#y’all aren’t detectives or historians

[darkstarnight02]

Why the Akuma Class Doesn’t Trusts Lila Rossi

Nino

This dude is a loyal friend

Like, he’s also a loyal boyfriend, so it’s hard when his girlfriend is siding with Lila

But he’s the one who’s like

“Dudes, we’ve known Mari for years there’s no way she would do the stuff this new girl we’ve known for five minutes says she did.”

He and Kim and Mari were besties since preschool, I think we all know that.  

Adrien

I hate it when people say he tries to defend her with the high road crap

When he sees her hurting people, especially Marinette

Because lets be honest, he cares about her alot

He’s less forgiven

Like do y’all remember the “BeCaUsE We’Re FrIeNdS, aReN’t We?”

So he’s not going to try and make her life miserable

But he is going to try to get her to stop

Chloé

Let’s be honest, she never liked Lila in the first place.  

So Imma give y’all bonus “how she figured out everyone’s identities”

So once she became friends with Marinette

Cause they formed a “we hate Lie-la” alliance

(tho since Mari’s still friends with the others its kinda awkward)

Chloe’s pretty smart.  

Like, she totally could have figured it out before they became friends

But she would never have believed back then that Mari-trash was Ladybug, her idol (and lesbian awakening, lesbihonest)

But now that she’s friends with her, it’s way too obvious

And she definitely already knew about Adrien because these guys are besties

And, dudes, she never had a crush on him, she was just an overprotective best friend

And a very touchy one

To her, it’s all pretty obvious.  

She thinks that its just whatever magic thats blinding everyone of the obvious, its immune to (like low-key Rachel Dare here)

But Sabine, Tom, and Jagged probably know to because they’re all Kings and Queens.  

So Chloe figures everyone out pretty quickly.  

Sabrina

She trust Chloe more than anyone.  

But I’m not just gonna use that because its kinda boring.  

Tho Chloe is her bi crush so that definitely helps secure loyalties

Its only when Marinette becomes MDC that she realizes

and yes, Sabrina probably knows because Chloe and she also recognizes the designs from some stuff she has in her own closet.  

So anyway, she realizes Mari is MDC and she’s some famous designer and Lila is not

And Mari also knows Jagged and Clara and a whole bunch of other famous people

And she never brags about it but there’s proof that she knows them

while Lila always brags about it but she’s never been mentioned and no one knows her.  

Alya

I hate it when people say she totally sides with Lila.  

This girl knows that her bestie never lies(or at least thinks)

and some things with Lila don’t add up.  

Like she doesn’t check directly if what Lila says is true

But she’ll be doing research for something else and see’s that it contradicts something that Lila said.  

So she’ll do more research and try to figure more stuff out

And she’s like holy f*ck nothing Lila says is true.

Or, alternatively, for those of you who have watched season 4

She immediately realizes Lila’s a liar right after Marinette tells her she’s Ladybug.  

Marinette

No explanation needed.  

Mylène

Mylene notices when Lila insults one of her classmates one day.  

Even if its subtle, or just piping on the edge of her blaming Marinette for something, she notices it.  

And a good person wouldn’t say something like that,  

Like Chloe, they all expect something like that from

No one every really liked Chloe in the first place

And Mari never says anything rude

Sure, she gets angry at Chloe and Lila sometimes, and she tries to prove what they say is wrong, but she never directly attacks someone.  

I don’t know who Lila was being a bitch to this time, but it cost her a follower.  

Alix

This girl is probably one of the most Gen Z kids in the Akuma Class, which is pretty sad because they’re all supposed to be Gen Z. 

She can smell bullcrap from a mile away

Not to mention the little hints older Bunnyx drops whenever she visits.  

With the mix of her being the future miraculous holder of time and being the daughter of a historian, she’s very aware of history and timelines and cause and effects and chain reactions

So when Marinette starts ‘acting up’ she tries to find when her personality switched over

And even if she seems more like a background character, this aro/ace queen always seems to know your secrets. 

So even before she knew Lila was a phony, she knew that Mari was MDC and that Jagged Stone was Juleka and Luka’s dad

So she definitely figured some stuff out that way

Honestly, next to Chloe, Alix was probably one of the first people to figgure out Mari’s identity.  

She’s a detective to rival batman

Ivan

I think Lila would make some sort of rift between him and Mylene.  

He loves her so much and it would be so hard

And mari and her friends would help him out

and he would see the truth

They wouldn’t like break up or anything

But he can just tell immediately when someone’s being a bad person.  

Kim

Probably something similar to Nino

But I think it’d be a bit more like he’s totally a die-hard fan of some of Marinette’s connections or some of Marinette’s work itself

And when he puts the pieces together its like everything makes sense in the world.  

He really feels super stupid afterwards.  

Ondine probably slaps him for not trusting his childhood best friend before some bitchy new girl.  

Max

This is the smartest dude in class

He made a f*cking robot with emotions you can’t tell me he doesn’t figure Lila out.  

A part of me believes that in the first episode with Lila when they were all waiting on her hand and foot they were probably aware that she was kind of delusional, but were giving into it the way you give into the tales of a six year old.  

Like ‘yeah, okay sweetie.  Sure’.  

I mean, at least that’s why Max went along with the napkin thing, because there’s no other excuse for that whole incident.  

Nathaniel

I don’t totally know how he figured her out, but I love the idea of her saying that she can introduce him to the creator of the Ladybug Comics.  

They actually sit next to each other in class, so he definitely is more aware of her weird behavior than others.

And since he’s an artist he’s very observant, always noticing things like her facial expressions and what seems more exaggerated than real.  

And we all know how kwami-damned done Nathaniel is with the class, so he probably knew all along.  

Not to mention that since the rest of the school is less submissive to Lila’s lies, Marc probably pointed it out to him at some point.  

There’s also the idea that since Nathaniel is pretty much never mentioned anymore, the class forgets about him and he ends up having to spend some time with Marinette and the other outcasts

In which he realizes that they are actually good people.  

Honestly, Nathaniel probably knew all along but he’s just not a drama queen about it so Lila never bothered him.  

Rose

Girls besties with Prince Ali, one of the key components of Lila’s lies

She definitely does not want to believe that someone is capable of so much evil, and she definitely gets Akumatized when she figures it out

She goes through a lot of denial but is eventually convinced.  

Juleka

Her dad is Jagged Stone, also another key component of Lila’s lies.  

After becoming Tigris Pourpre, the holder of the tiger miraculous (that’s canon in the future), she gets a little bit more invested in cat culture

And omfg I just realized that both of our models are kittens and I just wanna DIE because that’s so cute.  

And honestly now that I’m thinking about it if she was a celebrity she would totally take after Jagged and have an emotional support tiger like Princess Jasmine. 

ANYWAY, I’m kinda getting off topic here.  

So she asks Jagged about his cat, and he’s like 

“wtf I’ve never had a cat why would I have a cat I have FANG my CROCODILE”

And she’s like but your cat...

And he’s like “Jules, darling, I wrote a song about how I replaced my family with a guitar and I have three instagrams for Fang, why would I have a feline animal?”

And she’s just like

....

And honestly she probably already knew some sh*t was up before that

Because Luka obviously, despite only having met Lila, like, once, probably, dislikes Lila severely

And also Juleka is more of an observer than a do-er so she probably saw that some stuff was up.  

#Lila Rossi #Lila Rosi's Lies #Akuma Class #couffaine twins #Kim and Mari and Nino are Childhood Besties #I hate bashing just shut up everyone except Lila and Hawkmoth is awesom

[skeletorific]

How do you think the Beforus Ancestors(Aradia, Tavros, Sollux, Karkat, Nepeta, Kanaya, Terezi, Vriska, Equius, Gamzee, Eridan and Feferi)were like? I love your Alternian Ancestors stuff so far and was curious what you Interpretation of the Beforus ancestors were.

oh HELL yes I am about this.

