiti Brunei Darussalam, affirmed this view. He said if the average young Indonesian of any ethnicity were to learn anything from the New Order era, it’s that conversations about race and ethnicity must include rejections of economic inequality and of the oppression of other minorities.

“If we want to talk about race, we cannot pretend there is no class issue, because actually a lot of problems are rooted in socioeconomic problems,” he said.

A growing number of Gen-Zers are starting to realize this. Not only they are critical of discrimination they face themselves, but they are also building solidarity with people from other intersections of marginalization.

Kai Mata, 23, is a Chinese Indonesian who has been generating media buzz lately for being the first openly gay musician in Indonesia. In 1998, along with her parents she left Indonesia as a baby for the United States. She came back to Indonesia at 13 years old.

Kai uses music and social media to promote acceptance of gayness. Her Instagram and Twitter accounts are adorned by rainbows. When it comes to her ethnicity, she said she never fully understood it while growing up. When she asked around about the May 1998 riots, she received an underwhelming response.

“A lot of Chinese Indonesians survive in the past because they are quiet and stayed hidden, and a lot of them still moved forward with that rather than speaking up, and we don’t raise our voices for the people in the past that have died,” Kai said.

“From that aspect I think that’s why I’m quite vocal about all aspects of me being Indonesian,” Kai added.

Kevin Ng, 20, coordinates the Aksi Kamisan protest in Perth, Australia, while being a student. Kamisan is a silent protest held every Thursday urging the government to resolve cases of past human rights abuses.

Active in various youth and nonprofit organizations, Ng believed that the issues of class, racism and discrimination cannot be separated from one another.

“Class struggles is one of the factors creating that (social) friction… Our main enemy right now is capitalism, where Chinese Indonesians are not the only capitalists,” Ng said.

Meanwhile, Jesslyn Tan, 18, busies herself in womens empowerment activism and theater. For her, the most important thing is to start over and build up her heritage again, starting from her generation.

Moving forward, the responsibility for the future is with both sides, Hoon said.

Hoon strongly recommended the education sector be activated to promote multicultural citizenship.

He also pointed at the gaps. While Islamic boarding schools, or pesantren, are scrutinized and expected to foster tolerant teachings, little attention is paid to expensive, private Christian schools.

“They (Christian schools) seem to want Indonesia only for the privilege. They don’t see poverty, they are blinded to differences. They think Indonesia is heaven because they go to Singapore, Bali, and Australia. So (the kids) are being prepared for cosmopolitan lifestyle, and that’s problematic because it doesn’t match the reality of Indonesia,” Hoon said.

To give the past any meaning, young Chinese Indonesians must stand with their non-ethnic Chinese friends, the underprivileged, and all other minorities, and set the course of their own journey. Only then will walls and boxes disappear.

#indonesia #may 1988 #may 1988 riots #history #race #racial politics #ethnic identity #class

[proeticshadows]

#KapamilyaForever: A continuous battle to fight for those who are building their dreams

(WARNING: This may be a very long post, depending on the level of my feelings in terms of honesty. This is a personal account from a Kapamilya on the franchise issue of ABS-CBN. Opinions are MINE and must not reflect those of the network and its management.)

If you've been a long-time reader of my musings here, you'd know this fact about me - I work at ABS-CBN. I am a Kapamilya. I'm a digital content producer for the publishing arm of the station, article writer for the brand I handle, and scriptwriter for radio, and I spend most of my time creating social media stuff and stories for two departments of the network. My main job is with ABS-CBN Books, and I do online marketing and I spearhead digital content and social media postings for our brand. I also have a part-time job as a radio drama scriptwriter for MOR 101.9's radio drama program, Dear MOR. My stories are being aired all around the Philippines on air and even online via MOR 101.9's Youtube channel.

I've been a Kapamilya for almost 3 years now. I spent 2 and a half years as a Digital Content Producer for MOR 101.9 (along with my experiences as a Production Assistant, Associate Producer - for a week - and a Scriptwriter) then I shifted to a full-time, regular job when ABS-CBN Books offered me one (I used to work for Books only for NoInk, our digital writing and reading platform). Basically, my job experiences with ABS-CBN can be considered as the gateway of the dreams I've built since I was 10 years old. I've long been narrating this whenever possible, both here and offline, but me being a writer is my ultimate goal in terms of my career. I've been sure about it for a very young age and this is why I'm really grateful with ABS-CBN because the network gives me so much to look forward to everyday and to hope for more in the future.

Being a Kapamilya is tiring. Really tiring, trust me. Everyday, you're expected to be creative and top your previous performances. The work environment is a fast-paced jam-packed one, with deadlines and surprise additional load coming in between. Everyday, you'd get to see yourself challenged to become better with what you do. It's a process, a never-ending cycle, and a race to chase. Some would think it's a nightmare and a hell hole they'd choose not to involve themselves in, but for us, it's a passion cause and a privilege to be chosen in the network. On a personal level, the workflow I have to face everyday reflects my relationship to myself - it is a love-hate one that I have to keep on surviving.

Trying to enter ABS-CBN as a professional is not a piece of cake - you'd have to prove yourself over the tedious process of application, job interviews, exams, and professional assessment. I'm blessed to have survived it, but the better blessing is staying inside.

It is hard to concentrate at work when your company is in pain. Right now, we're bleeding the pains of press oppression and attack on freedom of speech. Our shoulders hurt as we carry the burdens of an unresolved grudge (which should have been a closed case during the Senate hearing because it was proven there that ABS-CBN did NOTHING against the law) over a childlike tantrum of someone who should have better wisdom, given his age and educational background. We're under the fire as people (who only know to do is to open their mouths noisily) call us names and tell us to do our jobs better without them even understanding how Journalism fully works. Trust me when I say that feeling overwhelmed after all of these is a freaking understatement because this is more than it - What we experience now is something that no one deserves to.

