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radioisntdead · 1 month

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Hi can I request alastor x Vox's sister reader? Reader isn't a tech demon like Vox and kinda the opposite of when it comes to technology.

Basically the equivalent of someone who's so bad at cooking they could burn water except with technology. And maybe Vox didn't know they were down in hell and only found out well spying on Alastor and reader accidently does that destroys a tech thing.

You dont have to do it if you'd dint want to and sorry its so long I hope it's not to weird or specific.

Good evening My dear! I may have gone slightly overboard, I had fun with this request!

You know where to find me, I know where to look.

Alastor x female reader, Vox & sister reader

Warnings!!

Vox being a creepy lil tv creeper, implied Radiosilence, Alastor plots to take out the reader at one point, both reader and Alastor are on the Aroace spectrum, Am I projecting a little? Yes

Reader has beef with microwaves, not proof read apologies for any spelling mistakes, Leaning into fanon territory here! Ending a little scrambled because it's 7 am and I am supposed to be up in three hours.

Vox's sister was something he didn't talk about often or at all, maybe a brief whisper of "[Name] would like this"

when he saw something she would like but nothing more, while Vox had managed to live up until the 50's you had died before him, a unspecified illness had taken your life, he suspected it was from you over working yourself but he couldn't prove it, all he knew was that you were more then likely in heaven with the angels, probably doing whatever you please.

He'd like to see his sister again after all the two of you were little troublemakers growing up, sneakily stealing the freshly baked cookies your mother made, spraying the neighbors son with the hose when he shoved Vox onto the ground or throwing rotten eggs at the neighbors other son who tried to pull your pigtails, although you did fight a fair amount, with you chasing him down with a baseball bat after he had broken the head off of your doll one time.

When the war took the life of your father and heartbreak took your mother's years after, when the two of you were in the middle of your teenage years, the two of you only had each other, you had each other's backs, even if you disapproved of your brothers obsession with the up and coming TV technology, it worked in his favor once he landed a job working with it, managing to scramble up the connections to get you a nice job as some guys secretary, it paid well and the guy wasn't stupid enough to mess around with Vox's sister.

To his knowledge you didn't get involved in the field politics like he did, where he trampled over the weak ones, stealing ideas and parading them off as his own when his own ideas were rejected, And the other things he did to get to the top, you were a decent person, a woman far beyond her time one would say.

However unknown to him his sister was causing up trouble in her own right, finding the weak spots of her bosses and exploiting them via blackmail or something amongst those lines, and if they refused to be blackmailed by her? Not even giving her a pretty penny to keep her mouth shut about their affairs? Their deals? Their tax fraud? Well the newspaper would have a field day with the scoop she anonymously dropped off.

Both siblings were doomed to fall below, maybe if they had perished around the same time they wouldn't had been separated, maybe she would've even joined the Vee's!

But they perished separately, years apart.

You met Alastor not long after dying, the deer radio host befriending you rather quickly.

Deer were ironically one of your favorite animals, and you always did prefer the radio as opposed to your brothers television, maybe that's why you foolishly put your trust in a friendship with Alastor, that was repaid with the Radio demon reluctantly falling for your charms, you falling for his,and not with him trying to eat you or making a deal with him and taking your soul.

Vox similarly had met Alastor after he had perished, and they were on friendly terms up until Alastor had, to be blunt rejected Vox's proposal, and then vanished for seven years.

Not once in those years of supposed friendship did Vox learn about you, he didn't even know the radio demon had a spouse, let alone that it was his own sister,

It's not that Alastor was ashamed of you or anything, he simply didn't think Vox was important enough to introduce you too, even when you were considered just a good friend and not his spouse, he considered Vox a supposed, one friend but not to the level of Rosie for example,

Rosie was the first person to know about you

Most types of modern technology would fizzle out or explode in your hands, you learned this the hard way after purchasing a flip phone and it exploded in your hands once you turned it on.

Alastor did NOT let you live that down, saying that it was your fault for trusting in faulty modern technology, eventually after some experimenting with random technology it was discovered that anything from the 2000's forward were practically expensive bombs for you,

Alastor took great joy in snatching up modern electronics and placing them in your hands to be rid of them before taking care of the unfortunate sinner that owned them, either making a snack out of them or taking their soul in a deal.

You didn't mind it much, was it somewhat inconvenient? Yes without a doubt, everyone kept their electronics away from you, you could be talking to Angel and he'd slide his phone far away from you, was that a bit much? Probably but if he pissed you off enough for whatever reason you could just reach over and BOOM no more phone!

Vox being the nosey control freak he was, used his devices to lurk around the hotel, and for plot related reasons managed to sneak into the hotel undetected with a remote control car with a camera the size of a hot wheels, at first he didn't see much, The princess and her girlfriend having a little date, The cat bartender and Angel Dust chatting while drinking, Niffty traumatizing baby bugs, blah blah boring stuff to him,

However he perked up as he spotted the radio demon, in the kitchen for whatever reason, cooking away, coat put to the side, sleeves rolled up, tail exposed, chopping up celery, bell peppers, garlic and onions while humming a tune,

Vox watched in stalkerish excitement as Alastor chopped the vegetables to prep for the meal he was making, it wasn't anything to be excited about but he was anyway,

Vox's expression changed from excitement to displeasure as someone walked into the kitchen, Joyfully calling out for Alastor while holding up a bag of what looked to be groceries,

Alastor turned, tail moving swiftly back and forth at the sight of his beloved spouse you moved forwards, just barely brushing against Vox's little spy car causing it to burst into flames.

Simultaneously causing Vox to break out in a sting of curses while you and Alastor looked at each other in confusion, before your face twisted into one of frustration, assuming you had bumped into some type of kitchen gizmo

"Can I NOT touch kitchen appliances anymore?!"

"Settle down dearest, and put down the produce please."

Vox came back at later date with another hot wheel camera, managing to sneak into the hotel when Angel dust opened the hotel doors to leave, this time Vox was determined to avoid whatever had caused the first device to explode,

There wasn't anything worth wild for him, The princess was scrambling with papers, the king of hell surrounded himself with ducks for some apparent reason?? Alastor was nowhere to be seen, but the person he was with in the kitchen was, sat at the bar listening to Niffty explain fanfiction while the bartender nursed a drink muttering something about being too sober for that.

Vox squinted as he zoomed closer to you, he stared for a few minutes before recognizing you as his sister, you looked different then when you were alive but it was without a doubt you.

Why the fuck were you down here?! And why were you in the hotel?! Did you know he was here?! Probably not considering he had a TV for a head now and went by Vox instead of whatever normal human name he had before.

Vox observed for the next couple of days, catching on that you and most modern technology did NOT mix, you had taken down twenty-five of his hot wheel cameras just by nicking them, you also had weird beef with Microwaves, sometimes they worked for you, and others times they fizzled down and refuses to work for you,

It annoyed you to no end especially when you were trying to eat a microwaved meal behind Alastor's back.

He wondered what would happen if you touched his head at all, would he explode? He didn't want to find out.

You hadn't changed much from when the two of you were alive, maybe more outgoing and confident but you were still the sister he grew up with, he debated on whether he should reach out, what would he say?

'hey sister, it's been a couple of decades I've been watching you? Join the Vees!'

that's not a normal thing to say, Not to mention Alastor more then likely wouldn't let him get near you

He found that you and Alastor were close, too close for his liking, cooking together, the two of you would dance together, Alastor would bite you when the two of you were allegedly alone, and the two of you even shared a room!

Was Vox in denial about the obvious? Yes, yes he was.

On one side there was that sibling protectiveness on the other he was jealous because why didn't Alastor treat him like he did you when they were on good terms?! Why didn't he? Was this why he turned him down on joining the Vee's?

Was it because of you? How long have the two of you known each other? Why didn't Alastor mention you to him? Did Alastor not trust him during their friendship? Of course he didn't, he was a heartless cannibalistic deer with gross deer hooves,

Clearly you were being held hostage or something, maybe you sold your soul to Alastor?

Alastor was clearly using you for his own entertainment like he had with Vox during their friendship, after All Alastor could never love another person, he was incapable of it.

But he wasn't incapable of it, you weren't an exception to Alastor's Alastory-ness, and he wasn't an exception to your you-ness

Neither you or Alastor were big on the whole romance thing,

You, in life didn't care much for it preferring to focus your time and energy on blackmailing folks and saving enough money to do whatever your heart desired and Alastor was similar, only instead of blackmail and money it was his radioshow and murder.

And that didn't change after death, even after you met Alastor.

You honestly couldn't pinpoint when you and Alastor fell for each other, it came slow like a horror movie where a serial killer was coming up behind the victim, no one noticing the killer until it was too late,

It got you first, at first you thought he just got bumped up from a good friend to a close friend, then a best friend and that's why you were so fond of him,

Until you started wishing to do unholy things,

Like holding hands, or petting his ears!

The minute you figured out what the budding feelings that had begun to weave themselves inside you,

you resulted to shoving them down, hopefully hiding them away until they disappeared completely, or until you gaslit yourself enough that they never existed in the first place, that it was just heartburn or something,

but that didn't happen, they just got stronger up until the point where it hurt, until you had to physically distance yourself from Alastor in hopes they subsided.

Alastor on the other hand, had it slightly worse,

For him it didn't hit him in small gaps like it did for you, it hit him all at once,

he legitimately thought he had somehow gotten deathly ill, perhaps he had gotten cursed? Maybe he wasn't as fond of you as he thought and instead hated your guts for whatever reason?

But if that was the case why did he yearn for your presence? Especially after you for some reason distanced yourself from him?

