#I have studied a LOT about American religious history

[myglassesareinkansas]

What does it hurt my mom for me to be interested in French religious history

[specialagentartemis]

Hey, would you be willing to elaborate on that "disappearance of the Anasazi is bs" thing? I've heard something like that before but don't know much about it and would be interested to learn more. Or just like point me to a paper or yt video or something if you don't want to explain right now? Thanks!

I’m traveling to an archaeology conference right now, so this sounds like a great way to spend my airport time! @aurpiment you were wondering too—

“Anasazi” is an archaeological name given to the ancestral Puebloan cultural group in the US Southwest. It’s a Diné (Navajo) term and Modern Pueblos don’t like it and find it othering, so current archaeological best practices is to call this cultural group Ancestral Puebloans. (This is politically complicated because the Diné and Apache nations and groups still prefer “Anasazi” because through cultural interaction, mixing, and migration they also have ancestry among those people and they object to their ancestry being linguistically excluded… demonyms! Politically fraught always!)

However. The difficulties of explaining how descendant communities want to call this group kind of immediately shows: there are descendant communities. The “Anasazi” are Ancestral Purbloans. They are the ancestors of the modern Pueblos.

The Ancestral Puebloans as a distinct cultural group defined by similar material culture aspects arose 1200-500 BCE, depending on what you consider core cultural traits, and we generally stop talking about “Ancestral Puebloan” around 1450 CE. These were a group of people who lived in northern Arizona and New Mexico, and southern Colorado and Utah—the “Four Corners” region. There were of course different Ancestral Pueblo groups, political organizations, and cultures over the centuries—Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, Kayenta, Tusayan, Ancestral Hopi—but they generally share some traits like religious sodality worship in subterranean circular kivas, residence in square adobe roomblocks around central plazas, maize farming practices, and styles of coil-and-scrape constructed black-on-white and black-on-red pottery.

The most famous Ancestral Pueblo/“Anasazi” sites are the Cliff Palace and associated cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado:

When Europeans/Euro-Americans first found these majestic places, people had not been living in them for centuries. It was a big mystery to them—where did the people who built these cliff cities go? SURELY they were too complex and dramatic to have been built by the Native people who currently lived along the Rio Grande and cited these places as the homes of their ancestors!

So. Like so much else in American history: this mystery is like, 75% racism.

But WHY did the people of Mesa Verde all suddenly leave en masse in the late 1200s, depopulating the whole Mesa Verde region and moving south? That was a mystery. But now—between tree-ring climatological studies, extensive archaeology in this region, and actually listening to Pueblo people’s historical narratives—a lot of it is pretty well-understood. Anything archaeological is inherently, somewhat mysterious, because we have to make our best interpretations of often-scant remaining data, but it’s not some Big Mystery. There was a drought, and people moved south to settle along rivers.

There’s more to it than that—the 21-year drought from 1275-1296 went on unusually long, but it also came at a time when the attempted re-establishment of Chaco cultural organization at the confusingly-and-also-racist-assuption-ly-named Aztec Ruin in northern New Mexico was on the decline anyway, and the political situation of Mesa Verde caused instability and conflict with the extra drought pressures, and archaeologists still strenuously debate whether Athabaskans (ancestors of the Navajo and Apache) moved into the Four Corners region in this time or later, and whether that caused any push-out pressures…

But when I tell people I study Southwest archaeology, I still often hear, “Oh, isn’t it still a big mystery, what happened to the Anasazi? Didn’t they disappear?”

And the answer is. They didn’t disappear. Their descendants simply now live at Hopi, Zuni, Taos, Picuris, Acoma, Cochiti, Isleta, Jemez, Laguna, Nambé, Ohkay Owingeh, Pojoaque, Sandia, San Felipe, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, Tamaya/Santa Ana, Kewa/Santo Domingo, Tesuque, Zia, and Ysleta del Sur. And/or married into Navajo and Apache groups. The Anasazi/Ancestral Puebloans didn’t disappear any more than you can say the Ancient Romans disappeared because the Coliseum is a ruin that’s not used anymore. And honestly, for the majority of archaeological mysteries about “disappearance,” this is the answer—the socio-political organization changed to something less obvious in the archaeological record, but the people didn’t disappear, they’re still there.

