[ID: youtube thumbnail from s/outh park, entitled "multiple universes are stupid - S/OUTH PARK". in the image there are three adult women of color portraying kenny, stan and kyle. /End ID]

what is even HAPPENING in this dumb fucking show anymore

from a never seen poor things anon, what do you hate about poor things? (ive heard its ableist...)

ok so before i get into anything, i would like to state that it was made by cis men (directed by a greek cis man, written by a scottish and an australian cis man). if it was done by cis women, i would still side eye it though. also, emma stone was a producer, so technically she had a say in just how much she showed of herself (the practicality of it you can argue but that would make this like an entire essay long).

what i can say, without spoilers, is that the movie reads like the study of "liberation" in the white feminist sense through white men's lense. if that's your thing (or choice feminism) then maybe you can put through yourself this. the writing is very much tony mcnamara (from "the great"; i knew it was him before i even looked at the credits) so if you miss his style of dialogue, then you will definitely enjoy at least that. the aesthetic is nice and you can tell that it took a lot of hard work, but also you have to tolerate a fisheye lense shot like every five minutes.

if you don't mind spoilers, then you can click "read more" - although i don't think i'm saying anything that hasn't been said before

i have to put out another disclaimer: i don't think you should only depict topics in a "HEY THIS IS A BAD THING!" manner or that you can only portray morally correct things, so i don't think this movie would have irritated me so much IF we had movies that dealt with similar topics in a more honest, more radical view (but like who am i kidding it's hollywood) or if people didn't hail this as barbie for ao3 like ???????????????? i mean i guess you lot are right about the white feminism…

the story begins with a pregnant woman killing herself (victoria, also played by emma stone) because she simply cannot tolerate the fetus/the idea of being a mother. the movie also implies that she was impregnated against her will by her husband. then doctor godwin baxter (willem dafoe) uses her for his "experiment" and he says, out of mercy, doesn't revive her but instead puts the baby's brain into the pregnant woman's and so bella baxter is born. this read as punishment for wanting to end a pregnancy (even though i'm sure it wasn't meant to) and that is just a really triggering to me. when bella learns of this later, it doesn't exactly have much of an effect on her though so all is jolly! not a single thing to ponder over! not the fact that her mom didn't want her and she killed herself, noooope. has no effect on her whatsoever!

so the premise of the entire thing is that we watch this baby grow in a grown woman's body. the movie is in b&w for a while because babies don't see color (about 4 months but we are never given a scale of her age) but her sexualization begins here already: one of whom she is betrothed to (so she never leaves the mansion) is max mccandles (ramy youssef) who also calls her the R slur (00:07:29,792 --> 00:07:31,625 "What a very pretty [R-slur]") and then duncan wedderburn (mark ruffalo). i'm not sure why that slur is resurfacing online and offline but i find it very disturbing, no matter what excuse people try to use. use any other word, literally. there is the question of adults who (if i'm not using correct terms, feel free to tell me) are cognitively challenged. is this meant to say something about them? does the movie not even want to entertain that people like bella in this stage exist and live their lives?

i feel like i've only yapped about the plot SORRY. the rest of the story is bella learning more about the world, mostly through sex save for one philosophical stage on a boat (where we meet the one man who does not sexualize her! hurray! harry astley, played by jerrod carmichael). i don't think the sex scenes were like too explicit (i'm sure hbo had done way worse back in its day…) as people say they are. do i think it was necessary for the story? not really. yes, sometimes children are aware of sexual things but they should be educated (to prevent predators) and not engaged in such acitvities. as she was not educated, predators crawl over her like duncan. but it doesn't read like that, not to me. i think they tried to portray her as a willing participant and for you not to even question whether she wants it or not, and rather as "female empowerment" like okay…

and then comes the paris part (sex work/prostitution) which can be read in many ways. bella learns more through sex paid for by strange men, duncan slutshames her and she leaves duncan, decides to be a doctor. a lot of progress is made in this part and there are some good lines but one line just… meh (01:43:23,292 --> 01:43:25,583 We are our own means of production.) so that's something to keep in mind.

anyway, shenanigans ensue, she ends up back where victoria escaped from and the husband wants to also keep her in the house and impregnate her. maybe something about how you cannot escape the system meant to encage you? no idea. in the end, she doesn't kill the man but rather replaces his brain with a dog's. is this meant to read as revenge? against the husband or against the doctor? who knows. the doctor dies but at that point i was just sooo over it. in the end, bella takes over her first prison, the mansion, as she is now its mistress, but what does that say exactly? the system is good as is, any change will just land us in worse places and we just have to make our space in it?

The more I think about Ren's new semblance ability and the scene with the Ace Ops, the more I hate it. Long post full of crit ahead.

No one else is discovering new semblance abilities in tense situations other than Jaune, who discovered his one ability. Llike, maybe the Fall of Beacon would've been stressful enough people would be discovering new abilities? And Weiss doesn't count, because her ability was treated like just another glyph, only this one is special. Whether getting new powers is experience and skill based, or trauma based, long time hunters like Qrow and James should have way more abilities than they do, and the Ace Ops and Winter all should have at least two powers. CRWBY is very choosy about how and when they use their ill defined rules about auras and semblances.

Ren is in control of this power right after getting it, and chooses to use it on the Ace Ops and Winter, but not Yang or Jaune. This implies that Ren doesn't read their emotions because that's a breach of privacy, but feels free to not only breach the Ace Ops privacy, but talk about it out loud. Because trust is for friends, and so are basic boundaries. It would make sense to me for Ren to use his new powers on Jaune and Yang as well, since he's doubting everyone’s capabilities and strength right now. But whatever. Why would we need to know how they feel?

But on that… Why do we need to know how the Ace Ops feel??? We as an audience already know Marrow is sad and doubting his place, Harriet is angry incarnate, Elm is also angry, and Vine seems fine. This doesn't do anything for the story except let Ren try to divide them more than they already are, during the worst time possible. Sure, while Salem's at Atlas's doorstep and literal children are probably dead, tell one of the members of the most elite team of Atlas graduates who were just tasked with a vitally important mission to ditch his position. Winter seemed fully convinced by Jaune actually having a good plan, so Ren figuring out a new power and turning into a mood ring didn't do anything. Also, Ren doesn't just tell them what they're feeling, he also reads their motivation and where they belong at the same time. Because 'Harriet angry' apparently translates into 'Harriet is incredibly torn up about Clover dying and trying not to feel it!' And 'Marrow sad' apparently means 'Marrow no longer fits in with this group and is actually a good person!'

And then Ren reads Winter's emotions and sees that Winter is feeling everything. So like… Okay. Are the Ace Ops Tinkerbell in the Peter Pan book? Only able to feel one emotion at a time? Harriet isn't angry and sad, she's just so angry it's all Ren can see! And Vine isn't sad, or angry, he's just (presumably) calm. But Winter is feeling all the emotions equally. Which of course, means she also doesn't belong here.Most adults feel more than one thing at a time, by the way. Idk why this makes Ren think Winter is special and different, rather than him wondering how the Ace Ops can only be displaying one emotion.

Ren also tells the Ace Ops the reason they fail is their terrible team work, since they won't admit they're friends, despite the fact they fought amazingly as a team at the start of the last season. Everyone jot that down. Strategy, planning, experience, knowledge of each other's skill set, and common goals all mean nothing. The only thing that can make you a fully functional team is friendship. We're ignoring the fact that Blake and Yang scoffed at the idea of working outside of their duo, never mind that the group literally drew their weapons on Qrow in V6 and demanded he do what they want or leave. Never mind that Yang and Ruby are currently fighting, Yang and Blake are apparently fighting, Yang and Ren are fighting, and Ren and Nora have been distant, cold, and frustrated with each other for one and a half seasons now. They still haven't had any problems fighting as a team because underneath it all, they're friends! In a normal, fun romp anime or cartoon, I might be able to be okay with this. But isn't RWBY marketing itself as a hopeful grimdark? Or at least, aren’t they saying this is a more mature, nuanced tone than the fun romp that only hinted at more darkness in the early seasons? You can't have 'morally gray characters that drift between ally and antagonist’ just lose because they aren't admitting they’re friends in even a hopeful grimdark. And it’s not strong plot for the most powerful graduates of a strict military school who have been on the field for at least a couple years (except maybe Marrow) lose to the first year drop outs THEY HELPED TRAIN because they're hiding their feelings for each other. I'm sorry, I thought this was a show where skill and consequence mattered.

On top of all this… We all know that portraying women of color - specifically black women - as constantly angry and hiding her emotions is a racist stereotype, right? I don't mean 'having a black women displaying anger is racist,' but again, the show had Ren sense her emotions and figure out what's wrong with her, and she was only angry, and Ren decided she's hiding her feelings behind a wall of thick anger. Elm is the same way, even going so far as to try and attack Ren. And it's not just this instance. They've been overwhelmingly angry since the end of volume six. Whether or not CRWBY thought this through, they should've done a google search that could've let them know not to do it. Vine is almost as bad in being the stoic, calm, at peace, Asian. I'm only holding off on calling him just as bad because I don't know for sure that green represents peace or calm.

Don't get me wrong, there were things I liked about that scene. Ren choosing to act and do what he could was a great choice, he clearly took what Jaune said to heart, and decided inaction due to doubts and fears wouldn't help anyone. I hope this doesn't mean the end of Ren doubting things and challenging the team (since his concerns are very valid and weren't solved,) but I like that direction. Winter really shined in this scene. I just wish the writers would put as much care and complexity into Harriet, Elm, and Vine. And the main star of this scene in my opinion was Jaune. He didn't fight the plan to blow up the whale, only requesting that they be allowed to go in ahead and try to rescue Oscar and laying out the benefits. I love this. Jaune isn't asking her not to do her job, he's not doubting that it has to be done, he's not blaming her for it, and he's accepting that if they go in, they may become part of that sacrifice. But he's trying to save a friend that's important to him anyway. I think this might be the best I've ever liked Jaune, actually.

But the cons of this scene, in my opinion, severely out weigh the pros.

since we're doing anti discourse i guess: the antis ive seen on their own blogs (as opposed to other blogs askboxes) seem more concerned with media that portrays pedophilia in a positive light, as that very much can influence people into thinking it isn't THAT bad. If portrayed as the bad thing it is, they dont mind. Personally, do you see a difference in something that goes "heres an adult in love with a child, how sweet" as opposed to "heres an adult in love with a child, isnt that fucked up?"

under a cut cause this got long

I would love to be on the internet where you are, because it sounds a lot more reasonable than the one I live on, where stuff like this just makes me go ???

the thing is that fiction actually does influence people’s perceptions of reality, and we ought to care about that! if a person grows up watching movies where cops break the rules but it’s OK because they’re the good guys; or where stalkerish and manipulative behavior counts as “grand romantic gestures” that obligate a woman to date a man; or where Black people are depicted as uneducated and violent, of course that is going to color their opinions of the world.

and there are a lot of really good conversations being had about issues like that, and we absolutely need to have those conversations about responsible media creation and consumption. this power can be used for good as well as for evil. many people cite shows like Will & Grace as helping turn the tide of public opinion against seeing “homosexuality” as deviant and instead seeing gay people as “normal” and “lovable” and “relatable.” superman was a beloved enough All-American Hero that a storyline where he fights the KKK is credited with helping turn the KKK from a mainstream fraternity into something seen as a fringe hate group.

so i would agree that a giant wave of media with positive depictions of pedophilia would be concerning. 

however, we do not currently live in a world where “here’s an adult in love with a child, how sweet” is a major issue in media narratives such that people are absorbing the attitude that pedophilia is fine, cool, and good.

in fact, pedophilia is such a hated subject that we have a whole political movement in my country based on people calling anyone they dislike a “pedophile” and accusing them of all sorts of depraved shit involving children. most people who have sexual inclinations toward children are fully aware that these desires are at odds with society and that they will become pariahs if these desires were known to others.

(In fact, this level of ostracization can put people at a higher risk of offending, because they feel hopeless, have nowhere to turn for support, and figure if they’re going to be a pariah anyway, they may as well do the one thing they can think of that feels good. Forcing conversations about this to go completely underground means that you end up with awful groups like nambla dominating the conversation and convincing lost, lonely, frightened people to hop on board with their dangerous attitudes. if the only people safe to talk to about this stuff are people who will excuse, justify, encourage, and promote offenses against children, it makes sense that people would end up in their grip. You can read more here and here.)

much of the “media” that these “antis” are up in arms about is fan created content intended for a small population. the people creating content that riles up antis generally recognize that this is not mainstream content and use things like tags and content warnings to set it aside from other content. the notion that certain tropes in fanworks are going to bring about a massive cultural shift is a bizarre slippery-slope argument, and i think people's energy would be better focused on problems that are actually currently existing rather than a potential future where a few tags on ao3 have become dominant themes in network television and blockbuster movies. 

another issue here is that when an “anti” uses the term “pedophilia,” it’s completely unclear what they are actually referring to. a reasonable person would assume that they mean “a sexual relationship between an adult and a child,” but the definitions of “adult,” “child,” and “sexual relationship” have gotten so blurry within this discourse that it’s impossible to determine what’s being discussed. i’ve seen people claim that any relationship is inherently “pedophilic” if the characters have any sort of age gap, if there is any sort of power imbalance, if they both belong to the same “found family,” or even if one looks younger in appearance.

so when someone says “fictional narratives that depict pedophilia in a positive light,” they may actually be referring to “fictional narratives that depict any relationship I don’t like,” which is such a vague and meaningless statement that it becomes completely useless.

finally, your actual question is whether I personally see a difference between stories where the narrative perspective seems to critique the relationship vs stories where the narrative perspective romanticizes the relationship. i think your question is...hard to answer, because there is just too much there.

first off, it’s not always easy to tell whether a story is “vilifying” vs “glamorizing” something. people watch movies like fight club and take away very different thematic messages about whether the protagonist is someone to admire and emulate. if we say that depictions of abuse are only “good” or “allowed” if the narrative clearly portrays the abuse as “fucked up,” then we’re going to have to establish a High Court of AP English Teachers to determine exactly what narrative devices are employed and how, and that’s just...not...workable.

also, some people like the “fucked up”-ness of these stories; if you’re trying to say that something is bad if people “enjoy it” or “get off” on it or “indulge” in the darkness of the content, then it doesn’t matter if the story itself is wagging its finger at the naughty, naughty reader. the taboo, the erotic, and the deviant are, and have always been, wrapped up in each other. you can depict something as “bad” and yet still “fun;” it becomes a useless distinction when talking about sexual content. 

do i personally see a difference, when it comes to my own enjoyment? yeah, absolutely. i stopped watching game of thrones not because it included rape, but because the way the cinematography, musical score, etc. made it clear that the show was expecting me to feel a certain way about those images, and i didn’t appreciate that. i also didn’t appreciate the directorial decision to give more dignity to a dog’s death by cutting to black than to violence against women. i would probably not enjoy a book or movie that’s just about how awesome and fun it is to hurt people; though i did like clockwork orange - i found the narrator abhorrent, but interesting.

but i think trying to split hairs about what does and doesn’t count as Problematic or Allowable Content, or trying to tell people that what they create and/or consume is Bad and they are Bad for doing it, because its inclusion of dark themes is Doing It Wrong - it’s not helpful. it’s impossible to develop a standard for what is “doing it wrong vs doing it right” that makes any sense, and even if you did, enforcing it through campaigns of hatred and social vilification is not going to be effective. 

