sathari | Recent Entries

I haven't posted for a while. Even before the US hellection, it was because I wanted to have something to say that would at least potentially serve some useful purpose. And after? Oh, yeah. Not cluttering up people's mental space until I had something useful to say, until I had words to say that I could stand behind and that might be of some use to someone else became exponentially more important.

And so here it is.

Everyone is an end in themselves--- or, if they choose, a means to an end of their choosing. That is the thing that the social forces behind this election are trying to kill. They want to tell you that you are just a means to someone else's end, that you have no say in what that end is. Whether that's on the large scale, of oligarchs of all stripes telling you that, no, you just exist to serve their ends (whether it's clicks and eyeballs and ad revenue or dying in armed conflict, just as two prominent examples), or the little, closer to home ones of people who demand that you attend in-person events unmasked because your desire not to contract a particularly nasty disease is somehow less important than their desire to be surrounded by a lot of people and to make those people smile at them, that's what they're trying to tell you. You don't get to choose your own ends, much less to be one in yourself.

The thing I'm fighting, or writing, or anything for--- is the idea that we're all ends in ourselves, or the means to an end of our own choosing. Our choosing. We choose who and what and how to live and die for. Each of us gets to choose that, and the messy, beautiful mosaic of the world that comes out of that is something that's more than any of us could imagine by forcing other people to be a means to our ends. That's worth saying, and worth saving, to me.

The Harris campaign has multiple "Childless Cat Ladies" shirt options, and some for dog ladies too!

Current Mood: mischievous

...I cannot be the only person here who really wants some version of a "child~~less~~free cat ~~ladies~~ people for Kamala" shirt. (Seriously, that crack of Vance's about childless cat ladies deserves to become the new "Nevertheless, she persisted.")

Current Mood: hopeful

(Post title from Don Henley's "The Sunset Grill".)

Honestly, with all the various shakeups in various places on the internet these days, I sometimes feel like I didn't so much dodge a bullet, or even dodge bullets like a freaking Matrix character as... I somehow managed to avoid kicking any of the pebbles that would have started a personal social-media avalanche right now?

( Rambling about my use of social media or lack thereof (spoiler alert: see icon).... )

I'd been trying to come up with not so much something I wanted to post but more like triaging ideas for posts and then choking on them, and then

anghraine tagged me with the following meme: Share the last line of your wip and tag as many people as there are words in the sentence.

And, well. Okay, 1) my life is nothing but WIPs. 2) Most of them have more words in the current last sentence than I even know people to tag, much less have reading me. 3) The ones that are shorter than that make almost no sense without reams of context.

But, okay, I'll give it a go:

And you’ve wanted to take me to your grandfather’s stronghold--- Bast Castle.

No prizes for anyone who guesses that this is Rey talking to Ben Solo|Kylo Ren; this particular WIP is from my pet idea of "Doyleist situations have Watsonian consequences" and specifically, "What if everyone involved with the making of the ST had known that Carrie Fisher wouldn't be available for the third movie and so they went with 'Leia reaches out to her son with her last strength and he has his heel-face turn at the end of TLJ rather than TROS' and he gets to live through his redemption arc?" This is Ben and Rey talking about what they want to do now that her grandfather's been defeated and his Uncle Lando and Auntie Qi'ra are pretty much sharing the gavel at the constitutional convention that's convened in the wake of it.

Tags are anyone reading this who wants to come out to play.

( Cut to spare your mental equilibrium, because UGH. )

Current Mood: angry

Hey, all---

atalantapendrag, who is one of my oldest friends, is in need of help with housing for her and her two kitties. Details can be found at her GoFundMe set up by another friend here, and if you've got a couple extra bucks to spare, that would be great. 'Lanta's been a big help to me a number of times in my life, so I'd like to do what I can for her in turn.

Current Mood: worried

So there is an article on DailyKos about Amazon, Pride Month, and anti-trans material being sold on Amazon. The rest of this is under a cut for reasons of the content advisory.
( Ugh, DKos, ugh. )

Current Mood: aggravated

Okay, so I just realized that it has in fact been over a year since I've actually posted here. I've been commenting on and off on various comms and other people's journals, so I didn't notice.

So, um. Not dead yet, of COVID or anything else; same for my family. The parental units have, however, had a number of health issues.which have been kind of taking up a lot of my "dealing with other people" skillpoints for the last half-year or so. Most of it's... responded to, at least, if not entirely addressed.

