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trophywifejimgordon · 4 years

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the ghostbusters + books

if print is dead, fiction doesn’t even EXIST anymore in egon’s world. even when he was a kid, he never read novels, as he couldn’t fathom why someone would want to spend time reading about something that wasn’t real. as an adult, most of his reading is made up of online transcripts of current academic journals, though he’s definitely not too immersed in tech to be above spending hours in the dusty library archives.

if he absolutely had to pick a fiction genre, it’d be speculative fiction, but only theoretically–in practice, he can’t stand the hand waved or otherwise entirely made up “scientific” methods employed in these novels.

the one exception he will make is for mary shelley’s frankenstein–the skipping over of the actual technique victor used to raise the dead irritates him, but he appreciates its place as a classical ode to human achievement past the realm of the morally sound, and besides, it played a heavy role in his decision to run a… not dissimilar experiment at NYU.

his parents, who discouraged all pleasure reading, punished him severely for the copy of the book he sneaked back to his room, and would later blame shelley for leading egon down the path that eventually took him to ghostbusting.

peter reads whatever’s popular–fiction and nonfiction bestsellers line his bookcase. he claims it’s because he’s more interested in knowing what draws the american public to the books than in the books themselves, and likes to concoct elaborate and negative conclusions to this effect… but maybe deep down, he just likes things that are popular. outside of that, peter also reads all the major psychology journals (when no one is around–he can’t let anyone know he takes this shit seriously) and, more gleefully, a wide array of harlequin romances.

between the job, night school, and, well, everything else, winston doesn’t have a lot of time to do fiction reading these days, but when he does get some downtime, he really enjoys a good mystery. this particularly extends to political thrillers and spy novels–he’s got a shelf of beat up favorites that he comes back to when he really needs to unwind.

as i see it, he doesn’t really have a favorite book so much as he has favorite authors; clive cussler is coming to mind.

ray actually feels the same way as egon does re: speculative fiction, but unlike egon, he’s more than alright with other genres. in particular, ray loves fantasy, the wilder the better–when he sits down to read a novel, he wants something completely detached from reality… not that it stops him from wanting to make real life that much more fantastic when it’s through.

the one exception to his aversion to scifi is star wars, which he loves implicitly (justifiable since it’s hardly scifi, anyway). he’s read every book in he extended universe, and has very concrete opinions on mara jade.

you know those bodice rippers i mentioned peter enjoying? those are janine’s favorites. shes unironically dreamed of herself as one of the heroines in the trashiest of her books since high school, and there’s nothing she longs for more than a muscular hunk to sweep her off her feet and into the sunset.

outside of that, janine is the most well-read of any of them in the fiction department–when she gets home at night, she enjoys curling up with a nice paperback from any genre and reading until her eyes droop closed.

i’ve talked about this before in a separate post, but i love the idea of janine and winston having a book club where they support each other through through dry, jargon-heavy tomes on parapsychology in an effort to play “catch up” and have a snowball’s chance in hell at understanding what the other three are talking about all the damn time.

when winston finally gets his PhD, janine pretends to be mad at him for “betraying their club,” but really, she was the one who often stuck around the firehouse with him, brewing coffee and reading her paperbacks while he poured over dense law textbooks, and she couldn’t be more proud.

i feel like, when he was a kid, books were a big coping mechanism for venkman. he spent a lot of time at the library just because it was free to be there and it wasn’t home, but with time this sparked a genuine love for reading that became his main form of escapism up through high school. even as an adult, he’ll sometimes lock himself in his apartment and fly through his to-read pile when he really needs to withdraw from himself.

back when they were in college, venkman had a running joke where he would describe the plot of a bad scifi novel to spengler as if it were the contents of a recent academic paper he read, just to get a good laugh out of his reaction. this escalated to the point of venkman actually fabricating a few of these so-called academic papers and spengler going so far as to write scathing responses with full intent to publish before ray finally stepped in and told him what was going on. peter had to hide out for a week to escape spengs’s wrath after that.

when he was a child, people who didn’t know egon (distant relatives, school peers forced by their parents to be nice to him despite a mutual distaste for one another, etc) would usually give him children’s books for birthdays or other special occasions, mistaking his academic disposition for bookishness. he never made an attempt to hide his displeasure with these gifts, and often used the pages as a part of some new science experiment.

think “paper mache baking soda volcano on crack,” and that’s what happened to a copy of charlie and the chocolate factory gifted to him by a well meaning great aunt.

the first job ray ever really saw for himself was becoming an author, a path that always sort of lingered at the back of his mind. opening ray’s occult was definitely tied to his lifelong fondness for books, but the real kicker came years later, when he published a successful young adult series drawing on his parapsychological knowledge after retiring from ghostbusters.

if you asked him, peter would list freud’s the interpretation of dreams as his favorite book. in reality, it’s jane eyre–don’t ask.

when janine was in high school, she spent many nights kicked back in the backseat of a friend’s car, reading a trashy paperback bought at a gas station while the others in her group got into more delinquent activities. even when they were skipping school or going road tripping, she always had a book for the ride. (looking back, she considers these nights some of the best of her life.)

winston has a great voice for reading out loud. some of his fondest memories of growing up were his mother tucking him into bed and reading him whatever she felt like: kid’s books, adult books, passages from her devotionals and from the bible. this became a tradition he passed on to his younger siblings, and looks forward to sharing with his own kids.

cliched though it might be, ray’s favorite book series is lord of the rings. (he was always especially interested in frodo and sam’s relationship… for no reason in particular, of course.) he amends this by clarifying that while there are fantasy series he likes more, he feels that lotr built the house the later authors were just living in, and he has to pay his dues.

of all the ghostbusters, though peter has been threatening to do it nearly constantly since world of the psychic got greenlit, janine is the one who ends up publishing a memoir about her time with the company. they all read it, and everyone is honestly blown away by how talented she is at writing, a skill they never really knew she possessed. janine takes this all in stride, but secretly, hearing their compliments means even more to her than the acclaim she’s receiving for the work :’)

#ghostbusters #peter venkman #winston zeddemore #ray stantz #egon spengler #janine melnitz #the fun thing about these is that some of them are thinly veiled angst fodder #(peter using books for escapist purposes and egon being raised in an environment where he couldn't bring home frankenstein)#some of them are about gay rights (ray liking sam/frodo and having strong implicitly negative feelings about luke's forced het romance)#and some of them are legit just me sitting down in front of my computer at 3:08 in the afternoon and typing #'i think the character winston zeddemore from hit classic ghostbusters (1984) would like clive cussler novels :/'#and there's nothing you can do about it #the genesis of this post was that i work at a bookstore and this is legitimately what i think about all day #text post

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Ducktales Treasure of the Golden Suns Reviews: Wronguay in Ronguay (Paid for by Patreons)

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to the genesis of magillicutty Ducktales with the second part of my months long look at Treasure of the Golden Suns, the mini series that kicked off the series. These reviews are a result of me hitting my first patreon stretch goal. I just did a LONGGG post outlining those here on tumblr so hit that up and help join my patreon so I can reach them and make some more moolah to help keep this my primary job.

So speaking of that job we’re back to The Treasure of the Golden Suns and the first chapter, while not bad, was a tad disappointing, especially since I really liked it on first viewing. So will the second chapter fair just as bad or be a massive improvement? The only way to find out is under the cut.

Previously on Ducktales: Donald shoved off with the navy leaving the boys with Scrooge, with both growing to care about one another... both out of nowhere

The boys ended up embroiled int he Beagle Boys theft of a wooden ship for a mysterious gentleman named El Capitan whose preferedd method of dealing with enterlopers.. was to use a chair like a lion tamer. After being falsely blamed for the theft, the boys ended up chasing the beagles to Scrooge’s candy factory, were vindicated and fought them off with Scrooge’s help , ending with the boys getting covered in choclate. while El Capitan escaped vowing to find the gold. Now knowing the wooden ship was a map, the family prepared to set off

And that’s where we pick up. The reporter from last episode comments on the beagle bust and while the Beagles are hauled off, with Burger asking if they have any milk after eating his chocolate prison. Because his only character trait is that...

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The camera does linger on an impression the ship made in the chocolate... hmmmmmm.

Meanwhile we meet FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD. As I said with Catch as Cash Can, he’s not BAD, just not NEARLY as memorable as the triumphantly insane 2017 version. He’s sitll a good villian and we’ll see why soon, he just has the unenviable task of competiting with a far more iconic versoin made decades later whose far more my type of bad guy. El Captian calls him and offers to make him the richest duck in the world, which he naturally is happy to hear him out on. El Captian as a character i’ll get into more.. but for now let’s talk about his weird fucking voice. For some reason, Jim is doing a Dr. Claw impression, to the point I thought this was Frank Welker. I will grant it’s better than a horrible latinx sterotype, and given the grand kishke and a minor character in this very episode, they were NOT above those, but its’ still just.. weird. He just sounds like he’s possesed with about 80 or 90 demons for no explained reason.

Back at the mansion, Scrooge and the Boys are both preparing to go after the treasure on the boat map: Scrooge is practicing vacuming it up using the pool and a sea safe vacum likely invented by Gyro, while the boys find the right coordinates to the treasure. Scrooge naturally.. is a bit of a dick about it, refusing to take them along despite them having found it, and saying they can stay with Duckworth. Duckworth’s response is about what you’d expect:

However before they can argue about this, there’s a bang at the door: It’s Flinty and here’s where the parts of this Glomgold I DO like, that do make him standout, if not as much sa his succesor shine: He plays scrooge, offering him 2 million for the Candy Factory. Naturally not realizing what Flinty’s getting out of the deal, Scrooge jumps at a quick and easy 2 million, since he knows it’ll cost MORE than that just to fix up the place. Flinty then proposes a contest: the two of them try to make as much money as possible from scratch in two days. No rules, no barriers, just whoever dosen’t have more money than the other by the end has to eat Flinty’s hat. Scrooge accepts.. but then realizes he has to eat crow and allow the boys along. With Scrooge sufficently blackmailed, the boys reveal where the treasure is: Ronguay, a made up south american county. Why they did so.. well just wait a second. And no it’s not just for the tile... but your close.

No we find out why as they take the cheapest flight avaliable to Ronguay, only for the boys their going the Wrong way to Ronguay.

Yeah I love a good pun but I draw the line at desinging an ENTIRE COUNTRY for a really obvious one. I have standards on this blog! Standards that include thirsting after Keith David , DBZA refrences up the whazoo and posting this gif of David Byrne at every given opportunity.

Look my standards are weird, but their still standards. I draw the line at making a stupid pun when there’s a rich number of countries in South America. I’m not saying Carl Barks was ever against making up a country, he probably did, could be wrong, but more often than not he did his homework instead, as did his succesor Don Rosa. It feels lazy to just make up a country when you really don’t have to and could’ve just found one with a massive rainy season for your children’s cartoon. It’s not hard. I mean it’s harder than now: now I could just google “what south american countries have torrental rains”.. but it’s not like you guys could’n’t just go to a bookstore and buy a refrence book or a library and rent one. I mean if they ran out of time to do anyresearch fine, but even for the 1980′s it wasn’t that difficult to at least TRY.

Regardless it turns out the pilot is a robot pilot.. who looks amazing but as it’s a flintheart glomgold company joint is purposfuly tring to keep them off path. Look they didn’t have to unplug the poor guy. I know what he wants.

So now on the right way to Ronguay our heroes lan only to find the locals all fleeing in terror of something. Scrooge heads in for suplies anyway and finds... a VERY racist sounding clerk. Seriously just to picture this.. picture say .. Michael Scott trying to do an mexican accent. You good and cringing? If not, adapt that to your doofus sitcom character or republican senator of choice There you go. You see my point. It’s not the WORST i’ve seen.. but only because I sat through the Rediculous 6 with my best friend, one of three, Cory, for a podcast we tried doing a year or two ago. I’ve seen Rob Schinder do this for an entire movie. In 2015 no less. So my threshold for HORRIFCALLY offensive is vast and deep. But this is still garden variety racist and should not have been okay then or now.

And it really SHOULD have the warning label on it. I’m fully in favor of the content warnings Disney started using, and it’s why I got so fucking annoyed during all the talk about it when it happend to the Muppet Show, ESPECIALLY when the republicans got a hold of it and accused them of “Canceling the muppets”. This is NOT fucking cancelation, this is a way to have the past there for posterity, while acknolding it sucked and was NEVER okay. It’s the best way to do this in my opinon, and it bothers me a LOT that a bunch of jagoffs coopted it and threw a hissy fit about Disney trying to do the right goddamn thing. And i’m also okay with leaving some media out. Disney + is a family platform. While keeping classic movies and shows on there with a proper warning is one thing, it’s another to not put song of the south or that episode of the muppets where the host later turned out ot be a pedophile on there. Some things just don’t have nearly enough worth to outpace the harm they can do. And it’s up to companies and consumers to figure out what fits where.

Anyways our heroes find a llama for transport and that the map is seemingly a dead end to the desert. But Scrooge is determined to press on... and while he does El Capitan and Glomgold are following him, though the two clearly don’t agree on whose in charge, or if El Captian sounds like dr claw or not. They followed with their own copy of the map taken from the chocolate.

As things progress the rain starts.. and our heroes find out via the JWG that this is what the citzens were all running from. They loose the llama, though are able to salvage some of their suplies it was carrying, and Scrooge nearly gives up to dispair. It’s a good, if sudden, character moment: Scrooge genuinely laments that he was worried one day he’d loose his step.. and stop being one step ahead of everyone. It shows some much needed vunerablity.. that beneath his boisterious and cantankerious usual personality he’s deathly afraid his age will eventualy mean he’ll have to stop..and having to stop adventuring and stop working and stop doing eveyrthing that makes him Scrooge McDuck is a fate worse than death.

Thankfully he dosen’t as via a figure on the ship, Huey, Dewey or Louie figures out, in a REALLY amazing twist, that the desert itself was the ocean: the ship that has the treasure simply sailed here and hid it. So while our heroes reflect, Glomgold decides to take them out NOW while he has the chance over El Captian’s protests, as the good captain only cares about the gold. But Glomgold is right.. from a villianous point of view at least. leaving them alive is a waste.. granted he does so.. in a way that makes my brain cry out in pain and want to run. He lights a stick of dynamite. In a torrential rainstorm.

I mean i’d expect 2017 Glomgold to try it and have it fail.. not to have the actually clever 87 version not only try something this stupid BUT HAVE IT WORK. THE FUSE LIGHTS. IT’S READY TO GO OFF. HE ONLY STOPS IT BECAUSE HIS MAP GETS EATEN AND THEY NEED SCROOGE’S IN TACT. JUST HOW DO YOU WHY DO YOU AUGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-

Okay i’m.. i’m good now. So after that bit of nonsense and some taking my medication, our heroes take shelter in a cave. The grusome twosome try to sneak in while their asleep.. only to trigger the alarms the boys set up using their pots and pans, a “junior woodchuck alarm”. Clever little bastards.

The tables quickly turn though as Thing one and Thing Two trap our heroes in the cave.. as i’ts flooding. Scrooge has them press on in hopes of finding a way out, and it rises further and furthe ran excenelty tense scene. But eventually our heroes manage to find somewhere safe in time: the shipwrecked boat with all the gold. Scrooge even puts on a nifty golden conquestador’s helmet.

