#nobody is immune to being misogynistic.
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Alley Cats AU: What Alejandro Did
Took a little while to get back to this AU because I got possessed by The Horrors, but now it's time to return to The Sillies!
Alejandro in this AU is still the son of a Spanish diplomat. He's been to five schools in as many countries. To him, Wawanawkwa High is nothing new. He has a set routine at this point.
First, figure out the social hierarchy. The first week or two he pretty much wanders around school eager and curious. He lays his Spanglish thick. Under normal circumstances he will throw in a Spanish word if he gets excited or frustrated. During this week though, he's constantly saying "¿Cómo se dice...?" and then the word he's looking for as if he doesn't speak fluent English. It sells the idea that he means no harm and is just innocently learning things. He observes people's reactions for that to find out who tries to help him or who scoffs at him. It helps him learn who he can ask for favors. It also helps him learn who can be flirted with as little effort as saying something in Spanish.
Second is to find and join the popular kids. The best way to do it is to do a favor for them. He just has to make sure it's a favor befitting of an equal, not of a lackey. He's not about to turn himself into Lindsey or Beth. Throwing a party when his parents aren't around is also an easy way to do it since his parents always buy a big house even when they know it's going to be temporary. It also involves tearing other students down. He looks for easy, unlikeable targets, aka those who scoffed at him or are otherwise easily manipulated. He'll create scenarios of them being the bad guy while he's the good guy knowing that no one will believe someone already unlikeable. He actually does this against a few of the Alley Cats, namely Noah, Eva, and Izzy.
Third is to rule the popular kids, and then the school. He has diplomatic immunity thanks to his father, and he will flaunt it and use it to do things others can't without punishment. He'll suggest ideas that he makes the other popular kids think are theirs. For good ones, he'll swoop in to take the credit afterwards. For bad ones, he scapegoats them to make himself look better. All the while with a dazzling smile of a perfect gentleman. He'll kick others on the totem pole to ensure he's not weak to the popular kids. It's nothing personal, just something he has to do to maintain his power.
And then, finally, the fourth step. It happens once his father inevitably declares that they'll be moving to a new country in a few weeks. It's his favorite game: Let's see how many lives he can ruin before he goes. After all, he doesn't truly care for any of these people. They're always temporary. No one will remember him when he's gone. So he'll give them something to remember, and leave them to pick up the pieces. No one will believe them because he'll already have moved on to the next country by the time they've fully realized what has happened.
Ezekiel is just a warm up. All he has to do is lay the groundwork for him to lean back on his old misogynistic views he'd been weaning off from and watch the sparks fly. He goes after Bridgette and Geoff because they're the most popular couple, and he thinks it's hilarious how Bridgette falls so easily and pokes at how their relationship truly is nothing but makeout session after makeout session. (Ignoring the fact that he'd been working for quite a while to manipulate her into second guessing things and Geoff into occasionally leaning into his more egotistical self in preparation for this). Leshawna is just child's play with how much of a mess her relationship is with Harold, and he has Harold humiliate himself just to kick him while he's down. Lindsey is just a whim of him pretending to be Tyler and it working because she's just that dumb (She's got undiagnosed face blindness and Alejandro downplays how much effort he put in to convincing her). And DJ? Nobody messes with DJ. He's the nicest guy anyone knows. And that's exactly why Alejandro wants to mess with him so bad. No one can have that much positive attention for that long without a challenge He has to do SOMETHING to him, so might as well leave him paranoid with an 'animal curse'.
People are pissed now and have caught on, but Alejandro's rather proud of the mess he's made. And then his father tells him that plans have changed. They're going to be staying in Canada for another year. There's no leaving this mess behind. Alejandro has to clean it up, or he has to stew in it. And he's never cleaned up a mess before.
DJ was the straw that broke the camel's back since everyone liked DJ so much. Alejandro tries to sit with Heather's group to wait for school to start in the morning and he just gets a glare that tells him to not even think about it. Everyone's clearly whispering about him and cursing him out if he tries to approach. He gets food thrown at him during lunch and isn't given a moment's peace. He gets pranked mercilessly by Duncan for screwing with DJ. This is something completely new and he hates it. This isn't how things are supposed to go. He can't even fake any apologies because nobody wants to listen to a word that comes out of his mouth. His words are his weapons. Without them, he's defenseless against the onslaught of hatred.
But this is fine. He's fine. He just needs to clear his head. Somewhere without all the stares and glares and people. He has to steer clear of all the hangout spots, which is difficult because they're so spread out around the school. His only option is somewhere nobody else would dare to follow. In the decrepit dumpster alley. He really has gone to the gutter hasn't he? ...Well. he still has some sense of pride. He wrinkles his nose at the stench (they're definitely not sniffles) as his eyes tear up a bit at the odor (that's the only reason they're tearing up, the only one. He is strong and he has pride and he can handle being hated because it's their fault for taking it so personally and no one else's.). He makes sure no one is watching before running into the alley to catch a breath. And finds he's not alone.
Part of him had always been a bit curious about where the outcasts were when they weren't in class or in the halls. He made a mental map of which group hung out where within his first few weeks. But he could never pin these five down. Yet here are Owen, Tyler, Izzy, Eva, and Noah now, all conversation halted at his arrival.
Noah and Eva look about ready to curse him out. Izzy just bursts out laughing seeing him. Tyler's just confused, and Owen just smiles and says welcome! It's been a while since they've had someone new, but he's welcome to join.
Noah and Eva immediately have protests about this, and Tyler to a smaller extent. Izzy's just cackling harder. Owen still insists that Al came in all on his own so alley rules still stand: Al's an Alley Cat now. It'd be against who they are if they pick and choose who the rule applies to. The two most hard headed ones complain but stop arguing, and Izzy's just popped a little confetti popper she got from somewhere and is welcoming him in. Tyler's still a bit reluctant considering the Lindsey kiss and wants an apology at the very least.
Now Alejandro's got a choice to make. He can turn himself around right now and find himself somewhere else to sulk be. Or, he can accept the offer of this butter donkey. He really doesn't want to. The few interactions he's had with him were incredibly unpleasant. It doesn't speak well for any of the others that Owen's the one they turn to for the final say in things. ...But he's also stupid. And easily manipulated. Usurping Owen is child's play. And afterwards he'll have a group to back him up vs dealing with his current onslaught alone. He can trick them into boosting him up to get back in everyone''s good graces, and abandon them once they're no longer useful. All he has to do is promise to bring them with him, because they've got to be just as desperate as he is to get out of this alley.
So he agrees to join, and apologizes for his previous behavior. He had just been so torn up about the thought of leaving behind the people he had grown to know over the year. He let his emotions get the better of him and lashed out when he truly should have known better and apologizes deeply. (There's a kernel of truth to this he's not going to be ready to admit for a while.). Owen, Tyler, and Izzy accept this apology without issue. Noah and Eva accept it under protest, but they're keeping an eye on him.
Thus, Alejandro's becomes an Alley Cat. And gets a whole lot more than he bargained for.
#alley cats au#total drama#td#total drama au#td au#team chris is really really really really hot#team cirrrrh#td alejandro#total drama alejandro#td noah#total drama noah#td owen#total drama owen#td eva#total drama eva#td izzy#total drama izzy#td tyler#total drama tyler#team escope#td team escope
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Actually, terfs exploit transmascs' transmisogyny and bioessentalism to radicalize them into terfism, rather than isolation etc.
Debated on answering this, but we will anyway because this is not something we want to let slide.
I'm not going to deny that the learned transmisogynystic biases of transmasculine people plays a factor in T/RF radicalization. It would be difficult to create bigotry in someone where none existed previously, and biases can absolutely be utilized to manipulate people.
But if you're going to look me in the face and tell me that isolation and vulnerability don't play a factor in radicalization at all? That's its ONLY bigotry that allows people to be radicalized? Then you are blatantly ignoring reality to suit an incredibly harmful narrative.
If you read into the process of radicalization into any kind of extremist group, you will find similar factors noted over and over, ad nauseum: Isolation, lack of a support network, economic struggles, trauma, emotional / mental vulnerability, and often that the individual themselves has some sort of minority status that they suffer bigotry from.
Every single study posits that the key characteristics and foundation of radicalization is not pre-existing biases, but is rooted in unmet fundamental human needs, such as connection and community.
The enduring appeal of extremist groups seems to lie in attending to fundamental human needs
Source 1
Different factors such as personal failures, interpersonal rejection, individual or collective grievances, or social alienation can induce a loss of personal significance through the loss of a compelling life narrative and the corresponding sense of purpose... Therefore, through joining such groups, individuals can address the basic need to be respected by others, they can establish a new narrative that gives their life meaning, and they also can experience the social benefits of being part of a network of people.
Source 2
It is no coincidence that you will often hear T/RFs describing horrendous accounts of sexual trauma and misogynistic abuse. Their trauma makes them more vulnerable to being manipulated by people who wish to use them as a tool in a bigoted campaign.
And this is not to say, "Boo hoo,, won't someone think of the poor T/RFs?" I'm not saying any of this in an attempt to downplay their violence or cast them in a more sympathetic light.
The reason why this is important is because understanding the root cause of radicalization is key to preventing it, and to deradicalize people who have already fallen down the rabbit hole.
When we recognize that isolation, trauma, and instability are what lay the foundation for radicalization, we can prevent it by helping our community and attending to the needs of those who are most vulnerable.
When you pretend that the cause of radicalization is just bigotry, you fall into the trap of casting radicalized people as just being inhuman bigoted monsters. Not only you are dehumanizing them, but you fool yourself and others into thinking, "Oh well I'm not a bigot, so I could never fall for their manipulation!"
That is a dangerous mindset, because it makes you perfectly ripe for believing propaganda. After all, you're not an evil bigot, so you couldn't possibly be indoctrinated, right?
Nobody is immune to being manipulated. Anyone, in the right circumstances, can be groomed into harmful ideologies. People in extremist groups are still human beings at the end of the day. They are people just like you.