Cottagecore Films (pt. 5)

Whisper of the Heart (1995)

starring Honna Youko, Takahashi Issei, Kobayashi Keiju, Yamashita Yorie

Fourteen year old bookworm Tsukishima Shizuku has a goal of reading 20 books before school starts, but while she’s reading, she realizes that many of her books have the same name written on the library cards: Amasawa Seiji. She begins imagining who he might be, and evolves the idea into her potential prince charming. After school begins, she encounters a cat commuting on the train, and follows him to a quiet antique shop where she meets a kind elderly man, Nishi Shiro. She soon meets Nishi’s grandson, an aspiring violin maker, who she actually had an uncomfortable encounter with at school earlier on. The two of them become friends despite their differences, until Shizuku learns that his name is Amasawa Seiji, shattering her imaginary image of him. Despite her discomfort, they continue to bond and become close friends, even meeting at school, until Seiji has to leave for Italy for school. While he’s away, Shizuku vows to write a story for him to read upon his return, as an effort to become a better person and understand what she wants to do with her life. It’s a race to get her story onto paper before he returns, a race to plan for her future, and a race to understand what her true feelings are for Seiji before it becomes too late.

I have never seen a film capture the pure essence of middle schoolers like this one. It showed the discomfort of discovering love as young teenagers in a way that was realistic but wholesome and honest. Also if Shizuku wasn’t exactly how I was as a child I don’t know what to tell you. She had the unbridled determination and complete tunnel vision of a teenager who’s set her mind to something, and no amount of real-world obligations could deter her from her goal. Her imagination ran wild as she translated it to paper, and although she was proud for finishing it she was still unhappy with the ending, as any writer--especially a first time writer--would be on their first draft. The people she loved were real with her but encouraged her throughout, a fantastic representation of how blood family and found family can help form a young person’s character. 9/10

Matilda (1996)

starring Mara Wilson, Embeth Davidtz, Danny DeVito, Rhea Pearlman, Pam Ferris

Matilda is born to grouchy, rude, and dishonest parents, Harry and Zinnia Wormwood. They consistently neglect her as she grows up, so she learns how to care for herself early on. She develops a love for books and learning, and is thrilled when her parents finally allow her to begin school. However, the school she goes to is nothing like how she expected. Principal Trunchbull, a violent and hateful woman, runs the school through brutality and fear. On the other hand, Matilda’s teacher, the gentle and kind Miss Honey, teaches her children to love learning and supports each of them individually, creating a stark contrast of joy in her classroom to the terrifying rest of the school. Over time, Matilda learns that she has some unique powers, and begins using them to protect the people she loves and punish the people who abuse those around them. She creates her own form of justice for those who have never seen repercussions for their actions, and by the end her actions pave the way for a loving home.

I’ve watched this movie many times over the years, and I’ve loved it every time. It’s witty, sweet, entertaining, and endearing. The characters are very straightforwardly portrayed, and although they don’t necessarily have complexity, they don’t need it in a film like this. The main story is about Matilda growing and learning that she deserves to be happy despite the suffering she endured, and the film delivers on that perfectly. The characters are enjoyable--even the unlikable ones--and you can’t help but love to see Matilda exact retribution when the system can’t deliver it for her. Despite everything, she is still a kind and clever young girl, just as Miss Honey is a kind and empathetic woman, which are clear messages that I definitely needed as a child, and still smile upon as an adult. It’s a fantastic movie for all ages, and will always be worth the rewatch. 10/10

Mansfield Park (1999)

TW: detailed depictions of rape, abuse, and other violence toward people of color through drawings; slavery; racist language

starring Frances O’Connor, Hannah Taylor Gordon, Johnny Lee Miller, Alessandro Nivola, Embeth Davidtz, Harold Pinter, Victoria Hamilton, James Purefoy

Young Fanny Price, at age 10, is sent away from her impoverished family to live with her mother’s family, the Bertram’s, at Mansfield Park. There she meets Edmund, a boy of her own age and similar fascination with storytelling, and the two become best friends over the years. When Fanny reaches adulthood, Sir Thomas Bertrand and his eldest son move to Antigua, where the family maintains a plantation. Upon their departure, a new sibling duo, Henry and Mary Crawford, move into the parsonage nearby. Edmund quickly falls for Mary, and after a short bit of ingracious flirting on Henry’s part to one of Edmund’s sisters, he soon develops feelings for Fanny. When Fanny refuses his advances, however, Sir Thomas sends her back to live with her family, still stricken with poverty. However, Fanny doesn’t remain for long, when a family tragedy strikes Mansfield Park and she’s needed. There, she renews her friendship with Edmund, and several astonishing complications entwine their fates once more.

As with any Jane Austen story, I greatly enjoyed the characters. Fanny is incredibly headstrong and outspoken, but always uses it in the effort of kindness. I find Austen heroines to be excellent role models for young women, and that’s not the last time you’ll hear that from me, but this portrayal of the novel was particularly well acted. O’Connor’s portrayal of her is quick-tongued and cutting when she needs to be, but more importantly her voracity for life and love shines through in her acting. I found myself laughing at her witty comebacks to being slighted, and frustrated when her affections are unknowingly spurned time and again. Austen created a very empathetic and spirited character, but O’Connor expanded her into an even more relatable young woman. All of the acting was done very well, and the settings were both cozy and beautiful, even breathtaking at times. 

I do want to make a comment regarding the trigger warnings here, given their graphic nature and how they affect my review. While I do feel that the detail depicted and the length of the scene were egregious, especially because they are never brought up again as a topic of contention, the drawings themselves were very realistic to the times. However, they are burned and disregarded in the film, and the character seen committing the abuses (Sir Thomas) does not face any consequences for them. It is a skippable scene (beginning when Fanny is looking through young Tom’s sketchbook), if such violence causes you discomfort. I personally was very disturbed as a person of color, not so much by the drawings themselves, although they were deeply unsettling, but by how Sir Thomas is never held accountable. He decides to stop being a plantation owner and takes up selling tobacco, implying that he no longer participates in slavery, but he doesn’t face any kind of backlash for it, even from his abolitionist family members. He has a happily ever after that he doesn’t deserve, and I know that is more distressing to many of us. As such, I must advise that you gain nothing in particular by watching these scene, and will lose none of the plot by skipping over it. 8/10

Part One // Part Two // Part Three // Part Four

Sundance 2021: Day 5

Films: 4 Best Film of the Day(s): Judas and the Black Messiah

Prisoners of the Ghostland: For years now, Nicolas Cage has found projects that allow him  —  at this point, encourage him  —  to indulge his innermost acting Id. Never particularly one for thespian discipline before (with a few notable exceptions), he’s been freed of these petty restraints in favor of further and further unhinged “performances” that consist of his hyperbolic, twisted up line-readings and little more. For this film, he’s teamed up with Japanese gonzo auteur Sion Sono in a bizarre, cultural mash-up that includes western, samurai, comic book noir, and sci-fi all colliding together in a tedious heap. Playing largely without rules does allow for an exploration of creative impulses, but without narrative drive, or stakes of any real kind (beyond Cage’s character’s testicles  —  don’t ask), the film drowns itself in nonsensical, self-conscious oddities, with everyone seemingly taking the direction to “act weird!” until it all bleeds together. Even Cage’s various Cagisms (“Tes-ti-CAAAAL!”) get lost to the cacophony. Be careful what you wish for, Nic.

Cusp: The specific physical details change and evolve a bit, but much of the thrust of the American coming-of-age doc remains as fixed as a mountain range. Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt’s film, about a trio of teen friends growing up in small-town Texas over the course of a long summer, hits many of the usual sorts of points: With not much else to do, the kids amuse themselves with endless smoking, boozing, and drugging (and, this being Texas, an alarming amount of playing with firearms), get into and out of relationships they think might be love before they aren’t, and disagree vehemently with their parents, and the choices they’ve made in their lives. Still, Autumn, Brittney, and Aaloni each have their own burdens to carry  —  Autumn and Brittney are both abuse survivors, Aaloni’s father seems callous and harsh to all of his children to the point that they all hate him  —  and the intimacy with which Hill and Bethencourt’s camera captures their struggles and experiences is refreshingly candid, especially in the day of the endless social media montage. The young women are caught somewhere between child and adult, but unavoidably hurtling forward, an understanding we are all forced into accepting, but hasn’t yet hit them. “I’m sixteen,” one of them says near the end, “I have forever to go.”

Night of the Kings: On the evening of a blood-red moon at the MACA prison deep in the heart of the jungle in the Ivory Coast, a new, young inmate (Bakary Koné), having just been named “Roman” by the reigning Dangoro, Blackbeard (Steve Tientcheu), is forced to tell a story to the rest of the inmates as an entertainment. As soon as he has finished, he’s been warned, he will be put to death. Ivory Coast director Philippe Lacote, who grew up in the city of Abidjan, where Roman’s story takes place, has created a sort of recrafting of Arabian Nights, with Roman as its Scheherazade. The thing is, as Roman begins to stammer out his story, attempting to elongate it as much as possible in order to stay alive, the inmates make it a fully interactive affair, jumping in to demonstrate the action Roman describes, breaking into songs glorifying the characters he creates, and responding favorably or unfavorably to every detail as he lays it out to them. In this way, Roman’s halting, confusing story  —  which changes time frames, and details as Roman rethinks them  —  becomes a collective experience of the entire prison, even as Lass (Abdoul Karim Konaté), a rival to the ailing Blackbeard, plans his overthrow. Ironically, Roman’s story might not rise up to the mythic elements he keeps trying to interject, but the film’s story  —  with its colorful cast of descriptive-name characters (Half-Mad, Razor Blade, Sexy, Petrol), magic realism components, and multilayered intrigue, plays like its own sort of myth.

Judas and the Black Messiah: It’s maybe one person out of 100 who would actually act in the best interest of everybody else instead of themselves. Which means there are about 99 who would look out for themselves, if push came to shove. Shaka King’s shattering film about Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya), the charismatic chairman of the Chicago sect of the Black Panther party in the late ‘60s, and William O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield), the man who would betray him to the FBI, is a testament to this most egregious human principle  —  memorialized, as the film’s title strongly asserts, in the Bible  —  and one of the confounding bedrocks of human civilization. Hampton was a young man when he became the chairman of his chapter, and his successes immediately grabbed the attention of J. Edgar Hoover (here played by Martin Sheen), who was obsessed with the idea that the Civil Rights movement had inlaid ties with the communists. Putting pressure on his Chicago office to diffuse Hampton, agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons) brings in O’Neal, recently busted for impersonating a Fed, and offers him a chance at his freedom, but at the cost of playing snitch on “Chairman Fred.” King, who co-wrote the screenplay, boils to story down to its essence without getting needlessly choked in the details. We see Hampton’s savvy, and his ability to connect with people of any creed or color  —  easily, the most frightening element of his program to the FBI was the so-called “Rainbow Coalition” that banded together the Panthers with black street gangs, but also Puerto Rican groups, and, shockingly, all-white coalitions, all untied under the rubric of being poor and abused by Chicago’s notoriously corrupt and racist police department —  but also, his absolute belief in keeping political power in the hands of the people, not the government. King’s film features absolutely blazing performances from its two male leads, in addition to a strong turn by Dominique Fishback, as Hampton’s wife, Deborah Johnson, and a strong, driving narrative focus that keeps the line taut, even if you know exactly what’s coming. King manages to portray Hampton in purely human terms, grounded in the reality of the struggle, and avoids needlessly deifying him in the process. It’s true, O’Neal, though the primary protagonist, remains more unexplored  —  this isn’t The Killing of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, exactly  —  but Stanfield gives enough breadth to the performance to keep the film properly balanced. It’s shatteringly good.

Sundance goes mostly virtual for this year’s edition, sparing filmgoers the altitude, long waits, standing lines, and panicked eating binges  —  but also, these things and more that make the festival so damn endearing. In any event, Sundance via living room is still a hell of a lot better than no Sundance. A daily report.

Yesterday marked the 8th anniversary of the death of Trayvon Martin. Oak Park and River Forest High School students walked out of class and marched down the street wearing ‘We are Trayvon’ hoodies before returning to the school where they blocked the main hall’s entrance, chanting they will not leave until their “racial equity” demands were met by the mayor, which included removing police officers from schools and to mark February 26 a day for black victims of police violence. “We don’t need more police or a new police station. We need more resources for the youth of color here. We demand resources go to us.” 

Black activist groups and figures such as the The King Center, Black Lives Matter, The Breakfast Club, BET, Common, Kerry Washington, Al Sharpton, along with numerous politicians joined to remind everyone on Twitter that Trayvon Martin was murdered for being black. It blows my mind that even after eight years, nobody seems concerned with the actual facts or the law. It’s obvious how content they are to combine misinformation to reach their own ridiculous conclusion, which is then used to justify their own racism and hatred.

