i love daisy jones and the six for many reasons but mainly because it’s just

Hello! I'm the Anon who asked about Bruce being self-aware.

When I said "Also, there's something of a difference between being self-aware about himself and when it comes to his kids." I meant that he says or does super hurtful stuff that he just doesn't seem to think was wrong or reflect upon when it went downhill or realising too late or sb had to spell it out for him.

Examples being:

him reading Dick's diary after taking him in as a ward to figure out what Dick wants instead of just asking, thus creating the Robin suit after Dick's designs (God, it was a Batman or Robin: year one comic book, I'm pretty sure but I don't rememer which),

saying "commendable" instead of just "I'm proud of you" to Damian (basically his "emotional constipation" as a whole, like being unable to understand or even recognize his kids feelings and then failing to say just the most normal praising/comforting/loving things.),

ignoring (or acting as if) when Damian apologizes for direspecting/ignoring previous orders and holds a cute speech about trying to listen now but Bruce just turns around like "Did you say something?",

not telling Dick that Jason is now Robin or that Jason died even though Bruce said he would call Dick (yeah, he was being petty or grief stricken, but still)

Tim's sixteenth birthday "present"

I hate to bring this up but the whole Batarang to the NeckTM situation in UTRH. His resurrected son confronts him and he fails to show a single emotion, instead immediately debating ethics and morals with him.

anything with Jason in future comics where Bruce beats him up and acts like Jason asked for it or that Bruce didn't have a choice but to do that.

bringing Jason back to Ethiopia to the warehouse where he died, so Bruce could maybe find a way to resurrect Damian after Heretic killed him (I think it was Heretic, but maybe it was sb else)

beating up any of his kids for any reason. The most he should do willingly is defend himself with defensive moves only or seeking distance. But not charging in like he wants a fight.

sending only Damian to save Alfred from Bane, which just allowed for Damian to be captured and then having to watch Bane snap Alfred's neck, and then Bruce says to Damian's face "If I had been there, I could have saved him." (Bruce prioritised his own grief over his son's grief and trauma and all that)

Bruce tells Cass she doesn't need a real life and sectret identity, that she only needs a costume and a private batcave and she'd be fine

Bruce instigates a fight where he and Cass get drugged and can communicate about their feelings through fist fighting.

Taking/ Trying to take Robin away from sb for their "own good". I don't mean benching, but full on "You're not Robin anymore, never again." but then folding a few issues later anyway. (It could be seen as very shitty parenting ig)

Like you said, Bruce gets written very inconsistently and I tried not to cherry pick too much of what I wanted to say, so I made this mess of a bulleted list. While a lot of these examples do come from his communication issues, I still wanted to include them anyway because it's taken too far with some writers (can't say "I love you" or hug his kids, although he doesn't have a problem with doing that with Clark or Diana) or he doesn't reflect on those moments or he repeats them over and over again.

I swear I love Bruce, I'm not a hater!!! He's actually my favorite character!!! 😭😭😭

(Making this list really hurt. Just so you know.)

Hey listen, im going to answer these by number* and then probably delete this ask in a few hours because. I hate all of these!! Maybe 3 are in character!! I dont want this terrible Bruce on my blog!!! But also i dont want you to think i asked for clarification and then ignored you so feel free to send another ask when you see this lol. Or if I have once again missed the point.

* because I misunderstood this ask again and also most of these gave me hives lmao and also also I think like 75% could be answered with "we needed someone to mean to [character] and Bruce is convenient el oh el"

Anyways:

1. This one is in character, a little bit, because as much as we understand kids needing privacy now, i can see the way Bruce was raised (Alfred would have absolutely read his diary, that feels very in character for him) and the way Dick was (sneaking out to find Zucco) leading to him panicking and monitoring him as much as possible. That doesnt make it right mind you. The thing is if Dick hacked the bat computer Bruce would probably be proud of him, so not entirely hypocritical.

2. Also possibly in character, because again, thats how Alfred probably spoke to him. Not great, and i think the current Batman and Robin run does a much better job with their relationship, but can be chalked up to bad writing tbh.

3. No this is shitty writing. Sorry it just is!

4. This could be its own post but in summary: decisions made to launch another chracters solo or in order to make a different character look good are ignored. They wanted a Nightwing solo and decided a good launching point would be a big fight between Dick and Bruce. No thanks.

There have also been panels where Dick talks about ignoring Bruce’s calls during that time period, so this could be chalked up to mutual miscommunication if you insist. And i prefer the pre crisis origin for Jaybin, for multiple reasons.

5. I haven’t read this, ive heard of it, and its weird. It feels like point 4, but for Tim. The writers wanted a villain for his birthday comic, Bruce is right there.

6. Nah, Jason fucked around and he found out. He wanted a Batman that kills criminals, he just forgot he was also, now, a murderer and a criminal. Im only half kidding here, but the problem with UTRH is that exactly. Also the fact that Jason spent like six months doing absolutely horrible shit in Gotham, and that like 15 minutes before this showdown Bludhaven was blown up, Bruce has no idea if Dick is alive, and Jason mocks him for possibly losing another son. Also Jason is the one demanding Bruce cross his very personal boundaries here, ethics and morals are a very necessary part of the conversation!!

7. Anything where Bruce beats someone near death or uses lethal force is technically out of character. Jason comics outside of DITF and UTRH do not do enough work to give his actions the context necessary for them to be in character. RHATO #25 Is shit writing.

8. It was heretic, on Talias orders, and that whole storyline is dumb. This does feel in character, because Bruce response to grief has historically been 1 become Batman 2 attempt to commit suicide by cop/criminal so points for that consistency? I really hate this plot tho. Stop killing Bruce's kids!! The man is unstable as it is!!!

9. Out of character. I know it gets used for some god awful reason but it is so out of character unless the writer is willing to give it some serious work to provide context, (or unserious; see; Zur-En-Arrh in Gotham War. It's dumb, but it provides plausible context for Bruce beating his kids ie: it isn't technically him). Barring mind control, rejected.

10. No!! What the fuck!!! Bruce is not sending one of his kids alone against Bane there is an entire comic where he drugs them so that doesn't happen stop that!!!!

As a side note when I read that the first time I understood it as "I should not have sent you in alone because it was a task too big for you, If I had been there to help we could have saved him", but I am an optimist with too much faith in DC.

11. Absolutely bonkers statement from "please let me fire you from robin so you can have a normal life" McGee. Chalking this one up to racism and misunderstanding Bruce's character and that stupid "Bruce Wayne is the mask Hur dur" thing.

12. Ok this one feels in character actually. Somehow. At least they're talking?

13. Also feels in character actually. This one is weird because you'll see those stupid "child soldier" arguments side by side with "how dare Bruce take away Robin!". Pick a side. It's either bad parenting to let Robin exist or it's bad parenting to not let Robin exist, it can't be both!

And since these are comic books, and you need to engage with the genre in good faith or you'll have a miserable time of it, Robin exists! And is allowed to exist! At the same time, as a mentor Bruce has to be able to bench Robin, that is also a function of the mentor/mentee relationship! Basically - Bruce should be able to bench an injured/at risk Robin, but the writing for those scenarios usually wants him as a villain.

Taking away Robin completely only happens to Dick tho, and since it's after he gets shot on the job I do think it's in character.