When you dehumanize them, you only push them even further down that path. And you make yourself vulnerable by not acknowledging your capacity to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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MotA pt eight:
combat pilots are the glamour boys of piloting tbh (I like/am critical of this show's sprawling ambition but I'd take a BoB style miniseries just following the 332nd / 477th)
feeling a little bit back to square one in that suddenly there's a whole new bunch of guys in uniforms and masks and I'm supposed to be able to tell them apart and it took me about 4 episodes to keep track of the 100th (about 7 to keep track of easy company, but I was new to the genre back then)
(my co-watchers and I have a whatsapp group called "i moustache you a question" which is purely for helping one another tell MotA characters apart)
I don't want to be mean but I do not give a skerrick of a fuck about bucky's emotional problems, especially when that problem is boredom
"well I could cope with being DEAD" is mildly endearing
just think how much of this narration you could cut out and everything would be fine, better even
it's good to see a little bit more of capt westgate's working relationships
croz that is what happens when you disobey kidd's direct order, your brain deactivates
did u know christopher lakewood (col jeffrey) is also an accent coach
I thought maybe buck and bucky's fight might be some piece of misdirection theatre in aid of an escape plan but no, bucky is just that annoying. punch him again.
luv the tuskegee airmen already because nobody's narrating over their scenes. see how well this works
"I helped plan d-day and then slept through it" is a great story for the grandkids. I'm being flippant but also: it kind of is
croz/rosie/kidd ot3. I'm right. think it over. thank me later. (platonically, but ydy. maybe I'll decide I'm flexible)
if I were more heterosexual I would fall for macon reeling off a list of precise statistics that he worked out earlier when he had a free five minutes
"we perhaps might not blend into nazi germany?" is seditious talk apparently
I'm always a bit lost when the 100th point to one another through their plane windows and say things like "look! there's blakely!" because I simply cannot make out any distinguishing features. the tuskegee planes are great though, much more distinctive
Second Smug Nazi is a slightly more charismatic actor imo
the writers have got themselves into that "this time period was racist but Our Heroes cannot be racist" dilemma so, as per the classic dodge, some relatively minor character gets to be the Only Racist. sorry hambone. you are very blond, after all. (sometimes it's "this time period was homophobic" or "this time period was misogynistic" but the solution remains the same)
I quite like alex and buck's interactions, despite not having been terribly invested in buck so far. good chemistry? just the novelty of a new character relationship? anyway it helps when butler and turner get scenes with other people for a change. one of the best tools for character development is giving them multiple relationships; the different commonalities/tensions/chemistry are v revealing
I am not immune to a Secret Plot Montage
tell me more about macon and demarco, is this a budding friendship (don't want to overegg a "standing next to each other" moment but I'm starved for supporting character development and I'm finally giving up on that significantly changing)
I think westgate is probably right to call things off with crosby sooner rather than later (I always support hbo war ladies when they dump guys #feminism)
yeah I do quite like rosie, he's a good person/leader/pilot. very obviously not (as winters described guarnere and speirs) a natural killer, but that's not his job and he is a natural pilot and therefore cannot bring himself to leave the other guys before the war is over
I think I have done a relatively good job of keeping track of the influx of new characters. don't remember everyone's names yet (alex! macon! daniels!) but I'm doing better on faces
hope demarco and meatball get to reunite next ep
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Hello! I'm curious about something if you want to talk abou it. Could you tell me more about lupus? How did you get it and which symptoms do you have? How you get through your days when you have them? You stay at home?
Sorry for the many questions but I don't know physically nobody that has it and I'm curious. Hope you are well!
Hello hello!! of course! It's always a good moment to spread the word and inform about certain illnesses, so thank you for asking!
TW: This is MY personal experience and my medical knowledge (rn nurse uni degree, med school student). However if you have the following symptoms DO NOT assume you have the disease, BUT VISIT YOUR DOCTOR. And, if your symptoms get underestimated don't be afraid to visit others. YOUR SYMPTOMS ARE VALID, YOU ARE NOT LAZY, YOU HAVE A REAL PROBLEM.
What is Lupus or SLE?
So, basically Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (aka Lupus) is what we know as an AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE. What it means is that basically your own immune system attacks the body's tissues because it recognizes your own body parts as "threats" (like it would consider a virus or a bacteria, like something coming from the outside to hurt your insides). When your tissues get attack, that means your organs and body parts will suffer damage. And, unfortunately being "systemic" means that it can attack any tissue, such as skin, kidneys, brain, eyes, lungs, etc.
How did I get Lupus?
I have no idea, as a patient nor as a future doctor or as a rn nurse. This little shit comes with you since the day you are born inside your dna, however not always it manifests. Some do not have symptoms until one day, others have symptoms and signs all throughout the years (me) and never get diagnosed until it becomes REALLY visible (let me make a little note here: even if the majority of lupus patients are female, we often get misdiagnosed because of the misogynist look that the medical field still has. Women often get called "lazy" or "dramatic", until you have eye or kidney damage like me).
Symptoms
So, it varies. Lupus is not just SLE. There are a lot of different types (4), from cutaneous, to systemic, to neonatal, and even there is another type that can be induced by certain medication (this is one of the reasons why we should never auto medicate).
Important note: all autoimmune disease gets triggered, awakened, crazy when we are under high stressful situations. The outburst of the symptoms are often (if not always) triggered by a stressful situation and these are called "LUPUS FLARE UPS". So, in my case some symptoms are:
fever with no apparent reason (while being totally "healthy". This I had it since I was a kid, no fucking doctor EVER give a fuck about it. My mother got told that "I was probably having a tooth infection" spoiler: no, i didn't).
skin rash and what looks like "eczema". Sometimes over the bridge of my nose and cheeks, this is called "malar erythema" or "butterfly rash" and it looks like you have a red butterfly on your face.
joints pain / muscle pain (it hurts like a bitch, sometimes you can even move your legs) and muscle weakness. I had my right knee cartilages degenerated, also because of Lupus.
Shaky hands (and sometimes I can't even open a bottle of water cause I don't have muscle strength).
cognitive problems (i can't remember shit, sometimes I can't study, anxiety attacks, etc)
Last year during this month I got something called "ANTERIOR UVEITIS" for which I am still paying the consequences. My right eye got super inflamed and red and some parts didn't receive enough blood (like a stroke) and I lost some % of my visual capacity.
Renal problems (p a i n, stones, etc)
weakness, tiredness, sleepiness (I also have hypothyroidism, which causes me to have 0 energy so I live off energy drinks: DO NOT DO THIS)
A lot of sadness and depression.
What do I do when these symptoms hit?
unfortunately there is no much you could do. I learned that nobody in the "adult world" gives a fuck about you being sick and nobody will wait for you. University don't care. Jobs either. So, what do I do? I try my best and work/study as "i can". Sometimes I just can't stand from bed, so I am lucky (and at the same I am not) to live with my family who often helps me to even go to the bathroom. I try to do stuff until I can't stand in two feet and that's when I call my doctor to ask for a permission to rest (Argentina is a country where is pretty difficult to leave your parent's house earlier like the rest, we are kinda poor and rent is EXPENSIVE)
I hope I have answered some of your doubts, and I am very very open to answer more if any wants to ask! 💖
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The devaluation of elder people in western culture absolutely breaks my heart. There are reasonable frustrations to have against individuals of the boomer generation who are misogynistic, racist, etc., but to paint this frustration in broad strokes over an entire aged population is wounding us. I look around and I see just as many individuals who are homophobic, sexist, racist, etc., in denial of it or in encouragement of it. It's all the same politics just with new terms and technology.
What the boomer generation had was being told they were going to die in a nuclear war every day, and nearly experienced it during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Can you imagine feeing so powerless to protect the people you love as wealthy men with twitchy trigger fingers are in charge of you and everybody else's lives around you?
They saw and experienced their nation force it's male citizens to be sentenced to death and to be sentenced to kill in Vietnam. Can you imagine either sitting in the room with your family and hoping that a certain set of numbers aren't called? Or, perhaps, hoping that they would be, because many men back then hurt women in severe and immeasurable ways without nearly as many laws to protect abuse victims as there are today?
They were also the generation that observed homosexuality becoming recognized as legal in 1967 (different from gay marriage being passed), and this was promptly followed by the AIDs epidemic. Can you imagine being a gay or lesbian boomer back then? Can you imagine holding your dying loved one's hand as they are essentially killed after they contracted a common cold due to a disease that destroys their immune system? Can you imagine getting this disease and understanding you're going to die slowly and painfully and are scared, and then nobody wants to touch you?
This is also the generation that received the news of a black teenager refusing to move to the back of the bus. They watched or even participated in marches on DC spearheaded from Martin Luther King Jr. and then observed their own government assassinate him years later. Many people in this generation and their protests were why the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. This was also the generation that was sent to the last American Indian boarding/residential schools, and the generation of Natives who endured the events at Wounded Knee in 1973 by the bloodied hands of the feds.
When we drag down this entire generation, we're also dragging down the boomer women who were beat in the streets by their husbands because domestic violence laws were not yet passed, and even after they were men were still en masse violent in public. We're dragging down the women who were involved in the hippie movement, protesting the Vietnam war, and the women who put their lives at risk marching for their rights in the civil rights movement. We're dragging down the women who established the first rape crisis centers and domestic violence organizations.
We're dragging down the generation that looked to the stars and sent us to the moon.
And this generation also is going through the same events we are. They saw the rise of security cameras being placed into parking lots and the slow erasure of privacy. They went through the #MeToo movement. They experienced (and some died from) COVID-19. They were more resourced, but many also suffered through the two recessions with us. They want us to help them understand this confusing technology that they did their best to parent us through even though it was some new magic they didn't quite understand. They're getting cancer alongside us because of the water contamination and environmental pollution. They went through the same story we are going through: the greater population being oppressed by the rich, and the greater population being divided by politics and social issues.
My intention isn't to say that sexism, homophobia, racism, etc. needs to be accepted or given a pass when it's done by someone from the boomer population - how we handle these situations in our every day lives is nuanced and sometimes its best to cut our parents out of our lives because their unresolved trauma is now hurting us. My message is that it is heartbreaking to know that there is a relationship wound between our generations, because our elders know and have experienced so much, and they have little time left on this earth with us. Their most treasured moments with their parents were probably the exchange of intergenerational knowledge, and even this isn't happening between us because instead Millennials, Gen X, and Gen Z look to the internet for answers instead. And because of this we don't get stories straight out of human history from them.
Their generation went through so much and are now seeing their children withdraw into our screens. Yes it makes us frustrated and it makes us roll our eyes when they complain about us being materialistic or having no social skills because of social media. I don't know. Sometimes I do get offended and my 72 year old father's words hurt and come off as out of touch. But I can't blame my mom or my dad for holding that resentment when they probably feel a core part of the generational relationship - the sharing of intergenerational knowledge - being stolen away by technology.
