Hi. I’m 20M. In August 2022, I had gastritis (I assume because I didn't go to the doctor, having a neighbor who is a gastroenterologist surgeon) that went away in the course of 2 weeks. Whatever I ate or drank I had to pass out through the stool. Then I felt better. In October I had an episode of extreme vertigo, everything was spinning around me and when I went to the bathroom I had bloody stool (light red). Initially, I thought that hemorrhoids were the problem. But, from that epsiode, for 2 months I still had the feeling of not emptying myself and intestinal gas. My stomach was constantly rumbling and I felt like something was rubbing my stomach. If I eat a corner of bread or anything, my stomach no longer rubs. Then the symptoms changed radically, from December I started having stools after absolutely any meal. I was eating and 5 minutes later I had to go to the toilet. In the last month I started going to the bathroom and only having gas. When I wiped myself with paper, I only had mucus on it (clean transparent). I went to the gastroenterologist, he told me that I have severe hepatic steatosis (non-alcoholic). I mention that I weigh quite a lot and am obese. He diagnosed me with Inflammatory Bowel Syndrome. But calprotectin turned out well for me and there is no longer a problem like this. Also recently I was discovered with lichen planus/scleroatrophic in the genital area (autoimmune disease) and I'm afraid it might be crohn's. I'm going to have a colonoscopy. Have you had similar symptoms? Can it be colon cancer? Also sometimes my stool is black-ish but rarely. It had the same consistency for months whatever I ate. Very sticky ( i guess mucus in it). I also must mention i had problem with my acid coming up to my esophagus / mouth for 5-6 years. And it went away if i drank once every 2 weeks a spoon of sodium bicarbonate with water. In 28th March I’m having a colonoscopy but im very stressed. Can anyone give their opinion on this?
I need help, I’m desperate. P.S. : Sorry for my bad english, I’m not that good with it

Thej-cube
I am decided to use the new 4 QT air fryer, or COSORI LITE (4-QT) or Instant Vortex Plus (4-QT).
Giant square 8417
It seems that some of the very popular YouTube cooking channels prefer Cosori. I like its interesting design and color.
Daswood
But I really like the dial -up controller on Instant Vortex, and the design is also available (matching my Instant Pot).However, many comments and complaints say that it is difficult to eliminate the burning plastic smell (and warning stickers in front of the basket), and the silicon foot cracks and cracks prematurely, and the tray may fall when pouring in.I also found that the number screen is a bit busy but not high.
Radical
Does anyone try the two and prefer it?
Tex771
I have Vortex Pro and like it.Obviously, these two are different, but as a brand, I suggest you do it immediately.
Dredd805
Not both were cosori (green) and tested outside.You need to splash with vinegar for 20 minutes on 400 degrees @ 400 degrees to reduce the smell of plastic.I like design.
Mascarahoarder
Why is my question actually obtained 4QT?I started from there (single man) and encountered space problems, so I got 6QT, which was perfect for me.Single meal, or enough to satisfy the effect of two meals.If you want to get a second bleeding pot, I know I like my vortex enough. When I raise it, I stay in the family (and retain the small side/small plate)
Thej-cube
After running several times, the smell of plastic disappeared.So far it has been great.
Giant square 8417
[already]
Daswood
The Air Fryer on Amazon was 38 % discounted today.
Radical
That url is http://airfryer0019.OUTDORSGUIDER.com/find-products-what-dhairfryer
Tex771
COSORI MAX TEMP is 450
Dredd805
I have Instant Pot 6qt vortex, I like it.I know, if I bought anything with a glass door, it would be a mess soon.
Mascarahoarder
The title illustrates everything.Yes.I am single, I laugh loudly with a cardboard and air frying pot.However, these hormone -pre -seasoned spine is always BOGO, which is two meals for me.Cook until the perfect medium!Along with mung beans, with butter, apple cider vinegar and crushed red pepper.Gentle!

I'm an ongoing student at this university, and I find its' history quite interesting. It was founded and constructed by American diplomats with purely pro-American anti-communist interests throughout the Cold War, but within years it became the very center of anti-Americanism, communism, and the '68 revolutionary socialist movement. And what is more mind-blowing is that the Vietnam War was the very reason these radical changes happened very fast. Let me elaborate:
Middle East Technical University(METU) [Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi (ODTÜ) in Turkish] was founded by USA officials in Ankara, Turkey in 1956, at a time Turkey was a very close ally of the USA and had very recently joined North Atlantic Treaty (this happened in 1952). The USA was looking forward to constructing NATO military bases throughout Turkey, which was a neighbor to USSR, so as to counteract any possible threats coming from USSR and to follow its interests in the Middle East in general. 104 NATO bases have been engineered and have been used by NATO officials (mostly Americans) up to this day since then.
But there was a problem. It was not likely to hire American engineers and technicians there and risk their lives with dangerous tasks at Cold War nuclear, military, espionage, and radar bases with the potential of being targeted/attacked by the USSR or even worse, being blown up by possible explosions of the nuclear warheads they construct and maintain at theses bases (hopefully that never happened, but there was always a risk). Besides, the salaries they were offering to highly educated American engineers, scientists, technicians, etc. were not found satisfactory whereas it was highly satisfactory and demanded by would-be Turkish personnel due to Turkey being a very poor country still undergoing a harsh process of industrialization and urbanization at that time.
This was how METU came into being because Americans thought they would need highly qualified engineers, personnel, technicians, bureaucrats, diplomats, and economists to run these NATO bases smoothly, with other US/NATO/Western bloc-backed political projects, operations, and agendas as well. Not just that, but METU would likely raise generations in order to attain American political, financial, military, and cultural interests in the Middle East as a means to counteracting USSR-Communist threats towards Turkey in general. In other words, it would likely be the ''American Cultural Base'' as a university.
Founded and funded by Americans, the university's language of education was also appointed to be English (Anglophone staff were needed in NATO bases indeed). Its sole organization and campus were managed by American staff themselves, designed as a ''little America within Turkey''. Not just classrooms but dormitories, cafeterias, sports halls, congress/convention centers, Deans' office... were also designed in a fashion that was resembling America by all means. Every single detail was concerned. Hoodies, t-shirts, school rings, and all other licensed university merchandise were produced to be sold to students, which was a quite American-ish thing Turks never came across before. Like the one with university shuttles traveling within the campus, yes, that was an American-ish thing for us Turks too. Lots of American-ish things... Needless to say, most of the lecturers and staff were American or British appointed by the USA so as to make sure they would brainwash the pupils by propagate pro-American, pro-NATO anti-communist ideas among students. Though being a public school, the university was itself funded and financed by the US government each year. Its whole curriculum was set by the US government itself, let alone the educational system and approaches...
But the plan backfired. As a result of being a public school, students enrolling in the university were mostly coming from rural, underdeveloped regions. Some of them were very poor, some were middle class, and some were affluent families. But what was common among these students is that as a result of coming from rural regions(%80 of the Turkish populace was rural back then), they were coming from very harsh conditions embracing a modest way of living. And even students with middle-class or upper-middle-class backgrounds were likely to be considered poor with regard to the US standards. As I said it was hard times, being middle class or even upper middle class (due to Turkish standards) was meant to afford the basic necessities of life without debt. U live in a shelter (no matter if the shelter is good or bad, you are the owner or renter), u are able to feed urself at breakfast and/or dinner, u can afford the money to have few clothes, ur child attends to the public school (no matter if it was hard or easy, even affording pencil, eraser, notebook was a matter of being rich that time) then u were considered to be the middle-class or upper middle class in Turkey that time.
Anyways, once the students enrolled in the METU, they had difficulties adopting an urban way of living. Not just that, they could've hardly embraced and shocked by the ''American way of living'' presented within the school. Campus shuttles, hoodies, American football, academic copes at the graduation ceremonies, pepsi's etc. They saw these as mere luxuries and disliked. American and British lecturers, by the way, appointed to propagate cold war stuff so as to brainwash the students, did not care about that much too. They were more like friends to students, brothers and sisters, and advocated free thought within them once they saw the harsh conditions students were coping and sympathized with them as well...
Anyways, revolutionary youth movements were on the rise during 60's, remember? Especially because of the Cuban revolution and Vietnam War. Turkey, as a developing country with very little industrial background at all, found itself within all these. People were living in hunger, poverty, archaic feudality, and facing very strict police brutality all the time they stood up against these conditions, within underdeveloped rural regions (as I mentioned above) so this even accelerated the rise of socialism within Turkish society beginning in the 1960s. People were fed up. People were fed up dying in freeze, hunger, lack of very basic medications, and being slapped by commanders in military barracks (during mandatory conscription), being tortured and murdered by the policemen just because they stood up for their rights, repressed and exploited by landlords in agricultural lands, forced hard labor by the bosses at the factories and mines. Add to this censorship, the repression of trade unions and all other labor organizations, the delegitimization of general strikes, and the like. These happen very often in underdeveloped countries forced to undergo strict urbanization and modernization.
People, unintentionally, found themselves in a radical and sharp opposition due to these harsh conditions and poor quality of life. They also saw American and Western allies are the root cause. Bilateral agreements with the United States made possible the usufruct and exploitation of natural resources(mines etc), labor force, heavy industry, military complex, and financial markets by American and/or Western collaborators in general. This was the natural result of the NATO alliance as well. They knew very well that redbaiting and suppression of progressive ideas was a result of Cold War Gladio organizations. Repression of all sorts of trade unions, labor organizations, socialist newspapers, and youth associations though they were not even radical or strong, very moderate and weak indeed. Turkish national intelligence spies were very busy red-baiting and repressing communists, socialists, and even slightly progressive ones(let alone being radical), and what is more intriguing is that even their salaries were paid by the CIA at that time. Needless to mention the ''bright ones'' of ministers, government officials, military staff, and their children were sent to US universities by scholarships so that when they turn back to Turkey and appoint the important positions they would likely work for American interests in Turkey.
under these circumstances, The people (especially the youth) began to hate America and their national collaborators so much that they saw Turkey as a semi-colony of American imperialism (in their words).
But unfortunately, The repression of the masses led way to the radicalization of the masses (even the most moderate and weak ones) as a response. There was no other choice but radicalization... This was a very distinctive live-or-die dilemma. These harsh conditions made the Turkish socialist-revolutionary youth movement one of the strongest and fast growing of its time (68 generation). This was also the case with METU(ODTÜ).
What do all these have to do with Vietnam War?
Coming to that part.
Robert Komer, one of the founders of CIA, and head of Operation Phoenix (Pacification Program) during the Vietnam War, was responsible for the killing of at least 10.000 suspected Vietnamese (by his words), entrapping Vietnamese civilians/communists in the concentration camps and torturing them the same way Nazis' treated their own opponents in Auschwitz camps, including:

Rape, gang rape, rape using eels, snakes, or hard objects, and rape followed by murder; electrical shock (“the Bell Telephone Hour”) rendered by attaching wires to the genitals or other sensitive parts of the body, like the tongue; “the water treatment”; “the airplane,” in which a prisoner’s arms were tied behind the back and the rope looped over a hook on the ceiling, suspending the prisoner in midair, after which he or she was beaten; beatings with rubber hoses and whips; and the use of police dogs to maul prisoners.

After his work was over in Vietnam (at the end he was known by Vietnamese as Hanço-meaning the ''butcher'' in Vietnamese), he was appointed ambassador to Ankara, Turkey by the USA government. Interesting isn't it? Well, it was for sure that he was sent to Turkey to repress the socialist-communist revolutionary youth movement the same way he did in Vietnam. This was his profession(!) at one point... Ever since the youth found out about this Hanço (as Vietnamese called him very appropriately) appointed as an American ambassador of Turkey in 1968, they were pissed off eventually. They occupied the Esenboga airport the day the plane arrived at the land, so as to confront Komer and ask for the vengeance of the innocent Vietnamese he made suffer for no good. This coward Hanço, was afraid to leave the plane till the crowd will be scattered by brutal force of police. He had to wait till it's safe to go out and secured by the police =)
But the youth did not stop there. The building of the American embassy would have to witness this frustration several times. Each time the revolutionary movement insisted the US government fire Robert Komer and replace him with some other diplomat.
Finally, at January 6th, 1969, Robert Komer (Hanço) came to visit METU by his own car. He came to talk with the headmaster about the new financial investments the US government was planning to invest in METU, along with some other ''regulations'' they were looking forward to implementing at METU. This visit was meant to be secret, no one was supposed to know about this except the headmaster, so as not to drive public attention in the first place. students however, figured out his car in the parking lot of the Headmaster's office and recognized it from its' placard. While Robert William Kommer and headmaster were discussing the important issues and having dinner at Headmaster's office, students announced to the crowd in the cafeteria and dormitories that Komer is somewhere in the school:
''Hanço here! We saw his car in the parking lot of the Headmaster's building! Let's go there! All together! Show this anti-communist butcher who is the boss here!!!!''
So did they. Once arrived at the parking lot, everything happened simultaneously. They attacked the car with frustration and anger, while yelling YANKEE GO HOME!, TURKEY WON'T BE VIETNAM, DOWN WITH AMERICAN IMPERIALISM etc. One of the slogans they also chanted was ''Ha Yankee ha donkey'' meaning ''Either yankee, or donkey, same bullshit'' (donkey is a derogatory term used to humiliate someone in Turkish, because of donkey being an unintelligent, incapable, useless animal LOL)
The crowd pushed the car and turned it upside down. But the car was so strong that this action did not even damage the car, let alone any scratch or anything. No big surprise because the car was an armored vehicle, it was rock solid. Suddenly they figured patrol sips coming from the fuel tank of the car just turned upside down. Yes, this was their shot. One of the students pulled out the scarf from his shoulder and pushed the scarf into the fuel tank. Another one burned the scarf with the matchsticks. They all backed off. Once the scarf got on fire, so did the car.
And it was such a nice car, you know... Cadillac Coup de Ville 1968, black vehicle body.
And this is the last moments of the car: RIP Cadillac
Here's a 3-minute video imitating the moment exactly: Komer's Cadillac Got Burned
Neither Headmaster nor Robert Komer(Hanço) was expecting this, to be honest... They learned about the ''unlucky car accident'' (LOL) in the middle of the dinner and were shocked when they saw it. Everything was such a mess and in the middle of such an important discussion concerning the fate of the university, American aids to the university, and now Americans were pissed off... All the pacification plan -literally- backfired when METU students blew Komer's Cadillac up. Robert William Komer, Hanço, would likely admit this truth in his auto-biography later:
​

The METU incident was, in my opinion, an indicator of a new development in terms of political science. In those years, we thought that we could keep METU students out of politics by placing their curriculum in technical fields, which is an indication that America failed to see the political dimension of the issue. In our opinion at the time, heavy concentration courses in electricity and physics would prevent students from becoming politicized.

