DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
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DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
#”We’re coming for your children.”
The LGBTQ+ movement kicked out NAMBLA, genuine pederasts, in the 80’s in order to get sodomy laws aimed at consenting adults off the books. The American anti-pedophilia majority took a generation to accept this disavowal at face value.
The Pizzagate section of the Q or QAnon movement revived the bailey that gay people generally want to rape children to cultural relevance, and did so around the time the trans rights movement was pushing acceptance of transition. The motte version is that the gay community reproduces through social memetic contagion since they won’t reproduce sexually. One potent variation is the ironic and practically self-parodying “trans genocide” meme
The drag queen story hour program made the idea scarily realistic even to parents who didn’t subscribe to any of that conspiracy theory nonsense. And now there’s a new twist.
As chronicled by NBC News:
In the 21-second clip, circulated by a right-wing web streamer channel, dozens of people march in the streets and are clearly heard chanting, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re not going shopping.” But one voice that is louder than the crowd — it’s not clear whose, or whether the speaker was a member of the LGBTQ community — is heard saying at least twice, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children.”
To conservative pundits, activists and lawmakers, the video confirmed the allegations they’ve levied in recent years that the LGBTQ community is “grooming” children.
But to Brian Griffin, the original organizer of the NYC Drag March, if that’s the worst they heard, it’s only because he wasn’t there this year.
Griffin said he chanted obscene things in the past, like “Kill, kill, kill, we’re coming to kill the mayor,” and joked about pubic hair and sex toys during marches. People at the Drag March regularly sing “God is a lesbian.”
“It’s all just words,” Griffin said. “It’s all presented to fulfill their worst stereotypes of us.”
The “coming for your children” chant has been used for years at Pride events, according to longtime march attendees and gay rights activists, who said it’s one of many provocative expressions used to regain control of slurs against LGBTQ people. And in this case, they said, right-wing activists are jumping on a single video to weaponize an out-of-context remark to further stigmatize the queer community.
Conservative politicians and pundits have increasingly referred to advocates for LGBTQ rights as “groomers,” associating people who oppose laws that restrict drag performances or classroom discussions of gender identity with pedophiles. The charge is an echo of a decades-old trope anti-gay activists have used to paint the community as a threat to the country’s youths, an allegation that some advocates say endangers LGBTQ people. And the intense reaction to the video has scared some attendees, who insist the quip has been taken out of context.
“It’s really scary to us,” said Fussy Lo Mein, a drag performer and activist who was at this year’s march and declined to give their real name because of safety concerns. “It doesn’t represent everybody — it represents that individual. I thought it was a dumb idea, and I started chanting on top of it with alternate verses.”
This seems to be equivalent to the Charlottesville “White Rights” event where “Jews will not replace us” was supposedly chanted. The outgroup only hears “WE ARE A THREAT TO EVERYONE YOU LOVE AND EVERYTHING YOU HOLD SACRED,” while the ingroup appreciates the nuance and gets a bit freaked out at the outgroup seeing only the surface level interpretation.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
Probably the single most manipulative person I know has a documented mental disability (low IQ) in addition to her autism (which I share, which is how we met). She tried to manipulate my emotions to get me to be on her assisted decision team, which I know she will hector until they bow to her wishes and let her go to Disney World for a week instead of fixing her roof with the savings.
She has had her rights thoroughly and fully explained to her throughout her public schooling in Special Education. She insists upon them at every turn when someone says something she doesn’t like. She uses threats of suicide to summon the police Crisis Intervention Team to try to get her caretakers at group homes and even her mother to give her what she wants.
But her deficit is real. Attempts to explain, by people she genuinely trusts, go over her head and you can practically hear them whizzing by. Try to stuff into her head a concept not directly concrete or tied to her health and wellness, and you will find nothing but misery and confusion.
She has been convinced, in those terms, that literally every Republican wants to take away her Social Security and let her starve, and she was genuinely suicidal during Trump’s Presidency, and grateful that someone let her vote. No concept of the deep philosophical reasoning behind the right to vote, just a bunch of motivated reasoning.
