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hanzi83 · 10 months

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Not Much Better Than The Last But Who Cares

I really didn’t like the last blog I put out. You know it is a bad blog when I am cringing while writing because it felt like I was just fulfilling covering notes I jotted down of what I wanted to cover but I built the list so fucking long that it would not really have the best segues, and I know whenever I write or say some shit, the people with power are at least paying attention to me, even if the “masses” are not, and if they are, no one can really interact with me because I am not part of any specific clique or institution, but I can already envision how much they would make fun of my lack of writing skills and the lack of formatting, and probably the endless amounts of grammar errors. I can’t really converse with people about my thoughts and theories, and maybe it stems from the fact that it feels like I am the only one who truly doesn’t know where this shit is going. I feel many personalities online and in the political and celebrity world have advanced insider knowledge and everyone is just facilitating a role in the discourse because there is a concrete end goal to all of this but in the midst of it, there has to be this implosion that is on the rise, and some days it feels we are getting there faster than we think, and other days it feels like it is just the calm before the eventual storm. I don’t know where this overall sense comes from when it pertains to myself, because I never viewed myself as smart in the traditional sense, but I often ponder when I am in my dream world, am I being given information and when I awake it feels like I can’t remember anything. So I worry and because I feel I have dealt with massive exploitation and will probably never be the same mentally, and then having to be told I should get help when I know this world is getting worse, how can I even be better when the world is moving in a direction that is gonna get 10 times uglier and it feels like everyone is crossing over to that far right wing side, and these people can’t even admit that they are doing it, they still want to maintain they are saner part of the left so they can prove they are fair to the right wing when most shit in this world has always had a more conservative trajectory than it leads on and more people want to redefine what a progressive or what being on the left is, while it feels you are sophisticating your talking points to lead them into a more right wing mindset while we fucking call out the most over the top and transparent racism, and because racism is a real problem, the minimal of the racist shit is what takes precedent so it gives far right wing personalities the need to then have to talk in circles and debate if this specific thing is racist, and even if it is debatable if that specific comment is racist or not, and trust me, it always is racist, but even then people are not paying attention that it isn’t the specific debatable racist comment, but it is coming from racist people who have ties to powerful far right groups and are normalizing fascism in other dangerous areas. So yes even if the comment might seem tame, it is still coming from people who are funding and investing in very bigoted policies and mindsets, like with Nina Turner, she had to deal with a shitty racist comment from the Libertarian Party twitter account, basically telling her to pick crops for free in response to her comment about how insulin should be free. Not really a controversial opinion, most decent people would agree. I am not saying the comment isn’t shitty but when TYT covers it to make it seem like they are appalled by the racism and want to call it out, and on the surface that seems great but they are using this story which could’ve been organized so they can make it seem like they are calling out racism and appalled by this, how are you appalled when you are an insider who sees how these people talk like and how they act like and you are kind of going in that direction in a more discrete fashion. You are palling around with right wing content creators, and all these content creators, despite their aesthetic, are probably funded to be a force in the discourse and get to control narratives, while acting like they are just lowly internet personalities. The internet is the establishment. So when they go off on fighting the system and doing vague shit that would’ve been revolutionary 10-20 years ago, now claiming yourself anti anti-establishment is the most establishment thing you can do in this 2020’s. There is more nuance to the entire system, and while the on surface aesthetic seems to be getting worse, the fucking online personas who take advantage of the shittiness will then basically set a limited narrative because by default the system is kind of shit. So I feel since TYT are palling around dangerous people who give them incentive to say the most pretentious shit on the planet while creating nonstop discourse so they can then go on their show and whenever there is right wing fascism being discussed, there has to be pot shots at the left and then equating them to the right when the left is trying to fight back. And yeah guess what, some of the personas online have to sports entertain, but that wouldn’t exist if the world itself was not on default set to be a sports entertainment circus. Look at how much this committees and hearings shit has become a fucking circus. So to me I have noticed that since TYT has waged war on leftist content creators, I noticed an influx of racist jerkoffs who show up in these chats now to make it seem like these leftist content creators harbor them when I feel they are at the behest of TYT types, because in my opinion, they are an institution and every institution is kind of above the law in some regard and they all partake in frat like shit, but they also organize cults to go on the attack, and I noticed an attack on one content creator in particular named Olay, who didn’t coddle TYT’s feelings because she knew what their grift is, while others in those circles wanted to play the naive pro wrestling babyface who wants to believe in the good. This is what happens when you dumb down your villains and tactics that are being done. Now these are just theories because I have theories on how Stern Show has organized this shit against me and even if it is too late for me to ever get vindication, and trust me the vindication would come a lot sooner if I did a right wing grift and attacked Howard like he is an actual liberal, which I don’t believe he really is. I have experienced firsthand how mafia people in the industry and in these institutions are, and now it feels like some of it has been seeping out with massive corruption and criminal and predatory behavior exists. Now like I have said, I will probably end up dying alone and never getting vindication, but as long as I am here, and I don’t look at myself as some fucking hero, but if I see people who are being targeted or people being exploited, I will call it out, especially if it is being done because someone spoke out, and I am not talking about the likes of RFK Jr who are marketed as people being censored and being the victim while they are being propped up for the online establishment to think they are rooting for an underdog from the underground. They do pay attention to my podcast, and are working underhandedly to get it to stop so I am forced to join a community where I am going to be put through the ringer with shitty people trying to socially climb to get at me because I am not anti woke like they want me to be, and not only do they want to be anti woke, they want to pretend that I am the one falling for agendas and propaganda, when this internet mindset has helped make people think that their opinions and the narratives set on there could never be a corporately sponsored operation. Again, just my fucking opinion. Again I am a shitty writer, should I break to create another paragraph. I feel I am kind of in the zone, and I end up just doing more run on sentences and never fucking stopping. Let me try to break for a bit, but I am trying to go from the top of my head instead of just crossing off the points I have jotted down and then it ends up not coming out naturally but now that I have been doing a decent job, for my level of writing etc, I feel this is where it will start to go to shit and it will end up worse as the last blog I did. You gotta remember a lot of my blogs are basically remixing shit from previous blogs and maybe 2 or 3 original points I make will seep through. If you read one blog of mine, you probably read them all.

I really wish I didn’t have to pay attention to the shit that some of these alt media personalities are doing because there are so much more important shit that should get focus, so it feels by focusing on this, it feels like it just dissolves into the entertainment aspect while this entertainment shit that is happening is helping facilitating a more fascist mindset, and just a word of wise to Cenk, you can keep talking about how your book is getting positive coverage from the establishment considering you hammer at the establishment, maybe because you did it in the most status quo kind of way which would’ve been revolutionary in the 90’s but all you are doing is pretending that you are actually shaking shit up because all your program is catering to the notion that MSM is shit, it is like wrestling, other companies can just get credibility because they are anti WWE despite being their own propaganda outlets. It is the easiest thing to do is rail against the WWE, especially when it is in limited and dumbed down ways. How are you better than fucking the MSM when you and Ana are covering a fake viral story about Miranda Lambert being mad at people taking selfies at her concert, like these things are not designed to do a promotion for the concert. It is the same shit with the discourse around the fucking movies, either it is just a way to promote the movie via culture war shit, or maybe this is a battle because different factions with different political ideologies try to politic their mindset into the entertainment, and these pushbacks from conservatives is designed for their way of thinking to be incorporated into the entertainment, but I am just saying covering a fucking Miranda Lambert controversy on your not so MSM news program is not really the most enthralling shit and it just serves for shitty comedy banter from people who are soulless, because if you aren’t doing shit like that, you are finding ways to be more vitriolic toward the left. Then you have Cenk going on twitter talking about how the right and left should align to fuck the system, while you guys shut down any form of protest from the left and dictate how they can act, and then declare you won’t talk to anyone else from the left, not because you guys are sick of being used, but because you are now under the right’s control and they won’t allow you to get a genuine left position. They try to put people who have those intentions to bring more nuance to the convo in a click or an institution where it is gonna serve a more right leaning narrative, that if you genuinely push back they will make you seem like the trouble maker. Ana will claim she is afraid of talking to people outside her race to make the narrative seem like they are the most unreasonable, but if you actually interact with other people from different backgrounds and people who genuinely lean left, they are more forgiving and understanding if you have a decent discussion with them, sure you might have to deal with sports entertainer personalities who are trained to just be combative at times, but a lot of time when people with power are gaslighting communities, I don’t blame people for being on the edge when there are people sophisticating a more fascist mindset. All of you “anti establishment” are more propaganda like than the transparent establishment that you claim to hate. I wish when fucking liberals who scoff at the idea that the liberals are the same as the right wing etc, I wish they would explain without the kayfabed on surface shit, they would explain the insider shit of why it is different because apolitical people who take in the results, they see the same shit when both parties are in charge. Now the right wing gets to act like they are the ones calling out the system, and then more and more people who claim they are left, who know the world is moving into fascism, and when most people at this current stage of the world have made their decision of which side they truly are on, now you will have people like Jimmy Dore or and people at TYT, act like since the establishment is limited they can look like they are being reasonable by wanting to align with the fascists and labeling them the working class, I am sure there are genuine people from the working class who you could work with, but they will keep pointing to discredited figures who they make it seem like they are regular people when these individuals are designed to be propped up in the fucking system. And it must hurt for these turncoats of the left to realize that the new right wing base they are catering to don’t actually like your personality or think you are actually interesting at all. In fact the only times there seems to be hype about any personalities like that, is when they are trying to start shit with the left and because if you shit on the people who are trying to oppose fascism, the ones who want to embrace that shit will really prop up your shit. You can’t handle that you are compromised because a lot of you want to be seen as successful solely for the hard work you put in but not the fact that even if you work hard, like the Bob Dylan song says, you gotta serve somebody. That is why no one wants that idea out there that there is control who can get their own blueprint for their path. I am a dumbed down guy so I might not understand all the technicalities of everything out there, I never pretend to, but I can look at patterns that have played out with people in the spotlight who then turn into bad guys. I can look at the overall manufactured consent entertainment has played in all of this, so much so that entertainment is seeping into the political shit. Regular people who have no idea what is going on, their fate in this world is being dictated by sports entertainment theatrics. Why would I want to be left on this planet with this kind of mindset? The system is so racist and dangerous that the discourse of DEI in companies will show the most over the top thing they present a black employee is going to do, like backfist a bunch of white woman 5 times a day, and then presenting it out there like “CAN YOU BELIEVE HOW FAR THESE PEOPLE ARE GOING TO CLAIM THE RACIST IS SYSTEM” but because it is presented as a news story, people think this is some serious threat. They will sophisticate shit to look like there is more trouble in addressing the racism that you think opting for the default racism existing is probably the better option. If I was so stupid and I took some of these alt media people now kind of catering to the right by presenting the decriminalization of drugs actually not working out and fear mongering about naked homeless people running wild and then at last second mention the defunding of the program which is why the bad shit is going down, you give yourself carte blanche to say you mentioned it while the overall framing is to make it seem you are being fair to the other side. It is a lot more dangerous than pointing out the obvious corruption because eventually people will be joining that side of the overall corruption.

There is this overall narrative that I used to fall for in the last 10 years when the internet was becoming more of a gimmick, even though I felt you were getting a bit more of an honest conversation and interaction etc, it feels like it has become so fucking gimmicked amongst the alt media who try to cater to the internet discourse to act like you are not allowed to call out the liberals or the democrats while everyone is literally calling out the liberals all the fucking time, they think because the discredited MSM legacy outlets don’t say much about the corruption or have compromised people on at times, that no one is calling it out because most of the voices are from propped up celebs, politicians, and alt media figures who make it their entire personality so it seems like you have woken up, but that is why people in the alt media have kept shit limited and want to be the arbiters of the narratives because if you are like me, and think a little more in a more conspiratorial fashion and actually do try to analyze all angles, which is including that personas online are funded to be online where a lot of people are consuming the information, people don’t have to consume the MSM to know the MSM is shit, every outlet via entertainment will tell them about shit that adds to the right wing agenda, so you think the establishment narratives from an official standpoint has any credibility to people who think they are consuming stuff we are not supposed to consume. If you weren’t allowed to call out the MSM or the democrats, no one online would be saying anything about them whatsoever. This is why “anti establishment” gimmicks are so destructive, because anyone who has a big time voice or has the backing, are not anti establishment, but they present themselves as the more credible ones because people who are more obvious part of the establishment have to limit what they can do and say and if real change is gonna happen, it will always be behind the scenes even if it has to have the aesthetic of it happening in some organic fashion. I would fall blindly for it because I knew 10-15 years ago that the mainstream establishment were no good and they are liars and they have had to do evil shit, so it is easier to get manipulated and brainwashed by these new anti establishment types, and what it has done is, because the democratic types are so fucking boring and they feel like the obvious status quo, it has let other people than give carte blanche to people who might have fascist aspirations, who might say some credible shit about the system in question, to the cultivate their own cult who will be lured into the far right wing mentality and they have different aesthetics for different political ideologies, races, ethnicities, genders, sex, fandom etc. We want the aesthetic of bringing back the 90’s and early 2000’s because “political correctness” has gotten so out of control. I am not saying don’t call out democrats for their shadiness etc, but a lot of the people with platforms who make their entire personalities “We are calling them out because no one else is” when literally everyone has been calling them out, they just want to disguise it so they can now be fair to the right wing and give them the benefit of the doubt. This is why limiting the J6 narrative is dangerous, because even if people are taking it seriously, I believe some of them are naive to think they are going after Trump because they are doing twists and turns to his many crimes being exposed, so if you are someone who hates the powerful, you should be happy someone is facing some consequences for shit. But is he really facing those consequences or are they making it look like he is so you think there is a target on him. If you think him and his ilk are dangerous you will get mocked online because there are other corrupt people that exist or have probably gotten away with shit, but if the overall direction is leading to a place where he will be the face of all that is wrong in the future, you are taking advantage of the system’s corruption and what other cogs had to do so you will soften up the new danger to the entire world. The establishment has dumbed down Trump into an America’s Dumbest Criminal, because we are supposed to be booing him, that it becomes the cool thing to get behind the obvious heel because the baby faces going at him are not that credible to a lot of the people who feel cynical about this world. Like if the right wing and prominent figures can be conspiratorial, why can’t I throw out the theory that the same people who are “after” Trump are not really after him. These guys don’t play by regular rules, they are allowed to still keep their jobs and wealth and do whatever they want while they are seemingly being investigated and when people try to ask about how these rules for these people are possible, because regular people would be doing time for just a 10th of what they have done, like you think anything will really happen to MTG for bringing revenge porn to a hearing about Biden’s corruption. They have managed to make that look like no one was talking about it even though this has been talked about since 2019 and it is being discussed on every platform, is it a cover up when the public is supposed to know about this? It is like I am watching a television show. It is like all the shit that was in the entertainment where in these political comedies the most absurd shit will go down but now it is like that is what is becoming. So whether shit is proven that there is corruption or whatever the right wing claim, it has been designed for them to be right. If you keep finding out about more corruption and it seems the walls are closing in for Trump then he and his base will then find justification for doing what they need to do so when TYT, who are insiders and know why this wasn’t just mostly disgruntled working class people. Sure there could be people like that exist and maybe they were there but most people who acted that day were funded to act, it isn’t just a case of random people being incited to do it. It feels like it was a testing ground so when you have Vivek, this new right wing token who is downplaying victims of systemic shit and doing whatever the right wing thinks is the most credible because it comes from one of their tokens, he can present the insurrection like it was people who are economically stressed etc then in the same breath promotes that there will be another one. They keep showing us what they are and we are debating if the things they say or do are racist and people continuously downplaying the threats. They put us in positions where we have to side with one or the other when it comes to fake right wing in fighting when I know these both a DeSantis and Trump are dangerous fucking figures that represent for the white supremacist system, but they have made the criticism of that come off like it is not cool because MSM are the ones who self preserve and state it, so then online you have to downplay it until then the MSM seems to capitulate like they are now being fair by giving the fascists the benefit of the doubt. Again these are just my theories, and some shit might be based off fact but me personally, I am just being conspiratorial. If what I am saying is dangerous, then I really have nothing to live for anyways. The people who have power have played a role in putting me in fucked up predicaments, see this would be considered not “taking accountability” so to people in the system, who never take accountability, they will then not take this seriously so my word shouldn’t really mean shit right? I am just saying when you have made me irrelevant and discredited me and I also play a part in that myself, but what would you expect from someone discredited? We can’t prove a lot of the shit that I am inferring but I can judge the patterns of people who now make their sole personalities about how they are against the vague system so you can justify why there needs to be a red-brown alliance, like when you are an alt media outlet and you are giving credit for someone who is a border control person “leaking” out what inhumane shit Abbot is cosigning at the border crossing etc, but then have disdain for people who push back against fascism because they are doing it in a way you don’t like. Like when I do a podcast and I cover shit like the Tracy Chapman discourse where someone claimed that her song fas car was never appreciated by the critics so people can push back against that narrative because it was nominated or won awards etc, those situations are designed for discourse so then people who cover this as a way to push back against claims of racism, like it is getting so ridiculous now. I would expect this form MSM types but alt media people buying into forced propped up discourse in favor of making it seem like people who claim racism are not to be trusted because you use the most sensationalist shit to help that take place. And when there is exposition of some of the fucked up practices in institutions or factions like Steven Crowder’s little outfit, the sexual harassment and hazing shit that goes on, people get shocked by this stuff but I am not because this is a requirement in this cesspool system, they have taken those things that go on and have created gimmicked ways to be presented so it can have regular people who go through this shit find it relatable when nothing behind the elements is relatable when this traumatic shit becomes another angle for the entertainment dollar and just more discourse. You think anything is gonna happen to Crowder or anyone who makes people go through this, this is why I have been trying to point out that in showbiz world and the political world, there are clubs and fucked up behavior going on and this is also how they help homophobia come to play as well, where people will turn others out and then people who are cogs in the system who deal with the predatory shit whether it is gay or straight etc, but the ones who deal with the gay predators within the system then don’t come out and specify what is going on, they normally turn to generalizing the entire community to get their message out and if you are from that community you will think this person is an asshole for thinking they are all like this, it is kind of like the fundamentalist system makes people go through that kind of abuse where the cogs then have to try and leave and then get lured into religion but it normally ends up joining the more fundamentalist side and if you present some of the shady shit happening in these places under the liberal Hollywood banner, you think opposing those fucked up things means you have to be more conservative. Showbiz to me feels like it is actually more conservative than people want you to believe, and now it is expanded to the social media shit and in the political circles and also people who are in the media, people who want to be the educators then have to do their shitty sports entertainment banner. But it is like all the initiations and all the fucked up practices that go on in these factions, institutions and industries is being used to put out there and it is designed to sell books and add to the 24/7 new cycles, podcasts, documentaries. When you have this kind of exploitation going on, how can anyone of us stand a chance to try and change shit in the system? You go through abuse and then you get vindicated so then you carry out the abuse because that is what the system requires.