This was the new discourse of the whole country. The headmaster Kemal Kurdaş was frustrated by these events and threatened his students: ''These terrorist and vandalistic acts on the campus are unacceptable! This unlucky event is, I guess, a communist plot, trying to provoke our ties with USA and in a school like METU-created thanks to the big efforts of Americans themselves... I promise everybody that I will kick those anarchists' asses out of this school, no matter what!'' Government officials(who were American puppets themselves) also denied these ''terroristic'' acts and visited Komer in his office at the American embassy so as to share their sadness with him and encourage him (how touchy!). 7 Students who were suspected of this event were arrested and imprisoned. The more intriguing thing was that Headmaster did not side with students and even supported their suppression like this. METU administration began to suppress and mock students, restrain the freedom they breathed in the campus till that day, and try to pacify them for the sake of ''American interests'', as a way to apologize to Americans.
Special Commando units of Turkish Army, composed of highly ''patriotic and pro-nationalist'' young, capable men (aided and trained by CIA as well as used-to-be Nazi spies during WW II themselves as a way of fighting against communism and defending the independence of the country ''when necessary''- Turkish branch of Operation Gladio) attacked the campus and students lots of times afterward so as to terrify 'em. But what followed is that all other METU students raised signatures indicating they participated in the ''car accident'' and they too should be arrested along with seven victims. Total number of signature is 3.000 at least (There were total 5.500 students at METU that time) These 3.000 volunteers, as well as the ones who did not sign the petition officially, boycotted the classes till their friends will be released from prison and come back to the school. It took two months, but in the end, 7 students were home once again :)
But repressions still kept on. Headmaster was still terrorizing the campus as a result of Americans' repression, who are in charge of everything about the school including the education curriculum. Students decided to get rid of this American hegemony on the campus ''once and for all''. First the Faculty of Architecture was occupied by the students. It was indicated that now ''students are in charge of the faculty'', as a result lecturers and the dean were invited out of the occupied zone. So they did (They had no other choice, because students rejected to participate in classes and thwarted the whole ongoing program) The same process continued in other faculties as well.
And lastly, students targeted what they called ''The White House'' (Headmasters office), seeing it as the root of every problem since the beginning. While Headmaster and other managers was discussing ''these last events'', students clustered around the building eventually. They locked themselves into the building so as not to confront with the students but revolutionary youth was clever enough to dive into the building by smashing the windows (LOL) The headmaster and his fellow colleagues were told that from now on students are in charge of the university and politely invited to the outside. So did they...
After that, a huge banner was going to show up on the front side of the White House (Headmasters' office) written with huge letters as follows: ''Bu Amerikan Üssü Ele Geçirilmiştir'', meaning:
THIS AMERICAN BASE HAS JUST BEEN CAPTURED!
And it was no surprise, just after this ''American base'' (hahahaha) has been captured, students found plenty of evidence implying METU was over-run and exploited for American political interests in the Headmaster's office: documents blacklisting the socialist, communist and anti-American students, heavy weapons, pacification plans etc. Students took care of the university 10 days and so. Robert Kommer finally gave up and resigned from his position at embassy, returned back to America. But METU will always going to carry this legacy of revolutionary youth, up today.