I find myself remembering that IQ 100 is an average, and realizing how many more Americans like her I’ve never met because I never go where they are; my ingroup is clever talkers, and she is adjacently a clever-talker by the quirks of autism.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
4mo ago
Don’t forget, the primary decrying was of unwed teenage mothers, “girls who got knocked up” with no intention of “tying the knot”. Teenagers (read: high school minors) shouldn’t be having sex, goes the thinking, but if they do, it should be after a youthful marriage on their honeymoon, or for the conservative liberals of the time, at least in the context of a serious relationship, not just a casual form of recreation.
In pro-life communities, then to abort the proof of extramarital sex would compound the sin with a worse one; have the grandparents raise it as a miracle baby in their old age if the father won’t do the responsible thing. This was an era when divorce was still seen as an epidemic rather than the norm it has become, and a child’s birthday less than nine months from their parents’ wedding was still scandalous. Nowadays, with sex and marriage almost entirely decoupled (pardon the pun), it’s hard to remember the sociopolitical nuances from when they were intimately intwined.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
3mo ago
I wonder how much of this dynamic is the systemic fault of counseling being female-coded: highly subjective, no rules allowed for assigning blame except the “yes, dear” dynamic, no logical framework undergirding the conversations, etc.
Once I discovered a mental health paradigm which worked due to being the opposite of the above, I dove in with both feet and have never regretted it.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
7mo ago
Sound of Freedom beat the final Indiana Jones movie at the box office, albeit through a ticket multipurchase scheme, and the idea that Hollywood might lose its power is unthinkable to them. The "need" is to regain control of a public narrative of mainstream moral superiority over Christians, and nothing hurts Christians in the news like the "hypocrisy" of a single Christian falling like Samson to a woman's wiles.
That's the Culture Total War mentality: destroy all monuments and great works the other side might conceivably claim as theirs, and salt the earth, from football and beer all the way down to knitting forums.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
I don’t see why a verbal referral, possibly made sarcastically to a “squeaky wheel”, would have been recorded.
This is one of the reasons American conservatives don’t trust a large, central, bureaucratic government: “The part of the government which oversees the government states they couldn’t find anything in the files of the part of the government which works with citizens who served the government in fighting another government to indicate there was a referral to the part of the government which kills its own citizens to prevent them using excess government resources which could be used for more productive citizens.”
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
3mo ago
· Edited 3mo ago
Trump aide Peter Navarro has been sentenced to jail for contempt of Congress; Navarro has cited executive privilege as a Presidential advisor, on separation of powers grounds, in his refusal of the subpoena. Per NBC News:
Navarro helped spread misinformation about the 2020 election after Trump's loss and issued a report that Trump falsely said proved that it was statistically “impossible” for him to have lost the election. Trump referred to the report in his infamous "will be wild" tweet on Dec. 19, 2020, encouraging supporters to travel to Washington for a "Big protest" on Jan. 6. That tweet, many Jan. 6 defendants have said, is what drew them to Washington.
Navarro's lawyer asked that any sentence imposed Thursday be immediately stayed due to "novel issues" presented in the case, including Navarro's purported belief that Trump had invoked executive privilege.
NBC has gone all in on bad journalistic practices. The highlights in the quotes are mine, and are my focus.
- misinformation - a Newspeak word meaning “inaccurate information that people write and spread inadvertently” but implying deliberate disinformation (lies or misframed/“spun”/“technically true” information). Note no “alleged” before this; they’re claiming this as a fact, but without specifics or scope. If Navarro ever mistakenly spoke a single piece of untrue information between 11/2020 and today, this sentence is defensible were Navarro to sue for defamation.
- and - the placement implies that the report mentioned in the next clause is the misinformation mentioned in the previous clause. My journalism professor would have marked my grade down for that on any assignment.
- Trump falsely said proved - They don't say the report has been debunked or disproven. They imply that by flatly stating Trump was incorrect (implying but not alleging he was lying) in saying that a proving of the report had occurred. What standard are they using to define “proof”? No idea; no statistician was cited herein, nor court documents, nor any other attempts to prove.