Why did he desire to chat with you? Why did he wish to cook you a meal and have a lovely dinner with just the two of you??

He eventually went to Rosie, his most trusted friend with this problem

his smile was strained when Rosie laughed at his troubles and told him he was, shockingly more then likely in love.

He acted like he was just told he had an incurable disease, like rabies.

Eventually he got to the point where he decided he should just take you out, in a murder way he couldn't afford a weak spot that he couldn't control,

However he couldn't go through with it when you showed up unannounced to his home, a frown present on your lovely face, you acted like a guilty child who had just stolen a batch of freshly baked cookies, you carried two folders and a board, and you asked him to hear you out as he let you inside,

You began to set up what one can only describe as one of those conspiracy theory boards, only instead of a conspiracy it was explaining how you managed to fall for Alastor, that he didn't necessarily have to return those feelings, and why he should let you live after knowing this information.

Thankfully before you could begin setting anything other then the board up and a few skeins of different colored yarn out, Alastor grabbed you by your shoulders and reluctantly told you that he adored you for some forshaken reason.

And that was that, nothing was ever officially labeled until a ring was put onto your finger many many years later, but it was comfortable, you stayed true to each other, you never went further then a light kiss or a cuddle, the two of you would be deemed odd for a couple, sometimes invalidated by folks who didn't know how to mind their own business, but they were usually dealt with quickly.

You adored Alastor, and He adored you in return.

And that was evident as he twirled you around his radio tower, Vox's hotwheel mini camera watching from the corner.

Soft jazz played as you were pulled back into Alastor's arms, a laugh escaping your throat as you smiled at him, taking a quick moment to reach your hand out and hold Alastor's face, planting a soft smooch on him before pulling away.

At that point Vox was disturbed and a peng of jealousy ran through him, one, because no one wants to see their sister doing that to their ARCH NEMESIS, and second of all, Out of everyone in hell, why did he have to choose you?

Yes you were nice, he guessed, but he's seen you be a feral little menace when the two of you were young, Alastor could do better [No he couldn't]

What did you have that Vox DIDN'T? Sure you didn't have a giant tv for a head but you also weren't an overlord like he was, you didn't have the connections he did, you didn't have a whole company that dominated the tech industry, you didn't HAVE what he did.

But you did have what he desperately wanted

You have Alastor's heart,

You get the adoring looks, you get the whispers of pure affection, you get to dance with him, you get Alastor.

No matter what Vox did, Alastor would never look at him the way he did you, he would never give him the look of pure affection, he would never ask him to dance, he would never give him his heart.

And that tore Vox apart.

So If he couldn't have Alastor, Neither could you.

To him, You either needed to get redeemed quickly and go up above or you were going to be joining the Vee's, whether you liked it or not.

Good evening folks! Thank you for tuning in! I know I said Rosie headcanons where supposed to be up next but I ran into some technical difficulties [my writing app crashed and a big chunk of it got deleted so I am not happy about that] anywho, Vox is a funky TV dude and I like the implications that he's lovesick about Alastor,

I need to finish my Vox fic because he's toxic there.

#hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel x you #alastor x reader #alastor x you #vox x reader #alastor imagine #radiosilence

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darkbluekies · 5 months

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Jerry pairings:

Jerry & Silas — 5/10

Touched on this earlier

Dumb and dumber. They'd COULD share a darling, but there would be so much fucking bickering. Silas and Jerry are opposites, and would fight a lot about what darling is allowed and not allowed to do. Silas is much more protective and isolating, while Jerry let's darling have more freedom.

Jerry would do a lot to piss Silas off, intentionally, and Silas would mess with Jerry. Never ending game of cat and mouse, just to piss each other off.

Jerry & Dr Kry — 6/10

Fun thing is that I have never imagined this pairing. They're both very ... unemotional in different ways, and still very similar. Jerry shows a lot of anger, excitement, and personality while Dr Kry is reserved and polite. Both suck at love though, Dr Kry not being able to touch you and Jerry not being able to express her feelings. In some ways, they'd compliment each other.

But they wouldn't get along very much. Dr Kry wants you still and Jerry wants you around and about. They'd be in disagreement a lot but would get along strangely well (better than Silas and Dr Kry) and could make compromises for each other. Dr Kry is my most mature OC and is too tired to bicker, so he would try to be civil with Jerry.

Jerry and Edmund — 1/10

Touched on it before

NOPE. Wouldn't wish this pairing upon my worst enemy. They'd kill each other. They're so far apart on a political spectrum that they wouldn't be able to be civilized.

Jerry and Hedwig — 8/10

Probably the best pairing for Jerry, to be honest. Although there would be a lot of differences between the girls, they'd get along surprisingly well. Both give you a lot of freedom and lets you be when needed. They'd work as quite a good team, Hedwig telling Jerry who to kill.

Jerry would tease Hedwig a lot, though. Probably to the point where she's crying, but she wouldn't be brutal. They wouldn't be friends, more like colleagues.

Hedwig would be the one you get all love and reassurance from, and Jerry would be the one you get all excitement from.

#yandere #yandere x reader #yandere x you #yandere imagines #yandere drabbles #yandere oc x you #yandere mafia #yandere oc x reader #yandere female #yandere rich girl #yandere poly #yandere ocs

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jewish-sideblog · 1 month

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hey uh goy here. if it isn't too much trouble, could you talk about some of those jewish communist groups you mentioned? i like to think of myself as a communist but i havent really had time to sink my teeth in much of any communist discussions or posts or what have you since pretty much every communist blog i used to follow has. uhm. well. I'm sure i don't need to remind you of what happened.

thanks in advance.

For sure! To my knowledge, the major Israeli socialist/communist groups that exist today are Hadash and Maki, which form a coalition with moderate two-state Arab nationalist Ta'al in the Knesset. The Kibbutz movements also tend to be communist when not religiously oriented, what with them being communes and all. I'm not Israeli myself, so there may be larger Israeli communist groups in the country that I'm not aware of.

As far as historical Jewish communists go, I'd recommend starting by looking into the Bundists and other Jewish groups in the Soviet Eastern-European era.

Jews in the diaspora today don't have any major and public Jewish communist groups that I'm aware of. Because, of, you know, the happenings. But plenty of us are still in red politics as individuals.

This is nothing against you, anon, but it's fascinating to me how far apart the political spectrum can still be. I forget that left-leaning politics often aren't aware of Jewish communist groups because right-leaning politics hyperfocus on Judeo-Bolshevism and antisemitic red scare conspiracy theories.

Thank you for reaching out!

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northwest-by-a-train · 12 days

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Zadie Smith's lack of any hill she's willing to stand on, much less die on, has made her a wonderfully blessed novelist. A very apt mimic of any particular coordinate of the political spectrum, a wicked satirist of modern bourgeois mores, a reader with an incredibly wide palette. Though she has gotten less adventurous as a writer as the years have gone on, she has gotten better at the craft, and she did build from a higher mastery than most.

That said, most of her energy, and in this she joins a great many writers coming from the urban working class of color, seems to be spent not being conflated. Conflated with other black female writers, conflated with protestors, conflated with critics of the establishment. Oh, she does criticize, empathize, recognize herself. But always prefacing it with layers upon layers of self-justification and differentiation. She, like her icon & model David Foster Wallace, feels the need to set herself apart from anything we could categorize her as in bad faith.

So she is a feminist, but worry not, she still loves Updike, Larkin and Pound. She is a utopian socialist but she has nothing in particular to say about the state of the world. She of course has an opinion on the current conflict in Palestine, but she won't tell because it's not important and it's "just words".

Of course you can read Larkin and Pound as a committed leftist feminist and think your personal opinion on world politics is irrelevant compared to what is going on in the world. My gripe is that someone with such high literary pretensions, such admiration for the gusto of free spirits both past & present (someone willing to go to bat for Kanye's trumpist phase in the name of poetry in the very same magazine where she so artfully defends at length that no statement from either student protesters or counter-protesters has value, nor hers) someone who spends so much of her time quoting moral philosophers and pondering the future of writing... That this someone has essentially given up on politics.

My gripe, my visceral annoyance at her, my point is that the "towering mind of her generation" has given up on politics except as background, coordinates to tack the nuance-lacking masses onto, but that great spirits transcend somehow. No wonder she loves Harold Bloom & James Wood. Or that she's a child of Blair's cool Brittania. As a public intellectual, there is no duty to say anything meaningful, or whereof one cannot speak, to remain silent. If your thesis is that you have none and the dead are more important, why spend 4000 words talking about yourself, and how above it all you are and how ineffectual anyone writing about it is, and how you're the only one smart enough to have the dignity of recognizing it ? Why not make form fit content, as you have so often done ? Why not attack specific words, specific utterances that ignore the dead, instead of fighting strawmen ?

The truth is that Smith's outbursts of calling for dignity, reason, nuance, cooler heads are not anything new, not anything groundbreaking, nothing unprecedented, even by the great. You can hear echoes of it in Camus refusing to denounce colonialism because Algerians refuse to speak French. It is the cry of the moral esthete, for whom to side with the dubious, the inarticulate, the incoherent, the angry, all that is like poison to her. Oh, yes, she can defend Kanye's nonsensical racist, and already then antisemitic rants. But Kanye is an artist, "one of our best living poets". So are any writers of dubious politics, any convicted felon, any instance of sustained personal cruelty worth defending against the mob. Their sensibility just hasn't been expanded far enough, they just don't get it. The mob hasn't created anything worthwhile. The mob is childish, does not know the right words, does not rise up to the occasion like it should.

