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yanaequa · 2 years

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Thanks for replying to me re: disability rights in SK. I learned a lot. I have a follow-up question: is it really true that there aren't therapists or doctors in SK who specialize in autism? I honestly can't believe there isn't even one (1) that can help YW. I'd love for YW to go to therapy in the 2nd season: on her own terms, to understand and help herself but also, towards gaining more independence.

There... is, there is. HOWEVER, they are not many in number, and I am not entirely sure if those would be actually helpful to autistics, especially for grown-up ones. Therapy for autistic individual are mostly focused on children, and I believe the it is more likely designed to make autistic people to be fit to social norm rather than helping the struggles of them. ABA is considered as something super innovative way of treating autistics. (I ofc firmly disagree with such notion. ABA sucks. Period.)

It sounds terrifying, but korean autistics are desperate for them. Our pain of not being able to be seen at all is greater than the pain of not being accepted and validated. At least, if I learn to speak their language, and speak in a way they understand, then they will be able to see SOME of me, at least. For that, we would try everything we could; we would be WILLING to take ABA, just to connect & communicate with others. We are THAT desperate. Think of it as drinking super dirty water that would definitely make one sick because that is literally ONLY drinkable liquid around.

Still though, I remember going for the therapy when I was young. Back in that day, autism being spectrum was yet to be perceived. It was a group therapy with other "Asperger's Syndrome" friends. (I was young and that was name of the diagnosis at that time!) We talked and communicated and did some quiz-like activity altogether including doctors and parents. Problem was: there were only four of us, and all the kids were boys, while I being the only girl. My mom was heard that is is less prevalent among girls. Now I know that autism is spectrum, I can confidently say that autistic women are less "visible". Anyways, my action & behavior was WAY different than others in there. I remember getting scared because one friend got agitated that his answer is different (I did the expression of "feeling sorry"; his answer was "feeling too bad") and started shouting. My mom and I stopped going to the therapy after a while, because she thought I was capable of being normal rather than belonging to such side. I agreed that what is being offered in therapy is not needed for me.

What my mom thought, in fact, is true. Unlike other autistics I met, I was CAPABLE of learning language that is prevalent in society. Because she thought that I was capable, I was able to study abroad. She said she wouldn't let me go if she thought I was autistic, and she still thinks that I am not, although she agrees that I am different from others.

Oh, the irony of NOT being thought as autistic actually being treated better than being perceived as autistic, because the stereotype of it is immensely flat and wrong on so many levels! The irony of the idea "disability is burden" being a PREMISE that nobody is even thinking of challenging it! One day, I commented in the online post, and explicitly said that "please AVOID commenting that the disability is burden" then people just casually replied that "I don't think disabled people is burden but isn't disability tho?" I was like HEY I DIDN'T EVEN INVALIDATE YOUR THOUGHTS AND EXPLICITLY ASKED TO DON'T WRITE IT IN SUCH WAY AND YOU JUST CASUALLY IGNORE IT BY WORDPLAYING? I DIDN'T EVEN DEMAND IT! I don't want to rant, but that's how the Korean society is; one consists of RIGID social norms that makes nobody (including NTs) happy.

So when I watched EAW and saw Young-Woo expressing herself with her own language, and people trying to understand and learn what her language would actually mean, (like the scene in ep.3 where Young-Woo's dad speak quoting a law so she would understand to make her stop crying), it really felt like something else. She looked like the parallel universe version of me, where my own language is accepted as valid ones. Because I didn't. My mom let me know how my language could be perceived by others (this thing was actually helpful for figuring out my own effective ways of communication!), then rather proposed express in a way I do not offend others. I now mask well, really well; thanks to my mother’s effort. In fact, I forgot how to express in my own language. I used to have something like the whale of WYW, but It’s lost and gone forever that I can’t even replicate it even if I wanted to. So lost and gone that I can’t really relate myself to other fellow autistics.

At least I thought so, until I started watching EAW.

After watching the show, I asked my friend who have been known me for long time if she sees me in WYW. She said I pretty much acted like her back then, so I asked if I had something like WYW’s whale. She told me that I was so fond of stars in night sky, that I kept telling her about constellations and stars.

I still like them. I LOVE making analogies of stars and nights to our life. I love the mythologies & stories related to constellations. I WANT to be the one like star in the night, and I really act like that.

Maybe it was not that lost after all.

I’ll probably write about stars and nights in another article.

#extraordinary attorney woo #actually autistic #actuallyautistic #kdrama #did I sidetrack #autism therapy #south korea #disability rights

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jcmarchi · 5 months

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Why Were There So Many Throwback RPGs and Remakes In 2023?

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/why-were-there-so-many-throwback-rpgs-and-remakes-in-2023/

Why Were There So Many Throwback RPGs and Remakes In 2023?

The quality of video game releases in 2023 has been discussed in detail by many, and it will absolutely go down as one of the best years the medium has experienced, strictly in terms of the excellent games that were released. The larger industry and its members will always look back on 2023 with justified frustration.

Patterns in any year are always a given. Trends inspire entire genres to be prevalent, and we also have events like 2009, where there were two high-profile open-world games about super-powered humans: Infamous and Prototype. This year will certainly be remembered for games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Baldur’s Gate 3, among others, but I can’t help but notice that RPGs citing a specific era of the genre were also, inexplicably, hugely popular.

Earlier this year, we featured Sea of Stars on the cover of Game Informer magazine. Talking to the team at Sabotage about its inspirations, it specifically cited the classic Super Nintendo game, Super Mario RPG. And when I played Sea of Stars a few months later, I could clearly see how the developer pulled from that game. One of the reasons Sea of Stars exists is because games like it are rare today, which makes it all the more surprising that Nintendo would announce a full remake of the game shortly after. What are the odds?

And then, within weeks, Square Enix saw it fit to announce and release an excellent remake of the beloved 1998 Star Ocean sequel, Second Story. That game fits right alongside Sea of Stars and Super Mario RPG as an RPG of a specific era – one interested in telling a linear story without overcomplicating its primary mechanics.

Before all of these games, however, we had Octopath Traveler II, a well-liked sequel to a game that may have served as a strong indicator to people and publishers with money that, “Hey – we miss these kinds of games. We want our characters and environments to look like a bundle of squares while going on an adventure. In fact, maybe it is the game to point to that started this whole thing.

It was admittedly less successful than the others mentioned here, but even WrestleQuest from earlier this year was another game playing in the throwback RPG medium. Late 2022 also saw the release of Chained Echoes. We also have the Dragon Quest III HD-2D remake coming at some point in the future.

So why is all this happening now? Why has this sub-genre of RPGs – inspired by the 16 and early 32-bit – become so popular all of a sudden? Or was it always there, and I just wasn’t paying attention?

I have a few ideas to put forward with little basis in scientific research. Video games, even compared to other entertainment mediums, are much more focused on nostalgia. Reliving the TV shows and movies you watched or books you read as a child simply isn’t as strong as the emotions related to existing within an interactive world. I didn’t just passively play Super Mario RPG when I was young – I lived in its universe. And RPGs are particularly good at that. They encourage players to exist within them and take them at a slower pace. The age we are now (i.e. old) has now placed us in a position where the experiences we are looking to remember are less the action-packed platformer challenges of our youth and more the relaxed vacations. We’re too old for the exciting amusement park of memory. Those rides make me nauseated at this age. But the old beach house where I just hung around and swam when the mood hit me? That sounds great. I want to play that video game, and apparently, it’s an old RPG where reaction time isn’t as important as making sure you have the right sword equipped.

It’s either that, or they are just selling really well, and people are buying them. I accept either explanation, both, or neither. Whatever gets me an HD-2D remake of Chrono Trigger the fastest.

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shepherds-of-haven · 3 years

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Hi Lena 💙 once again on my bullshit thinking/writing/pondering about baby stuff, so naturally I have a culture/worldbuilding question: are there traditions/celebrations/superstitions when it comes to pregnancy or the arrival of a child? Anything specific to any culture/region/ancestry?

Hi kingdom, thanks for your question! 👀

Babies are very important and revered in pretty much all cultures, and there is also a lot of focus on names and naming the baby as soon as it’s born!

To get into it in more detail, there’s this superstition prevalent among most cultures (except the Norms) that a baby only achieves personhood once it has a name (hence why “Birthdays” are slightly different from “Namedays” though they almost always fall on the same day and are used interchangeably anyway): in this belief system, there’s something about the act of naming that gives the baby a nature and identity, and the name is tied up into its spirit.

(There are interconnected names, one being more temporary and practical and superficial, the birthname--this is not a permanent descriptor for the baby and can be changed, forgotten, etc. over time with no consequences; and the other, their True Name, is more metaphysical/quantum/spiritual, serving as a Platonic blueprint and description of everything about a person, from their internal organs to their very soul. Access to this True Name gives a person power over the named being; this is how Mages summon demons and spirits and control them, by first learning their True Name and using it in their magic. The birthname/physical name has no sway over a person because it’s like a surface reflection, ripples on a pond or the small tip of an immense underwater iceberg that can be changed without altering the iceberg’s, or pond’s, nature. However, one name cannot exist without the other.)

Delaying giving the baby a name (and therefore a True Name) risks a demon or spirit stealing that name for nefarious purposes. Some people even believe that if an Endarkened gets ahold of your True Name before it’s given/attached to you, the demon can then use it to impersonate you perfectly, replace you with itself, or even control you and hold you in thrall from a young age!

Thus, a lot of emphasis around a baby’s birth is placed on naming it as well; the naming is often seen as the baby’s official welcoming into the world. So, with that context:

Elves: the Elves go NUTS over celebrations for babies, because among their people, babies are quite rare and only happen every few decades, if then. Huge festival-like celebrations are thrown upon the baby’s safe arrival (imagine giving birth and looking outside to find that all your neighbors, family, and friends are throwing a huge block party), and a special amulet engraved with the baby’s planned name is prepared; it is vital that this amulet is placed on the baby’s chest/in their blankets as quickly as possible after the birth, as doing so will immediately protect them from having their names and souls stolen away by demons, fairies, or spirits. The most superstitious parents hang this amulet over the baby’s crib as a protective talisman for the first year. Songs detailing the baby’s lineage and deeds of their parents and family are sung well into the baby’s first night. Also, some clans make a big deal about specific family members (not the parents, but grandparents, godparents, etc. if applicable) helping to give the baby its first bath, to symbolize that the parents are not alone in raising the child and that the community is there to help them.

Mages: Mages will generally have a witness present either during the birth or directly after the birth to witness the baby’s official naming and crossing over from “little shapeless spirit” to personhood. The witness is generally going to be the godparent or emergency guardian of the child, or is otherwise a close family member or friend of the parents, and their position is one of distinct honor (like standing as Best Man/Maid of Honor at their wedding). Some regions will paint the baby’s name on their right foot to ensure additional protection from demons; birthmarks are also celebrated because demon changelings/impersonations usually don’t have them (lol). Typically, friends and family come to visit one-by-one and are generally expected to bring one dried flower symbolizing their hopes or feelings about the newborn; these flowers are collected, arranged into a bouquet, and hung as a protective charm in the baby’s nursery until they’re older. Generally the bouquet is kept as a souvenir of the birth for the rest of their life, too!

Ket: In Ket culture, it’s thought that the mom’s food cravings are indicative of either the baby’s gender or even its relative strength and arma. If Mom is eating a ton during her pregnancy, baby is going to come out big and strong and with a chockful of arma; if she doesn’t have much of an appetite or is sick, baby may be physically frail. It’s taboo to try to influence the pregnancy (no one is forcing mom to eat in an effort to make their baby stronger, it just is what it is), but doctors and midwives do take note of her food intake for these purposes, regardless. Also, a big deal is made out of what time of day baby is born; nighttime babies are almost certainly destined to be Khehi warriors, while daytime babies are most likely going to be civilians or Sen leaders. Baby showers aren’t really a thing--traditionally, the parents and baby are expected to be left in privacy for at least three days--but presents are delivered and left on doorsteps and porches along with notes of well-wishing! People who come to visit the baby afterwards can’t bring any “bad energy” with them, either; if they’re fresh off the battlefield, they’re expected to do cleansing rituals, and people who are in debt, frequently sick, have dirty homes, or etc. are expected to get their act together before they can visit the baby. Some parents don’t care, and others can be very protective about this!

Hunters: before the baby is born, many super-traditional Hunters in the Reach will clear the windowsills of the planned nurseries and prepare them specially to tempt birds into creating nests and homes there. Birds are seen as messengers of Narthax, especially golden eagles, and it’s thought that having them watch over your baby will mean your baby is protected by Narthax for life. People who succeed in building these little ecosystems will even rent out their bird-nested nurseries to other hopeful parents (after their own babies are grown, of course) who want the same blessing for their children! Also, totems are carved (usually out of wood or stone) by friends and family and placed on a shelf in the baby’s room to protect them. In the Reach, a special bell is rung to announce the baby’s safe birth to the community!

Norms: Norms don’t really care about the name thing, so none of that figures into their birthing ceremonies. Norm moms are given a special ceremonial drink after birth, consisting of milk, sugar/honey, cinnamon, and cloves. For the birth of their first child, they’re also not allowed to do any household duties like cooking or cleaning for the first month, and are generally assisted by other relatives and family members while the parents are preoccupied with caring for their baby. (Ironically, this practice does not apply after your first birth, lol.) Directly after the birth, they also take a perfumed bath with flower petals (sometimes even bathing in milk) to aid their healthy recovery. Also, many with long enough hair wear it in a special crown-braid that new mothers wear for the first few months so neighbors and people in the community will know to come congratulate them or help them out!

#Shepherds of Haven #baby #babies #childbirth #birth #pregnancy #parents #parenthood #worldbuilding #races #kingdom-dance

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16woodsequ · 3 years

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Hi I'm back for our weekly ask (I have decided it's our new tradition)

Just wondering do you have any headcannons which are about Steve but not from Steve. Like something Clint or wanda have noticed about him. Or something vision or Tony think about him etc. Any character any cannon, as long as about Steve.

Hope that makes sense, is a nightmare trying to phrase what I'm asking lol

Oooh, I like this tradition! (Also, I’m pretty sure this was the ask that prompted my dream the other day, since it was so interesting I went to bed thinking about it.)