For the past 3 years, I've had this floating feeling of unbelief at times while I walk in ABS-CBN's Center Road. Am I really here? Is this real? Why? Those questions can be acknowledged as funny whenever I look back but the feeling strikes the reality to me - I am making my dreams come true... which is what I hoped and prayed for. I did not push myself so hard in Journalism school for nothing.

Of course I've had a fair share of doubts, especially with my skills, particularly when I was with MOR. I loved my stay there because of the experience but with the people I have to face everyday, I don't have a concise answer with that. I doubted myself highly because I feel that the people around me don't even believe with what I can do, which hindered me to fully go on. My shyness also became a problem and it was called out. When the opportunity to find an additional job happened, I immediately grabbed it because I was really hungry for career growth. I felt so stuck with what I do everyday and it was draining even if I wasn't doing so much.

With my new job at ABS-CBN Books, my shelved character as a writer bloomed. I became an article writer again. I have a website I handle where I can write stuff into. I am paid to read and write about books, which is the dream for me. People think I'm living the dream, sometimes I think of the same, but the universe must be joking lately, especially during this time of a melancholic trial for us.

The network and the management are not perfect entities. I've had a fair share of a story wherein I found them unfair, but it was resolved.  Despite of the imperfections, ABS-CBN tries its best everyday to live on its own tagline - to always be in the service of the Filipino worldwide. Every content we (the little employees) do, every write up and brainchild we release, the network makes sure that they're all dedicated for the Filipinos. ABS-CBN won't be the biggest media conglomerate in the country without that legacy, and that legacy will always remain.

As people try to silence us with their fake news parties and one-sided accounts; with their jurisdiction obtained from misleading social media postings and irresponsible word of mouth from imbeciles and evildoers, we continue to fight this battle we don't even have to be in, in the first place. We do this because our big bosses believe in us and for our love for each other as Kapamilyas. We do this for the people who choose to be kind to hear us out, too. We do this for those who believe and support us along the way, even if it means they'll get to be stabbed by the daggers used to wound us as well.

Personally, I am so damn tired to explain to people who are narrow-minded and would just throw out insults to me, my stand, and my status as an ABS-CBN employee. I am so freaking tired to argue with people (even my own relatives who are way insensitive to make this situation a laughing matter) who choose to be blinded with their hate and triumphant feeling over those who are unsure of their future everyday. But I know I must keep on fighting, on resisting, and on speaking not just for the network but for myself and my dreams as well. This is my bread and butter, and I don't see myself sharing my talent with words and paragraphs anywhere else aside from ABS-CBN.

#KapamilyaForever

#LabanKapamilya

#DefendPressFreedom

#IStandWithABSCBN

#personal #work #Kapamilya #ABS-CBN #Kapamilya Forever #Laban Kapamilya #Defend Press Freedom #I Stand With ABS-CBN #Filipino writer #Filipino blogger

[silversabl-inova]

( same information beneath the read more if you’d rather click through. ) BIOGRAPHY | BASICS | WANTED ARCS

i can bear any   p a i n   as long as it has meaning.

IC PORTION; BASICS —

CHARACTER NAME/ALIAS: Silvija “Silver” Sablinova

FACECLAIM: Katherina McNamara

AFFILIATIONS: The Wild Pack, ISA 

AGE (physical age as well, if different): Twenty three (23)

SPECIES (human, metahuman, alien, etc): Human

IS YOUR CHARACTER’S IDENTITY SECRET OR PUBLIC?

... Is ‘both’ an okay answer? I’m sure she thinks her identity is secret, but her name is Silver Sablinova, it’s not like... a leap to guess she’s the Silver Sable.  I guess it’s probably secret to the rest of the world because I don’t think she’s “famous” yet, but in her home country and the criminal underworld of eastern Europe, she’s probably pretty well known for her more infamous capabilities.

IF SECRET, OR YOUR CHARACTER IS A CIVILIAN, DO THEY HAVE A CIVILIAN OCCUPATION?

She prefers the term “secular recovery operative” but she’d be most appropriately dubbed a nationalistic bounty hunter.

IF YOUR CHARACTER LIVES IN THE FORTRESS, WHAT ARE THEIR DUTIES?

N/A.

DESCRIBE SIX TRAITS (3 positive, 3 negative) YOUR CHARACTER HAS AND HOW THESE AFFECT THEM:

[ + ]: PROUD - The third generation of Symkarian nationalists, Silver’s childhood was quickly marred by an airstrike that stole her mother’s life and destabilized her entire country, causing a civil war. Ever since, all Silver’s life has felt like a battle: for freedom, for justice, for family, and for peace. She knows her family history like the back of her hand, and because of this, she knows that fateful day was the result of her own family lineage doing everything it can to protect Symkaria & its people - but in the end, they had done anything but. The last surviving member of the Sablinova line, it’s Silver’s duty to restore balance to Symkaria, and she holds this duty deep in her heart, fueling the fire inside her. Everything in her life can be boiled down to ending the war in Symkaria - nothing else matters to her, and Silver’s duty to her country & compassion for her people are, arguably, her best qualities. [ + ]: RESOURCEFUL - There’s nothing in a room that Silver can’t make into a weapon at a moment’s notice. She’s not above fighting dirty to achieve the upperhand, and if her arsenal of gadgets won’t do the trick, than whatever’s closest to her will have to do. Locked in an empty room? No matter - she’s trained her entire life for the inevitable day when that situation arises, and when it does, her foe will be shocked to learn that she is the deadliest weapon of all. [ + ]: UNWAVERING - Devotion is one thing, but Silver is unwavering in her support. Once past her icy exterior, Silver tends to show her devotion with actions rather than words. She’s the first to interject herself into a dangerous situation to protect those she cares about; that circle is too small to allow any harm in its way, and Sable would break any law or commit any crime to safeguard those closest to her. It’s why her heart has such exclusive access - that kind of loyalty is, quite literally, worth dying for.

