#that is a huge no no in ethical journalism
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The difference in how Hen and Eddie's cheating is treated/being treated by the fandom v how Buck's is... I wonder why...
#911#911 abc#911 season 7#911 spoilers#eddie diaz#henrietta wilson#evan buck buckely#evan buckley#like not defending any of them for cheating but funny how the white man doesn't get half as much flack as the black woman &the latino man do#its so transparent#right i lied I'm defending Hen like it was s1 the writers didn't really know what they doing with these characters#she was a victim of a bad storyline idea#the show properly clicked in season 2#but anyways#and like i didn't like taylor#mainly because of how she did her job#speaking someone in the same profession she needed to go back to ethics 101 because christ#theres a reason why you wait for statements from official bodies before reporting#her reporting on Jonah before the (911) lapd released a statement also meant that victims' families might not have been informed in time#that is a huge no no in ethical journalism#taylors truth at any cost shtick really rubbed me off the wrong way because there is a huge cost involved#BUT she didn't deserve to get cheated on by Buck#and i love Buck but he was squarely in the wrong#eddies still unfolding so final thoughts on this scenario pending arc completion#but do i see him going further with kim than he already has by going on dates with her? i don't know#but i do see him heading towards a breakdown because he's been building towards one for multiple seasons now#I'll explore that more in another post methinks
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hello! i apologize in advance this is probably something that you get asked a lot. but do you have any recs on literary magazines to submit to? im a trans poet, ive been writing for over a decade but never shared anything and ive been wanting to try to send my stuff to get it published somewhere. obv ive been google searching but theres so many big and small publications and i was wondering if you have ones you like especially and/or tips on how to choose a magazine/journal to submit to. thanks a lot! <3
no worries, thank you for reaching out!! i've been publishing for like 8 years + an editor for almost 4, so i always appreciate the opportunity to help people new to the world find ethical publications that will treat their work with the care it deserves.
first and foremost: there are going to be pubs out there that are awesome and i don't know about. you may be the one to discover them for yourself! one aid in finding the best mag for your work is the wonderful, writer-created chillsubs. it's a fantastic platform that keeps a huge list of mags and presses and their relevant stats, and lets you create an account and bookmark those you're interested in. everyone i know uses them, and it's very worth it given the sheer volume of mags out there.
i also have some recs of my own, ofc. i'm going to list them below. if they pay (which i prioritize) I'll mark them with a $. some are trans/queer focused and some aren't, but all are pubs i've either edited and/or published with and can confirm their ethics + respect for writers.
manywor(l)ds - my mag! i'm co-founder and eic. break genre _ shapeshift with us. ($)
Sinister Wisdom - old, well-regarded lesbian+ lit mag, now open to everyone who is/loves a dyke. I'm guest-editing an issue on Madness with them, now open for submissions!
fifth wheel press - run by a beloved friend and comrade of mine. i've published here. excellent transparency, care, great for first-timers. ($).
kith books - headed by trans literary icon kat blair. a mag/press/community centered around bodymind non-conformity and noncompliance.
Honey Literary - QTPOC-centered, unabashedly pop-culture + social justice oriented. the vibes are simply immaculate.
Whale Road Review - not queer/trans focused, more oriented toward....'grown up' poetry/prose/pedagogy papers. Katie Manning (eic) is a fucking gem.
Graphic Violence Lit - just had my first experience publishing with them, and their care + consideration for the whole writer is amazing. they publish boundary-pushing work.
beestung - one of the brainchildren of Sarah Clark. nb/gq/2s SFF. I just edited a few guest issues w them and have published with them. amazing work. ($)
A Velvet Giant - genrequeer work. the editors are experienced, enthusiastic, and amazing at promoting writers long after publication. it's a family! ($)
Ethel Zine + Press - handmade with love by Sara Lefsyk (as you can see, trans/nonbinary/2s sarahs dominate indie publishing, as well we should :3). Sara is a sensitive and care-full editor and bookmaker whose every publication is a work of art.
Protean - pro- as in proletariat. awesome left mag with a mix of politics and culture and everything in between. they take reprints! ($)
Mudroom - publish your work along with a picture of your mudroom/shoe rack. very responsive editors who will hype you tf up. ($)
The Institutionalized Review - for psych survivors. the editors concreteness of vision and dedication to their community know no bounds.
Just Femme + Dandy - queer and fashion-focused! led by the inimitable Addie Tsai. They pay *handsomely*. ($)
In addition, there are also some "big" mags I have had excellent experiences publishing with and wanted to shout out. These are harder for a beginner to break into, but worth keeping on your radar + have been fantastic to me as a writer.
Electric Lit
Split Lip Magazine
The Offing
Nat. Brut
Santa Fe Writers' Project
Bodega
New Orleans Review
Augur Magazine
I hope this is helpful to you + others! the literary world is ever-changing and this is just a snapshot. Hopefully you find some that you like!
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WIP excerpt; weird Kryptonian bonding rituals.
“This just not how I expected to become a dad,” Lois mutters under her breath, putting her hands in her hair. “Seriously, I was going to get a Pulitzer first. How am I supposed to be a dad without a Pulitzer?!”
“You were ever expecting to be a ‘dad’?” Jimmy asks, raising an eyebrow at her. Lois glares back at him.
“You know what I mean, Jimmy!” she hisses. “A parent! Any kind of a parent!”
“What’s a Pulitzer?” Conner asks curiously.
“The Pulitzer Prize!” Lois says, gesturing dramatically with both hands and starting to pace. “It’s one of the most distinguished awards in journalism! It’s been going since 1917! It’s a huge honor and a major achievement and–!”
“What’s it have to do with being a dad?” Conner interrupts, wrinkling his nose with a puzzled expression. Lois . . . pauses.
“Um,” she says.
“Probably nothing,” Jimmy says with a shrug. “Like. Almost definitely nothing.”
“Then why’s it matter?” Conner asks, still looking puzzled. Lois puts both of her hands over her face.
“Oh my god, I am my dad,” she says despairingly. “I think my career matters that much? Seriously?! Conner’s not gonna care if I have a Pulitzer or not if I’m a bad dad to get a Pulitzer! Oh my god, what am I doing with my life?!”
“Having a crisis, apparently,” Jimmy says. “And, like, some serious reprioritizing.”
“I don’t think taking pride in your work is a ‘bad dad’ thing,” Clark says. Though having a kid is a reprioritizing-level situation, he thinks. Definitely when they’re a surprise kid. “That’s setting a good example for Conner, really. Just, you know . . . don’t ignore him to kidnap and illegally detain people because you think they might have something to do with a theoretical invasion, and I think you’ll probably be fine? Probably?”
“Yeah, the invasion thing really seemed important to, like. Everybody who was working on me,” Conner says as he sneaks another honey bun. He’s adorable about it, so Clark doesn’t stop him. “They kinda suck, though, sooooo . . . I mean, I wouldn’t mind if you were gonna invade them a little. Just saying.”
“No one’s doing any invading,” Clark says immediately, then feels awkward because, well, technically–“I mean, I don’t think anyone’s doing any invading. I’m not! I’m very much not doing any invading! Ever!”
“Are you sure?” Conner looks disappointed.
“No alien invasions until you’re eighteen,” Lois says. “. . . or until we figure out how old you should count as being.”
Conner pouts.
. . . they could probably invade just one dubiously-ethical lab, Clark thinks, if Conner really–
“No, Clark,” Jimmy says. “I know that look, man. We don’t need any more angry government dudes or MIB-types after you, we’ve got enough of those already! Like, way too many!”
“I think any is ‘too many’, in this case,” Lois says, looking sour.
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NINE HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS COMPARE ZIONIST POLICIES TO THOSE OF THE NAZIS
“Sometime after [1956] I heard a news item about Israelis herding Palestinians into settlement camps. I just could not believe this. Weren’t the Israelis also Jews? Hadn’t we – they – just survived the greatest pogrom of our history? Weren’t [concentration] camps – often euphemistically called ‘settlement camps’ by the Nazis – the main feature of this pogrom? How could Jews in any measure do unto others what had been done to them? How could these Israeli Jews oppress and imprison other people? In my romantic imagination, the Jews in Israel were socialists and people who knew right from wrong. This was clearly incorrect. I felt let down, as if I was being robbed of a part of what I had thought was my heritage. …
I have to say to the Israeli government, which claims to speak in the name of all Jews, that it is not speaking in my name. I will not remain silent in the face of the attempted annihilation of the Palestinians; the sale of arms to repressive regimes around the world; the attempt to stifle criticism of Israel in the media worldwide; or the twisting of the knife labelled ‘guilt’ in order to gain economic concessions from Western countries. Of course, Israel’s geo-political position has a greater bearing on this, at the moment. I will not allow the confounding of the terms ‘anti-Semitic’ and ‘anti-Zionist’ to go unchallenged.”