Alright, interesting thing with this question, is Steve is a hard person to get to know. He puts up a front most of the time, so for any of these headcanons, I think they would only happen if the Avengers lived around Steve for a while, so either an AU where they live together, or during the time when Steve is searching for Bucky with Sam, or when Team Cap is on the run together.

That being said, here are a few ideas:

Tony and press conferences

Now, starting off, I think Steve is very practiced at handling press conferences. He would have experience doing it as Captain America during the war. So I think he can generally get through the tediousness of it just as well as Tony can (who would also have a lot of practice with this sort of thing). That being said, I think he would have his limits.

Since Tony is practiced in portraying an image to the press, I think he might grow to recognise Steve doing the same thing, and I think he might learn to pick up the clues for when Steve is done up to here with reports and insensitive questions. I think the signs would be subtle—a narrowing of the eyes here, a pointed remark there, a clenching of the fists here...

And Tony knows it is about time to wrap up the press conference and pull Steve away to somewhere quiet.

Avengers and a super soldier

In general, I think the people around Steve forget just how enhanced he is. Even among the Howling Commandos, I think it would be easy to remember some basic things about Steve’s enhancements; he is strong, he can fight really well, he has good stamina... that sort of thing.

But I think is would be easy to think of Steve as, just a really athletic, strong guy, so I can totally see the Avengers and the Commandos both just being a little shook every once an a while when Steve does something the reminds them just how enhanced he is.

Steve: *scales a 6 story building with out breaking a sweat*

Clint: Um.

Steve: *sitting dead still, eyes wide as he listens in on an enemy encampment a mile away*

Gabe, next to him: Uh.

Wanda

I hadn’t thought a lot about Steve and Wanda, but once I did, I realised that the two of them have a lot in common. Wanda lost Pietro, and Steve lost Bucky. Both Wanda and Steve volunteered for body altering science experiments, and both of them are young. Both of them have lived through war-like conditions, and, after aou, Wanda is all alone in a new country, much like Steve was when he first woke up.

So anyways, I think Steve and Wanda could potentially grow very close. Especially if Wanda accidentally sees something like his nightmares. I think the Avengers and her would have an understanding that she wouldn’t see into their minds purposely, but if it were to happen accidentally, or if Steve’s emotions were to be particularly “loud”, I can see Wanda having an easier time seeing past the Captain Rogers part of Steve than other people would.

Steve and friends

I would like to think that anyone who spends enough time around Steve would eventually be able to pick up on his subtle red flags. I don’t think Steve would ever be very obvious with his problems—unless he were in the middle of a breakdown—but I can see Sam or Natasha being able to tell bad nights from good night by the set of Steve’s shoulders, or how long he spends zoned out over his coffee.

I can see Sam and Nat having a completely silent method of communication for ‘scale of 1-10, how is he?’ and ‘what is the plan?’, sort of thing. (And of course, Steve would do the same sort of thing for either of them, but this is mainly about what others notice about Steve right now.)

Bucky

This is for Commandos-era Bucky, but I was reading a post about subtle signs someone you know is having a chronic pain flare up, and I began thinking about that with Steve and Bucky.

What if, after the serum, Bucky notices that Steve moves differently than he did before? And at first, he thinks it is just new confidence, or a Captain America sort of thing, but after a while he realises it is something different. Steve is moving without pain.

He is so used to picking up on the subtle signs of Steve bracing himself to stand, or moving carefully, or being short of breath for reasons other than asthma. But, by the time Steve finds Bucky, he has been in his new body long enough that he is starting to shed those habits.

I imagine Bucky probably wouldn’t have grasped Steve’s chronic pain quite so well as the moment he realised just how prevalent is was—because he recognises now when it isn’t there.

I hope that is what you had in mind! Let me know what you think!

Headcanon masterpost

#asks #steve rogers #avengers #headcanons #headcanon #marvel #mcu #long post #bucky barnes

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combat-wombatus · 3 years

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Anti-Asian Racism (Pt. 2)

so if you haven’t read my (long) post about historical anti-asian racism, you can find it here. i tried my best to put things in chronological order, so you might want to read that before you read this one!

i got really tired writing that one bc it was super long and i only covered up to like...the 1920s?? and so here’s a second part bc i couldn’t fit it all into one post oopsies

WARNING: this contains some graphic descriptions of violence. i don’t want to accidentally trigger anyone, so please read at your own discretion. however, i do feel that it is important to be educated on the parts of history that schools often overlook, so if you can handle this, please read it.

the watsonville riots—january 1930

as US nationals, filipinos had the legal right to work in the US, and employers exploited these workers relentlessly as they assumed the filipinos were unfamiliar with their rights. they were paid the lowest wages among all ethnic laborers. the immigration acts of 1917 and 1924 allowed filipinos to answer the growing demand for labor in the US, and many young filipino men migrated to the US. due to gender bias in immigration & hiring, filipino men courted women outside of their own ethnic community, contributing to mounting racial tensions. white men decried the takeover of jobs and women by filipinos and resorted to vigilantism to deal with the “third Asiatic invasion”, and filipino laborers in public risked being attacked by white men who felt threatened by them. eventually, on january 19, this culminated in 500 white men gathering outside of a filipino dance club—owned by a filipino man—with clubs and weapons intending to take the white women who lived there out and burn the place down. they were turned away by security guards and the armed owners, but returned later to beat dozens of filipino farmworkers. they dragged filipinos from their homes and beat them, threw them off the pajaro river bridge, attacked them at ranches—and at a labor camp, twenty-two filipinos were dragged out and almost beaten to death. the mob fired shots into filipino homes, killing 22-year-old fermin tobera: no one was ever charged for his murder. in stockton, a filipino club was blown up—the blast was blamed on the filipinos themselves.

many filipinos fled the country. filipino immigration plummeted. anti-filipino violence continued in california in the months after the violence ended.

japanese internment camps—1942–1945

established during ww2 by FDR through executive order 9066. shortly after the bombing of pearl harbor, FDR signed the executive order, supposedly to prevent espionage. military zones were created in california, washington, and oregon—states with a large population of japanese americans—and the executive order commanded the relocation of americans of japanese ancestry. it affected the lives of around 117,000 people—the majority of whom were american citizens. canada soon followed, relocating 21,000 of its japanese residents from its west coast. mexico did the same, and eventually 2,264 more people of japanese descent were removed from peru, brazil, and argentina to the camps in the united states.

even before the camps, discrimination ran rampant. just hours after pearl harbor, the FBI rounded up 1,291 japanese community & religious leaders, arresting them without evidence and freezing their assets. a month later, they were transferred to facilities in montana, new mexico, and north dakota, many of them unable to inform their families. most remained incarcerated for the duration of the war. the FBI searched the private homes of thousands of japanese residents, seizing “contraband” (looting).

1/3 of hawaii’s population was of japanese descent. some politicians called for their mass incarceration. 1,500 people were removed from hawaii and sent to camps on the US mainland. japanese-owned fishing boats were impounded.

lieutenant general john dewitt prepared a report filled with proven lies—such as examples of “sabotage” (cattle knocking down power lines)—and suggested the creation of military zones and japanese internment camps. his original plan included italians and germans (because we were at war with them too!) but the idea of rounding-up americans of EUROPEAN descent was not as popular.

california’s state attorney general and governor declared that all japanese should be removed at congressional hearings in february 1942. general francis biddle pleaded with the president that mass evacuation of citizens was not required, pushing for smaller, more targeted security measures. FDR didn’t listen, and signed the order anyways.

around 15,000 japanese americans willingly moved out of prohibited areas. inland states were not keen for new japanese residents, and they were met with racist resistance. ten state governors voiced opposition, fearing the japanese would “never leave”, and demanded they be incarcerated if the states were forced to accept them. eventually, a civilian organization called the “war relocation authority” was set up to administer the plan, but milton eisenhower (from the department of agriculture) resigned his leadership in protest over what he characterized as incarcerating innocent civilians.

no one really cared back then, but we appreciate the sentiment. however, this led to a stricter, military-led incentive to incarcerate the japanese civilians, so you didn’t really win, mr. eisenhower.

army-directed evacuations followed, and people had six days notice to dispose of their belongings other than what they could carry. anyone who was at least 1/16th japanese was interned, including 17,000 children under 10, as well as several thousand elderly and handicapped.

these camps were located in remote areas, the buildings not meant for human habitation—they were reconfigured horse stalls or cow sheds. food shortages and poor sanitation conditions were common. each center was its own town, with schools, post offices, work facilities, and farms—all surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers.

in new mexico, internees were delivered by trains and marched two miles, at night, to reach the camp. anyone who tried to escape was promptly shot and killed, no matter their age.

when riots broke out over the insufficient rations and overcrowding, the police tear-gassed crowds and even killed a japanese-american citizen. three people were shot and killed for “going too close to the perimeter”.

in 1942, fred korematsu was arrested for refusing to relocate to an internment camp. his case made it all the way to the supreme court, where he argued that the executive order violated the fifth amendment. the supreme court ruled against him.

the camps were finally closed in 1945, after mitsuye endo fought her way to the supreme court once again. the government initially offered to free her, but endo refused—she wanted her case to address all of the internment camps. she was successful; the court eventually ruled that the the war relocation authority “has no authority to subject citizens who are concededly loyal to its leave procedure.”

the my lai massacre—march 16, 1968

during the vietnam war, US army soldiers entered a vietnamese hamlet on a search-and-destroy mission. they didn’t encounter any enemy troops; they did, however, proceed to set huts on fire, gang-rape the women, and murder around 500 unarmed civilians—including approximately 50 children under the age of four. army leadership had conspired to sweep this massacre under the carpet—the my lai massacre triggered a cover-up by the army that served to keep the atrocities committed a secret from the american public for 20 months during an election year.

american soldiers stabbed, clubbed, and carved “C [for Charlie] Company” into the chests of their victims (alive); herded them into ditches and blew them to bits with grenades. they cut off victims’ heads and slashed their throats.

this was more than spontaneous barbarism; for years, the army had dehumanized the vietnamese people as “gooks” and depicted women and children as potentially lethal combatants.

army officers who heard eyewitness reports of a massacre were quick to discount them. they issued a press release that informed news coverage—with lies. they claimed that their troops had killed 128 viet cong forces, even though they had been met with no resistance and suffered only one self-inflicted wound.

after word of the massacre reached the general public, more than a dozen military servicemen were eventually charged with crimes, but lieutenant william calley (the leader of the charlie company who was the main perpetrator in the massacre) was the only one who was ever convicted. pres. richard nixon reduced calley’s sentence to a light punishment—three years of house arrest.

three years of house arrest, and for only one person. for slaughtering 500 unarmed civilians. you do the math.

deportations

in 1975, more than 1.2 million refugees from southeast asia fled war and were resettled in the US—the largest resettlement for a refugee group in US history. in 1996, the illegal immigration reform and immigrant responsibility act (IIRIRA) expanded the definition of what types of crimes could result in detention & deportation—this broader definition could be applied retroactively, resulting in more than 16,000 southeast asian americans receiving orders of removal—78% of which were based on old criminal records.

islamophobia (article 2 preview) (article 3)

after the 9/11 attacks, islamophobia was especially prevalent in the western world, although it was also prevalent in other places without large muslim populations. from a small percentage of violence, an “efficient system of government prosecution and media coverage brings muslim-american terrorism suspects to national attention, creating the impression that muslim-american terrorism is more prevalent than it really is”, even though since 9/11, the muslim-american community helped security and law enforcement officials prevent nearly two of every five al qaeda terrorist plots threatening the united states. globally, many muslims report feeling not respected by those in the west, including over half of those who live in the US. in late 2009, the largest party in the swiss parliament put to referendum a ban on minaret (a tower typically built into or adjacent to mosques) construction, and nearly 60% of swiss voters and 22 out of 26 voting districts voted in favor of the ban—even though most swiss say that religious freedom is important for swiss identity. a network of misinformation experts actively promotes islamophobia in america. muslims are more likely than americans of any other major religious groups to have personally experienced racial or religious discrimination in the past year—48%, compared to 31% of mormons, 25% of atheist/agnostics, 21% of jews, 20% of catholics, and 18% of protestants. 1/3 (36%) of americans say that they have an unfavorable opinion about islam (gallup polls).

in the aftermath of 9/11, the US government has increasingly implemented special programs with hopes of “curbing and countering terrorism” and “enemy combatants.” these policies—such as the USA Patriot Act and the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System—have been targeted towards and disproportionately affects arabs, south asians, and muslims in america.

of course, the most lethal terrorist groups active in america are white supremacist groups, but people tend to overlook that because it’s always easier to blame something you have zero understanding of.

the non-profit advocacy organization South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) cataloged 207 incidents of hate violence and xenophobic political rhetoric directed towards south asian, muslim, middle eastern, hindu, sikh, and arab communities between nov. 15, 2015, and nov. 16, 2016. approximately 95% of those instances were animated by anti-muslim sentiment. also, “approximately 1 in 5 of the documented xenophobic statements came from president-elect donald trump.”

that’s who america hired to run our country in 2016. this was way before his misdeeds in office, yet it took us so long—and such a hard fight—to oust him. did it really take that long for everyone to catch on?

police brutality—(christian hall) (angelo quinto) (tommy le)

“CHRISTIAN HALL was a 19-year-old chinese american teen who experienced a mental health emergency on december 30, 2020. pennsylvania state police were called and requested to help de-escalate the crisis. rather than providing aid or assistance, the troopers shot and killed christian. his hands were up in the air as he stood on the SR-33 southbound overpass to I-80, posing no threat to the armed officers.”

they shot him seven times, with his arms up in the air.

“I miss my son so much. I love him so much but if his death is the catalyst for change, then so be it. Let his name be remembered. His name is Christian Hall.” —Fe Hall, Christian’s mother.

a video, shot by his mother, shows ANGELO QUINTO, a 30-year-old Filipino immigrant, unresponsive on the floor after officers subdued him with a knee to the back of his neck. the video shows him bleeding form the mouth after police knelt on his neck when he was experiencing a mental health crisis in his family home. he died three days later in the hospital without waking up. the antioch police had no body camera footage, nor has the department named the officers involved.

“I was just hoping they could de-escalate the situation,” his sister said in an interview. she called 911 when her brother had been experiencing mental health problems and paranoia. she says that she remains conflicted about calling the police that night: “I don’t know if I will not feel bad. If it was the right thing to do they would not have killed my brother.”