[ - ]: COLD - There’s a certain sharpness Silver tends to adopt when dealing with... people. Whether it be her version of professionalism, or just a product of her childhood, Silver’s apathetic approach to most interactions may give the impression of aloofness or distance. Bridging that gap is difficult for her, and for what she can’t give people emotionally, she tries to supplement with non-verbal acts of compassion. Not everyone has the ability to see through her stony exterior, or bone dry humor, and she often comes across as unhospitable or unconcerned, even if she’s anything but. [ - ]: DETACHED - Sometimes, you have to be selfish to be selfless. Silver has to remind herself of this fact constantly to keep herself in check; it’s easy to be swept up in the warmth of compassion for all, but a good leader knows when to draw the hard line between what’s good for everyone, and what’s good for your people. Silver has to draw that hard line far more than she’d like to - her one track mind is on brand for the Wild Pack’s affairs, but on a larger scale, this self-centeredness can spell disaster when they’re not careful. She just continues to tell herself that if Symkaria will ever be restored to its former glory, she needs to become as comfortable as she can with restricting big picture empathy. [ - ]: INFALLIBLE - When Silver makes a choice, be it over a contract or a personal matter, she becomes quite obstinate that her decision was the best possible one. In most cases, thankfully, it ends up being true; however, when Silver does make a mistake, she will outright refuse to accept responsibility, instead often blaming all other factors surrounding the situation for impeding her. If the mistake is a deadly error that costs innocent lives, than her adamance  increases tenfold, but in her heart, she knows she’s not free from wrongdoing - she just refuses to relent her headstrong exterior for fear of losing the respect of the Wild Pack.

POWERS AND/OR ABILITIES:

Indomitable Will: unnaturally strong willpower, able to resist all forms of temptation, including subordination manipulation, telepathy, subliminal seduction, & mind control.

Weapons Specialist: skilled with a katana, throwing projectiles, stun guns, & dual-wield fighting.

Master Martial Artist: and gymnast!

Multilingual: Fluent in seven languages - English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Somali, & Symkarian

WEAKNESSES:

Human: Quite literally, she’s human. No level of aptitude with guns, throwing knives, Kevlar bodysuits, or martial arts will help her defeat super-powered foes, and even though she can keep up with the best of them, a well timed sniper would write the end to Silver’s story immediately.

The Wild Pack: One of the last vestiges of her family history, Silver’s pledge to lead the Wild Pack includes protecting them, at all costs. There’s few honors she holds higher than the privilege to be apart of their ranks, let alone their commander in chief. She wouldn’t jeopardize their well-being for any contract, no matter how ludicrous.

Symkaria: It goes without saying that on the global playing field, Symkaria is the beating heart of Silver’s allegiances. She loves her country, and she would do anything to return it to the glory of her childhood - even if that means aligning with the wrong people for the right amount of time. Silver’s compassion for her countrymen - and longing for what used to be - outranks her perception of the bigger picture.

WHAT DREW YOU TO THIS CHARACTER?:

Well. I love Silver Sable, off the bat - the Spiderverse is pretty much my favorite comic conglomerate in the world, so I feel pretty comfortable writing characters derived from it. I dig a good villain, or at least, antagonists, and I just feel like Silver is one of those characters you can really dig your teeth into & flesh out so many different layers. The death of her mother at a young age, the duty to a country she saw prosper & implode within her lifetime, the lineage to uphold within The Wild Pack, and moving forward, the mending of Symkaria & creation of Sable International -- they’re all different strokes of the same woman, and I love poking & prodding around them all to see what sticks!

IC PORTION; DETAILS —

WHAT BROUGHT YOUR CHARACTER TO SOKOVIA?

Money. She’s only there to fulfill a contract - she’s been hired by the ISA to retrieve any powered people she can find. She’s not a big fan of Sokovia as of late, especially given their recent catastrophes. The damage to Sokovia had a ripple effect, upsetting the socioeconomic standard of neighboring countries. This, of course, includes Symkaria; getting powered people out of Sokovia will hopefully halt the continued destabilization she’s watched through her country even further off balance, making it easier for the oppressive regime currently in place to make swooping laws

(I would like to offer your current players the ability to opt into this plot! I don’t want to assume anyone wants her as an antagonist - if no one’s interested, she can certainly creep along the sidelines within the city of Matchak in the name of reconaissance. I would die if she & the Wild Pack were part of the reason why people are going missing in the woods, or at the very least, they begin to provide intelligence as to who or what is causing it.)

DID THEY SIGN THE ACCORDS? WHY OR WHY NOT?

No, Silver & her team aren’t superpowered and thus, outside the scope of the Accords, the ISA, or anybody else, for that matter.

(Well, maybe not Interpol, but that’s not her chief concern... ever.)

PROVIDE 3-5 HEADCANONS RELATED TO YOUR CHARACTER:

Thou Shalt Not Kill: Silver doesn’t consider herself a mercenary, unlike the rest of her crew, and for good reason. She staunchly keeps to a “no kill” rule; her clients pay her for retrieval, not assassination (and even if they did, her price would be too high). Silver specifically accepts contracts that require her to bring the target back alive, preferably to face trial. It’s a moral and economical decision - she believes in the hard lines of justice, and typically, the Wild Pack will get hired to also run security for these high profile trials. It’s a win-win in her eyes, especially because this moral alignment begins & ends with her; she can’t force the Wild Pack, a band of true mercenaries, to abide by that rule unless it’s part of the fine print. Otherwise, they don’t get paid.

