#another reason to hate the american political system
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when he became my favourite character, and i thought finally i have a comfort character who isn't completely messed up. and i thought he actually seems quite happy
then fucking obama happened
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i registered to vote for the first time ( i feel old) now that im an adult but my state has closed primary elections which i was wondering if you have an opinion about. my initial thought was that its bad because i had to register democrat (rather than my states green party which represents my beliefs more) just so i could vote between democrat candidates, which feels like being pressured into supporting the weird pseudo two party system we have. but then i looked it up and apparently a reason for this is so that people from opposing parties wont purposefully mess up the votes just so that their preferred candidates have an easier time winning, and i think that makes sense too. but is that actually the reason theyve closed it or is it just to force us dem/republican?? cause it feels strange
Okay, look. I respect the fact that you're a young person, and I appreciate that you have not only registered to vote, but plan to vote in the primaries, so I don't want to lecture you too much. That said: I am taking you out for coffee, I am sitting you down, I am looking into your eyes, and I am urgently telling you the following:
The Green Party is a scam. It is a scam. It has existed for decades in American politics as an empty shell corporation weaponizing the good intentions of young people like yourself, because all it theoretically stands for "it's good to save the planet maybe." Which is not something that any non-insane person seriously disagrees with, but there is no world in which that cause is actually furthered by registering/voting Green (you mentioned that you did vote for Democrats, which -- good, but listen to me here, youngun, okay?) It ran Jill Stein in 2016 to siphon more votes from HRC, and this election it plans to run Cornel West, a pro-Russian tankie who positively equated Bernie and Trump, as another spoiler candidate. It does not stand for "protecting the planet" or America in any real way. It has never elected a single senator or congressman, let alone a president. It stands for empty performance/grievance political theater by those people who feel too morally superior to vote for/affiliate with Democrats, often because the internet has told them that it's not Cool or Hip or Progressive enough.
If your main priority is climate/the environment, you're doing the right thing by registering as a Democrat and voting for Democrats. (Also: the adjectival form is Democratic. It is the Democratic party and Democratic candidates, otherwise you sound like the Fox News host who wrote a book literally entitled "The Democrat Party Hates America.") They are the only major party who has in fact passed major climate legislation and have made environmental justice a central tenet of their platform. As opposed to the Republicans, whose Project 2025, along with the rest of its nightmare fascist prescriptions, openly pledges to completely wreck existing climate protections and forbid any new ones, just because we weren't all dying fast enough under their death-cult rule already. That's the main logical fallacy I don't get among both the Online Leftists and the American electorate in general: "the Democrats aren't doing quite enough as I'd like, so I'll enable the active wrecking ball insane lunatics to get in power and ruin even the progress we HAVE managed to make!" Like. How does that even make sense?
On a federal level, the Greens have contributed nothing whatsoever of tangible value to American or international climate policy/legislation, environmental justice, or anything else, because as noted, they don't have any elected candidates and mostly focus on drawing voters away from Democrats. There might be plenty of good candidates on the local or city level, which -- great! Vote away for Greens if they're available, or the only other option is a Republican! But on the federal/primary level, please understand: once again, they are a scam. There is no point in affiliating yourself with them. You're welcome to register Green and vote Democratic, if that makes you feel better or if you prefer having another label next to your name, but once again, I'm telling you in my position as a salty Tumblr elder that they have done nothing but harm to the causes they claim to care about, because "environment" is such a nebulous priority and has demonstrably been hijacked to stop the American government entity, i.e. the Democrats, that is actually working to improve on it.
As for your question: nobody is "forcing" or "pressuring" you to vote in primaries. By your own admission, you made a conscious choice to register as a Democrat in order to vote for Democratic candidates. If you were just a regular registered voter of whatever party affiliation, you would vote in the general election for whatever candidate the primary process produced. But if you are sufficiently vested and committed to that process that you would like to have a say in who is running under that party label, it is not unreasonable that you would register as a member of that party. Nobody has twisted your arm behind your back and made you do so; you are taking a considerable level of initiative on your own. Likewise, open primaries can be both a good and bad thing. This falls under the "the political system we have is flawed, but we can't magically pretend it doesn't exist and act according to our own fantasyland versions of reality" thing that I keep saying over and over. So yes, if you want a role in shaping the Democratic candidates who emerge from a Democratic primary process, you will usually register as a Democrat, and nobody has forced you to do that. It's that simple.
Likewise as a general programming note: I'm trying to cut back on politics a bit right now, because I don't have the spoons/bandwidth/mental health to deal with it. I apologize. So if you've sent me a politics-related ask recently and haven't received a response, I'm not deliberately or maliciously ignoring you; I just am not able to handle it as much as usual and will have to put it on pause. However, I feel as if this is important enough to be worth saying, so, yeah.
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I suppose considering my last post I should address something.
I'm currently writing "Melodi," and "Foxen," and a lot of people have asked me if there will be "Representation" in those stories.
The answer is, "Not intentionally, no."
I do not write labels, I write characters. I'm sorry, I don't give a flying fuck about representation, I write characters that are important to the story and give them personalities that further the plot.
I love character interactions, I love when characters with heavily different personalities and opinions interact with one another and have disagreements, make stupid decisions, do things that the reader would never do (like "DON'T GO IN THERE" moments).
I also like world-building. I like imagining entire worlds where the governing bodies, the landscape, the whole society is completely different than Earth, especially since I feel very strongly that bringing real-world issues (especially political or ideological) into fictional media completely pulls the viewer out of the fiction.
A story about a fictional world shouldn't be a story about Earth.
Period. I will never change my opinion on that.
It's time to really lay things out here. People have asked me, "Will there be any trans characters in <Melodi/Foxen>?"
The answer is an absolutely resounding, "No. Trans people do not exist in those universes literally at all."
"WHOA, WHAT!? SO YOU'RE JUST ERASING TRANS PEOPLE!?"
No. I'm inventing a world where you can swap your sex by drinking a potion or casting a spell, thus meaning gender dysmorphia would not exist, because if you wanna be a girl you can just snap your fingers or drink a potion. That is not "Erasing Trans People," that is looking realistically at a fictional universe in which we are not born into a body we can't easily change out of.
I'm sorry to have to tell you this but the concept of gender, of culture, of race, of species, are all concepts that exist on Earth, and a fictional world is not required to have any of those things. At all.
Do black people exist in Melodi? Yeah, humans can have darker skin, a lot of them do. Are they a different culture? No. Do they act different? No. Do they look different? Other than the skin color, no. Do they wear their hair different? No.
All of these things are because "Humans" in Melodi's universe are a society obsessed with technology. Humans are the only species with no natural magical affinity, and therefore they put cybernetic bio-chips in their children that give them artificial magic affinity that slowly replaces their circulatory system as they grow up to make them able to cast spells. In Melodi's universe, humans are a society revolving around technological advancements, spellcrafting with their cool digital magic and they've developed kinks and fetishes for people with different cyber wiring patterns in their faces instead of like, "Freckles or no freckles"
There's no Africa or America in Melodi's universe so why would there be African Americans? There's just black humans, who act like all the other humans but have black skin, no cultural differences at all, no racism between them, none of that.