Naturally since we have minutes left in the episode the bad guys show up and have a gun... they never had before.

Regardless our heroes are lowered into the lifeboat at gunpoint as the ship goes out to sea and i’ts revealed el captain worked on teh ship as he knows the full manifest.

However both villians personal flaws end up doing them in: Glomgold’s need to gloat means he gives Scrooge a golden coin as he mocks him about winning the bet... only for El Captain to fly into an insane rage demanding he swim out and get it despite just how LITTLE he really needs the coin. He and Glomgold struggle over the ships canon, both no longer needing the other and eventually fire off a ball that capsizes the ship. El Captian seemingly drowns while Glomgold is forced onto the life boat with the McDucks.. and finds out he lost as while he and Scrooge both lost the treasure the coin he tossed scrooge means Scrooge still has made more money. So Glomgold prepares to eat his hat and El Captian prepares for vengance and to get his gold back.

Final Thoughts on Wronguay in Ronguay: The iffy bit with the store clerk aside.. this episdoe is easily the best 87 Episode i’ve seen. It captures the spirit of barks perfectly with plenty of intresting twists that kept me engaged the whole time, some great jokes, and two great villians who are done in soley by their own greed and neurosusi> it’s really great stuff and what I expected more and remember more from the 87 Series: top notch adventure in the barks style but wiht it’s own unique touches. While the pilot was a bit rough due to all the ground it tried to cover, this episode, now having the basic formula of the series pretty much set, is allowed to just be a fun, daring adventure story that brilliantly builds off the last episode but can be wholly enjoyed on it’s own. Hopefully this momentum keeps because I don’t remember being the fondest of the next two episodes.. and given that content warning I think we’re in for a rough time next month.

If you liked htis join my patreon, etc etc, I went into that mor eup top. Till All Are One, See you at the next Rainbow.

#ducktales #wronguay in ronguay #ducktales 87 #scrooge mcduck #flintheart glomgold #huey duck #louie duck #dewey duck #el capitain #duckworth #reviews #disney plus #the disney afternoon

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animalpetcel · 5 years

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Ideal RHATO

Okay, so I’ve done some thinking. While Red Hood and the Outlaws was an interesting concept; give Jason friends and a team of his own, get him out of the Batfam Shadow, it’s been bogged down by L*bdell spotty writing and questionable Editorial decisions. So I’ve taken the time to think of what I would personally want the Outlaws to be.

First of all, I don’t believe that Jason would be better of if he remained solo. While he does deserve a good solo run other than UtH, the idea of permanently sequestering from creating meaningful, recurring relationships with other heroes is just repulsive to me. He should be allowed to have friends and people to talk to outside of the Batfamily guys, there’s only so many adventures he can have by himself before they all start sounding the same. You could even have him gaining friends as part of his character development.

Okay! So let’s begin

In my version, the Outlaws would be a more obvious antihero team. They take cases by those who feel that regular heroes can’t help them, that they won’t go far enough to achieve justice. The Outlaws won’t kill often, but it would usually be awful criminals like drug dealers, traffickers or those in charge, but if they don’t kill, they won’t be above dissing out harsh, lasting punishments to those who cross them. There could be the possibility of them being a team looking for redemption, but I’ve never really thought about them going in that direction.

Btw: This will be a hard reboot, everything from New52 to Rebirth regarding RHATO will be completely retconned, because Lobdell wrote almost all of them and despite what people want to believe most of it is bad save for some barely passable moments

Outlaw Members

Jason Todd

Can’t have the Outlaws without their infamous leader. Like I said above, I believe that having his own team can be a good thing for Jason, he can establish a history disconnected from his history with Bruce and actually start to move on. I’d imagine him being a reluctant leader, preferring to work alone but admitting that having people to rely on has made his mission a lot easier. He’s a very driven and calculated person, and after reading Arkham Knight Genesis, I have no doubt in his leadership skills and his ability to turn a ragtag group of antiheroes into a team to be reckoned with.

Idk if I’d keep his All-Caste stuff. I know that it was probably created to give his backstory something that stands out, since he’s the third Batfam member to have the League of Assassins in his backstory and isn’t the only one that’s died before, but he barely uses the All-blades or brings up the All-Caste to the point were you can omit it and don’t really have to do that much to replace it. At this point, I’d accept Talia making him train with Brother Blood over the All-Caste.

I’d probably say that the Lazurus pit Talia used to bring him back was kinda special, giving him a minor healing factor and increasing his strength, idk, something small.

Eddie Bloomberg

(I hate Tom King and this dialogue too but I wanted a recent image of him)

Did you know that unlike Roy Harper, Eddie was actually Jason’s best friend pre-reboot? Most people don’t because DC doesn’t care about using pre-established canon or developing its less popular heroes! 🙃

Okay, I used to be a huge fan of Jason and Roy’s friendship in New52 RHATO, but then I learned that Roy was originally Dick’s friends, that his personality was dumbed down for New52, Roy actually hates mercenaries and would never become one, they only used Roy because he was more popular and that most Titan/Roy friends actually hate his New52 counterpart and friendship with Jason. While I believe that Roy and be both friendship with Dick AND Jason (but in different ways. Dick is more of a close friend while he and Jason should have a more big brother kind of relationship), I have to admit that DC dropped the ball here, and it would be easier to just scrap everything instead of trying to make it work.

Eddie’s personality is actually quite similar to New52 Roy’s, and he and Jason already have unexplored history, so switching Roy with him won’t mess anything too much.

And now, I hear you ask “Ani, what about the Outlaw’s being an antihero group? Wouldn’t that make Eddie stand out?”, and I will reply “Don’t worry, I have a plan!”

Back when Eddie first got his powers, Neron, the king of hell at the time (?) wanted Eddie to be his protege, but Eddie refuses. But what if Neron was more forceful? Eddie could be offered, now powerless again because of the events of TT (but his death is retconned to just getting badly injured), to become Neron’s protege once again. With nothing left to lose (his relationship with Blue Devil is still in the fritz, Teen Titans no longer seem to give a damn and Rose & Jaime is still off doing their own things), he takes it. I guess he’s probably look different with more of Neron’s power coursing through his veins, but the point is that Outlaws become a “Fall from grace” for him. He’s trying to still be a hero, but as Neron’s influence continues to grow, his ability to tell right from wrong gets more and more clouded.

He’s the one to approach Jason with the idea of being a team, wanting to relive the “Good Ol’ Days” when they were younger and less bogged down with personal trauma. While Jason is reluctant, he admits that since being self-exiled from the Batfamily that it’s been kinda lonely, so he agrees, but only short-term. Eddie then segways into the next member of their burgeoning group–

Rose Wilson

While pre-reboot, Rose and Jason did not have the friendliest interactions, with her holding a blade to her throat while his brothers threatened him with a crime he never committed. Post-reboot, he and Rose seem to have a more “friendlier” relationship, but the Wilson family have been rebooted at least theee times in both New52 and Rebirth, so who knows if they even still know each other now,

Rose and Eddie were very close friends in Teen Titans, and I think that getting Rose away from the madness of her family and father could be good for her character.

Eddie manages to convince her to join the “Outlaws”, but like Jason, she goes into it thinking that it’ll be a one-time thing. She cares a lot about Eddie, and sticks with the team to make sure that he’s doing alright. She probably could have an arc were Nightwing confronts her on her work in the Outlaws (since the other heroes see them as white-hat mercenaries) since he mentored her in being a hero, so it could be about dealing with what other people expect of her.

Essence

While L*bdell might be basically a shit writer, he does create interesting concepts. With a better writer, Essence could be a very interesting character, watching from the shadows and judging whether or not the Outlaws are actually “good” people, before she eventually starts taking a more active role in helping them punish criminals.

While she would at first interact solely with Jason, asking him questions about his deeds and ordering him in what direction she feels is best, she would eventually introduce herself to the rest of the group. I think she’d get along best with Komand’r, while the others might test her absolutism, Black-And-White morality a bit.

Rankorr (Jack Moore)

I know that there’s some people who want Guy Gardner to be Jason’s lantern, but what about a lantern who is close to Jason in age and actually fits the Outlaw theme?

Jack Moore is a Red Lantern, not only a Red Lantern, but the first human lantern who is also the first Red Lantern to be capable of creating constructs. He struggles with his rage, and deep down, he wants to enjoy a normal life on earth.

Maybe after Red Lantern (retconning Lobo or if not, he’s brought back using Red Lantern Blood Magic), he decides that the RL’s are a bit too cult-like for him and tries to lay low on Earth, finishing his literature degree and opening up a small bookstore somewhere in London. He’s close with Guy, but still can’t/refuses to let go of his rage, so Jack is still a RL

Of course, keeping his rage at bay is hard work, and after witnessing police brutality one more time, he loses control.

The Outlaws were hired by the family of the victim to make the officers see justice, but after seeing Jack work, they realize that this might be their easiest case yet.

Afterwards, Jack tries to downplay the entire thing (before resorting to threats when the Outlaws won’t listen), but Jason eventually convinced him that his talents would be wasted just being a civilian (and that his rage will only get worse if he continues to just let it boil without an “outlet”) so he joins the team

Blackfire

I’ve read Komand’r’s backstory, I know how bad it looks. However, in a medium where retcons and reimaginings are features instead of bugs (and can benefit a character’s story if done right), I really think it could be possible to make her work.

After reading New52 RHATO, I began thinking that it could be so much better if not only Eddie took Roy’s spot, but also if Komand’r took Starfire’s, since I feel like she had more potential beyond “Kori’s evil disabled sister”, “War Criminal” and “Struggling queen of Tamaran”

First, I’d change her pre-reboot backstory so instead of taking over the Gordanians, she is instead captured by them after Starfire frees her from the Psions (Komand’r still hates her sister and refuses to follow her). Through her clever mind and manipulations, she manages to earn favor with Lord Damyn, feigning romantic interest. Of course, given Komand’r’s nature, she ends up killing and replacing him, but her rule doesn’t go over well and she is again recaptured, but this time she’s brought to Earth.

Realizing that she’s now trapped on the planet whete her sister has become a successful and popular hero, Komand’r is at first angry, and then conspires to free herself and take revenge on her sister (who she still blames for everything despite that not being the case).

The Outlaws bust the alien trafficking ring, and Komand’r, seeing her chance, decides to show off and make nice with them to eventually use them for her revenge.

She finds Eddie and Rankorr easy to manipulate, but she bumps Heads with Jason whenever she tries to take his role as leader away from him and finds Rose’s mind to be “weak”. Overtime however, she bonds with Jason over feeling inferior to their siblings, realizes that her anger shares Rankorr’s intensity, and grows a genuine friendship with Rose and Eddie

Oh yeah, and maybe she tries to make things right with Kori

Artemis Grace

What would the Outlaws be without the greatest Amazon to have ever lived? Nothing, that’s for sure.

While I don’t agree with Jaytemis (at least not yet), I have to admit that Jason would be a fool not to like her. She’s a cool, confident character with a lot of interesting lore behind her.

Her joining will probably be pretty close to canon. The Outlaws are tasked with going after Black Mask, and Jason decides to go undercover, as the Red Hood still has his fingers in various criminal pies. While investigating, he runs into Artemis, who is looking for the Bow of Ra, and rest is history.

I feel like she’ll get along really well with Rose and Komand’r and maybe she’ll date one. She’ll definitely view Eddie a bit dismissively, and she isn’t a huge fan of demons. Rankorr would probably come off as stuck up to her.

Bizarro

Anyone who knows me will know that I’m am not a huge fan of Bizarro clones. I consider them to be an overused concept (that sometimes feels as if it relies on gene superiority, but idk if I’ll ever fully process my dislike for them), and the fact that as the time I’m writing this, there are at least four currently in continuity does not enamor me with the concept more.

However, after re-reading RHATO a few times, I’ll admit that the Outlaws’ Bizarro has grown on me. Since he already kinda has a unique name (Bizz), all I think he needs is a more visually distinct costume (doesn’t even have to directly reference Superman, but I can go 50/50 on the backwards “S”)

The Outlaws getting Bizz is exactly the same as canon. I’d imagine that he and Eddie would be as close as brothers. While Rankorr might find Bizz’s way of thinking and speaking to be annoying, I’d think that Rankorr will eventually warm up to him and probably teach him how to read and help Artemis teach him. Komand’r and Rose will probably be less receptive to him, but who knows

August Heart

I’m a Godspeed fan first and human second, we’ve been knew.

In all seriousness, Godspeed is the perfect Rebirth era character for RHATO and the fact that he and Jason still haven’t met is why DC doesn’t have any rights.

Okay okay, but he’s honestly a perfect fit. Like Jason, he also kills when dealing with crimes, but he isn’t so good and knowing who’s guilty and who isn’t just yet.

This will probably be after Death of the Speedforce, with August finally making things right with Barry, but still not forgiving himself for everything that happened. Deciding to self-exile himself rather than go back to Iron Heights, August travels, trying to figure out what do to do next, trying to follow Barry’s rules (which he finds to be very wishy-washy) to the best of his ability.

Eventually, he learns that Black Hole is still running, and against his better instincts, he goes after them.

His trail of lightning destruction catches the eye of the Outlaws.

Barry, realizing that his best-friend might need someone who can actually be there all the time to help reign him in, Barry goes to the Outlaws and asks them if they can help him once they catch up to him

They do in the form of offering a spot on the team.

August is very self-assured (even if it is hiding a softer, more emotional center), but has proven to be able to work with others, so I can see the other Outlaws coming to like him. They might find him a little cocky/early to jump the gun, but still a trusted and valued member of the team.

Since every Robin has their own flash, it only makes sense to finally give Jason (and have them date) a speedster of his own, and it should be someone who fits his morals, and who else could Then the speedster fans literally call “The Red Hood of the Flashfam”?

Final Thoughts

Other possible members I would consider/accept are

Eradicator Superman

Koryak

Vanessa Kapatelis/Silver Swan lll

Simon Amal (Crux)

Danny Chase

Clone!Roy Harper

Connor Hawke

Orm Marvius

Man O’ War

Lagoon Boy

Scarlet

Zachary Zatara

Thomas Merlyn

Ragman

Bleez

Walter West

Even with a cast as sizable as the one I just listed, with a good enough writer, there could still a few minor side characters. I would personally want the them to be

Scarlet: Jason’s former sidekick. She could be either a civilian who he talks to get experience some normalcy or the leader of her own version of the Outlaws made of up the Generation Outlaws we meet in RHATO #37-40. Either way, it could contrast with Bruce and the way he (mis)treats his own sidekicks and family

Zachary Zatara: Eddie’s old friend who helped him get his devil powers. Zachary would definitely be worried over Eddie once again accepting Neron’s power and will want to try to help. Whether he suceeds or not will depend if the writers want to go in that direction

Isabel Ardila: She’s a nothing character, but there’s a small chance that with a better writer, she might gain an interesting personality or an actual purpose in RHATO

Talia Al Ghul: before the reboot, Talia was Jason’s mentor figure and even gave him a cool dagger. It would be so cool if we can bring that back and erase Morrison’s problematic charactization of her. Maybe the dagger she gives Jason could be an All-Blade or smth. They’d definitely take a few cases from her however

Batfam, Titans and respective groups: it would have to happen eventually. It could lead to some interesting, angst filled conversations. And who knows, maybe they’ll actually make progress with their issues

But this post has gone on long enough. I just really wanted to talk a bit about my ideal Outlaws team that I will never see anywhere except for my dreams because mass media hates me and DC still thinks that Lobdell deserves to write Jason 😔😭

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clarabosswald · 5 years

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okay so someone on twitter dug up this absolutely outstanding uhhh “”article”” on his dark materials in general and the golden compass movie specifically by one david j stewart and i just. i HAVE to break down at least some of it because it’s an absolute gem

(this is a bit long - there is a LOT of stupidity to cover here)

first of all, the url

i could honestly just end the post here because that line right there is a masterpiece by itself. screw eurovision, hellivision is the next hot thing

There is no movie any more evil than THE GOLDEN COMPASS.

that’s the first line of the article. what a first line. the most amazing thing is that in an entirely different context i can kind of agree with this claim

Philip Pullman is a sinfully proud, God-hating, militant atheist.

militant! oh wow. is the hdm fandom actually pullman’s secret army? like dumbledore’s army in hp? do we have secret meetings? i want in

The movie has been dumbed down

yet again i find myself agreeing with mr stewart

in the end the children kill God and everyone can do as they please.

people having free will? good lord, the horror.

