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#—HE NEEDS HIS FANTASY & FREEDOM ( Abraham ) !
notmuchtoconceal · 8 months
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What are your thoughts on circumcision ?
bro, i have never understood the claim that it looks more aesthetic.
bro, it looks like there's a piece of your dick missin, bro.
i had phimosis most of my life and i used to be afraid circumcision was the only way, but naw man. stretch out the foreskin. pull back the hood. the elasticity is remarkable. it's what it was made for.
full-disclosure.
some of my best friends have always been jewish. i've always regarded the cartoonish distortions of jewish people made by antisemites as hilarious because the fantasy projections of bigots being amusing and weird is a more immediate point of interest than people's hurt feelings because i'm an asshole and an intellectual and my first instinct is usually to detach. this, while being big and burly and white makes me "sus" by which i mean gets you horny, especially if you fetishize white guys while screaming about how much their milky skin disgusts you.
that said, circumcision has always quietly been one of the main points in favor of the jewish god being evil. i mean, come on man. he's enforcing mandatory bronze-age genital mutilation into current day.
but like, regardless of how many high-profile jewish men are baby-eating satanic child rapists (not that different from many high-profile catholic men, honestly) scapegoating (which is a jewish practice, be aware when you partake in it) random individuals on the street, your neighbors, the innocent people you have access too, y'know -- it doesn't really harm the baby eating elites in anyway. it's just you barbarically offering a kidnapped blood sacrifice to your own vengeful tribal god. not cool, bro.
when i think about the old testament god, he seems like the collective manifestations of not only a people's wounded pride, but their broken hearts. the desperate, anguished scream of someone lost, alone in the wilderness, dire to hang on, capable of making miracles, but as he says -- jealous, vengeful. is he the leader you need?
is he the leader you think you need?
it seems to me, when you look at how this entity behaves -- demanding exclusive veneration, demanding obedience, commitment, alteration of your body to induce physical numbness and psychological dependence, you could look at him as someone monstrous and hyper-controlling -- or: you could look at his behavior as being in line with how a damaged person behaves during times of extreme duress.
there's still ambiguity over whether the old testament god as depicted is intended to be the creator of the universe, or just the hebrew tribal god. let's say the textual history of the bible is interesting, if you didn't know.
for me, there isn't any. i know that voice. i know that voice that says I AM YOUR LORD, THY GOD. i hear how it trembles. hear how it verges on tears, full of love, full of fury, and abandonment.
if the ashkenazi people aren't the originators and benefactors of this entity, they've accepted him and grown with him as one would in any partnership. if they're not the originators of the trauma of a lost homeland, the displacement, they are its inheritors, for they found in this being what they were looking for, their heart's most cherished desire.
The Abrahamic Religions. The God of Abraham.
one seldom gets called an antisemite if they're critiquing the Abrahamic Religions in general, cause that makes you specifically look more like a pagan than a white supremacist --y'know. despite the plenty of overlap. makes it clear, by what you prioritize with your speech, that you value the freedom of religious practice and freedom from persecution rather than freedom to engage in it. maybe i'm interested in two things here.
the character and the personage of the Prophet Abraham, being the originator of this entity, and thus the three corporate religions which worship him (to say nothing of all their own messy interrelations.)
tho also ... how i'm so confused and amused by bigoted comments, that i wonder if i'm secretly racist. i feel that if i'm amused, it must mean one part of me recognizes the insinuation and the other doesn't, so I can't be sure... bro am I laughing cause I think the insinuation is true or because it's stupid? why do most of the jews i know crack up hardest at jew jokes? do you know how many people go around daily experiencing vaguely racist things then blowing it up in their mind, reinforcing the absolute worst assumptions, then giving up on people for no good reason?
that's pretty dumb, right?
you're all so lucky i have the balls to breach topics you won't while talking about dicks. holy shit. if i demanded you worshipped me, that'd probably be better for most a ya cause independent thought is scary, huh?
if i gave up on you, that would validate you're already shit and you could then tell yourself it's okay not to try. whew. safe. fucking loser.
the more i talk, the more sure i am i've always already known myself and it's absolutely everyone else in the universe who's a fucking mystery.
which, hey? why would i be complaining?
bro, i fuckin love mysteries!
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hcmoisms · 6 years
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INTRODUCING CAPTAIN ABRAHAM KLINE...
(also a friendly reminder that Bram has an open starter HERE).
&. basics
FULL NAME: Abraham Charles Kline
NICKNAMES: Bram
FACE CLAIM: Hugh (mother fuckin) Jackman
AGE: fourty
SEXUALITY: homosexual
DATE OF BIRTH: 03/03/1978
GENDER/PRONOUNS: male/he/him
RELATIONSHIP STATUS: single
OCCUPATION: dog breeder/ranch owner & ex navy seal.
&. personality
USUAL HANG OUTS: his ranch, the park, the forest, beach 
HOBBIES: sailing, woodworking, hiking, hunting
FIVE POSITIVE TRAITS: practical, caregiver, adventurous, energetic, clever
FIVE NEGATIVE TRAITS: stoic, reserved. gloomy, impatient, hot-headed
DRINKS, SMOKES, & DRUGS: yes, yes & no.
&. verses
supernatural verse only.
&. wanted connections
ROMANTIC.
THE CAPTAIN & THE CONMAN — This is the guy who stole Bram’s identity. Bram is still shamefully infatuated with him, honestly. I’d love it if he was a vampire or some other kind of creature. The conman is charismatic and charming as all hell, a total wizard with his words and an expert manipulator. (FC suggestions: Luke Evans. John Barrowman or any male fc who can play 33-45!)
MARRY ME A LITTLE — This is Bram’s ex-fiancee. She hates him for having broke her heart the way he did, and is trying to get revenge. (FCs suggestions: any female fc who can play 33+!)
literally this boy needs a healthy relationship
PLATONIC.
HELPER — Someone who works on the farm with Bram & helps to raise dogs??
I THINK I KNOW WHY THE DOG HOWLS AT THE MOON — a fellow lone wolf with whom Bram sort of gets on with? As in, they have a mutual agreement to keep off each other’s territory & hang out sometimes.
TOY SOLDIERS — a fellow ex-soldier or seal who understands Bram’s struggles. Bonus points if they know about the scandal.
GET THIS BOY AN ACTUAL FRIEND.
ENEMIES.
HUNGRY LIKE THE WOLF — A fellow werewolf who is either trying to get Bram to join their pack or is territorial.
The con-man & ex-fiancee also belong here honestly??
&. filled connections
ROMANTIC.
none.
PLATONIC.
none.
ENEMIES.
none.
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Divine Scourge (Cleric Archetype)
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(art by Kaue Padau on Artstation)
 In mythology and in fantasy stories, you sometimes run across stories of folk that get divine curses laid upon them. Sometimes these are because the mortal in question did something that terribly provoked the deity’s wrath, deserved or not. Others simply ran afoul a particularly cruel divinity.
Regardless, divine curses are a long-standing trope in stories, but while many such tales have the deity themselves showing up to deliver the curse, in a world where priests are empowered by the divine, such curses might be meted out by them instead. In fact, there are some that dedicate their lives to this role, becoming divine scourges.
Now, obviously, this particular profession is not common among goodly gods, save for the most focused on law and/or just punishment for the wicked. However, more neutral deities might have scourges meting out punishment according to the principles of their faith, anything from teaching good life lessons to just punishment for grievous wrongs, to pure vindictiveness. And of course, evil gods often delight in causing suffering regardless of the justification.
In order to pursue their path of punishment, these clerics are granted not just traditional clerical power, but also divine magic resembling the more hostile side of witch hexes, adding an edge of old world vengeance to the class, as we shall soon see.
 These bringers of misfortune on gain power over one domain, specifically the subdomain of curses, which is an extension of luck. With it, they gain a combination of spells and abilities that both protect and remove curses, as well as bestow them on foes. This is true even for deities that do not grant the curse subdomain, or even the luck domain.
They also learn a variety of hostile hexes from a short list, including those that blight the land, leave cursed wounds, inflict curses with a glare, cause unluck, leave mystical marks, unnerve beasts, cause pain, freeze foes from within, poison wounds, inflict nightmares, and sympathetic wounds on attackers.
With both a variety of hexes and the curse subdomain, these clerics can be masters of both short and long-term debilitation, but also a source of freedom from such curses as well. Without channel energy their ability to heal is limited, but I would still recommend a build dedicated to dropping debuffs on foes and protections for allies.
 The idea of a divine scourge, of a mortal being the agent of a deity’s wrath has a lot of vibes from ancient beliefs like the pantheon of ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, and so on, but also some elements of the early days of the Abrahamic faiths as well. This flavor of the ancient world is fine and dandy, but I imagine that these clergyfolk will clash with those that believe in mercy over punishment, even within their own faith. With that in mind, they might exist in their own isolated sects which might believe that the mainstream faith is soft and weak, or at least, that their own ways must rarely be called upon. Or if they have power within the faith, they might turn their divine judgement erroneously upon their own, causing them and the surrounding communities to live in fear. Of course, if they cross certain lines, they may find their power waning as well.
  With snarling voices hurling invectives, the gargoyles of Volkas Pass are more than mere raiders, they are layers of curses. Indeed, they follow the god of Hatred, and their cruel magic has earned them the name Stone Furies.
 Far from the city, they say that one of the great scourges, the priests of punishment from the days of the war, still lives, refusing to give up his divine power to curse and punish though there remains no need. Most avoid him as an ill omen, but there a few who remember the dark times as well as a man who would not allow himself to forget.
 The lone priest warned that the entire kingdom would pay for their liege’s cruelty, and though he was mocked, the truth of his warning has been made manifest. It started slow, with strong workers suddenly becoming overcome with a weakness that would not past, and scholars suddenly finding their own writings confusing and impenetrable. However, now bouts of misfortune and ennui give way to outright plague, and horrible rat kings manifesting in the sewers.
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tankengine-codes · 4 years
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ACCIDENTAL REVOLUTIONS
VIBE ONE / VIBE TWO
“Fantasy. Lunacy. All revolutions are, until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilities.” - david mitchell
It all starts at a bar.
It starts with a conversation at a bar in Galli that he never thought would go anywhere with a few patrons that came in every night for a few drinks, a few patrons that he knew the names of, knew the drinks they got like the back of his hands. Whiskey, rum, vodka. The man tells them that he’s tired, tired of the taxes, tired of feeling like he has no freedom- he’s stuck and there’s no other way he can go. All it was meant to be was a vent.
That vent, that little rant behind the bar as he poured his hundredth drink that night, it became a revolution.
Or it will, at least. I like to imagine this is all just starting out, still in the baby stages. He’s just talked to his regulars, and they are slowly spreading the word. And by slowly, I mean pretty damn quick. One day, those three regulars come together and they talk about how he’s right, so they start telling people, and those people tell their families and friends, and the cycle keeps going. What no one expected was for this little revolution to end up with so many people ready to back it up.
So, they take their people to the bar, and they ask what’s next. They have people, they have a goal, so what’s the plan, boss? The only thing is.. Sean Abraham, aka Boss has no clue. He had no clue that a revolution was even beginning, but he stands tall, looks everyone in the eyes and tells them revolutions take time. 
He’s technically not wrong, but now he’s stuck in something far bigger than himself, and he has no clue what to do. He’s just going to go with the flow and hope things go well.. But then again, things always go wrong, don’t they? 
Eventually they’ll gain enough traction that they need to move base, and they’ll basically be planet hopping, going down the line of planets, maybe get stranded for a while on acedia? Who knows where their journey will take them? All I know is that it’s going to be a pretty wild ride for everyone involved!
Feel free to dm tommy on the to be human discord to find out more on the roles of the revolution! 
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nyc-uws · 4 years
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Friends
My new old friend. An odd formulation. And yet….
The Hedgehog Review Wilfred M. McClay
I hadn’t ever considered the matter until a few years ago, when I heard a dreamy little number by the jazz pianist Alan Pasqua called “My New Old Friend.” It’s a strictly instrumental affair, a subdued and contemplative piano trio, full of subtle unresolved suspensions and wafting dissonances, conveying a late-night mood of solitary and slightly bittersweet remembrance—one of those moments of quiet grace when the passage of time slows to a crawl, past and present seem to intermingle, and joy and sorrow become hard to tell apart.
But it was the song’s title that captured my attention, even more than the music itself. My new old friend. An odd formulation. But one I’d been looking for, without even knowing it.