As for "I tried not to cherry pick" babe please do so!! It's comics!! It's not canon unless you want it to be, and if you want these truly terrible Bruce's to be canon all the power to you! I want to set them on fire tho. And snort WFA like it's cocaine until all this is a bad memory jfc DC screen your writers for daddy issues I am begging you.

[Update/more like a very long speech about that post I made last night? Like, 3 of you probably saw it; or cared, the difference is irrelevant. I don’t know how deeply this may concern you as it is more about me and my experience, but ... it does contain something about the path I’m going to follow here, so...here we go.]

I’ve been roleplaying for a very long time, as some of you may know. I have dropped out of here for some time—years, actually, because of life, of things happening in the fandom, many reasons. But never have I ever lost muse for Ada. Then, out of the blue, I have decided to come back.

Why? It took some time for me to figure it out, but it is clear now. I just wanted to RP with my friends again. We used to be a pretty big and happy bunch, going our way and doing our stuff, and I really missed that. I just wanted to go on Ada and start from where I left.

Now that I write it down, it seems such a stupid and naive thought, but that is the truth. It goes without saying, there was very very few left of what I remembered. Cool. Okay. Fine. I can deal with that. Someone of the old (tm) gang would appear now and then -always grateful for that- someone else is gone forever. Okay. Fine. I simply have to start again, find new people.

And I thought I was fine with that, but I soon realized I was not. Because due to things happened in the past, I did not even feel comfortable in sharing my promo post. I was really so wary of the environment, that I decided to restrain myself. So I did, which is a thing I do not like. Some of those who had a chance to talk to me privately, know that I love to plot! Create new ideas, AUs, stories, no matter the character or the timeline or the universe. So, going slow, being wary of people, is not my style. I can kid myself saying that “sure I only want my little corner in the fandom and I’ll be happy”, but that’s a lie. I’m not that kind of person. I want to feel free that if I want, yes, I can take the whole room, not just a corner. And I don’t feel like I can now. I have met some new people , but it is so goddamn hard to find my way into this fandom now. The most most terrible thing is that I don’t understand why: is it because it’s a f!Ada? I don’t write well? I am not fun enough to rp with? I don’t know; and if I don’t know, I cannot improve myself, and if I don’t improve, I’m never going to have people know about Ada, which is, ultimately, what I want to achieve.

What I liked about my previous years in here, was that she was part of something; a gang, a plot, a family. And yea I know I am the most annoying person to plot with because I am there saying!!! Yes let’s write, let’s make it happen!!! And many of the things I wish had happened never actually did....but it was ok, there still was an idea, a shared idea. You need at least two people to create a universe, right? But now...I don’t feel like Ada is part of anything, I actually feel like she’s been left behind. And this pains me, because I pour my heart and soul into her.

And this is what has been, honestly, killing me these days. I can see it, I can understand that I am obsessing over this too much. I am constantly checking the app, the followers, the replies, trying to find new people to interact with—which will not follow me back and again, I will feel even more shitty. This is not healthy, this is not ok. This should be fun, and right now it isn’t. So, the realization.

Sometimes it takes more courage to give up. So I give up.

I think that right here, right now, there is no BIG spot for her. I think I should just be happy with, idk, interacting with a couple of people and not be mad if asks get ignored or threads get dropped, because at the end of the day, this does not mean anything. And if putting so much effort into this thing means being in such a state, then, well, I will put less effort. This is sincerely so hard to write because what needs to be done does not match what I want to do, but that’s just it. I have to forget about what it was and what it might have been, and analyze it rationally. And my rationality says that this is not sane.

So, said that, congrats if you actually read this whole thing, leave a like and subscribe if you did (jk), what does this ACTUALLY mean?

Nothing to you probably, but lots to me. I will be on here much less often, I will reply to things when I want to, without having to feel the pressure of “IF U DONT DO IT NOW THEN SAY BYEBYE TO SB TO RP WITH”, I will stop following people, I’m sick of going after them. And that’s it, I think. I simply wanted to get it out of my chest, and post it here because I didn’t know where else to vent.

That’s all. Sorry for being such a baby and I know this is so stupid, but I really love my character and my blog and all it represents a lot. So uh yea.

it's wild to see how so much of your content is relatively high-effort (you don't seem to just make claims and make it your audience's task to figure out what the fuck you're saying) and even wilder how homestuckposting is the exception to that. I fundamentally disagree that it's good, and I feel like if you had a good argument to the contrary you'd have posted it by now.

This is such a weird ask to me, since I’ve barely been postinganything of substance lately given that I’ve been so damn busy with grad schoolstuff. (And the stuff I’ve been reading, thinking about, etc., wouldn’t makefor very good posts here, since it’s a lot of stuff about Rawls and pragmatismand I just...don’t care, lmao.)

But at the same time: thank you! That’s a very nice thing to see,that one’s effort is recognized even if the culmination of that effort isdisagreed with. 

As far as the homestuck stuff goes though, part of the reason Ihaven’t given any justification of it is that I don’t really see it needing anyjustification, insofar as I’m not often making claims about how great it isoutside of some obviously hyperbolic claims. It’s mostly a private interest,forged out of a depression-fueled quick-read of the comic and the fact that thecomic appeals to a bunch of personal interests/themes/etc. I do think it’sactually great, but I haven’t put forth any effort to flesh out that claim or convinceothers of it in any serious way, mostly because I figure that no one cares.

I’ll attempt to spell out a few reasons that I think it’s very good,or at least important, but I want to recognize at the outset that I’m at adisadvantage in talking about this. You say that you ‘fundamentallydisagree that it’s good’ and that I probably have some ready made argument ofwhy it is, in fact, good. Since you’re anonymous, there’s no set standardbetween us for evaluating this claim (good/bad how?),and so I kind of just have to jump in with some generalities about the comic.If you’re serious with your intent in sending this message though (and I thinkyou are, since you started out with a compliment that shows me that you’veprobably given a looking over at my blog and even, dare I say, follow me onhere), then feel free to message me after with something more specificabout why you don’t think it’s good, so at least there’scommon set of propositions that we’re working with (”I think it’s bad becauseit’s overly convoluted” to which I’d disagree; “I think it’s bad becauseof the whole tumblr parody which was really reactionary” to which I’d agree;etc.) and we could move from there.

Let’s move on though. (This will be along post, and I apologize, especially for those on mobile.)

Reasons why Homestuck is At LeastImportant

There’s two major reasons why I thinkhomestuck (HS) is important, or at least should be regarded as a significantmedia product. Firstly, I think it’s a unique contribution to what mediaproducts can do on the internet;secondly, I think it’s important by virtue of what it contributed to mediaculture generally. Note, in this section I’m not strictly saying why I thinkthe comic is good, but only why I think it’s worth paying attention to,especially if you’re a media studies student, say, or someone interested incultural studies generally or whatever. But let’s turn to both of those points.

A quick reflection: I remember howfrustrated I was growing up when I would read articles online that were aboutmovies or paintings or some piece of visual culture that would only pointtowards the media product. I was frustrated, because there seemed to be noreason to simply talk about mediaproducts when you could actually incorporate them into your discussions. Whyonly talk about a scene in a movie, say, when you could include a clip of thatscene in your essay to provide more exacting context? Media productions andcommentaries weren’t simply bound to text, but writers and creators tended to restrictthemselves to this without need. (There are some reasons for this, especiallywith the state of the internet 9 years ago or so [when homestuck began],principally that pictures and videos loaded slowly and would be overlycumbersome. Still, I was frustrated at the unrealized potential.)