The movie is indescribably evil.

damn dude yet again you’re right but you’re kinda preaching to the choir here at this point

The word "demon" is repeated several dozen times throughout the movie, as each child has it's own lovable demon.

this is the first time in the article that mr david j stewart stubbornly refuses to understand that there’s this thing called “concept” and “artistic license” and that in the context of the hdm world, pullman used his artistic license to change the common meaning of the word d(a)emon. NOT TO MENTION that pullman hardly made up the concept of a daemon as a positive creature - “originally referred to a lesser deity or guiding spirit”, literally the first line in the wikipedia article about the classical concept of daemons. but yeah i’m unfairly expecting mr dave to do his research so i guess that’s kinda mean of me.

Witches by the hundreds are featured in the movie, and are portrayed as being good, helpful and rescuers.

for a moment i wondered what mr dave’s opinion on harry potter is like, but i can imagine it quite vividly.

The star character, a little girl named Lyra Belacqua, loves her demon (who takes various animal forms), and she has named him "Pan" (short for Pantalaimon)

somewhere inside of me, my inner hdm myth fanatic is screaming in rage at all the gross misunderstanding of the basic plot of hdm, but well we’ve got more serious problems here

Pan is the pagan god of sexual rape, lust and fertility. Statues of Pan are often displayed showing him with an erection.

you know what’s EXTREMELY ironic here? pantalaimon isn’t named after that pan. he’s actually named after the greek saint pantaleon. (mr dave now provides a link to his rage fest over narnia. good to know he’s against even blatantly pro-christian fiction.)

NOTE: Pullman uses the word "daemon." A "daemon" is just another term for "demon."

...no, honey, they really don’t, but we already know you didn’t do your research.

In the movie THE GOLDEN COMPASS, there are at least 50 references to a child's "DEMON."

imagine this grown up dude sitting in a movie theater watching a kids’ movie and counting the number of times the word “daemon” is said dkgsdaoighs

In one part of the movie, a missing boy (Roger Parslow) is found, but he is out of his mind and looks distraught because his DEMON has been taken away from him. Talk about twisting the truth around. The little girl who stars in the movie, Lyra, vows to find and return the boy's demon.

aslkdghsaodigho yeah this guy was definitely too busy to count “daemons” to actually pay attention to the plot

Pullman is hoping that unsuspecting parents will take their children to see the movie

no i actually think that at this point pullman didn’t want anything to do with the movie

The title for the trilogy comes from a line in John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Pullman views his trilogy as a re-telling of Milton’s poem (which means that His Dark Materials is in reality Pullman’s re-telling of the Genesis story in fantasy form)

no, not really, not as literal as that, but artistic subtleties seem to escape you quite frequently, my dear dave

In the trilogy, a young girl becomes enmeshed in an epic struggle against a nefarious [extremely wicked] Church known as the "Magisterium."

iooisadhgosdiahgosa i LOVE how dave made the EFFORT to explain the meaning of “nefarious” to the reader

Pullman's books are a work of darkness that every Christian needs to diligently expose (Ephesians 5:11)

damn dude can you believe hdm got so popular it’s referenced in the bible

America was founded upon faith in God, and the Communists are trying to rob it from our children

kefhsaoidgsdoh COMMUNISM CONFIRMED

at this point in the article mr dave finally decides it’s time to talk about the story of the golden compass in mere two paragraphs. spoiler: the first paragraph is yet again dedicated to anti-pullman ranting. so much for that plot summary.

In the books, Pullman represents God as a decrepit and perverse angel who captures the dead in a “prison camp” afterlife.

damn the dude says he’s gonna talk about the plot of the golden compass and then goes ahead and spoils the amber spyglass just like that. where are your internet manners, dave

The story centers on Lyra, a young girl living at Jordan College in the Oxford of an alternate world where everyone is accompanied by a daemon, a physical representation of their soul in animal form.

this is the ONE time dave refers to daemons as what they ACTUALLY are. but i suspect he just copy-pasted this bit without actually reading what is said in it.

One morning, Lyra's school Master

yet again someone was too busy counting words then remembering the plot/characters

Lyra then finds herself in a world where she must fight against evil, and here lies the controversy. Lyra is the "chosen child" who must do battle with evil. But in this story, the things that are good are evil (the church is the Magisterium, the bad group trying to gain control of all) and evil is good (daemons and witches are allies.)

it’s almost...... as if......... it’s somewhat........... symbolic.......... you know, that artistic device? symbolism? yeah? no...?

our darling dave then links to this piece as the source of his info on the plot of tgc and god that’s a whole nest of wasps i can’t even begin to deal with here. but it’s p entertaining how in only briefly reading the thing i can already recognize whole sentences who got copy-pasted by dave for his own magnificent piece of critique

Satan's Bid for Your Child

oh, WHAT a title for the next segment of the article. i’m hooked

Even though the books are strongly anti-God and anti-church, they’re getting a strong push in the godless public school system as curriculum resources. First the God-hating Communists introduced the lies of Evolution into the public school system. Then they kicked God's Word and prayer out of the public schools in 1962 and 1963. Now they want to teach our children homosexuality and witchcraft.

communism! evolution! homosexuality! witchcraft! god, i’m trembling

dave goes on for a while without mentioning the movie again, just ranting against the world in general. parts of it are still amusing, though:

Evolution is in fact a religion, as is humanism, witchcraft and Satanism.

yeah man i miss it when in school we used to pray to darwin every morning before class started :(

It requires faith to believe Evolution because there is NO proof, or even evidences to permit study. It is tragic that young people today are being taught a theory that has NO proof whatsoever. In sharp contrast, the Word of God is supported by an overwhelming abundance of scientific, historical, archeological and astronomical evidence.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA OH MY GOD. WOW!!!!!!!!!!

Public school children are being taught religion; but it's the religions of Humanism (i.e., man is his own god), Evolution, New Age and now Demonism.

are daemians aware that daemonism is being taught in public schools as a whole ass religion??? damn

With the rise of the New World Order since the 911 attacks

holy shit dude dave is diving deep into the waters of conspiracy at this point

Surely Satan is already panicking, knowing that he must accomplish much in a very short time frame. This explains why we see a flood of demonism, witchcraft and apostasy sweeping the world in an effort to destroy Christianity. Have you heard about the new FLY Pentop COMPUTER for kids, which features witchcraft? Did you know that Toys-R-Us sells a VooDooz doll for children? It comes complete with a spell book, and pins to stab your VooDooz doll with. I was at Barnes and Noble bookstore and saw a Teenage Witchcraft Kit.

THIS DUDE IS FUCKING WILD i imagine he started yelling at some poor employee for having witchcraft in that store

Doesn't anyone love God anymore?

this is sad.

The Bible condemns all forms of witchcraft—Voodoo, charms, spells, divination, incantations, palm readings, Ouija boards, psychics, witchery, sorcery, wizards, magic, potions, good luck charms, astrology, necromancy, spiritism, magic candles, mesmerism, hypnosis, astral projection, levitation, and anything else that invokes the power of Satan.

he actually............went through the trouble of listing all of that. from memory, no doubt

WE’RE BACK TO THE GOLDEN COMPASS AT LAST LADS

Instead of presenting the trailer on the homepage, The Golden Compass website uses audio to introduce the characters of the film and their respective demons, and then provides a prompt to "Meet Your Demon." Twenty questions are presented which promise to reveal "your true character and the form of your demon." Once you complete the questionnaire, you can send your resulting demon to your friends, presumably to build a community of young demons who will all later commune at the theater. This is pure Satanism and it's being directed at our children. Satan wants your child. The Golden Compass series glorifies demonism, witchcraft and divination; while blaspheming God Almighty.

Satan Wants Your Child

In the movie THE GOLDEN COMPASS, children are being kidnapped by a mysterious group called the Gobblers and taken "to the North" where they are tortured by having their daemons separated from them. This is the Satanic garbage that film producers and book publishers are vomiting upon our children. Towards the end of the film, the starring little girl deliberately destroys the machine that was robbing children of their daemons. Literally, the movie portrays the little girl as a hero for ensuring that all the other children can continue to be daemon possessed. This is one sick movie, straight out of the pits of Hell.

it’s fucking ASTOUNDING how this paragraph could straight up pass as magisterium propaganda

How about you? Our time on earth is short my friend. This life will be over before we know it. Is your heart right with God? Are you saved? Have your sins been washed away by the precious blood of Jesus Christ?

this dude got so fucking emotional over one bad movie he grossly misunderstood i am INSPIRED

our dearly beloved dave now goes on to quote yet another highly reputable source on the evil of the golden compass

"His Dark Materials" by atheist Philip Pullman

is “atheist” a title at this point? now that pullman is a sir, do they call him “atheist sir pullman” or “sir atheist pullman”?

Unsaved Heathens and Apostates Praise Pullman's Works of Darkness

do i get to officially call myself “unsaved heathen and apostate” because that’s one rad fucking title

Satan truly is the god of this world (2nd Corinthians 4:4), and he has many servants.

this is such a confusing fucking statement. how can satan be the god of this world if there is only one god? or two, because there is god and there’s also jesus? god i don’t know christianity never made any sense so this statement isn’t actually that surprising

Why would any professed "Christian" support Pullman's works of darkness, which he admittedly calls HIS DARK MATERIALS?

esteemed article writer dave is unaware of the existence of the concept of “references”

Sadly, ChristianityToday magazine promotes this vile filth, giving it a rating of 2 1/2 out of a potential 4 stars. I give the movie a ZERO rating, and so should you if you love the Lord Jesus Christ!

yeah guys! we must purify this dirty world by giving bad ratings to hollywood movies! this is the only way to show jesus our love and devotion!

Movie writer-director Chris Weitz has said he wants to make the next films more "iconoclastic," so consider this bit of sacrilege a taste of what is yet to come. The word "iconoclastic" means "Characterized by attack on established beliefs or institutions." In other words, the sequels to The Golden Compass are going to blaspheme God and attack Christianity much worse than the first movie.

man.... chris had good intentions. too bad new line fucked him over with how bad they butchered the movie in post-prod.

If we don't complain, then who will... the atheists?

this line is so confusing and meaningless and yet so timeless and iconic. wow

The Golden Compass is a Sicko Movie

i can’t breathe this sounds like an early 2000s compliment coming from a middle school bad boy who does tubular tricks on his skateboard

For Pullman, sexual experience is an essential part of becoming a full-grown human, despite the confusion and pain it can cause.

HOW IN THE FUCK IS THIS CONTROVERSIAL OR WRONG FOR NON-ACE PEOPLE KADSH;GOIDAGSDKJG

Children Using Divination to Confirm Guidance from Demons? "Lyra tries to consult the alethiometer to see if the daemons are right.”

Things Taking Wildly Out Of Context Making No Sense?

Kill God?

after reading this torturous rant? yes absolutely. next

Of course the idea in a trilogy is to read the second and third books, and not just the first. Naturally Scholastic is selling nicely packaged boxes of the trilogy.

i love how dave felt the need to explain to us how trilogies and bookselling work. what a sweetheart

Blasphemy! Children are being taught that killing God is quite a desirable thing to do.

will anyone ever understand that WILL AND LYRA NEVER INTENDED TO KILL GOD, AND WHEN GOD DIED IT WAS BY MISTAKE AND MADE THEM UPSET AND SAD? i mean this guy won’t, but people who actually read the books???

God and the Church Are Awful and Pathetic?

dave at this point in reading your rant i hate the whole of christianity. yes. next

Summoning Witches? “Serafina and her witches decide that they need to summon other witch clans....”

Mr Dave Is Unaware That The Word “Summon” Has Got Several Meanings

“He is so weak and old that he blows to bits with the first breeze, but his dissolution comes as a relief. It is as though God does not want the burden of leadership. In the end, Will and Lyra don’t kill God. Instead, they free him, and he becomes one with the universe again. The fact that God dissolves just like the newly freed ghosts suggests that perhaps God is simply the spirit of the living.”

i love how dave quotes this whole bit - ACTUAL GOOD ANALYSIS OF GOD’S DEATH IN HDM - without absolving any of its meaning

Conclusion The Golden Compass is evil.

i love this

children today are being challenged to hate Christianity, and are being invited to join ranks with the Devil's army.

damn i totally missed that bit about joining satan’s army in hdm

All we hear about nowadays is how religion throughout the ages has caused wars and suppressed people's rights.

it’s almost as if it’s true!

Increasingly, children today are being brainwashed to view Christianity as a power-hungry "MAGISTERIUM" (i.e., the evil organization in The Golden Compass), which seeks to suppress the rights of homosexuals, Wiccan witches, Evolutionists, abortionists, feminists and other degenerates of society.

WHAT a sentence!!!!!

The grave danger of Harry Potter and The Golden Compass

that sounds like one hell of an au

Christians are commanded not to associate with any professed Christian who is a drunkard, chases women, lives for money or lives in unrepentant sin.

and yet donald trump is president of the united states! go figure, davey

Public school children are being taught that the sin of homosexuality should be accepted; BUT, God says "No." Now you know why homosexuals hate God's Word so much.

we’re almost at the end of the rant and dave didn’t reference balthamos and baruch even once and i feel ROBBED

Women in the 1960's embraced feminism, because they were told (just as Eve) that the higher powers were trying to suppress their rights. Satan lied to Eve, thus creating a sinful power-struggle between her and God.

damn why won’t women just understand that men are like god :\\\

Satan is recruiting. Satan has a bid for your child mom and dad, and he will stop at nothing to recruit your child's soul.

gotta admire the determination there

Again, The Golden Compass is evil. It is not just a fantasy for children. The author of the series (Philip Pullman) is a militant, God-hating atheist who has openly stated that his goal is to "undermine the basis of Christian belief" in the mind's of children.

dave decided that the best way to end his rant is to quote a line that already appeared in the text at least 2 times before. man, if you ever think you’re a bad writer, remember that at least you’re not as bad as this dude.

moral of the story is: dave probably needs some sleep. and professional help

#his dark materials #the golden compass #god you gotta love the internet

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ao3feed-queliot · 4 years

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Power of the Heart, or Eliot Sings a Song so Beautiful that even Sisyphus Stops Rolling his Boulder

by get_sunny

“Peter Gabriel?”