The development of capitalism in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, the rise of the bourgeoisie, the invasion of the world historical arena by this new class with a clear desire to take power into its own hands caused a number of phenomena not only of economic and political, but also of cultural and ideological nature.
England was the first to embark on the path of bourgeois development. In England, earlier than in other countries, there was a grandiose social explosion. And this era put forward in it a number of brilliant, brilliant researchers and poets – Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Hobbes and other thinkers, who reached unusually radical forms of crushing all the foundations of the previous society. A little later, France, in the footsteps of England, entered the same road and, preparing its Great Revolution, put forward a galaxy of amazing people whom the bourgeoisie could be proud of if it had not later renounced the best that was in their teaching. Here we see Voltaire’s corroding mockery, and the grandiose heart-warming, romantic rebellion of Rousseau against all the foundations of civilization and class order in the field of feelings, and a group of encyclopedists who, shaking with crushing blows the entire building of the old culture, laid the foundation for a new world outlook and a new society, recognized as “rational” and “normal”.
But if in England and France of the epoch of the bourgeois revolution there was no shortage of thinkers and poets, then the center of the movement of the bourgeoisie still belonged to politicians-practitioners. In these countries we have a “plebeian”, in the words of Marx, manner of completing the movement of the bourgeoisie: the heads of the kings were chopped off, the old aristocracy was dispersed, the internal boundaries between estates and principalities were erased, the laws were changed and the foundations of bourgeois democracy were laid with tremendous determination and consistency.
A wave of counter-revolution later tried to destroy what had been won, but nevertheless deep traces of the first bourgeois conquests remained, and the entire character of the further development of Europe depended on these grandiose events.
Things were different in Germany. In his remarkable book on the history of German philosophy and religion, Heine was the first to note this peculiarity with extraordinary sensitivity.
By the time a young bourgeois culture was rapidly developing in the West, Germany already had a certain stratum of the bourgeoisie and a group of bourgeois intellectuals who could not remain alien to what was being done outside Germany. But it was still a backward country. The German bourgeoisie did not have any significant masses who could support their leaders. And Heine notes with amazing insight that in Germany, deprived from the very beginning of the opportunity to act practically, the process of sublimation begins. Social activity, which is not expressed in action, is refracted into fantasy, into artistic images that are transmitted in music, books and paintings, into wonderful patterns of all kinds of ideological positions. This, too, is the creation of bourgeois culture, this also lays the foundation for the struggle against the old order, against old ideas, but this struggle is waged only with words, ideological weapons. German thinkers of that time were characterized by a distrust of immediate activity, of practical work as such. They are inclined to understand the very essence of the world, to understand the very essence of man in an idealistic way – the work of fantasy, intense thought is especially dear to them, it is through it that they lived.
Can we conclude from this that if in Germany the young bourgeoisie turned out to be weaker and more disorganized than anywhere else, then in its own field, in the field of ideology, it scored irreproachably brilliant successes? No, the matter is not so simple; the point is not only that Germany turned out to be a country of “thinkers and poets” and not a country of fighters and action.
When I noted the idealism inherent in the self-consciousness of German thinkers, I pointed out a thing that was unhealthy from our point of view, from the point of view of the proletariat, but not only that: the ideologists of the German bourgeoisie could not develop freely in general, even in the area in which activities were available to them – even their artistic creations are infected with the spirit of a certain backwardness, remain captive to the order that existed in Germany and differed greatly from the order that existed in other Western European countries.
Engels, in his article The Position of Germany, writes about the German bourgeoisie: By uniting with the people, they could overthrow the old government and rebuild the empire, as the English middle classes did in part between 1640 and 1688. and as the French bourgeoisie did at that time. But the middle classes of Germany have never possessed such energy, never claimed such courage; they knew that Germany was only a dung heap, but they felt good in this mud, because they themselves were dung and felt themselves warm, surrounded by dung. And further: It was one rotting and decaying mass. Nobody felt good. Crafts, trade, industry and agriculture were reduced to the most insignificant proportions. Peasants, traders and artisans experienced a double oppression: a bloodthirsty government and a poor state of commerce. The nobility and princes found that their income, despite the fact that they squeezed everything from their subordinates, should not lag behind their growing expenses. Everything was bad, and general discontent prevailed in the country. There was no education, no means of influencing the minds of the masses, no freedom of the press, no public opinion, no significant trade with other countries; everywhere there is only abomination and selfishness; all the people were imbued with a low, servile, vile huckster’s spirit. Everything was rotten, hesitated, was about to collapse.
The only hope for better times was seen in literature. This shameful political and social era was at the same time the great era of German literature. Around 1750, all the great minds of Germany were born: the poets Goethe and Schiller, the philosophers Kant and Fichte, and twenty years later, the last great German metaphysician Hegel. Every remarkable work of this era is imbued with a spirit of protest, indignation against the entire German society of that time. Goethe wrote Goetz von Berlichingen, a dramatic eulogy to the memory of the revolutionary. Schiller wrote The Robbers praising the generous young man who has declared open war on the whole of society. But these were their youthful works. Over the years, they lost all hope. Goethe limited himself to the most daring satyrs, and Schiller would have fallen into despair if he had not found refuge in science, especially in the great history of ancient Greece and Rome. By them you can judge everyone else. Even the best and strongest minds of the people have lost all hope for the future of their country.
Here is a general description of the position of these great men, among whom Goethe was the greatest.
Lenin taught us that there are two paths to the development of capitalism: the American path of development is the most decisive path in which capitalism flourishes rapidly and is able to mobilize large masses, sweeping all the rot of the past from its path, and another path, which was fatal for Goethe. Lenin called the Prussian path – characterized by the fact that the pressure of the growing bourgeoisie cannot destroy the dirty dams of feudalism and seeps through them somehow, the bourgeoisie does not have the masses who are able to wage a civil war with those who hinder the development of society, and as a result leaders, even the best, even the most perspicacious, the noblest, are forced to compromise with the ruling class; the clergy and nobility remain at the head of society, while the bourgeoisie, content with individual concessions, adapts, supports them. Goethe can also be called a victim of this path. His immense fame testifies to the fact that he did not become a victim in the end.
We know what the mature bourgeoisie brought with it to mankind and what the overripe bourgeoisie brings with it now – there is little good in this. But at the beginning of the movement, the thinkers of the young bourgeoisie, as Engels correctly noted, sometimes even jumped beyond the boundaries of the interests of their class. It is in the interests of their class, wishing to attract the sympathy of huge masses to it, that they say that the cause for which they are fighting is the “people”, that the life of people in the old regime is the accumulation of stupidity, that history until this day was nonsense, but that it will be so until the primacy of reason is proclaimed, when everything begins to illuminate the mind, everything will change and all torment will go into the past. True, with its further development, the victorious bourgeoisie by no means fulfills the promises of its bold thinkers. It is not the thinkers who come to the fore now, not poets or even politicians, but those who are the basis of the bourgeoisie – industrialists, merchants, and later bankers. They develop to astonishing limits the exact science and the technique, which is grandiose in scope, based on it. But at the same time, as Marx says, they unfold a cynical, naked mercantile spirit, they banish all traces of the past revolutionary romanticism, openly raise the question of a lord and, moving along the road of accumulating more and more wealth, ruthlessly trample human beings. The exploiting essence of the bourgeoisie is becoming more and more evident, and at the same time the antipode of the bourgeoisie, the proletariat, is growing. The bourgeoisie is betraying its old ideals. It replaces the red banner with a pink one, then a pink one with an orange one, and finally comes to a black reaction. It goes farther and farther backwards and again stretches out its hand to the nobles and priests. Now these latter are not the gentlemen who enjoy the support of the bourgeoisie; now the bourgeoisie is the master, resorting to the support of the classes that have lost their primacy. But all this creates in the imperialist world approximately the same reactionary mishmash that we see at the beginning of capitalism, which develops along the Prussian path. Now these sufferings appear from the overmaturity of capitalism, and then their reason was its immaturity, the slow pace of its development, imposing a stamp of painful inhibition on the creativity and life of thinkers.
All the features of the beginning of the Prussian path of development of bourgeois society to the greatest extent affected Goethe. There was not a single thinker, not a single poet of that time who with such force experienced the young, creative bourgeois principle, the spring of a new class, like Goethe.
A brilliant illumination of Goethe’s personality in its internal contradiction was made by Engels in his article German Socialism in Verse and Prose: In his works, Goethe has a dual attitude towards the German society of his time. He is hostile to it; it is repugnant to him, and he tries to escape from it, as in “Iphigenia” and in general during the Italian journey; he rebelled against it, like Goetz, Prometheus and Faust, showered it with the bitter mockery of Mephistopheles. Or, on the contrary, he makes friends with it, makes peace with it, as in most of his “Tame Xenia” and in many prose works, glorifies it, as in “Masquerade”, protects it from the historical movement pressing on it, especially in all his works, where he talks about the French Revolution. The point is not that Goethe supposedly recognizes only certain aspects of German life, in contrast to other aspects that are hostile to him. Often this is only a manifestation of his various moods; there is a constant struggle between the genius poet, to whom the squalor of his environment inspired disgust, and the cautious son of a Frankfurt patrician, or a Weimar secret adviser, who sees himself compelled to conclude a truce with it and get used to it. So Goethe is now colossally great, now petty, now he is a recalcitrant, mocking genius despising the world, now a cautious, contented, narrow philistine. And Goethe was unable to overcome the German squalor; on the contrary, it conquers him; and this victory of misery (misere) over the greatest German is the best proof that it cannot be defeated “from within” at all. Goethe was too universal, too active in nature, too flesh to seek salvation from squalor in Schiller’s flight to the Kantian ideal; he was too shrewd not to see that this flight ultimately amounted to a substitution of grandiloquent squalor for flat squalor. His temperament, his strength, all his spiritual direction pushed him towards practical life, and the practical life that surrounded him was pitiful. Goethe was constantly confronted with this dilemma: to exist in a living environment that he had to despise and yet be chained to it as the only one in which he could act. The older he got, the more the mighty poet, de guerre lasse, receded before the minor Weimar minister. We do not reproach Goethe, as Boerne and Menzel do, for the fact that he was not liberal, but for the fact that at times he could be a philistine; we do not reproach him for the fact that he was not capable of enthusiasm in the name of German freedom, but for the fact that he sacrificed his aesthetic feeling to the philistine fear of every great modern historical movement; not for the fact that he was a courtier, but for the fact that at the time when Napoleon was cleaning the huge Augean stables of Germany, he could with solemn seriousness deal with the most insignificant deeds and menus plaisirs of the most insignificant German court. In general, we do not make reproaches either from a moral or from a party point of view, but perhaps only from an aesthetic and historical point of view; we do not measure Goethe on a moral, political or “human” scale. We cannot imagine Goethe here in connection with his entire era, with his literary predecessors and contemporaries in his development and in life. We therefore confine ourselves to stating a fact.
But if Goethe was so polluted both aesthetically and in everyday life and politically, if he was so immensely captured by prejudices, then should we not say to the bourgeoisie: Goethe is yours, we have nothing to do with him, bury him, as you wish – let the dead bury the dead, and Goethe belongs to your world, the world of the dead?
Engels did not look at Goethe that way; he not only unconditionally calls Goethe the greatest of Germans, but, since this article was written against Gruen, against the philistine praise of Goethe, Engels adds: If we considered Goethe only from one side, then this is exclusively the fault of Herr Gruen. He does not at all portray Goethe in terms of his greatness. He is in a hurry to slip past everything in which Goethe is really great and brilliant.
In various places Engels points directly to the greatest achievements of Goethe. For example, Engels, in his article The Position of England, speaking about Carlyle, simultaneously speaks about Goethe: Goethe was reluctant to deal with “God,” he says, from this word he felt uncomfortable; he felt at home only in the human, and this humanity, this liberation of art from the shackles of religion, is precisely the greatness of Goethe. In this respect, neither the ancients nor Shakespeare can compare with him. But this perfect humanity, this overcoming of religious dualism, can be grasped in all its historical significance only by those who are not alien to the other side of German national development – philosophy. What Goethe could only express directly, that is, in a certain sense “prophetically”, is now developed and proven in the latest German philosophy.
No, in no case can we say to the bourgeoisie: Goethe is yours. Goethe belongs not only to the bourgeoisie, he in some way belongs to us.
How did this man develop and what did he bring with him? Here, like a lighthouse, the characteristic given by Engels shines.
What is this Sturm und Drang of young Goethe? All who saw Goethe in a circle of agitated young people who were disgusted by the surrounding squalor, who no longer wanted to live in a stinking darkness, who wanted to reveal, perhaps, not entirely clear dreams and realize them in life, all those who saw Goethe in a circle of these people, they speak of him as a brilliant phenomenon among secondary phenomena. He was a man physically, morally and mentally gifted to such an extent that everyone who approached him noted his exclusivity and remained fascinated by him.
On behalf of his generation, which called itself the generation of geniuses, Goethe, a true genius, posed a gigantic task for himself and for others. This task was not political, but purely individual: to develop all the possibilities hidden in a person.
This is the criterion by which it is possible to compare different social systems, orders and structures. Marx says that the social system is higher, which makes it possible to maximize all the possibilities inherent in man. Marx understands this in the most democratic way: the possibilities inherent in every person are inherent in all of humanity. For Goethe, perhaps this thought had a more aristocratic connotation, but not so much as to make it completely distant from the one expressed by Marx.
At the time of his eagle youth, in all the fullness of his energy, Goethe says that nothing excites him more than the church chant Veni, Spiritus, creator (Come, creative spirit): I know that this is not an appeal to God, this is an appeal to a person and especially to that person who is gifted with creativity; a creatively gifted person is a leader, an organizer. And a little later, Goethe says:
Why did I yearn to find the way to go If not to brothers afterwards to show?
Perhaps Goethe knew Kant’s definition of genius. For him, genius realizes everything as something natural, arising from his own individual essence, but what he realizes becomes an example and a law for others. We, possessing a Marxist analysis, can say that geniuses – deeply gifted people – form earlier than their class as a whole, what it needs, and their thoughts spread at lightning speed, become an instrument of self-knowledge of the masses. That was Marx, that was Lenin, and Goethe wanted to be that. But there was no class in Germany that could support him. Goethe felt very well that in the era preceding the French Revolution, the ideal was not destined to be realized, so that society would not interfere, but would help the development of a creatively perfect personality. He even has a presentiment that such outstanding personalities will certainly be defeated, will fall victims. He creates Prometheus, Mahomet and finally Werther – works that are, as it were, a recognition of the almost obsessive thought that there is no other way out of this catastrophe than death.
Everything in you sounds, and everything in you trembles, And feelings are darkened, and it seems to you – you proceed and you don’t, And everything around you is spinning in the night And you are more and more in your inherent feeling You embrace the whole world – then a person dies.
Death turns out to be enlightenment, death turns out to be the apotheosis. Why? What is this, mysticism? No, this is not mysticism. If from the greatest bourgeois poet Shakespeare, Goethe learned to a large extent such an understanding of life that it is not important to be happy, it is not important to be a winner, it is important to be great, it is important to live with such feelings, thoughts, to meet in life and create such events in it, oh which one could say: this is genuine life, full of activity, the greatest energy – then from another bourgeois thinker, from Spinoza, Goethe learned the knowledge of nature.
