#he was literally a racist and tried to beat up a bunch of children

[catbountry]

Glancing over some of my older essays on politics, I’m kind of struck how, despite them not being written that long ago, I feel like I come across as a dumbass, or at least like somebody who thinks they’re much smarter than they actually are. And it’s weird, because most of my views are roughly the same; rather, it’s that I feel the way that they’re articulated comes across as too... I don’t know, smarmy? Smug, maybe? Lacking nuance. Blunt. Like I’m talking down to people. Obviously, this was never my intention, but it’s weird how something that was written while in my early 30′s somehow makes me wince a little... as I rapidly approach being smack-dab in the middle of my 30′s. God, I’ve been in my 30′s for almost 5 whole years now, fuck, where does the time go?

I think being able to come out of the other side of the Trump presidency in one piece has kind of helped add some much-needed perspective, at least for myself. I think the hypothesis that a lot of people who voted for Trump were desperate for some kind of change was proven correct when he failed to be re-elected due to his bungling of COVID, which, funnily (or not) enough, he almost could have looked like he was doing the right thing when he initially wanted to close the U.S. borders... except he’d been trying to restrict travel and close borders so often that of course nobody took such a suggestion seriously. And even if they had? Rich people still would have brought it over, because as we all know, rich people can just get away with all kinds of shit. Of course, once it actually hit, Trump really couldn’t handle the idea of looking weak at all, so instead, it was downplayed, joked about, not taken seriously, even though he’d been briefed that it was going to be really, really bad. And when he got it, and in private thought he was going to die? Well, once he beat it, of course he had to say it wasn’t so bad... even though it killed almost a thousand times more people than the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Most of them were seniors. I think that, as well as a general fatigue and disappointment over the lack of swamp-draining from those who weren’t fanatical devotees, probably sealed his fate. I admit, I wasn’t very sure Biden really had much of a chance for a long time... until COVID happened. But hey, at least we got our stimmy from Trump, right lads?

I’m still fully convinced that Trump never intended to win, and that his run was done purely for ego and financial gain, but his ability to effortlessly bait the media, as well as his unexpected exposing of the sham we all knew presidential elections to be, wound up rocketing him to success. Trump will no doubt go down as one of the most successful conmen in American history, one so slick he wound up conning his way all the way into the White House. The whole thing was like if The Producers was a presidential campaign, fascism included. Granted, I don’t think Trump was ever a true fascist; I think he wanted to be a dictator, but the actual job of being President was a drag. The cult of personality he accrued, however, was the biggest source of narcissistic supply that he’d ever experienced in his entire life. Hell, just being the literal President, the most important person in the entire fucking world, is a hell of a high that I don’t think he’ll ever really be able to reclaim. Trump’s going to be chasing that dragon for the rest of his life. Having “President” in front of your name is a lot nicer than actually, you know, having to be the President. I mean, look at how quickly Obama went gray. A lot of people are convinced Trump will run again in 2024, and I don’t doubt it, but unless something happens that completely throws us for a loop, I don’t see him being able to recreate the, er, “magic” of 2016. Everyone getting to see that, not only was his fanbase capable of having embarrassing public meltdowns just like the le epic triggered snowflake lib Hilary supporters, but that their meltdowns were even more embarrassing, and that they all looked like a bunch of fucking English soccer hooligans during the Capitol siege... well, I think that’s going to put off the swing voters, as well as the moderate Republicans.

Also, that Twitter knock-off founded by Trump’s aide, Gettr, being flooded by gay furries posting Sonic the Hedgehog foot porn? Feels like classic 4chan-style raiding. I approve. It almost feels like we’re healing, even if it’s just a little bit.

But what the fuck did we even learn from all this? What did I learn from this?

I don’t know. It feels like over the time I’ve been on Tumblr, what was once SJW became woke, and being woke has become very normal; so normal, in fact, that fucking massive corporations that use slave labor overseas will change their Twitter icons to rainbow every June because The Gays have become a safe, marketable demographic. On one hand, it’s nice to know that, at least in what I guess is considered the western world, LGBT people are more accepted now than they ever have been. On the other... god, it feels so cynical, doesn’t it? This is all very stream of consciousness, here. I don’t write very much on here since, surprise surprise, Tumblr’s been kind of dead since the porn ban. I still see people post, but it used to be that I couldn’t refresh my dash without seeing dozens of new posts. Now it feels like I refresh my dash and I’d be lucky to see a new post there an hour later. This is why I’m on Discord more. It feels like I have more productive conversations than I ever could on Tumblr or Twitter. Twitter is just... god. It’s like all the worst parts of Tumblr without the parts that made it fun aside from a few memes.

Sorry, I got off track there. The point I was going to make before is that, while I am still very firmly anti-censorship, I’ve managed to put myself in a position where it no longer feels like the stakes are so high. I can relax. I don’t have to feel like I’m on the defense the whole time as somebody grills me over some slip-up. I don’t use Twitter that much. When I do post something in response to somebody, I feel like I instantly regret it. I posted in response to some dumbass spreading a rumor that 4chan’s favorite Simpson’s meme about Sneed’s Feed and Seed is secretly ableist, and I got a response from some dude with an Umaru-chan avatar telling me how he’s proudly racist because he and his friends call each other slurs? Like bro, you’re posting cringe, you’re going to lose subscriber-

I don’t know what I’ve learned yet. Maybe that social media sucks and that chatrooms with friends are the superior way to communicate online. I tried out Telnet recently to go into some random IRC, that was neat. It just feels nice to not have to get into a fucking argument every fucking day over shit that doesn’t matter as much as people thinks it does, to not have to hear about every fucking time the President sneezes or farts. It’s not that there’s no longer anything to worry about; there is. I’d really like to see fellow lefties go after the handful of massive corporations that control the majority of the online experience, who censor not just all the racist white dude grifters in suits who all look suspiciously similar to one another, but us as well. I want to see us raise a bigger stink about the web being santized, sterlized, and gentrified to be friendlier to corporations who only want your precious data and eyeballs. Maybe without the constant distraction of Bad Orange Man, we could make that happen. Maybe.

Or maybe fucking Dream will breathe again and all the fucking children will piss their pants and clog up Twitter, fuck these kids, get off my internet, GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

#not fan fiction #political bullshit

[dystopiandilfs]

Any Dangerous hot takes. Ones that cause chaos and will get antis so far up your ass it's lethal.

The Speedrunning Drama was an antis wet dream opportunity. They already hated Dream, the cheating just gave them an actual reason.

My reasoning for this is that the people who would be affected the most by the Speedrunning Drama really didn't give a shit.

You have Benex and Illumina (along with a bunch of other runners) who both constantly fought for the speedrun world record alongside Dream and yet they both have nothing but kindness towards Dream.

You have half of the speedrunning mods and a lot of the older speedrunners (before Dream started) who bring up how they're grateful for Dream because he popularised Minecraft speedrunning and bought it to life.

In reality if anyone has a right to be upset it's the older speedrunners and the people who were Dream's direct "competition" but most of them still vibe with Dream. So that really shows a lot.

The only speedrunners who were mad were people who already had a bias against Dream or only joined speedrunning to try and beat Dream out of spite (if I find the link there's a whole Reddit post showing a bunch of speedrunners who started with the goal of beating Dream to knock his ego down a few pegs)

People who immediately decided he cheated were the same people who turned into children over the Glow Squid mob vote and are the same ones who blame him for the newest mob vote result even when he literally wasn't even on twitter.

The few speedrunning mods including Geosquare who already had a bias against Dreamwho decided to re-examine Dreams runs in the first place later were part of the group of people who tried to claim Dream said the n word and started to spread straight up lies about how he was racist to other speedrunners and the poc speedrunning mods.

Hot take people who hate Dream for the cheating drama already had a bias against him and just used the whole thing as an opportunity. They don't care about if he cheated or not and they don't care about the good Dream did for the speedrun and general Minecraft community. They just saw an opportunity to ruin Dream and hopped on it.

[deadmomjokes]

It’s nearly as dense and wordy as the Silmarillion, and it hurts every dang page, but y’all, Children of Hurin is something else. Lemme just give y’all a scene here.

My boy Turin is 20 years old and has been out patrolling the borders with his bff boyfriend, killing orcs and chilling in the woods for the last 3 years. He comes home to visit his adoptive elf dad, who’s actually out on vacation. But whatevs, he comes in a sits down for lunch.

But.

There’s this one elf, a real Mean Girls style piece of work who hates Turin’s guts on account of he’s a human, and he’s super duper racist. And Turin accidentally sat in his seat at the lunch table. So he goes OFF, talking about how nasty Turin is and how he needs to brush his dang hair and put on some decent clothes before daring to come inside. Turin, doing the smart thing, doesn’t respond. But then ol Pretty Boy literally whips out a golden comb (that he just had on his person for some reason?) and chucks it at Turin and pulls the old racist nonsense card and says that maybe that’s just how his people are. Turin is like, I don’t have to deal with this, and is about to leave, but then Pretty Boy says that if the men are like this, the women must be even uglier, and run around butt naked in nothing but their hair, like a deer.

So my boy Turin gets all hopped up on that Respect Women Juice and breaks a water pitcher in Pretty Boy’s face and knocks out a bunch of his teeth and decides he’s outta here and isn’t coming back. But Pretty Boy’s pride is hurt, so he takes the honorable road, of course, and jumps Turin while he’s on the road out.

Because Turin’s the main character, of course he beats the crap out of Pretty Boy, but instead of killing him, he literally rips off all his clothes, stabs him in the naked butt, and tells him his clothes will only slow him down and he should run home in nothing but his hair (sick callback, bro). Whereupon Pretty Boy books it, and Turin chases him, threatening his naked booty the whole time until Pretty Boy tries to jump a ravine because he’s so scared for his precious backside, and he falls in and dies the end.

And like. What. Just. Happened.

This by the same man who wrote a genre-defining epic that is studied the world over. Naked elves getting their butts stabbed by a grungy edgelord who is really, really fixed on that booty.

#what even is this #i love it so much #but i'm not ready for what happens to beleg #they're in love okay

[atomicfilm]

The types as people I know

ENTP: dnd enthusiast, trying to sell the world on his beliefs, owns like 69 :0 rubix cubes so people will know he’s smart, probably wears a cloak when he’s home alone, loves volunteering at bingo w/ elderly people, always trying to compete w/ me to finish our work first/best and usually looses because he overlooks something, 98% of people are annoyed by his presence, likes to start fights/debates, actually super sweet and big on respect but misunderstood

INTP: we all adopt really random catchphrases (mine is “that’s hot” and my friend’s is “j’accuse”), we have very specific interests (”your thing is learning about concentration camps in the Czech Republic? Mine is 18th-century poems about cats in fishbowls”), devoted to comedy, going to vote but doesn’t openly support anyone because the candidate will mess up, caught between dreaming and reality, doesn’t really understand other people’s perceptions of them, built to withstand anything (and I mean anything, more on that later), managing my bookmarks is my routine chore

ENFP: stereotypical gemini through and through, I love her but I can’t stand to be close friends with her, has a bunch of plans to marry people and move in with friends later in life, friends w/ everyone she has ever met (if you say you don’t like her then you’re on her hit list), very nice but definitely scheming, attention split between 8,917 things rn, falls in love easily and obsessively, so so creative, great singer, wants to go into advertising but will probably become a pediatrician, loves babies and taking care of things

INFP: lots of feels, really into the arts, nervous about talking, people pleaser, writes poems in their spare time, would adopt 500 puppies if it made financial sense and wouldn’t stress them out, stressed out anyway, sees the red flags but ignores them, either your literal mom or the mom friend

ISFP: aesthetics-oriented, their room is really clean except for one area with whatever they collect (shoes, tchotchkes from Asia, snowglobes, ect.), usually overshadowed in the art department but turn out to be the best artist in the room, speak French and/or want to move to Paris (except it’s dirty, wah), they typically measure in oofs (”big oof”, “little oof”, “8 oz. of oof”)

ESFP: a new boyfriend every two weeks, eyebrow game strong, funniest person in the room (or at least that’s what they think), extremely sassy, watches videos of tobacco spitting contests in the Midwest for fun, 9/10 times (this is a fake statistic) they’re a theatre kid, forget who you are if they haven’t seen you in a year (even if you were close friends prior), drives fast (and poorly), hot (and knows it), very confident, their default state is shirtless, dramatic 

ISTP:  everything is an adventure, their ideal romance movie is Baby Driver, wants to learn how to hot-wire a car, doesn’t realize they look punk but they do, should be employed as a makeup artist, probably pretty kinky (or at least act like it), either a fake f-boy or a very, very real one 

ESTP: wants to be an architect or CEO, mostly wants to be paid to do nothing, most-often found asleep during class or telling a story in a crowd at a party, drives drunk a lot, already dating someone but tries to get with you anyway, straight male w/ dangly earrings (queer vibes), very hilarious and everyone knows who they are, their closest friends are introverts who they force to share the spotlight w/ them, either don’t show up or show up late, fun to be around, class valedictorian but everyone thinks it’s someone else

ESFJ: once had a nightmare where all of their friends got drunk and they had to take care of them, brings you cupcakes on your birthday, all of their friends are social degenerates and they don’t know what to do, watches children’s movies their entire life, has more stuffed animals than friends, everyone knows who they are 

ISFJ: their catchphrase is “I need healing” (warning: they will steal your catchphrase), carries a singular band-aid at all times, makes lots of jokes about Communism, makes racist jokes against themself, their extended family lives with them, uncomfortable about breaking rules, always wants to pay for things, everyone’s boyfriend but only dating 1 person/no one, big on the American Dream, literally Captain America, appears to be a virgin at first, makes lots of sex jokes once you get to know them, n e r d, good at everything /  you thought perfect people didn’t exist? you were wrong

ISTJ: ESTP’s best friend, the obviously intellectual one, does everything with amazing skill, supports their friends tirelessly, great at math, understand systems really well, the designated driver, try to follow the rules as best as they can, laughs a lot at other people’s engineering mistakes, quiet and unnoticed most of the time, surprisingly funny

