Heyo and welcome to the MYST ZONE. Also some math, poetry, the Last Unicorn, a little Star Wars & Trek from time to time. Mostly I come here to chill with the same half dozen Myst & Star Wars mutuals I've known for ages. ^_^
still thinking about when i saw a girl on here with ~3 partners and one of them was a lesbian with a “MEN DNI” banner and one of them was a tboy with a “‘MEN DNI’ DNI” banner
reading a historical romance novel and reflecting on the way these stories often present woke nobility for the contemporary reader. a big thing is servants. you can’t not have servants in those times but many modern readers think “but I would never have servants. it would be so weird to have servants” and in order to make the protagonists of the story more relatable they are actually friends with the servants. but flip your perspective and think of it from the side of the servants. wouldn’t it be so awful if your boss was always trying to be friends with you. a really common thing you’ll see is the woke baronet having tea in the kitchen with the servants bc he’s not like other baronets. but what if your boss wanted to hang out and talk during your lunch break every day. not so charming when you think about it that way
i'm just saying shit but i think if you swapped sophia out with madison (i.e made madison the one secretly doing police brutality) it would make literally everything wildbow was trying to say about police brutality using sophia better
which is to say. insofar as madison actually gets characterization she's a cutesy socially beloved white girl who gets away with vast cruelty because she's cutesy and socially beloved and no one cares about the girl she's bullying. irl the "and because she's white" part would of course also be a factor but wildbow wasn't thinking about that one because he's wildbow. so extending that to "and she's secretly a cop/hero having the punitive violence she metes out swept under the rug by the PRT because she's white and cutesy and socially beloved and only hurting people it's societally acceptable to hurt" would be genuinely coherent. i don't even think she'd be one of the edgy-costumed ones like shadow stalker is in canon i think she'd be all cute and endearing and everyone would like her. unsure how you even attempt salvaging sophia because her core character concept is just sort of fundamentally unfixably racist but, like, i think you could take what wildbow is Trying to say with sophia and make it actually coherent slash even remotely accurate to how the police work by having madison fulfil the "secretly a hero" role instead
I feel like swapping madison into that position just makes her glory girl, except whith her, it's personal. The entire early arcs are entirely about the abuses of power, and demoting Sophia into token mean black girl, making Madison into a villian behind a sweet mask, but worse because she has powers too, doesn't do the story much benefit.
There is not a single named character that isn't some degree of problematic. And that's kinda the point.
Could we have better poc rep? Sure!
But I think there's something to be said for Glory Girl being that flavor of dismissive with police brutality, and Sofia being a very distinct character with a different flavor of brutality. Had she been swapped with Madison, being superficially similar with Glory Girl (but canonically impotent) and the way they both get away with things, I think it would have detracted from both characters and their respective plotlones.
first of all no there is nothing to be said for sophia's "flavor of brutality" because she's, and i reiterate, portrayed as an animalistic, predatory, violent black girl from a poor family who acts as the setting's sole demonstration of how police brutality functions (i.e state-sponsored brutalizing of people considered societally acceptable to hurt to maintain preexisting systems of oppression). which fucking blows, because 1. she's a massively racist trope and 2. she is literally the exact demographic that's actually targeted by police brutality irl. she's not interesting or distinct, she has Evil Bully Stock Image Dot Jpeg levels of characterization! she very clearly demonstrates that wildbow vaguely thinks police brutality is bad but can't even grasp the most basic facts of who perpetuates it and who it targets or refrain from a racist stereotype in the process of trying to portray it--"problematic" is an annoyingly vague and useless phrase to wheel out for literary analysis, but if we must use it here, she's not "problematic" (intentionally morally gray character), she's "problematic" (literally just written in a blatantly racist way).
