Snarkest Hour

Two uni students being unbelievably nerdy about books, films, TV shows, and anything else we can get our hands on. XD Also, politics, history, and real-world goings on.

[snarkesthour]

Follow-Up On That Essay

Some important extra information we didn't know about when we made the previous post:

Also the Swedish media are apparently acting like very sore losers, accusing Finland of tactical voting and for voting for Germany (who sent a heavy metal band) and not them (despite getting the 12 points from the jury) and making a number of disgusting comments about Finland, including calling them "the former Eastern part of the kingdom", referring to their colonisation of Finland. They apparently also said that the public does not always know what is right, but the jury does. We are not Finnish or Swedish and cannot confirm this, but we highly recommend listening to Finnish sources about this.

Just as a reminder of how long Eurovision has been a self-perpetuating hub of corruption as well, here’s an article from Betting Fair about the money that goes into gambling: https://betting.betfair.com/specials/eurovision-song-contest/eurovision-2023-over-10m-set-to-be-bet-on-final-making-it-bigger-than-grand-national-130523-200.html

With predicted monetary figures for gambling that high, accountability of the voting becomes all the more important.

[snarkesthour]

United By Music Hatred Of The Jury  

Eurovision has been dogged by allegations of cheating, corruption, bad judging calls, and hatred of the jury for many years. This year brought that to a head with Sweden’s win over the public favourite Finland, in an allocation of points that shocked Europe.

Sweden received only 243 points from the public vote, without a single “douze points” from any country. Finland received 376 votes from the public, the second highest amount ever, including the coveted 12 points from eighteen different nation-states. How, then, did Sweden manage to win? Finland was only awarded 150 points by the professional jury, while Sweden was given 340, sailing their singer Loreen, a previous Eurovision winner, to victory.

Understandably, people are upset.

One reason that Finns have said it hurt to lose to Sweden is due to their history. Finland was colonised by Sweden for over 600 years, after Sweden annexed them (a long process lasting between the 1150s and 1350s at least). Sweden is still seen as superior in a number of ways. The Finnish language is often considered weird and ugly. Käärijä, the singer representing Finland, went to Eurovision to prove that a song sung in Finnish could win.

The professional jury clearly shows bias against songs sung in native and minority languages and not English. Time and time again, they vote for the most generic pop songs instead of performances laced with languages and culture from the performing countries. Last year in 2022, France sent a song in Breton, a language with a long history of oppression in France, with Celtic iconography. They received only 9 points from the jury. Meanwhile, audiences enjoyed the performance, and were happy that France finally sent something other than a modern chanson song, French audiences included. Keiino included aspects of Sami culture and language in their song in 2019, and lost out to the Netherlands, falling several places due to the jury vote. The Eurovision Song Contest exists to showcase and celebrate the full cultural richness of the competing countries, and it is wholly wrong for the jury to penalise that.

This argument is unhelped by those that often complain about the amount of Anglophone pop songs, yet then vote for the same due to loyalty, or the attractiveness of the singer, or politics. There is nothing wrong with voting for an English language pop song if you think it is the best song that year, but one way to help these non-English language songs is to allocate them a smaller amount of votes and save the rest for your favourite. This way these countries know that other people did enjoy their performances, and that they would like to see more of the same.

During its occupation by Sweden, Swedish became the dominant language in Finland, spoken by the upper class, administration, and education. It was only under Russian rule that the Finnish language started to gain traction and recognition, finally achieving equal status as Swedish legally in 1892. This is part of why it was so important to Finns to have a winning song sung in Finnish, their only previous win being in English. To show that their language is not rough and ugly sounding, and to demonstrate what it means to sing in your native language. The crowd sang along to Käärijä’s performance in Finnish; people who are not Finnish and have never spoken a word of Finnish. I cannot imagine that feeling. Käärijä also performed topless, with a perfectly normal body, unlike the heavily chiselled bodies favoured by Hollywood, which are, only produced by extreme diets, workout regimes, and dangerous levels of dehydration. It is no surprise he became a national treasure. Finland redecorated statues and had green shrines in their libraries and supermarkets. The country was so excited. Then they lost to Sweden over the jury vote.

Norway got the third highest votes this year from the public. They also won the televoting in 2019 too, but lost because of the professional jury votes that propelled Netherlands to the win. It was said that Norway may have had some voice trouble during the finals week, including her jury performance. The BBC praised her jury performance, but Swedish newspapers allegedly said it was very rough, and that she missed nearly every note.

The professional jury doesn’t judge the same Grand Final performance that everyone else sees. The jury judges the final jury performance, a separate show where the public is not allowed and only press accredited people can attend. Performers will obviously give it their best, but that does not guarantee it will be their best performance. It is also reasonable to assume that some singers might have a lower energy performance during the jury performance due to exhaustion, or in order to save up for the grand final, among other possibilities.

It is clear that everyone needs to be voting on the same show – anything else is just blatantly unfair. Votes cannot be accurately distributed if people are voting on two different shows.

If the juries are unbiased, we have a huge problem. Even if Finland got 12 points from everyone voting in the grand final, they would have only scraped a win with 11 points. They scored the second highest votes in Eurovision history, second only to Ukraine last year, a win that itself was mired in allegations of cheating and corruption. And yet Finland still lost.