ESTJ: give you advice even when you don’t ask for it, seem like they’re judging every decision you have ever made, won’t speak to you if you lie to them, the stereotypical club president, takes initiative, likes to mention that mission trip they went on very frequently, shops at Dillards (always hunting for good deals), has a very traditional sense of fashion until you see their crocodile cowboy boots, they have a very idealistic sense of society and if you don’t meet their standards they’ll yell very loudly, remembers everything, constantly fact-checking, actually should be president 

ENTJ: control freak, but only because they don’t trust you enough to make the right decision, ready to race you at all times, could probably run a mile in 6 minutes without breaking a sweat, confident, prefer strategy games like Settlers of Catan, if they were a society they would be Ancient Rome, want to motivate you to succeed, see themselves as the best but want everyone to match them, running out of patience, seems insensitive and ready to cut you off but probably has a warm, beating heart (idk I haven’t dissected them, personally)

INTJ: I don’t think they really exist, supposedly everyone on Tumblr is one but they only make up approximately .8% of the population, if I met one I would probably think they’re a weirdly assertive/controlling INTP, I think people mistype as one because their ideal sense of self is being an effective problem-solver who challenges tradition from the comfort of their home and purposefully does things (i.e. learning a new language for business) but are they really

Idk 

I can’t tell if they have a high sense of self or are trying to demonize themselves

INTJs are textbook villains in the movie world but also probably a lot of detectives or something

ENFJ: don’t know any of them/anyone I think could be one personally but I wish I did / I feel like if I met one I would want to be as good of a person as them all the time

INFJ: not very reality-oriented yet in love with science, wants to be a writer, curious, wants to figure everything out but primarily wants to love everyone, passionate about a few specific projects that they talk a lot about (social issues), always reblogs positivity posts, once gave a ted talk about mental health, he’s the debate captain yet cries every time he loses a debate (because he has a lot of self-doubt), prefers to nap than to talk sometimes, eventually realizes they wants to adopt all of the people younger than him and protect them from the world, easy to love, they may reflect your personality, may also have very particular body movements (the one I know does a lot of fan kicks), actually make NTs feel (like a lot, like a lot a lot, like real crying), eventually dates their best friend and marries them, doesn’t draw but collects art

#infj #enfj #intj #entj #istj #estj #isfj #esfj #intp #entp #infp #enfp #istp #estp #isfp #esfp #mbti #types as #mbti as #16 personalities #myers-briggs #carl jung #intp thoughts #intp problems #rationals #sensors #intuitives #thinkers #feelers #introverts

[tervacious]

Whitey on the Moon

My current favorite Hot Take is from a bunch of khive assholes, literally a group so stupid they stole their name from Beyonce fans in a way that made absolutely no sense, and a group so ineffective Kamala didn’t make it to the fucking Iowa caucuses, lecturing anyone who supported Bernie Sanders that “you should study what she did and copy her if you want to win”.

Bitch, she won a fucking beauty contest.  She’s a token.  She kissed ass, didn’t show up to work so she could assidiously court the bankers/Wall Street tycoons Biden’s crew really serve, and kissed more ass.  That’s not winning shit, that’s standard-issue cock sucking.  She’s not breaking any ground.  She’s a woman, a Black woman in this case, who is trying to get ahead by serving the Man, just like all women have ever done to “get ahead” and “win” under patriarchy.  She’s the perfect exemplar of the Patriarchal Woman, who is perfectly willing to arrest poor women whose kids are truant or poor women whose boyfriends are selling marijuana out their Section 8 housing in violation of blah blah blah, because she ain’t shit.  She’s perfectly fine with innocent people rotting in prison.  Like all women who reach the fictional “top” allowed unto them in the patriarchy, she’s the worst of us, not the best, because a woman who cares about women, children, and men will never rise within the system.  If  you are good, you can only stay good if you stay outside.

I was watching PBS and a reporter did an incredible piece on a stretch of mountains between Colombia and into Panama which migrants from all over the world use in order to move north towards the United States.  The Darien Pass, no road, deep rainforest and jungle, and essentially an informal highway.  The reporter was running into Haitians, Pakistanis, people from Sudan and Cameroon and Bangladesh.  There were skeletons, skulls, and corpses along the road.  There were drug smugglers, bandits, rapists, and among the people they were predating upon were single adults, entire families, pregnant women, and women carrying babies at their breast nursing them as they walked with all of their belongings balanced on their heads through a jungle they had never been in before.

And I thought about the Gil Scott-Heron song “Whitey on the Moon”, in which he talked about the moon landing and how his sister couldn’t afford new shoes for school that year and they were hungry, but it’s totes cool, because Whitey’s on the Moon.  And Kamala Harris is Whitey.  Whitey isn’t a color or race, it’s a state of mind.  And she would lock up that pregnant woman, that rape victim, that nursing mother in a heart beat.  When she becomes president of the United States, which is the plan, she will be Whitey chosen by Whitey to uphold The Man, and it will be great timing, that glass escalator up to the top of a failed state on a ruined planet, because even when she is Whitey and embodies the values of The Man, even token women cannot be allowed to “succeed”, even on those terms.  But my point is, you didn’t choose her.  She didn’t even make it through one (1) national primary election.  Not because she’s a Black woman, but because she’s Whitey and everyone knew it.  Now we’re supposed to pretend she’s AMAZING and SUCH A STEP FORWARD and identity politics in and of themselves are an adequate stand-in for substance?  How about bitch no.

There will be a lot of chatter about anyone who doesn’t sign on to this wholly insulting charade being racist and sexist, and there will probably be some racists and sexists in there, it’s inevitable.  The same people who denied being anti-semites for complaining about Bernie Sanders being too Jewy waving his arms and talking loudly and enthusiastically will be the ones to complain the most about any objections to Kamala Harris.  They can’t see her Whitey-ness, any more than they can see her Patriarchy, because they don’t have any substantive analysis to fall back on even if they wanted to, which they don’t.  They can’t even go after Donald Trump, a man who has conveniently tweeted out a shit-ton of substance for them in his extremely plain English, for anything of substance-- they have to pretend he’s a Russian agent.  Anyway for the record Kamala Harris is a token, and there’s nothing racist about saying that-- though there’s something racist (or racist-adjacent at best) about the fact I can say that with a clear conscience.  There’s nothing sexist about pointing out she’s a Patriarchal woman-- she herself has bragged about it all unknowingly.  There’s no “internalized misogyny” in calling a woman-hating woman what she is.  Harris is the very Right-Wing woman Andrea Dworkin wrote about, in a slightly different costume with slightly different buzzwords.  The Democrat party is a right-wing party, just not quite as rightward as the Republican party.  It’s a tonal difference.  It’s a difference of style.  But they all serve the same masters.

So when you guilt-trippers who don’t understand what radical politics are or what radicalism even is try to yell at those of us who refuse to vote for the dementia-ridden rapist/racist and, emphasis on the “his”, the cop he selected for his vp?  Understand that.  There is no daylight between Harris and Trump and Pence and Biden and Obama and Bush and Clinton and Reagan.  They’re all the same thing, over and over, just with slightly different tones and skintones and demeanors, and meanwhile in the rainforests of the equator a Haitian woman tries not to let her baby drown in a river and if she ever gets here she’ll probably be thrown in prison and her baby taken away, and within ten years or less this entire conversation will be moot because the planet will pass the tipping point thanks not just to the men but to all the women who enabled those men.  The day Kamala Harris was officially “chosen” by a man to be “his” sidekick was the same day the last intact ice shelf in Canada cracked and collapsed.

So let that sink in.  And think about that when you feel really really superior and virtuous for voting, of all fucking things.  Like congrats, you still can’t afford food and rent and medical care and shit, and you’re still signing off on bombing women and children and imprisoning women and men en masse, and the clock is ticking on our species’ survival as fracking and drilling continues apace and communities are inundated by plastic and nitrogen and chemical runoffs and Flint still has no clean water and abortion is still functionally illegal in most of the country and Wall Street rakes in trillions while rural areas are having their postal service shut down and prisoners won’t be able to communicate with their families and there’s no plan to change any of this because nothing will fundamentally change-- but hey.  

Whitey’s on the Moon.

[praphit]

CRASH - I promise no race talk

First, let me say that this particular post will be a safe space. No race talk here. Today, we're going to talk a lil "Crash".

This movie came out in 2005; I hadn’t watched it since then. I remembered really liking it. I remembered Ludacris and Larenz Tate stealing the movie as a comedy duo. 

I remembered these two ladies:

(Jennifer Esposito - not the best picture of her, and perhaps that’s partly my fault. She is pissed in this scene... probably because the person whom she is talking to is not me :)

and Bahar Soomekh

(Wait, that’s “Saw 3... hmm... she was in “Saw 3″ btw.)

Let me try again - 

(Nope. Dammit. Still “Saw”)

You get the idea. These two ladies! Yes!

I remembered watching this movie with my then girlfriend, and thinking to myself "As soon as this movie is over, I'm breaking up with her and seeking these two out, to propose to the both of them - this is my destiny."

I remembered something about Saint Christopher, who is apparently the patron saint of travelers. 

He was kinda like an Uber driver (I guess... and by the looks of this depiction, a grumpy Uber driver). He will get you safely to where you'd like to be, as long as you listen to his smooth jazz, questionable philosophies on life, and of course allow him to flirt a lil with you.

Oh, and I remembered Luda getting his ass beat by the dude from "Empire"

- no, not that dude.

This dude - (Terrence Howard).

I believe that anyone who tries to explain what this movie is about will end up sounding like they've had one too many to drink:

"It's about a bunch of people of different races/ethnicities who... have racist stuff happen to them. And they don't know each other, but they're kinda connected... and there's a crash... although it doesn't have much to do with the story... but it kinda does... maybe? Ludacris is in it. He gets his ass beat by that guy from "Empire", but not that guy...  the other guy. Racism sucks, bro."

Trying to explain it is similar to how we'll (years from now) try to explain 2020... or Trump being president.

Let's me try to break it down:

Don Cheadle is Detective Graham Waters (what a name). 

He deals with a lot of race stuff on the job and in cases. Race stuff that I'm sparing you from today (you're welcome:) Annnnd he's banging one of the women whom I thought would be my future wife. 

The first time that we meet HER (another detective), we learn that she's pretty racist.

Side note: Can one be both pretty AND racist? Does the racism overwhelm the pretty face? or vice versa? Would some of us see Trump as being racist, if he looked like Chris Hemsworth?

(and always gave press conferences shirtless)

Sorry, I promised no race talk.

What if Trump looked like this? 

Are presidents allowed to get sex changes?

So, Terrence Howard and Thandie Newton have a racist and perverted encounter with the cops. 

The more I think about it, the more I blame most of the horrible events that take place in this movie on these two cops (and their superiors). Had they worked by better standards, a lot of the bad things that end up happening in this movie wouldn't have happened. Terrence and Thandie have some race stuff going on within their relationship as well (which I won't be talking about :) Brown people also have race fights; whitey doesn't always have to be involved.

I talked about Luda and Tate already. They're kinda like hipsters in a sense (in spirit). They have a racial commentary/banter throughout the whole movie. They're right about the things that they say (which I'm still not talking about). The prob is that they're also criminals.

Sandra Bullock (who's prob the most racist character in the movie) and Brendan Fraser are also doing their thing in this movie.

They're your stereotypical wealthy white couple. Fraser's character is in politics. There's some juicy race stuff there as well. We'll just ignore all of that.

Tony Danza is surprisingly in this just to be racist. Now, TD is before my time, but I remember him being loveable - no?? That's what makes it weird. Kinda like if Stephen Colbert swung through a movie briefly just to drop an N-bomb or something.

Michael Pena is here, because... he's on the short list of Latinos that Hollywood knows. 

I think this movie was his big shot (which he killed). Look him, he’s acting his ass off. His mouth opened so wide... that’s acting! He's also the only character in this movie who's NOT an asshole. He's actually a good guy. Even in the midst of people being very openly racist towards him, he remains calm and collected. He has a daughter who is scared, and so he gives her an invisible cloak that has a supernatural, imaginary ability to make her invulnerable. She then puts it on and immediately runs into traffic... and you know... BOOM!

I'm joking. But, that could have happened. Parents, don't lie to your children.

There's a scene where she does face some danger as a result of this lie. Spoiler alert, she makes it. Maybe it was the power of Saint Chris. Though she appears to be the only one that he saves in this flick. Seems like every time the good ol saint Christopher appears, someone pulls out a gun. Patron Saint of Gun Violence.

Fun fact: Michael Pena is also a scientologist. See, they're not all like T.Cruise - don't be so prejudice:)

Watch, there's going to be a story about some awful scientology weirdness on Pena’s part, the second I post this.

That's uh... not a great summary of the plot. It's an awful summary, actually. If you look up the summary on wikipedia, it pretty much does the same thing I did - just talk through the people involved in this picture.

This movie is like a game of 52 pickup - only the game is played with a deck of race cards.

If you're a person who doesn't think much about race issues, but is open to hearing about them, then this movie will possibly be enlightening for you.

If you're the type of person who has been actively avoiding race talk (and who typically avoids deep talks like that) Then, this def isn't the movie for you.

If you are racist, and somehow keep reading my posts... Imma pray for you, cuz this movie beating you over the head with race is only going to fuel you're... "special, hateful beliefs".

As for me... this time around I was indifferent towards this movie. I can see why I adored this movie back in the day. I enjoy deep talks about this kind of stuff, and we (me and my circle of peeps) prob weren't talking much about these kind of topics, openly, in the early/mid 2000's. But, as a movie... meh.

There is a touching moment when there is a literal crash

wait... 

My finding pics game has been way off today.

CRASH!

There's real humanity. Two characters come face to face with mortality, and all of the bullshit is pushed aside in efforts to secure rescue. But, then, after that moment, we go right back to the bullshit. Nothing really changes. The movie notices that they missed a few race cards, and continue on with their game.

