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beevean · 4 months

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Tbh I have a few major issues with HH. From the creators actions, to the character designs all looking nearly identical. But what irks me is the idea that the sinners can be redeemed, which misses the point that sinners are, rapists pedophiles, murderers. And ignores the point that many people are just evil and don’t change. To the point I agree with the exterminators because it’s hell, with evil people in it. IDK what are your thoughts?

I don't know what to think of the character design. Undoubtably, Vivziepop likes one kind of demon :P noodly, with shark teeth, with tons of red in their design, clad in a tuxedo, preferably with a top hat. But despite this, all demons look very distinct from one another, their silhouettes are recognizable, and their animal motifs are incorporated in fun ways. The Seraphs also look super cool to me, with their wings and the multiple eyes that open when they're mad. I can't be mad. I'm biased, I guess :P

(Adam sucks tho, even in design form. I hate him. there is nothing appealing about him.)

As for the morality, well, I think they're just starting to touch it properly.

The show doesn't ignore the most heinous sinners: Valentino in particular is shown in all of his abusive rapist glory. Obviously, he's not going to be redeemed.

Charlie may be overzealous in her project to redeem as many people as she can (and she is shown to be too sheltered for her own good), but it's pretty much spelled out that it has to be a personal choice. Mimzy, a buddy of Alastor, uses the hotel as a place of hiding from the loan sharks she stole from, and Alastor has to tell her to leave unless she plans to actually become a guest... but in his words, "it's not really her style". Cherri Bomb, a bomb obsessed rebel who so far has acted like a corrupting force for Angel, is also offered a place in the Hotel by Angel, and her reaction is more or less "nah, I'm good, thanks for the thought tho". Cherri Bomb in particular is not a monster, she could become a better person, but as for now she's not interested and that's it.

Heaven himself seems to have some issues regarding morality. One, no one knows the rules to get into Heaven, not even the High Seraph. Two, it's pointed out the unfairness of treatment: Angel was shown to have been on his best behavior and yet he's still stuck in Hell, while a complete piece of shit like Adam who admits that he loves exterminating for shit and giggles can enjoy his place in Heaven without so much as a slap on the wrist. Oh, but Lucifer and Vaggie "fell" because they dared to question the rules.

So far, the tone seems to be both cynical and hopeful as it needs to be: Charlie is fighting an uphill battle both against Hell and Heaven, and she needs to accept the reality of sin, that believing in the inherent good of people is not enough. However, some people are capable of change, because not everyone sins for the same reasons: some are rotten to the core and thrive in Hell, but others are desperate and can benefit from some genuine support.

So, again, I'm intrigued to see where this is going.

#hazbin hotel

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stormblessed95 · 2 years

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I would like to comment on an ask you received discussing why so many people refuse to see or acknowledge jikook as being more than friends. In theirs and your response you both mentioned heteronormativity and homophobia. I would like to push back some against the claim that it's homophobia. While I can't deny that this plays some role I don't think it plays a massive one. I would say that k-pop dating culture, expectation of fan service, and how commonplace shipping is within k-pop plays a larger role.

Since shipping/fan service is such a huge deal within k-pop I think many naively discredit any signs of members being together because all can go under the label of fan service and shipping culture. They don't realize how the industry has biased them against the possibility of members ever being more.

People who came across BTS without having any knowledge of k-pop are way more objective. For example, I am not a huge k-pop fan. I like BTS and came upon them in early 2017. I didn't know what shipping, fan service, or skin ship was prior to this. I just simply liked their content and within a VERY short time span (3 days) came to believe that Jimin and Jungkook were in a relationship. It wasn't until I started researching if anyone else felt the same that I came to understand what shipping, fan service, and skin ship was. I found many people trying to explain away Jikook's suspect behavior by claiming that's just what idols do, it's fan service, they do it for their shippers etc. I never really fell for it because as I looked more into fan service and ship videos, Jikook's suspect interactions didn't match what fan service meant. It seemed too subtle (at the time) and knee jerk...it didn't seem to be for fans but just who they were together. However, it didn't matter how I felt I was still inundated with claims of it's fan service or from other shippers, they actually hate each other and Big Hit (at the time) just plays them up for cameras.

If shipping and fan service weren't such huge components of the k-pop industry not a single person would question Jikook's relationship status, especially now. It would just be accepted. However, their very obvious couple interactions are discredited because fan service does exist as a plausible explanation, at least to the naive.

Now when GCF Tokyo came out I was sure that most people would acknowledge their status as a couple and when people still denied it I was a little shocked. And one could claim this as homophobia, but I still don't think that' the case. People go to great lengths to discredit even straight couples in k-pop and idols dating is called a scandal. I think this falls into an even larger toxic element of k-pop dating culture. Fans hate their idols actually having a life and become angry at the idea of them being humans with natural desires for relationships. Idols are commodified and not seen as people rather products. So when it appears that idols are actually dating, fans become enraged and try to discredit that reality.

So, it's not that people don't see Jikook as being an actual couple, it's that either A. Fan service/skinship/and shipping culture clouds their judgement, or B. If it's super obvious that there is something more they become enraged by the idea that their idol is no longer available so they seek to do anything they can to normalize that behavior and discredit it.

I believe both A and B is what's going on regarding why the fan base is so adamant that Jikook aren't a thing. You have hardcore k-pop fans that are so used to shipping culture that all intimate interactions are just for the fans. And then you have hardcore stans that hate the idea of their idol being in a relationship with anyone other then themselves so they have to turn a blind eye to jikook. Because come on, at this point what reality are we living in where two men can suck each others ears, give each other hickeys, make romantic travel vlogs of each other and way more and still not be seen as being together. What they are goes way beyond fan service and skin ship. They are clearly together...I saw that 3 days into watching BTS material at a time where they weren't so obvious. LIke it's clear as day.

sorry for the long ask

Thanks for sharing! Everyone has their own thoughts over it all. And I think everyone is a little bit right in their own ways. And Part of it comes down to each individual. No one answer will encompass everyone. Ever. To be human is to be different. To think and process things differently. I do agree with you, just like I agree with the last persons and those in the comment section. As well as there is probably more to it than everything already discussed and that's probably aren't far off or wrong either. One thing worth adding, that can and does connect the two though, is that one has to take into consideration the foundations of homophobia/heteronormativity and even queer baiting at times that is at the root of your typical bouts of kpop fanservice. And that heteronormativity and homophobia can shape the way you think even unintentionally, even while you don't THINK you ARE having your thoughts led by homophobia. It's a result of the society in almost EVERY part of the world. It comes in different shapes, but the basis is still there. Idk if that makes sense, but hopefully you get what I'm trying to say. Lol

Again, thanks for sharing!! I appreciate it. Don't apologize for Long asks. I'm like well known for my rambling essays over topics. 💜💜 Anon was referencing this ask in their reply here.

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citadelofmythoughts · 1 year

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RWBY/MHA: Tsuyu and Blake would be interesting. I'd imagine there'd be quite a bit of conflicting feelings from Tsuyu, given that unlike Sun, she's a much more lawful person and would probably end up not thinking too highly of the White Fang at first, and Blake being a former terrorist. I could see her end up causing friction between her and Blake, that'd only be somewhat mitigated overtime as she learns about the civil rights roots of the organization.

Maybe if a hypothetical situation where Blake's parents and Sienna Khan were to ever show up at an academy (either UA or Beacon, whichever) due to circumstances allowing them to find out that Blake defected from the White Fang would be a situation where Tsuyu could learn about the complicated nuances of the situation between humans and Faunus, and slowly wear down some of her societally-ingrained biases against unlawful behavior.

The one thing Tsuyu does agree with Blake on however is that Adam is a monstrous person, and that Blake doesn't deserve to suffer from his abuse.

Tsu is honestly my favorite MHA character and yeah, she might be a little hesitant around Blake at first but I think she'd be wiling to listen to Blake's point of view. As lawful as Tsu is, I don't think she'd turn a blind eye to abuse on that scale.

She'd recognize that Blake is fundamentally a good, noble person who would do anything for someone in need which is very much a heroic ideal that she admires.

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cancerian-woman · 2 years

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This is probably the most AU asked you could get:

If Gia survived, how do you think her character would have faired from S3 to S5? Do you think she'd have a bond with Hope, and if so, how? Do you think she'd trust any of the Mikaelsons (Klaus the royal exception)?

my darling gia…okay nice ask but let’s go. Warning this is a long one. A good part of this becomes very anti TO just for a warning.

The way I would’ve continued Gia’s storyline is following through with her connecting with the vampires/continuing to fight/ being a leader on her own. Get into more intimate moments with Elijah. Invest in their romance! Invest in her friendships! (Josh for example or anyone of Marcel’s friends.) Let her open up about her past. Give her the same treatment Camille had. Gia could’ve made more connections with more witches since Josephine just loved her. Gia in fact was the version of that “good vampire” but wanted to get her hands dirty. She’s respectable, patient didn’t mind fighting. If it was for a reason. Those are likable qualities. I could see witches being drawn to her for that. Gia stayed in her lane unless it effected someone she cared about. We needed to see more vampires who felt positive about their transition. Not to say that those who were unhappy about turning was bad. We just didn’t see many sides of characters who wanted to turn. Now onto s3 where we meet the Strix. I’d say Gia would originally be a bit biased at first not seeing their side of things since she’s loyal to Marcel/Elijah. But would slowly change her perspectives She wouldn’t allow Marcel to get invovled with the Strix alone. She’d be in the action as much as possible. But keeping that friendship and caring quality in mind she’d become friends with Davina by proximity to Marcel. Insert Freya/Elijah sacrificing Davina/Marcel’s death that alone would be enough to push Gia away from Elijah completely. She’d stand by her friends side and Marcel’s when it’s time to go against the Mikaelson’s. S4 & s5 i can see those as seasons Elijah has to work to get her back. She’d most likely would want Elijah to own up to his behavior past and/or present. I don’t agree with the way TO handled Kolvina for example so Gia would want to know about that rough past(red door plot) Elijah had. So she can accept all sides of him. I think Kolvina is a fault for both characters considering Davina just doesn’t believe anything on Kol’s darkness. Now back to allowing Gia to open up more about her past. We could see glimpses of her home life. What really turned her into this harder exterior on the outside? Why is she so adamant about being loyal to people? Let us meet her family or anyone from the past that made her the way she was. We know her mom died but what about her dad? Hell, how did her mom die? Why does she hate her step father? Is there siblings involved? Give her that story. Write that story. It can be told you just have to care to tell that story and given Plec, Carina, Dries…etc all have a disdain/racism for woman of color you see we were never going to get that. Tvdu’s flaw (well one of them) is creating characters and not pushing the lore they started with.