Writing-wise... I kind of accidentally won NaNo this year? Toward the end of November, I happened to look at the wordcount of the story I'd been working on, and it was 49k+. And I said, "Huh, you know, I started this one fairly recently... wonder if it was during November?" And lo, and behold, I had in fact started it at the beginning of November! So I knocked out the last <1k words, and yay! NaNo! (NaNo has long been a source of frustration for me, because while I can and do make 50k wordcounts in 30-day spans when I have enough free time, the precise period from Nov.1-30 has very seldom been that for me, between assorted end-of-year professional obligations and the fact that Thanksgiving is a Big Fucking Deal in my family, especially to my mom. So, go me.

Also, two recommendations of entertainment media:

House of Gucci: This movie entirely validates my conviction that Adam Driver should play adorkable shy nerds more often. Also, Lady Gaga is excellent, but I admit freely that I was there for the shallow purpose of enjoying Adam Driver's shy nerd turned quietly ruthless businessman... who should've kept listening to his very smart wife.

The Goblin Emperor: The Goblin Emperor The Goblin Emperor THE GOBLIN EMPEROR. If you haven't read it and you're reading my journal, you probably want to. It's the story of how the elvish emperor's half-goblin fourth son, whom nobody, including himself, thinks much of and who has been living in obscurity under the supervision of a distant family member who resents the hell out of him, becomes the emperor of the Elflands after his father and three older half-brothers are all killed in the same airship crash, and how he proceeds to make his world a better place through the power of knowing what it's like to have people think you're beneath them, and committing himself to treating everyone else better than that, while also ultimately not letting his political opponents get the better of him.

(Aaaaand if you think that both of these stories read like "things I think about Reylo"... that just shows you've been here long enough to know me. :) Because Adam Driver's performance of Maurizio Gucci as "shy dude turned quietly ruthless while initially dippy in love with a smart woman to whom he should have kept listening" is kind of on point for my headcanon of Ben Solo, and Palpatine's scavenger granddaughter Rey, if she'd taken the throne without the whole Sith bodysnatcher thing, would absolutely be the same type of ruler as the title character in TGE.)

For anyone looking for something constructive to do with regard to the chances of flipping the Senate by way of Georgia's pair of runoff Senate elections, I did what amounts to a meta link roundup here. (This is also my obligatory plug for

thisfinecrew --- really, if any of my political posts are relevant to your interests, then so is this comm.)

Here it is!

I just did what amounts to a linkspam of US voting information websites by state over here at

thisfinecrew if anyone needs the information.

Current Mood: productive

I've seen this one around, most recently on

ilyena_sylph's journal:

Pick a character you know I know (you may pick more than one character, but they must be in separate comments), and ask me to answer these questions about them:

1. How I feel about this character

2. All the people I ship romantically and/or sexually with this character

3. Favorite gen relationship(s) for this character

4. My unpopular opinion about this character

5. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

6. Random pet theory about this character that you won't convince me is not true.

7. A song or piece of music I associate with this character.

... are we far enough out that we don't need spoiler cuts? Eh, I'm waiting until the home-viewing releases in whatever format come out.

Anyway, this is a post about: 1) galactic realpolitik in the GFFA and 2) Lando Calrissian being awesome.

( Read more... )

Something I can't believe I forgot to include in my first review:

( Spoilers and some snarky feminist squee! )

And now I'm just wondering how long I should wait before starting to use my TROS Rey-and-Ben|Kylo icons without them being considered too spoilery.

Current Mood: pleased

Have seen it three times now, twice by myself and once with family who are casual fans.

On first viewing, I thought it was a hot mess and the dialogue in particular was execrable. On second viewing (I saw it the first and second nights it was out, back to back) I decided that the dialogue and pacing weren't bad in comparison to the overall series, it's just that I like Rian Johnson's writing and storytelling style a lot better than Abrams'.
( There are spoilers, spoilers, and spoilers, and also me rambling about my headcanon and plotbunnies. )

...so this is apparently less of a review and more of my spitballing about the plotbunnies I got from this movie? But the fact that I want to write fic for it is a good sign.

Current Mood: peaceful

Given my stated opinions around here, if I say anything more above the cut it probably counts as a spoiler, so under the cut we go.
( There are spoilers, and spoilers, and did I mention more spoilers? And also I natter about my headcanon a lot. )

As I just posted over at

thisfinecrew, there are a whole bunch of protest events scheduled in response to the draconian abortion bans making the rounds in various states of the US. Check them out here: #StopTheBans (Even states that aren't joining in the Handmaid's Tale LARP game have events!)

In my last, and somewhat flippant, post, I talked about Ben as having too much ambition for his own good. And I've been meaning to make a post about how I see his affect versus how a lot of the rest of fandom apparently does. And I think these issues mesh.