I was similarly frustrated by the typeof content that popped up in most webcomics that I was reading at the time. In2010, I believe, I took an on-campus job working in a geology lab. There waslittle work to be done, and, being nineteen, I stupidly blew off the smallamount of work I had. Even in blowing off that work, though, I still needed tooccupy my time while I was working in the office, and for whatever reason Itook to reading a lot of webcomics. I read all of Questionable Content, xkcd,Diesel Sweeties, Achewood, and (most important for my appreciation of HS,coincidentally) Goats. I didn’t actually read HS at this time (that didn’thappen until 2015), but this set the scene for eventually reading it. And whilereading all of these comics, despite liking them, I was sometimes frustratedhow they still read like traditional comics. It was hard to see how thesecomics were webcomics: I couldn’t seeanything that made them particularly different from normal comics, except forwhere they happened to be located.

In this context, Homestuck is the firstpiece of media that I’m aware of (and certainly the largest) which actually expandedthe ways that a comic could operate. Instead of a series of panels with textincorporated, Homestuck is primarily single panel pages with lots of textattributed to them underneath (of course, this barrage of text is also why manydon’t care for the comic). But it is also a series of flash videos, embeddedvideo games, youtube videos, parody accounts (like the DeviantArt one), albums,etc. It really is astoundingly expansive. Again, this is neither good nor bad,but is a reason for its importance. This is the first media production that I’maware of that attempted to take up the internet as a medium for communicationin its full power (even including user generated actions up through parts ofAct 5). This, alone, would make Homestuck worth paying attention to, even ifonly antagonistically.

Now for the second (shorter) point. Isaw someone joke once that HS is ‘the comic of the Obama era’ since it spansthe whole of his presidency, more-or-less (2009-2016). In that time, it createda *massive* internet presence that simultaneously influenced the content,themes, style, and other aspects of many diverse media forms (the wholeUndertale experience is just one gigantic branch sprouting from this Yggdrasilof memes known as Homestuck). It’s impossible to account for the massive impactthat Andrew Hussie has had on the content and form of the internet as weexperience it today (I mean, for one minor aspect of this, just look atSB&HJ and how those aesthetics have informed a massive amount of memecreation).

In this sense, I think it’s impossibleto regard HS as anything other than important. The pure, impossible to measurecultural impact it has had on media artifacts that we enjoy daily—even if theydon’t seem connected—is hard to overstate. For this reason alone, readingthrough some of HS is probably something worth doing (again, even if it’s onlydone antagonistically). To put this somewhat polemically, at the very leastHomestuck should be read as many novels are: not as a great artistic work, butas a window into a certain kind of cultural logic operating during a given timeperiod. And if that is the approach taken, then it’s hard to try and movepassed HS: I can think of no other media product that has had more of asingular impact, more breadth, and more userinteraction than HS has had on popular culture (except for, perhaps, HarryPotter, though that’s in an entirely different way and also—here’s,potentially, my real polemic—HS is much better).

Now on to some reasons why HS may, infact, actually be good.

Reasons why Homestuck is Good

I’ll break this into a few (hopefullyshort) themes: pacing, conversations, villainy, coherence, characterization, and (most controversially) the ending. (I would urge you—thecollective ‘you’ that may have been foolish enough to get this far—to not readthat last section if you haven’t read the comic. I’m trying to keep thisspoiler free, by and large, because part of my purpose in writing this is tosuggest that you should read it aswell [keep in mind Kant’s claim that aesthetic judgements are normativejudgements, lmao], though I think the ending is too important not to tough onto some extent.)

Pacing.HS does one of the oddest and most interesting things I’ve seen with pacing inany sort of media production. Perhaps this is a reason why some people haven’tenjoyed the comic, but it’s one of the reasons that I find it so thrilling toread, even on my multiple re-reads. The comic tends to move at a snail’s pace,with conversations that drag on and don’t advance the plot much (but they dodevelop characters, so it’s notuseless dialog by any means). This pace is enjoyable, but can get frustratingwhen you can see elements of the story building up to…something. Then, in abrilliant flash, the story erupts with tons of action: many diverse strands ofthe story are woven together into a single tapestry, lending coherence,consistency, and progress to the story. And the contrast between the slowtextual pace and the hyperspeed of the flash videos. The most obvious case ofthis is [S] Cascade, though I’d rather focus on [S] Make Her Pay, because Ithink it’s one of the strongest moments in the comic. (You can see the videohere, if you’re interested: https://www.homestuck.com/story/2578.A warning, though: I believe the video still autoplays, and it has music, sojust beware before opening that link.)

I don’t think I’m spoiling much bypointing to this flash video, since I think that almost everyone that has heardof homestuck at least knows that characters often referred to as ‘the Trolls’play an important part. They show up at the beginning of Act 5, which isperhaps a quarter of the way through the comic (given that [S] Cascade isnearly the halfway point). Their entrance into the story marks a kind of ‘reboot’to the story, where similar themes, tropes, etc. that were built in earlieracts are redeployed with these new characters. Further, it marks a definiteincrease in the complexity of thestory, given that it focuses on 12 difference characters, rather than 4, as thestory had done so far. The whole of Act 5 up until [S] Make Her Pay had beentext-based storytelling: detailing the complicated and twisted history of these‘troll’ characters, their involvement in the ‘game’ that forms the basis forthe whole of HS, and exploring new depths for the comic. But it is alsoslow-moving: the comic even makes reference to this pace in multiple partswhere it coyly talks about how we, the readers, ‘don’t have time’ to exploresome such gag, or go into depth about some story point, or to develop a flashanimation for some aspect of the story (e.g. Karkat’s Strife! with his lusus). This all is cut through with theappearance in the story of [S] Make Her Pay, which weaves the whole of Act 5Act 1 together, filling in many gaps of history that were left intentionallyunexplored at that point, and advancing the story by leaps and bounds. Therhetorical and affective dimensions of this contrast are hard to emphasizeenough: going slowly through all this history, all this plot, all this teen drama, in one of the longesttext-only sequences in the comic, only to have that pace flipped upside down bya single short video that connects so many disparate strands is really,well…exhilarating. It’s one of the things that makes the comic so intenselyenjoyable, dynamic, and, I think, worthwhile. I’ve never seen another piece ofmedia do such wonderful things with pacing.

Conversations.Due to this varied pacing, the majority of the comic is comprised of longdialogues. These dialogues have strong rules of how they’re allowed to beconducted, though. Conversations (until a certain element is introduced intothe story) have to take place through some medium: through a chat client(similar to AOL/MSN messengers), dreams, sprites, hand-written messages, etc.No direct conversations can happen between two people. There’s always somethinggetting in the way of conversations. I’ve never seen anything other than HScapture this element of conversations in the 21st century,especially without taking some condescending tone about how ‘screens rule ourlives’ or something. The fact that all the speech in the comic is mediated bysome form of media isn’t meant as a critique, but an accurate representation ofmany actual dialogues that happen. Perhaps this is only a good part of HSbecause it appeals to some of my sensibilities, so I’ll keep this short, butit’s an aspect that makes me enjoy the comic a lot. Growing up in the late90s/early 00s (I graduated high school in 2009, for a sense of my timelinehere), and having forged many friendships—even with friends I knew‘IRL’—through similar chat clients and such, this aspect of the comic simplyseems very real and intimate to me. I know that weird sense of closeness withpeople that you only, or primarily, know through text, and the kind of yearningthat can engender—and I think HS captures that very well.