I hate to be the one to break this to all of you but fiction is not real, and as much as you wanna demand it, fiction has no implicit criteria to be realistic or relatable in any way.
And now we get to the elephant in the room, "But Jay, you've said in private that Melodi is a lesbian, isn't that lesbian representation?"
No, that's girls who are attracted to girls existing in a fantasy world where it's extremely possible and reasonable for a girl to sometimes, hear me out, be attracted to girls.
Where gender dysmorphia wouldn't exist because of the immediate ease of access of sex-swapping magics and potions, the same can't be said about a person's attractions. Yes, magic and potions do exist in Melodi's universe that change a person's sexuality, but people still have a sexuality by default.
And here's another elephant, "But Jay, what about racism? Does racism exist in Melodi?"
Yes. Very much so. Melodi takes place in a universe where the different races are fucking vastly different and have extreme cultural differences. EXTREME.
An example: The Feliki do not have familial bonds of any kind and will gladly sell their children to pay their bills. They treat their children, parents, siblings like invaders in their own homes, and will only keep them around if they're useful to the household.
Another example: The Lupos choose a person once a year to be their "Hunt Target" and tell the rest of the world that anyone who interferes with their hunt will be slaughtered, and will spend the year hunting down and murdering their target to have a ritual feast.
A prime example: The Bicci literally need to have sex to live, and when starved will literally sexually assault people out of desperation. This has lead to the Bicci being forced to have partners if they ever leave their city so that they can feed off each other, and they will be arrested and dragged back to their city if they're seen alone outside of it. Bicci are also commonly referred to as rapists by other races.
See, I'm very much of the opinion (and always will be) that fiction is not real, and the more that you demand fiction be real, the less you're demanding fiction and the more you're demanding reality.
The world Melodi is in is a very fucked up world.
You will likely not relate to the characters, you will not see a single transgender character, and you will not see any intentional plot points that relate to anything happening in a socio-political sphere in real life because I'm sorry, but that's not the story I'm writing.
I'm writing a story about a fucked up nightmare world, and in Foxen's case I'm writing a story about a family going on an adventure in a silly world with goats and foxes and magic and candy.
I do not write stories about real life.
I do not write my opinions into metaphors nor use my characters as soapbox puppets to convey my opinions on real-life social matters.
And you will not see intentional representation in my works.
That is final, and I will never, ever, ever change this fact about my works of fiction.
Thank you for reading, hope you're having a great day.
Luv you.
~Jay
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Ok. So. Muskrat (aka Elon Musk) decided it was a normal and reasonable idea to pick a fight with one of the Brazilian Supreme Court’s Ministers. Allow me to explain it.
Context is essential here. Alexandre de Moraes* is the minister responsible for 2 ongoing extremely high profile cases against Brazilian democracy: the domestic terrorist attack in Brasilia in January 8th (yes, our own version of January 6th) and another one that investigates digital militias that are being accused of spread misinformation, hate speech and trying to diminish the legitimacy of our electoral process**.
During the course of those investigations (that have been going on for a few years) de Moraes has determined the suspension of social media accounts of some of the people being investigated. Among that, people who have claimed that ‘maybe nazism was fine, actually’ and a lot of other shit. And because of that, Muskarat is accusing the minister (and by extension, our Supreme Court) of censorship and attempting against Brazilian democracy. Because obviously he knows more about Brazilian Law than us mere Brazilians.
Well, can de Moraes do that? Yes. Yes he can. Free speech is a constitutional right (art. 5º, IV) (unless you hide behind anonymity), but you know what else is determined by our constitution? That ANY attack to our fundamental rights or freedom is to be punished by law (art. 5º XLI) AND racism is a non-bailable and imprescriptible crime (art. 5º XLII). So no, YOU CANNOT say racist shit or things that go against Brazilian democracy, because the right to free speech is not an absolute right, there are plenty of exceptions to it (in the same article where it’s established, even).
I guess it's kind of obvious, but let me make it clear: Elon Musk, famous for saying things that would be considered a CRIME according to Brazilian Law, is accusing our Supreme Court of “censoring” people that are being investigate exactly for using social media to commit crimes.
I could go on a wild tangent here about how our Constitution is, notably and historically, a product of our civil rights movement post 40 years of dictatorship, or how Brazilian Justice System is based on Civil Law while the American System is Common Law and there are fundamental differences on how they both work, or or I could go on a whole spiel about the social and political and ethical implications of some guy deciding he could wildly and publicly speculate about the works of a democratic country as if we didn’t have, you know, SOVEREIGNTY, but you know what? Fuck him. Brazil is not your goddamn back yard, Muskarat. We can take care of our own problems, fuck you very much.
* There is a lot of shit going on in our Supreme Court, and I’m not here to defend Alexandre de Moraes from criticism. Just, ya know, stating the obvious.
** Brazilians are very proud of the safety and speed of our electoral process
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Every time I think I'm tired of these guys and their endless rivalries, I learn about another crazy facet of the political system of the time and I get obsessed all over again.
You've got the chaos of 1840-1860, where slavery's increasingly becoming the all-important issue. The Whig Party is fracturing over it and turning into a bunch of tiny little one-issue parties that split the Northern vote. The only reason the South isn't seceding is because the chaos in the North keeps Southern-sympathizing Democratic presidents in power. By the time the 1860 election rolls around, the tiny little Northern parties have finally coalesced into the Republican Party, whose one issue is opposing slavery, and the Democrats are fracturing to back three separate presidential candidates. This allows the North to finally get a Republican in the White House, upon which the South immediately throws a tantrum and bails.
Which then transitions us to the political climate of the Civil War, where the war effort is vastly complicated by the fact that you've got to keep a jillion tiny little factions happy to prevent the country from splintering further. You've got the slave-holding border states who need to be placated so they don't decide to secede. You've got abolitionists who want to make the end of slavery the prime object of the war, which would be a great way to send all those border states straight into the arms of the Confederacy. You've got German-Americans and Irish-Americans and a bunch of different ethnic groups who all want representation among the high-ranking officers of the war. Within the Republican Party itself, you've got former Whigs and Know-Nothings and Radical Republicans and Free Soilers and anti-slavery Democrats who all agree that slavery is bad, but disagree about the best way to get rid of it, plus they all retain vastly different political beliefs from their former party associations. Plus, there are still some pro-Union Democrats you have to deal with, who also splinter among themselves into War Democrats and Peace Democrats who disagree on whether we should continue this horrific war or sue for peace.
And then there's the Confederate politics. You have Davis, the so-called President-General who'd rather be leading troops and hates politicking so much that he'll allegedly cross the street when he sees a Congressman coming rather than risk talking to him and be accused of currying political favor. He's dealing with a Congress that's essentially the Anti-Davis Party, because it's made up of a bunch of men who thought they should have been president (and I cannot explain just how hilarious that is to me). They're uniting under their belief that slavery should be preserved, and yet by the end of the war they're considering emancipation efforts in a last-ditch attempt convince France or England to help them out. They seceded because of one issue and they're willing to throw that away rather than admit defeat.
The chaos just keeps going. It's a never-ending series of high-drama rabbit holes to jump down. You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried. Politics nowadays is crazy, but Civil War politics are crazier, plus we have the distance of history that makes it fun to just sit back with a bag of popcorn and watch the insanity unfold.