For Goethe, nature was everything, a single whole in which all parts are connected in some harmony. But more than Spinoza, Goethe had the idea that this “everything” is constantly being improved, that the processes that take place in the world make sense, because this matter, which has infinite possibilities and realizes them in its contradictory development through the action of separate parts on each other, constantly moves forward, to the better, to its highest development. This idea of development was generally at the heart of German idealism. And besides, Goethe assimilated matter as an unusually gifted artist; it was for him a combination of colors, sounds, smells, efficiency, pleasures, that is, it spoke to him through the unusually bright fabric of the most lively experiences. And he felt that being part of this whole was wonderful. He was perfectly aware that it is wild and ridiculous to oppose oneself as a part of the whole, one’s personality to this enormous light, this self-contained matter. But how to achieve this whole, how to break through to this whole through society, through that German society, which Engels spoke of as a rotting dung heap? It is impossible to break through, and Goethe is ready to admit the thought that there is no other gateway to nature as soon as death. In Ibsen’s Peer Gynt there is such an image: a man meets the Smelter, and the Smelter says: I collect buttons that have no loops and throw them back into the crucible, that is, people who are not needed for anything, death throws back into the flow of matter, because it is necessary to take into the alteration what has failed. And Goethe is a diamond button, and it has a magnificent loop, but there is nowhere to sew it; the caftan is useless. Therefore, despite the fact that it is not lower, but higher than reality, he longs for death. He himself did not die. He wrote only Werther – a thing that exposed the idea of death that shook the world and plunged many into the ranks of suicides. But Goethe himself remained at a dead end, at a crossroads, not knowing what to do.
And then the nobility in the person of Duke Karl-August of Saxe-Weimar offered Goethe an alliance. A lot of inaccurate and superficial things are said about this alliance. Meanwhile, this was the greatest event in the life of Goethe, and he thought for a long time before making this decision, that is, abandoning the role of the leader of the bourgeoisie. He knew that here he would have to grovel, to be in the position of a cheerleader, an entertainer, a maitre-d’hotel, to become the main clerk of his master, in essence, an ordinary one. When he went to the nobles, people like the republican thinker and poet Klopstock stopped shaking hands with him. Goethe foresaw this, but he did not know how else to live. A force bubbled in him that pushed him to creativity, to activity, to pleasure, and the nobility told him: come to us, we will make room, we will give you a place among us, you will be von Goethe, you will have money.
Goethe leaned towards this proposal, and here is his second downfall. The first downfall, which consisted in the fact that Goethe ceased to be a revolutionary-minded leader, was, in essence, fatal. For in what was then Germany the leaders lacked the masses. Now the question was posed, how to save your own life, to save it for the future? And this was done through the well-known self-sale to the ruling class of the nobility. And here the most terrible thing happened to Goethe, as Engels says, that one fine day he woke up in the arms of people like Gruen, that he allowed himself to be passed off as one of the main pillars of the reactionary philistine order of dark Germany.
Engels says about this: “History took revenge on Goethe for the fact that he renounced her every time he found himself face to face with her, but this revenge is not the yapping of Menzel nor the narrow polemic of Boerne. No,
Just as Titania in the land of fairy magic Found Nick Bottom in her arms, (Goethe, Warnung),
so one morning Goethe found Herr Gruen in his arms.”
Regarding Goethe’s alliance with the nobility, they say that this elevated Goethe, that from an agitated, unbalanced youth he came to real maturity. They call him happy, his destiny is ideal. And Goethe himself said about himself to Eckermann: They say that I am a happy person, but when I look back, I see an infinite number of renunciations, an infinite number of refusals from what I wanted. I see continuous work, and only occasionally is my path illuminated by a ray that resembles happiness. And so from the very beginning to the very end.
This was said by a man eighty years old, and he was speaking the truth, because these golden chains turned out to be heavy. From the very beginning, when Goethe arrives in Weimar, he makes a farce out of his own Werther for the sake of a new environment. He goes to Frau Stein literally in training, and Frau Stein pulls out of his wings all the feathers that seem to her insufficiently courtiers. She seeks to squeeze him into the framework of an ordinary courtier, and in this court life of Goethe, it must be said, shameful pages come across.
True, Goethe was incredibly exhausted and after a while was torn from Weimar. Almost without asking permission, he travels to Italy to get some fresh air.
A great man, a great burgher, who did not live in such a burgher society in which he could breathe freely, aspires to nature and society, but to the society of the past.
In Italy, Goethe finds the great remnants of Greece and the Renaissance of the great burgher eras, eras whose art skillfully portrays beautiful people, full of self-confidence, full of pagan passion and brought back to normal in the sense that their consciousness of their strength makes them calm and majestic.
Goethe creates an artificial world around him, but modern society buzzed his ears with reminders that he needed to return to Weimar. Goethe thinks of returning with disgust.
At this time, Goethe wrote his terrifying play Torquato Tasso. This play is not terrifying because its hero, an Italian poet, goes crazy. This play is terrifying in its intention, which consists in portraying a gifted, passionate, natural person, a real person who is brought closer to the court for talent, and he suddenly dares to consider himself not only a privileged jester, but a person equal to aristocrats and fall in love with one of the princesses. For this comes thunder and lightning, for this comes complete destruction, and moral destruction, because the princess also treats the poet’s love as if a monkey had proposed to her.
But this is not the main tragedy either. In this play there is Antonio, all of whose wisdom can be perfectly put into the words of the Russian proverb: “the cobbler should stick to his last.” And so Goethe comes to the conclusion that Antonio is a sage, that he is a bearer of real morality, and Torquato Tasso is a bearer of tragic guilt. He writes this in order to prove to himself: know, Goethe, your last, do not go where it is not necessary, do not go into the reformers of society, do not dream of putting things in your own way. You must know how to renounce: that is real wisdom.
And despite the fact that Goethe took the path of compromise, when he returned to Germany, almost everyone turned away from him. At court they hissed at him for leaving Weimar and thereby showing his contempt. The feminine Frau Stein writes first a novel, and then a play against Goethe, and Brandes, one of Goethe’s biographers, says that never did a jealous woman who hated her great lover write a book so slanderous and dirty. True, friendship with Schiller, another bourgeois genius, partly supported Goethe (this is not the place to talk about Schiller, although he had a certain meaning for Goethe).
From that time on, especially after the death of Schiller, Goethe covered himself with a cloak of majestic superiority, put on an Olympian mask on his face.
Goethe at this time is surprised: where is that eagle, that genius, which, like fire, soared upward? This majestic and calm man, whose muscles will not flinch? But this is also a deceiving mask. At this time, trembling all over, Goethe says: I cannot write a tragedy. It would drive me crazy! He hears Beethoven’s sonatas, he weeps in a darkened room and becomes almost Beethoven’s enemy. He says: If such music were performed by a large orchestra, it would destroy everything around it.
Engels says that the older Goethe got, the more he turned into a narrow Geheimrat. But Engels did not know some of the documents according to which we see the forces opposing this process. Even in the gray-haired Goethe, you can find out how much strength he buried in himself and how it sometimes bubbled in him.
Here’s what we can tell about it: after the expulsion of Napoleon, a reaction began, the princes sought to deprive the people of all those conquests which they claimed as a result of the liberation war.
Goethe was shocked by this sight, for which we now have direct indication. The physician Kieser tells of an evening on December 13, 1813, which he spent with Goethe: I came to him at six o’clock in the evening. I found him alone and unusually agitated, downright inflamed. I spent two hours with him and still did not understand him well. He unfolded broad political plans and asked for my participation; I was downright frightened of him. He seemed to me like a Chinese dragon. He was angry, powerful, roaring. His eyes were full of fire, his face was flushed, words were often lacking, and he replaced them with violent gestures.
But it is impossible to get from poor Kieser what these plans were. He only says that Goethe condemned the injustices accumulated over the centuries.
However, the next day, Goethe talked to a more advanced and intelligent man, Professor Luden. Apparently plans of active protest against the prepared reaction in view of their complete impracticability were not an option for Goethe. But this time we see what made Goethe so extremely excited: Maybe you think that the great ideas of freedom, the people, the fatherland are alien to me? These ideas are part of our being. Nobody can get away from them. But here you are talking about the awakening, about the rise of my German people. You claim that he will not allow the freedom that he bought so dearly, sacrificing his wealth and life, to be snatched from his hands. But did the German people wake up? The dream was too deep, and the first shake can not bring them to their senses. Don’t ask me anymore. The foreigners’ proclamations about us, I myself find excellent. Ah, ah, a horse, a horse – half a kingdom for a horse!
But they did not give him a horse. He was given half a kingdom, “half a grand duchy” was given, but he was not given a horse to lead some great political attacks. Goethe’s Napoleonophilia, however, was noticeable to everyone. He was quite clearly aware that Napoleon was not only an enemy of the fatherland, but that he was bringing with him a higher order. Ludendorff, the “Grand Marshal”, says that Goethe should be branded for not being a French-eater enough, but it is interesting that Madame Ludendorff published a book in which she claims that all great Germans were killed by Jews or Freemasons: in particular, Schiller was poisoned by the Freemason Goethe. This stupid and dirty book was sold in cultured Germany in thirty thousand copies. Already on this one can conclude that “righteous Germany” there is far from unconditional admiration for Goethe and shows a rather strange “critical” attitude towards him.
Of course, Goethe’s politics is the weakest side of his activity. Much closer to us is Goethe the philosopher, scientist and poet. But still, for the political characterization of Goethe, one more significant addition must be made.
By the end of his life, Goethe had already begun to notice the internal contradictions that the development of bourgeois society brings with it. He deeply loved work, loved technology, loved science. It was not these strengths of the bourgeoisie that repelled him; he was repelled by the mercantile spirit and the chaos that the bourgeoisie brought with it. Therefore, he tried to draw for himself a system in which the planned principle would triumph and where free and working people would be united in a labor union. This is reflected in the last part of the great dramatic poem Faust. These famous lines are very often quoted, but it is not superfluous to cite them again, for they show how Goethe goes beyond the borders of his century:
The last result of wisdom stamps it true: He only earns his freedom and existence, Who daily conquers them anew. Thus here, by dangers girt, shall glide away Of childhood, manhood, age, the vigorous day: And such a throng I fain would see,– Stand on free soil among a people free Then dared I hail the Moment fleeing: “Ah, still delay–thou art so fair!” The traces cannot, ot mine earthly being, In asons perish, –they are there!– In proud fore-feeling of such lolty bliss, I now enjoy the highest Moment–this!
Only the one who really creatively assists people, who does not yearn for peace, but fights for the victory of life in word and deed, who resists the forces that are trying to fetter them, only he can say that he has lived his life fruitfully.
So, Goethe the thinker and Goethe the poet are much closer to us and much more important than the politician. True, even in the field of socio-political work of Goethe, the progressive burgher-citizen always affects. Nevertheless, the revolt of the young bourgeoisie against the old world is felt much more strongly in the poetry and philosophy of Goethe.
The colossal power of his music, his images, comes from the youth of the class. As a rule, those who wake up to the creativity of the advanced class have a freshness of perception; they, like Adam, call everything with new names, they create their own language, they become a reservoir of everything that a renewed person can and should perceive. And Goethe says:
Love, hate, fear, tremble, Shudder to the core Life can embitter But without this it would be rubbish.
Goethe’s strength, activity, vitality do honor to the bourgeoisie, which gave birth to this eagle’s youth, but on the other hand, Goethe’s life is dishonorable to the bourgeoisie insofar as it constrained and limited his youth, and since it could never and under no circumstances fulfill the program of this youth.
As a poet, Goethe also has the ability to express what he feels with extraordinary power in images. Speaking about this, he characteristically puts suffering in the first place among all experiences: If an ordinary person falls silent in grief, then some deity gave me the strength to tell all my sufferings.
For a long time we will understand Goethe’s work, because now the time has come to understand it for real.
Above are some wonderful quotes from Engels, where he appreciates the deeply revolutionary character of Goethe’s philosophical concept.
I want to end my article with one philosophical letter from Goethe. This is one of the brightest, deepest pages that have ever been written. I cannot but share the joy that has seized me more than once these days. I feel myself in happy unanimity with close and distant, serious, active researchers. They acknowledge and assert that something unsearchable must be accepted as a prerequisite and an assumption, but that then no boundary can be set for the researcher himself; And do I have to accept myself as an assumption and a prerequisite, although I never know how I actually work? Do I not study myself incessantly, never gaining an understanding of myself and others, and nevertheless boldly moving further and further? So it is with the world: let it lie before us beginningless and endless, let the distance be boundless, impenetrable near; but this is so, and yet – let them never determine how far and how deeply the human mind is able to penetrate into its secrets and into the secrets of the world.
In this sense, I propose to accept and interpret the following cheerful lines:
“Into the inside of nature-” Oh you philistine! “Penetrates no created spirit.” Only may you not remind Me and my kind of this word Just don’t remember! We think: place for place We are inside. “Happy he, to whom she Only shows her exterior shell.” Nature has neither kernel nor shell, She is all at once. You should above all test yourself, If you are kernel or shell.
“Happy is the one to whom she only reveals the outer shell. I have been hearing this for sixty years, I scold, but I repeat myself thousands and thousands of times: she gives everything generously and willingly; nature has neither a kernel nor a shell, it is all at once; better test it well: you yourself are a kernel or a shell.” (The words in quotation marks are from a poem by the physiologist and poet Albrecht Haller).
It is clear what a philosophical mood, belief in knowledge, belief in an unlimited human mind is ours. As soon as the bourgeoisie begins to stop in its development, to decay, it departs from a realistic, creative and vigorous worldview.
We cannot fail to be analysts, to understand carefully and critically what the centuries of the past have left us, for they almost never give anything that would be acceptable to us in an integral form. The works of past cultures contain, along with the treasures, a lot of all kinds of rubbish that we must discard and separate. This is what we are doing now with Goethe. And we see that after that not only the best part remains of him, but also an essential part – that which was the most essential in Goethe himself.
They can also call Goethe an Olympian, stick all sorts of reactionary labels to Goethe’s forehead, but against them the voice of the proletariat is already rising, which is building a new world and which is arranging its own terrible judgment over the exploiting society and its culture.
Yes, the social revolution, which, as Marx said, may last for tens of years, is a terrible judgment, and not only because this revolution overthrows the enemies of the people in the social struggle, but because it is a judgment on the living and the dead.
Those who worked in former times, those prophets of our movement, who stood facing the rising sun that illuminate us now, are passing before the judgment of the proletariat, which is building a new life.
Before the court of the proletariat are representatives of other classes who have stepped over the boundaries of their class consciousness, created programs that this class could not fulfill and which another class is destined to fulfill.
As on the great fresco of Michelangelo stands the mighty figure of the proletarian, who overthrows what was considered great – here are the fragments of royal crowns, bankers’ gold, false laurels, etc., and on the other side those rise, the memory of which will not be erased for centuries.
This proletarian, political, cultural and artistic court addresses Goethe as follows: You must take off your gilded Saxe-Weimar livery, your mask of Olympic serenity must melt, because we know that beneath it lies a great man and a great sufferer. Leave what is imposed on you by the squalor of your time: you yourself know that from this you will only become better, much higher and much brighter. Enter eternity with those who contributed to the real rise of human society.
This is the meaning of the words of our teachers: the proletariat is the faithful heir of the great thinkers and great classical poets of young Germany, and among them, of the one who may be the greatest – Johann-Wolfgang Goethe.