The weighting of the votes is undoubtedly tilted towards the jury. As mentioned earlier, Finland received the second highest amount of televotes in Eurovision history, and won the public vote, yet lost to Sweden based on the professional jury. This is a kick in the face to members of the public that watched and voted. It sends a clear message that the public and their opinion clearly does not matter at all and they might as well have not voted. The public pay for Eurovision, the public stream and download and buy the songs, and as such, the publics vote should count, otherwise why bother? Why have a competition?

As it stands right now, the Eurovision Song Contest is essentially voted on like a US Presidential Election. The professional jury vote is essentially the Electoral College, capable of snatching the victory from the clear public winner that secured the majority of public votes. If we are going to complain about this system being used for American elections, then there is no reason that it should be acceptable here.

One way to fix this is to change the weighting of the jury versus public votes. The professional jury was established to prevent nations from simply voting for their neighbours or allies, yet it is remarkable how often the professional juries’ votes reflect these politics anyway. A 30/70 split to the public votes will allow the jury to make clear who they think should win while also not holding enough sway to alter the public results.

An overhaul also needs to be made to the professional jury itself. It is no secret that corruption is present within Eurovision. Keeping the names of the jury secret to prevent this from happening is only going to make it impossible to know when it has happened. Instead, the jury list should be transparent, and the juries themselves should be diverse, with a number of musical styles represented. Eurovision has a wide range of musical styles perform, and having a jury compiled of industry professionals from only one or two genres will only harm these entries, especially those that draw on traditional music styles. Many fan favourites were cheated by the voting system because their songs and performances weren’t “normal” or “palatable” enough for the jury. As mentioned earlier, these trend towards songs that have considerable influence from the culture of the country, including native and minority languages. It was also caused by the “war” between the juries, as evidenced by the graphic put out by Eurovision showing the difference between the jury favourites and the public favourites. Sweden and Finland sat in the middle of each half, essentially causing a fight over who would win by each half voting only for that one country.

Worldwide voting should also be removed. There should be a return to form when it comes to who can vote, as it was last year. Those that did not pay for Eurovision should not be able to vote, and worldwide politics could tip a win or loss by a considerable amount. The US has a population of almost 332 million people. India has a population of 1.408 billion. Imagine if any country with a population like this had even a fraction of its people cast a vote based on socio-political reasons.

Even within the voting process itself, there are problems. Votes should cost the equivalent amount everywhere. It ranges from 15p/17ct up to over a euro to vote, depending on where you are. This is going to have an impact on who can vote, and therefore who will win. Even on the app, it costs money to vote. This will not be a fair competition until everyone can vote equally and the organisers need to get on top of this rapidly.

Equality is the basis of every democratic vote, but Eurovision does not treat all of its competitors equally. The Eurovision Song Contest explicitly acknowledged the war in Ukraine and the need for another nation to host because of it. They sanctioned Russia by banning them from entering, this year being the second year in a row after their initial ban last year. This is considered the right thing to do, but it has raised several questions. The Eurovision Song Contest declined to let Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy address the audience at the grand final, saying that it would politicise the event, ignoring the fact that they had already politicised it by acknowledging the very real events happening in the world that caused something as drastic as a change of host nation. They also politicised it by denying Russia entry. The politics are even implied in the theme. While seen as the correct thing to do, it means they have, to an extent, been hypocritical. They have then taken it one step further though, with the inclusion of Israel.

Israel’s participation has long been debated due to geographical location and politics. However, to ban Russia for the invasion and war against Ukraine while allowing Israel to compete is hypocrisy at its finest. Israel has carried out the same actions against Palestine as Russia has against Ukraine, yet they have not been banned. Instead, they have hosted in recent years, often receive a decent amount of points, and this year had a previous winner featured during the interval act. Many people with the job of awarding points made statements in support of “peace and unity!” only to immediately award points to Israel.

This disparity of treatment is most obvious at two previous competitions. Israel hosted in 2019 when the Icelandic group Hatari famously waved Palestinian flags during the grand final, causing them to be deported and banned from the country. They were later fined for breaking the no politics rule.

In 2021, the Israeli entry was a song called ‘Set Me Free’, a song title that was mocked and by many for its irony. The day before the grand final, Israel launched a missile strike against Palestine (reminiscent of the harrowing news that the hometown of the Ukrainian entry was bombed moments before they took to the stage this year simply from the other perspective) as part of a series of escalations that included threatening to evict Palestinian families from East Jerusalem and nightly clashes between Palestinians and the police during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Many people felt that it was wrong for the performance to go ahead. For a considerable time, YouTube searches for Israel’s grand final performance only returned results for the semi-final.

Despite all this, Israel faced no sanctions at Eurovision. Contrasted with Russia, who has faced sanctions for their actions in Ukraine, fans are understandably angry and upset with Eurovision’s lack of consistent positioning on this issue, calling for the end of the hypocrisy. The double standard shown here, in the disparity of Eurovision’s treatment of Russia and Israel, is a symptom of racialised Eurocentrism – something which remains a massive problem in Europe and a subject which deserves its own post.

