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This post includes spoilers for N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy

Of the seven common use-castes in the Stillness, I never expected to find the Breeders the most interesting and wholesome. The word itself has negative connotations in our world, and I originally envisioned them as something of a leisure class who attached themselves to the most wealthy/powerful to be pampered and have babies.

That impression was probably helped by the fact that Sanzed traits are considered the most desirable by Breeders and that’s my least favorite aspect of them. There’s simply no saying that Sanzed traits are the most well-adapted to all the variety of environments and situations human beings live in. Esni, the tiny blond Arctic woman that Essun thought her ancestors should have done the favor of sleeping with a Sanzed or two, laughed all the way to the ending by being very effective at her job as the head of Castrima’s Strongbacks and surviving everything like a bitch. Midlatters are highly fertile, as Essun herself exemplifies, and East Coasters seem to have had powerful lines of orogeny if Alabaster’s lineage was any indication.

Anyway, my impression of the Breeders turned out to be very wrong, at least for a smaller, rougher comm like Castrima where everyone has to pull their weight and is more egalitarian than one of the big Equatorial comms would have been. (Are there any left after Rennanis?) I started changing my mind about Breeders when Castrima’s gave one of their baby allocations to the mother who had the unauthorized pregnancy. They could be generous, it seemed, and compassionate. They are evidently inveterate gossips about people’s love and sex lives, too; their caste meetings must be so much fun. They also turned out to be flexible and pragmatic when the male Breeder who approached Essun got it into his head that breeding for orogeny was a great idea now. I headcanon that Ykka is one more proposition by a male Breeder away
from ashing the whole caste out–I mean she’s headwoman, an orogene, and strongly Sanzed. She’s so perfect that the Breeders would be in derogation of their duties by not at least trying. Maybe the male Breeder went to Essun after Ykka threatened to ice him if he asked her one more time to go off birth control with him. Convincing orogenes, a group that tends to be highly traumatized and defensive, to breed is no doubt a new and brave frontier in the Breeders’ trade.

Breeders are also protectors of pregnant people and young children in battle even though fighting is not their primary duty. They’re probably in charge of the comm’s birth control and sex education, too, and are likely to take a role in relationship counseling and lower creche caretaking as well. Since birth control is one of their areas of expertise they probably know about administering hormones, and transgender healthcare may be one of the duties they take on in conjunction with the Innovators. They’re probably the closest thing the Stillness has to a Planned Parenthood, what’s not to like?

It’s possible to be both terrifying and buffoonish in real life, to be sure, but I don’t know how well that translates to film, especially not one as broadly presented as Star Wars. I’ve just never found Kylo to be the least bit intimidating. Nazis would kill me if they got their hands on me, I’m sure of that, but… I don’t know. I just can’t feel it with Kylo.

Then I guess the authorial intent for whatever reason didn’t translate well for you. It happens.

I need help with my medication

themandalorianwolf:

Hey it’s your friendly(?) neighborhood Mandalorian, and promised myself I’d never ask for help after I finally fixed my living situation earlier this year, but American healthcare is bloody joke. I’m still 300K in debt to hospital bills and to get my seizure medication that I’ve recently run out of is now gonna cost me $300 just to get.

So if anyone wants to provide some help with my medication fundraiser, here’s my Paypal link https://paypal.me/ColeMedero, and anything honestly helps. Even a signal boost.

Beyond that, I’ll have to be taking a short break from being as active as I’ve been because of life and health, but I’ll still be around here and there! May the force with you all!

Can you explain the meme about terfs and the word queer posted from your queue?

Terfs and exclusionists dislike the inclusiveness of the word queer. Terfs hate that it includes trans and nonbinary people, and exclusionists dislike its inclusion of aces and aros. Calling queer a slur and discouraging its use has become a common rallying point for these two groups, who are just two different flavors of exclusionists (the “e” in terf stands for “exclusionary”). Even exclusionists who push back against the vile transphobia of terfs sometimes give support to terfs by, say, supporting shit like “Lesbian not Queer” which was literally the follow-up to “Get the L Out” which was the successor to “Drop the T.” There’s a clear evolutionary chain where transmisogynists started hiding their transphobia behind campaigning against “queer,” and exclusionists are eating it up. You can see it happen in real time in this discussion (link) where an exclusionist who disagrees with terfs unwittingly gives them cover.

One other thing; which interpretation of Kylo are you leaning more towards? Terrifying portrait of fanaticism, or laughable manbaby who can’t possibly keep the First Order together?

Like there’s a lot of daylight between the two? Fanatics are fundamentally ridiculous, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less dangerous. It seems you’re actually exemplifying the othering concept of evil we’ve been discussing, as though a truly terrifying evil must be aloof and inhumanly effective rather than laughable and buffoonish.

The Jewishcomradebot article link is broken, so finding the original piece was tricky. But I disagree about Vader’s villainy being more over-the-top than Kylo’s. In terms of personal evil done, Vader is actually pretty downplayed in the OT; he tortures and summarily executes people, but never personally massacres innocents like Kylo has. He did do that in the PT, which interestingly is him when he’s outwardly more human and relatable and not in a suit of dark armor. I would also say that Snoke–

is a much more over-the-top figure than Palpatine in TFA, being a
giant, ghostly, alien Lincoln Memorial; he was then humanized in TLJ by
becoming a shortsighted loser in a Hefner bathrobe. And, of course, Hux
is much shoutier and hammier than Tarkin. The ultimate upshot of which
is that I’m skeptical of TFA being a better showcase of the banality of
evil than previous movies.

In case others are having difficulty, here’s the current link to the full post (link). Idk if you were able to read the whole post or not, but the point in the op wasn’t that Vader was more evil than Kylo Ren, it was that Vader was presented as more otherworldly, distant, larger-than-life as opposed to the more humanly presented Kylo Ren. Anakin began his career as a Sith while still unmasked, yes, but iirc his eyes were already starting to go Sith-gold and the culmination of his transformation was that he became a masked villain with a machine voice like the Vader we know and loathe.

The op only mentioned Snoke in passing in relation to Kylo’s bloodline, and you seem to have missed the point about Hux entirely: Hux, the overt Hitler caricature, was a secondary one-note villain and it was Kylo, the human, “relatable” villain, who was the main face of evil in TFA. The argument as I understand it was not that TFA was in all ways a better representation of the banality of evil, but that Kylo Ren is a better example of it than Vader and the villains who better suit the idea of an alien and demonic evil take the back seat to Ren.

Guilt– feeling bad for doing the bad thing. Remorse– wishing you hadn’t done the bad thing. Repentance– changing yourself so you won’t do the bad thing again. Redemption– being forgiven after you’ve repented. When Kylo Ren actively tramples his own remorse, you know the other two things aren’t going to happen. He showed that by mocking Luke, asking if he’d come to save his soul. You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. Not from making evil choices anyway.

That’s a great breakdown! If I understand it correctly redemption isn’t about human forgiveness but being right in the eyes of God, so in SW terms it would mean returning to the Light. And big as Christianity is on the “Jesus saves” thing, even there the person has to make the choice to repent.

Oh, yeah, I figured that’s what you meant. “Pride” as some would call it is just someone not disrespecting themself, which is always seen as worse for men of color by white audiences. Obviously some guilt is helpful, but only in the same way that some anger is helpful: if it motivates you to do the right thing. (Moth)

I think that might be why pride is such an important point of Black and LGBTQ+ activism. When you are told you should be ashamed of yourself for who you are, loving and taking pride in yourself become radical acts.