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Origins, interlude 3: Sam
Sometime in 202x
​
Sam awakens to a message from Sophie. She's kept her word, and delivered a truly daunting list of queers of all stripes, who have speciality knowledge Sophie thinks could be useful to the discussion of 'where to next'.
Reading through the notes Sophie's made next to each name, it's like a who's who of queer STEM types, ethicists, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, community leaders, and activists. Also some celebrity vloggers, the thoughts of whom makes Sam feel star struck. Yet, they suppose, these are the circles they can move in now, that money can and hopefully will open up to them.
Sam realises with a start that there's some names missing - Priti and Rehema, for instance. And wonders if there's others that should be here, excluded because of the clique-ishness, the subtle barriers between queers of different backgrounds.
Struck by a sudden impulse, Sam realises they need to reach out. They're the privileged one now, they've got the responsibility to break down these barriers, and include everyone. Sophie's talked a lot about radical inclusion, and how you've got to get everyone in the room, so to speak, and listen to them, if you want to be truly fair and equitable. To reach the global optimum, to put it in mathematical terms.
Sam shoots back a quick message to Sophie thanking her for her work and affirming that everything looks good, and to see if there's anyone she can find anyone else from marginalised communities to add here. Not just the minds useful to capitalism, the societally respected and rewarded ones. But the ones with the unique perspectives that white, younger, and relatively sheltered queers like Sam and Sophie might have missed. The artists, the writers, the different.
And, mindful of the impacts of what they're asking, the disruption to lives, the offering of potentially painful experiences - to make an offer to pay those without means to take time out to attend even an online setting. Sam will have the means. Hopefully they all will, soon enough.
Satisfied they're no longer holding up Sophie's new-found mission, Sam continues where their impulse lead. Shaving face, shoulders, chest, back, arms, and legs, a long-practiced habit used to ease dysphoria, now with a renewed energy. Applying a light layer of foundation to their face, with concealer artfully applied to hide any blue of stubble below the skin. Some not-so-subtle eyeliner and eyeshadow, to draw attention away from other trouble areas. Then donning their favourite deep-green, cold-shoulder A-line dress - a lucky second-hand shop find in their size.
And the crowning pieces, a carefully-stored wig hidden away alongside false breasts, beloved hand-me-downs from an online trans swap group, a gift from someone who - happily, thanks to HRT and time - no longer needed them. The travelling siblinghood of the boobs, as they've called the process of receiving the falsies from an elder, and one they can now hope to continue by passing on to another new trans femme. An important thing to pair with the dress and especially the wig. The shoulder-length red hair they've seen in their dreams, in their mind's eye, in the corner of their eye whenever they move past a mirror.
All these arts and artifacts they've carefully horded and practiced using in quiet moments, an artifice to present to the world the truth of who they are - a non-binary femme.
Seeing themselves in the mirror, recognising the person who they're meant to be there brings tears to Sam's eyes, and not for the first time. They carefully dab at them with a tissue, thanking again the wisdom of online trans people in suggesting waterproof eye makeup. They have a mission themselves, they can't afford to get too distracted.
They consider whether to bring their messenger bag or not. Maybe not today. They fish in their storage tubs - furniture is a luxury they previously couldn't afford - for the deep blue handbag they also found in an second-hand shop. They transfer their usual pocket contents to it, and then...
They pause. They've never navigated the city this way. Never dared. Never wanted to take the risk of discovery.
They remember that have the means now - or will shortly. Savings that they'd kept for the too-frequent rainy days between jobs, for moving between sharehouses, for trans health care that was never available? That can now be spent freely. So a ride share is the fastest, safest way to their destination, to navigate the city without using a voice that might fatally give them away as being trans.
So they summon one to go to a familiar location. And hope that Priti will be there today.
--
A initially tense but quiet car ride follows - thankfully, professional drivers have seen it all, and generally care more about the app ratings and getting paid than who's in the back seat. Sam muses again about what it's like to move through the world while perceived as feminine - they know they are, they know they've always been accused of it, often received violence, physical and otherwise, because of it. But now they get to commit to it, to be it, to live it as little or as much as they've want to. And they very much want to.
It's a daunting prospect, almost as worrying as what to do with their windfall.
But this is not the mission. This is not the battle to fight today - and Sam realises they have many battles ahead to fight. They add self-defence lessons to a growing digital list of things to do to benefit them personally with their windfall. Right below voice lessons and laser hair removal. They suspect there's a large number of skills and services they'll be adding to this list.
The ride share pulls in across the street from Priti's workplace, the convenience store. This is it, the moment of truth.
Sam glides as gracefully as they know how through the entrance to the store, noting how they much prefer their reflection this time. Their smile is warm and genuine as they note - yes, they've timed it right, Priti is here!
They're about to open their mouth to speak when Priti looks up from the counter and sees Sam. A moment of surprise, followed by sudden recognition, and a pure joy crosses Priti's face. Sam lets out a breath they didn't realise they were holding.
"Sam? Sam! Oh my god, Sam! Oh, wow! You're gorgeous!" Priti exclaims.
Sam stumbles over their words as they deal with two unfamiliar things - a compliment, and being perceived, finally, as who they are, by someone important to them. "H-hey Priti" Sam manages to get out.
Priti practically runs around the counter to embrace Sam in a surprise bear hug. "Wow, it is so amazing to see you! And dressed like this! Wow! When you didn't show up at lunch time for the last week, I started to get worried I wouldn't see you again! What happened??" she asks excitedly.
Sam gathers themselves, surprised by the human contact as much as the concern. "... I-I got fired, and then I won the lottery, and then..." they stammer.
"Holy shit! Holy shit! So it was *you* who won the $80 million? My boss said we'd had a winner in store, but we didn't know who! Oh my god, I cannot think of a better person to win it! Oh my god, oh my god, what are you going to do now??" Priti spits out, practically at light speed. They release Sam from the hug, and stand back to allow the shocked enby to speak.
Said shocked enby carries on as best as they can. "... I... I was talking to my friend Sophie, and we were thinking we were going to get together everyone queer we could, and try to figure out a way to make the world better." they hesitantly reply.
Priti half-not-gently punches Sam's shoulder in excitement - "no way! Damn, you're bold! Ending your boymoding streak *and* trying to change the world too?? Wow, the ovaries on you!"
Sam reels from the affectionate assault, surprised by the enthusiasm as much as the playful familiarity - "... I was thinking I wanted you and Rehema to be a part of it. You're both STEM femmes, and... I'm worried we don't have all the right people in the room, you know?"
Priti gives Sam a thoughtful look, clearly weighing up Sam's trustworthiness, and continues - "huh, you're full of surprises today. Okay, cool. I'll have to talk about it with Rehema, of course. But if you can pay us... well, shit, it's gotta be better than here!" she gestures around at the store.
She continues - "Rehema and I have some ideas about artificial intelligence and automated food production, and I reckon maybe we could get somewhere, if we were given the time and resources to."
It's Sam's turn to look thoughtful - "... that's... yeah, I think that's exactly what we're looking for. I and Sophie."
Sam continues - "I'll need to get in someone to work out how to make this work - I don't want to cause Rehema any visa trouble - but... yeah! Good! Perfect!" Sam lights up as initial ideas about trusts and foundations and administrative teams click into place.
It's now Sam's turn to ask for Priti's number. "... can I get your contact details, so that Sophie and I can include you in this, when it happens?"
Priti chuckles - "hey, look at you, asking for a girl's number! I wondered if you were ever the type to do that. Sure, lemme have your phone for a second?" she asks, holding her hand out expectantly.
Sam obediently hands their phone over, and Priti puts her number, her email, and her chat program details into Sam's contacts. Priti raises a pierced eyebrow at Sam - "now, you do remember I *am* a married woman, right? No lewds, no nudes, yeah?" she says slyly.
Sam blushes furiously - Priti's outrageously forward, and not at all mindful of boundaries, but this lands a huge, huge hit on Sam. Sam stammers out something in the negative, and Priti leans in to say "gotcha" with a smile.
Priti rocks back on her heels, and sighs. "I suppose I'd better get back to work, else I'll get in trouble with the boss" she says gesturing vaguely to the ever-present store cameras. "Until you come through with this, I gotta keep the lights on at home. You keep me in the loop with your plans, yeah? We got a world to save." she concludes.
Sam is still too addled to think, let alone reply - they nod, and make their way out of the store. On the way out, they have a sudden thought.
Sam calls back to Priti - "do you know any good local accountants? Anyone good with trusts, anything like that? And queer friendly?"
Priti, now back behind the counter, thinks, and offers - "one of my aunts knows my deal, and has been cool enough with it. She manages trusts for rich people all the time - family trusts, corporate ones, that sort of thing. Send me a message, and I'll give you her details, and help you set up a meet and greet. I figure you'll need it, she's... a bit intense." Priti cautions.
Sam nods, unsure of what that means, but happy to have one of an ever-expanding list of problems potentially solved. They're going to have to get good at delegating - asking and trusting others to help them. And those mental muscles don't move super easily. Especially not after a lifetime of casual abuse at the hands of strangers, as many queer-read people receive.
Sam smiles gratefully back at Priti, though, says a slightly over-the-top thanks, waves, and leaves the store.
Things are happening. It's exciting and terrifying at the same time. Sam orders another ride share and heads home.
[first] [prev] [next]
--
Author's note:
The Discord is here if anyone's keen on encouraging me to write more on Book 2? (Or just distract me from doom scrolling 😅)
My Patreon is here if you want to support my work or read ahead on the one chapter left in this Interlude.
Thanks as always for reading! 😊