“Hades seems like the type of god who would listen to Genesis.”

****

With some help from a bookstore owner, Eliot journeys to the Underworld to retrieve Quentin Coldwater.

(My contribution to all of the Orpheus and Eurydice fix-it fics that I have become a total hoe for.)

Words: 3722, Chapters: 1/4, Language: English

Fandoms: The Magicians (TV)

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: Gen, M/M

Characters: Quentin Coldwater, Eliot Waugh, Margo Hanson, Alice Quinn, Julia Wicker, William "Penny" Adiyodi, 23rd Timeline William "Penny" Adiyodi, Original Female Character(s), Henry Fogg, Josh Hoberman, Fen (The Magicians)

Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh

Additional Tags: Fix-It, Canon Divergent-post 5x03, Angst with a Happy Ending, Season 5 AU, Eliot Rescues Quentin, References to Depression, Soulmates, Feelings, Quentin Coldwater Deserved Better, Eliot Waugh Deserved Better, Canonical Character Death, But we undo it, Canon Compliant, up to 5x03, Alice Quinn & Eliot Waugh Friendship

read it on the AO3 at http://archiveofourown.org/works/23282761

#ao3feed #fanfic #the magicians #queliot

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3packsfrom21 · 5 years

Text

Gander through Greece

On October 22, we flew from Rome to Athens. Knowing that Greece was nearing the end of its warm season, we only stayed in Athens for 2 nights before heading to Thira (Santorini). Our days in Athens were spent close to the hostel. I was feeling a bit of a stomach bug, so I needed to lay low. However, we were thrilled to discover some delicious food for cheaper prices than we’d seen in months! Greece is known for its gyros – wraps comparable to kebabs with generally either chicken, pork, or lamb, along with onions, tomatoes, tzatziki sauce, lettuce, and fries (inside). We were just grateful to have meat options that we could afford that weren’t just smoked ham, prosciutto ham, fake deli meat ham, or slightly-more-expensive-but-probably-actually-has-meat-in-it-ham. We also discovered feta cheese and HOLY. I didn’t think feta cheese could get better than ours at home, but I assure you it can. [In case you’re confused, my stomach bug didn’t eliminate my appetite].

The morning of the 24th, we woke bright and early (4:30 a.m.) to catch our ferry. Our receptionist had recommended that we show up two hours early, so although our ferry didn’t leave until 7:30, we caught a cab down to the harbor at 5. We were then confused because no one knew where our boat was supposed to dock. Our taxi driver was immensely helpful (another one of the Lord’s saving gifts) and helped us until we figured it out. Apparently, it is ridiculous to show up to a ferry 2 hours early. So, although we kept showing ticket offices the name of our boat, nothing made sense until we finally showed them the time when we would be leaving. They weren’t even considering boats that were arriving that far in the future. Our taxi driver thought we were crazy. With everything sorted, we sat at our gate for 45 min, while Lynece gloated (she’s the “no need to be too early, everything will work out” type), Kiana sat, resolutely unfazed (she’s the “better to be early cause what if [insert literally any possible obstacle that could arise here]” type), and I sat between them, admiring the boats and early morning breeze (I’m the “sure, ok” type). We all had a good laugh, and did get some pretty sweet seats on the ferry (which we later learned were reserved for people who paid more, but regardless). The ride was 7 hours long. We experienced the most amazing sunrise, the kind that can only be witnessed from aboard a boat, and spent the rest of the time chatting. You’d think that we’d eventually run out of things to talk about, but, although we do have our moments of silence, we always have more to say.

Now, to talk about Santorini. In the last post, Lynece told you about Venice being her “must-see” destination. Santorini was mine. In fifth grade English class, I had to do a project, which focused on traveling to another country. I remember basically nothing about the project itself, but I know I did mine on Santorini. I priced out flights and accommodations (pretty sweet deal when you’re 11 and have all the money in the world). I recall choosing a private home in Oia, with a pool that overlooked the stunning view of pearly-white-walled and sky-blue-domed houses, as well as the surrounding islands and endless ocean. From then on, I was GOING to Santorini (“like, when I’m old enough, like probably when I’m 16, or something”). My resolve was further strengthened by the likes of Mama Mia and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I, too, put it on my list of 10 places that I wanted to see for my 13th birthday trip, and even cajoled Aasta into putting it on hers. And yet, somehow, even with turning 16 and everything, the plan had yet to materialize. Until now.

Since 5th grade, I’ve learned that apparently (and disappointingly) I’m not alone in wanting to go to Santorini. It’s chocked full of tourists who were as convinced as I by Meryl Streep and Abba. So, my expectations were sufficiently checked. Still, the 11 year old inside me couldn’t help but jump with glee as we neared the white-topped cliffs. We didn’t stay in a private home with a pool and a view (although, my fifth grade research was pretty accurate - there are plenty of these homes available). But, our hostel in Fira was clean, had plenty of people to meet, and did have a pool (minus the view). On our first morning, after picking up some groceries and Freddo Cappuccinos (iced espresso, with some kind of special sweetener, topped with just-under-whipped, whipped cream), we sat looking out over all of the magnificent view, feet dangling over the wall, and I couldn’t help but be filled with overwhelmingly joyous tears. It was all too cool.

We spent 5 lovely days in Santorini. The first was spent exploring the climbing streets of Fira. The second was spent in Oia (we went to Oia!), where we explored some more, found the classic windmills as well as an an epic bookstore (that I’d still be in now if it weren’t for Kiana and Lynece’s prompting), and discovered the unpredictable nature of the local bus system (I say local because that’s what it is called, but it is used much more by tourists than locals, from what I could tell). The bus is supposed to come every 20 minutes; however, the bus that brought us back from Oia to Fira was 45 min late. A new understanding of “island time.” The third day was a life maintenance day, where we caught up on journals, did laundry, etc. On the fourth day (I’m beginning to remind myself of Genesis, here), we went to the heavenly “Red Beach,” named after the red sand. It was a cove perfect for swimming, with the kind of water you see on people’s screen savers. We swam and soaked up the rays aaand.. I forgot to drink enough water. Which brings me to the fifth day, where I had a touch of heat stroke, so we lounged around the pool of our hostel all day before catching our ferry back to Athens in the evening. While here, we caught the famed sunsets almost every night (there aren’t enough words), and were blessed with absolutely perfect weather. Also, being at the end of the season, there were sales everywhere and we were each able to pick out a ring we liked.

There is something truly magical about Santorini. It is undeniably westernized. It’s busy. But there’s just a feeling about it that leaves you wanting more. It has an almost Arabic feel to it (I say this with admittedly zero grounding, as I’ve never been to an Arabic country). It feels island-y and luxurious but also feels like real things have happened here. It makes me curious to explore other Greek islands to see what even more spectacular gems might be waiting outside of all the vacationers’ sights. But I would be more than thrilled to spend a season just here, working at one of the shops (preferably the book store mentioned above). Many of the people that we met who were working at the shops were from elsewhere in Europe; they all go home for the down season. So I know it is frequently done! Maybe when I’m finished my degree..

Anyway. We loved Santorini. And I will be back.

As I started saying, on the evening of the 29th, we caught a ferry ride back to Athens. A 12 hour, overnight ferry this time. There were no cabins (and we wouldn’t have been able to afford them even if there had been) but, luckily, the boat was not too busy and there were plenty of open sofas to lie down on. Even better, the ride was incredibly smooth, especially compared to the rather choppy waters on the way there. It was a surprisingly incredible sleep!

We arrived in Athens at around 9:00 a.m. We stayed at the same hostel as before – it was particularly lovely because there were curtains around the bunks which gave us a little bit of privacy. You come to really appreciate these kinds of things! The heat stroke had thrown me off; I lost my appetite towards anything Greek food and was just not feeling myself. So, we spent the 30th and 31st laying low, once again. Truthfully, we were glad to have an excuse to take a break from any kind of sightseeing. Europe was tremendous, but we were exhausted, especially after Rome. Rome really took it all out of us. So those two days of rainy weather and bed/café chilling were necessary for us.

We ventured out a bit more on the 1st. We went and explored the area around the Acropolis, called the Plaka. I was feeling particularly moody and, frankly, angry with still being in Europe, still having to eat this stupid food and sleep in these stupid foreign beds. All I wanted was Mum’s chicken and dumplings, or noodle soup, or Dad’s buttermilk pancakes. It’s funny, writing this and noticing how drastically my attitude towards Greek food changed. Don’t let this deter you; the food is GOOD. This was just the post-heat stroke talking. Anyway, the good news was that our little bit of exploring helped to brighten all of our spirits. We didn’t overdo it - soon returning to the hostel to begin to prepare for our flight to Asia – but it was enough to move through some of the blues.

The next day was Acropolis day. The Acropolis did not get the astonishment it probably deserves. As I’ve mentioned, we were tired. And there comes a time when another set of ruins is kind of just another set of ruins. We put in our best effort, reading lots of the placards for more info and taking time to admire the sights. It really was cool. My favourite part of any ruins is when they still have old engravings on them, and some of these did. On the South slope, there is an ancient stadium/theatre that spans a large portion of the hill. In this stadium there are still the seats that were reserved for the priests/priestesses and on the front of many of the seats there is still the engravings dictating which priest got to sit where: “The priest of Zeus” and so on. We couldn’t actually read the letters, of course, but we overheard a nearby tour guide telling her group about it.

As for the Acropolis itself, I’ll need to return to appreciate it fully. It was remarkable to think of all the history that occurred there (in other circumstances, it would’ve likely been mind-blowing). My highlight of the day was seeing the Areopagus (Mars hill). It is quite the experience to know that you are standing in the place where Apostle Paul preached the gospel to the Greek philosophers. To think: in this spot, Christianity was introduced for one of the first times to this land. Woah. It’s really just a craggy rock on the top of a hill, but it was more impactful to us than any of the pillars in the Acropolis.

Acropolis day was also wonderful because I had my appetite back. To celebrate, we went to one of the most famous Greek restaurant chains, called O Thanasis. O Thanasis is known for its yogurtlu: souvlaki meat, covered in warm Greek yogurt and various spices, and served on a bed of pita bread. GUYS. This food is SO GOOD. Ah. We shared a yogurtlu and a Thanasis souvlaki kebab (basically the same thing, but just onions and tomato instead of yogurt), and were filled and happy, happy, happy. What’s more, it only set us back 19 euro in total. For dessert, we went to Lukumades to try Greek doughnut balls, called loukoumades. Traditionally, they are served with honey and cinnamon. So, we shared one order of traditional ones (with a side of ice cream, of course) and one order with Bueno chocolate drizzle on top. Enough said.

With the 2nd at a close, we only had two remaining days in Greece (and in Europe!) and we had plenty to do. You see, paying to check bags would’ve cost a ridiculous amount of money. So, we embarked on the task of trying to carry everything on. This meant that a) we needed to make our packs look small enough to carry on (the easy part) and b) we needed to ensure that each of us only had 10kilos of weight (the slightly harder part). This task was made easier by the fact that we knew we were entering hot country, so we left pants, sweaters, and other unnecessary layers at the hostel, for other travelers to look through. There were some things that we didn’t want to part with, so we also sent a package home. However, even after all of this, we were still over our weight. We began seeing how much we could fit into our pockets. Turns out, the inner pockets of my sweater can fit our iPad on one side and a novel on the other. I look like a walking brick, but oh well. We debated significantly about how much we could carry in our arms without looking suspicious. Finally, we caved a little for the sake of comfort and bought an extra 5 kilos of carry-on weight. This meant that with just the right number of layers, and with our pockets as full as reasonably possible, we could probably squeeze by.

And so, the morning of the 5th came. We donned our layers and took the hour-long metro ride to the airport. And what were we wearing? Well let’s see. Kiana: 1 pair of capris; 1 pair of pants; 1 t-shirt; 1 long sleeve shirt; 1 sweater; 1 rain jacket; 1 pair of socks; and sandals. Lynece: 1 pair of shorts; 1 pair of pants; 1 t-shirt; 1 long-sleeve; 1 sweater; 1 rain jacket; 1 pair of thick wool skiing socks; and sandals. And me? 1 pair of capris; 1 pair of pants; 1 t-shirt; 1 long-sleeve; 1 sweater; 1 rain jacket; 1 pair of socks; 2 bandanas (one on each wrist) and sandals. And what did we have in our pockets? Kiana: pillowcase, 2 bandanas, phone, charging cords, and glasses case. Me: charging battery, charging cords, sunglasses case, phone, a deck of cards, and my camera. Lynece: phone, charging cords, camera, and 4 adaptors. To top it all off, we each have a multi-colored sheet (Kiana, Lynece, and Dad brought them home from the Philippines) that is sewn like a sleeping bag (except open on both ends). Naturally, we wore them around our necks like face-eating, overgrown scarfs. Needless to say, the metro ride was a little warm.

Just imagine 3 huffing girls walking down the airport hallway (in Athens, a warm country, mind you), topped with massive scarfs, each wearing two backpacks, weighed down by their sagging pockets, wearing socks in their sandals. That was us. We decided that if anyone asked we’d just say we’d come from Canada. We acted as normal as we could, standing in line at the check-in counter, and comparing the size of our packs to the size of everyone else’s. Our anticipation rose as we stepped up to the counter. The man gave us one look, asked for our Passports, printed our passes, nodded, and sent us on our way. HE DIDN’T EVEN WEIGH OUR PACKS. We stood outside of line, stunned, for a minute. The email had been explicit in warning that “each person is only permitted 2 bags with a combined total weight of 10 kilos.” We thought there must be some mistake. Maybe they weigh them later. So, we refrained from removing any layers or putting anything more into our packs. We cleared security (that was a sight, as we emptied the electronics from our pockets). Still no weighing. We found our gate, thinking: “Is it possible that they’d weigh them at the gate? That makes no sense!” Still, we stayed in our layers, pockets full. And so, we boarded the plane with our 16 layers. No weighing necessary. It was all somewhat anti-climactic and highly hilarious. At least we wouldn’t be cold on the flight.

Our plane took off at 11:00 a.m. It was a 10 hour flight, followed by a 3 hour layover in Singapore, and then a 2 hour flight to Denpasar, Indonesia. We said goodbye to Europe, part 1 of our trip. Wild. We’d dreamed of our sister trip to Europe for so many years and it has now come to a close. We were sad to see the end, but also so excited for Asia. We were really too tired to continue in Europe; Indonesia couldn’t have come at a better time.

Cheers // Janae

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kechiarts · 6 years

Photo

Warning!! Long post ahead (LOL)

I’ve been meaning to do one of these for a while now. Quite a few friends and followers have asked me ‘what big influences can you think of that have inspired you as an artist/creator?’

A lot of movies, games, books, tv series, artists, and writers have influenced my drawing style and storytelling - some of them more so than others. (As represented by the larger squares in the image)

So here we go!! The numbers for each inspiration were chosen at random, the order doesn’t have any significance lol

1. Cardcaptor Sakura - (and the works of CLAMP in general I suppose because I read them all) Cardcaptor Sakura wasn’t my first manga but it holds a really special place in my heart because it’s lore and depictions of love has influenced my storytelling a LOT. I was obsessed with CLAMP and their art style when I was young to the point I would trace their drawings to learn and emulate their style. To this day I feel like it left a big impact on my art style especially.