Aradia Megido, the Tombkeep: I see Aradia as being born a bit later than the others, while the coddling laws are at their strongest. Rather than put up with that, as quickly as she can she removes herself from Beforan society to the very outskirts. Like their Alternian counterparts, Beforan’s are often avoidant of the notion of death. However, in their case, it is not because death is a failure of the dying, but a failure of those around them. It is not seen as a natural cycle but something to be abhorred and feared at all costs. As such, tombs are kept, but they are far away from the rest of civilization and usually talked about in hushed tones. Aradia grows up among these tombs, befriending the local ghosts and considers them her own coddling charge. She guards the tombs from any who get too curious, or more often, from well-meaning government officials looking to tear down monuments to such “nastiness”. What they find instead is an angry little girl with powerful psiionics. She becomes something of a bedtime story for young grubs, even long after her passing. They say she still haunts the halls.

Tavros Nitram, the Menager: In parallel to his obsession with Fiduspawn, I see Beforan Tavros as being some variety of animal handler, using his fully fledged wings (and his bronzeblood bankroll) to travel the world and collect rare and exotic creatures to his own plot of land, to tend to and train. Some know him as a kindly soul, treating all beasts with the utmost love and dedication. He seems like some kind of fairy tale figure, surrounded on all sides by animal companions who he communes with. To others, this is reckless ecosystem mixing, but then, what do scientists know anyways. He prefers the hero title a bit more, as it aligns more with his intentions anyways. Eventually one of his expeditions ends poorly, with him being confined to a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. Outwardly he dies content to let his coddler and his animal friends care for him for the rest of his life, but there’s a restless spirit that he passes down to his descendant.

Sollux Captor, The Dronebee: Completely and utterly unremarkable in every way. Sollux contented himself with working his function as a goldblood. His technical ability was fostered at every turn by a Beforan education system eager to see a lowblood embrace their “natural talents”, but while he made minor waves in the programming circles in which he moved with his often unique approach to coding, to most he was just one worker among thousands, very valuable of course! Every worker is valuable :) But ultimately.....not worthy of notice. Which is fine: that’s how Sollux likes it, and more than that if left him time to pursue more personal projects, such as a little game later known as sgrub. Just because he’s not vocally complaining doesn’t mean he’s not compiling a list. From his perspective, Beforan civilization is a ticking timebomb anyways. Why shouldn’t he be the one to start the countdown?

Karkat Vantas, the Advocate: Look, I know we all love revolutionary Karkat, but I think something we forget is that Karkat was pretty pro-system even as late in the game as Act 6. So, for the Beforan model.....well, every system needs its bootlickers. Karkat Vantas becomes a mouthpiece for some lowblood lobbying groups, acting in vocal support of the Empress’s coddling plan. Its not all love of power: legitimately there is a part of Karkat that tries to see how this is good. Healthy. The needs of his friends are being met, they’re safe, and attended to. Surely all of that is worth a little......infantilization, right? He deals with a lot of criticism from other lowbloods for being a sellout, and though he does his best to cultivate a calm unflappable demeanor so craved by Beforans, I guarantee Beforus has more than a few Grubtube compiliations of Vantas meltdowns that Kankri watches when he needs a good cringe. As he got older he slowly began to question the system he’d spent his whole life building, but ultimately lowbloods don’t live long enough for those kinds of regrets.

Nepeta Leijon, the Believer: What, you think clowns have the monopoly on weird religious communes? Nah. To be fair to Nepeta, her commune’s status as a “cult” is probably more indicative of Beforan prudery than anything else. Her sect, the Righteous Assembly of Withdrawn Renegades (or RAWR for short), is dedicated to the principles of free love and a return to the natural. Within the massive tunnel and cave system in which they live, trolls are free to strip themselves of signifiers like caste and clan and live as the gods intended: covered in dirt, chasing something furry, and flirting furrociously :33. While Nepeta in life insisted there was no leader it was her effect on people that kept them coming back for more, and while the commune purrsisted after her eventual death, ultimately its membership dwindled. Meulin was brought up among some of the last vestiges of it, and some of their old hideouts have been inherited by the Lost Weeaboos.

Kanaya Maryam, The Prioress: Literally, the prior. One of the earliest trolls, widely considered the Matriarch of Trolls in some sense. In her time she revolutionized many of the practices of auxiliatrices, ensuring greater safety for the grubs and greater care for the mother grubs. Many of the norms now in place for jadebloods are in large part due to her own influence. Despite her farreaching influence (and the fact that she left behind a journal of her practices), not much is known about her personal temperament. Quick readers may catch a certain dry sarcasm behind her words, and the especially studious scholar may note slight reference to a few great lovers (and a few great disappearances, *cough* rainbowdrinker *cough*. Her greatest secret is her brief and tumultuous kismesis with Vriska Serket, notorious Mafiosa, but only a very few historians have ever uncovered it. In part, her long shadow may have contributed to her descendant’s eventual anxiety regarding her prescribed role,

Terezi Pyrope, the Gumshoe: Beforan justice is tricky. As opposed to Alternia, there are in fact actual laws in place that aren’t just “don’t fuck with highbloods”, but in many ways its almost more corrupt. More often than not the courts are more concerned with petty infractions than it is with actual injustice, and furthermore, inter-caste tension remains a huge concern that bubbles up in violence. After a few years badgering olives for traffic tickets while watching actual fully fledged crime families get off scott free, well....Terezi had had enough. She took her pursuit of justice into the real world, working as a private detective for hire. She’s notorious for her, erm....quirks, but she’s a fastidious hunter and a careful investigator when she wants to be. She brings em back alive. USU4LLY >:).

Vriska Serket, the Mafiosa/Mapm8ker: Let’s be clear, a lot of Vriska’s society was laid on top of her and it was abuse from which she struggled to free herself. However, what does one do when freed from society, but seek to shake things up a bit. She’s still a thief of Light, make mistake, and she slowly works up the ranks from card shark working the tables to in charge of a small army of foot soldiers, smuggling mindhoney to goldbloods (who have been restricted “for their own good”) and sopor slime to clowns. She’s the flamboyant head of her own criminal empire, with the code of only stealing from those she deems worthy and a reckless approach to life

However, most of that isn’t generally known. And to the outside world, she’s just a simple cartographer, travelling the world to assemble some nice, safe, boring maps. Indeed, when her journal was finally unearthed by her descendant, she couldn’t help but wonder if these exploits were true, or simply a story her ancestor liked to imagine herself into on her off days. Tough to say.

Equius Zahhak, the Showpony: Alright, y’all knew I couldn’t stay away from that one. Equius was something of a puzzle to his descendent when Horuss actually went back through his (meticulously kept) caste records. By all accounts, he was an intelligent, capable, hardworking man. A tinkerer in his off hours, he was a pioneer in the field of robotics, and by all accounts not romantically unsuccessful. And yet, the man never seemed concerned with making a name for himself. Instead, over the course of his long life, you could perpetually find him at the shoulder of someone more powerful and important than he was. Was he....a bodyguard? Trophy husband? Butler? Hard to say, but there he was. Trotted out like the loyal steed he was.

Gamzee Makara, the Borrower: A peculiar legend of clownery regards a strange “hobo looking motherfucker what will wander into your hive and be all and snatching up your most secretous things for the messiah’s wider purposes”. So far as is known, he is not malignant, although its not unknown for a troll to occasionally disappear while running after him to retrieve their stolen items. Even without that possible threat, its usually not worth it to chase after him: the things he takes have a way of ending up back in your hands, one miraculous way or another. Gamzee is an itinerant monk, wandering the countrysides. Some passerby he’ll occasionally offer aid to, or proverbs. Which might be helpful if anyone could decipher what they mean. Ultimately he’s a happy man, if prone to fits of temper and bouts of melancholy. Still, as he notes, he’s got motherfucking friends all over these globes :o) what’s a motherfucker gotta be lonely for?