The truth is that Zadie Smith stands for something. If she really believed in the dead, or in utopian socialism, or in responsible public intellectuals, she would have written differently. She stands for transcendence. Her right to be in the world without anyone being able to make moral pronouncements on her, her work, the work of others. She stands for a plane above this world that matters to this world in ways she finds complex and delicate. She stands for herself being judged only on, and from, this plane.

Thankfully, like a child in a playground that insists the game she devised is very good and we should all follow the rules, and really she is a skillful player and we will all have fun with once we simply follow the rules, we are all free to ignore her.

We are free to live in the real world and make real moral decisions, getting our hands and our consciences dirty, yes, but also stand by real human beings. Beings whose freedoms to play pretend, to read and write, to transcend, is hampered by real people who do not care for the right words or the correct moral stance. We are free to fight for a liberated Palestine though we may be partisan, simplistic, quick to anger and inarticulate.

#and should it make us worse artists or readers to be partisan then so be it #I was not put on this earth to read correctly; I was put on this earth to be of the world. No beauty I partake in will save me from that #Zadie Smith

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 2 months

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By: Michael Shermer

Published: Mar 3, 2024

It was an X post (tweet) mostly out of frustration after wasting too much time on social media absorbing endless stories about the Rigid Right and the Loony Left that led me on February 23 to exclaim…

The thousands of responses were as predictable as they were confident in their assertion that one side of the political spectrum is unquestionably worse than the other. A short sampling (see all responses here):

My post is suggestive of the Horseshoe Theory of politics, according to which if you take a linear spectrum from Left to Right and bend it into a horseshoe shape, the extreme ends are not so far apart (see graphic above).

The type specimen for the Horseshoe Theory was the 1939 Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact that resulted in the joint invasion of Poland that launched World War II, and was famously broken by Hitler when he invaded Russia two years later, in part, because he detested Communism (which he also equated with Jews), plus he wanted lebensraum (living space), thought of the Russian hun as a lesser breed, needed their natural resources, was a proponent of blood-and-soil romanticism, and more (so his motivations are probably overdetermined). The theory has been applied and criticized ever since, for example here and here. But it very much depends on what issues are being compared and, to be frank, whose ox is being gored by the theory (few on either extreme see themselves as remotely like the extremists on the other pole). Well, then, what would critics prefer, the equally delimiting straight spectrum like this? Where would you put someone like me who is socially liberal but fiscally conservative?

For my political tastes I prefer something like the 2x2 matrix below with the primary dimensions being Liberty (Economic or Personal) and Security (Economic or Personal), in which extremes on the Security variable once again find Communists and Fascists cheek-by-jowl. (I’m in the upper quadrant around Classical Liberalism—more on this below.)

One of my respondents posted in the comments this helpful checklist with updated examples for current events:

Since I started this Skeptic Substack column in 2021, I have been highly critical of the Far-Left’s woke ideology that has led them to abandon the search for objective truth; to treat science as nothing more than a hegemonic Western colonial capitalist tool of power and domination; to give up on Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of judging people by the content of their character, and instead obsess over the color of their skin by implementing DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) programs that force otherwise liberal, tolerant, color-blind people into elevating race above character; to punish anyone who deviates from Far Left norms (created only recently and constantly changing) through any means necessary, from censorship and cancel culture to loss of employment and life ruination; and to redefine biological sex from the long-accepted definition of gamete size/type to whatever anyone says it is, and along with this delusion to discard a century of hard-earned women’s rights to privacy (bathrooms), to female-only spaces (changing rooms, prisons), to female-only sports (swimming, cycling, volleyball), and more generally to ditch the dignity of being a woman. (See my Skeptic columns critical of the Far Left here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

As I said in my X post, at least the Far-Right knows what a woman is—an adult human female…who belongs in the bedroom making babies. The SCOTUS overturning of Roe v. Wade was, as I predicted at the time, only the start of the Far-Right’s plan to take control of women’s reproductive rights, starting with abortion. (See my three-part series defending the pro-choice position here, here, and here. And additional columns critical of the Right, such as here, here, and here.) It was only a matter of time before the Far-Right would target IVF, and that time has come with the Alabama State Supreme Court declaration that all frozen embryos stored for InVitroFertilization are legal persons, and thus the disposal of unused frozen embryos should be considered murder. Predictably, IVF clinics began closing their doors, and in the process deprive couples of this life-giving technology. Here are a couple of my outraged tweets on the matter:

I don’t think many Republicans on the Far Right even know what IVF entails. It is quite invasive, risky, time consuming, expensive, and not guaranteed to work. To prep the body for the process hormone shots must be self-administered for weeks in order to produce extra eggs. Withdrawing the eggs is a form of surgery requiring general anesthesia. After withdrawal they are then fertilized (after we guys make our, um, “contribution” to the process) and then implanted. At least half of all implanted fertilized eggs fail to result in a viable birth, so many couples have multiple fertilized eggs implanted in hopes of having one viable birth (and thus some have twins or triplets), with the rest frozen for future use if all else fails, which is as often the case as not. By treating these frozen embryos as “persons”, if couples don’t want to have half a dozen kids or more, then they (and by “they” I mean the women) would have to go through the painful, stressful, expensive, and time consuming process over and over again in hopes of success. Are conservatives willing to foot the bill for the tens of thousands of dollars for each round in order to “save” the frozen persons?

How ignorant and uninformed are Republicans when it comes to reproductive technology? Here is Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville when asked his opinion of his state’s Supreme Court decision:

Yeah, I was all for it. You just gotta look at everything going on in the country. It’s just an attack on families, an attack on kids. You know, anything we can do for the future of our young people, because they’re our number one commodity. We need to have more kids, we need to have an opportunity to do that, and I thought this was the right thing to do.

The NBC News reporter was understandably dumbfounded by the Senator’s ignorance. “But IVF is used to have more children, and right now IVF services are paused at some of the clinics in Alabama,” she explained to the now-flummoxed law-maker. “Aren’t you concerned that this could impact people who are trying to have kids?”

Now stumped, and aware of his own lack of knowledge of what IVF is, exactly, Tuberville stuttered out a change of topic: “Well, that’s for another conversation. I think the big thing is right now you protect, you go back to the situation and you try to work it out to where it’s best for everybody. That’s what the whole abortion issue is about.” Uh, no it isn’t Senator.

In fact, IVF enables around 500,000 babies to be born every year worldwide, with an estimated 10 million total since the technology came online. You would think baby-loving pro-natalist conservatives would be all for this technology. But no. This led me to tweet out that the GOP was once again the POS—the Party of Stupid (a descriptor coined by GOP Presidential candidate Bobby Jindal)—and (channelling Monty Python) predicting what may be coming next for the Religious Right:

Every sperm is sacred. / Every sperm is great. If a sperm is wasted, / God gets quite irate. Let the heathens spill theirs, / On the dusty ground. God shall make them pay for / Each sperm that can't be found. Let the Pagans spill theirs / O'er mountain, hill, and plain. God shall strike them down for / Each sperm that's spilt in vain.

As for contraception, apparently this technology leads to “recreational sex,” and for conservatives that’s a bridge too far. As if living up to H. L. Mencken’s definition of a Puritan—"the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy"—the conservative Heritage Foundation posted on X that “Conservatives have to lead the way in restoring sex to its true purpose, & ending recreational sex & senseless use of birth control pills.” In support they quoted British writer Mary Harrington, who advocates against the birth control pill and in favor of “rewilding sex, returning the danger to sex, returning the intimacy and, really, the consequentiality to sex.” So…conservatives only have sex for reproductive purposes? Sure. The hypocrisy begs for comedic commentary, as in Bill Maher’s observation of pro-life politicians who arrange abortions for their mistresses, or George Carlin’s assessment of conservatives who pretend to care deeply for the “unborn”, but once you’re born…

You’re on your own. No nothing. No neonatal care, no daycare, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're pre-born, you're fine. If you're preschool, you're fucked. Conservatives don't give a shit about you… until you reach military age. Then they think you are just fine, just what they’ve been looking for. They’re not pro-life. They’re anti-woman. They believe a woman's primary role is to function as a broodmare for the state.

In response to my X post comment (below) that IVF is just the start, right-wing activist and author Christopher Rufo responded:

“Recreational sex” is a large part of the reason we have so many single-mother households, which drives poverty, crime, and dysfunction. The point of sex is to create children—this is natural, normal, and good.”

Here was my response to Rufo:

Recreational skiing, softball, soccer, tennis...is a big reason we have so many sports injuries @realchrisrufo ! Recreational sex is not the cause of single-mother households. It is LACK of birth control use + lack of education & norms of commitment, marriage, responsibility, etc. Conservatives are right to emphasize family values. Wrong to restrict freedom & choice for others. IVF & frozen embryos have given > 8 million babies life. Why would you want to deprive parents of this life-giving technology that results in endless parental love? (I speak from personal experience.) Egg retrieval, fertilization, hormone prep, embryo implantation, not to mention pregnancy itself, is a HUGE commitment, mainly born by women (we men just have to, uh, make a "contribution" in a cup) Freezing embryos is necessary because the process is very hard on women, expensive, & many first-tries fail. I don't believe that conservatives really believe that a frozen embryo is a person. I think it's part of a larger religious/political agenda to control women's reproductive choice and freedom. Restricting choice and freedom should not be a conservative value, but it has become one.

An even more extreme position on these matters (if such a thing is even possible) was that of Daily Wire conservative commentator Michael Knowles, who opined that…

The reason surrogacy and IVF are immoral is because they interfere with the family, they break up the nucleus, the very building block of society. They separate the reproductive from the conjugal act. The problem for IVF and surrogacy is that no ends, no matter how good, justify immoral means. No ends, no matter how good, justify actions that are intrinsically evil to achieve them. This is the same kind of logic that we would apply to, say, rape. A child who is conceived in rape. I know some. They have a right to life. It’s very good that they exist. We like these people.