From the very beginning, it was obvious the media and activists were setting up a bad situation by portraying the incident as racially motivated, once that seed was planted, all reasoning was gone. George Zimmerman was already guilty no matter what the evidence showed. Trayvon was black, Zimmerman wasn’t, therefore it just had to be racism and anything that goes against that assertion is further proof of racism. I would bet anything that those high school students and every other race baiting activist using Trayvon’s death as a racial political play haven’t heard the facts that make up their entire misleading narratives. Here they are, make up your own minds.

The Hoodie Narrative

In trying to turn the case into a racial narrative, the initial burst of publicity and activism turned on Trayvon wearing a hoodie. The Hoodie has become the symbol of protests, based on the assertion that Zimmerman found Martin suspicious because he was wearing a hoodie. But transcripts of the 911 call shows Zimmerman mentions a hoodie only once, and only in response to a question by the operator as to what the person was wearing. The dispatcher asks, “Did you see what he was wearing?” which Zimmerman replies, “Yeah a grey hoodie, either jeans or sweatpants and white tennis shoes.” That’s it. 

That didn’t stop Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm wearing a hoodie, the “Million Hoodie March,” Harvard law students wearing hoodies with a sign “Do we look suspicious?,” Congressman Bobby Rush appearing on the House floor in a hoodie, the Hoodie March in Washington, the Miami Heat in hoodies. The hoodie has come to symbolize alleged racial profiling by Zimmerman, yet the narrative is not based on any known facts connected to the shooting. While Martin was wearing a hoodie that night, there is only assumption that Martin was considered suspicious by Zimmerman for that reason. 

Even if he was, that’s not racial profiling, unless only black people wear hoodies? There had been eight recent burglaries within the gated community and residents reported dozens more attempted break-ins. It was at night and Zimmerman told 911 that Trayvon was acting suspiciously walking around looking at all the houses. Considering a search of Trayvon’s backpack at his school showed it to contain a dozen pieces of women’s jewelry, including silver wedding rings and earrings with diamonds, as well as a screwdriver, why can’t we even consider the possibility that Trayvon was acting suspiciously and the Neighborhood Watch leader was just doing his job?

The Racial Narrative

The only narrative we ever hear from activists is Trayvon was followed and shot because he was black. That’s as far as their logic meter expands. It’s based on multiple falsehoods, most particularly the NBC News doctoring of police audio in which it falsely made it seem as though Zimmerman said he was following Trayvon because Trayvon was black. But that’s not what happened. Zimmerman only mentioned race when the police operator asked about race. The dispatcher asked “Is he white, black or Hispanic?” and Zimmerman replies, “He looks black.” This is the only mention of race.

There also was the claim that Zimmerman used the term “f**king coons” on the police tape. The activists have used the alleged racial epithet endlessly to paint this as a racially motivated hate crime. CNN had to backtrack after the audio was enhanced and experts gave their analysis after CNN originally stated that Zimmerman said “f**king coons.” In the official affidavit by State of Florida investigators, they concluded Zimmerman used the term “f**king punks” when referring to the recent break-ins by teenagers. 

The biggest thing that nobody wants to talk about is the FBI investigation that found no history of racism in Zimmerman’s past. Zimmerman had earlier angrily spoken out against the beating of a black homeless man and started a local initiative to help him. Zimmerman and his wife had tutored black children, he was a registered Democrat and voted for Obama. To further push the ‘white supremacy’ narrative, Zimmerman is persistently portrayed as white, even though he’s listed as Hispanic in his voter registration and he’s very clearly Hispanic, have they even seen him? Yet, he is painted as a white supremacist who assassinated an innocent black male for no reason other than Trayvon was black, it’s this myth that's generating all the hate, violence and division. 

Oh, and there was also widespread claims in the media that neo-Nazis were patrolling the neighborhood where the shooting took place, but of course Sanford Police ruled this story out immediately. 

Zimmerman Disobeyed Police Instructions Narrative

They say George Zimmerman supposedly was told by the police dispatcher not to leave his car, but did so against police instructions. This allegation is used to claim that the entire confrontation was Zimmerman’s fault, and had he merely followed police instructions, nothing would have happened. Zimmerman was not in the car at the time of the comment “we don’t need you to do that.” The 911 transcript proves at no time was Zimmerman ever told to stay in his car. Trayvon had become aware that he was under observation and started circling Zimmerman’s car while Zimmerman was inside talking to the police. At about the two minute mark, Trayvon runs. When Zimmerman did exit the vehicle it was in direct response to the dispatcher asking him the direction of Trayvon’s travel.

When the dispatcher asked if Zimmerman was still following the direction that Trayvon ran, Zimmerman said yes, the dispatcher said, “we don’t need you to do that” and Zimmerman replied, “OK.” There is not a single piece of evidence, none, that Zimmerman continued to follow Trayvon after this point. In fact, in the audio, he continues calmly talking to the dispatcher, telling him his phone number and even saying, “I want to get out of here, I don’t know where this kid is,” all without any sign he was chasing after Trayvon. Trayvon had more than enough time to achieve the safety of his father’s girlfriend’s condo had he truly been fleeing from a frightening Zimmerman. Instead, it was found that Trayvon launched an attack on Zimmerman from behind as Zimmerman was waiting for the police to arrive. 

Stand Your Ground Narrative

Despite constant outrage over Florida’s Stand Your Ground law being used in the trial, calling it a “license to kill,” it was never used by Zimmerman’s defense. It made sense for Zimmerman not to rely on SYG, because Stand Your Ground would only be relevant if Zimmerman had a route of exit, but the shooting took place while Zimmerman was on his back on the grass, his head having been pounded on the pavement and being beaten relentlessly by Trayvon. Witnesses say exactly the same thing. Trayvon was on top of Zimmerman, beating his head into the ground as Zimmerman was screaming for help. Activists claim that it was Trayvon calling for help, but it’s been long confirmed that it was indeed Zimmerman crying for help. Zimmerman had a broken nose, two black eyes and cuts to the back of his head where Trayvon slammed Zimmerman’s head repeatedly into the ground. Zimmerman’s back was also wet and covered in soil. Activists argue ‘but Trayvon was just a kid and Zimmerman was an adult,’ that’s why they only ever use photos of Trayvon as a kid, they don’t want you to know that Trayvon (6’2″) was much larger than Zimmerman (5’8″) and was in far better physical shape and condition. 

Forensic analysis demonstrated that the trajectory of the single shot fired and burns on Trayvon’s sweatshirt were consistent with Zimmerman being on his back with Trayvon hovering over him at the time of the shot. Since Zimmerman was pinned to the ground, he didn’t need to invoke Stand Your Ground because there was no reasonable means of avoidance. While the jury instructions did contain language similar, the SYG statutory protection itself was never invoked.

Bottom Line - The Jury Got It Right

Every piece of material and evidence was considered in court including crime scene evidence, witness statements, cell phone data, reconstruction analysis, ballistics reports, medical and autopsy reports and depositions. The verdict came as no surprise to those actually following the evidence. It came as a shock to those who bought into the racially charged false narratives, evident by the eruption on social media, the mass rioting, the outbreak of violence and the eventual beginnings of Black Lives Matter who carried these fabrications and deceit into the Michael Brown case and have since continued to glorify and martyr criminals in their efforts to whip up hate against the police, whites and America. At least it takes the attention off the staggering rates of crime and black lives being murdered that activists can’t blame anyone else for. (1, 2)

It’s sad that cases like Trayvon’s is used to teach black children that they must live in fear and anger because racism and white supremacy is everywhere and that at any point they can be killed, all because they’re black. It’s child abuse. Of course we can mourn Trayvon and remember him, but let’s not use him as a radical race movement’s martyr. Protesting against myths ruins the legitimacy and integrity of any future protest against real racism. If we need to keep fabricating and twisting stories to prove that we’re being hunted and oppressed, shouldn’t that be evidence of the opposite? Shouldn’t it be a good thing that Trayvon wasn’t actually killed for being black? Unfortunately, too many will say no, which perfectly sums up the mental imprisonment and why nothing will ever change. 

My Top Performances of 2019, Part 2

Here is the second half of the list of my favorite film performances of 2019. I tried to be as objective as possible, but it’s also a result of personal preferences. As before, the order is unimportant. Part 1 is here:  https://ryanmeft.tumblr.com/post/190668845597/my-top-performances-of-2019-part-1?fbclid=IwAR3_d80vj0FbIVXqWaTV1heUlIDJJmL-JB_ZksaadO_oNRztnhBMICxzTd8

Zhao Tao in Ash is Purest White

She’s got everything you could want in a rusting former industrial town: a good boyfriend who has influence in the area’s small underworld, which gives her power, love and money all at once. In a blink it is all gone, and she finds herself adrift in the world, dealing with the resentments of people with no patience for what she has gone through. Tao is the key component of this crime drama, which is more drama than crime. She does not take the world in blazing force as a crime figure in a Scorsese film might do, but quietly and slowly accepts that the days of her power are past---and unlike the men around her, tries to adapt to, rather than battle, the inevitable.

Ana De Armas in Knives Out

Knives Out is in the grand, disappearing tradition of the character actor, albeit with the parts mostly played by superstars. Yet among a roster that includes Captain America as an irresponsible playboy and Michael Shannon as a professorial-looking semi-Nazi, De Armas’s humble heroine Marta stands out. Maybe it’s because Marta is humble but not naive or entirely innocent, and De Armas manages to capture both her cunning and her honesty without turning her into a doe-eyed victim. She’s the kind of character you want to become a Nancy Drew-esque mystery hero for adults, so you can revisit her later adventures.

Joaquin Phoenix in Joker

Some hated the movie, some loved it, but one thing it seems everyone could agree on is Phoenix’s performance. He’s credited as Arthur Fleck, not as Joker, and his handling of the character couldn’t be more different than any previous portrayal. Arthur is sad and lonely, not at all an enigma---his private life is laid out for us in great detail---and Phoenix portrays him as just sort of being blown through the world, bereft of any real agency. You can debate all day whether the character deserves to be portrayed in a sympathetic way, but you can’t say Phoenix doesn’t pull it off, making us root for this maladjusted, societally-forgotten misfit almost up ‘till the end. 

Sienna Miller in American Woman

In a just world, Miller, hardly a household name, would have her face up on the stage Sunday night for playing this role, a drunken, hard-partying too-young mother and grandmother whose life begins to change when her daughter disappears. I say begins to, because this is not one of those magical stories of miraculous redemption. Debra does not become a good parent to her grandchild right away, and never becomes a great one. Instead, the film follows her throughout years of her life, during which, naturally, she must go on living as she mourns. Miller embodies each stage of this perfectly, never once allowing drama tropes to disturb her unflinching portrayal of an ordinary life.

Jeff Goldblum in The Mountain

What does the word “monster” conjure for you? Whatever traits it brings to mind, they are all present in Dr. Wallace Fiennes. He’s an egotistical, self-interested, callous man who performs lobotomies on mental patients in the 1950’s American heartland, the kind of person for whom his gruesome practice is not an outmoded method to be improved on by advancement, but an art form in itself, and his patients merely the canvas. This isn’t handled like a horror movie: Goldblum is not a mad scientist cackling away in a lab, but an urbane, cultured, engaging professional---which makes him all the more frightening.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Fast Color

Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel were, to a large extent, a marketing department’s ideal female superheroes: always flawless, gorgeous even when kicking ass, unable to make any very serious mistakes. Ruth is very much not that. She’s living wherever she can, dealing with the effects of past addictions, running from the government, scared of her own powers. She’s not just unlike any other woman in tights (without the tights), she’s unlike any mainstream superhero ever has, can or will be. Mbatha-Raw is one of our most underrated actresses, and she portrays Ruth in a way that allows us to both sympathize with her plight and support her as she grows stronger. The movie’s not getting a sequel, because the Hollywood franchise machine isn’t ready for imperfect superheroes yet, but it is getting a series, so at least we’re getting more of Ruth in some medium.

Renee Zellweger in Judy

I won’t pretend I knew much about Judy Garland going in, and frankly I’m not sure I understand her after seeing the movie---it was, in most respects, a fairly typical music biopic. Where it broke the mode is in Zellweger’s performance. I think it’s fair to say the once-household name has been largely forgotten by Hollywood in recent years; she never had the perfect starlet looks or the ideal girl-next-door adorableness that is the main standard on which women are judged. But she had the acting chops, and here she finally gets to prove it. Her Garland is twisted and gnarled inside and out by years of sexist treatment and the resulting substance abuse, but still a loving mother to her children and a great singer---and justifiably angry at the industry that used her up and spit her out.

Paul Walter Hauser in Richard Jewell There was never a single chance of seeing the camera pan to Hauser during Sunday’s roll call of acting nominees---both he and the person he plays are about the polar opposite of Hollywood’s image of itself. And it must be said that while Jewell should not be forgotten, Eastwood’s movie, with its ginned-up anti-press narrative, maybe should be. But none of that is on Hauser, whose performance firmly proves that fat guys can be more than bumbling comedic relief or ineffective sidekicks in the movies. It matters that someone who looks like Jewell is portraying him, and that he does it so well that we can almost overlook the film’s other faults.

  Honor Swinton Byrne in The Souvenir

This one was little-seen, and though it generated awards buzz initially, it’s already been largely forgotten. That’s too bad. Byrne’s Julie is a woman torn between her own ambitions and her love for a man who is---abusive? How to judge him? It’s a toxic relationship fueled by addiction on his part, but the movie is more about how you cope with a partner who is committed but not capable of commitment. Perhaps the most resonant aspect of Julie’s character is the way she holds out hope even when everyone tells her not to, even when she herself knows deep down that it is hopeless. You may find this weak, but I’ve never known a human being who wasn’t in some measure susceptible to it.

Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins in The Two Popes Everyone has strong feelings about the Catholic Church---it’s not a thing you go half-measures on. And every Catholic has strong feelings about the last two Popes---again, they aren’t the kind of personalities that inspire milquetoast reactions. What Pryce and Hopkins do in portraying Francis and Benedict, respectfully, is remind us that no matter how much they claim to be the chosen of God, these are after all two men---two men with flaws and opinions, whose own lives have shaped them every bit as much as the Bible or the church. When they are on screen together, you can imagine them in an odd couple buddy comedy, two aging road trippers tending to the flock. Lots of performances didn’t make my arbitrary 20-point cutoff. To be dead honest with you, it’s entirely possible that if you ask me in a year, I’ll have re-considered who is on the main list and who is in the honorable mentions; the idea that what I say now, when all these movies are fresh in my mind and affected by immediate emotional reaction, has to be my inviolate opinion for all time is silly. That said, here are some excellent and noteworthy performances that didn’t quite make the cut.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Kelvin Harrison, Jr. in Waves

Zack Gottsagen in The Peanut Butter Falcon

Isabela Moner in Dora and the Lost City of Gold

Alessandro Nivola in The Art of Self-Defense

Cate Blanchett in Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

More or less everyone in Little Women (I couldn’t decide, and thought more of the acting than the overall film)

Jodie Turner-Smith in Queen and Slim

Cynthia Erivo in Harriet

Kaitlyn Dever in Booksmart

Edward Norton in Motherless Brooklyn

this season was kind of whack, but at least we had Eizouken

Heya Camp is just kind of a lazy reminder that Yuru Camp exists, and will continue to exist in the future. You remember these characters?? OK good, just making sure. That said, did I immediately feel the tension release in my entire body when I heard the OST? Duh. Did I sing “it’s coffee time” to the ending not knowing these were the incorrect lyrics? The entire time.

I don’t know what to do with Isekai Quartet because like, objectively, I should hate it. I do not enjoy like 2.5 of the shows involved, and the addition of Shield Hero was not a welcome one. Turns out it doesn’t matter anyway because it was just Isekai Quartet and also Naofumi is Sometimes Scowling in the Background and that’s about as much of him as I want to see anyway. And yet? I do enjoy this Disney Channel Original Crossover. There’s something inherently fun about watching these characters from disparate shows interact with each other, and no matter what the original stakes were in their respective series, they’re all just doing homework and getting part time jobs and that shit’s funny when a big skeleton man is doing it.

After its first episode, Asteroid in Love was kind of a slog. This is your typical seasonal CGDGT show, and apart from that, I really can’t think of anything to say about it. I didn’t learn anything about the Extremely Niche Topic these girls are doing, and it wasn’t even that gay. Disappointing. 

I was really looking forward to Toilet Bound Hanako-kun because I am a big fan of the source material, but I was pretty let down by this adaptation. It seems that they prioritized the art style and the color scheme above everything else, but that essentially just meant the entire project ended up being colored manga panels. I wanted to see them move around! There was not a single moment of animation that justified it being an anime. You might as well have been watching a PowerPoint. I can’t think of anything nice to say. Let’s move on. 

Bofuri is my power fantasy. I want to play a video game so cluelessly I break it into tiny pieces and bumble into being the most powerful player in the world’s nicest MMORPG. Maple turns powercreep into powersprint. What Bofuri lacks in character development or plot, it makes up for in outrageous Maple feats. She holds the entire world in the palm of her hand and she doesn’t even know it. She named her OP pet turtle Syrup and then turned into an alien abomination unknown to the world and went on a killing rampage. This anime was Maple Crossing Online. Love you, Maple. Wreck shit, Maple. 

If My Favorite Idol Got Into Budokan, I Would Die walks a thin line and what separates it from being a slobbering idol otaku engine preaching how Cool it is to Be an Otaku and an Idol Show Watamote is the fact that Eripiyo is a girl. That’s it. If you took her and replaced her with your average Joe Schmoe-san, this show would be insufferably creepy. Every time I was waiting for it to topple over, Jenga-like, it managed to right itself and straddle the tightrope. It’s not a particularly subtle piece of media, nor does it do what I was hoping it would do and engage in any sort of conversation about the obsessive nature of idol otakudom, but you know what it does a good job of doing? Portraying being an idol as a job. Just some adults putting on underground shows and selling the same CD of like two songs over and over again. I was also hoping it would address what happened to Eripiyo, maybe talk about why at the beginning she’s dressed like an office worker and apparently gives that all up to follow this kinda-shitty idol group, why this fanatic escapism is preferable, or even maybe address how gay it is? Not in the cards, though. Honestly Budokan was, despite itself, pretty enjoyable? There are some great background lesbians. Also can we talk about how consistently good the production values were on this show? Why did this have such great dance sequences? Why did this look better than Love “Has More Money Than God” Live? Actually no I take everything back this show was kind of just Idol Otaku Watamote

Hey, let’s talk about the other idol show airing this season: the completely unhinged 22/7. This show is Whack. This show operates on an entire different plane of reality. I know nothing about the actual band, so I came into this blind and oh my god. Hey guys, the plot of 22/7 is that a Wall tells some girls to form an idol unit.  A sentient Wall whose orders absolutely must be followed. Why? Dunno! What happens if you don’t follow its orders? Never elaborated on. (Actually, is this a reference to Pink Floyd? I have no fucking clue.) In any case these eight girls, summoned by a letter from the Wall, are all invited to become an idol group, and then they’re magically an idol group. It’s unclear how they become successful, how they book gigs, who’s keeping the lights on at the agency, how they’re getting paid, who HR is, how their gorilla man agent found this Wall and determined that all its directives Must Be Followed, but shit, man. What follows in 22/7 is a one-member-per-episode serial that quite frankly stumbles far more often than it succeeds. One girl’s grandma died and that’s why she came to Japan. One girl had a traumatizing experience where she got lost in the woods for a week and it broke her family apart and now things just suck forever. These things are equal. One poor girl’s entire episode was about how she didn’t want to put on a bathing suit for a photo shoot and how uncomfortable she felt about it, but in the end she was made to apologize for dragging her feet for so long and takes her photo for a pin up. Yuck. Gross. Bad. The only valid girl is Jun, end of discussion. None of this even holds a candle to the finale-- wherein the girls are directed by the Wall to disband, and, defying an order for the first time, the girls return to their agency and throw shit at the Wall until it breaks down. It’s revealed that the Wall isn’t supernatural-- behind it are tv monitors, photos of the girls as children, records of their activities. A person or people are behind this. Why??? Are they being groomed?? Is the Wall a metaphor for the Industry? I’m so concerned. The girls aren’t, though, because after a little side eyeing, they ascend a staircase and wow! A Stage! Our fans are all here for our reunion tour! And then they’re fine and I guess their idol group is back together or something? Did I mention the stage where they perform? It’s at a zoo. I can’t tell if this is the most scathing condemnation of idol culture I’ve ever watched or just completely oblivious. The characters don’t engage in any sort of thought about what they’re being put through, but they are performing their final song, the lyrics of which are about how life is just too hard to keep on living, at a zoo and I don’t think you can have that sort of thing happen unless you’re trying to make a point. Right??? RIGHT?!? Dance and sing, monkeys.

Smile Down the Runway was another show completely divorced from reality. So you got your main character, Chiyuki, whose thing is that she’s Too Short to Be a Model at her father’s very prestigious modeling agency. Which, like, is valid! Let’s see some variation in the modeling industry. Let’s shake it up. Let’s lead the charge for alternative models with bodies outside of the very narrow requirements of the fashion industry. What’s that, Chiyuki? You have no interest in that? You want to be a Hypermodel? I don’t know what that shit is, I think you made it up. Our other protagonist is Ikuto, the destitute, put upon, bobcut boy with a dying mother and 3 younger siblings who is trying to pursue his dream of becoming a fashion designer. Are you beginning to sense the problem here? There is a fundamental imbalance in the presentation of these characters’ goals and situations. Also? Emotions are at an eleven, always. Characters are always acting as if they’ve just seen someone get murdered in front of their eyes even when it’s like. There’s a messed up seam. They are constantly being mortified, crushed, and having their dreams ripped away. One time, two different assholes offered Ikuto magical mom-fixing blood money when he was struggling to come up with funds to pay off his medical debt at the cost of giving up his spot in the fashion show. Wildin’ 

Haikyuu didn’t exactly come in like a lion, but I’m sure it’ll be more organic upon rewatching. We were laying the groundwork for much of this season so I’m expecting it to payoff later, but the beginning definitely lagged. Every time Haikyuu hints at a women’s volleyball tournament, I want a volleyball anime with girls. Man, those ten minutes we got with Kiyoko? Those were great. 

I don’t have too much to say about Somali and Forest Spirit. Abe’s “Make Children” agenda feels at least a little more like a narrative choice in this anime, and I enjoyed Somali and the Golem’s relationship and their travels were in equal turns harrowing and heartwarming. And I did tear up at the end so you got me there, anime. 

In/Spectre has some balls being an anime. It’s existed as a light novel and a manga and those are both superior mediums for it because let’s put all our cards on the table here-- In/Spectre is a show about talking. Five whole entire episodes take place in a car. The finale is winning an argument in an anonymous 4chan chatroom. That said, I have such a fondness for In/Spectre. I think Kotoko rocks. I think a show willing to do nothing but talk at you for two hours is badass. Sitting through this anime is like watching a podcast. I think the show engages in some great dialogue about human nature and how we prefer stories that are theatrical, narratively-driven, and have a logical cause-and-effect, instead of the truth, which is more often than not grim, and disappointing, and illogical. I like that Kotoko’s only function, in-story and out of it, is to bullshit so hard she invents alternate realities. Anyway In/Spectre is good. 

There’s no praise I can lavish on Eizouken that hasn’t already been said. It’s powerful, it’s strange, it’s energetic, and it’s packaged with such love. It’s repurposed the CGDCT template into something deeply affecting. It’s an anime for people who love animation.  I hope everyone watches Eizouken.

there’s so, so, SO much nonsense surrounding this game that i’m gonna do my best to separate it into digestible bits, with its own categories. even then this is... wow. it’s big.

Warning tags will be added at the start of every section, but the general gist is: incest, pedophilia mentions, fetishization of rape and abuse, fetishization of mlm, fetishization of people of color, racism, ableism, nb erasure and transphobia. aside of the warnings, this post will also touch upon Scummy Business Practices

let’s get going

Dana Rune’s and Elle’s lack of moral fiber: #incest #pedophilia#rape and abuse fetishization #homophobia

tl;dr: dana loves incest porn, elle loves guy on guy rape, and the both of them are friends with at least one pedophile

dana rune has run, is still running an incest zine (please visit my faq on what i think about “thats not really incest” and “it’s just fictional!”). The Arcana, as a dev team, clearly does not care, as shown in their e-mail responses.

dana also very much doesn’t care and has reacted to any criticism on this by dismissing people and blocking actual incest victims who tried to contact her about it claiming it was for her “mental health”

in some tweets she claims she “interprets” the characters as not siblings, but she never really cared enough to cover her ass when it all began (she happily admits she’d “cross the incest line”)

dana has commissioned artists who also ship incest, draw near-pedophilic art that’s supposed to pass as acceptable because the character involved is supposedly not a minor despite looking like a child down to wearing pigtails (the character is also wearing a racist-ass belly dancer outfit), AND even made white-washed fanart of The Arcana.

dana follows twitter user kapymui who also produces incestuous Fire Emblem art

dana has retweeted omocat long after it came out that omocat is, at the very least, consuming pedophilic content (on “omocat didn’t know what shota meant!”: yes they did)

moving on, elle has a long, long, LONG history of fetishizing mlm and the rape and abuse that comes with yaoi and had a rich, RICH “yaoi” tag before they deleted their tumblr

they curiously deleted their tumblr right after i made this reblog

shortly after that, tumblr user thalassiq remade and started attacking and insulting any blogs criticizing them - even people providing support in IMs. Since this doesn’t match Dana and Elle’s normal pity parties I’m personally willing to believe they were just a person wanting to start shit - but it’s so telling how Elle used this chance to dismiss everyone who disagrees with them by calling them “children” and did not even bother to offer a kind word to people who were harassed and even had their trauma mocked by this person. It costs 0 dollars to say “that was not me but I’m sorry about people who were hurt.”

Dana and Elle are close with Ava’s Demon creator Michelle Czajkowski aka that one person who endorses child porn of her characters, and even had her draw a promo image for the game. Michelle has been creating highly sexualized content of her minor characters for a while now.

ok so elle and dana are gross freaks, how is that related to the game?

oh it’s very very related

Dana Rune’s and Elle’s lack of moral fiber that’s Actually Inside The Game or The Game’s Blog: now with more #racism #fetishization of poc and mlm #whitewashing #fat hate #pedophilia #nb erasure #transphobia

tl;dr: the arcana is filled to the brim with racism! so much of it! haha holy shit! and that’s not even where it ends!!!

their game is rated PG-13 but includes incredibly sexual situations such as Julian making this fucking face while getting off on pain. This isn’t the only time Dana and Elle use their videogame aimed at young teens to showcase their kinks and fetishes. I have no issue with NSFW or titillating content, as long as it’s rated accordingly. This content is NOT and it’s a blatant disregard for their audience just to have a larger, more pliable demographic and have more money sent their way.

if you start your argument with “well, teenagers look at porn” 1. shut up 2. theres a HUGE difference between teenagers going after adult content aimed at adults, and adults creating content they know will be seen by kids barely starting puberty

as pointed above, dana has 0 qualms literally commissioning people who make whitewashed fanart of her own fucking game that’s supposed to be all about the inclusivity and safe spaces

thearcanagame blog has a pattern of reblogging whitewashed fanart (before you come in swinging with the good ole “ITS THE LIGHTING”: 1. no it isnt 2. the artist should’ve picked better lightning then 3. i draw and post shit online too so dont come telling me i just dont understaaaand),

fanart of their fat characters showed skinnier than they are in their sprites (although to be real for a moment - Portia is curvy at most and them behaving she’s fat rep is HILARIOUS).

going back to NSFW content: nadia and asra are overwhemlingly sexualized in the game, and were the first to have sexualized CGs and sprites introduced.

CGs: Asra’s here, here aND HERE, Nadia’s here with a NSFW warning because she’s just got her whole fucking ass out. Sprites: Asra’s thank god for whoever compiled it all in one image, Nadia’s and once again, NSFW warning lmfao!

Julian’s sprites on the other hand are noticeably tamer, including the one where he’s fucking strapped in leather. His only sexual (NSFW warning because its literally softcore tentacle porn WHICH, ONCE AGAIN, SHOULDN’T BE PUT IN A GAME AIMED AT 13YOS) CGs were also included months after Nadia and Asra received any of theirs.