[irhabiya]

hey could I ask where I could learn more about the arab spring? I can’t find many resources and most of them are very American. I’m asking partially because my parents mentioned a massacre that happened at a mosque around that time, but I can’t find much of that? They used to study in Egypt which is why they were horrified to hear about the brutality those years ago. Sorry if this sounds disrespectful you can ignore it if so. I just want to better understand the unrest in Egypt that I assume is still ongoing today with Sisi

hi sweetheart <3 this isn't disrespectful at all don't worry

unfortunately i don't really have any specific resources i can point you towards that aren't riddled with usamerican propaganda or leave out key details but i remember reading this article from a while back and it was pretty succinct. read it with a discerning eye and lmk if you have any further questions about the points they raised

the massacre your parents are referencing is probably the Rabaa massacre which happened in august of 2013, the biggest massacre in modern egyptian history. military and police forces killed an estimated 1000 protestors, most of whom were supporters of the muslim brotherhood, some others were simply opposed to the military regaining power.

the main key points you need to understand about egypt's modern history, contemporary history, and the arab spring as a whole, are the following:

egypt had been effectively ruled by a military ruling class since the 50's. nasser's presidency oversaw anti-imperialist policies and policies favoring the working class, but he basically laid out groundwork for 70+ years of military dictatorship

anwar al saddat's presidency involved lots of dramatic changes to our domestic and foreign policies, namely privatization of many sectors, introducing neoliberalism to the country, signing the camp david agreements with israel

mubarak's presidency was essentially a 30 years long continuation of sadat's neoliberalism and corruption, things got worse by the day for your average working class egyptian

the 2011 25th of january revolution in egypt was sparked due to worsening living conditions, and protests igniting many of the neighboring countries. namely tunisia, where street vendor mohammed bouazizi self immolated in protest of harassment he had been receiving from government officials.

it's important to note here that even before the protests in tunisia, there had been dissent from the egyptian working class, many factory workers went on strikes in protest such as in mahalla

the 2011 revolution was not ideologically coherent, in the sense that everyone, from all different political ideologies joined in, from the Muslim brotherhood to leftist coalitions. this will be important for understanding why it fell short of achieving long term goals. it managed to force hosni mubarak to step down

the MB's candidate, mohammed morsi won the 2012 elections, which sparked a lot of upheaval from leftists, liberals and religious minorities such as copts.

in june of 2013, mass protests broke out against his regime demanding that he step down from power, the us-backed military hijacked the protests and enacted a coup which reinstalled the military regime with sisi as president. protestors of the new regime, whether in support of morsi or not, were massacred in Rabaa and other locations leaving an estimated 1000 protestors dead

it's important to note here that it was later revealed that certain groups which were involved in the 2013 counter-revolution were funded and backed by gulf states (mainly the UAE iirc, i need to fact check that though). there was a marked increase in organized violence from these groups (tamarod was one of them) out of nowhere and it all played out in the military's favor in the end, which isn't a coincidence considering who are their biggest allies in the region. i don't think this was covered in the article above

there has been unprecedented efforts of censorship in the country since then, a complete crackdown on dissent. journalists get jailed for tweeting things opposed to the regime all the time. egyptian prisons (which aren't exactly known to be the most humane) are filled with political prisoners. this current regime is the one the US and their gulf allies backed and endorsed, we get billions of dollars in military aid from the US in exchange for carrying out their imperialist interests in the middle east. as for living conditions, it only gets worse by the day for your average egyptian. most major cities are riddled with slums, inflation is through the roof, unemployment is high, most people can barely afford basic necessities, our infrastructure is in desperate need of maintenance and renovations, our economy is almost entirely financed by the US (even putting military aid aside), the UAE, and saudi arabia. and we're drowning in debt. we take imf loans like, every other month lmfao it's bad

a lot happened within the span of 3 years, this is all not to say that the MB were good, not in the slightest. but the US once again interfering with a foreign country's domestic affairs to secure their interests has resulted in nothing but devastation for the overwhelming majority of the people living here.