2. Cyborg 009 - When I was a kid my parents told me and my brother that we couldn’t afford cable TV and reduced our service to the news channels and public broadcasting. We didn’t have cable TV for several years and when we finally got it back when I was 12, one of the FIRST TV programs I saw was Cyborg 009. I was just beginning to understand what anime was, since the only anime I’d seen was before our cable got cut, and I was so young I didn’t know it WAS anime. I immediately fell in love with Cyborg 009. I loved the characters, the story, everything - and I still do! It was the beginning of my exploration of the anime genre as a whole haha

3. ‘The Twelve Kingdoms’ book series - Around the same time I started watching Cyborg 009, I began getting into manga. While browsing the section in the bookstore one day I came across the first novel in The Twelve Kingdoms series. I was surprised to find a novel in the manga section and decided to browse through it. I couldn’t put it down! The rich world building and storytelling pulled me in and left me wanting more. I devoured the entire book series and the way the world was brought to life really stuck with me and influenced my own world building.

4. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles - my very first Final Fantasy game, and it was a spinoff title to boot! I was drawn in by the dark, melancholic world and cute graphics. I played this game a lot with my friends and even though multiplayer was a nightmare to set up, we had so much fun. I wasn’t able to beat it until I was 16, and the story left me in tears. The Crystal Chronicles games as whole have left a HUGE impact on me, but the first one especially so.

5. Sonic the Hedgehog - My first game ever! My brother and I first played Sonic the Hedgehog 2 when we were around 3 or 4 years old. We were hooked on our parent’s Sega Genesis system and Sonic was our favorite! When we’d get home from school we’d fight over who got to play first in single player, eventually we settled on a system, My brother would play sonic, and since Tails couldn’t die even if he ran out of rings, I would fight all the boss battles as Tails while my brother tried to keep Sonic out of the way. Using this system we made it all the way up to Metal Sonic but could never beat him. We’d have 99 lives too because we knew ALL the secrets of the game LOL. I’ve played most of the Sonic titles since then, including my favorite, Sonic Adventure 2: Battle.

6. Sailor Moon - my ‘first’ anime. I was very young when I first saw this anime. I didn’t even know what anime was! But the portrayal of girl power and how strong all the female characters were really stuck out to me, raised as I was in a women-are-inferior-and-should-serve-their-husbands religious household. Sailor Jupiter was my favorite because she was a tomboy and wore ponytails just like me haha

7. Fullmetal Alchemist - I think I’ve touched on this before, but I have had really weak bones since I was a little kid. In middle school I was constantly on and off of crutches or in and out of wheelchairs with broken bones and such. (I blame being a huge clutz) It got to the point my classmates started calling me ‘calamity Jane’ and making fun of me. To that dorky middle school girl with crutches and leg braces, Edward Elric was my HERO. Disability representation matters folks! It certainly helped me through a rough time in my life.

8. The works of Studio Ghibli - My first Ghibli movie was My Neighbor Totoro, and I’ve been hooked ever since. I actually managed to get my mom into them too, so now we can have mother/daughter quality bonding time over new Ghibli movies when they come out. It gives us a lot of fond memories together and I enjoy those times I get to spend with her. Mom and I may not see eye to eye all the time, but I truly treasure the memories I have of watching Ghibli films with her.

9. Odin Sphere - This one is more recent, and one I blame @heebiejeebiejade for. I love everything about it. The story, the art, the characters! It tore my heart out and the writing is just superb I love it so much. and the ART my god it’s so beautiful.

10. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles the Crystal Bearers - I decided I needed to make this one separate from the earlier Crystal Chronicles section. Mostly because this game HEAVILY influenced and changed my life. Not only is it my favorite game ever, it brought me to many of my current friendships! If not for this game I never would have met @heebiejeebiejade @killerkitty4 @indestructiblemoog @shadyfolk @ninjamonkeystudios and SOOOOO many others. These friendships mean a great deal to me. They’ve changed and shaped who I am today and I’m truly grateful for them, and they never would have been possible without Crystal Bearers.

11. Dragonball - Another one of those I never knew it was Anime cartoons I watched as a young child. I loved Dragonball and later Dragonball Z. The characters, the storytelling, the fight scenes, I loved it all because it was so different from what I was used to seeing in American cartoons. My brother and I would have Super Saiyan battles in our backyard throwing Kamehamehas at each other and laughing and generally annoying our neighbors XD

12. Over the Garden Wall - Another more recent influence. Over the Garden Wall was one of the first new cartoons that grabbed my attention due to it’s great pacing and creepy Americana storytelling. Mysteries, ghosts, the afterlife, purgatory, this show dealt with a lot of creepy things while simultaneously making it funny and endearing. I rewatch it often and it’s one of my favorites.

13. Legend of Mana and the Seiken Densetsu Series - Again, I blame @heebiejeebiejade entirely for this. She sent me a huge box with every game in the Seiken Densetsu series in it along with the guidebooks saying “you HAVE to play these.” I knew she liked them so I gave them a try and YEP as per usual with anything Jade introduces me to, they COMPLETELY DESTROYED ME. Love, sacrifice, life, death, and rebirth, are a huge part of these title’s storytelling and they drew me in completely. Legend of Mana and Dawn of Mana especially. Their world building and plot devices may or may not have heavily influence my own XD

14. The ‘Stravaganza’ book series - The first time I picked up a Stravaganza book title was when I was twelve and found this really shiny book in a used bookstore for $3. It featured a picture of Venice, and a pair of violet eyes staring at you from behind a shiny silver mask on the cover. I’m not sure why It spoke to me, it just did. I bought it and finished it within a day. That book was titled City of Masks and I loved it a lot! And then I found out there were more! An entire series! The books featured time travel and dimensional travel, espionage and intrigue! I read and devoured them all and to this day I hold out hope for a final volume to finish the series.

15. Avatar: the Last Airbender - At age 12 I dismissed Avatar as a kid show originally. I scoffed at it and laughed at my little brother for being so into it. Then I saw the first episode. And it was then that I knew what a mistake I had made. I know a LOT of people love Avatar, and for good reason! I don’t have to go super in-depth here because I’m sure most of you already know how great it is. It’s definitely influenced both my art style and my storytelling.

16. Hikaru no Go - This one’s special. When I was in high school I was bullied a LOT. Like, people writing DIE YOU WHORE in my textbooks and putting thumb tacks in my gym shoes kind of bullying. They’d touch me and then pretended that they’d die of the plague. That if anyone had a crush on me they were worse than trash. The kind of bullying that made me a bit suicidal in my teen years. Lucky for me my mother had bought me a copy of Monthly Shonen Jump in early 2005, She knew that I liked manga and thought it would be the perfect magazine gift for me for valentine’s day. Boy was she right and one of the manga featured in it was Hikaru no Go. I loved the art style, and the storytelling. I was instantly captivated by the characters and I wanted to know what happened next. I soon subscribed to SJ monthly and eagerly awaited the next installment each month. What this meant was that whenever I was feeling like I wanted to end it all, I’d remember that I didn't’ know what happened next and would wait. I honestly believe that Hikaru no Go is at least partially responsible for me making it out of high school alive, and I treasure it to this day. (Also I’m on anti-depressants now so don’t worry about me y’all okay? XD) There was another manga like this, but I'mnot sure how to feel about that one anymore :(

17. Magic Knight Rayearth - I know I’ve already listed CLAMP as a heavy influence on me, but I felt Magic Knight Rayearth deserved it’s own place because it was my first manga ever! I’d seen the commercial for the anime on one of my old DVDs way back when, and I was already intereseted in it when I happened to find the manga in a bookstore! I bought it and reread the first volume a dozen times before I even found the second ahaha. I must have read the complete set a hundred times now and let me tell you the twist ending of the first part kills me every time! The first of my manga obsession ahaha

18. Tales of the Abyss and The ‘Tales of’ game series - Tales of the Abyss was my first (and still my favorite) Tales game, and since then I’ve played almost all of them! They definitely influenced my character designs, most of my friends comment on how Tales-like my costumes are ahaha

19. The 'Riyria’ book series - The most recent novel series I’ve read. It’s got everything I’d ever want to see in a novel, it’s so great and the story is so deep and intriguing! I recommend everyone to read it, it’s a MUST READ for sure!

20. Journey - The first time I played this game I cried for three hours. I felt like I’d just had a religious and spiritual experience far beyond what I’d ever experienced in a video game before. It was just something so… beyond me. I recommend everyone to play this game at least once in their lifetime. I can’t really form the words to express what it means to me. It’s just something you’d have to experience for yourself.

21. Ico: Castle in the Mist and Shadow of the Colossus - Another famous one lol a LOT of people love these games but In particular I want to bring attention to the Ico novelization, Ico: Castle in the Mist. I really enjoyed the novel and it’s worldbuilding. The games will always be special to me, but that novel man. That novel.

22. Yu Yu Hakusho - One of my guilty favorites! I first saw Yu Yu Hakusho when I was 16 and I’ve loved it ever since! I’ve always been fascinated with spirits and the occult, but I definitely had to hide this one from my religious parents.

23. Black Cat - Honestly this one surprises me. I love those secret identity and hidden horrible past animes and this one definitely fits that bill. I think this one established my favorite tropes in my life more than anything else.

24. A Bride’s Story - Two words. THE ART. MY GOD THE ART. This manga, in addtion to being a really great read, has some of the most detailed artwork I’ve ever seen. It’s influenced me greatly and I encourage everyone to read it.

25. Bravely Default - Bravely Default definitely influenced my story building and characters, it was one of the first 3DS games that really captivated me and drew me into its world!

26. Yu-Gi-Oh!! - Another series I had to hide from my parents ahah This anime was something I really loved in my childhood. Again, I really love ghosts and spirits and things like that so this anime was probably what started it all!

27. Fire Emblem Awakening and the Fire Emblem Series - Awakening was my first Fire Emblem game (Cue whining from the FE purists LOL) but since then I’ve played them all! (Including the JP only ones don’t start with me haters ahahahaha) The storytelling and bonds between the characters really resonated with me and it’s become one of my favorite game series!

28. The ‘Legend of Zelda’ game series - The repeating themes of good vs evil throughout the Legend of Zelda games really struck a chord with me, especially when I was young. Twilight Princess and Wind Waker especially influenced me. “A Sword has no strength unless the hand that wields it has courage.” Is something that has suck with me for a long time, and something that encourages me and helps me get through my everyday life.

29. The Final Fantasy Series - Final Fantasy has had a HUGE impact on my life. I already gave Crystal Chronicles it’s due, now it’s the numbered titles turn! Final Fantasy has influenced my life in ways I couldn’t have imagined ten years ago even! I’ve played them all (Except 11, curse having no internet as a teenager!) and they’ve definitely shaped my lore and world building skills!

30. Naruto - Okay I’ll admit it! I was Naruto weeboo trash in highschool!!! Oh woe is me!! Just kidding! I honestly still love Naruto, and it’s something that really stuck with me for a long time, since it’s one of the first anime I saw (after learning what anime was ahaha)

31. Gravity Falls - How can I put this… Hmmmm. Gravity Falls has heavily influenced my character building. I love it’s characters. Don’t get me wrong I love the story too! But the characters are honestly what kept me coming back for more! Not to mention that epic foreshadowing in season one. Yep.

32. Spiral: The Bonds of Reasoning - Another one of my favorite manga in Highschool that oddly helped me through my depression. The main character’s struggles sort of resonated with me and helped my healing process in my late teens and early twenties.

33. Final Fantasy XII - Okay WORLDBUILDING. Let’s talk about worldbuilding because MY GOD has Final Fantasy XII have it. I love the Ivalice games in general, but the amount of effort put into 12 having a world that feels like it’s alive is astounding to be honest. The world truly feels like it’s alive, and it drew me in for over 400 hours of gameplay on Playstation 2. To this day it’s the game I have logged the most hours into.

34. Radiant Historia - What drew me in here was TIME TRAVEL and STORY AND WORLDBUILDING. This game is a hidden gem in the Nintendo DS’s extensive library. It doesn’t have the best graphics or even the best gameplay mechanics, but it didn’t matter to me because the story kept me coming back for more! By far one of my favorite games ever. (Pssst go play it, it got a remake for 3DS)

35. Final Fanasy XIV - This one is a favorite, not just because of it’s story and world building - both of which are excellent btw - but because of the connections I’ve made through it. I have made so many friends online through this game, friends that make me feel better about myself as a person, and who’ve stuck with me through the hard times along with the good.

36. Mushishi - We’ve established that I love ghosts and spirits and things, but this series made me love connecting it with nature, something that has heavily influenced my writing and my own webcomic!

37. Voltron - Mostly the first two seasons. Beast King Golion was one of my first super sentai anime as a child, and I loved seeing it remade! It was like getting to revisit my childhood

38. Gundam SEED and the Gundam Series - Okay Gundam has influenced me throughout my life, starting with Gundam Wing when I was six years old, and continuing on to this day. The one I’ve watched the most times though, is Gundam SEED, and it’s influenced my characters and storytelling a lot!

Wow, congrats to whoever manged to read this far. You’re really determined I’ll give you that! Thanks for reading!

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staarchild · 5 years

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How’s college/uni going for you? I’m graduating this year and I’m kinda nervous about going to post-secondary tbh...

It’s going great! I graduate in June, time flies omg

I should mention that my course is a strange one, it’s like the last year of high school but for adults who didn’t finish school (like me) so that we can get into uni. But it has similarities with uni. There’s a lot of coursework, so writing essays and stuff, mixed with a few things like presentations and more creative activities. There’s a lot of support too which is something I never got at school, which is why I never finished school. I’ve been able to work hard at my education now with help from my teachers and I’m on track to get the equivalent of AAA (most good unis here need the equivalent of BBC to get into them). So I’d say at college it’s more supportive and a bit less of a factory churning out depressed teenagers.

Still not sure how uni will be but from the looks of it, it won’t be too different from what I’m doing now. Perhaps may even be a bit less intense since I’m only doing 1 subject and not 3. All the support is there too, especially since they know my issues upfront and are already making sure I know that they have things in place to help me before i even start my course (again, more than high school ever did). I’m nervous too but it’s mainly excitement, I’m really looking forward to it and worrying a bit that I won’t do as well as I hoped. But I think if you’re doing well at school, you will do well at uni if you keep working at that standard or (even better) at a higher standard.

As well as the studying of course there’s the other things. Idk if you have societies in Canada, if not they’re like social clubs around one particular hobby or interest. For example my uni has societies for LGBTQ, K-pop, different political alignments, rock music, debates etc. Joining 1 or 2 will help you get used to the environment of your uni and help you meet new people. In UK unis most subject areas have their own society too. It’s important to not just focus on work work work, but of course don’t only focus on the social and fun side. Your professors will most likely be very chill though, it’s not like high school where you get told off for absolutely everything. You have more freedom, just don’t go wild with it ofc.

