The Absurd Hero’s Journey

Book that was bad: this sucked 👎

An amorphous black blob thingy that shape-shifts into any hazard related thing.

The Timeline: 40 mins

from this article which seemed to suck the least (unsure if this is the name she actually uses or a deadname; if it is i will remove it from this post):

The encounter took place in 2025 after the University of Central Florida police responded to a report involving a possible vehicle theft. Although Jarrett Preston Vick, who reportedly uses she/her pronouns, was not accused of stealing a vehicle, she became involved in the police interaction and grew visibly distressed after officers referred to her using male pronouns. In the footage, shared by Inside The Blue TV on YouTube, Vick repeatedly asked officers to address her correctly, saying, “She! She! Just say the right pronoun.” “Josh, can you please just tell them to use the right pronouns? Please. You know, it’s causing me a lot of distress.” Josh, identified as a university employee who briefly appeared in the clip, attempted to calm the situation as the exchange continued. At another point, Vick shouted, “Why do you let those kids get away with this? They are not supposed to be here.” One responding officer warned that if Jarrett did not lower her voice, she could be placed in handcuffs and taken for evaluation under Florida’s Baker Act. The confrontation continued to escalate before officers ultimately detained and handcuffed Vick. Notably, her arrest records list her as male. According to court records, the confrontation resulted in her being charged with battery on a law enforcement officer, a third-degree felony, along with misdemeanor counts of resisting an officer without violence and disorderly conduct. She formally pleaded not guilty to all charges on March 27, 2025. Bodycam shows UCF student repeatedly screaming “Don’t say him! Say she!” during a stolen vehicle investigation—then getting pepper-sprayed and arrested.

trans people's distress is always treated as a combination of male violence and female hysteria. this is patriarchal state violence in action. people fixate on the trans person's "unreasonable" distress and not that the officer was actively continuing to fuck with her until she lashed out.

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.