Point the first: I am not sure if Ben's so much ambitious in and for himself, as he is trying to living up to the standards he's used to other people expecting of him*. It may be less his own personal desire for power/etc. and more that it's just been assumed, by everyone, all of his life, that he's supposed to Achieve Great Things. I suspect that somewhere in the back of his mind, there is a subroutine that goes something like, "Anything less than actually ruling the galaxy means you are a failure and a disappointment."

Which goes to the second point. A lot of fandom seems to see him as spoilt/shallow/whiny... and I really never have. His affect always read to me as almost the opposite, especially any time he's got the mask off**--- he looked terrified and miserable to me. Not like someone who thinks he deserves to have more, but someone who's terrified that he hasn't done enough.
( Cut for length and canonical violence seen through the prism of abusive mentorship... )

So, all joking about John Dean parallels aside, I think Ben is a lot less driven by personal ambition, and more by a desperate need to live up to the expectations that other people have placed on him, and a fear of the consequences of his failure--- which for most of his life have included "possibly being killed by your mentor."

*h/t to

anghraine 's recent meta about Pride and Prejudice for inspiring me to organize my thoughts here.

**The mask is significant here; the mask, I think, simultaneously gives him that connection to Grandfather (the only member of his family he hasn't failed yet)*** and also lets him hide from being embedded in his family expectations. It gives him a sense of anonymity and of being his own person that he doesn't have.

***I'm a sentimentalist, but I'd love an ending for him that includes him getting to say to Rey something about how he did manage to outdo his grandfather's legacy, because in the end he didn't let down the woman he loved. (Even if those are his dying words and/or Rey doesn't necessarily feel moved to return his affections.)

I've been binge-reading/watching assorted Watergate-era history and fiction of late.

And thanks to reading about John Dean's life--- both his role in Watergate and after--- I think I've decided that that is basically what I'm hoping for for Ben Solo|Kylo Ren.

As in: dude in his thirties with too much ambition for his own good who involves himself in some highly unethical power-tripping garbage and slo-o-o-w-l-y begins to extricate himself from that, primarily for reasons of self-interest at first, and gradually works his way around to the ethical side of the universe. (Bonus if the sequel-to-the-sequel trilogy lets him reinvent himself as a snarky eminence gris to the next Resistance, which is basically what Mr. Dean seems to be doing with his life at the moment.)

How does this work what with Ben|Kylo being the Supreme Leader and all?

Hux, that's how. It seems pretty clear that those two are headed for a clash.

So, say that Hux keeps coming up with battle plans. And, whether Ben|Kylo actively thinks they're stupid (think more of those "technological terrors" that Ben's grandpa hated so much) or just doesn't want Hux to cover himself with glory... he gets the bright idea to start passing information about Hux's plans to the Resistance, possibly through the Force Bond he has with Rey, so that Hux will get egg on his face. (I suspect that Ben|Kylo would think that things that make Hux look bad and make Rey happy with him are win-wins in his life, and really, that boy needs to rethink his life and his choices at that point.)

And over the course of this, Ben|Kylo does start rethinking his life and his choices. Not least with help from Rey. And... okay, I'm the only person in Star Wars fandom who would want a war-crimes tribunal/reconciliation commission. But something more genre-appropriate would involve Ben|Kylo getting isolated enough in the First Order thanks to Hux that it ultimately becomes in his best interest to help the Resistance bring the whole thing down, climactic space battle and all. (I realize that this makes him probably more like a cross between Mark Felt, Bob Woodward's "Deep Throat", and Ex Exley from LA Confidential--- the latter being the ambitious SOB who agrees to tear down his own accomplishments "with a wrecking ball" when he discovers the rot at the core of them, and admittedly does so with an eye to rebuilding from the ashes--- but.)

(Also I want the sequel-to-the-sequel trilogy where Ben, who has mostly been living, not as a hermit like Luke and Obi-wan and Yoda, but as a sort of nomadic Atoner letting the Force guide him to the problems it wants him to solve, whether that's healing random people or freeing slaves or just fixing somebody's broken spaceship or beating a crimelord at sabacc and taking his ill-gotten loot to give away or whatever, gets to show up and help save the day for the next generation. Possibly not by stepping out with a laser sword and facing down the next iteration of the Dark side but by providing vital intel or tactical advice or something.)

(I seem to use my "I'm going to fandom hell" tag for obscure and idiosyncratic crossovers between Star Wars and US political history. Okay.)

My fandom_stocking is full of lovely goodies, including fic recs, icons, and a lovely Balthier-and-Fran ficlet--- check 'em out!