As for supplies, make sure you have a backpack since you’ll have to carry your notes, pens, your laptop and books and those get heavy pretty fast. I could get away with a shoulder bag in school, not now though. Speaking of books, use the uni’s library whenever you need books. If you need your own copy, like as part of a reading list or a textbook, try abebooks for hard copies or if you don’t mind pdfs then library genesis (you might need a vpn for that site though, it’s blocked in some countries including mine). Also you have to pay for books on abebooks although it’s a lot cheaper than most bookstores, whereas libgen is free >;) If your doing a science subject and need journal articles then I also recommend scihub for free access to those if your uni library isn’t subscribed to the journal you need.

This devolved into how to pirate textbooks and journal articles, oops! But there’s so much about uni that i still don’t know so I’m just going from what I assume the similarities are between what I’m doing now and uni. I hope this has helped you though

#jaded-tisay #replies

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herpeacetheorist · 3 years

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khalilhumam · 3 years

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‘Queer Japan’ documentary introduces Japan's vibrant, multifaceted LGTBQ+ community

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/queer-japan-documentary-introduces-japans-vibrant-multifaceted-lgtbq-community/

‘Queer Japan’ documentary introduces Japan's vibrant, multifaceted LGTBQ+ community

The documentary celebrates self-love, community and resilience

A few of the interviewees featured in the documentary Queer Japan, including Nogi Sumiko, Atsushi Matsuda, Hiroshi Hasegawa, Gengoroh Tagame, Akira the Hustler, and Tomato Hatakeno. Image courtesy Graham Kolbeins, used with permission.

A documentary that explores the lives of Japan’s multifaceted LGBTQ+ culture has recently been released on streaming platforms. “Queer Japan,” a documentary by Canadian queer filmmaker, writer, and designer Graham Kolbeins, explores the lives artists, activists, trailblazers and just regular folks in Japan's LGBTQ+ culture. “‘Queer Japan’ is about self-love, community, and resilience,” says director Graham Kolbeins in an interview with Global Voices. “It’s about the ambiguous nature of gender and sexuality, and the way language shapes our fluid understandings of these concepts.” The documentary was first screened in July 2019, and was shown at film festivals around the world. “Queer Japan” features interviews with nearly three dozen members of Japan's LGTBQ+ community. The film features a variety of individuals involved in art, activism, nightlife and politics in Japan, including a university instructor, a dentist, a drag queen and the parties she hosts for the LGTBQ+ community, the first openly transgender elected official in Japan Aya Kamikawa, and queer visual artist Nogi Sumiko.

Nogi Sumiko. Image courtesy Graham Kolbeins, used with permission.

“Queer Japan” also includes interviews with Gengoroh Tagame, the well-known gay erotic manga creator who has enjoyed mainstream success in Japan and around the world is also a featured interviewee. “Gengoroh Tagame is not only a master of gay erotic art; he also created a renaissance of gay manga through the magazine he co-founded, G-men [an influential magazine aimed at gay men in Japan],” says Kolbeins. “Tagame's influences and references are eclectic, drawing on everything from the Marquis de Sade to Go Mishima and Tom of Finland.” The documentary also includes another co-founder of G-Men magazine, writer, magazine editor and activist Hiroshi Hasegawa. Ever since Hasegawa was diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1992, he has lobbied for more and better treatment in Japan for the condition. Hasegawa has also played a prominent role in Japan campaigning to reduce the societal stigma who people living with HIV and AIDS.

Hiroshi Hasegawa at Tokyo Rainbow Pride. Image courtesy Graham Kolbeins, used with permission.

Kolbeins says the genesis for what would become the “Queer Japan” documentary dates back to nearly a decade ago and his love of Japanese manga. “I was just a very big fan of the gay manga genre and perplexed as to why no publisher in North America had put out English-language translations of these artists’ work,” says Kolbeins. “At the time, I was writing for art and culture magazines, and decided to try conducting some interviews to spotlight gay manga artists.” While there are no laws prohibiting consensual sexual acts between adults, there are no laws that address and prohibit discrimination against sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace in Japan, and same-sex marriage has not yet been formally legalized. Kolbeins says he decided to connect with Anne Ishii, a writer and translator, who currently serves as executive director of Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia. “We started working together around 2012, when we traveled to Tokyo to work on the anthology we edited together, ‘Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It,'” says Kolbeins. “Soon after, we co-founded a fashion and publishing brand called Massive Goods [a fashion brand, publisher, and creative agency representing queer and feminist artists from Japan], continuing our collaborations with queer and feminist artists from Japan.” Based on this work, Kolbeins and Ishii were the recipients of the 2016 Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship from the Japan-United States Friendship Commission (JUSFC), which allowed them to spend three months in Japan interviewing documentary subjects.

Queer Japan movie poster. Image courtesy Graham Kolbeins, used with permission.

“After receiving the JUSFC’s fellowship, we raised the rest of the production budget for the documentary through crowdfunding,” says Kolbeins. “Because of the work Anne and I were doing at Massive, we were able to reach out to a community already interested in many of the film’s themes.” The documentary ultimately took Kolbeins and producers Iida and Anne five years to complete before being released on the film festival circuit in 2019. Kolbeins says “Queer Japan” producer, Hiromi Iida, also played a key role with the documentary by connecting him with Japan's LGTBQ+ community. “I met Hiromi on Twitter, reaching out after watching several short documentaries she had made in Tokyo’s drag scene. Hiromi Ishii introduced Kolbiens to community leaders such as Margarette, who operates iconic bookstore Okamalt and also hosts Department H, which is known as “one of Tokyo's most venerable fetish parties.” Over the past decade, Kolbeins has been able to connect with an LGBTQ+ culture in Japan he describes as “multifaceted, robust and thriving.” “At the same time, members of the Japanese queer community face plenty of legal obstacles, family pressure, and discrimination,” says Kolbeins. It’s a situation that leads many to stay selectively closeted, especially in workplace settings, Kolbeins says. “Visibility and acceptance keep growing year after year, and as you can see in ‘Queer Japan,’ there are plenty of individuals living loud and proud in defiance of societal pressures,” says Kolbeins. “There is a growing spirit of solidarity and collective power in the community.” The documentary is now available to watch in some regions on a variety of online rental streaming services. Kolbeins says there are hopes to release the film in Japanese cinemas in 2021, depending on pandemic conditions. Updates about the film are posted on the documentary's Twitter account, @queerjapan. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utB6igqVJPQ?feature=oembed&w=650&h=366]

Written by Nevin Thompson

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konichiwaruby · 7 years

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The Journey Continues (Inside the Computer)

The second book in the Hello Ruby series is coming out in English. It's called "JOURNEY INSIDE THE COMPUTER" and it's published on October 3rd. (And you can get it from bookstores everywhere!)

So the book. It's about computers - the machines we spent last book talking to. This time Ruby is bored, but fortunately dad’s computer is always magical. However the computer doesn’t work - who could find the missing cursor? Ruby and the white mouse fall inside the computer and meet a group of new, exciting friends. Who lives inside the computer? And who left footprints all over dad’s desktop?

Writing the second book was so much easier. I trusted the process. Where while writing the first book I felt loss, this time I knew it was part of the journey and embraced, almost enjoyed the misadventures.

For me, the genesis of a new picture book is two-fold. It's a picture and a sentence a. For this book, respectively:

1. Idea of falling inside a machine. I asked kids to illustrate what they imagined was inside a computer and kept returning back to the idea of shrinking yourself to the size of a silicon chip. The first picture I drew for the book was the one of Ruby and the Mouse falling inside the computer.

2. "Computer is an abstracion machine." I think it was Neal Gershenfeld who said something similar and I kept a post it with the sentence on my desk. I wanted to explain the entire abstraction of a computer: from the lowest levels of electricity, bits and logic gates all the way up to operating systems and apps. Many of the How computers work -books focus on peripherals (the mouses, screens and keyboards). I wanted to focus on the big idea of a computer.

After this, words and images interact with one another over beautiful, messy, fluctuating months. The book is pulled apart, divided into little thumbnails, twisted and turned around. At one point the book was set in an amusement park, at another Ruby got stuck inside the computer. In the end, the book was ready a few hours before deadline. As always. Then it was 18 months of waiting - and now it's almost in the hands of the readers.

And again, this book defies the covers. It has already spread to the website where you can play a memory game with RAM and ROM, build a computer or see what children around the world (from Australia to Japan to Finland) imagine is inside a computer. The great team at CS4All in New York was kind enough to already create content and curriculum around the book. And this is before the book is even out. If you decide to get it let me know what you think!

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encephalonfatigue · 5 years

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to turn the mills day & night? art thou not newton's pantocrator?

i actually wrote this as a goodreads review of Friedrich Engels’ “The Conditions of the Working Class in England”. i use that website more as a place to post reflections on books i read, and being as self-indulgent as i am, i wrote too much and it can’t fit within the allotted space goodreads provides, so i’m just posting the thing here. a lot of half-baked thoughts in here, but it is a further elaboration on mills, which i have been thinking a lot about for the past couple years.

At it again with those mills. I'm really into the history of mills. Sorry, but mills are a thing for me. I want to do an STS dissertation on mills so if any of y'all know professors who want grad students to write stuff on mills -- I'm right here, hmu. Ok, Engels (of Communist Manifesto fame, but he didn't really write any of it): he's from a rich and austere Calvinist family, in Germany. They owned a bunch of mills -- one in Manchester. Engels was a naughty boy with radical ideas, so his father sends him out to Manchester to straighten him out. Get him to smarten up about those silly ideas of his. He sees the workers of Manchester living in total squalor. He falls in love with one of them, an Irish working class woman, Mary Burns, who he remains with for the rest of her life. He sees how the industrial mills of Manchester have laid waste to the rivers, the air, and the people.

An Engels mill in Germany is still around and is part of an industrial museum now. By the time Engels was 17, his father had secured water rights along the Agger River to power a water mill for the production of cotton yarn. He was able to do so from capital he had accumulated from his Manchester operations. When Engels was 22, he was sent by his father to their Manchester mill on the River Irwell. It was here that Engels collected his materials that would become this book. Engels writes about these rivers framing the areas of Manchester he explored while there:

“Manchester proper lies on the left bank of the Irwell, between that stream and the two smaller ones, the Irk and the Medlock, which here empty into the Irwell. On the right bank of the Irwell, bounded by a sharp curve of the river, lies Salford, and farther westward Pendleton; northward from the Irwell lie Upper and Lower Broughton; northward of the Irk, Cheetham Hill; south of the Medlock lies Hulme; farther east Chorlton on Medlock”

Early on in this book Engels starts spewing out numbers galore. It’s breathtaking to see the magnitude of these 19th-century statistics, and the horsepower figures are really interesting too:

“In 1834 England exported 556,000,000 yards of woven cotton goods, 76,500,000 pounds of cotton yarn, and cotton hosiery of the value of £1,200,000. In the same year over 8,000,000 mule spindles were at work, 110,000 power and 250,000 hand-looms, throstle spindles not included, in the service of the cotton industry; and, according to MacCulloch’s reckoning, nearly a million and a half human beings were supported by this branch, of whom but 220,000 worked in the mills; the power used in these mills was steam, equivalent to 33,000 horse-power, and water, equivalent to 11,000 horse-power. At present these figures are far from adequate, and it may be safely assumed that, in the year 1845, the power and number of the machines and the number of the workers is greater by one-half than it was in 1834.”

With these large numbers in mind, I think it’s worth noting that when Engels was writing this book, the American Civil War was still two decades off. By 1860, two-thirds of the global cotton supply was from the US, much of it cultivated by slaves. Sven Beckert, Harvard history professor known for his book “Empire of Cotton”, writes in The Atlantic:

“On the eve of the Civil War, raw cotton constituted 61 percent of the value of all U.S. products shipped abroad… Now, in 1861, the flagship of global capitalism, Great Britain, found itself dangerously dependent on the white gold shipped out of New York, New Orleans, Charleston, and other American ports. By the late 1850s, cotton grown in the United States accounted for 77 percent of the 800 million pounds of cotton consumed in Britain. It also accounted for 90 percent of the 192 million pounds used in France, 60 percent of the 115 million pounds spun in the Zollverein, and 92 percent of the 102 million pounds manufactured in Russia.”

Though cotton production was fairly small in Canada at the time, the proportion sourced from the U.S. was of course much higher, due to the obvious reason of proximity. M.N.A. Hinton and T. Barbiero (2012) in a paper write that:

“Canadian cotton mills, of course, were totally dependent on foreign sources of supply to obtain raw cotton. Before Confederation 95 percent of it was imported from the U.S. South; after Confederation 99 percent was imported from the South.”

Marx in “The Poverty of Philosophy” (his denunciation of Proudhon) wrote:

“Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry. It is slavery that has given the colonies their value; it is the colonies that have created world trade, and it is world trade that is the pre-condition of large-scale industry. Thus slavery is an economic category of the greatest importance.”

In no small measure because of his acquaintance with Engels, Marx actually mentions cotton right through his first volume of Capital, which was published shortly after the close of the American Civil War. I first realized that Marx and Lincoln were alive at the same time when I read this in Marilynne Robinson’s “Death of Adam”:

“Americans are astonished to realize that Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln were contemporaries, let alone that Lincoln and much of literate America would have read Marx, who published articles on European affairs for years in Horace Greeley's New-York Daily Tribune, and that Marx wrote about Lincoln. They are amazed that Marx also wrote a contemporary account of the Civil War, passionately taking the side of the North. This is only one illustration of the great fact that we have little sense of American history in the context of world history.”

About 600 articles written by Marx were published in the New York Daily Tribune according to Robin Blackburn. While the description of Blackburn’s book “The Unfinished Revolution” inflates the issue somewhat, saying: “Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln exchanged letters at the end of the Civil War,” Marx did write to Lincoln a number of times and Lincoln (or more specifically his ambassador) responded to an address of the International Workingmen’s Association, drafted and signed by Marx, with a brief acknowledgement. What undoubtedly was the case was that the American Civil War was deeply influential in Marx’s writings. This was at a time where a radical wing existed within the Republican Party. Horace Greeley who edited the paper Marx wrote for was one of the founders of the Republican Party and was himself a Fourier socialist — among a number of other Republican Party founders.

Anyways, Engels quotes a number of reports of the environmental conditions and health hazards faced by workers daily in these mill towns. In one of these long excerpts, Engels interrupts to say:

“...it must be added, like all other rivers in the service of manufacture, flows into the city at one end clear and transparent, and flows out at the other end thick, black, and foul, smelling of all possible refuse”

This is not unlike what you find in Toronto later in the century. Based on an interview with Jennifer Bonnell who wrote “Reclaiming the Don” (published by University of Toronto Press), Katie Daubs in a Toronto Star article writes:

“By 1860, there were more than 50 mills in the watershed, supplying paper, flour, wool and wood, and pollution… By the 1880s, the price of Toronto’s growth was told in the river. Industrial runoff, deforestation and sewage had turned the meandering lower Don into a festering flow of pollution.”

Photo: The Wonscotonach flowing under Highway 401 in 2019.

The Wonscotonach took on the name Don River because the imperialist Simcoe thought it reminded him of the River Don in Yorkshire, another industrial hub mentioned a number of times in this book by Engels.

Photos: Evergreen Brick Works (Don Valley Brick Works)

Close by what is now Don Valley Brick Works Park is Todmorden Mills, now a museum and art centre. It was once a paper mill that supplied paper for William Lyon Mackenzie’s sheet “The Colonial Advocate”. Mackenzie was actually integral to the genesis of this mill. He was worried about the cost of paper for the Colonial Advocate and lobbied the government to award anyone who would establish the first paper mill in Upper Canada. A gristmill known as Don Mills was converted into Todmorden Mills, and Mackenzie had a new supply of affordable paper.