What makes a lot of shit more difficult now is that at least 10 years ago or so when I started realizing after the Iraq war lies and the invasion of Afghanistan, that we were not being told shit, and it did seem like there was a cultural shift to at least call out how dumb the invasion was even if it still gave the benefit of the doubt that it was an accident etc, they would at least let you kind of theorize on if 9/11 was designed to happen and allowed to happen, even if it was not the most popular take. It still existed but now if you are someone who goes to the left and are propped up, you have to act like that is a stupid theory, despite the shit that happened since to get us on the road of distrust for the establishment, and opened the gates for other countries being invaded etc and other ways to take away civil liberties. It didn’t become a problem until people who are conservative felt like that way when they didn’t give a shit about how many people from marginalized communities were being affected. But growing up and falling for the system’s obvious propaganda, it made me go the route of leaning toward the anti establishment types and it was easier to think I knew what the angles were because at least there were people in the alt media spaces and chat room message boards would point out the MSM’s corporate narrative, it became easier to at least know what to be aware of but if the last several years has proven anything is that the social media and the alt media types were also con people, because anyone who was anti Israeli apartheid and showed solidarity with Palestine I would trust a lot more than people who think calling out Israel is anti Semitic, and then you have public figures who claim that shit then also playing into the anti Semitic tropes of making it seem like they are the chosen people, and then also censoring people when people say that there are powerful Jewish people out there, and some of these people are doing it in bad faith so they can generalize, but when it seems there are consequences happening for talking about it, then of course people have no option but to converse with people online or other media outlets who can lure you in and then accept their fundamentalism of pretending they are anti Israeli apartheid but want everyone to also generalize everyone who lives there. Because now people who would call out last decade are still showing support to RFK Jr who is a staunch Israeli government supporter because he happens to say shit about vaccines and he is also anti Ukraine. And me not knowing much about the overall playbook being put out there, I am supposed to think that because they present it with country vs country aesthetic, it makes it hard to decipher who is telling the truth about portions of what they say. Like if I want to go off on the Russian government or China’s government, I have to regurgitate US imperialist talking points and people who call out the US Empire’s corrupt ways and their history that should be called out, they have to defend horrible leaders in other governments. I realize I am not too smart with the official narratives shit, so I am left with no choice but to look at the overall picture of far right wing elements all culminating into an inevitable implosion. I could just focus on specific governments doing corrupt shit but I know if I did that, then I would have to cosign something that isn’t on the up and up. Maybe I would be able to do that easily if I wanted to socially climb up and wanted protection from the most horrible people, but I don’t think mentally I can handle being here. People’s lives are at risk, people are in danger and we gotta play these social media caricatures game and nonstop battles of sports entertainment until we fucking go into a direction where there is no coming back from. Maybe if there weren’t secrecy the last 15 years and me feeling I am a cog that is caught up in a fucking conspiracy, maybe I could just move on and just join everyone else and become more soulless, but just seeing it happen to everyone else and the only time they care about your trauma and the exploited shit is when specific factions can get you to cosign their problematic shit. Like here is a small example if you were someone who just had a plain “anti US” bias, you would point out what fucked up shit they are embracing but if people who are alt media who use that as the sole personality trait for why they are credible, this is why they are going down the anti trans road and sophisticating the most sensationalist shit so you get people to think they are going too far and these people say they are anti war. You can just say you are anti war and we have to believe people, but since they are pro Putin, they won’t give a shit about the banning of gender affirming care for adults and the youth in Russia. Is this why certain “anti war” people are kind of leaning against the anti trans thing because if Russia is banning that stuff, it doesn’t mean the “anti war” are embracing another fascist leader? This is why cowards like TYT are going in that direction while pretending to do anti right wing shit but they will then believe that republicans are genuinely sick of the fundamentalism that the right wing has embraced. All they will do is say they helped it go that way but now that they are admitting it was a mistake, we still give them the benefit of the doubt that they are actually against it. They do promotion for the right wing endeavors like Jesse Waters show and actually think he could be a decent human being because his mother called into his show to shit on the right wing conspiracy theories. I don’t watch all the entertainment that exists, but are they still doing the Howard Stern trope of having the common sense mother kind of condemn what they do in a playful way so you don’t take the threat seriously? Sorry you guys are supposed to be a fucking news program, and I know by writing about it I am putting myself at risk, they are already, in my opinion using their right wing alliances to go at anyone who is calling them out for what they are doing while they continue to pretend they are the purist in the progressive spaces. They are complete and utter shit. Jimmy Dore who has helped put so much anti vaccine sentiment out there when it was the establishment’s goal to do it while the MSM is self preserving by promoting it or making it look like people are forcing you to fucking take it, now people don’t even trust the flu vaccines and now Jimmy is putting doubt about that out there with sensationalist stories. I hope you realize the actual content of what you say is what the establishment wants, they want people to claim they are anti establishment so their words have more weight to them. If they didn’t want us hearing from these people who are playing victim of censorship and lack of freedom of speech, we wouldn’t even know they fucking exist. Like even having to make your audience think that someone like Kari Lake is making sense because she is against AI being used for political ads, like you guys couldn’t find someone who is a decent human being who condemns the over use of AI shit, you have to give Kari Lake the fucking credit for saying shit other people have kind of said?

You can keep promoting all the shit Trump is being guilty for but I think all parties who have inside knowledge and are tokens to the system have always known where we are fucking going and you promoted villains who you knew would not face any consequence so you greedy fucking pigs could make bank off fake narratives and I expect it from CNN, FOX News, MSNBC etc, but the supposed anti establishment who make their entire identity being against the MSM, are the ones also limiting the narratives because they are being permitted by the system to act like fucking purists and for people who are for the people, a lot of you shit heads become boring elitists who get mad at the people for questioning your intentions because you now have to play by a pretentious script and since you can’t derive from that script, it drives you crazy when someone who doesn’t play with one is bringing shit up because you continuously play by these kayfabe rules and knowing this shit is limited, you know people who counter you can’t go all out because it always favors the person who is promoting more of a conservative outlook. But if you expose or theorize that the system is always a right wing trajectory that let’s the heels in this pro wrestling storyline get all the excitement and get to have more range than the people who are supposed to be babyfaces, then it is always designed to always direct you into a right leaning mind state whether people realize it or not because it comes in all forms and as someone who has been dumbed down and fallen for many propaganda tools, I can tell what other people are falling for. They waste our time and play with emotion, now we have to wait until next year for the documents case to start when you know it is gonna be 10 times more chaotic from now until then. You expect me to buy into these rules you pretend exist when we all know that no one in the elite circles are playing by them. Like for example even if they encourage you to vote and I am not saying you shouldn’t vote, but this day and age where they have proclaimed it being the most important of elections so they can get people to mobilize and do the act of voting, the system knows that there are gonna be storylines of machines fucking up, or that there will be people protesting the results and votes getting lost etc, it is like yeah you technically voted but you are gonna find a gimmicked way to get it into the direction that it is going. So we then blame different factions for who they voted for when it is always going to go in the direction that it is supposed to go. I am supposed to trust people who are more invested in setting up pro wrestling angles for these politicians and these hearings are the pro wrestling matches where the storylines play out even more essentially.

This is part of the blog where I am now kind of fulfilling the points I jotted down. I hate holding off these blogs because I build so much up and I want to incorporate it in there but I am not smart enough to pull it off so I have to kind of be honest about my process which helps me maybe not have to go through this process in the future because since I put it out there maybe me admitting that I am not the best at doing this, maybe it will by default make me better at doing this if that makes sense but it is fine if you don’t think it makes sense, in fact if you consider yourself a respectable human being because of your fancy aesthetic, you shouldn’t be reading my blogs anyways but how else can you feel more elitist knowing I am not the best person to write down his thoughts. But going through the list of things I wanted to write down since they are trying to get you to not take anything that is important in this world seriously but there is this controversy about Carlee Russell, who is a woman who may have faked her own kidnapping and if this was genuinely her idea or even people in her immediate family helping out etc, people in charge would be able to know right away and since abductions of women in general exists whether people want to believe it or not, they are pulling the Jussie Smolliet model of propping up an obvious staged one so you don’t take this shit seriously. People are even denying the mental illness aspect if this was just a situation where she acted alone, but wouldn’t doing that be from a mental illness in your head, no normal person would do that, but I don’t believe it was her just doing this, because these viral things are designed and can be organized, especially in the era where the entertainment dollar on social media is flourishing. If they can also make people distrust people who might make claims of racism, abuse, kidnappings, and overall bigotry, then people will not take it seriously. I don’t see the people who are propping up this sound of freedom movie bullshit putting resources for actual cases of trafficking and kidnapping going on but they are too busy acting like people are shutting down their movie. That right there is faking an incident to put hype to your narrative. People really think because this became revealed on social media that the establishment doesn’t want us to know, everything we know is supposed to be known, and it is promotion of what is to come, you think when we find out by some press release of DeSantis’s new state guard that claimed it was for hurricanes and to protect property didn’t have a militia vibe to it and now it is like we could’ve guessed that from the beginning but through some leak to the media it seems like it a lot more dangerous than they promoted, and nothing will be done to stop it from continuing so what we are finding out in slowly what their intentions are. I don’t know what the purpose of us knowing that Paul Bernardo was transferred to another prison, but it is clear it was designed to be put out there because for some reason we need that guy in the discourse every so fucking often. I always felt his shit was connected to the underworld of crime where he was allowed to get away with shit, but the last few years we have heard about this guy more often for some reason like they are getting us prepared for something to do with him. Who knows what the entertainment dollar will exploit from it, but you look at shit where we have true crime people charging money to see the autopsy of a fucking murdered kid. This is why I have always had disdain for a portion of the true crime shit because it feels like it is more about the personalities involved rather than the people who are victims and the highly promoted ones end up being into fucking scummy shit themselves. I just look at these random things that get established in the discourse and I wonder where all this shit is going to go because on a grand level I just see many pieces of things in different areas just getting more normalized. Between knowing about more deaths from child labor and those laws loosening and just knowing about these things is horrid enough but will anything actually be done to correct all of this horrible shit happening because at least 10 years ago it felt like we were moving in a more positive direction with the established corruption that was being exposed, and now it just feels all of it is being put out there because it is just gonna be a fabric of our society. We are promoting scumbags under the guise of them being canceled, Jason Aldean has a case of radio won’t even play his jam while everyone is playing it and defending it, it is hilarious that a bunch of conservatives are like “imagine being more offended at a song condemning violent protests more so than the violence itself” like it wasn’t a way to symbolize what side you are on where you are talking about wanting to gun down protestors and using clips that weren’t even from the US to illustrate your fucking point, and then also doing the song’s video where a black man who was falsely accused of attacking a white woman, where he was hanged and you don’t think that is a provocation to get people outraged or pissed off so you can sell another shitty human being as this victim of cancel culture while they play dumb about it so they can keep the conversation going in circles. This is why I keep pointing out the entertainers are now cogs being used for the purpose of manufacturing consent, but it always seems to be considered an agenda when it is liberals having some kind of socially conscious message even if the system limits the narrative so it constantly makes the embracing of edge lord shit feel much more anti establishment and against the grain but that is what the right wing portion of the system wants. They have made pushing back against racism seem so over the top and unreasonable, you won’t give 2 shits that they are trying to teach in Florida schools that there were pros to slavery and that doesn’t seem like the craziest shit ever to a lot of people, people really think the people on the left are the ones who have fucking gone crazy and losing their minds while people who want to socially climb higher and not lose their relevance in their “fame” will use their platform to act like there is a common ground with these kinds of people. It becomes scarier once you realize and look back at everything the last 30 years and how they were able to use entertainment and the internet to sway people’s opinions and all because we clamor for the anti establishment type who is gonna save it all and now that it exists, it feels like the Ruthless Aggression era of WWE where at one point the Steve Austin character was original and unique and then after that era died down we had a bunch of copy of attitude era tropes where some of the storylines were just low level trash and the storylines where talent would feud with the establishment didn’t come off as completely genuine and all it did was try to regress more and having justification for why it needed to happen and those tropes and the elements that went into convincing people of worked shoots etc and behind the scenes stuff made people think they were going against the system and what the establishment wants when the establishment wants that narrative normalized. I was gonna finish off with some wrestling discourse about women wrestling and how there is this constant need to justify why they don’t deserve more storylines because ratings get used as justification when nothing is gonna be an overnight success in that regard but right now they have had some momentum going. Nothing is perfect just yet but I am sure they will mess up and create more internet discourse which will fuel me with how the shill accounts then blame the fans for not showing more support when the company doesn’t give you a reason to at times and yeah those kinds of people exist but it all starts and stops with the boss when they are capable of doing compelling shit. So I guess I kind of did talk about it. I know it might seem like a program or television show etc, but it is more about the overall discourse to justify suppressing the value in the overall sense because misogynists don’t want them getting more clout so they can afford to politic for better and it just represents that overall new conservative movement of trying to eliminate any narrative that might be more progressive even if it comes with limits and has to seem like it is less than because the default of our society growing up has by nature had political messaging without us realizing it because we just assumed that is life, so wanting more for people in marginalized communities seems like a fucking threat and they don’t even care if they are wrong. All they have to do is just keep pretending to hammer it home until they get their way. Anyways. This shit has been gone on long enough, and I did this with a lot of start and stop breaks because sometimes I am in the zone and then a million other thoughts from my past accumulate. I think the mix of my issues and the future of this world just has my mind spinning and worrying where all of this goes. Thing is I better get used to writing blogs for my remaining days because with all these social media apps being such a fucking hassle, I am kind of glad I became irrelevant before twitter went to shit because I don’t think I am gonna have a following like I did 10 years ago so if I go into a new app, I won’t have to worry about a lot of people following me and keeping up with me anymore. So maybe it is better to just post blogs even if I am not as good at writing them. I just need to vent from time to time and there is just too much going on.

#Hanzi 2023 Remix Blog Fascism Normalizing alt media sports entertainment mental illness theories

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lightdancer1 · 2 years

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This will also apply to the Magicatra AU I'm in that stage of shaping as a narrative:

Adora and Catra are not perfect mirrors of each other. Catra is selfish and already despised the Horde long before Adora did. Catra's approach to fighting it even without She-Ra is going to correspondingly be different *and* the Horde has the brute force ADORA SMASH! figure against the Rebellion, who gets the girl who almost won the war amplified by She-Ra's raw power.

Catra's version of She-Ra is also different to Adora's, Catra makes better use of the super-strength for Superman style 'leaping tall buildings in a single bound' quasi-flight even without Swift Wind. Catra, due to her different focus in intellect makes more careful studies of She-Ra's powers without trusting Light Hope one bit and refusing to play the same manipulation game she escaped. Catra is much better at the political game and thus proves much better at capitalizing on the skills of all the characters than Adora and company were, mostly because Adora is a bit hapless in social skills that don't involve throwing a shitload of punches and Catra...isn't.

Correspondingly Adora's Horde is far less a haven of backbiting and treachery than Catra's, at least as long as she stays there. Adora is the golden girl who sincerely believed the propaganda and is very much an Azula-style 'true believer and paragon whose villainous traits more than slightly converge with heroic ones and this is a tragic Very Bad ThingTM' Adora also opts for 'when you have a sufficiently big hammer everything is a nail' and her hammer is pretty much sufficiently big as long as she directly commands (but when she doesn't....).

As far as Shadow Weaver i opt for the view that she knew what Adora was from the beginning and believed her fated to be She Ra so her manipulations were designed to render She Ra a pliable weapon for her use and to Hell with everyone else, Horde included. And then sorry, Shadow Weaver, your princess had another host. So she switches up manipulation and abuse strategies without a hitch and in the process forces Catra to see in Season I's equivalent that she was completely and utterly wrong about everything happening with Adora and forcing by sheer 'evil cannot comprehend good' fuckery the biggest single personality switch in the AU.

And with the Masters of the Universe element in this AU instead of merely hinting that Eternians survive, He-Man is outright named, as is Adam (though they don't appear) and a certain villain gets to be the main element of the Eternians....complete with a take from one of the canons that he's the evil uncle. Unlike most takes on Skeletor this one at least tries to hide his villainy and with Hordak as the model leader Adora's used to following Skeletor isn't that much uglier than Hordak.

#magicatra au #skeletor is a big ol' outside context problem #skeletor randor and marlena are all immortal #eternia works like MCU Asgard #the royal family has powers that the rest of the species doesn't #but they're all superhuman to one degree or another #skeletor vs Horde Prime is straight up evil vs evil #magicatra isn't going to be a clone of canon Adora #Horde Adora isn't going to be a clone of canon Catra #Things really go wild by the time the portal arc comes up

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k7l4d4 · 3 years

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Owl House AU Ideas, ZA FIRST!!

Hello all, this has been a long time coming on my part. After procrastinating on the subject, I have decided to upload my personal AU ideas for the Owl House. Here’s hoping ya’ll like them, and feel free to make your own stuff based on them as you please!!

Tough Love: This AU is my own twist on the classic Siblings AU, in which I fleshed it out into my own little niche using whatever I had available in my brain.