The treats I wrote are as follows:

For

maplemood :
A Rey/Ben|Kylo fic in three parts: one, two, and three (and, uh, I may be working on some codas to it....)

For

bluegeek :
A Leia/Holdo short and a soup recipe:

For

paynesgrey :
A Rey/Ben|Kylo fixit AU

For

tassosss :
An Anakin/Padme short

For

queenmidalah :
Two Black Jewels fusions, one Luke/Mara and one Rey/Poe

For

wendymypooh :
A Luke/Mara short

Current Mood: pleased

I'm hopeful for the new US House of Representatives, and thankful for them and the independent judiciary and the free press.

I'm going to try to do the opposite of Burr's advice to Hamilton in the latter's eponymous musical, and talk MORE, smile LESS.

I'm going to try to figure out a better heuristic for what I want to post here, and at what level of access. (The short form is that right now I have two main fandoms, Star Wars and US politics, and not only do they overlap in some ways and no, I'm not linking to that article about how Lucas based Emperor Palpatine on Richard Nixon again, but also when I post about either of them I tend to want to line up literally everything in exhaustive detail or else come up with a short tagline and either is work.)

But I do want to talk with you, and by "you" I mean, "If you've stumbled on this journal and stuff I've posted publicly here on DW, I'm at least somewhat curious to see if we're okay with each other".

Seriously, this is an amazing movie. And while it is sharply critical of the politics/policy/apparent nakedly amoral power-grabbing of its subject and the surrounding players... I also came away with it wanting ALL THE BIOGRAPHIES of Lynne Cheney and thinking that her husband really loved her and their daughters ( ...and I'm cutting the rest for politics and spoilers and venting. )

Also, somehow it appears that I did not rec BlackKklansman when it came out and I must rectify this oversight at once. ( Not really spoilers but cut for length. )

( In which I objectify three very good actors who probably deserve better. )

Okay, so, I am not in Transformers fandom, but the posters for this one caught my eye because they gave it the appearance of having a female human protagonist and my inner six-year-old reminded me that I would have been so hard into Transformers as a kid if that had been the case. So I went. And I was not only not disappointed, this is the girl-hero story of my heart. And also it did everything right that I complained about with the Star Wars sequel trilogy over here in terms of the lady-hero and her dudely potential love interest. Like, I want to buy all the drinks/snacks/whatever forever for Christina Hodson (the screenwriter) and also I don't know if she was actually taking on the same things I noticed in TFA specifically, or if it was just... getting it right in general and just not doing those things and it just happened to map to my rants about TFA specifically.

And then just in general it just... did people so well. (I mean, granted that this is by the standards of the genre... but on the other hand, when a popcorn-movie action film produced by a toy company makes me cry at no less than three separate points, they are doing something very, very right about telling a meaningful and engaging story.)

What follows is not so much a review or a synopsis, but mostly me squeeing about favorite points with hopefully enough explanation of the plot/story for the squee to hang together. Content notes for canonical issues around grief and loss of a parent and canon-typical violence; also me talking about some potentially sexist plot-trope bullets that this movie dodges like Neo dodges the real ones in the Matrix movies. (Also I talk about Star Wars semi-gratuitously.)

( Spoilers, spoilers, more spoilers, and a lot of squee! )

Current Mood: happy

fandom_stocking is here!

Okay, so this is more or less an amalgam of things I've been thinking about Star Wars and specifically the Force and the Jedi Order, for a while. I'm not sure how much of it conforms to the New EU, nor even necessarily how much conforms to Legends/old EU. I'm just kind of having fun here. Fair warning, I am not entirely kind to the Republic-era Jedi Order and its relationship with the Old Republic, but given that George Lucas himself has noted parallels between the prequels and certain then-current trends in US politics, I think there's something to be said for playing with separation of church and state or its lack in the PT. (Also, apparently Palpatine was kind of a Nixon expy, lol.)

Content advisories: discussions of what might be considered spiritual abuse and educational malpractice, including gaslighting, and complicated messy human dynamics generally, as well as canonical acts of violence.

( I have a LOT of thoughts about the Jedi Order, apparently. )
TL;DR: Everything what went wrong with the Jedi Order is contained in Obi-wan's line in ROTS, "My allegiance is to the Senate"--- not to the Force.

Current Mood: thoughtful

Okay, so, dear friends and internets. I am kinda sorta worried about Episode IX.

No, not from any spoilers I've read or anything like that. This is more conceptual.