#tangent#boomers#intergenerational knowledge#human history#generational knowledge#millenials#gen z#gen x#boomer parents#baby boomer generation#elders
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I sent you this question about doctor in clinic of Bloodborne. Thanks for the answer! I was very nervous about it but I'm relieved. I've learned a few more things on this issue since yesterday after I did a post and someone also answered. There was evidence that, and doctor also, was Vileblood, what sounded very curiously. I'm now convinced on this theory too, at the same time I don't believe she was pregnant anymore. I forgot to say this in a previous ask that I thought that she described writhing and Oedon Writhe. But I am not confident anymore .Bloodborne has many horrible things happen with women, like just you wrote. Looks like because every Great One loses its child and years for surrogate, they use human bodies like factory. I understood your mind that another female character can just have more autonomy without being removed from this, at the same time I understood some fans just think that because false doctor can be Vileblood, it makes Oedon assault her too. I noticed that some people fuel even more horror to a story when it's already the most dark thing that isn't limited to be against women. It is such awesome idea to uplift the doctor instead of damning her too, like everyone else. We always notice that no one can have a happy ending, but we can change it with how we choose to interpret the story. It's all in the eyes of the beholder. I'd like to make a separate post on this that comes from different angle than saying someone is misogynistic, but I'm not even too familiar with using English language yet. There is no way to come to a complete agreement with sides, because different people want different things to write. So I think that some people here not hold ill intention to make one more female character reduced to just surrogated mother, but they want even more horror. Everything else in the post that you wrote was easy to understand and I had no more questions! Looks like everyone agrees that nobody wants to be evil and simply thought of what is better for the story and I love to see this in the fandom.
Yeah i definitely understand what you mean! In the end, bloodborne and fromsoft in general are games about coming to your own conclusions and thats part of what's so great about them. I think we can be mindful of what we theorize could mean in a narrative context while still being able to form our own takes on the lore. Also yeah agreed on the "vileblood"/cainhurst thing, without getting too much into it right now because this isnt my theory post LOL but i definitely think their relation to it added to their role and storyline in regards to oedon, it's really interesting to think about. I feel like i should clarify i dont necessarily want to accuse people of being outright misogynistic when theyre making that sort of theories! We all can unwillingly participate in misogyny that way without wanting to, because so much of it is internalized, and im not immune from that happening/having happened to me as well
Also your english is great !! Thank you for taking the time to write this and talk about it with me i really appreciate that :)
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i know nobody will care about this unless a popular bnf says so, but its a real trend in fandom where misogyny and homophobia are considered just “funny”, and that it’s usually always the canon gay dudes or heavily coded gay dude who are considered misogynists *even if there are no canon examples of misogyny from them*
meanwhile the straight guys who treat girls like objects or pieces of meat get written as feminists or people try to make that progressive somehow
idk almost like people assume that a man being attracted to women makes him feminist even though he says sexist lines like “girls need to be protected by men”, and everyone just uncritically sees this as drinking woman respecting juice, while the guys not attracted to women in canon are written by the fandom as mras or misogynists
really interesting how almost everyone just mindlessly parrots this type of fanon in almost every fandom, and no, being lgbt+ doesn’t mean we’re immune to homophobia
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No but literally I was told to I had "male privilege" and was "immune to oppression" when I didn't even have a chest binder yet.
I was out as trans but my mom wouldn't buy me a binder and I couldn't start testosterone, so literally all I had was short hair, I didn't pass because obvious boobs, and my voice was high, but apparently I had "male privilege" despite NOBODY being willing to even call me a man or use male pronouns for me. Literally EVERYONE treated me like a woman or a little girl but I wasn't allowed to complain about people being misogynistic to me because I identify as a man.
Like bruh the bigots who hate me for not being a feminine woman don't give a shit how I identify!!! They don't see me as a man!!! They see me as a failed woman!!!
But I guess misogyny is magically ok if it's directed at trans mascs? Because identifying as men grants us some kind of protection spell that prevents us from actually getting hurt by it???
Nah it totally didn't hurt when I got a boot thrown at my face because some shit head thought I was a butch lesbian, I'm a trans man so my magical male privilege gave me magic invisible armor that stopped the boot from connecting with my face. Totally. Because that's how the world works apparently.
Like I have literally been told by cis men that corrective r*pe would "fix" me. I've been stalked. I've had the crap beat out of me for being "too boyish". I've been threatened with all kinds of fucked up shit.
But yeah that magic male privilege that I totally have sure has made my life super easy with zero conflicts around me being assigned female at birth 🙄
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Do you have any dark romance recommendations? I just finished The Darkest Temptation by Danielle Lori and while it's not GOOD good, I was still entertained and now I'm left craving something similar (it doesn't have to be mafia... just, fucked up, ya know?)
Unfortunately, not that I would reliably call dark romance. I read many romances that I would consider pretty dark (PNR and historicals, mostly) but none that I would categorize as the subgenre dark romance. Yet. I just really haven't had the time--it's a matter of priority versus inclination. I would recommend listening to the Fated Mates episode on dark romance, as they have a lot of recs on there that sound interesting to me!
Heads up on Danielle Lori--I know she's pretty popular with dark romance (and please don't take this as shaming or judging, I just found this out fairly recently and she was on my TBR so I like to clue people in because, you know, you deserve to be aware when you're potentially spending money), but she's liked a lot of anti-BLM stuff, tweets from Tomi Lauren (a racist, misogynistic, hateful conservative pundit), made some problematic statements about having "a black family" and therefore being immune to criticism... Obviously, nobody is perfect, many authors are problematic on some level, but she crossed some lines for me personally.
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I know in hyperactive in here and I am slightly sorry, but here's a more serious post.
Vent underneath my sketch.
I drew my sona, Phaleo, in Mandalorian armor holding some symbol that says ♡L. That's the brand my mom's side of the family uses on cows and whatnot. It symbolizes our heritage. And about the Mandalorian armor, to mandalorians, family is everything, whether it's found family or biological.
I hate being a part of my family.
Venting below :)
V
Short vent: my family is a fuckhole piece of shit and my mom, despite having full custody, is a deadbeat due to chronic illness, boyfriends, and work, leaving a child no older than Mission Vao to take on adult responsibilities. There is also a bonus of genetic conditions that I'm very likely to have
Long vent: I should be proud of my family, but my grandpa and his parents are incredibly misogynistic. Their views are the same as views from the 1950s. My grandma has some GENETIC severe mental health issues that landed her in a nursing home. My mom's oldest brother is okay, but my other uncle is an alcoholic deadbeat dad. His kids, the kids I babysit, think he's dead.
My mom got pregnant in high school (not with me), divorced my dad (he's a great guy) whom she married straight after high school, then married an alcoholic man child. Her actions, whether or not she intended things to play out this way, stripped me of my childhood. I forgive her but she only recently split from him and the wounds are fresh.
My mom has lupus (where your immune system attacks itself), Rheumatoid Arthritis, Borderline Personality Disorder, and good ole anxiety and depression. I know these aren't her fault, but now, it's just pills and doctor's appointments: work and boyfriends. I try to appreciate my mom, but it's hard when I'm so easily forgotten.
My grandpa doesn't cook, and my mom rarely does anymore. Nobody cleans but me, so I was left with these responsibilities. I have a younger brother (age 12) too, and my mom is still pretty absent. I'm 14 (almost 15), and I'm responsible for cooking and cleaning at my mom's house. These aren't just small chores, I'm responsible for them, and it's pretty crushing. I had to quit softball because I had to watch my brother some nights and cook dinner (I got lectured for making microwave dinners for my family). Sometimes I was home alone and had nobody to drive me to practice. My coaches ridiculed me and forced me to quit over something I couldn't control. I had no time to do homework assignments and fell behind at school. My driver's ed teacher had to make embarrassing accommodations for me when I took the class because I had nobody to take me to and from lessons. My mom always felt unwell, working, or seeing a new guy.
I feel like I should be going skating with my friends and other teen things, but I can't and it's because of my family.
I'm ashamed to be related to the Luthy's. I'm upset I never had the childhood I deserved. I'm worried I will become a crazy old kook like my grandma.
And as much as I resent my mother's actions, I'm scared. She's showing early indications of brain rotting conditions like Schizophrenia, Dementia, and Alzheimer's. She's dependent on loads and loads of medication to live. She smokes and drinks on top of it all. I'm scared ill lose my mom; I'm scared it'll happen to me.
I'm related to failures in life, people who abandoned their kids, viewed women as pets, and mental diseases run heavy down the family tree. What my grandma has is genetic, and there's a high possibility I'm fucked.
And to whoever reads this, thanks.
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Thoughts on breastfeeding, as I was asked to write a discussion post on it for my medical anthropology class. (This is the prompt I was asked to answer: What are the factors leading into both suppression as well as promotion of breastfeeding infants? Given the enormous benefits of breastfeeding, what do you think are the prospects of returning to this being the primary form of infant nutrition in modern industrial countries? What factors go, and should go, into decisions about weaning, and why is weaning such an important matter?) Mind, I was breastfed but have never breastfed, as I do not have children. Assuming I do have children naturally at some point, I do currently intend to breastfeed them unless something unforeseen happens.
Capitalism and misogyny are both major parts of why the breastfeeding of infants is suppressed. Ironically, capitalism and misogyny can also be a part of why it is promoted. A better reason that also contributes to the promotion of breastfeeding is that breastmilk is typically better for infants, as well as significantly more accessible than formula in most cases.
In terms of the suppression of breastfeeding, there are two main ways in which capitalism suppresses breastfeeding: 1) actively, by discouraging breastfeeding in favor of formula (because by selling formula, and in many cases also water for the formula, directly makes companies money), and 2) passively, by not giving women enough time to be with their babies in order to properly breastfeed (through very little or no maternity leave and no or very few accommodations for working mothers so they can take care of their children). The suppression of breastfeeding in favor of formula across the board has been particularly harmful in areas where it is difficult to get clean water, and has resulted in a significant number of infant deaths. Breastfeeding is also suppressed through misogyny and classism, such as through the idea that breastfeeding will ruin the shape of a woman’s breasts and therefore if she doesn’t have to (if she is of a high enough social status/has the resources), she shouldn’t breastfeed, whether because she uses formula (nowadays) or she gets a wetnurse (formerly popular). This trend of whether or not wealthy women should breastfeed goes in and out of vogue.
In terms of the promotion of breastfeeding, misogynistic arguments include that women have to breastfeed because we can (and since women are all meant to reproduce). The capitalist promotion of breastfeeding is done in order to sell products – breastpumps, storage bottles, breastfeeding pillows, nursing pads, nursing bras, nursing tops, nursing covers, whether for a woman’s personal sense of modesty or comfort or so that nobody is offended by the sight of a woman feeding her infant child (because misogyny and capitalism often work in tandem), and so on and so forth. That’s not to say that none of these products genuinely help women, but they are overly promoted and constantly updated or changed or redesigned in order to sell products and make money.