Eridan Ampora, the Magician: Well.....the Empress doesn’t exactly need Orphaners. As such, the violets are largely left to their own devices. Given they’re often prone to creative endeavours, Eridan found his own outlet. He became renowned as an illusionist, and at one point his shows were capable of drawing large and massive crowds, who would gasp in awe at his tricks and wonder if the violet really did have a trace of magic in his blood. He seemed to like the idea, eventually penning a popular grubling children’s series about a boy with those very abilities (which eventually found its way into the young hands of his descendent). However, celebrity wasn’t necessarily the best mix with Eridan’s temperament. He was prone to some truly disastrous quadrant outings, as well as developing several more addictive habits to drown out the oddly oppressive loneliness that permeated him. These bad habits were only worsened by the worst thing to ever happen to Eridan Ampora: the internet. With access to videos of his performance, most were pretty easily able to spot the trick of it, and hell hath no fury like a cyberbullying teen going after a b list internet celebrity. He took it as a sign to swear off the craft forever and lived the rest of his life on book residuals, alone, drunk, and miserable

Feferi Peixes, Her Highness: Not as much to say about this one, as Feferi is the one we have the most information about. Like it says on the tine, she instituted the coddling system on Beforus. This was widely considered a Bad Idea by those victimized by it, but you couldn’t pay anyone in Feferi’s court to tell her that. The Empress is sweet tempered and excitable, it’d be like telling a child 12 perigree night is cancelled. Perhaps the great irony is that as Feferi gets older, the thing that frustrates her most is that it feels like no one takes her seriously as a person. Merely as a figurehead. Still, she lives her life on Beforus ultimately convinced this is what’s best for the greater good. 

#homestuck #beforus #beforan ancestors #aradia megido #beforan aradia #tavros nitram #beforan tavros #sollux captor #beforan sollux #karkat vantas #beforan karkat #nepeta leijon #beforan nepeta #kanaya maryam #beforan kanaya #terezi pyrope #beforan terezi #vriska serket #beforan vriska #equius zahhak #beforan equius #gamzee makara #beforan gamzee #eridan ampora #beforan eridan #feferi peixes #beforan feferi #headcanon #long post #Anonymous

[crownonymous]

Harry Potter Analysis Essays: General Worldbuilding

Because we all fucking know Rowling didn’t create this world with any sense of nuance or deep thought so here we fucking are, doing the work ourselves. Do keep in mind, though, that I haven’t touched a single Harry Potter book in almost a decade; all of these are mostly inferences, headcanons, and references pulled from other magic systems and worldbuilding tools found in other media.

This post will detail basic worldbuilding with the intent of fleshing out the Harry Potter universe. List of topics for easy navigation: Technology, Commerce, Education, Religion. Warnings for: gun mention (technology); death mention (religion)

The term “witch” will be used to describe practitioners of magic in this analysis regardless of sex or gender, because witch has always been a gender neutral term and I will never forgive Rowling for pulling the whole witch and wizard bullshit. Now. The analysis.

TECHNOLOGY

There are no phones in Hogwarts. There are no computers in Hogwarts. There are no guns in Hogwarts. And considering that witches from other schools (Durmstrang, Beauxbatons) don’t have these as well, it’s safe to assume that this is the norm for the witch community. There HAS to be a reason for this. Instead of a plot hole, let’s think of this as an obstacle for the magic world. There are no guns, no computers, no phones in Hogwarts not because of lack of thought, but of actual impossibility.

One way or another, complicated electronics and technology don’t work. The most complicated piece of technology that I can think of in canon are the train, the Weasley’s car, and the bus. I might be missing a few things, but that’s all that stands out to me. That’s how little magical technology plays a part in the canon storyline. That’s how little technology is talked about in the universe. Which, to me, is a fucking tragedy.

Address the kind of elitist view witches have in regards to their magic, especially in comparison to muggles. We, as actual people living in the real world, have seen this kind of behaviour many times before. Refusing to acknowledge the advancements made by other countries and cultures because we perceive our own to be superior, or we view that advancement as petty and useless. Remember the people who dunked on the first photograph of a black hole because it was blurry? It’s like that, but with a bigger population who all basically have the same “muggle technology? big pass” attitude. Arthur fucking Weasley didn’t understand how a train terminal worked and part of that is ignorance and the witchy upbringing.

Witches aren’t taught to appreciate muggle technology. Or really, muggle anything. And this lack of understanding and knowledge kind of drove home the superiority complex thing which again, further discourages muggle understanding, and the cycle continues on.

That’s the ideological reason for why there’s practically no muggle technology found in the magical world. Now, what about a different reason? What if the magical world does, indeed, have technology, but in a different way than how muggles perceive technology.

Take the internet for example. We have a wide collection of knowledge that we can access with a phone and wifi. What’s the witch equivalent of that? There are printed books of course, but what about something else? The pensieve is magical technology that can store memories, which is basically home videos and photos. What about several different pensieves connected to each other? Witches can store their memories inside their pensieves, connect it to other witches, and form a network of knowledge so that anyone can essentially dunk their heads in water and live through a step-by-step process on how to make a fucking cake. That counts as technology that intrinsically ties to magic.

So in theory, witches can invent technology tailored to and for them. Medicine that seeks out magical energy to ease the pain of curses and hexes. Bottles that can be filled up with raw, unfiltered magic to be used as bombs or accelerants for other forms of magic. Blank portraits hung in witch homes, where inhabitants can magic a picture of someone onto each other’s canvases to serve as video calls. So many fucking opportunities that weren’t taken.

But why not use muggle technology? It’s already been invented. Is elitism really so prevalent that witches would rather look like fucking idiots using quills and inkwells instead of a fucking pencil? Maybe there’s a reason for that too.

Forgive me for scientific inaccuracies but let’s suppose that witch magic can materialise as energy, able to be detected on the electro-magnetic spectrum. Basically, magic has the same effect on electronics as an EMP would. It shorts out wiring, makes electronic lights flicker, fucks up complicated pieces of technology just by being in magical presence. So, by that logic, if a witch holds a phone, their magical energy would make that goddamn phone go bust. Or worse, explode. And can you imagine what that kind of energy would do to firearms? There have been cases of firearms accidentally discharging because they were dropped. What will happen if the nature and construction of firearms react negatively to fucking magic? Yeah. There’s your reason as to why people didn’t just shoot each other in the head. Complicated technology and magic don’t mix.

But the Weasley car has fairly complicated technology. So, how does that work? In comes witch inventors whose passion and job is basically finding ways to make muggle technology work with the natural witch portable always-on EMP aura. In the PJO universe, Demigods don’t use phones very often because the waves make them more easily detectable. Same concept, but a little more violent. Arthur works for the Ministry which explains why he would have access to a car that doesn’t explode to fiery bits when it comes in contact with a witch’s magic. In fact, that car probably does what muggles did when inventing guns that can fire continuously. In the gun’s case, the recoil from the first shot is used to create energy for the second shot. Not a gun person so I don’t know how to explain it in more detail, but that’s basically it.

That “harnessing recoil” thing can be applied to the car as well. Instead of being shot dead with the all natural witch EMP, the car uses that constant discharge as fuel. Which presents a different challenge for magical inventors: create technology that doesn’t clash with natural magic. One way is to use pre-existing magical tools like the pensieve and improve upon it. Another is the recoil thing, which is finding ways where the constant ambient magic doesn’t disrupt the technology in question.

This is the same reason I use for every fantasy AU I have to explain why characters don’t just shoot each other. And it works for the Harry Potter universe as well.

COMMERCE

You expect me to believe that the ONLY jobs are magical-related? Fuck that noise. There are bakers and architects and taxi drivers and teachers and authors and inventors and clerks and construction workers and hairdressers historians. Remember kids, the job itself doesn’t have to be magic, you just have to be creative with the application. There’s nothing magical about being a taxi driver. You have a vehicle, you pick people up, and you drop them off. The magic comes from how you do it.

Instead of trying to make the job magical (like Aurors, which are basically magic police officers) how about we focus instead on finding ways to apply magic to the job? Back to the taxi driver, how does a taxi driver compete with magical methods like apparition, the floo network, and straight up flight? Please remember that apparating is dangerous and that the floo network has to be connected with the Ministry to work (at least in Britain) and flight is, well, flight.

Taxi drivers in the magical world have to compete with that, so how do they do it? They can take the knight bus route, which is make travel speedy so witches can go from point a to point b relatively quick. Another is to make the ride as comfortable as possible. You have magic, pull a Tardis in the cab and make it so passengers open the door and find themselves in a goddamn hotel suite so they can relax during their commute.