I’m Not Your Silver Lining: Silver does not “connect” well with others. Even the Wild Pack, despite being raised within their ranks, has become inexplicably difficult for her to bond with after she assumed a leadership rule over them. She doesn’t put herself on any kind of pedestal; it’s just lonely at the top, and heavy is the head that wears the.. crown? Tactical helmet? Whatever. Regardless, her icy exterior isn’t the result of her pride, but her inability to display outward affection. It makes her quite difficult to befriend, let alone romance.

Anything You Can Do...: She does not do well with being confronted with her own mortality, chiefly the indisputable fact that she is not super powered. She’s quick to start a fight with anyone who dares to say it. Silver has accomodated this woeful transgression of fate in every way she could, keeping a strict training routine that began in her childhood and never letting herself have a “real” life outside of the Wild Pack. Stories of her “powers,” passed in hushed whispers around Symkaria, never failed to bring the smallest of smiles to the Ice Queen’s lips, before quickly melting away. She feels uncomfortable around true superpowered individuals, knowing she’s at a tactical disadvantage at all times, so Silver prefers the company of augmented humans or just normal people.

WANTED CHARACTER CONNECTIONS:

Peter Parker: NEVERENDING PLOTS FOR SPIDEY!!!! I’m partial to Silver being an antagonist against Spiderman; I’m also partial to them being begruding partners, and pretty much everything in between! There’s a lot of back story I would want to establish with Peter’s player, since Silver does have some background in NYC at the Symkarian Embassy. Has she heard of him from her time in America, and can’t believe her eyes when she sees web residue in the forests of Sokovia? Maybe he intrigues her, in the sense of cat-and-mouse, the chase for a target that she can never quite catch. Anyway, I just like that they’re well matched and could endlessly go in circles around one another!

Dick Grayson: Silver will not take well to other mercenaries on her turf, and if she finds herself losing targets - and money - because of some dick in a spandex suit, she’s going to intervene the only way she knows how: a tactical net and a stun gun, to haul his ass off to ISA, or whoever offers the highest bid for his head. Either way, their connection would be openly antagonistic, and it’d be way more enjoyable if he continously slips through her fingers through the fault of only her own.

Tony Stark / Bruce Wayne: Waaaaaay in the future, but right off the bat - I know I’d love to lay the groundwork for Silver to have Tony and/or Bruce help her begin the first drafts of Sable International weaponry, specifically the special red energy blasters they use as well as their unique armor.

I like the idea of Tony trying to spear head any kind of science based project, but obviously, he has his own demons that he’s struggling with re: his inventions, so that would be the slowest of burns for Silver to actually convince him to help her of all people. Potentially, it would be easier to recruit Bruce because she has a hard moral alignment of Justice, which may appeal to him, but it also may not since she doesn’t have an issue breaking other countries’ laws to acquire her target. It really depends! I’m open to either or both options.

POTENTIAL CHARACTER ARCS: ( ohhhhh buddy... )

THE WILD PACK: Silver’s ascenscion to leader of the Wild Pack may not be a new development, but  I don’t think she has quite the handle over her role as her father had. At the moment, she’s still trying to prove herself that she was their best choice. It doesn’t help that she was merely picked for lineages’ sake, the group being “passed on” to her, despite there being members who were more qualified and possibly, even more respected than a Sablinova. It’s caused Silver to retreat within herself, for now, as she tries to feel out what’s the best version of herself to be that can actively command their respect. I want to see her grow within this role, specifically finding her stride and proving herself as not just her father’s daughter, but her own person. I’m mainly focused on her accepting the weight of her father’s death as a “positive” burden to shoulder, because it gave her the Wild Pack, but without anyone to banter off of, I want to remain a little removed from addressing her relationships with individual members until I get a better idea of her.

THE BAD GUY?: At the moment, she’s not very concerned with anyone’s opinion of her, outside of the Wild Pack’s. If that means that she’s comes across as a “villain” for simply doing her job, she doesn’t quite care - everyone has to make a living somehow, and she hasn’t seen these so-called “superheros” do very much to help anyone other than themselves. Sure, individual civilians are great to rescue, but they hold no concern for the bigger picture when it comes to their actions.

THE GLOBAL PEACE AGENCY: I don’t know what the hell is going to happen with this group, but boy am I excited! Regardless of whether their true to their name, I think Silver’s entire personality is tailored to be taken advantage of by them, especially if they promise stability for Symkaria. As long as she’s not exposed to intel that hints at bad intentions, she’d probably operate at their beck and call, until her trust in their motivations becomes fractured.

SABLE INTERNATIONAL: I want Sable International to come to fruition!!! I don’t know how, or why, but I just love that journey for her! Maybe as a retirement plan from “bounty hunting,” so she can lean more into private security consulting? Maybe as a tactical weaponry distributor that could rival Lex Luthor / Trask / Oscorps’ on the global market, but in the name of “good”? Maybe something happens to the Wild Pack and it’s the only way she can keep herself sane in the following months? WHO KNOWS!!! I’m always open to ideas!

CHARACTER BIO —

Silvija Sablinova and her mother, Sacha, were sleeping peacefully in their beds the morning that the Sablinova family was changed forever. It was too early to even be awake, dawn having not yet struck its colorful brilliance across the lavender-grey when the drone peppered the valley. It wasn’t the first time such an act of aggression was lobbed across their way, but this time, her father Ernest wasn’t there to save them, away on an assignment with his Wild Pack. It was the end of February, the winter of 2002. Silver was five, and from that moment on, she never left her father’s side again.