It’s not obvious to me why I should have been looking. In a different moment, I would have been far more likely to react against the phrase, striking it down with a reflex of indignant linguistic puritanism. After all, the noble term friend has already been so diluted and cheapened in our times, like so many of our most important words of personal and social connection, that it has become like the Platte River, a mile wide and an inch deep. Such cheapening has occurred not only in our personal usage but in public discourse. When Abraham Lincoln concluded his First Inaugural Address with a heartfelt plea to the seceding Southern states to recall that “we are not enemies, but friends,” the word had great emotive power, describing the very bonds of public affection that were being sundered. Such earnest usage has all but disappeared. Friend as we now use it embraces a particularly large portfolio of evasions and line-blurring maneuvers, especially useful in the hands of diffident teenagers, as in this familiar exchange: Mother: “Who was that on the phone?” Daughter: “A friend.”
As this example illustrates, friend can designate anything from a mysterious or otherwise uncategorizable love interest to a study-group classmate to a business associate to a helpful neighbor to the “friends” who accumulate on people’s social media accounts, where they are as plentiful and enduring as the daily harvest of low-tide sea shells on a beach. The television series Friends (1994–2004) became one of the most successful sitcoms in TV history by depicting a collection of very attractive twenty- and thirtysomethings “hanging out” together as a kind of quasi-family, a light and frothy fantasy that transposed the social life of the college dorm to not-quite-adult life in implausibly toney Manhattan apartments. For its characters, friendship was that relatively flexible and easygoing state of social relations before the hardening categories of adulthood come along.
This resonated with American audiences, including aging boomers who were nostalgic for the friendships of their college days. But when we’re confronted with the far profounder ideas about friendship put forward by Aristotle, the greatest of all writers on the subject, or by C.S. Lewis in his splendid account in The Four Loves, we tend to be nonplussed. Such heights seem beyond us. For Lewis, Friends would have to be considered a show about companions, not friends, since friendship is something weightier and inherently exclusive. In this, Lewis was in tune with the earlier observations of Aristotle: “Great friendship too can only be felt towards a few people…. One cannot have with many people the friendship based on virtue and on the character of our friends themselves, and we must be content if we find even a few such.” Far from being something breezy and easy, like a glass of sparkling spring wine, friendship in the fullest sense is a rare and precious thing, much more like an old single-malt Scotch.
As I’ve said, the Platte River principle has come to apply to many of our words of human connection, perhaps partly reflecting the automatic generosity of the democratic spirit, and also the way we employ the language of false personalization in our speech, routinely appropriating the most charged words in doing so. Some of this is vaguely sinister, as when corporate bosses try to persuade us to think of ourselves as part of “the Sprocket Corporation family,” especially at times when the budget needs cutting. Community is a word that comes in for similar abuse, and has been almost emptied of meaning in this respect, standing for any aggregation that it is politically or financially useful to treat as an aggregate. Here, as in the use of the language of family and almost any other affective term, Silicon Valley has led the way to perdition.
So you can see why I would be initially averse to the idea of “new old friends,” which might sound at first like more linguistic inflation, the equivalent of preripped jeans or “distressed” furniture, something new that is made out to look old, and thus is doubly phony. To make matters worse, as my old friends can readily confirm, I have for years been prone to saying, in an earnest imitation of Shakespeare’s Polonius, that “you can always make new friends, but you can never make new old friends.” And it’s true. There is something irreplaceably special about the people who have been down the road with you—those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried—and whose friendship has endured through the sheer passage of years, through the steady artillery of time, even if such friendships lack the lively intensity of newer ones. People who “knew you when” can never be replaced, and a wise person will not seek to do so.
But such friendships have their limitations. For one thing, it’s not always helpful to be reminded constantly of who you were “then.” Life does move on. And there is also something very true in the Simon and Garfunkel song “Old Friends,” about the two men who “Sat on their park bench like bookends…. / Winter companions… / Lost in their overcoats / Waiting for the sunset…. / Memory brushes the same years / Silently sharing the same fear.” There is a bond being described, if an unutterably sad and resigned one. It is an existential bond of the deepest and most universal sort. But there are some respects in which this “old friendship” falls short of the fullness of friendship as Aristotle and Lewis describe it.
And here I come to the heart of the matter: There is no denying the phenomenon of a new old friend. I have acquired a couple of them in recent years, people with whom I have found a near-instant bond whose depth is hard to explain, whose friendship feels as old and rooted as an ancient sequoia, even though I know it is as new as a sapling. Moving about in such friendships, I’m wary at first, thinking they may be too good to be true, fearing to trust too much in the sensation of oldness, fearing, much as one fears when living in a foreign culture, that my habitual ways of being will suddenly be misperceived or strike the wrong note. There is something deeply mysterious about such friendships, and mystery induces caution, as well as awe.
But perhaps the mystery has to do with the mystery of friendship itself. Lewis remarks that what finally hold us together as friends are not the “unconcerning things,” facts of biography and shared experiences. Of course, one brings the residue of all such things to the activity of friendship. But the friendship itself stands apart from such things. It concerns itself, Lewis argues, with nothing less than a shared quest for the truth about things. In the very act of sharing in this one thing, friends gain access to an astonishing degree of freedom. “In a circle of true Friends,” Lewis insists, “each man is simply what he is: stands for nothing but himself”:
That is the kingliness of Friendship. We meet like sovereign princes of independent states, abroad, on neutral ground, freed from our contexts. This love (essentially) ignores not only our physical bodies but that whole embodiment which consists of our family, job, past and connections.
Friendship represents a rare kind of freedom, an “exquisite arbitrariness and irresponsibility,” as Lewis puts it, precisely because it liberates us into a way of being fully human that rises above all the desiderata and conditioning factors that otherwise impinge upon us, the very factors that form what we are now accustomed to call our “identity.” But why shouldn’t an entirely new friendship have that power, as much as an old one has? Or perhaps…even more, since it is no longer the facts, but rather the search, the quest, that the new old friends share?
Lewis was not alone in connecting the disinterested love of truth and goodness with the highest forms of friendship. “The real community of man,” wrote Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind, “in the midst of all the self-contradictory simulacra of community, is the community of those who seek the truth, of the potential knowers, that is, in principle, of all men to the extent they desire to know.” Bloom, too, understood that the quest for truth is what unites us most deeply and most reliably. The greatness of the Great Books, in his view, was their ability to lift our minds and thoughts out of the realm of contingency and “fact,” into a realm higher and more essential, more conducive to the flourishing of friendship—not as a goal of the quest, but as a byproduct of it.
Maybe this way of phrasing it will sound too specific to the academic world. And not everyone has the time or inclination to reread Plato’s Republic every few months (preferably in Greek). But the larger truth, that the deepest friendship can take root in the sparsest biographical soil if some high and shared animating spirit is present, seems right. I’m guessing that’s how we make new old friends. Though in the end, it is a mystery.
Wilfred M. McClay is G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty and director of the Center for the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma. His latest book is Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story (2019).
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/friends
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eldritchsurveys · 4 years
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957.
5k Survey LIV
2751. What's the most interesting assignment you ever had in school? >> I’m not sure. I hope people realise that my last moment in any kind of school was in December of 2005 (and my last moment in high school was June of 2004). I can barely be arsed to remember anything from 15 years ago unless it’s trauma-related. 2752. What's the most interesting thing you ever had to do for work? >> I thought working as a merch seller for local bands was very interesting. I had a lot of fun. 2753. Do you feel: insignifigant? unable to evoke change? like one person can't change the world? like one life and one person's suffering doesn't mean very much? If you answered yes to any of those can you describe why in detail? >> I, personally, feel insignificant fairly often, but that doesn’t extend to thinking that other people are also equally insignificant.  2754. Do you feel like you could contribute as much to society as ____ has? Albert Einstein: Abe Lincoln: Franz Kafka: Jesus Christ: >> Just because I already have self-esteem problems doesn’t mean I’m going to sit here and consciously make “do you have as much worth as these people” comparisons. 2755. Are you aware that your brain is the same size as Albert Einstein's brain? Do you realize that you have the same number of hours in a day as Abraham Lincoln? Did you know that Franz Kafka wrote all of his amazing litterature during his lunchbreaks at work? Did you know that we are all made of matter and that you are made of the Same Thing that Jesus was made of? Do you still believe that you couldn't contribute as much to society as they did? If yes than WHY? >> This is an immensely irritating line of questioning, I hope it’s over now.
2756. Is your mind in the gutter? >> My mind is not in the gutter. 2757. What do you have to complain about? >> Whatever I want to complain about. 2758. Do you remember rock n' roll radio? >> ... Yes? Pretty sure it still exists, regardless. 2759. Is there such a thing as a food that you burn more calories from digesting than you actually absorb from it? >> I don’t know, try google. 2760. Hey, if you've gotten this far than you and me go way back. We've been hanging out for a while now and I gotta know..do you like me? >> --- 2761. What are you doing, Dave? >> --- 2762. As far as love goes do you feel it is better to become complete before looking for someone or find someone who completes you? >> People are already complete, despite however they may feel about themselves. I don’t understand what it means to look for someone who “completes you”, that sounds immensely absurd to me. So I guess I can’t really answer this question except to say “I don’t think people should be thinking about relationships in these terms...” 2763. What attracts you about the opposite sex (or same sex, or both sexes)? >> --- 2764. Do you need people or do you not need anyone? >> Of course I need other people. The fact that I have an attachment disorder is a direct result of my inherent need for other people’s love and support going repeatedly ignored. Even besides that, I need other people to physically survive, because that’s how ecosystems work, and believe it or not, we are still part of nature and beholden to its cycles and systems. 2765. Is selfishness always bad? Is selflessness always good? >> No. 2766. Do you feel like your life is being controlled by a power structure? >> Of course certain elements of my life as a social creature are controlled by power structures. 2767. Can you name three things in society that send the message that being completely yourself and that looking inside yourself and contemplating what's within is a good thing? >> Sigh. 2768. Can you name three things in society that send the message that materialism and the accumulation of stuff is a good thing? >> The entirety of capitalism. 2769. What is more important, a picture or it's frame? What is more important, spirituality or religion? >> These questions truly do get more baffling as time goes on. 2770. How many definitions can you come up with for the wword 'fuck'? >> I don’t have to come up with definitions, google is right there. 2771. Is it less offensive when a black person says Nigger than when a white person says it? Why or why not? >> The context in which a Black person says it is often a far different context from the one in which a white person says it. So, yes. It usually is less offensive by default, unless the Black person being addressed is uncomfortable with the word even when used in a friendly context. 2772. Do you rationalize often? >> Rationalise what? 2773. Do you believe that america is an imperialist nation? >> I mean, yeah. 2774. Would you agree that: hot topic is the new abercrombie? pink is the new black: you are the new you? >> *stares dully* 2775. Do you have more internet or real life friends? >> I only have Internet friends. 2776. What IS the feeding of 5000? >> The what?? 2777. What's an easy way to make money? >> I don’t know. 2778. What's your favorite slang word and what does it mean? >> I don’t think I have a favourite slang word. 2779. Are you uncomfortable? >> Slightly, because of noise issues. 2780. Is anything definate besides death and taxes? >> Taxes aren’t definite for everyone, but death certainly is. I don’t know what else is that predictable. 2781. Would you rather live fast and die young or live slow and die old? >> Living slow sounds nice to me. However it ends. 2782. Can you name 4 people who have committed crimes against humanity? How do you think they live with themselves? >> Probably, but I don’t feel like it. I don’t care how they live with themselves. 2783. If you could imagine, pure fantasy, any God you could concieve, how would you want God to be? >> I can imagine any god I want to imagine. It’s really not that hard, there are already so many to choose from, even if just to use as a template. 2784. do you think the smashing pumpkins have a strong christian theme? >> I don’t know, I’ve never paid a whole lot of attention to their lyrics. Their songs just sound pretty. 2785. Do you think this survey has a strong christian theme? >> I didn’t think that. I hope I won’t have cause to think it in the future. 2786. Fill in the blank for yourself" Give me ____ or give me death! >> --- 2787. Have you ever heard of the USA patriotism act? Apparently they have passed laws making torture legal. Also the FBI can sneak and peek into ANYONE'S home. They don't have to ask or even tell you they were there. This is already the law. So, whaddaya think? >> I mean, yes, I know that. I live here. 2788. The people in power step all over the average citizen, trying to secure all the power and money for themselves and leave us with no rights and under their control. They have the audacity to do this because they know that we will not lift a finger to stop them. Are they right? >> I don’t know if they’re right or not. I’m also not sure what the fuck powerful-ass finger you think we common folk all have. 2789. The Free State Project is a plan in which 20,000 or more liberty-oriented people will move to a single state of the U.S. to secure there a free society. They will accomplish this by first reforming state law, opting out of federal mandates, and finally negotiating directly with the federal government for appropriate political autonomy. They want to be a community of freedom-loving individuals and families, and want to create a shining example of liberty for the rest of the nation and the world. What's your opinion? Could this work? Why or why not? >> Didn’t a bunch of libertarians want to do this at some point? Anyway, I don’t know if this could work or not. I don’t know nearly enough about any of the elements involved to have an informed opinion about the feasibility of this kind of project. It does sound plenty audacious, though (and way too vague). 2790. Have you ever seen the Neverending Story? Remember when Bastian has to prove his worth by looking in that mirror where you see yourself the way you really are with no pretenses, rationalizations or mental lying? Could you stand yourself if you looked into that mirror? >> I do remember that, vaguely. I wanted to rewatch this movie but then I didn’t get to it in time and HBO took it down :( Anyway, I don’t know if I could stand myself if I looked into a mirror like that. I can’t conceptualise what that experience would actually be like. 2791. What is soilent green? >> Oh, you know. (That’s another movie I’d like to rewatch, in fact.) 2792. What are you proud that you have never done? >> *shrug* 2793. What things are hopeless? >> *shrug* 2794. What Are People For? >> Making Soylent Green out of. 2795. What book do you feel could change someone's life? >> Any book could change someone’s life. 2796. Didja ever want to just walk up to the Bush administration and ask them, 'What the fuck?' >> No, I wasn’t really paying much attention to the administration during that time because I had a lot of personal issues taking up my immediate focus. But from what little I remember about it, it’d be a valid question to ask. 2797. How do you take your coffeee? >> Decaffeinated. 2798. Have you ever played: paintball? lazer tag? which is better? >> I’ve never played these. 2799. In what ways are you lucky? >> A lot of ways, I guess. A lot of fucked up shit has happened, but a fair amount of strangely fortuitous stuff has happened, too. Guess something has to even the other shit out. 2800. If Jesse Jackson wants reparations to be given to black people because he thinks that black people don't have equal opportunities in this country than why does he drive a Jaguar? >> “Black people don’t have equal opportunities in this country” is still a fact of life no matter what the fuck kind of car Jesse Jackson drives. Focusing on his personal “success” or whatever like that is just a diversion from the heart of the matter.
