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Everything posted by richardmurray
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LUKE CAGE ON DEEP SPACE NINE chapter 1
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13028411/1/LUKE-CAGE-ON-DEEP-SPACE-NINE
MY THOUGHTS AS I READ...
I think Doctor bashir will say instead of "he seems to be made of...sterner stuff than most"
the following: "His cellular regeneration or cell wall permeability is similar to what is in starfleet records for genetically modified humans though the tricorder is revealing something curious... he was born long before similar processes were standardized in medical records "
Doctor bashir is lighthearted , likes jokes, but remember, he is a scientist in the federation and they are usually, when it comes to the scientific method, straight forward, near mechanical.
... your luke cage is quite comfortable in his initial shock.
Your Odo I love when he said "a what" that is well done:) Your Odo is on point man. I like the quadlog between captain sisqo/odo/bashir/cage:) well done .
When cage said "if I was him~" well done. that is luke cage:)
Black unity , love it, timeless.
Ahh.. fair enough explaining his ease with all this... it makes sense.
"your quarters" not "some quarters" no big deal at all.
I think instead of "In our time, discrimination between humans, based on ethnicity or gender, or any other factor is non-existant"
Sisko will say :"In our time, discrimination between humans, based on ethnicity or gender, or any other factor is significantly negligible"
I say this cause the augments, which can be considered a genetic gender, in the star trek timeline whether khan or bashir himself who is only lightly manipulated were treated unfairly for being what they are in various ways.
And the maquis, can be considered a cultural ethnicity, they are born from starfleet and people in the federation who felt the federation betrayed its principles by not protecting to the fullest people of the federation who still lived in the border between the cardasians and the federation.
It is like Anarchist in the usa or black militants in the usa. They are not visually different but they are culturally different in key ways. the culture of the federation is heavily set in the rule of law and by default the culture of the maquis is acting when the rule of law is not enough.
And I think sisko will say that. He isn't as defensive for the federation as pakard nor is he as short worded as kirk, like janeway, sisko is more of a public teacher to those about him.Before sisko nods sisko would have to talk about his cooking. Sisko gets the chance to test his new orleans cuisine on the mouth of someone black from the olden times.
Instead of "sisko nodded and smiled and left" something like the following.
<Sisko nodded and smiled and turned to leave but then snaps his fingers and turns around and says: "I rarely get anyone who knows what soul food supposed to taste like, so I am lucky, I will be able to prepare dinner for you tonight" . Cage smiles, and Sisko leaves smiling. >
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Why Plots Fail
September 26, 2022 by Tiffany Yates Martin
Many authors embark on a new manuscript with one of two common inspirations: a great idea for a plot, or a fascinating character and situation.
Both can be good springboards for story, yet without more development, each may result in stories that peter out, dead end, or get lost in rabbit holes (especially during the breakneck pace of NaNo).
Plots most commonly fail when:
- they’re approached as an isolated element of story, a series of interesting events for authors to plug their characters into, or
- when interesting characters are randomly loosed into an intriguing situation with no specific destination or purpose.
Characters must take action, but action is not plot, and plot is not story.
The role of plot in story
The basic definition of story is a character pursues something he desperately wants, and he is changed by that pursuit and his success or failure in achieving his goal. Plot is simply the road the character travels on that journey.
I often reduce it to a simple formula:
Point A + Plot = Point B
In other words, story equals character arc plus plot.
Creating an elaborately structured plot and calling it story is like mapping a trip and calling it a vacation. What makes it complete is the character’s experience of it. Character drives plot, not the other way around.
Don’t panic, plotters. That doesn’t mean you can’t map out your plot ahead of time. And fear not, pantsers—it doesn’t mean you have to painstakingly develop or outline the whole story before you begin.
But creating compelling, cohesive stories does mean considering how these two crucial story elements work together.
Know what your character wants
Before you can put a character in motion, you have to know where she is headed and why. What drives your characters is the engine and the fuel for the actions they take and fail to take in the course of the story, the reason they—and we—take this journey.
Your character’s goal(s) and motivations determine those actions, as well as her reactions, inaction, and interaction; they dictate every choice she makes that pushes her along the plot. It’s essential to understand at least these basics about your characters before trying to put them in motion.
In director Baz Luhrmann’s recent movie Elvis, the titular character’s main motivation is evident from almost the first scene: Elvis loves music, especially blues and gospel. It literally moves him—in an early scene he wanders into a tent revival and his body starts shaking and swaying seemingly without his volition.
That dictates his main goal—to make his own music—which is the propulsive force for every subsequent action he takes (or doesn’t take) in the course of the story, starting with recording his own version of the one of the songs by a local blues musician that fascinated him, accepting Colonel Tom Parker’s offer to tour him on the carnival circuit, and every subsequent choice he makes.
But characters may have other goals and motivations as well, and will also continue to evolve as the story develops and as the author’s understanding of them deepens and grows—which will also affect the choices they make and the paths they take.