As for Hope and Gia connecting deeply. This varies on if Hayley stops looking down on Gia and treats her like a person. Sure, TO didn’t go for the explicit “women dislike each other because of a man” thing but Hayley did subtlety look down on Gia simply because she had a building relationship with Elijah. Gia was never the aggressor towards Hayley. She offered her protection/help to Hope out of loyalty to Elijah/Marcel. Haylijahs tend to do this with ALL of Elijah’s women of color ships. They paint the opposing woman as villainous for being upset with Elijah from the past or for having romantic feelings for Elijah. You can check out wiki pages for Celeste/Aya/Gia and there’s people in the comments being spiteful because those women were with Elijah. It’s never an actual reason to dislike them. It’s a common trend with Mikaelson fans that if said Mikaelson dislike a character their fandom will as well. Ex: Tyler, Finn, Marcel etc.. Celeste/Aya/Gia suffered a similar fate and let Haylijahs tell it none of those women truly mattered to Elijah. But, as I said earlier if Gia is treated fairly by Hayley I can see something blossoming outside of Gia protecting Hope. Maybe, it’s a similar relationship to the one Camille could’ve had for Hope. TO written characters to be willing to protect/defend Hope but not enough (for me personally) on her parents becoming people that someone would actually want to help. They relied a lot on alliances with people which again wouldn’t be an issue if Klayley were written better.

I can see Gia building bonds with Davina/Rebekah. Her and Kol would have an interesting banter. So yeah after it’s been some time she’d be more trusting to them depending on how they treat her. Maybe this is where Freya/Klaus relationships could come in. It’s up in the air. It’s just the way they wrote the Mikaelson’s to be so co-dependent you kind of have to get in good with them all to date one so. Hopefully, this answers your question.

#dria responds #gia #gialijah #gilijah #gia the originals #marcel gerard #elijah mikaelson #anti Kolvina #anti haylijah #anti the originals #anti to #anti julie plec #anti hayley marshall #the originals #Marcel x gia #gia x elijah

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fantastic-rambles · 3 years

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Sk8 Character Thoughts

Yeah, so y’all have to deal with me venting my latest obsession, lol. Sorry to everyone who followed me for other stuff, I will get back to it eventually. ^^;

I was gonna write out individual walls of text for everyone to be fair, but I decided that’s too much work and I’d go crazy before I finished (plus I’m feeling guilty for neglecting my fanfiction writing), so I’m just gonna bullet point some of the random things I think about various skaters (opinions and theories).

The order is the approximate order of which I like characters, though it’s not a strict ranking. I like most of the characters in the show to some extent.

Adam (Shindo Ainosuke)

I’ve already said a lot about him, you can check it out here and here. I’ll probably end up saying more about him before the show ends, too. xD

Yes, he is an absolutely awful person, but that’s what makes him amazing.

I will say that he needs a better costume designer. He looks like a clown. It looks like something that he designed when he was, like, five years old.

The mask is great though. <3

Cherry Blossom (Sakurayashiki Kaoru)

I love the super analytical types, but I also feel like Carla is a crutch for him. He’s a great skater, but if he didn’t have Carla, I don’t think he’d be able to compete at the level of the other top skaters. But all the more props to him for finding a way that he could compete at that level.

He totally had a thing for Adam before. But I think that even then, Adam was too fucked up to be able to have a romantic relationship, so nothing came of it. Because if Adam did actually learn what real love was like rather than confusing abuse for love, I don’t think he would have turned out the way he did.

It’s pretty clear that until he gets smacked by Adam, he’s still looking up to Adam and clinging to what they had before. And it bleeds into his non-skating life as well: when he did his calligraphy demonstration, I think that he hoped Adam would see it, which was why he picked that specific phrase and explained it--to let Adam know that it wasn’t too late to make amends (not that Adam would have given a fuck even if he did see it).

I love his character design as a teen, and I’m sad that he’s become more respectable-looking (though still hot af) as an adult. I’m a sucker for guys with long hair in anime/manga.

He is absolutely a weeb. He’s made an AI assistant who he calls Carla, which creeps out Joe (in a cute, lovable way, not in an Adam way), and he incorporates her into almost all aspects of his life. Like, he just happens to have an AI-augmented wheelchair handy, why?

He also dresses up like a ninja when he’s skating, goes around in a kimono in his daily life, etc. etc. Okay, maybe the kimono can be excused since he’s a calligrapher (though I’m pretty sure that’s not the norm regardless, except for maybe if the artist is at some sort of exhibition?), but people’s costumes seem to show off who they really are beneath the mask they put on for society. So Cherry secretly wants to be a ninja. xD

I’m not on any specific ship, but if I had to pick one to board, it would be Matchablossom.

Can we please have a spinoff that’s just about Adam, Cherry, and Joe when they’re teenagers?

Snow (Hasegawa Langa)

Frankly, Langa’s only up this high because I love his dynamic/rivalry with Adam. If Adam didn’t exist, he’d be below Joe, maybe below Tadashi.

Not that I don’t like Langa, but he’s just an oblivious skating nerd. He’s skilled and passionate, but I don’t really feel that he really stands out as a standalone character. He’s more of a foil for other characters (mostly Adam and Reki).

I guess what stands out the most to me is his ability to improvise when he’s falling behind, since his skill level is understandably lower than most of the other people he skates against. Like finding alternative pathways to the finish line versus Shadow and Miya, or using Joe’s strength to propel him forward. Or just, like, flying off the edge of a cliff to take a shortcut. That too. xD

His snow motif is pretty cool. (No pun intended.)

And I won’t deny that he’s cute. He’s actually the reason I started watching, because I saw some fanart of him and got curious. Came for the Langa, stayed for the Adam. <3

I feel bad for him for having a jealous jerk as basically his only friend though.

Joe (Nanjo Kojiro)

He’s such a teddy bear. <3

Joe’s the heart to Cherry’s brain, and I adore the way they balance each other out. I love Vitriolic Best Buds.

What surprised me, though, is that Joe seems to have a better understanding of Adam’s current character than Cherry does, since Cherry is so precise and analytical. Though the flashback clarified that some since it’s pretty obvious that Cherry is/was biased where Adam is concerned. Sure, Joe was also friends with Adam back then, but it seems that Cherry was the one most star-struck by Adam.

But Joe obviously knows and accepts that Adam’s changed, unlike Cherry, though he probably doesn’t know the reason why. He seemed to be expecting something to happen during the race, so it didn’t surprise him when it did, though he was sad/disappointed by it. It seemed like he was concerned and wanted to warn Cherry before his race (which is super cute), and when everyone else was flinching from seeing the assault on Cherry, Joe didn’t look away. I don’t think he knew exactly what Adam was going to do (I don’t think anyone did, lol), but he knew Adam was going to do something.

I don’t think he was serious when he said the reason Adam is avoiding their beefs is because he’s afraid he’ll lose, though. Yeah, he wants to race Adam, and he wants to win, but I think he’s more grounded when it comes to Adam, so he probably knows that Adam would beat him if it came down to it. Whereas Cherry legitimately thought he could win if Adam held back.

Also, his skateboard wheels are ridiculous. How do they even work?

Snake (Kikuchi Tadashi)

He got an ask post, yay, so not going to rehash it here.

I really hope that Adam realizes at some point that Tadashi is the only person who really knows and understands him, and comes to appreciate everything that Tadashi’s done for him.

Miya (Chinen Miya)

Such a brat, omg.

I get that he’s a kid, and kids are brats, and so it’s a fairly realistic depiction. I just hate kids. >.>

Pretty much the only time I’ll really like a child character is when they’re precocious as fuck and not child-like at all, which I get defeats the purpose, but that’s me.

Brattiness aside, he is skilled and appreciates Reki standing up to Adam on his behalf, so much so that he’s willing to spend his time training a “slime” just so Reki doesn’t get completely crushed by Adam. And he’s also willing to work with Langa to teach him the most difficult trick in skating (the Caspar Slide) for the same reason.

Ultimately, he’s a good kid, but he’s had some bad experiences that make it harder for him to trust people since he’s afraid they’ll leave him. He’s still willing to try, though, if people will give him a chance.

Also, the one ep when they go on vacation and Miya pretends Joe is his daddy (and Cherry is his mommy, rofl--hi Matchablossom!) to drive away the women Joe’s hitting on... hilarious.

Kyan Reki

An even bigger brat.

Again, yeah, he’s a teenager and teens are “just like that,” but I hate those kinds of characters.

Just because his friend is a skating genius, he gets all pissy and stops being friends with him? Showing up to cheer Langa on and then completely running away doesn’t redeem him in my eyes. I get that he’s disappointed that he’s not capable of skating at the level of the top skaters and frustrated that Langa surpassed him so easily, but that’s no excuse to take it out on Langa (or anyone else).

And everyone complains about Adam being possessive, but they just gloss over the fact that Reki repeatedly tries to force Langa to promise to not skate against Adam, even roping in their manager, when he knows that Langa likes accepting challenges and has fun doing them. He just wants to keep Langa to himself, and he’s jealous as fuck that Langa is obsessed with skating against Adam.

Langa even explicitly tells him that he’s not racing Adam just because he’s upset about what Adam did to Reki, but because he wants to do it. Which is the exact same fucking reason Reki gives for not listening to Joe and Miya, and Langa supports his decision then. Why can’t Reki do the same?

Yes, he’s traumatized because his friend who introduced him to skating was seriously injured and had to quit skating, and he got hurt skating against Adam, but just like for Adam: YOUR TRAUMA/BACKSTORY DOES NOT JUSTIFY YOUR BEHAVIOR.

Plus, the whole “we’ll never disappear from your sight” that he told Miya? Psych!

Like, seriously. He knows the kid has abandonment issues because people leave him because he’s too good at what he does, and then he just goes ahead and poofs, putting both Miya and Langa through the same exact fucking thing.

Though I’m sure that the power of friendship will give him a miraculous recovery and he’ll build a new board for Langa so Langa can beat Adam before Adam gets hauled off to jail. It’ll probably be a cheesy make-up where Langa says something about how he can only use Reki’s boards, so it’s like they’re skating together when he races or whatever.

I do respect his ability to observe other skaters and make boards that are perfectly suited to them, though. And he knows that he’d be good in that support role. But he wants to be the hero, so he’s suffering from eighth grader syndrome and lashing out because reality doesn’t conform to his wishes.

Shadow (Higa Hiromi)

Just fucking die already, ‘kay?

I don’t even know what to say. He’s all caught up in his “antihero” complex or whatever (I don’t even remember if that’s the right term, and I don’t give a fuck), and he’s got a nasty personality. Like burning Reki’s board or threatening to have a guy tattoo “Dumpster Slut” above his girlfriend’s name.

You really expect me to believe that he’d treat his manager respectfully if they started dating when he does something like that? His polite florist persona is such a sham.

And he’s a shit skater. How the hell is he in the top 8? If they can throw in a random guy we’ve never seen before (Harry), then they could have just as well put in some other trash mob instead of Shadow, who only didn’t get knocked out in the quarterfinal round because he was racing a nobody.

Imo, all of his “cute” little tricks like throwing fireworks at his opponent or shining a laser into their eyes is worse than what Adam does. Once he does that, he relinquishes all control over the situation, so anything could happen, such as his opponent crashing into a wall or falling off a cliff, which could result in serious injuries or even death. On the other hand, Adam always remains in control when he’s trying to throw off his opponent by forcing them to dance with him and freaking them the fuck out by pushing their limits. Even when he’s holding Reki’s head about an inch above the ground, he won’t let Reki brain himself on a rock or something. And even when he smacks Cherry with his skateboard, his attack leaves Cherry conscious and so lightly injured (relative to what could have been) that he doesn’t even need to stay in the hospital. (I don’t think he actually needs a wheelchair, other than probably being a bit woozy from a concussion, maybe. And maybe not even that if Joe isn’t concerned enough to wake him up/keep him from being unconscious.) Yeah, Adam fucks with his opponents, but if they can get over it, they can get back on a board. There’s a good chance that won’t happen if they get in an accident caused by Shadow, other than for anime logic.