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We can start in the year 1619 with the arrival of twenty African prisoners of war in Point Comfort, Virginia but that would take far too long. Instead let us fast forward through the horrific murders, rampant rapings, brutal beatings, planned starvations and all other inhumanities inflicted upon these “Slaves” and their descendants at the hands of slave masters, slave drivers, and patty rollers to the year 1775. The true beginning of American hypocrisy, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” were words spoken by white men pursuing freedom from servitude even as they denied it to their captives and profited from their suffering. This hasn't been overlooked by historians, nor has it gone unnoticed by the descendants of these Africans. Who as a people, have not only been aware of the duality of this society but have rebelled against its fraudulent existence from the very beginning. The slave revolt was the first form of protest and revolution.  
Fueled by the inhumane treatment of human beings in America, in the colonies, and on the colonized Continent, the fire of this revolution has never stopped! Altered maybe, forms and fashions may vary from boycotts to guerilla warfare attacks on police officers, but without question as we begin to analyze the persistence and perseverance of our people in a collective effort to achieve the rights and freedoms granted to us by God and later spoken of their constitution we begin to understand very simple truths. 
There can be no peace without justice and for every action there is a reaction. As basic as these concepts appear, one glance into a small window of our history allows us to clearly see just how much blood continues to be shed by the actual complexity of these truths. Nat Turner, our revered ancestor, reacted in the only available response. Before him our brothers and sisters that participated in the Stono Rebellion and Gabriel’s Conspiracy reacted, murdered and died. Since then, there have been many movements, riots, protests, and even strategic wars fought, all in reaction to America's failure to live up to its claimed founding principles of equality, freedom, and justice for all! 
The civil war, according to American school books, was a military solution to the blatant discrepancies that existed between the ideals of American liberty and the actual reality of enslaved Africans. Viewed as a way of life for many, violence would be the only option of ending a society and system that was designed to terrorize humans for profit. 
Slavery was after all a way of life many intended to keep, as Abraham Lincoln himself put it: “The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves”. He stated this knowing that slavery in general was in direct opposition to the principles America was founded upon and that a weak foundation will soon crumble anything built upon it. He knew that one never addressed hypocrisy could, would, and should be the cause of civil unrest in America for decades to come. If fact, this martyred President was very aware of Americas true nature, saying: “The slave-breeders and slave-traders, are a small, odious and detested class, among you; and yet in politics, they dictate the course of all of you, and are as completely your masters, as you are the master of your own negroes”. Few people caught on to that simple truth then, and even fewer are aware of it now although we continue to revolt against this small minority today. The 20% of society consisting of racists, seperatist, and supremacist who harass and terrorize people of African ancestory through laws, discrimination, petty tyranny, and direct violence. The so-called 1% responsible for the social and educational systems that breed modern slaves and the corporations that trade their labor, but this is a topic for another discussion and for now we are talking about war. A war in which African People fought with brave honor for our freedom. Comprising 10% of the union army and motivated by the opportunity to claim their rights and freedoms in this concept called America, our ancestors killed and died as warriors. The same way their ancestors did fighting in the War of Independence that brought what would be called the U.S.A. into existence. The truth is history only repeated itself regarding the plight of African Americans. Before the war was even over, any thought of Black People finally enjoying the benefits of a country built on our backs, by our sweat and blood, was nothing more than a fantasy. Although the war’s conclusion did abolish the legal institution of slavery and later resulted in the recontruction of the southern United States however briefly, it also ushered in a new era called Jim Crow and gave rise to the Klu Klux Klan. Both created to perpetuate the subjugation and destruction of Black People. Basically, as state sanctioned white supremacy attacked African Americans with petty laws and designed ordinances, white terrorists lynched and sabotaged those of us succeeding in the American dream. A long recurring nightmare of ours, us being gored at every turn by the two vicious horns of the same sacred bull called capitalism or democracy.
This can be seen simply by analyzing the 1921 Tulsa race riot. After the white mob bombed and burned the wealthy and successful Greenwood district, city officials put restrictions in place to ensure Blacks could not rebuild Black Wall street and would never be compensated for their losses. This is the first time as a people we began to understand that our inclusion into their society was never the plan. In reaction to this reality, Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association of the early 1920’s founded the Black Star Line in order to aid the return of the African Diaspora to our homeland. The opportunity for this exodus was immediately countered by the federal government who used agent provocateurs to stop our repatriation to Africa due to the economic impact America would suffer without the presence of American Africans. Strategically, Marcus Garvey was criminalized and deported, not murdered and made a martyr of for Black People to relic. The overseers only had him removed in the hopes that our ambitions of escape from this constitutionalized plantation would be abandoned and our conformity to a racist system that ensures we are both brutalized and monetized, would continue. Expectations for our future were set high. We were  expected to participate in American society economically as workers, consumers, taxpayers, court fine payers and warehoused inmates. We were also expected to accept the fact that the rules governing American society do not apply to African Americans.                   This presented us with a choice: Accept second class citizenship or bring about change through revolutionary movements that focused on the concept of self determination.
We of course chose to continue the rebellion, resisting injustice and racism in solidarity during an era that we would term as the “Struggle” and voice loudly with calls for “Black Power'' while using phases that would rewrite the meaning of freedom or death like the infamous “Ride and Die”! The Civil Rights era of the 1960’s proved beyond a reasonable doubt, the extent to which the attempt at the reconstruction of this country’s political power to be more fair and equal following the civil war failed. If Blacks were really citizens and were truly as free as the constitution claims it’s citizens are, why was there a need to ask for civil rights, the right to be treated in a civilized manner by uncivilized people? This question has never been answered. In fact, as Black People began to persistently ask for our humanity the only honest answer that we received was assasination. Fred Hampton, Patrice Lamumba, Malcolm, Martin, James Earl Chaney and his honorable associates, a list of our losses too long to continue here. Killed by governments, killed by “recently escaped convicts'', killed by our manipulated own, killed by police, or killed by the white mob after being handed over by the police, they were all slaughtered without remorse actively pursuing the right to be treated like humans.
 The irony of this is in reality (Genetically, Archeologically, Historically) the African is the first human being, the only human group still existing on this planet today who has not interbred with non human species such as the neanderthal and the denisovan.   Understanding this, we can see that all of our past and present revolutions can be translated into a simple request from a people who should want ruthless revenge. Having been enslaved, freed without reparations, subjugated economically and socially thru maliciously designed laws, and oppressed thru systematic racism, surprisingly, we only ask that White America confront it’s hypocrisy. A revolutionary request, only in the context of asking the white power structure, to explain how they expect two concepts of justice to exist in this world without continued social disorder. We have been aware of how racism has been maintained in America through legislation from the state and federal government for decades. We know all about police sponsored brutality and murder which is a direct result of this racist legislation. We are being openly attacked by militias, hate groups, cowards, and pawns. Randomly targeted for termination by police and white terrorists who the media politely refers to as “troubled individuals''. Sadly, it has been made very clear to Black people through court precedents and rulings that very few of these savages will be prosecuted for committing crimes against us.
This is why the revolution still continues in the year 2020. There has never been an actual effort to right these wrongs. 401 years after the first African slaves arrived chained on American shores. 155 Years after slavery supposedly ended. 55 years after civil rights were granted to African Americans by law and integration occurred. 3 years after the first Black President. And as you are reading this now probably less than 1 day since the murder of a Black Man in America by a police officer openly or by a race soldier in secret. We have tried to reason with the government, the corporate elite, the scholars, and their uneducated citizens concerning our oppression only to have the narrative of our conversations changed from their hidden hand in our destruction to topics like Black on Black Crime. We have burned our property, their property, looted their stores, and robbed their banks in rebellion. We’ve marched more miles than any other people to bring attention to injustices we suffer while carrying signs advertising our grief and expressing our demands. We have now begun to carry assault rifles. 
The time of White supremacy is over. The advantage of surprise and a monopoly on weapons is over. The ability to pretend to be righteous while using division and deception to conquer and control unnoticed is over. The tactic of being the aggressor while simultaneously playing the victim is over. The ability to manipulate the minds of the masses to see African people as inferior, ignorant, and dangerous thru biased news coverage and stereotypical movie and television portrayals is over. The malicious deflection of all qualities, traits, and innate desires of our colonizers upon Black people is over. It is known that the very men incapable of constraining themselves in the act of murder, rape, and robbery have been attaching these very characteristics to the poeple they have been and currently are robbing, raping, and murdering. We are all aware that when it comes to “Western” history, culture, religion, knowledge, and identity the #1 world exploiter is a liar. A burner of books. A suppressor of truth. A thief of other peoples creations and accomplishments. A “race” prone to unimaginable and unnecessary violence. Knowing exactly who the enemy is our revolution continues. Until now we have done most of the dying and endured all of the suffering in America but this has only strengthened us. This strength makes us despised even more. Today it still remains that for every 10 Black People who assert their right to life and liberty there are 15 selfish and soulless individuals who pursue their happiness attempting to deny us ours. Until this conflict is resolved we can not and will not stop revolting in an unjust, corrupt, and racist system designed to maximize our exploitation. This is a revolution described by our ancestor Malcolm X as being “ by any means necessary” because he knew back then what many of us are just beginning to learn now. You can only speak to violent people in the language they understand: Violence. We have exhausted all of the non-violent methods of negotiation with those who oppose our liberation and self determination. For all of our marching and petitioning at best we have been given token positions and symbolic street signs to distract and deflect us from the fact that we have not achieved true freedom and actually remain slaves without natural rights. This is unacceptable! The time for revolutionary change is now. Our real community activists like Willie D repeat with the same tone the deepest feelings in the American African community that there will be “No Mo’ Talk”, I agree. We’ve waited long enough. The revolution in progress  continues but the generation to end it is this one. Umshini wami!
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l-o-n-e-b-e-a-r · 2 years
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Happy 4th Of July 2022 Quotes Wishes Messages For Friends
So flexibility influences us to feel and carry on with our life without limitations, it gives us the chance to satisfy our fantasies and finish our every desire. So we ought to recall forget the individuals who accomplished opportunity for us, and we should regard them and know the significance of freedom. In this day and age, individuals commend each event in an extraordinary advanced manner with photographs transferring on their profile and offering fourth Of July 2022 Images to their companions and others via web-based networking media. Here we are giving you the chance to get the autonomy day HD photographs, HD backdrops, pictures for totally free.