Mackenzie came to Canada in the same boat as James Lesslie — a book publisher and Owenite socialist. They would open and run a bookstore for a number of years together across the road from St. James’ Church (now a beautiful cathedral) around the St. Lawrence Market area.

He and Mackenzie were responsible for union organizing and the setting up of Mechanics Institutes — something Engels talks glowingly about in this book, saying:

“Here the children receive a purely proletarian education, free from all the influences of the bourgeoisie; and, in the reading-rooms, proletarian journals and books alone, or almost alone, are to be found. These arrangements are very dangerous for the bourgeoisie, which has succeeded in withdrawing several such institutes,”Mechanics’ Institutes,” from proletarian influences, and making them organs for the dissemination of the sciences useful to the bourgeoisie. Here the natural sciences are now taught, which may draw the working-men away from the opposition to the bourgeoisie, and perhaps place in their hands the means of making inventions which bring in money for the bourgeoisie; while for the working-man the acquaintance with the natural sciences is utterly useless now when it too often happens that he never gets the slightest glimpse of Nature in his large town with his long working-hours.”

A lot of socialists, communists, and Marxists admire William Lyon Mackenzie. Some examples include — an excerpt from a Young Socialist League leaflet

“For we are required, nothing more nor less, than to carry forward the revolutionary struggle that William Lyon Mackenzie and Louis-Joseph Papineau launched in 1837. That revolution exhausted itself so that as Mackenzie, commenting on its fate in the U.S., saw: ‘the power of the community pass from democracy of numbers into the hands of an aristocracy — not of noble ancestry and ancient lineage, but of monied monopolists and jobbers and heartless politicians.’”

The Communist Party of Canada website states:

“We honour those who led many of these struggles — Louis-Joseph Papineau in Quebec, William Lyon MacKenzie in Ontario, Louis Riel on the Prairies, and Amor de Cosmos in British Columbia.”

And in a rather long article by Julien Arseneau, , William Lyon Mackenzie’s importance to Canadian history is exposited on a Marxist website.

Photos: Silverthorn Mill ruins at Meadowvale Village, operated by Gooderham & Worts for a period of time. Sketched by the likes of A.J. Casson.

My interest in the mills of the Greater Toronto Area originates in Meadowvale Village, and there is a William Lyon Mackenzie connection here also. This is the area from which my neighbourhood of Meadowvale got its name. ‘Vale’ is the type of word for valley you might find in the romanticist verse of Shelley, a poet both Karl and Eleanor Marx were very fond of. So there was a certain poetic cachet that developers could draw on by co-opting the name ‘Meadowvale’ for their subdivisions father out west in the 1960s.

Anyways, back in Mackenzie’s time, the area I now live around was known as Switzer’s Corners, named after the Switzer family — Irish settlers who had garnered somewhat of a reputation as being seditious agitators and friends of Mackenzie. They would host him at their home when he was campaigning in the area, and one of the sons of the family, Martin Switzer, once rounded up a bunch of peace-loving Quakers (around Elgin, south of London) to go join the armed insurrection that had been launched from Montgomery’s Tavern. Charles Switzer (related to Martin Switzer) eventually ran what became known as the Gooderham store for some time, and was a fixture within the Meadowvale Village community.

Photo: The Gooderham store no longer exists, but the Gooderham mansion still stands. Now a private school. How fitting.

At the mouth of the Wonscotonach (Don River), as it empties into Lake Ontario, was the main industrial operation of Gooderham & Worts. This site is now a tourist destination known as the Distillery District, and the name Gooderham & Worts is still plastered throughout the Victorian industrial buildings there.

This company owned a number of other mill sites around the area, including a couple along the Credit River. One was a textile mill, although it was spinning flax (linen) and not slave-grown cotton. Gooderham & Worts, however, owned another major mill site in Meadowvale Village, and owned a department store there comparable with the T. Eaton’s store in Toronto (the one Charles Switzer ran for a period), with lavish and fashionable offerings for the wealthier folks of the area.

As with the ecological destruction of the Wonscotonach (Don River), similar results were manifesting in Mississauga’s Missinihe (Credit River). Donald Smith in his book “Mississauga Portraits” writes what Chief Peter Jones would have seen before and after the mills:

“The great trees stood so closely together that they formed a canopy shutting out the sunshine and most of the daylight leaving the ground free of undergrowth. He remembered the salmon-rich streams and rivers that flowed from the forested interior down to the harbour. Now the area was extensively deforested. The building of dams for gristmills and sawmills now prevented Ontario salmon reaching their upper spawning grounds. Released sawdust blanketed the bottoms of streams and rivers. By the mid-1850s, the salmon runs had declined to the point of extinction.”

The Anishinaabe ethnobotanist and Dalhousie professor Jonathan Ferrier referred to the clearcutting of forests around Lake Ontario as a “genocide by sawmills”.

I’ve mentioned in a previous review the child labour Mother Jones experienced in American textile mills. I wasn’t able to find evidence of similar stuff in Toronto at the time of writing that interview, but I have found some stuff since then. Firstly, Jean Barman in the Canadian Encyclopedia writes:

“The first wave of provincial legislation regulating child labour in factories and mines began to pass in the 1870s and 1880s. But the prohibition of child labour did not come until the 20th century.”

Secondly I found in a republished version of Royal Commission on the Relations of Labor and Capital, 1889 where James Brown a Toronto factory inspector is being interviewed about, among other things, child labour:

“Q. Did you notice […] any large percentage of children?

A. Yes; in some of them — in the cotton mills and some woolen mills, in cigar factories and knitting works, and some others.

Q. Were there many of those children below the age designated by the Act?

A. Well, I found about 40 girls under 14. Girls are not allowed under 14 nor boys under 12. I found six boys altogether nine years of age, and some ten or eleven.”

Mother Jones was from a working-class Irish family, and Engels spends quite a long time discussing how the Irish were an underclass in the industrial towns throughout England, and suffered extreme exploitation at the bottom of the industrial hierarchy.

I think it’s important to see a lot of the things happening in this century (the dispossession of land from and genocide of indigenous peoples, the global trade and Naval Operations those colonially sourced commodities went into, and the cotton plantations powered by American slavery) as deeply connected to the horrors of environmental destruction, child labour, and the extremely filthy and diseased living and working conditions of the English proletariat — as all connected together in the matrices of the capitalist economy. Capitalism cannot be blamed for all the ills in the world, but it certainly sustains and shelters many of them for the benefit of a small elite class of people.

It is hilarious that billionaires like Nick Hanauer are growing extremely anxious, feeling as if a revolution is going to break out any day. Rich people are not oblivious to the incomprehensibly enormous inequality that persists in the world. Hanauer has tried to gather other really rich people like him to lobby the government to implement some sort of ‘wealth tax’, which does not exist now. They can only extract wealth from the rich by way of income taxes right now. You might have heard this covered in a recent episode on NPR Planet Money. Starbucks piece of shit Howard Shultz is absolutely disdainful of this proposal put forward by the likes of Elizabeth Warren. It’s hilarious to see some rich people talk about their generosity in a self-congratulatory way when what they are really worried about is that thing Rousseau warned about: "When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich". This is at the core of Hanauer’s ‘Pitchfork Economics’. He outright said, at the end of the NPR Planet Money Episode that he’s fine with a wealth tax that ‘slows’ the growth of his wealth, which is the moderate proposal made by people like Elizabeth Warren. This is already rare among the extremely rich. Hanauer mentioned that he can’t be on board as soon as this wealth tax ‘stops’ the growth of his wealth or even farther, reduces it. Laughable really. Engels had something to say about people like this:

“The English bourgeoisie is charitable out of self-interest; it gives nothing outright, but regards its gifts as a business matter, makes a bargain with the poor, saying: “If I spend this much upon benevolent institutions, I thereby purchase the right not to be troubled any further, and you are bound thereby to stay in your dusky holes and not to irritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery. You shall despair as before, but you shall despair unseen, this I require, this I purchase with my subscription of twenty pounds for the infirmary!” It is infamous, this charity of a Christian bourgeois!

…What? The wealthy English fail to remember the poor? They who have founded philanthropic institutions, such as no other country can boast of! Philanthropic institutions forsooth! As though you rendered the proletarians a service in first sucking out their very life-blood and then practising your self-complacent, Pharisaic philanthropy upon them, placing yourselves before the world as mighty benefactors of humanity when you give back to the plundered victims the hundredth part of what belongs to them! Charity which degrades him who gives more than him who takes; charity which treads the downtrodden still deeper in the dust, which demands that the degraded, the pariah cast out by society, shall first surrender the last that remains to him, his very claim to manhood, shall first beg for mercy before your mercy deigns to press, in the shape of an alms, the brand of degradation upon his brow.”

Nick Hanauer is worried about some pending insurrection of violence on the horizon. What many people do not realize is that this is precisely the concern Engels had, except he obviously didn’t believe a ‘heterodox’ reformation of capitalism was the answer. Often times ‘communism’ has taken on a reputation of encouraging brutal and violent revolution, but Engels saw communism in a very different way — a way to prevent the cruel striking out of the poor in a unproductive way that accomplished little except the carrying out of individual revenge (think Atwood’s “Alias Grace”). Engels writes:

“Besides, it does not occur to any Communist to wish to revenge himself upon individuals, or to believe that, in general, the single bourgeois can act otherwise, under existing circumstances, than he does act. English Socialism, i.e., Communism, rests directly upon the irresponsibility of the individual. Thus the more the English workers absorb communistic ideas, the more superfluous becomes their present bitterness, which, should it continue so violent as at present, could accomplish nothing; and the more their action against the bourgeoisie will lose its savage cruelty. If, indeed, it were possible to make the whole proletariat communistic before the war breaks out, the end would be very peaceful; but that is no longer possible, the time has gone by. Meanwhile, I think that before the outbreak of open, declared war of the poor against the rich, there will be enough intelligent comprehension of the social question among the proletariat, to enable the communistic party, with the help of events, to conquer the brutal element of the revolution and prevent a “Ninth Thermidor”.”

Engels however is not rejecting the ‘ressentiment’ and its related ‘slave morality’ that people like Nietzsche were so disdainful of (a narrative that people like Jordan Peterson have leveraged for very particular ends). Anyways, Engels writes:

“English Socialism arose with Owen, a manufacturer, and proceeds therefore with great consideration toward the bourgeoisie and great injustice toward the proletariat in its methods, although it culminates in demanding the abolition of the class antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat… They understand, it is true, why the working-man is resentful against the bourgeois, but regard as unfruitful this class hatred, which is, after all, the only moral incentive by which the worker can be brought nearer the goal. They preach instead, a philanthropy and universal love far more unfruitful for the present state of England.”

Ayn Rand once called Christianity the best kindergarten of communism possible, and verses like Mark 3:27 always remind me of this ‘slave morality’ that Nietzsche talked about. In the verse Jesus says:

“But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.”

This verse is also mentioned in one form or another in the other two synoptic gospels. Craig Keener supposes it is an allusion to Isaiah 49:24-26 (the context being oppression under Babylonian imperialism), which I think is a good point of resonance:

“Can plunder be taken from warriors, or captives be rescued from the fierce?

But this is what the Lord says:

“Yes, captives will be taken from warriors, and plunder retrieved from the fierce; I will contend with those who contend with you, and your children I will save.

I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh; they will be drunk on their own blood, as with wine.”

Second Isaiah maybe one-upped the revolutionary Rousseau here. That’s some pretty gruesome stuff. This sort of radical rhetoric within faith communities was not unknown in Upper Canada’s more revolutionary moments. In the neighbourhood where I live there was a Methodist church on Switzer’s Corners known as Switzer’s Church. It eventually became known as Eden Methodist Church, and today is Eden United Church (where I visit not infrequently — though it’s no longer a hotbed of revolutionary fervour). It is fascinating to learn how Methodism was caught up with Owenite socialism in Upper Canada at the time. More broadly both Owenite socialism and Chartism were spread under the umbrella of the Reform Movement in Upper Canada. Engels speaks of both Robert Owen and his brand of socialism (critically) and Chartism (more approvingly) in his book on the working class in England. He also quotes a radical Methodist preacher named Rayner Stephens. Engels writes:

“The people were called upon to arm themselves, were frequently urged to revolt; pikes were got ready, as in the French Revolution, and in 1838, one Stephens, a Methodist parson, said to the assembled working- people of Manchester:

‘You have no need to fear the power of Government, the soldiers, bayonets, and cannon that are at the disposal of your oppressors; you have a weapon that is far mightier than all these, a weapon against which bayonets and cannon are powerless, and a child of ten years can wield it. You have only to take a couple of matches and a bundle of straw dipped in pitch, and I will see what the Government and its hundreds of thousands of soldiers will do against this one weapon if it is used boldly.’”

Haha, wow, this is like an episode of Damnation. Mackenzie himself is probably best known as a failed revolutionary, who led the feeble 1837 insurrection from Montgomery’s Tavern that was easily thwarted by Jarvis. (Peter Matthews, one of the two men hanged as a result of this insurrection, was encouraged to join the uprising by a Baptist preacher from Markham Township called George Barclay.) Mackenzie would go on to occupy Navy Island, just upstream from Niagara Falls and declare it to be the Republic of Canada, before eventually escaping to the U.S. — later returning to Canada in 1849 to take back a place in the legislature. The 1837 uprising was also an important theme in Margaret Atwood’s book Alias Grace (my favourite Atwood novel I’ve read so far), and the role of certain sorts of Methodists and Quakers is thematic in the novel as well.

For all the fear-mongering over atheism that Christians have expressed against Marx and Engels, I think Engels was very well-read in religion. And he knew the working classes generally weren’t, though he didn’t necessarily see that as a problem. Engels inserts a very large and humorous excerpt from the “Children’s Employment Commission’s Report” of working class children being asked about their faith:

“One child had ‘attended a Sunday school regularly for five years; does not know who Jesus Christ was, but has heard the name. Never heard of the twelve apostles. Never heard of Samson, nor of Moses, nor Aaron, etc.’ Another ‘attended a Sunday school regularly six years. Knows who Jesus Christ was, he died on the cross to shed his blood, to save our Saviour.’”

Engels however felt that education was focused on very unproductive sectarian theology and no proper moral teaching:

“The consequence is that religion, and precisely the most unprofitable side of religion, polemical discussion, is made the principal subject of instruction, and the memory of the children overburdened with incomprehensible dogmas and theological distinctions; that sectarian hatred and bigotry are awakened as early as possible, and all rational mental and moral training shamefully neglected.”