“What about Adam’s Love Hugs??” What about them? Yes, he’s not holding on to his opponents to control their falls, but the point of it is to make them flinch and fall backwards, against the line of motion. That naturally will decrease the severity of their physical injuries, unlike when Reki and Harry fall off the course at full speed versus Shadow.

The only reason he doesn’t have a higher body count than Adam (or even a literal body count) is plot convenience, since he’s not the villain.

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 4 years

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Humans are Space Orcs, “To learn.”

My brain wanted to write something in first person present tense today. I have no idea why, but I let it go wild. I hope you all like it :) A little bit different than my usual style :)

I just needed some time.

You ever tried putting yourself back together after war, it isn’t easy, or at least I don’t find it to be. I don’t know, call me a sissy, but I don’t actually like war., I don’t take pleasure from killing, but it is part of my job, a big part of it and if the universe continues the way it is, I am going to see war a lot more often.

I wish it didn’t affect me so much.

I wish I had a better way of handling it.

People think I’m a strong person, but they’re wrong. There are plenty of people who could take up my mantle and do a more badass job. They wouldn’t grow sick as the sight of carnage, and they wouldn’t hesitate to put the armor back on.

I’m not like that ….

I’m a coward.

If my friends knew…. Well I have no idea what they would think of me.

But that’s why I had to take some time. Since my first injury, I have never been totally alone. There was always someone there to check on me, there was always someone there to help me deal with my issues. I don’t think I ever figured out how to take care of myself, which is why I decided to take this trip, alone.

The others didn’t understand it…. well , one of them did but he still didn’t like it, but If I am being honest it will be good for them….. Especially her…. The last thing I want to do is make it so we can’t function alone.

I think its called…. Codependency or something.

I don’t know sounds like the sort of thing I’d get caught up in.

I suppose it's for all those reasons that I ended up here.

Looking out the window, I can see Anum suspended against the sky glassy in shades of blue purple and green like a lucky marble. It almost feels as if I can reach out and touch it.

The last time I saw this place, it was receding into the distance,.

I lost a lot here, my leg, and my mind for a short time.

Now it kind of makes me laugh to think that a piece of me was left behind to fertilize some of the plant matter. Of course, it looks a bit different now that the dark season has abated. I had only ever seen the place when it was covered in ash, but it's actually quite beautiful.

The pilot of the shuttle is pretty average, and I only feel like tightening my hands on the seatbelts just a little as we enter the atmosphere.

Fire rolls up around us as friction begins to heat up the outer hull.

Around me men and aliens alike rock in their seats.

Most of them are miners, come here to work on extracting the precious metals from below Anum’s surface.

Personally, I prefer asteroid mining, but statistics say that is more dangerous and expensive so of course corporations like it a lot less, and besides, all of this was sort of just a massive pissing contest with the GA forcing the Drev to pay for the damages caused during war. I don’t think they should, but who am I to give my opinion.

I’m just a soldier.

It doesn't take us long to leave the atmosphere, and it isn’t long before we are looking down at a massive open mining operation. The face of Anum has been scoured with a massive terraced hole overrun by machines and workers cutting into the stone. Volcanoes pipe smoke in the distance.

The scars of industry really are ugly sometimes.

I’ve seen pictures of anum during the bright season, without the machinery.

It's honestly very beautiful, but maybe I'm a bit biased. It’s the one part of home that Sunny misses, and I’ve always wanted to see it for myself. With all the times we’ve gone to earth, you think we'd have visited her home planet too, but I guess the cosmos have ust never taken us this way.

Red lights blink above the doors, and I unbuckle my harness pulling on my bag and gear with the rest of the miners, though I’m not here for the same reason they are. Boots clatter loudly on the ramp below our feet, and I head outside.

It smells clean and cool, though for a distant tang of sulfur.

You barely notice it though, less bad than visiting the hot springs at yellowstone, so your nose adjusts quickly.

The sky overhead is blue, just like on earth, though the ground beyond the launch pad is an amalgamation of rainbow color. I have to blink a few times to adjust my vision, pulling up the eyepatch to take a look from my mechanical eye and its UV filter.

“Holy shit.”

It's beautiful, the sheer amount of color is astonishing like the Lucky Charms leprechaun had some sort of horrific accident. T

he miners ignore me and continue on their way towards the docking pad.

I don’t plan on following.

I am not here for them. I drop the patch back over my eye, and adjust the bag over my shoulder striking it out into the bush, barely looking back. No one notices, or cares, and it isn’t long before the launch field and the mining operation disappears over the horizon. Anum’s circumference is just a little smaller than that of earth with the horizon eating up anything beyond that around three miles.

Gravity is somewhat lessened too, which makes it easier as I walk.

My boots are silent against the multicolored moss at my feet, this stuff teal in color. Little white flowers spring up from the surface like clover back home. A light gust of wind rolls past me causing the flowers to ripple. I lift my head closing my eyes and allowing the wind to carry with it distant smells.

This is the same wind that Sunny would have known growing up, the same feeling under her feet.

I decide to stop a couple miles out under the meager shade of a coiltree. I have never actually seen one before now, and I can see why it’s called a coiltree. Honestly it looks like something straight out of a Dr. Seus book striped up the trunk and with branches that curl into spirals. More little whit blossoms erupt from the trunk, and between those are little white berries.

I seem to recall those being edible.

Reaching up, I pluck one or two down from the branches and pop them into my mouth. Though the skin is white, the berries juice stains my hands purple. One of them is horrifically sour, but the other is pleasantly sweet, probably more ripe than the other, though I can’t yet tell the difference between them.

I sit there under the tree for a little while looking out across the lonely landscape. Something is moving on the distant horizon, though I can't exactly tell what they are, a herd of some sort of animal or another. They are very tall as far as I can tell, just a little shorter than the coiltree.

As a last moment decision, I kick off my boots, and strip my socks tying them to my bag before standing.

The moss is very soft under my feet erupting upwards between my toes like a shag carpet, but you know much less hideous.

My footsteps are even softer now, though the prosthetic clatters sometimes when metal hits stone.

Sweat runs down my back,sides, and front.

I have no idea where I am going, but I know they will see me soon enough.

They have patroll parties out here, and if they aren’t watching me already, then they will be soon enough.

I keep walking heading parallel to the volcanic chain.

For the most part, my hike is uneventful, except for that time that I stepped on something slimy and wriggly. I hate to admit it but I squealed like an idiot and nearly fell over, only made worse when I looked down and saw the giant pale maggot burrowing into the moss and underground.

I nearly gagged, and my skin crawled.

Sunny had mentioned those, though I forgot their names.

THey lived primarily off of decomposing plant and animal material, very common in areas where war had continued.

I didn’t like it, but it was probably one of those nasty suckers that ate my leg.

Ew…

Gross.

I contemplated putting my boots back on, but kept walking instead.

A group of unknown flying critters appear overhead. They have two sets of membranous wings, kind of like those of a bat, no tail though, just a long rail of fur like the streamer of a kite.

These ones are bright colors like pink and yellow.

Pretty cool.

Its nice to walk in the silence, though after a while my brain devolves into humming the star wars theme, and then singing stupid songs dancing around and hopping about from one foot to another as I badly sing the choruses to all the songs I know.

My eye of the tiger rendition probably left something to be desired, though I doubt anyone out here would know the difference.

Then comes the stupid dialogs with myself as I try to imagine what Krill Conn and Sunny would say about all this.

“Commander, I will have you know that you behavior is highly disquieting, I insist we get an MRI on your brain to make sure you have not developed a severe case of bilateral goop disease.”

“What kind of dumbass just goes wandering around with no idea where he’s going. The dumbass kind of dumbass.”

“Adam, I need you to understand that Anum is a dangerous place. I know you grew up on earth, but there are still things that can go wrong on Anum. Do you know how common surprise hot springs are. What if you fell in and died.”

Speaking of which, “Thanks imaginary Sunny, I totally forgot about that.”

Other than that, what can go wrong, it is a bright shiny day, the temperature is perfect, nothing someone like me can’t handle. Oh and is that a crunchy pink orb I see. I fucking love those, they taste so good.

I hop over the rocks, my feet warm on the moss, and reach down to pluck one of the spheres from it’s short stumpy stem.

And that's when the spear appears at my throat.

Shit.

I drop my hand back and look up to see a drev that is at least three feet taller than me, holding his massive spear orange eyes narrowed. Holy shit, I didn’t even hear her/him coming. Honestly I should have seen them coming long before anything else bright fuschia as they were.

“Lod tsa ee nin tsa daeen darish.” They jab the spear at my neck, and the obsidian lined head cuts through my sin like butter.

Oh shit, uh, my translator is not picking up shit. Guess these guys have a different accent than we’re used to. I rack my brains trying to remember how to speak what little I know, but it seems that it has all fled me when I needed it the most.

“Lod tsa ee nin tsa daeen darish!” I stumble backwards onto my butt and hands. Shit shit.

I hold up a hand.

“Cheeyat neahasan!” Shit I forgot to conjugate the verb. Damn I must look like an idiot yelling ‘to speak slow!’ at the top of my lungs

However, my botched attempt at speaking seems to work, and they pull back. “Tsa dzhal Cheeyish.”

Oh I understood that one, “Yid zhe cheeyi dzhal.” yes, yes I speak Drev, “neahasan.” Slolwy anyway.

They pull back. I don't know why, but I’m getting a female vibe off this one. I can't tell though, Drev voices all tend to be rather deep.

“Lod tsa ee nin tsa daeen darish” She says it slower this time, and all around her I watch as a small group of other Drev move to flank me from the sides. They are listening very intently.

I think I understand this time, the rough translation being who are you and what are you doing.

I want to speak with your leader, “Zhe zhegingi s tsak eeda cheeyat.” My voice is halting and I am butchering the pronunciation, but they seem to get my request.

She trusts the spear at me, “Tsaee!”

I hold up my hands, “Woah woah, easy easy…. I uh.” Shit what was the word to learn, “zhe….zhengingi hak tsa…. “ Damn it… I can’t remember, “um….. Rekazat nin dzhal….. Rekazazh.”

Oh wow, that sounds really intelligent. I wanted to learn from them but instead apparently I ‘want to know what they know.’ riveting conversationalist that I am.

She stares at me confused.

In frustration I point at her spear, “Zhe zhengingi…..zheengat?”

Uh this was going poorly. I clearly did not know as much of their language as I thought I did.

I want to know to fight.

Wow excellent work their commander that will convince them.

They look back and forth at each other, and fire off some quick shot dialogue that leaves my head spinning.

She turns to me and lowers her spear, “s jya Hajish.”

Come with us.

Great a sentence I understood.