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Happy 4th Of July 2022 Quotes Wishes Messages For Friends
Praise the birthday of America by sending an assortment of brilliant and charming Happy Fourth of July Pictures alongside warm wishes and welcome to all your kindred Americans. Also, make this day somewhat more energizing by downloading this Happy 4th of July Quotes for Facebook and please everybody around you an extremely Happy fourth of July!! Here we have likewise transferred spectacular fourth of July Pictures to Share on Facebook to have a shaking festivity this promising occasion.
Let eàch one of us màke à promîse to ourselves thàt às long às we lîve, we wîll help Àmerîcà grow înto à better nàtîon wîth eàch pàssîng dày. Happy 4th of July to you. The flàg stànds there wàvîng out to us wîth joy. The stàrs în heàven àre gleàmîng wîth prîde bàck àt us. The flowers àre smîlîng àt us wîth delîght. Everyone îs celebràtîng for we hàve done them proud. Long lîve Àmerîcà!
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Mày àll of you hàve à very Happy 4th of July“I believe in America because we have great dreams, and because we have the opportunity to make those dreams come true.” – Wendell L. Wilkie Happy Independence Day USA QuotesWe is the land of the free, we are the home of the brave. Let’s pay tribute to our brave American Heroes on this special day and forever. Happy Independence Day!fourth of July is about red, white and blue, the stars, stripes, history, patriotism, pride, and BBQ parties. In any case, you commend, we have endeavored to assemble fourth of July Pictures to Color that you will definitely appreciate with your children. Look at this novel and rich fourth of July Pictures to Print and Color for nothing of cost. Simply ahead and gather these astounding fourth of July Pictures to Print accumulation.
Happy 4th Of July Messages
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Autonomy influences us to feel free and carries on with our life the way we need, do what we need. A slave man can't be upbeat, his life is dormant and can't do anything with his longing. Numerous destinations are giving Happy Fourth Of July Images, Or Independence Day Images 2017. However, we are giving fourth of July pictures free download and that too in HD quality.
“I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.” – Abraham Lincoln
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“As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protection of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.” – George Washington
Î feel so proud to be à pàrt of the most powerful country în the world. Î promîse to be à good cîtîzen of my country în the best of my càpàbîlîtîes. Happy Independence day to àll my brothers ànd sîsters.
Mày the fîreworks of prîde, solîtude ànd love for your country dwell în your heàrt ànd în the heàrts of àll our Àmerîcàn brothers ànd sîsters. Long lîve Unîted Stàtes Of Àmerîcà! Here’s wîshîng you à Happy 4th of July.
Celebràte the power of prîde, couràge ànd fàîth, thàt we àll shàre. Let us àll sàlute the spîrît of Àmerîcà. Happy 4th of July.
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Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, the first novel to the popular Peculiar Children series and now turned into a film, was written by author Ransom Riggs and published on June 7, 2011. It claimed the top spot on the New York Time’s Best Sellers List for children’s chapter books on April 29, 2012 after forty-five weeks on the list, and staying there for 25 weeks more.
The novel tells of the story of Jacob Portman, an ordinary boy who soon discovers he was not-so-ordinary all along, after the mysterious death of his grandfather Abraham sparks a catalyst of change in him and the unearthing of deep secrets. His grandfather tells him stories of his early years, how he fought in World War 2, and most especially, his peculiar friends and headmistress Miss Alma LeFay Peregrine from his childhood home in Cairnholm, Wales.
Aside from the usual calling-out of problematic realities that were once treated as social norms and traditions such as discrimination, exploitation, and persecution portrayed in a sinisterly creative way with the Peculiar’s plight against Caul Peregrine and his wights, treacherous Peculiars and the ordinary folk, the story includes an issue even its own contemporaries at this day and age still struggle to talk about openly: mental health and illness.
Witnessing his grandfather’s cold-blooded death and holding his twisted, dying body in his arms, his blood seeping onto him is traumatic enough. Seeing the hideous monster (they’re called Hollowgasts) of his most deep-seated fears stare right at him in the middle of a dark woods as he held his grandfather’s mangled corpse is another thing entirely. A loved one dying a gruesome death and a close encounter with a dangerous monster, all rolled into one mess of a traumatic event. He develops acute stress disorder because of this, which later leads on to ASD’s more famous cousin: post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD for short. It’s those symptoms of frequent flashbacks of the event, panic attacks, nightmares that leave him bolting up in his bed and screaming, disturbed sleep patterns, difficulty doing basic tasks (going to school, talking to people) and a surly, unfocused attitude that present themselves as the aftermath of his traumatic experience. For those of us who’ve suffered from PTSD, ASD or any other trauma-induced mental illness, we all know it can’t get any truer than that.
You know what else is also true? How no one really took him seriously.
His parents made jokes about his condition and his experience. His only friend didn’t believe him, and even said he should stop thinking about all of it or else he might actually come down with a mental illness “Keep talking about monsters and they’re gonna put you away. Then you really will be Special Ed.”
You don’t even need to go through what Jacob went through to know that kind of attitude sounds awfully familiar.
Despite the gravity of it all and the possible misinterpretation by potential readers of the book, Ransom Riggs does not shy away from exposing the ugly truths about mental illnesses and trauma, and how devastating they already are on their own without the toxic attitude so many people still have towards them. It’s liberating, in a way, because it gives us more than a story of rebellion against the exploitation and persecution of minorities, which has been present in literature for the past decades, if not centuries (Les Miserables rings with this theme, and it’s a classic). It dives into the recent, nebulous and highly controversial topic of mental illness, and fishes out for us a piece of literature that readers with mental health issues have always longed to read and relate to, but never really knew until now. Although not the main theme of the Peculiar Children series, it brings to the table a glimpse of life with a mental condition, specifically one that was caused by trauma, in its raw and true form (save for some obvious elements of fantasy, like the Hollowgasts and Peculiardom).
And for many of us who were/are bent (not broken, we with mental complications should never be seen as broken because we aren’t, we were never broken because of this), this is another leap to the ever-nearing goal of holding in our grasps the freedom from mental health stigma.
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dixie78 · 6 years
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The difference in between your dream job and your dream job
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Prior to I started my career, I worked in tasks unassociated to my training. One day, I discovered myself telling a pal-- a partner in a law office-- about what I believed I wished to do in the future. At the time, I was working as an assistant and feared getting stuck there forever.My lawyer
buddy said: Beware what you wish for. Several legal representatives on the partner track at his law company, he said, wished to be their executive assistants. The stress was too much. They wished for less complexity.I understood at the time that his words weren't sensible, nor did they use to my particular circumstance. Looking back, I see that I was imagining a dream job, while my good friend was discussing a dream task. They are two entirely different ideas, though considering one can help you do better in the other.Dream tasks versus fantasy tasks I'm a coach to executives who need to make complex choices every day and whose time is constantly
in demand. A great deal of them are managing the results of chronic stress.But I understand that deep down inside, they don't want to quit the substance of their jobs or the responsibility that occurs with it. They just desire more time to rest and recuperate, and have higher flexibility and control in their individual lives. If they fantasize about being an executive assistant, they don't precisely wish to trade locations with one-- they are envisioning a level of flexibility that their current job isn't offering them, whether it is really better"over there. "A dream task is something that thrills you. You're probably aware of the obstacles, however you aspire to tackle them anyhow. A dream job is something that lets you escape reality( like the monotonous and unpleasant elements of your dream task). Understanding how they relate to each other can help you to enhance the quality of your working life.What's in a fantasy?Maura is a department president at an international media firm-- the sort of function she dreamed of while getting an MBA, beginning a household, and buying a home in a pricey
city. The dream task to which her mind drifts when times are difficult? Waitressing, which she did throughout summers in college. Candace directs a multi-tiered R&D group at a distinguished humanitarian company and thinks about teaching Pilates.The psychoanalysts Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok specify fantasy as anything that doesn't effect a topographical shift on truth. In other words, dream provides a component that we might be missing from our dream tasks, however it doesn't alter the status quo or in fact make our
lives that better, or worse.I've learned that"dream jobs" supply excellent hints regarding what we currently do not have in our work. When we recognize that specific aspect, we can determine how to present it into our present position without constantly losing focus daydreaming about it.Let's go back to our examples-- when Maura is thinking about being a waitress, she isn't wanting that she can trade her high-powered role for waiting tables. What she is actually yearning is a sense of humankind and service-- which can be tough to come by in an earnings-focused-- and sometimes extremely transactional-- environment.
Candace is desperate to extend in her role as a leader of R&D, but she feels constrained by the bureaucracy at her company. To her, Pilates represents that freedom of movement she is yearning to make.How dream tasks can enhance our lifestyle With this knowledge in mind, we can discover to put fantasies to operate in the service of our learning and development. Our relationships with ourselves and our relationships&at and to work will be stronger for it.Maura can continue to develop her management design so that she purchases, instead of extracts from, her team. She can also prompt her direct reports to share more of themselves-- by opening up about where she herself is coming from, and her vision of the future. Candace can exercise her creativity and work on a proposal that would benefit the R&D department, or handle a brand-new cross-functional job that necessitates the movement she craves.Fantasy can include richness to your life when you learn to take advantage of it. Identifying the aspects that attract you to the fantasy function will assist you to recognize what you're missing out on (and yearning)in your current job. You are then in a better position to include that into your everyday duties. One day, you may find that your old fantasy task has run its course. Do not hesitate to let your mind wander a little-- you just might discover a hint regarding what's next.
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thebeardedbuddha738 · 6 years
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Welcome to Freedom Without Borders, to the start of my new life, and maybe yours!
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Oh hi there! You caught me in the middle of something, But I can put it aside to welcome you here; just give me a second to tidy up and slip into something a bit more comfortable... 
*rustle rustle* *shift shuffle*
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There.
Welcome to my little plot of internet! I am known by many names, but lately, it’s been either Old and Miserable or Jon. Feel free to use either, tho Jon is easier/faster to spell/type.  :)
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I can hear you now: 
“What the hell is going on here?”, you say in wonder and amazement (yes, those are the words you used) as you read along.
And I say to you: 
“I don’t really know, myself...”
I’ve been re-evaluating life lately, and I need a place to keep track of my thoughts, my travels and my self, so I created this place to document my journeys and, maybe, in the process, help others learn, as I have. By learn, I mean understand that life is what you want it to be, not what you think it has to be. 
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“But Jon,” you say, “we know that already!” 
I thought so, too, friends. But what I thought I knew about life, while, in some ways, was off a bit. 
(Disclaimer: The next bit may sound sad, but it’s not meant to be, I promise! It has a happy end!)
For years, I was happy. I had met my wife in high school, and it was true love; I often say to her, “I heard birds chirping when I saw you for the first time” and “The light got brighter when I met you”, and if you have ever been in true, absolute, all-encompassing love, you know exactly what it was like. I knew this woman would make me happy for the rest of my life, and I was right! That was Sept. 1998 - to this day, I still have to wear shades around her. 
We had a son, Jon Jr., born in Jan. of 2007. That day, I vowed to sacrifice all sleep I could for that kid, letting my wife rest often. About a month into his life, he had to go in for emergency surgery (Pyloric Stenosis: the valve at the bottom of his stomach was enlarged, and all the food he ate couldn’t exit his stomach). The doctors were amazing and got him fixed right up, and we were home again to enjoy life.
Skip ahead to the present, and you have a man diagnosed with BPD and realizing the last 20 years of amazement and fantasy were, in my mind, just that... fantasy. 
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I don’t want you to feel bad for me; I’m not looking for pity or sorrow. I don’t see it as that, at least, not anymore. 
It was an experience that led to a life-altering change for me, and the realization that I’ve been living life wrong. For years, I wanted things given to me and I didn’t want to work for it, and it wasn’t until recently I discovered that I can have exactly that! There’s a process to it, and it’s the easiest thing you’ll ever experience! To find that out, just head on over to YouTube and search up Abraham Hicks. When you get it, you’ll know. There’s more, though...
My earlier answer to “What the hell is going on here?” was “I don’t know, myself,” but it could also be “I don’t know myself.” I don’t know me, the real me: it’s been hidden from me, by me, for so long; my thoughts of what I was supposed to do to be happy, my living up to everyone’s standards of what was right, fighting so hard to get what I wanted, convinced it was my way of the highway, not to mention the harsh pills I was on. In living like that, I was finally given the chance to see how simple life could be when I focused on me. When I can find the ability to be happy in wanting what I want in life, and be okay with how things are and in the knowing that what I want is coming, and when, in the meantime, I can delight in what I have and find joy in the little things, the rest of life around me has no choice but to follow along and be amazing. 
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And that is what this blog, this narrative, this EXPERIENCE is all about. It’s about me living my life as a happier, more carefree person, and recording it in these words and pictures. And, in turn, it will help you to see the joy in life, in the simple things, and see how easily you can start to be more happy!