Dr. Marika Sherwood, ‘How I became an anti-Israel Jew’, Middle East Monitor, 7/3/18. Marika Sherwood is a survivor of the Budapest ghetto.
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“Israel, in order to survive, has to renounce the wish for domination and then it will be a much better place for Jews also. The immediate analogy which a lot of people are making in Israel is Germany. Not only the Germany of Hitler and the Nazis but even the former German Empire wanted to dominate Europe. What happened in Japan after the attack on China is that they wanted to dominate a huge area of Asia. When Germany and Japan renounced the wish for domination, they became much nicer societies for the Japanese and Germans themselves. In addition to all the Arab considerations, I would like to see Israel, by renouncing the desire for domination, including domination of the Palestinians, become a much nicer place for Israelis to live.”
Dr. Israel Shahak, Middle East Policy Journal, Summer 1989, no.29. Israel Shahak was a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto and Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
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“I am pained by the parallels I observe between my experiences in Germany prior to 1939 and those suffered by Palestinians today. I cannot help but hear echoes of the Nazi mythos of ‘blood and soil’ in the rhetoric of settler fundamentalism which claims a sacred right to all the lands of biblical Judea and Samaria. The various forms of collective punishment visited upon the Palestinian people – coerced ghettoization behind a ‘security wall’; the bulldozing of homes and destruction of fields; the bombing of schools, mosques, and government buildings; an economic blockade that deprives people of the water, food, medicine, education and the basic necessities for dignified survival – force me to recall the deprivations and humiliations that I experienced in my youth. This century-long process of oppression means unimaginable suffering for Palestinians.”
Dr. Hajo Meyer, ‘An Ethical Tradition Betrayed’, Huffington Post, 27/1/10. Hajo Meyer was a survivor of Auschwitz.
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“As a Jewish youngster growing up in Budapest, an infant survivor of the Nazi genocide, I was for years haunted by a question resounding in my brain with such force that sometimes my head would spin: ‘How was it possible? How could the world have let such horrors happen?’
It was a naïve question, that of a child. I know better now: such is reality. Whether in Vietnam or Rwanda or Syria, humanity stands by either complicitly or unconsciously or helplessly, as it always does. In Gaza today we find ways of justifying the bombing of hospitals, the annihilation of families at dinner, the killing of pre-adolescents playing soccer on a beach. …
There is no understanding Gaza out of context – Hamas rockets or unjustifiable terrorist attacks on civilians – and that context is the longest ongoing ethnic cleansing operation in the recent and present centuries, the ongoing attempt to destroy Palestinian nationhood.
The Palestinians use tunnels? So did my heroes, the poorly armed fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto. Unlike Israel, Palestinians lack Apache helicopters, guided drones, jet fighters with bombs, laser-guided artillery. Out of impotent defiance, they fire inept rockets, causing terror for innocent Israelis but rarely physical harm. With such a gross imbalance of power, there is no equivalence of culpability. …
And what shall we do, we ordinary people? I pray we can listen to our hearts. My heart tells me that ‘never again’ is not a tribal slogan, that the murder of my grandparents in Auschwitz does not justify the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians, that justice, truth, peace are not tribal prerogatives. That Israel’s ‘right to defend itself,’ unarguable in principle, does not validate mass killing.
Dr. Gabor Mate, ‘Beautiful Dream of Israel has become a Nightmare’, Toronto Star, 22/7/14. Gabor Mate is a survivor of the Budapest ghetto.
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i thought nothing could be worse than the burning of byron’s memoirs but i stand corrected after reading jane austen’s poor wikipedia page
because at least we still have thousands of byron’s letters and journals which are mostly uncensored and which reveal his personality in all of it’s aspects, flaws and all, and everyone in his circle documented every detail of his life because he was a huge celebrity. his letters are considered some of the most brutally transparent ever written. i'm just using him as an example; him and austen shared the same publisher, lived during the same time, both very studied.
but with jane austen? we don’t get that honesty or that truly full picture. her relatives are the main sources of information, and all her surviving letters were carefully selected by them to portray her according to a specific agenda which would favor them, and so the true extent of her personality can never be as fully ascertained.
but at the same time... i don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. she doesn't seem to have wanted attention for herself but to have likely preferred privacy, and her books have gotten more acclaim that she ever could have comprehended -- her books are the way we access her, her life, her thoughts and her voice. i think that about all writers, though i do love biographical criticism and biography.
some writers we know nothing about and some writers we know everything about -- at least they all live on in their writing, yes. but on the one hand, i'm grateful all writers live on in their work (as a fan of history and literature) and on the other hand, my unquenchable curiousity does get annoyed with the lack of available information. i would really love to read an extensive series of austen diaries. there is something sort of voyeuristic about this, i know, but there is also a love of preserving the niche parts of history, the parts that others overlook, the undervalued parts (letters, diaries, receipts, notes, scraps, drafts, juvenilia, etc.)
marcus aurelius wanted his diaries burned but perverse curiousity, likely driven by excessive admiration, led to their preservation, and thus we have his meditations which is now one of the most valued pieces of literature ever. so i think letters and diaries, and any piece of writing, does have immense value, even when it borders on a violation of privacy or has the potential to ruin a reputation.
i think this all simply ties in to the fact that i don't believe in book-burning in any form. embarrassing love letters from 1812 ARE important, depressing diary entries from 1818 ARE important. i could go on and on and on but the point is that i think all words and all history are imporant. in my classes we've discussed how archival technology is at the forefront of all human knowledge: what do we keep, what do we preserve, what do we spend more time on salvaging?
it just kills me that so much has been burned and destroyed, regardless of all the intense ethical discussions which could derive from all this, which could go on for a million years. my point is that it is tragic that so much of austen's work was destroyed, and it is tragic that byron's memoirs were destroyed even though we have so much of his work any way. any loss of writing is a loss to posterity.
#ramble#thoughts#jane austen#literature#english literature#romanticism#lord byron#letters#history#english lit#lit#writing#literary history#womens history#censorship#journals#biography#my analysis#my essays#my writing#pride and prejudice#ji
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I get myself through the pain of such interconnected world news and 24/7 access to and algorithm pushes of suffering by reminding myself every day that I am only one person, and I have limited energy, short reach, and not many types of help I’m able to give.
I wish I could scream every bad situation in the world from the rooftops and make every person care, but I can’t.
I wish I could give money to every person and group that needs it and do it consistently every day or month, but I can’t.
I wish I could drop all my own life and work on the ground in local or international aid or system reform until i die or every problem is fixed, but I can't.
every day I open my journal and re-read my past self's oath, her condemning-and-absolving agreement and reminder:
When I can't directly help, I still witness.
And on days enough of me cares enough about saving enough of my energy and emotions to function, I repeat a second reminder:
When my witness turns to pain or drain, my ethical duty is to stop and protect my health and ensure my consistent ability to witness more later.
I'm only one person. one person can only take in and hold so much ugliness and grief and bad side of things. but i am one person of many. i can help sometimes. it makes a difference. it matters. i can witness all the times. i can witness some of the truth, and i can keep my records of what i witness. and i'm one of many people recording many pieces of the truth, even when we can't help as much as our fellow human hearts want.
The endurance of proof and facts and records and people’s personal stories are what I can always do. I can only hold a little, and I can record only a little more. But it’s a record. It’s a witness. That’s one thing.
One thing is enough in a huge world and a system with open and even extra-pumped flood gates. I’m one person and I can’t stem or stop the part of life involving horrors. But I can survive and witness for others and remember and record what I can and speak up or act when I’m able in my tiny percentage of the world.
I want to shake the thought policing and moral panic and performative online pressure guilt and remember all the time that my responsibility is always first to myself and my present touchable life, and that any amount of extra witnessing I can manage or help I can do, however frequently, is enough, and not demanded.
I want to help because my heart screams, not because I owe. That’s more than enough. And I can do what I can and know that.
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As a direct result of large language models, over the next decade we'll see more "literary" thrillers and detective novels in American publishing solely because those genres emphasize twists, foreshadowing, and extremely specific character motivations--the tropes that AI storytelling (currently) struggles with the most. They also require internal consistency, something AI can't pull off in longer stories.
There have been some prestige thriller/mysteries (No Country for Old Men, The Goldfinch, The Yiddish Policeman's Union) but they're rare, and even those examples tend to get a lot of flak. Every single review I've ever read of Yiddish Policeman's Union points out how bizarre it is for someone with an MFA to write *clutches pearls* A Detective Story???
Many, many writers have had successful careers in these genres within this century (Sue Grafton, Stephen King), but they aren't regarded as "serious" by the American "literary" community. Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Umberto Eco tend to be regarded as "serious," but they also tend to be regarded as "dead."
If my tone hasn't already made it clear, I'm not invested in the pyramid of aesthetic values that puts "genre" on the bottom, "prestige genre" in the middle, and "literary" on the top. I don't even regard it as a series of legitimate distinctions.