#history is awesome#presidential talk#i've reached the point of watching 2012 cspan videos to satisfy my curiosity if you were wondering how my day is going#the mosaic book made a mention of how davis' son died during the war just like lincoln's did#which intensified my desire to learn more about davis as a politician#and the comparison was even more fun than i could have imagined#love to see two old guys sit on a stage and judge long-dead politicians
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Remember kiddos, polygamy and polyamory was only demonized for four core reasons:
Tw: homophobia, sexism, religious commentary, political commentary, oppression
1.) America wanted more taxes
Part of the legal institutionalization of marriage is that there is tax benefits for the individual parties when they get married, and financial ties/power is attorney between married people. It becomes messy when these ties extend to multiple people/marriages and the I*RS wants they tax money, and America would rather just make an entire way of life illegal than make laws and systems that accommodate people. See point #4 for more on that
2.) Puritan culture (aka thinly veiled sexism)
Puritan culture relies heavily on systems of control that villainize sex and women (that's a whole other conversation but I won't digress), and lots of marriages/polygamous marriages having sex with each other is obviously bad bad bad!! Hard to control!! Save the defenseless women from their pimp husbands! Orgies, the devil's work! And...
3.) Homophobia
Good god, women being in marriages together! Married to a man, but what if these women end up by being married to each other by extension! And having sex with each other! And what if a woman marries more than one man! Would these men become inferior to their wives? Would one of these husbands be less dominant than another? Would the men function in these complex marriages like a woman?! Disgusting! That's gay (derogatory!) Would these husbands be having sex with each other? But that's gay and gay is bad! Sex is bad! God, purge these sinners of their Sodomy!
(Surprise surprise, homophobia has very little to do with actual gay people and has everything to do with puritan culture, control, sexism and the demonization of sex, and points two and three are actually the same thing)
4.) Christian nationalism
Polygamy and nonmonogamy is normalized and integrated with several non-Christian and alternative Christian cultures going back thousands of years, like Islam, Mormonism, feudal Japanese/samurai cultures, Hinduism, several Native American cultures, etc... even in the Bible in Judeo-Christian history and biblical era cultures nonmonogamy was normalized. Banning nonmonogamy in America is banning the right to engage in non-christian religious rite and practice. It's only something criminal to post-puritan Christians and those beliefs becoming law, regardless of other religious beliefs and practices also existing in America, is the unseparation of church and state.
So before you tell a polyamorous person "oh that's cheating with permission" or "I could NEVER do that," or "I love my partner too much to do that/cheat like that," remember that these are the institutions and the propaganda you're upholding with your judgement. Supporting/ being kind about polyamory is religious tolerance, and biting your thumb at the I*RS.
Tl:dr, the dissolution of separating of church and state, puritan culture and the sexism/homophobia associated with puritan culture is why nonmonogamy is demonized and why polygamy is illegal in America.
Tone indication/post intention: satirical and exaggerated tones criticizing longstanding institutions of oppression with the intent to explain why judging, hating or criticizing nonmonogamous practices is oppressive and a result of propaganda. This post is not intended to persuade people who practice monogamy to practice nonmonogamy instead or to demonize monogamy. It is intended to advocate for breaking the stigma around nonmonogamy.
#polyamory#polygamy#nonmonogamy#ethical nonmonogamy#enm#monogamy#toxic monogamy#puritan culture#religious tolerance#religious freedom#islam is not inherently oppressive#hijab is not oppression#puritan culture is oppression#puritan culture is sexism#puritanism is control#crash the mode#Christian nationalism#end Christian nationalism#homophobia#sexism#marriage equality#American history#political commentary#tax evasion is a moral obligation#tax evasion
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Hi, I don’t know if you’re comfortable answering this but I was wondering what your perspective is as a British person about all the non British people making so many crazy (even delusional) accusations about the UK, monarchy, and the royal family when they clearly have no idea what they’re talking about. I see the ridiculous things they say and the assumptions they make (particularly on TikTok) and even as an American it makes me mad because it’s so obvious they’re speaking without bothering to do any research. I’m curious how British people in general are feeling about this because social media is not always a great representation of the entire population. I know British people have their own opinions about the monarchy but it’s different when people from other countries are speaking about it and spreading outright lies about the UK.
I can never answer anything normally so I have multiple strands to this answer:
I hate people talking about something like they know what they are talking about but they are blatantly wrong - I had to do an assembly at school on Guy Fawkes the week after we did our Bonfire Night podcast episode and the effort I put in to not correcting my partner teacher was indescribable
I think it is almost impossible to fully understand another culture, even if you've lived there a really long time, especially if you don't live there - living in the UK, I've been bombarded with US images, politics, TV, literature, sport, etc but I don't understand what it's like to be American. I would never explain to someone how the American legal system works or the American political system. I feel the same about Wales and Ireland as individual countries (rather than as part of the UK) and my parents are quite literally Welsh and Irish
The more completely out there stuff I can laugh off but the almost believable but not quite stuff gets to me more. Also, explicitly cruel things I struggle with - I'm thinking the person I saw on TikTok the other day who said that Kate is actually dead or the person on Tumblr who said that Meghan was abusing her children. I can't even think about it and I have to just block and log off
Part of the reason I love doing the podcast so much is because it is time to provide facts. We joke about doing research but we really do a lot of research and if we don't know something, we say that or just don't talk about it at all
As for the other part of your message, "I’m curious how British people in general are feeling about this because social media is not always a great representation of the entire population. I know British people have their own opinions about the monarchy but it’s different when people from other countries are speaking about it and spreading outright lies about the UK":
I've said this before but I cannot get across how much most people in Britain do not care about the royal family however people in Britain also don't like to be told something about them is weird or wrong - I'm thinking about things like how British people reacted when people said beans on toast was weird
Social media algorithms means lots of people in the UK haven't seen what people are saying about the BRF online (I am cultivating a lovely online experience where I very rarely come across the BRF by accident and I talk about them a lot!) and not everyone in the UK has social media either
I think the best thing to do is not engage with anything online that upsets you. That's not to say you should end up in a social media bubble - you should definitely expose yourself to thoughts, opinions and cultures you wouldn't normally come across - but if you are finding yourself getting upset or angry or frustrated with the same kind of content, just block, mute and move on.
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A lot of Tumblr brain rot and insanity that we see, the poor media literacy, over zealous morality policing, the madness where we label someone a genocide apologist because they watch Steven Universe, all of this would go away if you all learned how to think DIALECTICALLY.
Dialectics is a philosophical framework that is a keystone to socialist political analysis but also necessary for, like, daily life. It is based on the facts that the world is:
1) in a constant state of change and evolution.
2) is made up of multiple moving parts that are in conflict and contradiction with one another.
This means that multiple things can be true at the same time. Things can be both good and bad at the same time. Things that are progressive in one time period can be regressive or reactionary later on.
In other words, dialectics acknowledges that the world is COMPLICATED which you think would be common sense but apparently is not.
So how would this solve Tumblr brain rot.
Take a movie that is frequently labeled as problematic. We'll use James Cameron's Avatar for our example. Tumblr brain rot tends to jump to extremes and you may see Tumblr users say things like: "every person who enjoyed that movie or rights fan fic about it must hate indigenous people, due to the fact that the movie has anti-indigenous stereotypes and tropes contained within it."