Villainy.In sending your message, I assume you were prompted by the post I rebloggedthat mentioned that HS features many of the standard tropes of a literary epic.Of those kinds of tropes, one that wasn’t mentioned (and which tends to beparticular to post-1940s epics or pseudo-epics) is the presence of some kind ofabsolute evil entity which corrupts and destroys beyond any realm ofrationality. A figure of ‘radical evil’ if you will: an evil which is cold,calculating, perhaps even intelligent in many respects, but which displays akind of horrifying excess of humanness which is warped into some kind ofabominable evil. HS has such a figure and fleshes him out very well, and healso ends up being one of the best characters in the story (best in the senseof developed, engaging, important, etc. – not ‘good,’ obviously): Caliborn.

Caliborn (and LE) is a reallyinteresting villain because, as Dave mentions at one point, he hasn’t had muchof a direct evil influence over any aspect of the story (“what kind ofvillain is someone you never met who hardly did anything evil to you or yourfriends directly/or even to anyone in your universe for that matter other thanthrough some vague insidious influence/who even is this guy and why should ihate him” (6385)). By and large, he’s been absent fromany direct engagement with any character in the story, and yet his evil isomnipresent. As his constantly tagline goes “he is already here.”

The major way in which Caliborn is evilis through excessively narcissistic he is, how thoroughly self-involved, andhow he desires to make his will reality in all instances. He bends the fabricof time around himself to propagate and ensure his own existence: hisimmortality is guaranteed simply because he will to continue existing. His evilis systemic: it’s the very (genetic) code of the gaming session that all themain characters of the story occupy, and all of its other instances as well.

Further, there’s a level of ambivalentcruelty mixed with enjoyment that we get in Caliborn’s character that’s hard tosee matched in any other literary figure that comes to my mind. Yes, much ofhis dialogue is full of jokes and statements that make him seem very, verystupid, arrogant, etc. But there are a few scenes where we get a sense that heis a kind of primordial, absolute evil, who sees the very purpose of hisexistence as that of wrecking pain and terror across many instances ofuniverses. Two such scenes suffice here. (Potential spoilers follow in the restof this section.) The first is from when Caliborn enters his own session:consumed with hatred for the only other living being he’s known (albeitdirectly), he kills off a part of himself and awakens with joy. He thenproceeds to remove his own leg forcefully (that kind of dedication through painis frightening), and initiate the game. While everything is being sucked into ablack hole behind him, while the whole of his world and life are beingdestroyed around him, he is seen smiling serenely with his eyes closed. He cansmile, because he knows that this is the beginning of his dominance overeverything: this destruction is a prelude to him carrying out his will todestroy everything forever and in all ways. It is, quite simply, chilling.

The second scene happens in a shortconversation with Jake. This comment comes across almost as a joke, but itreally highlights the depth of evil he occupies. In talking about what it meansto be a ‘Lord’ in terms of his class, and how he came to recognize hispotential within this class, he says that “NOW I KNOW. THAT WHAT ITTAKES FOR ME TO LEARN AND GROW STRONGER./IS EXCRUCIATING EFFORT./SO I HAVE ACHOICE. WHICH IS TO EITHER BE WEAK./WHEN WEAKNESS IS COMPLETELYUNACCEPTABLE./OR TO SUFFER. FOREVER. UNTIL NO ONE ELSE EXISTS.” (5671). Despitethe presentation (Caliborn’s manner of speaking often undercuts the severity ofwhat he’s saying, but it’s important for a reader to keep this in mind), thisidea that Caliborn is willing to endure infinite suffering and pain to ensurethat his will is carried out—a will that desire the utter elimination of allthings throughout all of existence—is honestly terrifying. He is a characterwhose evil isn’t marked by any singular action (again, as Dave mentioned), butby a relentless drive. To be a bit obtuse here, Caliborn is basically theLacanian ‘lamella,’ especially in the sense that the lamella “doesn’t exist,but persists.” Caliborn suffers beyond life and death, as a half-dead creature(I mean, to really put the point explicitly here, the lamella is a half-dead,abject excess of life, and Caliborn is a skull monster who through the sheerforce of will ensures the necessity of his continued existence): he is evilincarnate, and I’ve never seen such a radical evil presented in a better waythan through HS. This is honestly one of the biggest literary achievements ofHS, and that’s why I’m dwelling on it at length. But let’s continue 

Coherence.This may seem like an odd category, since I believe that many see HS asexcessively chaotic and unstructured. I thoroughly disagree and thinking thatthe overwhelming coherence of this nearly decade-long story is part of whatmakes it so good. This is apparent in the many jokes and themes that arecarried through the comic, even at a distance of thousands of panels (twoimmediate examples jump out at me: the joke about how Sassacre’s text could‘kill a cat’ that’s realized after about 4500 pages, or the ‘bleating like agoat for ironic purposes’ gag that’s realized in about the same span). Further,this coherence is built into the overall structure of the comic: the fact thatthe first half of the comic takes place within about a day’s time whereas thelatter half takes place over 3 years (punctuated at the end by a lot of actionat the end) shows that the general structure of the comic follows the patternof pacing mentioned above. There is a lot more I could point to that would showjust how wonderfully coherent the whole HS story is, but I’m not sure if that’sa useful exercise upfront. It’d be more useful to talk about coherence inresponse to a dispute over whether some aspect of HS was coherent or not—absentthat, there doesn’t seem to be much of a point in detailing such here, otherthan to note that I do believe that the comic is generally very well puttogether (with the ending being a big bit of punctuation on this point).

Characterization.Andrew Hussie did two primary things with characterization that I appreciateand find worthwhile in the comic. The first thing he did was give a lot ofspace for characterization. We end up knowing a ton of information about thecharacters in the comic and a good 90% of it is relevant in some way to theplot (some of it is just interesting details, which is more or less fine whenyou have a character driven story where the characters are likable). Thesecharacters are dynamic and fully fleshed out in almost all cases (Nepeta is probablythe one major exception to this, though she even got a bit more development inthe end that pulled her away from just being a lolcat meme). Sure, any goodstory should have characterization like this, but I think the length ofhomestuck allows it to happen in really supple and subtle ways: the majority ofcharacters in the story are multi-faceted characters who develop in believableways over time that come into conflicts that sometimes just aren’t resolved.There’s also the willingness to have characters that are just irredeemablyhorrible people, without trying to shoehorn some kind of redemption arc in(Eridan is a nice example of this: he’s a thoroughly detestable and horribleperson, and there is no possible way to see him in a good light in a fairreading of the text [the HS fandom, which is not on trial here and should beexcluded from most all of these statements, has tried to make him into asympathetic character time and time again, and this is only possible becausethey’re reading the comic badly]). Further, and lastly on this point, due tothe depth of characterization, there’s also a lot of great between-characterinteractions in the comic: not great because they’re funny or witty orwhatever, but because they show the depth of character and work and a mutualrecognition of that depth between characters. The speech that Dirk gives aboutRoxy before their session’s versions of Derse and Prospit were destroyed is agreat example of this (and one of the greatest tragedies of the comic, from areader standpoint, is that Dirk never gets to tell Roxy any of that directly,at least not in any manner that we see).