This was a bridge too far, even for me, and so I cut loose on Knowles’ despicable, detestable, disgraceful statement:

As I assess matters here in 2024, the Rigid Right and the Loony Left are both manifestations of authoritarianism—specifically, the well-researched and documented (mostly by liberal social scientists) Right-Wing Authoritarianism, but the newly documented (mostly by conservative social scientists—what few there are) Left-Wing Authoritarianism that is equally divisive and destructive. In response, I would like to make the case for Classical Liberalism. To wit:

Like most liberals, I am pro-choice and fully support women’s reproductive and economic rights; I am in favor of free speech and free thought; I believe in the separation of church and state and am against prayer in school; I believe in liberal democracy and voter’s rights; I believe in some gun control measures; I support environmental protection laws and agree that global warming is real, human caused, and something we should work toward mitigating; I work toward reducing animal suffering and expanding animal rights; I think that we need judicial reform because of our broken criminal justice system that incarcerates far too many people for victimless crimes, especially people of color; I think we should legalize all drugs and regulate them like tobacco and alcohol; I believe we have a moral obligation to help those who cannot help themselves; and, of course, I hold that science is the best tool ever devised for understanding the world and changing it for the better.

Like most conservatives, I believe in limited and accountable government, along with low taxes, low spending, and a balanced budget; I believe in the Constitution and the rule of law along with our system of Constitutional republicanism with checks and balances to prevent power from accruing to any one person or agency; I believe in property rights, and that one of the primary functions of government is to protect our rights; I believe in individual liberty, personal responsibility, and the philosophy of individualism in contrast with collectivism and identity politics; I contend that free trade and free markets are by far and away the best economic system for wealth production and lifting people out of poverty; I believe that there are objective moral values that apply to most people in most places most of the time (although I do not believe they were derived from God) and I reject moral relativism in all its forms.

Most of all, I agree with John Stuart Mill’s timeless observation (in his 1859 book On Liberty) that: “A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.”

In the run-up to the forthcoming Presidential election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden it doesn’t appear either extreme form of authoritarianism is going to attenuate any time soon. Out of a population of nearly 260 million adult Americans, these two are the best in show? What we need is a uniting President in the mold of Abraham Lincoln who, in his First Inaugural Address, as the country was about to be split asunder in civil war, nevertheless addressed all Americans when he thundered both descriptively and prescriptively:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

#Michael Shermer #horseshoe theory #horseshoe politics #IVF #in vitro fertilization #reproductive freedom #authoritarianism #liberalism #centrism #loony left #rigid right #far left #far right #classical liberalism #religion is a mental illness

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hero-israel · 8 months

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https://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinian-academics-sign-open-letter-condemning-abbass-antisemitic-comments/ Idk if you've got my ask about being amazed that Abbas is finally receiving consequences for being antisemitic but now there's an open letter by Palestinian academics calling it out. This is honestly amazing. I think, for better or worse, this is somehow the straw that's breaking the camels back. To be frank, I feel like Abbas' situation is like Trump's now, where he's served his purpose so now that powers that be are tossing him to the wolves, letting him face long-due consequences and will replace him with someone more extremist (DeSantis/Hamas/etc), but you know, we can hope! The thing is that Hamas is *also* starting to lose popularity among Palestinians/Gazans, so even if they've been more popular than the PA before it might not be guaranteed that they could take over the WB or hold on to Gaza in the near-ish future. It's not like Palestinian activists will take all their structures falling apart as a sign they should stop fighting with Israel (the open letter specifically called Abbas/PA out for being "pro-Israel") and I feel like the PA was/is the best shot we had at 2-state, but changes could potentially lead to something new and good, or at the very least *interesting*

Yes, I hadn't gotten around to responding to your prior ask, so let me do that now: I agree that it's remarkable that Abbas seems to be facing some consequences. Now let's move on to your new point...

I like to think I have a decent grasp of the big issues in I/P from closely, perhaps obsessively, following that issue from all over the news and political spectrum for decades. And there are 2 issues in particular where I really have no idea what would happen, where I can't even guess.

The one with far more immediate importance is: "What happens after Abbas dies?"

Abbas himself is not going to dissolve the PA. He has cried wolf on that about 30 times. Will the PA stay in place after he dies? Does he actually have a successor? Will there be a power struggle among rivals, maybe even a street war? Will Israel have to brutishly and - yes - colonially make clear which party it considers to be the true Palestinian president? Could Hamas take over the West Bank Palestinian towns?

He's 87 and looks 100 so I guess we'll find out soon enough. For better and for worse.

(The other issue where I wouldn't dare to take a guess, and perhaps even scarier, is: "What happens if the Jordanian monarchy falls?")

#israel #palestine #mahmoud abbas #arab antisemitism #jumblr

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justjensenanddean · 2 years

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More about Soldier Boy from GQ Interview.

Which means the big question in season three is something a lot of us are contemplating right now: When a would-be tyrant is finally toppled, what fills the power vacuum they leave behind? What if the venom that person injected into society has already sunk in so deep that there’s no sucking it out again? What can we do?

A popular answer on both sides of the real world political spectrum these days is looking for inspiration from an idealized, imaginary past. As conservative politicians try to drag everyone back to an America where white Christian men get to decide what’s right for everybody, liberal politicians fall back on ineffectual appeals to a bygone era of civility, decorum, and reaching across the aisle.

The show’s newest superhero, Soldier Boy, is an explicit throwback to the fantasy of an idealized past—a beloved, humble American hero who killed dozens of German soldiers in World War II, then refused the honor of his own national holiday, insisting the date should be used to honor all superheroes instead. (He also wears a combat helmet and fights with a shield, so yes, he’s The Boys’ Captain America.)

You will not be shocked to hear that the truth about Soldier Boy is a little more complicated than the official story. Believed dead for decades, he returns to a world he doesn’t recognize. For Captain America, being unfrozen meant catching up on stuff like Steve Jobs and Star Trek. For Soldier Boy, it means balking when he sees an openly gay couple walking down the street.

Eric Kripke didn’t need to look far for his Soldier Boy: Jensen Ackles was just finishing his 15-season run on Supernatural, the first TV series Kripke created. “He said, ‘I know that there are some actors that the studio and network and producers have in mind, but I'd be willing to go to bat with you if you want to do that’," Ackles recalls. “And I was like, ‘How big of a bat do you need?’”

Anchoring *Supernatural—*a TV show that premiered in the early days of George W. Bush’s second term—has taken up much of Ackles’ acting career, but he’s still managed to dip into more conventional superhero fare, squaring off against a young Clark Kent in Smallville and voicing Batman himself in last year’s two-part animated film Batman: The Long Halloween. (“Especially the Batman thing—that’s such a heavily painted lane,” he says. “You don't want to reinvent that too much.”) Even this funhouse-mirror version of Captain America wasn’t much of a stretch: “I've known Chris Evans for a million years, back when he and I were fighting for the same roles,” says Ackles.

But more than anything, Ackles was ready to show Supernatural fans what he could do on an Eric Kripke show that isn't bound by traditional TV's standards and practices: "I don't want to be a one-trick pony," he says. "I think I've got something else up my sleeve." Once unleashed onto the modern world, his Soldier Boy feels less like a superhero than a warning: Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

(...)

But like so much of The Boys, this ultra-dark worldview turned out to be uncannily well-timed. “Kripke is a fortune teller,” says Ackles. “He has some weird Kryptonian crystal ball in his office, and he's like, This is what the cultural landscape's going to look like a year from now, and he writes to it. I don't know how he does it.”

Trump was defeated, but he’s gathering strength for another presidential run, and we’re all stuck with what he unleashed—and there’s no sign that it’s going anywhere, or that the Democrats in power have serious plans to do anything about it. And maybe that’s been the real message of The Boys all along—the one that makes it stand apart from all the other superhero stories out there right now: No one is coming to save us, so we’d better figure out how to save ourselves.

gq.com

#Jensen Ackles #Soldier Boy #*

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bee-ina-boat · 1 year

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Being a middle support needs autistic is. Is weird.

My neeeds are always changing and i constantly feel like I'm not autistic enough because i don't experience certain things that others do. That just because the situation I'm in right now accomodates for me to have my alone time and take care of myself it feels like I'm not even middle support needs because i don't feel like I'm struggling 24/7

But that's not TRUE. the situation I'm in, my family takes care of most of the basics in the house. If i was put in an apartment on my own? I would not at all be able to live. My work is babysitting a couple of kids for only a small amount of time every week day where my mom isn't too far away and that's IT. I tried working a regular customer service job and i barely had to do anything and i still quit within the first 3 days because i couldn't do it. I literally couldn't freaking stand in a store making sure the shelves of a tiny area are neat for a small amount of time without having a meltdown in the bathroom.

I can't leave the house alone. I struggle with communication ALOT even though I can physically talk. my motor skills and spatial awareness suck ass. my brain is so so slow for most things and struggles to retain information or remember basic things. The only reason I passed highschool was because i was online schooled and i CHEATED. everyday tasks and keeping schedules feel impossible sometimes

And i have all these struggles etc. but i feel like i constantly have to justify my problems to myself. It feels like my brain is always downscaling what i experience because there are others who have it worse. But that's NOT HOW IT WORKS. Others who are higher support needs then me existing doesn't mean i have no problems!!!!

