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#that in practice they're just hoarding operations
nicklloydnow · 7 months
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“The New Dumb
Something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?
- Bob Dylan
No sir, not a chance. Mr. Jones does not even pretend to know what's happening in America Right now, and neither does anyone else.
We have seen weird Times in this country before, but the year 2000 is beginning to look super weird. This time there really is nobody flying the plane....We are living in dangerously weird times now. Smart people just shrug and admit they're dazed and confused. The only ones left with any confidence at all are the New Dumb. It is the beginning of the end of our world as we knew it. Doom is the operative ethic.
The autumn months are never a calm time in America. Back to Work, Back to Football Practice, etc....Autumn is a very Traditional period, a time of strong Rituals and the celebrating of strange annual holidays like Halloween and Satanism and the fateful Harvest Moon, which can have ominous implications for some people.
Autumn is always a time of Fear and Greed and Hoarding for the winter coming on. Debt collectors are active on old people and fleece the weak and helpless. They want to lay in enough cash to weather the known horrors of January and February. There is always a rash of kidnapping and abductions of schoolchildren in the football months. Preteens of both sexes are traditionally seized and grabbed off the streets by gangs of organized perverts who traditionally give them as Christmas gifts to each other to be personal sex slaves and playthings.
Most of these things are obviously Wrong and Evil and Ugly - but at least they are Traditional. They will happen. Your driveway will ice over, your furnace will blow up, and you will be rammed in traffic by an uninsured driver in a stolen car.
But what the hell? That's why we have Insurance, eh? And the Inevitability of these nightmares is what makes them so reassuring. Life will go on, for good or ill. But some things are forever, right? The structure may be a little Crooked, but the foundations are still strong and unshakable.
Ho ho. Think again, buster. Look around you. There is an eerie sense of Panic in the air, a silent Fear and uncertainty that comes with once-reliable faiths and truths and solid Institutions that are no longer safe to believe in....There is a Presidential Election, right on schedule, but somehow there is no President. A new Congress is elected, like always, but somehow there is no real Congress at all - not as we knew it, anyway, and whatever passes for Congress will be as helpless and weak as whoever has to pass for the "New President."
In the world of sports, it is like playing a Super Bowl that goes into 19 scoreless Overtimes and never actually Ends...or four LA Lakers stars being murdered in different cities on the same day. Guaranteed Fear and Loathing. Abandon all hope. Prepare for the Weirdness. Get familiar with Cannibalism.
Good luck,
DOC
- November 20, 2000”
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princeescaluswords · 2 years
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Exactly! Fandom racists never portray Deaton or Scott as "competent" villains, they're almost never a genuine threat to them. They never even have the same level of, say, resources or wealth that Stiles, the Hales and the Argents have. Dispatching them is laughably easy. And as you said, Deaton never DOES anything with all this ~power~ he is supposedly hoarding or coveting. Even though a seasoned Emissary should have SOME ideas at the very least. Maybe he could permanently put an end to the feud that took his beloved Alpha from him or he could permanently deal with Peter for hurting his surrogate son so much or punish Derek for assaulting and kidnapping him. He doesn't seek revenge against Deucalion for killing a patient on his operating table, tormenting Scott and attacking his sister Marin.
SOOOOO many motives you could go for but despite fandom preaching about loving villains, Deaton and Scott are unmistakably the unlovable kind. The greedy, selfish and ruthless (but not in a sexy yt way) kind. They're cartoonishly incompetent yet viewed as nefarious masterminds who schemed in the shadows. But not clever enough to escape the suspension of the wunderkind Stiles, though, if he is oh so smart, why he would keep working in a pack with Scott who he knows is just a puppet for Deaton and WHY he doesn't ~free~ him is beyond me
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And people wonder openly why I think Athena Dark and the people who adhere to her efforts to make to make Scott an Accidental Villain and Deaton a Sinister Mastermind are influenced by racism. It's not hard to see.
Ever notice that when Scott is a villain, it's almost never intentional, instead it's because he holds wrong ideas. He 'rejects the wolf,' whatever that is supposed to mean (though in practice it means not doing what white men say). He listens to the wrong people who believe in things like mercy and forbearance (though in practice it means not doing what white men say). He 'thinks he's better than everyone else,' which as far as I can tell means he believes that violence can't be the only answer (though in practice it means not doing what white men say). He ignores werewolf traditions, whatever those are, doesn't train his pack, and neglects the territory even though he canonically does not do any of that (though in practice it means not doing what white men say). Scott is never a villain because he has a goal that requires him to destroy or hurt people. He's always a villain because he doesn't do something, which in reality means not doing what white men say.
Deaton, on the other hand, is a villain because he indulges in the greatest of all blasphemies: he acts as if he's the equal of white characters, which has to mean he's an Evil Tree Wizard. He keeps secrets, which only white men like Derek and Stiles are allowed to do. He protects Scott from violent white werewolves, which is something only Stiles is allowed to do. He sarcastically calls Derek incompetent, which is something only Stiles and Peter are allowed to do. He dares to encourage Scott to be alpha, and doesn't he know that only the Hales get to determine who is alpha or not? His crime is more active, like stealing fire from the gods, he dares to place himself on the same level as white characters.