as for the arab spring as a whole, i think it's disingenuous when people dismiss its entirety as western backed conflict. even though a lot of it is exactly that (see: libya), especially in countries where the revolutions kind of bled into them rather than already having brewing tensions from working class people suffering worsening conditions. in tunisia and egypt, there was already a lot unrest within their populations over material conditions, which is why i mentioned the mahalla strikes. it's a shame our revolution didn't have more coherent, stronger socialist organizers, it's a shame it was killed and hijacked before we ever got to reap its benefits

[racefortheironthrone]

Why People Are Wrong About the Puritans of the English Civil War and New England

Oh well, if you all insist, I suppose I can write something.

(oh good, my subtle scheme is working...)

Introduction:

So the Puritans of the English Civil War is something I studied in graduate school and found endlessly fascinating in its rich cultural complexity, but it's also a subject that is popularly wildly misunderstood because it's caught in the jaws of a pair of distorted propagandistic images.

On the one hand, because the Puritans settled colonial New England, since the late 19th century they've been wrapped up with this nationalist narrative of American exceptionalism (that provides a handy excuse for schoolteachers to avoid talking about colonial Virginia and the centrality of slavery to the origins of the United States). If you went to public school in the United States, you're familiar with the old story: the United States was founded by a people fleeing religious persecution and seeking their freedom, who founded a society based on social contracts and the idea that in the New World they were building a city on a hill blah blah America is an exceptional and perfect country that's meant to be an example to the world, and in more conservative areas the whole idea that America was founded as an explicitly Christian country and society. Then on the other hand, you have (and this is the kind of thing that you see a lot of on Tumblr) what I call the Matt Damon-in-Good-Will-Hunting, "I just read Zinn's People's History of the United States in U.S History 101 and I'm home for my first Thanksgiving since I left for colleg and I'm going to share My Opinions with Uncle Burt" approach. In this version, everything in the above nationalist narrative is revealed as a hideous lie: the Puritans are the source of everything wrong with American society, a bunch of evangelical fanatics who came to New England because they wanted to build a theocracy where they could oppress all other religions and they're the reason that abortion-banning, homophobic and transphobic evangelical Christians are running the country, they were all dour killjoys who were all hopelessly sexually repressed freaks who hated women, and the Salem Witch Trials were a thing, right?

And if anyone spares a thought to examine the role that Puritans played in the English Civil War, it basically short-hands to Oliver Cromwell is history's greatest monster, and didn't they ban Christmas?

Here's the thing, though: as I hope I've gotten across in my posts about Jan Hus, John Knox, and John Calvin, the era of the Reformation and the Wars of Religion that convulsed the Early Modern period were a time of very big personalities who were complicated and not very easy for modern audiences to understand, because of the somewhat oblique way that Early Modern people interpreted and really believed in the cultural politics of religious symbolism. So what I want to do with this post is to bust a few myths and tease out some of the complications behind the actual history of the Puritans.

Did the Puritans Experience Religious Persecution?

Yes, but that wasn't the reason they came to New England, or at the very least the two periods were divided by some decades. To start at the beginning, Puritans were pretty much just straightforward Calvinists who wanted the Church of England to be a Calvinist Church. This was a fairly mainstream position within the Anglican Church, but the "hotter sort of Protestant" who started to organize into active groups during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I were particularly sensitive to religious symbolism they (like the Hussites) felt smacked of Catholicism and especially the idea of a hierarchy where clergy were a better class of person than the laity.

So for example, Puritans really first start to emerge during the Vestments Controversy in the reign of Edward VI where Bishop Hooper got very mad that Anglican priests were wearing the cope and surplice, which he thought were Catholic ritual garments that sought to enhance priestly status and that went against the simplicity of the early Christian Church. Likewise, during the run-up to the English Civil War, the Puritans were extremely sensitive to the installation of altar rails which separated the congregation from the altar - they considered this to be once again a veneration of the clergy, but also a symbolic affirmation of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.