- “Big protest” - quotation marks which indicate Trump’s actual words, doing double duty as skepticism quotes, heavily hinting that Trump intended insurrection, not first Amendment petition for redress of wrongs.
- Navarro's purported belief - here they’re weaseling their words as a good journalist does with any statement which is unprovable, but on something they know Navarro would never sue over for defamation, giving the impression that Navarro may be lying when he purports that belief.
This piece is propagandistic in these sentences at the end of the article, which are designed to give the reader background info about the case.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
9mo ago
I grew up a Christian in a full gospel (literal Bible) church which would today be reductively called fundamentalist. As a nerd (with what turned out to be autism and ADHD), I listened to the stories and connected the pieces. I looked for underlying structures, like I do with any sufficiently nerdy story-verse, like Star Trek, DC Comics, or My Little Pony. When I found theological radio shows (Chuck Missler’s 64/40, The Bible Answer Man, and the like), I was thrilled. To me, theology is worship s the Logos, the infinite and eternal mind of God, is the Person of the Trinity I’ve most adored since putting those pieces together. For fifteen years of adulthood, I spent Monday nights in a non-denominational Bible study group which is a local chapter of an international organization. I’ve expected the End Times to start soon, ever since I read a Chick Tract featuring mobile guillotines for Christians in the near future.
But I really didn’t get religiosity, or the atheist view of religiosity, until I read Robert Harris’ Cicero Trilogy, which brought the ancient world of the late Roman Republic to vivid and stunning life. Among the things Harris (not to be confused with Richard Harris) did was subtly but often mention the state religion. Not just the honoring and petitioning of gods, but the auguries, the seeking of divine signs in the entrails of small animal sacrifices. After seeing what reverence the Romans placed on auguries, it made sense that Caesar’s most public play for political power was getting himself chosen as the head high priest of Rome. It also suddenly made sense to me why the early Christians were called “atheists”: because they did not participate in the very public rituals and observances.
I still go to the same church I grew up in, though I’m one of only a few of my approx. age still there. I still believe in Jesus, though I’ve had several crises of faith. I still know the little details and nuances of the Bible and believe them to be real history, though I have an instinctive dislike of superstition and woo-woo pseudoscience.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
· Edited 10mo ago
“Woke” is about intersectionality or power-critical narratives or character arcs, usually pedantically or with a lecturing tone, not just progressive / feminist heroic viewpoints. Brave was about a Scottish princess beloved by her kingdom and family who used her existing but unrealized privilege to make choices in her romantic life; that’s standard modernist feminism.
Moana, on the other hand, was marketed as woke: “here’s a brave, strong Brown woman, isn’t she brave and strong for being Brown and a woman?” I didn’t see it until it hit the second-run theater for that reason alone; when I did, I was surprised it was just a fun, well-made, coming-of-age Disney film. She saw a problem, had an adventure, fixed the problem, and was rewarded for her leadership with more leadership. Sure, she had no romantic co-star, but that’s not woke, just feminist. It had a flamboyant-coded treasure-grubbing giant crab, which edged into wokeness, but it was a minuscule part of the film, and it fit the story. Again, modernist progressive, not woke.
Lightyear was woke because it was power-critical: the white man protagonist was constantly wrong, not heroic, throughout the film. At the end, his heroism consisted of being an ally to the family he accidentally helped, against Zurg, another white man who wanted to turn back the clock to when things were good for him and hide his mistakes from the people who determine his societal status. Postmodern “power was wrong” narrative plus fecund Black lesbian equals the triumph of queer family over the success of a highly privileged white man’s career ambitions
“It’s not a small or throwaway part of the movie. The climax hinges on Buzz deciding Alisha meeting her wife is more important than his primary objective for the entire movie, the lost years of his life, any possible better alternative path. He sacrifices everything for their love story and for the multi-generational positive impact of their love story. I was gobsmacked at how hard it swings not just for gay people being tolerable in “family-friendly” settings, but for gay people creating amazing families themselves.” - Autostraddle article
The article then goes on to point out how Pixar’s meta-narrative made queer acceptance itself travel back in time to make the Toy Story universe retroactively gayer, and thus better, then ours. Lightyear is woke, it’s a political point masquerading as a story, and it’s not satisfying entertainment.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
11mo ago
I'll add that if a guy can't say anything without lying, maybe he's got a bigger problem.