It was in the next few hours that I was either going to live, or I was going to die horribly.

A pretty exciting time in my life.

And I followed.

Not like I had a choice at this point.

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creepingsharia · 4 years

Text

Is TEXAS the Center of U.S. Jihad Activity?

Texas is definitely one of the top dumping grounds for Muslim refugees. Ted Cruz has some ‘splaining to do.

The man who attacked NAS Corpus Christi (TX) was a sharia-adherent Syrian-born muslim who studied sharia in Saudi Arabia named Adam Salim Alsahli. Alsahli was killed by personnel manning the gate he tried to plow through with his vehicle.

Understanding the Threat (UTT) has published numerous articles about the significant and growing jihadi network in Texas to include:

Texas Leads the Nation in Domestic Jihadi Attacks – click here to read;

Texas Media Desperate to Defend Jihadis – click here to read;

Remembering the Largest Terrorism Financing Trial in American History – click here to read.

A Look Back at Nabil Sadoun: Hamas/CAIR Leader in Texas – click here to read.

Terrorists in the “Best Small Town in America” – click here to read.

Jihadi Omar Suleiman Finds Open Doors All Over Texas – click here to read.

The Disinformation Campaign at the Ground Level: Carrollton, Texas – click here to read.

Texas School Demonstrates Mainstream Public Education is Biased Against Truth & Reality – click here to read.

Here are some facts to ponder regarding the jihadi threat in TEXAS:

Texas has had more jihadi attacks since 9/11/01 than any other state in America.

On November 5, 2009, muslim U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan launched a jihadi attack at Fort Hood (Texas) killing 14 people and wounding over 30 others.

Dallas – Fort Worth (DFW) has the most Hamas activity in the nation, outside of the Chicago, Illinois area.

Texas is home to the largest terrorism financing trial ever successfully prosecuted in American history – US v Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), Northern District of Texas (Dallas) 2008. HLF was the largest Islamic charity in America and was a front for the terrorist group Hamas located in Richardson, Texas.

On May 3, 2015, two Islamic jihadis from the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamic Community Center of Phoenix (AZ) attacked the “Draw Mohammed” contest in Garland, Texas but were killed by police before they could enter the event.

On February 17, 2019, the Islamic Education Center in Houston, Texas celebrated the anniversary of the 1979 Iranian revolution and declaration of a global jihad against the non-muslim world with children at the center declaring they are soldiers for Allah.

Houston, Texas has 108 mosques (that we know about), and UTT has not identified one of them which does not teach that it is obligatory for muslims to wage war against non-muslims until “Allah’s divine law”/sharia is the law of the land on earth. As a side note, Houston is also home to the headquarters of the Communist Party in Texas and the jihadis and communists are working together against the United States. UTT assesses the Houston area is significantly dangerous and as dangerous as Dearborn, Michigan and Minneapolis, Minnesota, but the jihadi population is not as overt as those other areas yet.

Hamas doing business as CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) hosts an annual “Muslim Day” at the Texas State Capital in Austin, Texas. In December 2018, Houston Mayor Turner declared December 9, 2018 as “CAIR-Texas Day” in Houston.

Texas is home to at least one Islamic Tribunal or sharia court. In 2015, Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne boldly took on this Islamic sharia court in her area, and the U.S. Islamic Movement responded with a propaganda operation of sending a muslim boy into school with a device that looks like a bomb. Eventually the citizens of Irving stood behind their mayor, but the Irving sharia court is still operating.

Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas has a “muslim prayer room” inside the Taylor Chapel on base which teaches that all muslims must wage war against non-muslims until “Allah’s divine law”/sharia is imposed on every one on earth. In April 2018, UTT published a report on the specific materials UTT found in that muslim prayer room and the danger this activity poses to the base and the community. A copy of the report was sent to the base commanding officer with numerous follow ups and requests by Members of Congress to conduct a CONGRINT (Congressional Inquiry). To date, nothing has happened.

Texas has been home to numerous Islamic “honor killings” including the 2008 New Year’s Day killing of two muslim girls by their father Yaser Abdel Said who is still at large.

Colleges and universities across Texas are home to chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Muslim Students Association which recruit jihadis, promote a false understanding of Islam, conduct dawah, and are a significant part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s deception operation.

All Richardson Independent School District (ISD) high schools have designated muslim prayer rooms.

These data points indicate a dangerous situation in Texas and a lack of understanding of the threat by those in charge. Yet, Texas leadership, including and especially the Texas GOP, has ignored this issue and, rather, embraced Islamic leaders who – almost always – turn out to be jihadis.

Texans must decide how long they will let their neighborhoods burn before they decide to call the fire department. Texans are encouraged to get a deeper understanding of the threat by using the resources UTT offers, and pushing local and state officials to do their duty to protect the citizens instead of working to infringe on their unalienable rights under the cover of COVID-19.

Understanding the Threat is the only organization in America empowering citizens, police, and local/state officials with tools to identify and map out jihadi and communist networks, and the only organization in America which helps local leaders build strategies to dismantle these networks.

UnderstandingtheThreat.com

[Coda (5/22/20): In light of the facts we now know…What will be the response from the FBI and federal officials?

Will the United States take military action against Saudi Arabia for training Alsahli, the 9/11 attacks, Saudi Arabia’s funding of the global jihad, Saudi’s funding of jihadi mosques and schools in the U.S. or any of the other hostile actions Saudi Arabia takes against U.S. interests?

Will the FBI get search warrants for NAIT owned mosques (Muslim Brotherhood/jihadi) in Texas and bring the heat down on the Islamic community and begin holding them accountable?

Will the FBI arrest leaders of Hamas doing business as CAIR and seek their execution based on the fact they are working directly with hostile foreign powers to commit murder, conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government, committing espionage, and directly support terrorism according to U.S. law?

Will local or state officials in Texas order all Islamic schools in Texas shut down because they teach the very thing Adam Alsahli just did at the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi is normative and universally accepted behavior for all muslims?

Americans should be outraged if there is not immediate and bold action taken.

Texans should not stop pressing their state leadership until Texas leaders take aggressive and definitive action against the jihadi community or Texas leaders are removed from office for their criminally negligent inaction as well as actions which continue to support enemies of Texas and endanger Texans.]

--------------------------------------

Creeping Sharia has been reporting on the Islamization of Texas, including a sharia court, for more than a decade.

#Legal #Jihad #Islam #Muslim #Sharia #Immigration #News #Politics #Media #Travel

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sometimesrosy · 4 years

Note

I’m fine w/ people expressing ship opinions whatever side they‘re on, but did you know JB started posting anti-Re*ylo stuff only after he was called out for sexist comments about Rey/women and harsh comments about KMT struggling w/ mental health after the way she was treated by fandom/Disney Corp? I want to love him going off regardless if I agree with his Re*ylo views, but I can’t fully when it seems he’s doing it to deflect his poor behavior. Go off, but PLEASE also own your own mistakes.

I saw what he posted and I don’t think that was sexist. They started with making it sexual so he continued. I don’t agree with hypocrisy. If one group of shippers is allowed to make it porny, then so is the other, especially in response. Don’t brag “canon” to the actor whose opposite ship character is still alive and whose ship is also therefore still open.

But you know what? I just went back over what I was posted so I could make sure what I was saying was accurate, and I posted about what a narrative romance DOESN’T look like not that tweet about laying pipe. Which is crude, not sexist, in a conversation about which fictional character is boning rey. I mean. If you can say it about your fave, then it’s not suddenly sexist when it’s against your ship. Unless it was sexist the whole time, and it’s ONE person ignoring their own sexist behavior and attacking a person for their equal and opposite sexist reaction. So if reducing the hero of a story down to which guy she screws is sexist, then, my friend, this has been an issue with the R/ylos the whole time, because her role has been reduced to HIS redemption and her suffering has been forgiven because it makes HIM feel sad. So be careful with that claim. (because if i unpack it then i see the r/ylo ship as a sexist one on a grander level.)

Do endeavor not to be hypocritical and to also DOUBLE CHECK your own actions and how things started. (as an example, I went back to double check my reblog and posts to make sure i wasn’t wrong or hypocritical.) PARTICULARLY not when you say John Boyega should own his mistakes but you are forgiven your own. He was HARASSED by the r/ylos. When people snap back at the people who attacked them, they are not then the aggressors.

If r/ylos spend time going after John Boyega for... idk what, and then cry victim when he responds aggressively, that’s called “playing the victim.” This is not the same thing as an ACTUAL victim being told by their abuser/bully that they are “playing the victim” when they stand up and tell them to stop victimizing them.

Not all r/ylos are toxic. This does not excuse the toxic r/ylos. John Boyega has been the victim and target of the toxic ones, and if you don’t want the r/ylos to be all drawn with the same brush, then you should be up there calling the r/ylos who harassed him out, rather than John Boyega, who finally had enough and finally had the freedom to speak about the bullshit he had to put up with.

I didn’t see anything he said about KMT so I can’t speak to that.

And then there is another issue that we need to address about this rage over John Boyega thinking r/ylo is a bad ship (which I do happen to agree with even if some people don’t,) and that is an issue of racism.

Do not play the nice white lady game. Do not weaponize your white lady tears to attack a black man and rally your nice white lady defense squad. And i DEFINITELY saw some of that going on on twitter. “Oh woe is me poor nice white lady who loves a toxic ship, that black man was mean to me! I AM OPPRESSED!! please protect the nice white lady who is perfectly innocent and has never done anything wrong in her life.” Shipping something an actor doesn’t like does NOT make you oppressed. And comparing someone not supporting your ship, who is from an oppressed race, to your OWN oppression is, like, rather fucking racist.

Adam Driver doesn’t think r/ylo is healthy. Did y’all attack him?

Daisy Ridley can’t get behind it. No attack.

Mark Hamill tries not to think about. No attack.

John Boyega points out the CANON violence in the ship and y’all go on attack?

My friend. This is VERY suspicious. What’s the difference? He’s not white. He’s black. It sure smells like racism to me, in a fandom that has been FULL of racism. Why did the story focus on the antagonist as a “love interest” in the first place? Is it because Finn is black and racist fans were outraged and/or dismissive of that ship? Because Finn was a hero and a friend to Rey while K was an enemy and abuser-- BUT he was white, so that always makes fans like their mass murderers. Cool.

You have HONESTLY got to check your own behavior and thought processes and judgments and consider if your unconscious biases are working here. If you’re just going along with the r/ylo crowd reveling in the wounded feelz of being sad and hurt and disappointed (all of which are VALID FEELINGS MIND YOU,) and think that rationalizes your attack on an actor who plays the character in the opposing ship who has NOT died, then you need to stop and explore what’s really going on with you and within your shipping community.

It’s not good, nonny. What’s happening is not validated by your feelings of grief over your ship. What’s happening looks like entitlement and racism.

I’ve tried to stay out of star wars fandom and just watch from the edges, but no man. I cannot agree with your perspective here.