After that, the story sounds the same. Daddy's little girl raised to be his right hand; there's no softness, no grief, only purpose for them both to find vengenance for her mother's killer. Not a border nor an army could keep them from finding whoever ordered the strike, and with the Wild Pack by their side, their path toward retribution knew no limit. In the mean time, they trained, and Silver's entire life began and end at all the same lines as her father's. It would be nice, if the story could stop there, but it never does.

For generations, the Sablinova's served the monarchy that ruled over Symkaria, until World War II threw the entire planet off-kilter and brought their beloved country into turmoil. Her grandfather was a prolific Nazi hunter and a national hero, actively fighting against the civil war threatening to break out across the land. Her father followed in his footsteps, his career more focused on collecting HYDRA agents with terror charges, alongside his infamous band of mercenaries as they brought countless criminals to justice. In 2017, when it was exposed that HYDRA had infiltrated SHIELD, a frequent employer of the Wild Pack...It was no surprise they would be targeted, but once again, Symkaria became the battleground of their disposal; their loved ones targeted, their neighborhoods raided, and soon, they were left no choice but to go underground.

Silver was there the day that her father's tenure as their fearless leader came to a shuddering halt, face to face with the man who hadn't just taken her mother from them. He'd destroyed their homeland in the name of the enemy. He'd taken peace from innocents without a second thought. In his final act of treachery, he stole her father's life and body, slipping through the Wild Pack's clutches as they gave desperate chase, but to no avail. She was the natural choice as his successor; it was a lifetime achievement tainted with sorrow and defeat.

The hunt has never ended, despite what Silver says. She knows her father's dead, and she'll probably never find the man who destroyed her family, but still, she waits. Until then, it was business as usual; catch the bad guys, bring them to justice, rinse & repeat. No duty is monotonous when it serves a greater purpose, but eventually, even Silver couldn't stop herself from pushing the Wild Pack toward Sokovia. Their unrest had begun to bubble over and spill across its borders, eventually displacing refugees and criminal activity into Symkaria's own. Silver Sable may be investigating client contracts, but Silver Sablinova is bidding her time, waiting for something, anything to help her either accept the fate that's been handed to her, or to find the man that caused it.

Until then, all she can do is be stronger than she was the day before.

#srisingintro

[oddlyre]

Historically black communities have participated in non violent resistance to the racist system our society is built on. I say nonviolent because violence (of which doesn’t purposefully harm another human but rather deconstruct the power structures they live beneath) is only sparked when the continued refusal of basic human rights aren’t being met. For example, Rosa Park’s nonviolent resistance of refusing to give up her seat for a white passenger sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955. This didn’t end racism, all it did was be one of the many voices speaking out against poor treatment. There was a system in place — segregation — this system denied rights to the black community, they fought back. If I was growing up and living in the 1950’s, would I have done anything? I do believe I would not blatantly say anything racist, sure, I wouldn’t purposefully harm someone else. But I know I would still go along with the segregation rules that I would have been brought up in. Because it’s normal, because I myself wouldn’t see the harm it was doing anyone. So what if different people sit in different seats, we’re all getting a seat. And this is the HARMFUL white perspective.

Opportunities and education lack majorly in communities with large percentages of people of colour. Because you need money to get opportunities and education. A white European family tree that leads back centuries might land on successful business owners, even monarchies. This money trickles down into today. Giving the family privileges they might take for granted; a house in a comfortable area with a library and a well equipped high school, a car, wifi, computers. Take away one of those things and you are at a severe disadvantage. No wifi, no access to information from home. No car, no ability to travel, especially for things like work. No well equipped school in the zone, lack of quality education which leads to opportunities. No opportunities, no ability to find good well paying jobs, no ability to have a house in a comfortable area, no ability to educate yourself. The history of black people show murders, slavery, discrimination. These trickle down and lead to the lack of the things white people take for granted. Which leads to stereotypes of uneducated inarticulate black people which leads to the discrimination of black people on every level of society. This is HARMFUL.

These stereotypes and discriminatory perspectives lead to jobs profit off of their pain. Amazon is an excellent example, stories I’ve heard of people who work in amazon factories have proven that you don’t choose a life like that. You lack other opportunities.  White people choosing to buy from Amazon, and other conglomerates,  are also choosing to support these structures.

The white perspective revolves around comfort and stability. When we see footage of a black man being murdered by police officers we have an urge to look away, this is normal and a humane reaction. But don’t forget the feeling. The disturbance of seeing someones life taken is unsettling, holding onto this feeling and channeling it into change forces your white perspective to shift. It’s uncomfortable to see the reality white people have inflicted on the black community. Be uncomfortable. Be uncomfortable in the comfort you have, share the privilege you have by donating, by volunteering and educating yourself. Don’t just nod and accept that this is what happens every now and then when a person of colour is murdered and goes viral. This isn’t an every now and then situation. This is the every day. This is the normal and we can’t see it because we’re too afraid to loose our comfort.

Anger comes when the refusal of basic human rights is denied. This has continued.  Black people and people of colour aren’t violent. They’re angry. And they should be.

Within the past couple of days there have been peaceful protests after the murders from white police officers to black citizens of which have been broadcast across the world. The peaceful protesters were met with violent reactions from police officers yet again. Tear gas, rubber bullets and aggressive attitudes. Violence comes from white people. This is white supremacy. When the oppressed riot (act “violent”) they attack property and capitalism, looting is powerful as in our society that values property and materialism the statement is that human lives matter more. When the oppressed riot against the violent actions of oppressors it is after staying quiet and fearing that it would be worse if they speak up. When someone gets angry, it’s already past the point of the oppressor saying sorry and saying it won’t happen again. The storyline has already been cemented to weave the dismissal of black lives. This narrative is the harmful structure we live under.