Let it be known that I am NOT defending James Cameron's Avatar, saying that it's a good movie, or that James Cameron deserves your money. However it is a big jump to go from "this movie has problematic elements" to "everyone who enjoyed the movie is an irredeemable racist who deserves to be cyber bullied."
Because multiple things can be true at the same time.
Avatar (blue ppl version) relies on anti-indigenous racist tropes and a white-savior story line. But also
1) the movie unapologetically celebrates anti-colonial resistance and the struggle for indigenous self determination. And people may like the movie for that reason.
2) people may like the movie for it's positive aspects that are not racist such as detailed world building or good visuals.
3) due to being exposed to a racist public school system and very large amounts of racist propaganda from the ruling class, the majority of working class Americans, through no fault of their own, fail to recognize racism in the media when they see it. It's our job on the left to educate them and we haven't always been good at that.
4) it's a dumb fucking movie and the fact that you care what type of movies people like shows that you are spending too much time consuming media instead of going outside and engaging in real activism. Hating on Avatar isn't going to do a damn thing to win the right of democratic national self determination for indigenous people.
To think dialectically is to recognize all of these things at the same time.
While I don't recall any actual examples of cyber bullying over Avatar (blue ppl), I'm using it as an example.
But I hope how you can see how dialectical thinking can lead you away from unproductive behavior (cyber bullying people who like bad movies) to useful behavior (educating people on indigenous issues, participation in real life indigenous - rights activism). And that is how you escape Tumblr brain rot.
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current energies of the upcoming usa presidental elections (2024)
as promised i decided to ask who might be the republican, the democratic candidates, will there be a one who might be important, how americans will vote and who can win these elections.
republican candidate: whoever that is, they really care about the americans and their happiness. it really feels that it's their fate to try for a president. very stable person who has all the money in the world (metaphorically of course). they're well-known outside of the country with .. i'd say good things? even if they do get more hate than love, the good things they're known for seem to be more prominent. they won't lie to your faces.. unlike someone else. i feel trump's energy here, ngl; they were president in the past..
democratic candidate: well, that's the "someone else" i mentioned in the previous paragraph. they'll really try to "steal" the ideas and plans from the republican candidate for the audience they have to collect just to brainwash them and even more. i personally am unsure what democrats' intentions towards trump really are as of now but i sense they'll continue with them as they want to (literally) fight trump and repress him? they'll try to brainwash everyone with the usual tactics such as celebrities supporting the democratic candidate, i do see taylor swift supporting them whoever they'll be and possibly some other ones who might be forced or willing to show their support. their actual intentions to make america greater are similar as biden's current management such as creating more wars, chaos and so on. i feel that they weren't president before however the current energy regarding who that can be is sort of messy as i sense the current vice president, kmala harris and someone else whose energy isn't familiar to me even with their possible names. i certainly don't feel biden as i saw he might give up to be candidate again for health reasons.
is there another impactful candidate who isn't from republican/democratic party and if yes, who: even if there's a one, they won't be mentioned as much as expected. i do sense some talks, related to some people who can candidate in the future who can be viral due to saying something that's true or relevant but up to there, at least as of now. there can be some shifts that can be related to "oh look at person x, he can do this and that, you should vote for him" but i doubt they'll be listened to that extent and seemingly will be ignored by most people.
how americans will vote: they seemingly have trust issues to both sides and might actually want to break from the two-party system they have. similarly to bulgarians, most of them don't believe at the politics at all, impactful amount of americand are hopeless because of biden's management. however, they might want to "settle" for the republican candidate no matter if that's trump or not not because he's geniunely better but because they don't have choice. i do sense that vibe from 2020 when the americans genz people tried to educate that both people are bad but should settle for biden. well, how the tables turned.. big majority for the republican candidate, possibly trump. maybe 60% of the states? like 30 out of 50?
who might win: it's still the republican candidate no matter whether some people like it or not because the winner will be isolated from the media, like tvs and the popular censored platforms/shows. i do see some new memes here and there though, lol; i still feel that there won't be cheating in a way or another because of the winner being isolated from basically almost everywhere. i cannot deny there will be attempts but will be unsuccessful.
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Hi there! I've just discovered you work "The House of Mirrors" and I am loving your writing, and the idea of Nesta x Rhys. May I ask what draws you towards the Rhysta ship?
I've found it to be a really intriguing ship when looked into with insight, and it's sad to see that it's immediately dismissed as "oh Nesta will go Amarantha on Rhys, it will be another abusive relationship" etc
Sorry for not answering this ask sooner, I am on mobile 99.99% of the time and my asks always get buried for some reason. Also, my grammar and language spelling will be inconsistent, Tumblr keeps correcting my spelling to American EN
and it's sad to see that it's immediately dismissed as "oh Nesta will go Amarantha on Rhys, it will be another abusive relationship" etc
honestly not even gonna touch on this because whoever thinks that is so set on being against this pair that they've clearly deconstructed parts of their brain. No one is forcing them to ship it and they're going as far as to imply SA?? not someone to be entertained or taken seriously
so why Rhysta? hmm, I think I've posted about it somewhere, but my tagging is so terrible I wouldn't be surprised if it was lost forever
Firstly, I'm gonna be transparent in just preferring Nesta as a character to Feyre.
Feyre isn't terrible (most of the time) but she's pretty generic and inconsistent (and wildly offensive sometimes) but tbh, for the most part, I'm not anti-Feyre, just anti the way sjm uses her
Honestly, I would have preferred to read an ACOSF that centered around Feyre being HL, becoming a Valkyrie, doing the blood rite etc. than what we got in canon.
all this to say that even though I am a Nesta fan, my interest in this ship isn't rooted in hating Feyre
let's get into it
the first reasons are things that I see as tying Nesta and Rhys together so things like:
I prefer likeness in pairs as opposed to opposites. and funnily enough, 'like calls to like' is a sort of rule in the magic system.
despite how I might disagree with what's given in canon, when we are first introduced to Rhysand, we're given the impression of someone who is more brains than brawn - and Nesta is characterised in the same way
certain parts of the writing reflect a connection: Night and Death, both seem to have the most direct personal conflict with the KoH, both are willing to sacrifice their bodies for those they want to protect
things like this are common in other characters too, but not in the same way. Feyre is also a character that sacrifices herself for other, and so is Cassian, but the latter two have a streak of selflessness to them. they would die for people they don't know. Rhysand and Nesta's brand of sacrifice is much more personal
Nesta having unique mind powers, a strong connection to Illyria and it's magic and the magic in the NC (she literally makes his childhood home come to life and magic tied to the land is a trait of High Lord/Lady magic)
it would have been poetic if they belonged to Feyre to show fate/the mating bond always meant for her to be with Rhys. But they belong to Nesta. Why
I also just think Nesta's character and temperament are more suited to politics. She's stubborn, but she's also the type of person who listens and learns and judges people off their character rather than if they are 'on her side'
Things like her being more mature and raised to thrive somewhere like the Hewn City add to this
the second reasons are reasons I dislike the canon pairings that would be either not applicable or severely lessened in rhysta
I am not a fan of Hades x Persephone (F.eysand)
I despise The Taming of the Shrew (N.essian)
Enemies to Lovers is only real when they can hate each other equally, a big power imbalance turns one party into a victim
The power imbalance cannot be solved by making a 19 y.o with ptsd an overpowered fae with no experience or agency
but, for example, if Rhys had to contend with a stubborn and somewhat uncooperative human - in a land he can't waltz around in, with a mind he can't enter and being the party that needs her help - suddenly there's a much more even playing field.