Engels goes onto elaborate the general indifference to religion felt by much of the working classes as a result of this pedagogical failure:

“All the writers of the bourgeoisie are unanimous on this point, that the workers are not religious, and do not attend church… among the masses there prevails almost universally a total indifference to religion, or at the utmost, some trace of Deism too undeveloped to amount to more than mere words, or a vague dread of the words infidel, atheist, etc. The clergy of all sects is in very bad odour with the working-men…”

Engels likely thought this outcome to have a fairly bright side, considering the theological convictions of the bourgeoisie which he described in this way:

“It is all very pretty and very agreeable to the ear of the bourgeois to hear the “sacredness of property” asserted; but for him who has none, the sacredness of property dies out of itself. Money is the God of this world; the bourgeois takes the proletarian’s money from him and so makes a practical atheist of him. No wonder, then, if the proletarian retains his atheism and no longer respects the sacredness and power of the earthly God…

…The English bourgeoisie is violently scandalised at the extravagant living of the workers when wages are high; yet it is not only very natural but very sensible of them to enjoy life when they can, instead of laying up treasures which are of no lasting use to them, and which in the end moth and rust (i.e., the bourgeoisie) get possession of.

…the humanity of the workers is constantly manifesting itself pleasantly. They have experienced hard times themselves, and can therefore feel for those in trouble, whence they are more approachable, friendlier, and less greedy for money, though they need it far more than the property-holding class. For them money is worth only what it will buy, whereas for the bourgeois it has an especial inherent value, the value of a god, and makes the bourgeois the mean, low money-grubber that he is.

…It is utterly indifferent to the English bourgeois whether his working-men starve or not, if only he makes money. All the conditions of life are measured by money, and what brings no money is nonsense, unpractical, idealistic bosh.

During my residence in England, at least twenty or thirty persons have died of simple starvation under the most revolting circumstances, and a jury has rarely been found possessed of the courage to speak the plain truth in the matter. …many have died of starvation, where long-continued want of proper nourishment has called forth fatal illness, when it has produced such debility that causes which might otherwise have remained inoperative brought on severe illness and death. The English working-men call this “social murder”, and accuse our whole society of perpetrating this crime perpetually. Are they wrong?”

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lollipoplollipopoh · 5 years

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Rewriting Yugoslav history: Serbian war criminals-turned authors | The Listening Post (Feature) by Al Jazeera English It has been a quarter of a century since some of the most brutal wars tore through the once huge country called Yugoslavia. The stories of collective memory, the narratives of loss, and the legacies of those wars are still fresh in the minds of so many who lived through those years. And as a Kosovar-Albanian working on The Listening Post, telling those stories - especially the ones that capture the damage done to our discourse and the mutilation of our media culture - has been close to my heart. The genesis of this report - telling the tale of a large scale project to re-engineer Serbian understanding of their role in the Yugoslav wars - actually came during the process of filming another report that my colleague Johanna Hoes and I produced in January this year. As Serbs protested their government and its hold over the country's media, it became evident to both of us that it is not just the country's current media climate that is problematic, but that there is a hangover from the wars that has skewed the historical memory of a majority of Serbs. As I researched this phenomenon, I came across numerous headlines denying key events from the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. Headlines like "No genocide in Srebrenica". Demonstrably fake news. And books, 119 of them, written by 22 former generals and politicians - convicted of war crimes including genocide - now turned authors. And finally, television appearances by former Hague detainees dismissing any accusations that they played a role in a deadly war. There is an entire self-sustaining structure perpetuating a historical delusion: that, contrary to the established proof unearthed by investigators and prosecutors, Serbs did not mastermind and execute the crimes of Bosnian and Kosovan wars. "The facts are horrible," Emir Suljagic, a professor from the International University of Sarajevo, told us. "But they don't care about facts, and they don't care what you or I think about it. This is tailor-made for the Serbs. And it's made in a way that would fit in the pre-existing narratives of what Yugoslavia was, of what and who the Serbs are." "Stories make nations. Radovan Karadzic [Bosnian Serb former politician, convicted of war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia] is not going to be remembered as a murdering genocidal maniac, but as a great Serbian hero who made the first Serb 'state' on the left bank of Adina River. Nebojsa Pavkovic [commander of Third Army of the Armed Forces of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War and convicted by the ICTY of crimes against humanity and war crimes] is going to be remembered by future generations of Serbs, not as a murderer of Albanian children in Kosovo, but as a great war hero who stood up to NATO. End of story," Suljagic says. Natasa Kandic has spent years documenting and campaigning for human rights in the region. During the Kosovo war, Kandic was a lone voice of reason from Belgrade, at a time when reason and logic were branded hate and propaganda by the Serbian state. Two decades later, I found myself standing in front of her, filming an interview about the revisionist literature of Serbia. "I think these books are short-lived, they cannot survive," she tells us. "But even the short time these books will last is still lost time. Time we've lost for setting up different relations in the region and getting over these ethnic divisions and tensions, creating the conditions in which we can think about common goals in the future." These books are commonly available in bookstores across Serbia. Many of them are even published and marketed by Serbia's Ministry of Defence. As Aleksandar Brezar told us: "When it comes to some of the books we know that for instance Alexander Vucic - the current president of Serbia - wrote a couple of forewords to some of the editions. Now if you have a legitimate representative of a country write a foreword for books of an alleged war criminal that is a huge issue. And I think that tells you a lot about just how far the current political structures will go in order to push this narrative onto the public." "People have actually managed to move on from their own experiences of the 90s," says Suljagic. "But the people who did that to them have not moved an inch. Denying a past genocide, it's never just about denying genocide in the past. It's about planning and or hoping for the next one. Otherwise, why do it? Why glorify genocidal maniacs, why glorify mass murderers unless you're prepared to repeat it?" Produced by Hasan Rrahmani and Johanna Hoes Contributors: Aleksandar Brezar - journalist Emir Suljagic - professor, International University of Sarajevo Vladimir Petrovic - historian Natasa Kandic - founder, Humanitarian Law Center - Subscribe to our channel: https://ift.tt/291RaQr - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://ift.tt/1iHo6G4 - Check our website: https://ift.tt/2lOp4tL

#youtube #video #news #aljazeera

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katybudgetbooks · 7 years

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YA Books We’re Anticipating in June 2017

Dividing Eden by Joelle Charbonneau (6/6): From the author of the New York Times bestselling Testing trilogy comes a sweeping new fantasy series, perfect for fans of Victoria Aveyard and Sarah J. Maas.Twins Carys and Andreus were never destined to rule Eden. With their older brother next in line to inherit the throne, the future of the kingdom was secure.But appearances—and rivals—can be deceiving. When Eden’s king and crown prince are killed by assassins, Eden desperately needs a monarch, but the line of succession is no longer clear. With a ruling council scheming to gain power, Carys and Andreus are faced with only one option—to take part in a Trial of Succession that will determine which one of them is worthy of ruling the kingdom.As sister and brother, Carys and Andreus have always kept each other safe—from their secrets, from the court, and from the monsters lurking in the mountains beyond the kingdom’s wall. But the Trial of Succession will test the bonds of trust and family.With their country and their hearts divided, Carys and Andreus will discover exactly what each will do to win the crown. How long before suspicion takes hold and the thirst for power leads to the ultimate betrayal?

Follow Me Back by AV Geiger (6/6): Tessa Hart's world feels very small. Confined to her bedroom with agoraphobia, her one escape is the online fandom for pop sensation Eric Thorn. When he tweets to his fans, it's like his speaking directly to her...Eric Thorn is frightened by his obsessive fans. They take their devotion way too far. It doesn't help that his PR team keeps posting to encourage their fantasies.When a fellow pop star is murder at the hands of a fan, Eric knows he has to do something to shatter his online image fast--like take down one of his top Twitter followers. But Eric's plan to troll @TessaHeartsEric unexpectedly evolves into an online relationship deeper than either could have imagined. And when the two arrange to meet IRL, what should have made for the world's best episode of Catfish takes a deadly turn...Told through tweets, direct messages, and police transcripts, this thriller for the online generation will keep you guessing right up to the shocking end.

Once and for All by Sarah Dessen (6/6): From Sarah Dessen, the beloved New York Times bestselling author of SAINT ANYTHING and JUST LISTEN, comes a new novel set in the world of wedding planning! Is it really better to have loved and lost? Louna's summer job is to help brides plan their perfect day, even though she stopped believing in happily-ever-after when her first love ended tragically. But charming girl-magnet Ambrose isn't about to be discouraged now that he's met the one he really wants. Maybe Louna's second chance is standing right in front of her. Sarah Dessen’s many fans will adore this latest novel, a richly satisfying, enormously entertaining story with humor, romance, and an ending that is so much more than happily-ever-after.

Wildman by JC Geiger (6/6): "How can a complete stranger know you better than the people you've known your entire life?" Lance Hendricks is homeward bound, four hundred highway miles from the best night of his life. There's an epic graduation party brewing, his girlfriend will be there, and they've got a private bedroom with their names on it. When his '93 Buick breaks down in the middle of nowhere, Lance is sure he'll be back on the road in no time. After all, he's the high school valedictorian. First chair trumpet player. Scholarship winner. Nothing can stop Lance Hendricks. But afternoon turns to night, and Lance ends up stranded at the Trainsong Motel. The place feels ominous, even before there's a terrible car wreck outside his room. When Lance rushes out to help, the townies take notice. They call him Wildman, and an intriguing local girl asks him to join in their nighttime adventures. He begins to live up to his new name. As one day blurs into the next, Lance finds himself in a bar fight, jumping a train, avoiding the police. Drifting farther from home and closer to a girl who makes him feel a way he's never felt before—like himself. This debut novel by a remarkable new talent explores the relationship between identity and place, the power of being seen, and the speed at which a well-planned life can change forever.

Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley (6/6): A beautiful love story for fans of Jandy Nelson and Nicola Yoon: two teens find their way back to each other in a bookstore full of secrets and crushes, grief and hope—and letters hidden between the pages. Years ago, Rachel had a crush on Henry Jones. The day before she moved away, she tucked a love letter into his favorite book in his family’s bookshop. She waited. But Henry never came. Now Rachel has returned to the city—and to the bookshop—to work alongside the boy she’d rather not see, if at all possible, for the rest of her life. But Rachel needs the distraction. Her brother drowned months ago, and she can’t feel anything anymore. As Henry and Rachel work side by side—surrounded by books, watching love stories unfold, exchanging letters between the pages—they find hope in each other. Because life may be uncontrollable, even unbearable sometimes. But it’s possible that words, and love, and second chances are enough.

Be True to Me by Adele Griffin (6/13): It's the summer of 1976 on Fire Island, where sunbathing, lobster bakes, and the Bicentennial celebration reign. Jean, a sometimes cruel, often insecure, and always envious rich girl, is accustomed to living in her glamorous older sister’s shadow. So when Gil Burke, a handsome newcomer with uncertain ties to one of the most powerful families in the exclusive enclave of Sunken Haven, notices Jean—not her sister—Jean is smitten. Then Fritz, a girl from outside the gilded gates who humiliated Jean in the Island’s tennis championship last year, meets Gil. The chemistry between them is undeniable, and she quickly falls Gil herself. Soon the girls are competing for much more than a tennis trophy, with higher stakes than either of them can imagine. Through the alternating perspectives of Jean and Fritz, Adele Griffin captures the angst of feeling like you don’t belong and the urgency of first love with vivid language and perceptive wit.

Want by Cindy Pon (6/13): From critically acclaimed author Cindy Pon comes an edge-of-your-seat sci-fi thriller, set in a near-future Taipei plagued by pollution, about a group of teens who risk everything to save their city. Jason Zhou survives in a divided society where the elite use their wealth to buy longer lives. The rich wear special suits, protecting them from the pollution and viruses that plague the city, while those without suffer illness and early deaths. Frustrated by his city’s corruption and still grieving the loss of his mother who died as a result of it, Zhou is determined to change things, no matter the cost. With the help of his friends, Zhou infiltrates the lives of the wealthy in hopes of destroying the international Jin Corporation from within. Jin Corp not only manufactures the special suits the rich rely on, but they may also be manufacturing the pollution that makes them necessary. Yet the deeper Zhou delves into this new world of excess and wealth, the more muddled his plans become. And against his better judgment, Zhou finds himself falling for Daiyu, the daughter of Jin Corp’s CEO. Can Zhou save his city without compromising who he is, or destroying his own heart?

Aftercare Instructions by Bonnie Pipkin (6/27): “Troubled.” That’s seventeen-year-old Genesis according to her small New Jersey town. She finds refuge and stability in her relationship with her boyfriend, Peter—until he abandons her at a Planned Parenthood clinic during their appointment to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. The betrayal causes Gen to question everything.As Gen pushes herself forward to find her new identity without Peter, she must also confront her most painful memories. Through the lens of an ongoing four act play within the novel, the fantasy of their undying love unravels line by line, scene by scene. Digging deeper into her past while exploring the underground theater world of New York City, she rediscovers a long forgotten dream. But it’s when Gen lets go of her history, the one she thinks she knows, that she’s finally able to embrace the complicated, chaotic true story of her life, and take center stage.Aftercare Instructions, a debut full of heart and hope, follows Gen on a big-hearted journey from dorm rooms to diners to underground theaters—and ultimately, right into readers' hearts.

Generation One by Pittacus Lore (6/27): The first book in a pulse-pounding new series that’s set in the world of the #1 New York Times bestselling I Am Number Four series. The war may be over—but for the next generation, the battle has just begun!It has been over a year since the invasion of Earth was thwarted in Pittacus Lore’s United as One. But in order to win, our alien allies known as the Garde unleashed their Loric energy that spread throughout the globe. Now human teenagers have begun to develop incredible powers of their own, known as Legacies.To help these incredible and potentially dangerous individuals—and put the world at ease—the Garde have created an academy where they can train this new generation to control their powers and hopefully one day help mankind. But not everyone thinks that’s the best use of their talents. And the teens may need to use their Legacies sooner than they ever imagined. Perfect for fans of Marvel’s X-Men and Rick Yancey’s The 5th Wave, this epic new series follows a diverse cast of teens as they struggle to hone their abilities and decide what, if anything, they should do with them. As a spin-off of the bestselling I Am Number Four series, those familiar with the original books and newcomers alike will devour this fast-paced, action-packed sci-fi adventure.

Midnight Jewel by Richelle Mead (6/27): The Selection meets Reign in this dazzling trilogy of interwoven novels about three girls on a quest for freedom and true love from #1 internationally bestselling author Richelle Mead. Mira is not like the other Glittering Court girls. She is a war refugee, cast out of her home country and thrust into another, where she has learned to fight against the many injustices around her. For some, the Glittering Court offers a chance at a life they’ve only ever dreamed of, one of luxury, glamour, and leisure. But for Mira, it’s simply a means to an end. In the new world, she plans to earn off her marriage contract price, and finally be free. Mira pitches herself as an asset to one of the passengers on board the ship: the sardonic and aloof Grant Elliot, whom she’s discovered is a spy for the prestigious McGraw Agency—and her ticket to buying her freedom. His cover blown, Grant has little choice but to take her on. Mira applies herself by day, learning the etiquette and customs that will help to earn her anonymity. By night, she dons a mask and slips into the city, fighting injustice and corruption on her own terms—and impressing Grant with her extraordinary abilities and insights into an elusive case. But the case isn’t all they’re fighting… Neither of them can ignore the attraction burning between them—an attraction so powerful, it threatens to unravel everything Mira’s worked so hard for. With freedom finally within her grasp, can Mira risk it all for love?

#YA #new releases #Joelle Charbonneau #AV Geiger #Sarah Dessen #JC Geiger #Cath Crowley #Adele Griffin #Cindy Pon #Bonnie Pipkin #Pittacus Lore #Richelle Mead

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