I'm so afraid that I'm gonna get told "youre not middle support needs." Because im polite during conversations (even though half the time i space out or say weird things or struggle to even put a sentence together) or because i wasn't diagnosed as a kid (despite missing the context that i WAS visibly autistic as a kid. My doctors just thought it was anxiety. Also afabs are less likely to get diagnosed anyway) or because "i don't look autistic" (what does that even mean??)

I'm just. Now that I've accepted i need this amount of support. I'm reaching a point where everytime someone shares there experience I'm just like "Im not as disabled as them so that means I'm not middle support needs" but it's a spectrum!!!! And everyone experiences different parts of it differently and i DONT KNOW why my brain can't accept that!! hHH

:[ bleh i wish my brain wasn't so mean sometimes ngl

Anyway if anyone else does experience this stuff, just know that while it's hard for us to accept. We are valid and we always will be..you deserve to get the support and help you need and if anyone tells you your experiences are lesser I'm gonna kick em, ilu

#levels of autism #.txt #autism #actually autistic #autistic #tism things #level 2 autism #middle support needs #medium support needs

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tobeornottotc · 2 years

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Chess and KinnPorsche 1/?

First of all isn’t this picture so glorious, gives me goosebumps because it looks so magnificent and powerful despite it just being board pieces, maybe it’s the gold. Either wat I feel like this is a massive representation of what seeing the major family chess pieces are like, I also like that it’s gold in this picture since that’s their meta colour, but they are probably also seen as the white side of the chess game, it doesn’t really matter what colour they are, all we know is that in KinnPorsche, since episode 1, we have been introduced to an analogy of chess. And this is a metaphor, a symbolic choice used in these type of storylines. Normally when someone is playing chess in a meta show, it means that it’s used for foreshadowing, mirroring, or just explaining a certain dynamic the audience will have with certain parts of the story. In KinnPorsche the series, the person who introduces us to chess is big daddy Korn, he is the supposed leader of the major family, but he sets his son instead as the new boss as the story begins because he’s become poorly. Playing chess in a story normally shows someone being strategic, calculating and controlling, depending on what role they align themselves too. With Korn he doesn’t put himself on the board but rather the watcher and master of the game constantly winning every single scene we see him play chess in. But I could focus on the puppet mastery that is Korn’s character in this show as shown by his control over the game and his manipulation of certain pieces in it, however I want to explain more about the other pieces, I want to break down how chess so far has shown roles of certain characters and then speculate or explain why some other characters become other chess pieces and what it symbolises for them in this game.

So first of all, chess is you know competition between two sides. There are two groups of people with their own leaders that need protecting and strategy systems in a war, that needs to get to the other side and ensure defeat somehow. Either way, they leave no options for one side’s power being captured and removed, or it ends in a situation where people are forced to give up to the other side, or just accept defeat. Chess is all about using these powerful pieces with each of their own skills to get to the end and destroy the defence and attack systems created by the other side one step at a time. In KinnPorsche we have two sides very much introduced in episode 1 and 2. That’s the major family side, mostly the side we are on, because our main characters play roles on that side, this side is seen as the protagonists, the ones who need to win and are more human and moral in terms of how the audience views them. They are kinder, less strategic, just powerful and wanting to keep and protect that power however they are attacked by all sides, always being betrayed or hurt.

Then we have the second side which is the minor family side. This is the side of the younger brother and his own businesses surrounding the mafia family. This family so far from ep 1-7 are connected with greed, fear, lies, and manipulation. They are seen as antagonistic and monstrous always leaning on the moral ‘black’ side of things. So obviously they are the black pieces because that’s sadly what’s normally associated as the bad side on the morality spectrum whilst white represents purity, and goodness. It doesn’t really seem apart from the role of one character in the show so far, that the minor family are really fighting in a war against the major family but obviously with known story tropes of two brothers thrust on a throne forced to fight for it, there is always going to be competition between them, royalty, politics, and gang tropes in media always have a shunned family member feeling misused, or looked down on and hiding their intentions along the way. I don’t think it’s surprising to say knowing movies like Lion King, Greek mythologies like Zeus vs Hades, and the Godfather and other stories such as this that there is always betrayal despite the fact someone keeps being submissive and kind on the surface to the other side.

In this case Kan smiles a lot and he embraces his role but for some reason his son moves in ways that seem creepy, villainous and hateful against the other side of his family. They are not okay with the lack of power they have. But Korn and his side also know they’re in this war, in the mafia you have to always lose trust for people and always know who’s at your back and Kinn mentions repeatedly to Porsche that yes they are to be distrusted. And that’s a big thing.

So we have two sides, the white/gold side being Kinn’s side the major family, the other being Vegas and his family and their intentions. The goal? Power and control over the whole family assets. As you do in mafia storylines. So like chess there will be trickery, manipulation, and sacrifices, and long games of waiting and backstabbing and dangerous modes of attacks. There will be waiting for someone to be weak. But overall there will be pieces that feel like they have no choice but to play their role. The question is do the pieces know why they are even in this game and how are they dealing with the scary weight of being forced to participate and lead one of these kings to victory. This part will focus on the main roles in the chess board, the kings and queens.

The Kings:

So as mentioned, Korn is meant to be the leader of the major family, he’s meant to be the King, however he sits outside and watches over the game, purposely removing himself and controlling it through his children especially Kinn who he has bestowed responsibility of being his heir in the future. In their board Kinn becomes the King, Korn believes he’s the one needing protection and if weakened would ruin the whole game for them. So he raises Kinn up and lets him know of his role and responsibilities. So what is Korn supposed to be in this game, he acts as the bishop but he isn’t because the show already has foreshadowed his part as the puppet master of everyone, he’s the one playing the game, choosing the parts and controlling the pieces, even when he plays for the other side. He’s one who knows everything in the game despite his weak disguise of not being part of it. He owns the game.

Kinn as the white king is meant to be protected, and plays his role of leadership towards the ending of the game, he’s meant to be strong and cold and cruel to ensure he has subordinates follow him and respect him, however, Kinn is a hopeless romantic and kind and this normally gets him weakened and defenceless, since it’s easy to fall for manipulations and tricks by the other side using that. So Korn focuses instead on the other pieces in the game since their role is to protect and defend and fight for Kinn, he chooses to place to distract and remove the second side completely before the responsibilities fall on Kinn properly. On the other side it feels like Kinn’s counterpart is Vegas, because he’s the one thrust in the same kind of position as Kinn, brothers both responsible for most of the job roles in the sides of the family, however Kinn is put on the throne explicitly with no doubt or push from Korn, but Vegas’s father has not yet yielded to Vegas.

This means Vegas is just another piece on the other side, not the main piece that wants the power and the control. for themselves This is why in episode 2, when Kan is first introduced he questions Kinn’s leadership, he shows disagreement with how he runs things especially with his body guard, showing he feels slighted to be controlled by someone younger and someone who got the position because of nepotism when it should have been his after Korn went ill. So Kan is the king of the other side, he’s the one who’s the rival in the war, the one who if they win, the power would go to, he does his role by keeping silent, smiling and giving Vegas all the power and weaponry to go behind the scenes and sort out any issues and find any weak spots. He sends Vegas in episode 2 to keep an eye on Porsche, because he realises Korn plans to use him as a piece in the game he doesn’t understand why though. He also uses Vegas in episode 7 to manipulate and control situations to ensure the minor family looks like they’re on major family’s side when in reality they are clearly part of the incentives for the rebellion by Don and they blindside him by the way he calls Vegas a traitor. They are probably also behind moles, and Kinn getting targeted and constantly captured because he is the king on the other side who they see as weak. So Kan seems like he’s doing the same thing as Korn, not getting his hand dirty, playing with pieces, but unfortunately for him he’s actually on the board as a piece too, he’s also being manipulated by the player of the game, and he’s also being watched and observed, he’s just to greedy to notice just how scary that is. So if he’s the king where is does that leave Vegas

In summary with the Kings:

White King: Kinn, he’s been given this responsibility, he’s the most targeted on the board and he’s meant to become the next heir after his dad dies of the whole mafia system. The second side’s attack is towards him, everyone tries to manipulate and capture him with different things. Kinn is meant to play a massive role towards the end of the game if he wins, all the power of both sides belong to him and if he loses everything falls apart including all the pieces on his side of the game

Black King: Kan, he’s been slighted the opportunity, wiser and older than Kinn, his uncle controls the other side of the board, he doesn’t get his hands dirty on the surface, smiling and calculating moves and using all his pieces as pawns and tools to protect himself, but he targets the throne, he waits for weaknesses, and calls out choices (Porsche) to know what’s happening. He’s Hades to Korn’s Zeus, he feels taken advantage of so he waits. If Kinn loses he’s the one who’ll be the new king and the minor family will become the major family instead. However with minor in their name it seems Kan has never won in the board since birth, he was always given inferior status and always overlooked.

The queens

The queens in chess are the most powerful part of the board, surprisingly able to by guiding the king, control most of the strategies. There's a heavy role put on them, to ensure that by the end of the game they are at the King's side ensuring he doesn't fall. This means the queen is strong, strong! Like whatever they own, or have or do is important and powerful enough to change the outcome of the game. However at the end of the game the victory always go back to the king, that's who is the one in charge, the one the main players are trying to keep safe, the queen is a weapon, a piece just as every other piece on the game below the king but the one who actually has the ammo, and the strength to destroy everything if they so wish. Getting the loyalty and the love of the queen on your side as the king is paramount to helping him lead and guard his throne. The queen on the other hand? As long as they are given what they need they should be fine, but if they aren't, then the throne would be turned upside down. Which brings us our two queens.