The good promotion of breastfeeding is because breastmilk is genuinely better for infants, as the popular WHO slogan “breast is best” states. That’s not to shame women who struggle with breastfeeding for various reasons, or who don’t breastfeed at all, but the data makes it very clear that babies that exclusively breastfeed are at a significant advantage to babies that drink formula, especially babies that drink exclusively formula. The WHO says that, “Babies who are exclusively breastfed are 14 times less likely to die than babies who are not breastfed. However, today, only 41% of infants 0–6 months old are exclusively breastfed, a rate WHO Member States have committed to increasing to at least 50% by 2025.” (1) Additionally, babies that breastfeed have better immune systems, fewer allergies, and better brain development, and are less likely to die of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). (2, 3, 4, 5) Breastfeeding may also be better for mothers. (3) In addition to breastfeeding being better for the infant than formula, it is also more accessible. It doesn’t require formula, which is very expensive, and it doesn’t require clean water to be mixed in it, which can be a significant barrier for some women.
I think that returning to breastfeeding (for the right reasons) is possible, but I think it would take some major cultural shifts. Women would need more protections in the workplace, as well as having those workplaces made more accessible, women would need to be given better maternity leave (and by that I do mean I think women should get at least a year/year and a half of paid maternity leave, and without repercussions for taking it), women need to not be shamed for breastfeeding in public, women need to not be shamed for breastfeeding or for not breastfeeding (and doctors and nurses (as well as schools) do need to properly educate women about breastfeeding, why it’s good, and how to do it properly and get babies to latch), and doctors and nurses to be more considerate and respectful of women and less aggressive to women when they are promoting breastfeeding. It is a common occurrence for women to struggle with breastfeeding, with getting babies to latch, and to not receive education or support from anyone, including medical professionals, and/or for a woman to be traumatized in the delivery room by overzealous nurses who ignore the woman’s comfort and needs in favor of making the baby breastfeed.
1: https://www.who.int/news/item/27-05-2020-countries-failing-to-stop-harmful-marketing-of-breast-milk-substitutes-warn-who-and-unicef
2: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210114111912.htm
3: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/15274-the-benefits-of-breastfeeding-for-baby--for-mom
4: http://www.bakerchiropractic.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/ImmuneSystem.pdf
5: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/breastfeeding-your-baby/breast-milk-is-the-best-milk
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you have been giving bad vibes lately tbh, like ily and you’re the only blog i’ve got notifications in snd check everyday, and i live that you call out antisemitism and homophobia (i’ve messaged you private stuff too and you’ve been totally lovely too, like ily!!!) but some of the stuff you do it questionable, and idk if it’s just because it’s online, but you always talk about how hot women are when discussing them, even when it’s not relevant, and call them bitches and stuff, and i saw some people call you out for misogyny and you never really took it as valid criticism, but you kinda talk about women like a shitty 17 year old boy tbh, it’s just weird, and the going after a hardly 18year old too instead of just ignoring those messages, it’s all just a bit iffy to me, nothing major and you’re definitely not TTB (it’s disgusting to even suggest that, that woman is so fucking disgusting!) but just some things that you should maybe not brush off as people just being pressed, as you say you’re a human being who will fuck up, but it’s nice to acknowledge that and understand why people say it, rather than just thinking people are haters and what not
Hey, this feels like it’s in good faith but I would very much like a chance to respond to some of your points (again in good faith). Like I hear you but I am not sure I agree with you and here’s why:
1) the criticism that I thirst over women or behave like a “teenage boy” is entangled in respectability politics, slut shaming, homophobia and patriarchal standards. Nobody pearl clutches over anons going off about Dino Dick (except people who’re like “wow these anons are wild” and like fair enough). Harmless thirsting over public figures is absolutely normal and not something to feel ashamed for. It’s okay to discuss sex and how horny shit makes you. It isn’t a bad thing at all.
2) “bitches” is used by me as slang. I have called people “motherfuckers” etc as well, it is 100% used in a general slang way and not in a way intended to be derogatory.
3) I don’t think it’s fair to say I’m “going after” Olivia. I said she’s very talented, very ambitious, has some boppy songs, and is insanely good at marketing herself (and performing! Her SNL slammed and that’s SUCH A HARD STAGE TO PERFORM ON). Saying her songs are thematically similar as a marketing choice and she’s copy pasting Taylor’s ideas isn’t going after her. Also, there is a huge power imbalance here and it’s... in Olivia’s favor. Olivia has the backing of UMG and Disney. My saying “she’s contrived in her public persona and good for her hope she makes it since that’s clearly what she wants” isn’t an ad hominem attack on a random teenage girl.
4) I don’t think people are “just haters” but you need to understand that I’ve had a LOT of antisemitic remarks in my ask in the last bit and obviously that’s affected my mood and general vibe. It lowkey sucks. And I do think people willfully and sometimes like obstinately misread what I am saying and take my words out of context or obfuscate what I was saying which, yes, is frustrating.
So like yeah I’m not perfect and yeah I do hear people if they come with valid criticism of me and if people point out stuff I said that’s problematic I take it on board. “Bitches” is offensive to some but is also a linguistic choice. I will think about that one because it doesn’t bother me but I don’t need to be offending people y’know.
The respectability politics stuff is a bit bullshit though. Like I say you can’t just cry misogyny at people thinking people are hot and tbh on that same note at some of the times I’ve been called a misogynist. I have expressly called Harry Styles a himbo, I have roasted him for having Camille teach him to read, and butchering her favorite wanky book for his pussy song. I’ve also like.... not expected Harry to give good critical analysis of a wanky post apocalyptic nightmare novel. Which is a very similar criticism to what I’ve leveled at Madison. Yeah, they’re talented musicians. Yeah, they’re hot. No, don’t expect them to give you a good take on some literary topic that’s kinda unfair to them. Just let them be hot and talented.
I’ve also said that Harry’s hyperconfessionalism on Fine Line annoyed me and I’ve said I can’t stand Ed’s music because it’s like the exact same topic on all of them.
Nobody has been like, “WOW YOU HATE HARRY! WOW YOU ARE A MISANDRIST!”
Because those criticisms have nothing to do with the identity of the people.
One can criticize women for things they’ve said and done and also just.... things you find annoying.... and that doesn’t mean you hate women.
And it does feel unfair that that gets leveled at me a bunch because I really don’t think it’s true at all. I think this is a deeply and inherently feminist space. And yes we thirst in it, which is fine, and yes we don’t act like women are somehow immune to criticism. That doesn’t make us sexist. It’d be worse to be acting like somehow being a woman makes people immune from discourse or needing to be held to a different - presumably lower - standard. Like that’s be fucked up.
Hope this makes sense and let me know if you have any further thoughts or comments. I’ll think about the “bitches” thing.
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Why Are Progressives So Illiberal?
By Victor Davis Hanson January 31, 2021
Progressives adopted identity politics and rejected class considerations because solidarity with elite minorities excuses them from concern for, or experience with, the middle classes of all races.
One common theme in the abject madness and tragedies of the past 12 months is that progressive ideology now permeates almost all of our major institutions—even as the majority of Americans resist the leftist agenda. Its reach resembles the manner in which the pre-Renaissance church had absorbed the economic, cultural, social, artistic, and political life of Europe, or perhaps how Islamic doctrine was the foundation for all public and private life under the Ottoman Sultanate—or even how all Russian institutions of the 1930s exuded tenets of Soviet Marxism.
Pan-progressivism
To be a Silicon Valley executive, a prominent Wall Street player, the head of a prestigious publishing house, a university president, a network or PBS anchor, a major Hollywood actress, a retired general or admiral on a corporate board, or a NBA superstar requires either progressive fides or careful suppression of all political affinities.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, 98 percent of Big Tech political donations went to Democrats in 2020. Censorship and deplatforming on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media companies is decidedly one-way. When Mark Zuckerberg and others in Silicon Valley donate $500 million to help officials “get out the vote” in particular precincts, it is not to help candidates of both parties.
Google calibrates the order of its search results with a progressive, not a conservative, bent. Grandees from the Clinton or Obama Administration find sinecures in Silicon Valley, not Republicans or conservatives.
The $4-5 trillion market-capitalized Big Tech cartels, run by self-described progressives, aimed to extinguish conservative brands like Parler. Ironically, they now apply ideological force multipliers to the very strategies and tactics of 19th-century robber-baron trusts and monopolies. Poor Jack Dorsey has never been able to explain why Twitter deplatforms and cancels conservatives for the same supposed uncouthness that leftists routinely employ.
Silicon Valley apparently does not believe in either the letter or the spirit of the First Amendment. It exercises a monopoly over the public airwaves, and resists regulations and antitrust legislation of the sort that liberals once championed to break up trusts in the late 19th and early 20th century. As payback, it assumes that Democrats don’t see Big Tech in the same manner that they claim to see Big Pharma in their rants against it.
Wall Street donated markedly in favor of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden in their respective presidential races. Whereas conservative administrations and congressional majorities are seen as natural supporters of free-market capitalism, their Democratic opponents, not long ago, were not—and thus drew special investor attention and support from Wall Street realists.
The insurrectionist GameStop stock debacle revealed how “liberals” on Wall Street reacted when a less connected group of investors sought to do what Wall Street grandees routinely do to others: ambush and swarm a vulnerable company’s stock in unison either to buy or sell it en masse and thus to profit from predictable, artificially huge fluctuations in the price.
When small investors at Reddit drove the pedestrian GameStop price up to well over a hundred times its worth, forcing big Wall Street investment companies to lose billions of dollars, progressives on Wall Street and the business media cried foul. They compared the Reddit buyers to the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6.
One subtext was: Why would nobodies dare question the mega-profit making monopolies of the Wall Street establishments? The point that neither the Reddit day-traders nor the hedge-fund connivers were necessarily healthy for investment was completely lost.
Surveys of “diverse” university faculty show overwhelming left-wing support, reified by asymmetrical contributions of 95-1 to Democratic candidates. The dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. to make race incidental to our characters no longer exists on campuses. Appearance is now essential. More ironic, class considerations are mostly ignored in favor of identity politics. “Equity” applies to race not class. The general education curricula is one-sided and mostly focused on deductive -studies courses, and in particular race/class/gender zealotry that is anti-Enlightenment in the sense that predetermined conclusions are established and selected evidence is assembled to prove them.
We are also currently witnessing the greatest assault on free speech and expression, and due process, in the last 70 years. And the challenges to the First and Fifth Amendments are centered on college campuses, where non-progressive speakers are disinvited, shouted down, and occasionally roughed up for their supposedly reactionary views—and by those who have little fear of punishment.