Speaking of the war, the UK did not utilise enough Ukrainian talent, or songs. The UK hosted on behalf of Ukraine, yet little of Ukraine was represented. Previous performers Verka, Go_A, and Jamala (who herself faced controversy for her entry at the time, it being an allegory to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the same year as the title under the excuse of “allying with Nazis”) returned to sing their Eurovision entries, and last year’s winners Kalush Orchestra returned with an extended opening sequence. Beyond this, and one Ukrainian presenter, Ukrainian representation was far below what it should have been. Other Ukrainian groups or previous entries should have been invited to perform, and the three previous groups that performed should have had the option to sing additional songs if they wanted to. This was a serious let-down by the UK, especially given the interval performance. Famous songs of Ukraine could have been sung instead, or even some of those Liverpudlian songs translated into Ukrainian and sung by Ukrainian performers.

Moving on from those who didn’t perform to those who did: Loreen, too, is facing accusations of rudeness and arrogance. She has already won Eurovision once before and has returned to try and win again. The popular opinion is that those who have won Eurovision before should be allowed to return and perform as part of interval acts, but should not be allowed to enter again. It is unfair to the other contestants; they have already had their moment, and should move on to allow the new competitors a fair chance under the spotlight.

Viewers noticed that it was strange that the hosts kept mentioning Abba, and that a member of Abba even made a recorded appearance. Eurovision has nothing to do with Abba’s 50th anniversary next year. Abba won Eurovision for Sweden in 1974 when the UK hosted on behalf of Luxembourg. Now, 50 years later, Sweden wins Eurovision again, in the UK hosted on behalf of Ukraine, just in time for Abba’s big anniversary. No-one can deny that this coincidence seems suspicious, especially considering the jury versus public votes Sweden received and the landslide amount of votes won by Finland.

And that brings us to the plagiarism. Many fans say Loreen’s song this year, “Tattoo” is very similar to her previous winner ‘Euphoria’. An even more common accusation is that her song is very similar, or even identical to ‘Flying Free’ by Pont Aeri. Indeed, the openings are almost a complete match. It seems hard to believe that she could compose an identical opening without having heard the original at all. Sections of the instrumentals are also similar to Loreen’s entry.

Having not heard about this controversy before the grand final, the comparison this blog draws is with Abba’s ‘Winner Takes It All’. Perhaps this is why Sweden scored so many points from the jury this year? After all, Abba constructs very enjoyable, musically excellent songs. This was only noticed when my own father heard Sweden’s entry and began singing along with Abba’s lyrics, only realising that something was different when his lyrics didn’t match Loreen’s. He has been a fan of Abba since they won Eurovision and owns several records and CDs. And even he thought it was a dance remix of Abba.

During the judging section of the competition where the points are awarded, the crowd kept booing, and chanting Käärijä’s name and “cha cha cha” while the hosts were trying to announce Sweden’s victory. This chanting continued during Loreen’s victory song, as well as many other competitors immediately making their way to Käärijä to chant and support him. It was very clear who people thought the winner should be, and it was not Loreen.

No-one remembers who won the year Verka performed. They remember Verka. That’s what’s going to happen this year. This won’t be remembered as the year Loreen won Eurovision for the second time. This will be remembered as the year the juries finally went too far, and the year Finland was robbed.

Next year we should all just send our previous winners. And maybe question if Israel has a place in this competition anymore.

[snarkesthour]

Greetings From Europe, We're Kinda Not Okay 😅

For all those around the world waking up to an angry Europe and not knowing why, Sweden won the Eurovision Song Contest by performing a song that is blatantly identical to, and plagiarising of, Abba’s ‘Winner Takes It All’, just remixed as a dance track. They lost the public vote, robbing Finland of what was seen as a well-deserved and well-earned victory, to the point that people are calling for the annexation of the professional jury and calling the contest rigged and paid for in order to tie in to Abba’s 50 year anniversary next year when the contest will be hosted in Sweden.  

Do you think the professional jury should be abolished?  

Do you think Eurovision should abolish the professional jury?

Yes

No

I think it needs overhauling in some way

Voting ended onMay 21, 2023

Swedish Performance - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE2Fj0W4jP4

Winner Takes It All - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92cwKCU8Z5c

Finish Performance - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6rS8Dv5g-8

[snarkesthour]

#NotMyOBONDay

I hope you like the title. It was an attempt to be funny and light-hearted, but I'm afraid that is as good as it’s going to get for the rest of this post, because the British government has been At It Again.

I’m sure some of you at least will have seen/heard of this idea of “OBON” day, or “One Britain One Nation” day. It is an idea endorsed by the British government to “celebrate the values we [the British people] share: tolerance, kindness, pride, respect and a tremendous desire to help others.”

Because we’ve seen so much of that from the government recently.

Also problematic, taken from their website, is the idea that “our diverse cultures are inextricably linked by the sole fact that we are British”, which is a disgusting sentiment. Not only does it mask the struggle of our minority communities, it erases their culture by implying that British culture takes centre stage, and is somehow better. This is dangerously racist. I will argue that our diverse cultures are inextricably linked by the sole fact that we are British - but not in the way they want to believe. They are linked because Britain once owned a quarter of the world. One quarter. 25%. That’s what links these cultures to Britain, and it is not a link that should be celebrated. Which makes the next sentence “it is this fact that has prompted OBON to reinforce and revive what collectively unites us” particularly distasteful, and offensive.