Have your bakers make figures out of fondant and marshmallows that come to live as the candles are blown out. Imagine those little birthday cakes with cars and mermaids and other stuff on top. Now imagine those things coming to life as you blow out the candles. They’re like chocolate frogs without the stupid nonsensical time constraint. Can you imagine what it’ll be like if you have a cake topper that’s a car that can actually move around? Maybe zip through the air around you? Dunno bout y’all but I want that.

And how would trade between witch communities go? No matter how much you try to convince me, I refuse to fucking believe that the sickle/galleon thing is universal across ALL witching communities. Fucking impossible. So there has to be different witch currencies out there with their own exchange rate compared to the sickle/galleon system as well as their respective muggle currency in relation to where they are.

Because of the fact that muggle exchange rates will ALWAYS be present because of the numerous muggleborn and half-blood witches who don’t want to yeet an entire part of their life away just because they can levi someone’s corpus, there IS muggle trade. I refuse to fucking believe that the extent of witch and muggle commerce begins and ends with the exchange of currency. There HAS to be goods and/or services exchanged. Otherwise, how would witch banks even acquire muggle currency in the first place? Do they fucking steal it from the unsuspecting public? No, they gain muggle currency through trade.

Just because witches can make chocolate frogs and moving pictures on cards, doesn’t mean that it’s what they HAVE to make. Witches can easily make things that they can sell in the muggle world that have no magic. Notebooks, kitchen implements, etc. With magic, manufacturing these will be incredibly easy and could break the muggle economy. So I think only banks have clearance to sell witch-made mundane objects to muggles for the purpose of getting muggle currency so they can exchange that with magic currency. There are plenty of muggleborn and half-blood witches that may need muggle currency when they return to the muggle world, so the demand is reasonably high.

Basically, my point is, witch communities trade with each other because that’s what we as humans do. We find something we’re good at, find someone else who’s good at what we suck shit at doing, and we fucking trade. If, for example, British witches are good at making magical confectionery, they can then trade those confectioneries for things like self-writing quills or magical blankets that keep you at your preferred temperature. My point is that there is trade and communication between different witch communities that allow them to better their respective communities whilst simultaneously learning from others.

EDUCATION

Put aside the Hogwarts sorting thing because THAT shitshow deserves its own post. For now, we’ll just take a look at the education system itself. Particularly how the magic education system mirrors our own real world “muggle” system. We will ask and answer this question: Why do these schools exist?

To teach children how to use and control magic, obviously. But why? Why is it so important to enroll every magic user into a witching school and why is it important for these children to get their magic under control? And if learning how to control magic is so important, is tuition still necessary? While we’re at it, we also have to ask: What happens to the children who don’t get taught? Rowling can try to convince me that every witch child was brought under a magic school like Hogwarts as soon as their magic manifested all she wants but that’s fucking impossible.

You mean to tell me that there are no children who were homeschooled? You mean to tell me that there weren’t witch children who bounced from foster home to foster home so often that no matter how much they tried to be located, these children were never picked up? You mean to tell me that there weren’t any children who didn’t want to go to a strange magical boarding school? The fuck are they going to do? Arrest children for non-compliance with magic laws of a magic world that the child wants nothing to do with?

If the answer to that question is “no”, then what do they do with children who have no wish to learn anything about their magical powers? Are they excommunicated from the witch community? Do they send a witch guardian to follow the child around like an underpaid bodyguard with the added difficulty modifier of having to stay undetected? I think that in order to use magic, one must have either focus, or an extreme emotional reaction. The magic we see in Hogwarts is controlled; the students want to cast the spells they’re casting and are in the right headspace to do so. The magic we see Harry do when he traps Dudley behind glass is emotional; his magic reacts to his current mental space and altered reality because of Harry. So an untrained witch who suddenly experiences an emotional outburst could potentially cause trouble, which is why it is best to at least inform them about their situation so they can be aware.

If the answer is “yes” however, that begets the question of WHY untrained witches need to be found and contained if they can’t (or won’t) control their powers. Thankfully, canon answers this one for us with the introduction of Obscurials. Obscurials (or Obscuros but I like Obscurial better so that’s what we’ll use) are the manifestation of a witch’s energy when they repress it, whether by their own volition or by the coercion of their environment. And as we all know, Obscurials are dangerous if left unchecked, because their magic is wild and untamed and capable of causing mass destruction not only to muggles, but to witches as well. So in the interest of protecting both muggles and witches from rogue Obscurials in unfavourable environments, it’s more practical to yeet as many students into witch schools as possible. Or at least get them to a mentor who can teach them if they don’t want to go to magic boarding school.

I really, really, want to talk more about Obscurials and how/why trauma does and doesn’t make Obscurials but we’re not focusing on that today.

We’re focusing on the magic education system.

We’ve now understood and established why education young witches on their powers and the practical applications of it is so important. In order to avoid damage to both witch and muggle society, people with magical talents should be taught how to control their powers so they aren’t a danger to themselves and to others. That’s all fine and dandy. But what do the schools actually teach?

Hogwarts has a fucking crisis every damn year so it isn’t the best example but it’s all we’ve got, so let’s look at it.

We have classes about the magical creatures that exist in the world, some benign and some actively malicious. We have classes on different kinds of magic and their applications (more on this in a different essay) in day-to-day witch life. We have self-defense classes against potentially harmful entities, whether they be another witch or something else. We have classes about different forms of magical practise including but not limited to: arithmancy, divination and herbology.

With this in mind, we can infer that there are multiple kinds of magical practise that range from potion-making to cursing someone to speak only in riddles for a week. We can also infer that the magical world is fucking dangerous. There are animals that can rip you apart without a moment’s notice, and there is an actual literal fucking spell that is a straight up fucking insta-kill if it hits you. If a young witch is caught unawares and unprepared, they will likely die.

And as we’ve learned, if a witch with uncontrolled powers experiences extreme duress, their magic reacts and lashes out at anything and everything. If the witch is powerful enough, they could straight up nuke several buildings (and everyone in em) out of existence.

So, the reason magical schools exist, and the reason why young witches are pressured to attend them, is to protect both the muggle world and the magic world.

But again, Hogwarts has a fucking goddamn crisis every year so other witching cultures might handle wayward witches differently. But we’ll never know because the canon worldbuilding fucking su-

RELIGION

To be fair, witches can be a part of many religions around the world. Some might be Jewish, others Catholic, maybe there are witches who are even Wiccan or Pagan or polytheistic. All of these options are possible and plausible. We also have a few canon examples of real life and “muggle” religions practised by the characters. Fat Friar was Roman Catholic during his lifetime, and because Christmas is celebrated in canon, it’s safe to assume that there are witches who are Christian and that the magic world has at least a passing knowledge of these religions.

All of these religions are also, coincidentally, religions that normal people, that MUGGLES, are a part of. Why is that important? There are half-blood and muggleborn witches, and they might worship the same God(s) their muggle parent(s) do. But there are also pureblood witches who very likely don’t know a lick about most of these religions. There are also pureblood families who might worship their own God(s) and thus, would shun away religions that muggles also participate in. Witches have also existed for as long as humans existed. And witch history (real life witch history) is brimming with hatred and violence and distrust towards witches from normal people. From muggles. So it would make sense for witches (especially pureblood witches) to have their own religion.

The problem now, is that we literally have nothing about that supposed religion. Coupled with the fact that there are literally witches everywhere, a universal religion to witches cannot be applied. We must also consider other cultures removed from Britain where the canon takes place. There are cultures all over the world whose magical practises tie in closely with their religion. I am not an expert on theology. So for the purposes of this analysis, we will focus on the supposed “non-muggle” religion likely practised by pureblood old-timey British witches.

Not that non-pureblood witches can’t practise it, but the world moves on and the stigma against muggles is slowly dwindling. With the rise of half-blood and muggle-born witches, it’s likely that more modern religions are adopted by these new witches. So it’s safe to say that these religions practised by pure-blood families are slowly phasing out. Which would also lead to the whole “blood purity” plot point. The old, traditionalist witches want to be more selective with newer witches so they can preserve their own culture and religion. *cough* parallels *cough*

Onto possible religions that would make sense with the barebone canon universe.