Elvis’s desire to pursue his music begins to morph early in the story as he is seduced into a new goal—fame and fortune—which evolves from his deeper motivation: a desperate need for love.
These are powerful and universal desires, the kind many readers can relate to. But they’re vague—another reason plots can falter or lose focus.
Create tangible as well as intangible goals
Pinning your character’s intangible longings to a concrete goal gives readers something to root for—or against—and tells us when the character has “won” (or lost).
Without that, momentum may stall, like a footrace with no definitive finish line for runners to orient themselves toward or to tell them when they’ve reached it.
Or the story may lose cohesion and feel episodic: “This happens…and then this happens…and then this happens…” but because the plot has become disconnected from the character arc, the actions lack meaning or impact.
Tie your character’s more generalized motivations to some specific, tangible “brass ring” that represents them.
For Luhrmann’s movie version of Elvis, each element of what drives him is pinned to a definitive representation of that longing:
- His love of music—his kind of music—is tangibly represented by a Christmas special where Colonel Parker demands he sing sanitized traditional carols and not swivel those hips, as well as the broader concrete representation of Parker’s pushing him to shift his career to inoffensive, bland music, against a new manager who wants to encourage Elvis to play his own kind of music and swivel at will. This sets up a clear story conflict that serves as a powerful propulsive force.
- His desire for fame and fortune is represented by specific, tangible goals that Elvis associates with money—wanting to buy his mother a pink Cadillac, Graceland, his own plane, etc.—and popularity and acclaim, like bigger venues, Hollywood movies, and eventually a European tour.
- His longing for love is represented by his profound devotion to his mother, Gladys (and to a smaller degree his father); the Colonel; Priscilla and Lisa Marie; and, as the Colonel himself reminds viewers throughout, the fans. Elvis thrives on attention and confuses it with love—and that motivates every decision he makes in the story.
Defining what your character wants and why allows you to grow a cohesive, integrated plot as you throw obstacles in the path between your characters and what they want, and let their “why”—what drives them toward that goal—dictate the choices they make. Each choice sends them on the next step of the path as your plot develops organically, always driven by the characters.
Know how your character changes
One final reason plots may fail is that the character’s point B—how they change by the end of the story, externally, internally, or both—is not directly related to or a result of what happened to them in the course of it.
But if you let their goal and motivation dictate their actions and behavior at every decision point, then readers will see on the page, step by step, how your character moves along her arc: how each challenge she faces, every choice she makes, affects her, shifts her perspective, and causes her growth or change.
This direct, intrinsic relationship between plot and character—the character’s struggles, choices, longings, and goals that drive the actions they take in the course of the plot—is what makes for dynamic stories that feel organic, cohesive, and satisfying to readers.
Article
https://www.janefriedman.com/why-plots-fail/My Thoughts
the following is a little aside. but, what do you think about short stories that contain key tenets or rules in a world that can prepare an author in making a longer story in the same world ? I use as an example. ursula leguin's earthsea. she wrote three short stories that like any good short story stand on their own but also displayed key principles of the world in the later books. I have a larger work I am working on, the plot is not finished, but that is based on what I want a few major characters to do at or near the end and it is an important choice. But a smaller story, in the same world , is near complete, The characters , The plot, the story is done. The ending resolution even relates to where I want the larger story to go. And some key rules are displayed. Maybe some plots fail because authors are unwilling to give glimpses, ala short stories, into the world first? I will be blunt, I never wrote a short story at the same time working on a larger one in the same world. Maybe if plotters:) or pantsters step back from the big book and make an intentional short story in the same world, it can help them with the cohesiveness between the plot side characters lives in the longer story.
Writers of the future talk
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No Proof Of Racism By School Bus Driver Who Assaulted Black Children On Video, Cops Say
The adultification of Black children was demonstrably what happened on that school bus.
Written By Zack Linly
Posted September 21, 2022Source: SOPA Images / Getty
Here’s the thing: There’s a difference between blind speculation and experience-based speculation. But our legal system isn’t equipped to differentiate between the two. In any incident involving white people causing harm to Black people, there will be speculation that the incident was racially motivated. In many cases, there won’t be any racial slurs or verbal indications that race played a part in an attack. But Black people will see the racism based on our experience with racism. In other words: We know it was racist because we’ve seen this before.
But that will never match up with the burden of proof our legal system requires before it will call something racist, regardless of how obvious the racism is. And that’s why the Morgan County school bus driver who was caught on camera pushing a 6-year-old Black child and his 10-year-old Black sister will not be called a racist when he stands trial—at least not by the court.
According to the Morgan Citizen, James O’Neil, the now-former bus driver in question (he was fired after the video went viral), has been arrested and charged with two counts of simple battery after the recorded incident that took place earlier this month. He was booked in the Morgan County Detention Center, where he spent a day before being bonded out.