Let’s not get into the bit where they say that “OBON aims to give new impetus for the creation of a harmonised society”, (harmonised in the particularly “British” way they want), in order “to make Britain an international model of moral rectitude.” (Just… no.)

There are a number of issues with this first point, about “British values”. There is no mention of how conditional these values really are to the British people, or the times in history we have not extended the merits of these values to others. The day includes clapping and singing songs which are very nationalistic and contain worrying lyrics, which we will touch upon in a minute. All of these are serious problems, but the one that angers me the most is the existence of an Obon Day already.

The aforementioned song gained some traction online, but did not make main news in Britain. It is a song supposedly written by a class of schoolchildren in

the city of Bradford, a multicultural hub in the north of England. It contains such lyrics as: “we have one dream to unite all people in one great team”, which is uncomfortable when you think of the UKs history of colonisation and forced assimilation of indigenous peoples; “we’ve opened our doors, and widened our islands shores”, which is uncomfortable weighed against the UKs history of slavery (and more recently, its rejection of many boatfuls of refugees and asylum seekers; “we celebrate our differences with love in our hearts.” This one is just laughable given the recent protests over the rampant racism within our government, political landscape, and country at large. Protests over women’s mistreatment in British society, the horrific abuse of the transgender community, the rampant Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism, particularly within our major political parties, and the treatment of the autistic community. All of this is worsened by the government’s refusal to acknowledge the atrocities and crimes of Britain’s past. Nay, they actively take steps to censor them by refusing to allow this part of history to be taught in schools. The rhetoric of “so many races, standing in the same place” comes with no mention of just why so many different races of people reside in the UK (once again, because we invaded 90% of the world), making the seemingly unproblematic line “united forever, never apart” abruptly ominous. The song finishes with the repeated phrase “Strong Britain, Great Nation, which is the sort of fetishistically nationalistic thing you’d expect to be sung in a country such as North Korea.

All of these points disgust and disturb me. Yet the thing that personally angers me the most is that Obon Day already exists. If you are a reader of manga/watcher of anime, you may have already heard of it. Obon is Buddhist festival in Japan for honouring one’s ancestors. It is the Japanese Buddhist version of the Buddhist festival Ullambana and is celebrated in August, when the gap between the human world and the spirit world is smaller, or weakened, and the spirits of ancestors can cross over in ghost form.

While Obon is a Japanese Buddhist festival, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect those of us in Britain. As of October 2019, there were around 66,000 Japanese people living in the UK. Given that nearly 70% of Japanese people are Buddhist, we can assume a fair number of them will be practitioners. Not only that, it will affect non-Japanese people following Japanese branches of Buddhism, such as Nichiren Shu Buddhism, founded in the 13th century. It will impact the wider Buddhist community that does not celebrate Obon too, because, as said above, Obon is the Japanese Buddhist version of the Buddhist festival of Ullambana, observed by a wider array of Buddhists.

All of this infuriates me. Buddhism is a religion of peace, tolerance, love, and everything the British government seems determined to stand against. Buddhism does not look at people and see division. It sees unity, and it certainly does not see hatred. The British government’s “OBON Day” is insensitive and tone-deaf to Britain’s minority communities at best, and divisive and quietly hate-fuelled at worst. Either way, it amounts to another act in a repeated pattern of behaviour seeking to destroy cultures already existing within the UK to assimilate them all into one perfect “British” society, and Buddhism does not tolerate those qualities one single bit.

Find another name for your day of fascistic pride.

This one is taken.

[mioxenoblade]

Yall gotta stop arguing w terfs cuz they dont care. It doesnt matter how right you are theyre using fake studies made by anti lgbt groups, hanging out on neo nazi sites, and just twisting anything you say. you can't debate a bigot into not being a bigot online. stop putting in effort and just block em (and ridicule them but block them)

[redcrewmate]

ntm if you argue with terfs, they can and will go onto your blog. they will see trans womens posts that you reblogged (donations, selfies, anything) and with that they have found more trans women to harrass. arguing with terfs gives them a gateway directly to trans womens accounts. it doesnt change their mind, and it doesnt keep trans women safe.

[snarkesthour]

If you're a TERF, then there is no place on this blog for you.

[snarkesthour]

Real late to the party, but Happy Pride Month one and all, and that includes all aspec and arospec people – you are valid and this blog is a safe space for you

[snarkesthour]

Happy St George's Day!

· In the midst of a pandemic when schools are all closed, the government votes to not allow free school meals to schoolchildren during school holidays, despite this being the only meal many of them have each day

· Marcus Rashford, a footballer, led the drive to feed the nation’s children, 49% of which live in poverty, and forced the government to provide food for them during the school holidays

· Instead of previous years when vouchers were given to parents that can only be spent on nutritious food, members of government give contracts to friends to provide a week’s work of food costing £5 to schoolchildren for a price of £30. Food is unhealthy and would not last a week

· Parcels also expect parents to cook two tablespoons of rice at a time in the oven and bake their own bread every day, ignoring poverty-stricken families possible lack of access to such equipment

· Wife of conservative MP attacks poor families for eating unhealthy food when healthy food is cheaper, ignoring the fact that not all families have access to equipment needed to store and cook it

· Nigel Farage, head of the Brexit party came out strongly against the government for their stance on starving schoolchildren. Not a good look.