#oh well fuck i guess staying out of it isn't working

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velvyy · 5 years

Note

Hey, Rad... Alex... Alexlememe? I know that's the name you used to go by and I know you've kinda disconnected yourself from Viv's fanbase after ZP ended, and I remember your memes and such but I kinda just wanted to get your take on the Hazbin drama since you reblogged the headcanon blog's post on the subject. More or less regarding the issue of her being uncharitable to fans and non-fans alike, plus that one callout post on twitter?

So this is weird. I wasn’t expecting to get asks on the subject since like you said, I’ve generally been disconnected from the fanbase aside from the few reblogs here and there retaining to Hazbin and its more recent developments. But yeah I guess I could give my take on this since I mean.. old fans still follow me. Idk why, but they do!So, really. In regards to that callout post (which is now deleted) I really, really don’t care that much. For one thing, Initially I did because I really hated to see someone be slandered so viciously with inaccurate and uncharitable attacks, but I kinda just stopped because even when I linked the addresses from both Viv, and the Ken dude regarding all the drama mentioned, it was either ignored and resulting in me being called a “pedo sympathizer” or “It wasn’t even an apologyyyyy weh” and like, whatever. I stopped giving a shit.

Terms of the traced animation thing... Lol, ok. I mean homages do exist, and her animation thingy was based on a meme so whatevs.

Anyways,I knew from the very start that the whole “tracing” and “stealing designs” stuff was nonsense since there was an entire like, tumblr drama arc on the issue, and albeit Viv’s post is gone, there’s evidence of legal contracts regarding Jiji and that whole nonsense that was years ago. In regards to her drawing pictures of Blaire White and Shoe… Eh. I mean, yeah, fuck em, but she’s made it clear that she doesn’t support those views anymore, and she wasn’t even really aware of the other things they’d done at that point, and I see no real reason not to believe her because what does lying about that gain her? Yeah her comment on the “blackface” thing if you wanna call it that was dumb as shit, but considering 2016 was a rough year for her in terms of trying to find where she fell in the political sphere, I can relate because I was in the same boat. A lot of sjw cringe comps, shaming feminists, and purposely misgendering transpeople… Not a good time for me either! Course I’ve changed. I went from being a reactionary alt-centrist to an anarchist so. Whether that’s an improvement is up to you.

As for the whole pedo/zoo shit, I really don’t see it. I mean like, look, obviously porn art portraying people fucking feral animals is disgusting right. Not saying it isn’t problematic or anything, but to be fair, she did draw this shit like 8 years ago. I’ve seen worse from even more well-established artists and I don’t see people trying to cancel them? Also, the art was suggestive for one thing and not necessarily 100% porn. I mean it’s still creepy and gross, and I’d understand scolding them if they continued to do so but a lot worse, but I haven’t seen anything like that from Viv past those 2 drawings. As for the pedo shit… The relationship between a 17 year old and a 19 year old is… hardly creepy and reminiscent of pedo shit. So yeah no fuck that. Now with the drawing of Mirage and Kestrel and the tag that said something jokingly like “Mirage and her pedo tendencies” or whatever… Yeah idk, I can’t defend that lmfao. Again, Viv said she disapproves of those drawings and doesn’t care to think about them, but that one piece of artwork definitely had some baggage to it that made me feel uncomfortable after reading the tags.Only issue I took in terms of her addressing that, is that she was very adamant about it being an inside joke… Which if that’s true, you must’ve had some fucked up friends like damn.

I would also like to state that cub art is legitimately disgusting and I am of the belief that it can cause harm depending on the context since I assume the consumption of cub art can reinforce the urge for pedophiles to act on their desires instead of finding healthy coping mechanisms for it through therapy. There have been stories from younger users on the internet that older people have tried to groom them and have the notion of pedos preying on them be normalized by sending them art depicting kids in sexual acts with adults. Of course in isolation cub art isn’t as harmful as the actual act of raping a child, and I would argue that people have their priorities kind of messed up since the illustration being acknowledged should be part of combating pedophiles preying on children. However, people, typically twitter wokescolds tend to focus on the art solely and I don’t know why. There’s a lot of MAPS trying to find their way into LGBT spaces and it’s fucking gross.

Now with Hazbin itself… It’s meh. Initially I watched it with rose-tinted glasses and loved it. After watching it for like… the 3rd, 4th, 5th time? It’s alright. I don’t hate it, but it’s far from perfect. Now ofc I know it’s a pilot but a very lengthy pilot I’ll say. My biggest gripe with the pilot is that the editing is really fucking weird. Like the editing where Angel tells Alastor “I can suck yah dick!” and the scene that followed was really off. It seemed like too many cuts were made in that instance and seemed very cluttered. It also feels that way during Charlie singing “Inside Every Demon is a Rainbow” and how many little animated bits were like almost wiped off the screen by how fast it came by, and ntm there was just so much happening all at once on screen as well. I had to pause at points just to process everything that was happening. The palette is also very, very, verrrry red. There’s so much red going on and like… I get it, it’s in hell. But lemme rest my eyes on something else besides red, please. The palette they use needs to be better diversified, and the same goes for the characters too. Every character seems to have red on them. Whenever Baxter shows up later he’s gonna look really out of place. Some of the jokes were ok, and others seemed non-clever. I didn’t think Angel’s joke about sucking Al’s dick was funny. I did like the joke with Pentious and Angel though. “SON??” Some of it could’ve been written better too.

Regarding the drama with the show itself… Personally I don’t get it. Like, I don’t feel as if Angel is homophobic as a character since his queerness isn’t at the face of the jokes he makes? He just happens to be sex worker which… sex workers are fine? Support sex workers y’all, seriously. There’s also nothing intrinsically wrong with being sexually active either? As long as it’s within reason and you’re being trustworthy.The issue lies in the fact that people viewed the things I just mentioned as negative, and associate it with gay people as said negatively portrayed thing to push the sentiment of “Gay man do sex a lot therefore the gays bad” or that sort of thing. Also there’s a bit where it shows there’s more emotional depth to him and I’m hoping they’ll expand on that later. Honestly though, the criticisms in regards to that have been pretty uncharitable. Same with the criticisms for Vaggie. Apparently Vaggie is racist because… she’s loud and angry? Again, this is a case where people assume those traits are negative, and because it’s assumed to be negative, the negatively portrayed thing pushes the sentiment of “Being a loud fiery woman made, and latina women are that, therefore latina women bad” or some shit. There are stereotypes that are bad no matter what the context is like sambo-esque caricatures of black people. Then there are tropes that are applied to certain demographics that have the capability to be written well into characters without it being offensive or disrespectful. Vaggie is literally angry because she’s protective of her gf. Like. C’mon.

So, I think that settles what I think about that? It honestly seems like superficial shit to me tbh, and I’m saying this as an sjw-y beta cuck anarchist.

The only REAL gripe I have, is with what the mod from @zpheadcanons posted. Because I know this is probably true as much as it hurts me to say it. Faust def has a history of being pretty petty and bully-like to people she deems undesirable, and Viv harbors it by not criticizing it, and if anyone else within their friend group does it then you’re scolded vehemently and treated like garbage. Her attitude also stretches to harboring an audience full of white knights that I personally don’t approve of.

There’s also this

Faust has hurt distant people I personally know and… yeah. Maybe I’m biased but I can’t vibe with that. Sorry. If you don’t make an effort to criticize abusive behavior within your own friend circles then that makes you just as bad, because then you’re just a bystander to things you could have prevented.

This isn’t to say Viv herself hasn’t dealt with bad faith actors, or people who had the intention to hurt her, or very uncharitable criticism. Particularly from the badwebcomics forums which is honestly 4chan like in how they operate. It’s vicious as hell, and a lot of their criticisms boil down to insults and personal attacks, which serve to be nonconstructive. That’s not to say Viv has been kind to even the more charitable criticism though. I know because when I happened to send an ask to the zoophobia criticism blog (where did it go???) regarding something relatively minor and superficial, she blocked me from her blog. I’m still blocked lmfao. I’m not blocked on twitter though! (not yet anyways). Faust has me blocked there though, and I have no idea why. She’s had me blocked for years even though I haven’t spoken out against her till recently. So, there’s that.

As for her apology itself, I feel like it was fine. I think it could’ve been worded better? The take I disagree with in terms of that is like… If I made a mistake in the past, and I make it clear that I don’t care for what I did, I don’t feel as if me explaining why I felt compelled to do certain things negate me from still not caring for my past actions? That’s just me providing context. That’s a really weird take, but I guess that could be viewed as an excuse idk. Personally I think people are holding the bar super high to a state of irrationality.

*sigh* So yeah there’s that. I miss the old days where honestly I could be ignorant about this, but at the same time I look at my old obsessive posts and I kinda just… cringe. I was such an irrational stan I almost hate myself for it. Fuck XD

Edit: I’d also like to point out that I’m not saying Viv or Faust are totally awful or totally good people, and I know they’re capable of being better. It’s a matter of whether or not they wanna be better.

#vivziepop #hazbin hotel

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drcaleasesmith · 4 years

Text

White Supremacy: The Never-Ending Pandemic

The world is in the midst of another health crisis -- a pandemic of the virus with the names, "Covid-19," "Coronavirus," and "CV," from the category of Corona viruses of which the common cold is also a member. It portents a staggering mortality rate not unlike earlier pandemics.

The nation and the world grappled with its last pandemic back in 2009, when H1N1 Influenza aimed itself at its populace. According to the Centers for Disease Control, before this pandemic was declared under control, it claimed between about 150,000 and 575,000 lives worldwide. Certainly not the worst pandemic in world history or the United States, it stands in history as a lethal legacy of the power of nature to exact itself upon humanity however it pleases, whenever it pleases. However, this is not an essay on the flu or CV. It is about pandemics, and one in particular, white supremacy.

In order to make this essay make sense, there needs to be some understanding about pandemics. According to Dictionary.com, a pandemic means: "prevalent throughout an entire country, continent, or the whole world; epidemic over a large area," largely associated with disease or illness. But what constitutes an illness or disease if discussing white supremacy and racism? Are the terms, white supremacy and racism really synonymous within the lexicon of the language we use to describe, define and associate ourselves? In order to make this essay make sense, these two terms must finally take their place as separate but equal, distinct and purposeful, and made unique in their own particular right.

There is no argument and indeed no debate should exist at this point about the pervasiveness of Racism, or its definition as "the systematic subjugation within established institutions in the U.S. through structurally designed denial and limited apportionment of opportunity, equity, equality and justice, to control the formerly enslaved and their descendants after the Enslavement ended," or that it "operates as power plus prejudice and bigotry in the form of White and Whiteness as 'superior,' and the "Black" formerly enslaved and their descendants as 'inferior'." What is still up for grabs in terms of intellectual debate is the ideology of white supremacy, what it means, what it does, how it operates, and why it is easily conflated with Racism.

By contrast, there doesn't seem to be any true scholarly acknowledgement as to any pathology of white supremacy or the association of mental processes which have been ingrained for centuries in people who identify as white in order to sustain and support the beliefs and subsequent behaviors that arise out of the ideology. In other words, white supremacy is not even considered a sickness of the mind. In fact, most scholars dismiss the idea of white supremacy as a pathological ideology altogether. Given that the ideology over the generations has glued itself into the subconscious as well as the unconscious places in the minds of white people, creating behaviors from subtle biases to full on aggression and violence, the absence of any correlation between the behaviors borne of the ideology and the notion of these behaviors is notable. It is telling that the study of white supremacy as a mental disorder is not pursued as possibly being due to a pathology of the mind, and is in itself, most likely because of the same construct of "superiority" already inherent in the ideology, in essence, why study what is already perfect?

