This Plant Is Upset

@nordicninja Aaaand Avatar the last Airbender

And like, okay, true! But also consider: on this particular front, AtLA is good at this because it is a solid 8.5/10 on the FMA side of this scale.

(The 8.5/10 isn't a critique of AtLA, which is an excellent show on all counts, but it doesn't quite measure up to the FMA threshhold here simply because of the limitations of being an American kids' show. It can do the thing, but it can't foreground the thing or spend five seasons of anime/27 volumes of manga meditating on the ravages and implications of violence, because it's busy also being aimed at 10-year-olds and about other stuff too.)

Witness:

You could defeat the enemy, if you killed him. Your allies say you should. It would work.

It wouldn't even make you a bad person -- not here, not now, not in these circumstances. Of course you wouldn't be "as bad as they are," that's bullshit. Putting down a single mad dog does not equal literal genocide. FFS.

You could do it. You should do it. It would work, and isn't that the most important thing? To stop the horror? In the light of all the sheer destruction and evil at play, your own personal lily-white rejection of culpability is purely selfish. Isn't it?

But, god, you don't want to. You don't want to kill. The whole point is that life is important, is sacred, is worth protecting. You haven't been forced to yet. You keep finding ways around it. You've seen enough death. You don't want to do it.

Here and now, if you did -- it would fix the problem. It would fix things! It would save the day! The world would be inarguably better. You know this!

You know this. You know it because the world will not stop telling you this. Everything you've seen, everything you've been taught. Everything the people you love and respect say to you. And it's not a lie, it's not made up, it's true -- killing, here, in this one case, would help.

Why is the world so set on forcing you to kill? Why is this how the world works, that a child (you're not as young as you were when you started, but you're a child, you were a child, the first time somebody assumed you would someday simply have to be a murderer) gets handed a weapon and made to use it?

We are using the rules that the world set. We are using the rules that the genocidal maniac set. They are the same rules, because there's a reason genocidal maniacs are able to come to power in the first place, because the world is built in a way that violence works.

You know this. You're good at it! You're skilled at violence. It's how you've come so far.

But.

((and you know, the only reason you're able to have these thoughts, is because other people have already killed for you. will kill for you again. will wear the blood on their hands to save your life. somebody else is taking it so you don't have to, and you do not get to forget that.))

But maybe, if you're skilled enough. If you're good enough. If you can find a third option. Maybe, maybe, if you are just clever enough, if you're willing to risk losing entirely, you can do more than save the day.

Maybe you can rewrite the rules. Maybe you can rebel, not just against the genocidal horror villain about to doom the world, but against the entire world in the process.

If you're good enough to find the loophole -- to master the magic -- to put everything you've ever learned into practice. If you can find another way. If you can prove that another way exists.

Maybe you get to do more than close the door on one evil.

@thoughtful-collections Could you go into the Animorphs side of the child soldier question? Obviously they do kill and I think one character even kills many of the yerks while they are defenceless and justifies it as a necessary step to win. I suppose that series is saying there is no avoiding murder/killing/getting your hands dirty in war?

Yesssss

Look, there are a lot of child soldiers in the genre, whatever 'genre' that may be. Some kill easily, thoughtlessly, like any action movie star. Some have Important Moral Lessons on how killing makes us no better than the bad guys. Many of them get their very own generous plot device get-out-of-jail free card: either they have some form of captivity that their opponents get sent to at the end of a fight and we never have to think too hard about false imprisonment without trial (Steven Universe; at least one instance of Power Rangers?; Batman and Robin generally; etc), or, their opponents aren't really people, so it doesn't actually count as murder (media as diverse as the Persona series all the way back to good old Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Sometimes, through sheer force of will, grit, and absolute unparalleled protagonist energy, child soldiers get to avoid killing in a world that makes it a genuine option.

Animorphs looked at all of those options, and it said, nah.

You want a war story, little child? Okay, the books say. Here's a war story. This is war.

Here's how it starts: you're goofing around with your friends one night. You take an ill-advised turn. You watch somebody get horrifically murdered.

No, you can't save him. Yes, you can save yourselves. Get used to that. Get used to it so, so fast.

You're on a trolley. Up ahead are two tracks. On one side: a dozen evil aliens. On the other side: your brother. Make a choice.

Good job, you didn't crash the train into a cliff. By the way, did we mention there are a thousand more tracks? More people tied to each and every one?

You get to put your hands on the steering wheel. You get to drive the trolley. This is a gift. Make a choice.

(Refusing to act is still a decision.)

You can jump off the train, if you want. You don't have to be the one to steer. Maybe you'll even survive the fall. Maybe the friends you're leaving behind will be good enough to make sure they don't run you over on your way down.