· Another MP came out and said that poor families should not receive government assistance because the money would be going direct to brothels and crackhouses and the parents would spend it on drink and drugs instead of feeding their kids, a dangerous and persistent stereotype of working class people

· For the first time in its history, UNICEF is feeding kids in the UK – the 5th richest country in the world – and the head of the House of Commons accused them of “playing politics” and said they should “be ashamed of themselves”

· J.K. Rowling came out hard as a TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist), writing a book about a serial killer that dresses up as a Muslim woman, which isn’t subtle when you look at her history of transphobia and other “-isms”

She also publicly supported an author who wrote a book about the destruction of Europe by waves of Muslim immigration

· Speaking of J.K. Rowling, the government’s response to the Gender Recognition Act.

· It is now impossible for under 16s to receive reversible puberty blockers

· Wait times at NHS Gender Clinics, of which there are only 7 in the country, have doubled, with wait times now up to 60+ months (5+ years)

· Keir Starmer, head of the Labour (left wing) party says he doesn’t want to get involved in trans issues

· With the loss of Labour, no major party supports trans rights

· Self ID is no longer allowed, meaning every step of transition is medicalised and involves the trans person having to prove that they are “trans enough” at every stage to panels of cis people

· Government wants to invalidate non-enrolled deed polls, essentially making available a public list of every trans person in the UK

· Hate crimes have quadrupled

· Anti-trans campaigners are now setting their sights on trans adults’ access to hormones

· A petition was formed to counter this and was reviewed by the government, who determined that nothing was wrong with the GRA except that it might have been a bit lax.

· The Guardian newspaper ran child labour and child starvation supporting stories

· Internal border now along the border of Kent and lorry drivers must produce travel papers (Brexit Passport) to cross it, placing the county of Kent in a state of “no man’s land”

· Government fails to lockdown on time, every time

· Government refuses to ban conversion therapy in the UK

· Scotland adopts Human Rights of Children, which requires the government to better support children and families, especially those who are poor, disabled, minorities or young carers. England does not

· The government declared that sleeping rough is now grounds for deportation

· Schools reopened several times despite being warned not safe to do so

· The government banned NHS workers from speaking out about COVID

· Do Not Resuscitate orders proposed for those in care homes, with learning disabilities and who are autistic

· The government cut pensions as the COVID death toll rose

· The government learnt about new South-East COVID strain in September and didn’t come forwards until December

· New COVID strain targets kids, teens, and young adults, and yet none of those groups are allowed vaccination unless a serious pre-existing condition is had, even if they are key workers

· Downing Street says UK should be model of racial equality because government report says no institutional racism in the UK

· Report also says young people are young and foolish for thinking it exists and that minorities are superstitious and irrational and are sabotaging themselves out of success

· It came out that the government was given the independent report and rewrote it to the version that was released to the public – the version that says racism doesn’t exist in the UK

· The rewritten report also refers to the slave trade as the “Caribbean experience”, like those enslaved were on holiday

· Woman in London abducted, murdered and dismembered by off-duty cop and when socially distanced vigil goes ahead, police wait until dark before trapping women, arresting them, using excessive force on them, and also destroying memorial

· Bill passed in government that allows undercover officers to commit serious crimes such as murder, torture and rape

· Plainclothes police to now patrol nightclubs and bars due to aforementioned murder by police officer

· Bill passed that bans any protest at all, no matter how quiet, unobstructive or small it is, including single-person protests. Bill also includes a 10 year sentence for damaging a statue, which is a longer sentence than for rape

· TV programmes critical of the government have been cancelled

· Universities have been told what to platform and schools have been told what to teach, including banning material speaking about BLM and calling for “overthrow” of capitalism

· Voting has been supressed, mainly those who are working class or POC

· During protests in Bristol, press was assaulted and pepper sprayed by police and two legal observers were arrested

· Being Roma/Traveller and living the traditional Roma/Traveller lifestyle is now illegal under that same bill that bans protests. They also have to register as such and receive a licence or risk losing their vehicles

· Hours before Eid, lockdown across the UK with no warning whatsoever, meaning people woke up the next morning after visiting relatives to find themselves “criminals”. The country was opened up specifically for Christmas though

· Conservative (right wing) party blamed BAME (Black And Minority Ethnic) communities for dying of COVID more than white people

· Landlords have been protected extensively and renters blamed for living in close quarters or having to take public transport to work

· Conservatives have launched investigation into possible corruption in Liverpool Council. Liverpool is a Labour stronghold and if corruption is found then the Conservatives can seize control of the council. No evidence of corruption is present as of yet

· Military threatened to stage a coup if Corbyn (then head of the labour party) became Prime Minister

· Government orders all government buildings in England, Wales and Scotland to fly the Union Flag every day to boost patriotism

· MPs call for the curriculum to require teaching the history of the Union Flag rather than Britain’s many atrocities

· The first fortnight of April saw a mini heatwave with temperatures up to 20°C immediately followed by snow, and this is ignored in favour of debating “vaccine passports” in order to visit the pub

· UK allows for international summer holidays despite being warned it will cause a third wave, such as the situation in Germany

· Government placed asylum seekers arriving in the UK in army barracks where they were to sleep 24 to a room with no open windows or air circulation, and when COVID inevitably ran rampant, the Home Secretary accused the asylum seekers of not following COVID protocol, such as social distancing

· Several accounts of self-harm and suicide attempts were reported from the asylum barracks and were dismissed

· UK to deport unaccompanied minor asylum seekers

· UK refuses entry into the UK for radicalised teen failed by system who joined ISIS. Case is difficult and controversial because teen wishes to return to the UK temporarily to fight for her citizenship after the UK broke international law by stripping it from her, despite her not having dual citizenship. Argument given was that her parents were from Bangladesh and so she could apply for citizenship there. Bangladesh refused. Teen is now stateless and living in a refugee camp after losing several children, unable to fight for her citizenship to be reinstated.