Secondly, and this is heavily relatedto the first point, the depth of characterization that Hussie gives to theplayers in HS allows him to start with kind of obvious and one-dimensionalstereotypes of characters and morph them into something fully fleshed. And hedoes this not by simply inverting the roles of those stereotypes of something(which is common in a lot of ‘ironic’ pieces of media that try and overturn themajor tropes working within a given genre) but by fully fleshing outcharacters. I think this may be most apparent in someone like Dave. He beganthe comic by being a stereotype of some kind of hipster-bro, and almost all ofhis jokes, interactions, and conversations revolved around this stereotype. Itwas even folded into his personal mythology: because he’s the coolest, the mostcapable, etc., he’s the one that’s ‘meant to’ take down LE when all is said anddone. Slowly though, through confronting the stupidity that his mythologyforces him into (like having welsh swords as key items, for some reason) andalso confronting the death of his ‘bro’ and the feelings that stirred in him,he comes much more of a fully fleshed character. And by the end of the entirecomic, as he’s confronting issues of cross-cultural exchange, his ownrelationship to his abusive upbringing, his conflicted feelings about how tosituate his sexuality, etc., Dave has easily become one of the most thoroughlyrealized characters in the entirety of HS. That’s a hard thing to do when you’restarting with stereotypes of characters (which, it should be added, wasnecessary given the types of stories and games that Hussie was trying to riffoff of in developing HS) and end up with something thoroughly real, and HSshould be commended for being able to do such on many different fronts.

[I was going to add another piece aboutthe nice temporal dynamics of the comic, taking place originally over a day andthen over the course of three years, but this is already long enough and I’vementioned this part of HS a bit above, so I’ll let it be.]

TheEnding. I had a literature professor onceremark that the most conservative part of novels is the ending, because itforecloses on all of the openness and contingency at work during the otherparts of the novel. This is true for most pieces of media, and is why theendings of most things are bad (I’m replaying Mass Effect right now and it’sreminded me of two of my least favorite endings in media ever: that game, andBattlestar Galactica). I think HS, in many ways, gets around this problem.

To celebrate the ending of HS iscontentious, I know. It was mostly hated among the fandom. But I really thinkthat the ending is one of the most flawlessly executed pieces of the wholecomic. Many people were mad at the ending because it ‘left so many questions’open—but this is precisely why it’s good. It allows us to see that thecharacters continue to exist in some form or another, that their relationshipsdevelop, but it doesn’t answer every question that the comic poses, nor does iteven attempt to give us a rubric for evaluating those questions in anydefinitive way. Further, the ending is *genuinely surprising.* In a comic that’srevolved around a plot point of a ‘final boss’ that must be faced andvanquished, the comic surprisingly ends without this boss being defeated in anysimple manner. Instead, the main characters simply escape the confines of the ‘game’that they’ve been playing: a game that has brought them isolation, tragedy, andendless fear. The major resolution of the story comes through the charactersjust being allowed to live for a while, to enjoy their lives. That’s why theending text for the story isn’t “and they lived happily ever after” (or somesimilar cliché), but “Thanks for playing”—a sign that the worst is in the pastand that the lives of these characters is now truly beginning in a way that’s totallyup to them. That’s why, in the afterward,we get a snapchat story that shows various pieces of the lives of these characters,up through John’s 21st birthday. It was the best solution to such acomplex, diverse, and nearly decade-spanning comic: to allow the characters tohave some space to actually live on.

It was also the single best way ofdealing with this ‘final boss’—Lord English. In his form as Caliborn, as quotedabove, he’s a character that’s willing to suffer forever if it means that hehas complete control over the existence of the whole of reality. The best wayto ‘destroy’ such a character isn’t to have them killed (that would simply markan endpoint to their terror, but LE wouldn’t experience it as anything bad, torturous,etc.), but to have them trapped within a dimension all to themselves. By theend of the comic, LE is trapped in the game, with no means of escape, and isbound to the rules and logic of such a game. Sure, he’s omnipotent within thatsphere of influence, but all the characters have moved on to something else.This assigns him to a fate worse than death: to suffer forever without, throughthat suffering, attaining control and power over others. In this sense, I feelthat the ending that Hussie designed for HS is the only reasonable ending: andpulling off such a wonderful ending to such a long and complex comic is quitean achievement—especially since, as I’ve mentioned, this ending didn’t simply ‘tieloose ends’ or anything. It resolved the central tension of the story while(intentionally) leaving other tensions and questions unresolved and unanswered.It was—and this is rare for most any piece of media—a fully realized,thoughtful, and incredible ending to a story that I find to be one of the bestI have read in very many, many years.

And so that’s it. I was going toinclude another section about how HS is at least not-bad where I list common reasons that the comic is seen as badand show that they miss the mark, but this is long enough as is (9 pages inword). So I’ll leave this here. This isn’t a total justification of why I likehomestuck or why I think it’s worth paying attention to, I haven’t addressedmany of the major points, but I think I’ve made the case, at least partially,for why I think the comic might be worth taking a look into. Beyond that, I don’treally know what I can do, given that I’m only working with the message placed inmy inbox. But considering that most don’t care….that’s probably more thanenough, lmao.