Your mom is on one of the tracks, by the way. Your dad. Your sisters, your cousins. Your brother, still.

You don't have to steer. You don't have to do this. You can let the train take its course, you can let it plow through all of humanity. You can let it happen. You get to do that, if it's what you want to do.

Nobody is coming to save you.

On one track: the aliens have names, thoughts, dreams, personalities. On the other track: there are six billion humans on this planet today.

Every single option in front of you is a war crime. If you're lucky, you'll get to pick which one.

(Refusing to act is still a decision.)

It's fun sometimes, driving a train. When there's nobody in the way, for just a little while. When you can pretend you're mowing down enemies in a video game. When you can give into the rush of adrenaline and just be glad you have the skill.

Maybe, maybe somebody will come to save you. They'll take over steering. You won't have to choose.

(Refusing to act is still a decision.)

Who will they choose to hit? Will they care? Will they care enough?

You watch TV. You watch Xena, and X-Files, and Buffy. You can pretend to live in a world where your enemies are nameless monsters without souls, if you want. If that makes it easier.

Is it easier, to kill them soft and vulnerable and completely powerless, unable to fight back? Does that feel better than killing the ones hunting you down, weapons in hand?

You are looking for a loophole. You are looking, and looking, and looking for a loophole. You don't get to fight monsters without souls. You don't get to lock them up in tiny bubble jail. They are going to kill you. This is what you get.

It's you. You're the one standing here. This is what's happening.

Refusing to act is still a decision.

(There is a loophole, eventually. A third path. One of you finds it, eventually.)

(It would not have worked, without years of war first. It took you years of war to find it and if you hadn't killed so, so many, it would not have worked.)

You don't get to be good, in war. You don't get to save the day by sacrificing your own life and remaining morally pure. That would be too easy. War means dead bodies. That's what it means.

That doesn't mean you give yourself over to despair. That doesn't mean you shrug and figure the lives being spent don't matter. You don't get to throw your own moral code on the altar of heroic sacrifice and claim to be the real victim here. It never stops mattering. It will never, ever get to stop mattering.

That doesn't mean you never fight. It just means that when you choose to step up and fight for something, you'd better be goddamn sure it's worth the cost, because chances are somebody a lot less powerful than you is going to be the one to pay.

On one track: Your brother. Your cousin. Seventeen thousand unarmed, helpless enemy agents.

On the other track: a new train's barreling straight at you and all six billion members of the human race. All-out slaughterous war. Giving over the steering wheel to the last hands that decided the best answer to their problems was genocide.

(REFUSING TO ACT IS STILL A DECISION)

There's nothing wrong with wearing polos. Or keeping your house clean. Or shaving, or 'politeness', or whatever. But.

... A very important test of someone's character is how they deal with things that Society (TM) in general, and their social circle in particular, thinks are Not Okay. If society says it's Not Okay to be gay, are you capable of being decent to gay people? If society says you Have to like drinking, and you can't stand the taste or effects of alcohol, are you gonna let people pressure you into drinking anyway, to get along with others? If your social circle says that it's Not Okay to listen to certain music, are you going to listen to that music anyway? If your social circle says that people with Political View A are all evil bastards, are you able to be decent to someone with Political View A? (Or someone with Political View C or Religion Q that vaguely looks like Political View A, if you squint?) Things like that.

If you see someone who has stripped their life of anything that society disapproves of, that's not a great sign. If you see someone who has stripped their life of anything their social circle disapproves of, even if they're alt and anti-government, that's also a bad sign.

You need to have something in your life that is yours, that is not dictated by someone outside you, that no one is going to take away from you. You need to have some part of your life that you will defend and hold onto, even if everyone else is telling you that it's wrong. Even if everyone you know thinks you're dangerously bad and stupid for it.

by John Tagliabue

She begins by detailing the history of Ingen as a fledgling bioengineering company, with a lot of biographical information about John Hammond as the charismatic yet shady founder, complete with the anecdote about his genetically engineered dog-sized elephant ("While it may have wowed investors, Babar the elephant did not live very long, and allegedly suffered from numerous health disorders and a generally poor quality of life. Put a pin in that.")

After detailing the covered-up scandals about workplace "accidents" at the park, the youtuber goes into her own trip, which is notably disappointing, not dramatic. It starts well with her seeing the Brachiosaurs, complete with found-footage style reveal of them that hopefully manages to capture some of the majesty of their reveal in the original film, albeit from a very grounded "real person encountering big exotic animals" vibe.

