My sticking point with the treatment of Finn is that to discuss it, you MUST start with his sidelining in TLJ, and not TRoS. 

Because he WAS sidelined in TLJ. Many of his scenes in TLJ were deleted or heavily altered, and, not to put too fine a point on it, but he WAS the leading male of TFA, and even arguably more of the lead than Rey. Finn’s actions were what moved the plot – if Finn hadn’t made the choice to defect, EVERYTHING that followed would be different, and it’s entirely possible Rey would be dead, BB-8 dismantled and dissected, Poe dumped out an airlock, Starkiller left unleashed, the Resistance wiped out, etc. 

But in TLJ? He’s in a C-plot that even the film’s defenders will often admit could have been shortened or cut and nothing lost. Finn is treated as a vestigial limb that the movie wants to lose but can’t. 

You know that child slave on Canto Bight, who the movie ends on him looking up at the sky? You know where else in this trilogy there are child slaves? THE FIRST ORDER STORMTROOPERS. Kidnapped, enslaved, brainwashed, turned into killing machines for a fascist organization. You want the groundwork for the last-second stormtrooper rebellion of TRoS? HERE, Finn is infiltrating a First Order vessel, why not talk about it here, show the seeds of that? 

Or the goddamn coma – Finn starts TLJ in a coma, and this coma patient is in a storage closet. Why is a coma patient in a storage closet with no medical observation, not even a droid if not a doctor to monitor him? 

Finn is a punchline throughout the movie, his pain and trauma ignored or the source of “humor,” like him getting tazed for trying to run away from an organization he hadn’t even joined – his working with the Resistance in TFA against Starkiller isn’t him signing up, so if anything, it could be said the Resistance holds him hostage. Which, if you want to explore the idea of how, since the Republic became the Empire became the Republic, the cyclical nature of the Star Wars universe… Great starting point, what are we saying with this? Cuz the film says nothing. 

And this isn’t even going near the lack of Expanded Universe content on him – What has his presence been in the EU? He got the first issue of an anthology comic series centered on him, and beyond that AT MOST has been a supporting character. While there have been mini-series and novels set around other characters – freaking PHASMA has both a novel and a comic series centered around her, and she taps out at about ten minutes total screentime in the whole damn trilogy. 

So if you’re going to go after the sequels for wasting Finn, you MUST start with the example left by TLJ.

everyone who says they’re not going to vote if biden gets the nomination knows they’re also passing up on voting for other shit, right?

like, just some of the seats up for voting this year:

you know the shit that’s been happening in the house since 2018? you know how the senate has been stonewalling fucking everything? did you know that Mitch McConnell’s seat is one of the seats up for grabs this year? if you give a fuck about non-shitty laws being passed and not giving the republicans control of every government branch (again), then you should fucking vote.

and in case that wasn’t pants-shitting enough, the 2020 census means that the state governments elected this year get to choose the redistricting process that determines districts for the next 10 years. if the republicans take your state legislature, it is practically a guarantee that your state will be gerrymandered to hell. if you give a fuck about gerrymandering (and trust me, republicans do), then you should fucking vote.

if you let all this shit slide by staying home on election day, if you give up your vote because the only election you know or care about it is the presidential one, that’s not fucking praxis.

plus like

this is a 2party system

in the president ballot, a vote for anybody other than the democrat nominee is a vote for trumpetface. and sorry to break it to you but so is not voting

i mean we went thru this last time in 2016 don't you remember?!

Happy 2200 or 2020 or something from the Little Dorks!

— Alexander Berkman - What Is Communist Anarchism?

“right”, mumbled crowley, suddenly feeling very alone

a request for @221teabees

The Demons of St. Jame’s Park

Prompt: “Tell me who did this to you.”

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The Demons of St. Jame’s Park

Sidewalks typically do not sway. There are notable exceptions of course, such as when the earth quakes, a landslide occurs, or Satan himself fancies a jaunt to the mortal plane. 

None of these events are currently in progress, of course. 

So the swaying is, very likely, in Aziraphale’s head. The result of a minor concussion, no doubt. 

He’s getting stares as he shuffles, wobbling with a hurried determination through the trafficked London streets. 