ABOUTARCHIVE Inside SafetyNet - part 3 SafetyNet: Google's tamper detection for Android - part 3 ikoz #android #safetynet This post is part of a series: Inside SafetyNet part 1 (Oct 2015) Inside SafetyNet part 2 (Feb 2016) Inside SafetyNet part 3 (Nov 2016) How to implement Attestation securely using server-side checks (my blog, Cigital blog) SafetyNet Playground (POC server-side implementation) Play Store - Android source - PHP source It’s been more than 8 months since my last blog post on Android’s SafetyNet. In that post I was describing an end-of-2015 version of the system (version code 2495818). As expected, there have been several updates since then; I thought I should write one more post in this series, probably the last. I’ll briefly describe the differences of that last reviewed version versus version 10000700; this is second-to-last version. The latest version I’ve seen is 10000801, but it doesn’t have many functional differences. For a more complete overview of the client-side checks inside the SafetyNet system and its usage please read through my previous posts. SNET version codes I thought I’d just list some of the SNET versions I’ve observed in the wild; I’m sure there are many more. 1626247 (December 2014) 1839652 (April 2015) 2097462 (July 2015) 2296032 (September 2015) 2495818 (December 2015) 10000700 (August 2016) 10000801 (September 2016) Design changes SafetyNet got partially integrated into the Chimera system as a dynamite module. Chimera is a sort-of package management system for Google Play Services components, allowing Google to flexibly and independently upgrade each one. As Chimera manages part of the download and provisioning process, this change made the snet package lighter and more flexible. Chimera also has a nice interface, found by going into Google Settings and enabling “debug items”. You’ll see an “[internal]” menu item called “Chimera Modules”. The SafetyNet module is called com.google.android.gms.flags, currently version 1. You’ll also find that DroidGuard is another dynamite module.  basicIntegrity  At least since last July, Attestation responses objects contain a new boolean flag called basicIntegrity. This new field does not appear in Google’s published documentation yet. I’m sure it will soon. { "nonce": "R2Rra24fVm5xa2Mg", "timestampMs": 9860437986543, "apkPackageName": "com.package.name.of.requesting.app", "apkCertificateDigestSha256": ["base64 encoded, SHA-256 hash of the certificate used to sign requesting app"], "apkDigestSha256": "base64 encoded, SHA-256 hash of the app's APK", "ctsProfileMatch": true, "basicIntegrity": true, } But what is this field? Here are some thoughts, the way I understand it: In September 2016, Google decided to introduce more aggressive checks into ctsProfileMatch, e.g. acting on VerifiedBoot status. Due to these changes, devices that are not “rooted” but may only use a different bootloader will cause ctsProfileMatch to be set to false. In such cases, basicIntegrity will still remain true. It seems that this is set to false only if an su binary is placed in expected locations. The basicIntegrity field currently seems to behave like ctsProfileMatch did before the recent changes. One could see it as a way to maintain the previous ctsProfileMatch behavior, so that 3rd party apps can choose the level of checks they want to base their decisions on. I have yet to see any case where basicIntegrity is true while ctsProfileMatch is false; let me know in the comments if you do. I also updated Cigital’s SafetyNet Playground app in Google Play. It now checks and reports the value of basicIntegrity. Check it out!  DroidGuard It’s safe to say that DroidGuard plays a bigger role into attestation than I have previously described. It is (and has always been) a packed native library, designed to somewhat withstand reverse engineering, which makes dealing with it more interesting. Another blogpost on this may come in the future. Safe Browsing SafetyNet - from a 3rd party app perspective, used to initially be only about Attestation and CTS compatibility. It now offers another flavor: A lookupUri() API that allows apps to check if a given URI is classified as Potentially Harmful App by Google’s threat intelligence systems. More details on this here and here. I’ve not described Safe Browsing in any of my blog posts yet, this may come in the future - just like Verify Apps & DroidGuard. Minification As of version 10000801 SafetyNet is making use of ProGuard-style minification (some call it obfuscation). This is an interesting change of heart. Initially Google seemed to leave things unobfuscated on purpose in order to increase transparency, however this appears to have changed. It is important to note that this change happened at the same time as the cat-and-mouse game between SafetyNet and various “bypasses” intensified after the recent device integrity change. I am sure that SafetyNet re-implementations like this might have affected this decision. SafetyNet module changes A few but important new modules have been added in recent versions and some older ones were restructured. As mentioned above, SafetyNet is configured by Google at runtime or via play services updates; the snet module itself updated independently less often. What follows is the list of snet modules that are currently enabled by default. Note that a few extra modules have been enabled compared to a year ago. But the real differences are of course not here; the real differences are in the way data from each module affects backend attestation decisions. Idle mode modules Idle mode checks appear to run every 12 hours. The last time an idle mode scan run is stored in snet’s shared preferences inside the Play Services app private files. The following modules are now always enabled by default in idle mode. gmscore system_partition_files system_ca_cert_store setuid_files dalvik_cache_monitor device_state locale selinux_status logcat event_log The gmscore, locale and selinux_status modules have now been turned ON comared to a year ago. The gmscore module retrieves info about the com.google.android.gms package installed on the device via PackageManager APIs, including versionCode, hashes, signatures etc. The locale module obviously retrieves the current locale, including country code. The selinux_status modules will be described in a moment. Normal mode modules The following modules are now always enabled by default in normal mode. Normal mode ‘checks’ appear to run when a 3rd party app requests an attestation or at a maximum every 24 hours. default_packages su_files settings locale ssl_redirect ssl_handshake proxy selinux_status sd_card_test google_page_info captive_portal_test attest gmscore device_state carrier_info logcat event_log The following non-default modules are also currently enabled by play services config: mx_record sslv3_fallback Compared to a year ago, the only differences appear to be that the following two modules are now turned ON: device_state and carrier_info. The device_state module is of course very important and is directly related to the recent verified boot blocks. It’s described in more detail below. SU files module The SU finding modules has been partially redesigned since it was first introduced. It reports back information about two sets of files: files explicitly requested by Google su binaries The first category of files comes from snet configuration options, shipped separately from snet itself as part of Google play services. It currently includes a single file: /proc/sunxi_debug/sunxi_debug. This file is a well known kernel backdoor allowing easy root on some devices. The second category has been split out into a new rooting file finder submodule. This works as follows: SNET assembles a combined list of two types of directories to search into: interesting directories: These by default include /system/bin and /system/xbin and all directories specified in PATH, if such environment variable exists. systemless root directories: SNET attempts to identify directories that might be bind-mounted by parsing /proc/self/mountinfo and figuring out if /bin or /xbin are mounted using via /dev/block/loop. I will not go over the details of how systemless root works in this post. SNET attempts to find if the su binary exists in any of these directories. If it does, it gathers information about it, including its SHA256 hash, if it’s a symlink and its target, ownership/permissions/selinux info (lstat) etc. It now also checks if the file is executable - this is done via java.libcore.io.Os.access(file, X_OK). Settings module This module is used to retrieve various pieces of information about system settings and is run as part of the ‘normal-mode’ checks. It has changed to also retrieve two more pieces of info: Storage Encryption Status This is retrieved via the getStorageEncryptionStatus() method of the device_policy system service if SDK >= 11. Fingerprint Status This is retrieved via the isHardwareDetected() and hasEnrolledFingerprints() methods of the fingerprint system service if SDK >= 23. This can return the following values: FINGERPRINT_ENROLLED = 1 FINGERPRINT_NOT_SUPPORTED = 0 FINGERPRINT_UNENROLLED = 2 Device State module This module used to gather the following data: Verified Boot state via ro.boot.verifiedbootstate Verity mode via ro.boot.veritymode Security Patch Level via ro.build.version.security_patch Unlock Support via ro.oem_unlock_supported State of Flash Lock (oemLocked): via ro.boot.flash.locked Now the following have been added: Device Brand via ro.product.brand Device Model via ro.product.model Kernel Version from /proc/version List of System properties explicitly specified by Google via play services. currently just ro.build.characteristics On API>23, flash lock state is now retrieved via PersistentDataBlockManager.getFlashLockState() which is a new wrapper API to the ro.boot.flash.locked property. Possible values are: FLASH_LOCK_STATE_LOCKED = 1 (0x1) FLASH_LOCK_STATE_UNKNOWN = -1 (0xffffffff) FLASH_LOCK_STATE_UNLOCKED = 0 (0x0) Some people were surprised back in September this year, when Google started blocking devices that were not rooted but had unlocked their bootloader. First of all, unlocked bootloaders cause verified boot to fail - that’s what’s triggering snet. Not much changed in client-side code: SafetyNet was retrieving ro.boot.verifiedbootstate and ro.boot.veritymode all along, gathering metrics, until someone made the decision to make these indicators influence the ctsProfileMatch boolean flag (but not basicIntegrity). dm-verity correction info checks For idle-mode checks, the Device State communicated back to Google now also includes dm-verity correction information for SDK > 23. Some of you may know tha Android N introduced Verified Boot with Error Correction. This is all described here and here and here. Forward Error Correction is of course used to recover from filesystem corruption. An interesting security “side-effect” is that the definition of ‘curruption’ extends to ‘tampering’, so this feature can effectively repair rooted filesystems) SafetyNet searches all device mapper directories (e.g. /sys/block/dm-0, /sys/block/dm-1) and looks for a directory named fec, signalling that a partition is using Forward Error Correction. If fec is found, SNET retrieves the partition name (/sys/block/dm-X/dm/name) and the fec record file (/sys/block/dm-X/fec/corrected) and sends these back, allowing Google to track how this new feature is used. System Partition Files module In my previous blogpost I briefly described this system performs integrity measurements, retrieving hash trees over the /system directory and reporting them back, along with other info, to a System Integrity service separate from SNET. A year ago the SIC Server URL was empty but this has now been filled in. It is: This appears to be an undocumented part of the Safe Browsing system. SELinux checking module Previously this module only retrieved: whether selinux is supported if it’s in enforcing mode via /sys/fs/selinux/enforce. Now, it also retrieves: the version via /selinux_version the SHA256 hash of the policy file (/sepolicy) SSL Handshake module As discussed before, this module attempts to figure out if communications can be intercepted in a number of ways, such as via having an SSL-Kill-Switch app installed. It basically attempts to find malicious TrustManagers. In the last few versions it has been significantly refactored. Like before, the code attempts to contact accounts.google.com and www.google.com. The third host is play.google.com, replacing pubads.g.doubleclick.net. For each host, the module attempts to do an SSL handshake (sslContext.getSocketFactory().createSocket(hostname, 443)) and now, separately, an HTTPS connection (new URL("https", hostname, "").openConnection()) Both use a custom all-trusting X509TrustManager to establish a secure connection and retrieve the server’s SSL certificates. Then the module finds the system’s first X509TrustManager (instead of all of them like it did before). It then uses this TrustManager (via checkServerTrusted() to verify the server’s chain. It is interesting to note that now, on API>=21, the module uses X509TrustManagerExtensions.checkServerTrusted() instead of checkServerTrusted(), in order to retrieve the validated certificate chain. This is good news; bad things happen when these differ, as seen in CVE-2016-2402. In a change since previous versions, even on API=21 use X509TrustManagerExtensions.isUserAddedCertificate() instead of manually checking /data/misc/keychain/cacerts-added. SDCard analyzer module This module now also retrieves the last modification time of JPEG file it attempts to store on the SD card. Carrier Info module One new module was introduced into SafetyNet: “Carrier Info” This just retrieves the Name of the current carrier by using the getNetworkOperatorName() method of the phone system service. John Kozyrakis mobile security, static & dynamic analysis, automation, payments London, UK Share this post  John Kozyrakis ~ blog All rights reserved - 2016