Through all of the updates, people have constantly requested that Asra and Nadia’s sexualization be toned down, and time after time The Arcana just churned out fetishistic, hypersexualized content at an absurd rate, especially when compared to the one white love interest.

Oh, speaking of the one white love interest: Julian is based off of Jeff Goldblum (this is not spectulation - they p much bring it up at any given time) but like. If Jeff Goldblum was white. They base their favorite love interest off their supposed favorite man in the world but casually leave his skin tone behind. Lmao.

they also play favorites very obviously - in the prologue, Nadia and Asra have a romance paid scene each. Julian has a scene... that requires no coins. Julian was also the first LI to receive three CGs, two of them requiring no coins, while both Asra’s and Nadia’s first CGs were behind a paywall

Dana and Elle have been notoriously skittish about confirming or denying their characters’ ethnicities. After hyping for weeks on thearcanagame that they would confirm the character’s races they basically made a post that amounted to “well they’re not white lol!”

they only relented after the perfectly understandable outrage... and posted a thread about it on Elle’s twitter. Nothing on the actual thearcanagame blog. Anyway, here’s the thread. Note how there’s mention of Julian being Jeff Goldblum... but nothing about him and Portia being Jewish (or “fantasy Jewish” as it were).

The one time they did confirm their jewishness dana then backpedaled and said she shouldn’t have done that lol.

another fun tidbit of how well The Arcana handles race and how much it cares about feedback from fans: an ask was sent about an anon begging for Nadia to step on them. The blog, with the finesse of a bunch of horny dumbasses, didn’t just publish the ask, but approved of it (even though the fans of color had long, long, LONG been telling everyone not to fetishize Nadia into a “step on me kween” wet dream). People were outraged, of course, and the blog ~apologized~ and said they were still learning.... then a new chapter included a scene of Nadia stepping on the Apprentice. 🙃

not to mention elle, on their twitter, made a passive aggressive “women can be doms?” tweet, trying to twist it into a “yr oppressing women” angle (when the issue is that women of color are always constantly portrayed as aggressive and domineering)

Now for a wombo combo of racism and Elle’s fetishization of mlm:

the devs have spoken at length of how Julian’s and Asra’s relationship was quite unhealthy. In a paid scene in Asra’s route, they’re depicted as Asra being disgusted w Julian touching him+Julian following Asra to his shop when Asra refused his offer to go with him (aka julian... stalked him lmfao).

.......... this scene is promptly followed by a highly sexual scenario where Julian’s pain fetish is played up. Remember how this game is rated PG-13? Me neither. Asra’s previous disgust with Julian is also forgotten, for some reason (and by some reason i mean Elle wants to make them fuck w/o buildup or logic).

Then Asra’s route has yet another paid scene dedicated to Asrian, even though he’s supposed to not even like Julian! And be head over heels with the Apprentice! But Elle just has to make these two be entangled despite insisting their relationship was not good for either of them!

Now here’s the kicker: Julian doesn’t have any paid scenes related to his romance with Asra. Note how it’s one of the brown LIs whose route is highjacked by the white LI, but not vice versa. Hmmmmm.

Now, on the topic of Asra: thearcanagame has said repeatedly that he’s nb and uses he/him pronouns, and promised (since last year) that there would be dialogue where he speaks about his gender

as of the making of this post such dialogue still does not exist

so basically asra is the nb to dumbledore’s gay: anyone who just plays the game w/o keeping up with the official blog has no idea of what asra’s gender is supposed to be.

aka he’s not nb. he’s just a cis guy. the arcana just doesn’t want to put its money where its mouth is, i dont care if elle is nb themself. the team made a promise which has not been fulfilled yet and i suspect will not be.

instead, our introduction to canon nb characters is... these two.

By “these two” i mean neither vulgora nor valdemar are even fucking human, and stick out like sore thumbs with their monstruousness.

so our nb rep is... non-human villains. a few books later one of Nadia’s sisters with they/them pronouns shows up, but that’s too little too late on top of the fact that we should’ve known Asra was nb from the first to begin with. It’s a fucking embarrassment and an insult.

at least two villains are visibly disabled (Lucio’s missing arm and Volta’s blind eye+intentionally asymmetrical face). Julian’s eye doesn’t count because, spoilers, he’s not lacking an eye and even if he was it’d still be hidden behind a dashing eyepatch instead of grotesquely displayed as a sign of his lacking morality.

BUT WAIT! IT DOESN’T EVEN END THERE!

The Arcana Exploits The App Business Model To Price Their Full Game at $500, $1000 if the three extra routes make it out, and they never delivered their Kickstarter rewards:

tl;dr: you heard me

the original price per route was planned on being $1.99

they took that “subject to change” really seriously, it seems, because now each route, once the game is fully out, is estimated to cost around $170 each.

both those screenshots are taken from this post which explains in detail just how truly scummy all of The Arcana’s business model and decisions are: https://mysticmicrotransactions.tumblr.com/post/174308723344/dishonesty-from-the-arcana

the tl;dr is basically what’s listed in the beginning of this section, but other highlights from that post are: the use of addictive gambling mechanics such the Wheel of Fortune, and the dazzling calls to action in the new mini-game.

something that The Arcana supporters forget (or choose to ignore) is the fact that for a long, long time the game did not have the mini-game or the log-in rewards for coins. Players depended only on the gambling of the WoF or paying absurd amounts of money for the new chapters.

the devs went from playing the victims who were unable of controlling prices to (as spoken of in the link from mysticmicrotransactions) saying the making of the game (a pathetic little app game backed by a studio and a kickstarter) justifies the prices

they also gave people false hope about maybe changing the prices in the future, all while bleeding money from loyal players in “micro” transactions

the arcana literally added a $99.99 coins option on their latest update

in case it hasn’t sunk in yet: you can pay a hundred dollars upfront to the arcana, and you still will not have access to the whole game

there is no defense to this

none

“it’s free stop whining” let me explain:

“spend months on end accumulating fake currency or pay hundreds of dollars up-front to be able to play” is a scummy business model no matter how you look at it

if i can spend $60 upfront to play an AAA game there’s no excuse to demand more than that for a game with much smaller and, honestly, inferior content

the combination of there being already far and few games featuring lgbt characters and characters of color AND the little cult of personality set up by Dana and Elle makes people feel that spending money to support them is an acceptable expense.

it’s not

manipulating people into spending ridiculous amounts of money and then claiming “it’s their choice” is just scummy business, baby, and thats all the arcana does

the devs are brats who instead of admitting $500 is absurd for a game instead write petty little caricatures into their game - like, lbr: dana, elle, if i could afford diamonds in my hair i wouldn’t have even bothered with your shitstain of a game

despite bragging that ppl would get the full story w/o needing to pay, the paid scenes are pretty much required - the first few books of julian’s route have no romance without accessing any of the paid options. you dont even get so much as a kiss in without handing coins over. many, many people were baffled when julian had a teary break-up scene when from their perspective they hadn’t even started building a relationship.

wow that’s more than i ever thought it’d be

and i’ve been aware of their bullshit for near a whole year now!

i don’t have much of a note to end this on, other than: the arcana just isn’t even that good. it suffers from weak writing, pathetic character development and above all actually harmful content. do not try to argue with me on any of these points unless you’ve read all of that, because whatever you have to say i’ve likely mentioned before. if you still are that determined to yell at a me on the internet, please preface your argument with the phrase “I’m a pee pee poo poo man” so I know you’ve read everything in here. thank you!

I posted 10,408 times in 2021

265 posts created (3%)

10143 posts reblogged (97%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 38.3 posts.

I added 2,190 tags in 2021

#warriors - 768 posts

#jjba - 405 posts

#ebony talks or something - 345 posts

#pokemon - 182 posts

#danganronpa - 113 posts

#good videos - 103 posts

#the adventure zone - 86 posts

#mlp - 72 posts

#deltarune - 60 posts

#ableism tw - 56 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#instead of ashfur being the villain we could go for my starclan is at war over changing the warrior code au and like a bunch of leaders and

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

They really put Kakyoin in the hospital for a majority of the second half of sdc and brought him back to not only not let him win any battles but also kill him off.

61 notes • Posted 2021-08-30 03:23:21 GMT

#4

Can people stop stanning Thistleclaw pleaseeeeeeee

Like yeah sure if you don’t want to consider Spottedleaf’s Heart canon because of the poor portrayal of grooming, then that’s okay. I don’t consider Leafpool’s Wish canon because of the implications that cat heaven can force people into taking care of children because every female character needs to have children but like... y’all just hate on Spottedleaf’s Heart because y’all love Thistleclaw.

Do you not see the problem here???? Spottedleaf’s Heart came out when I was 12 and I defended that book because guess what??? I thought the reason people hated it was because people loved Thistleclaw. Because that’s all I saw. And I always hated Thistleclaw because even 12 year old me understood that the cat who beat up a child, a pregnant women, and insulted his wife and son while training in cat hell was a horrible person.

It wasn’t until Moonkitti, an incredibly popular warriors content creator made a video on it. And then I understood. Spottedleaf’s Heart is a terrible book because it didn’t portray grooming as negatively as it should’ve. Instead the only bad thing it showed was “Thistleclaw is evil.” This adult in a fandom made up of children stood up and said “hey this is wrong,” and that’s exactly what every adult in a fandom made up of minors should do.

That’s what everyone should do.

Instead you all focused on “poor thistleclaw is getting his character butchered 🥺🥺🥺”

Okay??? What if I said Long Shadows isn’t canon and Ashfur is a kind cat who died for no reason????

Or Crookedstar’s Promise isn’t canon because Mapleshade is a kind cat who reacted with grief and was in the right????

Or Omen Of The Stars isn’t canon because Breezepelt never did anything wrong????

Yeah I can’t just do that, because that’s not how it works.

You all need to do better.

81 notes • Posted 2021-05-22 17:50:18 GMT

#3

As a white person myself, I can confirm that when I was younger, more ignorant, and desperate to prove my hyperfixations weren’t racist, I would scroll down hundreds of black people saying this piece of media is irredeemable, and cherry pick the few black people who went “oh this is okay actually.” I would think “see???? This black person said it’s not racist!!!!”

Of course, growing up I now definitely realize how awful that was of me to do, but yet I see so many more people fall into the same trap I did in many different ways.

“See???? It’s not ableist because of this one disabled person who said it wasn’t!!”

“See???? It’s not antisemitic because of this one Jewish person who said it wasn’t!!”

“See???? It’s not transphobic because of this one trans person who said it wasn’t!!”

“See???? It’s not racist because of this one person of color who said it wasn’t!!”

Cherry-picking is an incredibly huge issue so many privileged people do. How about instead of listening to that one person validating you, you listen to everyone affected by said media???

87 notes • Posted 2021-04-14 19:41:32 GMT

#2

Say whatever you want but TAZ Graduation is good actually because it has Sir Fitzroy Maplecourt

182 notes • Posted 2021-08-22 03:07:58 GMT

#1

Yeah yeah okay I get this is just my opinion of silly fighting cats but I cannot stand that there are people out there who hate Bluestar, a character who had to deal with so much loss and was forced into a role she didn’t want and later showed signs of PTSD, and then love Thistleclaw, a character who got angry because “oh no my wife died” and decided to purposely hurt others (INCLUDING WHEN HE ATTACKED A PREGNANT BLUEFUR) and train in the Dark Forest and then turn around and insult his dead wife and son. And oh yeah, remember Spottedleaf’s Heart?

359 notes • Posted 2021-01-08 18:06:48 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

☽ ┊[ IM JINAH / APHRODITE ] IS THAT [ SUNMI HYUNG ] ? I HEARD THAT THE [ 23 ] YEAR OLD [ CISFEMALE ] IS A [ SOCIALITE ] FROM [ MANHATTAN ]. I HEARD THAT THEY’RE [ + ALLURING & + CHARMING ] BUT ALSO [ - SPOILED & - SENSITIVE ]. RUMOR HAS IT THAT THEY HAVE A REPUTATION FOR BEING KNOWN AS [ THE BABY DOLL ].

MAIN HEADCANONS: –– sunmi hails from a  wealthy family, daughter to a south korean ceo & a very ruthless lawyer, her parents never once missed their important meetings and job calls to tend to their daughter’s needs. –– both her parents climbed the social ladder very early in life. she’s never had to beg or ask for a thing, because they’d make up for the lack of love & attention by showering her in gifts and money. sunmi had her first pony when she was five, being a passionate lover of animals ( i will delve deeper into this !! ) –– they moved to nyc once sunmi was two years old, in 1997, leaving south korea for yet another territory to be explored by her father’s company. she never had to learn south korean ( although she does speak it at home ), so her main language is english. –– her father owns a cosmetics company, and her mother works for her father; it’s how they met: through work. sunmi used to think it was a beautiful love story until the day she caught her father cheating on her mother. she never mentioned it once though, too afraid that the divorce was going to tear her mother apart. –– she was expected perfection from everywhere. sunmi’s still traumatized by the demands that her parents made, and she found comfort in the little things of life. this is what ultimately makes her so sensitive ( something which will be talked about ! ) and solonely, too.