I remember tearing up the first time that I watched this movie. I don't know whether my girlfriend and I were fighting that may have caused those tears. Or maybe her breath was stanky with onions (while trying to make-out with me in the theatre) that brought me to fight some tears. Or maybe 15 years later, I've become a heartless SOB, but outside of that crash scene, the only time I was moved was when Sandra Bullock fell down some stairs.

- moved to laughter.

It still makes me laugh. That's my fav part of the movie for sure. I wish that they had ended the movie there.

She's spread out at the bottom of the steps. And then a silent roll of the credits. It would have made just as much sense as the actual ending. She DOES  however end up being ok, and less racist, as a result... somehow.

So, if any of you know someone who's super racist ("coughtrump") and notice that they're near some steps... do your part. We'll end racism one flight of stairs at a time.

In the end, this movie is about diverse groups of one dimensional assholes, who complain about everything (even the rich, white people... cuz we all know how hard their lives are), and through sappy music and a lack of learning from some contrived moments, make little progress towards peace.

Totally unrealistic. In real life, we get shit done!

Grade: A/D/A

A for the race talk (which hopefully I was successful in not talking about:)

D for... just about everything else...

...  and another A for Sandra Bullock’s tumble down the stairs.

#crash #john praphit #praphitproductions.com #Movie Reviews #Sandra Bullock #brendan fraser #race talk #racism #praphit #michael pena #saint christopher #jennifer esposito #bahar soomekr #racist #black lives matter #ludacris #larenz tate

[yespumpkindoodlesthings]

If The Avengers Are The Beatles, We’re, Uh, Not That?

Jack Rollins finds out that post-HYDRA life is, well, less fun than he anticipated. Or, the crack fic where Jack Rollins is basically the band manager for a bunch of unhinged super villains. It's like herding cats. And there's a literal cat.

“Uh, Brock?” Jack asked.

“Yeah?” Brock said, looking up from where he was feeding one of the snakes he kept in the tank. Jack shuddered. Growing up in Australia, he’d earned a healthy fear of wildlife. Fully 78% of Australian wildlife would kill you dead, given the opportunity. There was no bloody need to keep them in your secret West African warehouse as pets. Bloody hell.

“I’ve, uh, got news, about Darcy?” Jack said. Brock went still. Jack inhaled and counted to ten. Across the room, Wanda Maximoff glared at Jack.

“Wanda, will you give us a minute?” Brock said. Wanda replied in Sokovian and stalked out, giving Jack the evil eye as she twisted those silver rings she wore.

“What has she got against me anyhow?” Jack wondered aloud. “I’ve tried to talk to the sheila about jewelry, pleasant things--” Jack liked a good Navajo silver. Getting to wear his regular clobber and gear was one of the few bright spots of his post-SHIELDRA phase.

“She knows how you feel about recent events,” Brock said.

“Oh,” Jack said. “Well...”

Brock blamed them all--Fury, SHIELD, Cap--for the loss of his relationship with Darcy in the wake of the failed Uprising. In drunken, inchoate conversations in sketchy bars all over the globe, he’d ranted to Jack. He believed he would’ve been able to convince Darcy to leave with him, had he not been laid low by his burns. The burns were the fault of Sam Wilson, who’d delayed him, and Steve Rogers, who’d sabotaged Insight and sent the helicarriers careening into the Triskelion. All the Avengers, those ostensible do-gooders, were just as bloody and grotesque as anything Alexander Pierce had dreamed up in his most homicidal fever-dream. Ever. Combined, they made Pierce look like a probie agent.

Brock on Tony: “A drunken, selfish philander with a sideline in warmongering and bombing, Jack.” He would nod.

Natasha: “She’s a fucking cold-blooded murderess.” In response, Jack would nod again.

Clint: “Basically, a junior Natasha with shitty Robin Hood weapons and the style of a goddamn country singer. Woo-fucking-hoo, it’s Legolas Toby Keith, here to save the world!” Jack grinned at that one. “You see it, right? Fucking no sleeves. Totally forgettable. You could kick him outta SHIELD, it’d take seven months for anybody to notice but the vents, man,” Brock would say in a woozy voice.

Steve: “You ever notice how that smug, hypocritical bastard touts his WWII service while ignoring that his generation was a bunch of sexist, segregationist bastards who nuked half of Japan and set the stage for the Cold War while lynching black children for looking at white women, Jackie? He’s the same goddamned age as that bastard, whatshisface, the mummy senator who was KKK in his thirties. Storm Drummond?”

“Strom Thurmond, Brock.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s the one. That’s Cap’s fucking peer, right there. Racist Cracker Imhotep. The greatest generation, my fucking ass.”

“Yes, boss.”

The Hulk: “He’s fucking green. I could beat a green guy. I have guns. But you know his big ugly toenails have killed more people than me, Jack. You know.”

Thor: “I mean, shit, he’s murdered thousands personally in his fifteen hundred years of life, he’s a literal goddamn despot-in-training with a gold throne like Saddam fucking Hussein, but I’m the bad guy? Me? You fucking know we did the minimum, Jackie, the goddamn minimum, of loss of life. I killed more people with fucking Avengers than not, man. With them. Legitimate SHIELD missions. I’m a goddamned Boy Scout compared to any of ‘em. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

This was usually the point in the drinking binge monologue where Brock passed out, face down on a grimy table, many, many glasses in. Whenever Jack hustled him out, he would rouse and seethe. “They were whispering in her ears, all of ‘em, turning her against me. Snakes, whispering. Snakes in the grass poisoning her against me...snakes...”

“Yeah?” Jack would say. Politely. You didn’t argue with Brock when he was three sheets to the wind and ranting, if you wanted to live. He’d stabbed that guy in the bar in Myanmar who’d told him to get over his ex, oh, five times before Jack had been able to separate them. And that was so drunk he could barely stand.

“I miss my girl, Jackie. I’m going to make them pay. This isn’t about HYDRA anymore,” he’d vowed. Repeatedly.

Then Brock had gone off and fucked anything that moved, plus one thing that didn’t. It was some sort of Chitauri sex plant person, once owned by that weird ratbag called the Collector. It had consented to the sex, apparently, but it--uh--was rather stationary, personally. The less said, the better. But Jack could handle all that. That was in the realm of the expected, roughly. He didn’t expect what happened next.

First, Brock had started a minor HYDRA schism, hijacking some of Ward and Garrett’s tech supplies for fun and Jack had to ask Malick to intervene and smooth the ruffled feathers. Brock had refused to make any effort himself. Instead, he told Ward to go fuck himself and arranged for someone to change all the photos in Hale’s office to ones of his (present, scarred, traumatizing) face. He’d anonymously uploaded unflattering footage of Senator Stern combing his hair before a Congressional hearing to YouTube. It was petty. It was stupid. But it was only the first salvo in Brock’s ongoing midlife crisis.

The second salvo was raiding von Strucker’s  fortress--alone!-- and freeing those Wonder Twins of his, just for shits and giggles. He’d given them a million a piece and told them to go bother Tony Stark. He’d almost stolen Loki’s Scepter and only evaded capture because the girl half of the Wonder Twins had taken pity on him and managed to whisk him out of there.  It didn’t help that that Wanda had managed to show up at each of their mercenary hideouts, making sweet eyes at Brock and muttering things in Sokovian that sounded suspiciously like curses on Darcy Lewis. Jack didn’t think she done anything at all to Tony Stark. The boy Wonder Twin had apparently been content with stealing a lot of Stark’s toys: Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches, stray supermodels he’d left about.

Third, Brock and the Wonder Twins had made Helen Cho fix up his burns with her Cradle. At gunpoint. That was all right, Jack guessed. But he’d gone off on a mad bender when Darcy still wouldn’t return his calls and sent his gifts back with a note about “oblivious murdering Nazi fuckwits and their fuckwittage.” It had been a time drying him out, once they found him in that underground Mexican fighting ring. Jack was seriously checking on the price of black market livers there for a fortnight.

Then Brock had started collecting snakes. Big ones. He used them to frighten the victims of his robberies and thefts--one bank manager had actually urinated all over himself when Brock walked into a bank in Alberta in his Crossbones gear with a boa constrictor draped over his shoulders. Eventually, he branched into using their venom to make experimental poisons and toxins. He was most recently fixated on a Nigerian biochemical that could be fused with Bolivian snake venom. He wanted to steal it and hybridize it for...reasons? Expensive reasons. He kept breaking the lab equipment when it didn’t work and demanding that Jack kidnap toxicologists who understood the science. Jack found it all befuddling. He had difficulty following Brock’s logic now. Taking over the world, that he understood. Working for HYDRA within SHIELD? Sure. The end goal posts were clear.

But moving around the world, stealing poisons and gold and Chitauri weaponry for no other discernible reason than to drink a lot, wander about neck-stabbing people, and play with your snakes? You could do that in Paraburdoo on the cheap and the scenery was better. Christmas would at least be warm, Jack had told his mother in Kurrajong on their last phone call. This was the most bizarre version of mission creep he’d ever experienced. Brock kept sending him out to buy keffiyehs, too. Jack would come back with a box of scarves and a fresh set of camo blazers--another strange new fixation of Brock’s--to discover he’d killed their current client. Clients were getting rather thin on the ground. Jack had begun to fret he himself would reach the unhireable stage soon enough. Toxic resumes were a thing, even in the criminal underworld. Ulysses Klaue had cut him dead at that black market deal last week, Aldrich Killian wasn’t returning his emails, and he hadn’t even been invited to Justin Hammer’s “White Collar Crime” themed all-white birthday party in Monaco. Even the Mandarin had been invited to that--the photos were on Instagram. He wasn’t even a real bloody criminal!

He’d also had difficulty hiring new mercenaries to fill the team when it was bloody Snakes On A Plane if you traveled with Crossbones. He’d had to increase salaries by thirty percent after those Hungarian mercs got bit by Brock’s favorite cobra en route to Manila. Just thinking about it made Jack tired. It was like having a sleep-deprived toddler with access to landmines. Maybe Jack could go back to New York, see if any of the gangs were hiring, rehabilitate his image. Would Anatoly and Vladimir help him out….

Read more on A03.

#darcy lewis #brock rumlow #darcy lewis/scott lang #scott lang #villain wrangling is like herding cats #jack rollins

[camellia-thea]

Feather Reviews: 2019 Cats

For clarification, before I begin, I am a big fan of the traditional musical, Cats, and I grew up on it. I tend to ramble a little, but I have made an effort to make this cohesive.

This will, obviously, include spoilers for Cats. I will also state that this is my personal opinion, and I wanted to share it for those who are interested. I have nothing against people who disagree with my opinions, and am open to talk about how people felt.

Quick list of terminology: Queen’s Chorus: The older female chorus - Jennyanydots, Jellylorum, Bombalurina, Demeter. Kitten’s Chorus: The female kitten chorus - Excetera, Exotica, Electra, Jemima/Syllabub, (Victoria) Tom’s Chorus: The male chorus, including, but not limited to Tumblebrutus, Plato, Admetus. Often doesn’t include Munku or other cats with their own numbers. Original: When I state the original, I mean either the stage performances overall, or the 1998 filmed performance. Both are relevant and I focus on both too.

My initial ramble to some friends:

I am conflicted - on one hand, Cats was mostly awful and they did my boy so dirty. Misto wasn't Misto, he was an anxious boy (which I have no issue with, but it wan't my Misto). Skimbleshanks was wrong, and holy shit, Jennyanydots unzips her own skin and pulls it off revealing a cat in sexy clothing underneath, before eating literal children pretending to be cockroaches. Bustopher was a disappointment, but I got shivers with Memory, and Gus (though missing Jellylorum weeps) was fantastic. My biggest issue was the fact that a whole bunch of cats were missing or simply unnameable. I pride myself on being able to name all of the cats in stage version, but none of them have the same or even vaguely similar designs. Munkustrap was bearable, but not floofy enough, but he was really really good. Victoria was two characters in one: Jemima/Sillabub and Victoria. I saw Excetera, which was good, but apparently Demeter was there, but bad? She was just-- mean? She was meant to pity Grizabella (and is the second cat to touch her???) but was nasty and snarly and grey? She's a Tortie??? Has always been? hhhh, and though I did spot Coricopat and Tantomile -  who always move as one, but none of the non main cats had a big role, and most weren’t named or recognizable which was a shame.. and they MISSED the ORGY scene? WHY? it was a fantastic number, and had some great (if really sexual) dancing?

The numbers themselves:

Good Numbers and Dances: 

Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats; the beat was off on it, which made me mildly uncomfortable, but overal it was well done. Not as good as the original, but I enjoyed it, and it was a good first number. It was good as something to get used to the CGI for.  Memory (both); holy shit, Memory was really raw and emotional. No dancing for these, which was interesting. Gus; Ian McKellan gave me shivers. It lacked Jellylorum, which was upsetting, but he did really well, and I love this song normally, and I wasn’t  Beautiful Ghosts; okay, so I wasn’t expecting to like it, honestly, but I was pleasantly surprised. Vic was very raw and sweet, but I found it a little odd - I suppose it was her telling Grizabella not to give up, but it had a little of the @my pain is worse than your pain” thing, which bothered me. It was a sweet number though, and I enjoyed it. Jellicle Ball: Um... where was the orgy? Other than that, it captured the original, but had some new choreography, which was nice, actually. Couple of bits that didn’t quite work, but overall, a good piece.

Good Numbers, Bad Dancing:  Mungojerry and Rumpleteazer - the house scene was unnecessary and weird? But I enjoyed the sound - it was fairly true to the original. They missed the duo-cartwheel (is there a name for this? I feel like there is, but I don’t know it), which is one of the best moves in the entire musical, but it was missed? Whatever the reason, it was wrong. Grizabella the Glamour Cat - I liked this, though the tone felt off, and the acting was wrong. Demeter wasn’t right, and I think it was Cassandra instead of Bomba, which was also wrong? My ladies sing together. Rum Tum Tugger: I am so so so gad that it wasn't rap, holy shit - I have nothing against Rap!Tugger, but in this musical, it wouldn’t have worked. He had a good voice, and I really liked the way he held his notes, but his tone was a little off. Misto was a little unimpressive in it, where is my sassy boy? and I wasn't a fan of the dancing. It was good, sure, and I did see Excetera, which was nice, but overall, they lost Tugger’s theme. He also insulted Jenny? Which isn’t in character, I don’t think. Tugger’s an arse, but not that kind of arse.