“TOMMY LE, a 20-year-old Vietnamese-American student, died hours before he was scheduled to attend his high-school graduation in June 2017. He was shot multiple times by sheriff’s Deputy Cesar Molina after responding to reports of a man armed with a knife. Deputies discovered after the shooting that he was carrying an ink pen, not a knife.

The office reported that Le had lunged at the sheriff’s deputies with a knife and had been threatening residents, shouting he was “the creator.” An autopsy showed that two of the three bullets that struck Le were in his back, and a witness said that Le was shouting he was “Tommy the renter.”

despite the challenges our communities face, AAPI communities receive less than one percent of philanthropic funding.

covid-19

i’ll try to keep this brief. there have been so many instances of violence perpetrated against the asian community during covid-19—not to mention the casual snipes at our culture, the microaggressions we face every day, the verbal and sexual harassment we encounter, sometimes even on the way to the grocery store for a supply run.

VICHA RATANAPAKDEE: a thai-american, he became known as “grandpa” throughout his neighborhood, where he’d made it a ritual to go on morning walks each day. it was during one of those walks on january 28, 2021, when the 84-year-old was forcibly knocked onto the ground. he was transported to the hospital, where he died two days later.

“He never wake up again. He [was] bleeding on his brain,” his daughter said in an interview. “I called him, ‘Dad, wake up.’ I want him to stay alive and wake up and come and see me again, but he never wake up.”

between march and december last year, the organization Stop Asian American and Pacific Islander Hate recorded nearly 3,000 reports of anti-Asian hate incidents nationwide. the new york city police department also reported a 1,900% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes last year.

i think senator tammy duckworth put it very aptly.

“Most people, I don’t think, think of Asians as being the subject of racist attacks, but we have been. And we’re the one community that’s often always seen as the ‘other’. I—to this day—still get asked, ‘So where are you from really?’“

i don’t think i’ve ever related so much to something a senator said.

actor and activist daniel dae kim talked about an encounter he had with a pollster who said asian americans are “statistically insignificant” in polling models in a congressional hearing:

“Statistically insignificant. Now all of you listening to me here, by virtue of your own elections, are more familiar with the intricacies of polling than I am, so undoubtedly, you already know what this means—statistically insignificant literally means that we don’t matter.”

do we matter? are we really “statistically insignificant”? blips in the machine, to be used and then thrown away once we become too “fussy” or demanding?

testimonies from victims showcase the array of xenophobic and racist insults they’ve encountered. i’ll put an (x) next to the ones i’ve personally heard.

“Go back to Wuhan and take the virus with you.” (x)

“You are the reason for the coronavirus.” (x)

“Damn, another Asian riding with me. Hope you don’t have covid.”

*fake coughing* “Chinese b—” *more fake coughing* (x)

now for some really “creative” ones that i’ve personally encountered:

“Cock up my dad’s botton, Chinease cunt”

“You don’t got the kung-flu, do ya?”

“Ever ate a dog?”

Along the same vein, “ever had any bats? Heard they’re delicious.”

“Wouldn’t want ya to pet my dog. Ya might steal it and cook it for dinner!” *hyena laugh*

a little personal anecdote

i debated whether or not to wear a mask to school in early march. my aunt lives in china, and she’s a first-responder (trained paramedic & contact tracer) and we knew how bad the virus was going to be in late february when we facetimed her, quarantined in her apartment. her toddler was staying with her husband at her parents’ house because she was afraid of infecting them. she didn’t see them in person for four months, working 14-hour shifts in the back of an ambulance decked out in a hazmat suit.

my mom cried when she facetimed us the second week of her grueling shift. i couldn’t stop thinking about her when i went to school that day. my mom sent me another picture during art class, and i just couldn’t control myself. i started crying during class.

i asked my mom whether or not i should wear a mask to school, and she said that if i did, i would be singling myself out. i wouldn’t be protecting myself—far from it. if i wore a mask to school, people would think that i had the virus, not that i was trying to protect myself from it.

gossip spreads like wildfire, and the next day, everyone knew i had relatives in china. most of my friends were sympathetic, but they were wholly removed from the situation. it was early march, and they never believed that the coronavirus would spread here. they were firmly rooted in their opinion that it was an easy situation, grossly mishandled by the chinese government, and that we’d do much better if it ever washed up on our shores.

i do hate the chinese government, and back then, i didn’t think too much of their antagonism. yes, the situation was mishandled. it was like a repeat of the SARS outbreak in 2003—first a cover-up by the local government, then a cover-up by the national government, and finally, a realization that no, in fact, they could not handle it in secret. yes, the media had to get involved. no, dead bodies were not piling up in the hallways while they waited for doctors to triage care. yes, we have capacity! look at these documentary mini-videos, forcing doctors and patients to leave a wing of the hospital empty and operate below maximum capacity so they could shoot propaganda videos for the lunar new year, boasting about how well they’re handling it!

i won’t argue that in the beginning, this was mishandled. i will argue, however, against the idea that asian countries are incompetent. that western approaches are oh-so-much-better.

in wuhan, they built a makeshift hospital spanning three soccer fields in the span of a week, with properly-functioning utilities, hospital beds, decontamination, and security. people rallied together and donated everything from money and supplies to food and ventilators, from all across the country. doctors and medical staff shaved their heads so they could better wear masks and volunteered to go to wuhan, where the situation was much more dire than in other areas. thousands of medical students from shanghai were transported to wuhan to fill the personnel shortages.

china reopened in june.

what did we do?

we didn’t ask the asian countries for experience. china, japan, and korea had handled the 2003 SARS outbreak and knew what kinds of things needed to be done. from the beginning, they wore masks. they halted travel, they did routine testing, performed contact tracing, set up programs for bringing food to the immunocompromised, elderly, and disabled, and worked as a cohesive community.

on the other hand, we resorted to childish infighting, political games, shunning masks and blaming it on asians, when we could’ve learned from them instead. we didn’t do contact-tracing. our testing systems were sorely inadequate. borders were closed with china, yes, but the majority of the cases in the US arrived from italy and other european countries who had already been infected. banning travel between the US and china was nothing more than a political gimmick.

states fought each other for basic medical supplies. there was no national unity. we were fractured in two, and COVID became more fuel for the fire dividing the two parties, when it could’ve been something that unified us.

and instead of blaming china, we would’ve been better off recognizing our own failures.

you can say that the virus caught china by surprise.

it shouldn’t have done the same to us.

we knew it was coming. but we still botched it.

blaming the virus on asian communities is a sign of immaturity and a lack of accountability. own up to your failures.

anyways, my mom was right. whenever we wore a mask in public, people really did think that we were “dirty, foreign chinese.” we stocked up on groceries so we wouldn’t have to go out, because every time my mom did, people would look at her weirdly. they didn’t wear masks.

one time, she was accosted by a blonde woman when we were at a supermarket. i’d gone with her that time because it was right after practice, and i was in the car anyways. the lady came up to us (without a mask: this was in may) and said, “excuse me, you don’t have the virus, do you?” with a pointed look at my mom (who was masked up).

my mom, being the polite person she is, simply responded “no, i don’t.”

the woman didn’t let us go after that. she pushed even more. “well, you see, i was just making sure...with this chinese virus going around, it’s scary, you know?”

i wanted to ask her why she wasn’t wearing a mask if it was “so scary”, but i couldn’t get a word in before she asked another question.

“by the way, y’all aren’t chinese, right?”

yes i am. yes we are. why does it fucking matter. we’re wearing masks, you’re not, get the hell out of my face.

honestly, i don’t know how my mom does it. she has the patience of a saint. she said “mhm”, grabbed a gallon of milk, and walked to the self-checkout area. the lady looked at me and raised her eyebrow, and i said “so what if we are?”

she looked like she’d been slapped in the face. i turned and followed my mom, but she said “now hold on young lady!” i ignored her and kept walking.

i don’t owe her anything. why do people think it’s okay to talk to others like that? we’re human beings too. we’re allowed our basic dignity. basic respect. we’re not something for you to joke at, to laugh at, to fetishize or bully into submission. i don’t understand why it’s so hard for people to realize that. i don’t understand why it’s so hard for people to treat others like human beings.

to people like that lady in kroger:

why do you feel the need to do it? is your opinion of yourself really that high to think that you’re superior to others who are different from you? are you really that conceited to think that you’re the perfect image of a perfect human, and anyone not like you is unworthy, considered lesser? or is your opinion of yourself really that low, to think that whatever you say, it doesn’t really matter anyways? why do you find derogatory jokes and demeaning comments funny? why do you think it’s okay to harass a stranger just going about their day? is your life really that boring, and you have nothing else to do with your time? why? would it be okay if i came up to you and asked if you ate rotten shark meat, then laughed it off and said “oh, i thought you were from iceland”? is that okay? can i ask if you eat cockroaches? how would you respond if i asked “where are you from?”? you would say america, right? and if i asked again? europe? where in europe? oh, you don’t know? are you illegal? was your mother a prostitute? are you a communist? why are your eyes so big? do you speak europeanese? crut iveroij aeish poient. oh, those aren’t words? well i think they sound like european words. what’s your name? je-re-mi-ah? like jeeryyy-miiiaaaccchh? oh, that’s not right? sorry, my tongue just won’t bend that way. your names are so weird! why would your parents name you that? oh, it means something? well, i don’t know the language, so don’t expect me to say it right. have you ever eaten haggis? oh, that’s scottish? oh, you’re not scottish? sorry, you all look the same to me. scots and italians are just so similar, you know? what’s your name? your last name is anderson? i know an anderson! she lived in texas. are you related to her? oh, you don’t know her? sorry, i thought you were all related. yeah, like i said before, you all just look so much alike, you know? are you lazy? oh, nothing, i just heard from my dad that all french people are lazy. oh, you’re not french? well, you still look lazy. are you good at english? oh, nothing, i just assumed that all white people were english. i know you like to assume that we’re good at math. oh, you got an A in english? isn’t that normal? i can’t help it, you’re just smarter. you probably don’t even study. oh, you do? well, you’re smart anyways, so it doesn’t matter. you’re so good at math for an american! oh no, nothing, i just assumed that all americans were bad at math. *starts playing with her hair* oh, that’s making you uncomfortable? but your hair’s so silky, and it’s so smooth. what kind of hair products do you use? i want to learn how to make my hair look exotic like that. oh, you’re not exotic? but you’re foreign. of course you’re exotic. you know, *leans in and whispers* men like you this way, yeah? they just looveeee exotic ladies. *winks*

can you see how this is demeaning? can you see how this diminishes our culture, our hard work, our accomplishments?

racism isn’t funny. it’s not cool, it’s not a joke, and it’s hurtful. it makes us question our capabilities, forces us to have unrealistic expectations of ourselves, makes us feel unworthy and “other”. just stop? stop making hurtful comments. stop stepping on other people to feel better about yourselves.

#racism #anti-asian hate #anti-asian racism #asian #asian racism #politics #covid #covid-19 #i'm so sick of it

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schrijverr · 3 years

Text

The Media in a Quirk Society

An essay or more a thought piece about how the media adapted to the appearance of quirk. How genres changed and how the media influences and is influenced by society.

On AO3.