How about the Deathly Hallows?

It’s a story about three brothers, the personification of Death, and the cycle of life. It’s also a story about the values represented by the different Hallows, and a warning about the importance of temperance and how easily these values could be corrupted. In the context of the magic world, temperance is something that is SORELY needed, but unfortunately never fucking seen. Let’s review.

The Elder Wand: asked for by the oldest brother, the strongest wand in existence, a symbol of power. it is strength, it is action, it is decisiveness. In relation to a real-life religion, the Elder Wand is like the flaming sword in the Bible, used as a deterrent to ward away any who would dare try to step inside Paradise. In the HP universe, the Elder Wand can easily be seen as protection from evil, as a way for a witch to protect themselves and the people they hold dear to their hearts. As the strongest wand in existence, the wielder would have immeasurable power and of course, with great power comes great temptation. Temptation which the First Brother in the story succumbed to, and is thus met an untimely and gruesome end. It is a moral about how power in the wrong hands leads to an unfortunate end, and how witches should be proud of their gifts, but they should never be arrogant about it. Homeboi would have lived if he kept his mouth shut about having the most powerful wand in existence.

The Resurrection Stone: asked for by the second brother, a way to bring the dead from their graves, a memory and love for the past. it is grief, it is remembrance, it is guidance. There are several religions around the world that place emphasis on respecting and honouring the dead like Dia de Los Muertos. When we lose someone, especially someone important to us, we mourn, we grieve, we feel as though the world is ending. We are lost. The Stone offers consolation, an opportunity to see those we have lost so that we might move on. It’s a way for us to look back at the past, at the people we have lost, parents and grandparents, teachers and mentors, and ask for their guidance and wisdom. But it’s also a call for us not to stare, not to linger, and not to miss the past so much that we lose sight of the present. The second brother did not understand that moral, and so he misused the stone, preferring to live in the past rather than cherish the life he has which led to his demise.

The Invisibility Cloak: asked for by the third brother, something that could elude Death yet was ultimately surrendered, a reminder that life is short and fleeting. it is longevity, it is acceptance, it is sacrifice. Again, I’m not a theological expert and thus, failed to find a fitting real world religion to compare this particular section, but maybe we can look to nature instead. Death comes for all of us. It’s an unfortunate truth. It takes our family, it takes our friends, and it will inevitably take us. As the third and final brother, the story of the Cloak teaches us to accept that inevitability, and to live life to the fullest because of it. The third brother did not keep the Cloak for himself, he gave it to his son, so that his son may also live a long and fulfilling life. The third brother tried to pave the way for those that will come after him, and that’s ultimately what the Cloak tries to teach. One must try to live life with as few regrets as possible, so that when the time comes, one can pass the Cloak to someone else, pass down knowledge and experience and love, and greet Death as an old friend.

The three stories of the Deathly Hallows are fundamentally good. When you have Power, don’t abuse it. It is important to love and cherish the past, but you must live in the present. Death is inevitable, so make the most out of your time while you have it. At its core, the Deathly Hallows would make a good religion, especially for witches.

And of course, the bit about how one becomes the Master of Death should they come into possession of all three Hallows. In a sense, becoming the Master of Death is finally and wholeheartedly understanding the meaning and lessons the Three Hallows are trying to teach. Accepting responsibility for one’s powers and not abusing it, learning from and cherishing the past but living in the present, and of course doing your best to pave the road for those that will come after you. Understanding these three fundamental things preserves the values exemplified by the Three Witch Brothers and is basically Enlightenment for this supposed religion. All of this essentially boils down to “appreciate life and don’t be a dick” which is a good code to live by.

But, like any other religion, these tenets and values can easily be corrupted and perverted. Ancient pureblood families can so easily twist these morals to benefit them and their agenda. The First story can be interpreted as the Brother being too weak to be worthy of the Wand. The love shown in the Second story can be viewed as weakness. The Third Brother giving the cloak to his son in the third story can be used to dissuade altruism.

Religion in real life is complicated. Religion in a fictional universe can be complicated too. And this is only one small region of the universe. Who knows what kind of stories and lore and possible religions other parts of the world may have.

.

In conclusion, I spent four (almost five) goddamn hours of my one human life tilling at land that isn’t fucking arable, but I have a fucking shovel and I’m prepared to dig deeper into this godsforsaken fandom. I was given a skeleton made of wet tissue paper and I turned that shit into a skeleton made of sturdier materials that will support the weight of heavier ideas. Ideas like what actual combat between two witches who can mold reality like fucking play-doh would look like. You think it’s the boring glorified laser tag team battle we get in the movies? Fuck that, I’m going to give you more. Want an analysis on the Hogwarts Houses that isn’t “good, bad, smart, miscellaneous”? It’s on its fucking way.

This is just bare fucking bones. I’ll be writing more essays in the future and I’m bringing in the heavy shit. So go get comfortable because I’m not done picking this world apart yet.

#ref #crowsas analysis #hp #harry potter #hp analysis #fandom ref

[sol1056]

hey im the anon who asked about how you knew the stuff, sorry i wasn't too clear on what. i just read the post explaining EPs and how the behind the scene stuff worked and i wanted to know how you knew all that, like are you involved in the industry? or just a nerd?

gotcha! Well, remember how back in S1/S2, people kept pointing out Hunk could be… awfully nosy? always getting into things, asking questions?

I was over here going, YES HUNK IS MY PEOPLE. 

It’s a hallmark of a certain type of engineer: insatiable curiosity, and never satisfied with only one answer, always sure there’s more to discover. Okay, we’re not all engineers — a lot of us are Russian Lit majors — but the key is our drive to discover. We take apart, put back together, connect dots close and far, turn things around and study them from a new direction. We’re those people who randomly show up in your part of the building, poke our heads in the room and say, “so, what do all y’all do here? what’s this do? hey, what’s that?”

Despite the fact that most of us seem to be (strangely) strong introverts, that doesn’t stop us. We’ve got questions for everyone. We’ll talk to total strangers all day if we’re on the trail of a particularly interesting idea. In a nutshell, we’re utterly shameless.

I did post-production back when NLE was relatively new and the compositing applications required massive nearly-mainframe computing power. I was mostly in the sfx/cg areas, but I weaseled my way into the color suite pretty regularly. I sat in on editing sessions and was a happy lunch-fetching lackey if it got me a chance to watch the compositing team. Any lull meant a chance to chat up directors, cinematographers, producers, etc. I totally took advantage. 

It’s been awhile since I did that – and since then I’ve been a roady, a mental health & substance abuse admin, a doorman, and even owned a bookstore, before going corporate. But for every wacky thing I’ve done, I’ve also kept in touch with people I met. Frex: the friend who got me the post-production job is now an executive producer. Yes, I do call him with questions. He’s used to it. If he doesn’t know an answer, he sends me to someone who does. (Another reason we’ve been friends for so long.) One answer is never sufficient, never a reason to stop there.

Meet one novelist, get introduced to six more, and three of them write for TV. Oh, that’s handy. Should save that contact, could be useful someday. It’s actually rare for someone to say no, come to think of it. idk, as long as I can get access, I can usually get the person to tell me something I can use. 

However, since my actual area of expertise applies across many industries, I’ve worked all kinds of places. A lot of it’s client-facing, and if you think that means I’m not wandering around the client site poking my head into rooms and cheerfully interviewing people on the spot, then you haven’t been paying attention.

Now that I work at a multinational corporation, I have literally thousands of people in my network, including everyone who’s moved on to a new place. You might be surprised how many people are fine with, “hey, I work at X with Y, and Y told me you’d know this.” Of course, everyone has a bias and a view limited to their own experience, so you can’t stop there. You can’t really understand a situation without knowing the agendas of all the players. You gotta ask a bunch of people, make sure you’re getting the most rounded sense of things. 

Not really a hardship for me. It’s kinda the whole point. 

People are people everywhere (outside cultural quirks), and it’s rare I’m ever researching a single person (I’m not an investigative journalist, if you were wondering). Most of the time, I’m looking for the industry-based cultural expectations. As in, “given X and Y, what would someone who does A generally think is a reasonable action, in this situation?”  