Students charged with “sexual harassment” or “assault” are routinely denied the right to face their accusers, cross examine witnesses, or bring in counterevidence. They usually find redress for their suspensions or expulsions only in the courts. What was thematic in the Duke Lacrosse fiasco and the University of Virginia sorority rape hoax was the absence of any real individual punishment for those who promulgated the myths.
Indeed in these cases many argued that false allegations in effect were not so important in comparison to bringing attention to supposedly systemic racism and sexism. In Jussie Smollett fashion, what did not happen at least drew attention to what could have happened and thus was valuable. It was as if those who did not commit any actual crime had still committed a thought crime.
Almost all media surveys of the last four years reflect a clear journalistic bias against conservatives in general. Harvard’s liberal Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy famously reported slanted coverage against Trump and his supporters among major television and news outlets at near astronomical rates, in some cases exhibiting over 90 percent negative bias during Trump’s first few months in office. Liberal editors can now be routinely fired or forced to retire from major progressives newspapers if they are not seen as sufficiently woke.
No major journalist or reporter has been reprimanded for promoting the fictional “Russian collusion” hoax—and certainly not in the manner the media has called for punishment, backlisting, and deplatforming for any who championed “stop the steal” protests over the November 2020 elections. The CNN Newsroom put their hands up and chanted “hands up, don’t shoot”—a myth surrounding the Michael Brown Ferguson shooting that was thoroughly refuted. Infamous now is the CNN reporter’s characterization of arsonist flames shooting up in the background of a BLM/Antifa riot as a “largely peaceful” demonstration. BLM, of course, has been nominated for a Nobel “Peace” Prize. After the summer rioting, one could better cite Tacitus’s Calgacus, “Where they make a desert, they call it peace”.
A George W. Bush or Donald Trump press conference was often a free-for-all, blood-in-the-water feeding frenzy. A Barack Obama or Joe Biden version devolves into banalities about pets, fashion, and food. The fusion media credo is why embarrass a progressive government and thus put millions and the planet itself at risk?
Andrew Cuomo’s policies of sending COVID-19 patients into rest homes led to thousands of unnecessary deaths. Still, the media gave him an Emmy award for his self-inflated and bombastic press conferences, many of which were little more than unhinged rants against the Trump Administration. Anthony Fauci’s initial pronouncements about the origins of the COVID-19 virus, its risks and severity, travel bans, masks, herd immunity, vaccination rollout dates—and almost everything about the pandemic—were wildly off. Yet he was canonized by the media due to his wink-and-nod assurances that he was the medical adult in the Trump Administration room.
It would be difficult for a prominently conservative actor or actress to win an Oscar these days, or to produce a major conservative-themed film. Bankable actors/directors/producers like Clint Eastwood or Mel Gibson operate as mavericks, whose films’ huge profits win them some exemption. But they came into prominence and power 30 years ago during a different age. And they will likely have no immediate successors.
Ars gratis doctrinae is the new Hollywood and it will continue until it bottoms out in financial nihilism. When such ideological spasms contort a society, the second-rate emerge most prominently as the loudest accusers of the Salem Witches—as if correct zeal can reboot careers stalled in mediocrity. Hollywood’s mediocre celebrities from Alec Baldwin to Noah Cyrus have sought attention for their careers by voicing sensational racist, homophobic, and misogynist slurs—on the correct assumption their attention-grabbing left-wing fides prevents career cancellation.
Hollywood, we learn, has been selecting some actors on the basis of lighter skin color to accommodate racist Beijing’s demands to distribute widely their films in the enormous Chinese market. Yet note well that Hollywood has recently created racial quotas for particular Oscar categories, even as it reverses its racial obsessions to punish rather than empower people of color on the prompt of Chinese paymasters.
Ditto the political warping in professional sports. Endorsements, media face time, and cultural resonance often hinge on athletes either being woke—or entirely politically somnolent. A few stars may exist as known conservatives, but again they are the rare exceptions. For most athletes, it is wisest to keep mum and either support, condone, or ignore the Black Lives Matter rituals of taking a knee, not standing for the flag, or ritually denouncing conservative politicians. Those who are offended and turn the channel can be replaced by far more new viewers in China, who appreciate such criticism directed at the proper target.
Again, what is common to all the tentacles of this progressive octopus is illiberalism. Of course, progressivism, dating back to late 19th-century advocacy for “updating” the Constitution, always smiled upon authoritarianism. It promoted the “science” of eugenics and forced race-based sterilization, and the messianic idea that enlightened elites can use the increased powers of government to manage better the personal lives of its subjects (enslaved to religious dogma or mired in ignorance), according to supposed pure reason and humanistic intent.
Many progressives professed early admiration for the supposed efficiency of Benito Mussolini’s public works programs spurred on by his Depression-era fascism, and his enlistment of a self-described expert class to implement by fiat what was necessary for “progress.”
Even contemporary progressives have voiced admiration for the communist Chinese ability to override “obstructionists” to create mass transit, high-density urban living, and solar power. Early on in the pandemic Bill Gates defended China’s conduct surrounding the COVID-19 disaster. Suggesting the virus did not originate in a “wet” market was “conspiratorial”; travel bans were “racist” and “xenophobic.” In contrast, had SARS-CoV-2 possibly escaped by accident from a Russian lab, in our hysterias we might have been on the brink of war.
So it is understandable that progressivism can end up as an enemy of the First Amendment and intellectual diversity to bulldoze impediments to needed progress. To save us, sometimes leftists must become advocates of monopolies and cartels, of censorship, or of the militarization of our capital.
The new Left sorts, rewards, and punishes people by their race. And some progressives are the most likely appeasers of a racist and authoritarian Chinese government and advocates of Trotskyizing our past through iconoclasm, erasing, renaming, and cancelling out. San Francisco’s school board recently voted to rename over 40 schools, largely due to the pressure of a few poorly educated teachers who claimed on the basis of half-baked Wikipedia research that icons such as Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Washington were unfit for such recognition.
Absolute Power for Absolute Good
There are various explanations for unprogressive progressivism. None are necessarily mutually exclusive. Much of the latest totalitarianism is simple hula-hoop groupthink, a fad, or even a wise career move. Loud progressivism has become for some professionals, an insurance policy—or perhaps a deterrent high wall to ensure the mob bypasses one for easier prey elsewhere. Were Hunter Biden and his family grifting cartel not loud liberals and connected to Joe Biden, they all might have ended up like Jack Abramoff.
More commonly, progressivism offers the elite, the rich, and the well-connected Medieval penance, a vicarious way to alleviate their transitory guilt over privilege such as a $20,000 ice cream freezer or a carbon-spewing Gulfstream by abstract self-indictment of the very system that they have mastered so well.
Progressives also believe in natural hierarchies. They see themselves as an elite certified by their degrees, their resumes, and their correct ideologies, our version of Platonic Guardians, practitioners of the “noble lie” to do us good. In its condescending modern form, the creed is devoted to expanding the administrative state, and the expert class that runs it, and revolves in and out from its government hierarchies to privileged counterparts in the corporate and academic world.
Progressivism patronizes the poor and champions them at a distance, but despises the middle class, the traditionally hated bourgeoise without the romance of the distant impoverished or the taste and culture of the rich. The venom explains the wide array of epithets that Obama, Clinton, and Biden have so casually employed—clingers, deplorables, irredeemables, dregs, ugly folk, chumps, and so on. “Occupy Wall Street” was prepped by the media as a romance. The Tea Party was derided as Klan-like. The rioters who stormed the Capitol were rightly dubbed lawbreakers; those who besieged and torched a Minneapolis federal courthouse were romanticized or contextualized.
Abstract humanitarian progressives assume that their superior intelligence and training properly should exempt them from the bothersome ramifications of their own ideologies. They promote high taxes and mock material indulgences. But some have made a science out of tax evasion and embrace the tasteful good life and its material attractions. They prefer private schooling and Ivy League education for their offspring, while opposing charter schools for others.
There is no dichotomy in insisting on more race-based admissions and yet calling a dean or provost to help leverage a now tougher admission for one’s gifted daughter. Sometimes the liberal Hollywood celebrity effort to get offspring stamped with the proper university credentials becomes felonious. Walls are retrograde but can be tastefully integrated into a gated estate. They like static class differences and likely resent the middle class for its supposedly grasping effort to become rich—like themselves.
The working classes can always make solar panels, the billionaire John Kerry tells those thousands whom his boss had just thrown out of work by the cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline. It is as if the Yale man was back to the old days when the multimillionaire and promoter of higher taxes moved his yacht to avoid sales and excise taxes and lectured JC students, “You study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
There is no such thing as “dark” money or the pernicious role of cash in warping politics when Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, and Mark Zuckerberg, both through direct donations and through various PACs and foundations—channeled nearly $1 billion to left-wing candidates, activists, and political groups throughout the 2020 campaign year.
In sum, the new tribal progressivism is the career ideology foremost of the wealthy and elite—a truth that many skeptical poor and middle-class minorities are now so often pilloried for pointing out. Progressives have adopted identity politics and rejected class considerations, largely because solidarity with elite minorities of similar tastes and politics excuses them from any concrete concern for, or experience with, the middle classes of all races. The Left finally proved right in its boilerplate warning that the “plutocracy” and the “special interests” run America: “If you can’t beat them, outdo them.”
Self-righteous progressives believe they put up with and suffer on behalf of us—and thus their irrational fury and hate for the irredeemables and conservative minorities springs from being utterly unappreciated by clueless serfs who should properly worship their betters.
https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/31/why-are-progressives-so-illiberal/
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Would you consider posting your thoughts on the Twilight series? Because the bits and pieces I catch on your main are HILARIOUS though maybe it’s just because I find salt hysterical LOL
Oh good grief
Under a read more for my sake if not anyone else’s
The year was 2007. I was 11 year old, in 6th grade, nursing a substantial superiority complex over my classmates, and idolizing the 7th grade girls. This is where my story begins.
Now I won’t get into all the semantics as to why I was such an insufferable little garbage person in middle school, but I will tell you that I was convinced that I was not like other girls. While this proved true, my reasons as to why were completely off the mark in my tweens. Back then, I thought it was because I was smarter, wiser, and more mature than any of the other 6th grade girls in my class.
But not the 7th grade girls. The 7th grade girls were it, man. Nobody was cooler or smarter or more creative than the handful of ladies who were blessed with the patience to put up with my nonsense in middle school. So naturally, when they read Twilight, I read Twilight.