scholars have moved toward the minimalist 'new consensus' refined by Roger Griffin: 'the mythic core' of fascism is 'a populist form of palingenetic ultranationalism.' That means that fascism is an ideology that draws on old, ancient, and even arcane myths of racial, cultural, ethnic, and national origins to develop a plan for the 'new man.'" Griffin himself explored this 'mythic' or 'eliminable' core of fascism with his concept of post-fascism to explore the continuation of Nazism in the modern era. Additionally, other historians have applied this minimalist core to explore proto-fascist movements.
Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser argue that although fascism "flirted with populism ... in an attempt to generate mass support", it is better seen as an elitist ideology. They cite in particular its exaltation of the Leader, the race, and the state, rather than the people. They see populism as a "thin-centered ideology" with a "restricted morphology" that necessarily becomes attached to "thick-centered" ideologies such as fascism, liberalism, or socialism. Thus populism can be found as an aspect of many specific ideologies, without necessarily being a defining characteristic of those ideologies. They refer to the combination of populism, authoritarianism and ultranationalism as "a marriage of convenience".
Robert Paxton says: "[fascism is] a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion." Roger Eatwell defines fascism as "an ideology that strives to forge social rebirth based on a holistic-national radical Third Way", while Walter Laqueur sees the core tenets of fascism as "self-evident: nationalism; social Darwinism; racialism, the need for leadership, a new aristocracy, and obedience; and the negation of the ideals of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution."
Historian Emilio Gentile has defined fascism as "a modern political phenomenon, revolutionary, anti-liberal and anti-Marxist, organized in a militia party with a totalitarian conception of politics and the State, an activist and anti-theoretical ideology, with a mythical, virilistic and anti-hedonistic foundation, sacralized as a secular religion, which affirms the absolute primacy of the nation, understood as an ethnically homogeneous organic community, hierarchically organized in a corporate state, with a bellicose vocation to the politics of greatness, power and conquest aimed at creating a new order and a new civilization".
Racism was a key feature of German fascism, for which the Holocaust was a high priority. According to The Historiography of Genocide, "In dealing with the Holocaust, it is the consensus of historians that Nazi Germany targeted Jews as a race, not as a religious group." Umberto Eco, Kevin Passmore, John Weiss,[page needed] Ian Adams,[page needed] and Moyra Grant stress racism as a characteristic component of German fascism. Historian Robert Soucy stated that "Hitler envisioned the ideal German society as a Volksgemeinschaft, a racially unified and hierarchically organized body in which the interests of individuals would be strictly subordinate to those of the nation, or Volk." Kershaw noted that common factors of fascism included "the ‘cleansing’ of all those deemed not to belong – foreigners, ethnic minorities, 'undesirables'" and belief in its own nation's superiority, even if it was not biological racism like in Nazism. Fascist philosophies vary by application, but remain distinct by one theoretical commonality: all traditionally fall into the far-right sector of any political spectrum, catalyzed by afflicted class identities over conventional social inequities.
fascist government proposed the creation of workers' councils and profit-sharing in industry, although the German authorities, who effectively controlled northern Italy at this point, ignored these measures and did not seek to enforce them.
A number of post-World War II fascist movements described themselves as a Third Position outside the traditional political spectrum. Falange Española de las JONS leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera said: "[B]asically the Right stands for the maintenance of an economic structure, albeit an unjust one, while the Left stands for the attempt to subvert that economic structure, even though the subversion thereof would entail the destruction of much that was worthwhile."
Fascist as a pejorative Main article: Fascist (insult) The term fascist has been used as a pejorative, regarding varying movements across the far right of the political spectrum. George Orwell noted in 1944 that the term had been used to denigrate diverse positions "in internal politics": while fascism is "a political and economic system" that was inconvenient to define, "as used, the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless. ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist,'"[emphasis added], and in 1946 wrote that "...'Fascism' has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies something not desirable."
Despite fascist movements' history of anti-communism, Communist states have sometimes been referred to as fascist, typically as an insult. It has been applied to Marxist–Leninist regimes in Cuba under Fidel Castro and Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh. Chinese Marxists used the term to denounce the Soviet Union during the Sino-Soviet split, and the Soviets used the term to denounce Chinese Marxists and social democracy, coining a new term in social fascism.
In the United States, Herbert Matthews of The New York Times asked in 1946: "Should we now place Stalinist Russia in the same category as Hitlerite Germany? Should we say that she is Fascist?" J. Edgar Hoover, longtime FBI director and ardent anti-communist, wrote extensively of red fascism. The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s was sometimes called fascist. Historian Peter Amann states that, "Undeniably, the Klan had some traits in common with European fascism—chauvinism, racism, a mystique of violence, an affirmation of a certain kind of archaic traditionalism—yet their differences were fundamental ... [the KKK] never envisioned a change of political or economic system."
Richard Griffiths of the University of Wales wrote in 2005 that "fascism" is the "most misused, and over-used word, of our times."[page needed][clarification needed] "Fascist" is sometimes applied to post-World War II organizations and ways of thinking that academics more commonly term neo-fascist. To
Yugoslavia, attempts to bring Yugoslavia into civil war by supporting Croat and Macedonian separatists to legitimize Italian intervention and making Albania a de facto protectorate of Italy, which was achieved through diplomatic means by 1927. In response to revolt in the Italian colony of Libya, Fascist Italy abandoned previous liberal-era colonial policy of cooperation with local leaders. Instead, claiming that Italians were a superior race to African races and thereby had the right to colonize the "inferior" Africans, it sought to settle 10 to 15 million Italians in Libya. This resulted in an aggressive military campaign known as the Pacification of Libya against natives in Libya, including mass killings, the use of concentration camps and the forced starvation of thousands of people. Italian authorities committed ethnic cleansing by forcibly expelling 100,000 Bedouin Cyrenaicans, half the population of Cyrenaica in Libya, from their settlements that was slated to be given to Italian settlers.
Hitler adopts Italian model
choreography of mass bodies. But whereas official communist art "aims to expound and reinforce a utopian morality", the art of fascist countries such as Nazi Germany "displays a utopian aesthetics – that of physical perfection", in a way that is "both prurient and idealizing".
According to Sontag, fascist aesthetics "is based on the containment of vital forces; movements are confined, held tight, held in." Its appeal is not necessarily limited to those who share the fascist political ideology because fascism "stands for an ideal or rather ideals that are persistent today under the other banners: the ideal of life as art, the cult of beauty, the fetishism of courage, the dissolution of alienation in ecstatic feelings of community; the repudiation of the intellect; the family of man (under the parenthood of leaders)."
Criticism Fascism has been widely criticized and condemned in modern times since the defeat of the Axis powers
Fascism has been criticized for being ideologically dishonest. Major examples of ideological dishonesty have been identified in Italian fascism's changing relationship with German Nazism. Fascist Italy's official foreign policy positions commonly used rhetorical ideological hyperbole to justify its actions, although during Dino Grandi's tenure as Italy's foreign minister the country engaged in realpolitik free of such fascist hyperbole. Italian fascism's stance towards German Nazism fluctuated from support from the late 1920s to 1934, when it celebrated Hitler's rise to power and Mussolini's first meeting with Hitler in 1934; to opposition from 1934 to 1936 after the assassination of Italy's allied leader in Austria, Engelbert Dollfuss, by Austrian Nazis; and again back to support after 1936, when Germany was the only significant power that did not denounce Italy's invasion and occupation of Ethiopia.
After antagonism exploded between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy over the assassination of Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss in 1934, Mussolini and Italian fascists denounced and ridiculed Nazism's racial theories, particularly by denouncing its Nordicism, while promoting Mediterraneanism. Mussolini himself responded to Nordicists' claims of Italy being divided into Nordic and Mediterranean racial areas due to Germanic invasions of Northern Italy by claiming that while Germanic tribes such as the Lombards took control of Italy after the fall of Ancient Rome, they arrived in small numbers (about 8,000) and quickly assimilated into Roman culture and spoke the Latin language within fifty years. Italian fascism was influenced by the tradition of Italian nationalists scornfully looking down upon Nordicists' claims and taking pride in comparing the age and sophistication of ancient Roman civilization as well as the classical revival in the Renaissance to that of Nordic societies that Italian nationalists described as "newcomers" to civilization in comparison. At the height of antagonism between the Nazis and Italian fascists over race, Mussolini claimed that the Germans themselves were not a pure race and noted with irony that the Nazi theory of German racial superiority was based on the theories of non-German foreigners, such as Frenchman Arthur de Gobineau. After the tension in German-Italian relations diminished during the late 1930s, Italian fascism sought to harmonize its ideology with German Nazism and combined Nordicist and Mediterranean racial theories, noting that Italians were members of the Aryan Race, composed of a mixed Nordic-Mediterranean subtype.
In 1938, Mussolini declared upon Italy's adoption of antisemitic laws that Italian fascism had always been antisemitic. In fact, Italian fascism did not endorse antisemitism until the late 1930s when Mussolini feared alienating antisemitic Nazi Germany, whose power and influence were growing in Europe. Prior to that period, there had been notable Jewish Italians who had been senior Italian fascist officials, including Margherita Sarfatti, who had also been Mussolini's mistress. Also contrary to Mussolini's claim in 1938, only a small number of Italian fascists were staunchly antisemitic (such as Roberto Farinacci and Giuseppe Preziosi), while others such as Italo Balbo, who came from Ferrara which had one of Italy's largest Jewish communities, were disgusted by the antisemitic laws and opposed them. Fascism scholar Mark Neocleous notes that while Italian fascism did not have a clear commitment to antisemitism, there were occasional antisemitic statements issued prior to 1938, such as Mussolini in 1919 declaring that the Jewish bankers in London and New York were connected by race to the Russian Bolsheviks and that eight percent of the Russian Bolsheviks were Jews.
In popular culture American folksinger and songwriter Woody Guthrie is quoted by fellow singer and songwriter Pete Seeger as having said: "Fascism comes along when the rich people get the generals to help them stay in power." Seeger himself remarked that "The first country a fascist dictator conquers is his own country. Then he aims at other countries."

scholars have moved toward the minimalist 'new consensus' refined by Roger Griffin: 'the mythic core' of fascism is 'a populist form of palingenetic ultranationalism.' That means that fascism is an ideology that draws on old, ancient, and even arcane myths of racial, cultural, ethnic, and national origins to develop a plan for the 'new man.'" Griffin himself explored this 'mythic' or 'eliminable' core of fascism with his concept of post-fascism to explore the continuation of Nazism in the modern era. Additionally, other historians have applied this minimalist core to explore proto-fascist movements.
Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser argue that although fascism "flirted with populism ... in an attempt to generate mass support", it is better seen as an elitist ideology. They cite in particular its exaltation of the Leader, the race, and the state, rather than the people. They see populism as a "thin-centered ideology" with a "restricted morphology" that necessarily becomes attached to "thick-centered" ideologies such as fascism, liberalism, or socialism. Thus populism can be found as an aspect of many specific ideologies, without necessarily being a defining characteristic of those ideologies. They refer to the combination of populism, authoritarianism and ultranationalism as "a marriage of convenience".
Robert Paxton says: "[fascism is] a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion." Roger Eatwell defines fascism as "an ideology that strives to forge social rebirth based on a holistic-national radical Third Way", while Walter Laqueur sees the core tenets of fascism as "self-evident: nationalism; social Darwinism; racialism, the need for leadership, a new aristocracy, and obedience; and the negation of the ideals of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution."
Historian Emilio Gentile has defined fascism as "a modern political phenomenon, revolutionary, anti-liberal and anti-Marxist, organized in a militia party with a totalitarian conception of politics and the State, an activist and anti-theoretical ideology, with a mythical, virilistic and anti-hedonistic foundation, sacralized as a secular religion, which affirms the absolute primacy of the nation, understood as an ethnically homogeneous organic community, hierarchically organized in a corporate state, with a bellicose vocation to the politics of greatness, power and conquest aimed at creating a new order and a new civilization".
Racism was a key feature of German fascism, for which the Holocaust was a high priority. According to The Historiography of Genocide, "In dealing with the Holocaust, it is the consensus of historians that Nazi Germany targeted Jews as a race, not as a religious group." Umberto Eco, Kevin Passmore, John Weiss,[page needed] Ian Adams,[page needed] and Moyra Grant stress racism as a characteristic component of German fascism. Historian Robert Soucy stated that "Hitler envisioned the ideal German society as a Volksgemeinschaft, a racially unified and hierarchically organized body in which the interests of individuals would be strictly subordinate to those of the nation, or Volk." Kershaw noted that common factors of fascism included "the ‘cleansing’ of all those deemed not to belong – foreigners, ethnic minorities, 'undesirables'" and belief in its own nation's superiority, even if it was not biological racism like in Nazism. Fascist philosophies vary by application, but remain distinct by one theoretical commonality: all traditionally fall into the far-right sector of any political spectrum, catalyzed by afflicted class identities over conventional social inequities.
fascist government proposed the creation of workers' councils and profit-sharing in industry, although the German authorities, who effectively controlled northern Italy at this point, ignored these measures and did not seek to enforce them.
A number of post-World War II fascist movements described themselves as a Third Position outside the traditional political spectrum. Falange Española de las JONS leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera said: "[B]asically the Right stands for the maintenance of an economic structure, albeit an unjust one, while the Left stands for the attempt to subvert that economic structure, even though the subversion thereof would entail the destruction of much that was worthwhile."
Fascist as a pejorative Main article: Fascist (insult) The term fascist has been used as a pejorative, regarding varying movements across the far right of the political spectrum. George Orwell noted in 1944 that the term had been used to denigrate diverse positions "in internal politics": while fascism is "a political and economic system" that was inconvenient to define, "as used, the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless. ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist,'"[emphasis added], and in 1946 wrote that "...'Fascism' has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies something not desirable."
Despite fascist movements' history of anti-communism, Communist states have sometimes been referred to as fascist, typically as an insult. It has been applied to Marxist–Leninist regimes in Cuba under Fidel Castro and Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh. Chinese Marxists used the term to denounce the Soviet Union during the Sino-Soviet split, and the Soviets used the term to denounce Chinese Marxists and social democracy, coining a new term in social fascism.
In the United States, Herbert Matthews of The New York Times asked in 1946: "Should we now place Stalinist Russia in the same category as Hitlerite Germany? Should we say that she is Fascist?" J. Edgar Hoover, longtime FBI director and ardent anti-communist, wrote extensively of red fascism. The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s was sometimes called fascist. Historian Peter Amann states that, "Undeniably, the Klan had some traits in common with European fascism—chauvinism, racism, a mystique of violence, an affirmation of a certain kind of archaic traditionalism—yet their differences were fundamental ... [the KKK] never envisioned a change of political or economic system."
Richard Griffiths of the University of Wales wrote in 2005 that "fascism" is the "most misused, and over-used word, of our times."[page needed][clarification needed] "Fascist" is sometimes applied to post-World War II organizations and ways of thinking that academics more commonly term neo-fascist. To
Yugoslavia, attempts to bring Yugoslavia into civil war by supporting Croat and Macedonian separatists to legitimize Italian intervention and making Albania a de facto protectorate of Italy, which was achieved through diplomatic means by 1927. In response to revolt in the Italian colony of Libya, Fascist Italy abandoned previous liberal-era colonial policy of cooperation with local leaders. Instead, claiming that Italians were a superior race to African races and thereby had the right to colonize the "inferior" Africans, it sought to settle 10 to 15 million Italians in Libya. This resulted in an aggressive military campaign known as the Pacification of Libya against natives in Libya, including mass killings, the use of concentration camps and the forced starvation of thousands of people. Italian authorities committed ethnic cleansing by forcibly expelling 100,000 Bedouin Cyrenaicans, half the population of Cyrenaica in Libya, from their settlements that was slated to be given to Italian settlers.
Hitler adopts Italian model
choreography of mass bodies. But whereas official communist art "aims to expound and reinforce a utopian morality", the art of fascist countries such as Nazi Germany "displays a utopian aesthetics – that of physical perfection", in a way that is "both prurient and idealizing".
According to Sontag, fascist aesthetics "is based on the containment of vital forces; movements are confined, held tight, held in." Its appeal is not necessarily limited to those who share the fascist political ideology because fascism "stands for an ideal or rather ideals that are persistent today under the other banners: the ideal of life as art, the cult of beauty, the fetishism of courage, the dissolution of alienation in ecstatic feelings of community; the repudiation of the intellect; the family of man (under the parenthood of leaders)."
Criticism Fascism has been widely criticized and condemned in modern times since the defeat of the Axis powers
Fascism has been criticized for being ideologically dishonest. Major examples of ideological dishonesty have been identified in Italian fascism's changing relationship with German Nazism. Fascist Italy's official foreign policy positions commonly used rhetorical ideological hyperbole to justify its actions, although during Dino Grandi's tenure as Italy's foreign minister the country engaged in realpolitik free of such fascist hyperbole. Italian fascism's stance towards German Nazism fluctuated from support from the late 1920s to 1934, when it celebrated Hitler's rise to power and Mussolini's first meeting with Hitler in 1934; to opposition from 1934 to 1936 after the assassination of Italy's allied leader in Austria, Engelbert Dollfuss, by Austrian Nazis; and again back to support after 1936, when Germany was the only significant power that did not denounce Italy's invasion and occupation of Ethiopia.
After antagonism exploded between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy over the assassination of Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss in 1934, Mussolini and Italian fascists denounced and ridiculed Nazism's racial theories, particularly by denouncing its Nordicism, while promoting Mediterraneanism. Mussolini himself responded to Nordicists' claims of Italy being divided into Nordic and Mediterranean racial areas due to Germanic invasions of Northern Italy by claiming that while Germanic tribes such as the Lombards took control of Italy after the fall of Ancient Rome, they arrived in small numbers (about 8,000) and quickly assimilated into Roman culture and spoke the Latin language within fifty years. Italian fascism was influenced by the tradition of Italian nationalists scornfully looking down upon Nordicists' claims and taking pride in comparing the age and sophistication of ancient Roman civilization as well as the classical revival in the Renaissance to that of Nordic societies that Italian nationalists described as "newcomers" to civilization in comparison. At the height of antagonism between the Nazis and Italian fascists over race, Mussolini claimed that the Germans themselves were not a pure race and noted with irony that the Nazi theory of German racial superiority was based on the theories of non-German foreigners, such as Frenchman Arthur de Gobineau. After the tension in German-Italian relations diminished during the late 1930s, Italian fascism sought to harmonize its ideology with German Nazism and combined Nordicist and Mediterranean racial theories, noting that Italians were members of the Aryan Race, composed of a mixed Nordic-Mediterranean subtype.
In 1938, Mussolini declared upon Italy's adoption of antisemitic laws that Italian fascism had always been antisemitic. In fact, Italian fascism did not endorse antisemitism until the late 1930s when Mussolini feared alienating antisemitic Nazi Germany, whose power and influence were growing in Europe. Prior to that period, there had been notable Jewish Italians who had been senior Italian fascist officials, including Margherita Sarfatti, who had also been Mussolini's mistress. Also contrary to Mussolini's claim in 1938, only a small number of Italian fascists were staunchly antisemitic (such as Roberto Farinacci and Giuseppe Preziosi), while others such as Italo Balbo, who came from Ferrara which had one of Italy's largest Jewish communities, were disgusted by the antisemitic laws and opposed them. Fascism scholar Mark Neocleous notes that while Italian fascism did not have a clear commitment to antisemitism, there were occasional antisemitic statements issued prior to 1938, such as Mussolini in 1919 declaring that the Jewish bankers in London and New York were connected by race to the Russian Bolsheviks and that eight percent of the Russian Bolsheviks were Jews.
In popular culture American folksinger and songwriter Woody Guthrie is quoted by fellow singer and songwriter Pete Seeger as having said: "Fascism comes along when the rich people get the generals to help them stay in power." Seeger himself remarked that "The first country a fascist dictator conquers is his own country. Then he aims at other countries."