But I do think it's worth paying attention to this model because it directly influences journals, small presses, MFA programs, and big publishers. The "literary" community has a stranglehold on our world of small independent publishing for short stories/essays, and it's Very difficult to attract a large publisher with a wide distribution network without a few publications in small journals. I'm not saying you can't attain popularity or financial success without kowtowing to these institutions, but it's certainly harder to make a living without their support (not that it's easy to make a living as a writer WITH their support, but that's a different post).
And I really do think their aesthetic values will rapidly shift to prioritize things that AI can't do well. Especially among the types that want to be seen as prestigious. I'm not saying that today's hard genre writers are less financially or emotionally affected by AI competition, but by and large they seem less... insecure. And I think the "literary" community will deal with that insecurity by flaunting skills that AI doesn't have.
Now, obviously, there's a huge difference between a book that's just generated by AI vs. a book that AI generates but which a human then edits. I do think an AI could conceivably provide a sound basis for a detective story that a human might then shape into something with hard-hitting twists. But I'm also not sure anti-AI reactionaries will agree with me on that. The prevailing sentiment seems to be that anything AI breathes on is both permanently and obviously tainted. Reminds me a lot of people who think it's 100% of the time easy to detect "fanfiction with the serial numbers scraped off".
(Please note I have never once said in this post AI is cool, good, or ethical. If you want those opinions come back with a warrant.)
Anyways, if you're an indie author, small press, or journal that publishes "genre" (prestige or otherwise), please feel free to hijack this post for self-promotion. There's a 99% chance I'll reblog.
#not that me reblogging has like#any substantial advertising power#but i will help out as much as i can#creative writing
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I have a huge interest in plurality (not just in maladaptive plurality/dissociative disorders but also in theories of the mind that examine the ways in which plurality is biologically and socially adaptive and affects all of us to varying degrees) and if I could ethically go into psychiatric research I would love to research the comorbidity of autism and plurality.
every person I have ever met with DID has been autistic, and I think this makes a lot of sense because autistic people tend to have a less stable/integrated sense of identity and a lot of autistic people without dissociative disorders seem to still display a higher level of what you might call "adaptive plurality," i.e. the ability to have a fluid personality and take on different societal roles when needed, which in an individualistic capitalist society unfortunately leads to a lot of insecurity and discomfort, but is actually biologically advantageous and contributes to the theory that having autistic individuals in a given population is an adaptation rather than a disability. there is a lot of writing out there about how plurality is genuinely a good thing until it becomes a maladaptive coping mechanism for intense and chronic early childhood trauma, and I think autistic people without dissociative disorders are emblematic of this. on the other hand, a lot of autistic children are victims of intense early childhood abuse, and when this happens I think it would make sense if DID is a more likely outcome than it may be for an allistic individual.
but there's no research on this. there's so little research on plurality in general and a lot of the research that exists is split between multiple arbitrary diagnostic categories. a lot of "borderline" people, for example, are actually plural, but they're misdiagnosed because their plurality is considered unappealing. and the existence of OSDD-1 confuses things even further because the difference between DID and "OSDD" is oftentimes negligible and up to the discretion of the doctor diagnosing you. coincidentally, a lot of plural people are antipsych!
but yeah like. I think this is an incredibly important and overlooked topic and I also think it's why autistic people who aren't plural still see themselves and their experiences reflected in the plural community so much. I certainly do, to the point that I thought I was plural for a long time, but in retrospect my childhood trauma was not early or chronic enough to result in dissociative plurality. so instead of continuing to claim experiences that aren't mine, I've taken a vested interest in studying plurality and in supporting and understanding the plural people in my life. I wish I could contribute to a new body of research that is important to me, but I'm not going to become a psychiatric researcher, I just can't. maybe medical journalism would be a better career path for me if this is something I want to pursue.
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Forgotten, Not Forgiven - Chapter 10
Rift era reconciliation/fix-it fic in which Kara's memories of Supergirl are stolen and Lena has to rally round to help her get them back. Starts out kind of on the angsty side but there will be more fluff down the line.
This and previous chapters are also on AO3
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Clinical trial for Q-wave brain stimulator.
Trial subject 1. Session 2
Subject now up to a stable therapeutic dose of 15 biohertz, sustained for a period of 45 minutes.
No ill effects noted.
Brain image unchanged since previous session.
Subject favours Big Belly burgers over tacos, and steals my fries.
Lena added the last sentence into her headline report summary in an unplanned and uncharacteristic fit of whimsy, and hit send before she could second guess the impulse. With all the extra hours Alex was putting in to try and keep on top of the Malefic situation (not to mention the media circus surrounding Supergirl’s official cover story), Lena knew she was feeling guilty about not being there for Kara more when she was going through something so huge. She hoped that the touch of levity (and the sheer, undeniable Kara-ness of it) would reassure Alex that her sister was doing okay, and maybe even make her smile.
Lena’s own cheeks were still aching a little with the unaccustomed amount of smiling they had been doing over the past few hours. She had been somewhat apprehensive going into the Q-wave session after the intensity of the first one, but there had been none of that this time. Kara had been in a buoyant mood after finally being allowed to hand fashion over to someone else, and while “The best (AND WORST!) food trucks in National City revealed” could hardly be called hard hitting journalism either, at least she was going to thoroughly enjoy the research process. Her good humour was infectious, and the two of them had chatted easily throughout the 45 minute treatment, stopping only twice, when they had had to abruptly drop a subject and take a few minutes to recover to avoid their laughter developing into the kind of giggle fit that would make it impossible for Kara to keep as still as she needed to.
At the end of the session they had found that neither of them were ready to abandon the conversation and head home just yet (or in Lena’s case back up to her office to put in another couple of hours on her endless to do list), and so Lena had mentioned that while the ice cream part was negotiable, taking ones research participant out for a post-trial treat was a strict requirement of her profession, and she would hate to be reported to the ethics board for neglecting her duties as a scientist.
And after all, they did need to eat.
Actually, going out with Kara was one of the few things that reminded Lena to eat a full meal these days, rather than just taking a few mouthfuls of whatever happened to be to hand when she had been focusing on something for so long that she started feeling faint and foggy (it had happened a few times recently, but now that Lena had asked Jess to stock up on smoothies and granola bars she was at least taking in enough nutrients to stop it affecting her work, and between her day to day CEO duties, the Q-Wave treatments and her latest product launch date on the horizon, she really didn’t have time for more than that).
As an extra incentive Lena had suggested that they could get something from a food truck as early research for the ‘Best of’ article, but despite the fact that she had been waxing lyrical earlier over a new taco truck she was desperate to try, Kara had instead opted for Big Belly Burgers. Lena’s favourite comfort food.
She had been touched enough to allow Kara to ‘accidentally’ steal several of her fries, until after theft-number-four her honour demanded the challenge be answered and Lena swiped a mozzarella stick from Kara’s plate in retaliation. They ended up holding a discrete but intense battle in their quiet corner of the diner that culminated in a brief fork-fencing match, which had been both incredibly undignified and, somewhat to Lena’s surprise, a lot of fun.
It didn’t hurt that she won the fencing match. She might not have brushed off her sabre for a few years now, but before she had moved to National City Lena had been a fencing champion, and had even come close to qualifying for the Olympics. The tiny, greasy battle made her think it might be time to look into taking it up again. Kara would probably enjoy it too.
Maybe Lena could even teach her...
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Clinical trial for Q-wave brain stimulator.
Trial subject 1. Session 3
15 biohertz sustained for a period of 60 minutes.
No ill effects noted.
The lab setup was a little different this time.
Lena had remembered Kara’s choice in their ‘where-would-I-rather-be’ game from the first session, and had replaced the printouts stuck above the cot with a night sky projector. Not content with the random pinpoint projection of the kind made for children’s bedrooms, she had tracked down a model designed for planetariums, and the ceiling and walls of her lab had transformed into an accurate, detailed map of the night sky (absent light pollution). The effect was somewhat spoiled by the flat angles of the room rather than the graceful curve of a dome it was designed for, but even so, once the lights were off and her computer monitor brightness was turned to its lowest setting, it was impressive. It was almost startling how different it felt, actually, even to Lena, who spent almost as much time in this room as she did in her own home.
The projection managed to convey a certain amount of relative distance, making the lab seem, if not limitless, then at least far bigger than its true dimensions, while the darkness softened the shapes of furniture and equipment until they blurred into the background, eminently ignorable compared to what else there was to look at. Of course it still smelled incongruously clinical, but the background hum of efficiently running machinery was easily transformed into the quiet sighing of a breeze through trees, the occasional beep or click nothing more than passing insects.
Lena was considering whether or not to have a quick lie down on the cot (just to check the projector was perfectly aligned to give the best view from that vantage point), when she was interrupted by a small ‘oh’ from behind her, and the quiet thump of a bag dropping from slack fingers to hit the floor. She turned to find Kara standing in the doorway, her mouth hanging slightly opened as she stared upwards.