Porsche, or what he’s been set up as is the White Queen to Kinn's White King, I fear for him and anticipate him too. I fear because Porsche unknowingly becomes a piece in this game, being in a piece in the chess game is not good in this environment, you have no choice but to fight, you will be forced to play your role whether you know it or not. The queen is the most important piece of the board, the weapon, the defence, the one with the most power and knowledge of how to destroy the other King. She is not to be played with. The question is yes as a bodyguard who becomes incredibly skilled, Porsche could play that role, or as the love interest of Kinn it may symbolise him as his partner however, it also foreshadows there’s more to Porsche that we still don’t understand. Whatever Porsche has or owns is key to unlocking the defence mechanisms for the white side, and destroying every piece on the other side. The queen is someone who has knowledge or a connection that can easily overcome most of the game play in the war if used properly. Korn intends to connect Kinn to his queen (people have said to give him his own Chan but it’s more than that), meaning the game maker knows more things about this piece than we do, this isn’t just because he wants loyalty but he wants loyalty from Porsche as a way to trap him and make him become a weapon and puppet on their side. The queen is just as much a puppet as the other pieces, she’s also giving her life to ensure her man is protected and her power is the same. Porsche wants to protect Kinn now because of love which wasn’t his father’s intentions, but Korn would gladly use it and manipulate it to ensure whatever is hidden inside Porsche will be used to its full potential. Kan and Vegas both know Porsche is important, they both keep trying to remove him because he’s a threat the question is why?

And then you have Vegas. Oh Vegas, the boy who feels forced into all of this too. Vegas acts like he wants the power, and that he even wants to be the king of the piece, he seems given the most autonomy in the game, he’s strategic, cunning and smart, and cruel perfect for the role of the queen, but he’s also just a weapon, a pawn of his dad, sent to do his bidding without choice. Vegas is the queen because he’s meant to be the last line of defence for Kan, Kan has groomed and forced him to be strong, mighty and violent beyond belief to ensure no one gets past him. Reasons Vegas should be feared, he also like the queen contains knowledge, steps, and strategies that can defeat and wipe out the other side too. Vegas knows a lot too, he probably even knows more about the game than Kinn and Porsche know. The minor side knows how much power Korn has, they know his real self because they’ve seen his control and hate it, so while on the white side we see him as a dad who’s kind and set apart from the board, who’s nice to his kids and worried for them, the second side views him as a cunning monster who hurts them.

Vegas’s goal is to wipe out the major side why? What does he know or want from them (apart from greed for the throne and control) that makes him become a pawn easily used and controlled by his father to destroy them. Why does he hate them so much?. Either way I’ve been saying not just their positions in the game, but Porsche and Vegas mirror each other a lot in this story, they both have a lot characterization choices in common and it's intentional, however Vegas is put in a negative light and has too many masks, it’s hard to see his real self or understand him until we see him break. But just as Porsche’s real self beneath the queen piece is just a boy who dreams of protecting who he loves, staying alive for who he cares for, and forced into this life with no choice, Vegas who has a lot and is targeting him may just be the same. Spoiler he is the same. Either way, Vegas is an important piece of the game, he will be in the last line of defence of this war but there’s a piece that can defeat his power from the other side apart from the king and queen, if he’s ever vulnerable or blindsided. Who could that be?

In summary with the queens:

Porsche: Lover of the King, is loyal to him and him alone, wants to be free from responsibilities and roles and finds safety with Kinn. Is going to be great as a bodyguard (best defence and attack) and he's going to be wanted, targeted and prioritised. No one however knows what Kan intends to do with him not even Kinn, who still just believes his father is doing this for him to have someone he can trust. Porsche's choice can destroy the game, for both sides, same as Vegas.

Vegas: Sigh, son of the King, is also loyal to him and him alone and detests everything to do with the other side, feels slighted, and overlooked, and is a sadist who is numb to torture, pain and violence. His strengths are his ability to manipulate, wear masks and adapt to his surroundings, and weaponise everything he has. Vegas is also like the queen piece giving his ALL to the game, his loyalty and his knowledge he contains hidden from the other side could also destroy or remake the game depending what he wants to do with it. Vegas is seen as psychopathic, obsessed with power and control and pain, but the thing is like Porsche is on the other side, he has no choice in the matter, if he fails the whole side crumbles, if he fails, a lot is at stake. If his father is defeated everything falls apart. And like Porsche has his own goals for why he became unwittingly the queen, Vegas also has the same reason. Both Porsche and Vegas can also be stopped or defeated by the two parallel pieces on the latter side. Will discuss that in another post.

Anyways after spending time with KP, and looking at chess and watching videos describing chess, KP has most of their characters in the actual plot fit Korn's game, Korn has his own intentional laid pieces for this game, and Kan thinks he has his, however as mentioned, Kan isn't playing the game, he is a piece in the game, that's painful for him, there's no control no matter how much he thinks he's winning or ahead. Korn will always be one step ahead. Some of the pieces of the game are also corresponding to pieces of the murderboard Kim is looking at. Kim is the one trying to understand his father's game (while probably finding himself also playing a role unknowingly on the board), and he's the one who's also trying to piece things together, but there are somethings on Korn's side that can't be seen, for example he has plot armour because most of the pieces on his side are protagonists, he views love as weak (he's right) but he doesn't realise how much love and passion is what he needs to manipulate to get what he wants, it's how he basically will destroy the other side in every piece (and he doesn't even mean to sigh) but I'll go more into detail about that later once we see them expose their roles, I just feel bad for the other side they all never had a chance they were all going to be ruined because Korn is the one in control of the game from above. He was never in it.

#kinnporsche #kinnporsche the series #reviews #bl series #bl drama #thai bl #kinn x porsche #vegas x pete #kinnporsche meta

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jones-friend · 1 year

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So recently I took it upon myself to watch through all the Fantastic Beasts series. Why? Because after the subpar release of Secrets of Dumbledoor all plans to continue making Fantastic Beasts movies have been axed. The series pulled a Divergent and got cancelled before it finished its series. It is also far past the initial wave of hype of its release, and with all the movies being on HBOMax I did not pay money to see these outside the subscription fee I already pay.

And oh goodness, goodness this is not the viewing experience I expected.

So the first movie is the one that acts the most like a movie. There’s characters with motivations and their actions drive the plot forward. I’m fairly certain JKR did not research 1920′s New York but she never makes the history relevant. So you win some you lose some. The premise is Newt Scamander is a wizard conservationist and his beasts get loose in New York, and they have to gather them back up. Unlike the rest of the movies in this series there are scenes I did like here, for example one winged snake grows to fill its habitat and they have to trick it into going inside a teapot to shrink it back down. It’s delightful.

The actors also bring a lot to what would be some flat characters. Eddie Redmayne specifically plays a Newt Scamander on the autistic spectrum without the movie making a big deal out of it, which makes me think this was a choice by the actor and not the writer. The characters have a wonderful charisma and all the actors are having a great time, its very easy to see why there’s so much fanfiction on this series bc of how underutilized everything is.

There’s a number of missteps, and the movie in my brain is better than the real one bc there’s a number of one off lines they could give to help fix things. And part of the problem I have with JKR’s world is that spells are just kind of nonsense. Newt fixes an entire apartment complex by waving his wand. A lot of her racism is still VERY present here as well, and the UK wizards taking pot shots at the US wizards for being unable to marry muggles is. A choice.

The second movie is where the problems begin. As Dumbledoor gets involved he becomes the main character over Newt. The second and third movies do not have to do with magical creature conservation, the creatures become MacGuffins (the item everyone wants) rather than what the movie interacts with. When we do get a scene interacting with Fantastic Beasts its a surprise, a breath of fresh air. Her terrible wizard politics come back and now Wizard Hitler wants to stop world war II, so its up to our wizarding pals to put an end to his evil deeds. It isn’t good.

But the third movie was something special. Out of all these the first can be a fun movie on its own, the second is Not Great, but the third movie is so unique. I have never had a moviegoing experience where the entire movie fell out of my brain immediately after the credits rolled. The issue is none of the scenes have connective tissue and the movie doesn’t set up or pay off enough elements, so this movie is extremely hard to recall in the correct order of scenes. It was like the men in black neurolized me immediately after the movie was over. So I’ll do my best to recall the plot here:

Newt helps a magical creature called a Qilin give birth. He’s attacked by Evil Wizards and is knocked out, one of his creatures flying him back home. Apparently the Qilin is an important creature to the wizarding world bc it bows to pure of heart wizards and decides wizard president. So it was giving birth 100% alone in the wild unprotected as evil wizards descended on it. Wizard Hitler steals the baby Qilin to make it choose him as wizard president. He also kills it bc its blood lets him see the future inaccurately. Bc of this Dumbledoor assembles wizard avengers and tells them the only way we can combat this is to not have a plan. An hour and a half of not having a plan passes. Wizard Hitler has zombie’d the baby qilin and will use it to become wizard president, but the other high profile expert wizards can’t tell he reanimated it like a puppet. There is a series of action scenes in the same physical set and then the zombie qilin bows to Wizard Hitler, but the good guys bring the secret twin qilin to the ceremony and tell it your undead sister can’t hear you. Then the blood pact necklace that kept Dumbledoor and Wizard Hitler from fighting decides to break and there’s a short fight scene. Then the movie stops.

I’m not trying to exaggerate, make hyperbole, it’s really interesting how unconnected all of this mess is. I wouldn’t recommend watching through the Fantastic Beasts movies as bad movies. I would say the first has good moments and isn’t a wholly bad movie, but that third one. There’s something really special about the third one. Its the only one to have the decency to leave nothing behind after it concludes.