At the same time, they were not the only religious faction within the Anglican Church - and this is where the religious persecution thing kicks in, although it should be noted that this was a fairly brief but very emotionally intense period. Archbishop William Laud was a leading High Church Episcopalian who led a faction in the Church that would become known as Laudians, and he was just as intense about his religious views as the Puritans were about his. A favorite of Charles I and a first advocate of absolutist monarchy, Laud was appointed Archbishop of Canturbury in 1630 and acted quickly to impose religious uniformity of Laudian beliefs and practices - ultimately culminating in the disastrous decision to try imposing Episcopalianism on Scotland that set off the Bishop's Wars. The Puritans were a special target of Laud's wrath: in addition to ordering the clergy to do various things offensive to Puritans that he used as a shibboleth to root out clergy with Puritan sympathies and fire them from their positions in the Church, he established official religious censors who went after Puritan writers like William Prynne for seditious libel and tortured them for their criticisms of his actions, cropping their ears and branding them with the letters SL on their faces. Bringing together the powers of Church and State, Laud used the Court of Star Chamber (a royal criminal court with no system of due process) to go after anyone who he viewed as having Puritan sympathies, imposing sentences of judicial torture along the way.

It was here that the Puritans began to make their first connections to the growing democratic movement in England that was forming in opposition to Charles I, when John Liliburne the founder of the Levellers was targeted by Laud for importing religious texts that criticized Laudianism - Laud had him repeatedly flogged for challenging the constitutionality of the Star Chamber court, and "freeborn John" became a martyr-hero to the Puritans.

When the Long Parliament met in 1640, Puritans were elected in huge numbers, motivated as they were by a combination of resistance to the absolutist monarchism of Charles I and the religious policies of Archbishop Laud - who Parliament was able to impeach and imprison in the Tower of the London in 1641. This relatively brief period of official persecution that powerfully shaped the Puritan mindset was nevertheless disconnected from the phenomena of migration to New England - which had started a decade before Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury and continued decades after his impeachment.

The Puritans Just Wanted to Oppress Everyone Else's Religion:

This is the very short-hand Howard Zinn-esque critique we often see of the Puritan project in the discourse, and while there is a grain of truth to it - in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Congregational Church was the official state religion, no other church could be established without permission from the Congregational Church, all residents were required to pay taxes to support the Congregational Church, and only Puritans could vote. Moreover, there were several infamous incidents where the Puritan establishment put Anne Hutchinson on trial and banished her, expelled Roger Williams, and hanged Quakers.

Here's the thing, though: during the Early Modern period, every single side of every single religious conflict wanted to establish religious uniformity and oppress the heretics: the Catholics did it to the Protestants where they could mobilize the power of the Holy Roman Emperor against the Protestant Princes, the Protestants did it right back to the Catholics when Gustavus Adolphus' armies rolled through town, the Lutherans and the Catholics did it to the Calvinists, and everybody did it to the Anabaptists.

That New England was founded as a Calvinist colony is pretty unremarkable, in the final analysis. (By the by, both Hutchinson and Williams were devout if schismatic Puritans who were firmly of the belief that the Anglican Church was a false church.) What's more interesting is how quickly the whole religious project broke down and evolved into something completely different.

Essentially, New England became a bunch of little religious communes that were all tax-funded, which is even more the case because the Congregationalist Church was a "gathered church" where the full members of the Church (who were the only people allowed to vote on matters involving the church, and were the only ones who were allowed to be given baptism and Communion, which had all kinds of knock-on effects on important social practices like marriages and burials) and were made up of people who had experienced a conversion where they can gained an assurance of salvation that they were definitely of the Elect. You became a full member by publicly sharing your story of conversion (which had a certain cultural schema of steps that were supposed to be followed) and having the other full members accept it as genuine.

This is a system that works really well to bind together a bunch of people living in a commune in the wilderness into a tight-knit community, but it broke down almost immediately in the next generation, leading to a crisis called the Half-Way Covenant.

The problem was that the second generation of Puritans - all men and women who had been baptized and raised in the Congrgeationalist Church - weren't becoming converted. Either they never had the religious awakening that their parents had had, or their narratives weren't accepted as genuine by the first generation of commune members. This meant that they couldn't hold church office or vote, and more crucially it meant that they couldn't receive the sacrament or have their own children baptized.

