Let's go on an adventure

-Peri

Well, the entirety of my syllabus is a full explanation of creating with intent, and intent is not "versus" doing research and applying it!

Also,

"I wanted to challenge myself, using my amateur art skills and my teaching skills, to convey to creators how that makes us as a community feel, and little things they can do to more intentionally create their Black characters (and therefore show more care for their Black audience). There's more to us than adding to a diversity quota. There's more to antiracism than a checklist!"

-My FAQ

There's a difference between writing a character and just happening to make them Black, and Choosing to Write a Black Character. That is, one that is purposely, "I intentionally thought about the importance of the Blackness of this character as I wrote them, as well as the Black audience that will see them, and it shows".

Most of you don't do that. You write a Guy and go "I'll just say he's Black, boom I'm Progressive and Woke and Inclusive!" Meanwhile, it's a shell of a character that you will be angry at me for thinking could be better if you'd put a little more active thought into it, because How Dare You Question My Good Intent?!?

really makes you wonder why they're so shocked about sex tourism, like of course you can do depraved shit you're waving money (valuable money too) in front of poor imperialised people. it's almost less empathetic to be shocked by it than to understand why it's such a common thing.

and the attitude that tourists get like "oh everyone's just after my money" and paranoia around getting robbed like of fucking course people want your money you're wearing a luxury watch in front of subsistence fishermen, you're showing off how much money you have even just as a regular citizen of empire to people who'll not only never see a cent of it, but who actively are exploited to make your country rich.

that's really exactly it.

as someone who could very easily qualify for a diagnosis of bpd or cptsd, and even very often resonates with both, everything described in bpd is just a demonization of the same patterns of behaviour described by cptsd. it is just describing you as evil for struggling with being hurt so much, and in doing so, takes the focus away from the person hurting and puts it onto how it inconveniences everyone else.

we really need to be critical of how these labels come to be, because they are deliberately created, and they are created by people with biases. they are so often just a tool of oppression, another extension of a discriminatory machine.

I hope it isn't derailing, but I think this is also really illustrated with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. "narcissist" was a word for an asshole before it was a word for a disorder. rather than describing how someone might struggle to relate to others or be open to true connection, and centering the person who needs to heal, they instead called everyone who struggles with that an irredeemable dick and dressed it up in medical expertise so you wouldn't think to question it. frankly I think it's silly to call for treating "narcissist" like some sacred medical term instead of looking at how fucked up it is that they called a disorder that???

nigel farage is, if you're blissfully unfamiliar, a pissbaby who wants to ride on the trump playbook into power. his party, filling the power vacuum of the dying conservative party, has gained a worrying degree of popularity in a very short time, despite spending most of his time getting 'milkshaked'.

it'd be funny if it wasn't scary. the conservative party, which has been the shitty right-wing party of the uk since the beginnings of its weird as shit democracy, is on the precipice of collapse, and into that gap has come farage with the 'reform' party. it's far-right and it's currently very popular and it's very very fragile. nigel farage is its sole face. it requires him to function and without him the movement has no establishment figurehead.

so. farage is a member of parliament (you basically need to be one to be a prime minister) who's eyeing the PM job in a couple years. he's got a non-zero chance of making that happen. but his party has to survive to the finish line, and he needs to be an MP to make it happen.

this situation became tenuous for him when it turned out he'd been taking millions of pounds of mysterious backhanders juuust before he was elected from, primarily, a crypto billionaire and a man named 'posh george'. all in all he pocketed £5 million for fully unclear purposes. you're supposed to declare anything above £300 received in the last 12 months when you get elected to parliament. you see the issue.

so there's a parliamentary investigation going on, and how is farage to stop such a thing? well...

at a time where his position is tenuous, he can stop the clock, make every news cycle about him, and reinvigorate his base and mandate by resigning, triggering a local election, and then standing in that election. in his area no party stands a chance of being the One True Opposition against him; they'd just split all the votes amongst each other and farage comes out on top having tamped down the whole 'millions of dollars of ??? money' thing. genius, thinks farage.

seeing that it's a fool's errand, though, no party has taken the bait. everyone has allowed him to run unopposed.

except this guy.

this is count binface. his entire career is being The Guy Who Stands In Elections. if the prime minister's local election is getting contested, he's there.

nigel farage is in a one-on-one battle for his political future, and the future of his party, against someone he never thought he'd be directly pitted against, and who now, if he remains the sole other candidate, controls the narrative for the next few weeks of his life. it's Farage v Binface.

what does binface stand for, though? is he just a guy with a bin on his head? well, he's got strong opinions on stuff. here's his manifesto from when he ran for mayor of london:

the only thing that really remains consistent between his manifestos is the hand dryer thing. it's fair enough.

all this to say. it's a non-zero chance that, with a single unity candidate against farage, people just say 'fuck it' and tick count binface on the ballot.

and now nigel farage and his team have to stay up at night sweating about it.

I can't tell you how strange it felt to see a post with this photo attached, bc I also have this post blocked in the exact same way

2tbsp of peanut butter. a splash of rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, maple syrup. some chili flakes, some sesame seeds. a splash of water to thin it out. now you put in your noodles (cooled!!!! boiled and rinsed so they’re cold!!) and then some chopped up cucumber or carrot or avocado or cabbage or any crunchy vegetable. i just used cucumber

I am relieved that I'd left my room tidy