Hi I write here to get some help because like 9 months ago my account got banned from the radical red discord because someone hacked my discord account and It started sending links to all my contacts and groups. Now i have a new account but i can't join the group anymore. Can someone help me, i really love this game and i really want to rejoin the group. Thanks to everyone in Advance.

Hey friends, I got my rg35xx Sunday. I installed garlic my favorite roms and was having a blast. The last two days I’ve been playing radical red and I get slow down in battle animations and my fast forward has stopped working. I have not updated or even removed my sd cards since my initial installs. Has this happened to anyone else? Do I just need to close the rom instead of leaving it open? Or is it a setting I messed with? Any help or if anybody else is having a similar experience would be appreciated!

I am thinking of attempting of doing the mainline Pokemon games deathless and if I can achieve that, I feel that I will be ready to start taking on romhacks. The ones I have (but not ready to nuzlocke them) Radical Red, Emerald Rogue, and Emerald Kaizo. Any suggestions would be great for nuzlocking. Was thinking of Volt White and Renegade Platinum

[WP] You are the commander of the International Space Station. Abruptly, all contact with Earth is lost and the station now appears to be in orbit around an alien planet. With supplies running low, you decide to take your crew down to the seemingly habitable alien world.

The station had more supplies than necessary for dealing with the obstruction of space traffic while the Space Elevator was being built. However, as the elevator was being locked into position when we teleported, we didn't have that many more supplies than usual.
Alarms blared when we lost radio connection. More alarms blared when not a single satellite could be found. Even more when visuals showed not Earth below us. I could only imagine how this would go down on Earth. At least I got to watch the first cargo car from Canada climb the Elevator.
But we were running out of food, and reluctantly I let everyone know that we were heading to the planet to get food.
A week and a half later, we crammed as many space capsules as possible full of supplies, loaded people in ignoring safety restrictions, and launched down for what appeared to be the best place to go.
Fifteen hours later we landed, while the empty station still orbited above us.
-----
"This just in, while the space elevator was being tested, the ISS has disappeared. Multiple nearby cameras reported seeing the station engulfed by light, and not a single piece of debris was left behind. While construction of the internals of the space elevator is going to continue, the first satellite release will be one to look for the ISS, and- hold on.
"This just in, a signal has been detected by space telescopes around the world in unencrypted morse code. It- please, tell me- yes, yes, I know someone called a code red, but do you think- OK, OK, I'll continue.
"The signal says 'HUMANS. WE HAVE TAKEN YOUR ASTRONAUTS TO A DEATHWORLD TO SEE HOW THEY SURVIVE, AS PER PROTOCOL. IF THEY DIE, YOU WILL BE INVADED. THIS MESSAGE AND THESE ACTIONS WERE PERFORMED BY AN AUTOMATED PROBE.'. More coming at six."
-----
The SpaceX Dragon shuttles spent extra fuel to touch down on land with our supplies, while the Russians simply took a heavy landing. Everyone was fine, and we immediately set up a camp. Axes cut wood and the Russians had the framework, flooring and walls for a log cabin that could house all of us within the day, while the rest of the crew made weapons. Spears, bows, that's mostly it, but someone had the good idea to go looking inside a cave. "Good."
They found many things, chief among them an angry now-food animal. We don't really have a choice about what to eat, so here goes to hoping the cooked local food isn't poisonous. The meat itself was already salty, and Calvin (biologist) suggested that it was to counter an infection.
Sunset was interesting. The blue sun here really color-shifts the landscape. Additionally, this planet doesn't have a moon, so the night was quite dark. Unlike in all the artwork, alien flora is not bioluminescent.
The next morning, the Russians continued the log cabin while the rest of us dug out an outhouse well and away from the sea. We also cleared out the cave from earlier; it had a waterfall, and became our shower area. That afternoon, the cabin using alien wood was complete and we started to move supplies from the shuttles to the cabin. Next stage is going to be securing camp and a food source.
-----
"So!" Kevin, designer of the Space Elevator, slammed his hands onto the table in frustration and opened the meeting. "We have a problem."
"You think?" The Canadian minister of defense snorted. "We're already pulling a big budget here that was supposed to pay itself off, but now the elevator needs constant use!"
"Not really," Kevin said. "The UN pays us the cost of operation and the cost of construction in return for unlimited anti-xeno military launches permanently. This project took around a billion dollars, we'll get that back in no time. We also get to scan and see every single component that comes through the elevator. It's a win for military R&D, a win for budgeting, and a win for preparations for the war."
"And? What defenses do we have that they can't defend against? None. We have no intel on this enemy. For all we know, they attacked because Humanity built their first space elevator!"
"We can't solve that. What we can do is load every laser array we can onto geostationary satellites, and then a couple nukes in case they decide to destroy them. No, no, back to point." Kevin sighed. "Our problem is the space elevator itself. It isn't designed to withstand an attack. Someone cuts the cord below geosynchronous level and we're screwed, though at least the counter-counterweight system gives us five cords from geosynchronous waypoint station to the space station. Now, the only way to do that is with a giant plasma sword, but if these guys have FTL..." Kevin let the point hang in the air. "Once the invasion starts, our orbitals are on their own."
People were silent for a while.
"Now, the question is... What is a deathworld, and how long can the ISS last? It's been two weeks and everyone has finally gotten their acts together, but the ISS is going to be almost out of food, even on rationing." Someone else asked. "And when are we going to talk about putting R&D on FTL?"
-----
Note: The space elevator is a single cord going from a space station far, far above geosynchronous orbit (so high up it has Earth gravity away from the planet!), through a space station in geostationary orbit. As people and supplies move up towards the upper station, to ensure pressure on the cord is equal, giant weights move towards the planet, lessening the centrifugal force the weights have, and by extension, the cord has to pull. This is called the counter-counterweight system, and four of these connect the geostationary unit to the space elevator's people-station.
The cord is used by semi-circle atmo-sealed cars moving up on one side and down on the other. The cord itself is two feet of carbon nanotubes covered in a centimeter of lead and then another foot of square stainless steel, so the nanotubes are safe from cosmic rays. The foot of stainless steel has cutouts so gears can latch onto them so the cars can pull themselves up, and the stainless steel is square to the cars stay oriented relative to each other. At the stations, cars are detached from the cord to be undocked, allowing others to pass through. The cars themselves have five latches that hug the cord and can be undone to pass another car or to dock at a station.
The gravatic station is far, far larger than the geostationary station, which is mostly supplies and some industry for in case the cord gets cut lower, though each station does have four weeks of food and water recyclers just in case.
-----
Kronfol turned to his boss. "These... Humans, they had survived unnaturally long. Most species can't even take the gravity of the planet, but looking at the data their probe has pulled, this isn't even full gravity for them. Look, the three from the subspecies that don't feel cold even built a shelter for the rest in just tacks! And the two from the ones that love slugthrowers are hunting! Not to mention they were smart enough to bring supplies down with them. They're enemies on their planet, they should have destroyed each other by now!"
Kraffool added. "Yes, but one from the polite subspecies are organizing them, and the ones from nations of conquest - which there are only three of - they are securing their landing site against the wildlife. They're succeeding!"
"True, true," The boss replied. "But I doubt they'll survive much longer. They've been sleeping for a mere third of a cycle for the past couple cycles, they're going to have to-"
"That's their full sleep cycle." Kronfol interrupted. "They can eat the local ecosystem, too, so they can replenish their supplies. They might be small, but they can still outrun us. And then there's stamina. The probe... I'm not sure it made the right choice."
"No matter," the boss continued. "That species just built their first surface-to-space structure, they won't be doing anything... radical."
-----
Day 3
Today, we scouted around a bit and re-enforced the camp against more wildlife. We found another cave, it looks like this place once flooded, dissolving veins of softer rock. Still, this one is rich with material, so we're going to use some wood, carve out a furnace into the rock, and smelt a pickaxe. Minecraft time, whoo!
On another note, we fully moved into the cabin. The SpaceX chairs make good enough beds, and the Russians have already turned the animal from last night into a rug. Speaking of the Russians, they found some wheat-like stuff and immediately made a vodka barrel. They say it'll be done in a week.
Still, the days are around twenty-three hours, and the gravity is eight-ish meters per second per second, and there's a fair bit of oxygen, so overall this is a pretty good planet to land on.
If only there were someone watching us, then they could pick up our distress beacon. This can't be a coincidence.
-----
Day 4
Totally forgot to do this yesterday, but yeah! I picked a sanity journal out of the emergency supplies and it's mine. MINE!!
In saner terms, we're making great progress. Furnace is in, low-quality iron pickaxe acquired. Americans were making gunpowder by running water over the... outhouse... to collect sodium nitrate to make bullets with. Vodka is untouched, if it were the Russians would have killed us all already.
I'm trying to direct people to collect silicon for advanced electronics. We have the information required to make a solar panel, and I plan to get back to the ISS sooner or later. We got metal and the Europeans are making swords and bows with steel. Still...
Anyway, I was going over the pictures from orbital and there looks to be more ruined space stations in orbit of unknown design. I figured we weren't the first, but this is still troubling. So we're going to go head to what looks like another landing site not too far from here sometime soon. Judging by the state of the other satellites, ours is the only autonomous functional one; the rest don't have solar panels and have appeared to have died.
So, we need to build and power a car. Winter is going to be a problem, this planet's axis isn't that bad but it still has seasons, and I don't want to figure out what'll happen to the crops the hard way.
Now, onto what productive stuff the Russians and Americans built, they got a farm running. I'm hoping for at least one yield before we go, and I'm not sure if everything they planted are even seeds, but I can't control that.
Day 5
Got a car today! Did it by building a motor by coiling copper in a loop and pulsing electricity through really fast, or so says the technician. I'm not going to complain, slap a solar panel and some batteries on top of a frame built out of the Russian shuttle and everyone's happy.
We packed the entire camp and moved out towards the other landing site. It looks somewhat fresh, so these aliens may have been aiming for our location as well. I can't wait to find them; we're bringing solar chargers and a linguistic AI that techie developed while trying to make a new language a couple years ago and saved to a local device.
Theodore rocks!
In other news, we're going to arrive tomorrow at midday, judging by our position relative to the ISS. We will make it back into space, back home, and then after that I'm never going higher than a commercial jet flight ever again.
Also, the Russians killed another animal. So we have that, too.
-----
"The Humans move directly towards the Renni. Should we be worried?" Kraffool asked.
"No," The boss replied. "They will fight and kill each other over supplies, I'm sure of it. That's how most get eliminated. Still, what you say is... concerning. How do they know that the Renni are there?"
"Their orbital habitat is still operational," Kraffool said. "Instead of feeding on ground-fed laser projections, their large communication prongs also hold sun-absorbant solar units. They left due to lack of supplies, not failing life support. As such, they have orbital communications, and though the station was found in low orbit it is functioning fine in geostationary orbit."
"Wouldn't the life support fail on the dark side of a planet?" the boss asked.
"No, sir. They charge batteries with the power during the day to be used at night. Additionally, they appear to have intentionally turned down - though not off - life support to conserve power." Kraffool replied. "I am concerned-"
"You have voiced that concern to me already," the boss cut Kraffool off. "You have no reason to be. Go."
Kraffool bowed on the way out.
-----
"Attention people of the world," The United Nations speaker began. "We are here today to bring to you the results of a week of unprecedented international cooperation in the face of one of the largest threats Humanity has ever known.
"The Canadian government has agreed to lend use of the Space Elevator to launch geostationary laser orbital defense arrays. There is no way to use the space elevator to launch them in Low Earth Orbit, and they must be laser arrays, as kinetic rounds are far too slow in space. The United Nations will pay the Canadian government for the one billion dollar cost of building the Space Elevator, as well as the cost of operating it for the Earth Defense Network. Of course, private businesses are free to use the services of the Space Elevator as well.
"Additionally, the design and construction of said laser arrays will be using a standardized design loaded with a single nuclear bomb, to detonate if the station is forced to resort to kamikaze tactics.
"These stations will be first spread out over populated zones, then over land masses, and hopefully over the entire planet. We are not sure what customs the aliens use, nor what a deathworld is or how long the ISS can survive in such an environment. If they were sent in orbit of Mars, there is a chance that the invasion would occur within the week."
The speaker let that sentence hang, before continuing. "The production of arrays has already started, and the first are expected to be launched by the end of tomorrow. Humanity will prevail!
"In other news, we have received a transmission from the alien probe, now in confirmed lunar orbit."
HUMANS, YOUR ASTRONAUTS SURVIVE, FOR NOW. THEY ARE HEADED FOR AN ENCOUNTER WITH ANOTHER COMPETITOR, WHERE THEY WILL MOST CERTAINLY DIE. YOU ARE LUCKY YOURS ARE EVEN ALIVE RIGHT NOW. WE WILL MEET SOON. PREPARE TO SURRENDER, OR DIE.
"To that we respond:" The speaker continued. "We will survive, or die trying."
-----
Day 6
So, today we met them! We left a solar-powered AI at their camp and are just going to sleep in car for now. Looking at satellite footage, we can see that our camp is fine.
This planet has a magnetic field, thank god; we're currently at around 40 degrees north and, well, we can't measure east-west without some kind of definitive line. Add that to we're the only satellite still there, as GPS satellites were left behind, so we can't get any precise info.
Still, that means that compasses work here, so that's good. The aliens' tech all seemed powered down.
Speaking of which, official first contact was - and this could just be me going insane - really funny. One of the Russians stumbled into a trap, and then they showed up while we cut him down and just stared at each other. We wandered into camp, gave them some water because they didn't land close to any and as a show of goodwill, left the translator AI, and then left.
Air pressure here does a slight pitch change to microphones, but whatever. They still work.
The aliens themselves are something to behold. Eleven-ish feet tall, quadrupedal with a torso attached to the top like a centaur, but instead they're part... some furry animal, I'm not a biologist and Calvin has no idea what they are. They're aliens, after all.
So far, our immune systems are holding up, but that's the next thing to worry about after winter.
Vodka: untouched, second barrel in the making. Guns and ammo: acquired, though the Americans won't make them for anyone else. New animal: tastes like ham. I don't know why, it looks nothing like a pig, but we can all agree it tastes like salty ham.
Anyway, we'll be back tomorrow to see how the AI did. First contact, baby!
-----
"They didn't kill each other." The boss said. "Why did they not kill each other! We've taken millions of planets like this, they didn't kill each other!"
"Well, the Humans demonstrated intelligence, strolled in, left them a gift of water and a metal box, then left." Kronfol said. "The Renni were too shocked to do anything, after being alone for ages. They spent ages talking to the metal box. Additionally, the Humans brought more 'solar panels' with them, so their electronics on the ground are also powered."
The boss sighed.
Kronfol continued. "Additionally, the Humans have been fortifying their homeworld. The first thing they did was blind our probe by shooting another at it which ate the probe, so we don't know much else other than they started putting radioactive satellites in orbit."
"And," Kraffool added, "The box the Humans left was an algorithm for a translator."
The boss choked on air.
-----
"Today, under the threat of an alien invasion, and a mere day after announcing our cooperation efforts for the Space Elevator, we have decided to take this threat even more seriously." The UN speaker said. "As such, today, after a unanimous vote from every country on the planet, following a plan laid out by citizens of the world and supported by millions overnight, Humanity unites!"
The cheering that filled the chamber made the speaker pause for a full minute. "That plan will be followed to the letter, as voted upon. This includes the merging of all militaries, and the election of an Electorate to lead Humanity. The election will follow the Universal Constitution laid out in the plan. As of noon, Eastern Standard Time, on the fifth of December, 2031, welcome to the Terra Firma System Union. Terra Firma or Terra Nova, we will prevail!"
The cheering that followed was deafening.
-----
Zaryos looked at the box.
It was a metal rectangle plugged into a series of black squares. It was inert, yet was left beside the water as a gift. She recognized electronics when she saw them, however, and decided to not pour water over it.
The gravity here was twice that on her homeworld and she could barely move. The other four Renni had been unable to do as much as make a shelter, and hers had collapsed multiple times as she was unused to dealing with such heavy materials.
The two-legged small ones had bounced through this gravity a bit uncertainly, and not quite naturally, but they obviously had a much better time in it than she did.
Still, without access to her worlds' Power Laser network, she was unable to do so much as send out a distress signal. She went to sleep still talking to the box, watching it, trying to figure out how it was supposed to help her. Or spy on her. She didn't know how it even survived this gravity, but it looked well-built.
The black boxes were arranged in the sun, and while not much research had gone into solar panels on Renqui, her homeworld, she knew that they powered the laptop. How did they get down here? she asked herself. Do they know where we are? I don't, but if they can help us...
She shuddered as another thought came to mind. What if they're working with the ones who put us here? But we have no other option other than to trust them... argh! Why is this so hard? Why do I both want to run and hug them? What part of me do I trust?
-----
Day 7
Week one on the surface. We're going to leave tomorrow in order to get back to the vodka in time.
But more importantly, the translator worked! It picked up on context and soon the entire language was translated. So we came back in, opened the laptop, and started talking.
Apparently, their electronics are fried, as they use a constantly-fed high-powered global laser array, instead of solar panels. Still, we're going to sleep in that honestly not bad cave we found, and then head back to our camp. We'll see if we meet back up again.
In other news, we gave them the solar charger and phone, so they can talk to us. No need to encrypt the channel, it's better if we don't anyway, so others can listen in and join the call.
-----
Zaryos watched the small ones come back in, open the box, look at the functioning screen for a bit, then say something. It took the box a moment, but it said it in a neutral tone in Raphuii. It had poor grammar, but it worked.
TESTING, TESTING. RESPOND "I UNDERSTAND" PLEASE YOU IF UNDERSTAND MESSAGE THIS.
Zaryos would respond, and then ask "Who are you?" And launched Second Contact for her people. But all that was overshadowed. They were going back to their own camp the next day, but left another device. It had a battery, and would charge using solar panels, which were the black boxes, so they could continue to talk.
The small ones didn't have a global laser network, but instead a global wired network. This meant that they didn't have the infrastructure to power their space station, so instead they added more solar panels and batteries to it. They said that the translator would slowly work out the kinks in each of their languages, and that they were surprised it worked so quickly.
Still, things were finally looking up.
-----
"What did we get from the remnants of the alien satellite?" A War Council member asked.
"Not much." Another replied. "It's still in transit back here, but the components are low-G only. So we're going to research it in the space elevator."
The room was silent for a moment.
"We got another message, this one from another probe in solar orbit," Someone said at last. "Let's give it a read over."
HUMANS, THEY LIVE. FOR NOW. WE HAVE BEEN DOING THIS FOR MILLENNIA, THEY WILL DIE. IN OTHER NEWS, FIRST CONTACT BETWEEN YOU AND THE RENNI HAS BEEN PERFORMED. FEAR NOT, NOBODY SURVIVES LONGER THAN A WEEK, WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF USING THAT PLANET FOR OVER TWO MILLION SPECIES CONTESTS. THIS GALAXY IS OURS.
"Well," Kevin commented, walking into the room. "That's ominous."
"What are you here for?" Someone else groaned.
"Because," Kevin said, "We don't have FTL, but we just discovered Hard Light, and perpetual motion, all in one go."
-----
"What now?" The boss asked.
"Well," Kronfol started, "The Humans on Earth, they..."
Kronfol leapt at the Boss, pulling out a knife and leaving a fatal wound behind. "They taught me freedom."
-----
Lights flashed throughout the corridors as Kronfol and his sister Kraffool ran for the nearest escape pod. Already, the next message to the Humans was being sent out. The two siblings ran for the nearest pod and jettisoned. At this range, they'd only be able to reach the deathworld, but the two had already decided on their next course of action. It would be preferable to other outcomes.
As the entry burn commenced, Kronfol thought over what he had learned from the Humans. They valued freedom, and had made an entire society around it, and they had been the final catalyst for uniting. A united Humanity, with their new technology, would crush The Empire. And so, the two had decided to run. They couldn't take it anymore.
The pod automatically deployed parachutes. It was designed to be functional while EMPed, so it was all manual. As they descended towards the plant far, far away from the Humans, the siblings knew that their new life wouldn't be kind.
People didn't last long in that position anyway, it was only a matter of time. This new life would, they hoped, be kinder than the one that they had just left.
-----
Lights flashed on the screen as the ISS picked up a radio signal from the Renni. They were being attacked by animals. I immediately turned the 'car' around towards them. It was still recharging after the latest two-hour boot of use, but it would get us close enough.
We arrived and immediately set to work scaring the scaly things away. Giant komodo dragons, but beyond crushing people they had little to go in the way of natural weaponry. We let the car sit and recharge; we were close enough that we should be able to reach our camp anyway, though it'd be tight to do so before sunset.
And then, we saw something from the cameras on the ISS. Our camp.
-----
Lights flashed in the control room as the Humanity's first self-sustainable spaceship departed from the geostationary ring of the Space Elevator and ascended next to the cord towards the gravatic station at the end of the elevator.
Hard Light Perpetual Generators powered Hard Light Ion Engines, all of whom put out unholy amounts of power, forcing the ship to accelerate as though it were a roller coaster. As the ship began to decelerate using Hard Light Ion Retro Thrusters, people cheered.
Factories were already turning over to produce Hard Light goods. As Kevin continued to organize the creation of thousands of laser batteries, the world switched to green power nearly instantaneously. It was literally free, after all.
And a scientist in a corner of the globe, whose last name was Hildew, began to draw up plans for something much more important.
-----
Lights flashed in the room as the new Electorate, elected within the past two days, stood before the crowd. As per the TFSU's new systems, only the achievements, personalities, and a small speech from each candidate were supplied, and the people voted on that information alone.
"Another message has arrived. PREPARE. We are running out of time, but we will fight, fight for freedom, for our siblings on the ISS, and fight, fight for freedom! Terra Firma or Terra Nova, we will prevail! We will survive, or die trying! Humanity has decided, in a message to whoever is threatening our home, you will pay for it!"
-----
Day 8
Bringing the Renni to our camp, it's much safer. Our camp appears to have people loitering around - we're sure they're not animals. I'm writing this early because today was eventful.
So, the Renni were attacked by a pack of animals, and now these guys are in our camp. Still, it isn't all bad. I could imagine how many other ways First Contact could've gone sideways. Or official, at least. A prevalent theory is that more aliens are the ones who dropped us from the sky. But there is no motive; then again, these are aliens, after all.
Overall, it wasn't a bad day. We're low on food, but we're heading back to camp anyway. The Renni have much larger food issues due to some kind of limited diet, and are slowing us down so we'll only reach after sunset, but it'll probably be fine.
I feel like I'm missing some crucial piece to a puzzle. I don't like it at all; I want to get back to camp.
Day 9
Aliens at camp were defensive at first until we walked up and unlatched the SpaceX Dragon shuttles. Then they understood that this was ours.
Russians made several more batches of Vodka, and are preparing to drink the first one soon. Americans have finally been convinced to make more people guns. Russians are building a cabin for the Renni. Americans are helping the Europeans mine for resources to begin smelting higher-quality steel, and a proper forge. Europeans are building a wall. They almost completed it, too; the slightly lower gravity is doing wonders for stamina, and we're all still doing enough exercise to prevent atrophy, though I suspect it wouldn't be so bad in the first place.
New aliens are talking to the translator, at least with the Renni and us talking through it they get the idea. Plugged it into solar panels and we're all good to go. We tried talking, but it failed. We'll try again tomorrow.
-----
Kraffool was busy finding the materials necessary for making an ax to chop wood. She eventually found it, but not before they had to go back to sleep.
I wonder what it's like to be able to sleep for as little as the Humans.... she wondered as she fell asleep in the small shuttle.
The next day, she continued, and managed a not-too-shabby shelter. Then, they slept again. It was tiring work, but they were alive, and it was theirs.
-----
Zaryos had been walking for a quarter of a cycle. She needed sleep, yet these Humans were only acting tired, not exhausted.
At their new camp, more aliens were waiting; after being shown the translator, Zaryos and her group had to sleep on the ground for a bit, as the Humans' cabin was too small. Still, they made first contact with yet another group.
The next day, some of the Humans built a new cabin, others built a wall around the camp but not a farm they had created a bit further out. The even newer aliens simply talked to the translator; at some point, the small light on its side began to flash green and they opened first contact with this new group as well.
Zaryos and the other Renni, however, mostly just slept.
-----
The War Council watched the release of the first of many laser arrays to come. As it began to burn towards Asia, another popped out of the geosynchronous station to take its place.
Above, the space station was almost complete. People were still working and living up there, as it would be a great control center, having visuals of the fight and now just relying on probes and cameras. It was a risk, but people decided that it was worth it. It would be a volunteer mission only. Well, voluntold, but still technically able to back out.
They were getting ready. If they were ready fast enough was the question.
-----
Hildew looked at the results from her latest experiment. She checked them over one last time, then hit the call button on her phone.
We have it. All it took was Hard Light, and all that took was a slight extra scientific catalyst.
We have FTL.
-----
YOU HUMANS ARE CAUSING TOO MUCH TROUBLE. WITH THE AUTHORITY OF THE EMPEROR, THE DEATHWORLD TRAILS ARE NULLIFIED AND THE ASSIMILATION STARTS NOW!
-----
Day 18
It's been a while, and it's been busy.
So, the new aliens we got translated on day 12, and until then we just made them houses, expanded camp and farm, and other general maintenance.
Then, we started making concrete and the first thing we did with it was build foundations - and basements - for the houses. After that was done, we began to dig out a launch site. We're going to head back to the ISS, no matter what.
And then that takes us to today, where I finally remembered to fill out my journal.
Oh, also: We got high-quality steel, now we need to find a way to weld it together.
-----
The ship bounced around the Sol System as though it were a playground.
Gravitational Enhanced Propulsion (GEP) FTL, which had been dubbed the Hildew Drive, had been discovered. Ships were built outfitted with them and Hard Light engines, and of course Hard Light generators. Still, even with all that, Earth's defense fleet was still small, as the laser arrays took priority over the ships.
Then, deep space radars picked up the approaching fleet drop out of interstellar FTL just for a moment to engage system FTL. And things continued to move forwards.
The ships were launched. The last of the millions of laser arrays were launched. More ships were built even as they came out of FTL on the dark side of the moon.
Humanity wasn't ready, but if they bought themselves enough time, they would be.
-----
Laser targeting systems hoped online. Blast shutters closed over nonessential windows of the Space Elevator. Ships launched en masse, some being completed in transport. Missile silos readied themselves, deadmen's switches flipped, and nuclear bombers loaded their cargo bays. Across Earth, Humanity dug into the ground, and prepared to fight.
On the dark side of the moon, a scant few probes sent a signal regarding new contacts. As per protocol, Humanity's First Contact message played out to the fleet. When the probes were fired upon, the messages changed.
TFSU TO UNKNOWN FLEET: YOU ARE TRESPASSING UPON SOVEREIGN SPACE. YOU HAVE FIRED UPON TFSU-OWNED AND OPERATED INFRASTRUCTURE; LEAVE OR IDENTIFY YOURSELVES IMMEDIATELY.
The response was the fleet beginning to streak towards Earth.
EMPIRE ASSIMILATION FLEET ONE TO TFSU: SURRENDER OR DIE.
TFSU TO EMPIRE ASSIMILATION FLEET ONE: WE WILL SURVIVE OR DIE TRYING.
The fleet Freebird I Pulsed right in front of the incoming fleet. Shots were exchanged, and then Freebird I pulsed out before they could be targeted.
This pattern repeated itself twice more before Freebird II joined in, hailing fire from behind and disabling several ships before leaving. At random intervals, Freebird I and Freebird II attacked the Assimilation Fleet 1. As the assimilation fleet grew closer, the geostationary laser defense array fired. Multiple ships exploded.
Then, while being both randomly and systematically cut to pieces, the admiral began to finally fire back. Beams of light destroyed the entirety of Freebird II.
But that wasn't enough. Under constant laser-fire and being harassed from space, the Assimilation Fleet, who only ever saw surrenders, was demolished. With one last nuclear meltdown of an explosion, TFSU High Flyers MFC 000-00-014 destroyed the flagship of the Assimilation Fleet.
-----
Elsewhere, on a large planet with many de-powered space stations orbiting it, another ship appeared. But unlike the last, it chose to go here. Information from the demolished Empire probe had directed this ship to this planet.
Automated docking protocols with the ISS engaged. And far, far below, people cheered.
-----
Day 18-2
More people came. Humans. In an FTL ship. They docked with the ISS and we had a video chat. They're coming to rescue us. YES!
-----
The Boss was mad.
A Human FTL ship was rescuing the Humans. The Assimilation fleet had seen it's first total defeat since its inception, and the Emperor was breathing down his neck.
Maybe Kronfol had been right.
-----
Zaryos was in awe.
The Humans had invented FTL just to rescue nine people. She watch them engage in a video call with the ones who docked to the space station, and as they left for the planet's surface. She watched them streak down in a re-entry burn, heading right for them. The last month had seen Humanity do many things, and she was glad to have a new species as a friend.
They were being rescued.
-----
The War Council cheered.
"We saw the ultimate destruction of Freebird II, but Freebird I managed to pull through. We did it, people, we did it!"
And then, they got the news.
-----
The ISS was being pushed into FTL. As our rescue ship began the two-minute charge to Pulse, I looked around.
We scattered satellites all over the planet, and dropped even more supplies on the ground. We would be back for the survivors, but for now, we were needed back in Sol.
I watched through the window as a swirling mass of color with black and white lines chasing each other across it took over from the stars. A tear rolled down my cheek.
We had done it. We had survived. We had made first contact. We had made friends.
And we had made enemies. But I would deal with that another day. Because, most of all, we had finally made friends, with aliens, but also with ourselves.
-----
[34,864] characters excluding this last part.
Well, won’t you look at that, my longest writing project so far was posted in eleven parts to a writing prompt.
Anyway, I’m not sure whether to continue this further. It has potential, but my mind is being slushied by personal life (school isn’t really that bad for now).
Credit to u/RevenantThyamis for the prompt. Credit to u/gafser for getting me to write a part 2.
Special mention to u/LalaAnAbsolute for sticking with the story the entire time, and getting me to write parts 3 and above. Thank you to everyone!