Twilight, if you have the good fortune to not be intimately aware of it by now, is about the Bella Swan, blandest girl in the entire world, moving to a small town to live with her emotionally awkward father, where she meets the Cullens, a clan of vampires who don’t drink human blood, because they’re trying to be morally upright. Her scent is irresistible to one of the vampires, (the only single one among them because the rest are dating each other) named Edward. Edward has the ability to read minds, and Bella is the only person he’s ever met who is immune to this power. I must stress again that she smells so good that he has to physically restrain himself from eating her, and murdering all witnesses. For reasons I can’t really remember now except “because that’s what the books are about”, they fall in love.
Here’s the thing about these books: Even as I was reading them, they gave me the creeps. Something in my little baby mind was vaguely aware that Edward was a messed up motherfucker, and Bella was a one-dimensional stand-in for the reader, and everything interesting in this story was happening on the fringes, facilitated by the far more interesting side characters. There were parts of these books that were uncomfortable to read. There were parts that made me seriously question why these books were so popular. There were parts that made it physically difficult to keep reading. About 3 things happen in the entirety of this series that feels good and satisfying, and none of them are things that the author, who I will derogatorily refer to as Smeyer, meant to be satisfying.
Two things kept me reading these books. The first was, obviously, the 7th grade girls, and my other friends in other grades who quickly caught the hype wave.
The second. Was the fact. That the writing style of these books, despite being the modem for a story that is absurd at best and a giant, flaming, stinking dumpster fire of bad takes, racism, and sexism at worst, is HYPNOTIC. A lot of my opinions about this series have changed drastically over the years, but this is one that I was acutely aware of even as I was reading these books. No matter how stupid or frustrating or repulsive the things that Smeyer is writing are, her writing style will not let you put the story down once you’re invested. And since I was reading these for social clout, I was invested on page 1. I want to believe that this was a trick played on my young mind, but after reading the first chapter of Midnight Sun (the newly released book that is literally just Twilight from Edward’s POV instead of Bella’s), I can confirm that this woman’s style is genuinely Like That. I enjoyed maybe 6 sentences of the 15-page chapter and I am still frothing at the mouth to read more.
So now that I’ve justified why I subjected myself to this shit in the first place, let’s get to some feelings about it.
Edward is a CREEP. He knows this. His family knows this. His love rival knows this. The only person who does not know this, rendering the fact completely inconsequential to the events of the story, is Bella. I’m not really willing to talk about how Edward is such a disgusting model for what young girls should expect out of a partner that there was discourse for MONTHS over Fifty Shades of Grey, but.... Edward is such a disgusting model for what young girls should expect out of a partner that Fifty Shades of Grey exists. It’s literally Twilight fanfiction. Fact check me. I wish I was making this up.
Bella is, as I said before, a cardboard cutout of a human being. The book is from her point of view, and includes copious amounts of her thoughts, and yet it’s still clear that she has absolutely no personality. She is supposed to be your Jane Everywoman, and yet there is not a single relatable thing about her. Her three personality traits are Brown Eyes, Clumsy (but not in a way that matters often), and Likes Edward. That’s it. This girl has nothing going on, which only draws more attenton to the fact that literally everyone else in the story has a rich and interesting backstory. But they’re side characters and this is about Stale White Bread Bella over here, so go fuck yourself if you want more information on Rosalie using her vampire abilities to get revenge on her fiance and his buddies, who assaulted her to the point of near death, or Alice, who sees the future and spent a good chunk of her life in an asylum, or Jasper, who was a Union soldier fighting the Civil War which was ALSO the vampire war???? Fuck off with that shit, this is about Bella.
But you know who the best characters are? The werewolves. But not REAL werewolves. These are Native Americans whose initial transformation is triggered by the proximity of the vampires, because vampires once terrorized their people and now this ability to turn to wolves is hereditary to protect themselves. The fact that these fellas are not REAL werewolves, and that there are real lycanthropes of lore, is mentioned in passing in the last book and never mentioned by anyone ever again.
One of these wolves is Jacob, Bella’s childhood friend and, for the first two books, an absolute sweetheart. Just a big goofball who’s a couple years younger than Bella, and all he wants is the best for her. Real wholesome shit. When Edward leaves her because he thinks that she’s too attached (SHE IS), Jacob literally talks Bella back from the brink. The wolf pack, and the Native American tribe, welcome her as one of them. They’re adorable. I can’t stress enough that they would have also been an excellent candidate for the focal point of this shitshow.
But it doesn’t last. Edward does some real dumb shit in Italy and Bella has to go rescue him, which tips off the Vampire Illuminati that Edward was trying to get killed by (i.e. the real dumb shit). They don’t like that Bella, a human, knows about them, and demands that she be turned. Edward’s family is divided on this. Eventually they decide that they got time because the Vampire Illuminati are ancient and don’t have a good enough sense of time to hold them accountable immediately.
So Bella is fine and Edward is fine and everybody is back in the same town and they’re dating again and literally everyone in the town is like Bella what the FUCK. Nobody likes Edward because they think he’s no good for Bella. They are written like the bad buys. Jacob especially, becomes a huge asshole. Because he decides that he’s in love with Bella now. Because werewolves can imprint on people, which is just a sloppy soul mate mechanic used for absolute evil in this story. He wants to fight Edward over her. Edward is chomping at the bit to throw down, but pretends to be the bigger person even though he’s just as big an asshole about all this as Jacob is. This is as misogynist as it sounds. From this point on Jacob is now also a creep.
Oh, but it gets worse!
I gotta talk about the last book in the series now, Breaking Dawn. Because this shit was so awful that it made me regret, instantaneously, ever second I spent enjoying Twilight.
Bella and Edward get married after they graduate high school because Edward is a religious virgin and Bella is HORNY. They go on their honeymoon. Bella gets pregnant. This is Not Something That Is Supposed To Happen.
Smeyer tells us WHY this happened post-canon. Edward, the virgin, has never nutted. Because of this, he still has living sperm in his balls. So when he boffed Bella, his 80-year-old sperm made it count. I wish I was making this up, y’all. I’m tearing up thinking about it.
Bella is now pregnant with a half-vampire baby that is destroying her body from the inside out. It is growing at an exponential rate. She’s eight months along after three weeks. Edward can hear its thoughts. It loves Bella. Bella has to drink blood or die. Jacob is like What the Fuck. I am also, pretty thoroughly like What the Fuck. A couple members of the Cullen family are, very quietly, like What the Fuck.
Queue the most forced and ineffectual pro-life discourse you’ve ever read in your life.
All is well and good until it’s not. Baby suddenly wants to get out of Bella RIGHT NOW IMMEDIATELY and thrashes so violently that it shatters every bone in her body between her ribs and her femurs. Edward has to rip her uterus open with his teeth. Baby is out. It has a full mouth of teeth. It bites Bella. Edward whips out several syringes full of his own saliva and injects them into Bella all over to make her change into a vampire. This is all written in disgusting graphic detail that still makes my skin crawl to think about. I cannot fathom why Smeyer was not made to tone this scene down.
So it takes a few days for Bella to change into a vampire, during which time the Cullens (and Jacob) have to look after her hellspawn of a daughter. Jacob decides that he must kill her, because she basically killed Bella. But--- surprise! He wasn’t in love with Bella! He was in love with the eggs in her womb-- particularly this one egg that is now a baby! No more crush on Bella! No more beef with Edward! He’s just in love with a newborn infant. I am, at this point, wondering in my little 12 year old mind, how this was allowed to be published.
Bella wakes up a vampire, and in her first display of rational thought through the entire series, does not like this. Don’t worry though, that’s quickly cancelled out by her naming her baby daughter Renesmee.
Renesmee is clearly supposed to be a sweet and gifted little angel that you’re meant to love, but frankly, all I can picture is the Chucky doll but quieter. She does not talk much, because she has the ability to share thoughts by touching people’s faces. She also grows super fast. In a few days she’s toddler age. Nobody knows what the fuck is going on and nobody has time to worry about it because the vampire Illuminati found out about this (a vampire friend of the family snitched) and they’re coming to fuck up the whole family.
There is a reason why they want to do this but it’s stupid and frankly I’m not going to explain it.
So the vampires mobilize. They call all their vampire friends because their plan is just to fight the thousands-years-old vampire Illuminati over this horrible child. For some reason dozens of vampires agree to this. They’re all smitten by Resume I guess.
So the illuminati comes, the family tells them that Ramune isn’t the problem that they think she is, and they leave.
That’s it. That’s the climax.
And then everyone gets their off-putting happily ever after: Bella and Edward can now fuck as much as they want because neither of them can die. Bella abandons her human life without so much as a second glance. Resonate will physically be an adult by the time she’s 7, which means that Jacob can start fucking her then. Bella’s dad sort of knows what’s going on, but doesn’t. For some ungodly reason I don’t make a bonfire out of these books.
You may notice, if you have any knowledge of Twilight, that there are whole plots that I didn’t talk about. That’s because I’ve surely forgotten things. While I read these books with what I can only describe as a manic fervor in my youth, I could never bring myself to reread them. On God, I tried. Multiple times in the last decade I have pulled my box set, hard covered Twilight books off my shelf, and opened them up. But I never even make it through the first chapter before I am so put off that I have to put them back. The plots are flimsy. The main characters are made of sand. The secondary characters are treated like garbage. The lore is disturbing.
And yet as soon as I heard that Midnight Sun was coming out, I knew that I must read it. I’ve made it through the first chapter. I do not know when and how I will make it through the next, but I know, for little middle schooler Theo’s sake, that I must.