Victoria Noceda: My name for Beta Luz, who in this Idea is the oldest of the three Noceda sisters. Brash, belligerent, always ready with a smart remark, Victoria is a tough girl who takes no crap from anyone, with her weapon of choice being a metal bat carved with glyphs. A short temper mixed with both a strict demeanor and a flippant attitude has earned her a reputation as a thug, one which she has done nothing to reject or deny. Growing up, Victoria quickly grew familiar with the uglier side of humanity, and when her sisters were born vowed to shield them from the harshness of the world, by any means necessary. She is highly cynical, yet being around Luz chips away at this persona of hers. Despite her attitude and behavior, she is highly intelligent, graduating from school as valedictorian to the shock of everyone bar her teachers. Victoria first ended up in the Isles by chasing down Owlbert after the Palisman tried (and failed) to pickpocket her. She and Eda, to their mutual surprise, hit it off rather well, with Victoria often acting as her Stall Manager, Gopher, Muscle, etc., and has amassed a large quantity of glyphic spells, which she keeps as tattoos climbing up both arms (she actually has enough to cover nearly her whole torso and part of her neck, but uses illusion glyphs to hide them so Eda doesn't ask how she discovered them... some of them were highly unpleasant for lack of a better word). Using her work with Eda to avoid getting a job on Earth, Victoria has a LOT of money, mostly due to Eda paying her with whatever bills and coins Owlbert brings her without consideration for how much they actually are worth. Offered to house her sisters so they could "branch out and get some real world experience," really an excuse to get her sibs away from the toxic environment at school. Convinced (threatened) Principal Hal to have Luz sent to stay with her for the summer. Her aggressive tendencies and willingness to use incredible violence to solve her problems has resulted in her relationship with her sisters partially atrophying, though she is unaware of it herself. Her first encounter with Boscha, in the body swap episode, is meant to illustrate this as she very clearly and deliberately tormented and ridiculed the girl for bullying Luz, refusing to let up even when Luz begged her to stop until Boscha apologized and begged for forgiveness; Luz rushing off to help bandage Boscha's nearly broken hands implies this isn't the first time she has done this, or at least something like this. Victoria has a bad temper when roused and often resorts to extreme verbal haranguing when she's cross with Luz, not knowing that this reinforces the idea that she doesn't like or care for her youngest sister, as she can't bring herself to raise a hand to her sisters. Finds Amaryllis hot and enjoys teasing her. Will answer to Victoria, Tori, or Ria, NEVER to Vic or Vicky, which will result in her threatening to break the offender's legs, THIS IS NOT A BLUFF SHE HAS DONE IT TWICE BEFORE. Mari Noceda: My name for Pilot!Luz, the middle child. Easily the most well-behaved of her siblings, though that isn't saying much. Unlike her hyper-impulsive younger, and her super aggressive elder, Mari is calm, logical, and significantly more easy going. However, she is an absolute snoop with a very poor understanding of personal privacy, resulting in her being sent to the principal for breaking into other students' lockers, on multiple occasions. After Victoria basically dropped off the map, she became hellbent on tracker her down, resulting in her discovering the Boiling Isles and magic. As is her usual, she quickly got over whatever shock she felt and proceeded to brow beat her mom, Victoria, AND EDA to let her stay in the Isles by homeschooling (Camila doesn't know she went to the Isles, just that she wanted to move in with her sister... it hurt her more than Mari thought it would), she soon set herself to studying everything the Isles has to offer, to Eda's chagrin. While her repertoire is much smaller than Tori's, she knows quite a few spells herself, all of which she has studied to a ludicrous degree. After reading up on some of Luz's fantasy novels, she has started viewing herself as an artificer, blending magic and technology together. Is VERY GOOD FRIENDS with Vela Blight (they are dating but don't want anyone to know). Often puts down Luz's fantasies as ridiculous. Luz Noceda: Canon cinnamon roll, sorta. Plucky, sweet, optimistic, and, oh yeah, Kinda mental. Was introduced to the Boiling Isles and Eda via Victoria picking her up and driving through a portal that opened up in Eda's living room. When she asked her sisters' to share what they know about magic with her, they both laughed and told her they would teach her how to use any spells she figured out on her own, and no more. Basically the same as canon, she is somewhat more fragile emotionally as a result of Mari's unintended put-downs, and Victoria's angry rants. She is convinced that part of the reason she didn't have friends was due to everyone being afraid of Victoria beating them silly, or Mari invading their privacy. While very similar to her original self, this version of Luz has a lot of repressed anger, which manifests as a slight twitch in her left eye and a compulsive hiccup when stressed. Eda: Due to taking in Victoria and Mari, she is much more in touch with her caring side earlier on than Canon, welcoming Luz easily and more willing to play the mentor role. Quickly picks up on the warning signs in the sisters' interactions but is repeatedly shut out, to her frustration and concern. King: Mellower than in canon due to having Mari, who considers him a fount of demonic knowledge, and Victoria, who appreciates his street wise wisdom when it peeks through his megalomania, to talk and interact with. Clings to Luz as a "new general in my Army! Rejoice, Mr. Ducky, REJOICE!!" Amaryllis Blight: My name for Beta!Amity, and the eldest sibling. Ruthless, ferocious, and feral, Amaryllis always possessed the hallmarks of a problem child, bucking her parents authority at every turn, which she got away with due to her immense magical power even as a toddler. Wears green hair dye to spite her parents after they virtually disowned her. Regularly forgets any and all information that she deems useless, which includes her parents' names, resulting in her always referring to them as Mr. and Mrs. Blight at all times, even in her head. Leads the Predators, an elite section of the Emperor's Coven tasked with locating and sealing dimensional breaches, as well as purging anything that crosses through. Has a severe survival of the fittest mindset; if you don't have the strength and will to survive and succeed, you are nothing. Ironically, she hates bullies, claiming them as weaklings who tear down those with true potential for greatness, and often curses herself for being too weak to separate from Belos. Her sheer power and accomplishments have forced the Blight parents to recognize her as their child, if only to capitalize on her success and prevent difficult questions being aimed their way, yet none are comfortable with the arrangement. Strongly admires Eda, genuinely believing her to be the greatest Witch of all time, which leads to her verbally, and sometimes physically, tearing a new one in anyone who speaks ill of her in Amaryllis' presence. The biggest inspirations for Amaryllis were Katsuki Bakugo from My Hero Academia, and Esdeath from Akame Ga Kill, being strangely friendly and amicable to her fellow Predators and anyone who she finds sufficiently impressive in terms of combat, though she has no ability to register those she thinks of as weak, often being incapable of recalling any real information about them beyond whatever part of their appearance stuck out most to her. She has no respect or regard for Emira and Edric, regarding them as fools and cowards, and is genuinely incapable of telling them apart, despite the fact that they are different genders, and often needs a moment to remember who they are. Often verbally scolds Vela for being weak, with the first "kind" thing she has ever said to her since graduating was congratulating her for taking the first steps to realizing her true potential. Admires Amity's dedication to be the best, but detests her kowtowing to their parents. Has a huge crush on Victoria, but is both better at hiding it than Amity, by a mile, and severely conflicted over it, due to regarding humans as "the weakest existence on the whole of the Isles." Amaryllis' animalistic mentality is considered extremely unusual, even by the standards of the Boiling Isles and results in everyone being incredibly wary of her. Amaryllis is insanely loyal to those she holds regard to and works with, viciously destroying anything that dares bring harm to her comrades, or "pack" as she insists on calling them, and has a win by any means necessary mindset, being genuinely puzzled by the crowd and Amity's distress at Lilith's cheating during the Covention, seeing the power glyph as a perfectly acceptable tactic and applauding Luz and Eda's mines to circumvent the Human's lack of spells, however even she disapproves of cheating that can result in permanent injury, which is her sole complaint about the duel. Vela Blight: My name for Pilot!Amity, and the Middle child of the Blight Triplets. Timid, meek, and polite to a fault, Vela is near totally lacking in confidence. Is hopelessly mediocre in every form of magic, despite her higher than average power, and regarded as a failure to the Blight name. Her parents disowned her shortly before Canon, but allow her to stay in the Manor as her siblings' attendant, even Amaryllis is better regarded than she is by the Blight parents. Is good friends with the Detention Track kids, and eagerly jumped on the bandwagon when they became multi-track students, joining Luz as an All-Tracker, which also exposed her immense talent for magic mixing, allowing her to merge different forms of Magic with ease and fluidity. Vela's sheer passion for learning magic exceeds both Amity and Luz combined, and is genuinely puzzled why more witches weren't trying to multi-track too. Is something of a teacher's pet, to her own embarrassment, as even with her poor abilities her sheer passion for learning has caused many of the Teachers and Bump himself to develop a soft spot for her. Has a complicated relationship with Ed and Em, as while she loves them, she envies their talent, and despises their pranks, as she is often punished for them whether she had a hand or not, and often when she tried to stop them. When her trip-mates decided to prank Amity, she lividly tore into them with a brutal "The Reason You Suck" Speech before storming off in tears, resulting in Ed and Em chasing after her and leaving Amity and Luz alone in the library. During the trip to the Knee, she was still bitter, and went out of her way to be as difficult for Ed and Em as possible, only forgiving them after took on the Slitherbeast. Vela is very close to Amity, as well as the Nocedas. Vela regards Amity as a treasure and has the healthiest relationship with her out of all their siblings, instantly pegging to Amity's crush on Luz (She ships them so hard), though she doesn't call her out on it. Vela is scared of Amaryllis. Ed and Em: Are wilder than in Canon, willing to resort to harsher pranks to meet their goals. They adore Vela, and assumed she adored them; having her verbally tear them a new one served as a massive wake-up call to how jerky they could be, and often were, provoking them to be better siblings and people all around, still tricksters though. Are jealous of Amaryllis due to her being unshackled from their parents, and are often rendered livid by her casual dismissal of them. Amity Blight: Mostly the same, but a bit more assertive against the toxic influences in her life. Idolizes Amaryllis due to her power and freedom, and trusts Vela with the same secrets as her diary. Sallix Park: Name for Beta!Willow. A maverick and an agitator, she enjoys stirring up trouble for the heck of it, but only when she's the one to cause it. Adores her little sister, but insists on her fighting her own battles, and enjoys training Willow through random plant attacks. Has been secretly gaslighting Boscha, in the hopes of the brat having some kind of epiphany and cleaning up her act, not knowing that her actions were causing the triclops to develop conflicting impulses and feelings regarding Willow, as well as an unhealthy fixation. Is good friends with both Victoria and Amaryllis, resulting in her serving as referee whenever they fight, which is often. Willow Park: Same as canon, but more assertive over her behaviors.

Let me know if any of you have any questions or opinions on it.

#the owl house #owl house au #owl house luz #owl house amity #owl house beta #owl house willow #owl house eda #tough love AU

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ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years

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Caledonia straight up sounds like a country from the Princess Diaries and that’s that on that. (Also the piece with her infuriated me like few other things can, I Do Not Like Her or how she treats Chris (and apparently her BBs))

I mean, one thing Callie touches on (and @deluxewhump does an EXCELLENT job on this same theme with her OC Alex!) is people who have sort of taken for granted that the world is set up his way and it’s just not that big a deal, until they have to face the uglier aspects head on and it shakes their conception of what it all looks like apart. In the case of Bee’s Alex, he tries to make a difference in immediate ways (his treatment of Zee) while maybe planning to make a bigger difference later on (Bee has him mention he’s going into politics, or plans to!). He can see that it isn’t quite what he thought it was, once it’s up close and personal.

in Callie’s case, she digs herself in even deeper, because her experience has been very different, and she has no reason, in her mind, to reconsider the basic assumptions of her life. Is she capable of doing so? Yes. Will she? No.

She is comfortable with her assumptions, and would be incredibly uncomfortable with having them shattered. So she simply refuses.

That said, Callie also is entirely unaware, during that argument, that she is literally facing someone who is the absolute actual proof of her comfortable assumptions being wildly off-kilter from what is actually happening. She has the pieces of the picture in front of her, but she doesn’t put them together (and for those of you who wondered, Callie did NOT hear that ‘us’ that slipped out of Chris’s mouth) and even if she did, her first action would be to call the hotline and report him, before she really considered whether or not she SHOULD.

When faced with an understanding that your world is neither as narrow or as just as you were led to believe... you can choose to expand that view or choose to cling to the narrow strictures. Callie chooses to cling.

Her little sister - and I think probably one of the twin oldests, if not both of them - would (and will) choose to embrace the bigger world.

You can take two people from the same family with the same basic worldview, and see them make very different choices, in the end.

#chris asks #caledonia and her family #bbu capitalism

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crossdreamers · 4 years

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Has J.K. Rowling been misunderstood or is she really transphobic?

There is an interesting discussion on the Rowling supporting Forstater case over at CDL, where one member asked the following pertinent question:

how would it be possible for someone to say 'we must be allowed...' without them being interpreted by commentators such as yourself as 'wanting to invalidate trans women'? you close down respectful discussion by presuming an ugly motive, by seeking to disqualify any opinion other than 'transwomen are women, as much as ciswomen are' as being too offensive to be considered. having been thus insulted, gender-critical feminists are likely to retaliate with genuinely offensive responses, and the dialog gets still uglier. this is so typical of internet discourse.

Here’s an edit of my response:

Rowling is invalidating trans women. The tweet is clearly in support of a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist). She is even using TERF hash tags. So I am not presuming an ugly motive. It is clear and out in the open.

I have been discussing trans issues with TERFs for some years now, and there can be no doubt whatsoever that they are aggressive transphobes who are actively trying to make the lives of trans women a living hell.

Deconstructing the tweet Here is the tweet as she wrote it:

“Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who'll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya#ThisIsNotADrill. "

It is pretty clear what it means: 1. The first part is the traditional TERF pseudo-acceptance. "By all means dress up as women! We are liberal and open minded, after all. But you are not women." In other words: This is not in reference to a philosophical discussion about what constitutes womanhood, this is in reference to a political and cultural movement that is established to attack trans women. As we know, TERFs think trans men are deluded lesbian women, androphilic trans women are misguided effeminate trans men and gynephilic trans women are perverted "autogynephiliacs". There is no common ground that makes an open, tolerant and informed discussion possible here. 2. The second part is a TERF lie. Women are not forced out of jobs for stating that (biological) sex is real. One woman was forced out of her job because she actively promoted the idea that biological sex and gender is the same (which is not true, by the way) in order to invalidate and harass trans women. And yes, forcing trans women to use men's bathrooms, stay in men's prisons, be excluded from the right sport teams and use male identity papers are deliberate and hostile acts meant to force them back into the closet. 3. #IStandWithMaya is a TERF hashtag, used to propagate the view that trans women are men. The hashtag refers to a court case Maya Forstater filed in London against her former employer — and which she lost.

The judge concluded that this was harassment In a 26-page ruling, the judge wrote that Forstater is “absolutist in her view of sex, and it is a core component of her belief that she will refer to a person by the sex she considered appropriate even if it violates their dignity and/or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.”Here's more about Forestater's opinions.

Slate writes:

Forstater’s contract with the Center for Global Development was not renewed due to a series of transphobic comments made in multiple forums. She repeatedly tweeted statements like, “I think that male people are not women. I don’t think being a woman/female is a matter of identity or womanly feelings. It is biology.” In a workplace Slack she wrote, “But if people find the basic biological truths that ‘women are adult human females’ or ‘transwomen are male’ offensive, then they will be offended.”

Forstater also purposefully misgendered a nonbinary councilor on Twitter, and when they complained, she wrote, “I reserve the right to use the pronouns ‘he’ and ‘him’ to refer to male people. While I may choose to use alternative pronouns as a courtesy, no one has the right to compel others to make statements they do not believe.”

TERFs are not debating, they are waging a war

I am all for an open and fair discussion, if your opponent believes in at least some of the same fundamental values of democracy and an informed debate, but fundamentalists and extremists do not, and if that is the case they do not deserve my respect and patience. In Norway TERFs have published photos of the child of a trans friend of mine, one of the leading trans activists in the country, implying that she is a male child molester. This is not about having (or not having) a democratic debate; this is about defending trans people against bigots who threaten their right to be themselves, who threaten their families, their dignity and their health. As far as I am concerned, Rowling might as well has come out in support of the Klan. It is that bad.

Rowling has had the chance to explain herself

Let me add one more thing: Several LGBTQA sites and organizations have tried to get Rowling to elaborate on her tweet. They given her a chance to explain herself and present a more positive approach to trans people. She has said nothing, and refused all comments. And given all the criticism that is for me another clear sign that she is on the side of the TERFs. Please remember that the British feminist scene has become toxic because of the TERFs, much more so than in the US, where a new generation of compassionate intersectionalist feminists are dominating the debate.

You cannot force NGOs to hire bigots

Forstater worked in an organization called Center for Global Development. This is a non-government organization (NGO) working for the realization of the UN sustainability goals. They note that they are "committed to transparency, diversity, and professional and personal integrity." They "value mutual respect, a collegial work place, and a healthy sense of humor."

As I see it, you cannot force an NGO with an agenda of tolerance and inclusion to employ someone with the exact opposite values. You cannot, for instance, force an anti-racist civil rights organization to keep someone who is a racist or a nazi on board, nor can you force a feminist organization to hire a male misogynist. You can read the ruling here. As you will see the judge has concluded that Forstater's argument that sex is unchangeable is not a philosophical statement in this context, but harassment.

I agree.

Rowling is not stupid. She knows what she is doing. She knows how to read. This was a deliberate act from her side. Too bad.

Se also: J.K. Rowling’s betrayal of trans people is also a betrayal of her own books

#transgender #trans #transphobia #lgbt #lgbtqa #terf #gender critical

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justcallmenikki7 · 5 years

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BTS Reaction To: You Standing Up For Yourself (Mafia!Au) (Hoseok and Maknae! Line)

Summary: you don’t put up with shit from people who disrespect you.

Warnings: language, harassing, rude men who degrades women, discriminatory comments, women being bitches, self esteem, women degrading women, women picking at readers weight and looks, age and maturity talk (?).

Notes: two posts in one night? hell yes. also, a big thank you to @charliesfairy for helping me and giving me ideas!! i love you<3

Request: Anon said- bts mafia reaction to their s/o having a strong personality and knowing how to protect themselves.

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Hoseok:

Being the fiancé of a mafia leader is hard because of the constant pressure of making sure that you are not in any danger, some of the criticism from peers, and the constant worry from your fiancé himself. Plus, it is hard trying to live a normal life when your fiancé will not really let you live one due to him having enemies that try to take him out and possibly hurt you to get to him. But, after some reassuring and persuasion from your side, you finally got him to agree on letting you have a job where you can have a somewhat normal life – plus you can feel better that you are not solely depending on your boyfriend for everything. You hate depending on people and like the feeling that you are independent.

Even though you have a job, you are still put under protection by having a guard that watches you from a distance to make sure you are safe. This was an argument between both you and your boyfriend, which was not a pretty sight. But hearing his side of the story, which is him having a peace of mind that you are safe and are protected while he is at work made you be able to live with having someone watch you 24/7.

Anyways, you love your job. You love the people, the atmosphere, meeting new people, making new friends/acquaintances has been something you have thoroughly love. Hoseok can see this too by your change in mood. Of course, there are those rude customers. Usually you are able to be calm while you dealt with the rude customers, but the ones today are not that easy.

When you first walked up to the table filled with young men, you had a gut feeling that it was not going to end well. At first, they were semi pleasant, but as time went on, they became ignorant and crude towards you. One male, in particular, stuck out like a sore thumb. You did your best on trying to ignore them and being as polite as possible, that was, until, the ignorant male made a comment when you were walking away with their order”

“Hey baby,” the male said as his eyes trailed down from your back to your butt, eyes staying glued to it for a few seconds before looking back up at you, “when you bring that sweet thing back over here, make sure to bring a soda with it.” he winked at you, making you feel disgusted and angry.

Finally having enough, you slammed your notepad on the ground before you stormed over to the table. In your angry state, you did not see your fiancé come into the restaurant with your on guard body guard in tow. The look of surprise and enjoyment on the group of men made you even angrier, they like that you are angry.

“I am sick and tired of how you all have been treating me. You all are nothing but ignorant pigs, finding enjoyment by disrespecting women and harassing them with crude words. I am now going to ask you to leave the restaurant and to never comeback unless you comeback with some manners.” You tried to stay as calm as possible along with not using any curse words.

“You cannot kick us out, we are your customers. You serve us.” one commented, a smirk on his face.

“Yes, she can, and you better leave before things get a lot uglier. And you better apologize to my fiancé before you become nothing.” A familiar voice spoke up from behind you, bringing you a sense of comfort and safety. The pure look of terror crossed every man sitting at that table, bringing you satisfaction that they realized who they have been harassing the whole entire time. “And if I find out that you have been harassing anyone else like you have been to my fiancé, then I will make sure no one ever sees any of you again.”

Nodding their heads, they all apologized to you before quickly leaving your restaurant. Turning around, you came face to face with the love of your life. “Thank you for stepping in, but I had it all under control.” you thanked, kissing Hoseok on the cheek.

“I know you did, but I could not stand how they were treating you so I wanted to say something. Plus, you being really angry turned me on.” he winked, giving you a cheeky smile. You rolled your eyes, smacking his shoulder lightly. “But seriously, I am proud of you, baby girl.”

Smiling, you brought Hoseok into a hug, mumbling a ‘I love you’ into his chest, to which he replied “i love you too, Y/N. I will always protect you no matter what.”

Jimin:

Everyone looked down at you in the mafia and real world since you were dating Park Jimin. Park Jimin was the definition of cold, heartless, and strict – someone who was straight to business and made sure there were no mistakes. You were the definition of kind, loving, and someone who wore their heart on their sleeve and gave them your full trust right then and there. That was something everyone took advantage of. Even though you were someone who could defend themselves, you never did because of your view that everyone was human and made mistakes.

That is why you were now criticizing yourself to the max.

You wanted to help your fiancé out and wanted to prove that you were worthy enough of being his fiancé. Deciding to do a drug deal alone without any help was the biggest mistake in your life – probably to the point where Jimin will never trust you and possibly break up with you.

You could feel the tears form in your eyes by the mocking laughter of the dealers. Every laugh and every chuckle that they continued to light the fuse to the anger you were feeling.

“It is funny how she thought that she could do a man's job. I am sorry, baby, but this field is only for men, not weak women, like you.” the leader called out.

And that is what made you go off. Screaming out in anger like a mad woman, you took out your pistol and shot at the man's leg, earning a cry of pain from him. His cry brought you a sick and twisted satisfaction.

“Who's the weak on now, huh?” you question, aiming your gun at his two back up men. “i have had it with everyone criticizing me for being the fiancé of Park Jimin. Just because I have the opposite personality as him does not make me any less of him. Whipty do, I have a vagina and boobs, that makes me a girl – but that does not define my damn strength and worth as a person. And just because I was not born into this line of business does not mean I am going to hold him back from his job. So, you all need to shut the fuck up and give me some respect because I will not fucking hesitate to kill you all.”

“That’s my girl.” You heard an all familiar deep voice praise from behind you, causing you to freeze in worry and relax at the thought of your fiancé being here. “Now, why are you boys trying to take advantage of my girl and degrading her?” The men were stumbling over their words, causing Jimin to sigh in annoyance. Snapping his fingers, you saw Taehyung, Jin, and Yoongi stalk over to them and drag them off to the black vans. “Boys, make sure they are nice and ready for my girl when we get to the cells. I know my girl needs to release some anger and they are the right toys.” Jimin chuckled darkly, bringing you into his chest.

“How did you find me?” Was the first thing that you asked Jimin.

“I have my ways, but that is beside the point. I am proud of you baby for defending yourself. Now, before you ask, no, I am not mad at you. I am proud of you for being the strong and beautiful woman that you are and for wanting to prove to people that you are, even though you do not need to. You do not need to prove anything to anyone.” Jimin explained, kissing your head. You know that Jimin struggles with his words, but that is okay because you know that he loves you and you love him.

Taehyung:

Being with someone who is a Greek god is hard because you are automatically compared to them. Every day you always wonder how the Kim Taehyung – a beautiful human being, sculpted by the gods themselves, who is also a mafia leader – wanted to be with you and asked you to marry him. You have never looked at yourself in a positive light because of how ‘bland’ you see yourself as. Yes, you can admit that you do think you are pretty, but not pretty enough.

By being with Taehyung, you have had a lot of criticism from it due to the looks. The main group of those people who do criticize you are girls from outside of his gang and inside his gang. They always say you are not worthy enough in looks to be with Kim Taehyung because you are not even close to his looks. Of course, you do your best in ignoring them by reassuring yourself that you are a lot nicer than them, intelligent, and human than they are. Which is true, you treat people with respect, you are a very smart person and are good at strategizing with Kim Namjoon when it comes to ambushing a warehouse, and are more human because you do not go and tear someone down because they do not fit in the category of ‘worthy’ in something.

Even though you do your best in ignoring them, you still have your breaking point.