She stayed like that for several long moments, just staring and softly repeating ‘oh, oh, oh’ as she took it all in, until at last she tore her focus from the ceiling and instead turned the full force of her rapture on Lena, gazing at her as though she was a witch who had gone out and captured a real piece of the heavens just for Kara’s amusement.
‘Oh Lena, you’re… this is just…’
Kara shook her head, apparently lost for words, and although Lena knew that the look and the breathless murmur of delight were for the stars and not really for her, they were filled with such unguarded wonder that it made her blink, unprepared for the dazzle of Kara’s admiration. She felt unaccountably warm suddenly, and although she tried to remain business like as she went through the usual set up routine, it took three tries before all the sensors were perfectly aligned to begin.
When at last it was done and Kara was lying back on the cot with the Q-waves running, she gazed up again with a sigh that seemed both contented and a little wistful.
‘There are so many more than you can see from the city. I’d almost forgotten…’
She reached out a hand as if she might be able to touch the scene above her, and the projector painted the back of it with a sprinkling of stars, as if Kara was once again part of the night sky that was now so far out of her reach. She looked almost sad, and Lena wondered whether this might not have been such a good idea after all. Was she just taunting her with the illusion of something she could no longer have?
But then Kara stopped reaching upwards, and instead extended her hand towards where Lena sat with her laptop, in the shadows beyond the soft shine of simulated starlight.
‘Will you come and watch with me?’
‘I shouldn’t. I need to keep an eye on the monitor, just in case something goes wrong…’
‘Nothing will go wrong. Besides, the readouts are on your laptop aren’t they? Can’t you just bring it with you?’
Lena considered. Technically, yes, she could. Her laptop had all the controls she needed apart from the switch to actually turn the Q-waves on and off, but if she was beside Kara she could always just physically remove the cap if there was an emergency. There was no practical reason to stop her joining Kara among the stars…
Except.
Well, was it wise?
She and Kara were well beyond any possibility of romance of course, but still, stargazing. It was the classic trope from every romantic novel and movie in existence, and going over to lie beside her now might be tempting fate too far.
...But then again, they weren’t real stars.
The two of them were just in Lena’s lab, the same as they had been twice before now, and Lena was a certified genius, she was hardly likely to allow herself to forget reality, especially if she was also keeping an eye on the Q-wave readouts at the same time. And after all, she had paid an amount that she wouldn’t care to admit to for the projector, and if not now, when was she ever going to find time to make the most of it?
She gave in, and was soon settled beside the bed with her chair tipped back as far as it would go, laptop set up beside her but carefully angled away from Kara so that she couldn’t read more from the screen than she should. She checked the readouts one more time, and then Lena let herself lean back and enjoy the majesty of the universe.
It had been worth spending the extra money to get a quality model, she thought. Every constellation was picked out with breathtaking clarity, the milky way so crisp that she understood the urge to reach out and try to touch it. Of course it still wasn’t really like being outside (not when the shape of the light fixtures was so clearly discernible behind the projection), but as her breathing synced to Kara’s in the darkness, Lena still felt an echo of what she always had when she took the time to really notice the stars.
It made her feel her own smallness and insignificance in a way that she rarely experienced in her day to day life. Down here she might be nigh-infamous, the influential billionaire, high power CEO at the top of her field, respected or despised but always and inescapably known; but up there she was nothing. A tiny, fleeting blip in the vastness of space, barely there before it was gone again. It made her chest ache with the memento mori of it, but at the same time she found it strangely comforting, because on that scale it wasn’t just her that didn’t matter. The Luthor name and all that came with it was equally insignificant. Every rigid expectation, every hurt, every betrayal, every loss she had ever felt was so inconceivably tiny that if you zoomed out even a little bit they were no longer there.
It meant that if she chose to she could rip up the rule book, let her leg hair grow out and just do whatever made her happiest in the moment. The world would keep turning just the same, none the wiser to the fact that Lena Keiran Luthor was eating thick slices of mango on her balcony, dressed in nothing but the rosy glow of a rising dawn while juice ran down to her elbows; or sleeping for twelve gloriously unproductive hours before wandering out to the nearest park with a bag of defrosted peas and rolled oats for the ducks instead of attending her scheduled press conference (because even when nothing had consequences on a cosmic scale, not harming the local wildlife by feeding them bread still mattered).
It made her want to look away.
It made her want to stare forever.
It made her want to hold onto someone, to anchor herself with the undeniable, tangible physicality of life and heat and breath and the shared experience of this.
It made her want…
It made her want.
‘Do you remember the time we did this your first year here?’
Kara’s voice was almost as soft as a starlight surrounding them – an accompaniment rather than an interruption to the peace, and Lena found herself smiling fondly at the reminder, the sharp stab of pain that usually tainted any happy memories of their shared past unexpectedly absent.
‘Oh course I do. You dragged me out in the middle of the night, insisting we go to some special perfect spot to see a meteor shower, and then we got lost hiking up the trail’.
Probably, she now realised, because Kara had only ever flown there before. She could have done so that time as well if it had just been about seeing the shooting stars, but she had wanted to include Lena in the excursion so much that she had been willing to walk a mile and a half in the dark just so they could experience it together, and Lena had agreed as if the suggestion hadn’t been completely insane. Even after knowing her only a few months, she had already been willing to do just about anything if Kara asked it of her.
‘In my defense, the trail marker was missing, and it turns out things look really different in the dark. But that meadow we found was even better, wasn’t it? With all the harebells, and then the owl flying over, it felt almost like magic’.
‘It was beautiful’.
It really had been a lovely place, but despite the scenery, all Lena had really had eyes for that night had been Kara. She had been more beautiful than any meteor shower…
‘It was. I loved sharing the stars with you’.
Lena didn’t trust herself to reply, but she couldn’t help her mind drifting back over all the other times she and Kara had shared the stars.
Warm summer nights spent laughing and sipping wine while the sky slowly darkened above them. Crisp autumn evenings when they had met up after work and decided to take the long way through the park, just for a few more minutes of starlight and conversation before they met up with everyone else for a game night. The New Years Eve when Lena had been under the weather and decided not to go to any of the various events she had had invitations to, and Kara had blown off her own party in order to keep her company. They had spent the hours before midnight sitting out on her balcony, bundled up in layers of coats and blankets, sipping hot tea instead of champagne and watching the fireworks going off across the city…
The memories were so vivid that Lena had to interrupt them before she could forget herself and reach for Kara’s hand as she had then (not that anything had come of it. Kara had simply swung their clasped hands between them and started up a verse of Auld Lang Syne, and Lena had pretended that that’s what she had intended all along).
‘Do you know any constellations?’
‘Yeah, my friend Kenny and I spent about a year in high school obsessed with star gazing, and we learned them all. Do you know them?’
‘Most of them – not all. I had a brief astronomy phase too, but my family didn’t consider it a proper science and pushed me to redirect my focus to areas that would prove more profitable later on. I enjoyed learning about the constellation myths in my free time though’.
Kara hmmm-ed gently – sympathetic without making it into a big thing.
‘Will you tell me one?’
They spent the rest of the 60 minutes swapping stories about the stars. Lena told Kara some of the livelier Greek constellation myths, and in return Kara told her about her nights of stargazing as a teenager, and the stories she had made up for herself about what she could see. Some of the myths Kara described sounded too detailed, and too strange to be all imagination, and Lena wondered whether this was a re-writing of some Kryptonian legend. She made a mental note to ask once Kara had the rest of her memories back, and then pulled up short.
Of course she couldn’t ask.
They would no longer be on speaking terms by that point. Foolish of her to forget that.
But the stars were shining, and the quiet hum of the Q-wave generator was soothing, and she couldn’t bring herself to get worked up about the slip. It didn’t matter. They were in a made up friendship in the midst of a made up universe, and all of it felt real enough for this moment.
All too soon the time was up and Lena turned the lights back on, the intimacies of her star-addled thoughts retreating into the safety of the shadows they had come from as she turned her attention back to the Q-wave programme.
And: there was something there.
Well. Maybe there was. It was hard to be sure even with the image magnified as far as it would go, but she thought there might be a couple of spots where the dark line was now very slightly less crisp. Not quite fuzzy, but getting there…
She stared at it until her eyes ached and she could no longer trust that any blurring was actually on the scan rather than an illusion of her own visual fatigue, and then she closed the file and sent it off to Alex along with a brief write-up of the session’s progress. It might be nothing, and it might not. All she knew for sure right now was that Kara felt fine, and that at that moment she was waiting for Lena to finish her report so that they could begin their evening plans, and the longer she spent worrying over an inconclusive image the less time they would have to enjoy them.
So she abandoned her laptop along with all thoughts of fuzziness that wasn’t the alcohol induced kind, and set off with Kara for their cocktail night.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clinical trial for Q-wave brain stimulator.
Trial subject 1. Session 4
15 biohertz sustained for a period of 60 minutes.