PERSONALITY HEADCANONS: –– she’s extremely love & attention hungry. because her parents never once gave her the attention and the love she truly needed, she’s a child that comes from neglect. of course, the optimistic side in her refuses to see it that way, but putting it truthfully, they weren’t one bit mindful of their child. –– being a socialite comes easy to her. sunmi is good at smiling, at playing pretend and dressing up. she’s the ultimate girly girl in every aspect, sometimes shockingly so. even her mother, who gladly imposed these ideals upon sunmi, is shocked at times. –– a little childish at times. she’s also a little too competitive and tends to take things way too personally. one would call her ‘ oversensitive ’, but i like to think her sensitivity hails from a good place. even though she’s spoiled, a socialite and someone who never truly had to face the trials that a regular person would, she’s good-hearted. –– sunmi knows she’s pretty. she’s never shied away from the spotlight, and she thrives on being the center of the attention. from papparazzi harassing her for pictures to desperate fans wanting one bit of her minute, she knows she’s relevant and she fully embraces it. –– her personality was slightly based off of songs by marina & the diamonds, with lyrics such as “hollywood infected your brain / you wanted kissing in the rain” and “got a figure like a pinup, got a figure like a doll”, it’s hard not to compare her to the archetypes established by marina in her sophomore album, ‘ electra heart ’. i took bits of these archetypes and incorporated them into her personality, such as the idle teen ( “i wanna be a bottled blonde / i don’t know why but i feel conned” ), the homewrecker ( “every boyfriend is the one until otherwise proven”, “deception & perfection are wonderful traits / one will breed love, the other, hate” ) the primadonna ( “primadonna girl, yeah / all i ever wanted was the world” ) and the heartbreaker ( “this is how to be a heartbreaker / boys they like a little danger” ) –– her signature look is her hot pink lipstick, it’s a mark of her passion, her infatuation with love & her spontaneous personality. –– a quote that describes her perfectly is one famous quote by marilyn monroe whom i personally adore ( and i will ellaborate on the parallels later !! ),  it goes: “i’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. i make mistakes, i am out of control and at times hard to handle. but if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you surely don’t deserve me at my best.” –– i have based her off of famous personalities such as audrey hepburn and marilyn monroe. i like to think she’s a mixture of both, for her generosity ( which audrey so vehemently was ) and for her beauty, as well as her passion, a passion that reminds me of how spontaneously marilyn lived - she had a short life, and i like to thing it was as good as she portrayed in her pictures. she was envied by many women and even hated by them ( this was something that bothered her greatly ), but she always put herself first and wasn’t afraid to be a beautiful, powerful woman. these aspects are what make sunmi so closely similar to these two women. –– CHARACTER FLAWS: superficial / childish / sensitive / fickle. –– CHARACTER QUALITIES: generous / loving / spontaneous / fun. TESTS & OTHER LITTLE HEADCANONS: –– her MBTI type is ESFP, they’re enthusiastic and fun-loving, as well as social butterflies who thrive on attention. they tend to have a special bond with children & animals, and are known as natural “performers” & “entertainers”. “ESFPs get caught up in the excitement of the moment, and want everyone else to feel that way, too. no other personality type is as generous with their time and energy as ESFPs when it comes to encouraging others, and no other personality type does it with such irresistible style. ESFPs are welcome wherever there’s a need for laughter, playfulness, and a volunteer to try something new and fun – and there’s no greater joy for ESFP personalities than to bring everyone else along for the ride. ESFPs can chat for hours, sometimes about anything but the topic they meant to talk about, and share their loved ones’ emotions through good times and bad. if they can just remember to keep their ducks in a row, they’ll always be ready to dive into all the new and exciting things the world has to offer, friends in tow. ” i handpicked ESFP for her because it perfectly matches with her generous, loving and spontaneous style, which i talked about a little bit earlier, but i imagine sunmi as the type of fun person in your life whom you never quite forget. –– her hogwarts house is HUFFLEPUFF. because of her softness, i do not see her fitting anywhere else but hufflepuff. her amity, her love for people and her generosity truly make her a great hufflepuff, as well as a daring one, for her fearlessness to be herself and her spontainety. hufflepuff is the most inclusive of the houses, they are known for being fair and for being loyal, something which i definitely thought about before sorting sunmi into hufflepuff. if she were a harry potter character ( yes, i’ve thought about this !! ) she’d be famous in her house, not only for her beauty, but for her great and loving personality as well.

MISCELLANEOUS HEADCANONS: –– some of her aesthetics would include: pink bubblegum, fresh & long manicured nails, flirting with strangers, fake smiling, flashing cameras, perfectly curled hair, big hugs, frilly dresses, the colour baby pink… and more here. –– i have chosen the colour baby pink & an off-white colour for her aesthetics because they represent many of the things which i believe she encompasses: pink is a very feminine, delicate and sweet colour, it is also the colour of unconditional love ( channeling her inner aphrodite here !! ). here are some aspects i’ve found interesting about the colour pink that apply to her: “a combination of red and white, pink contains the need for action of red, helping it to achieve the potential for success and insight offered by white. it is the passion and power of red softened with the purity, openness and completeness of white. the deeper the pink, the more passion and energy it exhibits. pink is intuitive and insightful, showing tenderness and kindness with its empathy and sensitivity. if you have a friend who constantly wears pink as it may indicate a need for acceptance, support and unconditional love! pink is a non-threatening color seeking appreciation, respect and admiration. It doesn’t like to be taken for granted and just loves to hear the words ‘thank you’. it is the color of uncomplicated emotions, inexperience and naiveté. a constant and exclusive use of pink can often lead you to become immature, silly and girlish, abandoning your adult responsibilities.” i believe she can be immature and sensitive sometimes, as well as someone who isn’t too keen on her own responsibilities, someone with a peter pan syndrome, someone that never quite let go of her childish aspects.

Jacqui GermainSep 17, 2020 12:46pm

Deborah Roberts wasn’t born a triplet, but she often felt like it growing up. Two of her sisters and herself were all born within two years of each other. She remembers people calling the three of them, stringing together their first names so that it became its own uniquely muddled phrase. Knowing this, it’s difficult not to think of Roberts’s works: We Are Soldiers (2019), Between Them (2019), An Act of Power (2018), and The Sleepwalkers (2017) all show three young Black girls with braids and barrettes, consciously or unconsciously mirroring each other as they make their way through Black girlhood.Born in 1962 and raised in Austin, Texas, Roberts is one of eight; she has an additional sister and four brothers. She started exploring her artistic side in the third grade and quickly realized her drawings were good enough to trade for the things third graders treasure: pencils, popularity, and other odds and ends. “I could draw people under the table!” Roberts told me recently with a laugh, her wide smile widening even more at the memory.

Deborah Roberts, We are Soldiers, 2019. © Deborah Roberts. Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.

These formative years were also marked by Roberts’s first glimpses of Blackness, femininity, and beauty—all pre-internet and largely portraying images that did not look like her. Roberts, just like generations of other Black girls before and after her, developed an understanding of beauty and femininity within this exclusionary context. “I think the foundation of not believing what I was seeing is what fuses this work—what holds this work together today,” Roberts said. “Had I bought into this idea that beauty was one way and not another, I don’t know if I’d be doing this work.” It wasn’t until her artistic practice matured that she was able to more deliberately investigate and refute that conditioning, but even as a child, she recognized the incongruity with a skeptical eye.Roberts’s talent also laid the groundwork for shaping a sense of her own individuality. Early on, art was less a career path and more an enjoyable way to distinguish herself in her 10-person family. “It was something that was uniquely mine,” Roberts said. “In a house with eight children, it’s hard to have something that’s yours.” In high school, one of Roberts’s art teachers provided an infusion of encouragement by exposing her to a wide range of Black artists and a much broader perspective of the art world at large. After graduating, Roberts studied at the University of North Texas, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art, then later earned her MFA from Syracuse University.

Deborah Roberts, Rebels, 2019. © Deborah Roberts. Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.

Deborah Roberts, After the thunder (RR), 2019. © Deborah Roberts. Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.

“When the art came, it was hard, but I was so intrigued by the hardness of it. It kept drawing me in to get better at it,” she recalled. “I learned the craft, learned how to draw, learned how to paint, learned how to watercolor. They’re all different—different properties, different materials, different tools that you have to master.”After showing her work at several galleries in the mid-1980s, Roberts decided to open her own gallery space, naming it Not Just Art Gallery because she also maintained a framing business to ensure a more consistent cash flow. She hoped to increase her own visibility and gain access to the national art market, while regularly showcasing the work of peers she admired. The gallery operated for about 10 years, though it started failing in its seventh year. Today, she laughs at her own naivety, but the experience gave her an early taste of her work’s viability in the art market.

Deborah Roberts, detail of Man[ly], 2019. © Deborah Roberts. Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.

Roberts’s love of drawing blended with her collage practice to become the perfect outlet for exploring her persistent skepticism about socialized definitions of beauty. In addition to topics like colorism (“When they say you’re pretty for a dark-skinned girl, that’s no compliment”) and the politics of Black hair (“Whatever good hair is”), the bulk of Roberts’s work comments on the sanctity of Black girlhood. Her collages force viewers to make sense of images of Black girls that are visibly distorted and mismatched and yet still childlike and innocent.“At one point they say you’re a little girl and somehow they treat you as an adult. So sometimes you have a big arm—you have to be an adult,” she explained, referring to the oversized features or too-long limbs of some of her figures. “When I was drawing these little girls, I wanted to highlight that…[just] because society has set us up like this doesn’t mean that we didn’t want to be children, that we didn’t want to be seen as innocent, that we wanted a childhood to be able to explore.”

Deborah Roberts, Hip bone, 2019. © Deborah Roberts. Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.

Deborah Roberts, The burden, 2019. © Deborah Roberts. Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.

Some of her works depict Black girls with boxing gloves in place of hands. “When did the gloves of Black womanhood come on us? When is it, all of a sudden, that we have to defend ourselves?” she asked, speaking to such works. “It’s around the age, I think, from maybe 14 to 22 [when] we have to start defending ourselves. And it’s based on watching our mothers, our aunts, our community members and how they carry themselves—how we [learn to] defend our ideas of who we are.”Gradually, she distilled her approach into four key aspects—pop culture, Black culture, art history, and American history—and she continues to imbue varying degrees of each into her works. She mentions, for example, repeatedly using James Baldwin’s eyes in her collages, Michelle Obama’s fist, and portions of Willow Smith’s face. “I think she has the most beautiful, soft face,” she says of Smith’s features.

Deborah Roberts, detail of We wear the masks, 2019. © Deborah Roberts. Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.

Deborah Roberts, detail of Mixed hues, 2019. © Deborah Roberts. Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.

The piecemeal nature of collage allows her to create figures of Black girls—and as of a few years ago, Black boys as well—that are composites. On the surface, the arrangements might speak to the disfiguring and objectifying way a society marred by chattel slavery views Black children and Black people in general. But given the images of Blackness and beauty that Roberts and so many other Black girls struggle to reconcile with their own sense of self, Roberts’s collage works can be better understood as a purposeful reconfiguring of Black girlhood. After all, how does a Black girl create a sense of self while being denied any kind of mirror or reflection in society at every turn? How does a Black girl begin to shape her identity in the midst of a country that values her parts more than her whole?Black women, and Black people in general, have always had to serve as each other’s mirror in the context of a white-dominated world that refused to see us as either human or whole. The works, then, are defiant depictions of Black girlhood, amalgamations of each other collaged together to lay claim to both our humanity and our wholeness.

Deborah Roberts, From the beginning, 2019. © Deborah Roberts. Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.

Deborah Roberts, I am not a man, I'm dynamite, 2019. © Deborah Roberts. Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.

Roberts draws a hard line against depicting explicit violence or the aftermath of violence in any of her portraits. The art world is slowly beginning to reckon with controversial claims of exploiting racialized violent experiences of being Black in the United States—typically shorthanded as “Black trauma”—for the voyeuristic desires of majority white arts patrons. But for Roberts, distancing her figures from overt physical trauma and suffering is a way to protect them while still commenting on the racialized trauma their real-life counterparts face. Her insistence on creating that visual distance allows her to prioritize their wholeness and dignity first and foremost above any message or humanistic appeal for empathy.Instead, she mentions collaging a piece of candy in the hands of a figure with the word Pop! on the candy wrapper. The placement references 12-year-old Tamir Rice, a Black boy shot to death in 2014 while playing outside in a park with a toy gun, as young children are wont to do. “The idea of violence—I can’t [literally] put in my work, so I like the idea that it has, pop! pop! pop! because the sound of violence is pop! pop! pop!” Roberts explained. Her piece Ghost gun (2018), also in honor of Tamir Rice, is the closest to blatant representation, depicting a Black boy holding a colorful toy gun and a blue pacifier placed snugly in his mouth.

Deborah Roberts, When you see me, 2019. © Deborah Roberts. Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.

In another instance, Roberts said, she might place cartoon monkeys on a figure’s shirt as a nod towards that specific racist and dehumanizing characterization burdened on Black people for centuries—though she describes monkeys as “the nemesis” in her work because she “hates the idea of anyone thinking we are less than human.”When the conversation turns to 80 Days (2018), one of Roberts’s most celebrated and beloved works, her posture changes to that of an openly affectionate mother, welcoming a stranger’s admiration of a child she holds dear. Part of a longer series of collage-on-canvas works called “Nessun Dorma” (Italian for “None Shall Sleep”), 80 Days references 14-year-old George Stinney Jr. who was executed in 1944 for a murder he didn’t commit—and who, to this day, remains the youngest American to be executed. The piece’s title refers to the two and a half months from arrest, trial, conviction, and execution: just over 80 days.

Deborah Roberts, Head Nods and Handshakes, 2019. © Deborah Roberts. Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.

To be clear, Roberts is proud of all of her works, but this one obviously occupies a particular place in her own personal career archive. In 2019, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery selected 80 Days for its triennial exhibition.“I am so happy that [80 Days] is at the National Portrait Gallery right now, sitting in the middle,” she said, smiling. Indeed, Roberts’s piece is installed on a broad wall between two other exhibition finalists, with George Stinney Jr.’s tilted head visible above crowd height.“And they hung him high. Everyone has to look up to him,” she added. “I love it. I wanted that for him.”

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-deborah-robertss-gripping-collages-reconfigure-black-girlhood?utm_medium=email&utm_source=sailthru&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_content=daily-&utm_term=21536109-09-17-20

Why does Black Panther look Like That? Trailer 1(Part One): Wakanda

I’m breaking down the Black Panther trailer(yet again I know), but this time focusing on it’s aesthetics and trying to point out the reasons behind some of the design elements, and the cultures that inspired them, in another super long, super detailed blog post. No, shush I am not obsessed okay just go with it.

Looking through it(for the hundreth time) I realized that Black Panther has pulled from a vast number of cultures and communitites, so I may miss some, or get others wrong. The points below will be largely based on my own cultural experience(and meagre education on Traditional African Society) and some google :3. So this is like 60 percent speculation. Feel free to correct me. I also try to avoid spoilers below, but here’s a potential spoiler alert just in case.

With that out of the way, Enjoy!  

Part One: Location; Let’s Talk About Wakanda

You can read about its history here but it’s basically a futuristic African country.