But then we get to the tour of the park itself. The visitor center is half finished, with a big obvious tarp covering the wall from the reception area that hasn't been made yet. the hokey welcoming video is using scratch track music because they haven't sorted out the rights to the licensed music they want. The automated vehicles are buggy as hell - one of them snaps on the youtuber's thumb when she closes the door, bruising it terribly ("That's what you get when you partner with Tesla I guess. Spared no expense, I guess.")

The dilophosaurus is a no show. The T.rex is a no-show, even when they bring out a goat to lure it. ("Why feed it a live goat? I'm pretty sure most zoos don't feed live prey to the large carnivores both for their safety and ours. And a goat's barely more than a mouthful to a T.rex, isn't it? It's like they're not considering the animal welfare at all - put a pin in that.") The triceratops is sick. ("The veterinarian on hand, Gerry Harding, said this was a recurring problem. Apparently there was a plant in their enclosure that's toxic to them, but because the trikes haven't been spotted eating the plant, the park assumed it was alright to include because it's pretty? Anyway, it turned out that the plant's berries, which are also toxic, were being eaten by the trikes, and that's where their digestive problems came from. Spared no expense!")

Many of the other promised rides aren't in operation, and as she looks into it our youtuber protagonist learns that it's due to inability to manage the animal behavior (despite the staff trying to hide that this is the case). The aviary is closed because the cearadatyluses are wildly aggressive. The mosasaur lagoon is closed because they can't find a way for audiences to view the mosasaur up close that's remotely safe. The river ride is closed because the dilophosaurs SPIT VENOM! at people when they pass by. The velociraptors have been moved to an extremely tiny quarantine pen because of their vicious behavior ("Yeah, keeping predators that are built to run at cheetah speed in a tiny pen is going to do so much good for their behavioral issues. Spared no expense!").

On her last day she finally manages to see the Tyrannosaur in its exhibit ("Why did they put it in a paddock filled with thick foliage? It's a nine-ton carnivore, it needs a much more open space! This can't be comfortable for it - hell, I'm halfway convinced the reason it didn't show up the first two days is that it was struggling to find its way through all those goddamn trees!"). She takes note of its odd, toad-like eyes, and its near inability to capture the goat when it stands still, forcing it to roar loudly to make the goat squirm so it can finally eat. The youtuber then recalls a bit of information from the welcome video - "Remember when I said to put a pin on Frog DNA?" - and realizes that the dinosaurs's hybrid nature has severely compromised their basic biological functions, with T.rex, an animal with some of the best binocular vision in the fossil record, being hamstrung by having the vision problems of a toad. "This is a creature that should have eyes as sharp as a hawk's that's now almost functionally blind! Can you imagine how terrifying that must be for it?"

The video then turns into a takedown of Ingen's shoddy genetic engineering work, uncovering a great deal of infomation on the hybridization process and how it's negatively impacted the animals upon creation, and then focuses on how the park exacerbated this by its neglectful approach to protecting their livelihoods, caused by a mixture of stingy over-reliance on automation and a lack of actual experts on staff. "They hype these animals up as miracles of science, and yet they can't be bothered to put even a modicum of effort into considering their basic biological and behavioral needs! Spared no expense my ass!"

by Joanna Klink

And to have come this way for nothing. To see my own skin’s shallow glow against the cool wood of the porch swing, holding out my arms. The breezes I created leaning back into me. I was swinging against the empty day, against the rain’s copper pitch, against summer. Someone banged out piano scales and I swung against them, the lack of silence. I was a guest in that house, feathering shapes in my head out of snow, a quiet above the porch-boards emptying through meadows and rose windows. Sun fell like mist from an opening in the clouds above farmlands, the hills sometimes lifting like waves. I was host to disappointments that were not mine. I watched a few weeds glint in the woods, felt dry lilacs browning, was unseen minister to stray things that could resist blurring. Wet leaves against water. Glass bowls by the high windows. But now these are dreams, they are plain tombs.

Why such painstaking care in sitting on a swing — breathing, as if I could float back into the precision of myself within the white hours of afternoon, hung from clean beams by chains made stiff by rust. Their cold metal links turning warm in my palms. Have I not changed at all, folding my legs beneath me, bracing for the next unspoken need, the blind demand to stand and shoulder what I had no hand in creating. The sound of windchimes beaten gold.

my human rights as a woman and a gay person, and those of trans people, people of color, disabled people, and other marginalized people are not a bargaining chip. and they are not up for negotiation

focus on issues like jobs and housing and healthcare and student loan debt more by treating human rights as settled and not budging while you do other things, not by demanding historically oppressed groups make ourselves smaller. because then what the hell are we fighting for?