Tonight, is ball night, which means you have to wear a dress (which is something you despise wearing). When you walked out of your shared bedroom, Taehyungs jaw dropped. The look in his eyes and the words he whispered in your ear about what he planned on doing to you later when you both got home had you feeling sexy and confident in yourself. The whole night Taehyung kept you beside him – his arms wrapped possessively around your waist, a dark look in his eyes towards men who stared for too long, and his body pressed against yours told you that Taehyung was feeling extremely possessive of you.

His actions have helped you not worry about the envious looks from every girl in the room.

“Kitten, I have to speak with two men, it will only take me a few minutes and I will be back, okay?” Your fiancé explained to you, giving you his boxy smile that was only reserved for you.

“Okay, don’t leave me here all by myself for too long.” You teased, pressing a kiss to his cheek.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” He laughed, kissing your forehead before leaving.

“Who, I cannot believe you decided to show up looking like that.” A voice spoke from behind you, followed by mocking laughs.

Turning around, you came face to face with the group of girls who make your life a miserable hell. “What is your problem with me? What did I ever do to you?” was the first thing you asked.

Scoffing, the girl replied, “I have a problem with the face that my leader has a cow as a fiancé. Taehyung is too good for you. He deserves a beautiful woman who is skinny, smart, and strong as his fiancé. Not someone who looks like a cow, thinks that she is smart, and believes that she is strong. You are nothing but a loser that is not good enough to be in this line of business, that is why I have a problem with you.”

Trying to not let her words get to you, you stood up straight and walked closer to her with your head held him. “You know what you lack in? Kindness. You see, you are nothing but a sad, insecure, scared woman who thinks that everyone is below you. You may be told that you are beautiful because you have the ‘perfect body’ or the ‘perfect hair’ always wearing the most expensive clothes, jewelry, and makeup. But you are not beautiful, you are ugly by how you treat people and degrade them. You are ugly by calling people names, picking fun at their looks, and rating them on how much money they have, you are just plain ugly.” you growled out, not breaking eye contact from her.

You knew that you pissed her off and you knew she was about to hit you from the way her fists clenched and how stiff she got. As she was going to punch you, you grabbed her fist, twisting it behind her back which caused her to yell out in pain, and you kicked her behind her knees, making her fall down.

“What the fuck is going on here?” your boyfriend yelled out, coming to stand beside you.

“i love you babe, but you need to teach some of your members respect and kindness – some of them lack in it.” your grip on the girl’s wrist tightened, making her yell out in pain. “I will be in the car.” you said before letting go of the girl’s wrist and walking off.

Jungkook:

You have always believed that maturity comes from experience – not age. Yes, age does play in with it, but going through life events and growing through them is what you believe defines a person's maturity level.

So why do you get bashed on for being in a relationship with a 23-year-old mafia leader? That is something that you ask yourself almost every day when someone is shocked on how old you are. Yes, 19 is still young, but that does not mean anything. But it obviously does when you are dating a 23-year-old. Ever since you started dating Jungkook you have been criticized by your age and lack of maturity. People in the mafia world believe that you are too ‘immature’ to be handling weapons, going to meetings, being with the one and only Jeon Jungkook. This has caused a lot of fights in your relationship because of how much stress it puts on you both. You know that Jungkook has been targeted as a weakling now because of it, making you feel guilty and contemplating on leaving him no matter how much you love him.

That morning, you both woke up in each other's arms, naked bodies pressed together as if the both of you were one whole. The argument from the night before was still on both of your minds, but the makeup was what made you stronger. That is something that you love about both yours and Jungkook's relationship is the communication that you both share with one another. You both do not go and runaway, you both talk (mainly yell) it out, explaining how you both feel, and once everything that you both had been holding in is out, and you go from there.

“Do you still want to come? It is okay if you don’t, I wouldn’t blame you since nothing exciting happens.” Jungkook asked you, kissing your shoulder blade.

“I still want to come to the meeting. I like learning what you do and what goes on behind the scenes of being a mafia boss.” you answered, looking up at your boyfriend.

“behind the scenes?” Jungkook teased, pressing kisses to your face as you laughed.

Once you both stopped laughing and decided to get up and get ready, you both hopped into the shower. After the both of yours shower, you got dressed in appropriate clothing for the meeting and left. The drive to the meeting was quiet besides the music that was playing from the radio. When the familiar building came into view, you suddenly became tense. You have a feeling that this meeting was not going to end well, making you extremely nervous on what's to come.

When you and Jungkook walked into the elevator, he brought you into a hug which made you relax, “you know what babe, fuck everyone. Just because you are four years younger than me does not mean shit. If I did not thing you were right for me then I would not have asked you out. I asked you to be my girlfriend because of what I saw in here” he pointed towards your heart. “and I fell in love with the girl who spilt coffee on me. I fell in love with the girl who makes my heart pound faster each time I look at her. I fell in love with the girl who makes me smile, happy, crazy, and makes me a better person each day. I don’t give a fuck on what those people think because they are not the ones in this relationship, it is only us. And if they have a problem with it, then they can simply fuck off, or, if you allow me to, blow their heads off.”

His speech brought tears to your eyes and speechless. Before you could reply the elevator dinged, signaling that you made it to the floor where the meeting was to be held. You and Jungkook walked out of the elevator hand in hand and to the room where the meeting was, as you walked in, a person had the guts to say something.

“I’m sorry, ma’am but this meeting is for adults and not little girls,” he apologized mockingly.

“Neither should little boys, but look at who showed up.” You sighed as you walked to the chair that was beside Jungkooks.

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angelfishreveal · 4 years

Text

FRANKFURT UPDATE / DISORGANIZED RANT ABOUT TRUTH AND ART AND FASSBINDER

by Camille Clair

I spent the strict quarantine following my arrival in Frankfurt studying German in the mornings, and watching Fassbinder in the evenings. The time between morning and evening was spent...nervously.

I watched so many Fassbinder films during my quarantine that I began to feel his cabinet of actors were my companions (quarpanions). We were all crying and grinning and swallowing our pills together.

I am one of those people that believes that pain/discomfort/anxiety is necessary, important, a catalyst. That is one of the reasons I left, have left in the past, will leave again. Sometimes the next best life move involves ripping your heart out! Sometimes it isn’t quite so abrupt, and your heart will sizzle in the pan for months. You may even grow to cherish the sensation because it means you are working toward something. You may recognize your true self in that pain. And in that truth, your mission, which may, or may not be, your art.

I do believe that, as an artist, you have to be a bit of a masochist. Your life is sustained via chopping yourself into bits, and, if you’re lucky, stowing those bits in the pockets of the wealthy, the devious. And though you may consider yourself an orthodox Marxist, this seems to be the only way to keep the axe swinging. I would never say aloud that I believe suffering produces great art, but I also must admit I understand the desire to drag oneself across shards of glass a la Chris Burden in Through The Night Softly. I relate to the impulse to bear it all. I want to be torn apart! For art.

I don’t always want this, but fresh out of my Frankfurt quarantine - following a confounding summer in Los Angeles - I want this. I really, truly want to exhaust myself.

Though Fassbinder himself may have been a bit amoral, he was, at the same time, so undeniably invested in all that is human. Many of Fassbinder’s characters seem to cave inward, unable to stand erect under the weight of the social, the political, the bureaucratic: the simultaneity, and responsibility of it all. Fassbinder’s characters give into their truth, or they parish. No time is wasted on the performance of goodness, because salvation was never in their cards to begin with.

What I desire and revere most in art is truth. I want my “self” and my “art” to be inseparable, the same. I want my body to vanish in the company of my art. I don’t really want to exist. I repeat variations of a line from Reena Spaulings in my head all day long: Where does my (boyish, jaunty, smooth, freckle-dusted, foxy, stiff, screen-like) body end and a real event begin, for once? I do a little dance in the mirror. I have never been this alone. Some days I feel stiff with sorrow, so I remind myself that I am a character, and the director expects a performance, and then I stretch.

Walking home in the rain, I envision Margit Carstensen waiting for me in my flat. I am her aloof lover. Or she is mine. I’ll fall through the door with a sigh, she’ll pour me a little glass of schnapps, and we’ll heartfully console one another. I sometimes play The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), which starts Carstensen, in the background while I go about my tasks. I speak my favorite of Petra’s lines back to her as part of my daily Deutsche practice. Maybe by Spring, I’ll have the entirety of her central monologue memorized. I love to fantasize about the spring, it’s become one of my favorite pastimes. It is possible to imagine nearly anything happening in the spring because real life has become so severely abstracted.

I lament…

What is real? Now? And in hindsight, what was ever real? Is it, or was it, ever recognizable or is it just whatever you put into your head on a given day? I scroll through Contemporary Art Daily on acid and feel confused about what it is I am supposed to want. My eyes linger on words that used to resonate, and it stirs some sort of longing. I want it to be physical, I want to get dirty and injured in the process. I want to be so involved it’s disgusting. But for now, nearly everything I want is impossible. Maybe it's a symptom of the current situation, but I want to be overinvolved. I generally find most performance excruciating, but now I feel I would do anything for an audience. I desire an audience.

I envy Fassbinder’s overinvolvement. In Beware of a Holy Whore (1971), a film about making a film, Fassbinder seems to play himself. He doesn’t play the director, he plays Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Often fussing around or yelling in the background, it’s unclear exactly what his role is in the production, but as a viewer one is intensely aware of him at all times. Upon first watch, I felt envious. I want to be present in that way, shrieking for the sake of, and within, my art. The ringleader, and also, the eager participant. In the opening scene of Germany in Autumn (1978), Fassbinder, dials a call, and says “Ich bin es Fassbinder” into the receiver. We know of course, who the man on the screen is, though we aren’t immediately sure who we are meant to recognize him as.

In a 1997 eulogy for ArtForum, Gary Indiana writes, “what can you say about a fat, ugly sadomasochist who terrorized everyone around him, drove his lovers to suicide, drank two bottles of Rémy daily, popped innumerable pills while stuffing himself like a pig and died from an overdose at 37? [Fassbinder was] a faithful mirror of an uglier world that has grown uglier since his death”. Fassbinder knew truth, and truth is as beautiful and precious, as it is vile.

My sister, who is 17 and only just got drunk for the first time last week, told me she could never watch The Shining (1980) knowing how much Shelly Duval was tormented in the making of it. I felt I couldn’t argue with her but I also wanted to argue with her. “So you will never watch what is widely considered one of the greatest films of all time?”

“No,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.

Perhaps we are reaching an age in which you really cannot separate the art from the artist. Maybe it’s never actually been possible. But then again, there are so many things that seem to be art by mistake, and so many artists who die without recognition.

In the eulogy, Indiana goes on to say, “there is nothing you can say about Fassbinder that he hasn’t already said about himself”. This line again brings to mind Fassbinder in Beware of a Holy Whore, berating everyone in the vicinity, utterly repulsed by a multitude of things never made explicitly clear. Fassbinder lying dead in the train station after an overdose in Fox and his Friends (1975). Fassbinder lying dead, with a cigarette between his lips and notes for an upcoming film lying next to him, from an actual overdose. A parallel that reveals art is just as intertwined with death, as it is with life.

I realized this year that many of the artists I respect care a great deal about film, about drama. I have found solace in films, because I am alone nearly all of the time, and I don't know when I will see any of my cherished ones again. I am living vicariously through characters, beginning to think of myself as a character, which is admittedly therapeutic. I am the director. And I chose myself from a lineup of nervous red haired girls. I recognised myself at once, and thus, here I am.

Some artists, or people!, are overly concerned with their own narrative. It can be irritating, indulgent, abject, but it’s convenient, and it may save your life. Though you’re never really alone you may feel really alone. Allein. Alleine... Sometimes there is nowhere to turn but toward yourself. And, once you begin to think of yourself as a character, you no longer bear the full responsibility of your being. You have been put in place to carry out the artistic vision. So, in a sense, all characters are artists, just as they are products of art. It’s reflexive, and Frankensteinian, in that way.

Maybe as an experiment, try referring to your dismal flat as “the set”.

Are you at home?

I’m on set.

Complain aloud, but to no one, about the uninspired refreshments.

Stare longingly at everything.

There is a misanthropic edge to many of Fassbinder’s films. A bleakness. It is often said that his work is about the fascism at play in interpersonal relationships. The fascism that blooms in all of our hearts.There are instances across Fassbinder’s filmography of, not only an awareness, but a patience, for all that is despicable. Human beings are weak, impressionable, they want to be liked but if it doesn’t work out, they’ll settle for being hated or feared. Often, Fassbinder will have a character do or say something that completely skews, if not, obliterates your previous impression of them. For example, in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), Emmi who is, up until this point, mostly redeemable, chooses Hitler’s favorite restaurant to celebrate her and Ali’s wedding, stating upon entry that she has “always wanted to go”. In the scene that follows, she mispronounces the names of menu items, the server scoffs, and one can't help but feel a bit bad for her. Is her desire to eat at Hitler’s favorite spot purely aspirational, a misguided highbrow charade? Or is she a sympathetic fascist? This is another fault of the character, any character, their world view is often contrived, never holistic.

Fassbinder is the Postwar German filmmaker - generally considered the “catalyst of the New German Cinema movement”. In his films, World War II is often alluded to / background / partial context / a shadow, but it is never the subject, or the main event. A character’s idiosyncrasies, or disturbances, could be attributed to the wartimes, but often, their faults seem too deeply intertwined with their truths. But of course they’ve always had a tremor, a temper. Many of Fassbinder’s characters have a hard edge, or have suffered immense loss. They are either in, or narrowly escaping, crisis.

In Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), Franz Bieberkopf, a rampant dilettante, oscillates between political affiliations. When we first meet Bieberkopf, fresh out of prison, he is a bit of an anarchist, sympathizing with soldiers and workers above all. As the series progresses, Bieberkopf is revealed to be immensely impressionable, confused, vindictive. He exhibits symptoms of several political philosophies, albeit meekly. Bieberkopf even briefly wears a Nazi armband, which, when questioned about, he is unable to defend, and from thereon, is never seen wearing it again. Franz Bieberkopf is similar to Tony Soprano in that way. Selfish, gruff, deeply flawed, indubitably human. Tony Soprano bites into a meatball sub and sauce dribbles onto his shirt and you forget, momentarily, that he's a bigot, because he’s the protagonist. And it is the job of the protagonist to represent a spectrum of human strength, and fallibility. It is arguably better, or more redeemable, to be overtly, rather than covertly, self-serving because then at least one is operating in defense of their own truth.

Truth is constructed daily and could easily be mistaken for anything but. Truth is nearly impossible to represent, and harder still to recognize. Truth is a fallacy, and thus, very lonely. Still, it must be guarded, I have been listening to The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as I walk around Frankfurt which, in all honesty, fertilizes the melodrama blooming in my heart. Werther is bitterly alone, consoling himself via drawn out descriptions of his loneliness. “I am proud of my heart alone”, he says, “it is the sole source of everything, all our strength, happiness and misery. All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own”.

I am alone in Frankfurt, but I have my heart.

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aesirfalling · 4 years

Note

From your writing asks: #1, 8, 10, 26, and 28 :) I wasn't sure if you had wanted me to answer any specific ones myself, but since it was an ask I wanted to respond properly~

I definitely wanted you to answer some specific ones yourself :^)

What themes would you like to write about that you feel don’t get explored very often?

I think this is obvious to everyone who’s read my more recent fics (so like... my fics from 2016 onwards?), but I like to write “realistically,” especially in regards to joys and pain. When people write about angst things like breakups and depression and physical illnesses they are sometimes hesitant (rightfully or understandably so, in many cases) to really get into the nitty gritty, and in many cases, uglier parts of them, but like, they’re a part of life and people in our lives don’t have a good time (or even many good moments at all) when these kinds of things happen to them. Those moments are still important, though, and I personally feel like embracing the dark aspects of those things makes getting through them in the end more emotionally and existentially powerful? If that makes sense. I’m definitely still wrestling with, like, the extent to which I should write such things (esp. since like, in most cases, fic readers are not reading your fic to suffer), but I think my underlying sentiment as a writer is to examine/meet feelings and life unflinchingly and with some kind of grace.

(I’ll get to the joys eventually. I swear. I have that draft of the second chapter of Lost and Found in my Google Drive. There’s Radiance and the mood in that, too. I just don’t like to write too much preemptive joy.)

The other thing I want to bring up as well is a kind of like... infrastructural realism? Or is it like, socioeconomic, worldly things? Like we’ve talked about this as well RE: how I’m covering Hope in my fics and how you worldbuild a lot around missions and such in yours. I think this is mostly a fic thing since to do this well requires a longer fic with a lot of forethought, and most people don’t have time for that. And honestly most people don’t like Hope for the structural engineering work he put into building new planets either

Favorite dialogue in your wip? (If asked more than once, respond with a new piece each time)

Oh man this interlude is going to be CHOKE FULL of dialogue that will kill me and most of them haven’t even been written yet

But the things that I’ve already put down on my dump file are like all dialogue

Here I just wrote up this thing

Snow: Go on then. Tell me that you don’t miss the stars. Tell me that you are okay with just sitting here day by day, pretending that you don’t know anything, pretending that you don’t have regrets and wants. Tell me that you don’t care if I won’t invite you to the wedding with Serah, if Light finds another man, or if some orphanage is burning on the other side of town. Tell me -

Hope: I don’t think you understand. I never needed anyone to motivate me.

Hope: I needed someone to stop me.

What scene was the most fun to write for you and why?

Hmm... we might have to establish a definition for ‘fun’ :P

I think in more recent memory, I’ve had the most fun writing the dialogue between Hope and E1 in the Intermission, because I relish all opportunities to write him (especially in FWWCH where I’m usually banned from writing in his POV) and writing two of him is just double the fun. I also adore all occasions where introspective idiots have to talk to other versions of themselves because it’s kind of like. The inevitable 404 error when they realize they are actually empathizing with themselves is tearjerker and heartwarming central.

What do you feel like you need to work on as a growing writer? How can you improve?

Oh lordy there are so many things. Lemme just list a few off the top of my head

1) Linguistic ability: There is definitely a part of me that is sad about the fact that leaving my home country at the age of 11 has left me in a place where I am kind of bilingual but kind of... not really “Native” in either. Like, I have this lingering feeling that I’ll never get to the level of a “Native” English speaker/writer, and I definitely hit like language ability walls all the time when I write - things wouldn’t feel naturally lyrical, I’d run out of words, I wouldn’t know how to describe something the way it should be described, the sentence structure variety is pitiful, etc. I think it’s especially apparent when you’re writing a long fic, where like you have to deal with the same things over and over (e.g. writing Hope cooking, or how Lightning physically perceives him, etc) and there’s more of a limit on where natural inspiration can take you. I should read more good prose (since that’s apparently how I get better at English) but, ugh, effort.

2) Characterization: how many times have I whined about how much I suck at writing Lightning lmaooooooo I think the general thing is like, everyone is decent at writing someone they personally relate to, but we struggle when we try to write outside of our comfort zone. Lightning is definitely the poster child of “character unlike me that I’m trying to get a hold of,” but I think I struggled even more trying to write Fang, and I’d probably struggle trying to write someone like Cid seriously. I think a large part of the struggle is trying to morph yourself into that character (or, like, dissociating from yourself and just... “becoming” that character depending on how you view writing meta??) since like, just understanding someone is not enough. Just understanding someone won’t let you write convincing dialogue where they talk and move around the way they usually do. You have to like, become them and that’s really hard when you have a strong writer’s ego (I know, shocking, coming from me.)

3) Worldbuilding: wtf am I even doing with Hope’s White Lotus thing lmaoooooo anyway a world could always be more interesting, consistent, realistic, nuanced etc. And not necessarily through more word count on the worldbuilding-y stuff. I think it’s more about understanding the factors driving the world than anything else. Like what the resources are, who has power/agency, how things are done (e.g., in our world, decisions are mostly made by individual nation states, although large corporate entities often have immense political influence). AND THEN JUST LIKE CHARACTERS THERE’S THE STRUGGLE WITH EXECUTING THEM - like just because I understand there are rich oligarchs behind things doesn’t mean I’m good at writing the Great Gatsby. I dunno, I have a perpetual sense of imposter syndrome when I try to understand and write things about the world, regardless of whether or not the world is real. I feel like a large part of this goes back to the fact that I’m still only in my 20s and haven’t seen much of the ‘real world’ as they say, although I guess I’m technically still way ahead of most fic writers.