This seemed to suggest that, within a generation, the Congregationalist Church would essentially define itself into non-existence and between the 1640s and 1650s leading ministers recommended that each congregation (which was supposed to decide on policy questions on a local basis, remember) adopt a policy whereby the children of baptized but unconverted members could be baptized as long as they did a ceremony where they affirmed the church covenant. This proved hugely controversial and ministers and laypeople alike started publishing pamphlets, and voting in opposing directions, and un-electing ministers who decided in the wrong direction, and ultimately it kind of broke the authority of the Congregationalist Church and led to its eventual dis-establishment.

The Puritans are the Reason America is So Evangelical:

This is another area where there's a grain of truth, but ultimately the real history is way more complicated.

Almost immediately from the founding of the colony, the Puritans begin to undergo mutation from their European counterparts - to begin with, while English Puritans were Calvinists and thus believed in a Presbyterian form of church government (indeed, a faction of Puritans during the English Civil War would attempt to impose a Presbyterian Church on England.), New England Puritans almost immediately adopted a congregationalist system where each town's faithful would sign a local religious constitution, elect their own ministers, and decide on local governance issues at town meetings.

Essentially, New England became a bunch of little religious communes that were all tax-funded, which is even more the case because the Congregationalist Church was a "gathered church" where the full members of the Church (who were the only people allowed to vote on matters involving the church, and were the only ones who were allowed to be given baptism and Communion, which had all kinds of knock-on effects on important social practices like marriages and burials) and were made up of people who had experienced a conversion where they can gained an assurance of salvation that they were definitely of the Elect. You became a full member by publicly sharing your story of conversion (which had a certain cultural schema of steps that were supposed to be followed) and having the other full members accept it as genuine.

This is a system that works really well to bind together a bunch of people living in a commune in the wilderness into a tight-knit community, but it broke down almost immediately in the next generation, leading to a crisis called the Half-Way Covenant.

The problem was that the second generation of Puritans - all men and women who had been baptized and raised in the Congrgeationalist Church - weren't becoming converted. Either they never had the religious awakening that their parents had had, or their narratives weren't accepted as genuine by the first generation of commune members. This meant that they couldn't hold church office or vote, and more crucially it meant that they couldn't receive the sacrament or have their own children baptized.

This seemed to suggest that, within a generation, the Congregationalist Church would essentially define itself into non-existence and between the 1640s and 1650s leading ministers recommended that each congregation (which was supposed to decide on policy questions on a local basis, remember) adopt a policy whereby the children of baptized but unconverted members could be baptized as long as they did a ceremony where they affirmed the church covenant. This proved hugely controversial and ministers and laypeople alike started publishing pamphlets, and voting in opposing directions, and un-electing ministers who decided in the wrong direction, and accusing one another of being witches. (More on that in a bit.)

And then the Great Awakening - which to be fair, was a major evangelical effort by the Puritan Congregationalist Church, so it's not like there's no link between evangelical - which was supposed to promote Congregational piety ended up dividing the Church and pretty soon the Congregationalist Church is dis-established and it's safe to be a Quaker or even a Catholic on the streets of Boston.

But here's the thing - if we look at which denominations in the United States can draw a direct line from themselves to the Congregationalist Church of the Puritans, it's the modern Congregationalists who are entirely mainstream Protestants whose churches are pretty solidly liberal in their politics, the United Church of Christ which is extremely cultural liberal, and it's the Unitarian Universalists who are practically issued DSA memberships. (I say this with love as a fellow comrade.)

By contrast, modern evangelical Christianity (although there's a complicated distinction between evangelical and fundamentalist that I don't have time to get into) in the United States is made up of an entirely different set of denominations - here, we're talking Baptists, Pentacostalists, Methodists, non-denominational churches, and sometimes Presbyterians.

The Puritans Were Dour Killjoys Who Hated Sex:

This one owes a lot to Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter.