According to Chauncey DeVega, writing for Alternet:

White supremacy is a complex social phenomenon. It is also a relatively new invention that was created to make Europe’s efforts to colonize and conquer the world seem like a “natural” process wherein “superior” white races would dominate “inferior” non-whites.

The Transatlantic slave trade was pivotal for the invention of race by creating a sense of group stigma and a belief in the concrete biological differences between white Europeans and Africans.

Mr. DeVega alluded to white supremacy as a complex social phenomenon and invention. I would disagree to the extent that the ideology, while complex and social, was an "invention," but that the system of racism was itself the "invention" created to sustain the ideology created by the wealthy landowners, and which, today, has morphed into a pandemic of narcissism and pathological aggression among people who identify with the whiteness ideology.

Two scholars, Christopher Petrella, Ph.D., and Justin Gomer, Ph.D., who coauthored a piece entitled, "White Supremacy Is Not an Illness," for the "African American Intellectual History Society's (AAIHS) segment on Black Perspectives, were adamant in their assertions that white supremacy is not an illness. Absent from the discussion, however, was the distinction of white supremacy as fundamentally separate from the system of racism, and the conflation of both as one and the same. While acknowledging that prior to the 1950s both terms were considered synonymous, it is clear that the ideology had to exist well BEFORE the system that supports it. What these two white scholars missed is the whiteness-centered nature of their argument.

Nevertheless, under their rationale in discussions with white people on the subject in an attempt to justify their assertion that white supremacy is not an illness, they referenced racism as their argument for or against, and only casually referred to white supremacy, not even within the same context. They then blithely acknowledged systemic racism as being ignored in favor of individual, "bad apples," and as a "misdiagnosis." It was obvious these two white scholars, albeit with Doctoral degrees in African American studies, and writing for a segment on Black Perspectives, lacked the Black perspective necessary to understand the difference between the terms.

"The presumption that one can eliminate racism by snuffing out a few “bad apples” misses the mark. In fact, such a paradigm misdiagnoses the systemic and ideological production of race itself which is squarely centered in white supremacy. "

Background Facial Image: "Deep Thought," 16x20 by TK Canvases

By implicitly conflating the terms white supremacy and racism as the same, they completely dissolve the systemic structures built into all of the institutions of human activity. They dismiss the very system of racism itself, and relegates racism as ONLY individual bad, and bigoted behaviors of people, while not allowing for exactly what caused the behaviors. Anyone who can critically think about these behaviors will soon come to the conclusion they are more attributed to white supremacist attitudes and the aggressive pathologies associated with them, rather than what was developed to uphold those behaviors. Moreover, while they described the term, "racism" as not being a disease and not an illness, this can only be ascribed as true because Racism is really NOT the behavior itself, but the system upon which the behavior is supported and sustained, and white supremacy is the catalyst which spawned and imposed a spectrum of mental disorders on an entire race of people with no desire to cure them.

Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, a psychiatrist and scholar, was one of a very few, if any, who acknowledged white supremacy as a "neuroses." Although she used white supremacy and racism interchangeably, she understood that the ideology of white supremacy itself was the overarching substance of any rational argument on white supremacy as a disorder, and therefore having a pathology. I would add that it is actually the separation of the two terms: one as the ideology which formed the negative, aggressive and malevolent behavioral pathologies among the masses of people who identify with it, and the other as the system designed and developed to sustain these behavioral pathologies and the ideology that spawned the behaviors in the first place, and provides the legitimacy and justification for the ideology to have contributed to generations of white narcissists and sociopaths of varying degrees of illness.

It is important to begin to see each of the terms, white supremacy and racism for their own unique place and order to properly engage in meaningful discussions of each and to understand which term came first. Had it not been for the creation of the ideology of white supremacy, there would never have been a need for a structural system to sustain it, and millions of people would never have been stricken through this neverending pandemic.

Sources:

Encyclopedia Britannica (2020). When Was the Last Pandemic?

Alternet (2020). 10 Things Everyone Should Know about White Supremacy

AAIHS (2016}. White Supremacy Is Not an Illness.

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darylelockhart · 5 years

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WeWork debacle exposes why investing in a charismatic founder can be dangerous

by Greg Putnam

WeWork wanted to be a lot more than a shared workspace. rblfmr/Shutterstock.com

WeWork went from unicorn darling with a nearly US$50 billion valuation to a cautionary tale for gullible investors worth just $8 billion in a matter of months. It did so in part by wrapping its real estate sublet business in the cloak of a tech startup destined to “change the world.”

Were investors like SoftBank and JPMorgan duped by the hype of a charismatic founder, as happened with Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos?

As a lecturer in finance and someone who managed investments for 20 years, I believe that there was some of that, coupled with behavioral biases that lead people to make bad decisions. But I also think something else was going on that should give investors pause the next time they stumble across a visionary founder promoting a “change the world” branding strategy.

‘We’ will change the world

WeWork was founded in 2011 as a co-working venture.

But Adam Neumann crafted and pitched a vision for his company that went well beyond office sharing and real estate. He said the “we” culture he was building would change the world.

“The influence and impact that we are going to have on this Earth is going to be so big,” he told staff during a music festival-like retreat, where he suggested the company could “solve the problem of children without parents” and even eradicate world hunger.

Such statements weren’t uncommon from him. But moreover, they fit neatly in the messianic-like Silicon Valley tech world, where companies believe their inventions can actually “free the world.”

Neumann’s ambitious plans hit reality recently as investors soured on the company in the runup to a planned initial public offering. On Oct. 23, existing investor SoftBank agreed to rescue the embattled company with billions in additional capital in exchange for increasing its ownership stake to 80%. The deal pushed out Neumann, who will get US$1.7 billion despite burning through earlier investments.

Neumann’s “exit” package may be unusual in its scale, but otherwise similar fates have befallen numerous other founders, such as Theranos’ Holmes and Uber’s Travis Kalanick. Even Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and founder of SpaceX, often seems to be one outrageous tweet away from his own ignominious end.

Each of these leaders embodied varying traits that inspired almost cult-like followings among investors who forked over billions to be a part of their rise. In cases like Tesla and Uber, the companies have managed to become successful despite their CEOs’ shortcomings. Theranos and WeWork are examples of what can go wrong when the founder is both owner and executive in a venture capital-backed startup.

Principals and agents

Finance scholars like myself think about this in terms of the principal-agent relationship, an issue that is crucial to the management of almost every business and organization.

The principal is a party or group that enlists the agent to manage some asset or process in their best interest.

In a healthy corporate structure, the alignment of principal and agent is accomplished through governance and executive compensation policies that provide management incentives to act in the best interest of owners. For example, the CEO’s compensation might include stock in the company that vests over some period of years and is dependent upon specific performance targets.

In the case of WeWork, Neumann was acting in both roles: He was principal as the investor with the controlling stake and agent as the executive tasked with running the company. Even the prospectus for the company’s ill-fated IPO included language that would have given him control for life.

Why it’s a problem

You might wonder what the problem is with this arrangement given that it’s common for managers to be owners, as is the case with small businesses and family-owned companies.

When it’s their own money at stake, surely they’ll be looking out for their own best interests, right? In those situations, yes, and the downside risk is assumed by the owner-managers.

The difference between those types of companies and the likes of WeWork and Theranos is that startups typically have significant outside investment capital. SoftBank, for one, was also a principal in WeWork. In such situations, the interest of a founder like Neumann may not necessarily align with those of the company itself and its other investors.

During WeWork’s buildup, for example, Neumann borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars against his stock in the company, leaving himself and WeWork exposed depending on the shares’ future valuation. He also charged his own company $5.9 million for trademark rights to the word “we” – a sum he gave back after intense criticism.

Even in leaving the company, he was able to negotiate a generous go-away package, including the ability to cash out almost $1 billion in stock and receive a $185 million consulting fee. This at the same time that the company’s future is uncertain and it’s laying off 2,000 workers – which it delayed doing because it couldn’t afford their severance.

Unemployed workers and wasted capital are the collateral damage when investors fall prey to the principal-agent problem. And unfortunately, I don’t think this will be the last time.

Greg Putnam is a Lecturer in Finance at the University of North Carolina Wilmington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

#business #startups #WeWork

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theliberaltony · 5 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

When President Trump entered office, it wasn’t clear if he would consolidate control of the Republican Party — or even his own administration. We used to write a lot about various power centers in his administration, for example. But the president gradually forced out people who didn’t agree with him. Congressional Republicans buck the White House on occasion, but that’s more the exception that proves the rule. And special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe ending without the president being directly implicated, according to the attorney general, both removes any doubt that Trump will be running for president in 2020 and gives Republicans skeptical of Trump one less argument to make against him, thereby strengthening his influence within the GOP.

So describing Republicans as divided between pro-Trump and anti-Trump forces no longer makes much sense — the GOP is overwhelmingly a pro-Trump party. That said, just like Democrats, the broader Republican Party does have some distinct blocs and factions worth understanding. The parties don’t have the same kinds of differences. Democrats have deep divides over policy. In contrast, Republicans, at both the state and federal levels, are largely unified around an agenda of cutting spending for programs such as Medicaid that are targeted at low-income people, defending Americans’ ability to own and purchase guns, limiting abortion, and reducing regulations and taxes on businesses.

Instead, the most important dividing line in the Republican Party right now is probably this: How much should the GOP adhere to Trumpism?

We don’t have an official definition of Trumpism, but we’re describing it here in terms of four areas where Trump is somewhat distinct from previous Republican presidents: (i) Anti-institutionalism (his attacks on the Justice Department and the media, for example); (ii) Economic protectionism (his wariness about international trade agreements); (iii) Foreign policy (his hostility to NATO); and (iv) immigration and race (the border wall, the travel ban).

Vrtually all Republicans in elected office are generally aligned with the president and will support him in seeking a second term. But many Republican officials don’t fully (or really at all) embrace those four facets of Trumpism. That creates tensions between the president and people in his party that play out regularly in Washington.1 I’d put modern Republicans into five main groups (ordered roughly from most to least aligned with Trumpism):

The Trumpists

Often join Trump on immigration policy and in attacking institutions; largely avoid criticizing him publicly on foreign policy and trade even if they don’t fully embrace his views on those issues; strongly defend him in almost every instance.

Prominent examples: Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Fox News, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, Rep. Devin Nunes of California, Sen. David Perdue of Georgia.

This is not the biggest wing, but it may be the most important. People in this bloc forcefully take on some of the president’s biggest critics (Jordan and Meadows leading the attacks against Trump-fixer-turned-antagonist Michael Cohen at a recent congressional hearing, for example.) They will often defend Trump’s behavior when other Republicans won’t (Perdue suggested Trump did not use the phrase “shithole countries” to describe nations like Haiti in a meeting last year, even as other attendees confirmed that he did.)