Cassian is pushy and flirty in a way that involves a lot of physical intimidation and boundary crossing, that shit is not cute. in fact, in the canon Wings and Ember excerpt, Cassian crowding Nesta against the fireplace makes her think of Tomas Mandray, the man who almost assaulted her.
there are ways around it like being close cause you're dancing or sparing but Nesta isn't a fighter (acosf can fuck off) and Cassian doesn't know how to dance. they're completely mismatched
Feyre is naive and insecure in a way that makes her easy to manipulate. like I know a lot of people find the CoN scene sexy but it had been weeks, maybe two or three months, since she'd non-consensually been in that position for real UtM.
Nesta might have been convinced to put on a show by dancing or wearing something a little provocative by her standards but that wouldnt have been something that directly mirrored a trauma of hers.
I think, politically the handling of the Summer Court sets the tone for the abject failure of F.eysand as a political team.
Nesta would have trusted Tarquin. She handled herself well (at the cost of her pride) at the High Lord's meeting.
im sure there's more
but again, this isnt really at the cost of Feyre being the protagonist especially of book1, there are things Feyre does that I don't think Nesta could or would. just that book2 might have had more povs or something
this also takes the approach of Rhys being a slightly different character than in canon, one more like what we were promised and one slightly more suited to Nesta
but that's literally what love interest characters are. they aren't supposed to become the centre around which the protagonist and plot now revolve
anyways,
I'm so glad you read and enjoyed House of Mirrors!!! please don't be shy to drop me another ask
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Looking forward to the new chapter of UtB! Also I learn a lot hearing your thoughts on fandom culture, and I was wondering why you think puritanism is getting stronger? Lately I’ve experienced it a lot both online and irl.
Hi anon,
I could write like a 10,000 word essay on why I think moral puritanism is getting stronger in the world, and how that intersects with increased moral panic, and 'anti' or fancop behaviour among fandom.
But I think there's more than one reason, and that at the centre of it, is the radicalisation of political extremes alongside the disdain for human life and education in the USA specifically. In non English-speaking cultures, antis are often considered a uniquely American phenomenon, for example. (They're not, but I do think some of the problems start there).
And from there it's necessary to look at:
The high presence of evangelist religion and their millions in USA politics in particular, and the influence this has on the news and government systems from the top down, affecting legislation, what we see on the media, what gets censored, who gets impacted (SESTA/FOSTA etc.) and so on. When companies like Paypal or similar say they won't support certain sites because they don't support sex workers or explicit artwork, we see extremist perspectives being normalised into the mainstream. Puritanism becomes baked into the system, and accepted as normal. And it has a domino effect, taking one thing away usually means to another thing being taken away, and by 'one thing' I usually mean like... equality, access to basic human rights, and more.
The presence of certain billionaire TERFs in UK politics actively working to destroy legislation over there gives a platform to hateful, bigoted extremists of all kinds, including Nazis (as seen in Australia recently, during a TERF event where Nazis turned up in open support). Also, I'd like to add that a lot of anti/fancop thinking is generally SWERF, anti-kink and eventually TERF in nature, and often homophobic and transphobic even when it's perpetuated by queer folk.
A long-term attack (we're talking over several decades now) on education (especially the humanities and any area that teaches critical thinking) including gutting the funding to libraries, colleges, high schools, primary schools and not increasing the pay of teachers, decreasing the general intelligence of US citizens in IQ tests across multiple metrics (except spatial reasoning). This, combined with the lack of emphasis on teaching nuance and critical thinking, means you get people primed to make didactic, black-or-white decisions and often are prone to radicalisation and black-or-white thinking. There's an increasing lack of ability to understand complex or even reasonably moderately complex thinking tasks. A great example of this was re: anti-vaxxers who said 'if masking works so well, why do you need vaccines' because there was a complete inability to understand that just because something works well, doesn't mean it works 100% of the time. There was a consistent inability too, to grok things like the swiss cheese model. That's not the only reason people are anti-vaxxers and there are some extremely smart people who are anti-vaxxers, but among broader populations, a lack of basic appreciation of nuance and risk mitigation in health was a huge issue. (And it's fairly easy to see this happening in many fandom discussions when we discuss how racism in fiction is generally not great, but that rape in fiction does not cause rape in reality.)
I know the above paragraph is long and unwieldy but it doesn't actually come close to capturing a lot of my thoughts on this so slafkjdsa it'll have to do though. The tl;dr is 'the government said philosophy and critical thinking isn't worth money, so a lot of people don't know how to do it, and anyone who can do it is often attacked or viewed with suspicion' (see also: The increasing suspicion and hostility towards experts in their field x.x). (Oh see also: A lot of people thinking YouTube videos count as 'valid research' for their viewpoints, and a lot of folks just...not ever learning how to research in general).
Something something social media privileging inflammatory and provocative takes as well as clickbait etc. encouraging people to often say things in the worst or least nuanced way possible.
The systemic attacks on democratic processes in the USA (and the UK and Australia and many other places).
The loudest and most obnoxious voices are often the people saying the stupidest shit. As in: It will feel like puritans are everywhere (and there's definitely more of them), but they're also just louder and getting more attention than they used to. It's misleading. Anti-vaxxers are actually a tiny minority for example, and antis are a minority in fandom, they're just...the loudest and the most willing to try and murder real people to defend the rights of fictional characters.
Er so. That's some of it anyway. There's more, absolutely, because I could talk about the presence of puritanism in a lot of levels of our experience/s, whether you're religious or not.
It's frustrating writing about this because I fall into the same trap of knowing that I can't talk about this in as nuanced a way as I want to, even if I get to do it in 1000 words instead of like, a miserable amount of characters on Twitter. Anyone thinking 'but it's not always like that!' or 'but not in every situation!' like trust me, I know. But if I sat here caveating everything that deserves a good caveat this post would blow out even more.
Basically if you try to stop educating your people as much, don't teach them how to research, debate or learn (yes, you have to learn how to learn), and don't give them access to basic needs, and gut your democracy/s, and the people at the top believe a fictional being cares if they're virgins or not or have abortions or not, and you don't care if people commit genocide against the children of your nation because that's not as important as the right to kill them in a moment of anger..., and you create a world where the children of your nation are primed to develop PTSD due to the fear of being gunned down while learning, you create a really great environment for radicalisation, extremism, the safety and comfort of puritanism (i.e. following very strict rules in the hope of fixing what's wrong with the world) while people look for a solution to why they feel so empty and hopeless in their lives.