  02/02/19

  GOING INTO THE last month of 2018, I was more frustrated than ever! After we had returned from our most recent Marianna trip things seemed to be falling into place BUT December was here in the blink of an eye & everything came to a screeching halt. I’d hit a wall & not knowing what to do next, I just started plugging away at going through the tons of material that I had received over the summer. I tried to focus but honestly, my mind was ALL over the place! I’d start reading something, make notes & lists & then end up going in an entirely different direction. Putting the million little pieces in their correct spots was proving way more difficult than I’d EVER imagined! I needed a plan & I needed it quick! So I did EXACTLY that…I made the MOTHER of ALL “To Do” lists! Here’s what that first “Official” list looked like…

  1: SAVE THE SCHOOL!

THIS ONE WAS a given…NO school, NO evidence! “Preserve The Campus & Land” would always be number one on ANY list & I can attest that while my list changes & grows almost every day, keeping that school intact stays in the top spot! So I would focus on coming up with a way to keep Jackson County from turning 1400+ acres into a Super Walmart. I kept drawing a blank on ways to accomplish this BUT it suddenly popped into my head one particularly frustrating night…Actually two ideas came to me!

A) Figure Out The Process Of Getting The Arthur G Dozier School For Boys/Boothill Listed In The National Registry of Historic Places/Landmarks.

B) Go Back To That Damn Place & find even more evidence to add to what I already had!

  THAT SHOULD BE easy enough, right? I’ll talk about these ideas & where I am with them in my next post BUT for now, we move on!

  2: REVITALIZING CS/SB 1780: VICTIMS OF REFORM SCHOOL ABUSE ACT

KNOWN AS THE Arthur G. Dozier School and Okeechobee School Abuse Victim Certification Act”, this particular bill would have put in place an application process to apply & become certified as a victim of Dozier & its sister school, The Okeechobee School For Boys. Once certified, a victim can than move forward to request compensation from the State of Florida. Unfortunately, CS/SB 1780 died in appropriation on the Senate floor in March 2018 with no plans of bringing it back. THERE IS ANOTHER bill that is currently on the Senate agenda for 02/04/2019. It is SB130 OR the “Sexual Battery Prosecution Time Limitation Act.” The bill states that ANY victim of a sexual battery crime would not be tied to the Statute of Limitations if they were under the age of 18 when the crime was committed. They can report it & know that the potential of having it prosecuted is still, regardless of it having had occurred 5 years OR 50 years before. A similar bill just passed in New York & with ANY luck, the other 50 states will follow!

  FORTUNATELY THERE IS still hope for SB130 BUT CS/SB 1780 is just as important & should be reconsidered soon. There are links to both Bills below for anyone who wants more info.

CS/SB 1780: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2018/01780

SB 130: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2019/00130

  3: GET ONTO THE SOUTH CAMPUS!

THIS ONE SHOULD be self explanatory! I’ve waited almost 4 years freaking years to get on the other side of that barbed wire, prison style fence & I’m happy to report that as of this post…I still haven’t stepped one damn foot inside! It has been my single biggest goal & also my single biggest dissapointment. Whoever said “Patience is a Virtue” is a total A-Hole! I have NO patience & could really give two shits about being “Virtuous.” One way OR another I’m getting in & since the clock is running out fast, it has to be sooner rather than later!

  I MAY BE sitting on an update on this one…We’ll just have to chat about that later though.

  Nov 2018

Jan 2018

Nov 2015

I COULD LITERALLY fill 25 more pages with everything that I have listed on my “Internal To Do List” as my brain NEVER shuts off…But I’ll spare Y’all as I’m pretty sure people are a over my rantings by now.

BUT….

  IF BY CHANCE you’re not, consider joining my “Army”…Lord knows I need ALL the help that I can get!

      ♤Please Consider Helping In The Fight For Justice By Signing The 1st Petition: https://www.change.org/p/jenn-moslek-re-investigation-of-the-arthur-g-dozier-school-for-boys

  ☆ IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW SUFFERED ABUSE, PASSED AWAY, WENT MISSING OR WITNESSED ANY WRONGDOINGS WHILE  AT “THE FLORIDA INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL FOR BOYS” AKA “THE ARTHUR G. DOZIER SCHOOL FOR BOYS” OR THE OKEECHOBEE SCHOOL FOR BOYS, PLEASE REACH OUT VIA HERE AT findingflorida.blog OR ANY OF THE CONTACT INFO LISTED BELOW!!☆

  Want More “Finding Florida?” BE SURE TO “SUBSCRIBE”! FOR PRIVATE CONTACT SEND EMAILS TO: [email protected] FOR ALL DOZIER SCHOOL INFO GO TO: http://www.whitehouseboys2007.com & http://thewhitehouseboysonline.com FOR FULL PHOTO GALLERIES & ADDITIONAL LOCATION INFO FOLLOW ME ON FB AT:  @GRAVEAdventuresFL

    INVESTIGATING DOZIER:WHEN IT TAKES A VILLAGE BUT YOU NEED AN ARMY! 02/02/19 GOING INTO THE last month of 2018, I was more frustrated than ever! After we had returned from our most recent Marianna trip things seemed to be falling into place BUT December was here in the blink of an eye & everything came to a screeching halt.