Namely that JJ Abrams is back at the helm. And--- look, I was as happy with the improvement in terms of race and gender in TFA as opposed to the OT as anyone else... and then Rian Johnson came along and not only did enough better, but kind of threw into sharp relief some of the problems I had with the way TFA's creative team, with Abrams at the helm, handled certain points of race and gender, especially with regard to Finn and even more especially with how they made him relate to Rey.

And the thing is that several of them could have been fixed with MINUSCULE script tweaking! Just a couple of lines different here and there and several of my problems would go away entirely! But no. Somehow, some very sketchy race-and-gender dynamics got all the way through the development process onto the screen and apparently either no one "in the room where it happens" (/Hamilton reference) noticed, or if they did it didn't get fixed.

( Cut for length, discussion of racism and sexism, and brief discussion of the specifics of the Milgram study )

If you haven't seen either Widows or Green Book yet, and you're reading this, you probably want to see them whenever you get an opportunity that's within your time/money/energy budget for seeing movies. Because both of them are AMAZING. (I will happily talk more in comments but there will almost certainly be spoilers.)

Seriously. VOTE. I have been doing most of my posting of election resources over at

thisfinecrew and if you're not already lurking over there, please take a moment to have a look because there are a lot of people posting a lot of good resources. Also 866ourvote.org/ exists if you need help with voting.

Last but not least, if you're not inspired by the candidates on your ballot, there are enough races getting national attention that you can probably find someone in a comparable race you are inspired by. Vote for the one on your ballot so that the ones you do like have a team when they get there. (This is definitely true for Congress--- both House and Senate--- but also to varying extents for downballot races, because, for example, governors and attorneys general do interact with each other across state lines and do things like filing lawsuits against federal policies together.) (And, for democracy's sake, even if you don't like your local pols, if you have someone at the statewide level you do like, vote for the ones of their party so that the one you like can actually do things. I'm thinking specifically of the races for governor, which have a lot of really likeable people who are also good at their jobs, but they can only do those jobs if the downballot folks back them up.)

And, yeah, right now, I think the only viable choice in this election is to vote for the Democratic party, because the Republican party seems in my lifetime to have grown increasingly hostile to actual Constitutionally protected rights other than the one in their particular interpretation of the Second Amendment. We need elected officials who will act as a drag chute on the efforts by the worser demons of the GOP to send our democracy right over a cliff.

Good luck, and we're gonna do this.

rydra_wong has an excellent rundown here of the latest round of People Who Do Not Have Our Best Interests At Heart (even if they are not necessarily in the employ of an historically hostile foreign government) trying to discourage people from voting. (Actually, her posts in general are amazing reading; I should probably just be signal-boosting her more regularly.)

Now, personally, even if I were the type to ignore the right which was arguably the touchstone for why we decided to become a separate nation in the first place, I would find the abject horrors of the last week motivation enough to go out and vote, and specifically vote the people who are enabling the stoking of these horrors or even doing it themselves out of office. (Hint: those would be the ones with an R after their names. Further hint: there are almost no cases I can think of, with the exception of Sanders' Senate race in Vermont, where the people with the best chance to remove the others DON'T have a D after their names. If there were ever a year for straight-ticket voting for Democrats, this is it.)

Or to put it another way, if voting didn't matter, People Who Do Not Have Our Best Interests At Heart would not be trying to stop us from doing it, or making it less effective when we do.

A/N: I've been watching Rogue One as my go-to "background noise" lately, and it struck me that there are some similar things going on with Vader and Galen Erso and where that might lead. This fic is the result. ETA:Also, apparently I didn't mention that I'd intended it as an AU--- thanks to

sheenianni for catching that, and for graciously saying that it works even as canon-compliant!

( Read more... )

Current Mood: pleased

So, in an effort to be the change I wish to see in my reading page, a wild post appears!

And, because there is enough up and down the line in the universe that sucks, here's a post to talk about anything you're happy about. Favorite things--- share a fandom (or whatever) that's making you happy and squee unapologetically about it. (And, not to be scoldy, but let's try not to harsh anyone else's squee if we can help it.)

(And, yes, this is sort of a response to the at-least-semi popular demand for a Last Jedi appreciation post, because it appears that my reading list's views on the sequel trilogy ranges from "meh" to "yay!", rather than the fully-polarized distribution in fandom generally, which was heartening for me as an unapologetic sequel fan--- and then I decided, why limit it to one movie or fandom?) (That said, if you want to squee in detail about TLJ with me here, I would love to! ;) )

Current Mood: hopeful

Scott Pruitt is out at the EPA. (This dude is so cartoonishly corrupt that I can't even. The man basically thinks being a Cabinet secretary is effectively being made a member of the peerage. But then I am increasingly inclined to believe that the GOP's ideal vision for this country is effectively cartoon medieval Europe with better tech.)