4) General writer’s attitude: this influences themes and the heart of one’s writing. When I say that I care a lot about the grace and dignity of my narratives and my characters, it ties back into this - I want to tell human stories, and I want to tell stories that reflect on our struggles and our faith despite said struggles. It’s the kind of lens that I filter all my words through and impacts every word I write. The obvious problem, then, is that my writing’s only ever going to be as perceptive or sympathetic as I am, and that’s something that I can and should always work on. Am I too obsessed with tragedy? Am I honestly far better at posing questions than providing solutions, even when I highly value solutions? How do I become the kind of writer and person that I want to be without driving myself insane or losing touch with the people that I want my writing to speak to?

5) Discipline: Am I ever going to finish FWWCH (or H&L or any of my other WIPs lmao)? Stay tuned.

I think a lot of my self-doubt as a writer comes from just how much I know I can improve on tbh

Do you need background noise to write? If so, what do you listen to?

I wouldn’t say I work with “background noise” - I work with mood-appropriate playlists (did you know I’ve been gratuitously naming all my fic chapters after songs?), or you know, the good ole 2 o’clock cosmic silence. It’s pretty interesting to me actually, since I also have an engineering degree and like... I need silence when I’m trying to logick things like math or the correct wording for a formal writing thing (e.g. a grant or policy proposal). So my creative hemisphere wants stimulation while my mechanical brain wants silence. Figures.

#thank you for sending these in ;_;#writing tag #long post

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meetdheeraj · 4 years

Text

Rajeev Dixit, from whom Ramdev borrowed his swadeshi rhetoric and narrative - Ramdev has openly accepted this - was born in UP. He was pursuing BTech from Allahabad when the Bhopal Gas Tragedy occurred. He began thinking and asking questions about what had brought Union Carbide to India in the first place and about the economic compulsions that forced Indians to allow multinationals to set up their plants in the country. These questions led him to Dharampal, a Gandhian thinker, who shaped his economic worldview.

Seven years later, in January 1992, Dixit founded the Azadi Bachao Andolan. The Khadi clad Dixit took to touring the country, giving thousands of lectures and speeches in elegant Hindi. Over the next several years he stitched together and refined his argument against multinational companies and claimed that liberalization and globalization were the modern faces of colonialism. His organization recorded his speeches, and sold cassettes and later CDs of them wherever they could.

With 10 crore supporters and a presence in 1500 tehsils across the country, the Azadi Bachao Andolan became an object of envy for anyone looking to build an army of followers.

Ramdev certainly looked at him as a valuable ally.

Sometime in February 2004, according to K N Govindacharya, then a RSS ideologue, 'I ran into Ramdev somewhere in Bhopal and he told me he was looking for Rajeev Dixit. So I made a call.' Shortly after that, Ramdev met Dixit in Nasik. Ramdev agreed to sell Dixit's CDs at his Yoga camps for a commission.

That was difficult year for Dixit. In 2004, around the time of the wedding of Dixit's younger brother Pradeep, a sensational allegation rocked the andolan. "Suddenly, his brother Pradeep constructed a house for thirty-forty lakh, a lot of money at that time. Everyone believed Rajeev Dixit took money belonging to the trust and gave it to his brother."

There was big backlash.. Rajeev began to get isolated within his own Organization.

It was under these circumstances that Ramdev met a vulnerable Dixit, and a bond developed between the yoga teacher and the battle-weary swadeshi campaigner and deepened over the next three years. By 2007 Dixit would become Ramdev's mentor and a trusted aide guiding his political ambitions.

Remember Karamveer - who helped Ramdev acquire an ashram and taught him how to teach Yoga - he did not like Ramdev moving away from idealism. Ramdev had brought his family to ashram, trust money was being transferred to individuals, Ramdev bought a bike and house for his younger brother using funds from trust, he also bought a house for his sister and her husband. Ramdev had also started to charge his yoga classes. Closer to the stage and ticket costs increased manifold. All this hugely bothered Karamveer who thought sadhu's life was to give, not take. He believed that there should have been no place for moneymaking and self-interest in Ramdev's life.

He argued with Ramdev on these grounds. But Ramdev did not change. His old mentor had nothing to offer him anymore. His usability was dwindling and besides, new mentor, Rajeev Dixit was helping Ramdev sculpt his politics and economic worldview.

Karamveer left on 25 March 2005.

Between this, Balakrishna was appointed managing director of Patanjali Ayurveda, this had intensified the rivalry between him and Ramdev's brother Ram Bharat. These two rivals would unite against a third ascendant force: Rajeev Dixit. Dixit, national secretary of Bharat Swabhiman Andolan was the man who was always standing beside Ramdev now. Ramdev hoped to eventually convert this trust into full-fledged political party. With Ramdev's ballooning political ambitions, Rajeev Dixit's importance also grew. He was now the key man, at the heart of all the action - adviser to and architect of Ramdev's socio-political messaging.

Balkrishna and Ram Bharat looked on resentfully as Rajeev Dixit, a suave outsider, far better educated and articulate than either of them, usurped their positions as advisers and became Ramdev's trusted political mentor.

At the same time, Dixit's popularity was such that it was beginning to steal the limelight away from Ramdev himself. Yashdev Shastri, Ramdev's brother-in-law, was also jealous of Dixit, and had allegedly warned Ramdev not to give Dixit too much airtime: 'Or people will forget you and start following him.'

About a year after founding the Bharat Swabhiman Trust, in March 2010, Ramdev kept his word and launched a political party. Under Dixit's guidance, the party made fighting corruption and black money the centrepiece of their message. When Ramdev unveiled his Bharat Swabhiman Party in New Delhi, he declared, 'I will field candidates from all the 543 constituencies of India and then there will be revolution.'

In a bid to increase membership, Ramdev and Dixit planned yatra across India.

But Dixit was not unaware that his presence in Haridwar and closeness to Ramdev was causing unpleasantness. Madan Dubey, a long time associate of Rajeev Dixit who continues to propound the views of the Azadi Bachao Andolan, says, "He must have been troubled... Because that July [2010] when I asked him.. If I should also sign up to become member of Bharat Swabhiman Andolan, he told me to wait. He told me he was not sure... And that made me think there was something going on."

On 30 November 2010, two months after Ramdev and Rajeev Dixit began their nationwide Bharat Swabhiman yatra to drum up support for their party, Dixit was dead. He died on his forty-third birthday.

After massive cardiac arrest, Dixit collapsed in an Arya Samaj guest house in the remote town of Bemetara in Chhattisgarh where he was delivering a lecture. Although he was rushed to a nearby hospital, he did not last through the night. According to Ramdev, Dixit refused to have the medicines prescribed to him by the local doctor.

Pradeep Dixit, Rajeev's brother was not let to talk to him - 'I could not speak to him because they said he was not in a condition to talk.. By the time I reached him early the following morning, my brother was dead.'

But in a televised address on Aastha channel, Ramdev claimed to have spoken to him for an whole hour. "Maine karib ek ghante tak unko samjhata raha, ek ghante tak! Bhai Rajeev, ab shareer mein dikkat aa rahi hai to.. Unko shayad yeh genetic bimari thi... BP ki, sugar ki, heart ki... Teeno." (I kept trying to explain to him for an hour, a whole hour! Brother Rajeev, there is a problem in your body.. He probably had a genetic condition of blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease.. All three)

Pradeep Dixit cannot help but wonder now: How had his brother, who Ramdev's men had told him was in no condition to speak on the phone, managed to have an hour-long telephonic conversation with Ramdev about the ideal line of treatment? He also asserts that his brother suffered from no ailments and had never taken medicines for diabetes, blood pressure or a heart problem.

After Dixit died, a seemingly grief-stricken Ramdev had spoken to the family over the phone and requested them to allow him to arrange for the last rites on the banks of the Ganga in order to honour him. The stunned family went along with Ramdev's plans. So instead of taking body back to Wardha where it would otherwise have been flown to, it was transported to Haridwar on a chartered plane.

By next morning, hundreds of Swadeshi activists from around the country were making their way to Haridwar to pay their respects to their leader. One of them was Madan Dubey. It was 18 hours since death when Dubey arrived. Dixit's body lay in the Great Hall of Patanjali Yogpeeth 2 - an enormous space designed to allow thousands of people to do Yoga together.

In the hall, mourners sat on mattresses and stood around in groups. Dixit's body lay on a block of ice, draped in white and orange. But something was unsettling the onlookers: Dixit's face 'was unrecognizable... A strange purple and blue. His skin was peeling strangely. There was some black, blue blood around his nose,' Dubey remembers.

Dubey finally said out loud what many were whispering: 'There has been foul play... I want to know if anyone else feels that a postmortem should be conducted.'

He asked those who raised their hands to sign a petition addressed to Ramdev, demanding a postmortem before the cremation. By nightfall, there were fifty signatures on it.

At six next morning, a group of nice men walked through grey winter mist to take the petition to Ramdev, only to be stopped by the guard who refused to let them enter the two-storey building complex where Ramdev used to live at that time. Dubey told the guard, 'All right then, please go and tell Babaji that if he does not meet us, Dixit's dead body will not be allowed to be cremated.'

Finally, Ramdev relented to a meeting at 7:30 a.m., and called in Dubey and his associates but 'only after taking away our cellphones, to make sure nothing was recorded,' Dubey recalls, a fear that even Kirit Mehta referred to during his fateful encounter with Ramdev.

War of words began. Ramdev insisted there was no need for postmortem - 'What is need for it? This is natural death... I spoke to the doctors myself. I have reports from the doctors that he had a heart attack and all that.'

Remember Ramdev was not present where Dixit died. He only talked to him in phone. Dubey pointed this to Ramdev. He asked, how can he be sure there was no conspiracy?

Ramdev was growing angrier by the minute. He tried to rule out postmortem saying it was against 'Hindu dharma'. But Dubey dismissed this objection saying, 'He [Rajeev Dixit] had no dharma. His dharma was the service of this country. He never called himself a man of any religion. So don't worry about Hindu dharma and get the postmortem done...'

This went on and got uglier. Finally, Ramdev suggested that they all go to the hall where Dixit's body lay, and ask the people there, and the Dixit family, for their opinion. This sounded like a reasonable thing to do. But while Ramdev sat in his car with his people and sped off, Dubey and the others in his party followed in foot to the hall that was a twenty-minute walk away.

Cremation was originally scheduled for 11am. But angry Ramdev stormed into hall and commanded body be carried for cremation right away. It was still only nine. Ambulance with body set off before Dubey and company could reach and stop it.

"After the cremation, when Rajeevbhai's laptop and his two phones were returned to his family, they discovered that all three devices were completely wiped clean. All data on all three devices had been erased. I saw Rajeevji's room in Haridwar in a ransacked condition, things and documents missing from his room after his death... I've felt absolutely sure that there was foul play in Rajeevbhai's death... I know it. I saw the body. I will never stop saying it,' Dubey asserts.

- From Godman to Tycoon by Priyanka Pathak-Narain

#Baba Ramdev #Ramdev #Balkrishna #Patanjali #Ayurveda #Medicines #FMCG #Murders #Rajeev Dixit #India #Politics #Business

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eluvisen · 5 years

Text

OC As Companion Meme

(look at me, perpetually late to the party)

NAME: Kaelyn Prescott

FOUND: Diamond City, after Road to Freedom has been completed.

COMPANION PERK: Friends in High Places - 20% increased accuracy with sniper rifles.

WEAPON OF CHOICE:

Silenced 10mm

Sniper rifle

I THINK WE SHOULD TRAVEL TOGETHER:

“Is this for... official business? Full steam ahead, then.”

“I hope you’re taking me somewhere nice.”

“My husband would disagree, but he’s not here. Let’s go.”

“Of course, but I have to be home by six. Family dinner tonight.”

“What trouble do you have planned for today?”

“Good timing. A desk job can be tiring.”

“I’ll just leave a note for my husband. He’ll understand.”

USE MELEE:

“To think I left my swatter at home.”

“Close quarters isn't my specialty, but...”

“If that's where you need me.”

“So we're hitting and running, is that the plan?”

USE RANGED:

“Back to my favourite spot on the battlefield.”

“I’m more than happy to keep my distance from the things that want to kill us.”

“Now we’re talking.”

“I’ll be watching your back.”

OPEN INVENTORY:

“One person's junk is another's treasure, I suppose…”

“What do you want me to carry?”

“Take a look.”

“Anything you need?”

IF OVERENCUMBERED:

“You'll break your back at this rate.”

“I can lighten that load for you.”

“You really do have one of everything in your pockets, don't you?”

“We need to move faster than this. I don't want to be caught in the open.”

“Maybe we should invest in a brahmin to carry all that.”

STAY CLOSE:

“Right behind you.”

“I'll stay close.”

“Better we stick together around here.”

KEEP DISTANCE:

“Can do.”

“I'll keep my distance.”

“I'll be back there with my sniper rifle.”

“I’ll follow your lead.”

STEALTH:

“Now we're talking.”

“We'll take this carefully.”

“I'll be right behind you.”

“They'll never see us coming. Or at least they’ll never see me coming.”

BACKUP:

“Can do.”

“Sorry. I’ll take a step back.”

BE PASSIVE:

“I’d rather not pull the trigger if I don’t have to.”

“Sure, we can try talking first.”

“Pacifism is worth a shot. No pun intended.”

“Let’s try not to make any new enemies.”

BE AGGRESSIVE:

“Ready to fire when you are.”

“We’re going the fire and blood route today?”

“This doesn’t look like a friendly neighborhood we’ve wandered into.”

“If you insist.”

“Diplomacy too boring for you, I take it?”

USE STIMPAK:

“Ah, that feels better. Thanks.”

“Thanks, I needed that.”

“Gonna feel that tomorrow…”

“Nate’s going to freak when he sees this…”

WAIT HERE:

“Waiting.”

“I’ll stay put.”

“Don’t take too long.”

FOLLOW ME:

“Good, you’re back.”

“Let’s not waste daylight, then.”

“Lead on, then.”

DISMISSED:

“Don’t be a stranger.”

“I go, then. See you later.”

“It’s time I headed home, anyway.”

“If you need me, you know where to find me.”

“Not going to lie, I’m looking forward to seeing my husband again.”

ENEMIES (LONG RANGE)

“A part of me feels bad, but I know they don’t!”

“Let’s teach them a lesson they'll never forget.”

“Sometimes I feel bad for them. Not today!”

(Raiders) “They won’t get a chance to hurt anyone else!”

(Insects) “I hate these things!”

(Insects) “At least they’re easier to hit when they’re this big?”

(Synths/Robots) “Where’s the self-destruct button?”

(Synths/Robots) “You're off to the scrap heap!”

(Super mutants) “Super mutants? We should pick them off from a distance.”

(Feral ghouls) “Best put them out of their misery…”

(Feral ghouls) “Don’t let them close in on us!”

(Critical Kill) “Good shot!”

(Critical Kill) “Like something out of a comic book.”

ENEMIES (CLOSE RANGE)

“You should have run while you had a chance!”

“Enemies closing in!”

“Coming in hot!”

“Hands off!”

“Oh no you don’t…”

(Insects) “I need a big flyswatter.”

(Insects) “Ugh! Disgusting.”

(Synths/Robots) “Think a factory reset will work?”

(Children of Atom) “Atom’s wrath? We’ll see about that.”

(Super mutants) “They’re somehow uglier up close.”

(Feral ghouls) “Don’t let them swarm us!”

(Mirelurks) “Great, now I’m covered in crab guts.”

WHEN ENTERING:

GOODNEIGHBOR

“Goodneighbor used to be even shadier, if you can believe it.”

“Watch your back as well as your caps stash. Both are good targets.”

“This isn’t my idea of a night on the town.”

DIAMOND CITY

“Home sweet home.”

“I need to check in on my family while we’re here.”

“Huh, D-Sec patrols have been switched up again...”

“If you look past the mud, rust and politics, it’s one of the nicest settlements in the ‘Wealth.”

BUNKER HILL

“Watch your wallet. Bunker Hill has all sorts of ways of parting you from your hard-earned caps.”

BOSTON AIRPORT

“Can you imagine all the places these planes could reach? If only we could still travel that far.”

“I wonder how many planes were in the air when the bombs dropped?”

(After Reveille has triggered) “Look at those fortifications. The Brotherhood establishing a foothold here.”

(After Reveille has triggered) “Is anyone else nervous that a foreign army is camping in the Commonwealth?”

(After Reveille has triggered) “Whatever else the Brotherhood is, they’re serious about protecting their base.”

THE PRYDWEN

“How did they build something like this?”

“The Prydwen sure is impressive. And alarming.”

“Be careful around the Brotherhood, okay?”

THE CASTLE

“When the Minutemen lost the Castle, it was the beginning of their end.”

(After Castle is restored) “I never thought I’d see the Castle restored, but here we are. Maybe we can turn the Commonwealth around.”

(After Castle is restored) “If the Castle fell once, it can fall again. I hope the Minutemen are ready to protect it.”

(After Castle is restored) “The view from the walls must be breathtaking.”

QUINCY

(Before clearing Quincy) “Quincy used to be one of the larger settlements in the ‘Wealth. Damn Gunners…”

(After clearing Quincy) “Good riddance to the Gunners. Maybe one day Quincy can thrive again.”

THE GLOWING SEA

“You know, I was planning on having children.”

“Whenever I saw the glow on the horizon, I never thought ‘it would be nice to see this up close’.”

“This place doesn’t feel real. It’s hard to believe there was ever anything else here.”

“Ground zero of the bomb…”

CONCORD

“If you ousted the raiders and put up some walls, Concord could be a decent place to settle.”

LEXINGTON

“Word is Lexington is overrun with ferals. If you trip over one, don’t scream. I don’t want to be chased through the streets by a horde.”

“If we’re quiet, we might not wake up the ferals in the streets.”

SALEM

“Salem is a good place for a witch hunt, I hear.”

“We’d best not linger here.”

LYNN WOODS

“I’ve heard this is deathclaw territory. Be on your guard.”

“A bad place to step on a stick. We don’t want to alert something nasty that we’re here.”

NAHANT

“This looks like it used to be quite the neighborhood.”

“I imagine this isn’t the same ocean view that they used to have around here.”

“There’s a rumour that a raider gang claimed the peninsula. In case the threat of sea monsters wasn’t enough for you.”

CAMBRIDGE

“I hear there used to be places of learning around here. It's a shame they're gone.”

SANCTUARY

“It would have been nice to live here. Maybe it can live up to its name again.”

AGGRESSION: not aggressive/aggressive/very aggressive/frenzied

CONFIDENCE: cowardly/cautious/average/brave/foolhardy

ASSISTANCE: helps nobody/helps allies/helps friends and allies

LOSE AS COMPANION PERMANENTLY:

Too many dislikes

Attacking the Railroad

Selling Billy to slavers in Kid in a Fridge

Killing Kent Connolly in The Silver Shroud

Siding with Covenant

Destroying Acadia

Destroying Far Harbor

Raiding the Commonwealth for Nuka-World

PERSONAL MISSION:

After Graygarden has been recruited as a settlement, Kaelyn receives a message from her mother asking her to come home. When the player and Kaelyn enter Diamond City, they are directed to the greenhouses where Eromi works. She will show them her sickly crops and request that Kaelyn and the player find her some pesticide to curtail the problem before it creates a food crisis.

The player and Kaelyn can go to either Graygarden or Vault 81 (if the Vault is open) to collect the pesticide. Upon their return to the greenhouses, the player and Kaelyn assist Eromi fix the water distribution in the greenhouses, and, with her thanks, the quest ends.

Later, Kaelyn will receive a message from Nate that she has to return home at once. If the player does not agree to immediately travel to Diamond City, she will leave of her own accord. In the city, the player discovers that Eromi is sick from an unknown poison, more crops are dying, and Nate has been ordered to crack down on smugglers selling food in the Lower Stands.

With some investigation, the player learns that Erica Beattie, a prominent Upper Stander who owns the greenhouses, is the saboteur. She has been manufacturing a food crisis to drive up prices and cull the population of low-income citizens. When confronted, she threatens to have both Eromi and Nate fired and blacklisted to stop Kaelyn from exposing the plot.