The cold Autumn air is a stinging touch against his cheek; shivering droplets trail from the gash below his cheekbone. An eye throbs with a dull, insistent ache, and Aziraphale swears he can feel the skin around it darkening into an unsightly bruise. His wrist, bent just slightly further than human wrists are meant to bend, is cradled against his chest. And behind it, he carries a package, beaten almost as completely as he, wedged protectively between his wrist and dirt-stained coat.

He’s nearly made it back to his shop, and as he trots unsteadily over the swaying path, he very purposefully avoids meeting passerbys’ concerned stares. A few miracles would clean him right up, of course, but frankly it has been an exceedingly trying morning and Aziraphale would rather not spare the energy to divert the attention of curious eyes prior to actually doing the healing. 

The miracles can wait.

At least until he’s in the privacy of his shop.

And he does make it - back to the shop.

Not that he doubted he would, but his wrist was throbbing something awful and the sidewalk had begun an alarmingly frantic tilt. 

The chime of bells as he shoulders into the shop is a lovely accompaniment to the ringing in his ears. 

The shop is dim and mercifully quiet, and Aziraphale heaves a sigh. He leans against the door, and it closes behind him with a comforting click. With his good hand, he carefully sets the battered package on a nearby shelf. 

With the knowledge that his precious cargo is safe, a wound up part of him relaxes. His head falls back with a thunk, and braced against the door, he closes his aching eyes.

“You’re back. Finally.”

Aziraphale starts at the voice, which rises, low and petulant from the shop’s dark interior.

“I’ve been waiting forever, angel.”

And now the voice is accompanied by loping footsteps. 

Aziraphale is exhausted, his body is bruised and aching, his package was very nearly lost, and he does not have the energy to deal with whatever chaos Crowley’s presence will inevitably bring to his day. 

It’s not that he fears that Crowley would hurt him - or anything of the sort. Even before The Arrangement, Crowley had really never seemed keen to harm Aziraphale. It’s just - well, Crowley always wants to do things. Grab lunch. Go on a walk. See a play. All lovely activities; and really, the demon isn’t bad company. At all. 

And therein lies the problem. 

Aziraphale likes spending time with Crowley. 

Far too much, considering their respective allegiances. 

If Aziraphale is summer-dry tinder, Crowley is the lit match. 

And after the morning he’s had, Aziraphale doesn’t have the energy to resist burning. 

Keep reading

George Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, protests a pizza place in Arlington, VA, 1961

You know what? Good for Mario

Gosh. Wonder why a Jewish man wouldn’t think twice about serving African Americans but would be loath to serve the founder of the American Nazi Party. (sarcastic)

As an Italian Jew I really identify with Mario here, he’s my hero

So there was no Mario, actually. The shop was run by a man named Howard Levine and his family. Levine rather understandably refused to serve the nazis (as you might already have guessed, “won’t serve white gentiles” was extreme hyperbole) and thus, this extremely small and unpopular protest ensued.

George Rockwell was gunned down in 1967 by one of his supporters, ironically enough. This fine establishment is still standing and operating, if anyone in the area wants to celebrate a long and illustrious history of telling fascists where to stick it.

As someone who does ceramics, that twisted, broken up fork would make an excellent tool for slipping and scoring, or maybe even just texturing. It would make a super cute bug print, or make easy, perfectly spaced lines at a farther difference than a typical fork. It can be used for creating, rather than just feeding some giant machine. Just because it wouldn’t be particularly good at being used as it is expected to be used, which is not to say that a creative person couldn’t find a way to make it work, does not make it useless. In the right hands, even the most seemingly “useless” object can be functional, or even groundbreaking in the right hands.

Also, people aren’t objects, and you dont need to be able to “use” them in order for them to exist.

Although the third item may not be useful as a fork, it may not be a fork at all. It might be a spongulator or breckinaid or wizmark. I don’t know, it’s none of my business, I’m not a toolologist or a breckinmonger; I am only am amateur curator of mysterious artifacts. I 

(Whatever that particular strange item is, I’m sure that some archaeologist has one of its siblings in a drawer somewhere, labeled as a “ritual object.” We’ve probably been making them since the Bronze Age. Scholars probably throw up their hands helplessly when another one of these comes up; they debate their origins, label them as a fragment of a lost conversation with unknown gods.)