The reality is actually the opposite - for their time, the Puritans were a bunch of weird hippies. At a time when most major religious institutions tended to emphasize the sinful nature of sex and Catholicism in particular tended to emphasize the moral superiority of virginity, the Puritans stressed that sexual pleasure was a gift from God, that married couples had an obligation to not just have children but to get each other off, and both men and women could be taken to court and fined for failing to fulfill their maritial obligations.

The Puritans also didn't have much of a problem with pre-marital sex. As long as there was an absolute agreement that you were going to get married if and when someone ended up pregnant, Puritan elders were perfectly happy to let young people be young people. Indeed, despite the objection of Jonathan Edwards and others there was an (oddly similar to modern Scandinavian customs) old New England custom of "bundling," whereby a young couple would be put into bed together by their parents with a sack or bundle tied between them as a putative modesty shield, but where everyone involved knew that the young couple would remove the bundle as soon as the lights were turned out.

One of my favorite little social circumlocutions is that there was a custom of pretending that a child clearly born out of wedlock was actually just born prematurely to a bride who was clearly nine months along, leading to a rash of surprisingly large and healthy premature births being recorded in the diary of Puritan midwife Martha Ballard. Historians have even applied statistical modeling to show that about 30-40% of births in colonial America were pre-mature.

But what about non-sexual dourness? Well, here we have to understand that, while they were concerned about public morality, the Puritans were simultaneously very strict when it came to matters of religion and otherwise normal people who liked having fun. So if you go down the long list of things that Puritans banned that has landed them with a reputation as a bunch of killjoys, they usually hide some sort of religious motivation.

So for example, let's take the Puritan iconoclastic tendency to smash stained glass windows, whitewash church walls, and smash church organs during the English Civil War - all of these things have to do with a rejection of Catholicism, and in the case of church organs a belief that the only kind of music that should be allowed in church is the congregation singing psalms as an expression of social equality. At the same time, Puritans enjoyed art in a secular context and often had portraits of themselves made and paintings hung on their walls, and they owned musical instruments in their homes.

What about the wearing nothing but black clothing? See, in our time wearing nothing but black is considered rather staid (or Goth), but in the Early Modern period the dyes that were needed to produce pure black cloth were incredibly expensive - so wearing all black was a sign of status and wealth, hence why the Hapsburgs started emphasizing wearing all-black in the same period. However, your ordinary Puritan couldn't afford an all-black attire and would have worn quite colorful (but much cheaper) browns and blues and greens.

What about booze and gambling and sports and the theater and other sinful pursuits? Well, the Puritans were mostly ok with booze - every New England village had its tavern - but they did regulate how much they could serve, again because they were worried that drunkenness would lead to blasphemy. Likewise, the Puritans were mostly ok with gambling, and they didn't mind people playing sports - except that they went absolutely beserk about drinking, gambling, and sports if they happened on the Sabbath because the Puritans really cared about the Sabbath and Charles I had a habit of poking them about that issue. They were against the theater because of its association with prostitution and cross-dressing, though, I can't deny that. On the other hand, the Puritans were also morally opposed to bloodsports like bear-baiting, cock-fighting, and bare-knuckle boxing because of the violence it did to God's creatures, which I guess makes them some of the first animal rights activsts?

They Banned Christmas:

Again, this comes down to a religious thing, not a hatred of presents and trees - keep in mind that the whole presents-and-trees paradigm of Christmas didn't really exist until the 19th century and Dickens' Christmas Carol, so what we're really talking about here is a conflict over religious holidays - so what people were complaining about was not going to church an extra day in the year. I don't get it, personally.

See, the thing is that Puritans were known for being extremely close Bible readers, and one of the things that you discover almost immediately if you even cursorily read the New Testament is that Christ was clearly not born on December 25th. Which meant that the whole December 25th thing was a false religious holiday, which is why they banned it.

The Puritans Were Democrats:

One thing that I don't think Puritans get enough credit for is that, at a time when pretty much the whole of European society was some form of monarchist, the Puritans were some of the few people out there who really committed themselves to democratic principles.

As I've already said, this process starts when John Liliburne, an activist and pamphleteer who promoted the concept of universal human rights (what he called "freeborn rights"), took up the anti-Laudian cause and it continued through the mobilization of large numbers of Puritans to campaign for election to the Long Parliament.