“The investigation resulted in the arrest of James O’Neil on two counts of simple battery,” Morgan County Chief Deputy Keith Howard said in a statement. “While this was not a complex investigation, it was complicated by the allegation that the incident was perceived as being racially motivated.”
“Investigators took additional time to investigate all the facts to include consulting with prosecutors in the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit,” he went on to say. “Investigators could not establish a nexus that the incident was racially motivated.”
So, how do we know it was racist? Well we don’t—not for sure—but we’ve seen the adultification of Black children at the hands of white authority figures before. We see it in the statistical evidence that Black students are disproportionately and more harshly disciplined than their white counterparts. We saw it when a 9-year-old Black girl was forced into the back of a police car and pepper sprayed while she was severely distraught and begging for help. We saw it when Aurora, Colorado, police pulled over a Black family in an SUV (despite the vehicle description they were given being a motorcycle) and had young Black girls—the youngest of whom was also 6 years old—lying face-down on the ground while handcuffed and frantically crying.
The adultification of Black children was demonstrably what happened on that school bus.From the Citizen:
According to Nene Carter, the mother of the children who were pushed, O’Neil allegedly told her six-year-old son to sit in the back of the bus, despite the fact that primary school students usually sit in the front of the bus away from the older high school students riding the bus in the back.
The 12-second video that went viral on social media shows the bus driver standing over the small child while pushing the boy back into his seat near the front of the bus. The 10-year-old sister is standing next to the bus driver trying to reach out for her brother. The girl shouts, “Stop pushing my brother,” as the bus driver is seen repeatedly pushing the crying boy back into the seat.
“Shut your mouth,” the bus driver says to the girl as he continues pushing the little boy.
The girl asks again for him to stop pushing her brother when the bus driver appears to put his hands on the girl. The girl tells the bus driver to “get your hands off” when the bus driver suddenly pushes her, causing the girl to stumble backwards. The bus driver then says to her, “What a pain in the neck you guys are. Get back there.”
A 6-year-old child isn’t a “pain in the neck” because he’s fearful and anxious about being moved to the back of a bus to sit with older teenagers. He’s just a small child being a small child. A 10-year-old child isn’t a “pain in the neck” because she’s trying to protect her younger sibling from the grown man who is aggressively putting his hands on him. She’s just a child doing what she knows she’s supposed to do as a big sister.
But white America often views Black children through a lens that doesn’t detect innocence and underdevelopment as readily and naturally as it does when viewing white children. It’s just really hard to imagine a white 6-year-old child being sent to the back of a bus among much older kids and then being pushed because he didn’t want to go. (I’m going to go ahead and skip over the part where I talk about the racist implications of a white bus driver sending a Black child to the back of the bus in the first place, BTW.)
It’s also worth mentioning that Carter believes O’Neill was only fired because he was caught on viral video manhandling her children.“We feel like he was terminated because the story got more coverage than the Morgan County Charter School System would have liked,” said Carter. “It was rumored that they were just going to send him to be retrained.”
And if that’s true, it would have been racist AF. But we could never prove it.
ARTICLE
https://newsone.com/4413554/morgan-county-bus-driver-video-update/
Referral
https://twitter.com/msolurin/status/1573716117956304896My thoughts
The problem is Black people seem not to realize the usa is a collection of states. Each state is free to have its own culture as long as it is republican, meaning no kings or generals or oligarchs running a state. But that doesn't mean a community can not be empowered in a state and abuse other communities in it.
Yes, the legal system in the usa allows for cases to be taken to the federal level, but that is a task.
The state in question is georgia. A confederate state. A state where jim crow was at its most firm when other compatriots like new york city were allowing more, albeit trickles, for black folk. Has Georgia ever been anything but the enemy to blacks in its history?
Do you think this case needs to go to the federal level? -
Why couldn't Disney make a movie titled the Little Mermaid using Halley Bailey as Gabriella?
Gabriella is the name of the deaf black latino mermaid that enjoys adventures with ariel in the little mermaid t.v series. why couldn't Disney make the little mermaid movie with Halley Bailey as Gabriella?
The two questions are simple, can a thespian act beyond their physical definition, and are roles for thespians absent? Halley Bailey can play Ariel,as any thespian can attempt to play any role, but Halley Bailey didn't need to.Gabriella was in the following episodes of the little mermaid show
"Wish Upon a Starfish"
"Ariel's Treasures"Gabriella Angelina Bommino - a child whose spirit flew at a very young age, was an inspiration to the character.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-10-22-ca-48649-story.htmlP.S. I will be blunt, honoring the Bommino by making the character inspired by her titular role in the new Little Mermaid film I think would had been a far greater gesture on many levels, than changing the appearance of Ariel, for no reason... and Black women need to watch more television who said they never saw a black mermaid before, cause disney made a black mermaid already. Why didn't black women know about Gabriella already?