Bad Numbers, good dancing:  hhhh Skimble my boy. Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat. They tried to modernize the music, but it was badly done. His tap was really good though - they mimicked the sound of trains going along, which was good. I didn’t enjoy his voice - where’s my Scottish cat? The 1998 version reminds me of living in Glasgow, but this didn’t have that, and lost a lot of Skimble’s charm, which was a shame.

Numbers that I honestly don’t know how to feel about: Mr Mistoffelees: Okay, so before I begin, you need some context. Mr Mistoffelees is my hands down favourite character in Cats - I’ve had a cat named after him, it was the first song I ever heard, and I relate him to my grandfather who has passed, so I have a lot of feelings here, and some will be unique to my situation.  This song isn’t about the Mr Mistoffelees that I know and love. This song was about a cat who was incredibly unsure about himself, and it shows in the vocals, in the dance, and in the music itself. It wasn’t sung by Rum Tum Tugger, and Misto’s character had so deeply changed that I couldn’t relate it to the original other than the lyrics themselves, and the fact that the goal of the song was to return Old Deuteronomy. However, I enjoyed it thoroughly. It was the only song that furthered a character’s development, and it was enjoyable over all. It did loose the charm of having Tugger sing about Misto, though, which was a big thing for me, I think. I certainly liked it but it wasn’t right, or fitting, however it was cohesive, and Misto got his confidence through it, which was good (and he was very sweet in it too).

Bad Overall:  Macavity; This one upset me. Macavity is another favourite, and I love Demeter and Bombalurina’s duet, and so removing Demeter was upsetting. The dancing was gone, which was awful. They missed a great opportunity to create a fantastic dark jazz number (perhaps on a similar line to Chicago? Something with that dark element that isn’t quite surface level), but instead we got TS nonconsensually drugging cats, and lying on a moon? There was so much that could’ve been done here, but they didn’t and it was bad. Gumby Cat - holy shit, Jennyanydots fucking unzipping her skin and eating children (dressed as cockroaches) was from stuff from nightmares.There was also an odd thing, after she unzipped herself (hhh, nightmare material), where she was suddenly in  this “sexy” bikini? It was just so utterly unnecessary and wrong. Jenny is meant to be an adoptive mother for most cats - Jellylorum being the other Mom Cat. The missing Queen Chorus was missing which was also sad and wrong.  Bustopher Jones: The Cat About Town, James Corden is a great actor, and is normally great in musicals, but he isn't the right person? The casting was wrong, and the song was just plain weird? Where was him flirting? Where was my Queens Chorus, again? my girls? And his CGI was weird. This song just rubbed me the wrong way, and it might’ve been his pitch too, but it was just wrong and disconcerting. Growltiger’s Last Stand: This was the most unnecessary thing? Honestly, they didn’t even need to put him in. They used the first verse, and left it at that which was stupid, and also the full song is racist and awful anyway? Many companies have managed to fix both Growltiger’s Last Stand, and the Pekes and the Pollicles, but this was just lazy and unnecessary, as well as not fitting the original trackline at all? I don’t know. It was a clear bad decision, I think.

Character Evaluations:

Good Characters:  Munkustrap; damn, I was worried that they'd change him a lot, but he was pretty close and I loved him. His voice was great, and I loved his interaction. He was overall friendly, but wary of Victoria in the beginning, and I loved him a lot overall. I’m sad that he didn’t get some of his numbers/lines, and that bits an pieces were changes (why did you sing Tugger’s opening in Mister Mistoffelees, Munku, why?)  Victoria; great voice, great dancing, and I think that she did a very good job but I felt uncomfortable with her singing Jemima/Sillabub's piece. Gus; Ian McKellan is a fantastic actor normally, and I think he really understood Gus, which was great. Missing Jellylorum and his interaction, but I'm glad that he was cast. 

Cat's I'm conflicted on: Mistoffelees - My boy, my best boy, my special boy. I actually really liked him, but his CGI made me deeply uncomfortable, but I loved the costume (top hat boy!), and though he wasn't my Misto in terms of character, I think it was a good version. My one true critisism was that he was straight. (In 99% of all shows, he and Tugger are gay af for each other, and Tugger is chaotic bi.) His design shift was off - too much white, I think. But overall, I think I did like this interpretation. It wasn’t my Misto, but I feel like they did a good job, and the acting was great, so I can’t complain. Grizabella; Griz was fantastic, but I feel like she was too young. She had all the necessary emotion, but looked to be early thirties? I’ve always felt that Griz is meant to be a glamourous signer/dancer who has been forgotten and replaced by newer cats (ei Bombalurina and Demeter), rather than cast out because of a skint with Macavity. She was phenomenal though - her voice, the acting, the emotion, all really well done. Skimbleshanks: Honestly, I didn’t like his design? A mustache? Pants? WHy not let him keep his waistcoat and watch, and leave it? The pants were odd on him, and though i liked the suspenders, they didn’t add to the charm of the character?

Bad characters: Bombalurina; um? Why? WHy? WHY? Admittedly, I am not a fan of T*Sw*ft, but honestly, I feel like she was cast into the right character, who’s characterization was them butchered so that she couldn’t perform a decent role. She's a good singer, and I respect her work, but they ruined Bomba’s character, which made her job really difficult. Bomba doesn't work for Macavity, she sings about how he is bad, and her girlfriend was abused by him? They also ditched her original design, which was a shame - I love the red based tortoiseshell that she has in the performances.  Mungo and Rumple; They were done so dirty. Again, why did they work for Macavity? It wasn’t necessary, and honestly, I feel like it was lazy on the part of the creators? I did love their voices though, and their song was close to the original which was great.   Jenny and Bustopher: Again, shitty numbers did these two no favours, but they lost the characterization in this. Bustopher was meant to be pompous but also an okay dude. Jenny was meant to be motherly, and kind, but nope. Not happening here. I feel like for these two, all original characterization was dumped, and then personality was stitched together from ill-fitting material. Macavity: Look, Macavity has no spoken lines in the stageshow, and honestly, I liked that? His part was convoluted, off, and also hhh? Why was his costume like that? He looked like he was going to offer drugs to young children in the back alleyways. I always thought that Macavity would have class - the line “the Napoleon of Crime” references Moriarty, and I always thought of him as being similar to the novelization of Moriarty, but he wasn’t. It felt like he was trying to be suave and charming, but failing miserably. Demeter: My lady? Ruined? Yep, they went there. Deme honestly didn’t have a part, other than to be mean to people, which was awful. She got a duet, in Grizabella the Glamour Cat, but honestly, it was a terrible piece. She wasn’t herself, and honestly, that wasn’t Demeter, that was just a grey cat who sang one of the parts that Demeter sang in the stageshow.

Cats that I straight up didn’t see: Jellylorum.

I mean, there were others, but they completely got rid of Jellylorum, who has a pretty damn big part? She’s the lead of the Queen’s Chorus

Continuing on with the list: Most of the Kitten Chorus. I actively recognized Electra but no others. Most of the Tom’s Chorus. I think I saw Admetus, and Tumble in Jellicle Cats, but nowhere else.

I was upset by the fact that most character’s original designs were ditched? We didn’t really get the calicos or tortoiseshells. Making Vic a tabby was odd? She was a plain white cat in the show, and it didn’t need to be changed? And Tugger’s mane wasn’t big enough (I weep for the loss of his floof).

Costume, Set, Prop, and CGI:  Overall, the CGI was surprisingly good. The cats themselves where disconcerting at the beginning, but it was surprisingly easy to get used to. I think they should've given them noses, and made their lips less pink (Looking at you, Misto), but it was okay. The crawling was weird - human proportions with long legs and short arms was disconcerting, but I could ignore it. There were points where the CGI made the entire thing so much worse (Gumby Cat, I am looking at you) but it was bearable, and even charming by the end. It could’ve been done much better (just plain animated would’ve been fantastic, or even if they’d stuck closer to the costumes?), but it was okay, and I found myself not paying that much attention to it, which means that it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could’ve been.

There was an odd thing in terms of set, where some things were proportions as though it was made for the cats, some were proportioned as though it was for giants, and some was as though they were for a cat's perspective of humans? There was just no continuity there. Same with the props, which was odd, but overall okay. 

Costume and design was mostly good. As I said, I loved Misto's garb - a top hat, with sequens but human sized sequins! very sweet boy. Tugger was odd, but it fit. His mane wasn't big enough, and was a coat instead, which was odd-- Jenny made me feel uncomfortable again, and did Bustopher. Macavity was a disappointment (he's ginger? “Macavity’s a ginger cat, he’s very tall and thin,” But was brown and wearing a coat that made me think of the hey, kid, want some drugs character, as I said before? Which i guess was intentional, but I don't know. He's written as being like Moriarty? So suave and charming, but not?). I feel like they could’ve pretty easily taken a deep red-brown tabby, and gone off with that, but they didn’t, and he wasn’t scary, or creepy, just wrong, and I half wanted to laugh whenever he was onscreen because of it. Griz was pretty good. I liked her coat, but I wished she looked a bit more 'drowned rat'-ish  with some torn up fancy clothes under? I don't know. . Growltiger. Huh. I wasn't expecting him, but also I really didn’t like his design. It was shady, and grimy, and his colourscheme was right, but it didn’t match the slightly majestic stage version of him, which was unfortunate.

Plot: Plot-wise, they honestly should’ve left it the way it was on stage. Macavity’s plot was frustrating, off, and overall unnecessary. Having it told through Victoria’s eyes was interesting, but not unwelcome, however and she gave the show a different angle which was welcome in my opinion. A lot of the music didn’t fit together in the same way as the original. It felt a lot more disjointed, and it wasn’t something I expected. Some of the dialogue was unnecessary and muddled the plot a little more than it needed to be (I’m looking specifically at Macavity’s part, I think.) Overall, the changes to the plot weren’t great, but what can you do.

Sound: I’ll start this section by stating that I have auditory processing issues that are normally really bad, and I rarely watch films/youtube without subtitles, so this section is a little more personal for me. I struggle with watching and hearing things at the same time - I normally only process one or the other, and so I loose a lot of dialogue normally in most films. I can cope with the 1998 filmed version of Cats simply because I know the music so well. I could listen to this, including the parts that I wasn’t familiar with (ie, spoken dialogue, and Beautiful Ghosts) without subtitles, and also I didn’t find myself overwhelmed by all the movement and musical changes, which was great, because it’s normally an issue for me. All in all, that’s a big plus for me, and I think that it was great.

Overall: I rate this film a 5/10. I wouldn’t pay to see it again, but I might borrow it from a library when it comes out on DVD. I rate the music a 6/10. There were some really great songs, but also some severely lacking ones. I rate the characterization a 5/10. Victoria, Munkustrap and Mistoffelees prevented this from going any lower, but still, it wasn’t great for anyone other than them. I rate the dancing a 7/10, overall the dancing was really well done, and I think they could’ve done a lot with it. I rate the plot a 4/10. A lot of it was unnecessary, or overly complicated. I think they should’ve stuck with the original. I rate the casting a 7/10. Mostly good, a couple I disagreed with, but I feel like they did pretty well. In comparison, I rate the 1998 filmed version a 9/10, points being deducted for the racism in several numbers (looking at you, Pekes and the Pollicles)

Would I recommend this film: It depends on the person, I think. I would say that a fan of Cats should watch it, simply so they can see another interpretation, even if there are parts that are wildly wrong in my eyes. I wouldn’t suggest it to younger viewers, simply because it’s not a simple plot, and the CGI can be disturbing. I would recommend it to people who want to watch Cats, but don’t have the energy, because even if the plot was iffy, it was easy to understand, and to follow, and is a good way to lead people into the stage versions. A final sentence summarizing my experience: I was pleasantly surprised by most of the 2019 Cats - I had been expecting much worse, and there were certainly thoroughly enjoyable parts.

#cats 2019 #cats the musical #cats the movie #cats 2019 spoilers #long post #feather speaks #feather reviews #i'm so sorry that this is so long #I didn't intend it to be #i just have a lot of feelings about this #this was an infodump brought to you by feather's special interest; cats

[mst3kproject]

Black Dragons

 This is a bizarre and thoroughly mismanaged WWII yellow peril movie.  It features Bela Lugosi and Joan Barclay, both of whom we’ve seen before in The Corpse Vanishes, and was produced by Sam Katzman, who brought us both The Corpse Vanishes and Teenage Crime Wave (also The Giant Claw).  I liked The Corpse Vanishes.  It was fun, fast-paced, and in some ways surprisingly feminist.  Black Dragons is none of those things.

It’s 1942, and Japan has just bombed Pearl Harbour, forcing Americans to stop ignoring World War II.  Stock footage of stuff burning and blowing up is implied to be the work of a bunch of indistinguishable suited men who are sabotaging the allied war effort.  They’re standing around one evening congratulating themselves on how evil they are, when a mysterious Monsieur Coulombe arrives and talks privately with one of them, a Dr. Saunders  Coulombe hypnotizes or drugs Saunders somehow – and in the days that follow, the conspirators start turning up dead, each with a souvenir from the renaissance faire… oh, excuse me, a Japanese dagger… in one hand.  What the hell is going on?

Well, the ending is supposed to be a surprise, but I’m gonna spoil it for you to save you having to watch the stupid movie.  All the victims, plus Dr. Saunders, are actually Japanese operatives from the Order of Black Dragons who had plastic surgery to turn them into the doubles of American businessmen!  The originals were killed, and the duplicates took their places… and the surgeon?  He was a Nazi who did it as a favour from the Fuhrer, but afterwards the Order tried to kill him so that he could never reveal the plan to anyone.  He escaped, and went to the States to murder them in revenge for their betrayal!