You can expect a lot of things in this place of bizarre-itude:
-Stuff about my day
-Things I am currently into (music, hobbies, games, so on...)
-Talking about life and stuff... 
-Sometimes, I’ll post poems I write
-I’m a man, so there will be some “adult” content, in the form of language - swears and shit, sexy talk ;) , porn... wait... no?  No porn?  Oh... ok  ;) ;)
This is a judge-free zone, and I encourage any and all comments! I want to hear your stories, too! Tell me how you live! Tell me how you be happy! 
Well, boys and ...
... Ladies ... *insert seduction measures*
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Yeah...
It’s about time I start hittin’ the old dusty trail. It’s after 7pm... past my bedtime. I just want to say thanks for stopping by, and I hope to see you again in the next episode... 
Uh... whatever... ciao 4 now!
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hcmoisms · 6 years
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CAPTAIN ABRAHAM KLINE looks an awful lot like HUGH JACKMAN. HE is FORTY and while they're RESILIENT, they have a tendency to get pretty RECLUSE. You’ve probably seen them around Kola listening to I KNOW HIM SO WELL by JOHN BARROWMAN.
&. basics
FULL NAME: Abraham Charles Kline NICKNAME(S): Bram PREFERRED NAME(S): Bram, Kline AGE: 40 DATE OF BIRTH: 03/03/1978 OCCUPATION: Dog Breeder, ex-naval seal. SPECIES: Werewolf PACK AFFILIATION: None.(Lone Wolf)  GENDER: male PRONOUNS: he/him SEXUAL ORIENTATION: homosexual
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main & supernatural verse. Both follow the same story, but in main he isn’t a werewolf.
&. history
“DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL”
That was the motto surrounding homosexuality in the Navy at the time that Abraham enlisted. He was twenty-five, tough as nails and stubborn as an ox. Bram mostly kept to himself, feeling ostracized by the secrets that he held. Both because he was gay, and because he was born a werewolf. The extreme physical prowess blessed upon him by his lycanthropy was enough to send him soaring through the ranks other sailors. By the time Bram finished his training he was the top ranking cadet in his battalion. 
It wasn’t long before they were enlisted for service. The night prior to their departure, a party was held so that the sailors could enjoy one last night on dry land. It was here that Bram met the love of his life — and the bane of his existence. He was graced with the company of a man who seemed to be higher ranking officer. He was handsome, charming and the young werewolf was almost immediately smitten with him. Though he tried to hide it at first, as the two bonded Bram began to sense that the Lieutenant Commander (LTDR) had a similar interest in him.
Their interest in one another began to raise some brows. In particular that of Bram’s current girlfriend. She confronted him about the subject and he feared that she would expose him to the rest of the navy, so he impulsively proposed to her. She accepted. The rest of the party was simply a blur of congratulatory handshakes and shoulder pats, as Bram feigned enthusiasm over the engagement. 
Later that night, during the final dance, the Lieutenant Commander approached Bram once again. He asked him to dance. At first, he only sat motionless, but after some encouragement from his charismatic & handsome superior, Bram agreed. As they danced the entire room STOPPED to STARE. Bram felt their eyes borrowing into him, but all of that faded away when the LTDR actually kissed him in front of everyone. 
The danced ended on a sour note with the inklings of a scandal waiting to happen. But Bram was so infatuated by the stranger he hardly seemed to care. Bram asked the LTDR’s name, prayed that they would meet again, soaking up all the assurances he was given like it they were the force keeping him alive. 
Bram left for his enlistment the next day. As expected, he was shunned by the entire crew for months after their departure. But after a while the hate began to fade from an event long forgotten. He managed to work his way up to the rank of Captain before retiring from the Navy.
When Bram returned home he immediately began looking for the Lieutenant Commander, his head filled with fantasies of the life they could have together. Bram was SHOCKED to find that he was apparently already a resident of town. The LTDR was really a CON-MAN who had stolen Bram’s identity. 
Bram was heartbroken to say the least. His life has never been the same since, struggling against the legal issues of sharing a name with a stranger for whom he can not help but care for, and at the same time fighting off his marriage-obsessed fiancee. Bram decided to at least attempt to follow his dreams. He bought a farm (which was no easy task, given the legal issues involved) and used it to begin a dog breeding business. He now lives alone on the farm caring for his dogs. When he is with them it is the only time Bram feels truly at peace. He feels as though the dogs understand him in their own way. With their help he has developed the closest thing to a wolf-pack he has had since childhood.
&. personality
While Bram might be good at hiding his feelings, he is an emotionally complex individual. He chooses not to show most of his emotions, as he fears it makes him appear weak. As a result, they often manifest in fits of anger and frustration. When he has time to stop and think, Bram can actually be quite calm and kind, but he rarely affords himself the opportunity after being seriously hurt in his past. Bram is the very definition of unapproachable ever having a gruff and grumpy appearance, he can clearly see why people tend to avoid him. and just as well, for he has issues trusting others. If someone manages to get close to Bram he will be eternally loyal to them, almost to a fault. While he is not quick to trust others, he finds great comfort in the presence of animals, and can often be found surrounded by them when having a bad day.
USUAL HANG OUTS: his ranch, the park, the forest, beach  HOBBIES: sailing, woodworking, hiking, hunting FIVE POSITIVE TRAITS: practical, caregiver, adventurous, energetic, clever FIVE NEGATIVE TRAITS: stoic, reserved. gloomy, impatient, hot-headed DRINKS, SMOKES, & DRUGS: yes, yes & no.
&. wanted connections
ROMANTIC.
THE CAPTAIN & THE CONMAN — This is the guy who stole Bram’s identity. Bram is still shamefully infatuated with him, honestly. I’d love it if he was a vampire or some other kind of creature. The conman is charismatic and charming as all hell, a total wizard with his words and an expert manipulator. (FC suggestions: Luke Evans. John Barrowman or any male fc who can play 33-45)
MARRY ME A LITTLE — This is Bram’s ex-fiancee. She hates him for having broke her heart the way he did, and is trying to get revenge. (FCs suggestions: any female fc who can play 30+)
literally this boy needs a healthy relationship
PLATONIC.
HELPER — Someone who works on the farm with Bram & helps to raise dogs??
I THINK I KNOW WHY THE DOG HOWLS AT THE MOON — a fellow lone wolf with whom Bram sort of gets on with? As in, they have a mutual agreement to keep off each other’s territory & hang out sometimes.
TOY SOLDIERS — a fellow ex-soldier or seal who understands Bram’s struggles. Bonus points if they know about the scandal.
GET THIS BOY AN ACTUAL FRIEND.
ENEMIES.
HUNGRY LIKE THE WOLF — A fellow werewolf who is either trying to get Bram to join their pack or is territorial.
The con-man & ex-fiancee also belong here honestly??
&. filled connections
ROMANTIC.
none.
PLATONIC.
none.
ENEMIES.
COOPER JORDAN ( @shtbgs ) / A MOONLIGHT MISTAKE — Bram accidentally turned Cooper into a werewolf. But it’s totally not his fault. After all, the kid got in his way. Now they hate one another
3 notes · View notes
thelordstears · 4 years
Text
Oh I wrote more, what a surprise
"You can't spark a revolution without a flame. And where there is flame, there is casualty, where there is casualty, there is history.” - Corvenstain Bonstellos
“ If I am the enemy of the world for fixing it through violence so be it. May I be remembered as a conqueror despite my efforts to destroy broken dynasties and might I be remembered as a villain for killing those who're damned by their actions.” - Corvenstain Bonstellos
“I can not fight for peace because it isn't what I strive for. Freedom was never once peaceful. Do you think the African Americans who were enslaved earned freedom through peaceful means? Abraham Lincoln had to wage war on his own country to free them. Nothing good is done through peace. Good things come out of harsh circumstances.” - Corvenstain Bonestellos
"Time don't stop for no man woman nor child, so I certainly ain't gon' stop for no man who only wants ta see me fall. The game was rigged from the start, spose that means I oughta cheat, just like them. I got all my cards in the deck, every single one of em wild, because in a wild world, you gon' need some wild, wild cards.” - Scow Witson
“ When life fucks you over, you oughta fuck it back twenty times as hard, cuz your demons ain't gon' take a break, they aren't the hare, and you ain't the slow and steady tortoise. You're a human, so act like it and face your demons god damn snarlin'.” - Scow Witson
“ I'm a demon of a man, shotgun trained on those who wish me nothin' but death. I ain't gon' pretend I'm a good man, I'm a shark swimmin' towards the scent a tangy iron and blood, because my demons bleed, and so they can fucking die, eh?” - Scow Witson
"I can feel teeth sink into my soul, because these days I'm nothing but a feast of misery and bone trodden pathways.” - Roxane Vanderburg
“ I'm holy in the sense that I'll die for my sins. I'll be crucified for everything I've done, but when you fear for your life, you'll do anything to keep it.” - Roxane Vanderburg
“ These days I'm just a ghost, because every piece of pain consumes me and turns me into a relic of the past. If an archeologist dug me up he'd consider me a fossil. Because I am nothing but my past.” - Roxane Vanderburg
“ I'm a man who plays games with people's lives, I'm the gamemaster, the Monopoly man, stealing from a bank of lost souls.” - David Faim
“ One day I shall be nothing but flesh and bone buried in a casket of pearl or pinewood. But before I'm buried beneath the soil, I shall be a man who holds fate in his hands and plays games that lead to fatality. I roll on snake eyes and I could perceive it as faith wanting two bullets in a man's skull. I could land on six and poke six holes into a man's stomach, because that's what the die landed on. “ - David Faim
“ I waged a war on my heart, and I lost it.” - David Faim
"You believe the seers write your destiny. But how do you not see that they have shackled you to a destiny that is not your own? If my fate was in the hands of what I could not see, I would write my own." - David Faim
"In theory if the seers are something to be believed in, if they are not another myth, which I find highly unlikely. They wrote a tale of pain for me in 1990, a boy of eighteen so distraught by the loss of the only family he ever had. They should fear me, because if I discover they are a reality, then I will make them a fiction and cut the strings of fate and become fate itself. You can not control my destiny, for it is not written in the stars nor the threads of a mistresses yarn. For what is fate to someone who doesn't believe?" - David Faim
"Fate itself does not follow the laws of mortality." - David Faim
"I see the reflection of another in my eyes.' - David Faim
“ How can I hope in a world that makes you lick it off of daggers?”  - Hanzo Sabian
“A man once told me I was a victim on his board of sacrificial pawns and knights with blood soaked blades. And I ask the question, am I the pawn, or the knight? Because this dagger of mine is so covered in blood I can't help but weep, but I've also made sacrifices of self.” - Hanzo Sabian
“ I'm on a board playing against a man who controls my fate, I wish to call a stalemate, end this game in a draw, but all I can ever do is be the Queen's Gambit, because in his eyes, I'm just a sacrifice.” - Hanzo Sabian
“My mistakes never cost my life, only other's.” - Hanzo Sabian
"I'm broken, and I don't got the tools to fix that. How is it, that in all my years I've never acquired the means to patch myself up? I can fix up old houses, build a tree house for my sons, but somehow, I can't fix myself.” - Shane Hoffs
“ Somedays I'm dancing with the sun, and other's I have a bottle of barebones whiskey in my hand, and all I can do is remember the past.” - Shane Hoffs
“ Do you really think, the shadows are a friend of yours? They hide you from untrained eyes, but I know what lurks in the night, for it is me.” - Luther Woolhaun
“ I am a hunter, I've hunted every kind of animal thinkable, I've gunned down giraffes in the savannah, defended myself against a lioness with only a dagger and my wit, and I've fought in war, and thus I've hunted men of honor.” - Luther Woolhaun
"The destination ain't worth the damn price, so what am I doing in the struggle of the path?” - Denis Polmer
“ So I'll raise a glass to my past, because all it ever was is poison against my damn lip.” - Denis Polmer
“ This city I roam is a graveyard of bone trodden railroad tracks and corrupt gardens of wickedness.” - Callum Valstone
“ We're crushed underneath the boots of the powerful, they say flowers grow back once stomped on, but when the boot stays, the flower can never spring from the soil without being crushed all over again.” - Callum Valstone
“ How am I to trust anyone, when even preacher's speak with crooked tongues?” - Callum Valstone
”I’m myself, and there’s something unholy about that.” - Sadri Sabian
“ No sun could melt this Arctic storm inside my heart, I'm so cold, that even the brave who'd climb Everest would freeze when walking a mile in my shoes.” - Sadri Sabian
“ I am a fairy tale, but not one re-written for children to laugh at, I am the crows pecking at Anastasia and Drizella, I am Pinocchio hanging from the strings that brought him to life, and I am the dagger that plunged into the Little Mermaid's heart upon being given a difficult choice. I am the dark ending to beloved stories.” - Sadri Sabian
"The less I reveal, the more you wonder what made me who I am. You ask more questions, I flip on your intrigue switch, and leave it on until I decide it so that you get too know one piece of the broken puzzle you'd call my life." - Sadri Sabian