Now, when these racist authors make Scott and/or Deaton the villain, they don't go into depth about how they are villains because of two reasons. First, it's hard to hide your racism if you end up clearly stating that Scott is a bad person because he doesn't do what a white man tells him to do or Deaton is sinister because he tries to do things that Peter or Derek do every other Wednesday. Second, delving into their strength or their motivations would mean that they're worthy of time and energy as characters, and the temerity of these two thinking they were as worthy of attention as white people are what made it necessary in the first place.
And why should they? They have an entire history of literature which code minorities as dangerous if they possess power. Why reinvent the wheel? /sarcasm
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Summer Camp AUs
There're 3 huge opportunities I feel like are missed when writing summer camp AUs a lot of the time: you are literally living with these people, you become a "family", and the "rumor mill". This is in terms of being on staff, you're living in close quarters with these people for like two months. Even if certain people's living quarters are half the camp away from yours, you're going to learn the most inane facts about them. I know the exact shampoo used by someone I genuinely dislike. You can try to avoid it. You will learn against your will. That being said, just picture Person A getting up early one day to like catch up on work or something only to find out Person B gets up super early every morning because they like to take the long way the dining hall and watch the sunrise. Or Person B finds out Person A's comfort snack (like the one they always have on them, and hoard in their cabin). So the next time Person B goes off camp to pick up some stuff they also grab that snack. Person A finds out that Person B uses x toothpaste or some other mundane but intimate fact*.
Building on how you're going to learn these intimate domestic little things about the other people, you start to learn how to like live around each other and what boundaries people have. It's really cheesy to say you become a family with the other staff, but you do. Family is also meant in the most literal sense possible, like you can easily end up estranged from someone after having an argument about politics over dinner. As much as you learn nice or neutral facts about these people, you also learn the bad parts very quickly. You may know that they eat starburst in rainbow order, but you also know that they are a raging misogynist**. These are both facts that you just have to grin and know, because you guys work together and getting in a row in front of campers is a big no. That's the bad side, but to focus back on the relevant parts. Especially with the people you work with directly, those you share a cabin with, and the people you become actual close friends with*** you learn very quickly how to operate around each other. You get real comfortable with them. A real-life example, I'm still friends with her and the whole "this is so-and-so she likes her personal space. This is [me], they also like so-and-so's personal space" joke has been made several times. If allowed, I will sit practically on top of her. This is a prime example because we knew each other for not even a week before the disregard for personal space began. There is another person--and we all ask or indicate if doing any of this first for the most part--who it's practically unspoken at this point that if I have an energy drink I pour like a third of it into his mug. The examples go on and on. I can only think of real-life examples and I don't want them to be misconstrued as anything but platonic, but also: a fanfic where it starts as a joke, Person A and Person B get up at sunrise and make Person C take fake prom pictures of them, things just spiral from there. 85% of staff at the camp I worked at are men, at least a third of them have pretended to date another man on staff before (a lot of the time for no other reason than shits and giggles. This also completely transcends sexuality, they do not care if the other person is gay or straight or etc, it is silly). The fucking fake dating AU writes itself. If I didn't find it really weird because I would be romanticizing something that was never meant to be so, I could write extensively just based on what I've witnessed.
Finally, these camps are primarily staffed by teenagers and young adults, the age groups most know to be petty, cliquey, and major shit talkers. Now, put them in a situation where they're almost entirely cut off from the rest of the world. It will get to a point where there are only 2 consistent conversation topics: work and the other people around you. It becomes small town to an extreme; everyone knows everyone else's business, good, bad, and neutral. So, people are going to know. Rumors are going to fly, yes, but more often it's just the truth. That's the beauty of the fact that everyone can see it. Therefore, everyone can verify it. So, if Person A has a very unsubtle crush on Person B, people will know. And if it's not a known fact, people will speculate. It's not really a thing at the camp I worked at, but it was so true when the Foxes in aftg bet on literally everything, because that’s the natural progression. People talk, and I think that should be used more in writing. Like how about having no spine to verify a rumor? Or the stress of how bad an idea a camp relationship is? Or, no miscommunication, both know everything, they just are far too fucking busy with work to actually talk about it (bonus points for funny hijinks interrupting them. Even more bonus points if they have the same off night and STILL can't manage to get the time)? What if only Person A's group knows and has been sworn to secrecy on threat of violence/Person A manages to keep it a secret for the whole summer, and Person B finds out after the summer's over? So, yea the person they have a crush on likes them back and has slid into their dms, but also that motherfucker is going to college over a thousand miles away. Building on this, campers are nosy little shits sometimes and will perpetuate completely incorrect rumors, and that's so silly of them. So Person A catches wind that Person B likes them, but no, actually Person B likes Person C. Person A doesn't like Person B, silly hijinks ensue and the truth comes out that a camper just misheard the names that were really similar, or even funnier, completely different. Enemies to lovers camp edition? Where they have to work closely together on a project but they find each other really annoying and bothersome and their friends hate each other^? Mayhaps one attributes the other as the reason they keep coming back to camp, because said other person did something for them that completely switched how they saw their camp experience? It also brings a bit of realism to the story. As well as if really utilized these facts can lead too very sweet, very silly, and very dramatic situations. Maybe reality isn’t actually stranger than fiction, but it can be just as if not more dramatic. The fact that these people are stuck together needs to be emphasized because what that makes is a pressure cooker of emotion. Sometimes it’s hard to buy a big dramatic reveal in a mundane setting, but everything is dramatic at camp. In the end, I’m just saying I’d like to see more of this kind of stuff in Summer Camp Aus.