There, not only did the Puritans vote to revenge themselves on their old enemy William Laud, but they also took part in a gradual process of Parliamentary radicalization, starting with the impeachment of Strafford as the architect of arbitrary rule, the passage of the Triennal Acts, the re-statement that non-Parliamentary taxation was illegal, the Grand Remonstrance, and the Militia Ordinance.

Then over the course of the war, Puritans served with distinction in the Parliamentary army, especially and disproportionately in the New Model Army where they beat the living hell out of the aristocratic armies of Charles I, while defying both the expectations and active interference of the House of Lords.

At this point, I should mention that during this period the Puritans divided into two main factions - Presbyterians, who developed a close political and religious alliance with the Scottish Covenanters who had secured the Presbyterian Church in Scotland during the Bishops' Wars and who were quite interested in extending an established Presbyterian Church; and Independents, who advocated local congregationalism (sound familiar) and opposed the concept of established churches.

Finally, we have the coming together of the Independents of the New Model Army and the Leveller movement - during the war, John Liliburne had served with bravery and distinction at Edgehill and Marston Moore, and personally capturing Tickhill Castle without firing a shot. His fellow Leveller Thomas Rainsborough proved a decisive cavalry commander at Naseby, Leicester, the Western Campaign, and Langport, a gifted siege commander at Bridgwater, Bristol, Berkeley Castle, Oxford, and Worcester. Thus, when it came time to hold the Putney Debates, the Independent/Leveller bloc had both credibility within the New Model Army and the only political program out there. Their proposal:

redistricting of Parliament on the basis of equal population; i.e one man, one vote.

the election of a Parliament every two years.

freedom of conscience.

equality under the law.

In the context of the 17th century, this was dangerously radical stuff and it prompted Cromwell and Fairfax into paroxyms of fear that the propertied were in danger of being swamped by democratic enthusiasm - leading to the imprisonment of Lilburne and the other Leveller leaders and ultimately the violent suppression of the Leveller rank-and-file.

As for Cromwell, well - even the Quakers produced Richard Nixon.

[thisisnotthenerd]

Curriculum at the Aguefort Adventuring Academy

Now that the Night Yorb adventure has concluded and the Bad Kids are headed back to school I have thoughts about the structure of the Aguefort Adventuring Academy.

The Solisian School District in Elmville, as far as we know, consists of Skullcleaver Elementary School, Oakshield Middle School, Mumple School, Hudol College, and the Aguefort Adventuring Academy. While Skullcleaver and Oakshield serve the population as a whole, Mumple focuses on NPC trades, while Hudol is a private school that focuses on theoretical magic for the ‘upper class’ of Elmville, and the Aguefort Adventuring Academy focuses on training adventurers from within their specific classes while also providing general education.

Obviously, the differing structures of each of these institutions brings up some questions. Since the Solisian School District presumably has a school board and a superintendent, are there any enforceable curriculum standards that the high schools have to abide by? What common classes do Mumple, Hudol, and Aguefort have? What does a high school diploma from each of these mean? 

Given the endless questions brought up by the organization of this school district, I’m going to try and make logical sense of it by tackling them as they come to me.

First, I’m going to focus on the Aguefort Adventuring Academy, since that’s what we have information on. I can speculate on the nature of Mumple and Hudol, but we have actual info about the AAA.

What has to be in the base curriculum for each school?

For the AAA:

I’m basing this on a combination of what we know from the Bad Kids’ classes and their investigation during Family in Flames.