Ships: none

Warnings: none

~~~~~~~~~~~

Something that makes me so very curious is how media must have developed in the BNHA universe after the appearance of quirks.

We hear almost nothing of media other than the news within the universe itself. For now it escapes me if All Might Cartoons are actually mentioned in the show or something of fanfiction. But another fanfic phenomena are pre-quirk movies, aka movies of our time.

The latter is a thing we must agree on, since there was a time before there were quirks wherein movies were made. This also implies that the pre-quirk superhero genre has existed (think MCU or DC)

I want to examine how that must have changed with the appearance of quirks based of what we’ve seen in the show.

When we see the beginnings of a quirk society, we meet AFO, who rises in the chaos and especially the scene where he takes and gives a quirk stand out the most. Quirks weren’t excepted yet, especially visible quirks, while at the same time a quirk means power. We also know the hero profession rises here, because it was too much for just law enforcement.

So we have these components, which all make for really great stories… in hindsight.

After the fact there must have been many stories about a lone police officer, becoming a hero as he saw the force around him crumble. Or a weak person, suddenly developing a powerful quirk that helps them get out of an impossible situation. Or maybe even about someone who feels they are deformed and shunned from society by their quirk and how they overcome it.

But at the moment it was happening there was still a lot of resentment about quirks and people who had them.

When quirks first entered the stage, people who had them plunged the world into chaos or had to hide like the man who goes to AFO to get his quirk removed.

I can imagine that if movie productions could continue in those turbulent times they would focus on the normal guy, still fighting against a suddenly super-powered villain or a quirkist (as I shall refer to it) take on a person who gets a quirk and turns evil.

Or they might even ignore the whole quirk situation in general with a new genre that can be boiled down to ‘No Quirks – AU’ wherein the movie is based in pre-quirk times. This genre would have a lot of nostalgia at first, probably, trying to call upon how simple life was when villains weren’t terrorizing the streets and heroes were just a funny thing of TV.

Maybe it will develop later.

Maybe it will become how difficult it must have been back then with no simple quirk solutions to problems. It might even turn into a genre about invention, mostly, with a fascination in the public of how things that run on quirk-solutions now, could have been solved by a quirkless scientist in the before times.

But back to the developing genre that is set the BNHA real world. Wherein quirkless people might have gotten a center stage in the early years, before quirks became so entrenched in society that quirkism developed against what used to be a majority.

I can picture a young Midoriya watching old movies wherein the quirkless protagonist was the hero against the evil quirks, telling himself that one day that could be him.

However, with the rise of heroes the media attention probably shifted.

The manga/anime describes it as ‘ordinary civilians with their own Quirks decided to take matters into their own hands to bring order to society, and thus the first "Heroes" appeared.’ as it says on the fandom wikia.

This shifts the narrative of quirkless hero against the chaos of quirks, to brave citizen stands up using the power they’ve been granted. Maybe they gave it religious undertones or maybe it was the story of taking the moral high ground and doing what was right for your country and neighbors.

In those early days you probably have more stories reflective of the pre-quirk fictional heroes, wherein the main character has to hide that they’re out there every night breaking the law to bring order.

It can be that at this time the narrative that the police is just the ‘villain taxi service’ starts to originate among bitter storytellers, who have seen the police fail where heroes did not. Though this would be more older filmmakers after this era is over, who start this. When heroes have become accepted, but they still remember how bad the police reacted before.

But on the topic of heroes becoming accepted, that must have been a civil right movement, a right that had to be debated with villains reflecting how bad an idea public quirk use could be.

You can see in the ‘Liberation War Arc’ how something like that could have played out and how it makes for interesting media entertainment as it is a story arc in our world, meant to amuse. Mixed with the fact that the first heroes created order in the chaos, there must be a ton of movies following activists or a hero not only having to fight the villains, but also the system.

And then over time heroes morphed into what they are now.

Hero became a profession and quirks the norm. After a while, just focusing on quirks got less interesting and using quirks as just a backdrop became more interesting.

Sure, you still had the hero genre and with actual figureheads these can range from documentaries to inspired by real life movies or just fictive fights with characters that are obviously based off a real hero or just the real hero. Especially when heroes became depended on their popularity, there must have been plenty that signed an acting contract in the hopes of getting their name and image out there.

With Midoriya’s comment about Todoroki having the backstory of a protagonist, it is clear that the hero genre is far from forgotten.

However, the “normal” genres also developed with society and with quirks becoming normal and no one truly aching for the before times, they must be set in the BNHA world we know.

The tropes we know (and maybe love) will get a new twist to fit this society or maybe disappear completely. New stereotypes and assumptions based off quirks appear, even quirkism might become prevalent in media, teaching kids that those without quirks are freaks or weak and weird.

In my mind I picture a movie trailergoing “She has a water quirk, he has a fire quirk. Will they fall in love despite their different personalities?!?” or “When his family is murdered, he must track down the killer with only the quirk as clue. Will he find out what happened on that faithful day or will the path this sends him on be the last of him???”

The horror genre will also be transformed with the fear of people misusing their quirk being a big thing in society.

As for fantasy, this genre will change with super-powered people being the norm, you can have to get more creative to make it truly fantastical. World building, visually, will be more important to distinguish it from our world, creatures too since there are literally people with bird heads, for example, walking around.

Not to mention the potential of quirks being hereditary that can be used in dramas where the partner has cheated or as plot point as grant reveal of a main character being related to one of the antagonists or even in gang movies as them training together to use their quirks and them all being the same. That would make for a cool visual tbh.

Disaster movies also will be different than they are now. With protagonist who can have quirks that work against them in their situation or if it’s a more hopeful movie how they work together, piling together their quirks and other skills to survive.

And the crime genre will be so intrinsically tied to hero society and with the police being seen as kinda useless, it will be so different than how we know it now. Did crime become part of the hero genre? Is this a piece of cop propaganda left wherein the police tries to save their reputation? I don’t know, but I wanna think about it.

It’s just interesting to me how in a world where the super is normal, media has adapted and this has been keeping my mind busy over the past few weeks.

The transformation in society of quirks as something dangerous that needs to be stopped, to a few brave people standing up for what’s right to finally the commercialization of heroes so that they can keep doing their job.

You see these changes, that’s unavoidable.

Media is such a powerful tool and it’s hardly referenced within the source material (which I understand because there are already so many movingparts), but with the fall of hero society it is interesting how all that propaganda for heroes might disappear back to when quirks first appeared and how the cycle may start again.

A/N:

There are probably so many genres and other stuff thatI haven’t considered, so tell me your thoughts about the media in BNHA!

((also I didn’t want to dive in how racism, homophobia, ableism will develop with quirks and notions people will have about them. It is important to think about, but I do not think that I am the right person to talk about it. If anyone does, tag me or comment the link, because I will 100% read it))

#RR writing #BNHA #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #mha #quirks #quirks in society #quirks in media #movies #movie and film #idk how to tag this lmao

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babbushka · 3 years

Note

I’m confused, I was always taught that Reagan was one of the best and most progressive presidents we ever had, granted I went to a Catholic school way back when, what did Ronny do? (In a not accusatory or snippy way)

Hello my dear anon! Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to talk about this, because while I am firmly a believer that everyone can have their own political opinions, objectively, Raegan literally ruined the country through something called Raeganomics -- and that's not just an exaggeration.

Here are some of his biggest lasting legacies that make people remember him in a negative light:

Purposeful inaction on HIV/AIDs

Purposefully widened income inequality through 'trickle-down' economics

Suppression of unions

Slashing of public assistance

Excessive corporate influence on government

Explanations under the cut (with links to articles for further reading, if you're so inclined)!

Purposeful inaction on HIV/AIDs

One of the most notable things that Raegan was responsible for was his failed response to addressing the HIV/AIDs crisis. The first case was recorded in 1981, but one of the first nationally pieces of recognition, the New York Times, posting an article about it in 1982. This was when it was first called GRID, or Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. Because it was affecting primarily gay men, the general public, and the government itself, did not feel any need to stop the disease from spreading. Literally, because it was the gay disease, the overall perception was that this was God sending a cure for the country.

Raegan said and did nothing, not about the disease, or about the deaths, or about the hate crimes that were growing more and more prevalent against queer people. So despite YEARS of begging and marching and millions of people dead -- it's not until 1985 when he even publicly acknowledges the disease that had thousands of Americans dropping dead on his watch. It's not until 1987 when the administration finally forms a committee to look into trying to cull the disease. 47,000 Americans are estimated to have been affected by AIDs by then. It's not until Ryan White, a straight white young man who contracts AIDs and dies when he is only 18 in 1990, that the disease becomes a matter of importance for the rest of the country, because suddenly they understood that disease does not discriminate. HIV/AIDs is still a disease that we deal with today, with over 1.1 million people living with AIDs today in the united states.

Purposefully widened income inequality

It is no secret that associated with the Raegan administration is something called 'Raeganomics', which, while being a very complicated economic theory, ultimately boils down to establishing a "trickle-down" economy. Where, in theory, those at the very top who hold the majority of wealth in the nation, allow that wealth to move down through the middle and lower classes by either investing it or spending it in communities.

And of course, as is well evident, that just, didn't happen. The wealthiest of the nation received large tax cuts in order to hold onto their wealth to trickle down, but instead of actually spending it, they put their money into off-shore banks and then asked for more. I could get into the why's or how's of economics, but just know this -- the tax rate used to be anywhere from 71 and 94% for the highest tax bracket, money that was used to fund this nation's infrastructure, roads and schools, maintain a healthy economy, provide public services and budgets for progressive programs.

Raegan slashed it down to 28%, and in doing so widened the income inequality gap almost immediately, something that we're still seeing today. The reason why you and your family pay more money in taxes than billionaires like Bezos and Musk is directly because of Raeganomics.

Suppression of unions

The backbone of this nation has always been fought by the Unions, which are organized groups of laborers who fight for better working conditions, safer working conditions, and good pay. The reason you have a weekend is thanks to the unions. The reason why we don't have child labor is thanks to the unions. And in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, unions were an incredibly powerful part of working society, because they ensured that workers would not and could not be exploited by the CEOs who want so desperately to exploit them. Well, thanks to Raeganomics and the tax cuts, CEOs were starting to play a much larger role in the The Raegan administration, and ultimately, Raegan sided with them to effectively put measures in place that slashed the importance or power of unions.

It first started with dismantling the Air Traffic Controller's union, then followed up with slashing taxes for the elite rich who employed the union workers. Then it continued when the recession that the tax cuts caused laid off workers in the auto industry, and still declined when he appointed a "management-sided" man named Donald Dotson to chair the National Labor Relations Board.

But what really put the nail in the coffin, was his push for something called the Right To Work law, which mean that state governments have the option to not fund or support unions, removed protections for unions, and that employees do not have to join unions if they don't want to. What happened as a result, is that companies began firing employees who threatened to unionize, turning the unions from having great PR, to being a thing of fear.

This is directly related to why minimum wage has been so low for so long. Thank Raegan for that.

Slashing of public assistance

Because of the enormous tax cuts for the ultra rich, the country fell into a deep recession, and as a result many programs were cut for the poorest of the nation. Food Stamps, the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, Federal guaranteed loan programs for higher education, Legal Assistance, etc., all took a big hit.

The reason your student loans are through the roof? Raegan. The reason unemployment benefits are near impossible to navigate? Raegan. Directly his fault.

Excessive corporate influence on government

I think one of the things that's very important to understand is that Raegan was a film actor before he went into politics and became president (sound like someone else we know?) and he was actually neither a Democrat nor a Republican -- he was a Libertarian. And what Libertarians do, is look at America like a business. Which is exactly what Raegan did, and exactly why his presidency fucked up our nation. He thought that the president was like the CEO, and that the people were employees, which, is fundamentally not how that works.

So it's with no surprise that he allowed SUPER-PACs to completely take over political parties in accepting money donated heavily by them to write the policies that shape this country. The reason why so many politicians, particularly Republicans, are in their seats of power is because of the millions or sometimes billions of dollars that CEOs fund them, to write the laws they want. That's entirely Raegan's fault, and at his encouragement.

So, from these 6 major things alone, we have a country that has been ravaged by disease, thrown into poverty and recession, killed the middle class, boosted the wealthy 1%, accrued enormous amounts of debt, and prevented economic mobility for anyone to hope to climb out of it. And that's not even mentioning his war on drugs and increase of mass incarceration for privatized prisons, his insane military budget leading a larger budget deficit, the Iran-Contra scandal, among many many other things.

As I said earlier, people are allowed to think he's a great president if they want, but factually, his actions (and inactions) have fundamentally and irreparably broken the economic landscape of our nation for the poor, working classes.

I encourage you to research further into this, if you so desire. There's a lot more than I mentioned here, I only picked what I thought to be the most famous of his failures as a president.

#<333 #sorry this got long he just #really fucked up so much of our country #lol #i could really continue on and on

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bills-pokedex · 4 years

Note

Is using pokemon to steal from big stores a valid use of pokemon?

Before I begin, I’d like to apologize for the open discomfort in this response. This discomfort stems from three things, which I should also note:

1. I’m a public figure, so therefore, I literally cannot encourage or even condone theft of any kind for any reason, even if I am politically unconventional, as it were.

2. Even if I could, I’ve always been very open about my anti-Team Rocket policies, so I’m not entirely certain what you were expecting here, to be frank.

3. If you were doing this as a form of protest, then I have unfortunate news to tell you about quite a few products you’re likely benefiting from, including but not limited to the Leppa laptop you’re likely using to access GMail in order to run your ... well, literally every social media platform these days. While shopping at certain online retailers who must not be named.

That having been said, to answer you properly, allow me to do so by assuming this is a pokémon handling question more than ... anything else.

The short answer is no. The long answer is no ... because of consent. You see, the biggest concern with any activity you engage in is consent. It’s very easy to assume that our pokémon partners are just as intelligent as we are, given that they’re so integrated with our lives. The sad truth is that many of them don’t possess the advanced intellect we’re capable of, so having your pokémon help you steal would be a lot like having your four-year-old little brother help you pocket whatever they can. Certainly, it’s your four-year-old little brother, but at the same time, you wouldn’t ask your four-year-old little brother to commit what’s technically a crime, right? The same should be said of pokémon. If they can’t comprehend what they’re doing or the moral arguments behind it, then they can’t consent to you using their abilities. Ergo, no, it’s not a valid use of pokémon.