During the Mueller investigation, this bloc was particularly helpful to Trump. They not only cast the investigation that Mueller was conducting as unfair and biased against Trump, but conducted a counter-investigation, aggressively questioning the Department of Justice officials who had launched the probe about Trump and his campaign during 2016.

The Pro-Trumpers

Support the president as a default, but hold views similar to George W. Bush or Paul Ryan on policy issues and not truly aligned with most of the four aspects of Trumpism; occasionally disagree with Trump publicly, particularly on foreign policy, but usually with careful language.

Prominent examples: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Charles and David Koch, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

I would put most elected Republicans on Capitol Hill and in governors’ mansions in this group. They do agree with some aspects of Trumpism — in particular, Trump tends to use more inflammatory rhetoric on immigration issues, but his policy stances aren’t all that far from GOP orthodoxy. But these figures aren’t attacking the media as “fake news” or particularly enthused about say, removing U.S. troops from Syria. They usually avoid criticizing Trump in public. And if they do, that criticism is usually expressed in very polite terms — and often not followed up by much action.

Trump critics often cast this group as “enabling” Trump or even handing full control of the GOP over to him. Many in this bloc do, in fact, have high Trump scores.2 And while Republicans in this bloc didn’t attack Mueller’s investigation as the Trumpists did, they largely took positions that helped the president amid the probe. McConnell never pushed for a vote on a measure that would have made it harder for Trump to fire the special counsel, and this week blocked a provision pushed by Democrats that would require Attorney General William Barr to publicly release Mueller’s full report.

But as the political scientist Matt Glassman has described, the relationship between these Republicans and Trump is best understood not as Trump forcing ideas down this bloc’s throats. Instead, Glassman argues that McConnell and other congressional Republicans are pushing a fairly traditional Republican agenda, like tax cuts, and Trump largely goes along with it. The unwritten contract between this bloc and Trump seems to be that they will not break with Trump in public (even when he is, say, bashing the late and revered-among-Republicans John McCain) as long as he does not stray too far from establishment Republican policies. Their mantra can be summed up by one word: “judges.” (However erratic and unpredictable Trump may be in personality and on some issues, he is appointing conservative judges who will be on the bench long after he leaves the White House.)

Trump-Skeptical Conservatives

Generally aligned with Trump, but tend to break with him in somewhat noisy ways and generally by casting the president as insufficiently conservative.

Prominent examples: Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

This is a fairly small bloc among elected Republicans. But in a closely divided Senate, Lee and Paul in particular really matter. Their opposition in 2017 to the party’s push to roll back parts of Obamacare — arguing the provisions written by congressional Republican leaders kept too much of the law in place — was a significant factor in the GOP never actually passing anything. Lee and Paul were two of only five Senate Republicans who earlier this month backed both the legislation to end the U.S. involvement in the Yemen civil war and the legislation to stop Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build the border wall. Paul had the second-lowest Trump Score among Senate Republicans in 2017-2018, Lee the fourth-lowest. In the House, Amash backed the president’s position just 54 percent of the time in 2017-2018, putting him behind all but one Republican and also behind some House Democrats.

In all, this group, driven more by doctrine and ideology than the other blocs, is the clearest remainder in the GOP of what the tea party movement espoused.

Trump-Skeptical Moderates

Generally aligned with Trump on policy, but wary of Trumpism; often criticize the president sharply and publicly, particularly his anti-institutionalism and his policies and remarks on racial issues.

Prominent examples: Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah

Think of this group as the “very concerned” Republicans. They often verbally tsk-tsk about Trump, but then, say, vote for Brett Kavanaugh, irritating Democrats who want to see them marry their words with actions. This group is most important because they are likely to be the most forceful critics if, for example, Trump seems too chummy with Vladimir Putin. That occasional forcefulness makes this group different from the generally Pro-Trump bloc I described. And this strong criticism matters — Trump sometimes reverses himself in the face of it.

You might object to the term “moderate” here — Romney for example, is quite conservative on most policy issues. But being hostile to the media and at times to minorities is an important part of Trump’s political approach and increasingly that of the Republican Party’s. Being openly resistant to that drift in the party, like Romney, is a point of distinction between him and Republicans in the first two blocs.

Anti-Trumpers

Never really embraced Trump as the leader of the GOP and seem open to supporting a primary challenger to him.

Prominent examples: Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, conservative activist Bill Kristol, former Gov. John Kasich of Ohio.

This is the smallest bloc and it includes very few elected officials — illustrating how Trump has largely won over a Republican Party that was resistant to him basically up until the day he was elected president. Hogan, who just won reelection in 2018 in a fairly blue state, is hinting that he is considering a run against Trump. But he would be a long shot — and one reason is that he would have almost no support among Republican Party powerbrokers.

As long as Trump is in power, I don’t expect these blocs to feud much. They might differ on tactics or strategy in the run-up to the 2020 campaign. But if they want to win in 2020, all the blocs but the final, most anti-Trump one are probably better off aligning with one another and with Trump.

But if Trump loses reelection in 2020, these blocs are a useful guide to a post-Trump GOP. The old divides between the GOP establishment and the tea party or moderates and conservatives are now outdated ways of looking at the GOP. The former insurgents in the GOP now run the party — Trump is the president and one-time House Freedom Caucus member Mick Mulvaney is the president’s chief of staff. Many of the party’s remaining moderates lost in 2018 to Democratic opponents.

Instead, the new dividing lines in the party are likely to be about how various Republicans dealt with Trump and Trumpism. If Trump loses in 2020, I would expect some Republicans, particularly the Trumpists, to argue that many in the party were insufficiently loyal to Trump and Trumpism, dividing the GOP and making it harder for the president to win a second term. Other Republicans, particularly the Anti-Trumpers and the Trump-Skeptical Moderates, are likely to argue Republicans lost the presidency because the party didn’t try hard enough to either get a less polarizing 2020 nominee or push Trump to be less polarizing.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Perry Bacon Jr.

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demenior · 6 years

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YO LOOK tis the Deamon Au anon and WOWZA thank you!! For that little snippet thingy, it made me so fuzzy on the inside AH especially the part where his daemon lets them both clean her up T~T AH my heart. And a great pyraneese!!! i saw the pics for that and HELL YES

A huge chunk of my daemon preferences comes from @featherquillpen ‘s AMAZINGLY in-depth analysis of characters. Instead of coming from a human-symbolic perspective on assigning daemons, FQP looks at the unbiased nature of the animal, and then matches that to a character’s personality. If you ever get the chance, read their thought process on assigning daemons. I can’t settle for anything less.

Majestic

So, that being said, it makes the Great Pyrenees daemon make a whole lotta sense for Shiro imo.

Dogs are super social creatures that benefit from being in groups. They relate super well to extroverts, which I think absolutely relates to Shiro (especially pre-Galra prisons) We’re told (by the VA, so, taken with a grain of salt), that Shiro was a lot more like Lance, in that he was a little carefree, flirty and probably overconfident. He lived off of attention and loved it.

Now why a GP works for Shiro is that, while they can work in groups and get along with others, they are a guardian dog. They’re meant to be very independent, left to their own devices and to think for themselves. They’re stubborn AF.

^^ This isn’t an exaggeration, though it’s hilarious. They’re a very difficult dog to train because they don’t exist to please you. They love you, but they have a job to do.

They task themselves with guarding those under them (livestock, sheep, children, kittens, other dogs- basically anything and anyone they bond with) and they’ll put their bodies on the line. They’re not inherently violent dogs-- they bark first to warn off predators/intruders, and use their size for intimidation, and THEN they’ll fight if they must. They’re hardworking, always “on the clock”, and can’t be deterred once they have an idea about something. They’re dogs you give them their task, and then stand back and let them work until they’re too old to run, and then they might agree to become house dogs.

(It should be noted that GP love snuggling up on a couch and pretending they’re lap dogs- and then the instant they Hear Someone, they’re kicking down the door to find the threat, howling the whole time)

I say all that to relate back to Shiro-- Shiro has been shown to always be a very independent thinker, even within the very military-coded Garrison. He vouched for Keith to join the Garrison even when people were implied to be against it, he has been shown to go behind his team’s wishes when he thinks he knows what’s right (and if that isn’t the MOST GP quality I have ever seen, good lord). Shiro immediately tasks himself with caring for Team Voltron- he’s shown going on patrol rather than enjoying festivities, he’s always on alert. That’s very classic guard behavior that would match well with a guard dog.

And then the guarding/warning off first vs attacking first!! Shiro’s mantra we’re introduced to (through Keith) in the very first episode is: patience equals focus. Shiro is adamant about violence being the last resort (but he won’t hesitate if it comes to that). Not to mention- when Shiro and Matt were being sent to the Arena, Shiro’s strategy was to protect Matt, and try and intimidate everyone else into backing off. Granted, he knew he would have to fight no matter what, but in establishing that bloodthirsty persona I’m going to make a stretch that it did a lot to warn others off of approaching him.

Shiro’s already an imposing person, and especially before Kerberos, he was, y’know, majestic. Ambitious, stubborn af, independent, handsome, heroic (Lance: that guy’s my hero!) and fiercely protective of those around him (we see with the Holt’s, with Keith). So now imagine how well a gorgeous great pyr would look alongside him. That’s a Role Model guy right there!

^^The promotional image the Garrison uses when they are advertising to get new cadets to enroll with them.

And then, I mean, after the prisons and the Arena, you can imagine the Abused Dog behavior that would come out. Shiro and his daemon wouldn’t do well in the midst of things, and she’d be quick to show her teeth. But at their core they’re protective people who don’t necessarily want to be in a pack, but need to care/protect others to have purpose, and they’ll do anything to protect what they deem as theirs.

I know lots of people like Shiro to have a wolf daemon (they’re SUPER COOL) but it doesn’t work for me because, while wolves share a LOT of similarities with dogs in terms of being super sociable creatures, wolf packs are family units! And... I don’t see Shiro as a big family person. But maybe this means a found family!!.... except.... Shiro really keeps a wall between him and his team, who are the closest he has to a family.

Also, if anyone equates the wolf = violence (due to the arena), I personally don’t believe Shiro was ever inherently a violent person, but instead was forced to become one. AND I think wolf = carnage is a human-biased interpretation of a wild animal, which isn’t how I personally want to “assign” daemon settled forms.

That being said, this is all my very loose and light interpretation of an au I’m never going to write, and everyone is more than welcome to interpret characters however they want!

So, in conclusion, I love Shiro with a Great Pyrenees daemon, especially because they could be taking Iconic photos like this:

#takashi shirogane #this is a lot more words than i intended to write woops #voltron #daemon au #this is also more words than anyone asked for lmao #Anonymous #asks

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b34utiful-d1s4st3r-blog · 6 years

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Artificial Intelligence Philosophy – AI and Machine Learning

A student will gain an awareness, and discover to judge and also to produce arguments for and against major philosophical problems concerning AI, robotics as well as their relations to human cognition and behavior. A different type of effort at fixing AIs ethics issue is the proliferation of crowdsourced ethics projects, which have the commendable objective of a far more democratic method of science.