also glory girl's writing sucks too. the thing where she goes after nazis is not even remotely comparable to who police actually target. it's portrayed in this insufferably ambiguous way where the issue is supposed to be that she's doing violent vigilante justice and not that she's, y'know, abusing her position of power to brutalize ppl it's considered acceptable to hurt. it's just flat incoherent and inaccurate. which is why in my hypothetical imaginary sophia/madison swap i alter glory girl so that she's still going after nazis out of some vague philosophy that "my job is to punch people with the force of a truck until it improves society + nazis are bad and make society worse = i should be allowed to go punch nazis and surely even if it's a bit off the books the prt will let me because heroes do off the books things all the time." and then she does actually get in trouble for it because nazis are, generally speaking, something policing structures Uphold. & subsequently falls sort of obliviously in line because she can't get over the idea that Cops Good Villains Bad and meting out punitive justice on behalf of the state will still fix things even if they're not letting her go after the really bad guys. which might be a dumb writing choice i dunno but i like the idea of madison illustrating the very straightforward brutality and glory girl demonstrating how like. well-intended liberals are also responsible 4 enacting violence from the state and just quietly disagreeing in her head doesn't actually change the material harm the totally-not-racially-biased ABB crackdown she's participating in while E88 gets the kid gloves is doing
yes, the cop who is explicitly portrayed as using her power as a cop to enact unchecked violence upon people is in fact supposed to represent police brutality. the text's fixation on depicting her as hating her job & wishing that she were an independent vigilante are part of its failure to portray police brutality even remotely accurately--it's extremely common for mediocre liberal criticisms of police brutality (or other systematic forms of violence) to portray the violence as a result of individual bad apples within the system who "don't want to do the job right" or "are trying to be vigilantes," with the underlying implication being the assertion that if we got rid of the "bad apples" the "real" cops who "do their jobs right" would conduct themselves appropriately and the issue of police brutality would be solved. (because the author can't grasp that police brutality is a result of the system functioning as intended rather than as just an error that could be fixed to create an idealized policing system.) the book doing a bad job at depicting how and why police brutality happens doesn't mean that it's not trying to depict policy brutality
genuinely it ks so fucking funny that victoria actually thinks tattletale is responsible for that much shit. honey she didn’t cause the leviathan attack youre just projecting
literally everything people say about public defenders on the internet is so wrong and frustrating even when they’re trying to be sympathetic to us. and I certainly said some of that same kind of shit before I did this job. I didn’t get it yet. I get it now. the only people who really do get it are the people who’ve done it and the people who are in or also working with the communities we serve. representing a factually guilty person is the absolute least of any public defender’s fucking problems at any given time and the last thing I would ever lose sleep over lol
what a lot of people in the notes on the post that inspired this train of thought seem to imagine public defenders struggling with and getting upset about: finding out a client committed the crime they're accused of and having to grapple with the morality of defending a person who Did Harm To Others and what that means for the attorney as an individual immortal soul or whatever the fuck
Things that I have actually struggled to deal with in my 2 years as a public defender so far (non-exhaustive list):
Having to put the criminal records and self-esteem and livelihoods of clients I believed were factually innocent, people I'd developed relationships with and knew how much they had to lose if something went wrong, in the hands of a group of strangers who I'd had no more than 20 minutes to question about their knowledge and beliefs and biases.
Worrying those strangers would favor the young, handsome white male prosecutors' arguments over my innocent clients who've had rough lives and it shows on their faces, because of whose voice sounds "authoritative" and who "looks like a criminal".
Never feeling like I had enough time to prepare a case for trial because I also had over 100 other cases pending at the same time.
Put simply, it is harder to represent a factually innocent person than a factually guilty person. I think basically all defense attorneys agree on this. It's more emotionally taxing because of the stakes. There are always material stakes for all of our clients, but for a factually innocent person there are also moral stakes.
Representing people who are technically guilty of the crimes they are charged with, but no one was actually harmed, and maybe the law itself is unfair, and also my client was certainly racially profiled and overcharged. And having to put that in the hands of a jury, because my client wants to maintain whatever dignity they can to the bitter end.
Not being able to just say to the jury, I don't give a fuck whether my client is technically guilty. He's a poor Black man, so he was guilty in the eyes of the American legal system before he was ever arrested. He gets that. I get that. Do you get that? Who gives a shit whether he's factually guilty of a technicality DUI that happened 2 or 3 years ago? What the fuck are we doing? Are we all just here to give another black father a criminal record? Fuck you all.
Representing multiple very young men charged with DV assaults who grew up with fathers who abused their mothers, or parents who abused them, in and out of foster care, multiple generations of cycles of violence and substance abuse passed down from parent to child. It doesn't excuse it. Of course it doesn't. They have done harm to their own partners and they know this isn't the example they want to set for their own kids. But they're human - the idea that abusers are somehow inhuman just sets you up to fail to recognize abuse when someone you love is the person doing it - and what the fuck other ways of dealing with difficult situations and relating to other people were these guys ever supposed to learn? They didn't have the opportunity to learn anything else. They never had a fucking chance.