However, if you have a pokémon that can comprehend—say, kadabra or alakazam—then you can technically do whatever you’d like with them so long as: 1) they do indeed consent, and 2) the activity you wish to engage in isn’t morally reprehensible on an objective level (e.g., murder, assault, poképhilia, sexual misconduct of any other variety, corruption of minors—I could go on). So in that sense, if they understand and consent, you can’t technically say it’s wrong ... except, well, from a legal standpoint. Therein lies the debate, of course, and why I clarified that earlier statement to say “so long as you don’t do something objectively reprehensible.” That having been said, again, I can’t encourage or condone you to ask your pokémon to steal, but I can say that you can at least argue it’s not pokémon abuse if you’re not forcing a pokémon to do something it doesn’t understand.

Finally, if you’re a member of Team Rocket, the above still doesn’t apply because even if your pokémon does understand and consent, you’re asking it to steal for the subjugation of other pokémon, which is ... wrong. Don’t do that. Among other things that you shouldn’t also do.

{Important Mun Disclaimer is below the readmore and heavily political. Please skip to the next post if you don’t want to see Words.}

{Important Mun Disclaimer: I’ve been thinking about how best to address this because on the one hand, I realize this is meant to be a lighthearted funny haha joke ask sent to a normally uptight yet also lowkey anarchist character who happens to work alongside his world’s government. On the other ... I’ve always been uncomfortable with the lifting community that I know is prevalent both among leftists and on social media in general, and I feel like I need to talk about it because it’s not for the reason you might think.

See, I’ve read arguments on both sides about whether or not it’s morally okay for a leftist to steal from a big corporation. I’m aware of the arguments about workers (Do they get penalized? Don’t they? It seems to vary by store, and honestly, some workers support this behavior and shouldn’t be ignored.), and I’m aware of lifters’ insistence that it’s some form of protest against box stores (spoilers: they make enough bank and take out enough insurance that they don’t care about the handful of luxury items you’re stealing). So I hear all of you. F, yo, I was a teenager once too, and I hung out with textbook punks a lot. If your reason for stealing is because you’re an idiot kid who gets kicks from doing that, at least I understand because that’s what you do when you’re young and angry.

Nah, my reason for being super uncomfortable with lifting doesn’t really touch these arguments. It’s got everything to do with my need to write this disclaimer, though, and that reason is ... to let people know that’s an extremely white thing to do.

So to all the white people and white-passing people shoplifting because you’re lefties (really, because you like the adrenaline rush, lbr), I just want to talk about all the Black people who have to be followed around in stores because clerks think they’re lifting. I want to talk about how retail workers not too long ago (as I was before I started my career doing something else) were literally taught to follow “suspicious customers,” with the implication being “POCs.” And I want to talk about how there are folks who get arrested or worse for “stealing” things they actually bought or for “stealing” when they were literally just browsing.

Some of this might just be bad timing too, mind you. I’d read this article the other day, so maybe if this ask hadn’t come literally that day, I probably would have answered without all this talk. Maybe I could’ve deleted the ask and pretended it was one of the unanswerables. But anyway, I read it, and I’d like to share it for context with the rest of you because it’s also important: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/29/opinions/kyle-rittenhouse-bail-donations-race-leiba/index.html (tw btw, because a Black person describes what it’s like to be arrested in pretty intense detail) Anyway, point is, maybe it’s a good thing that I’d read this because, well, something needs to be said here. When you’re young and stupid and very likely white, stealing seems like fun because ACAB and all. But when you get older and really think critically about the world around you, you start to think critically about what you do too. Hopefully. In most cases. Some people are dead-on my age, and they still steal, citing leftism as their reasoning with absolutely zero self-awareness about how they can do that because they’re, well, white.

My point in bringing this up is not to harsh a buzz, and absolutely, it’s done with the complete understanding that this is a Pokémon ask blog, so of course not too many people are going to take it seriously. It’s more because I just didn’t feel right just answering this ask and not talking about this bit of politics. And that’s mostly because lifting is such a meme among progressive folks on social media, and it just ... tires me, in a way, that it’s never really discussed that this is a thing you can only really get away with 100% of the time if you’re white.

Anyway, the actual disclaimer is that Bill’s politics don’t often reflect my own and vice-versa. Bill is played as a neutral good character, who believes he can fix the world and actually probably could, but at the same time, he’s, well, lowkey anarchist. I, meanwhile, am none of those things. Moreover, Bill’s world is a utopia where things like discrimination is an actual thing of the past and where humans live more or less in harmony, openly, as whoever they want to be, and that’s due to a combination of canon and me intentionally constructing a world where other people can imagine themselves being safe and not having to fight to be who they want to be. But the problem is that our world isn’t Bill’s, and sadly, sometimes, I have to acknowledge that.

Anyway, sorry for the long rant. Thanks for reading, and a second ask will be up shortly as a reward for putting up with this.}

#asks #odd questions #pokemon headcanon #Anonymous #long post #extremely long post #tw: politics

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therapy101 · 4 years

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(1/2) With a rise in young children expressing gender nonconformity being sent to gender clinics, being taught about gender dysphoria and being ‘born in the wrong body’ in schools, being guided towards pubertal blockers and medical transition, I was wondering if I could ask for your more knowledgeable input please. When treating such children and adolescents, why is the underlying assumption that the dysphoric feelings are valid and the body is what needs fixing? Why is APA/psychologists

(”2/2) allowing medical decisions to be made based on outdated mind-body dualism? We don’t affirm anorexia and offer liposuction, or the delusions of schizophrenia for instance, so why is this the only mind-body incongruence that’s treated this way? Does GD in a developing child really warrant medicalizing them for the rest of their lives? Since we’ve scientifically concluded gender is a spectrum, shouldn’t we instead be promoting gender diversity no matter what sexed body we’re born in?”

There are a lot of things to unpack and understand here.

1. The underlying assumption is not that “the body needs fixing.” Medical transition is not the first step for children, adolescents, or adults with gender dysphoria. From 2004-2016, only 92 total children and adolescents out of six million total patients younger than 19 seen in the sample received a hormone blocker for a transgender-related diagnosis. Even among adults, current estimates for the United States are that between 25-35% of trans and non-binary adults complete any kind of gender affirming surgery (this means, even enough those who have surgery, it may only be one type of surgery and may not impact all relevant body parts). Getting access to trans-affirming medical care is very difficult, and structural inequalities like racism impact access to care, leading some trans people, especially Black trans women, to have to buy hormones from non-medical sources. That’s one of the reasons why the APA has come out to support trans folks and gender affirming care: because otherwise, these folks don’t get any care, or they get mistreated. The point here is to ensure that everyone gets equitable access to high quality medical and mental health care. That includes hormones, hormone blockers, and/or surgery for some people, but not everyone.

2. All feelings are valid- dysphoric or otherwise. Sometimes feelings don’t fit the facts, or acting upon them doesn’t make sense, but that doesn’t take away from their validity. The question is not whether the feelings are valid for kids with gender dysphoria, the question is how to understand that dysphoria better and how to identify what to do about it, both in terms of gender identity and in terms of coping, support and improving overall mental health. This is a great place for a therapist with expertise to step in and help the child and their family figure it out.

Sometimes the child or adolescent has known literally or essentially their whole life, and that may mean no dysphoria (which is great!). From Katz-Wise et al., 2017:

For some youth, primarily but not exclusively those ages 7–12 years, indication of transgender identification occurred early and was described as “immediate.” One father of an 18-year-old trans boy from the Northeast noted, “It was so immediate that it was just, you know, it wasn’t like he was seven and he said, ‘Oh my god he thinks of himself as a boy.’ It was just kinda always like that with him.”

For other youth, it is a more gradual process, and may take some time to sort out. Some youth also don’t have dysphoria while they are doing that so there may not be a reason to seek out therapy unless there is some other mental health issue they are facing. But if they do have dysphoria, or are otherwise experiencing mental health symptoms related to their gender identity, then seeing a therapist can help.

3. Supporting a child to identify as trans or nonbinary or some other non-cis gender is not “medicalizing them for the rest of their lives.” Hormone blockers can be removed, and hormones can be stopped- but I disagree that these are “medicalizing” in any case. A person cannot be reduced down to the medications they take or the treatments they receive. Is a woman with cancer “medicalized” because she undergoes a hysterectomy? Are the children on puberty blockers for medical reasons “medicalized” (>2000 of them in the study I cited above, but no one seems concerned about them)? What about those people with delusions who are put on antipsychotics, which are known to have severe side effects including higher risk of diabetes and heart disease, seizures, tardive dyskinesia, overwhelming sleepiness impacting ability to work or drive, weight gain (I’ve seen clients gain >70 lbs in 3 months), and more?

I would encourage you to read either of these great studies by Katz-Wise et al: 1 or 2 to understand this better. When you ask trans youth about themselves, the medical aspect is such a small part- they are talking about their whole selves, their hopes for the future, their families and friends, and their wishes to be able to be loved and accepted for who they really are. Some of it is about their bodies, sure, and that can mean that some decide to use hormones and/or hormone blockers or undergo surgery (although we’ve seen that those rates aren’t super higher ). But they’re also just talking about being called the right name and pronoun, getting to wear the clothes that make them feel authentic, getting to date and marry and have sex, and: getting to live. Not being ostracized and assaulted and killed. Like this 8 year old who identifies as a girlish boy worrying he’ll never be able to get married AND be his true self (from the second Katz-Wise et al):

An 8-year-old youth participant who identified as a “girlish boy” similarly worried about other people's reactions related to gender norms in the long-term future, as told by his mother,

He said [to me], ‘But I'm not going to get married, because if I married a boy I'd want to be the bride...I would want to wear a dress and people would laugh at me because I'm marrying a boy and I'd be wearing a dress.

He is 8 years old and these are his worries. As a mental health professional, my immediate thought is that he deserves any and all support that makes sense to him and his family so that he doesn’t have to worry like this. So that he can be 8.

4. Finally, and probably most importantly: gender dysphoria is different because treating it with hormone blockers, hormones, and surgery is literally life saving.

As high as 42% of trans people have attempted suicide at least once. For comparison, the lifetime prevalence of suicide attempts in the general population is 3%.

Study after study has shown that there are three primary factors that reduce suicide risk: 1. Timely medical and legal transition for those who want it; 2. Family acceptance and general support from friends and loved ones; 3. Reduced transphobia and internalized transphobia. (1 2 3 4 5).

Psychologists want to help people live, and live well. Living well means having a life you enjoy and find meaningful. If medical transition means someone’s suicide risk decreases and their mental health improves, then they can pursue the life they want. Being affirmed in their gender means they can have that part of the life they want. It might also help them get to other things they want (like having the marriage and wedding they envision, like that example). These are things we as psychologists prioritize. Period.

It’s not the same as anorexia because providing a liposuction for two reasons. One: It would not resolve the dysphoria. People with anorexia who lose weight do not feel better about themselves and their bodies. That’s the dysphoria: people with anorexia (and other eating disorders, sometimes) often cannot see their bodies as they really are. Changing the body won’t help. Unlike in gender dysphoria, where changing the body- either in presentation or actually medically -actually does help. Two: Liposuction for an underweight person with anorexia could kill them. As we’ve discussed, gender affirming surgeries for trans people can save their lives. These are not comparable.

The comparison to delusions doesn’t work very well because there isn’t really a “medical” intervention you would do to affirm someone’s delusion. But, since you may not know this: we sometimes do affirm people’s delusions, and it’s not necessarily psychologically helpful to try to change someone’s mind about a delusion. Delusions are not bad all on their own, and: sometimes things we think are delusional, actually aren’t, so it’s super important not to assume we know someone’s life and experiences better than they do. (Just recently a nurse assumed a patient was delusional, but actually they were quite rich and owned several expensive cars. People can be rich and have a significant mental illness.) So anyway- I don’t know how that applies.

Overall: we as a field are still understanding the full spectrum of gender identities and how to do good treatment and good science in relationship with that. But what’s clear is that medical transition is sometimes a part of a good treatment plan for both youth and adults, and that it can save people’s lives. It can make their lives better. I am 100% about saving people’s lives, so I am 100% about a medical transition when appropriate and gender affirming care in general.

References: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

(email me at academic.consultant101 gmail.com if you need full texts)

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sol1056 · 4 years

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wuxia: a general yet probably too verbose introduction to the genre, pt2

and now we get to the actual conventions -- although more accurately, these are just the ones that I either noticed the strongest or had the most difficulty adjusting to, when I was first getting into wuxia.

Not all stories have these elements, and of course in a genre as varied (and as old) as wuxia, there are twenty exceptions for every rule. What’s more, one story’s mild admonishment (”well, X is frowned on, but I guess if you’re just low-key about it”) can become the next story’s worst taboo (”omg you did X, you must be shunned! SHUNNNNNNNNNNed.”).

Like any other living genre, authors will shift/tilt convention as needed to drive a story’s conflicts.

btw, it’ll probably be a few days before I can do an introduction to MDZS, which should give time to @guzhuangheaven, @atthewaterside, @dramatic-gwynne, @the50-person, @drunkensword (and anyone else) to point out everything I misunderstood, over-emphasized, misinterpreted, or just plain missed.

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

1. Hierarchy still matters. A student’s respect for their teacher, a child’s respect for their parents, younger siblings/students to elder. You’ll see this in how people are called (ie 3rd uncle, elder sister, 2nd brother), but this doesn’t mean everyone goes around dutiful and obedient. Err, wuxia is actually more of the opposite. I mean, a good story requires conflict between characters, and what better way than someone overturning (or at least appearing to overturn) the hierarchy?

In that vein, creating new relationships that take precedent over old relationships is anywhere from disrespectful to a full-on violation of natural law. As in, learning from someone other than your teacher, joining a new family in lieu of your birth family, running away to get married -- hell, just running away! -- are all potential sources of trouble. At the same time, wuxia has a really strong comedic streak (all the martial arts also make for great slapstick). Squabbling families with headstrong, misbehaving kids who break the rules, well, that’s a classic that can be played for melodrama, comedy, or both.

2. Swordsmanship is the pinnacle (or the most prevalent) of martial arts. The protagonist is either going to be (or end up) the best swordsman (or swordswoman) ever, or they’re going to use a weapon that’s unlike any other -- and if the latter, they’ll either be reviled for it, or lauded.

3. Despite the fact that swords are heavy and a real pain to carry around, characters carry their swords. All the time. Everywhere. In historical dramas, swords hang from belts, but not wuxia. Plus, characters will place swords on the table, across their lap, lean them against chairs, put them on the floor, and it doesn’t seem to map to whether they’re among allies or enemies, on guard or relaxing. The sword goes with them everywhere, and is always within reach. (And again, this general convention can go strict in some stories, like MDZS, where the failure to carry a sword is seen as a major breach of etiquette.)

4. The general term for ‘members of a sect’ or ‘people who study martial arts’ is ‘cultivators’. To cultivate is to grow something: cultivating [internal or spiritual] fields to gain a [skillset] harvest. Cultivation isn’t just going to the practice hall and swinging a sword three hundred times; meditation, study, even copying out texts are also ways to cultivate.

5. Wuxia characters may also be called swordsmen/swordswomen, wandering heroes, or martial heroes. If the story pivots on getting into a sect (or achieving some rank in a sect), then the characters will be considered cultivators (of a given path). If they’re introduced as just swordsmen, that seems to indicate it’s a story where sect politics plays less of a role. Or both terms may be present, to differentiate between sect-members/students versus people who defected (or are self-taught).