· Rioting in Northern Ireland, which included the first use of water cannons in 6 years, a bus being hijacked and burnt, a press photographer attacked, and people throwing bricks, fireworks and petrol bombs at police, not to mention some of the clashes happening over a peace wall in west Belfast, completely ignored in British media and then later drowned out by non-stop news of Prince Phillip’s death, obscuring any important news from being heard. Riots were over Northern Ireland’s being a part of the UK

· MPs take vote on whether China’s treatment of Uighurs constitutes genocide. They decide it does, but that it isn’t their job to do anything further

· Home Office released their spending for the 2020 fiscal year. It’s a mess, including over £77,000 at an eyebrow salon in March alone, and £6,000+ in Pollyanna Restaurant which doesn't appear to exist.

· When people started questioning the spending, the Home Office sent a tweet fact checking themselves

· Country reopened over the summer for Eat Out To Help Out, a scheme to boost the economy. COVID cases rose sharply and the government then blamed people, but mostly working class people, for not following restrictions such as only leaving the house when absolutely necessary, after telling them it was safe

· Foreign NHS workers denied COVID vaccinations

· GCSEs and A-Levels were cancelled due to COVID-19 and expected exam grades were to be used instead. Private school students received grades much higher than they were expecting, and state school students received grades much lower, some grades falling as far as an A to an E. This was because the government couldn’t imagine state school students being smart enough to receive the high grades they were predicted to get; after much uproar the grades were scrapped, and a new method was introduced

· BBC offered staff grief counselling following Prince Philip’s death, but not after having to report on the ever-rising COVID death toll

· The COVID-19 Infection Survey closed in mourning for Prince Philip, with workers to contact participants to reschedule visits for “as soon as possible” when they return to work

· Census workers told to pack up and go home and were placed on immediate unpaid leave due to the death of Prince Philip, but told they must make up the hours later

· Conservative MPs lobbied for a new royal yacht after voting to keep schoolchildren hungry (see first points)

· The BBC’s complaint page crashed over the amount of complaints they got of their coverage of Prince Philip’s death. It was covered non-stop for over 24 hours and the page came in at over 100,000 complaints before going down

· BBC also fast becoming politically biased despite their requirement to be apolitical, after cutting out the audience laughing at Boris Johnson on Question Time, displaying Corbyn as a communist figure in front of a prominent piece of Russian architecture, and providing a platform for a Conservative MP to tell a stage 4 bowl cancer patient that her life wasn’t valuable on live television

· On the COVID-19 pandemic, the BMJ, (British Medical Journal) said about the government that “science was being suppressed for political and financial gain” by “some of history’s worst autocrats and dictators”

· Not only did Boris Johnson launch Eat Out To Help Out when he was warned it was dangerous, lifted lockdowns too early when he was warned it was too dangerous, reopened schools when he was warned it was too dangerous, but when scientists said the second COVID jab should be delivered within 3 weeks he decided that was too tall an order and it should be within 12 weeks – after a period of radio silence, suddenly the science fit his plan. No scientists came forwards to defend it

· The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, blamed protestors for protests that became violent from police attacking protestors, bullied staff members under her, bought members of staff in her department, said it was “disgraceful” to topple the statue of Edward Colson, a slave trader, in Brighton because it undermined anti-racism protests, held treasonous meetings with Israel with the plan to divert aid money, and threatened to starve Ireland in order to get them to agree to Brexit

· She also wants to set up Australian-style asylum processing centres on British islands, but the islands she wants are in the Atlantic ocean and over 4000 miles away from the UK. This is because she wants to help asylum seekers enter the UK legally, completed ignoring or oblivious to all the reasons that asylum seekers might not be able to do that, and for the fact that to seek asylum you must essentially walk up the border and ask for it

· The bungling of the Track and Trace system – the government spent £10bn on a system to track and trace the spread of COVID-19. All data was stored on an Excel spreadsheet which developed a technical glitch and many results were lost before the system was scrapped

· As Autism Acceptance month began, the BBC ran a story saying the autism causes fascism, and that an autistic person who had chosen to embrace the ideology was incapable of seeing that a neo-Nazi group he joined was morally bad because he was autistic

[snarkesthour]

WORLD AUTISM ACCEPTANCE DAY

We don’t need awareness, we need acceptance. Acceptance saves lives.

 #WearRedInstead

Nothing For Us Without Us

[snarkesthour]

A Vulcan Hello

Tor Vuhlkansular lafosh ri ka dah’wak

Vulcans don’t make the same mistake twice

“240 years ago, near H'Atoria, a Vulcan ship crossed into Klingon space. The Klingons attacked immediately. They destroyed the vessel. Vulcans don't make the same mistake twice. ... Captain, we have to give the Klingons a Vulcan "hello".” 