The player can either encourage Kaelyn to fight for change (thus keeping her family in Diamond City) or protect her family (resulting in the family moving to Vault 81 to join Nate’s family). In either instance, the story is leaked to Piper, who prints a Publick Occurrences article on the sabotage, triggering protests in the Lower Stands. If Kaelyn’s family remains in Diamond City, both Eromi and Nate are fired and become the unwitting faces of the protests. If the family returns to Vaults 81, they are safe and Eromi’s expertise allows the Vault to increase the amount and quality of its produce, while the protests in Diamond City eventually fizzle out.

Tagged by @mrninjapineapple (a very long time ago)! Given I’m so late to the party, I won’t tag anyone but if you haven’t done it, feel free to give it a go!

#fallout 4 #oc companion meme #i may have also gone overboard with this #kaelyn prescott

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oliverzafar · 5 years

Note

What’s your view on the electoral system?

Metaphorically, he’s cracking his knuckles in anticipation of his answer. It’s no secret that Oliver abhors the electoral system, and he’s more than ready to recite the answer he’s been preaching for years now. “A democracy should be based on the principle of everyone having an equal vote, and that’s simply not what the electoral college allows for. It takes political weight away from a majority of Americans and places it in the hands of the minority - which is quite literally the opposite of what our Founders wanted the electoral college to be about. Instead, the original vision for the electoral college is to ensure that Middle America wasn’t forgotten, but what it’s ended up creating is a system in which nine states can make or break an election and a vote in Wisconsin has three times the weight as one in California. Pandering to a large group of voters isn’t a pretty aspect of democracy, but pandering to a highly specialized group of voters just because they can sway an election is even uglier. Solving this would be a quick switch of just abiding by a simple one-person/one-vote system. The very intent of the electoral college as framed by the Founders is the opposite of -.”

“That’s time, Senator Zafar.” Oliver has to resist the urge to swear. Instead, with a humble smile he says, “Thank you. Bottom line, I oppose the electoral system.”

#cbcdebate

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connywrites · 5 years

Text

Eavesdropping

now on [AO3]

“Yeah, well, my mom was a piece of shit, and uh, my dad—oh yeah, he was a piece of shit, too,” Leo snapped, a familiar sign of finding it hard to stop talking shit once he started.

“Not to mention the whole, liking an android more than me, anyway,” he spat with the same fluctuation in his voice as he’d used the day he sauntered in with the expectation of more money; the day when Markus confronted him and his own father encouraged him to back down from his spat of violence. It didn’t matter what he did, how he did it or what measures he took to achieve what he wanted, whether Carl gave it to him or not– it was all he’d seen, wanted or cared for, so he’d go out of his way to do anything to obtain it.

Leo was a person that insisted on pushing forward, for better or worse. If he was challenged, he would tackle it head-on, even if it meant a worse demise for himself.

“But that’s just the complaint everyone has these days, isn’t it? At least it was before everything lead to shit and robots had their heads over ours. But hey, maybe that’s just my fucking problem, after–”

A strange sensation churned in his chest while his typical double personality fought against itself, leaving him to try and make a decision over ‘which Leo’ he would allow himself to be today. It depended on the moment, what he wanted, and which way would be the best to achieve his desires. Lying and telling stories were second nature to him, and exaggeration in his favor fit his sticky fingers like sterile gloves.

“You know what that piece of shit said to me?” He always did the annoying pause for emphasis after a prologue of words, knowing it riled up whomever he was talking to, a key role in his typical manipulation tactics. The more he spoke out loud, the more he fed into the rage still stirring within him, feeling the resurgence of bitter hatred seeping its way to the surface of his skin the same way it always did.

“You know, my dad was full of his own crap, but at least he was real,” he said in an intentional diversion from his original question as he’d already lost the thought.

“This thing…I dunno. It pretends. It pretends real well.” Whoever he was on the phone with seemed to encourage him as he rocked in his seat, leaning forward and speaking with dramatic prominence.

“And that’s like, that’s the point, right? It was made like that, and dad fell for it. Just like ev-er-y-bo-dy else,” he muttered in sharp, slow, spaced syllables, revisiting his misanthropic view of humanity as a whole to fuel the emotional fire.

“I don’t know what’s up, but it’s freaky, you know? I live here, with this thing that could kill me in my sleep. I can’t really explain it. Everyone was scared seeing him on TV, and I live with that, night and day. I could die like, you know, one of the cops in the street did or whatever. I mean, they shot him and took him to the junkyard and the freak came back from the dead, or whatever.”

It was too deep of a thought process, but now that he’d plunged into it, he couldn’t escape what he’d started.

“That’s what I mean. You don’t really know, and it’s not like they tell you.” While Leo couldn’t comprehend much about the politics involving Cyberlife, he had a basic understanding of why the majority of the population didn’t take a particular liking to androids. The shift of power was sudden, and in his own view, he felt like it was majorly his own fault—he’d been shoved to the ground with a concussion in the midst of a petty argument, they’d lost their father and before he knew it, he was sharing bus seats with different mechanical models sharing the same faces, pretending they had an identity in a serial number.

Human rights. New species. Something something, new life form. Freedom. The news reports still rang in his mind as it was all he saw and listened to while bound in the hospital bed that day, as well as the next three following. He’d woken with a bloody nose and no memory of what had happened, only recalling his crippled father hovering above him in fear, sobbing over what he had done and the fact Markus was missing and ‘in danger’. The way Carl spoke about both of them as if they were on equal ground was always strange to Leo, but he knew better than to assume his dad saw him as anything close to how he perceived Markus, thus never raising his hopes with the acknowledgement that he would ever measure up to a machine.

A specifically designed android, modern art with a specific goal in mind, something so precisely constructed down to its behavior and personality. Leo had no chance of fully grasping the degree of which Markus was finely tuned, as he’d only been able to see what was revealed to him. When he wasn’t thinking about the angle of the lifestyle Markus got to lead, he didn’t mind treating him as a person and often didn’t think too hard about it the more time went on. As soon as he could find a reason to use it as verbal bait or any kind of manipulation leverage overall, however, it didn’t matter what Markus had done or fought for; he was reduced to being useless plastic praised much too high in Leo’s personally opinionated mind.

“Why were you saying those things about me?”

Confrontation was one of the most difficult things for Leo, and now he was caught in the act, standing stiffly while his body wavered to one side with a bout of anxiety bringing him to tap his fingertips at his side, letting out a sigh, then two, and three. Shaking his head, he turned to leave; but a hand gripping his shoulder was quick to stop him as Markus stilled him with a moment of thought as the android paused to find eye contact, eyebrows narrowing with a stare of disbelief and an edge of anger in a final response to how Leo had been acting, just now as well as overall. Is this what Carl had gone through every time?

“Leo…are you talking about me differently, depending on who you’re speaking to? And how you want them to see me?”

Being called out made Leo feel guilty, and he hated guilt. It meant that not only was he wrong, but he was forced to acknowledge it. Resonating a sense of self-awareness, he was still tussling with between accepting who he was and following through as a better person, or trying to latch onto the uglier parts of himself that existed through old grudges and bad habits for the sake of ease.

There was something in the way that Markus stared at him, a certain sorrow in his eyes with the shift of his mouth into a frown – not one of anger or frustration, but of betrayal. How could Leo blame him? They’d spent this long together with Markus constantly at his side, helping him, teaching them how to handle new coping mechanisms and the lack of certainty that came with the death of a loved one, alongside the difficulties of quitting hard drugs. Sometimes Carl’s death was seemingly the only thing they had in common. Markus felt like he’d taken it much more seriously and heavily than Leo, but he’d seen from the young man’s emotional outbursts – even if they were small and far in-between, as Leo didn’t like being emotional or giving into those thoughts and feelings at all, which was what made them genuine and proved to Markus that what he thought and felt was real – he had his own sorrows haunting him over the matter. There was something in Leo that one would only recognize if they looked, squinted and dug around for, and that was the personality that was resilient, the Leo that wanted to live, to learn and to thrive, weighed down by his previous history, from family neglect to drug abuse leading up to felony charges. A badly manufactured firecracker waiting to be lit with a short fuse while it crackled up to one explosion after another, unexpected and abrupt with sparks flying everywhere. Sometimes it was a glorious display, but usually it was an awkwardly packed bundle of gunpowder in a crooked shell, bound to explode without warning and provide a show subpar to what was usually expected.

A disappointment. A dud. A weakness.

“Shut up,” Leo said in offense, as if Markus’ words were the wrong ones and he had been in the right to deflect them. Lowering his stature while the width of his shoulders tensed and squared, Markus glared at his brother with a gaze holding betrayal. Leo wasn’t exactly the type that was able to read people like books, but he figured if he put forth enough emotion, it would be harder for Leo to avoid, no matter how difficult of a time he had with body language or eye contact.

“I didn’t say anything,” Markus notified him firmly.

“You’ve been doing all the talking. I just don’t like what I’m hearing.” Surprising for Leo, Markus’ voice was soft to his ears, kind and with a slight edge that reminded him of someone that had been hurt – the usual way people responded once they realized you’d set them up for disappointment and used them to gain something for yourself, meanwhile shoving them under the bus in your favor, just as he’d been so many times before, an uncomfortable reminder that whether he liked it or not, Markus was emotive. He could feel, he could think, he could become sad or grow angry, and while Leo didn’t understand it even to the slightest degree, he emotionally crumbled faster than he could catch himself once the subject was brought to his attention. It was harder to be an asshole without the red ice blurring his vision in a berserk panic, leaving him with no choice than to consider what he’d said, and the damage it had already done.

Markus drew in a long, deep breath while he reminded himself that if he wanted to help and understand Leo, it would take patience, to a degree that was new and challenging to him. Sometimes he felt as though he’d finally cracked through the shell, gotten Leo to shine for who he truly was, following his better beliefs and feeling ambition to his core, the key component to fighting his addictions; and sometimes he felt like he’d worked so hard to chisel his way through, only for all the hard work to be shoved back into his face multiple times over. Maybe this was what made Leo so difficult to get along with, but with that thought, he knew that it was only that way because no one else tried to refuse his sly ways. Whoever Leo had known in the past let him get away with the lies, the twisted words and anger, the inflated ego, the pity parties, the coercive motions and cunning words if he wanted someone to feel bad for him. He’d seen it, and he hated it, the way Leo would take every verbal and behavioral cue as an excuse to turn it back on whoever seemingly opposed him or utilize it as a chance to attract attention to himself.

“Leo—” His voice was soft but stern as he tried to catch the other’s attention.

“Leo,” he spat back with blatant sarcasm, rolling his eyes while he mimicked the word with spite and mockery.

“Christ, now you sound like my mom, too. What, my name only worth saying when you want something? When I do something wrong?” That glare was all too familiar, dark, radiant brown eyes staring into Markus’ while he was reminded of interactions he’d long since wanted to forget. Markus acknowledged that despite his personal frustrations, if he didn’t stand up to Leo when he was in a mood like this, no one would, and he’d never learn that he couldn’t get away with acting this way.

“I don’t say your name as means to antagonize you.” For a moment, he’d forgotten that trying to explain himself was a bit too much with words too long, bounding to only frustrate Leo worse; closing his eyes, Markus lifted a hand in a ‘wait a minute’ gesture while he regathered his thoughts. Leo looked nonplussed, scowling while he glared him down through frustration as he was made to deal with this, but let Markus continue.

“I just wish you’d listen, for once. That I could trust you not to act like this as soon as I turn around.”

Was he feeling regret? Over an android’s words? Leo didn’t want to believe it, staring at the ground as he shifted his weight to the other leg again, rotating a foot and smudging the toe of his shoe into the ground, as if snubbing something out – though nothing was there, proving it to be an action carried out by the need of his internal bursting energy alone, always seeming to disrupt him in a way that made it so he couldn’t sit still or hold conversation for long. Markus couldn’t tell whether to blame it on the drugs anymore or not, or leave it to the fact Leo was simply like that as a person.

“Yeah, well, I wish all sorts of shit, but that’s just it – wishes don’t come true.” There was a cold callousness in Leo’s eyes that Markus hadn’t seen since he was on drugs, and that was when the realization clicked into place that it didn’t take an external substance for Leo to act up; it was simply something he did when he might see the response as beneficial, or simply carried it on as a habit, a weapon tucked away into its holster until he needed it.

“So I’m supposed to believe the past four months of our time together weren’t…” too many words, he knew already.

“Leo, I thought that you… I thought that we,” he restated, quick to realize his monologue would likely hit deaf ears and quickly shortening his sentence before continuing. To his surprise, Leo huffed, stopping in place while he considered the words; bringing his hands to the sides of his head, Leo clenched fingers into his hair as he began to pace, a blatant sign something was bothering him and thus hinting Markus to tread lightly.

“I thought we were doing well.” He wanted to finish his sentence with more dialogue, but it lacked malice, holding pure interest as to why Leo would turn on him this way and what he should do about it. He’d heard about it, he knew full and well how Leo changed his personality on a whim, fished for compliments and played the victim card when he needed to for whatever he wanted. Nonetheless, he’d never seen the actions in front of his own two eyes, and the striking disappointment that sunk deep into him made Markus realize so much more about Leo than he’d ever wanted to. It explained why Carl had such difficulty trying to keep in touch alone, why even after doing their best for Leo, everyone had to give up eventually and leave him to face his own battles; a bold contrast to how Leo seemed to either belittle himself or inflate his own ego depending on the moment, leaving Markus to pick apart an algorithm he’d never had to before.

“It’s not that easy,” Leo griped, an immediate excuse to avoid the conversation as he, again, tried to leave. Markus was quick to position himself in his way, tilting his head with a look on his face that made Leo feel cornered—not afraid, simply aware, leaning his head back with an upward tilt of his chin as he subconsciously tried to make himself appear bigger in favor of the interaction, even as the shorter party.

“I never said it was.” The level of intelligence this computer held reminded Leo of his frustration in the first place, index fingers rubbing circles in the sides of his temples as he glared straight ahead and began pacing back and forth across the polished wood floor.

“You can’t keep doing this.” Markus let the name drop, lacking the need to further add a carved sharpness to the words he spoke, something else he and Leo would disagree on again and again. Every once in a while, Leo seemed to belittle his own name, reacting to it with sudden disgust as if it left a ringing in his ears or a bitter taste on his tongue. What it was like to hate one’s own moniker was entirely beyond Markus, as his was simple and held no particular emotional attachment, short and to the point. There was the generally added personal connection to surnames, and Markus had yet to brave bringing up the sound of Manfred between the two of them.

“I can do whatever I want,” Leo stated blatantly, even though both of them knew better and neither of them believed him for a second.

“Is it that easy for you to lie?” This caught Leo’s attention full-on as he froze in place, staring Markus down with an expression mixed between disbelief and the ‘duh’ he communicated with his eyes, barely short of escaping his lips.

“Is it that hard for you?” Leo parroted, glaring Markus in the eyes the same way he’d done the last time while his fingertips curled into the fabric of the android’s jacket.

“Is it that easy for you to be honest? Oh yeah, you never had to defend yourself, so of course it is! You had nothing to lie about,” he began, already feeling the aggravated heat on his face from his own frustration alone. He subconsciously stepped onto the seething hot trail of rage, knowing it would lead to somewhere ugly and regretful, but took it in stride for the moment as he felt like it was the right thing to do.

“You had nobody to lie to, so of course you wouldn’t get it. There was no need!” Despite having Leo yelling in his face another time over, Markus took a long, quiet moment to recollect, sucking in a deep breath and letting it out in one long, slow motion, before opening his eyes to catch Leo’s while he was granted the mercy of holding eye contact, no matter how short-lived the moment might have been.

“No, I didn’t lie,” he stated with clear modesty.

“There’s no reason for me to lie, withhold secrets or falsify the truth. That isn’t to say I haven’t done it before – I understand the need to when you’re in the position of danger. I will never understand doing so for the sake of self-gratitude, though.”

“You what now?” Right. Markus glanced over to one of the chairs in the main room, leading them both to sit down across one another in the seats on each side of the empty chess table, hoping that Leo would accept the invitation to settle and vent one way or another, whether the conversation was personally constructive for either of them or not. He knew when Leo acted like this it meant he had a lot of pent-up frustrations he needed to get out, and sometimes complaining alone did the trick; but this time, Markus felt like it might be a little bit different.

“Sorry,” Markus offered, thinking about how talking in shorter sentences was his own sort of habit he needed to change, but it was a simple rearrangement of thought compared to the daily major life aspects Leo had to work around and teach himself to adjust to. All he was trying to do was make communication easier between them, and if he still caught himself finding trouble with it, he couldn’t imagine how many times more difficult such a thing must be for someone trying to turn their entire life around. Leo only stared at him.

“Lying just to lie doesn’t make sense to me, neither does lying to get something I want. That’s why you do it, right?” Leo scoffed, glaring daggers in Markus’ direction.

“Yeah, sure, let’s go with that. Lying to win. It’s that easy.” Both of them paused with a heavy tension between them, aggravation building, doing no favors for the docile nature Markus intended to keep with this exchange.

“No. I never said you won, or that it was easy,” Markus corrected, and Leo bared his teeth with a snarl as he further disliked being corrected.

“I said I can’t do the same thing myself unless the situation called for it. I want to understand why you talk to your friends like I’m an object after I thought you were finally understanding how to respect me as a person.” Shifting in the seat, it took all the willpower Leo had not to get up and leave, arms straight at his sides while his hands clenched into the soft red fabric of stiff luxury cushions. Lowering his glower while he glared off to the side, he shook his head with an unsteady motion as everything in his body ushered him to keep moving.

“’Cause some people don’t get it, okay? They’re never going to. They’re not gonna wake up one day and think androids are people, no matter how hard you try,” he continued with spite, but his lowered vision and shrunken shoulders told Markus that there was sincerity in Leo’s word, an emotional defense mechanism slowly crumbling as honesty and realization swirled in Leo’s mind, constantly changing his view for the better even as he dug his hands into old mud.

“It’s just…easier to talk to ‘em the way they know, you know?” Markus glared at him, not feeling so bad when Leo adjusted uncomfortably in his seat again.

“You talked about how I could kill you. You don’t really think of me that way, do you?” Leo swallowed, making Markus grow uneasy. Was this a thought process Leo had stuck in his mind all along? An assumption he’d never heard, and thus didn’t bother trying to work around?

“No,” Leo said, but it was in a rush and he realized he should take it back immediately as it was a falsified truth.

“Maybe,” he snapped, closing his eyes while he leaned back and rubbed over the skin of his forehead, rolling it over his eyebrows and back up to his hairlinne again. Too honest. This was speaking more than he cared to, and every word dug the stress in deeper.

“I don’t know. You’ve seen what—what those things—what your friends do!” Aware there was no way to properly speak about it in a dignified matter, he’d changed his wording with a last-second moment of lament, shaking his head and combing his hands through his hair.

“I don’t know, dude, everyone’s out to get me all the time, why the hell should I think you’re any different?” Leo’s eyes stared at Markus’, but they jittered, dilated and unfocused in a way that would make Markus assume he was on drugs if he didn’t know any better. This was merely a typical stress response in Leo and would usually go as soon as it came as long as he let him ride it out the way he needed to; but that was the trickier part. Sometimes it was a good idea to let Leo get his frustrations out, and others it only made the situation and his own train of thought that much worse.

“Will you listen to me if I explain it to you?” There was a sharpness to Markus’ voice as he offered-yet-threatened to try and hold a conversation over the matter, and Leo stopping in place at least proved he was willing to consider the idea. Shrugging, Leo pulled his arms up from the seat and leaned into the back of the chair, folding his hands behind his head.

“Alright. Okay. Go for it.” Markus never liked Leo’s taunting nature, but he was willing to try and work with it if it might work out in their favor. Looking expectant, Leo raised his eyebrows with a twitch of his lip as he waited. Suddenly, Markus had a harder time finding the words he needed to say once he was put on the spot.

“First of all, I’m not them. I’m not your mother, or your father, or your old friends, or your ex-girlfriend.” Leo already looked bored and annoyed but remained quiet as he waited for Markus to continue.

“I don’t have some ultimate goal to ruin your life, and I’m not dealing with a fluctuation of instable emotions like most people around you had been. I’m not going to think differently of you from one day to the next, I just want to try to understand how you are as a whole. Killing you would sort of defeat the whole point of me trying to get to know you better, anyway,” he continued with a lighter tone to his voice, prompting Leo to face the realization of truth as he bit his lower lip and turned his head to the side, shifting uncomfortably.