"You'll never know what's best for you. All you can do is hope your choices lead to the right path.” - Solomon Bones
“ When all you can do is cry, remember the moments where you could laugh. Because those memories, are strength. They're fuel that keeps you alive.” - Solomon Bones
“ My brother is my hero, really. He doesn't wear a cape, he doesn't have laser eyes, and he can't fly. He wears scars and burdens, but he also wears a golden heart on his sleeve.” - Solomon Bones
“ Isiah is a strange man, but that doesn't make him a bad one. He's built for this world, his soul wiser than one could ever possibly imagine. It takes such a deep pain to be so deeply wise, and my heart hurts, knowing that he's been through so much. But I know my heart beats for him, and I'll always dance underneath the sun, just to feel warmth upon my skin as we twist and twirl through life with a perpetual smile on our lips.” - Mardeca Blackfall
“ I'm a lioness baring her fangs pouncing on those who do me wrong, a huntress in a world where all I can do is stain my paws red.” - Kadlin Paulson
“ I have scars that cut deep into my soul, but I am strong, I am a warrior of Valhalla, and one day the Valkyries shall claim me, but today is not that day. I have battles yet to fight and victories yet to claim.” - Kadlin Paulson
“ I bare my fangs and pounce into battle, I am no coward and so I shall not cower.” - Kadlin Paulson
“ I've lived through so much, but the tale of the little man is never written in the pages of history, they only ever reside in the pages of his mind.” - Marv Callemritz
“ She is no Countess Bathory, for all we know Elizabeth Bathory was a victim of falsehoods and corrupt politicians. For all we know, she could've been a scared little girl. But Tilda is no scared little girl, she wears savagery as a gown, she dances before me in all of my pain, and she haunts my mind.” - Marv Callemritz
“ My life is a battlefield, just as the Civil War, I wage war upon myself. Because I must conquer these demons that reside inside of me, and find a way to rise despite the war I wage being against the man in the mirror. I must make a revolution of oneself, and instead of dumping boxes of tea into the ocean, I must cast my fear off the side of this haunted ship of my cruel, cruel past.” - Marv Callemritz
“ By God, history is a warning and we ignored it.” - Marv Callemritz
"You're not the fantasies of your mind, kid." - Marv Callemritz
"I could play a game of Russian roulette with six bullets in the chamber and still I'd win, after all, six regrets doesn't change the amount of men dead, only the mind set of the man who watched six bullets fly and saw six good men die.” - Osbourne Smithens
“ My mother is a sweet woman, but she couldn't catch me on my fall from Heaven. I slammed into the concrete of reality, realizing I can't be a scared little boy. I have to be everything my brother put on death's row.” - Osbourne Smithens
“ They say to catch a killer, you have to think like one, analyze their every move and walk a thousand miles in their shoes. So I took a walk inside the man who scarred me's mind, and you know what? I've become a monster, just like him.” - Osbourne Smithens
“ I will not rest until that man is dead, he can run, he can hide, but he can't outrun his past. Because I am, his past. And I am the only bullet left in his revolver of secrets." - Osbourne Smithens
"I'm wrapped in crimson bullet casings and sins. I suppose all I am is an empty magazine to an AK 47, because all I hear is the ricochet of death.” - Scarletta Bonewhistle 
“ I could give you a thousand metaphors, or tell you a thousand lies, but none of it would let you know how I feel, only I know that torture, I suppose.” - Drew Dreadful
“ It's almost as if my mind is the atom bomb, destroying the very man who lets it continue existing. I guess as Robert J. Oppenheimer said, I have become death, destroyer of worlds. But the only world I ever destroyed was my own, because I can't let myself live in the world everyone wants me to see.” - Drew Dreadful
"I am nature's excuse to be violent. I can not find the beauty in the trees when I've seen them crashing onto soldiers and catch fire from an enemies spark, I can not see the river run clear when I've watched men fall into the stream and color it red with the paint that spilled from their veins. I can never know the beauty of the world, when I've always been shown it's ugliness.” - Max Caldiph
“ My life has been an ashy torment of a whisper ever since I was sixteen and stepped into the mines I would soon discover were hell on Earth. Three chipper young'uns stepped into those mines on a dare from foolish boys, and three broken souls would walk out.” - Max Caldiph
“ You could see everything I've been through if you saw the scars I wear on the face I hide.” - Max Caldiph
"I'm a travesty of myself, I present who I am in such a distorted way, that not a soul could believe this is who I truly am. But alas, I look in the mirror, and I see my own worst enemy staring back.” - Armen Barrowmore
“ Ya know, an old friend of mine told me I was falling, and asked why I stand at the edge and leap, after all these years, I think I finally have an answer. Because in all this pain, in all this wickedness I've seen, it's better to jump into freezing waters and wrap yourself in a thick coat of ice to protect yourself from those who seek to shatter you.” - Armen Barrowmore
“ I'm not strong enough to be a hero, so I might as well be a villain, even if it's only in my own damn story.” - Armen Barrowmore
“ She's everything I never knew I needed, the way her eyes sparkle in the madness, I don't know how she makes chaos look so damn beautiful, but she does, by God she does. She's my warrior, she'd fight for me any day, and I'd fight side by side with her. Because this love is worth fighting for, we've fought, struggled, but by God have we always loved a lot louder than we've ever hurt.” - Lucille Ramaswami
“ I've let this world crush me, been caught in a riptide of bad decisions and seen the pale red moon shine against my back as I lifted a brick and ended my first damn life.” - Lucille Ramaswami
"I am a revolution, my heartbeat is a war cry, and so long as I'm still standing, darkness has won. Look around, the darkness outweighs the stars these days and the blood spilt is mostly human, the world is broken, and we're in shambles looking for a purpose, so why not find glory in death? Why not show the world you are no cattle to be plucked out of the fence, you're the bob cat that stalks the mountains and drags livestock into it's little corner of blood and bones and makes death your home.” - Velzwakem Boncoat
“ Behold the truest form of nature, blood soaking the fields.” - Velzwakem Boncoat
“ I follow the law of combat, it's kill or be killed, and I'm just not ready to die.” - Velzwakem Boncoat
"Ze black vaters of my heart capsize ze capability too feel anything but hatred. And yet, Lucille clears ze river, and finds a vay to drag me to ze shores of love.” - Marlene Dayvrack
“ I have had blood on my hands since ze age of thirteen, a hired gun because all I vas made to be, vas a killer. But here I am, cocking my AK-47 for justice instead of greed.” - Marlene Dayvrack
“ I have found family, and though zey are not by blood, zey are ze only family I have ever known. Zey'd swim through shark infested vaters to save me from myself, light a candle in ze dark to show me light peaks through ze cracks, and zey taught me, ze vounds are vere ze light seeps through. Izn't it beautiful? To find strength in other's?” - Marlene Dayvrack
"Not all light equates to holiness, after all, even the flames of Hell emits a pale glow. You can hold onto the light all you wish, cling to the street lights as if they'd save you from a man who wanted you dead, but the stars implode, and not even they have the power to stop it.” - Sam Dellwotfire
“ I could give you lies, I could tell you a thousand stories that aren't truthful, but all I can say, really, is I lost my light, and so I plummeted into the dark.” - Sam Dellwotfire
“ I'd say I have regret on my mind, but I pushed it away and accepted who I am, because if I'm being honest, regret only brought me pain, so why let myself feel pain when it's all I've known? I'd rather cause it, because in a sense, I'm powerful, and that's addicting." - Sam Dellwotfire
"I've changed many times through the years. Not all change is good, but it is inevitable." - Sam Dellwotfire
"Life in all it's simplicity is often to complex for a simple mind to bear. So I suppose life is easy for one who doesn't know what it is to become more than someone following the path given to them." - Sam Dellwotfire
"The past tarnishes the present, more often than not." - Sam Dellwotfire
"These days, science is a sin." - Olympus Woods
"I am doomed to be the last one standing. And if I am not, perhaps the world will spin in a direction that sheds light on the atrocity that is I. I have walked a lie, and so I shall become one." - Olympus Woods
"I've already lost my humanity, so all I have left is immortality. Even if I die, I am immortalized in the sense that I am remembered, all the best things end, all the worst things crumble to ash and dust. And perhaps I was never meant to be of bad intent, or a man of wicked science, but alas it is what I've become. I bound just behind the sun, but never touch it, because if I did I would burn alive and become nothing but ashes in the crimson sunset." - Olympus Woods
"I could blame God, I could blame fate or existence itself. But I am to blame, and perhaps that is what makes me continue. Because if I dared turn to face my shadow, I'd become it." - Olympus Woods
"I've never fought. All I've done is lose, but I call it winning because it boosts the goal I've set in my mind. In theory I could win if I just took a chance and leapt towards fate on a mere one percent chance." - Olympus Woods
"Feeling often leads to tragedy. All my life I've dedicated to wiping emotion from my slate, and yet I find I can give other's my wish, but never can I hold it." - Olympus Woods
"I fear change, because it's all I've ever done. I am an everchanging beast, and all change has ever brought me is sorrow." - Olympus Woods
"Rosabella, you romanticize me in such ways that could not be possible. You believe in me, but belief will get you nowhere when I do not believe I can change." - Olympus Woods
"I have marked my back with many a scar for this country. For my Government I became a soldier of the dark, spinning tales of sin for the damned of this country. And yet, they spun me the exact same damn tale in favor." - Earl Mumford
"I can succeed, just not in the tasks you give me. I fear if I let myself regret even more, my lungs would fail to keep the black waters from crawling up my throat and drowning me from the inside out." - Madam Stephanie Rose
"I'm a sin wrapped inside of trickery and black blood." - Richmond Venwokebridge
"Lost are the pieces I wish I had. But I suppose we don't always get what we want, and I have to learn to accept that." - Pablo Havelock
"When one fears for their life, they give away their darkest secrets." - Tilda Hawsberry
"No one acts like that. Not even on a stage." - Hermann Pastel
"I'm a survivor. But how can I be proud of that when so many other's don't hold that title?" - Hermione Vallwing
"The King can wail, beg and confess. But that never stopped him from swinging my mother from the gallows, and so it shan't stop me." - Magenta Starwidth
"Well then.. looks like we're damned.. on Earth." - Abraham Carlson
"I find it kinda funny, that people will damn someone for what their mind did to them. You condemn the person, yet forget it's the mind that's the villain." - Lilah Smith
"Don't let yourself become so ensnared in a person that them hurting you, would shatter your perception of trust." - Lilah Smith
"You can't fall trick to their schemes, you can't just surrender your dreams too those whom spin nightmares." - Lilah Smith
"Glory was never found in death, only life." - Russell Cormellius
"We are victims of a world that burns before us due to the hatred we let go wild." - Salvador Boardman
"I will never fear the world, I will instead fear what the world holds." - Salvador Boardman
"The world will never favor you. We're all the same in the eyes of the stars." - Corrie Vendowoft
"One can never understand the complexity of love. It's a rarity to find a love so whole and complete that it leaves you star struck, looking for any reason to hold onto the one you've found." - Lizbeth Samwick
"My best'a intentions have gone up in damn smoke." - Chase North
"Difference 'tween me and a preacher, Roman, is I leave it up to God to forgive you. Cause my bullet's got your damn name on it." - Chase North
"The ashes of my soul stand before me, and all they do is crumble between gloved fingers." - Victor Hughes
“ Oh broken soldier of my past, doth thou know it is someone else dancing before the stage? Doth thou know I am but behind the curtain, wondering oh why won't you save me? Why would you condemn me without once trying too show me salvation? But no, I'm just somebody else, a shadow of the angel you once called brother." - Victor Hughes
"Us humans are vile beasts. We rip and tear at each other's hides knowing it was but choice of our own too grow claws when we were always meant to have but hands barren of a beasts tool for survival." - Victor Hughes
"No sleep works through this tired mind, there's sparks in my head, perhaps one might call me insane? But no. There's a very thin line between insanity and being broken. And yet I walk upon the rope, knowing one day it shall wrap around my neck and watch me swing." - Victor Hughes
"I cracked the halls in my mind simply so I may hide as the feeble house around me collapsed. In my head I hear a million conversations, and yet one voice." - Victor Hughes
"If you hold onto the smallest of good moments, even.. a butterfly landing on your finger, or.. when your mother would cook your favorite meal, you'll realize it isn't the darkness that has a hold on us, we can't dwell on the past and expect the future to be any better. I've learned to carry on through all the bullshit." - Lilly Van Velk
"I shall dance with my demons, let them take lead, and when they think of themselves in charge, I shall make them bleed." - Timotheus Naziger
"I am as lost as Alice, as mad as the Hatter, as confused as the Rabbit, as wise as the caterpillar, I am Wonderland, all mixed into one mind." - Timotheus Naziger