Twilight? Horrible. Twilight Fandom? Geniuses.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
#twilight#spinda tea#shinyshammie#this took a lot out of me#it's not even funny#we never really escape who we were at 12
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atla sense8 au.
a couple people seemed interested so i decided to type this all up. there's a LOT, and i spent more time than i should on this, so i hope someone reads it. (3.5k words total, it’s practically a plot outline.) aspects of the sense8 lore has been modified to fit ATLA, and for people who aren’t fans of the show, i try to be clear, but if it’s still confusing, here’s a link to the wiki page that details how the sensate thing works.
it's all under the cut.
no one in the gaang knows they're a sensate, not even when the avatar awakens from his 100 year slumber.
so when exactly is their cluster "born"? (aka for non-fans, when do they suddenly gain their psychic connections to the people within their group/"cluster"?) it happens at roku's temple, during the winter solstice. roku himself "births" their cluster, and tells aang briefly about what he just did. aang understands -- because sensates were common knowledge amongst air nomads.
aang, katara, and sokka escape one way and zuko escapes another, and for the next week, they start... feeling odd. soon, roku starts to visit them and they start having sudden migraines. one day, sokka's out hunting when aang suddenly "visits" him, sees the ferret-hare sokka's about to kill, and stops sokka from killing it. somehow, instead of being stupefied by their newfound ability, sokka just chews aang out for letting his next meal get away. they discuss what aang knows about the sensate ability over the fire. one of the abilities, beyond "visiting", is "sharing", where they can share skills with each other. katara tries to take advantage of this during "the waterbending scroll".
zuko has a dream with roku and afterwards, starts getting migraines, but for the most part, he doesn't feel the connection. why? iroh knew that zuko was an unawakened sensate from a young age, and thus kept blockers (sourced from the OotWL) on hand in case zuko woke up. normally, iroh would want zuko to embrace his nature, but iroh also realizes that there's danger in being a sensate, especially in the fire nation. most information of sensates has been suppressed there over the years, and zuko could be headhunted if found out. (and... there's another reason as to why iroh gives zuko blockers, but more on that later.)
toph is also within the cluster, but nobody actually knows that for some time. aang, katara, and sokka have their suspicions that someone else is in the cluster, but they can't discern whom. this is because toph's blindness has an odd effect through her connection. while sensates would usually be able to identify each other by seeing each other's physical appearance when they "visit" through their bond, toph has no conception of her own appearance, and as such, she initially can't seem to project herself visually the way that everyone else does. since sighted people -- aang, katara, sokka -- rely heavily on physicality to identify others, this hampers them.
it doesn't help that bending is complicated by the cluster connection. toph can't use her bending to "see" aang, katara, and sokka when they visit her via psychic connection, because they aren't physically there. likewise, they don't receive any visual input, either, when they visit toph. instead, they receive this odd earth-sense feeling that's absolutely foreign and indecipherable to them. when toph visits them, she has to leave almost immediately -- her occipital lobe is severely underdeveloped and thus, she can't interpret the visual information they give her. with time, they should be able to resolve this, but not immediately after they made the connection. all of this this is a significant barrier between their communication -- they can speak, but early on, toph, understandably, begins to think that the other three don't actually exist and manages to effectively block them out. this prevents them from realizing the connection they have until s2. (more on bending later.)
the "medication" (blockers) that uncle gave zuko becomes a normal supplement he takes, in the form of tea. he thinks it's to stave off migraines. still, sometimes he goes a little too long between doses, and sees some peculiar things. when he's sleeping, his dreams get odd. one night, he dreams of escaping into a storm. he shakes it off, and when his ship gets trapped in another storm, he takes it as an omen.
aang, likewise, has a dream the night after being rescued by the blue spirit. a man looming over him, nothing more than a sillouette, fire in his hand. "... and suffering will be your teacher," he hears.
when sokka looks into yue's eyes, euphoria runs though him. he thinks it's love, but it's something more. yue is an unawakened sensate, and while it's rare for unawakened sensates to make connections with other sensates, it does happen, and in this case, she's made a connection with sokka. (for non-fans: sensates can make psychic connections with people outside their cluster by meeting each other's eyes. they must be physically in the same space when they meet eyes, though. connections made outside of the cluster cannot share skills, but they can "visit" each other.)
(yes, this means toph is immune to creating connections outside her own cluster. this is both a boon and a loss -- she can't have unique connections, but that also means that malicious sensates can't force a connection with her.)
pakku fesses up to the fact that kanna left him, and that she probably left him due to his misogynistic attitude. however, a lot more people have left the NWT in the last 100 years, that weren't all related to cultural problems. many sensates, when they were "born", suddenly had the perspectives of people who lived in other nations, and many left to join the rest of their clusters. this is something that katara discovers from yugoda.
after zuko's ship is blown up, his supply of "medication" becomes even less regular. when zuko infiltrates the NWT, his medication is wearing off, and a migraine is coming on. he pushes through it. when he and katara fight, they meet eyes, and something electric runs through both of them. they ignore this, but it happens again between aang and zuko, when zuko's medication is wearing off even more. none of them know what's happened, but aang remembers the experience later.
when yue sacrifices herself, sokka quite literally feels her apotheosis. later, he realizes that he can still feel her. katara feels the cycles of the moon because she's a waterbender, sokka feels it because he and yue are connected.
the foggy swamp shows aang toph's appearance... and things slowly start to change within their cluster. during "the blind bandit", aang recognizes toph to be his future earthbending master immediately, but so too does katara and sokka, who, in canon, did not make the immediate connection. when they chase her down, they finally manage to make toph understand that she's part of a psychic cluster, that those voices she heard before were real.
during "zuko alone"/"the chase", katara sees something she shouldn't see. there's a man standing over someone else, with his back to her, twin swords in both hands, wreathed in flame. she can't see his face but he feels familiar.
in "the chase" itself, aang also sees zuko, this time fully recognizing him, and then so too does sokka. since toph and zuko both are somewhat closed off, they can't sense each other -- but aang, katara, and sokka, who don't know this, thus incorrectly believe that toph doesn't have a connection to zuko at all. therefore, they come to the conclusion that zuko is a sensate, but that he's not a part of their cluster. they must've created accidentally met his eyes and made a connection with him back when he was chasing them. though sokka has to wonder why zuko didn't just use his connection to better track them down, like he's somewhat doing now, during "the chase".
after zuko reunites with iroh, he's shaken by the odd visions he had of the gaang while traveling. he doesn't understand that he's psychically connected to them, so they felt more like premonitions. he tells iroh a little of what he saw, and iroh nearly startles in alarm as he realizes that zuko's cluster is the avatar's group. but given the fact that zuko is reeling from both the fight with azula and iroh's injury, iroh decides to keep it to himself. when zuko asks if iroh has any more of the migraine "medication", iroh gives it to him -- only for now, he thinks.
in "bitter work", toph takes advantage of the psychic connection to teach aang earthbending. katara had done this before, a little, but not much, because aang never really needed it. for earthbending though? it's useful. toph gets aang to "visit" her, and forces him to stay. when he's visiting her, he only gets her sensory input, and thus, he's blind. he has to spend time with her and learn to decipher the information that toph's earth-sense gives her. this helps him understand his own earth-sense.
also, just for fun, before sokka gets stuck in a hole in that episode, he accidentally visits katara while she's practicing bending. he asks her what it feels like. she lets him take a ride in her body and shows him how it feels.
and that's really how bending works in conjunction with the psychic connection -- bending is partially based in body, so when a sensate briefly possesses another sensate's body, they can bend whatever element is in that body. but that's also contingent on their own spiritual connection to the element. in sokka's case, his peculiar attachment to the moon (yue) makes him not-the-worst at waterbending when in katara's body. when katara and sokka "visit" toph, the information they get from her earth-sense is not as precise as the info that aang gets, because they have less connection with the earth. so on and so forth. yes, when someone "visits" aang's body, they can bend all four elements. this particular property of possession only works well within clusters, as it's part of the skillsharing aspect which is unique to clusters.
there are other effects on bending, too. when iroh begins to teach zuko lightning direction, he first begins by teaching zuko the basics of movement in waterbending. zuko picks up the push-and-pull fluidity of the style almost immediately. why? because some of katara's and aang's expertise has trickled down to him, sometime when his connection wasn't blocked. (during the siege of the north, specifically.)
when aang loses it after appa is kidnapped, everyone in the connection can feel his anger. they can feel the avatar state, almost as they were there themselves, shrouded in anger and grief. and katara drags him down to earth once again, but sokka and toph run forwards to meet him, and together, they hold him in their presence and provide him comfort and support through their connection. somewhere else, zuko begins to cry, and he doesn't quite know why.
for most of the rest of the season, zuko takes blockers regularly, and his connection to the gaang is blocked. the exception is when he falls ill after setting appa free. an illness that deep is semi-resistant to the blockers, and odd memories weave their way into his dreams -- an air nomad laughing with him (aang), black snow falling from the sky (sokka), his mother's face superimposed over another's (katara), the feeling of badgermole snout against his cheek (toph), and the feeling of being buried alive in lava (roku, their cluster "mother" who passed some memories down to them). all of this is in a blur that mixes with the rest of his absurd and symbolic dream, and he can't quite separate them out when he awakens.
in "the guru", when aang ascends the last chakra and sees the cosmic energy around him, he can see the visage of the rest of the cluster there, glowing sillouettes akin to his avatar state. they're tethered to him, but guru pathik tells him to let go of his connections. he has to be willing to keep moving even without them, even if they died... but he can't. he's fallen in love with their connection -- katara, sokka, toph, and the odd flickering image of someone else on the horizon. and suddenly, he can feel katara in danger, viscerally so, and he has to leave.
during "the crossroads of destiny", tension comes to a head. when katara talks to zuko, she references the fact that zuko made a sensate psychic connection to her, aang, and sokka, while he was hunting them. (remember, she doesn't know he's part of the cluster, but thinks he's a sensate from another cluster that managed to connect with them through eye contact.) this confuses him, but he doesn't quite get the clarification he needs before iroh and aang come in, and both aang and katara leave. when azula traps iroh, and leaves zuko and iroh alone, iroh finally reveals to zuko the extent of what he is, including the fact that the rest of his cluster, the rest of his psychic family, is the avatar and his friends. from this, zuko also discerns that the medication wasn't actually medication, and feels angry at iroh, which in part leads to his betrayal.