In the trailer we get this great overhead reveal of Wakanda. Note the shapes of the buildings, especially the roofs. Despite looking contemporary at first glance, they follow a similar design to grass thatched huts.

Next we have a shot of the people receiving their King as he returns from a journey.

This Wakanda follows some African countries in that they are a people of different comunities or tribes with different ancestry,culture, customs, mannerisms or attire(or even languages) living together. Where I’m from we’re 47 tribes living in a country about the size of Colorado.

There is also the guy in purple in the middle ground of the photo. I’m guessing this is the King’s personal advisor or the royal witch doctor, or both(more on him below).

In this shot, it looks like T’challa is taking a stroll in some Wakandan town(I’m assuming because of the grafitti on the walls) with Lupita’s Nakia as the Dora Milaje(the royal guard) stand guard nearby. Note the building behind them is covered in art made up of colorful shapes. That is very similar to the architecture of the Ndebele located in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana.

We also have a shot of the king’s throne room:

The Dora Milaje stand guard(along with two guards of Mr. Green?). It looks like the elders, or representatives of every tribe, are coming together to have a super important meeting. Maybe a trial? In traditional African society the chief would make the decisions but he would often be surrounded by a counsel of wizened elders who would advise or caution him. In some communities people who broke the rules would be brought to the elders who would decide the right punishment for them. They would also resolve conflicts among the people, and preside over special occasions like naming ceremonies, weddings, funerals among others. In some, there would be no chief, only a council of elders. Some communities still have councils to this day.

However, it could also be representatives of the different tribes or clans of Wakanda, meeting to discuss an issue that affects or will affect them all. This is not uncommon. Some tribes would be divided into different clans, if something important needed to be discussed, each would send a representative. They had to be well spoken and knowledgable in the rules of the community.

Note the colours chosen for the achitecture of the throne room. Instead of portraying materials like marble, they have stuck to earthy tones and gold(which may have been used to symbolize royalty).

Here we have Nakia, Queen Ramonda and Everett Ross at what looks like a shrine high up in a mountain:

I brightened it up a bit.

At first I thought it was a shrine, but it looks more like the base of operations, or home, of one of our antagonists(more on him under attire). It would also explain why they have fur in their attire, because the live high up on the snowy mountain peak. Some mountains like Kilimanjaro,(that one in the opening scene of the Lion King) are so high that they have snow at their peaks, despite being in tropical(hot all year) places. See the gif below for the Lion King scene...

Just kidding here is the real one. And a photo of the real thing for comparison.

Moving on, in this shot we have some Wakandans performing what looks like a ritualistic task:

They could be making the herb that gives Black Panther his abilities, in preparation to ‘anoint’ the next Black Panther.

Many communities have had close relationships with nature. People could easily recognize which plants were food, medicine, poison, for toothbrushes or even toilet paper(yup). And in villages there was often a lineage(often that of the witchdoctor) specializing in herbalism. Today, industries have been built around providing herbal remedies. I assume that this herb is considered to be royal or even of divine nature.

I also think that this is happening right before or after the fight between Killmonger and T’Challa. I say this because the children of the community, who have been gathered and their faces painted in a distinct, almost ghostly style, similar to that of the face painting of the Surma of South Sudan and Ethiopia, are given the task of stirring something off screen. 

Only the children seem to be stirring away as the adults stand solemnly in the background. To me, it looks like this is an important, even sacred, ceremony for the community of Wakanda. If they were following traditional African culture and this was just casual cooking, it would be the women handling the food, with the children doing errands(and the men out on the farms or something).

Take note that our royal advisor/witchdoctor is present, possibly supervising.

Next we have a waterfall reminiscent of(but isn’t actually) the Victoria Falls in Zambia. If you go to the image here, you see that the Victoria falls look like a literal crack in the ground with water flowing into it, like the pic below.

There was also something similar in The Lion King.

And that’s it for now!

Thank you for making it this far in my long rambling rant. I like inspiring people to discuss so don’t feel shy to disagree or agree. If you love it, hate it, let me know!

I’m still working on Part 2 and 3, (ALAS I SAW THE LAST TRAILER TOO LATE. I’m posting this before I watch it) but I hope to finish the series before the actual movie. Once I have it ready I’ll link it here.

Thanks again! Here’s your potato.

Hobgoblin (AD&D)

Hobgoblins! Like goblins, only...hobbier? Or rather, they’re bigger and stronger and...more orange than regular goblins. And I hear they’re highly militarized in structure. But only the parts of the military that make them more evil. Let’s take a gander, then!

General:  “Hobgoblins are a fierce humanoid race that wage a perpetual war with the other humanoid races.” So, first sentence, and we already are embroiled in a war of racial violence. ...This doesn’t bode well. “They are intelligent, organized, and aggressive.” See, if it wasn’t for the previous sentence, or the adjective “aggressive”, they could simply be intelligent and organized. But no, to hell with that, they’re evil, because my fighter isn’t going to getting to Level 5 by not murdering people. “The typical hobgoblin is a burly humanoid standing 6 1/2′ tall. Their hairy hides range from dark reddish-brown to dark gray. Their faces show dark red or red-orange skin. Large males have blue or red noses. Hobgoblin eyes are either yellowish or dark brown while their teeth are yellow.” Wait, really? I’ve never seen it portrayed where their face is a significantly different color from the rest of their body, not to mention their noses. It makes them sound almost like baboons, or mandrills, or other weirdly colorful apes... And of course, they have terrible dental hygiene, because it’s not like anyone who wasn’t evil didn’t have terrible teeth, too. Heaven forbid a good person ever be unable to receive or afford dental care, right? “Their garments tend to be brightly colored, often bold, blood red. Any leather is always tinted black.” I’m struggling not to quote “Paint It Black”, here, guys. “Hobgoblin weaponry is kept polished and repaired.  Hobgoblins have their own language and often speak with orcs, goblins, and carnivorous apes. Roughly 20% of them can speak the common tongue of man.” ...Wait, the common tongue of man? Since when has humanity ever, ever had a common tongue? I mean, you get lingua francas from time to time, but even those are usually known more by scholars or merchants or the like, not all people, everywhere. Hell, the closest we’ve ever gotten to a “common language” is English, and that’s only due to the cultural influence of both Great Britain and the United States over the last two centuries, after the Industrial Revolution was well underway, and then even more so after the advent of television, and later the Internet. To me there’s a gaggle of weird and/or unfortunate implications by having a “common language” that is explicitly “of man” in a pseudo-medieval setting. Not to mention, if dwarves and elves have been around longer, as they so often are in D&D settings, why wouldn’t any lingua franca descend from Dwarvish, Elvish, or hell, even Draconic?? ...I’m sorry, I got off on a tangent, so allow me a very small one: “Carnivorous apes”?! Where are the carnivorous apes?! I haven’t seen any carnivorous apes in this book, much less ones that are sapient to the point of using language. Did I miss them?? I mean, they can’t be using an insulting term for orcs or goblins, because they’re mentioned by name alongside the “carnivorous apes”. Where are the apes?! Alright, sorry, moving on.

Combat: “Hobgoblins in a typical force will be equipped with polearms (30%), morningstars (20%), swords and bows (20%), spears (10%), swords and spears (10%), swords and morning stars (5%), or swords and whips (5%).” You know, with a diversity of arms like that, and if you read up on the necessary strategies to portray this in-game, you could make the hobgoblins masters of combined arms tactics. A squad of spearmen defending the archers, and such. I mean, I suppose a high enough level wizard could blow through such groups with fireballs and the like, but on the other hand, if it’s just the one wizard against an army of hobgoblins, an army has more men to spare than most wizards have spells for the day... “Hobgoblins fight equally well in bright light or virtual darkness, having infravision with a range of 60 feet. Hobgoblins hate elves and always attack them first.” I...well. ...That came right the hell out of nowhere, didn’t it? No context of any kind, before or after, this is the last sentence of this section. Just leave us on that note, eh? Is this just to remind DMs that if the party has an elf in it, any hobgoblin armies will just beeline towards them for murder? What’s the point?

Habitat/Society: “Hobgoblins are nightmarish mockeries of the humanoid races who have a military society organized in tribal bands,” Ah. Just starting off with a right hook of “evil AND ugly”, eh? Well. “Nightmarish mockeries”? Seriously? Just because they do have a military society, and are perhaps not as “classically beautiful” like the elves are, doesn’t make them “Nightmarish mockeries”. I mean, most dwarves aren’t exactly lookers, themselves, and their society is all about mining and killing whatever disrupts their mining, but that doesn’t make them “nightmarish mockeries” of anyone else who mines and is militaristic. Hell, “nightmarish mockeries” would make more sense if they were corruptions of a different race, like how Tolkiens orcs are thought to be corrupted elves, or if they were just manufactured by some evil entity, but as far as I can tell hobgoblins arose as naturally as any other race in Dungeons & Dragons, and yet you’re just going to call them “nightmarish mockeries of the humanoid races who have a military society”.  Right.  “Each tribe is intensely jealous of its status. Chance meetings with other tribes will result in verbal abuse (85%) or open fighting (15%).” This just gives me the hilarious mental image of some scribe shadowing a hobgoblin tribe and recording the reaction whenever they came across a different tribe over the course of a year or two. “It just gets into a metaphorical pissing match 85% of the time.” “That’s ludicrously precise.” “Hobgoblin tribes are found in almost any climate or subterranean realm. A typical tribe of hobgoblins will have between 20 and 200 (2d10 x 10) adult male warriors. In addition, for every 20 male hobgoblins there will be a leader (known as a sergeant) and two assistants. These have 9 hit points each but still fight as 1+1 Hit Die monsters. Groups numbering over 100 are led by a sub-chief who has 16 hit points and an Armor Class of 3. he great strength of a sub-chief gives it a +2 on its damage rolls and allows it to fight as a 3 Hit Die monster. If the hobgoblins are encountered in their lair, they will be led by a chief with AC 2, 22 hit points, and +3 points of damage per attack, who fights as a 4 Hit Die monster. The chief has 5-20 (5d4) sub-chiefs acting as bodyguards. Leaders and chiefs always carry two weapons.” ...This implies a much more complex and organized society than the monstrous manual will deign to elaborate on. And on a minor note, why didn’t they go all the way with the military ranking thing? Like, okay, so you got sergeants in charge of 20-man groups, why isn’t the “sub-chief” called a “captain” or a “colonel”, or something? Why isn’t the chief a “general” or “warlord”?  ...Don’t tell me it’s because by using “tribal” terminology it makes them seem more “primitive” and therefore less “cultured” and therefore because they don’t contribute much in the way of “culture” it’s “more okay” to exterminate them, because that would be nothing short of absolutely hideous. “Each tribe has a distinctive battle standard which is carried into combat to inspire the troops. If the tribal chief is leading the battle, he will carry the standard with him, otherwise it will be held by one of his sub-chiefs.” ...Well, uh, good? Is there some morale bonus for depriving them of it? If there is, you don’t expound upon it here. Is it in the DMG? “In addition to the warriors present in a hobgoblin tribe, there will be half again that many females and three times as many children as adult males.” Oh, my God. So literally for every two hobgoblins you’re killing, that’s three hobgoblin women and six hobgoblin children you’re leaving without a father/husband/brother/what-have-you? That’s awful. You keep doing this, Monstrous Manual, you keep telling us about the women and children, right after telling us that this species can be killed without any moral quandaries, and then don’t tell us what to do about the noncombatants that the party will leave behind, traumatized, if you play them as written. It is baffling. “Fully 80% of all known hobgoblin lairs are subterranean complexes. The remaining 20% are surface villages which are fortified with a ditch, fence, 2 gates, and 3-6 guard towers. Villages are often built upon ruined humanoid settlements and may incorporate defensive features already present in the ruins.” See, this shows at least as much knowledge of construction of fortification, or ingenuity in utilizing old construction, as the armies of Rome did in ancient times, but I hardly think you would call Rome ‘uncivilized’ or free to exterminate, eh? Despite the Roman Empire being at least as devoted to military expansion as these hobgoblins you’re trying to portray as irredeemably evil.  “Hobgoblin villages possess artillery in the form of 2 heavy catapults, 2 light catapults, and a ballista for each 50 warriors. Underground complexes may be guarded by 2-12 carnivorous apes (60%)” It is things like this that I like, because they do portray the military focus of their society, even though I know it’s to show DMs how to design these fortresses that their parties are inevitably going to infiltrate and burn to the ground.  ...Also, again with the carnivorous apes?! Did I overlook an entry in this book? Where are the carnivorous apes?? ......Oh, they’re under ‘Mammal’.  ...Huh. See, it’s just weird that, first of all, they can be spoken with in a manner they can understand, and also as far as I know there are no apes that are obligate carnivores? ...I mean, I suppose more than a few are insectivorous, but that’s a little different from red meat, you know? Though who knows, I could be wrong. Moving on! “They are highly adept at mining and can detect new construction, sloping passages, and shifting walls 40% of the time.” See, between the mining, the stout defenses and fortifications, and the racial hatred towards elves, explain to me in what way hobgoblins are different from most dwarven kingdoms.

Ecology: “Hobgoblins feel superior to goblins or orcs and may act as leaders for them.” ...In a “white man’s burden”, kind of way, or...? “In such cases, the ‘lesser races’ are used as battle fodder.” Ah. ...Though in practice, that’s usually how the “white man’s burden” mentality seems to play out, too... “Hobgoblin mercenaries may work for powerful or rich evil humanoids.” But only evil ones, because since when have good humanoids ever been powerful and/or rich? Like, this is especially odd, considering if you’re mercenaries, you work for the highest bidder, usually, right? So if the good guys pay you better, could you convert hobgoblin mercenaries to your way of thinking? Or, because they’re EEEEEEVIL, would they take the money and run?