6. Wuxia as a genre is remarkably egalitarian. Expect women martial artists to throw down with (and hold their own against) male opponents. Learn to fear the older women in wuxia; they’re often the most dangerous. Not to say there aren’t damsels in distress in wuxia, just that there are usually as many female warrior characters, too.

If the story has multiple sect leaders, usually at least one is a woman -- and if not, one of the men is married to a woman that everyone knows is the truly powerful/skilled one. Near-equal cast percentages are common, too, both in the foreground (and not always for the sake of pairing off for romance), and in the background, when you catch shots of the rank-and-file sect members.

Basically, you can expect the average wuxia to pass the Bechdel test with flying colors. It may not always pass all the other gender tests, but conversations (and deep friendships) between female characters are usually on-screen (not just implied), and often a strong part of the storyline.

7. The super-hero-like skills -- leaping from or to an extreme height, tossing someone a great distance, getting thrown far and getting up again -- are a good map to things like gunslingers who can shoot a playing card at eighty paces blindfolded. Or Robin Hood getting a bullseye through the arrows of someone else’s bullseyes. Wuxia tends to expect even superlative skills at a beginner’s level (so you’ll see student-characters doing such), but it’s all just ways to say, these characters have studied the sword while the rest of us were waiting for the translation team to release the next episode.

8. Those skills are not magic, which occupies a different category. Whether shown or implied, wuxia’s ‘martial arts’ (if exaggerated and unrealistic) are still studied. When magic shows up, it’s often derided, because it’s a shortcut. There’s an insincerity, a kind of bad sportsmanship. The reaction in-story is much like real world reaction to athletes using performance-enhancing drugs. It’s cheating, and it’s disrespectful towards your opponents, that you refused to match their efforts with equal effort of your own.

9. Every story has its own definition of what is, or is not, ‘magic’ and thus a shortcut. Wuxia is usually pretty good about making clear what the story considers ‘orthodox’ or ‘right’: look for characters introduced as authoritative voices in the story’s world, and what they do is probably a good indication of accepted skills (that is, not-magic). Well, unless the character cackles a lot, in which case they’re probably an example of magic/unorthodox approaches.

9. Qi -- energy -- is the root of a character’s power (or lack thereof). Plenty of wuxia only reference this concept in passing, but some codify it into a necessity -- as in, some people have the ‘right’ kind of qi, and some do not. Or that it takes years to develop so the hero is permanently behind until they finally get to doing the work. Whether nature or nuture, this qi is how a cultivator can leap high bounds while the background farmer or merchant characters must scramble to find a ladder.

10. Over the years of television, ‘manipulating qi’ -- shoving energy at someone through the hands/feet, a sword, a musical instrument, something else -- has developed its own set of stylized movements. It’s a lot of arm-waving and finger twirling and whatnot (often circular). I think of it like riding an invisible bike to charge the generator; releasing it means the TV has the juice to kick on. Or the tazer can release, or whatever.

11. There are a bunch of virtues being promoted by wuxia, from a tangle of daoism, buddhism, and confucianism -- things like loyalty, sincerity, honesty, humility, respecting one’s parents (or teacher), benevolence, and justice (or righteousness). Plus a disregard for wealth or glory for personal gain.

The good (or enduring) wuxia stories seem to be the ones that find a way to make a virtue into a point of conflict -- as in, loyalty to what/who, questions of what it means to be righteous in this circumstance or that, and so on. The virtue is still at the heart of things, the conflict lies in how it’s interpreted or applied.

12. Wuxia predates Confucianism and Buddhism (and possibly Daoism), so it’s got a long history of cherrypicking to mix and match as it pleases. Some things you might see, and the influencing source:

horsetail whisks, used for purifying a space and removing evil influences, traditionally carried by Daoist priests as a sign of their rank.

an emphasis on Yin and Yang as driving opposing energies (sometimes good and bad, sometimes required to be balanced), also a Daoist concept.

most mystical elements are also Daoist influence: like qigong (coordinated posture and movement to increase/improve health, spiritual strength, and martial prowess), alchemy, astrology, etc.

mudras (hand gestures, cf Naruto) are predominantly Buddhist, meant as a way to focus oneself. When these show up in wuxia, the origin is still ‘to focus oneself’ but being wuxia, the result is usually a burst of visible power.

if a story revolves around learning to forgive/forget and to have compassion (over vengeance), that’s the Buddhist influence showing.

if filial piety, the observance of rites, or questions of ethics/morality are significant themes, that’s probably confucianism’s influence.

The lines are way blurrier than I’m going into, here. After all, the three perspectives have competed and coexisted for hundreds of years. There’s a fair bit of cross-contamination, as it were.

13. A lot of wuxia -- and I mean a lot of wuxia -- can be boiled down to coming-of-age stories: a young hero faces trials and tribulations on his (or her) way to finding a place in society. Sometimes it’s working their way up through the levels to claim the top spot; sometimes it’s being rejected from the school they wanted, and continuing to fight that fate until they’re accepted and demonstrate they deserve to be there.

This focus on younger heroes also means that wuxia is rife with idol dramas, where the majority of the cast are young/first-time actors, chosen for their looks and their similarity to the character (so as to not require too much of a stretch for them, acting-wise). On the other hand, this does often mean the pretty is almost overwhelming, since it’s looks and not long-time acting experience that set the bar.

14. Compared to other Chinese literary genres, wuxia is somewhat unique in its emphasis on individualism, but this isn’t to say you should expect full-throated american-style rugged individualism. I’d say it’s less about the individual breaking free of social rules, and more that the individual must find a way to interpret those social rules and forge a compromise between what they’re required to be vs who they want to be.

The best illustration I can think of is a parental dictate of “I want you to marry and have a family,” that sets off the story’s conflict. By the end of the story, the now-adult child realizes the message wasn’t meant literally so much as a way to say, “I want you to grow up, have a place in this world, surrounded by people who love you.” The error wasn’t in the parents’ blindness to the child’s needs, but in the child’s interpretation of the parental message.

(Unlike historical or modern dramas, which often have a lot of daddy issues -- thanks, Confucius -- wuxia is relatively free of that. Child-parent conflict is common, but truly dysfunctional on the level of modern melodramas, not quite so much.)

15. The fights are balletic and acrobatic; they’re meant as an abstract representation of a fight. You want reality, go watch an HK or Korean action movie/show. Wuxia is where you go for the twirling, the leaps, the spins, all the kinds of moves that no decent fighter would ever do, ‘cause turning your back on the enemy gets you killed -- but wuxia isn’t about that, it’s about the cool visual factor.

16. Historically and aesthetically, the costumes are closest to the Ming dynasty -- layered and belted ankle-length robes with long, flowing sleeves. Partly because the Ming dynasty seems to be a favorite setting (for whatever quality of actual time period a story even bothers to identify), but also (at least, my theory is) because those big sleeves make for dramatic gestures when swinging a sword.

17. There are newer wuxia that show some Game of Thrones influence (or, in the movie adaptations like The Four, some grimdark-slash-steampunk influences) but for the most part, wuxia is rather brightly-lit. My theory is that it was traditionally designed to be visible on (literally) smaller TVs, out in rural villages and whatnot. Frex, the darkest things get in wuxia, visually, is a day-for-night blue, since filming at night for real makes for an awful dark screen.

This is changing -- I’ve seen a lot more wuxia that are genuinely filming at night -- but the same show may also do day-for-night just cause they’re on a tight schedule and can’t sit around until it’s dark again to shoot the next scene, so they make do.

18. Older filming styles still dominate in wuxia, and the one you may notice the most is a particular move where the speaking character turns away from whomever they’re talking to, walks towards the camera, and speaks in the direction of the camera. It’s just not something people normally do, but it happens all the time in wuxia.

I think it comes from the days of only having one camera, so either you took the time to reshoot to get reactions (not really possible on shoestring budgets with tight deadlines), or you made sure the frame could include the speaker and the listeners. (Or it might be coming from the stage, where the actor must face the audience to be heard.)

The basic blocking, lighting, and so on sometimes reminds me of afternoon soap operas from the 80s, done with videotape rather than film. Not cheap so much as lower budget.

19. If you want historical authenticity, this is the last place to look. The costumes will be flashy, especially for the hero and his love interest: layered and embroidered, with modern fabrics in bright, sometimes neon!, shades and combinations (Nicholas Tse, I see you).

Older wuxia, the characters rarely got dirty, a wound from a fight was represented by a streak of clearly-fake (and somewhat diluted) pink syrup, and plenty of times a character will go through an entire battle and not even be sweaty or dirty. (Game of Thrones is changing this, too, though -- I’m seeing more dishevelment, though it’s still relatively minor compared to post-battle LotR or GoT.)

20. You can tell the budget from two things: how many costumes and how many wigs. A lower-budget wuxia (or one made at rapid pace) means characters go to bed in their day-clothes, with headpieces still on. Wigs are expensive, and a quickly-made wuxia means you get one wig, and that’s what you’re always wearing, rather than a wig for sleeping and another for waking. Same goes for showing characters in their day-clothes versus what they’d wear for night, or when relaxing, or whatever. (Or having two versions of the same costume, one pre-battle and one post-battle.)

21. About that historical bit -- at least up to the Qing dynasty, Chinese men usually wore their hair in a top-knot once they reached adulthood. Wuxia’s aesthetic is for everyone -- including elderly men -- wearing their hair mostly down with only a small top-knot to pull back their bangs. This just isn’t how anyone wore their hair, but it’s a massive visual clue that the story takes place in the jianghu, where normal society’s rules don’t apply.

22. I think I mentioned the Ming dynasty -- not sure why, but it seems to be the most favorite target. (You’d think it’d be the Qing, since they were outsiders, but nope.) The literary precursors of wuxia had a strong streak of ‘the government is corrupt and/or full of idiots, we’re better off doing our own thing over here,’ which led to various dynasties cracking down on wuxia as a kind of rebel literature.

It’s kind of ironic that wuxia’s history of overturning the natural order confucian principles (that is, treating individualism as an equal virtue, and elevating commoners to hero-status for *gasp* leaving their place of birth to wander around and do good deeds) is what made wuxia immensely popular during the cultural revolution, when China was busy deconstructing (often violently) so much of its cultural past. Wuxia stood apart, as something that had been quietly deconstructing all along, and thus shot up in popularity for finally being in tune with the zeitgeist.

(Wuxia in all its forms has always, perhaps unsurprisingly, been massively popular among the common classes. Wuxia is not, never has been, a high literary form; watching wuxia means you’re watching the latest iteration of an ancient yet truly pop-as-in-popular-as-in-common culture.)

I get the impression the chinese authorities have an uneasier relationship with historical dramas (which can walk a fine line of implying that imperial past as a good/positive), whereas wuxia’s place in the mythical jianghu diminishes its ability to threaten via social commentary. This isn’t to say wuxia isn’t in dialogue with the social and political environment in which it’s made; all literature is, by virtue of being of its time. It’s just a bit more coy about it, and its loudest political-type trait -- of dismissing the imperial system/capital as corrupt, evil, or otherwise contemptible -- fits with a desire to see the dynastic past as something to be discarded and/or dismissed, not emulated.

23. Oh, and one last thing: wuxia is very, very, very chaste. A lot of the romantic relationships are almost entirely implied -- a lot of longing looks, maybe the exchange of a significant gift, I mean, we’re talking a genre that considers holding hands to be pretty daring. I’ve seen entire series where you know those two will end up together, but if you can’t read the visual cues, you’d think they were just close friends (if not socially-awkward acquaintances).

That said, when wuxia breaks that so-chaste rule, it’s like having a table dropped on you. There’s a drunken makeout scene in The Legends that had my jaw on the table because holy smokes, that was unexpected. Mad passionate wild abandonment just isn’t a thing in wuxia.

[ETA: don’t get me wrong, wuxia in general is hugely passionate. Just not on a sexual level; it’s on the emotional level that wuxia will go to eleven, repeatedly.]

...okay, that wasn’t even in the neighborhood of brief. hell, it wasn’t even in the same state as brief, but I did warn you. Wuxia’s a huge genre, after all. An entire book might still only scratch the surface, but hopefully this suffices as a general introduction.

#wuxia #come for the brief essay stay for the dissertation #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #mdzs

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carsonreal · 3 years

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The Best Team in Hockey: The Chicago Blackhawks

There’s just something about the red, white, and black on the Blackhawks jerseys that really draws you in. Maybe it’s the fact that it is clearly the best jersey in the world, let alone in the National Hockey League (according to a poll of NHL players). Maybe it’s the fact that they have been the most successful and dominant hockey team of the 2010′s, winning 3 Stanley Cup Championships in 2010, 2013, and 2015. Or maybe because the most electrifying hockey player on the planet, Patrick Kane (who just recently played his 1000th game in the National Hockey League) has his number 88 stitched to the back of that beautiful sweater. The point is that this team has been so important to me in my life, as well as the lives of most people from or living in the Chicago area, because of their success as a team and really just as a part of growing up in Chicago.

There is a lot of history behind the Blackhawks organization that makes it one of the most special and one of the most historic franchises in all of sports. When the National Hockey League first came to fruition, there were only 6 teams, and these teams were known as the “Original Six”. This group of teams consisted of the New York Rangers, the Boston Bruins, the Montreal Canadiens, the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Detroit Red Wings, and the Chicago Blackhawks. Being among the group of first National Hockey League teams automatically brings a ton of history to the franchise that other teams, other than the remaining 5 members of the “Original Six”, simply do not have. Not only does the team itself have a ton of history, but the Blackhawks have had a load of players that have gone down, or will go down, as all time great players that the National Hockey League has ever seen play the game. According to the National Hockey League’s website, which continually updates its “Top 100 Players of All Time” list, the list consists of former Blackhawks players Chris Chelios, Tony Esposito, Glenn Hall, Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, and Denis Savard. All of these guys are historic players that suited up for the Chicago Blackhawks for the majority of their career, if not their whole career. Even better than having 6 former Blackhawks on the list, is having 3 current Blackhawks, that made the cut, with those guys being Patrick Kane, Duncan Keith, and Jonathan Toews. I obviously don’t have much memories of the 6 former players on the list, but I am extremely familiar with the 3 current players on the list, as they have had a huge effect on my life and are honestly extremely important to my childhood.

Duncan Keith has been the core of the Blackhawks defensemen since he first made the Blackhawks roster after being drafted by the team in June of 2002 (he was drafted less than a month after I was born, which I find absolutely crazy sometimes). When he first became a part of the Chicago Blackhawks organization, they were in a bad spot. They were not winning many games, they were going through a lot of changes when it comes to the management positions and the coaching staff, and they were starting to become a young team that really lacked experience. However, Duncan Keith was the first guy that was a part of that young group of guys that showed a ton of potential. He was the beginning of the dynasty that was the 2010′s Chicago Blackhawks, and it showed in being a key part of winning 3 Stanley Cup Championships, and 2 Norris Trophies, which show that he was the best defenseman in the league for two of his seasons in his career.

Patrick Kane is the most electric, fun to watch, skilled player that the Chicago Blackhawks have ever seen, as he rightfully obtained the nickname “Showtime” throughout his career in this organization. Drafted in 2007 with the first overall pick, everyone knew that he was going to be something special. I can still remember watching him skate all over the ice when I was 6 or 7 years old and just being astonished at how good he was, and how much better he was than almost everyone I have ever seen play the game of hockey. Not only is he known as probably the best Blackhawk to ever put on the red, white, and black jerseys, but he is also almost undoubtedly the best American born player that the league has ever seen. Hockey in Chicago was on a serious downward trajectory before Patrick Kane arrived, and it’s safe to say that he was the key in bringing the hockey fandom back into Chicago. Throughout his career, he has won 3 Stanley Cup Championships, as well as a Calder Trophy for being the best first year player, and a Hart Trophy as the Most Valuable Player in the National Hockey League.