If a guy declines to testify on his own behalf because he can't say anything under oath without being accused of lying, and if he can then be forced by law to spend his own money to defend himself whilst again unable to take the stand himself, the problem he has is known as a witch hunt.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
7mo ago
In the newspeak memetic calculus of the 2020’s, being mean implies someone with “a tough skin”, good coping skills, or good mental defenses won’t be harmed by someone else being mean to them. But of course, if someone hasn’t been harmed, “no harm, no foul”. Therefore, all “being mean” should become “violence” to make harm unavoidable: “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can truly hurt me.”
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
“Neurotypical” used to exclusively mean without neurological structural differences from the norm, ie, without autism, mental retardation, cerebral palsy, traumatic brain injury, and anything else identified as being physical, not chemical.
It was adopted by the bipolar community, among others, creating a neuro-atypical disability pride community which now includes every emotional disturbance and memetic misconfiguration, including the dysphorias and dysmorphias.
“Neurotypical” is now used as an insult for “people who don’t know what it’s like to be us.” It’s another power-critical term intended to make “normal” unutterable without a sense of guilt.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
4mo ago
· Edited 4mo ago
Baphomet Has Fallen
How much good faith is required for an American state government respecting a religion's symbols?
The Satanic Temple, specifically the Satanic Temple of Iowa, put a statue depicting the pagan idol Baphomet in the Iowa Capitol, following the letter of the law allowing religious symbols. Thing is, it's explicitly an atheistic (or rather "non-theistic") religion; they have as much belief in the reality of Baphomet as they do the Flying Spaghetti Monster (mHNAty). They use literary symbols and provocative symbols to promote science and promote humanist atheist goals of tolerance and justice. It was designed to provoke a response, and it has; a Christian broke it. Deseret News reports that:
Jason Benell, the president of the Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers, described the “targeting” of the display as “encouraged by legislators.” He wrote in a news release, “This is unacceptable. When our leaders make it permissible to destroy religious — or non-religious — displays they find religiously objectionable, they are abdicating their responsibility to safeguard the freedom of expression of the citizens they represent.”
The state of Iowa finds itself in the position of avenging the rights of atheists to display a pagan idol they don't even believe in, which mocks people of genuine Christian faith with a dark symbol drawn from mythology.
Take that to its logical conclusion.
A Christian church could create a parallel object to be installed in the Iowa Capitol, a similar deliberately provocative anti-atheist symbol to be promoted as a sacred symbol of a pseudo-atheist "Church of the Human Condition" which exposes the failures and tragedies of the Enlightenment and promotes learning how to morally philosophize using the Jefferson Bible and select readings from Ayn Rand in after-school clubs. I can think of a few:
- A statue of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx in their best suits, French kissing atop a pile of human skulls
- A statue of Margaret Sanger and Madalyn Murray O'Hair standing back-to-back, dressed as Greek priestesses, each holding a knife in one hand and together holding the corpse of a Black baby
- The Invisible Pink Unicorn (possibly made of pink-glazed blown glass, in the style of My Little Pony) as the steed bearing the returning Jesus, depicted as a Super-Saiyan, His head and hair burning white, His eyes like a flame of fire, His feet like fine brass
- Or, if we want to avoid humanoid and animal statues entirely per the Third Commandment, an orrery (representing science) surrounded by gravestones bearing the names of Marx, Darwin, O'Hair, Sanger, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Christopher Hitchens, and other prominent atheists.