*And like, intimate doesn't need to mean romantic, I mean it more so in the way of facts you wouldn't otherwise ever find out if you didn't have to live with them. If that makes sense? **This is made up for example's sake. Just know that I’m basing this off the middle of buttfuck nowhere, if someone's one type of bigot, they're actually several types ***Trust me, friendship is really fucking weird in these circumstances. I found out someone considered me a friend even though we worked on different sides of the camp and had had maybe 2 frivolous conversations up to that point. He's very rad as I've gotten to know him though, still not sure I'd really consider him a friend... ^This is an excellent one for queer pairings, because a notable chunk of the queer staff I've met and become friends with through this camp have a chip on their shoulder and an inane passion that pushes them to just try and be a perfectionist. The queer audacity is strong in us, and I do not believe any of us are wrong when we think that we could do other people's jobs better than them, despite lack of knowledge. Queer enemies to lovers also just has more nuance and less toxicity to it in my opinion
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alatar-and-pallando · 2 years
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so many Petfinder/shelter listings are along the lines of “This horrifically malformed dog is 89 years old, in constant pain, will attack any creature larger than a football or smaller than a duck, hates all humans except middle-aged left-handed women named Martha, is terrified of sounds and also the outdoors and also the indoors, and eats only prescription foie gras. He will need an experienced owner. This dog has been waiting for a home for 20 years... won’t you open yours to him? We will reject your adoption application if you can’t give us a reference from your favorite childhood teacher and don’t live on a beautiful 40-acre apple farm in Maine. Adoption fee: $1,000.”
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🙋 + BLM and Cops
about cops...
one important aspect to know about my miles is that he isn’t pro-police, but he is pro-dad. he believes in what he says about wanting to be a better role model as a black police officer in their communities across new york. he’s a hard man, and while miles looked at him as unfair in his punishments as a teenager, he saw positive contradictions of that in his father’s career practices. the man could actually be fair and not the hardcore man that shared an apartment with. there have been instances he overhead dialogue that took place between his dad and kids that had committed petty crimes. later in his career as spider-man, he’d learn to adopt that diplomatic attitude and attempt to be voice of reason versus just webbing up a common “criminal” for the cops to take in.
now, as for b/ack l/ves m/\tter, the national org, miles frowns upon caricatures of black life. he is well aware of the corruption surrounding blmgn. having long conversations with his father, being comprehensively engaged with his own research on the matter, and chopping it up with the locals on the daily gave him fair perspective on a movement that's supposedly centered on black interests. to him, they're vultures that profited heavily off of the deaths of black men and boys, and he saw how their actorvism prioritized forging corporate partnerships, social justice campaigns, and hoarding the resources from local grassroot blm chapters that actually been at the frontlines on protests and involved with community work. 
he sees blmgn as an example of what happens when individuals or a group has proximity to power. miles read about cointelpro tactics, but reading about it is one thing, witnessing it in real time, disguising itself in another form is another. he saw how other groups harmful agendas became highlighted and supported after successful high-jacking of black liberation movements. he’s twenty-one, he’s on social media, so he hardly ever misses the consistent influx of think-pieces from fake ally-ship pledgees that believe they’re helping raise awareness, when it’s just black trauma porn galore in literary form. perhaps one of the saddest parts about it to him is that it’s clear as day that people are losing their humanity for material gain and clout, and the injustices are frequently rising because of it. 
but overall, miles look at it as a lesson on responsibility. blmgn managed to accumulate $90 million dollars and maintained moral neglect towards the families (i.e., michael brown sr., samaria rice, lisa simpson, etc.) whose lost loved ones to constitutionally immune cops for years. they successfully joined in on the systematic operations they claimed they were fighting against. he doesn’t  want to contribute to that. he’s one spider-man and one miles morales, so as a black superhero and a young black male, it’s more than just beating up bad guys and thinking he has done a good days work. it’s about cracking down on people in order to bring down the system. an idea he learned from his father, who eventually would become police commissioner in later years. 
@espirituspider | hcs you’d like to hear.
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