"if you go down this path, i can no longer protect you, nephew," iroh says, as zuko leaves to fight azula.
the lightning strike is a terrifying moment, and it reverberates throughout the sensate bond. katara almost collapses but manages to get aang to safety. toph and sokka are struck with fear and pain. and zuko... feels a twinge in his chest, something that penetrates even through his blockers. he barely manages to hide it.
in "the awakening", aang tries to close himself off to his cluster, and he hides from them. out in the ocean, he sees yue, and roku, and suddenly he sees them in a deeper fashion, feels the sensate energy between them. katara, sokka, and toph track him to the island with their connection.
at the start of s3, zuko goes home. his usual supply of blockers is running low, since he got them from his uncle, and he's just run out. now, zuko meets his father again for the first time in years. when he looks up into ozai's eyes, all the muscles in his body are too warm, too cold. and ozai narrows his eyes, and smiles. why, he didn't know his son was a sensate, too.
they both recognize what just occured, and ozai tells him that he'll leave zuko a supply of blockers to take regularly. the crown prince has just returned home in honor. it would be horrible if they'd have to send him away once again, on another hunt.
you see, ozai first awakened when he was in his late twenties, before he married ursa. sensates are forbidden knowledge in the fire nation, but azulon suspected that there would be sensates in his family one day. but since being a sensate gives you an unfortunate connection to people that may not be fire nation, it's not something that either azulon or ozai was happy about. so ozai vowed to prove his loyalty by hunting and killing his clustermates. this is a painful and terrifying process. killing a clustermate is like a killing a part of yourself. and ozai did this several times. he even killed another fire nation woman that was part of his cluster; he surmised that her temporary connection to those of earth and water would make her traitorous, and justified it that way. now, all of ozai's clustermates are dead, but he still retains his abilities as a sensate to connect to other sensates.
zuko is... happy that his father seems to respect him, but he feels uneasy. the unease remains as azula delivers to him the blockers, like she knows exactly what he is, too. and the way that she acts as if he knows the avatar is alive, does she suspect that the avatar is part of his cluster? did she see him react to his so-called death in a way that indicated a psychic connection? he doesn't know, and he feels so very uneasy and destabilized.
during "sokka's master", sokka's more skilled at swordplay than he should be. he chalks it off to natural talent, but there was a weird, long moment where he almost selected the dual dao as his weapon of choice. later, when he's planning the invasion with the water tribe, hakoda notes that sokka's handwriting has become neater and more formalized, closer to the sharp script of the fire nation nobility. sokka thinks that it's from being in the fire nation for too long.
in "the avatar and the fire lord", aang and zuko both find out that roku and sozin were part of the same cluster. through this, aang realizes that avatars of the past have had clusters of their own, ones that they kept a secret but nevertheless had. roku and sozin are also shown to have outlived the rest of their cluster, but sozin killed roku and became the last one standing. from that act, zuko realizes the history that runs through the blood of fire royalty -- the sin of killing one's own spiritual brothers, fratricide of the highest order. it's a curse that even ozai followed through on, and it's one that zuko will eventually be damned to if he cannot rise above it -- this is what iroh tells him as zuko kneels in front of his cell.
when zuko escapes the fire nation on the day of black sun, he takes a supply of blockers with him. after all, if he doesn't block his own sensate ability, his father will be able to track him using the connection they made with each other. when he confronts the gaang in the western air temple, he doesn't get the chance to explain that he's part of their cluster, but alarm bells go off toph's head. he leaves to go back to his camp, and she follows because she NEEDS to verify this hunch. he burns her, but when she finally gets back to the gaang, she knows for sure that she recognizes that voice -- he's the odd voice she heard once back during the chase, sleep deprived. he's psychically connected to her.
the puzzle pieces fall together in the gaang's mind. zuko had already established connections with the other three, so they assumed before that their connection to him was a product of them meeting eyes with him during his initial hunt. but toph cannot make connections with people outside of her cluster, due to her blindness, so she can't possibly have a connection with zuko... unless he's a part of their cluster. it's a terrifying conclusion, and not one that everyone wants to accept. behind toph, aang is probably the one who most wants to accept zuko -- it's unnatural to reject a clustermate, that he knows from what the monks told him.
zuko takes his blockers diligently, so that his father can't find him through the connection. but, by the time he and aang meet the dragons, it's worn off, just a little. not enough that ozai can find him, but enough that he and aang can share in the rainbow fire together, their inner fires vibrating at the same beautiful intensity. this connection is one they alone share -- even when katara, sokka, or toph try to bend fire in either of their bodies, they can't capture the real spirit behind the fire.
sokka takes a few blockers with zuko before they go to the boiling rock, but the rest of the small supply that they take with them to the boiling rock is burned away with the rest of the warship. as a result, it's a race against time for them to get hakoda and get out, as their medication wears away. for sokka, he's practically waiting for the blockers to wear off, so he can SOS aang, katara, and toph, but for zuko, once the blockers wear off, his father can find him once again. in this case, it's actually a good thing that he gets outed as an impostor and imprisoned because then, at least, anybody who comes after him aren't coming after him because they tracked him through the bond.
however, when azula finds the gaang at the western air temple, it IS because ozai told her they'd be there. that's because zuko's blockers wore off before he could arrive at the temple and take another from the rest of his supply. everyone's back to being sort of safe during their stay at ember island.
when aang gets stranded on the lionturtle, the lionturtle shows him not only energybending, but the very psychic nervous system that connects him to his clustermates. it's almost like the roots of the foggy swamp tree, this great psychic energy that connects everyone and everything but is strongest between the sensates. they are all connected, but their sensate connections are an incredible and unusual manifestation of this energy.
aang takes away ozai's sensate abilities alongside his bending, so he can no longer abuse them. if energybending is a sort of "neutralization" of ozai's bending ability, the removal of his sensate ability is a sort of "severance". it severs ozai from that great psychic energy that connects everyone and everything, and in some sense, that's a fate worse than death. that's as if the world rejected you and judged you unworthy of the connections that living creatures make. aang doesn't regret doing what he did to ozai, but he opts never to do it again.
after the war, zuko finally stops taking blockers. he's free to truly connect with the rest of the gaang. toph embraces her connection as well, and one day, she manages to actually see, using sokka's eyes first, and then one by one, every one else. furthermore, the rest of the gaang finally begin to understand how she “sees”, and as a result, they all become more comfortable visiting each other.
love blossoms within the cluster, both platonic and romantic.
#atla#avatar the last airbender#aang#zuko#katara#sokka#toph#atla au#yeets this into the tags because i spent so much time on it and i want people to read it#me: oh this will be a cute set of headcanons! [3 hours later]#i have unreplied asks solely for the fact that i WILL write an essay#my brain hurts man i went crazy stupid with this#PLEASE read it. i'm begging you#this is the fruit of my labor#mine#text#headcanons#*head hurty noises*#atla headcanons and aus
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"TLDR: If you don’t know the emotional burden the POC behind the scenes are carrying then don’t use them as a defence just because you like the end product." holy shit. fuck yes. i apologize in advance if this gets long & rambling. it is super offensive to use the race/presumed race as a shield. i've seen stand use it with the writers' room, the actors, & themselves. so, one at a time. (1)
(2) The writers: like you said, maybe some just don’t have the emotional energy or desire to be the “race monitor” for every conversation (AND THEY SHOULDN’T HAVE TO BE!). Getting staffed in a room is hard enough and I can easily see the desire – because I’ve had it too in work & personal settings - to not get labeled as the troublemaker who is always bringing race into it. I mean, shit, we see it happening in the fandom and none of us are getting paid for this (although some seem like it).
Exactly! It’s so hard to even get in the door. Being the ‘race monitor’ is so utterly exhausting and it shouldn’t be an expected duty from POC.
(3) I will say that I bet the Good Girls writing room is probably 85% better than most other rooms, which is faint praise if you’ve read any thing about the industry. I just can’t believe JB left Shondaland without learning anything. Quick tangent: I’m not a fan of Shonda Rhimes’ creative output. Watched a few episodes here & there; maybe even the entire first of GA. They are too DRAMATIC! for my tastes. But I’m a HUGE fan of SR and what she’s accomplished.
Same! I’ve only properly watched two of her shows: How to Get Away with Murder, when it was still good, and The Catch (which I’m still mad got cancelled!). But I’m astonished by what she’s accomplished, it’s super impressive. I’m also not sure how Jenna seemingly came away with very few lessons about intersectionality, though. (I think Laurel on HTGAWM probably got more about her culture included in the first episode than Rio has in nearly three seasons.)
(4) (although an interesting though experiment is would all that have happened if she hadn’t hooked up with Betsy Beers?) And one thing I remember reading from SR that stuck with me b/c it is a fact of life but not often articulated is that when she would read scripts the only times a character’s race was indicated was when the character wasn’t white. so, white is the default. the presumed. the normal. I love that she said that because that’s the kind of subtle racism that is so insidious.
I didn’t know about Betsy Beers! That is actually really interesting.
And, yes. White is the default. That’s what I really loved about @septiembur‘s response as well – so little thought goes into making the Latinx characters real people, which really shows in the naming and the way they haven’t let Rio step into his identity.
I also think she made a really good point that the friendship between the girls is something else to be investigated. I’ve always felt, but especially in 2x08 it was hard to ignore, that there isn’t much acknowledgement of how the world treats Ruby differently than her two best friends, and I can’t help wondering if that’s as a result of that default treatment – these characters get cast as POC, but not written as such. Because every POC knows that having white friends is a Whole Thing.
(5) that’s the kind of racism that says “i can’t be racist, i have black friends.” ok. point 2 - the actors. as at @septiembur mentioned, Retta & Reno have both spoken about pushing back on things. they also mentioned that the “La Di Da Di” sequence came about because they were just doing it for fun around set and someone took a video and sent to JB and they wrote it in. Manny has been super vocal about the struggles of MOC in the industry and his own in particular.
I know. Every time people say “Manny must be fine with…” or “Manny hasn’t said anything against…” I’m so confused because he’s said so much more than I would ever expect someone in his position to say. Not directly about the show, but like you say, he’s been vocal about his struggles in the industry, and it’s very easy to see how that plays out on this show as well. Nobody can speak for him or know how he feels, but he’s been clear on certain issues and those issues crop up here too.
(6) he’s constantly saying he never knows how tough or charming to play the character and that means he’s not getting any guidance from what’s written. also in the Angie Martinez interview, he mentions director & writers telling him to play tougher (while making a growl noise), which is basically like in community when they try to tell Shirley to be sassier. it’s hella coded language and poc deal with it all the time.
Oh, for SURE. I’m not Latinx, black or even American and I immediately knew what he meant.
(7) point 3 - the fans. woo boy, this is the stickiest one. I’ve seen stans say “I’m latinx and it didn’t bother me.” great. not all poc have the same reactions. also, we live in a white heteronormative patriarchy and that affects us all. it’s why so much of social justice is UNlearning. also, may I present stacey dash & ben carson. and the over 50% of white women who voted to uphold the grossest form of white heteronormative patriarchy in 2016, especially important as that was the catalyst for the show’s creation.
(8) and maybe i’m being uncharitable, but some of those stans are the same ones that have zero problem calling other female fans misogynists. so, at best, they understand that having an identity of an oppressed class does not automatically make you immune to participating in that oppression. at worst, they throw that term around and then use their racial identity as armor. Damn, ok, hope some of that made sense.
I also find certain stans to be the sticking point, tbh. It’s one thing to have a problematic show. It’s a different one altogether to have a fanbase that not only defends that show with its lives, but also attacks anyone who dares speak up against it.
“some of those stans are the same ones that have zero problem calling other female fans misogynists. so, at best, they understand that having an identity of an oppressed class does not automatically make you immune to participating in that oppression. at worst, they throw that term around and then use their racial identity as armor.” 🔥🔥🔥
Dang, Anon, you did not come to PLAY!
#Anonymous#NBC Good Girls#Manny Montana#these are all really interesting points#and so informative#thank you for taking the time#and for sharing it with me!
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