But the picture presents a series of items, presented as if they already have a relationship with each other, in which one of the items has failed. And, like, I’m not pretending to be an Art Critique here, but I feel like we got over that in the early 1900s with the Surrealists, yeah? That’s the literal entire plot of The Ugly Duckling (1843). Just because something’s been plonked down in context with some other things that it vaguely resembles doesn’t mean that it’s somehow Bad, because it fails to Resemble the Other Things, especially if it’s a pile of things that somebody arranged. The person who arranged the photograph deliberately arranged a context to make it seem as if the item had failed at being a fork. But if they had taken the same non-matching item and lit it artistically, then that same artist would be demanding accolades for their Very Original Picture of a Breckinaid.

Figure 2. Breckinaids are frequently exploited by artists and upcyclers, due to their abundance and versatility. They are commonly thought to be more useful, beautiful and valuable than forks, although, of course, that is not everything. 

However, all that being said: as OP says, people aren’t forks or breckinaids (or even wizmarks). And we are not measured by our ability to fork or breck. 

Although, obviously, we are all obligated to give a fork about each other. 

Sometimes multiple things are just true at once. Chanukah is a minor holiday and it’s also an important one. It’s not in the spirit of Chanukah to commercialise it like Christmas and it’s absolutely the best way to assert your Jewishness during the most Christian-centric time of year. You can only really spell Chanukah in Hebrew and you absolutely don’t need to know Hebrew to spell Chanukah/Hanukkah/Chanukkah/etc. 

It’s Judaism. Multiple things are true. 

Ahhh! I thought these would be out like, next year or something 😧 (from Garrett’s instagram) Americas face is so good I’m dying 😩

Posted to wrong account oops 😋

one thing that would be nice is when people talk about “scabs”/strikebreakers etc is that historically the labour movement has been extraordinarily racist and that unions as an institution have excluded black people & have had policies barring black people form membership (formally or informally), setting up a dichotomy of people who deserved fair wages & those who didn’t. demonizing people who cross picket lines is not a neutral act & i know there are multiple contexts and multiple histories here but “scabs” has often traditionally been a racialized insult at least in the US. (x, x, x, x, x)

this is just a fyi, not like a encouragement to cross picket lines. 

This is also like, a key weakness in unions and one of the most powerful weapons against them. 

If unions only protect union-workers (rather than the whole working class) then they swiftly become useless. As Union workers retire they are replaced with non-union workers (these new workers aren’t including in the negotiations with the union in return for giving Members a bigger piece of the pie) and a generation later the union represents so few workers that its strikes are meaningless.

Nowadays it is central to state propaganda to widen this division between Good Workers and everyone else (even as the state attacks Good Workers, it blames those attacks on the unemployed or undocumented or criminalised).

From the start - the white labour movement built this deep structural weakness into itself, because antiblackness was fundemental to their notion of their own liberation.

I’m upset because I want to change the world but the world is too big and people are too mean

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” - Rabbi Tarfon

I think that there’s some kind of mindset in a lot of creative communities (authors, artists, musicians) that your work needs to be groundbreaking and thought-provoking for it to matter. That in order for it to be considered worthy of its medium, it must have a greater purpose. 

And if you ask me, its bullshit. 

God, it puts so much stress on a creator to have to be important to someone else. I have seen so many people give up because their work isn’t making a statement, that it’s ‘fluff but no substance.’ As though there’s only room for so many people in a community of creators that only people with a point can get in. 

If it made someone laugh, it’s important. 

If it made someone smile, it’s important. 

If someone looks back on it fondly, even for a moment, it’s important. 

If you enjoyed making it, even if you never shared it, it’s important. 

Sing songs about your cat, draw pictures of lizards eating popsicles, and write a series of novels about time-traveling alpaca. 

The world is already full of super-important stuff. Write fluff. 

I get weird looks sometimes when I tell people I write for myself, and if other people incidentally enjoy it, well, cool.  But it’s way, way too much work to write anything but a story I desperately want to read.  And that’s truly my only criteria for whether or not something is personally “worth writing”.

America Vol 1 #1  (2017) // Marvel Comics

“Fear not, mi gente…”

Story: Gabby Rivera, art:  Joe Quinones 

Get her comics comics here

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(via deadly-daydreams)