White people are scared of being uncomfortable. Decent white people are scared of being uncomfortable. Decent white people who share a post on their instagram stories that last 24 hours and then disappear are scared of being uncomfortable, because to them those 24 hours are as uncomfortable as they need to be and within a week it will subside and make its way out of the news cycle.

‘I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.’ — rosa parks

White people, be uncomfortable. Stay uncomfortable. Rewrite the harmful narrative. Human lives matter more than that. #blacklivesmatter

#black lives matter

[galaxy-notes]

may day notes re: organizing

before covid19 and perhaps before these past 2-3 years, if you were to ask me do i subscribe to one political ideology? i’d say no and just be like i’m a leftist / radical / etc. and i def fuck with anarchists, but i don’t think i am with ONE ideology, no... but now i VERY much see anarchism (which is, truth be told, marx’s original picture of ‘ideal’ communist societies) as an absolutely key piece to the type of radical movement building that’s actually gonna get us to the world we need and want.

i think the combination of covid19 + climate change is unraveling so many things for me and exposing the failure of states as a whole. i was watching INCITE’s abolitionist feminism event today, which left me with something that really stood out: one of the speakers (love them) critiqued the way mutual aid efforts could be co-opted and nonprofit-ized to suit neoliberal capitalism, and how we must hold the state responsible esp to our basic needs. and they also said (paraphrasing) we are in a constant battle between organizing against the state and holding the state accountable. i feel that.

and i’m also like, well which is it? if these states don’t serve us especially in times of crisis, then what could we possibly demand from them?

i truly believe that our ideal image of the world (an image free from oppression, centralization and domination) isn’t some far future, but something that we should be practicing now - which is what anarchists are all about - and something that actually many radical, localized movements are already doing (even if they don’t use the label anarchist* - that’s cool, too). if we don’t start now, we’ll never be able to set it into motion whenever that future arrives. but the idea that it’s something in the “far future” is untrue. for some, pieces of that future are already here. some communities are already set up with solidarity or alternative economies, indigenous folks have been practicing self-governance for ages, and movements have adopted diff practices like decentralization, mutual aid (practiced in many rad disabled/queer/trans communities and most def survivor-led, abolitionist transformative justice groups), radical healing, survival skill sharing and consensus decision-making. getting involved in local movement ecosystems shows us that anarchism isn’t something “pie in the sky,” it’s actually a way of being in the truest forms of community with each other - as independent of the state and interdependent with each other as much as possible.

we are at an unprecedented time and a crisis. we are facing existential threats that we’ve never faced before. we need to radically shift our organizing in a way that meets what we’re up against - not just climate change, covid19 and the start of a series of economic collapses, but fascism at its peak, including increased militarization, advanced weaponry and surveillance tech that is most definitely going to used (and strengthened) against the most vulnerable among us. the surveillance state, the carceral state, the billionaires, and corporate conglomerates may have been resourced and preparing for years, but the rest of us... we are, altogether, very unprepared for this.

we cannot return to the world the way it was before. we cannot be waiting on a political savior to come and rescue us. we cannot turn to the government and beg that they give us basic human rights. we cannot be demanding (which is still asking for permission) corporations and negotiate through meetings and achieve wins after campaigning for months or even years. we cannot continue to simply rely on unions or ask for more jobs when that doesn’t get to the core of what is denying us the things we need to survive + thrive as full human beings. we do not have time to wait for policymakers and politicians and legislature to pass proposals because this planet is not waiting for us. we need to let go of old models of organizing and begin prioritizing forms of direct action organizing that gets the goods directly and immediately from the source, and most importantly, does not ask nor wait for permission. we need to see ourselves (evolve) in a new way: as leaders and decision-makers of our own lives and communities. fully autonomous with strong, adaptive networks of support.

we needed to fucking end the carceral state, yesterday. we needed to end poverty, yesterday. we needed to get folks into safe houses and into communities of care and support, yesterday. folks who don’t have houses, folks who are in abusive ones, folks occupied and surveillled daily by law enforcement and the US military, folks in prisons and detention centers represent some of the most vulnerable members in our communities. if we do not abolish the state and all its institutions that make these conditions possible for the *most marginalized,* we will end up with a reform “movement” disguised as a “revolution” led by liberals and well-meaning leftists. and the result? continued state violence. the difference? new institutions that provide “band-aid” solutions, but unfortunately set up to allow the exact same forms of violence again, enacted and shadow-led by white supremacists, war criminals and monsters like jeff b*zos. we need to completely redefine “wealth” so that billionaires don’t even get the slightest chance to emerge victorious, where global capitalism is fully abolished - and that starts with creating alternative ways of living and being with one another.

i am feeling a great sense of urgency to get together, thoroughly learn what is coming for us and what is already here, and engage in deep strategy. this requires us to plan how we create and further alternative systems of living + continue to engage in direct action organizing that supports a diversity of tactics and fundamentally challenges what or who is legal/illegal.

as an immigrant/settler on colonized grounds, i recognize how decolonization will be (and always has been) at the center of this upcoming shift. as someone whose family and ancestors were not forced captive and stolen from their homelands to be exploited on stolen land, i am aware that if indigenous (+black) folks want me off, i am ready to pack my bags and go. (edit: in re-reading this after having learned about indigenous sovereignty and what that looks like, this does not make much sense as the land does not “belong” to people, at least not in the way we currently perceive of land ownership under colonial conditions). if not, indigenous leadership (across borders) must be at the forefront when it comes to how to we restore our relationship to this land, with ourselves and with each other. although not indigenous (in nepali terms) myself, i am prepared to bring in my people’s own ancestral knowledge of the land and community healing to uplift this practice. i am also prepared to bring in my personal reflections, including everything i learned from experiences with my family and my childhood to newfound knowledge and wisdom i have (and am currently) building up through mentor- and community-based relationships where i am. 

we are faced with a unique moment we could not have predicted, and this requires us to open our mind to every radical possibility.

there is no going back.