“I know that truth is difficult for you, Leo. Sincerity, emotion, it’s all a foreign concept that you struggle to understand.” Cheeks darkening, Leo felt the need to get up and leave thricefold as soon as Markus pointed out the truth, leaving him to start scratching at the long sleeve of his upper arm in agitation while Markus pulled out another pin to add to the cushion of his own denial. Leading to self-discovery was another process in itself, Leo’s body shuffling so his shoulders slouched when he leaned forward, still casting his gaze off to one side in avoidance. Still, in Markus’ mind, it was another step forward.

“You don’t have to tell me. Your relationships with your friends and what they mean are your own business, and not mine. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have the right to be treated like a person, better than how you’ve been talking, with how much I’ve done for you.” Usually, Leo would take that as an antagonization, hearing Markus’ words and reflecting them in his past memories of manipulation – but Markus was sincere, another fact that had him lost while he tried to register the words for what they meant, and the emotion they fully encompassed. Markus wasn’t passive-aggressive, he wasn’t bitter or spiteful; he occasionally sunk his teeth into a bittersweet fruit but overall, Leo knew what he was telling him was honest, and there was no way he could deny or run away from the matter.

“Okay,” he said swiftly, and the disbelief made Markus curl his lips with an expression of dismay and lower his eyebrows while Leo rubbed the palms of his hands together, antsy and avoidant.

“You know what, you’re right,” he admitted – as much as he hated stating such a thing.

“I just… I know so many people, and they all think different. I can’t fit in with anyone, so I sorta, I have to change my behavior because of it.” It sounded pathetic; he knew. It fell flat on Markus’ microphones; he was all too aware. But it was the best he could give at an explanation for his actions, in a way that would make sense to him.

Markus wanted to respond immediately, but he took a moment to redecide, trying to imagine himself in Leo’s shoes; to him, it would be easy to tell the truth and hold a modest persona, but for Leo it would be the opposite. The fact this person had to adjust and change his personality so much made Markus question who the true Leo was, or rather, who he might have been if given the freedom from such a cruel world caving in around him. The longer he’d spent with him, the more he learned that Leo’s exaggerations and lies weren’t merely self-defense; they were deeply ingrained beliefs that would be harder to shake than super glue.

“You don’t have to do that.” It was the first thing Markus thought to say, pausing afterwards so as to let the words sink in.

“I know,” Leo responded in a dark, quiet tone, the words surprising both of them.

“I don’t have to. But it’s easier if I do.”

Easy. A word Markus was aware of, but never became well-acquainted with. Why would there be any worth in doing something if it was easy?

Then he remembered Leo’s situation, where nothing was easy and he had to do his best just to survive, feeling the melancholy drift over him, shrouding him within a cloud of newfound heartache. He still hadn’t adjusted to his own emotions in regard to Leo, so it was always a bit surprising when he felt something in response to their exchange, new sensations he was still regulating to while Leo likely knew the full extent of the strings he was pulling. This time, he hoped to turn the tide, even just slightly.

“Why do you think it’s easier?” It was a difficult concept, but he wanted to know the truth, and understood the thought process Leo must go through every time it came to something like this; he imagined it may have been a practiced feat, but never assumed it could come easily.

“Okay, like, if I called up a thrift shop and started talking about an old microwave like a person, they’d look at me like I’m nuts, right?” The mania strung out through his veins made him continue to shake while he offered a half-smile, half-sneer, eyes wide with disjointed lips and crooked teeth showing an expression Markus never really understood.

“I mean, I get it. The revolution shit. I was there, I saw it, I kinda caused it,” he said with an airy tone holding more snide than he’d really meant. Again, he wasn’t good with confrontation.

“But that doesn’t mean everyone listens. Some people I know aren’t gonna change their minds, and that’s just how it is,” he said, not noticing the touch of gloom to his voice. Markus did, eyes darting over to him while he tried to absorb the full length of exactly what Leo was feeling – but it was impossible, considering just how in-depth his personality was, deeper than most of the humans he’d ever known.

“If you’re speaking and you think no one is listening, then there’s a flaw in your dialogue. I mean to say, they’ll hear you if you talk loud enough.” Leo scoffed.

“I don’t care about that, dude,” he chimed in a voice all too friendly for the discussion at hand.

“They don’t need to hear me. I don’t need to hear me.”

“Then why tell them the lies that you do?”

Leo’s gaze turned serious, the brown of his eyes seeming to dim as he leered at Markus, trying to decide how to respond to his question. The fact he had no words only continued to prove he was in the wrong, and this time he had to face the fact, rather than try to bury it down in his typical act of repression.

“Nobody trusts me. I want to keep what I can, when people think I’m worth it.” He wasn’t worth it, he knew; they were just using him for what he had to offer, whether it was drugs, money or sex, adjusting his weight in his seat again with a rapid scratch at the skin of his collarbone.

“Guess that means talking shit about you too,” he said with the realization that the Leo that spun webs of lies and the Leo here now, trying to overcome such an act in an effort of rehabilitation, were very different and ultimately difficult people to split.

“If I tell them the truth about you, then I lose them as friends, too.” Markus wasn’t sure whether to be hurt over the aspect of being replaceable, or remorseful with the idea that Leo’s friends were that shortly extendable, easy to drop like flies if he so much as told the honest reality of it all.

“Do you want to keep them as friends in the first place?” Markus knew the weight of his words and how they sunk Leo down by the shift of his expression, but in his mind, it was necessary. How else would he come to terms with such an idea?

“The last I knew, you were only talking to your ex-girlfriend. Who were you on the phone with?”

In response to being questioned, Leo was quick to stand from his seat, close to backhanding Markus all over again before he reconsidered the idea, stepping away to pace through the living room.

“Who were you on the phone with?” Markus repeated, his voice holding more depth as he noticed Leo’s typical behavior of avoidance, making him all the more uncertain, and therefor wary, hoping it wasn’t what he thought. Leo avoided the question, feeling the anger bubble up beneath his skin with a readiness to kick down the kitchen chair while his hands clenched fistfuls of his own hair.

“He was–he was—" Speaking was a new sort of communication that Leo could never entirely connect to, linking his ability to easily lie alongside the need to tell the truth in favor of Markus, what he wanted, and how badly he, himself needed the connection they had. Losing it now would only hurt him worse, as much as he hated to think such a thing.

“Was?” Markus’ voice was calm, reasonably quiet. Leo shook his head, scratching his hair while he took in Markus’ question. Feeling defeated, Leo sighed, snapping the fingers of his right hand a few times in lieu of knowing what else to do with himself.

“He was my dealer,” he said in one rushed, fast breath, hoping it would be lost in the wind if they could put aside the conversation. Of course, with Markus, they couldn’t.

“So your red ice dealer doesn’t like androids? Hard to see that connection,” Markus said in a flatly sarcastic voice, but Leo still appreciated the irony, flashing a one-sided smile in response and scoffing before he let out a low, dry laugh, but not one that indicated it was humorous to him.

“Funny. You got jokes,” Leo stated with a bored tone of voice that showed he didn’t actually find it amusing. Markus reflected his expression.

“You and I both know this isn’t funny.”

“Yeah, well, I gotta laugh. What do you call it? Irony?” He shrugged, gaze shifting to the ceiling as he let out a big sigh.

“There’s no reason to. If you stop finding humor in the morbid things, you’ll realize there’s nothing to laugh at.”

“That’s not funny.” The ironic paradox in the statement struck them both, but Markus was the only one to react, letting out a quiet sigh as he leaned forward to prop his weight on his arms with his elbows against his knees, sitting down.

“Would you find it easier if you could laugh at it?” Eyebrows immediately knitting together, Leo glared at him with offense riddling his face, leaving him to feel both frustrated and righted, as there was probably some truth to what Markus had asked. He wanted to bat away the subject and stand up to leave, but Markus’ gaze was enough to reel him back to his seat in the chair even when he tried. Markus felt satisfied that Leo had retreated of his own accord.

“Easy,” Leo said back, staring with cold eyes, glassy with their glare of spite.

“Yeah. Sure. If anything about my life was fucking easy,” he bit, ready to trail down another road of anger and nothing else, virtually feeling his shoes burn from the melting lava - even if it was entirely metaphorical.

“Can you listen to what I’m saying for a moment?” That was new, the frustration in Markus’ voice that Leo had never personally heard before, attention immediately on him as he turned his head, wary as to whether it was an act of truth or not. Another part of himself – and what the drugs made him out to be – he hated was the temptation to distrust, always wanting to second-guess what he’d been told, to challenge what had been done to him. This time, he just sighed, slumping into the chair as the urge to fight left him, and for the time being, he listened to the words Markus was going to say.

“You don’t have to lie to fit in with people. You don’t have to fit in at all.” Looking confused, Leo narrowed his eyes, tilting his head with a defiant shrug of his shoulders.

“If they really mean so little to you, then why give them so much credit?” Leo was struck silent for a moment, sinking into the seat of his chair. Taking that as a victory, Markus continued.

“Do you think more of me or of them? Who matters more to you?” Markus was well aware the ultimatum wasn’t fair, but that was exactly the reason why it would make Leo think over it.

“What the hell do you mean by that?” Leo looked offended, but Markus remained deadpan.

“What do you think I mean?” Leo hated when he asked questions like that. He hated what they meant, and the way it made him think.

“I dunno. It’s not like that. I can’t just, pick and choose my friends, you know?” Markus looked confused.

“Sure you can.” The aspect made Leo feel like he’d fall from his chair, scrambling to catch his balance again with a mocking noise. Markus wanted to comment about it but said nothing.

“You know what’s better or worse for you. Good influences, and bad, whether you want to admit it or not.” His voice became lighter as he was hoping Leo absorbed his words, examining his shifting expressions while Leo did all he could not to get up and leave. Markus continued to be thankful he’d tried so hard not to, another piece of proof that he was still trying, even in moments like this.

“You know what it takes to sober up and talking lowly of me isn’t part of it.”

He was right, of course, the denial leaving Leo to do little but glower in his direction. Markus knew it was a signal of progress, opting to let him for the sake of how it would help, even if Leo didn’t acknowledge it – now or ever.

“Dude, if I leave him too, I won’t have any friends left,” he said with contempt, aware that he would be better off if he’d dropped the ‘connection,’ yet fearful of the future of another person leaving his side—even if it was for the best.

“Do you need them?” Leo stared blankly, lacking any physical or mental response this time.

“I need something,” he stated clearly, even though the words left his lips in crumbling uncertainty.

“Company, I guess,” Leo continued with a sneer.

“Good company,” Markus corrected. Leo glanced away.

“Maybe that’s part of your problem, or why you keep going back,” Markus offered.

“Do you actually feel a connection to that person?” Leo glowered, teeth bared but lips limp in a lack of proper expression, lacking words certain enough to escape his mouth.

“No,” Leo murmured with the voice of epiphany, a tone of realization that left him in a whisper while he glanced down at his hands now trembling in front of him.

“He’s just there for the drugs. Right?” Leo closed his eyes, hating this particular aspect of discussion, as he’d had many similar interactions with therapists before. They never ended well.

“Right,” he said in a voice that wavered, a hint of dismay proving he didn’t want to believe it.

“Why did you talk to him about me killing you?” That struck him speechless, leaving Leo to roll onto his side and curl up against the seat between an instinctual nature to hide and the desire to flee. For now, while he didn’t want to be there, he laid still, waiting for more of Markus’ words while he curled himself into a corner.

Did he really have to tell the truth?

“Uhm, that’s what he thinks is gonna happen,” he muttered simply. Markus didn’t take it in so few words, swallowing down the awareness of there being so many people out there, always ready to kill himself or others like him.

“And you fed into that?” Leo’s eyes looked tired as he glanced up at him, but they were understanding enough to continue the conversation. Leo glared at him with the obvious undertone that Markus didn’t understand to the extent he needed, but the thought was quickly discarded.

“What else was I supposed to do?”

Markus paused as he acknowledged it was a good question, considering the circumstances. Say no was too simple, with expectations much too intense for someone like Leo, and he couldn’t hold such high hopes against a man like him.

“You weren’t ‘supposed’ to do anything. Just consider what it might mean for yourself, to keep in touch with people like that.” Leo’s own mind reminded him those were his only friends, but realizing Markus wouldn’t understand such a concept, he didn’t dare speak such words out loud.

“It’s bad,” Leo said with an air of realization, as if he just then understood the way it could lash back on him. Markus stared, but didn’t offer any verbal response. Before long, Leo’s hands were scraping through his hair; meanwhile Markus gave him a pointed gaze, distracting him for long enough to keep his attention where he needed it to be, yet didn’t pursue Leo despite part of his initial programming telling him to do so. For the most part, he’d learned to ignore those instructions, neglecting them in favor for what he- as well as androids around him- needed as a whole. Leo had never saved an entire species of his own, he’d mused, but never did he feel so trapped that he felt the need to otherwise. A new chance rose with a bright and vibrant opportunity, an aspect that scared Leo to the core.

“Then why do you keep doing it?” Markus’ words shook him, yet made him think long enough it left him quiet while he debated the exchange. That was the hard part; trying to explain what made it that effortless, that quick to slide off his tongue in a slip of a few seconds of coherent questions and responses, even to the police and authorities.

“Why do you keep asking me about this bullshit?” Leo was pleased to find his external reflection skills were still needle sharp, tilting his head with a twitch in his eyebrows and an accusatory stare at Markus as soon as he’d been given the chance.

“Stop telling me about shit I already know, okay? And the whole listening to me while I talk to my friends, thing – way creepy, dude.”

The weight of the ground seemed to shift beneath them as Markus didn’t exactly expect to be so blatantly dismissed. Nodding, his eyebrows furrowed in a moment of confusion as he scratched the back of his neck—an action he hadn’t generally acknowledged, picked up by someone aside from himself who he didn’t immediately remember while his mind scrambled to find an answer. Leo didn’t notice, and he was grateful.

“What? Now you’re quiet?” The way Leo’s voice cut into him was quick to force him to settle in place, staring into dark brown eyes with his own, digging his metaphorical heels into the ground while he wondered exactly how long he could stand staring into Leo’s eyes.

Looking amused, then offended with an accusatory glare in Markus’ direction, Leo laughed in his face.

“I should have known better, anyway.” Leo rambled on in a tone meant to attract attention and all the while speaking in pointed, short bursts with the anticipation to keep a sharp mindset, a way of speaking that kept Markus on his toes as he’d learned to become more in tune to Leo’s awareness than he’d originally anticipated. Leo sucked in a deep breath while he made his best attempt to hold a civil conversation, but couldn’t help the way his voice held nothing but spite.

It was all too easy for Leo to dig from an old list of egotistical remarks and demanding tones that made Markus equally more curious and yet all the more willing to leave the entire thing behind as soon as Leo opened his mouth.

“All you motherfuckers do—”

Markus turned to stare at him without so much as a three-second movement, barely casting a glance while he did a quick analysis of the human. He was a bit too quick to strike, lost in a moment of what might have been emotionally-driven thought as he shoved Leo to the ground, but even in millisecond motions he wasn’t sure there was anything backing up exactly what he’d done.

“You think that everything is entitled to you, but you don’t deserve half of what the world has offered you,” he hissed through his teeth, a particular accusatory gaze pointing at Leo with his hands already wrapped into the front of an unzipped jacket.

“Haha! Look at you!” Leo’s congratulation was thick with sarcasm, followed by one of his infamous chuckles—the ones that sounded so unrealistic, it was strange to hear from a living, breathing being. That laugh was a signal that the cognitive portion of Leo was lost in the confines of whatever delusions had their grasp on his prefrontal cortex for the time being. There was no negotiating with someone who wasn’t coherently there in the first place.

“Not so perfect now, are you?”

“Leo,” Markus stated sternly with just enough gumption to keep his attention,

“Stop this.”

“Don’t call me by my name,” he demanded, the sour scour never leaving his face. Markus considered it an odd request, but stored away the ‘command’ for later.

“You’re not my fucking parents. I get it, the way you really tried to fit in and become a big part of everything, but don’t you realize how stupid it is? I mean, that’s the joke, you know—the first android Kamski made was a blue-eyed, blond-haired babe!” There was an unusual amount of enthusiasm to his voice as he pointed out the fact, laughing to himself at the idea of Markus being comparable to nothing short of a bikini model.

Markus saw black, and in a moment, there was nothing. The last time they fought, Leo was unconscious on the ground and Markus wondered if he was dead – and hearing otherwise almost made him wish he’d finished the job.

The next thing they knew, Leo was beneath him, turned onto his stomach with his arms behind him while he shouted in discomfort, struggling for a few minutes before he turned his head to glare up at Markus the best he could from his position.

“Alright, if you’re into this, you need to tell me now, because it’s really kinda weirding me out—” Markus’ eyes narrowed as he graced Leo a gaze of distrust, but remained silent, lifting himself up and letting him go in one quick motion. Blinking, Leo brought his arms forward to push his body off the ground so he could stand, then brushed the dirt off his hands and clothes, but wasted no time scowling directly at Markus.

In a moment of silence, it seemed like neither of them had anything to say. Markus had plenty of words to use in favor of convincing Leo he was in the right, but even if Leo was willing to pay attention, he didn’t currently have the desire to teach. Not to someone that refused to listen. Not him.

Markus knew his words were meant to try and pull a response from him, so he was silent in his refusal. In a swift line straight towards him, Leo was quick to close in, never looking away with his eyes glaring into the android’s as soon as he’d set foot in his direction—a behavior that only seemed to happen when he thought he was the one in power, another expression showing an emotion he would never understand.

“Why do you want to hurt me?” It was an honest question, even if Markus didn’t expect an honest response.

“I don’t. I wanna see that you won’t hurt me.” There was a twist of uncertainty that welled inside him as he prepared a few backup commands for the worst of situations—just in case.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Markus said softly with a lift of his eyebrows, and in that moment, something occurred to him; in a haze of his own distracted thoughts, he hadn’t checked to ensure Leo took his medication earlier in the day. Could a few hours make this much of a difference?

“You say I don’t think a lot. I thought that was your whole thing, raising hell about thinking and feeling? Tell me about how you feel, Markus.” Leo spat each word with such vigor Markus felt the flecks of saliva speckle his face. As much as he wanted to resist, he knew if he fought back, the only way this could go was downhill, letting his body grow limp in surrender. Besides – he’d made the first move, after all.

“Tell me if you feel this,” Leo threatened in a tone that gradually lowered before slamming a fist across Markus’ face. Once, twice, then again. Pausing for a moment to recalibrate, Markus felt his weight shift as he found himself weakened a fair amount from the blows. Momentarily silent, he told himself how history had a tendency to repeat, wondering for a moment just what was going through Leo’s mind in the time they’d shared face-to-face, now close enough he could feel the erratic breaths cast down his neck. A swift scan notified him Leo’s conditions being none too healthy, moving his head out of the way as Leo swung another punch and rolling away to sit up beside him. Confused, Leo glared him down with suspicion; Markus shrugged in response.

“Come here,” he beckoned with a voice of concern. Baffled, Leo took the opportunity to stand upright again, tilting his head and raising his eyebrows in a gesture that asked the question so obviously blaring in his mind. Markus was grateful he didn’t feel the need to use his nasty vocabulary to speak, for once. In a few moments, Markus gathered the words to say, reassuring himself they were in a fashion Leo would listen to and understand, even if it sounded unlikely.

“You—you think I’m just gonna, walk over there, right up to you? Is that what you want?” While he paused to catch his breath, Markus took a moment to feel nigh on impressed by how well Leo could taunt while in the face of direct danger. A surprise he’s not dead yet, he thought to himself, before discarding the notion in abrupt discomfort.

“Listen to yourself. You’re not making any sense.” Surprisingly enough, the words seemed to get through to him, leaving Leo to take a moment to kneel on the ground, holding himself up on his uninjured knee and both of his arms. For a moment, he thought back to the days when he’d been more fit, running track with visits to the gym at least twice a week. In that moment of feeling useless all over again, he took a few deep, heavy breaths before heaving himself back to his feet – and turning around, leaving the room before Markus could get another word in.

#dbh #shoves this across the table n skitters to bed #this took all day.... enjoy #detroit: become human #dbh: leo manfred #dbh: markus

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cassatine · 6 years

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Why don't you like Jordan Peterson? What did he ever do to you?

Oooh boy. I’d redirect you to the Ressource Page on him I already posted a link to, where you can find much better analyses than I can provide, as well as much documentation on the things he has to say – but I suppose that’s not what you’re asking for.