The EU did not, after all, decide to break fandom horribly. (I may live in the US, but I've been sick about this since I heard about it, and profoudnly relieved that it's over for now.)

Current Mood: relieved

...so I just realized it has been nearly a freaking year since I posted here? I blame a combination of meatspace eating my socialization skill-points and... something harder to verbalize, which was that I had been posting a lot about politics (see: what's been eating my socialization energy in meatspace) and not wanting to... get off-message, I suppose is the best way to put it, or post about other things (like how freaking much I love The Last Jedi, seriously, I have a new favorite Star Wars movie and it is also possibly in my top ten favorite films) in a way that would somehow detract from that?

And then the FCC's net neutrality rules went into effect and I was sharply reminded of how fragile and precious my online social network is to me, and so here I am. What's up with all of you?

Current Mood: thoughtful

Okay... is anyone else seeing what I'm seeing/connecting the dots that I am here?

Item: Earlier this week, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, our nation's top law enforcement official, announced a plan to increase the scope of civil asset forfeiture by law enforcement, rolling back the restrictions on this practice put into place during the Obama administration.

Item: This Thursday, the New York Times published an interview with the current occupant of the Oval Office in which he expressed regret for appointing the aforementioned JeffBo, despite his having been one of said occupant's early adopters. He gave as the reason JeffBo's recusal from the investigation into the administration's ties with Russia.

Now, why am I seeing these two items as related?

( The dots, let me connect them. )

(Title of post is from the Mountain Goats' "Up the Wolves.")

I blame radio silence (at least in terms of posting here) on using up the vast bulk of my interpersonal skillpoints on federal, state, and local politics in meatspace or the near equivalent. And, frankly, the feeling that that is in fact a more "cost-effective" place to use them in terms of making anything happen. Not that I don't love my DW community, but when I've commented here about politics I've wanted to be extremely meticulous and thorough in how I lay out my thoughts, whereas, frankly, sometimes in meatspace just being another warm body who's present at a march or a town hall or whatever sort of political gathering and being casually supportive of others through words or simple presence is enough, and on the other hand, maybe it's better to save that thorough meticulousness for my conversations in whatever form with the staffers of assorted elected officials.

I have a longer and more serious post on the topic brewing, but for now, I'll share a few useful links (which I may have done before, but I have been away awhile!):

On the Issues: This website gives a comprehensive, and as far as I can tell, nonpartisan, overview of elected officials and candidates on... pretty much every issue imaginable, especially for longer-serving incumbents; it includes voting records, bills sponsored, quotations, and ratings/evaluations by various organizations across the political spectrum.

TrackBill: This nifty little app lets you track any bill at the state or federal level, though the catch is it seems to work best if you know the bill number. It lets you see various drafts and revisions, sponsors, etc.

5calls: This one's both an app and a website; unlike the other two it is distinctly partisan, but it gives you neat little lists of issues about which to call, scripts for ideas of what to say, and links to the numbers of officials you should call about a given issue.

And, a bit of political humor from my own quirky sense of it... ( which I shall cut for the snarky partisanship contained therein. )

And a little riffing on life/politics and art, mostly Star Wars, but also Final Fantasy VII and XII: ( Again, cut for snark. )

So, okay, I'm on my forty-eleventh draft of talking about this movie right now.

Because a) I totally loved and very much needed this story of geeky women of color supporting each other to do awesome things, and b) there are concentric spirals of intersectionality with it in our current context, both nationally and internationally, because they're doing their awesome thing for NASA during the Cold War.

( Cut for length. )

Content note: White Nerd talking about how to fight systemic injustice. Potential for privilege blinders: HIGH. Therefore under a cut.
( Read more... )

Current Mood: determined
Current Music: Warren Zevon, "Lawyers, Guns, and Money"

Two comms that are riiiight up the alley of the kind of thing I've been talking about here:

spoonlessactivists for activism while disabled, and

thisfinecrew for activism and signal-boosting generally.

Current Mood: hopeful

I've been seeing a lot of... "stuff" around the generational variables of Who's Doing It Wrong in terms of US politics.

And I'm not sure I'm going to get this right, but I'm going to take a stab at it, because the short form is, whatever's wrong, we all need to get out and vote when there's an opportunity to and in between find things we can do otherwise.