The key is to have a believable reason for asking, and being a writer definitely qualifies. “I’m researching for a story, and I have a character who do X. I wanted to know if it’s realistic for them to know Y. Who do you think would be the best person to ask?” I frequently cold-call, and I never ask “is there someone there,” I ask who they think is the best person. A lot of times it ends up being someone that the phone operator knows (personally or by reputation) who’s full of bizarre trivia and enjoys a chance to show it off. (Plus, it’s amazing what you can learn about a person from all the other subtle cues people are unaware they’re telling, when they’re focused on their area of expertise.)

That’s how I ended up interviewing the Director of the DEA about whether a non-US-university degree would satisfy the education requirement. His letter of introduction got me monthly lunches for awhile with the DEA director in my city. (Oh, the stories I heard.) It’s how I learned about sheep subsidies from one of the top execs at the USDA, and that there’s a single surviving Civil War widow still getting a VA pension. Going in person is even more fun. You could wind up talking to one of the very few artists in the world whose speciality is touching up pre-Renaissance books so the repairs aren’t visible. Or the art historian whose job is going through the nation’s attic and identifying century-old fakes. 

I’ve talked to embassy officials from five different countries, NASA biophysicists and astrophysicists, OSHA inspectors, Nobel prize-winning economists, police detectives, celebrity chefs, environmental lawyers, arena-level sound-people, race-car drivers, potters, opera singers, patent examiners, train mechanics, fire marshals, foley artists, and club DJs. I’ve interviewed fashion photographers, farriers, puppeteers, lighting designers, Catholic bishops, bioethicists, rabbis, fighter pilots, public radio personalities, newspaper editors, chemists, club organizers, war correspondents, Episcopalian nuns (yes they exist), textile artists, prison architects, midwives, cabinetmakers, tall ship sailors, haute couture seamstresses, and civil engineers. On and on and on. 

Don’t neglect official avenues, either. The Department of Labor, the International Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, the Screen Writers’ Guild, the list is nearly endless — any organization, union, or federal/state dept that sets or guides policy. Everyone has a bias, so what people consider normal is sometimes… not. Or they just didn’t know (or saw no need to know, the fools) the reason for A over B. You have to check the rules, because a discrepancy between what you’re told should be done versus what people tell you is actually done… is also useful to know. 

(Labor practices are definitely one of those areas, since federal labor policy is something every company must observe. It’s the law. So when a workplace seems to be violating the law, it raises a lot of interesting questions.) 

And finally, of course, there’s traditional research. Textbooks written by people in an industry can be particularly interesting, especially if it’s a book meant for readers outside that industry (which usually means a lot of firsthand anecdotes to round out the gaps). Popular articles, academic essays, post-mortem white papers, TED talks, interviews. You need to do your basic homework, because there’s no waste of someone’s time quite like asking them a question that’s patently absurd once you get past common assumptions. 

I once explained the plot of a popular SF show to a NASA astrophysicist, and his response was simply, “Every word you used was English, but those words in that order make absolutely no sense at all.” Kind of a dead-end, there. You can’t come at a top-level expert with intro-level questions. 

Since I don’t always know who I’ll stumble over next, being an information sponge means I at least have a whole encyclopedia of analogies. If I can find  common ground (cars and houses are two of the best), I can at least get a basic idea of the person’s meaning. “Oh, so it’s like when you turn the key in the ignition, and the lights don’t come on because the battery is dead?” 

It’s asking the right questions, using an open and friendly approach, and having the right timing. Remember: there is no such thing as unskilled labor; there is only undervalued labor. That is, their time is also valuable, so be brief, open, and sincere. Treat every person as if they’re an authority in something, even if you haven’t figured out what that is. 

The world is a massively complex place, and contains more things than are dreamt of in our philosophies, all of it waiting to be discovered.

Or, the shorter version:

btw: I don’t actually recommend going in person to the Dept of the Interior, though. You’ll get lost. Like, instantly. That place is MASSIVE.

#research #asking questions #to paraphrase bertrand russell #it's a good thing #to hang a question mark #on things you've long taken for granted

[shirlleycoyle]

How Ring Transmits Fear to American Suburbs

This is the third of a three-part series, where we’ll explore how Ring transformed from start-up pitch to the technology powering Amazon's privatized surveillance network throughout the United States.

On Halloween 2017, Ring’s servers crashed en masse. The Ring app was nonfunctional. Why? Millions of trick-or-treaters overwhelmed Ring’s servers. Children dressed as ghouls and superheros executed an accidental denial-of-service attack.

Kids are central in Ring’s marketing strategy, and the company even bragged about how many children they surveilled on Halloween this year.

When the company once known as DoorBot relaunched as Ring in 2014, its marketing strategy promptly changed. The convenient “smart home” doorbell butler was gone, reborn as Ring, a home-security product that doesn’t simply sell fear, but sells the idea that the nuclear, suburban family is a delicate, precious thing which needs protection from a hostile world.

In Ring’s advertisements and commercials—which are spread across HGTV, Fox News, podcasts, and social media alike—the company tells the public that it isn’t watching their families, but watching over them. Ring wants customers to think it's the protective father, but not Big Brother.

Although Ring is telling families that they need protection from unsafe neighborhoods, the company is also radically changing what a typical neighborhood is like. Ring has quietly partnered with over 600 police departments around the country and promotes Neighbors, its own neighborhood watch app, where users are supposed to report “suspicious” people.

Ring has also heavily pursued city discount programs and private alliances with neighborhood watch groups. When cities provide free or discounted Ring cameras, they sometimes create camera registries, and police sometimes order people to aim Ring cameras at their neighbors, or only give cameras to people surveilled by neighborhood watches.

We don’t have any substantial proof that towns become safer when Ring enters the picture. But when Ring cameras enter a town, it’s easy for cities to equate surveillance with being a good neighbor.

Inside Ring’s Marketing World

Ring’s marketing materials on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are a strange mix of installation instruction videos, testaments to how Ring supposedly reduces crime, and family moments as captured through surveillance cameras. It’s like a combination of America’s Funniest Home Videos, Ellen, and Cops.

In these videos, high schoolers leave for school and say goodbye to their parents. Small children in costumes talk to their parents through the camera intercom. A family plays in the front yard, unknowingly activating the motion-detection feature on the doorbell camera.

Image: Obtained via public record request from Commerce, CA

Ring dedicated a blog post to a video showing a 19-year-old woman leaving for a date. Her dad demanded to interview her date before allowing her to leave the house. The dad made the man repeat, several times, that he would return his adult daughter before her 10:30 p.m. curfew.

These videos sell old-fashioned notions, depicting the typical customer as a nuclear American family with a patriarchal father figure supervising women and children who are unable to protect themselves.

This ethos extends to the influencers that Ring has chosen to sponsor its cameras:. At least a dozen popular Instagram accounts , almost exclusively run by white women, have promoted Ring products, according to Ring’s tagged posts on the platform. They all appear to be mom lifestyle bloggers who favor a Charleston aesthetic of white houses, linen clothes, and Etsy signs that say things like “Hello” or “No Soliciting.”

View this post on Instagram

When you’re paranoid like I am & think every time the doorbell rings it’s a crazy person on the other side (who else pretends like they’re not home & hides when the doorbell rings 😂) you invest in security for peace of mind. Y’all know I love my security cameras so we recently got the @ring so now I know who is coming & going and that makes this Mom feel so much safer! Check out my IG stories for details ❤️ • I just wish I had it a few months ago when my door was shot with silly string 🤷🏼‍♀️ 📷: @chelsearoc

A post shared by Ashley McClellan Houston (@nashvillewifestyles) on Jun 7, 2018 at 7:25am PDT

Ring also has a section of its website called RingTV dedicated to sharing videos hand-picked by the company. RingTV’s Fun & Convenience tab is dedicated to videos like "Goldendoodle Puppy Uses Ring Doorbell."

But aside from all the wholesome family videos and cute puppies, the company also uses the RingTV website to try and prove that its cameras prevent crime.

The Crime Prevention tab shows videos depicting people who "stop crime in its tracks" or catch "strangers in the act." Some of the videos appear to show people apparently considering stealing a package, but not doing so after seeing a Ring camera.