#asks and answers#look don't listen to me#i just have thoughts about this stuff#and i could talk about it for a long time#a long long time#also a lot of this is echoed and repeated in other countries too#Australia has been gutting its humanities departments in universities for a decade or more#and making education harder to access#the UK has JKR literally putting money into anti-trans legislation#you have extremely powerful (and sometimes very respected) people#saying very hateful things that put the lives of minorities in danger#and it gets quite normalised - debating the right to exist for example#when these things should have never been normalised at all#also my patience with people who believe in a religion that seeks out death and harm and supports intolerance to others#(including 'hate the sin love the sinner' which is bullshit#is very low do not even try to convince me fsdalkjfsa#this post is a mess have a nice day
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UBI would just be giving people handouts, though. Like, "congrats your alive you get money" doesn't provide the best incentive to work? We're going to have a lot of freeloaders if we do that.
Uhhhh.
First of all, I think it's pretty obvious from my other posts that you and I are not going to agree about this, so I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish here. Second of all, I... don't.... see.... what's....wrong with a government fundamentally providing basic financial support to its citizens??? There are plenty of people who CAN'T work for one reason or another and who struggle all their lives on extremely meager levels of support that the ableist state has decided they can (very grudgingly) be allowed to have, despite their terrible sin of not being able to join the workforce. Besides, the "UBI will make those lazy freeloaders not work!!!" is a) capitalist propaganda and b) not even true. Finland is one of the countries to have completed a UBI trial and guess what! People who received it were actually more likely to be in work after the trial ended!
Interestingly, the final results of Finland’s program, released this spring, found that a basic income actually had a positive impact on employment. People on the basic income were more likely to be employed than those in the control group, and the differences were statistically significant, albeit small.
This coincided with a strong uptick in mental health, positive social support, and other quality-of-life indicators. The people in the Finnish trial received €560 a month, which is obviously not enough to replace work-related income, but which DID provide enough extra funding to help fill critical gaps and provide more peace of mind. Besides, humans are naturally industrious and like doing things?? And are usually happy to work and find ways to occupy themselves, and the idea that they only "deserve" to survive or have their basic needs met if they're working long hours at a job that they probably hate is, again, capitalistic propaganda nonsense (not to mention, has strong undercurrents of social Darwinism, eugenics, and other questionable social philosophies).
In a world that is so wildly economically unjust, where a tiny handful of people control an incredibly disproportionate amount of wealth and so many people suffer with so little, you're simply never going to convince me, ever, that making more effort to financially meet their basic needs is a bad thing. For God's sake, giving them five hundred extra bucks a month, if we're replicating the Finland conditions, is hardly going to create a culture of "freeloaders." Why is that worse than forcing them to work multiple jobs for shit wages and still struggling? Why is their "production" the only important thing about them? Why is this the metric you've chosen to complain about in what is, as noted, an entirely theoretical program that is decades away from being politically feasible in America, if ever, and yet has been experimented and implemented in successful democratic-socialist societies that are, gasp, NOT AMERICA?
In short, as it has been put before and is still the best way to say it: I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people. Because, as noted, of all the outrageous economic injustices that currently exist in this world, it's extremely confusing to me that this is the one you would choose to complain about. And in closing: any UBI program in America would be funded, a la Social Security and Medicare, with taxpayer money. So that is YOUR MONEY to start with (and that of everyone who has ever paid a single penny in federal or state tax for any reason, which is almost every single American citizen over the age of 18). It's not "giving handouts" to distribute it back to poor people, rather than continuing to jigger the system so rich people pay nothing into it at all and are allowed to reap insane profits. And the idea that all other working people are your enemy and if they get anything, there will be less for you, is a deliberate technique used to keep you blaming each other, and not seriously questioning the grotesque accumulation of those at the very top. Because yeah. Uh. I think they can absolutely afford to fucking share.
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This might be completely off but as a white gen z american i think that white gen z americans tend to see the idea that everyone gets paid enough to live and latch onto that so hard that we don't care about the implications of the rest of communism. Like we can't really imagine what another political system is like for whatever reason (for me it was a language disorder but ik there's something structural going on, same reason so many usually white americans forget that there are people in other countries). and we don't have relatives who survived communism so we're just like "hey, something that claims to give you livable income, it's different than what we have right now which sucks so fucking bad, i like that" cause we're not even told to read the communist manifesto. we're told what capitalism and communism are on paper and then asked which we would prefer (this was literally a history class exercise i had that took the whole period). Ik you don't need me to explain it to you since you've seen people defending it for so long and I'm DEFINITELY not trying to make excuses for anyone because there aren't any, it just clicked in my own head that this is a *trend*. It's fucked. We aren't told that you can consider or theorize a society outside of either system. So we don't. And then we're told to pick.
Yeah. See, I have a problem with that if true (and in fact it ISN'T the first time I've had someone say that because of a few key points about communism and it sounding better than the experience with capitalism it was decided hey we should all be commies). Because the problem with that is the same problem as deciding because a bunch of boomers hate communism, and clearly the Red Scare was a bunch of (often antisemitic) hogwash on top of that, that communism really isn't all that bad after all. Which then turns into 'we support any country that isn't the US through the virtue of not the US even if that country is a genocidal hellhole'. (See the uptick in support for China, North Korea, russia of course is an obvious one. All of them are guilty of genocide in the present day, none of them are innocent or worthy of support. Citizens of those countries have been begging Westerners to stop supporting them, in fact.)
You (general you not specific) probably know people who have dealt with a communist regime, they just don't talk about it for myriad reasons (it was traumatic, they've tried talking about it before and had people--children-- shout them out about how they're totally wrong about why communism was terrible to live under, they don't owe anyone knowing where they came from, etc., or the big one: they learned not to talk about their opinions and experiences because that gets you sent to gulag).
Or the fact communism didn't die when the Wall fell. Even if places like China are tenuously considered communist, they are still using the same playbook. You have the russkis now completely believing they're bringing back the USSR (missiles, tanks, etc., have had CCCP painted on them). Which is, uh, bad. And you got western teenagers cheering it at the literal cost of Ukr life.
And I promise I am not trying to be condescending. You have a great advantage over many previous generations: you have grown up entirely with the internet and the tools to search it easily and quickly. (This is, of course, the big divide between Millennial and Gen Z. We watched computers and tech become ubiquitous. You have never known a time without a computer in every home.) You rebel against so many other things 'the System' tries to get you to believe. School doesn't or won't offer sex ed, you learn it on your own time anyway. School bans books, you find them and read them on your own regardless. There is no difference in doing that with pure politics (since book banning is political but 'softer'). Hell, you already do. You shine a spotlight on bigoted politicians all on your own. You argue for better gun control. You have an entire demographic scared of y'all being at voting age.
So, yes. It's hard not to feel a little frustrated when we're told to "read a book" (or any other comment we receive from people desperate to make us believe we are actually wrong and pretending we are the ones who need more education). When we've read more than we've ever needed to because some of us have desperately tried to figure out why. Why this political and economic theory. Why so many had to die. Why we're being told the ends justified the means when those means were mass torture and murder. Why it seems to be easier to say you're a communist than a socialist. Why it's as hard as deprogamming a cult member when it comes to making people understand the blood staining the word 'communism'. To say nothing of the fact that we don't need to read something when we have the experiences burned into our collective memory.