Jonathan Toews has been the captain of the Chicago Blackhawks since the start of the 2008 season. He was just 20 years old when he was named the captain of the team, and was the third youngest captain that the National Hockey League has ever had. The first memory that I have of Jonathan Toews, or “Captain Serious” as Chicagoans have grown to know him as, is looking at the Blackhawks calendar that showcased a different player on the team for each month. One might think that his name would be pronounced “Toes”, but quickly we learned that it was actually pronounced “Taves” (somehow). “Captain Serious” was my favorite player that the Blackhawks have ever had throughout my life, and he probably had the biggest impact on my life as a Blackhawks fan. Toews was the young guy, but he was also the leader of the team from the day that he stepped foot in that locker room. He was a no nonsense type of player and worked harder than anyone else when he was on the ice, but you could tell that he was a super fun, energetic, and positive guy off of the ice as well. Recently he has been away from the team and unable to play with an unknown illness, which is very scary. Everyone hopes that he can return to the team next year, healthy and ready to go.

The Blackhawks have been a huge part of my life. Growing up in the Chicago area, sports were just always prevalent in that area, and throughout my whole life, the teams have been extremely successful, but none more than the Chicago Blackhawks. They have the most championships in the league in the 2010′s, proving that nobody could really compete with them as far as team success in the league goes. Also, the players on the team have formed such a connection with the city of Chicago and all of the Blackhawks fans, that we all feel like they are truly part of our city and our culture. People that are my age have grown up with the guys that are currently on the team, and it really feels like myself and my peers have been a part of the team ever since the first championship season in 2010. My life has been infinitely better as a Blackhawks fan, and I couldn't thank guys like Patrick Kane, Duncan Keith, and Jonathan Toews enough for helping with that, as well as every single player that was a part of the team since I've been a fan. Nothing else that I have ever encountered or that has been a part of my life has effected me like sports, and out of all the teams that I have been a fan of since I was born, the Blackhawks have been the most successful and the team that I felt the most connected to.

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puppyluver256 · 4 years

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"Dear lord Jesus, please bless this young lady so that she may one day have the ability to speak just as you intended, that she may no longer be forced to surmount this obstacle on her own..." "(Geez, lady, you really have nothing better to do? It's not like I'd give you the satisfaction of hearing me speak even if this crap worked, I never consented to your so-called healing...)"

Was randomly thinking about the prevalence of faith "healing" a few days ago and getting a little pissed about it, and I wanted to kinda channel that proxy irritation. So here's Cosmos having to deal with an old lady trying to pray a voice into them and it's super awkward and annoying and they just wanted to meet their boyfriend for a lunch date let go of their hands alreadyyyyy... Usually they'd find being misgendered as a woman humorous (at least moreso than being misgendered as a man), but right now they're too busy being irritated to be amused.

(also what is with this posing? did my skillset suddenly throw itself back to ancient Egypt? welp I can take this as a learning experience at least hehe)

💖🐶 Check out my pinned post for ways to support my artwork, among other things! 🐶💖

~If you like, please reblog to show your friends! Likes are appreciated, but reblogs let more people see my content! If you have something to say, feel free to give feedback in tags/comments/replies as well!~

Smile For Me and related concepts © LimboLane Cosmos Stargazer and artwork (and that old lady I guess, I'm never gonna use her again hehe) © PuppyLuver Studios

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[Image Description: A digital illustration featuring Cosmos Stargazer, OP’s interpretation of the protagonist of Smile For Me, and an old woman standing on the side of a street. Cosmos is a young androgynous person with reddish-brown skin, pink and green hair resembling a stargazer lily, and green eyes with light green sclera. They are wearing a light blue sweater, a purple and pink ruffled skirt, light blue leggings, and green socks. A face mask with the colors of the pansexual pride flag is pulled down around their chin, and they are staring at the viewer with a look of irritation. The old woman has lilac skin and silver hair in a bun. She is wearing a dark pink sweater with lighter pink trim, a lavender skirt, muted pink tights, and a golden cross pendant. The old woman has Cosmos's hands in her own, and her eyes are closed in prayer. There are some shops on the other side of the street in the background, as well as an alleyway between them. End ID.]

#smile for me #smile for me game #flower kid #cosmos stargazer #jess drew the thing #sfw #image description #religion mention

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liskantope · 4 years

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Some thoughts on BLM and our current unrest

[Content warning for death and violence and even sexual abuse (although that’s not part of this week’s issue) and, you know, discussion of a current topic that’s very upsetting for many people. I can’t guarantee that the opinion I express won’t be additionally upsetting although I’m hoping for an open-minded rather than strident tone here. Also, it turned out super long. And I didn’t even get around to the protest vs. rioting discourse!]

This post is long, and since Tumblr for some reason has done away with the light horizontal bars separating sections of writing (I can’t imagine why, and I wish they’d bring it back), I’ll adopt the style of Slate Star Codex and The Last Psychiatrist to mark different sections.

(The following hypothetical situation is inspired by the crimes of Jerry Sandusky of Penn State and Larry Nassar of Michigan State.)

Suppose it becomes public knowledge that in many American universities there are officials working in athletics departments who are using their programs to gain access to children and teenagers for the purpose of sexually abusing them. Say it is discovered that this has been going on for decades at most of these universities, with the perpetrators using their privilege and power to keep the suspicions of the higher-up administrators on the downlow. This would of course become a dominating national news item and lead to a public conversation about how poorly structured the system must be at universities to allow for such despicable crimes to go on, how we as a society are putting people in power who care more about their power than about the basic safety of children and teenagers, and so on. If enough people felt like university administrations or state governments were refusing to take action towards dissolving these corrupt systems, or if they disagreed with the actions being taken, there might be full-scale protests or even riots along with the vigils that would take place in any case. I mean, I believe all of this is basically what happened when the Sandusky and Nassar situations broke out some years back.

Now suppose that in addition, when looking at all these horrific revelations from universities all around the country, it became noticeable that the victims of these sex crimes were disproportionately young people growing up in poverty; let’s say fully one third of the victims were growing up in households whose annual income was under $30,000. (I don’t recall the Sandusky case in great detail but something like that was probably true there to a more dramatic extent since he got access to his victims through a program designed for underprivileged children.) This makes the situation feel even more tragic -- don’t kids from low-income backgrounds suffer enough disadvantages already? These monsters that are protected by The System are adept at preying on the most vulnerable, and clearly this (hypothetical but altogether not unrealistic) phenomenon highlights the vulnerability of those who are not economically privileged.

Now in such a situation, class issues would definitely become at least a minor part of the discourse, but I have a hard time imagining that the entire main thrust of the public outrage would focus on classism, even if (and this is something I can’t imagine either!) the only cases being projected by the media to become common public knowledge, out of the whole series of university athletics sex crimes, were the ones where mainly poor kids and teenagers were targeted. In fact, I expect that if any media outlet tried to present the entire thing as being a class issue and implied that it affected only poor kids, there would be a lot of backlash especially on the grounds of this coming across as a big middle finger to the higher-income-background molestation victims. I just don’t see it happening. Primarily, the outrage would be centered on the fact that university administrations allow high-ranking people in their athletics departments get away with despicable violations of young people for decades. The fact that a disproportionately high number of those young people are from underprivileged backgrounds would be treated as sort of a secondary issue, if properly noticed by the broader public at all.

So, if you’ve read this far you probably see where I’m going with this. And I know that the above hypothetical scenario furnishes nowhere near a perfect analogy to what has people riled up right now. But why is it that in my hypothetical nightmare crime scenario, the prevalence of the crime itself (rather than which demographic is disproportionately on the receiving end) is what constitutes the outrage, whereas in the real-life scenario of numerous documented instances of police brutality and murder, the entire thrust of the public outrage is centered on the notion that this is all about racism, that yeah there must be something seriously amiss in a system that lets cops get away with brutal violence towards innocent civilians but pretty much every single statement expressing that sentiment will frame it in terms of racism while the existence white victims of police brutality is essentially never even acknowledged?

From what I can see, in this age where everyday happenings can easily be recorded by random bystanders and the recordings can easily become accessible to the public, we are seeing evidence that a number of American cops are way, way too liberal with lethal violence, either through direct training or through a tendency towards paranoia of how dangerous a civilian under arrest might be or through psychopathic tendencies that attract certain kinds of people to a profession where brutally violent behavior is too easily excused in the courts after the fact. I don’t know to what degree these relatively few pieces of documented footage reflect a large part of the police force rather than just “a few bad apples”, but on some level it doesn’t matter -- an event like the murder of George Floyd should not be tolerated and the fact that many such instances are happening every year seems unacceptable. This is true regardless of whether Floyd’s race actually played any significant part in Derek Chauvin’s decision to apply very excessive force. Then there are statistics to reckon with -- I don’t have the skillset that some have for knowing where to look up data and rationally analyzing it, but to my understanding it’s quite unambiguous that American law enforcement officers kill a lot more people than the police forces of most other countries, and this would seem to point to a serious problem. I have generally heard that in absolute terms, in fact more white men are killed this way than black men, but relative to the ratio of white people to black people, black men are killed disproportionately often. Of course there seems to be no room whatsoever for discussion of any possible reason this could be aside from purely racist motives on the parts of the cops, which is certainly one of my issues with the whole topic, but let’s set that aside for the moment and assume for the sake of argument that this disparity is entirely attributable to anti-black racism. Even with this assumption, does it make sense to present the entire issue of police brutality as a purely racial one?

Here is another analogy to something that is not only non-hypothetical but is an even bigger current situation: the pandemic. It’s frequently been remarked on that Covid19 has been killing at a significantly higher rate among racial minorities. And yet the broader framing of the crisis we’re in hasn’t been that it’s an African-American issue or that every failure of government officials to respond effectively is primarily an instantiation of racism. The racial component of this is treated secondarily, in fact with far less emphasis than the direct crisis which affects everyone in the country even if not in equal measures.

With the murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Abery, as with every other story of a cop killing of a black person that goes viral, it’s not only that the narrative frames the race component as the primary issue -- the race component is framed as the only issue. This is done in such an absolute and unquestioning manner that I’m still a little taken aback whenever I see each new “We denounce racism!” announcement from almost every company whose mailing system I’m in: my Unitarian Universalist organization, the university I work for, Lyft, Airbnb, etc., not that any of them actually suggest a plan of action beyond donating to Black Lives Matter and other related organizations.

I think I can answer my own questions about why the narrative is coming out this way. Some areas of social justice enjoy a much more prestigious position in America than others do, and racism seems to dominate all the rest. (I’ve come to see this as a very American thing, no doubt due to the exceptionally dramatic nature of my country’s struggles against racial oppression, although it’s probably the case in Canada as well and maybe to a comparable extent in other Anglophone countries.) There is no surer way to make an issue more hot-button than by framing it as a racial issue, except in the unusual case (as in my Covid example) that the issue is actually of urgent and immediate concern to all citizens. Opposition to something like police brutality could have some momentum on its own, but as motivation for activism it has nowhere near the mighty strength in our culture that anti-racism does. In the hypothetical scenario about child abuse at universities, we have one type of social injustice, economic inequality, which has mostly been relegated to the background in the recent history of social activism (yes, Bernie Sanders has had a significant following, but my impression is that even many of his most diehard supporters get more passionate about racial inequality than economic inequality, at least when it comes to fiscal issues other than health care reform). Whereas child molestation is condemned in the strongest terms by our society perhaps even more universally than racism is (even though this universality makes it less of a cause for energetic activism -- I never hear anyone complain that “we live in a molestation culture” or anything like that). So, issues viewed as racial have far more memetic endurance than non-racial issues or even the exact same fundamental issues when not viewed from a racial angle.

Or, here is another way that I’ve considered looking at it: because police violence happens disproportionately to African-Americans, police violence could be considered to be “an African-American issue”, and since anti-racism activism is already quite a strong force in modern American culture, the issue of police brutality will naturally find an outlet to the public through the lens of African-American issues. Therefore, this is the only angle from which most of us will ever see it.

Of course the obvious thing that someone would surely point out here is that pretty much all of the examples of police brutality we’ve been seeing for years have white people victimizing black people (George Zimmerman did not present to me as white from the moment I first glanced at him, and by many definitions he is a PoC, but I guess he’s close enough to white that people were able to ignore this). Therefore it seems logical to assume that anti-black racism is the only lens to view these events through. Well, it would be logical except that we should all be able to think critically enough to realize that there are probably tons of videos out there of innocent white people being victimized by cops but those aren’t the ones that go viral. In fact, videos of black people being victimized by non-white cops probably also don’t get very far in the memosphere* -- it’s occurred to me that perhaps if the Asian policeman on the scene had been the one in the center of the frame pinning Floyd to the ground, this atrocity might never have become public knowledge!

(*Did I just make up that term? Google isn’t showing anything.)

And honestly, for this reason, I can’t help feeling particularly bad right now for loved ones of nonblack people who were victims of such crimes while being treated as if their cases didn’t exist.

This is not me trying to covertly imply support for “All Lives Matter” here. I’ve never felt the slightest bit of attraction to that counter-hashtag, which has always struck me as subtly obnoxious in implying that Black Lives Matter’s name is equivalent to saying “only black lives matter”, which of course BLM is not saying. Black lives do matter and in many ways still constantly get devalued and it is good that there’s an activist group out there whose main purpose is to stand up for them. But my discussion above does point to a specific issue -- probably the biggest of two or three issues -- I have with BLM. It would be one thing to say, “Police brutality can be considered a black issue since it affects black people disproportionately, so we should form a Black Lives Matter group and include it as one of the things we want to fight against.” Instead, BLM’s rhetoric strongly implies, “Police brutality is entirely a black issue and we’ll round off the entirety of it to racism and make opposition to it our main plank”. (Compare, from an secularist activist group, “Anti-gay bigotry often arises from fundamentalist religion and the justification for anti-gay-rights legislation threatens separation of church and state; therefore we should consider it an atheist/secularist issue and place gay rights issues among our concerns” vs. “Anti-gay bigotry and legislation is simply a manifestation of religion’s attempt to dominate non-religion so we should make opposition to it our main plank and not acknowledge or stand up for gay Christians.” Again, not a perfect analogy, but I hope it shows where I’m coming from.)

II.