"My deepest pain does not make me a warrior, it just makes me.. broken." - Angelica Hippens
"I don't grieve what happened.. I grieve what didn't." - Grant Filepen
"My demons destroyed me in the most beautiful of ways, for I loved them, and what you love, often is the most prepossessing of undoing's. It is in what we cherish we find our darkest of desires, for too save what you love, you would end what you do not." - Vessemir Hussane
"I'm no hero, mate, I'm just a broken man, wearing the tattered cape of a dead man." - Abraham Vanfelt
"Blood is a finnicky thing ta stain your pages. It can be your own, it can be an enemies, it can be a friends, a lover, a father a son. It doesn't discriminate. No matter the purpose of it upon your pages. We're all sinners friend, some of us just accept it. We all have demons, some of us just feed them." - Bill Duster
" All my life, I've looked for the sun, but once I held it in my hands, it's burn was too hot ta the touch. And I was consumed by the very flame I thought my salvation." - Buddy Duster
"When pain is all I know, I tip my hat ta the stars, and tell 'em ta guide me through the dark." - Ellen Duster
"The sound of my heart poundin' tells me I'm still alive. The tinge of pain in my bones tells me I'm still breathin', and the twist in my heart tells me my heart ain't broke yet." - Ellen Duster
"I have lived a life of partial luxury, and I know you say, "You've only known small amounts of suffering, and you think you understand pain?" And yes, I would understand pain. For it only has to be dealt in small amounts too be understood." - Katrice Foltick
" I charge into battle with reckless abandon, I raise my rifle, yet forgot it is I who shall taste the dark, not the one whom falls inta the dirt." - Natasha Law
"We do not decide our fate, but we do decide who we are." - Rando Ballsy
"The world told unto me a thousand lies, so I told unto it my a thousand truths. It told me I would live in sin, so I told it I would live in tranquility. It told me the darkness was my ally, so I simply said light was my friend, and the sun was my lover." - Rando Ballsy
"For when the wind is howlin', and my pain is soarin', that's when I know I am whole. For I can stand in the rain, and remember it is too drink, not too drown. So oh fallen brother's of mine, I'm doing the best I can, and I can only hope, I'm not doin' what you'd do, but doin' what I would."  - Alonzo Graves
"As I stand here, rememberin' my brothers whom have fallen, I wonder what it is they'd do now? What would Sandusky do if he was in my shoes? What would Joseph do if he was walking my miles? What would Mike say if it was he who had too inspire? What is it Nathaniel would do if he was the one breakin'?" - Alonzo Graves
"Time and time again I drag myself to her, she is but nicotine upon my lip. She is but my addiction. And yet she is no mortal, she is no real woman, she is simply the cold in which I stand when warmth is but one step forward, and yet I take two steps back." - Hoshino Akinori
"There was but a time I grew so close with the darkness that she touched my skin, but oh, she marked me with sin. I grew so far into the dark, that she simply gave me warmth in the fires she knew would consume this cold soul." - Hoshino Akinori
"Delusions lead to sin, and sin leads to damnation. So why dance in a bitter delusion when you know it leads to hell?" - Roman Hemlock
"I'm a strange mix of corrupt and lawful." - Karstellonius Alexander
"The torch was not past down to me, and yet still I felt it's burn." - Cadencia Malrosa
"My reflection is a twisted variant of me. How am I ever to find peace if I'm trapped in a web of the lack of a sane mind?" - Mack Morfellos
"I leave the forgiveness of me up ta God, cause my enemies don't deserve the word mercy in their vocabulary." - Jeffrey Newhunt
"They put us in boxes and expect us to stay put. No living creature ever stayed inside a maze." - Wyatt Demouchett
"The secrets I hold have never tarnished me. Only other's." - Samuel Javencrocks
"Believe me, or don't, either way my story is one written in the devil's book." - Warren Shanaghost 
  "I ain't so scared of others, really. Just myself." - Friella Beckenheimer 
  "Give me a penny for my thoughts, and a drink for my memories." - Vector Beckenheimer 
“We're sinners by design, but whoever said one can't stray from the path?" - O'Neil Morikstead
"Sometimes our darker side writes our story, and if you see that little bastard writin', take the quill from 'is hands, and start writin' your own tale instead." - Frank Smilowitz 
 "As my lungs filled with water I realized I had lived a life full of regret, and then I pulled myself outta the water, and I started again. Cause if I can realize I'm filled ta the brim with sin, I can stop myself in my tracks, and turn the other damn direction." - Frank Smilowitz 
"When we're young we see the world through a dreamers eyes, but why do we sell those dreams when we grow?" - Michelle Smilowitz
"I'm screamin' out loud, can you hear me now monster above my cell? You can run, you can hide, but you forgot too build your arc before the storm. What's the storm? Oh she's brewin' just under your floorboards, and she's sick of being the secret you keep in this broken home. You tore into my heart and forgot I had claws, I'm screamin' loud monster, so build that arc, before it's too damn late. Cause the flood is comin' to your gates."  - Michelle Smilowitz
"I have lived my life in a cage, I'm far from home, I've sent a message of blood and bone.. hoping you know what it means. My love if you get this, come and rescue me in the dark, my son, if you get this, please find me, let your heart guide you forth through the dark, dear mother, if you hear this, please know it is not your fault that I am lost, and oh father, if you get this, please know you were never broken, you were just a hero hiding behind a thin mask." - Michelle Smilowitz
"You say faith is what keeps me alive, but it was not strong enough, but hate drove me forward, hate kept this heart pumping. Faith is not enough too keep us alive in the dark. It's a tiny spark, but hate is a wildfire that rages through out the dark and singes our souls." - Fiend Masters
"In all chaos there is calculation, you can not tell me God didn't create evil, he created all, did he not? So there was a method to his madness.. and it was all made within the span of three days. On the first day, tranquility was made upon these lands, the trees, the bird who sung.. on the second day God created the storm.. and on the third and final day, God would make his first mistake, making a life sentient." - Holland Gursoch 
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thisdaynews · 4 years
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US:President Joe Biden's Inaugural Speech As 46th American President
New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/uspresident-joe-bidens-inaugural-speech-as-46th-american-president/
US:President Joe Biden's Inaugural Speech As 46th American President
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This is America’s day. This is majority rule government’s day. A day of history and expectation, of reestablishment and resolve. Through a pot for the ages, America has been tried another and America has adapted to the situation. Today we praise the victory not of an applicant but rather of a reason, a reason for vote based system. The individuals – the desire of the individuals – has been heard, and the desire of the individuals has been noticed.
We’ve realized again that majority rule government is valuable, vote based system is delicate and, at this hour my companions, majority rule government has won. So now on this blessed ground where only a couple days prior brutality looked to shake the Capitol’s actual establishments, we meet up as one country under God – unbreakable – to do the serene exchange of force as we have for over two centuries.
As we look forward in our exceptionally American manner, eager, strong, idealistic, and put our focus on a country we realize we can be and should be, I thank my archetypes of the two players. I express in all seriousness. Furthermore, I know the flexibility of our Constitution and the strength, the strength of our country, as does President Carter, who I talked with the previous evening who can’t be with us today, however who we salute for his lifetime of administration.
I’ve recently made a holy vow every one of those loyalists have taken. The promise originally depended on George Washington. Yet, the American story depends not on any of us, not on a few of us, but rather on us all. On we the individuals who look for a more wonderful association. This is an extraordinary country, we are acceptable individuals. Also, over the course of the hundreds of years through tempest and hardship in harmony and in war we’ve overcome much. Be that as it may, we actually have far to go.
We’ll press forward with speed and criticalness for we have a lot to do in this colder time of year of danger and huge chance. A lot to do, a lot to mend, a lot to reestablish, a lot to construct and a lot to acquire. Not many individuals in our country’s set of experiences have been more tested or discovered a period more testing or troublesome than the time we’re in at this point. A once in a century infection that quietly follows the nation has taken the same number of lives in a single year as in all of World War Two.
A huge number of occupations have been lost. A huge number of organizations shut. A sob for racial equity, somewhere in the range of 400 years really taking shape, moves us. The fantasy of equity for all will be conceded no more. A sob for endurance comes from the actual planet, a cry that can’t be any more edgy or any more clear at this point. The ascent of political radicalism, racial oppression, homegrown illegal intimidation, that we should go up against and we will vanquish.
To defeat these difficulties, to reestablish the spirit and secure the fate of America, requires far beyond words. It requires the most subtle of everything in a majority rule government – solidarity. Solidarity. In another January on New Year’s Day in 1863 Abraham Lincoln marked the Emancipation Proclamation. At the point when he put pen to paper the president stated, and I quote, ‘if my name actually stands out forever, it’ll be for this demonstration, and my entire soul is in it’.
My entire soul is in it today, on this January day. My entire soul is in this. Uniting America, joining our kin, joining our country. Furthermore, I request that each American go along with me in this reason. Joining to battle the adversaries we face – outrage, disdain and contempt. Radicalism, rebellion, savagery, sickness, joblessness, and sadness.
With solidarity we can do extraordinary things, significant things. We can right wrongs, we can give individuals something to do in steady employments, we can show our youngsters in safe schools. We can defeat the dangerous infection, we can reconstruct work, we can remake the working class and make work secure, we can make sure about racial equity and we can make America indeed the main power for good on the planet.
I know talking about solidarity can sound to some like an absurd dream nowadays. I know the powers that partition us are profound and they are genuine. Be that as it may, I additionally realize they are not new. Our set of experiences has been a consistent battle between the American ideal, that we are completely made equivalent, and the cruel monstrous reality that bigotry, nativism and dread have destroyed us. The fight is enduring and triumph is rarely secure.
Through common war, the Great Depression, World War, 9/11, through battle, penance, and difficulty, our better blessed messengers have consistently won. In every one of our minutes enough of us have met up to convey we all forward and we can do that at this point. History, confidence and reason show the way. The method of solidarity.
We can see each other not as foes but rather as neighbors. We can treat each other with pride and regard. We can unite, stop the yelling and lower the temperature. For without solidarity there is no harmony, just sharpness and anger, no advancement, just debilitating shock. No country, just a condition of bedlam. This is our noteworthy snapshot of emergency and challenge. Furthermore, solidarity is the way ahead. Also, we should meet this second as the United States of America.
On the off chance that we do that, I ensure we won’t fizzled. We have never at any point, ever, ever fizzled in America when we’ve acted together. Thus today as of now in this spot, how about we start anew, we all. How about we start to hear one out another once more, hear each other, see each other. Show regard to each other. Governmental issues doesn’t need to be a furious fire annihilating everything in its way. Each difference doesn’t need to be a reason for absolute war and we should dismiss the way of life where realities themselves are controlled and even made.
My kindred Americans, we must be unique in relation to this. We must be superior to this and I trust America is such a lot of in a way that is better than this. Simply glance around. Here we remain in the shadow of the Capitol arch. As referenced before, finished in the shadow of the Civil War. At the point when the actual association was in a real sense yet to be determined. We suffer, we win. Here we stand, watching out on the incomparable Mall, where Dr King discussed his fantasy.
Here we stand, where 108 years prior at another debut, a huge number of dissidents attempted to hinder courageous ladies walking for the option to cast a ballot. What’s more, today we mark the swearing in of the principal lady chose for public office, Vice President Kamala Harris. Try not to disclose to me things can change. Here we stand where legends who gave the last full proportion of commitment rest in interminable harmony.
What’s more, here we stand only days after a crazy horde figured they could utilize savagery to quietness the desire of the individuals, to stop crafted by our majority rules system, to drive us from this consecrated ground. It didn’t occur, it won’t ever occur, not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Not ever. To each one of the individuals who upheld our mission, I’m lowered by the confidence you put in us. To each one of the individuals who didn’t uphold us, let me state this. Listen to us as we push ahead. Take a proportion of me and my heart.