As ideas for an espionage movie go, this one reaches near golden-age comics levels of absurdity and as such it’s almost kind of brilliant.  A movie that used this plot to its full ridiculous potential could be great fun – I especially like that it pits two sets of villains against each other, while the supposed good guys spend most of the film completely clueless.  Black Dragons, however, was rushed onto theatre screens within four months of the bombing of Pearl Harbour, and it’s an utter mess with no idea what to do with its premise.

For being made in 1942, Black Dragons mostly doesn’t look bad.  There are no scenes so dark you can’t see what’s happening, and we get an idea of things like the layout of Dr. Saunders’ house. The characters all kind of look alike but I’ve just had to accept the idea that all white men had the same face until about 1965.  The steps of the Japanese Embassy are obviously somebody’s house with a sign on the door, but I can forgive them that, and the voices sound a little brassy and indistinct but no more so than in The Corpse Vanishes.  The main technical flaw in the film is that most of it has a constant crackling noise in the background, sounding kind of like heavy rain. This is obviously a problem with the print itself, since it continues as we switch scenes from Washington to Philadelphia, and it is very annoying and confusing.

No, almost all of Black Dragons’ many problems are in the writing.  Just based on the premise you can guess that the movie is racist – we’ve got the ‘Japanese dagger’ that doesn’t look even remotely Japanese, and Japanese characters (even some of those who are supposed to look Japanese) played by white guys in costumes and makeup, speaking in fake accents.  And as for the racial issues inherent in the plastic surgery plot point... I don’t actually feel qualified to address those.

What is slightly more surprising is that it’s also egregiously sexist.  There’s a woman living with Dr. Saunders who’s supposed to be his niece Alice, worried about all the weird things happening around her.  She turns out to be a policewoman who’s there to spy on the fake Dr. Saunders, and she gets shouted at for being entirely incompetent when she fails to solve anything (it must be admitted that she didn’t try very hard).

Everything that surrounds this character is just terrible. She’s there to be one (1) pretty girl, like the film is trying to fill some kind of quota.  Alice is introduced when the chief of police suggests that detective Dick Martin might get somewhere by questioning her.  Martin responds, “let me guess, she’s fifty and flat-footed, and wears glasses.”  Oh my god, you poor thing, you might have to talk to an unattractive woman!  She flirts with Dr. Coulombe throughout the film, even as he hangs around being ridiculously off-putting and creepy.  The revelation that she’s a spy herself explains this, I guess, since she must have been doing it in the hope of learning something from him, but it never avails her anything and is, in the end, useless, much like Alice herself.

The worst moment is when Martin, who has been trying to get her to move out of this dangerous house, walks into the room and out of nowhere says, “Alice, will you marry me?”  She stares at him like he’s crazy and asks, “what for?”, and I swear to you he actually replies, “so I can beat you up.  It’s the only way I’ll get you out of here.”  I had to pause the movie and watch it again because I couldn’t believe I’d just heard that.  I have combed the internet for a gif that expresses a sufficient level of what the fuck for this line and I cannot find one.  I need Shikha again.

Black Dragons really has no hero.  The closest thing on offer is Detective Martin, who is honestly just as useless as Alice.  I usually enjoy movies that are just a bunch of bad guys trying to thwart each other, but this is actually Black Dragons’ biggest mistake.  If this were supposed to be a suspense film, then we really ought to be focused on Martin (and possibly Alice) trying to solve the mystery.  Martin sees the Japanese agents as upstanding citizens in danger, and he is doing his best to help them but has started to suspect that the victims aren’t as innocent as they appear.

That has the potential to be an interesting story with a surprising twist at the end, but Black Dragons is not told from Martin’s point of view.  Instead, the audience is privy to at least some of the secrets from the beginning.  We already know that the murder victims are the bad guys, because we watched them brag about it to each other.  We watch Coulombe killing them (though the way he behaves, it would be obvious he’s the murderer even if we didn’t) and hear him calling them by Japanese-sounding names before they die.  By the time we get to what should be the twist, we’ve already figured most of this out (while Martin hasn’t a clue), and the only surprise is that Coulombe’s motivation is personal revenge rather than being a government assassin, as I initially assumed.

A version of the movie that actually tried to keep its secrets secret could also have something I kind of hoped we would see but never did, which is the conspirators interacting with their families.  At least some of the men who were replaced ought to have had parents, siblings, wives, or children, unless they were chosen specifically for being orphaned bachelors with no friends – and that doesn’t seem likely when we know Dr. Saunders had a niece he was close to.  Watching the people around these men feeling like there’s something different but not sure what it is would have been nice and creepy, but Black Dragons is not that subtle.

It’s all doubly unfortunate because there is some cool stuff in this movie.  There’s a bit where rather than killing two of the conspirators himself, Coulombe tricks them into killing each other.  That was nicely done.  His creative methods of hiding bodies are fun, too.  The fact that he ultimately dumps them on the steps of the Japanese embassy with an unconvincing ‘cultural artefact’ in their hands seems like it ought to mean something, like he’s trying to either alert the Americans to the threat or the Japanese to his survival, but nothing is ever really made of this and we never see what the head of the Order of Black Dragons thinks of it at all, as he is seen only in flashback.

The biggest problem with the whole concept behind Black Dragons is the same one as in Hercules Unchained: they needed to make a movie really fast in order to capitalize on something, and just didn’t have time to figure out what they were actually doing.  Hercules Unchained was a movie that tried to have two storylines at one, neither connected to each other and one of them only barely connected to its main character.  Black Dragons isn’t even sure who its main character is. Dick Martin is the nearest thing to a hero, but an argument could equally be made that this story is about Coulombe as antihero.  The result is a film that’s trying to do too much and too little at the same time.  And of course, Black Dragons’ intentions are way less honourable than Hercules Unchained’s.  Hercules Unchained just wanted to capitalize on a popular film.  Black Dragons was capitalizing on a literal act of war!

A version of Black Dragons that tried to do justice to its silly premise would still have been a bad movie.  It would still be an old, grainy print with sound issues, and it would still be deeply racist (among many, many other things, there’s a particularly detestable bit where Coulombe insults the Japanese operatives by calling them ‘apes’) and probably still have that stunningly horrible line about how you have to marry a woman before you’re allowed to beat her.  But it would have been a much more interesting and entertaining bad movie than it ultimately ended up being.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #black dragons #tw: abuse #40s

[meggannn]

(based on your previous ask) do you mind if I ask how you feel about lok? is there a general consensus if it's good or bad? youre really insightful and just wanted to know if there were any major issues you had with it

yeah sure, i’ll do my best. if you want a quick answer to your question, here is a link to some of my other korra posts where i say pretty much the same thing as i do here, just in fewer words. cause this post will be mostly an unhappy summary of my experience watching the show. this post will contain spoilers, and disclaimer, i am a really biased, disappointed asshole, so i’ll just admit that now. 

short answer: i liked the concept of lok more than the product we got. a lot of that is because you had a physically buff brown wlw protagonist written mostly by cishet white men and, as you can imagine, it wasn’t handled great. when i think of lok now i tend to fluctuate between bittersweet nostalgia and quiet, simmering rage.

if you don’t care about the show summary, skip at the middle paragraph break down to my tldr.

so for those who don’t know, LOK was really my first “big” fandom on tumblr. when it was announced, a bunch of ATLA purists were already hating on it because 1) brown woman, 2) it was unrealistic to go from ATLA’s technology to streampunk in 70 years, and 3) it wasn’t ATLA, basically. it was my first big interest that i got to participate in as it was airing, and i was really excited about it. i defended it, i wrote meta, i liveblogged, i wrote tons of fic and spammed theories/wants before the damn show even had a release date. all that is to say, i was Invested, and i believed in it before i even saw it. people called me a bnf, i’m not sure if that’s true, but i did gain a lot my followers in my first few years on tumblr by posting korra stuff. a lot of them – hello – i think are still around today (i’m not certain how all the video games hasn’t scared them off yet)

i should say at this point that my opinion of LOK the show has been really wrapped up in the ugly stain left by the fanbase. korra the character has been the subject of tons of racist, misogynistic criticism since the moment we saw her back; when she showed up on screen as a proud young woman who fought with authority and stood up for herself, that was the nail in the coffin for her reputation. i agreed that she had a bit of growing up to do, because ATLA/LOK have always been stories about coming of age and maturing, but i disagreed strongly with this notion that she deserved to be “humbled,” which is what a lot of fans were looking for.

the overall consensus on if it’s “good” depends on who you ask. most people agree that ATLA is better overall: it was better plotted because it benefited from more writers in the room and more episodes to flesh out the world. opinions on LOK specifically range based a lot on their opinions of the K/orra/sami pairing, if they were involved in or what side they were on in any of the fandom wank, and also just complete random chance.

i’ll go more in depth into my ‘history’ with the show below, but i just wanted to mention that all the while the show was airing, korra was being hit with waves of criticism by so-called fans for basically being a confident brown woman who were calling for her to learn her place, respect her elders, etc. another common theme was fandom’s brilliant fucking idea that asami, a light-skinned feminine non-bending woman who was more polite and reserved than korra, would’ve made a better avatar. because you know why. (korra was often described as brutal, rough, unsophisticated, next to pretty, perfect asami. and asami is a fine character, to be clear, but that’s what she was – fine. nothing really stands out about her, which is a fault of the writing, because she had a lot of potential too.) so anyway all of this did sour my mood toward engaging with other fans outside my friend circle.

–

it was around maybe the middle of book 1 that i realized the writing for the show was simpler than what i was expecting – not that it was childish, which it was (because it was written for children, i understood that), but i felt like the plot meandered and the twists came out of nowhere. it felt like they were making it up as they were going, and it opened threads it didn’t answer. one of the biggest threads was the equalist revolution, which was a very sensitive topic that got jettisoned when the leader was revealed to be a fraud, and that devalued the entire movement in an instant. really disappointing, because i was looking forward to seeing that addressed. for a lot of people, this was a dealbreaker, and they started walking. i stuck with it, but loosely.

book 2 aired, focusing on the spiritual world and some really cool history. it still suffered a lot from awkward b-plots and loose threads it didn’t know how to tackle. korra lost her memory and then regained it 2 episodes later with no consequences, mako flip-flopped between korra and asami because bryke don’t know how to write teenage romances without making it a love triangle, and at some point bolin kissed a girl against her will and they didnt acknowledge that at all? i honestly don’t remember. anyway at the end of book 2, even though korra saves the day and prevents the world from descending into darkness for ten thousand years, due to events beyond her control, korra loses the spiritual connection that ties her to all of the previous avatars – aang, roku, kyoshi, wan, everyone. and people hit the fucking ceiling. “korra’s not a real avatar if she lost her connection to the old ones! that’s the entire point of the cycle! this show is bullshit, it’s not canon anymore!” (the entire point that finale demonstrated that korra’s power alone was enough to save the world and she didn’t need anyone else. but people found that ~unrealistic~ i guess). as you can imagine, being a fan of LOK is starting to get a little tiring by now.

books 3-4 is where the korra haters got to love the show again, because they were both straight-up torture porn. after everything she did saving the world, this is the arc where korra got beat down, tortured, dragged into the dirt, swallowed and spat back out. book 3 is a lot of people’s favorites because it was the first book that felt fully plotted out before it was put on air, which is why i enjoyed it too. but for me it was difficult to see a girl, whose identity revolved around being the avatar after being raised and sheltered to think it was all she was good for, effectively abandon her life and even her name by the beginning of book 4 because the events of book 3 were that traumatizing for her. somehow this was character development. we were encouraged to stick with it because we hoped korra would find herself again. and she did, sorta.

but it makes me furious that people who had quit in books 1-2 came back during 3 because they heard these books were better – aka book 3, the book that featured korra the least, and books 3-4 in which korra got her ass handed to her in some of the hardest fights vs some of the cruelest villains of the series. (nevermind that the book 3 villains suffer from the anime villain curse: they quickly went from “cool character design” to “wait, how does this rando group of villains show up with powers literally no one in the universe has ever heard before?” – questions no one ever answers)

anyway book 4 is a mish-mash of… i’m not sure. i’ve rewatched all the books but i don’t know if i’ll ever touch this one again. the culturally appropriating airbender wannabe, zaheer (a complete rando who somehow masters airbending enough to fly, which was a huge middle finger to airbending masters aang and tenzin for no reason) a guy who literally tortured korra one season before and put her in a wheelchair, is the one who the writers send korra to for her spiritual awakening that lets her save the day. not tenzin or jinora, her spiritual teachers with whom she has positive, healthy relationships – they send her back to her abuser who terrifies and degrades her a bit more before deciding to help. this was a pattern: the writers made both korra and asami face their abusers (in asami’s case, her father) for catharsis instead of gaining peace over their trauma another, healthier way because…. i’m not sure why. there is no reason why. and then there’s the guilt tripping nonsense of asami feeling as if she had to forgive her father, who tried to kill her, because he said he was sorry and sacrificed himself for her in the finale. it’s angst galore, if you like that kind of thing, which i normally do, except this is less angst and more just the writers trying to hammer in torture porn, grimdark, and poor attempts at morally gray nonsense into their finale season.

anyway at the end of her journey, korra, our buff brown woc, learns that she had to suffer to learn how to be compassionate and relate to her enemy. i’m not exaggerating, she literally says that. which is lovely.