I already wrote a post exactly four years ago describing and criticizing what I called “protest culture”. My point in linking to it here is not to revisit the discussion about Bernie Sanders or even the question of protesters’ deep-down motives but to endorse the following paragraph describing the kind of protest activism I felt (and still feel) could be helpful:

I definitely think there’s an important place in our culture for organized protest. Sometimes we ordinary citizens need to show our dissatisfaction to the higher-ups in a way that they are forced to notice and not ignore. But I strongly prefer protests that express dissent from a particular action, propose a concrete solution, and include many people who are able to make nuanced arguments in favor of this solution. If there is no good consensus as to a serious solution, then I’ll settle for some particular action that is being protested against. For instance, I would have proudly joined the marches against the war in Vietnam had I been around for it, and would have joined the marches against the war in Iraq had I been a little older at the time. I would consider joining protests against, for instance, particular amendments I feel strongly about. I did not, on the other hand, feel comfortable with the “99 percent” movement. What was it expressing a sentiment against, exactly, apart from the very vague notion that a few people at the top screw things over for the rest of us? (And by the way, I suspect that demonizing the entire top 1% was too heavy-handed; it’s probably only some in the top .01% who have been doing the main damage.) There seemed to be little organization to this movement, and little common purpose except “let’s protest for the cause of being vaguely left-wing!” The best argument I remember hearing in its favor was when a student explained to me the main strategy behind the movement: they would essentially fight guerilla-style by occupying large areas for a very long amount of time in a way that the top politicians couldn’t ignore, never, ever giving it up until things change in Washington. But I was still pretty sure that at some point, the movement would have to die down, and was willing to bet that this would happen before anything changed in Washington.

I’ve never felt as fervently as I do now that too many law enforcement officers in the US are out of control and some kind of reform needs to be done (or at least strongly considered, in a serious conversation) to the system so that it can be effective in keeping them in check and outlawing certain forms of excessive force. There’s a lot I don’t understand about the demands and risks involved in law enforcement, but I really can’t imagine how there’s any possible excuse for what Officer Chauvin did, or for his colleagues who stood by and watched him do it. One reason I’m bringing up everything I did in the section above is that a massive protest movement based entirely on opposing racism seems to me like the exact wrong way to bring about the kind of reform we need, in part because it fails to recognize that the link from the bare facts of these events to possible racist motives is far less direct than the link to the overpowered nature of American law enforcement.

What is a campaign centered on “Be less racist!” possibly going to accomplish? Yelling at the police to be less racist isn’t going to change the behavior of individual cops who might be subconsciously racist but don’t realize it, many of whom are likely to react with defensiveness (because racism on an abstract level is sufficiently shamed in modern western culture that nobody likes to admit to themselves that they’re being racist). It’s even less likely to change the behavior of individual cops who are maliciously racist. It’s not going to change the policies set in place for law enforcement when, in this day and age, it would be highly illegal and unconstitutional to have explicitly racist policies in the first place. (It can be argued that some of these policies are a part of systemic racism, but then in my opinion the activist movement should focus on attacking those specific policies.)

In fact, I can’t think of any situation, however race-related, where I expect it helps to yell “Be less racist!” except for when (1) you are protesting against a particular law which discriminates against people of a certain (minority) race; or (2) you are denouncing a particular candidate or person in power who has explicitly endorsed racism in public or in private. Both of these scenarios are highly rare in 2020. Maybe there are other neighboring scenarios I’m not thinking of at the moment, but I’m pretty sure our current scenario isn’t one of them.

I imagine that if we set race aside for a moment and focus on police reform, by waiting for background information on the Floyd case to come out and piecing together what led to this injustice and pinpointing which factors led to it, a difference could be made. I’m not saying that this should all be done dispassionately, and in fact acting with passion and emotional force is crucial. And I’m not saying that in the wake of such an obvious murder everyone should just stay quiet until more facts come out. It makes sense to cry out in pain and anger as an immediate reaction, and I’m not going to criticize anyone for doing this, especially someone who feels closer to the tragedy (yes, including through shared racial background) than I do. But letting this get immediately drowned in a rampage against perceived racism and only that, against a system that has shown time and time again that it clearly doesn’t think itself racist at all and perhaps (in at least most of its components) has no deliberate intention of being, doesn’t seem likely to produce anything but further acrimony and polarization.

[TL;DR for these last two sections: it would seem like a more effective response to focus on police brutality and overpowered-ness as the main issue rather than making it all about race.]

III.

I forced myself to watch as much of the video of George Floyd’s final hours and minutes as I could. I didn’t actually succeed in finding the full video, and maybe that’s for the best, because what I did see chilled me to the bone and distressed me more than almost any real-life footage I’ve ever seen. I’m not as eloquent as some at putting my raw emotions in writing and don’t know the words to describe how twisted up it made me feel to “witness” an obvious murder of a man whose greatest “crime” was resisting getting pushed into a police car, and to watch him dying one of the most undignified deaths I can imagine ever being forced on anyone. I felt momentarily physically ill and wanted to cry.

Others in my orbit -- mostly white people; my social bubbles have always been disproportionately white and Asian and certainly nonblack -- have expressed a similar emotional reaction to mine except with the added factor of disgust at the obvious racism present. This was just simply not part of my immediate emotional reaction. On a cognitive level I am aware that there clearly has to be some degree of anti-black racism in law enforcement, even independent of classism and other factors, and that could be of some relevance in any individual case (although it would seem very tricky to assess how much). But this awareness doesn’t have time to kick in when I open a video or news story that’s already been presented to me as “another black man killed by racist cop” which reminds me that this is embedded in a particular media narrative and makes me feel instinctively on guard against letting my perceptions be colored by it.

Black people seeing these apparently all feel on the level of deep, fundamental knowledge that this happened to Floyd because he was black and that it’s a fate they have to constantly fear happening to themselves, or at least that’s what the white people around me are constantly claiming. I feel epistemically helpless when it comes to knowing what the “average” (rather than one of those on the forefront of racial activism) African-American’s take on this is, or how fearful the “average” African-American is of the police on a daily basis as compared to a white person’s, especially prior to the age when videos of police abuse started going viral.

But I’m certain that a significant part of the African-American community is right now in a deep pain that I can’t really imagine, because I don’t quite know how it feels to perceive one horrible tragedy as indicative of something that is done to attack a specific minority that I belong to.

I expect that some of them learn about an incident like this, and an incident like the one with Ahmoud Arbery, and feel on the level of social intuition (I think I’ve sometimes called this “social sense”), developed from a web of personal experiences, that these individual terrible choices clearly had a lot to do with the victims being black. I would be a hypocrite to fault someone for reaching a strong conviction based on this kind of social intuition, because I do it myself all the time -- in fact, I often express such conclusions on this blog. I feel less qualified to rely on this social intuition and my own experience when it comes to race issues, but I invoke it all the time on this blog when I talk about male-female dynamics in order to argue on controversial position on gender relations, for instance, because I do have lifelong ample experience with men and women interacting.

If many black people in America have a deep instinctual feeling for the racial aspect of many of these attacks, then I do acknowledge that a lot of that is probably coming from somewhere other than media narratives. It might come from everyday interactions with police, observing that they are stopped and treated hostilely by the police than their white friends seem to be, or who knows what else. And those voices with their explanations need to be at least listened to. I wish it were easier to hear them through all the tribalistic noise and confusion.

So trying to better understand all this is part of my struggle at the moment. This post might not age well -- I wouldn’t be surprised if I view some of my turns of phrase in this section of it with some embarrassment even sometime in the near future -- but I need to commit myself to trying.

Anyway, I guess all of this is to say that my lengthy arguments above aren’t meant to claim that the instances of police brutality we’ve been seeing aren’t related in some way to racism, but that reflexively framing them in terms of racism seems guaranteed to bring only more pain to an already painful situation.

#child molestation #racism cw #police brutality cw #classism #basically all the content warnings #covid pandemic #BLM #protest culture #social intuition

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todo-ho-ki · 4 years

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If It’s Convenient For You, Pt.1

Hello everyone! It’s been a while since I wrote anything I felt was worth posting.

I got into My Hero Academia recently and wanna try my hand at writing again. Please read and let me know, is it too slow of a burn? Is it worth a part two? (Fact: The story will be written regardless of whether I post the rest)

You’re also getting a name and there is nothing you can do to stop me. Writing in second person is a little awkward for me, but if you think it suits the story then I’ll keep it like that. I’m not the most poetic so please only be a little mean!

Word Count: 1,426

Warnings: Super Mild swearing

Pairing: BakugoXReader

Summary:

You work at a convenience store in a small town where heroes are hardly ever needed, and suddenly three of the top four new heroes walk into your store. Why are they here? And why is one of them so...hot?

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

You stared out the window.

Another boring day, serving customers and pretending you cared about it. It was just another day in boring old Shoto. Nothing really ever happened. Crime was permeating the denser parts of the country, but not here. You got to watch a few skirmishes between some small-time villains and local heroes a couple times a month if you were lucky.

Since the new wave of heroes took over, everything was going fine. They held a steady front against perpetrators and would-bes all over Japan. You heard somewhere that the top three heroes had all come from the same class at U.A High School and wondered what the heck they were teaching them, since All Might came from that school too.

All Might. A legend among men. He retired six years ago as one of the mightiest heroes to ever walk the face of this earth. He came into the convenience store every once in a while when he was traveling. He'd stopped in once and bought a smoothie on his way to Tokyo, and apparently never forgot you. He always greeted you with veracity reserved only for heroes. Young Shouna! He'd always thunder. So great to see you again! How have you been? You smiled at thought of being acknowledged by such a class act. He truly was the Symbol of Peace, even still, with all the new heroes crowding the scene and damn near showing him up. The bell of the door opening pulled you out of your daydreams about heroes and the like.

"Eijirou! Grab the drinks!" A gruff, fired up-voice filled the dense silence of the empty store. Your eyes rolled involuntarily. Who the hell did these kids think they were?

You heard things falling off shelves and punches being thrown, peppered with fits of "stop messing up the store! It's not manly to force others clean up after you!" There was red hair peeking over the tops of the Aisles. "Hmm." You hummed. "Red Riot," What the heck was such a big hero doing all the way out here?" Your face gave way to confusion as the raucous crew moved toward the counter.

"Hello miss! We'd like four orders of onigiri please!" Red Riot stood at the front of the group. He'd also come out of U.A. The most chivalrous hero. It wasn't something you realized until you looked at him, though. In person, he was towering and forebodingly muscular. A little nerve-wracking.

You turned silently to the fresh onigiri stand and a blur of dusty blonde hair rushed past your field of vision. He was standing in the back, but there was no mistaking him for anyone else. Ground Zero. The number two hero in the world. He was known to be aggressive and difficult, full of venom but also full of valor. Your hands grew a little shaky as you realized just how much greatness you were in the presence of. What were two of the world's greatest heroes doing buying convenience store snacks in Shoto?

"H-here’s your onigiri, Mr. Riot," You squeaked. Adrenaline was coursing through your veins. Could you even hold packages of onigiri? More than one? Had you ever handed anyone a package of onigiri in your six months working at 7-11?

It wasn't weird for one big-shot to pass through, but...wait, three!? Todoroki!? Three of the top four heroes in the world? Your eyes fixated on Todoroki's pensive gaze. He smiled politely, like he was saying there was no need to be nervous.

"Great! How much do we owe you?"

"It's-it's on the house?" It was more like question. Your nerves were so prevalent you couldn't speak. They were obviously around to protect, but it took a lot of stomach to stand next to a hero. "Nonsense!" Red Riot pointed a finger in the air. "Dues must be paid! It's not very manly to accept hand-outs you don't need!" He dropped 1500 Yen on the counter. "Keep the change," he winked and you were sure your heart would give out right then and there. What a little shit. With that, they turned their backs to walk out. "W-what are-" Your sentence was cut off by two inquisitive stares and one angry one.

"What are heroes like you doing in a town like this?" You asked.

"None of your business!" Ground Zero yelled.

"Oi! Idiot! Never bite the hand that feeds!" Red Riot retaliated. "But really,"he turned back to your mousy expression. "It's nothing to worry about." His cocky grin told you it was true but a feeling of unease was settling in. They left in a hurry, running and yelling.

"If they weren't heroes, I’d think they were here to rob me." You mellowed out a bit in the moments surrounding the encounter. Why did you get so nervous? Why did you always get so nervous? People weren't that intimidating and the only ones that were were kind enough to use it on villains instead of the general public. You were still shaky and vaguely nervous, but that was your general demeanor anyway. As lame as they came. A very daring middle school nickname they’d not so lovingly chosen for you. "You don't want to be a hero?" They'd ask. "There are other ways to be important." You’d always reply meekly, not one to seek out confrontation.

"Good luck finding them!"

You were always met with jeers and general distaste when you told people being a hero wasn't for you. If people wanted to be one but couldn't that was fine. It was noble even, they were worthy then, but if someone didn't want to be one, whether they could or not was no matter. They'd sullied the name of heroes everywhere.

The tense atmosphere you’d felt moments before became relaxed a bit as you flipped through the magazine in front of you, visions of famous singers and dancers working their magic flitting through your head. That was what you wanted, to be important for different reasons than most everyone else. There was no need for you to fight crime. You needed to hear the music tug at your heartstrings, to change the mood, change the atmosphere, change a life. A tune broke from your chest and a pair of legs found their way to kicking around in rhythm under the stool.

"Hey." Startled out of your positively stunning fake performance, you snapped your head up so brown eyes could meet a pair of carmine ones. There was a pile of change slapped hastily on the counter in front of you and a seething rage slapped hastily on the face in front of you.

"O-oh. Yes?" You didn't even hear him come back in.

"I'm paying for these?" He asked condescendingly, motioning to the drinks on the counter. You raised your brows. You didn't hear him come in or get several Icees and walk to the counter with them?

"O-kay. That's 800 Yen."

"You're not gonna offer them to me on the house?" He sneered.

"Wh-I thought you-"

"That red idiot doesn't speak for all of us!" He growled, begrudgingly throwing the rest of the change on the counter and walking out in a huff.

The stunned look on your face didn't disappear.

"Do you think free shit just falls out of the air..?" You mumbled, the air of distaste setting in. "You don't ask for free things, idiot."

Guess you should've let the door close all the way.

"What did you just say to me?" The question was quiet and loaded. His hand gripped the door and his raw strength alone was almost enough to snap the frame. Or maybe he was just holding back. Did you really wanna provoke him?

Of course you did. This was the rudest hero-scratch that. This was the rudest person you’d ever met in your life. He was just going to walk in after Red Riot’s display of exemplary behavior, slamming things and breaking doors? And you were going to let him?

"I said you don't just ask for free things. You get offered free things." You weren’t really ever one to disturb the peace, but something inside you stirred when it became clear he didn’t think of you as more than an ant beneath his feet and he had to try not to step on you.

His face twisted in some mix of shock and annoyance. He stared for what could only be described as the historically longest five seconds ever experienced by one person before he simply turned around and left.

"Tch. Asshole."

#BNHA #bakugou x reader #probs mostly angst and fluff? I guess #no sexytime here #Bakugo fic

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