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dustyphantom · 2 years

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I usually write Norman from the perspective of the games/anime with May as his kid (because dad+daughter bonding!). I always imagined him to have far far more feminine interests then masculine ones but was never really able to express that until after becoming friends with Koga and Bruno. Realizing it’s okay to have and enjoy such things, even leads him to designing his own coordinator outfit and taking on a stage persona/name for contests too.

But I’d love to hear your own thoughts and ideas on this for Norman as well!

Sorry I took so long to reply!

I'll be honest, I don't think about Norman a lot, but I'll try to come up with some!

Fun fact I just discovered: Norman and Byron have the same voice actor in the English Dub of the anime(Dan Green).

I read the manga, so I tend to peg Norman as being Brendan/Ruby's father rather than May/Sapphire's and regard him from that perspective as well.

Norman has a Johtan accent. Brendan/Ruby does too, but his is less noticeable.

He moved to Hoenn when he was 35, and his wife and child moved over two years later.

Norman wasn't very popular with the other gym leaders when he moved because of Hoenn's complex political climate.

Norman was mostly unaware of this when he was appointed, but found out the hard way pretty quickly.

The only gym leader that was friendly towards him from the get-go was Wattson, and they became close friends because of that.

Although, Norman does often tend to be oblivious to Wattson's jokes.

The rest of the gym leaders came around to him in time.

Of all of them, Juan and Wallace were the last to warm up to Norman.

When he would get homesick, he would go hang out in Mossdeep City, since he's originally from Olivine City.

He originally moved because his friend, Professor Birch, encouraged him to.

He met Lance as a kid a few times before he moved. He thought he was a brat and was shocked when he heard that Lance had become champion later.

Norman's actually only 5 years older than Lance.

He was a trainer at Saffron City's fighting gym for a while before it was disbanded.

Bruno also trained there, so they did battle each other occasionally, but weren't exactly friends.

However, Norman still looks up to Bruno quite a lot.

He was born in Olivine City, but moved to Saffron City for several years before marrying his wife and returning with her to Olivine, and then moving to Hoenn.

It's pretty normal for aspiring Champions and Gym Leaders to do internships before they're appointed. Norman did his internship under Koga.

Norman was 24 at the time of his internship.

Koga is 15 years older than Norman.

The two became fast friends, and still often talk.

Koga was the one who introduced Norman to the woman who would become his wife.

Norman does care deeply for his family, he's just not great at expressing it. It is suspected that he could be on the autism spectrum.

He also does not like being touched. Occasional hugs from his family are acceptable.

After he reconnected with Ruby, he got Juan to teach him about contests, and even participated in a few. He wasn't very good at it, but he did enjoy it.

Norman and Juan also get along quite well, and Juan is grateful to Norman for reaching out and helping break down the walls between them.

In all timelines except the anime, he had a second child who died shortly after they were born. In the anime, this child is Max, who obviously survives.

Norman was torn apart about what happened, and still has nightmares about it.

Spending a lot of time working and training at his gym helps him work through his anxieties.

He also enjoys meditation and finds cleaning therapeutic.

He's surprisingly good at baking, though he isn't home a lot to do it.

It's also a little bit ironic, since he doesn't like sweet things.

Although he is not romantically interested in men, he experimented when he was younger and dated another man for a short time.

Asexual Heteroromantic, cisgender(he/him).

37 year old as of ORAS, birthday is November 1.

Stands at 5'10"(178cm).

Juan doesn't get a personality, so he gets to be in basically all of my headcanons for other characters.

In all seriousness, having an interconnected world with complex relationships is really important to me, so that's why so many characters tend to be mentioned in each other's headcanons.

#pokémon #gym leader norman #gym leader juan #elite four koga #elite four bruno #pokemon headcanons

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khaleesiofalicante · 2 years

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This chapter felt like it has such a steady momentum to me. You could really see this complete transformation from start to finish. Some things I loved:

Alec’s emotional spectrum

I’ve said this so many times before and I’ll say it again, I am so happy for this man. The fact that he is taking accountability for his actions, allowing himself to be teachable and sitting with the wholeness of his emotions. I think this chapter really showed us where Alec’s transformation has been one of vulnerability, self awareness and accountability. It’s really touching to see the way he went from ‘I have to deny my emotions’ to be safe, ‘I can’t let the pain reach my face’ to ‘it’s okay to feel this pain, I can learn from it too.’ The biggest shift I believe is in realising he didn’t need to be responsible for everyone’s happiness anymore. Robert’s death impacted him in way that he felt the need to assume responsibility for his family, for the legacy of the Lightwood name and for taking over his work as a government official. Alec no longer had his father to shield him, to help him navigate politics, to show him the harsh truths in life. He had to become the protector now, the one everyone relied on when everything feel apart. I think this is why he struggled so much to feel, it was easier to pour his emotions into his work, into protecting his family, into being the Governor the people need. It was so much harder to confront the cracks in the ‘dream life’ he was always fighting to keep alive.

I loved seeing how much calmer he was by the third timeline, how even in his stress and worry he didn’t jump to conclusions, use his words to hurt others or hide his pain. He was honest with the fact that he wasn’t comfortable, he reached out and asked for help, he listened to Jem pointing out where they had caused their family pain, he accepted that he can’t keep his family safe if he isn’t working to better himself too. He is honouring his needs, not to win Magnus back but because he recognises that he deserves to be happy too. That wanting to support his family makes him happy, he just doesn’t need to hurt himself doing that anymore (Rafe and Alec really are similar hey). He can’t be responsible for people’s happiness but he can be there to support them to find their happy space.

The evolution of therapy.

Okay so, one thing about this is the fact that the way Malec interacted with therapy across the timelines almost became a representation of the way they navigate their inner turmoil. Timeline 1, Magnus was pushing Alec to go to therapy out of desperation and fear, it wasn’t so much about helping Alec grieve as it was about Magnus being scared of the dark abyss it could push them both towards. In many ways Magnus might have felt a sense of helplessness and lack of control, wanting the pain dissipate for Alec, not only because he loves him but because he was hurting them all too. I think Magnus sees his own situation sometimes, sees how empty and endless it can be and he assumes everyone will end up on that path (therapy is like a lifeline to Magnus). I’m glad Luca could share some insight because he totally ignored that therapy wasn’t a safe space for Alec at that time. Alec really needed family then, he needed to know he wasn’t alone and they could get through it together.

Timeline 2 was interesting because therapy became more about stopping the divorce than necessarily figuring out how to heal their marriage. Malec were almost stuck in a limbo between ‘this is not working’ and ‘it’s over’, bouncing back and forth trying to find some clarity. I think this is why therapy really didn’t work for them, they were trying to fix something that was already too far broken. It was something they couldn’t come back from, there was no healing that could be achieved within the fractured commitment they had made to each other. This is where Alec’s desperation and fear kicked in, it was his sense of lacking control over their relationship, of wanting Magnus to see he would never stop trying, never stop sacrificing himself for them (unfortunately it was too late).

My favourite timeline 3, Alec choosing therapy for himself and asking Magnus to support him out of love. As much as therapy was about Malec learning to be better coparents, I think Alec also realised this was about him learning to be a better person in general. I think for him, it’s hard to dig up the pain of the past, the guilt can sometimes be a lot for him to carry. By proxy this is almost giving him a chance to learn from his childhood pain through understanding the pain of his children. I loved that he knew he didn’t have to do this alone, that he could trust in Magnus’ guidance to support him as well. Alec has felt lonely for so long, having to face a lot of the issues from the divorce by himself, that being able to experience this facet of Magnus’ world is almost a new layer of intimacy for him. It’s realising he doesn’t have to be in a romantic relationship with Magnus to feel his love. It’s him willingly stepping into a vulnerable space, acknowledging how exhausted their marriage was and choosing to learn so they can both be the parents, the friend and the partners they both needed.

I loved this: “And if he doesn’t work out, we’ll keep looking,” Magnus says gently. “I’m not giving up this time.” It really showed me that Malec are both in a place where they feel strong enough to keep on fighting, not to ‘try harder’ anymore. Recognising that they had given the past all they could, no longer desperate to mend what can’t be fixed. Rather they are working to absorb all the wisdom of their pain and build a new foundations of healing and love. It was almost karmic in the way that Tessa was the last person they reached out to as a couple for therapy advice and the first person Magnus reached out to as coparents. They have become the people they now need to be to move past the guilt of what was and be hopeful of their commitment to a better future together.

Alec realizes he is still holding hands with Magnus. He doesn’t let go. Magnus doesn’t either.

One thing I have learnt from this fic is that the raw emotion of love may not be enough, but love as a complete contained entity always is. It’s the actions that align with the emotion, the way we heal for ourselves, the way we support the people we care about, the boundaries we set, the way we stand up for our needs and the gentleness and innocence with which we express our vulnerabilities. It is beyond ‘I care for you’ and ‘I need you’, it’s ‘I want to keep growing with you’, ‘my life is endlessly more exciting with you’, ‘I will always be here to support and love you’. This is what I feel Malec is learning most, the fact that love really doesn’t hurt, it’s the way that we try to control it that does. They can hold on now and not let go, not suffocate each other but rather help each other to breathe.

——

Also just thinking about the whole dialogue of Magnus talking to 2d Alec about his excitement to see 3d Alec: about how sexy it is that he asked Magnus to support him in therapy, about being nervous he won’t ask the right questions, of wanting to make a good impression…..and then putting on fucking fishnets. I can’t. This man really covered all the bases.