( Read more... )

So I was playing one of the Nightmare dungeons in Final Fantasy Record Keeper, that I kept not being able to beat? And, for those who don't play it, there is a thing in FFRK that when you take certain characters to dungeons related to their story or specialty, sometimes they say relevant dialogue or quotes before the battle. And it so happened that I got some ones that are even more relevant than usual and to far more than the game. (And also beat the thing twice.)

Which made me think about awesome and inspiring fandom quotes in general. Please feel free to share your own favorites in the comments!

First, the two that came up in FFRK:

Lightning (FFXIII): It's not a question of can or can't. There are some things in life you just do. (Note: this one got me! I'm not crying, I'm not!--- Loz, FFVII: Advent Children)

Sephiroth (FFVII): I will never be a memory.

And a couple of others I've been leaning on:

Poe Dameron (SW:TFA): We're gonna do this.... Don't let these thugs scare you.

Christopher Robin (Winnie-the-Pooh): You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

And, of course, an extension of the Tori Amos quote in my icon: I found the secret to life: I'm okay when everything is not okay. --- "Upside Down"

Current Music: The Cranberries, "Free to Decide"

So I've been trying to start doing some of those "strategic analysis" bits about what went wrong for the Democrats, and I've come to a conclusion:

Namely: to all my fellow White, liberal, educated, middle-class US types: we are the Democratic Party's image problem. Definitely at the national/presidential level, but probably downballot in a lot of cases as well. And we're also part of its complacency problem.

As Weird Al Yankovic puts it, we're "just too White and nerdy." Sing it with me.

And the Democratic Party keeps running people like us as their candidates. When we do that, we lose.

When we do literally anything else, we win.

Content warning: overeducated middle-class more-or-less-normatively-abled White person trying to talk usefully to other people-like-that about how we can suck less going forward. The potential for me tripping over my own privilege somewhere in this is almost infinite. I'm still gonna try, because we all have to try right now, and frankly because this is in fact a place where I think I see one of the ways we screwed up and it's on us to do something about it--- look to our own house. On the other hand, and especially if you're any of not-those-things, a) if you have the energy to call me out on anywhere I screw up, I need to listen and b) if you don't have the energy for dealing with any of various forms of White-people-jaw-jacking right now, that's why this is under a cut.

( So here's the thing. )

Current Mood: determined
Current Music: The Cranberries, "Free to Decide"

Another petition asking the electoral college to go with the popular vote. (It's newer and has fewer signatures than the first one I linked, but, hey, more chances to speak up.)

(ETA: And here's another one to abolish the electoral college altogether.)

Current Mood: determined
Current Music: Warren Zevon, "Lawyers, Guns, and Money"

Just what it says on the label. (While I don't actually expect that we're getting an eleventh-hour save, that's arguably kind of one of the reasons the damn thing exists--- checks and balances.) (And, as I said in a previous post, two of the states with comparatively large blocs of electoral votes and narrow margins, Missouri and Pennsylvania, are currently apparently considering adopting the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, so there's some "will of the people" in their own states in favor of that.)

Current Mood: determined
Current Music: Warren Zevon, "Lawyers, Guns, and Money"

Possibly some or all of you have already moved to this place in your heads, but in case anyone else will benefit from hearing this, I'm sharing. Because I realized I was starting to hit the wall emotionally, which means it's time to take stock and regroup.

This is a marathon, not a sprint. Which means it's not only a good idea to pace ourselves, it's necessary. We've got to keep our energy up for a minimum of two more years. Which, again, means pacing ourselves. And not only is it a marathon, it's a relay. We need to keep taking the batons from each other and resting up for the next leg in turn.

Something else to consider in responding: I don't think we have a good idea yet of just which of the many, many vulnerable populations Trump has put on his hit list he'll go after first. When we're making our decisions and plans about where to get involved, whether by donation or in other ways, we may want to hold some of our resources--- time, energy, money--- in reserve until we see where we need to deploy them first.

I'll admit that I did partly break this rule: I've gone ahead and set up a monthly donation with Lambda Legal, on the grounds that legal and institutional/systemic protections for queer/QUILTBAG people are going to be low-hanging fruit to Trump and his minions--- an easy first target that will be popular with their "core" and less likely to alienate moderates than some of their other targeted groups. But I'm holding off on allocating what I've got left until I see where he puts his weight first.

Just some thoughts--- because it's dangerous to wear ourselves out too quickly. But the dragons can be killed. It might take a while. But the dragons can be killed.

Current Mood: determined
Current Music: Warren Zevon, "Lawyers, Guns, and Money", which is all too apt

So,

conuly and I had a conversation about the possibility of electors in any swing states that don't legally require their electors to "vote with the state" choosing to go with the popular vote instead, which we both agree is a pipe dream but a nice one. Among other things, we discussed the best ways to go about contacting electors and voicing this opinion. (Examples included petitions and finding more direct contact information through state's websites.)