No ill effects noted.
Subject fell asleep at approximately minute 14 of treatment, and this was maintained for the remainder of the session.
Scan evidenced definite blurring of perimeter at position 4 (noted on scan), measuring approximately 0.54mm in width. This represents a significant development over the previous treatment outcome.
Hypothesis: treatment during REM sleep may have enhanced effects compared to the same waves received while conscious.
They had used the star projector again, but with the possible-almost-blurring on the previous scan Lena had felt it prudent to keep her focus on what was happening on her screen, and had stayed at her desk this time. Without the distraction of sharing stories Kara, apparently exhausted after a broken night and a particularly grueling day at work, had quickly dozed off in the quiet peace of the simulated night sky.
And it was lucky for Supergirl that she did, because this new finding was major. A breakthrough even.
Okay, Kara hadn’t seemed to remember anything new when she woke up, but the questionable fuzzy spot on the previous scan was now a definite blurring, and progress had been much more rapid than Lena had expected.
It was exactly what they had been working towards since she had conceived the idea that first night in Al’s.
It was wonderful.
Just what she had been hoping for.
It WAS…
It had to be.
She waited until Kara was safely in the bathroom, then retreated to the privacy of the back office with her auditory scrambler to call Alex. Even with those precautions in place it was a bigger risk than she should have taken, she knew that, but she couldn’t help it.
She wanted to pass on the good news directly.
She wanted to hear someone else tell her that it was good news, so that she could believe it for herself.
‘Lulu, what’s up?’
Somehow Alex managed to audibly smirk at the use of the code name, and it was just so typically Alex of her that it managed to divert Lena briefly from the reason for her call.
‘Do you really have to call me that every time?’
‘Hey it’s your rule, I’m just abiding by it’.
A little of the panic that had been building behind Lena’s sternum was replaced with the aggravated amusement that was becoming the baseline for their interactions, and she felt her stiff shoulders relax by a few degrees even as she made her voice sound stern.
‘That’s for when there’s a risk of being overheard at your end, as you know perfectly well. Right now I know for a fact that our trial subject is not standing behind you, because she is currently in my bathroom, and I am in my locked, sound proof office’.
‘Still, it’s wise to keep in good habits’.
Lena grimaced at her phone, but she had to fight the slight tugging at the corner of her lips to do so. Alex was enjoying this code name business far too much, and it made her wish she had chosen something less innocuous than ‘Annie’ in return. Ermintrude perhaps. Or Bert. It would have been terrible for the purposes of keeping things under the radar, but it would have been fun.
‘Hey Earth to Lulu, don’t keep me in suspense! What’s happening over there?’
‘Right, sorry. I do need to be quick – I just wanted to tell you myself, I think we have some progress. There is a definite blur on the scan. It’s small, but it’s there’.
‘Wait, seriously? And Kar- uh, Katie is feeling alright? No headache or anything that might indicate a danger sign?’
‘She’s completely fine. No indication of any memories or powers coming back yet, but this is a real start’.
‘Lena this is amazing! We need to go out for a drink to celebrate!’ - she hesitated - ‘unless that would be crossing too far over the business/friendship line?’
She should have refused. Would have refused, if Alex had suggested this even last week. But now, hyped up by the imminence of success and desperate to share it with someone, she didn’t want to. She wanted to go out to a bar with Alex Danvers, have a drink and companionably provoke each other for a couple of hours while they toasted the progress of their project. And if that happened to distract her from what else success would mean for her, well, that was so much the better. Besides, what harm could it do, if all of this was going to be over soon? She might as well make the most of having someone to go out drinking with while she still had the chance.
‘In the circumstances I think a celebratory drink would be entirely appropriate. Kara and I are on our way to catch a movie right now, but I could meet you later this evening if that works for you? 8.30ish?’
‘Sure Lena, I’ll see you tonight. Have a good time with Kara’.
There was a smile in Alex’s voice as she said this, and Lena wondered exactly what she was reading into their movie date.
Not that there was anything to read.
This social time was all part of keeping Kara on board with the ongoing trial, it didn’t mean anything more than that. It couldn’t, especially now they were a step closer to this whole thing being over.
Not even if she was about to sit through a special screening of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ that she might have suggested could be a good nostalgia draw at an independent movie theatre where she had just... happened... to make a recent sizeable donation. They were after all a community institution, and The Wizard of Oz was a beloved classic. It was a worthy cause that had nothing at all to do with the fact that Kara had mentioned in passing that she had never actually had the opportunity to see her favourite movie on the big screen.
No one could prove otherwise.
Kara certainly didn’t question it. She was as excited as a puppy as they made their way to the movie theatre, apparently refreshed by her nap and practically skipping along beside Lena as she gushed about her favourite scenes, and how magical it would be to see the moment when Dorothy stepped out of sepia and into full technicolour rendered huge on the big screen.
They bought a giant bucket of buttery popcorn and settled into front row seats, and Lena found her eyes drawn as often to Kara as to the movie as the story began. She just looked so happy, it made it impossible to dwell on anything outside of this moment with her, experiencing the vicarious delight of her immersion in a well told story.
Lena knew for a fact that Kara had seen this movie dozens, if not hundreds of times, and yet she reacted to everything as if it was the first time. She glared ferociously at the threat to have Toto euthanised. She mouthed along with all the songs, gasped at the transition into Oz, and actually grabbed Lena’s hand at the first appearance of the Wicked Witch of the West, though she let go again a moment later.
She stayed transfixed, eyes shining, until the credits finished rolling and the lights came up.
‘That was uh-MAZING. Thank you so much for doing this with me Lena. I don’t know why I love that movie so much, but there’s something about that always just clicked, you know? Maybe it’s to do with being fostered. It’s not exactly like finding yourself in Oz obviously, but it was a pretty big transition to make at 13. I guess I always felt a bit like Dorothy because of it’.
‘It’s funny, I think my adoption made me relate more to the Wicked Witch of the West’.
Kara laughed disbelievingly and swatted her very gently on the arm, clearly still high on the joy of the movie and too much popcorn.
‘Lena! That’s ridiculous, you’re not a wicked witch, you’re the best!’
‘Debatable. But I suppose I’m not thinking of the original Wizard of Oz witch so much as- have you ever seen Wicked?’
‘No, I’ve wanted to forever, but it’s never come to National City, and I never got round to making the trip’.
Lena grinned.‘Okay, that settles it – I’ll find out where it’s showing next and we can take my jet’.
They would just have to fit it in before the Q-wave trial progressed too far, that was all. She could do that.
‘Fly there? You don’t have to do that for me, that’s way too much trouble! Do you even like musicals?’
‘Some, and I have a special soft spot for Wicked. As I said, I always kind of related to Elphaba. She’s not actually adopted like I was, but she was marked out from the beginning in her family by something she couldn’t help, and was always in the shadow of her golden-child sibling. Then when she finally goes out into the world all anyone can see is her green skin, and they brand her wicked for it no matter how hard she tries to be good. After Lex committed his crimes, the Luthor name felt a bit like that for me. Then there’s this whole bit about how she relates to the Wizard that felt very me and Lex’.
She hadn’t expected to open up like that to Kara about something she wouldn’t usually admit to, but for some reason her defenses didn’t slam up to stop her saying it. Maybe because she had just spent 102 minutes watching Kara unabashedly, purely relate to something without any kind of reservations; it had made her want to offer something in return, even if it was nothing more than a broadway musical.
Or maybe because there was a smudge on Kara’s scan, and it had made Lena realise how not-ready she was for their temporary friendship to end...
‘So Wicked is kind of like your ‘Wizard of Oz’? That’s amazing, I can’t believe I never knew we had Oz in common! But I also hate that you were ever made to feel that way about who you are’.
‘It’s fine Kara, I’m used to it. Besides, you’ll see when we watch it, it makes her strong in the end: she gains her independence and learns to rely on herself in the face of those that doubt her’.
Like Lena had done before, and would do again... After their trip to see Wicked.
Kara frowned a little, not looking entirely appeased.
‘If you say so. It makes me not like how things end for her in The Wizard of Oz though. You deserve so much better than that’.
‘You know, she isn’t really me’.
‘I know… but still’.
#supercorp#kara danvers#lena luthor#supergirl#supercorp fanfic#supergirl fanfiction#If you enjoy it consider leaving me a comment on AO3?#kara x lena#my fic#multi chapter fic#Forgotten Not Forgiven
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I'm just adding my voice to the growing choir but yeah, I don't think Trent is going to out Collin:
It would be an extreme moment of regression. I mean, this guy gave up decades of high-profile journalism due to his distaste for how the job was making him compromise his ethics. He's not gonna just turn around and out a player after that.
(Headcanon-y side-note, but Trent is HEAVILY queer coded and based on my personal readings of his character he's someone who would not just respect Collin, but understand him.)