And if they don't have a lot of history yet, maybe there's still time to turn it around. One of them talked to me about how badly he wanted to break the cycle and not have his kids grow up to be like that. I hope he can do it. I don't know if he will. That's what haunts me about that situation. Not the fact that I had to represent his interests in court. That's just my job.
Family after family after family who call 911 for help for a loved one in a mental health or substance-related crisis. And then the cops show up and throw their loved one in crisis in jail sometimes over the weekend because if you lash out at someone you live with for literally any reason that counts as domestic violence which means the cops legally have to arrest someone. And 24-72 hours later the family is in court upset telling the judge if they knew this would happen they never would have called 911. Cannot stress enough this happens like weekly in misdemeanor court.
A prosecutor submitting victim impact statements for the sentencing of a colleague's client who absolutely had killed their partner, and it was awful - but the victim impact statements were provided by the victim's family, many of whom she was estranged from, and many of them misgendered and deadnamed their dead "loved one". And the prosecutor just threw them all into the public record unredacted. Because of pressure to "listen to victims", in this case coming from the transphobic family.
A 16-year-old getting held in juvenile detention on unproven charges an 18-year-old would get released from adult jail on, because while the 18-year-old is presumed to have the autonomy to find another place to stay, if the charge is related to someone who lives in the 16-year-old's parents' house - or their parents straight-up just don't want them going home - well, then, they can't go home, which means they have nowhere to go. so let's keep them in jail.
On the flip side, having 18-year-olds get released to homelessness because their well-intentioned parents called the cops for whatever reason (see above) and now the court is imposing a no-contact order with someone who lives at their house.
A kid who got pulled over and charged with DUI/physical control of a motor vehicle while under the influence on her 18th birthday. She was a senior in high school. She had never been in trouble before. She had no criminal record. The law doesn't require someone to be booked and held in jail for a first-time DUI charge with no history, so the jail's policy is that they usually don't do that. If it was just the DUI she would have been cited and released. But the cop also cited her for 2 counts of minor in possession. So, because she had non-DUI charges, I guess, they booked and held her in jail. If it had been just one day earlier she would have been in juvenile detention. She cried. I almost cried. I sat in the attorney meeting booth with her for an extra half hour until they kicked us out for the lunchtime visiting area closure, just so she could be in a quiet space with a friendly face instead of back in the adult jail dorm. That was all I could do.
Tiny old people in jail. Tiny old people, deep in dementia, deeply upset, who got angry - personality changes including becoming very quick to anger are common with dementia - lashed out at family members and got arrested on domestic violence charges. (Again, see above.) And all I could see was my own late grandmother, who was a tiny old lady with dementia who lashed out all the time, but she was a rich white lady who could afford to live in a home with professional caregivers who were trained to handle those situations and deescalate, instead of having to rely on overwhelmed family members. And getting praise from teammates for how well I handled those clients and their jail hearings, and knowing it was because there but for the grace of god go we.
A guy who stole 2 beers from a grocery store, products that cost like $13 total, getting held on $1000 bail because he has warrants in other counties. $1000 bail when he's charged with taking $13 worth of beer. From a gigantic corporation. And he stayed in jail. Because if someone is stealing from a grocery store, they probably don't have $1000 to pay.
I think people who talk about the moral conundrum of public defenders get too stuck on the defender part and forget the public. Public defenders, by definition, simply do not represent the worst of the worst. People who hurt others because they can, quite literally can, because frankly most of them don't end up getting arrested and prosecuted for the ways they hurt people in the first place. And if they do, they can usually afford to hire a private defense attorney. I think most of us know the actual statistics about rape and abuse reporting, but for some reason that goes out the window when people talk about public defenders. (The reason is racism.)
Acting with (perceived) impunity is a privilege. It's for rich (and mostly white) people. The vast majority of crimes prosecuted in the U.S. are crimes of poverty and addiction (and that includes many violent crimes - yes, really), and that vast majority is where public defenders operate. There aren't moral quandaries in knowing what our clients did. The part that hurts is understanding the systems that have led them to this place, and knowing what those systems are going to keep doing to them once their case is resolved, and not being able to do jack shit to stop it.
Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.
At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.
At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.
“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.
The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.
I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.
I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.
I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht.
i wrote this while i was working at orlando’s walt disney world parks.
i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.
as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.
disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.
at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.
i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.
i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.
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