I've made posts about it before specifically pleading that people do their own research. You can and should look at communism just as critically as you do capitalism. Hell I have even shown how they aren't all that different after all. Communism actually lies to you more than capitalism. At least capitalism we know is built to exploit and yes even to kill. Communism is too but hides it behind 'proletariat' and 'bourgeoisie'. Or euphemisms like 'liquidate'. (Which is often where I know the other party has failed to fully read the book they claim to worship. There was no corruption of the message, mass murder was baked into it in the first edition. Either that or they want me to believe liquidate means something more benign.)
I am only a first generation American because my birth mother fled the Ukrainian SSR. My adoptive father is a McCarthy flavor anti-commie, unfortunately. There is a scene in 'For All Mankind' where the commie cosmonaut starts scoffing at a Vietnamese American about how she only hates communism because of her (white, adoptive) father. She puts him in his place by pointing out no, it is because she put in the work to research it and she is also only in the US because of communism. (I think this is my third time referencing it because it is THAT good. It is a vindication of everything people like me have dealt with our whole lives. And I have literally been told on this very same website I only hate communism cause of what the US govt tells me, or Boomers, or whatever else. Nevermind I'm a 34 year old Ukrainian American.)
This is all we want from people. To put in the work. We know you can. We know why you say yes to communism and we know you deserve better than both communism and capitalism. You have everything you need right here on the world wide web. You have us, fighting to get the atrocities out in the open. You have millions of people from former Soviet bloc areas who show you just by their culture the damage communism has done. Especially where that means they have LOST a connection to their culture. Or people who have fled China, North Korea. People who escaped the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge. Or floated in from Cuba.
(Note I am using 'you' in the general sense.) Also, there is something a tad bizarre to me about ascribing to a belief, an opinion, a theory, without doing your due diligence and learning about it as much as you can. I've mentioned it before about deciding communism is your political affiliation, and yet it seems you didn't look beyond a couple of bullet points in a presentation. We know you are capable of doing the research. So the question becomes: Why did you essentially stop? Didn't look any deeper after being given a short list of things communism does and capitalism does? That part is on you, not the education system.
It's like being told the Republican party says they believe in the safety of women and children in the bathrooms, lower taxes, and job security and since they all sound GREAT if laid out that way then Suzie Johnson who recently became voting age has decided she's going to be a Republican. But come to find out what they REALLY meant, which you'd find out after a bit of research is: they believe trans people shouldn't be allowed in the bathrooms that match their gender identity because 'rapists', they really mean they want to give tax cuts to people who don't actually NEED them and NOT Miss Johnson, and what they really meant by job security is that they want to make it so that anyone who isn't a cishet white man is less likely to get a job much less keep it. Essentially, only job security for the 'right' kind of person. None of that 'affirmative action crap'.
So essentially what I would and do say to any Gen Z (I also hesitate to just say 'white' because gosh I see so many kiddos of color who defend communism even tho statistically POC suffered so so much under communism just as much as capitalism and it isn't any better for them to defend it, either. Forever agog at 'you only hate communism cause you hate to see people of color winning'. It's been years and I'm still not sure what POC are 'winning' with communism) who labels themselves commie for the reasoning you mention: Do the work. Research the label you wish to attach to yourself. Ask questions. Do everything you already do for so many other things you rise up against. Don't politically label yourself something just because it might piss people off or because a couple things sound good. Because at best you look naive and at worst callous and uncaring about the victims of the people who shared the communist label. Which becomes heavily ironic when it seems the whole reason one decided to call themselves communist is they were told communism cares about the less fortunate and victims of people in power.
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'In Christopher Nolan's new film "Oppenheimer," a biography of one of the chief architects of the atomic bomb, Robert Downey, Jr. plays Lewis Strauss, a real-life politician who spent a portion of the McCarthy era becoming increasingly suspicious of Communists in the American political system. He launched a campaign against Oppenheimer years after the invention of the bomb, hoping to have the scientist's security clearance revoked. Strauss, in public, claimed to hate Oppenheimer because of palpable Communist ties and sentiments he had expressed in sympathy with the Communist party. Nolan's film, however, posits that Strauss was hoping to pillory and ostracize Oppenheimer for personal reasons, having been humiliated by the scientist at a congressional hearing years before.
The Strauss character is vital to "Oppenheimer," as he seems to serve as a stand-in for American politics as they have come to be in 2023. Nolan seems to point out that many politicians of the modern day are following Strauss' template of pettiness and revenge. No one is interested in governing, advancing legislation, or doing anything that might be considered righteous. Most political actions, Nolan argues, are driven by spite. Given that humankind just invented and exploded a nuclear bomb, we have essentially lost our souls. Oppenheimer invented the most immoral device imaginable. The politicians who used it, meanwhile, never stop to consider it. They merely move forward with their puny wrath and idiotic, power-mad politicking.
Many might consider Strauss to be the central villain of the piece, but Downey disagrees somewhat. In a recent interview with Vulture, Downey recalls his meeting with Christopher Nolan, and how his take on Strauss startled the director. Strauss, he said, was not a villain, but a patriotic American politician. In Downey's words, his take raised a few eyebrows.
Strauss, the patriot
Downey was enthused to meet with Nolan, saying that any questions the director had about meeting at his home for a script reading would be answered with words beginning with "Y," as in "yes." Nolan invited Downey over to read "Oppenheimer" and to see if he might be interested in playing Strauss, and if he was previously familiar with the historical figure. Downey, as it so happens, was. He said:
"It has been a longtime contemplation, verging on obsession, of mine: mid-century Cold War and all the characters involved. I had a previous fair understanding of Strauss because I was fascinated with the mechanics of warfare, particularly in the Pacific theater in World War II. The first time I saw his name in print was regarding the proximity fuze and its development."
A proximity fuze is a sensor used in bomb-making that can tell when a payload is close enough to its target to explode and do actual damage. Proximity fuzes were first used in bombs during World War II.
Downey's immediate take on the script was that Strauss and Oppenheimer were close colleagues with something of an antagonistic mentor/prodigy relationship similar to the one seen in another notable Hollywood biopic from 1984, namely Miloš Forman's "Amadeus." This, he said, was a take Nolan didn't expect. In Downey's words:
"I challenged a little bit the Mozart-Salieri of it all. I said, 'I'm not sure in some ways that Strauss isn't a bit the hero here,' which kind of raised an eyebrow on Chris. I half-jokingly challenged him on whether Admiral Strauss hadn't done everything that any patriotic American would've done. And he said, 'Well, this will be a wonderful ongoing dialogue. So, will you do the film?' And he's Chris Nolan, so he's not asking your fricking agent."
Strauss, the man with pride
Downey argued that Lewis Strauss wasn't a petty man, but a principled man who possessed a great deal of pride. Nolan may have presented Strauss as a man motivated by spite, but it was Downey's job to turn him into a person that he could relate to. When asked what he personally brought into the role, Downey was quick to point out that playing Strauss was actually a matter of dismantling. What are the very basic, very real, very relatable motivations for someone like Strauss? The actor said:
"Technically it wasn't really about what to add on; it was about what to remove so that aspect of all of us can emerge — a nose-to-the-grindstone public servant. Someone who is conservative for all the right reasons. One who has a very strong moral psychology, but also someone who is human and does not like to be slighted, does not like to be taken lightly, does not wish to be unnecessarily embarrassed, even if we're in the presence of a genius."