Desecrating any of these would bear the same fourth-degree criminal mischief charges, with up to a year in prison and a $2,560 fine, and exposure to lawsuits by the artists and owners of the symbols.
But aside from the turnabout, I'd like to remind that atheism is treated as a religion de facto by its adherents and proselytes, and de jure by the government in having Freedom of Religion under the First Amendment. Anyone who says it is not a religion must, by implication, accept that the broken Baphomet statue is only a violation of Freedom of Expression (under the same Amendment) so any cries of Christian hypocrisy at its destruction are inaccurate on their face due to the uneven parallel. Only by accepting that atheism is a religion can atheists claim a sacred right to offend Christians.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
11mo ago
Facts first:
-
Maxwell Ghislane, Epstein’s madame, was wealthy because her father paywalled science journals which had previously been free. It is widely believed that user MaxwellHill was her Reddit account, one of the earliest and most constant users.
-
Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz was a free info activist. He was in big legal trouble for using MIT’s fast Internet to freely download massive amounts of paywalled science journal archives. He died by hanging.
Theory:
- The Maxwells’ science journal empire would have been threatened if Swartz’ free information activism had spread to the student populace. She used intelligence service tactics to get close to the inner circle of Reddit admins and powermods, and applied psychological tactics to push him to commit suicide.
Even if not true, it’s interesting that both Swartz and Epstein were found dead, hanged. Miss White in the server room with the noose.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
11mo ago
First they reinvented original sin as white privilege, and the selling of indulgences as buying sustainable / environmental / electric. Now they’ve reinvented the mortification of the flesh.
I find this both scary and amusing. Maybe I’m just up too late, too tired.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
9mo ago
The left is now experiencing what it felt like on the right when the left was demanding everyone parrot "Black Lives Matter" or else be branded a racist on social media forever. (Which ruined race relations, and became an incredible opportunity for actual racists and eugenics supporters.)
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
9mo ago
The question Western/European civilization now needs to answer is at what point migrant camps / ghettos / unassimilated population centers / banlieues / HLMs become colonies in the colonial sense.
Native America was overtaken by European colonies, and the most famous was Plymouth, refugees who broke from England’s church but stayed tied to England politically.
One other thing scares me: France is a nuclear-armed power; imagine if the Conquistadors had found natives’ nukes and given them to the 17th century Vatican.
DuplexFields
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11mo ago
My hypothesis remains unfalsified: the media reaction and government reaction was a tool for societal changes, not a tool for saving lives.
It was like those SF movies where some monster, disaster, or disease is ravaging the city, and a plucky scientist shows up saying the response has been all wrong. Only, instead of the authorities or the military listening and solving the problem in half an hour of screentime, they lock him out of the building and the media starts calling him an anti-science conspiracy theorist.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
2mo ago
Counterpoint:
The shift to women creators and LGBTQ+ lead actors might be coinciding with a dismaying shift from GenX to Millennial entertainment production. My favorite hobby-horse, MLPFiM, was created by a woman several years my senior, Lauren Faust, and it has a GenX worldview behind it, contrasted with the Millennial storytelling of its biggest contemporaries, Adventure Time and Steven Universe. Those are shows which delight in subverting the Hero’s Journey, and also pioneered the wide acceptance of the “bean-mouth” rubber-hose stylized animation trend.
Consider also the Cobra Kai series which leaped from YouTube to Netflix. It has been a tremendous accomplishment because it takes its farce seriously and yet doesn’t skimp on powerful character development. Film schools should be studying this phenomenon for the next decade. The creators were born in 1977 and 1978.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
9mo ago
War was painted as glorious and honorable so that men would actually be willing to pay with their lives. The moment the cameras and journalists get onto the battlefield, the less glamorous and noble it all seems.
One problem with the culture war is that the “soldiers” look back from the battlefield and, instead of seeing the opera houses of Vienna or the palaces of Versailles, they instead see the hovels and ghettos and wonder why exactly they are fighting in the first place.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
9mo ago
It’s the Matrix 3 effect, in my opinion. Matrix 1 was a modernist film about postmodernism, which is why it won big. Matrix 2 was a deconstruction of Matrix 1, and upped the ante on ideas, spectacle, and CGI, but focused on deglamorizing the lives of revolutionaries. Matrix 3 went full postmodern, with a “who do we root for?” ending which was barely explained despite its double big sacrifice.