Song rec for our everlasting lovers, Malec: ‘Adore you’ - Nao (because infinite love is worshipped in the veins of our commitment to ourselves and each other). The lyrics are so fucking perfect and she’s my fav too 🥰

Hope you’re hydrated, healing and happy dearest Dani x

Reading your analysis after every chapter for me is liking reading a the Washington Post's review of my movie or something askndkjansckja.

I love it so so so much.

Also that song rec was sexy oof.

PS - Magnus and 2D Alec need their own spin-off series.

I had seven cups of tea today so I'm very hydrated lol <3

Have a great week, love.

#tlnd

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sashketter · 7 days

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The Captain and the Senator Chapter 2 Footnotes

Double the length, double the fun 😉🤭 Some clarifying thoughts:

Poor Echo lol but Mom deserves his beauty sleep 😌

Here’s how I figure the timeline: when Rex and the Batch are escaping the shipyard in “Truth and Consequences,” Rex says they need to hurry because “it’s almost morning.” The establishing shot of the Senate building immediately after is still dark, so it’s not even sunrise yet. That means when the Batch leave, it’s most likely early to mid morning. I assume then that by the time Rex and Riyo reach her apartment after Echo does his scan, it’s at least early afternoon. And with three people taking separate, consecutive showers in one fresher, it’s likely to be between 6 to 9pm by the time this chapter starts. They’ve all been awake for over a day. They’re all supremely sleepy-eepy.

Pantorans blush purple, obvs bc red blood + blue skin = purple cheeks, and I think that’s absolutely adorable. I’m working off this and this swatch, in case y’all want a visual.

I’m not going to debate Riyo’s exact age. I think it’s enough to know she’s older than in “Trespass,” and I’ll treat her as such. She’s obviously younger than Bail and Mon Mothma, but certainly not inexperienced. She’s allowed to have thots about a half-naked clone right in front of her! And y’all spent literal years sailing Foxiyo. As far as I’m concerned, Rex is a lateral move for her.

Riyo strikes me as someone who would wear nightgowns, another similarity she shares with Padmé, but I had her opt for loose pajamas because it was a Long Ass No Good Day and she just wanted to get comfortable and retain some modesty while hosting Rex and Echo.

As much as I think the clones treat their armor like a second skin and feel almost naked without it, I also think they don’t care about being half naked around other people. Certainly not around each other; it’s the same equipment, etc. And obviously, there’s room for a spectrum of modesty, but unless it’s an active battlefield, sun’s out guns out. Get ye taps aff, as the Scots wud sae.

I am of the firm belief that the clones were all horny young men who took every opportunity to get laid, Republic and Kaminoan policies be damned. I don’t think the WW2 parallels stop with the nose art.

I’m also of the firm belief that for all the anti-clone sentiments TCW seemed to suggest, there had to have been an equal amount of love for them. GAR groupies, clone fan clubs, what have you. Again, using WW2 for inspiration, there had to have been a Republic equivalent of the USO. And you’re telling me millions of Jango Fetts went completely unnoticed by the civilian population? No one wanted to bang Fives? Even if it was illegal, you don’t think some enterprising citizens wanted a taste of that forbidden fruit? How do you explain the thirsty side of TCW fan base? Be frfr, sex transcends politics.

Writing sex is hard DIFFICULT HOW DO ROMANCE NOVELISTS DO IT. There’s only so many ways of avoiding cock, pussy, clit, testicles without sounding like a prude 💀 and it was my first attempt, so I’ll get better, I promise 😉

But frenulum is a fun word lolol Kisses to everyone who uses it.

It was very important to me that they were both fresh-from-the-shower clean. Wash your bits before intercoursing, ya nasties.

Equally important was Riyo using the fresher immediately after. IYKYK.

I reference Umbara twice, if only to underline that Rex understands Riyo’s predicament more than she does. He understands what it’s like to be used as a tool against his own aims. To that end, I’m not sure the Republic divulged the full details of Krell and Umbara to the public, in the same way Palpatine never shows all his cards. They probably would’ve made Krell’s deceptions and the clones’ sacrifices known to garner sympathy, but I think only the clones who were there know the full details, things like the Umbarans’ technology and how easily the clones were tricked into targeting each other. Those things would erode public confidence in the GAR and the war, so in my mind, they’re classified.

#*#the captain and the senator #footnotes

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plethoraworldatlas · 17 days

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Author's note: The following is the text of a speech delivered on the campus of Indiana University, Bloomington on April 29, 2024 during a rally that called for the termination of Indiana University President Pamela Whitten and Provost Rahul Shrivastav after they brought heavily armed Indiana State Troopers—including snipers—onto the campus to violently repress peaceful protests. Over three days, on two separate occasions, the troopers violently dispersed crowds peacefully assembled in a free speech zone, pulling down a few harmless tents, and violently arresting over 50 students and faculty members, each of whom was banned from campus for at least a year, on threat of prosecution for felony trespass.

The Whitten administration must go.

On April 16, at a special General Meeting called by the Bloomington Faculty Council, the Bloomington faculty passed a vote of no confidence in President Whitten by a vote of 827-29—that's 93%. For Provost Shrivastav—who was installed by her and cannot be judged apart from her—the vote for no confidence was only 91%.

Both the meeting and the overwhelming vote of no confidence were unprecedented in my 37 years as an IU faculty member.

Barely a few minutes had passed before Whitten sent out an email bemoaning the challenges facing higher education and promising to “listen and learn,” and to “weigh the guidance from faculty council and the participation of the campus community through shared governance to achieve our collective vision of a thriving campus.”

A few minutes later, Quinn Buckner, the retired mediocre professional basketball player who now chairs IU’s Board of Trustees, declared: “Let me be absolutely clear: President Whitten has my full support and that of every member on the Board of Trustees.”

President Whitten and Chair Buckner—surely peers when it comes to professional distinction and educational vision, or the lack thereof—may believe in each other.

But it must frankly be said: the faculty vote of no confidence in Whitten and her underlings did not signify a loss of confidence but a lack of confidence.

The Whitten administration was hired by a Board that overruled its own appointed search committee and that made no effort to consult with faculty. Whitten’s appointment was never authorized or even seriously considered by the faculty; Whitten has done nothing to earn the confidence of the faculty; and so Whitten has never had the confidence of the faculty.

But in recent months what had been a simple lack became something more—a strong and determined opposition by a broad range of faculty—across the intellectual, disciplinary, and political spectrum—who have come to consider the attitudes and the actions of the administration as not simply incompetent or confused or intellectually suspect or morally derelict or politically objectionable but downright dangerous.

For many of us, things began to crystallize when the Whitten administration made IUB the first major research university in the United States to suspend a tenured faculty member for doing what MAGA Rep. Jim Banks and other right-wing legislators declared verboten: serving as a supportive faculty advisor of the student-run Palestine Solidarity Committee. The administration then followed up by peremptorily and rudely canceling the long-planned major art exhibit of Palestinian artist Samia Halaby.

Across the country, pro-Palestinian rallies on campuses have generated controversy, and across the country, a political unholy alliance of far-right, Christian nationalist politicians—and, I am sorry to say, organizations like the ADL, AIPAC, and Hillel—have responded to the controversy by demanding that the protests be shut down on the specious grounds of “opposing antisemitism” and “protecting students.”

The presidents of Harvard, UPenn, and Cornell were called before MAGA Congresswoman Elise Stefanik’s House Education and Workforce Committee to abase themselves, failed to be sufficiently humbled, and were denounced and subsequently cashiered. When Columbia’s President Minouche Shafik’s turn came, she bent the knee, promised to crack down on her campus, and then returned to upper Manhattan to do just that. Poor Pam Whitten has not—yet—merited an audience with Stefanik. And so she found her own way to get the validation she desires from those who matter most to her—call in the snipers.

At the same time, the protests furnished the perfect opportunity for the Whitten administration to prove its mettle and to demonstrate its superiority to the leadership of the Ivy Leagues, which have apparently been insufficiently repressive.

Whereas those college presidents actually articulated ideas, however confused or craven, Whitten articulates no ideas.

Whereas those presidents typically used campus police or city police to suppress their students, Whitten brought in heavily armed and armored State Troopers, many in camouflaged battle gear, to suppress IU’s students and faculty, and to brutally arrest over 50 of them—of us. Last week there were armed snipers on the IMU roof, and scores of machine-gun toting troops taking control of the campus—at the behest of the very administration that punished or canceled other entirely peaceful events on the grounds of “public safety.”

It would be a gross understatement to say that this violent response constitutes an infringement of academic freedom.

It represents a clear and present danger to the safety of everyone on campus within range of the weapons; an equally clear and present danger to our constitutionally protected civil liberties; and a profound danger to the intellectual freedom and education that is at the heart of any serious university.

...

I was mistaken last week. For there was another option: call in the troops.

Why?

Well, it seems clear that President Whitten fancies herself a leader. Not a thought leader. Not an educational leader.

A leader in the nationwide effort to be tough on the “crime” of speaking out.

A law and order university president.

The Spiro T. Agnew of American higher education.

And so she moved to attack almost everything that higher education stands for—with the exception of the economic boosterism and sports cheerleading that was the hallmark of her leadership until she decided to suspend academic freedom and call in the troops.

Whitten has proven that when the calls for crackdown come, she will crack down.

She will not resign. If she had any self-respect as an educational leader, the vote of no confidence would have led her to do anything but call in the troops.

And so she called in the troops. And by doing so, she showed utter contempt for the faculty who do the teaching here at this university and the students who are here to learn and grow and assume the responsibilities of democratic citizenship.

We need to take back our university.

#us politics #indiana #indiana university #bloomington indiana #student protest #university protests #college protests #police brutality #political corruption

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