I've been noticing that each episode has a small "Don't print that" moment where Trent seems legitimately open to keeping the club's personal secrets. The ones that, frankly, have no bearing on football and thus the public has no right to them (changing manicurists, diarrhea, etc.) None of these scenes have implied that he's merely humoring his worried friends and planning to air all the dirty laundry when they're least expecting it. A player kissing another man in an alley on their night off absolutely counts as 'Personal and none of the book's business.'
Outside of the book, how would Trent publish this? He doesn't seem to be doing freelance. It's possible he could pass the tip off to someone else, but we haven't seen any journalist buddies he's friendly with and giving that to a stranger (from the audience's perspective) would feel like even more of a betrayal. You're not just outing him, but using someone who we can't trust to spin the story in an empathetic light, as Trent did with Ted's panic attacks?
Trent doesn't snap a photo of them, despite having the time to get one (they're oblivious). He doesn't write anything in his notebook. He doesn't interrupt and hound them for a quote like he might have in season 1-2. He just walks off, looking contemplative/a bit worried.
So I don't think Trent is going to out Collin, but I do think he might try and do something about it. Meaning, this episode has shown that Collin is, well... pretty bad at keeping his sexuality a secret. He's sneaking out of his boyfriend's house, trying not to draw attention to himself, but then he hits a whole bunch of trash cans while leaving. I got a huge spike of anxiety when he looked at his phone with the other guys standing right there, given that a selfie, kissy emoji, and "thirst" are all pretty damning texts. He's obviously kissing right next to the main road, just a street or so down from where half the club is eating dinner, in a remarkably lit area. And though he tries to deflect a lot - fine he's gay for Zava too, this is my wingman, story about trying to seduce women - it comes across as trying too hard to anyone who's paying attention. Because, you know, Collin is trying very hard, despite his missteps.
The point is that Collin is constantly on the cusp of being outed. If the story doesn't have that happen next episode (that would put a damper on Richmond's win streak) I think Trent is going to step in somehow in an effort to provide damage control - or at least try to, even if he winds up being too late. The use of "Everybody Knows," while obviously a pertinent title, is also a list of how all these awful things have already come to pass - "That's how it goes" - and contains such gems as,
"Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
Everybody knows"
(The context here is cheating, but for a background snippet of a song I think the general vibe of bad things + lovers + not being discreet wins out.)
So Trent may try to step in, even if it comes to naught. After all, if he spotted them it's only a matter of time until someone else does too. Collin is lucky it was Trent who saw them and not someone else.
Cue the emphasis on how much he's changed as a journalist (Collin wouldn't have been lucky a year ago), viewers get a cool new relationship between characters who haven't interacted yet, as well as the canonizing of Trent as a queer man without giving him a coming out story because frankly a 50ish character doesn't (necessarily) need that. He's already got the "vibe" 🌈😎
#Ted Lasso#Ted Lasso spoilers#Trent Crimm#long post#for the record I have complete faith in this show not to fuck this up#WITH THE CAVEAT#that the Sam/Rebecca situation has always made me go '?????'#like that's the one time Ted Lasso has induced a 'Hey wtf' response#and I remain hopeful that it was a one time thing
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you can see more than a few similarities between the “original gamergate”, the DOA “gamergate 2” and what’s been happening with the misogynist men freaking out about 🤏 in South Korea. This time the western gamergate incels hate “woke” and “cultural Marxism”, before this it was “SJWs”. In practice their hatred is targeted on the same groups no matter what the year. In SK it’s “megal femi/ feminists” (megalia feminists) and “PC” (politically correct). These men pretend to care about things like “ethics in gaming journalism” or “extreme misandrist feminists”, the topics are smokescreens they use to legitimize their violent hatred of women, minorities, lgbt, the disabled, etc. as shown above with the quote from the Discord chat. I think the shock for many people regarding the Korean incel situation is that the companies they target very often will grovel and beg for their forgiveness, thus validating the delusion of some radical feminist boogeyman placing secret signs in gacha games or cartoons.
for the western gamergate men, their white supremacy is also a huge factor. They form communities and shape their own identities based on hatred and fear.
The “threat” in this case of “gamergate 2” is Sweet Baby Inc.
From the way social media is set up now, it’s easy for these men to rapidly fall into extreme echo chambers. They are angry about the hardships of life and are champing at the bit to direct that anger at an easy, identifiable cause. Can’t find a job? It’s too hard to recognize and understand the force and destructive nature of capitalism, it’s not a concrete thing you can attack right now and they have typically already been indoctrinated to believe anything criticizing capitalism is some scary evil communist ploy. So they turn their ire to an easily identifiable group, like immigrants attempting to live and work in the US. Why are these people trying to escape their countries? Don’t think about it! Can’t get a girlfriend? Surely it can’t be that you need to improve yourself, socialize and not see women as conquests? No, it’s the fault of those damn feminists! Of course these are flippant simplifications of issues that can be studied and analyzed in regards to society, family, religion etc and how propaganda from these sources can beget the type of male who is primed for indoctrination as well but I’m trying to be brief. A lot of this hate and fear also comes in tandem after any type of hard won victory (no matter how small) for any demographic these men are not a part of, they see it as some catastrophic loss of power because they are so used to absolutely everything being made for them or in their power. They think society runs “correctly” because they hold absolute power, so they push back (often violently) on anything they deem an challenge to this. In terms of videogames, this is why they believe just having a main character who is not a white male means “society hates men”or “games are not made for ‘us’ anymore”. You can see this type of attitude emerge in Korean men as well, regarding backlash to more women entering the workforce and gaining more rights. the following is just one example-
After a short period of time, men in these spaces get so indoctrinated that actual facts are false to them if it goes against what they WANT to believe. They don’t want to challenge and evaluate their own thoughts because it’s easy to keep hating.
If you’re from the US (or familiar with its political landscape over the past decade+) and this reminds you of the alt-right playbook, it’s because Steve Bannon saw the original gamergate and utilized the force of these angry males.
As the excerpt stated, these men see videogames as “a final escape for a generation of angry young white men,” essentially power fantasies that still reinforce and flatter their sense of importance over the “other”. (Of course the Korean incel demographic is not white and is not living directly in a white supremacist western society so this isn’t a 1:1. regardless that does not stop them from being racist.) In some ways this is from lack of inclusion of some demographics, in some ways it’s reinforced by having the “other” be in what these men see as their rightful place in society. So because of this, you see a LOT of these men foaming at the mouth when they believe a female character design is not “sexy” enough, because her job is not to be a character in a story, it’s to titilate the male viewer while he plays he game. She is made FOR him, for his pleasure first and anything else second. If she isn’t hypersexualized then she does not exist, she is failing the one job she has in these men’s eyes. You can see this in the way men talk about the upcoming “Stellar Blade”game from the developers of the gacha game “NIKKE”. Gaming presents this “sanctuary” for men, many eventually cutting themselves off from reality to live in this fantasy world- an act that can be dangerous for those around him.
Anyone who is new to gacha games, I need you to understand this is how the typical male gacha gamer views an all-female cast especially- they are there to titilate the perceived male user while he “buys” them, gives them orders in gameplay and reads the story. It’s still their male power fantasy, this is why tensions are extremely high when they think a “feminist” works on the game, and/or they think a male character looks “weak” or is sexualized in the same way women are sexualized. They want a clear divide of the sexes (designs of powerful men VS very thin, highly sexualized women), and this type of design threatens that. You can read more on gacha designs here on this blog, I don’t want to rewrite that whole post here. When they think a character is not sexy enough, they will illegally mod the game to change that, you can see in this image the Genshin Impact (a game the korean incels have now dubbed as a “femi game”) character “Shenhe” whose outfits were not deemed sexy enough, so the men modified the clothing on the left (costume and original outfit) to the “clothing” on the right while also increasing her bust size significantly.
This isn’t meant to be an analysis but rather a basic overview and reiteration of some aspects that made up the western “gamergate” situation using plain language. I linked the sources for everything directly on the images. Whenever I do an actual analysis there of course will be more sources and less copy&pasting directly from them lol
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This has really got me thinking -- I really think fanfic authors view all writing as having equal artistic merit because they often have very little awareness of, or respect for, The Writing Process as a very long and arduous journey that often takes YEARS to make a piece of writing good. Fanfic being published a chapter at a time certainly doesn't fucking help, because it means the writing is only ever edited incrementally, and never retroactively; I've made narrative or thematic changes in my writing that reshape THE ENTIRE STORY, even if I thought I was nearing the end, and it's meant I have to either edit the whole thing right from the start or even start over from scratch. Dante's Inferno wouldn't be what it is -- NO book would be what it is -- if authors were so restricted, and if they could only ever edit the exact chapter they were currently working on. This is a difference I think fanfic authors fail to grasp but it's also the main reason fanfic isn't (and rarely can be) considered on the same level as something like Inferno. It's the biggest difference, but fanfic authors also seem to deeply not know (or care) that the difference exists, and that's why I think they get so defensive and resistant when they're challenged or critiqued.