Matrix 1 and Last Crusade are both practically perfect movies, Matrix 2 and Crystal Skull are both CG heavy cash-ins, and I believe I’ll feel the same way after watching Dial of Destiny the way I felt after Matrix 3.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
I’ve seen it. The first half felt, I kid you not, just like watching the local college women’s basketball team.
My family loves the Lobos of the University of New Mexico. I’ve gone to many games at The Pit, our basketball arena, and watched both men and women play. With the men, it’s about the almost martial precision as they dribble, shoot, pass, and execute plays. With the women, it’s about watching them put in the effort and the emotion, feeling their drama as they play.
The Marvels is a superheroine movie, a different beast than its spear counterparts. The emotions are more important than the scenarios; issues of identity, status, duty, wants and fears are what matter. Kamala is a teenager worried about her family, Carol is an unaging guilt-ridden mess, and Monica is an orphaned grownup working through her grief. Their punches and zaps don’t hit as hard, though that may be the directors’ fault. They want to convince, not to fight, but their appeals aren’t to logic, they’re pleas of emotion.
They’re, quite simply, beta Avengers in a made-for-TV movie trying to be postmodern and flailing back into modernity for money shots.
It’s worth sitting through the first half to get to the second half. Ironically, it’s when they get to the Bollywood planet that things come together. Once that fight finishes, however, the movie seems to delight in swapping them into other scenarios where their swift action is necessary, making the point that women’s lives are all about multitasking. Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury stuck in Earth orbit but available by ear comms makes the whole thing Charlie’s Avengers.
(Culture war angle: the villain looks uncannily like VP Kamala Harris.)
All in all, I watched it for the Marvel continuity, and enjoyed it, but I was moved more by the movie I watched directly afterward: Five Nights At Freddy’s.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
9mo ago
· Edited 9mo ago
You can if, like in dream experiences, the magic in play means you can lead an entirely different life and yet return in an instant to the body and brain you left. Her middle-schooler’s brain was literally not developed enough to retain all that it had absorbed and adapted to in the other realm. The forgetting would have started nearly immediately as the nerves unbranched.
In addition, they’d lived decades there and practically forgotten the England they’d come from! They were fully assimilated into Narnian life. But in the text, they dropped it all in an instant, remembering about the houseguests touring the Professor’s estate. From the final two pages of LWW:
Then said King Edmund,
“I know not how it is, but this lamp on the post worketh upon me strangely. It runs in my mind that I have seen the like before; as it were in a dream, or in the dream of a dream.”
“Sir,” answered they all, “it is even so with us also.”
“And more,” said Queen Lucy, “for it will not go out of my mind that if we pass this post and lantern either we shall find strange adventures or else some great change of our fortunes.”
“Madam,” said King Edmund, “the like foreboding stirreth in my heart also.”
“And in mine, fair brother,” said King Peter.
“And in mine too,” said Queen Susan. “Wherefore by my counsel we shall lightly return to our horses and follow this White Stag no further.” “Madam,” said King Peter, “therein I pray thee to have me excused. For never since we four were Kings and Queens in Narnia have we set our hands to any high matter, as battles, quests, feats of arms, acts of justice, and the like, and then given over; but always what we have
taken in hand, the same we have achieved.”
“Sister,” said Queen Lucy, “my royal brother speaks rightly. And it
seems to me we should be shamed if for any fearing or foreboding we turned back from following so noble a beast as now we have in chase.”
“And so say I,” said King Edmund. “And I have such desire to find the signification of this thing that I would not by my good will turn back for the richest jewel in all Narnia and all the islands.”
“Then in the name of Aslan,” said Queen Susan, “if ye will all have it so, let us go on and take the adventure that shall fall to us.”