Koalinth: “This marine species of hobgoblin is similar to the land dwelling variety in many respects. Koalinth dwell in shallow fresh or salt water and make their homes in caves. Their bodies have adapted to marine environments via the evolution of gills. Their webbed fingers and toes give them a movement rate of 12 when swimming. Their bodies are sleeker than those of hobgoblins and they have light green skin. They speak an unusual dialect of the hobgoblin tongue.” ...So does anyone else get vague flashbacks to the seadweller trolls from Homestuck? Because I’m getting vague flashbacks to the seadweller trolls from Homestuck. ...Also, hold up, they evolved gills? So evolution in Dungeons & Dragons is confirmed. So are hobgoblins some manufactured-to-be-evil race, or did they arise through natural evolution? Because if they evolved naturally there is no reason that I can think of that they would be absolutely bugfuck evil, to a man. “They tend to employ thrusting weapons like spears and pole arms. Koalinth are every bit as disagreeable as hobgoblins, preying on every thing they come across, especially aquatic humanoid and demi-human races. They detest aquatic elves.” Well that’s self-destructive as hell. If you destroy anything and everything that is not you, then anything that isn’t you is going to gang up on you and take you out. It’s societal suicide.  ...And again with the weird, specific elf hate. No expounding on that point at all, just “they hate THESE GUYS in particular”.  I mean, I suppose racism doesn’t really have any good explanation, but usually they try to think of some threadbare justification to sate their own warped consciences.

General: Well! I mean, if nothing else, you can’t say their society isn’t organized. ...But if the males are implicitly all warriors, does that leave the women to farm and feed these armies? Because I mean, hey, an army can’t fight on an empty stomach, right? At least, not very well. And raiding and pillaging neighboring cities only works for so long, once their scouts tail you back to the lair and call down a siege that you can only outlast if you actually do have farms to feed off of. Like maybe I kind of harp on this, but a society needs an infrastructure to realistically survive. It can only mooch off of others for so long. Like, I suppose if they get big enough to actually conquer a human kingdom, they could use their new vassals to farm for them, but the entry as written implies hobgoblin settlements are usually individual fortresses with relatively small garrisons.  Also, the children! What are you going to do with the hundreds of children?! You could raise them as your own, but then that almost plays into all sorts of “white savior”/”white man’s burden” narratives, and... It’s all just a little frustrating. Like, okay, yeah, the whole “they are military-based, and are evil” isn’t that much better than “all they do is banditry. Banditry all the time, 24/7, 365 days a year, they’re evil”, but it at least is more easily made into an actual workable culture that can realistically be portrayed in a setting? Like history is no stranger to military dictatorships. You can play up the Lawful bit of their Lawful Evil alignment, make them be very heavy on the hierarchy of the chain of command, give them a very zealous military police, a court martial, all that. Like, if their theme is “military”, play it to the hilt, I’d say.  And they still needn’t be evil, even at that point. They could just be an overly zealous, overly paranoid obsessed with making sure their people are not conquered. Hell, make ‘em Sparta. A proud military city-state that doesn’t take no guff from outsiders. Until they bite off more than they can chew, are conquered by a much larger outside empire, and are quickly rendered irrelevant for the rest of time, if you’re going to go all-out with the analogy, but still. I guess what I’m saying is, and really this applies to every entry on this blog, is that you gotta work for it. Maybe they’re an isolationist city-state, maybe they’re an expansionist empire, maybe you drop the militaristic culture entirely and make them peaceable agrarians, just take the “monster” given to you and give them just a modicum of depth. Or at least, deeper than what the Monstrous Manual offers. Shouldn’t be hard. :P

This was an essay please read.

We The People of these here United States, live in a country that believes in black privilege and thinks white privilege is a joke. The level of racism throughout today’s society is always compared to the racism back in the days of segregation. Is that not the problem? Comparing today to yesterday, in today’s society will never let America move on from the detrimental past it has created for African Americans. The hate groups are back and bigger, the crimes are raging high, and the marches for colored people are still happening. Racial segregation is still prevalent in today’s society because the rise of a white christian nation is only beginning. Ku Klux Klan The restoration of a White Christian nation founded on only God’s work has been the goal of the Ku Klux Klan for a good while. The Ku Klux Klan is publically known for being the most hate-filled racist group against African Americans. But, according to the loyal white knights, they do not hate any group of people. However, they hate things that certain groups do to affect their race and nation. The Klan has a list of things they hate which are drugs, homosexuality, abortion, and race-mixing. The Ku Klux Klan only hates these things because they go against God’s law, and they destroy white nations all together. The Ku Klux Klan is a group of people that have nothing wrong with black people; they just want to live in a white nation. The Ku Klux Klan is supporting segregation throughout America. Caucasian people do not like walking the grounds of America with African Americans. The Ku Klux Klan is simple, they have nothing against people of color, they just do not want anything to do with them in the same nation, as God intended. It is obvious that whenever black people participate in modern day society, they destroy it all together. The Ku Klux Klan is not who we think they are. The people who profile the Ku Klux Klan as hateful, are their enemies. Everyone has enemies, and everyone profiles. The Ku Klux Klan is a group of people that recognize the problems that the caucasian race is facing at the moment. Ku Klux Klan members come together as a family, a brotherhood to most, whose main goal is to push Christianity upon the men, women and children raised in that family. Together they stand as strong Christian families only influencing their kids to grow up hating the communists that are ruining this country. In a society that teaches children all about how black people are dirty and awful and should still be picking cotton in their backyards. Our future generation is going to need some serious help. People that actually believe and follow this group need serious help. The leader of this group is called a Grand Wizard. Black Lives Matter Movement Alicia Garcia is one of the three who created the Black Lives Matter Movement as a call to action for black people after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was post-humously placed on trial for his own murder and the killer, George Zimmerman, was not held accountable for the crime he committed. The creation was a response to the anti-Black racism that permeates our society and also, unfortunately, their movements (Garcia 2014). The movement is mocked, and compared to the Ku Klux Klan only because it is a group supporting one color. The difference between the Black Lives Matter movement and the Ku Klux Klan is that the movement does not want a one colored nation. Black Lives Matter is a strong statement that most of society sees as borderline racism. The statement is not racist, it is supporting the fallen lives of black people in America that have lost their life in justicless situations. When people say “Black lives matter,” they do not mean it in a Klan way. Their intent is to support situations at hand in America, and come together to redefine justice. The differences between the two groups is it’s connotation. Black lives matter movement, soon awoke a different movement, “All Lives Matter” because of it’s borderline racial content that America profiled together for the group. The point of Black Lives Matter is not to hate on all of the other colors of America. The point is to resurface the neglect and dehumanization that has created the discriminatory nation. But, the Ku Klux Klan does not have to change their name, and they have been around since 1865-present. Black Lives Matter can be viewed in two obvious ways throughout society. From the inside, the movement is a powerful and family-oriented pact that wants nothing but justice for their race. According to “A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement,” they have hosted national conference calls bringing together people across the country, working to end the various forms of injustice and focusing on the hard work for the liberation of black people. Together they created space for the celebration and humanization of black lives (Garcia, 2014). The other way you can view this movement is from the outside. The problems created by the outside is racism. Black lives matter is a group supporting their race, defending their family, and working towards a better society for their children. The main difference between the Ku Klux Klan and Black Lives Matter, without the hateful discrimination, is that anyone can support Black Lives Matter. The Ku Klux Klan requires you to be white. They require a white society, or they cannot function. Many people throughout society compare the two and group them as two racial groups fighting for one color. What people do not understand about Black Lives Matter is that it is an all race group of people who understand the problem at hand. Black Lives is like breast cancer. Breast cancer is the cancer of the moment. So many women and sometimes men are being affected by this cancer, so they have more awareness programs compared to the groups supporting brain cancer or thyroid cancer for example. They focus on the problem that is affecting the most people. The point is, Black Lives Matter is a group of people focusing on the issue at hand. Most black people live scared, every single day, as they are being killed just for the color of their skin because black looks suspicious. A lot of people in America see black as a weapon and they are going to attack at any moment. Cops automatically assume drugs, theft or suspiciousness the second they see the color of skin. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 18% of black drivers were searched for “probable cause” while the caucasians are at an everlasting 2%. Black people feel the difference in that percentage, every time they get pulled over. Not only do cops and every day people feel the need to dehumanize black people, the Ku Klux Klan influences it. What’s the difference between profiling through law, and profiling with nooses. Either way black men and women die. That is the problem at hand, it is to push the blacks out by ridding them to the life of “borderline” racism. Effects Since America came up with the bright idea of integration, black americans are killed at 12 times the rate of other developing countries (Davey,1998). Since then, the rise of many racial movements have resurrected. Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, The Black Panthers, and White Nationalists. All of these groups have resurfaced into the 21st century and have become an issue in today’s society. Recently at The Statehouse of South Carolina, there was a rally held for the removal of the confederate flag, which is understandable because most people use it to legally portray their racism. But hundreds of Ku Klux Klan rioters showed up, along with members from the Black Panther association group, and they screamed racist things in front of kids, moms, grandparents, anybody who was around with ears could hear the racist things being shouted in this very age in time. The effects of racial discrimination can be perceived from a psychological point of view. Psychologists are aware of the pernicious effects of discrimination, and multiple studies have explained the relations between self-reports of discriminatory experiences such as distress, anxiety and depression. The most common side effect caused by discrimination is anger (Gibbons,2010). So many teens and young adults are opened up to this profiling society that they are supposed to call their safe land… “Land of the Free,” but when they spend most of their lives in anger, that anger will shine through everything they do. For example, when the Ku Klux Klan said that black people screw up society in every way possible, if black people were not dehumanized, they would not have so much anger against this country. The above side effects can result in so many different possible outcomes it is absurd. The main outcome with the most relations to the factors is risky behavior. To be more direct, it is associated with substance abuse. Studies have proved patterns throughout black people who report being discriminated compared to their report that they use tobacco, alcohol, and more likely to use marijuana or crack in their lives (Gibbons, 2010). Black people are profiled as ignorant gang banging, drunks, and substance users. I believe that the “ignorance” you see is triggered by everyone that has wronged them. Caucasian people don’t understand racism because they have never felt it. The term “self-segregation” came up into a conversation, and it blew my mind. Caucasian people have come to believe that black people are butt-hurt because of slavery many years ago. It’s not just the slavery, we weren’t the people picking cotton, but our ancestors were. You ever think that black folks want to segregate themselves because of all the cruelty happening. Racism is profiled as black people angry because of the cotton picking days. White people see no racism. They don’t know what it sounds, looks, smells and they especially don’t know what it feels like. It’s the worst feeling you could possibly imagine. Think of hell on Earth. Caucasian folks don’t understand that it was their ancestors enslaving our ancestors. So now it’s just really awkward because white people think we’re out to get them because of what happened. And at this point, some black people might be because you’re treating them no different.. Racism is a fluent thing in today’s society, it’s just under the table. For example, how many people do you know that have been declined a job? A lot. But peep this scenario, a cleaned up black and white man walk into a lobby for an interview, before the interview even starts the profile of each man is being registered into the one conducting the interview. For the white male it’s probably something like this, “He’s cleaned up, well groomed, looks like a nice family man.. I wonder what church he goes to. HE’S HIRED” not exactly how it goes because I’m not a white male profiler. Compare it to the profile of the first minute a black person walks into anywhere.. “Hmm he looks mean, I wonder what part of chicago he’s from, you think he’s in a gang? Check his neck.. His eyes look angry even though he’s smiling, I wonder if he’s going to rob me… his teeth are straight but he doesn’t look like he can afford anything else...so he obviously needs this job… when i shake his hand should i call him ‘brotha’.. No that’s too much.. I’ll settle with ‘bro’... what type of handshake should i prepare myself for… he has a ring on his finger, but i bet he isn’t loyal.. How can i trust him?” Plus an abundance of other stereotypes. To society, black people do not seem to be very motivated, but who would be motivated in a society in which every day you get shot down, literally, because the profilers do not want them to be apart of today’s society. People feel this way about people of color, and they do not understand that those people see it in everything they do. When they are communicating with someone that does not see eye to eye, or in this case, color to color, it is not that hard to read. But according to caucasian people black people are not very good at that either. Conclusion The rise of the never ending racism train left station back in 1964 when the Civil Rights Act was passed. In said act, segregation was supposed to be outlawed in businesses. That is all that the government wanted to do for people of color. They wanted them to start working for them. The fact that they think that taking away the “colored” signs above water fountains and giving people jobs was the solution to the inequality, defines the problem that still exists today. The problem back then and the problem today are the exact same. Integration started in 1954. They mixed everyone together in businesses, schools, busses.. making public places a living hell for people of color to make it look like they did everything they could to help people of color. Martin Luther King’s famous speech “I have a Dream” took place in 1963. THE YEAR IS 2017 PEOPLE. That’s only 54 YEARS, since that brave man spoke of this dream. This amazing dream in every colored person’s heart. The dream that is still not true. Half a century goes by and we still can’t stop this bullshit. 54 years ago kids were being integrated in schools and going home to their most likely racist family, who would provoke them to call them the N word, and spit on them, and treat them like straight up animals. Are they ashamed? Because now people act like those kids that were in those first integrated classes, aren’t the parents, grandparents, aunts uncles, of kids that are in my class today. TODAY. It’s either the family Klan robe was passed on or it was forgotten about, but the school i attend at the moment (no names) seems to have every wrong messed up piece of this essay streaming through their veins. And what can i do about it? What can I do about the N word being tossed around like a joke? Fight? Nope.. i’ll get kicked out of school and i won’t be able to graduate.. And in america that’s an automatic “you want fries with that.” I as a half black, half caucasian, fully understand my rights as a citizen of America? Am i offered equal rights? HELL NO. Because when there is trouble, people are almost trained to sniff out the black folks. I’M NOT EVEN FULLY BLACK. But it doesn't matter. I’m not ashamed of who i am. I have friends of every color. I’m 18 years old, about to graduate high school in 20 something days and I am very terrified for the future. Black people need to wake up. Everybody. Stop living the lives THEY want you to live. The year is 2017, and the uprising has only begun. Hate groups are spread across America. People of both colors (black and white) are being killed for no reason. Justice is not fair on both ends of the bus, but society only sees it together as one close minded problem. Black people are the modern day monsters in today’s society. No matter what they do, they will be discriminated, mocked, and never treated as an equal. They created a movement, to support the fallen and to prevent the soon to fall black lives across america, only to be ignored and compared in equivalence to the Ku Klux Klan. In conclusion, racial segregation is everywhere. It is in the streets. It is taught at home. It is in the water of America. It is impossible to get new water, and it is impossible to end racism.