On the off chance that you actually dissent, so be it. That is majority rule government. That is America. The option to contradict calmly. Furthermore, the guardrail of our popular government is maybe our country’s most noteworthy strength. In the event that you hear me obviously, difference should not prompt divergence. Also, I vow this to you. I will be a President for all Americans, all Americans. Furthermore, I guarantee you I will battle for the individuals who didn’t uphold me concerning the individuals who did.
Numerous hundreds of years back, St Augustine – the holy person of my congregation – composed that a people was a large number characterized by the regular objects of their adoration. Characterized by the basic objects of their adoration. What are the regular articles we as Americans love, that characterize us as Americans? I think we know. Opportunity, security, freedom, poise, regard, honor, and indeed, reality.
Ongoing many months have shown us an agonizing exercise. There is truth and there are lies. Falsehoods told for power and for benefit. Furthermore, every one of us has an obligation and a duty as residents as Americans and particularly as pioneers. Pioneers who are promised to respect our Constitution to ensure our country. To shield reality and thrashing the falsehoods.
See, I comprehend that a considerable lot of my kindred Americans see the future with dread and fear. I comprehend they stress over their positions. I comprehend like their father they lay in bed around evening time gazing at the roof thinking: ‘Would i be able to keep my medical services? Would i be able to pay my home loan?’ Thinking about their families, about what comes straightaway. I guarantee you, I get it. In any case, the appropriate response’s not to turn internal. To withdraw into contending groups. Doubting the individuals who don’t seem as though you, or love the manner in which you do, who don’t get their report from a similar source as you do.
We should end this uncivil war that sets red in opposition to blue, country versus metropolitan, moderate versus liberal. We can do this on the off chance that we open our spirits as opposed to solidifying our hearts, in the event that we show a little resilience and quietude, and in case we’re willing to remain in the other individual’s shoes, as my mother would state. Only briefly, remain from their perspective.
Since here’s the thing about existence. There’s no representing what destiny will give you. Occasionally you need a hand. There are different days when we’re called to help out. That is the way it must be, that is how we help each other. Also, in the event that we are that way our nation will be more grounded, more prosperous, more prepared for what’s to come. Also, we can even now oppose this idea.
My kindred Americans, in the work in front of us we will require one another. We need everything that is in us to continue on through this dull winter. We’re entering what might be the most obscure and deadliest time of the infection. We should put aside governmental issues lastly face this pandemic as one country, one country. What’s more, I guarantee this, as the Bible says, ‘Sobbing may suffer for an evening, happiness cometh in the first part of the day’. We will traverse this together. Together.
Look people, every one of my associates I present with in the House and the Senate up here, we as a whole comprehend the world is viewing. Observing we all today. So here’s my message to those past our lines. America has been tried and we’ve come out more grounded for it. We will fix our coalitions, and draw in with the world indeed. Not to address the previous difficulties but rather the present and the upcoming difficulties. Furthermore, we’ll lead not just by the case of our force yet the force of our model.
Individual Americans,
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medschoolash · 7 years
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why do you think the targarians are white supremacists
Because they mirror everything we see in real life white supremacists. They embody everything that was wrong with the imperialist societies that conquered lands that were not there’s and subjugated people against their will.
People tend to think that white supremacy is only the KKK and the Nazi’s but it’s not. The driving force behind almost every single imperialist society was white supremacy. It’s rooted in extreme narcissism, uninhibited self indulgence, and unchecked entitlement. It’s rooted in the belief that you are inherantly superior than the people you are conquering and have more of a right to their land than they do. Those same traits can be found in many of the targaryens.
Just take a look at Africa. The continent of Africa is the richest continent on this planet but Africa is one of the more ravaged continents on this planet because of centuries of imperialism. The British, the Dutch, the Portuguese, the Spanish, The French, etc They all felt that they were entitled to lands and resources that belonged to other people. White Supremacy is what gave them these feelings of entitlement. They didn’t care about the cultures of the people who lived there, they didn’t care about the people, they only cared about themselves and their own needs and they were so racist they deemed those people as nothing. They stole their land, stole their resources, even stole their bodies. They stripped them of their own languages, their religions, their customs, and forced their own upon them. They took their land by brutal force, committed genocide after genocide and left those people without a choice. Many places in Africa are still feeling the effects of those centuries of imperialism. Black people across the diaspora still feel the affects of this imperialism as well.
Take a look at America. This land was stolen from Native Americans and Mexico. Europeans sailed across the Atlantic and just decided to claim all this land as their own and committed genocide to get it. They brought African slaves with them and built this entire society off the back of the slave and the blood of the Native American.
The targaryen conquest mirrors this behavior and is rooted in the same narcissism and belief of superiority. They pat themselves on the back for stealing a land that was not theirs to take and only rule by subjugating other people. They bullied their way on to land giving people no choice and forced their customs and practices upon them.
They also mirror the same post conquest behavior that we see in real life white supremacy. Oppressors love to rewrite the narrative to make themselves look like admirable and brave people. They fed children songs of the great aegon who rode on the back of his special dragons with his brave sisters and conquered a land that they made into greatness. They conditioned children to want to be just like them even tho they live under their subjugation. They did that so no one would question their power and their right to it. It’s just like how we tell children that Christopher Columbus was a great explorer who stumbled upon a land and helped build a great society, or how the imperialism in Africa and America was some altruistic mission to bring civilization to savage people. Its supposed to make the later generation admire then and want to be like them instead of question the subjugation they live under, because once you start to question you won’t like what you see and you will eventually rise up. It’s a way to keep the people you subjugate powerless.
It’s why in my hometown they take little black kids on field trips to a slave plantation and show us how pretty they are and how amazing the architecture is, conditioning us to see the plantation as just a pretty house that we should want to live in one day instead of a structure that embodies the rape, murder, and oppression of our ancestors. It makes us hold reverence for the structures that kept us oppressed instead of making us Want to root it up and tear it down. It’s how we erect monuments of confederate soldiers and feed people stories about how they valiantly fought for freedom when the truth is they fought a way to keep black slaves in subjugation. This romanticized narrative we see with the targaryens is EXACTLY like the romanticized narratives we see in real life when it comes to imperialists and white supremacists. That’s why Arya wants to be like one of ageon’s dragon riding sisters even tho Aegon and his sisters were going to burn her homeland to ashe if Torrhen Stark had not kneeled. It’s all about reinforcing their own supremacy and maintaining their own power. It’s not about truth because truth is a threat to their power.
Let’s also talk about their look…. pale skin, white blonde hair and striking “violet” or blue eyes. There is no way GRRM was unaware of the implications of this look when he started to write his novels. Their look mirrors the same beauty standards that we see today, all of which are rooted in white supremacy. There’s a reason Hitler was obsessed with the “aryan” look, blonde hair blue eyes. Its a symbol of whiteness, the inherently superior race. It’s what we all should look like, the master race. It’s hailed as the most beautiful of all, that no one can resist. It’s the apex of beauty. Why? Because it’s white, it’s the phenotype most associated with whiteness and whiteness is inherently superior therefore the look is superior to all others. Dany’s arc in Essos drives home this point. All of those brown people become enamored with her beauty. They talk everywhere of the targaryen with long white blonde hair and blue eyes, the mother of dragons the great savior of them all. It reeks of white saviorisim and white supremacy. These brown people worship her because her inherent superiority has been engrained in them. They all see themselves as noting but low people compared to her because she’s beautiful and powerful and “special” and they worship her because she dared to see them worthy enough to save. It’s just like how black people look at Abraham Lincoln fondly because he issued the emancipation proclamation and freed the slaves even tho he participated in the same oppressive system for years before that. It’s the EXACT same way that white supremacy is internalized by people of color in real life. It’s why colorism exists in almost every single non white race.
Let’s also talk about the incest. There’s a reason why most of the great kingdoms in Europe had monarchs that were all genetically related. These people believed wholeheartedly in the idea that they were set apart by God and given this birthright to rule over any and everyone they so desired to rule. They believed this so much and wanted to keep their power and their genes alive that they married each other and created generation of inbred children that could continue the family line and keep their power. That sounds a whole lot like the Targaryens. This need for consolidated power and genetic purity is elitist and racist. They can invade your land, but you can’t have a stake in the power structure that you are now forced to live under because only they can hold the power ,they are the only ones worthy. White people didn’t want to breed with or marry black people because they didn’t want their bloodlines “poisoned” with something they deemed genetically inferior and they didn’t want black people having a stake in their power structure. You were good enough to keep their dicks wet but the true inheritance and power was only reserved from the progeny that came from their pure white bloodlines.
I know that the targs did occasionally dip outside of their own bloodline but incest was a major practice for them and they did it for very specific reasons, reasons that mirror that same elitist and white supremacist reasons that incest was practiced among European royalty. You can also look at the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt as another good example of incest practiced for white supremacist reasons and that same dynasty mirrors the Targaryens. I believe it was even direct inspiration for them. Basically in every real life equivalent practice of incest like the Targaryens you find strong white supremacist ideals.
Now I know that the concept of race in westeros isn’t the same as it is in real life, but the fact remains that Targaryens embody supremacist ideals, and if they did in fact exist in our world they would embody white supremacist ideals just like the people that they mirror. They are a fantasy metaphor for white supremacy.
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nikihawkes · 4 years
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Title: Smoke and Stone
Author: Michael R. Fletcher
Series: City of Sacrifice #1
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 3/5 stars
The Overview: After a cataclysmic war of the gods, the last of humanity huddles in Bastion, a colossal ringed city. Beyond the outermost wall lies endless desert haunted by the souls of all the world’s dead. Trapped in a rigid caste system, Nuru, a young street sorcerer, lives in the outer ring. She dreams of escape and freedom. When something contacts her from beyond the wall, she risks everything and leaps at the opportunity. Mother Death, a banished god seeking to reclaim her place in Bastion’s patchwork pantheon, has found her way back into the city. Akachi, born to the wealth and splendour of Bastion’s inner rings, is a priest of Cloud Serpent, Lord of the Hunt. A temple-trained sorcerer, he is tasked with bringing peace to the troublesome outer ring. Drawn into a dark and violent world of assassins, gangs, and street sorcerers, he battles the spreading influence of Mother Death in a desperate attempt to save Bastion. The gods are once again at war. -Goodreads
The Review:
I’ve been hearing great things about Michael R. Fletcher for years. Several people in my Goodreads group (Fantasy Buddy Reads) have been raving about his Manifest Delusions series, and he’s even stopped by to do some Q&As (gracious authors rock). When offered a review audiobook of his latest novel, Smoke and Stone, I jumped at the opportunity to give him a try.
The book was definitely grimdark, and I liked how true to the genre it stayed – abundant violence, bleak outlooks, dry humor. It’s usually in these dark reads where you find the most beautiful glimmer of humanity by contrast. Smoke and Stone was no exception on that regard. Subjectively, I think it may have leaned too dark without as much glimmer for my personal taste, but I still enjoyed it.
When venturing in, I expected the dark elements and the dry humor based on FBR feedback about his writing. What I didn’t expect was the personable nature of the characters. They were downright charming, and easily my favorite aspect of the book. There were moments where it dipped its toe into providing more depth – inner motivations and driving forces behind the characters – but it didn’t get below surface-level very often and I think that’s part of the reason why I finished the book not feeling particularly connected to the characters, nor torn up about some of the awful things that happened to some of them.
The concept for the story was interesting, but I felt the culture needed a bit more development. The strict framework of the priests of the Cloud Serpent kind of contradicted the somewhat casual enforcement of their practices. The fact that a lesser sorcerer could even be allowed to question the morality of sacrifices without sever punishment (or at least crippling fear of sever punishment from all the brainwashing) was a bit of a contradiction. If nothing else, hanging a prominent lantern on the discrepancy would’ve helped.
All that said, the main story arc was action-packed and generally badass. I loved the pacing through the whole thing and the quiet moments with the characters were golden – where you learn more about them based on decisions and reactions. It’s a good start to a series with potential to grow.
Recommendations: I’ve heard rave reviews about the Manifest Delusions series and still hope to pick those up soon, regardless of my conservative rating here. Many of my GR buddies (who’s opinions I highly respect) really love this author, so I’m definitely not finished exploring his work. Pick it up for a creative grimdark experience and some interesting characters.
I’d like to thank Michael R. Fletcher for kindly providing a review copy. And thank you, Jon, for orchestrating it. 🙂
Other books you might like:
The Grey Bastards by Jonathan French
A Shadow in Summer by Daniel Abraham
Child of a Mad God by R.A. Salvatore
Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan
The Waking Fire by Anthony Ryan
by Niki Hawkes
Book Review: Smoke and Stone by Michael R. Fletcher Title: Smoke and Stone Author: Michael R. Fletcher Series: City of Sacrifice #1 Genre: Fantasy…
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