I think also going through editing processes that you mentioned make it more obvious that your work is political - not just in the sense of like, what is the substance of your writing saying about the real world, but that you have to manage the demands of editors, publishing houses, the publishing landscape, financial interests, etc. I have not written any professional fictional work but I have written grants applications, research proposals, ethics applications, and academic work with an eye towards journal publication, and the amount of jockeying and managing you have to do with other people’s desires and expectations is pretty intense! Again this is a very different context but like, publishing writing makes you aware of the various interests and contexts that professional work gets made in - most especially, what makes money, what publishers like to see in your writing, how your writing needs to contribute to certain fields (/genres) and debates (/popular trends). And those interests and contexts have their own huge set of problems, but - fanfiction has no barrier of entry aside from having the tools to post text online. Which is good in a lot of ways, and it’s fine if your shit is average or even bad because it’s amateur hobby writing, but the individual mechanisms through which fic gets published (sitting alone at your computer hitting ‘post’) obscures a lot of the social and political infrastructure that surrounds the work you’re writing fic of and makes it feel like this totally self contained thing that’s just like, free-floating art in the void of the internet. Which is not the case for published work!
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So you're anti history and pro-genocide. Got it. the Hamas claims have been refuted a million times, even by Israel journalism. Even by pro-israel news outlets and the New York Times. You're Jewish but you deny that a genocide is taking place, as the Holocaust did. Just admit you aren't interested in the massacre Israel is inflicting and has been inflicting on millions of innocent lives instead of trying to save your ass. You support Palestinians being butchered and wiped out unless they agree to Israeli terms. It's genocide supporters such as yourself who shouldn't be on Tumblr, due to the hateful propaganda you spread.
This is the standard, regurgitated response we get when we say we're not cool woth 1200 civilians, including BABIES, whom we KNEW PERSONALLY AND WENT TO SCHOOL OR WORK WITH, getting raped, mutilated, burned alive, murdered, and 250 more kidnapped as human shields. Me caring about my own people first and foremost, LIKE ALL PEOPLE DO, is twisted into condoning the genocide of another.
They refuse to explain why they so readily dehumanise Israelis, and at the same time, expect a huge outpour of compassion for Palestinians from the very Israelis they dehumanise while we struggle with personal losses and acute, severe PTSD by the hundreds of thousands.
Every argument these sociopaths make, every question they ask, is in bad faith. They know damn well that similar or worse has been happening elsewhere with nowhere near the outrage and still haven't explained why. Truth is, most of them don't care. Half of them have a full cart at Shein, a labour camp supplied by captive Muslim Uyghurs, for example. But due to the white supremacist US alliance, Israel, a country whose people is 60% brown, is whitewashed and thus a more ethical target for fake outrage than SE Asian or "real brown" countries. Criticize Chinese crimes against minorities, and you're sinophobic. Criticise Hamas, Assad, or the Houthis who are starving Yemeni babies RIGHT NOW, and you're racist. What makes Israel unique oh wait I know, it rhymes with juice.
That said, genocide is defined by intent, not success, and Hamas' own words betray that their end goal is eradicating Jews in the region. Meaning October 7 was a pogrom, not resistance. Resistance is solution oriented, but the current brutality against Gaza was a 100% predictable and predicted consequence of October 7 and Hamas did it anyway. Why is no one talking about that?
I never said anything about condoning genocide, but these anti-Semitic animals claim Hamas is just a bunch of misunderstood meow meows and cite sources that refute their own claims, because dropping the names of those outlets is enough to convince thoughtless idiots who think being given names is as good as verifying them.
Or maybe this is more evil sadism because this puts me in a position where I have to retraumatize myself, already suffering PTSD since that day, all to look it up myself to refute their bad faith claims. I wouldn't put it past them.
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It’s not a Leap Year, but... remembering Davy Jones.
“Underneath his nasty exterior, Davy had a heart of gold. He’d always fight for what he wanted. I’d have to say he had the most feeling of any of the members of the group.” - Peter Tork, Sioux City Journal, January 1980 (x)
* * *
"[W]e’re playing to 18,000 screaming kids and Davy’s banging on the tambourine and he comes waltzing over to me right in the middle of this wonderful thing and he yells, ‘We’re gonna form a group!’ Which is why I love Davy Jones, because he noticed and he knew what it was about.” - Peter Tork, Hey, Hey, We’re The Monkees (1996) (x)
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Peter Tork: "Davy’s extraordinarily funny.”
Q: “Is he?”
PT: “He’s said things — and quite deep sometimes, too. David has, he’s got some insights.” - GOLD 104.5, 1999 (x)
* * *
Q: “Which of the Monkees are you closest to?"
Tork: “It's different with each. [Micky]'s the best pal, but my heart connection is biggest with Davy. Davy is capable of as much heart as anyone I've ever met. I kind of had a crush on Davy for a while.”
Q: “That's sweet. Maybe it will work out for you two some day.”
Tork: “Maybe. We'd have to talk to our respective girlfriends about that.” - St. Petersburg Times, June 23, 2000
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Peter Tork: "Davy, for all of his virtues and glories, was very much into British music hall. Given his head, he would do nothing but ‘I’m Henry the VIII, I Am.’ I mean, not that he did that song, but that’s the kind of music that he would do, in spite of the fact that Davy could rock like nobody’s business. [At one point] Davy [did a version of] ‘Hippy Hippy Shake’ and nailed it! It just wasn’t what he wanted to do.”
Q: “I think that demonstrates the dynamic of what each member brings to a band and to a situation and how they contribute things but are also there to tell you to pull back where necessary or encourage you to go further.”
PT: “I’m only sorry that we didn’t do more of that by a huge amount. I only now have, in the last couple of years, come to understand how smart and good-hearted Davy Jones could be. I did not have the skills to notice that, even though I was drawn to it without knowing exactly why. But I certainly did not have the first clue of how to encourage all of the good stuff from Davy that I loved. I wish I could have known how to do it - and he might still be with us, even.” - Las Vegas Weekly, September 14, 2016 (x)
* * *
Clowning around at The Monkees' London press conference on June 29, 1967.
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Peter with Dolenz, Jones, Boyce and Hart in 1976, and in 1977.
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From The Monkees' Solid Gold interview in 1986.
* * *
Peter Tork: “(quietly) Yeah, I really hit him once.”
Q: “You feel badly about this?”
PT: “I sure do. My conscience was stricken for years. (perks up) Of course, the little sucker hit me first.” - 2000
The fight, in quotes and audio.
* * *
“Jones has a tremendous sense of fun.” - Peter Tork, The Post-Crescent, July 29, 2004
* * *
“When we first met, I was confronted with a slick, accomplished, young performer, vastly more experienced than I in the ways of show biz, and yes, I was intimidated. Englishness was at a high premium in my world, and his experience dwarfed my entertainer’s life as a hippie, basket-passing folk singer on the Greenwich Village coffee house circuit. If anything, I suppose I was selected for the cast of ‘The Monkees’ TV show partly as a rough-hewn counterpart to David’s sophistication.
What stands out for me about David, however, were the several events through the years in which I came to see a man of extraordinary heart and sympathy. […]
I felt this criticism [of The Monkees] keenly, coming as I did from the world of the ethical folk singer, basically honoring the standards of the naysayers.
We did play as a group live on tour, including a concert in Osaka, Japan, in 1968. There, in the middle of a performance of Mike Nesmith’s ‘Sunny Girlfriend,’ we hit the pocket. The beat fell into place, solid and grooving. Rock n roll was happening there for us on stage. David came bouncing over to me and yelled above the volume, ‘WE’RE GONNA FORM A GROUP!’
David’s sympathy for my feelings about the criticism, his musical awareness and his sense of humor buoyed me that day about as much as getting into the groove. Later, when we four argued to be the musicians on our own albums, it was David’s agreement that provided the unanimity that made the difference. This was huge, actually; Micky and David came from an entirely different tradition. Actors sang on records made for them, and nobody thought twice about it. Folkies and rockers made their own albums!” - Peter Tork, Hartford Courant, March 6, 2012
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Peter Tork: “Well, Davy’s always been a man of great talent and heart and I had just been hoping to work with him some more. He had such talent. He was probably the most talented of us all. He certainly had the best pitch and the best time. He should probably have been the drummer or the bass player of something. He should have been in the rhythm section. It’s kind of amazing – the two guys with the best time in the band weren’t in the rhythm section [laughs]. That was a little weird, looking back. And he was so able – there was just nothing he couldn’t do. I remember once in the middle of a tour, we said, ‘Well, we want to do this song, and we want to do it this way. But we’re missing a bass player. Davy, here’s a bass. Put your fingers here and pluck this string there.’ Next thing you knew, he was playing bass on stage like that night or two nights later or something. It was nothing major – he wasn’t popping strings and doing runs and fills, but he was laying down a bass and it was solid – it was solid. And that kind of ability is, I think, what I’m going to miss … what I’m sorriest to see go.”