–

tldr: i wasted a lot of emotional time and energy into this show and was extremely disappointed when some of the ending’s notes were “you had to suffer to become a better person” and “forgive your abusers/villains because aren’t we all the same in the end?”

but also on a strictly narrative level, LOK also bit off way more than it could chew both emotionally and thematically. it had an amazing premise, but it was not committed to

utilizing the steampunk genre to its best potential in the bending world (after the creativity in the rest of the worldbuilding, the LOK series finale was literally fighting a giant robot – seriously?)

giving its hero the respect and character arc she deserved. and i don’t say that because i think korra had no growing up to do in b1, she did, but she didn’t deserve for it to happen like that.

so basically i realized that a lot of the writers that made ATLA great weren’t brought back for LOK, and it showed. i realized that the LOK writers, when they listened to fans, were listening to the fans that whined the loudest, or (more likely, since they plan seasons years before we see them) they thought from the beginning that it was a good idea for korra to go through years’ worth of pain just to be spat out a humbler, “better” person

the reason i told you all that about me defending LOK in the beginning is because i need you to understand that i believed in LOK longer than i probably should’ve. i wanted it to be everything i was expecting in a diverse children’s show with an unorthodox female protaganist. but just because they had a brown wlw heroine doesn’t mean that they deserved to be praised for it when they treated her like garbage.

and korra and asami walk into a beam of light together in the last second of the show and i’m supposed to applaud the writers for their bravery or something

#megan talks about korra #Anonymous #askbox #this is a very condensed summary because otherwise i'd be here all day talking about the pro-asami anti-korra fandom wank

[bookaddict24-7]

MUSIC MONDAYS:

A series where I recommend a book, review it, and create a short playlist to give a sense of what the book is about.

This review may contain spoilers.

Disclaimer: I received a copy via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

This week’s feature is a book that had me on all kinds of emotional roller coasters. On one hand, I was a naive reader and I thought I knew what was best for the characters, but on the other hand, I was also a frustrated reader because of the protagonist’s at times naive behaviour. But I learned quickly that this book wasn’t just about the awful events that Mafi’s character’s suffer, it’s about finding and believing the hope that not everyone you meet is going to be a jerk; it’s about finding a reason to hope that perhaps certain people deserve more credit than we initially give them. 

A Very Large Expanse of Sea by Tahereh Mafi is a powerful story set in 2002, one year after the events of 9/11. While there have been many novels about the after-effects of that tragic day, Mafi manages to write a memorable novel about a teenage American Muslim girl trying to find her path in a brand new high school. Shirin is pretty sure that the best way to protect herself is to expect the worst from the strangers around her. After all, they judge her when they first meet her, right? Until one boy seemingly doesn’t and his interest could offer Shirin a new perspective. What could happen if she allows herself to fall for someone the rest of the world doesn’t see fit for her? What could happen if her protective walls start to come down? 

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I really enjoyed this. Hell, I will be recommending this to the readers coming into the bookstore until I go blue. But, with that being said, this wasn’t a perfect read. I’ll get my big negative point out of the way so I can fangirl about the things I did love about this book. 

My biggest concern is the portrayal of Ocean. While I can see the way his imperfect character learns some vital lessons due to the way he is portrayed, I am also slightly disappointed that he was shown as such a “perfect” white male character. He was a very good™ character, despite his troubled past. It’s literally one of his characteristics. While I can understand the importance of having someone who sees the world that way Ocean does in a book like this one, it was done in a very unrealistic way. No one is that naive, especially in 2002. Even those who hope for the best from humanity have to have seen the tension growing in the States between the different citizens. I am privileged because I did not experience the wave of hate that came on the heels of 9/11. However, my mother dated an asshole before she met my stepdad and he was from NYC. When he was visiting us here in Canada, he yelled some pretty racist stuff to people who were minding their own business. 

I personally didn’t experience the hate so many lived with in the early 2000′s and the hate that so many still live with now, but in that brief moment I saw how someone that I once thought was cool could hide such a darker side. It was a lesson I never forgot and I can still remember where we were and how he looked yelling that disgusting crap out of our car window. 

My point with this digression is that while I can understand Ocean’s purpose in this book--because Shirin is understandably jaded and careful and we need a character to show her that hope still exists--but his over-the-top naïveté and wishful ignorance made it hard for me to completely fall into the story whenever his “goodness” was mentioned. 

For all of his annoyingly chipper behaviour, Ocean does grow in this novel. He learns to hope, but it comes at a price. While I wasn’t a fan of how he is presented in this novel, I did feel for him and his experiences. Having your positivity thrown in your face isn’t a great experience. 

With all of that being said, however, the rest of the book was just incredible. At first, I didn’t know how to feel about Shirin. I will admit that I became a victim of my own opinions and tried to place my expectations on her. She was a very careful character who knew her own world much better than I did. I fell into the trap of expecting certain things from her, but was happy to experience Shirin’s growth into a character far beyond what I expected her to be. Don’t get me wrong, Shirin was at times naive not unlike Ocean. However, he expected the best and she expected the worst. This at times also grated on my nerves because I wanted her to at least try. 

One of the great things I loved about this book was how Shirin grew to have hope. In a story where so many bad things happen to her because of who she loves, what her beliefs are, and how she looks, it’s incredible to see her grow into a person who is ready to take on the future. Also, I admired how important it was to her to remain true to her identity. She didn’t let the bullying, or the anger thrown at her dissuade her from her beliefs. 

Another interesting point was the comment on how fickle young minds can be. It’s interesting because of how true it is to see how some teenagers follow the pack mind, but most move on until their actions become a regrettable memory. There’s a point where Shirin even comments on how weird her classmates are when their opinions waver and change in certain situations. Even this message gives the reader a sense of hope because it shows that swaying public opinion isn’t as impossible as we might think it is. 

Also, I’m just throwing this in here because it’s still a point of interest in 2018: the double-standard on how boys are raised compared to how girls are raised. The leniency that Shirin’s brother is shown in regards to dating, going out, and the rules is staggering in comparison to Shirin’s own rules. Thankfully, it wasn’t an impossible hurdle for Shirin’s story, but it was something mentioned and I wasn’t entirely surprised to see that we’re still struggling with this today. 

One other topic I want to mention before I finish is that of Shirin’s parents. The differences between immigrant parents who’ve strived for a better life for their families and the children who grew up in the new country was not lost on me. Shirin’s allusions to her parents’ dark pasts made me incredibly sad for Shirin and her brother. I personally believe that everyone has their own struggles. It doesn’t matter how large my struggle is compared to the next person--everyone has a struggle. To tell your children that their struggles aren’t important or as impossible to overcome because they didn’t grow up in a war-torn country is deeply disheartening. Especially when those struggles include racism and physical abuse at the hands of people full of hate. Like many other things in this book, this broke my heart. 

Putting aside all of the sadness, this was a beautifully written book. I fell in love with Mafi’s writing through her middle grade series and I was a tiny bit hesitant going into this one. I was very happy to see that I still enjoy her writing!

 But like other important Young Adult novels coming out recently, I think this is an important book to read. It may not be set in our present time, but it is set in one of the most recent dark times in our history. Racism is always a dark subject to read about, but it’s also something that needs to be talked about. Mafi’s book is something that everyone should aspire to read, if not for the incredible messages of hope and growth and understanding, then for the jarring realities of what it was like to be a young Muslim woman in 2002. 

My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

Age Recommendation: 13+

Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Racism 

Add it to your Goodreads here.

See the playlist on Spotify here.

The Playlist & Why I Chose this Music:

1. What A Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong

This is the kind of song that is played when we want to remember that though the world may look like crap, there are still things and people who are worth the fight to make the world a better place. Also, this song goes back to the theme of hope. 

2. Don’t Phunk With My Heart by The Black Eyed Peas

So, because this is set a year before I started high school (it’s...been a while), I went ahead and reconnected with a bunch of songs from my teenage years. Anyway, the lyrics to this song remind me of Ocean’s struggle in trying to get Shirin to admit she’s into him. That boy’s heart took a beating in this book. 

3. Lose Control (FT. Ciara & Fat Man Scoop) by Missy Elliott

Shirin and her brother are badass breakdancers. If you’ve ever heard this song, then you know that the lyrics and the beat will immediately make you want to dance. This song connects us to Shirin’s surprisingly fun and cool side. 

4. What You Waiting For? by Gwen Stefani

While one of the songs chosen was for Ocean’s poor heart, this song is for Shirin’s scared heart. She wants something that she’s afraid will destroy her world, but she has to be prepared to take a chance first. 

5. White America by Eminem

This song is pretty self-explanatory. I know this is a controversial choice, but I honestly thought of this song first when it came time to choosing a playlist. Eminem’s lyrics and uncensored observations touch on some of the issues explored in Mafi’s novel. 

6. No Surprises by Radiohead

There’s a moment in the book where we get to see some of Shirin’s music. This song was on the playlist she had created and I thought it was fitting to include it in my fan playlist. I always like including songs that the characters themselves reference. 

7. Mr. Brightside by The Killers

This is all of Ocean’s sunny disposition and his unrealistic expectations of the world around him. While the lyrics themselves don’t correlate with Ocean and Shirin’s relationship, the ironic title of the song and the darker undertones of the seemingly chipper beat shows that things aren’t always what they seem. Ocean learns a lot from his experiences and this song shows a man who is learning to not be Mr. Brightside.

Have you read this book yet? Would you recommend it?

Happy reading!

#books #bookish #booklr #bookworm #bookaholic #Music Mondays #tahereh mafi #yalit #yafiction #young adult #book blogger #book blog #reco #recos #recommendation #recommendations #Features #bibliophile #read #reader #reading #long text post #text post #opinions #playlist #spotify #a very large expanse of sea #review #reviews #reviewer

[drumpfwatch]

How We Know Trump is a Racist

    So, I think it’s time I put this card on the table. I think there’s no more room to argue here, that Trump (who still lost the popular vote by 2.5 million) is a racist and most certainly a threat to people of color. And I’ll give my best evidence by the end of this, but let’s cover some of the more...obvious stuff.

    Let’s talk about the first big racist thing that Trump did that caught everyone’s attention. You know, that time he said Mexico is sending us their rapists and criminals.

    Let’s break that down for a second, shall we? Is he saying that Mexico is like, sending rapists as a military? That they are some kind of invading force? Because that what it means to send a group of people to another country. It’s not like there’s some grand Mexican conspiracy to make life so horrible for the people their that they’d rather come here. Or some sort of “globalist” conspiracy to flood the Americas with Mexicans because…

    Actually, why? Why oh why would they be doing that? Why might a man whose more than once shown himself willing to defend Nazis be convinced that there is some sort of effort to bring lots and lots of non-white people into our country in such a manner that they could be said to be being “sent”, as if apart of some military operation.

    GEE, I WONDER.

    Of course, that would give Trump the credit of having intelligence, which I’m not entirely convinced of. Maybe he does actually think that Mexico is purposely trying to torment its population to chase them out because he’s an idiot. Or maybe he’s just too stupid to know what the word “sending” means - I wouldn’t out that past him either. That’s what makes dealing with Trumby so hard - is he real? Is he just stupid? Maybe he’s just accidentally saying Nazi talking points because he’s a moron and doesn’t know to NOT say them! May he’s stupid enough to believe them! Maybe he’s just an idiot who doesn’t know that what he’s saying are Nazi talking points! Who knows!

    Actually, while we’re on the topic of Nazis, let’s talk about the second big incident, the one surrounding Charlottesville.

    For those fortunate enough to forget about that little blunder, back when he first got elected a bunch of Nazis got together with members of the KKK and other hate groups to march in protest of a statue of Robert E. Lee going down. Talk about being overly sensitive. It took the President two days to finally say anything on it, and what he said can basically be translated as “Sure there were some bad people there but I’m sure there were a lot of good people.” He then went on to talk about how the Alt-Left was there and came “charging at the Alt-Right” as if both sides were equally bad.

    Another common Nazi tactic, by the way. “Mom, mom, they were being bad too!” says the child who was just beating his sibling because she wanted to play a video game when he wanted to.

    Of course that’s not a perfect analogy - Nazis would kill the child for the crime of existing while Jewish/Gay/Roma etc. But that’s a whole other post.

    Point is, Trump, a man known for jumping the gun, suddenly decided to take a moment to make sure the reports of people screaming “Jews will not replace us!” (something you could find with a 5 second video search) and carrying swastikas (again, something you can find fairly quickly) were true. Sure, he says, SOME of them were obviously bad but some of them were probably “fine people.” Right?

    Except no. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, do you know what good people do when they accidentally find themselves on the same side as the swastikas at a Nazi rally? THEY LEAVE. Meanwhile, the “Alt-Left” which doesn’t exist were violent largely only in self defense, if at all, and certainly didn’t end up murdering anybody like the Nazis did. .

    What matters today is that the first thing a Nazi tries to do when dealing with a “normie” (and yes they do call non-Antifa, non-fascists that) is say they’re not a Nazi, so never believe it from the mouth, always look at the actions. If someone hangs out with Nazis, says Nazi talking points, and has Nazis following them around, they’re a Nazi.

    Even if Trump was trying to be honest for once in his goddamn life by taking the time to actually get the full story, then the answer is “These guys are Nazis, and Nazis are bad people.” It doesn’t matter if they have a cute dog at home and take care of their children as great parents, they want to kill people - they want to commit literal genocide. How do you excuse that? You either have to unbrainwash them, educate them, or deal with them on those terms - if they’re going to kill you, you are in your rights to retaliate in self-defense. End of discussion.

    “Fine people” my flatulating ass.

    Anyway, they say two makes a trend, but three makes a pattern, so what about a third horribly racist thing he’s done?.

    I could talk about all the dog whistles he’s blowing, to the point where he mind as well being using a megaphone and not a dog whistle, but people won’t believe that entirely easily. It’s not a simple thing to convince people that the “OK” symbol is actually a little highsign Nazis flash to each other without sounding like you’re crazy, but again, that’s a whole other topic. Besides, that’s more of an ever pervasive thing instead of a specific incident.

    On that same tack, I could talk about the time he called himself a nationalist, and how scary a term that is and how afraid a lot of people should be that he did because it means he’s either admitted to being a nationalistic Nazi or he’s too stupid to realize that that’s what he just did. Either way, he’s not fit to be president, but people would argue the same thing - that it’s just a word. It couldn’t possibly mean anything, certainly not something bad!

    I could talk about how I hear people complaining that I’m only a silly liberal who only thinks he’s racist now that he’s president and I don’t like him, but that’s not true. There’s plenty of records of people talking about Donald Trump being a racist before he ever ran for President, including numerous reports of him disallowing black people into his apartments because they are “welfare queens.” One of his staff reported that everytime a colored person applied, he was supposed to attach a small sticky note with a “C” on it to let the higher ups know. Trump was very eager to settle these outside of court, probably because he knew he’d lose. But I’ve heard a lot of people say that because it never went to court it doesn’t count and nothing was ever proved. Hell, if you’re still on about it being me specifically, I called Trump racist before he ran for president when he kept going on about Obama’s birth certificate, although I couldn’t prove that with any sort of record, that was all in conversations with my friends.