However, it’s unclear how commonplace any of these success stories are. Millions of people own Ring cameras, and the Crime Prevention tab hosts nearly 50 videos.

Image: Screenshot from RingTV

The Neighbors App, and the Racial Politics of Suburbia

Suburban life is at the center of Ring’s marketing materials, and almost all footage that the company shares is captured at suburban homes. This focus says a lot about what Ring is selling, and to whom: Historically, American notions of the suburban, nuclear family have been built upon the exclusion of people of color.

After World War II, white families fled from urban centers and resettled in homogeneous suburban regions. Redlining practices excluded people of color from getting loans and mortgage payments that would allow them to move into the same areas.

Additionally, as Vanderbilt University historian Sarah Igo writes in her book The Known Citizen, Americans associated the sanctity of the suburban home with the right to privacy. Suburbia was meant to be not only a destination of white flight, but a refuge.

Neighbors, Ring’s neighborhood watch app, efficiently encapsulates the mixed politics of privacy within the home and racial exclusion.

The Neighbors app, in its most basic function, allows people to upload footage from Ring products or other security cameras for other users to see. A post can be sorted into one of five categories: crime, safety, suspicious, stranger, unknown visitor, or lost pet. The Neighbors feed consists of these user-submitted posts and bite-sized alerts posted by Ring about possible dangers around town.

The app was launched in May 2018, one month after Amazon finalized the acquisition of Ring. (It wasn’t the company’s first experiment with mobilizing the politics of neighborhood watches to sell their products. In 2017, Ring offered free swag and discounted Ring products to neighborhood watch groups that promoted Ring and agreed to testify against their neighbors in court, if necessary.)

The Neighbors app has since developed a culture that is completely obsessed with crime and the self-policing of neighborhoods, and users often resort to racial profiling. Similar problems exist on the crime-reporting app Citizen and the neighborhood hub app NextDoor. On Neighbors, all posts are dedicated to crime, and three out of the five possible post categories deal with suspicious, strange, or unknown people. These options implicitly encourage people to post about people they don’t trust. In practice, this lack of trust is often racist.

The Aesthetic of Fear on Neighbors

The Neighbors app empowers people to not just watch their neighborhood, but to organize as watchers. Ring markets Neighbors as a “digital neighborhood watch,” which is an accurate description. It encourages people to think about who belongs and who is an outsider. In this way, Neighbors is not just a digital neighborhood watch. It’s a digital gated community.

“So much of it is this shared sense of the people who happen to be on that [app], or who we assume are neighbors like yourself, and watching and policing the dangers in your neighborhood,” Igo told Motherboard. “[Neighbors] also will undoubtedly reinforce some sense of who belongs here and who doesn't.”

When people take pictures or videos, they determine who and what is worthy of attention. But when people use security cameras specifically, they also determine who is suspicious and who does not belong.

Security cameras carry an aesthetic of suspicion and fear. Footage is often grainy, black and white, or green-tinted due to night vision filtering—but these aren’t inherently “sketchy” traits. Since security footage is usually shared in the context of crime on local news, all security footage is marred with the appearance of suspicion. Local news tends to over-represent crimes committed by people of color, meaning people of color captured on security cameras are at an especially high risk of appearing to be suspicious.

As more people buy cheap home security systems, the amount of security footage is proliferating. This means that more people appear suspicious than ever before. Even if a person has done nothing wrong, even if they have the wrong address or if they’re dropping off a package, they will appear suspicious.

Neighbors, and apps like it, have empowered people to publicly share footage that they consider unsettling, and people who they consider to be out of place, at a scale that we’ve never seen before.

Individual Decision With Group Implications

There’s a crucial, unstated aspect of owning a Ring camera: You aren’t just making the decision to surveil your own property and visitors when you buy one. You make a decision on behalf of everyone around you. If someone walks by your house, lives next door, or delivers packages to your home, they will be recorded and surveilled. They don’t get a choice. Buying even one Ring camera is a fundamentally communal decision.

Andrew Hager, who was a delivery-person for a meal-prep company in the Portland suburbs, said that he noticed all the “fancy houses” had Ring cameras, especially around Beaverton, OR. (The Beaverton Police Department has partnered with Ring, per documents obtained by Motherboard.)

For a while, he didn’t realize that Ring doorbells were actually cameras.

“It might've changed how I acted if I knew that there were cameras,” Hager said. “I was always professional, but I would’ve made sure I was not picking my nose or something.”

Hager added, more seriously, that he would not have been “blatantly checking the house out” if he knew he was being recorded.

“I feel like if people were watching me, they would've thought, ‘Oh, is this guy casing the joint out or something?’” Hager said. “Because you could totally think I was like, ‘Oh how much square footage is in here. I wonder how much they pay for this place.’ Before the door opens, I’m always looking around.”

Hager’s fear is justified. On the Neighbors app, users frequently post videos of people looking at their homes, taking pictures of their homes, or lingering around their homes. The captains often speculate as to whether the person is planning a robbery, although they just as well could have been at the wrong address or admiring the house.

“Making sure that packages are okay seems like a pretty common sense goal,” Albert Fox Cahn, founder of the anti-surveillance advocacy group the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and member of the Immigrant Leaders Council of the New York Immigration Coalition, said. “But the problem is that it comes at the price of recording these workers who are delivering them. It's just part of this surveillance web on the job that's depriving workers of autonomy and privacy, and can really have an emotionally toxic effect over the long term.”

The New Neighborhood of Ring Cameras

Ring has two aims that work in tandem. On one hand, it wants to become embedded in the process of policing. But it also wants to build relationships with neighborhood watches, and to have its cameras to become a feature of neighborhoods.

Ring doesn’t only partner with police departments. The company also provides discounts to local neighborhood watches and homeowners associations. According to emails obtained from Olathe, KS using a freedom of information request, all community leaders need to do is reach out to Ring.

"We would ask that a community leader (for instance head of HOA or neighborhood watch president) go to [redacted] to begin the process,” a Ring representative told a police officer who asked about local subsidy programs. “The community programs teams at Ring will work with them to create a limited time, zip code specific discount zone."

Ring also provides city-level discounts, if the city agrees to pay up.

Dozens of cities have Ring discount programs, which involve cities and towns paying Ring up to $100,000 in taxpayer money in order to subsidize Ring camera purchases for their residents. Ring will match every dollar committed by a city per the terms of these discount programs. This means that for every $100 residents save when buying a Ring product, the city pays $50 and Ring pays $50.

These city-level discounts have been happening since 2016, according to documents obtained by Motherboard.

By funding these discount programs, cities conflate surveillance and citizenship. For instance, West Hollywood, CA distributed flyers advertising its Ring subsidy program at voter registration events, according to documents obtained by Motherboard. West Hollywood also sold subsidized Ring products “exclusively” to residents in areas moderated by neighborhood watches. Everyone who bought a discounted camera was added to a registry list with their name and address.

West Hollywood isn’t alone. Camera-purchase registries—which Motherboard obtained from Redondo Beach, CA, West Hollywood, CA, and Green Bay, WI—included the names of purchasers and the police patrol areas in which they live.

Image: “RE__Request_for_shapefile_assistance.pdf” from West Hollywood, CA.

Documents obtained by Motherboard also show that several cities will loan or sell discounted cameras Ring cameras to residents. In one camera “loan” program in Green Bay, WI, police technically owned all footage generated on all cameras given to residents, per contract documents residents had to sign.

Police from Redondo Beach, CA even used the pretense of camera registries to determine who should get a discount and who shouldn’t, according to a city council meeting memo obtained by Motherboard. Police said that they inspected the facades of homes of each applicant, and looked for who had the most “optimal viewpoints that could assist with criminal investigations.”

In a slide presentation obtained by Motherboard, Redondo Beach police said that applicants who offered to surveil their neighbors would get a heavier discount than those who only offered to surveil their own property.

Image: Screenshot from Secure Your Castle slide presentation from Redondo Beach, CA obtained by Motherboard.

Ring doesn’t officially endorse cities requiring people to go on a camera registry in order to obtain free or discounted cameras.