To illustrate DJ Patils Code of Ethics for Data Science, which invites the information-science community to lead ideas but doesn't develop in the decades of labor already made by philosophers, historians and sociologists of science. Then there's MITs Moral Machine project, which asks the general public to election on questions for example whether a self-driving vehicle with brake failure must go beyond five destitute people instead of one female physician.

Philosophers call these trolley problems and also have printed a large number of books and papers around the subject in the last half-century. Evaluating the views of professional AI philosophers with individuals of everyone could be eye-opening, as experimental philosophy has frequently proven, but merely ignoring professionals and going for an election rather is irresponsible. We live at a time in which the fundamental knowledge of what it really way to be human is altering. Social networking platforms still redefine our feeling of place and time.

We grapple using these changes once we attempt to define ourselves and our social relationships within an era of constant connectivity. A couple of decades ago, if a person claimed to possess supporters you’d assume they were beginning a cult. Now it’s an expression that 12 year olds use once they discuss Instagram and Twitter. Customers aren't the only ones who're increasingly more demanding, employees too. They would like to choose their professional future as well as their development.

That's the reason new talent management methodologies have started to emerge, as we will have below. Many counter-arguments happen to be made against unpredicted intelligence explosions, focused largely on technical limitations and logic. For instance, sci-fi author Ramez Naam stated within an essay for H+ magazine that a super intelligent mind would want some time and sources to invent humanity-destroying technologies it would need to have fun playing the human economy to acquire what it really needed (for instance, building faster chips requires not only new designs but complicated and costly nick fabrication foundries to construct them.)The determination that the system, just like an atom of polonium218, is or isn't a closed system, obviously, poses difficult epistemic problems, that are compounded within the situation of people, precisely since they're vastly more complicated causal systems.

Furthermore, probabilistic systems need to be distinguished from (what exactly are known as) chaotic systems, that are deterministic systems with acute sensitivity to initial conditions, in which the smallest switch to individuals conditions can result in formerly unpredicted effects. A small improvement in thousands and thousands of lines of code controlling an area probe, for instance, composed of the appearance of just one wrong character, just one misplaced comma, caused Mariner 1, the very first US interplanetary spacecraft, to veer off target after which need to be destroyed. A minimum of some versions of artificial intelligence are attempts not just to model human intelligence, but to create computers and robots that exhibit it: which have ideas, use language, as well as have freedom. Performs this seem sensible? What can it show us about human thinking and awareness? Join John and Ken because they identify the philosophical issues elevated by artificial intelligence. However the nerd-sighted geniuses in our day result in the same mistake. Should you ask a coder what ought to be done to make certain AI does no evil, you are prone to get 1 of 2 solutions, neither being reassuring. Answer No. 1: It is not my problem. I simply construct it, as exemplified lately with a Harvard computer researcher who stated, I’m just an engineer when requested the way a predictive policing tool he developed might be misused. Answer No. 2: Believe me. I’m smart enough to have it right. AI researchers really are a smart bunch, but there is a terrible history of staying away from ethical blunders.

A few of the better-known goof-ups include Google images tagging black people as gorillas, chat bots that become Nazis and racist soap dispensers. The effects can be more serious when biased algorithms are responsible for deciding who ought to be approved for any financial loan, who to employ or admit to college or if to kill a suspect inside a police chase. I can tell how that's already happening. We have pretty efficient satnav systems, which generally take us right places.

Those who have developed with this type of system have grown to be incredibly dependent on navigation by machine. In the event that begins to fail at any time, Id imagine some those who have lately passed their test as motorists would a very find it difficult to use road signs, or memorized routes, or perhaps a conventional map as a means of having in one spot to another. Another recent article within the New You are able to Occasions claimed that academics happen to be asleep in the wheel, departing policy makers who're battling to learn how to regulate AI subject to industry lobbyists.

The content trigger a Twitter storm of replies from philosophers, historians and sociologists of science, angry their decades of underfunded jobs are again being overlooked and erased. Such as the Who’s lower in Whoville, they cried in fear, we’re here! We're here! We're here! We're here!

If policy makers and funding sources listen carefully to individuals’ voices, there are answers on offer. The content concludes that people urgently require an academic institute centered on algorithmic accountability. On Twitter, the articles author, Cathy ONeil, was adamant, there must be several more tenure lines dedicated to it. Individuals both seem like solid ideas. Objection II: A minimum of it might be figured that since current computers (objective evidence suggests) do lack feelings until Data 2. Does arrive (when) we're titled, given computers' insufficient feelings, to deny the low-level and piecemeal high-level intelligent behavior of computers bespeak genuine subjectivity or intelligence. AI lent many concepts without delivering thanks, like ontology, theory of mind, agent based architecture, object oriented design, archetypes and many more. Algorithms tracking our each step and key stroke expose us to dangers more dangerous than impulsively buying anti-wrinkle cream. More and more polarized and radicalized political movements, leaked health data and also the manipulation of elections using harvested Facebook profiles are some of the documented connection between the mass deployments of AI. Something as apparently innocent as discussing your jogging routes online can reveal military secrets.

These cases are simply the beginning. Even our beloved Canadian Tire cash is being repurposed like a surveillance tool for any machine-learning team. Singer didn't think about a. I. s, but his argument shows that the escalator of reason leads societies to greater benevolence no matter species origin. A. I. s will need to strike the escalator of reason must have, simply because they will have to bargain for goods inside a human-dominated economy and they'll face human potential to deal with inappropriate behavior.

The philosopher John Smart argues, if morality and immunity are developmental processes, when they arise inevitably in most intelligent collectives as a kind of positive-sum game, they have to also grow in pressure and extent as each civilizations computational capacity grows.

#ai #artificial intelligence #mit #machine learning #philosophy

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fantastic-rambles · 3 years

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Here's a lil input on the discussion about Reki.

I do get what you're saying about "got it" being more of a consideration than a promise(tho i perceived it as more of a promise at first), i don't think that actually matters because the reason behind Reki's behavior isn't Langa breaking his promise(and nor it is him being jealous of Langa's abilities). All of that stems from him losing his sense of self-worth. He was aware of Langa's potential before, and was absolutely ecstatic about it. Also i think he would've been pretty chill if Langa "broke" his promise to him if he wasn't doubting himself so much. Reki making Langa promise him not to skate against Adam is out of pure concern at first. Like, as much as it can be infuriating to the receiving party, if a person thought that doing X would make smb dear to them potentially harm themselves, they sure as hell would do anything to prevent that, even if it's smth that that smb wants. Later tho I believe Reki thought that Langa breaking his promise served as further proof of him not having any worth as a skater, and he's not angry at Langa but rather at himself(him yelling at langa not to apologize to him during their fight) for being so upset with Langa (and at this point wanting him to stick to that promise is sorta Reki's attempt at trying not to get left behind. He thinks that Langa deciding to skate against Adam means that he doesn't need Reki anymore).

As to him avoiding Langa at all cost and breaking his own promise to Miya of not disappearing on him, I also think that that kind of behavior is a given considering how he feels about himself. Interacting with a group of people(especially Langa) phenomenally good at what he himself loves so much but can't be as good at is straight up painful, so naturally he'd try to avoid them as much as possible. He does realize it's a shitty thing to do tho, based on how he ponders about what to say to Langa("how i acted so terribly against him") when he goes to meet him. Him not being able to apologize out loud is another thing lol. But i think Langa at that point already had an idea on what was going on with him, so Reki actually hearing all the truths from him that he himself had forgotten was much more important. That being said im actually pretty satisfied with their reunion :D I just really hope Reki apologizes to Miya later.

Anyway i hope this makes sense at least a bit, cuz Reki's character is written so well too imo. Him eventually breaking despite his happy-go-lucky personality and then finding himself again is GOOD stuff lol :D

So... I’m not opposed to justifying Reki being a jerk as long as you’re not opposed to justifying Adam being an asshole. -blink-

I’ve been trying to keep my content in line with the majority fandom (anti-Adam) argument that problematic behavior is problematic behavior regardless of the reason for it since I don’t want to deal with hater drama for my love of Adam, but that means I’ll look at all the characters with the same critical eye, which is why I can’t gloss over how problematic Shadow is either. But I’m not going to be hypocritical and apply one lens to characters I like and a different one to characters I dislike. (Or at least, as much as I can, I try not to, though I obviously have my own preferences and biases.)

So if we’re gonna talk on the premise that people’s backstories/traumas/mental states are valid reasons for the way that they act, then yes, Reki’s actions are understandable (if extremely obnoxious, to me, because again, I don’t generally like child/teen characters).

Reki obviously loves skating, and from the start, he has an inflated sense of ego, such as when he’s bragging to Langa about how he learned how to do an ollie faster than average. So it’s all the more crushing when he sees how fast Langa picks up skateboarding and when he completely loses against Adam, who didn’t even take him seriously. He legitimately thought that he was a “good” skater, but after Adam shows up, in addition to the appearance of Cherry and Joe, as well as a parade of others including Miya, Shadow, etc., his confidence is entirely shattered. Yeah, he’s probably a bit better than the average skater, but he’s clearly not at the level of the top skaters: Adam doesn’t even remember who he is because he’s so unremarkable. xD

And like any angsty teen who can’t deal with the reality that he’s not special, he lashes out at others and blames them for his failings. And that’s why he ends up being such a jerkass towards Langa and Miya. He is entirely selfish, not caring about what Langa wants, just to try to keep up his feeling of self-importance that’s crashing around him. He’s afraid of losing his new friend: not to injury (though that was part of it, when he first tried to persuade Langa not to race against Adam), but to more skilled competitors, and of being left behind, as you said. In school, at least, it doesn’t seem like there’s anyone else who is really interested in skating, so Langa’s the only one he can really talk to, share videos with, etc. But when he feels that Langa is slipping away and striving for a higher level, he gets jealous and tries to issue an ultimatum “me or Adam” and also tries to guilt-trip/gaslight Langa by accusing him of breaking a promise he never made (imo). And that has the exact opposite effect of driving a wedge between them. Again, highly obnoxious and toxic, but understandable.

And no, he’s definitely jealous that Langa and Miya are better than him. The whole reason he has his whole angsty “go hang out with your cooler friends” thing is because he’s not a top skater, even though he wants to be. And he struggles to accept that he’ll never be at that level, especially when he really did think he was special, so instead of confronting the problem, he chose to run away from it, no matter how much it hurt other people. It’s also not an uncommon reaction for people in general, to avoid things that make them uncomfortable.

But even though I understand all of this, I still don’t like him as a character. I don’t hate him as much as I did pre-episode 10, but he’s still not “likeable” to me because the way the situation was resolved was so superficial. I agree that he probably has the second-most characterization/development after Adam, and I am glad that he’s made up with Langa (and will probably make up with Miya), but he’s just such an... ordinary character. A typical, obnoxious teen who needed a smack in the face with reality more than Cherry. xD

Adam is a far more terrible person, yes, but I enjoy him because he’s entirely open about who he is and owns his actions. He doesn’t apologize for the things that he does--in part because he has no moral compass, at least currently--but also because he is absolutely truthful with himself and with others, at least when it comes to skating.

#sk8 #sk8 the infinity #skate the infinity #sk8 reki #kyan reki #reki kyan #analysis #long post #mine

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