Downey pointed out that Strauss was an assistant to President Hoover, put himself through college, and stood against a certain kind of political thinking he perceived as tyranny. Strauss' spite at being humiliated by a scientist, he feels, would wound anyone in that position.
"Oppenheimer" ends with the Strauss story arc, leaving audiences bitter about humanity in addition to feeling existential dread over living on the same planet with a bomb that can kill literally everyone. When asked about the bitter taste that might leave in the audience's mouths, Downey felt that it was petty rivalries that sour the world, not necessarily political viewpoints.
Destructive explosions
Is "Oppenheimer" a leftist or a rightist movie? Knowing Nolan's personal politics as well as J. Robert Oppenheimer's, one can easily see it as left-leaning. Downey, however, ached for more nuance, feeling that bitterness between the Left and the Right way up at the top is what's really doing damage to all the voters and citizens down below. In his words:
"It's that thing when there is either too liberal or too conservative a disposition, it's us, the citizens, that wind up paying the price for these frictions. Lewis — consciously or not, solely or not, maybe just as a sign of the times — succeeded in getting Oppenheimer canceled. Then, those who felt Oppenheimer was wronged waited for the perfect moment to cancel Strauss, right when he was about to be at the precipice of his life's achievement."
In other words, the rivalry between Oppenheimer and Strauss ultimately had nothing to do with who was right or wrong, or who was right or left. It had everything to do with wasting time and resources to attack a man for personal reasons. Was Oppenheimer a dangerous Communist? For Strauss, perhaps. But not for the rest of the world. Downey finished:
"Obviously, Oppenheimer's achievement was global. Strauss's achievement had been personal. And still, to this day, many will never know all the earlier contributions that Admiral Strauss made that were significant and have made this a better, safer world. But there you have it, buddy. Nothing new under the sun."'
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Worldbuilding: Out of (Cultural) Context Problems
If your world has humans, humanoids, or anything that reasonably acts like ‘em, you’re going to have nations. Could be formal like the modern nation-states of Europe, ethnicity-based like various nomadic or herding tribes (Mongols, the Berbers, and Maasai come to mind);
could even be based on an idea and belief system, like the United States and the Jewish Diaspora.
But there will be nations, tribes, clans; and people being people, there will also be some people of foreign nations living among them.
Reasons, of course, will vary. Trade is an excellent reason to be living far from home. You’re trying to bring things people want from where there are more to where there are less, and make a nice side profit in the bargain. Though reading accounts you get the impression that some merchant-adventurers suffered from an incurable case of wanting to be somewhere that was not their native land, and trade was just how they paid the bills.
Exile is another reason. Might be for a crime, might be someone who’s fallen out of political favor; might be hapless relatives of someone who did commit treason, that don’t want to be condemned to execution or slavery. Beheaded in a civilized Empire or taking your chances with the nearby savage nomads; decisions, decisions....
Missionaries are a third possibility. Somewhere, somehow, there are those convinced they can improve the lot of others if they only show them The Way....
Note, this has fallen out of fashion with a lot of people, but I tend to be in favor of strongly advising groups who commit cannibalism to quit that. It’s not healthy - physically, mentally, or spiritually.
(Also note that there are some places, even today, where it’s not considered cannibalism if you’re killing and eating a witch, because Witches Aren’t Human. Do your research before wandering off with people you don’t know.)
A fourth reason is pure curiosity. Isabella Bird explored Japan, Korea, and the American West as a stolid middle-aged woman, because she could. And left accounts still used as useful references today. Lafcadio Hearn, tracking down folklore in the hills of Japan. James Mooney, documenting everything he could of Cherokee lore, life, and history in the Carolinas. Humans are curious beasts, and some of us just want to know things.
And there’s a fifth that crops up in history textbooks and sometimes the evening news: people living in a nation not theirs to make trouble. Political expatriates. Wild-eyed fanatics. Whoever lost the last war. There was a time New Orleans was a haunt for supporters of French royalty, who hated Bonaparte. A bunch of Quakers hot-footed it out of England, and ended up in the Atlantic Colonies. And Taiwan... well. Taiwan. That doesn’t even get into various political assassinations we can prove happened in the United Kingdom and U.S.; some carried out by spies, others by people too caught up in political axe-grinding.
If you’re writing a straightforward action pulp or sword and sorcery, why strangers are among foreign nations may not be important. Fantastical places are supposed to have people of far-off lands, adding mystery and splendor. But if your story veers into elements of mystery, war, or politics? Consider why your cultured scholar-mage is living amongst the raiding orc horde. What does he want? Why doesn’t he leave? Who’s influencing who?
After all, if the imperial ambassador winds up dead, you as a writer need to know one “nomad” had a good reason to knife him, as a filial duty to an executed parent. Or maybe they’re being framed by someone who knows they have a motive, and who’s always hated the outlander reaping honors among them....
Look outside the cultural boxes. People are complicated!
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"At a time in which a broad sense of powerlessness is increasingly being shared amongst Americans, in relation to the environment, our politics, and the economy, how should we relate to one another? What we tend to have now is mutual intolerance and culture war hate, which only propels the status quo. What we need is radical acceptance and compassion.
To 'radically accept' does not mean we should forgo our morals, accept bad politics, or ignore violence and oppression, but instead to recognize that hate is almost always born out of trauma and wounding, and that hating hate only begets more hate. As James Baldwin once wrote, 'I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.'
In the emergent field of psychedelic therapy — which has proven remarkably effective at treating addiction, depression, and other chronic conditions, while posing little to no addictive risk itself — a treatment modality known as Internal Family Systems [IFS] is increasingly being used to strengthen the benefits of a psychedelic trip. IFS operates on the assumption that there is no such thing as a unitary self, but instead that we are composed of a variety of 'parts,' which exist in relation to each other. In essence, IFS proposes that we 'contain multitudes,' to quote poet Walt Whitman. One 'part' of you may feel like a loving parent, where another personifies your inner race car driver. In a healthy and secure place, these subpersonalities resonate and sing together, making us living embodiments of inner diversity. But when the body experiences trauma, certain 'parts' can become frozen in time, or repressed, leading others to abandon their natural roles in an effort to protect or even shame the 'exiled' parts. As a result, friction, imbalance, pain, and disharmony afflicts the entire system.
It is interesting to think about American trauma through the lens of Internal Family Systems, to consider the cultural narratives that scaffold our pain and the formative wounds that haunt the present day — many of which have largely been forgotten. If the collective American psyche took a heroic dose and reckoned with its history, good lord, who knows what would come out? A revolution? A protest? A giant comical fart?
But we aren’t ready for that. No, not even close. We haven’t even learned how to sit with ourselves and be quiet.
In some ways we are no more free than Pavlov’s dog. In others we can choose how to inform and condition our minds."
- Vinnie Rotondaro, from "How We Can Ease the Pain." Current Affairs, 12 September 2022.
#vinnie rotondaro#james baldwin#quote#quotations#american culture#american politics#pain#chronic pain#internal family systems#psychedelic therapy#identity#self#no self#anatta#hate#trauma#buddhism#nonviolence#compassion#acceptance
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