CLOSE

Health officials from almost every agency and organization warn raw milk often contains dangerous bacteria that can sicken or even kill people. Angela M Gosnell, USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee

Supporters of raw milk believe that it is healthier than pasteurized varieties.(Photo: Molly Bartels/AP)

“Raw” milk is milk that hasn’t been pasteurized. Health officials from almost every agency and organization warn it often contains dangerous bacteria that can sicken or even kill people: E.coli, salmonella, listeria and campylobacter, to name a few.

More: ‘Close to 10’ children hospitalized for E. coli; ‘raw’ milk, farm animals may be sources

But proponents of drinking it say heating the milk during the pasteurization process kills helpful pathogens, including probiotics and enzymes.

Personal freedom vs. public safety

That’s put lawmakers in the position of having to strike a balance between personal freedom and public safety.

CLOSE

Dr. Joe Childs from East Tennessee Children’s Hospital talks about the dangers of drinking raw milk. Angela M Gosnell, USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee

East Tennessee Children’s Hospital said Tuesday it’s treated “close to 10” children, all younger than age 4, for a “serious outbreak” of E. coli-caused illness over the past 10 days. The Knox County Health Department has confirmed two likely sources of the outbreak are unpasteurized milk and farm animals.

Four of the children are in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit with kidney failure, ETCH Chief Medical Officer Dr. Joe Childs said Tuesday.

Most of the ill children are known to have consumed raw milk from a local cow-share dairy, French Broad Farm in Knox County, the health department said in an alert issued Tuesday evening. “Due to possible contamination with E. coli and out of an abundance of caution,” the health department said it recommends consumers dispose of all raw milk or other unpasteurized products they may have from this farm.

Earl Cruze is the owner of French Broad Farm.

He and wife Cheri also founded Cruze Farm Dairy in the 1980s and were bestowed the Southern Foodways Alliance 2008 Ruth Fertel Keepers of the Flame for being one of the few family farms in the state of Tennessee to process and bottle their own milk and buttermilk.

Cruze Farm Dairy is currently owned by Colleen Cruze Bhatti, who is Earl and Cheri’s daughter, and Colleen’s husband, Manjit Bhatti, and is in no way affiliated with French Broad Farm.

Cruze Farm Dairy does not market, sell or distribute unpasteurized products. 

Earl Cruze couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday and the French Broad Farm Facebook page has been taken down.

The health department is also investigating whether any of the affected children were exposed to E. coli after interacting with farm animals at a local child care facility. The facility, which officials declined to name, is not currently operating, health department director Dr. Martha Buchanan said.

Is raw milk illegal?

It’s not illegal to consume raw milk, but 20 states outlaw its sale for human consumption altogether. Thirteen states allow its sale in stores, 17 states allow its sale only on farms, and eight states — including Tennessee — allow it to be sold only through “cow-share” arrangements.

In this March 24, 2017 photo, Rachel Moser pours raw milk into a container on her Be Whole Again Farm in Excelsior Springs, Mo. (Photo: Charlie Neibergall, AP)

In Tennessee and every other state but Michigan, farms licensed to sell animal feed can also sell raw milk labeled “for pet consumption only.” 

In addition, unpasteurized milk can’t be sold across state lines, since the federal government does not allow its sale.

The same laws apply to shares for goats’ and sheep’s milk, although that’s less common.

What’s a cow-share?

In a cow-share, sometimes called a “herd-share” or “dairy-share,” a group of individuals technically own a cow or cows and pay a farmer a fee for boarding and milking their cows. Members of the cow-share then pick up the raw milk from the farmer. A share is usually equal to a gallon a week.

The members of the cow-share are drinking milk from an animal they own, so they’re technically not “buying” the milk, just paying the farmer to collect it and care for the animal. The milk is not sold commercially, and since the cows are privately owned, the state does not inspect them as it would a commercial dairy.

Tennessee legalized cow-shares in 2009. That’s how French Broad Farm sold its milk, which made it easier for Knox County Health Department to track who’d consumed it during the recent E. coli outbreak investigation.

Suzanne Morgan of Echo Valley Farm in Madisonville offers cow shares and said she is “grateful that we have the freedom to do this here in this state.”

“There is not just one thing we can say is a silver bullet (to prevent contamination). It starts with the cows’ diet, it moves to their living conditions, to the sanitization procedures put in place for milking and sanitization procedures for filling jars. Everything being immaculate is probably the biggest preventative and second to have the cows on a grass-fed diet. We also implement supplements for our cows that are study-proven to help reduce pathogens in their guts,” she said.

Morgan considers this latest E. coli outbreak as “a hard stroke of luck for our area because we have the Dean Foods issue and there may be farmers entertaining doing herd sharing. Then this happens. It’s not a pretty thing to have to deal with,” she said.

Dean Foods severed its contracts with many East Tennessee dairy farmers, citing an overabundance of milk in the market and resulting in many farms’ closures.

More important, said Morgan, she feels strongly that pointing a finger at a culprit is not good for anyone until there’s definitive proof.

“Raw milk is not the devil. There is risk with all foods,” Morgan said. “I’m not trying to be insensitive. My heart goes out to those children and their families who are affected and I pray that they get well. My goal is to raise awareness and offer education about raw milk and the good that it offers. Let’s call back the lynch mob and get it figured out first and then lay responsibility where it belongs.”

Are there new laws?

Benjamin Beichler walks among pregnant dairy cows at Creambrook Farm in Middlebrook on Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2017. (Photo: Mike Tripp/The News Leader)

Earlier this year, the state Senate and House considered a pair of bills — SB 1913 and HB 1963 — that would have allowed the direct sale of raw milk butter. Another pair of bills — SB 2104 and HB 2229 — would have exempted raw milk and dairy products sold out of “home kitchens” from being licensed, inspected and regulated by the state.

Both mainstream dairy groups and health organizations lobbied against the changes, and neither bill was approved.

Is raw milk safe?

Cow-share farmers say they make extra efforts to sanitize milk collection at every step and use a process that filters — but does not pasteurize — the milk.

Health officials say it’s not the milk itself but the process of collecting it in a farm environment where animals inevitably have bacteria in their intestines that makes it susceptible to contamination.

More: E. coli infection: Five things you should know to keep your kids safe

The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in data it collected in 2009-2014, found unpasteurized milk is 840 times more likely than pasteurized milk to cause a food-borne illness. People who get sick from unpasteurized dairy, the CDC report said, are 45 times more likely to be hospitalized than those who get ill from pasteurized dairy products.

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Most people take precautions to avoid contracting salmonella poisoning from raw chicken, but there are other foods that are surprisingly more likely to harbor the harmful bacteria. USA TODAY

After the report, the CDC updated its website to include more information on raw milk.

Harmful strains of E. coli can cause diarrhea, cramping, urinary tract infections, kidney failure, respiratory illness and pneumonia, and other illnesses, the CDC said. Occasionally, people die after infection.

The watery, bloody diarrhea that’s the hallmark of most cases is particularly dangerous in small children, who are prone to dehydration, and shiga toxin that can be released by the bacteria can cause kidney failure, which is especially dangerous for the very young and the very old.

The Health Department recommends seeking medical attention immediately if you or your child has watery, bloody diarrhea that does not resolve quickly.

Tell your medical provider if you or your child have consumed raw milk or had contact with farm animals. For general questions about E. coli, call 865-215-5555 between 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. weekdays.

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