        That’s actually a whole other thing I could write an entire post about - how we know he’s racist because he refused to believe a Black Man could actually be American, but that’s another one of those things that people just find it difficult to believe for some weird reason.

    Hell, I could cite every single racist thing he’s said or done. Because racism isn’t...like, a crime you commit, it’s a pattern of behavior encouraged by systemic structures that serve to better one group over the other, so everything from that comment he made about how a judge wouldn’t treat his case fairly because he’s Latino or how he berated that Gold Star Family for the mother not talking when she was literally grieving the death of her son just because they were Muslim count. Maybe that time he encouraged people to beat up the Black Lives Matter protesters would count.

    But all of this is almost tangential. You wanna know how I know Trump is a racist? Because I’m not the one saying it. David Duke is saying it. You know, that former Grand Wizard of the KKK? Sebastian Gorka, a known Neo-Nazi, says Trump agrees with him. The KKK was pretty notorious for hating American politics for leaving them more or less behind with the exception of crawling out of the woodwork to support a Ronald Reagan or disavow a Barack Obama or two. Even then, their support was a bit hesitant, and of course even Ronald Reagan was like “Ew, no. You guys can get away from me” as soon as it became news that the KKK had done so.

    But with Trump, you have very enthusiastic Nazis coming out of the filthy, disgusting sewers they belong in saying “Yeah, Trump’s our guy! He’s our guy!” and Heiling him all over the place. THEY wouldn’t be excited about him being a racist if they didn’t believe he was racist. They like him, they approve of him, and the only reason for that, the only point of that, is that they’re saying he’s on their side. THAT should be more than enough to prove the point.

#by Phoenix #TheDrumpfWatch #Donald Trump is a Racist #Wednesday Essays

[impuretale]

IT 2017, Reaching Adulthood, and That Completely Unnecessary Scene from the Book That Was Left Out for Good Reason (Spoilers)

I’ve mentioned before that I was cool with Cary Fukunaga losing his directorship of the project because he seemed determined to make the orgy scene from the book happen. The movie as it stands now has proven it is not necessary. I will explain why.

In the book, when the Losers Club makes it to IT’s lair (well beyond the cistern) they’re also pulled into its reality, where it can take its true form (or as close an approximation as the human mind can comprehend it, hence the spider). Afterward, the kids are left wandering the sewers, lost in total darkness, for literal days. IT has not only managed to fool them into thinking they killed it, but may very well take their lives via starvation and exposure. 

Then the entire Losers Club has sex. The reason for this is the realization by Beverly that, essentially, they can’t escape IT unless they stop being children. It’s a symbolic rite that’s supposed to represent Beverly claiming herself in a way her father attempted to violate but also initiates them into adulthood. IT does not go after adults because their fears are harder to manipulate. More on this later. The point is, I understand what King was going for but also ew. And also no, we do not ever need to see a bunch of 13 year-olds engaging in graphic intercourse on the big screen, something the original director intended. 

The 2017 IT movie achieves the intentions of the above-described scene in different ways. Firstly, Bev takes ownership of her body and her sexuality the second she cuts her hair, and we see evidence of this feeling of freedom this gives her when after this scene, the first thing we see her do is join the boys for a swim in the gorge. This is a scene in which everyone is swimming in their underwear, then (for her) sunbathing in plain view, and she feels utterly safe. This is huge when you understand that her father is all but confirmed to have been molesting her, possibly for years. This takes this achievement for her and makes it about her decisions and her owning herself and not about giving herself to a bunch of boys. The decision she makes in the book is her decision which is in itself giving her some agency, but it also hinges on something shared with all of the Losers and not something she just owns outright. The movie changes that, for the better. 

Beverly, among the other losers, is already an adult in the symbolic sense that the orgy in the book was supposed to initiate. This is evidenced by the fact that when IT tries to conjure up horrors for her, what she winds up getting is easily the most abstract attack in the whole movie. Remember what I said earlier: adults are more complicated when it comes to scaring them. Children fear monsters in cellars; adult anxieties are way more complex. Bev’s nightmare is being (fresh from starting her period and her father’s adverse reaction to that) attacked not only by a geyser of blood, but also the hair that she cut off -- hair that she cut off because it sexually excites her father, hair that only stops holding on to her and pulling her toward the drain when she relents and screams for her abuser to come help her. The only means that IT has to terrorize her is to constantly place her in situations where she’s vulnerable to her father. 

Bev is the most fearless of the Losers, and she had already grown up a long time ago. The only reason IT maintains any sway over her to the end of act 2 is because she hasn’t defeated her true monster yet -- her father. She’s the first to insist they go help Mike when they know Henry Bowers is after him. She’s the first to cast a stone -- she is the first one to physically harm Pennywise. 

Because when adults see creatures or animals that mean them harm, they are more likely than children to pick up a weapon and try to kill it.

Everyone in the Losers Club claims their adulthood in the final battle with Pennywise when they take up arms and beat it nearly to death. Everyone else also has symbolic moments in the movie before that confrontation that is meant to show their (sometimes imperfect) initiation into adulthood. For Eddie, it’s standing up to his mother, who has been lying to him about his illness. For Richie, it is that moment when Bill tells him that IT took Beverly, and he comes to help, accepting that his feelings and his fears are not the most important thing. For Mike, it is his decision to fight back when the bolt is between his eyes -- confronting his longtime tormentor and the progeny of a racist who was involved in the Burning of the Black Spot (and likely the burning of his home, which killed his parents). For Ben, it was the first stone he threw when Henry sexually harassed Beverly -- Ben, whose main response to Henry when he’s near was initially to run or hide. For Bill, it’s accepting that his brother is truly dead and he’s never going to be able to bring him home. For Stan, it was meant to be his bar mitzvah -- the traditional entrance into manhood for Jewish boys, but we’re shown that he struggled with it from the beginning and appeared to continue to during the montage showing him actually attending it. He’s the one that could be led away from his friends and attacked, so his ascension is incomplete in a way, despite his taking part in the melee at the end. This will tie later to his ultimate fate twenty-seven years later. 

Everything that the sex scene in the book was needed for, symbolically, is carried out in the movie just fine. First through character growth but second through the most righteous monster ass-beating that’s ever been committed to film -- against a creature that, as a friend of mine pointed out, has never needed to fight before. 

The Losers Club are all at least symbolically “grown up” by the time they make the blood pact in the end. Some, moreso than others. Stan’s story is more tragic than the miniseries had time to fully realize for the viewers. I’m looking forward to seeing how all of this reverberates in chapter 2. 

#stephen king's it #it 2017 #it 2017 spoilers #rape mention #csa tw #it spoilers #beverly marsh #beverly marsh is the badass of the losers club

[nemesis-nexus]

A few more things that I need to get off my chest regarding the First Nation, the BLATANT disregard of Treaty Rights across the board and the abysmal treatment of the people at the hands of the United States government: Not only are you paying for it, but you will NEVER be compensated for any of the services your tax dollars are covering EVER! What you have been told about there being permanent jobs created between the dapl and KeystoneXL pipelines is a lie! the fact of the matter is there will be no more than between 15 and 35 permanent jobs! Everybody's bitching and moaning about how they want to end the dependency on foreign oil, the problem is that the dapl will not do that in fact the dapl will not benefit the United States in any way shape or form! The truth is that it's being transported across states where it will be refined and exported overseas - why do you think countries such as Japan have such a vested interest in it? The truth is that Energy Transfer Partners has lied about everything since the beginning! They paid off ex-Governor Jack Dalrymple so that he would call in the National Guard to defend the pipeline!! Since when does the National Guard protect private oil companies instead of THE NATION?! Then every time violence erupted Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier ran as fast as he could to the nearest microphone and Podium and LIED ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED! There is a reason why there has been a TOTAL MEDIA BLACKOUT since the beginning of this conflict and that is because they don't want you to see what's really happening over there because if you see what's really happening over there they can't lie to you about it later!!! This is also the reason why they have gone after independent journalist such as Jon Ziegler who they called out before shooting him in the hand!!! What you may have heard about weapons in any of the camps is a complete lie, think about it logically, why would they suffer all the abuse that they did to the point of almost being killed and NOT fight back if they allegedly had all kinds of guns and other weapons? What you have heard about the trash on the ground is also a lie, the campsites WERE NOT "deliberately trashed" what ACTUALLY happened was the blizzards - as they have a tendency to do in the winter - set in very quickly and did not give people enough time to move out all their belongings! That coupled with EXTREMELY HIGH WINDS that were blowing everything, everywhere made things literally impossible to clean up at the time so yes there was a mess to clean up and no one is denying that! However as soon as the snow started to melt that is exactly what they did, they cleaned up about 85% of it and they knew they were going to need more time which is why they asked the Army Corps of Engineers to extend the deadline so they could finish the job! The Army Corps of Engineers however refused to grant them more time so they were unable to finish what they started, we know that they were refused an extension for the very specific reason of utilizing the trash on the ground as propaganda to further smear the Water Protectors and as expected all the gullible, ignorant people who believe whatever they're told bought it hook, line and sinker! What you may have heard about human feces all over the place including in the river is also complete and utter bullshit! There were composting toilets on the scene at all times, what they are is toilets that are designed to collect waste and when they are full the contents are bagged up and shipped out by truck. The contents Ultimately used as fertilizer, the same as horse manure! What gets me regarding the trash is that people are so hateful and callous that they are implying that they are more concerned about trash on the ground than they are about the multitude of Human Rights, Constitutional Rghts and Civil Rights violations that have been levelled against EVERYONE fighting for the Earth and Water in the last year - going so far as to say that Sophia Wilansky blew her own arm off!!! They are literally more concerned about trash on the ground then they are about human life and that is a level of depravity I hope no one I know ever lowers themselves to!! Does anybody ever wonder why when we're taught American History in school, no matter what grade, that the ONLY time we're EVER told anything about the First Nation is when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock and in regards to Thanksgiving, but we're rarely if ever told ANYTHING else? We have Black History Month where all kinds of information is made available to learn about Black pioneers and key figures of Black History, we also have TV channels (specifically BET) that show movies featuring prominent black actors and actresses and the work of talented directors producers so forth and on... We also have Native Heritage Month and yet where is the information readily available to learn about any Tribe of the First Nation? Where are the school plays that demonstrate real Native History? Where are the book reports that put front-and-center all the people who fought for Indigenous Rights since the beginning? Where is the TV channel that specifically displays the work of prominent Indigenous actors and actresses or of talented producers directors and such? Why is it whenever we talk about racism we automatically think Black White Latino Asian but very VERY rarely IF EVER do we mention the Indigenous who have had it a HELL of a lot worse than ALL of us COMBINED? I will tell you why; because we have ALL been mentally conditioned to not even acknowledge the FIRST NATION let alone the Indigenous PEOPLE! We know it is true for the aforementioned reasons that they are never discussed outside of Thanksgiving and Plymouth Rock, their Heritage month goes by with no general recognition whatsoever of historic Indigenous figures such as Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, Geronimo or even Sitting Bull, in fact the closest we came to acknowledging the Indigenous was when the Sacagawea dollar was introduced and people lost their fucking minds over it!!!! The fact that the Indigenous at Standing Rock as well as all those who stood in solidarity alongside them have been Domestically Terrorized the last year by the very people who are supposed to protect them, not a private company performing an illegal project and people are actually more concerned about trash on the ground than the fact that lives were almost taken and even more have been violated is beyond reprehensible and inhumane to say the least!!! This war that has been leveled against the First Nation for centuries did not start at Standing Rock but what has happened at Standing Rock for the last year is but a small example as to the kind of dehumanizing, racist, hateful and dismissive treatment the Indigenous people have been regarded with since the Inception of this country! To this day they continue to have their land stolen and their children forcibly removed as well as their women abducted and raped, oftentimes sold into sexual slavery!! I can guarantee if ANY other group of people was treated the same way that the Indigenous people are treated NOT ONLY would the courts be FLOODED with lawsuits of Racial Profiling, Racial Discrimination and a PLETHORA of hate crimes to beat the band, but it would be all over the news and EVERYBODY would be bitching about how WRONG it is, but when the Indigenous are treated this way all those Social Justice Warriors can't be bothered!!! Since people seem content to continue to bring up the trash on the ground I will remind them of what is important - That just because some people were unable to gather up their belongings and transport them out when they left IS NOT A CRIME and is certainly NOTHING COMPARED TO: Having crop dusters spraying poison directly on you, your family, your animals and your land Having your children assaulted with guard dogs Having your pregnant wife assaulted with pepper spray to the face Having your sacred holy items stolen and smashed then thrown in the mud and garbage Having your Cemetery bulldozed into nonexistence Being arrested without your Miranda Warnings or charges being read beforehand Being illegally strip-searched and then shoved in a dog cage for hours on end Being accused of firing a gun and trying to kill a police officer when their own words dictate that such a scenario was physically impossible, dropping the local charges because they knew they had nothing to base them on and then pursuing bogus federal charges #FREEREDFAWN #FREELEONARDPELTIER Being attacked indiscriminately and viciously with: LRADS Tear Gas Rubber Bullets Concussion Grenades Sound Cannons Beanbag Rounds Fire Extinguisher Size Mace Water Cannons in 26 Degree Weather Verbal assaults issued on Radio Transmissions that DEMAND the men come out and fight OR THE WOMEN WILL BE RAPED IN CAMP - YES THERE IS AUDIO AND VIDEO EVIDENCE OF THESE THREATS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT!!! On the night of November 20th, a bunch of people went to the Backwater Bridge to clear the two burned-out vehicles that were blocking it so as to allow vehicles including emergency vehicles passage. Upon securing one of the trucks to the rig and starting to pull it away they started getting fired upon from the back - yeah that's right THEY WERE SHOT IN THE BACK! I thought only COWARDS shot people in the BACK??!! Then when they tried to approach the barrier to attempt to speak with the militarized police and National Guard to try to explain what they were doing, they were fired upon with more rubber bullets, concussion grenades, teargas and beanbag rounds! Some of their Munitions hit the ground and ignited yet of course they did not accept responsibility for that instead passing the buck and blaming the Water Protectors accusing them of starting fires! The fact of the matter is and again we have the video to prove it, that the ONLY fire that was in fact started by the Water Protectors was done so AFTER they started hosing everyone down with a water cannon in 26 degree weather! It was an emergency fire that was meant to keep them from succumbing to hypothermia! So yeah the next time somebody tries to give you shit about the trash on the ground, just remind them of EVERYTHING ELSE THAT'S HIT THE GROUND IN THE LAST YEAR and ask them why their priorities are so screwed up that they place more value on a gum wrapper than on a human life!! The most recent and despicable crime committed by the Domestic Terrorists is the forced removal of people from The Oceti Sakowin and Rosebud Camps where dwellings were desecrated and torn apart for NO OTHER REASON than they could! This is why the structures on the OS amp were burned, because they did not want them desecrated as well but also because it is customary for them to burn down semipermanent structures before moving on. Several arrests were made including military veterans and the grandmother they were protecting! Eric Poemz was tackled and slammed to the ground resulting in his hip being dislocated and what did the domestic terrorists do? One of them took a picture with him screaming in agony then laughed about it and left! Another one told him that the water protectors spent the last 6 months disrespecting THEM and THE STATE!!! And what makes all of this that much worse is that what I just said is not everything that happened ONLY SOME of the MORE extreme examples!! Now Trump wants to introduce legislation that makes protesting of any kind a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison? This bill will take any Act of protest and corrupt it into and act of aggression where by anyone participating will be arrested for "Inciting A Riot" the most messed up thing about it is that you don't even have to be doing anything to be arrested and accused of it, just ask Chase Iron Eyes!!! The fact is that racism is still rampant in this country and as bad as Black, White, Asian and Latino think they have it NO ONE has it as bad as the Indigenous! It is time that we all reread our history, learn the facts versus the bullshit and work together with our Indigenous brothers and sisters for the betterment of OUR present and the security of OUR future!! We Are ONE Even Though We Are MANY And We Stand STRONGEST When We Stand TOGETHER! #FREEREDFAWN #FREELEONARDPELTIER #NODAPL #WESTAND #MNIWICONI #WATERISLIFE #OCETISAKOWIN #PROTECTTHESACRED #PROTECTORSNOTPROTESTERS #RESPECTEXISTENCEOREXPECTRESISTANCE #NOSABALPIPELINE #KEEPITINTHEGROUND #NOKEYSTONEXLPIPELINE #NOTRANSPECOSPIPELINE