- Michael Burnham, Star Trek Discovery S1E1

[snarkesthour]

That Dueling Scene from Chamber of Secrets

So I was rewatching my way through the HP series the other day, (or at least the first two because my PoA disk has apparently burnt out), and I noticed something in the duelling club scene in Chamber of Secrets.

We all know how the scene goes. Lockheart and Snape face off, and Snape wipes the floor with Lockheart in about 30 seconds because Lockheart is useless. Then Harry and Draco are called and they duel too, more successfully than their teachers. (Goddamnit Lockheart)

But I want to take a better look at the stances the four of them use at the beginning of the duel.

Here is Lockheart’s stance at the beginning of the duel before spells start getting fired. It’s pretty reminiscent of a fencing stance.

Here’s Snape’s stance. It’s pretty different.

Now, when Harry and Draco face off they both salute with their wands, walk the correct amount of distance away, and then take their stance, and what I find interesting is that they both use the same stance, and it’s this one:

They both mimic Snape’s stance. Harry at least has his hands the other way around, due to either character or actor just getting it wrong, or because Harry is supposed to have his hands the other way around, we don’t know, but I find it interesting that both students recognise Lockheart as so useless that they both mimic Snape’s stance, including Harry, who hates him with a passion.

[deathdaydungeon]

This is great meta.

I would suggest that Harry’s stance is for cinematographic purposes.  If Harry stood with his left hand forward and his right hand in the air (as Snape and Draco do), he’d have his back to the camera - so I reckon the director requested an inverse stance.

But it does raise an interesting ‘in-universe’ question, and I suppose we could say that Draco’s stance is correct because he’s brought up in the wizarding world so already knew these things, whilst Harry is living amongst Muggles, so he’s relying on Hogwarts to teach him these sorts of customs.

Which links neatly back to what you were saying - Harry has two professors to choose from, and he immediately recognises that Snape’s stance is the one to emulate and Lockhart should be ignored.

[snarkesthour]

I never even thought of cinematographic purposes! Of course, that makes so much sense!

I also assumed Draco simply copied Snape because he is his head of house and therefore Draco’s most trusted teacher at Hogwarts, but if Snape had learnt to duel due to his association with Death Eaters at Hogwarts and afterwards, then it would make sense that this could be considered the proper form, and that is also why Draco uses it.

I assumed that there could be several proper forms to take, as Lockheart uses a different one, and that Harry, not knowing anything about duelling, immediately adopts the stance of the teacher he knows is at least competent. But then again, Lockheart is useless so maybe he just does it wrong. XD

[snarkesthour]

That Dueling Scene from Chamber of Secrets

So I was rewatching my way through the HP series the other day, (or at least the first two because my PoA disk has apparently burnt out), and I noticed something in the duelling club scene in Chamber of Secrets.

We all know how the scene goes. Lockheart and Snape face off, and Snape wipes the floor with Lockheart in about 30 seconds because Lockheart is useless. Then Harry and Draco are called and they duel too, more successfully than their teachers. (Goddamnit Lockheart)

But I want to take a better look at the stances the four of them use at the beginning of the duel.

Here is Lockheart’s stance at the beginning of the duel before spells start getting fired. It’s pretty reminiscent of a fencing stance.

Here’s Snape’s stance. It’s pretty different.

Now, when Harry and Draco face off they both salute with their wands, walk the correct amount of distance away, and then take their stance, and what I find interesting is that they both use the same stance, and it’s this one:

They both mimic Snape’s stance. Harry at least has his hands the other way around, due to either character or actor just getting it wrong, or because Harry is supposed to have his hands the other way around, we don’t know, but I find it interesting that both students recognise Lockheart as so useless that they both mimic Snape’s stance, including Harry, who hates him with a passion.

[snarkesthour]

May Her Memory Be A Blessing

[snarkesthour]

[snarkesthour]

To all the non cis-hets who deal with bullshit on account of their identity

You’re valid. Yes, that applies to a-spec and aro-spec people, bi people (seriously, how are you guys STILL facing erasure and gate-keeping?!?!), trans people, pan people, anyone with a non-standard gender identity, gays/lesbians, anyone in the process of still figuring it out or coming out. You’re super valid and loved. :)

[tenitchyfingers]

“We chose the term “asexual” to describe ourselves because both “celibate” and “anti-sexual” have connotations we wished to avoid: the first implies that one has sacrificed sexuality for some higher good, the second that sexuality is degrading or somehow inherently bad. “Asexual”, as we use it, does not mean “without sex” but “relating sexually to no one”. This does not, of course, exclude masturbation but implies that if one has sexual feelings they do not require another person for their expression. Asexuality is, simply, self-contained sexuality.”

— The Asexual Manifesto, Lisa Orlando and Barbara Getz, 1972

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

Note the date, people:

That’s 1972

29 years before AVEN was started online,

and 47 years before the present.

And that’s only the date that Manifesto was written, so asexuals as members of a community must have existed at least some time before that.

So, no: we are not just Tumblr trenders. Get out of here with that.

[m-in-a-moonrock]

Also note how this clearly states that the words asexual was chosen specifically because others words implied that sexuality was bad or that the person might have made a “superior” choice in giving it up, and that IS NOT part of being asexual. 