So these Kings and Queens entered the thicket, and before they had gone a score of paces they all remembered that the thing they had seen was called a lamppost, and before they had gone twenty more they noticed that they were. making their way not through branches but through coats. And next moment they all came tumbling out of a wardrobe door into the empty room, and They were no longer Kings and Queens in their hunting array but just Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy in their old clothes. It was the same day and the same hour of the day on which they had all gone into the wardrobe to hide. Mrs Macready and the visitors were still talking in the passage; but luckily they never came into the empty room and so the children weren’t caught.
And that would have been the very end of the story if it hadn’t been that they felt they really must explain to the Professor why four of the coats out of his wardrobe were missing. And the Professor, who was a very remarkable man, didn’t tell them not to be silly or not to tell lies, but believed the whole story.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
2mo ago
My Little Pony Friendship is Magic is singlehoofedly responsible for:
- Reducing my depression to manageable levels which a support group managed to finish off
- Giving me enough confidence to get my degree
- Reigniting my passion for writing
- Teaching me about healthy relationships in a theoretical and logical enough way to break through my autism and show me what everyone had claimed was so profound all my life which I couldn’t see before, to the point people are now generally shocked when I say I have autism and I mostly don’t feel I have it anymore
- Showing me how journalism really works, and why never to trust a journalist
- Rescuing a long-time family friendship I accidentally almost broke
- Getting me the third best job I’ve ever had
- Revealing a piece of theology which is sorely underserved, the true meaning of shalom
I would be a completely different person today if I hadn’t seen the first episode I ever saw, S1E4, at that exact moment in my life.
Terminator: Dark Fate
(Disclaimer: I am ONLY discussing T1, T2, and DF here because it fits this trope.)
Sarah Connor fought Skynet’s Terminators, first for her own survival and then her son’s. She prevented Skynet from coming into being. She became a true action hero in T2, a mama bear, right up there with Rambo and Ripley.
But she tried to kill Miles Dyson so he wouldn’t invent the militaristic Singularity. Miles was Black, and he died helping her kill Skynet. Thus, she isn’t allowed a happy ending.
DF picks up after the Los Angeles adventure in T2. Sarah and John flee the country to the tropics. A Terminator, Arnold model, emerges from the water and slaughters John Connor, successful in his mission at last. She saved the world but lost her only son, her motivation for fighting.
Hollow and defeated, she lives her life as a fugitive from the law until one day she gets a message pinpointing where and when a Terminator will emerge from the future. She shows up, kills it. This keeps happening until she saves the life of a Hispanic girl, the newest target.
It turns out Sarah only killed the first militaristic Singularity, Skynet. They’re going to keep happening as long as humans try to make smart machines. This one will be called “Legion” and has time travel and Terminators too.
On the run, they commiserate about being the targets of Terminators and losing family. Sarah waxes angsty about how meaningless it is that this girl will spend her life just trying to keep her son safe. The androgynous augmented woman warrior from the future tells Sarah that no, this girl is herself the future savior of humanity, the future general who takes down Legion.
Sarah Connor, the white waitress-turned-warrior woman who defeated Skynet in a time war, is devastated. She lost her son after he was no longer vital to humanity, and she’s on the run for crimes she committed to keep him safe.
This Hispanic girl, meanwhile, will someday be hailed as conquering hero. If she doesn’t strangle Legion in its crib, she’ll at least put it down with extreme righteous violence. She’s Sarah and John Connor wrapped up in one person.
The cuckolding of old and wrinkled Los Angelina Sarah Connor is made complete when it turns out the T-800 who killed her son became a really chill dude and has been feeding her the coordinates of Legion’s Terminators all along. The cuckoldry is doubled by Arnold’s doofy ass having become stepfather to a gun-loving Texas family.
Sarah gave it all, every ounce of strength and will and legal recourse, and her son besides, and the week she finds out she’s been the sidekick to her son’s slaughterer is also the week she finds out her son’s place in prophecy has been pre-empted by someone nonwhite, non-American, and non-male.
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