*especially important to note if communities don’t use the term ‘anarchist’ because they have their own definition of how they exist and relate to one another independent of the state 

#anarchism #communism #movement building #may day #grassroots organizing #labor movement #liberation #revolution #post #long post

[destroyyourbinder]

two articles on psychiatric medication

I'm planning on writing a bigger psychiatry-critical piece soon about how the overwhelming majority of both leftists and trans people that I know believe themselves to be necessarily reliant on either psychiatric medication or therapy or both, and permit themselves (rather, semi-deliberately evacuate themselves of agency in identification with those harming them, I do not wish to victim blame) to be extensively abused by the psychological-psychiatric medical system in a fruitless search of validation for their malaise in some horrible cycle of iatrogenic dependence.

In particular, I know at least two transgender people personally (one male, one female) who are so heavily medicated that I have few compunctions about calling what is being done to them a kind of chemical lobotomy. They have both been left minimally functional and dramatically changed in personality by their "treatments", but both still seek out psychiatry to endorse their transgender interpretation of themselves, despite the fact their doctors are brutally and with little humanity "re-adjusting" them out of inconvenient behavior through repeated hospitalization, high and probably inappropriate doses of lithium alongside multiple other medications, and of course their whole gender treatment paradigm.

So I am continually startled by not only the distinct lack of modern leftist criticism of psychiatric medical institutions but outright collaboration with these institutions. Many people in the broader community-- whether radical queers or lesbian feminists-- purport to value self-reliance and peer support networks, distrusting well-funded and politically undermining officially-sanctioned institutions, but I am not sure I know a single gay person in my everyday life who is not regularly attending counseling sessions of some variety or another or who is not taking psychiatric medications-- prescribed by a psychiatrist that they see monthly or sooner-- that they believe they cannot live without.

One of the reasons I am so critical is that I was once one of these people: I have been on at least fourteen different psychiatric medications in various combinations throughout my life, and both I and many of my doctors believed that I was so critically ill that I could not live a meaningful or even minimally functional life without them. I, or my depression-- we were coextensive, inseparable, my personhood was inconvenient to assessment, I suppose-- was considered so deeply treatment resistant that I had multiple psychiatrists tell me to my face that it might not be possible to help me (of course, while still holding the prescription pad). I was lucky to never have been on lithium or Lamictal, nor subjected to electroshock, but all were floated as an unfortunate but potentially necessary part of my treatment plan. I was indeed considered such a hopeless case that I was actually approved for disability payments for mental illness, without appeal, an extreme rarity in the United States, especially at such a young age (23). I do not know for sure or not whether I could have set the grounds to get my shit together without the intervention of psychiatry-- I did survive long enough to leave an abusive home, after all-- but I do not consider it a coincidence that I did not get my shit together until I stopped having a therapist whispering in my ear and stopped having these substances in my body.

I don't think you can understand the modern transgender movement-- whether the push to identify various gender-distressed people as having a disorder or just niche lifestyle in need of medicalized affirmation, or the ideology that demands we believe that gender identity is an essential characteristic of human beings-- without understanding the history of psychiatry as a coercive practice attempting to normalize the socially abnormal, often in service to extremely oppressive interests, and the history of therapy as inherently individualizing and anti-political, an authority-laden substitute for discernment and appropriate and healthy social feedback.

In any case, I want to keep it short today, and it's with this context I want to share with you two articles, one from the New Yorker and the other from NPR.

The first article, by the amazing writer Rachel Aviv, who has previously covered dense and thorny ethical issues regarding psychiatric treatment and the construction of mental illness, is a critical article about how many modern psychiatric patients come to take consecutive strings of multiple psychiatric medications, coming to have and then losing faith in their doctors and medications to fix their ills. It follows a woman who decided to withdraw from her medications and the people she meets as she must build her own support network during her process of withdrawal, given her unhealthy dependence on the psychiatric network treating her and the psychiatric industry's public denial that medication discontinuation symptoms even occur, nonetheless can have severe and life-disrupting effects. Aviv gives a contextual history and science of the use of several classes of modern psychiatric medications, including their incredible limitations given psychiatry's practice and value system; in a description that will read eerily familiar to any detransitioned woman, she states that "there are almost no studies on how or when to go off psychiatric medications, a situation that has created what he [Allen Frances, chair of the DSM-4 committee] calls a 'national public-health experiment.'"

An important excerpt relevant to both general psychiatry and the practice of transgender medicine and health care:

A decade after the invention of antidepressants, randomized clinical studies emerged as the most trusted form of medical knowledge, supplanting the authority of individual case studies. By necessity, clinical studies cannot capture fluctuations in mood that may be meaningful to the patient but do not fit into the study’s categories. This methodology has led to a far more reliable body of evidence, but it also subtly changed our conception of mental health, which has become synonymous with the absence of symptoms, rather than with a return to a patient’s baseline of functioning, her mood or personality before and between episodes of illness. “Once you abandon the idea of the personal baseline, it becomes possible to think of emotional suffering as relapse—instead of something to be expected from an individual’s way of being in the world,” Deshauer told me. For adolescents who go on medications when they are still trying to define themselves, they may never know if they have a baseline, or what it is. “It’s not so much a question of Does the technology deliver?” Deshauer said. “It’s a question of What are we asking of it?”