(I wish you hadn’t asked. I’ve seen the kind of harassment sent to people who criticize Peterson. But you did, so here comes A Rant.)

To start with: what he did or didn’t do to me, specifically, is irrelevant. To illustrate that point – let’s say your school has two bullies. One of them bullies you, the other doesn’t and instead targets other people. Is this second bully more likeable because he leaves you alone? Or is this second bully as dislikeable as the one who does bully you? Are they any less of a bully because you escape their attention?

It’s not about what Peterson did to me, it’s about the ideas he advocates for, the way he profits from his followers, the harm he does other people, his bad scholarship – and more importantly, the fact that he is a gateway to the alt-right for many. He’s replied to this specific concern, for example here, by saying he does not support the alt-right, that he’s in fact stopped many on their path to it. “Read the comments on my videos,” he says, before deflecting by launching in a tirade against comments criticizing him.

I did read the comments and certainly there is some, ahem, strongly-worded criticism from people of all political stripes, but there’s also a bunch of people advocating for a white ethnostate, among other niceties. Peterson’s followers do not all belong to the alt-right, just as not everyone in the alt-right likes him.

But if we step outside his YT channel, there’s an incredible number of reposted videos, on all kinds of channels. Some are mocking: “here’s Peterson speaking nonsense as usual.” Some are very much alt-right channels, and thanks to the magic of YT algorithms, the more those are watched, the more you’re proposed videos by more extreme people. Stepping away from YT altogether, and delving into alt-right and manosphere forums and sites, links to Peterson’s videos are not a rare occurrence.

And yet, he does not believe he has been co-opted by the alt-right to any significant degree.

I find the claim dubious (and the formulation interesting – “any significant degree”). I find the fact that he pretty much always deflects to his bête noire, the left “far more gripped by totalitarian spirit” than the rest of the political spectrum (and yes, that includes the alt-right) even more dubious. Not only the claim itself, but the way Peterson uses it to turn the tables. ‘I don’t think I was co-opted by the alt-right,’ he says, ‘and anyway the real problem is the totalitarian left.’

Polarization is also a problem, he says, and that I can easily agree with. I can also agree with the idea that having conversations with people who hold very different views is a good thing, and that for this to happen one must be prepared to listen.

I do, however, doubt that Peterson is himself prepared to listen. He has shown many times that he rejects any and all criticism, instead explaining it away as coming from the ‘totalitarian left’ and rooted in Cultural Marxism© – basically framing it as invalid. To have the kind of conversation he speaks of, both sides must be prepared to make concessions, to agree to disagree, to accept one might not see the full picture, and yes, to accept that one might be wrong on some points. You can’t have this kind of conversation with someone who wants to win, with someone who deeply, absolutely believes they know better, and that anyway the other side is a problem, and not a small one, nope, more the kind that will lead civilization to its doom and also the gulag.

I did listen. I read much criticism of Peterson, but I also listened to his videos, I read some of his stuff, and I do not believe he is the listening type. I’m pretty sure I could never have an actual conversation with him, for a very simple reason: he would consider me a Cultural Marxist©, a member of the oh-so-dangerous totalitarian left – and reject everything I might say on these grounds.

The notion of Cultural Marxism© in fact allows him to brush away much of the criticism directed at his ideas: if someone were, say, to criticize his unfalsifiable claim that “Faith in God is a prerequisite for all proof” by arguing that’s it’s built on a deep misunderstanding of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, then he’d just have to argue it’s the critic that misunderstand Gödel because Cultural Marxism©. If someone were to say Jordan Peterson Doesn’t Understand Nazism, and actually has his facts wrong on the matter then that critic would be the one not understanding because Cultural Marxism©. If someone were to say Peterson didn’t even understand what Canada’s Bill C-16 entailed, it wouldn’t be because they actually understood the bill, but because Cultural Marxism©. If someone were to say he’s wrong about the pay gap – well, you can guess.

(There is another reason why Peterson Is Never Wrong, and that’s because his usual argumentative strategy is never actually saying what it is he means, which means he can always fall back on being misunderstood and misinterpreted. If someone were to say his comments on “enforced monogamy” amount to a careful defence of natalist policies, and go so far as to reference those totalitarian regimes he says he is fascinated and revulsed by with, say, the Lebensborn program and the Bund Deutscher Mädel, or Decree 770 – well, he’d just have to say that’s not what he advocates for. Of course it’s not. He just circles around the notion, and if our someone were to mention things that happened, things that were documented, things Peterson will never talk about because women have never been oppressed, not ever – well, that’s an undue, unfair parallel; from him to the Lebensborn, there is after all quite a stretch. Although I don’t see how it’s a more unlikely one than, say, “using gender-neutral pronouns will lead to the gulag.”

And let’s be real, it’d be hard for me to have a productive conversation with someone who buys into Cultural Marxism© in any case – especially when they describe themselves as fascinated and revulsed by totalitarianism. For someone who has so much to say (and much that is factually wrong) about Nazism, Peterson seems strangely unaware that Cultural Marxism© is nothing but the contemporary version of Cultural Bolshevism©, and that it’s most dear to… the alt-right.

Peterson appeals to some portions of the alt-right because much of what he has to say is eerily similar to their own arguments: the destructive, doom-leading influence of Cultural Marxism©, obviously; intelligence differences having a biological (ie racial) basis; the naturalness of hierarchies dominated by white men; most if not any of his statements on The Woman Problem, etc.

The alt-right, however, has solutions for all these problems, and that’s where the love story stops. Peterson does not give solutions. He will tell you that society’s refusal to acknowledge biology-rooted differences in intelligence is a problem, a big one, an enormous one, and he will stop there. He will tell you that what women really want is to be dominated, that they are socialized to believe otherwise, that it’s wrong, and he might go so far as to propose that the solution to the Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian of the world might just be enforced monogamy, but he will not advocate for it directly. And because he doesn’t take that last, seemingly logical step, some on the alt-right hate him. He is a traitor to the cause, a sell-out.

Does it matter whether Peterson is affiliated to or worried by the alt-right? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe we should in fact focus on other things. Like the fact that he is not afraid of a little lie, like that time he pretended to have been inducted in a First Nation tribe – a relatively common tactic: “i’ve been inducted in (x)”, “some of my ancestors were (x)”, “some of my followers are (x)” is frequently used as a way to shield oneself from criticism coming either from members of (x) or criticism addressing one’s stance towards (x). One of the problems with this is it rests on the (usually unsaid) assumption that all members of (x) share the very same views and values. See outgroup homogeneity effect.

It doesn’t reflect well on him that he lied about it, but even if it had been true, it wouldn’t have made his ideas any less racist, no more than it would have given him the right to speak for First Nation Canadians.

Oh wait, I probably need to back up the racism claim.

Here are Peterson and Stefan Molyneux, another altogether awful dude. Peterson is dead wrong from the start – intelligence isn’t the best predictor of “life success, economically,” neither is conscientiousness (which needed to be mentioned otherwise his point about meritocracy would make no sense at all), the two don’t automatically come together, though of course any argument I could make would have to be rejected on the grounds of Cultural Marxism©. Anyway, what follows is typical: Peterson takes care to mention that “this is where some the uglier elements of science become germane,” which allows him to distance himself from what he’s about to say, establishing he’s only relating what science indisputably shows and that he acknowledges The Ugly. He adds it’s “that which no one would want to be the case,” reinforcing this distance. That thing no one wants to be true but is science, he continues, is that there are “profound and virtually irremediable differences in people’s cognitive performances, and that those differences have a very solid biological and heritable basis. No one wants to hear that. They don’t want to hear that it’s biological, they don’t want to hear it’s heritable, they don’t want to hear it’s permanent, they don’t want to hear that it’s irremediable and that it actually has a practical consequence.”

(“Intelligence” is a much more complex thing than Peterson seems to believe. It’s determined by complex genetics and environmental factors; the question of heritability is also way more complex than that; the permanence thing refers, I believe, to IQ and that too is more complex than “it’s permanent and irremediable” – “irremediable,” btw, is pejorative in this context.)

You can guess why no one wants to hear it – not because Peterson is oversimplifying and misrepresenting the results of contemporary research on cognition, not because he’s hedging close to Social Darwinism. Nah, it’s because of Cultural Marxism©’s doom-leading influence, obviously.

Molyneux is quick to expand, distancing himself in similar ways to Peterson’s from what he’s saying-but-not-saying, which is that ethnicity and gender are basically the main factors in intelligence difference. Peterson downplays but doesn’t disavow the gender factor, explaining it as “relatively trivial.” Ethnicity, however, is a whole other matter, and he mentions Ashkenazi Jews having an advantage over other Caucasians – a reference to Sam Harris’ The Bell Curve, one of the go-to works for people trying to bring back scientific racism.

Peterson brings back his earlier idea that intelligence is the best predictor of “life success, economically,” and explains that Ashkenazi Jews’ intelligence advantage is “sufficient to account for their radical overrepresentation in positions of authority and influence and productivity,” no actual statistics given. The very terminology is dubious – “radical overrepresentation,” not “greater representation,” or anything more neutral-sounding, and it’s easy to go from here to there, even easier when you remember the historical roots of the notion of Cultural Marxism©, but of course Peterson is quick to distance himself again: “just so it’s absolutely clear, I am not saying [this overrepresentation is] a bad thing.” He’s not being antisemitic is what he means. He’s only saying there’s a real reason for it – ie the biological basis of intelligence difference, which since we live in meritocracies (we don’t, and considering the accent he puts on the intelligence factor and its inheritability, it’s not quite the good term anyway) accounts for “life success, economically.”

There’s more of the same, but basically we go back to the idea that no one wants to admit it’s True, All Of It, and of course, that it’s a problem. It’s a problem because in our more and more “cognitively complex societies” there’s less and less room for the “gainful employment” of the bottom ten percent. The human capital of these ten percent is too low, if you will (of course how much that should even matter depends on whether or not you believe productivity is an important factor to determine individual ‘worth’), making them at best worthless and at worst a burden. Peterson unsurprisingly insists he doesn’t have a solution to this unsolvable problem, which might be sincere, or might be because he’s aware that historically, the solution is eugenics, and of course that’s not something he’d ever advocate for.

Just to make it clear, under all the rhetorical flourishes, this is two white men saying white men are more intelligent than everyone else because Science, but the “science” they refer to is either held as pretty much pseudoscience (the Bell Curve) by the scientific community, or criticized to a degree (IQ, which is insufficient a tool to approach all areas of cognitive abilities, among other critiques) and misrepresented anyway, because neither Peterson nor Molyneux give a whit about what The Science really shows, they just want to make it like their prejudices are rooted in fact: they’re not racists (remember the ever-important ethnicity factor in intelligence difference), they’re just pointing out undeniable facts. They even say it’s ugly, what else could we ask for?

Some awareness of this, maybe:

[Moreover], the question of the relation, if any, between race and intelligence has very little scientific importance (as it has no social importance, except under the assumptions of a racist society) … As to social importance, a correlation between race and mean I.Q. (were this shown to exist) entails no social consequences except in a racist society in which each individual is assigned to a racial category and dealt with not as an individual in his own right, but as a representative of this category … In a non-racist society, the category of race would be of no greater significance [than height]. The mean I.Q. of individuals of a certain racial background is irrelevant to the situation of a particular individual, who is what he is. Recognizing this perfectly obvious fact, we are left with little, if any, plausible justification for an interest in the relation between mean I.Q. and race, apart from the ‘justification’ provided by the existence of racial discrimination.

(Another thing Peterson was dead wrong about, but I think he knows it, is when he says no one wants to hear that. There are plenty of people who want to hear exactly that, and they love people like Peterson, who can give a veneer of scientific credibility to their prejudices. He should know, since they make up a vocal portion of his fandom.)

Maybe I should get into The Woman Problem as well. I did mention it. Peterson has a lot to say about women. Sometimes he frames it as questions, which allows him to say “I didn’t really say it, I’m just asking questions, you numbskull.” (paraphrased). There’s that time he asked why do so few women watch my videos? Which I’m only mentioning because considering what follows, it’s hilarious, and I kinda need a laugh at this point. There’s that time he asked could it be that women are outraged because they crave infant contact and society refuse them that? There’s the worse do feminists avoid criticizing Islam because they crave masculine dominance? There’s the blame-shifting can men and women work together in the workplace? He actually answers this one, and the answer is women and men can’t work together because we (men) “don’t know what the rules are”. Which rules is unclear (maybe “don’t harass women?”) but no matter, Peterson has some to propose: “no makeup in the workplace” should definitely be one, since it’s “sexually provocative”. Women paint their lips red because “lips turn red during sexual arousal”. High heels are also reprehensible since they “exaggerate sexual attractiveness.” Of course, he’s not saying women shouldn’t do it, just that it’s, you know, what they do. Kind of like they’re asking to be harassed, honestly. Might that be because of that craving for masculine dominance?

More pearls that should make it clear why he’s overall more popular among men: Women are characterized by “higher levels of trait negative emotion (neuroticism)” in contrast to, of course, men. (A comment on a study of online harassment posted by James Demore, who managed to get fired from Google for a sexist memo; you can contrast his description of working at Google to the testimonies coming to light with the Google Walkout.) Women that don’t want a child by their 30s? There’s something that “isn’t quite right with the way they’re constituted or looking at the world”. More cringy comments ensue. Looping back to women’s craving for masculine dominance: Testosterone, nothing’s more appealing to women. Some appalling comments on men too. Rhetoric eerily similar as that of MRAs/Incels’.

It’s all Very Serious, so I’ll focus on something that’s kind of funny in this neverending deluge of awful: Peterson’s deep, deep dislike of Frozen. Yes, Disney’s Frozen. He didn’t like the propaganda:

Frozen apparently “served a political purpose: to demonstrate that a woman did not need a man to be successful. Anything written to serve a political purpose (rather than to explore and create) is propaganda, not art. Frozen was propaganda, pure and simple. Beauty and the Beast (the animated version) was not.” He’s expounded on that, explaining it was “produced for ideological reasons” as an anti-Beauty and the Beast, which is “inappropriate”. He did like Moana, but only because Moana allied herself with this “uncivilized, rather masculine force”

I’m sorry but that’s hilarious. I mean, there’s two main male characters in Frozen (not counting Olaf, who is a snowman), and one of them reveals himself to be Bad News, but the other is… kind of instrumental to the “success” of the female characters? His name is Kristoff, but he doesn’t count because… Well, Peterson doesn’t mention him, so I’m not sure why he gets erased from the narrative, but if I was to hazard a guess it’s because he is Not A Good Example Of Masculinity. Too nice, too bumbling, too… beta-y. Definitely not enough of an “uncivilized, rather masculine force.” (Though even that seems debatable, considering his way of life, but whatever.)

I wonder what he thought of Brave. Haven’t found anything on that one. Anyway, assuming Frozen is an anti-BatB, why is it inappropriate? Why, because BatB is the “fundamental hero myth for women”, which he defines as “find a monster that wants to be a good man and help him be a good man”. Don’t go for the “underdeveloped, harmless thing”, ladies, go for the monster. He admits “that’s a scary thing to do,” but since the choice is between a monster and a “castrated man…”

(On Peterson and myth – I will never stop if I go there, so please read Homer and Hatred: On Jordan Peterson’s Mythology; Jordan Peterson & Fascist Mysticism – to be followed by Umberto Eco’s essay on fascism; Jordan Peterson’s Tired Old Myths; Jordan Peterson’s Murky Maps of Meaning; Elwood’s The Politics of Myth: A Study of CG Jung, Mircea Eliade, which is not about Peterson, but considering the influence of Jung/Campbell/Eliade on his own approach of myth I still recommend it.)

Please note the dehumanizing language (thing), and of course the eerily similarity with MRAs/Incels’ rhetoric.

On the manosphere forums, you can find praise for Peterson and just under it, someone who thinks throwing acid into women’s faces is the best idea since the wheel. Or something much, much worse. I wonder if Peterson is wilfully blind to it, or if he’s exploiting it. I wonder why he’s so afraid of Cultural Marxism©, when so many of his fans fantasizes about killing women, killing Jews, killing Muslims, killing everyone that’s not them and unapologetically admire those who act on that hate. I wonder if it matters. I wonder if someday soon someone will follow in the footpaths of Elliot Rodgers and Alek Minassian, and leave a manifesto quoting Jordan Peterson. I wonder how we’ll explain it away. How we will explain it away. There will be a girl, or maybe a woman. She will have rejected this newest killer, she will have worn makeup and heels. It will be a sad story, because if she’d accepted the monster, if she’d been the Beauty to his Beast, we’d have avoided a tragedy. We won’t say, it was her fault, we’ll just insinuate it. Somewhere, someone will say; Jordan Peterson is so right. Click for my essay on Why Women Are Evil And Also Stink (Because Vaginas Are Dirty) And Not Fully Human!

In Peterson’s deluge of words, there’s some decent, common-sense advice. Stand up straight, it’ll do wonders for your self-confidence (and accessorily your spine). This you know already, as you already know everything I’m about to tell you, like the fact that, dear men, the world is doing you many a wrong by trying to convince you that we should all be equal. We are not. Fight for the reestablishment of your nature-given right to dominance.

But don’t forget to clean your goddamn room first.

In another timeline, he’d just be one of a bunch of people on my list of utter quacks, along with so-called Ancient Aliens theorists, Campbell, and a looot of anthropologists and prehistorians from the nineteenth century (an era Peterson could have easily belonged to, and probably been happier in, what with all the scientific racism), among others.

Peterson earns his place on the list because he has some very dodgy ideas about The Past (let’s not forget(1) He can’t tell you how he knows that, but The Ancients depicted the DNA molecule. (2) More examples, and again he “really believes” that they are ancient representations of DNA, it’s just “very complicated to explain why” (3) Oh but wait, he doesn’t “believe” that, he just has his “suspicions.”) and Human Nature (not even that accepted a concept, btw). Look, anyone telling you “that’s how it was Before hence it’s what’s Natural and how it should be again” is lying to you. The Before is a deeply political territory, and the things we chose to tell, the very way we tell them, the parts we cherish above all others – that says as much about us as it does about the Before (and often enough, more). People who say “that’s how it was; that’s what’s natural; that’s how it should be” are misrepresenting the past, cherry-picking the bits that support their arguments. What guides their choices is nothing but Ideology – which is what they’re really trying to sell you.

Be wary of people who instrumentalize the past to sell you something, be it the Lebensraum or communism as the true State of Nature. Or a specific, “natural,” model of social hierarchy.

Which brings me to the lobster. Why, of all things, does Peterson pick the lobster? I don’t know that, and neither does anyone, because he never explained it. A shared common ancestor in no way justifies it: if we look far back enough, we share common ancestors with pretty much anything living. And the lobster is such an incongruous choice. Not a primate, not even a mammal.

I have no doubt Peterson could have spun something out of the Bonobos, and point to actual Science. That’d make a modicum of sense at least. But no. Fucking lobsters. Even my nineteenth century dudes would have brought Statistics before going there. They’d have tried to argue that studies showed the majority of all things that breathe favour a specific social organisation over all others, and they’d have given a variety of examples. Among which the lobster, maybe. They’d have explained Mantis religiosa and other inconvenient counterexamples away. Peterson’s book, it’s true, is theoretically a self-help book, but still, he’s an academic, and yet he goes straight for the lobster.

Part of me is disappointed. He could do so much better than lobsters. But why would he, since so much of the reading material is produced by those oh-so-evil, doom-leading Cultural Marxists©? Why even bother with standard academic practices when those were set by the same Cultural Marxists©? It’s all worthless.

(That might be why he didn’t even try to use the Bonobos or another species of primates, to go back to my previous example. After all the argument that they’d be a better choice is in part based on research produced by disciplines infested by this so-called Cultural Marxism©. The lobster, on the other hand, is a massive fuck you to those evildoers.)

But. Peterson isn’t the Flat Earth society. He didn’t write the 21st century version of the Telliamed. He didn’t write a parody like Blueprints for a Sparkling Tomorrow: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, which I’m mentioning because one of its authors wrote some really good stuff on Peterson.

He’s not funny. He is A Very Serious Man, peddling Very Serious Notions.

#anon #ask #i should probably reread and clarify and expand #but the more time i spend on this #the more i'm afraid the worst portions of his fandom will send me not so nice messages #so fuck it here it is #in all its unedited unorganized glory #and incompleteness #this is an anti jordan peterson blog

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