And then I went away from my keyboard for a bit, because of things like sleep, and I came back to find that rather a lot of people had had the same idea. So I'm inclined to elaborate a little.

First, a caveat: at least one person I saw on my Network raised the point that electors are ordinary citizens as opposed to public officials and thus contacting them directly is intrusive. This is partly a very good warning: as in, don't dox anyone (really, that caveat applies for everything ever, or it should, but as we know, it doesn't actually go without saying).

However, according to the website of the National Archives, electors are usually selected from among active members of each political party. In other words, they are in fact active in politics and are arguably choosing public service (my impression from the site is that it may or may not be a stepping-stone to greater party involvement). In a democracy, this does at least potentially mean hearing from the people they represent.

Which means that if there is a public-facing method of contact for a state's electors in that capacity, individually or as a group, go for it. (Examples: comment box somewhere on a state government website, state government email that's connected to the electoral college, etc.) (Examples of what not to do: finding electors' names and contacting them at a home or business address, electronic or otherwise.)

Now that we've got that out of the way:

Currently, the two swing (or at least swing-ish) states that both have the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact under discussion (ETA: and thus whose political "players" may be best disposed to going with the popular vote, since it's clear that there's interest in their states in going that way generally) and don't have laws forbidding electors to vote "outside the box" are Missouri and Pennsylvania. Brief Google searches on my part did not turn up any readily accessible official contact information, but if anyone does poke the states' websites and finds non-intrusive contact information, feel free to share.

Current Mood: productive

I've mentioned elsewhere that there's been a fair bit of talk about getting rid of the Electoral College. DailyKos is here to help! (SO EXCITE. I've been seeing the posts all day and by this evening, here it was. And getting rid of the Electoral College is just the kind of cross-country-networking action that fannish culture does like breathing.)

Current Mood: hopeful

(Edited for release into the wild/public dissemination)

So many of us are so rightly distressed today. And on the one hand I know from offhand remarks on my Reading and Newtowrk pages that a lot of people have engaged in various forms of activism, and on the other that a lot of us feel helpless to do so. And especially those of us for whom the "conventional" forms of political activism (which are often socially and physically, ah, intensive) are not accessible for one reason or another.

So, let's see if we can make this a master post: if you have suggestions or experiences of Activism While Non-Normatively-Abled and/or Neuroatypical and/or Introverted (especially in a US political context) please share them here!

Current Mood: thoughtful

As you can probably guess from the title, I voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton. As you can probably guess from that fact, I am not a happy camper today.

So I want to talk about going forward. And specifically in a fannish context--- what we can do with all the distress that I'm seeing on my Reading and Network pages.
( Let's get together. )

Basically, even though this is a horrible, horrible day for so many of us, it's not the end of everything. Not yet. Liberty hasn't died just yet, and the sun is still rising. (Yes, this is an allusion both to the end of Revenge of the Sith and to the line in Barack Obama's speech today that finally let me cry about this like I needed to.) I don't know exactly what we need to do next--- I'm at best a Person of Ideas, not of Action, in Eric Hoffer's terms. But I know we need to get talking. And supporting each other. And figuring out the next steps, together.

So, to all the nasty women and bad hombres and everyone else reading this: we are still stronger together. And for those of us who have the opportunity to be active in US politics: Let's try to make America great--- not "again", in the sense of rolling back our ever-widening inclusivity--- but for all of us.

(Feel free to pass this around to anyone who might be interested, especially if they're US voters. Let's mobilize in fandom.)

Current Mood: determined

Summary: Padme has a question, Amidala has an answer, and Darth Vader joins the Rebel Alliance--- all because Obi-wan Kenobi can’t bring himself to betray the two people a Jedi isn’t supposed to love at all.

A/n: Title is from the song of the same name in the musical Chess, as is the cut-text. Amidala's repeated line of "When someone tells you who they are, believe them," is something I got from Captain Awkward, because CA quotes when the terrible boyfriend is actually Darth Vader will never not be funny to me. Also, ask me about the academic discipline of "political praxis" that Amidala mentions studying, because I have worldbuilding around it.

Content notes: mentions of canonical violence as of Mustafar, and also Padme and Anakin's relationship dynamics are weird as fuck, which we all knew, but it might be unsettling for some to read an Amidala who talks Darth Vader down and her thought processes therein.

Word count: ~1800.

( Never leave a moment too soon.... )

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That means you stood up for something, some time in your life.

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