“Ring won't subsidize devices to cities to be used for camera registration programs,” a Ring lawyer told city officials in Peoria, IL, who asked about creating a camera registry program. “If you cannot agree to that, then we cannot do the program.”

“This is getting ridiculous,” the Peoria lawyer said to a Peoria City Manager, after forwarding the email thread to him.

But cities can make camera registries without Ring’s permission. The Peoria Police Department unveiled a surveillance camera registry program two weeks before these emails were sent.

“As a policy, Ring does not support any subsidy match program that requires recipients to subscribe to a recording plan or share footage as a condition for receiving a subsidized device,” a Ring spokesperson said in an email. “We actively work with these groups to ensure this is reflected in their programs."

The Fanatic Culture of Ring Stans

People decide to buy Ring cameras for lots of different reasons. Ring customer Bryan Herbert told Motherboard that Ring makes his life easier.

“I’m disabled and tend to walk slow,” Herbert said via Twitter DM. “It’s nice being able to speak to people at the door and let them know it’s going to take me a minute to get there.”

But one thing connects all Ring camera owners: a sense of community.

Digital community is a crucial tenant of Ring ownership. There’s Neighbors, where geographic neighbors connect with one another through Ring’s platform. But there’s also Facebook and Reddit, where user-moderated, fanatic communities for Ring product owners have flourished.

In these groups, people are implicitly understood to have accepted the privacy tradeoffs that come with owning the cameras, and the proliferation of police partnerships. The resulting culture is a combination of a do-it-yourself machismo and intense product loyalty.

The most noteworthy examples are r/Ring, the Ring-focused subreddit, and Ring Doorbell Users Group, the Facebook group for Ring owners. These online communities aren’t primarily focused on sharing “success stories,” or sharing so-called sketchy footage on Ring cameras. Users mostly troubleshoot technical problems and answer one another’s questions. Often, people who speak too negatively about Ring products are disparaged, even when they face frustrating technical problems with no obvious solution.

The admins of the Facebook group often advocate on behalf of Ring. In one post, the Facebook group admin screenshotted and shared a post, which began by complaining about the quality of Ring cameras.

“Don’t get me wrong,” the group admin wrote, “I’m sorry that [name redacted] is having issues and feels he must so eloquently announce to everyone that he is GIVING UP.”

The admin suggested solutions to fixing Ring products that were often more labor-intensive or expensive than setting up the device itself.

The culture on r/Ring is pretty similarly to the culture in the Ring Doorbell Users Group on Facebook. Dan Sullivan, one of the moderators of r/Ring, said in a phone call that he’s been a subreddit moderator for about four years, around the time that DoorBot became Ring.

“I’ve been leading that disaster for a while,” Sullivan said. “It was really an echo chamber when I came across it… There were people who loved it, people who hated it, and there was no one to talk to about it. It’s still like that now.”

Sullivan said that he tried to engage with Ring’s social media team and get them to provide help. Ring tried, but it’s mostly stopped engaging.

“Ring used to participate, but then they stopped because people were attacking the employees,” Sullivan said.

How Does It Feel to Be Watched?

Among the many Ring users that Motherboard spoke with for this article, none expressed privacy concerns, or misgivings about having a camera in and around one’s home.

Sullivan, the r/Ring moderator, said that if people are worried about their privacy, they just shouldn’t get a camera. It’s like Facebook, he said. If you don't like Facebook, just get rid of Facebook.

“I don't have it inside of my house for a reason, but I don't really care who sees what goes on on the outside,” Sullivan said. “You could make a list on why you shouldn't have a camera. Obviously these [videos] are going somewhere, being sent to a server somewhere. But I don't have anything to hide. I’m not a criminal, there's no risky things going on at my house. So I’m not worried about it.”

Sullivan added that there are benefits and drawbacks to every product. For him, the benefit of catching a criminal on camera outweighs the risk of relying on a private company to catch them.

Several Ring camera owners told Motherboard that they, in part, chose Ring because they wanted cameras that weren’t made in China, citing security concerns. Neither of them were concerned about how camera footage and customer data is used.

Why We Watch Ourselves

There’s one unavoidable fact about Ring: people are choosing to use this product. They’re choosing to put a camera in their homes. They’re choosing not only to watch other people, but watch themselves.

Self-surveillance isn’t a Ring-specific phenomenon. The core of self-surveillance has to do with how we understand privacy.

Sarah Igo, the historian, says that “privacy” deals with the threshold between where the individual person ends, and a collective society begins. As a result, privacy concerns are often invoked in situations where people are scared, apprehensive, or uncomfortable about changes happening in their society—technological, social, or otherwise.

As explained by Igo, after World War II, when white people fled to the suburbs, a combination of academic scholarship and popular opinion strengthened the idea that freedom, especially freedom from authoritarianism and fascim, can be found in the right to private property, space, and land.

The American home, in the face of these fears, became a place of safety and tradition. It was a place for families where a patriarchal figure protected his wife and children.

Americans, as Igo describes it, often fear and mistrust objects that mediate between the private home and the outside world. Many people in the early twentieth century viewed the telephone as an unwelcome intruder in the home. Fear of wiretapping was widespread throughout the century. The doorbell, for many, was no exception. Igo writes that people viewed the doorbell as something that empowered the outside world to penetrate and intrude on “domestic tranquility.”

Interestingly, Ring customers believe that the doorbell camera protects the home. It doesn’t invade the home; rather, it guards the home. Igo said in a phone call that this isn’t necessarily surprising. Ring doorbells, like all doorbells, mediate the relationship between the home and the outside world.

“Video cameras, security cameras, and so forth is the turning of the home outward to watch, in the other direction,” Igo said. “So I think it's still connected to this longer history of worry about invasions of the home. To prevent those, you have to look outward and invade the privacy of those potentially right on the street outside.”

“[There’s] this sense that the barrier can also be a window on to who's on the other side,” Igo added. “And that, at the very least, suggests rising distrust of unplanned interactions.”

So What Now?

Ring has some experienced pushback in recent months. In August, Senator Markey demanded the company answer questions about its data retention and relationships with law enforcement. Then, in November, five senators demanded Jeff Bezos answer additional questions about its data security practices.

Despite this pushback, Ring is not faltering or losing momentum.

It doesn’t hurt that the company has crucial connections to power. Jacqui Irwin, a member of the California state assembly, is married to Jon Irwin, the chief operating officer for Ring. Kira Rudik, Ring Ukraine’s chief operating officer, was recently elected to Ukranian parliament. Ring has connections in precisely the places it needs them in order to continue operating as it always has.

However, it’s impossible to talk about Ring in a vacuum, as if Ring is the only home surveillance company selling fear and promising security in return. Ring is the symptom of a worldview in which crime is an existential threat, and data-capturing technology is the solution. For people who subscribe to this worldview, it doesn’t matter that crime rates are actually going down nationwide. The only thing that matters is that they believe crime is a threat.

According to Evan Greer, deputy director of digital activist group Fight for the Future, Ring is a product that’s “incompatible with a functioning community.” If you don’t trust your neighbors, Greer said, it becomes okay to surveil in perpetuity.

“That's a fundamental idea that ties community together: neighbors trust each other, and protect each other, and take care of each other,” Greer said. “It just feels like, for Amazon’s business model to succeed, they have to sow distrust and fear between neighbors.”

Cahn, the privacy advocate, said that Ring and security products like it capitalize on a widespread feeling that we are never safe.

“It goes to some almost society-wide anxiety, that if we can't prove everything's okay, at every moment,” Cahn said, “then somehow, something terrible is happening.”

There is no single reason that people choose to watch themselves and others. The people of Baltimore, MD believe that camera footage can be a tool that facilitates justice in a city where justice feels rare. For others, Ring cameras offer the convenience of seeing who is at the door. Some people buy Ring cameras to usher in peace of mind.

Everyone who buys a Ring camera shares one core belief: that Ring cameras are neutral, objective, or even benevolent. However, in a world so overcome by fear that the people believe they must not only watch others, and watch themselves, there’s no such thing as a truly benevolent tool.

How Ring Transmits Fear to American Suburbs syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/