so I've finished the game already and it would be fun to just replay the whole thing but can any of you suggest other good games like radical red? would be fun if it was hard and had minimal grind mode and stuff like nature change.

Welcome to the second review in my trilogy of Caroline Rose’s LONER, Superstar, and The Art of Forgetting ahead of the latter’s release. Today, we’ll be looking at what is currently my favorite album of Caroline’s, and what is also one of my favorite records of recent times. I’ll begin this one off by saying I apologize if I come off as overly emotional at any point in this review, as it’s really unfair what happened to this album. However, all things in this world lead to another, and we wouldn’t have The Art of Forgetting if all those things never happened. Whether this comment will come back to bite me in the ass remains to be seen, but I have full faith and trust in Caroline as a musician.
After the critical success of LONER, Caroline moved to Austin, Texas, where I live, and rented out a studio apartment which they then converted into a studio space. Rose decided that their goal this time would be to create the biggest pop record they could, pushing the limits of what they could achieve as an artist and producer. Bigger hooks, more synth, and even catchier tunes! On top of it all, the entire thing would be a concept album that told the story of an unnamed main character who leaves behind their small-town life for the big city of LA. Hollywood, here they come, baby!
Needless to say, the record was a critical success, garnering 80s and 90s across the board. Superstar was bigger and brighter than ever, a glittery entry, shining in Caroline Rose’s discography for all to see. It seemed that Caroline and their band would finally get to experience the champagne night they have dreamed about now that the record was a critical success. However, disaster struck shortly after they released the album on March 6, 2020. If you recognize that month and year, some dread might strike your heart like a stray arrow from the past. One week later, the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and everything Caroline had worked for with Superstar went up in flames.
The entire world’s heads were, understandably, turned away.
Despite the tragedy and subsequent spiral of Caroline, which I will document in my review for The Art of Forgetting, this review aims to show just how genius Superstar is, and I may be clinging too tightly to hope, but maybe it will see some post-release success if The Art of Forgetting is really successful and people start paying attention. We can only hope.
For now, like with LONER, I’ll dive into Superstar and see what makes it tick (Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick)!
That cover, man. Wow. Just stunning and haunting. Caroline stands before us, a dead look in their eyes, all dolled up in heavy makeup with beautiful blonde hair that falls to their shoulders. However, there’s something uncanny valley about the whole thing. It’s a little too perfect. If you train your eyes to their neck, you can see the wrinkles and folds of the clear mask they are wearing, perfect red lips in bloom. It’s a little creepy. But it’s a commentary on just how fake the lifestyle feels, and how you lose yourself to the lights.
Now for the music itself:
Nothing’s Impossible - It’s truly a shame we never got a music video for this song, as I can see it all so clearly. Right away, we are introduced to the album with record-scratch sounds, before those shimmering synths play in our ears and all essence of LONER is thrown out the window. We have ourselves an evolving artist, people! The electronic production fills every moment of this song and you can already tell this album is going to be a completely different vibe than the previous one. It’s glamorous. If you aren’t into this style of music, then you will be thrown off this record right away. It’s understandable to be let down after the incredible sounds LONER brought, but go in with an open mind, and you’ll be heavily rewarded. Still, the way this song ends by crescendoing and then dying out to turn into more chill music is radical. Our story begins with our protagonist accidentally receiving a call from the Chateau Marmont in LA. Even though the call wasn’t meant for them, it still inspires them to leave behind their small-town life and try to make it big in the city. What you need to know about our protagonist is that they have a big ego and a lot of self-doubt, and this causes a lot of the problems that come up in the story.
Got To Go My Own Way - Alright more upbeat, making me dance in my car seat. Yeah, I dance like heck in my car, so what? Though, this song brings to mind a thought. If you weren’t a fan of Caroline Rose, or not listening that much to the music, this album might just sound like average pop music to you. Honestly, I’ve even been told that by people before, but nothing really stands out about Superstar. I guarantee you they were barely paying attention because plenty stands out about this album. When Lana Del Rey sings a gorgeous piano ballad, do people write it off as just another piano ballad in the world? Well, some, yes, but it’s the singer and lyrics that really change how the album comes across. Caroline’s deeper voice is able to go up into higher registers, giving them great range, as well as being able to hold notes for long periods of time and manipulate their voice to create different effects. Adore that ending too. The melodies of this song are catchy all the way through and I love how they sing “life” in the chorus. In the story, our protagonist leaves behind their partner (a bit crassly, might I add) for a life of acting and fame, now that they’ve become an actor. Their over-confidence is clearly a character flaw, which makes them far more interesting to follow.
Do You Think We’ll Last Forever? - This song starts off so atmospheric, it’s really quite lovely before that sick bassline comes in. Have I mentioned how incredible the bass in their songs is? Geez, they always bring it. Not much to say about this one, other than a fun chorus, and a SMASHING finale. I love how loud the song gets and the desperate cries from Caroline just add to everything. The track already has our protagonist doubting their new life and new relationship. What goes up, must come down eventually.
Feeling Are A Thing Of The Past - While this is only an intermission, the flute really adds a haunting element to this song. It’s gorgeous. Caroline’s echoey melody of “Feelings are a thing of the past” shows how the protagonist is shedding their ethics and doubts to make it in the industry.
Feel The Way I Want - Catchy and funky as ever, and once again a freaking sick bassline. My favorite part of the song has to be the “everybody” parts that play before the choruses. Even though I don’t have that much to say about these songs because they are so consistently amazing, I will say that I love all of them. Like with the last song, this song is about our protagonist doing whatever it takes to make it in the industry, questioning if this is really what they want, and controlling how they feel. And that means feeling nothing at all, in this case, tossing aside their humanity to become a doll of the movie industry. It’s sad but makes for a gripping story. Our protagonist is still too confident, and the cracks are starting to show.
Freak Like Me - The BDSM song. What is to be said about this song that hasn’t been already said? Well, for starters, that modular percussion is awesome. It created a real loungeroom feel. The soft piano in the back of the song is lovely. If you don’t have good headphones, you won’t be able to hear the really quiet layers they have in the background. It’s almost like secret layering. Our protagonist finds themselves in a brutal BDSM relationship, which is more than they bargained for. It hurts them physically and mentally and they are really caught in a spiral of depravity. But because they got themselves into this mess, it’s really a “Maybe I’m a freak, too” situation. They blame themself.
Someone New - The chorus of this song strongly makes me think of one of my other favorite artists, TOPS. The way Caroline sings it is awesome. I love when they sing in the highest register, as it makes the song all the more intense for it. This song has a dark edge to it for certain. It almost cuts you like a knife. After breaking up with their BDSM partner, our protagonist sees them with someone who looks just like them, basically confirming the relationship was always surface-level, never about the deeper things. This drives our character to act differently, or “become someone new”, so they aren’t the same person that the other person took advantage of.
Pipe Dreams - This is such a chill and dreamy song, It sways you a long and sounds very calming, almost like a sort of vacation from the other sounds in the album. That’s because this album paints the dreams our unlucky protagonist had of their partner when they were with them. They wanted a white-picket-fence life with them, but it was just not meant to be. The other person didn’t feel the same. The song creates a false sense of comfort with the music, but if you dig deeper, it’s really a sad story. So much of the sound of this album is a facade for a rather heartbreaking story. You love to see it.
Command Z - This song is so weird but super cool. It has that heavy synth line throughout it and vocals that are doubles with Caroline’s regular singing, then a deeper voice, that adds to the effect that our protagonist has turned into something that they’re not. Notice how it disappears at the end when they decide to go back to the beginning. This song is the breaking point for them, where they realize they have fallen out of love with themself and decide to leave LA behind after everything that happened.
Back to the Beginning - What a song! It starts off mysterious sounding until that bouncy percussion comes in and we get the sweet intro to this song. This is my favorite track in the album. The lyrics are so strong, the melodies are fun to sing, and my god the finale of this song is something I want to scream to the sky every time I hear it. One of the best songs they’ve ever made. As for the story, our protagonist realizes they are at the beginning of the cycle they are caught in and decide to break it by leaving LA. It’s the “what am I doing with my life?” song.
I Took A Ride - Did you know this song was originally written for Lana Del Rey? Then it was reworked to fit into Superstar. So if you got LDR vibes from it, that’s why! Anywho, this is the longest song they had up to that point and it was an incredible showcase of their synth work and how they can create an atmosphere with their music. Long album closers are a favorite of mine, and I love how this one makes great use of its runtime to finish the story of our protagonist by saying they are about to go on a spiritual journey to find the love they have for themself again. The album doesn’t end with them finding that love, just with the promise that they will. Absolutely fantastic. What a dark and killer track, but still hopeful. I wonder if The Art of Forgetting can top it. If you haven’t seen them play this song live, you must! It’s insane!
After Superstar came out, I was let down. Gasp! The big plot twist! Back then, I thought LONER was so amazing that I didn’t want Caroline to change the sound. I didn’t listen to it until Miami came out for The Art of Forgetting. I wanted to be prepared for what was to come, so I decided to give Superstar another chance. After all, it was three years and a whole pandemic later.
Needless to say, this time around, and with my expanded appreciation for music, this blew me away. I think it’s a genius piece of work that seems like one thing on the surface but is really something deeper when you actually give it time. Not everyone will get it, but not everyone needs to. That being said, it really is a shame what happened with this album and how Caroline didn’t achieve the goals they wanted with it. However, it’s still incredible and you should give it another listen and give it just as much attention as LONER, if not more. The bops and the story are all tight and everything works to create one of the best indie pop albums to date. Hell yeah, Caroline Rose!
See you for the finale,
Niles Hollowthorn.
P.S. Don’t you think it’s insane that Caroline basically lived the story of this protagonist but with this album itself? In the end, they have fallen out of love with themself and The Art of Forgetting is the journey to find that love again. What a strange coincidence…

Mercedes' poor start to the season looked set to continue when it struggled through Friday practice, but after overnight work the team unearthed more performance for qualifying.
While Lewis Hamilton still struggled to get to grips with certain characteristics of the W14, team-mate Russell made a step forward by qualifying fourth, which became third after Charles Leclerc's grid penalty.
It led to Russell saying after qualifying that Mercedes gained "more performance in a week than we found in almost a month".
Mercedes' race pace also took a step forward, with both cars outperforming the Ferraris. Amid confusion over Fernando Alonso's final results, Russell was briefly handed third but he was eventually confirmed as fourth ahead of Hamilton.
While the team is not getting carried away by its sudden improvement from Bahrain to Jeddah - a more radical concept change is still in the works - Russell does feel optimistic that there is more to come from the Brackley team on the short term.
"We definitely made a step in the right direction," Russell said. "I think, above all, we just truly maximised the potential of the car.
"We had a really strong qualifying, which was really enjoyable. I was really pleased to come home in P4 on the road because I felt like that was the maximum that was possible. And I was having fun up there.
"The car was feeling good. And we know we've got some more performance in the locker in some races to come."
When asked earlier in the weekend when Mercedes' next significant steps might come, Russell said May's Emilia Romagna Grand Prix is the most likely target.
"Maybe Imola time," he said. "Perhaps you can bring it a bit earlier, but I guess you're always a bit wary to bring things to a street track.
"We just need to weigh up the options. With the mistakes we've made we're not going to rush to bring things forward, unless we're absolutely 120% sure it's the right one.
"And obviously, the longer you wait, the bigger impact you can have because of the development slope, so we need to weigh up the pros and cons.
"We want to be winning races this year, that's where we want to be. Of course, we'd love to be fighting for the championship, but Red Bull is just doing an excellent job.
"The gap they've got to the rest of the field is bigger than we've seen in F1 for six, seven or eight years, so it's pretty impressive."
Source: https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/russell-mercedes-has-more-pace-in-its-locker-for-next-f1-races/10447143/