Associating sexuality and sexual attraction to something bad has never been inherently part of asexuality unlike what aphobic people on here keep saying. It has always been their own internal shame and issues about sex that they keep projecting on to us.

[snarkesthour]

Killing Peeves: Thoughts on Villanelle and LGBT+ rep on TV

Happy Pride Month, one and all.

Something that has been on my mind for a while is how commonly LGBT+ people are otherised and/or side-lined in fiction and the media. For example, Steven Universe only had a human (as opposed to an alien) non-binary character in the Future sequel series (which was prefaced by a LOT of controversy over the original) and She-Ra: Princesses of Power didn’t go that far – the one non-binary character used as representation was also non-human. 

We should be able to expect TV shows featuring human LGBT+ characters too, and not just the crappy tokenism where a gay couple is formed right at the end when there’s no risk to the ratings (Legend of Korra is forgiven because that show was first but successors need to up their game) or when there is just heavy ~subtext~ that has no other purpose aside from comedic effect. That’s not to say you CAN’T do it with non-humans – one of the best examples I can think of for LGBT+ representation recently was Mr Ratburn’s wedding – but that we should not be ONLY getting represented in media by non-human characters. Because that would, on a subconscious level, feed the idea that non cishet people are not human or should not be treated thus. That line of thinking is dangerous and gross and yet people still buy into it today, in 20-damn-20.

Which got me thinking about a show where, conversely, a human LGBT+ character is arguably subject to a certain kind of otherisation.

Spoilers below for the final season of BBC America’s Killing Eve.

From what I’ve seen it’s fashionable to say that S1 was miles better than S2 and S3 because of the change in writers. The change really is palpable, and admittedly neither S2 nor S3 ever matched the knuckle-grinding, exhilarating suspense I felt watching S1. But the latter two seasons have their merits too. Specifically, they were kinder to Villanelle. Her plot was slow to warm up in S3, but I loved every minute of her screen time during and after her finding her family (even if her brother and little half-brother were the only ones deserving of that title).

We already had the foundation laid in S2 where she listed her wants as “nice life, cool flat, fun job”, but S3 served us the culmination of that where she decided that she did not want to kill for a living anymore, as well as making it clear that she had been forced into that position in the first place. It was more humanisation than I expected Villanelle to get from the show.

In S1, she was more explicitly a villain for the protagonist Eve (who was also explicitly NOT IDing as wlw in S1, she only considered that after ceasing to be the clear Big Good to Villanelle’s Big Bad). We have a recurring theme of characters like Bill and Paul mentioning in asides that they had male partners, but when we saw nothing of these relationships, it felt like small potatoes. The only same-sex attraction playing out on screen was Villanelle with another woman (sometimes Eve) or women. And those relationships ranged from at best having a foundation of lies at best and at worst… uh…

Content warning: mention of rape, pedophilia, and abuse

Villanelle’s backstory with Anna Leonova was very different in the original novel by Luke Jennings and, I would argue, more tasteful than the show interpretation. For one, Anna does not abuse her power over her student, and rejects Oxana’s advances. While I do want to emphasise that no sympathy was encouraged for show!Anna with her affair with Villanelle in mind (note how horrified V is when Irina asks her “are you a pedophile?”), this was one of only two long-term wlw relationships seen on the show at that point. The other, Villanelle and Nadia, was based on rot and deceit and it ended with the latter’s murder. Retconning Anna that way was not a bad decision per se, but in terms of representation, it would have been better to have shown a positive LGBT+ relationship elsewhere on screen, even as an aside, free of those associations. Especially with how often historically pedophilia has been stapled to the LGBT+ community.

Another book difference is that Villanelle does not castrate Anna’s husband out of jealousy and then put up balloons in her house in mock celebration. Instead, book!Anna was assaulted, and Oxana went after the rapist after he was cleared of any punishment on a technicality. Small as this detail may seem, the devil is often in the detail. What Oxana did in the show feels more like a Moral Event Horizon, to quote TV Tropes, speaking of total disregard on Oxana’s part for Anna’s consent/feelings. It makes her seem more dangerous as it tells us she will kill randomly and on sexual caprices. That’s unnecessary information, we already know she is dangerous! Anyone who would dispute that by the end of the season wasn’t watching. On the other hand, book!Oxana is killing to articulate how important Anna’s autonomy and safety is to her, even if Anna herself is horrified by the crime – though Oxana’s hope that she would not be is more understandable here. And the point made is that Oxana is misaligned not with society itself as in the show, but mainstream state apparatus.

If you’ve seen S3, you’ll notice that Anna was never mentioned in it at all. And that’s because there’s really nothing they could have done with that story that worked in the context of Villanelle’s story as we saw in S3. I’m not sure if S4 will touch on Anna at all, much less what version of Villanelle we will get there. Time will tell. But maybe, like Villanelle herself, more TV shows will evolve. Beyond the sheer spectacle of elaborate or villainous gay-coded characters, or their appearance as mere tokenism, in favour of deeper explorations of well-rounded characters, LGBT+ or otherwise. Where, like Villanelle, we see them refuse to allow prior abuse to beat them and shoot (heh) for a happy ending. A kind of representation to really take Pride in. 

[whitepeopletwitter]