[brajeshupadhyay]

Column: I wasn’t a fan of Kamala Harris. It took President Trump to change my mind

I’ll admit it. I was a Kamala Harris skeptic.

The day Joe Biden announced that the California senator would be his running mate, I rolled my eyes and resigned myself to voting for her.

It just seemed bonkers that Joe Biden would select a career prosecutor — Black though she may be — at a time when Americans are taking to the streets to protest a criminal justice system that continues to treat Black people unfairly. And yet, also all too typical of the Democratic Party to go for the moderate.

But that was Tuesday.

Now, I’m all in. I’m even excited, and certainly more committed than ever to giving President Trump and Vice President Pence the boot.

What’s changed for me, and I suspect for a lot of Black people who were initially less than enthusiastic about Harris as VP, has been the constant stream of racist attacks against her from Trump and his various minion mouthpieces. Lukewarm about her before, now we’re fired up and defensive.

I mean, how else can one respond to the comments about her being “nasty” during the Democratic primary debates and “a madwoman” while questioning then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh during his Senate confirmation hearing for the U.S. Supreme Court. Never mind that Kavanaugh was legit angry crying. The “angry Black woman” trope is so tired.

And then there’s the cockamamie narrative about her being part of “the left-wing mob” that wants to do away with “law and order” and is now controlling the Democratic Party. Fellow Californian and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted (and apparently deleted) that she “wants to turn the entire United States into San Francisco. Her radical agenda has been terrible for Californians, and it would be terrible for the rest of America, too.”

What does that even mean? So a Black woman who made headlines for refusing to punish police misconduct is now a “radical”? Please. I interviewed her a handful of times during her time in Sacramento, and I always walked away thinking she was smart, charming, cautious and opportunistic in the way that the most talented politicians tend to be.

But what pushed me over the edge have been the snide comments and insinuations about her race, from the ludicrous birtherism claims that she’s not eligible to be vice president to the questions about whether she’s really Black because she is the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father.

I remember the first time someone asked me that. I was in the fourth grade. My family had just moved from an Ohio suburb with a population that was about 90% Black to one, only a few miles but an entire socioeconomic strata away, that was about 90% white.

One afternoon, a girl with long, blond hair and blue eyes walked over from where she had been sitting on the playground with a bunch of other girls with long blond hair and blue eyes. She looked me up and down in the scornful and skeptical way that only a privileged kid can.

“Are you really Black?” she asked. “Because you are really light.”

I remember pausing, wondering if it was a trick question. “Yes,” I told her.

She didn’t miss a beat. “Well, prove it!”

To this day, the notion that anyone who is of African descent — whether their ancestors came on a slave ship through the Caribbean or directly to the shores of the United States — has to somehow prove their Blackness is something that both dumbfounds and enrages me. It is just mind-blowing that we’re still having this conversation, even after Barack Obama, born to a white mother and an African father, served two terms as president — which probably tells me that I’ve been in multicultural California for too long.

But I’m not alone. A little hesitant at first, a string of progressive Black women have come out in support of Harris in recent days, as Republicans have stepped up their attacks on her.

Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors took to Instagram on Thursday to encourage her followers to vote for Biden and Harris. “She has been an amazing progressive in the Senate. She has stood up to Trump time and time again… We need a Black woman like her to be in office.”

Filmmaker Ava DuVernay did much the same, telling her followers on IG that there is no debate anymore and to just go vote.

“We either make this happen. Or literally, more of us perish,” she wrote, blaming Trump’s hot mess of an administration for the disproportionate number of Black and brown people who have fallen victim to the spiraling COVID-19 pandemic. “People are dying. Someone I love died. This virus is real. If it hasn’t visited your doorstep, it will. Oh but, Kamala did this or she didn’t do that. I hear you. I know. And I don’t care.”

Longtime activist Angela Davis also has chimed in. Not a fan of Biden, she admitted that she wasn’t thrilled that he had picked Harris. “We can’t forget that she did not oppose the death penalty,” she told Reuters, “and we can’t forget some of the real problems that are associated with her career as a prosecutor.”

But Davis said that Harris also has made the ticket more “palatable” and encouraged people to vote.

The bottom line is, as much as Republicans would like to sow division among the ranks of liberals, poking sore points, such as allegiance to the more progressive demands of Black Lives Matter, it won’t work.

Sure, Harris has been squishy on the defund-the-police movement and, as California’s attorney general, threatened to jail the parents of truant children. Republicans have tried to hit her on that while simultaneously accusing her as being an ally of anarchists. But, as the state’s junior senator, Harris has led the charge on a police reform bill that would create a national registry for misconduct cases, prohibit chokeholds, limit “qualified immunity” and declare lynching a federal crime.

All of this adds up to the fact that Harris might not be the biggest ally for progressives if elected vice president, but she certainly won’t be an enemy. Not anymore.

“People want us to go on and either talk negatively about Kamala Harris or talk positively about Kamala Harris. I want to be very clear: Black Lives Matter believes that our primary work is the work of organizing and being in streets,” Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, told a crowd of supporters on Wednesday.

“There’s a fallacy,” she continued, “that says that you move from protest to politics. You do not move from protest to politics. The only thing that ever creates change is protest and politics.”

Resorting to racist attacks on a Black woman is a good catalyst for both.

window.fbAsyncInit = function() { FB.init({

appId : '119932621434123',

xfbml : true, version : 'v2.9' }); };

(function(d, s, id){ var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;} js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "https://ift.tt/1sGOfhN"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));

The post Column: I wasn’t a fan of Kamala Harris. It took President Trump to change my mind appeared first on Shri Times News.

from WordPress https://ift.tt/3ax9soC via Blogger https://ift.tt/2FtHXAN

#Blogger #Column: I wasn’t a fan of Kamala Harris. It took President Trump to change my mindfollowme

[brajeshupadhyay]

I’ll admit it. I was a Kamala Harris skeptic. The day Joe Biden announced that the California senator would be his running mate, I rolled my eyes and resigned myself to voting for her. It just seemed bonkers that Joe Biden would select a career prosecutor — Black though she may be — at a time when Americans are taking to the streets to protest a criminal justice system that continues to treat Black people unfairly. And yet, also all too typical of the Democratic Party to go for the moderate. But that was Tuesday. Now, I’m all in. I’m even excited, and certainly more committed than ever to giving President Trump and Vice President Pence the boot. What’s changed for me, and I suspect for a lot of Black people who were initially less than enthusiastic about Harris as VP, has been the constant stream of racist attacks against her from Trump and his various minion mouthpieces. Lukewarm about her before, now we’re fired up and defensive. I mean, how else can one respond to the comments about her being “nasty” during the Democratic primary debates and “a madwoman” while questioning then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh during his Senate confirmation hearing for the U.S. Supreme Court. Never mind that Kavanaugh was legit angry crying. The “angry Black woman” trope is so tired. And then there’s the cockamamie narrative about her being part of “the left-wing mob” that wants to do away with “law and order” and is now controlling the Democratic Party. Fellow Californian and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted (and apparently deleted) that she “wants to turn the entire United States into San Francisco. Her radical agenda has been terrible for Californians, and it would be terrible for the rest of America, too.” What does that even mean? So a Black woman who made headlines for refusing to punish police misconduct is now a “radical”? Please. I interviewed her a handful of times during her time in Sacramento, and I always walked away thinking she was smart, charming, cautious and opportunistic in the way that the most talented politicians tend to be. But what pushed me over the edge have been the snide comments and insinuations about her race, from the ludicrous birtherism claims that she’s not eligible to be vice president to the questions about whether she’s really Black because she is the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father. I remember the first time someone asked me that. I was in the fourth grade. My family had just moved from an Ohio suburb with a population that was about 90% Black to one, only a few miles but an entire socioeconomic strata away, that was about 90% white. One afternoon, a girl with long, blond hair and blue eyes walked over from where she had been sitting on the playground with a bunch of other girls with long blond hair and blue eyes. She looked me up and down in the scornful and skeptical way that only a privileged kid can. “Are you really Black?” she asked. “Because you are really light.” I remember pausing, wondering if it was a trick question. “Yes,” I told her. She didn’t miss a beat. “Well, prove it!” To this day, the notion that anyone who is of African descent — whether their ancestors came on a slave ship through the Caribbean or directly to the shores of the United States — has to somehow prove their Blackness is something that both dumbfounds and enrages me. It is just mind-blowing that we’re still having this conversation, even after Barack Obama, born to a white mother and an African father, served two terms as president — which probably tells me that I’ve been in multicultural California for too long. But I’m not alone. A little hesitant at first, a string of progressive Black women have come out in support of Harris in recent days, as Republicans have stepped up their attacks on her. Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors took to Instagram on Thursday to encourage her followers to vote for Biden and Harris. “She has been an amazing progressive in the Senate. She has stood up to Trump time and time again… We need a Black woman like her to be in office.” Filmmaker Ava DuVernay did much the same, telling her followers on IG that there is no debate anymore and to just go vote. “We either make this happen. Or literally, more of us perish,” she wrote, blaming Trump’s hot mess of an administration for the disproportionate number of Black and brown people who have fallen victim to the spiraling COVID-19 pandemic. “People are dying. Someone I love died. This virus is real. If it hasn’t visited your doorstep, it will. Oh but, Kamala did this or she didn’t do that. I hear you. I know. And I don’t care.” Longtime activist Angela Davis also has chimed in. Not a fan of Biden, she admitted that she wasn’t thrilled that he had picked Harris. “We can’t forget that she did not oppose the death penalty,” she told Reuters, “and we can’t forget some of the real problems that are associated with her career as a prosecutor.” But Davis said that Harris also has made the ticket more “palatable” and encouraged people to vote. The bottom line is, as much as Republicans would like to sow division among the ranks of liberals, poking sore points, such as allegiance to the more progressive demands of Black Lives Matter, it won’t work. Sure, Harris has been squishy on the defund-the-police movement and, as California’s attorney general, threatened to jail the parents of truant children. Republicans have tried to hit her on that while simultaneously accusing her as being an ally of anarchists. But, as the state’s junior senator, Harris has led the charge on a police reform bill that would create a national registry for misconduct cases, prohibit chokeholds, limit “qualified immunity” and declare lynching a federal crime. All of this adds up to the fact that Harris might not be the biggest ally for progressives if elected vice president, but she certainly won’t be an enemy. Not anymore. “People want us to go on and either talk negatively about Kamala Harris or talk positively about Kamala Harris. I want to be very clear: Black Lives Matter believes that our primary work is the work of organizing and being in streets,” Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, told a crowd of supporters on Wednesday. “There’s a fallacy,” she continued, “that says that you move from protest to politics. You do not move from protest to politics. The only thing that ever creates change is protest and politics.” Resorting to racist attacks on a Black woman is a good catalyst for both. window.fbAsyncInit = function() { FB.init({ appId : '119932621434123', xfbml : true, version : 'v2.9' }); }; (function(d, s, id){ var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;} js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "https://ift.tt/1sGOfhN"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); The post Column: I wasn’t a fan of Kamala Harris. It took President Trump to change my mind appeared first on Shri Times News. from WordPress https://ift.tt/3ax9soC

http://sansaartimes.blogspot.com/2020/08/column-i-wasnt-fan-of-kamala-harris-it.html

#SEO #Local SEO training #daily news paper #daily news india #daily news newspaper #technology news a