The second article, which also contains a longer-form audio interview with the author, is about a new book by Harvard historian of science Anne Harrington called Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness. What I found particularly striking about her interview is Harrington's assertions about the state of psychiatry and psychiatric pharmaceutical research now-- she claims that the psychiatric medication market has stalled because of research finding that many common antidepressant medications work no better than placebo versions, and that pharmaceutical companies therefore are de-investing from psychiatric medication research and development because they can no longer use their previous strategy of slightly tweaking the chemical components of previously monetizeable drugs. She states there have been very few innovations in finding new classes of antidepressant medications in particular (the most easily marketed psychiatric drugs, for whom the target population can easily be expanded).

I think her points here are crucial to understanding exactly why pharmaceutical companies and psychiatry have become increasingly invested in transgender health care and in expanding the market for hormones and transgender-related surgeries through promoting interventions like HRT and "top surgery" as elective procedures suggested as ways to "affirm a patient's identity" rather than "treat a disorder". The gender critical blogger Brie Jontry, a mother of a formerly trans-identified female teen, calls this practice and ideology "identity medicine", a term I find useful to describe the unholy conglomeration that is the individualized medicalization of gender-related distress and the advertising of medical treatments (particularly those provided by cosmetic surgeons) as ways to facilitate self-expression and authenticity. Given increasing attempts by gender doctors to create patients permanently dependent on exogenous hormones (those children left with non-functional gonads after treatment with GnRH agonists like Lupron and cross-sex hormones, or those transgender people who have had theirs removed) or to convince patients that gender dysphoria is a life-long, inescapable condition that they had already failed in not treating/affirming earlier (because you Always Were A Boy), I have to note parallels with psychiatric medicine's anti-recovery, anti-patient-autonomy assertions about other recently marketed drugs such as atypical antipsychotics, on which patients are also purportedly permanently dependent, or antidepressants (as above) where withdrawal symptoms purportedly prove that a patient is doomed to relapse should she cease psychiatric treatment. "Informed consent" and the formation of transgender resources outside a "gatekeeping" paradigm, where patients need not seek insurance approval nor the opinions of several doctors of different specialties for transgender medical interventions, nor wait a set period of time prior to transitioning, is often lauded as progressive and anti-institution by radical transgender activists, who can rightly see issue with a psychiatry put in charge of policing the intimate personal beliefs, coping mechanisms for misogyny or homophobia, and individual gender expression of its patients. However, I can't but see this as part of a new and terrifying medical strategy regarding transgenderism, where a loss of patient agency is replaced with the false sense of consumer choice; we have seen this in other realms of psychiatry, where forms of psychiatric incarceration were rebranded as the choice to take a break or "finally" seek help after self-negatingly denying it for so long, where tranquilizing drugs were rebranded as assistive devices for women struggling to have it all, and where high-risk, heavily sedating antipsychotic medications were rebranded as ways to give other psychiatric medications a "boost" should you still experience unhelpful emotions after complying with psychiatric treatment. "Gender dysphoria" is increasingly nebulous, something you might have had all along if you experienced various forms of generic malaise or failed to have your suffering sufficiently validated and thereby dissipated by psychiatry; funny that we've seen this before with other conditions and their treatments, and psychiatry somehow always comes up with a money-making solution for its own problems.

#medcrit45 #writings

[superlucky777boy]

Hey, i'd be curious on your thoughts re: Stuart Temple's fight against corporate culture if you have time + spoons :)

Yes I do! I was running late for class at first post but this is more complex than just a fight against keeping colors free and I love to y’all about this stuff!

Basically when we talk about keeping things like colors or sounds or even fonts in the public domain, it seems like a silly unnecessary thing, I mean how hard can it be to not use a specific color, right? But it’s a little more serious than that even at face value because things being out of the public domain, at least from interpretation of the legal sense, means that the person or entity who owns private domain of the font, color, idea(s), etc in question came up with that particular item or has elsewise paid for intellectual rights to that item. When it comes to colors, not to mention sounds, this is problematic. There ought to be no intellectual rights to a color as all colors in spectrum exist already, they can simply be isolated by a dedicated enough person.

Now to tie this back into how corporations still can own rights to things that exist with or without any individuals contributions: they actually have rights to the exact method of isolating colors (and in cases like sounds they own the precise manipulation of a wave form) and can therefore say that you can’t use the method we paid to use to isolate that color for your business unless you also pay us to do it. This leads to egregious lawsuits over even accidental use of colors and sound if they are in use for advertisement or business purposes (this can include making t-shirts on a registered color bearing your organization or business’s logo/slogan/recognisable mascot on the front depending on how good a lawyer they use to do this).

More importantly than owning what should be non-ownable, these corporations basically use this to support their own monopolies (t-mobile might own a branding or printing conglomerate as part of their communications setup that helps make them more money and local businesses might be circumventing those), burn local opposition that might offer competitive rates (say if AT&T and it’s associated incorporations were taking down municipal wi-fi providers) or even just to supplement profits without care of consequence (like if Sprint was losing a little stock power they could potentially sue for use of their yellow to pick things back up and even increase stock value by showing strength of brand). These are actions that would normally be illegal by antitrust (and in many cases anti-censorship) laws but companies that do this circumvent the law with loopholes in copyright law and abuses of copyright and trademark extensions.

Worse than just corporate greed is that this is LEGAL CENSORSHIP of anyone who tries to protest things like this if they use the colors, sounds, or word choices in question without paying. Except there’s a loophole: if you mix the color by hand without isolating from the spectrum and it extremely closely matches, the color is still fair play unless the company owns that process (which is not likely to be allowed soon due to artisans protections in copyright law). Stuart Temple isn’t just fighting greed, monopolies and corporate abuses, he’s fighting censorship and corporate oppression of activists as well, and where it hurts: he can take profits for that color away from t mobile. It’s really freaking cool and I can’t emphasize enough the necessity that fighting copyright culture like this has on future expression and creativity of this country