Q: “What was the last you had contact with him?”
PT: “At the end of the last tour. We just said, ‘Goodbye, I’ll see you soon.’ I didn’t think I wouldn’t – partly because he was the youngest of us. That was too bad.” - LeHigh Valley Live, June 2012
* * *
“[Micky] and Mike and I have a very cordial relationship and share a lot of common topics. We go to lunch together when we're all in town and have a good time. I love and respect each of these guys in their own way, although the real joys that I shared with Davy were special. At one point we had some good hard connections but as the years rolled on, those things faded away. But I am sorry to see Davy go. He was the one member in the group that I had the strongest human connection with. I still have two guys that I love and respect left from the band, but we share a different dynamic.” - Peter Tork, Review Mag, May 27, 2016
* * *
“Davy adored performing, and adored meeting and greeting his fans. He was tireless in making himself available to sing a song, do a dance, shake a hand; whatever was asked. I had heart-to-heart moments with him that were among the best in my life. I was blessed to know and work closely with him. He was one in about 6 billion, give or take. We won’t see his like again. He left much too soon. I share your sadness. Thank you again for this chance to contribute. God bless and keep you all.” - Peter Tork in a note for a Pennsylvania memorial event for Davy, also shared via Peter’s official Facebook page, 2012
#Davy Jones#Peter Tork#Tork quotes#60s Tork#70s Tork#80s Tork#90s Tork#00s Tork#10s Tork#The Monkees#Monkees#<3#Michael Nesmith#Micky Dolenz#long read#(since it's not a leap year but there has to be a remembrance)#Peter and Davy#2012#can you queue it
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Hi, just curious! Are there problems with how research is done?
Oh, huge can of worms. Here's a post I made about basic scientific literacy. But I'll touch on problems here instead of basic stuff like stats.
1) Funding bias. This Should be disclosed in more modern research but sometimes still is not. But basically research teams are...not exactly swimming in cash (side tangent please support PhD researchers in trying to secure better pay and better working conditions). They have to request funding from Somewhere--university money, govt money (NIMH etc), corp money (pharmaceutical companies), or private funders (think SpaceX). That means that researchers can feel pressured to report things that those parties Want to hear in order to get money to do their research. Looking up who the funder is should give a pretty clear idea. This is Typically more of a problem for pharmaceutical research for psych and privately funded/other corporation research for most other things. So make sure to check out who funded something.
2) This isn't technically funding bias but is still funding related and is a major pet peeve of mine. But often there are a lot of things that researchers WOULD absolutely research, but the problem is that it never gets funded because the people with money don't think it's important/interesting enough. If you get very good at reading research you can tell when researchers really want to study a specific thing but they weren't allowed to so they did something tangentially related. Big huge thing that rarely gets funded is longitudinal studies, because...well. It's expensive. But there's a lot of stuff that would deeply benefit from longitudinal views.
3) Publication bias. This is more about research Not getting published than the fact that the published stuff is "bad" per se. But whenever research is conducted, the research team pays for a research journal (there are many, but usually you don't apply for multiple at once due to cost) to look over their paper and decide whether to publish it in or not. The journal has a team of reviewers who rate the paper on a scale and if there's editing stuff to be done and so forth. The good side of this is that reviewers are neutral 3rd parties that can catch things like poor methodology etc and on a more minor note things like typos or word choice. The bad side of it is that sometimes research that "has been done" or is not considered "interesting enough" doesn't get published. So basically more sensationalist or groundbreaking papers get published than the more "boring" stuff but many times the boring stuff is kind of pretty important.
4) Research limits. So, I talked about demographic and sample size in the post I linked. But sometimes, particularly for less common conditions, there simply is never a representative sample. For rare things, you might only get case studies of 1-2 individual people per paper. If you are in NY for example, and you have to have people physically in your lab to conduct tests, and they all have to have x condition that occurs in 1% of the population. You theoretically have 1% of your state to work with, but then you factor in whether people are willing to drive to you, whether they meet your other criteria like age range, or they have a bunch of comorbidities that you can't begin to untangle, then they also have to Hear about the study so where are you marketing, then they have to Agree to be in the study and then they have to Keep Going to your study (many people drop out for various reasons during the course of a study). At the end of the day you may be have 50-200 people to work with and maybe there's an overrepresented demographic or two. There's also stuff like ethics to consider but I don't consider that a "limit" per se...like for example the reason why children aren't studied to "make sure" trauma is what really causes DID is because they would have to knowingly leave or put children in traumatic situations to do that.
5) Ok pet peeve #2 time, but speaking of comorbidities. Studies will usually exclude people for having comorbid conditions (unless they're specifically looking at how the conditions interact). This is for the simple reason that they can't account for how all that other stuff is affecting their results. Some of it might seem "obvious," but science doesn't really do "obvious"...it's meant to eliminate as much bias and assumption from the researcher as possible. Downside of this is that very very few people are as simple as research would like them to be. There's not really a solution to this, just something to keep in mind.
6) Speaking of! The researchers themselves. You will see strongly opinionated papers, particularly in lit reviews and in meta analysis (I personally really like watching 2 researchers duke it out but instead of being normal about it they just publish papers back and forth shittalking each other. Not very useful info in their papers though). More subtle/hard to see on paper, but researchers are people and unfortunately that includes all the nasty shit that people come with, like bigotry. This can affect how they treat research subjects as well as how they interpret those peoples' results. Double blind studies are nice for this because noone knows who got what results or what their demographics are, but not every study can be double blind.
7) Research work environment. Hinted toward this with the higher pay and whatnot but a lot of PhD researchers are severely overworked and very underpaid. A lot are making roughly $20-30k/year while juggling research, teaching, publishing, conferences, sourcing funding, and continued education, while trying to pay off their student loans. And some universities don't pay them over summer breaks so they also often have Another job. There is also the beaurocracy to deal with, the fact that sometimes they are expected to pay out of pocket (rather than through the funder) for things like the research publication application or panel reviews, and...there is a significant amount of sexual harassment and racism etc from PIs who they often are not in a position to argue with or report. This means that stuff probably gets missed, often, or the data drawn doesn't really match up with their conclusion because they're running on empty.
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hi merry! hope you are enjoying malta ♥ i finished season 2 of the newsreader today (instead of doing school work) and it was intense. i don't remember last time i was this stressed ! in a good way ofc. so i was wondering what your thoughts were, especially on dale and helen's arcs as well as noelene rejecting helen's offer to produce for her. have u been listening to the companion podcast?
hello! I finished it yesterday 🥰
I haven't been listening to the podcast (I'm a fake fan, I know 💀), but I have so many thoughts! these are mostly raw and half formed but anyways:
I see Helen and Dale's plot lines as very nuanced takes on walking the line between being damned if you do and damned if you don't. sometimes to get what you want, especially if you're marginalised in any way, there are no good choices or options. I think Helen and Dale's plot lines show what it is to come face to face with that reality and how soul crushing it is to navigate.
Noelenes story was honestly my favourite of the season even if I'm not the biggest fan of her n Rob as a couple. I loved seeing her thrive in the producer role and talk with Helen more. Loved watching her juggle the ethics and demands of producing as a woman of colour. "the landscape is different for me" >>>> baller line. Very much about how for women of colour in journalism, there's much less freedom to turn down stability to just run off to do gigs in say, America. But also she loves Rob and her family and has obligations in the way Helen as someone who's estranged, single and white does not. It was a great arch and Noelene advocating for herself is huge growth for her. I loved to see it.
I will say Helen's plot line was my least favourite only because I DESPISED seeing her hook up with Lachlan Murdoch Ordered On Wish™. That's not to say it didn't make sense or it was bad. It was compelling and so in character for Helen to always be looking to be with people who make her feel in control, but I STILL did NOT want to see her fuck proxy Lachlan Murdoch. I was so happy when she dropkicked his ass. I don't think she'll go to America. I think she'll back out, come back to Aus, and realise she needs to get hired as an anchor on a rival network and her n dale will be rivals of news reading. That's how she'll get back at Lindsay too. I hope that's where she'll channel that new-found independence.
Dale's monologue to Donna at the end >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> AHHHHHHH I was vomiting blood but he DID IT. HE BECAME THE NEWSREADER. what did it cost? Only everything :(((( but I did really like how Dale's first (??) sexual experience with a guy was not with any of the main characters. I think it showed how isolated and compartmentalised that part of himself is from what he sees as his "real" life. But Sam Reid's performance of the shame, the repression of it (when he was brushing his teeth 😭) and how that shame mutates into just being ice cold with Gerry and Donna. And how that fear and shame driven persona gets him what he wants? Perfection. I cried for 10 minutes.
Deah and i are working on a @gayvclubpodcast ep about gender and sexuality in news drama stories so I'll have more coherent thoughts then 💕
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