Here’s what we know of the AAA faculty:

Administrative Staff:

Principal: Arthur Aguefort

Vice Principal: Goldenhoard/Kalvaxus, Gilear Faeth

Lunch Lad(y): Doreen, Gilear Faeth

Guidance Counselor: Mr. GIbbons, Jawbone O’Shaughnessy

Librarian: Maugly Dimweather

Nurse: Fatima al-Aydaa

Receptionist: Chart Bomsk

Custodian: Kasavian the Wise

Bloodrush Coach: Coach Daybreak, Gorthalax the Insatiable

Gen Ed/Elective Teachers:

History: Kurby Rockstone

Linguistics: Efevrian Stuttle

Home Ec: Pilby Hatchet

Driver’s Ed: Alphonse Doublefist

Health: Spunge Dirtfoot

Theater: Ebria Dwimmerwaithe, Mr. Pepper

Music: Lucilla Lullaby

Arcana: Joria Casterwall

Class-Specific Teachers:

Artificer: Grunding Tomblast

Barbarian: Porter Cliffbreaker

Bard: none listed

Cleric/Religious Studies: Yolanda Badgood

Druid: Ellarian Fallowglade

Fighter: Corsica Jones

Monk: River Moondaughter

Paladin: Halo St. Croix

Ranger: Ellen Fleetfoot

Rogue: Eugenia Shadow

Sorcerer: Jace Stardiamond

Warlock: Evan Freem

Wizard: Tiberia Runestaff

So we know there is at least history and linguistics, as well as many elective options. Math and science likely run differently when Arthur ‘Chronomancer’ Aguefort is around, so I can understand them not being present on this list, though I would say that math is probably present in the elementary/middle schools, just because having a basic understanding of how arithmetic and geometry work forms a lot of what goes into basic life skills and also things like material components and ritual circles for casters. Adaine has made reference to math classes before, so the existence of them is kind of up in the air–we don’t have direct confirmation, but they’re likely present.

I took the liberty of moving arcana to the elective category because while it is a specific specialization, it doesn’t fit with the rest of the class model, and it fits more as a class that would be shared between the casters that have to learn things. Understanding the foundations of each type of magic, learning the bases of material, verbal, and somatic components bc even if you use an arcane focus, it’s important to understand where the idea is coming from. 

Based on my own American high school experience, I would have expected a few more core classes. There really are a lot of electives. There don’t seem to be specific curriculum standards that would transfer well from school to school. Thus, I would expect that earning a diploma and/or a GED would have significantly different requirements.

Class-specific curricula:

Artificers

They likely have some sort of shop class/STEM course to learn how to build things and repair them–easy way to get tool proficiencies. Also a class on the different infusions and how to use them? 

Subclasses: Once you get past 3rd level and choose a subclass I'd assume they would have optional electives for each subclass (alchemist, armorer, artillerist, battlesmith). Ultimately it just comes down to different skills, but artificers do a lot of the same things from subclass to subclass.

Barbarians

We have insight into these classes because Fig and Gorgug attended them; they are learning about  the sources of rage, and how to control the rage state while in combat. 

Subclasses: electives likely split into controlling magical elements of rage for wild magic, zealot, totem, storm herald, and ancestral guardian barbarians, and martial elements of rage for battleragers, berserkers, beasts, giants, and juggernauts.

Bards

Bards are one of the classes that often have a strong theoretical basis, so I would assume they have a relatively heavy curriculum. We know there’s bardic history, because Aguefort talks about it in Sophomore Year, but bards would likely have some required music classes as well. 

Subclasses: Lore bards would definitely have some history crossover and maybe arcana crossover with the wizards once they started taking electives for their subclasses, while swords and valor bards would share classes with the fighters, creation bards with the artificers, glamour bards with the charisma rogues, and eloquence, spirits, tragedy, and whispers would likely have similar electives.

Clerics

Healing/medicine is likely one of their core classes, but generally clerics are probably going to be learning rituals and the histories of deities, along with other wisdom based skills. 

Subclasses: like the bards, there’s a ton of variance with clerics. A knowledge cleric is not going to have the same classes as a trickster cleric, or a grave cleric, etc.. Now that I think about it, it makes sense for forge clerics to be taking shop classes with the artificers.

Druids

Ecology, druidic magic, survival classes? They’re probably paired with the rangers often. I think I recall Aabria and Erika talking about Danielle helping Antiope with more traditional ranger skills, so it makes sense that they share some classes. Wildshape training and summoning practice probably factor in when they can perform the skills more than once a day.

Subclasses: the things that druids can do can vary significantly, but if i had to guess: moon & shepherd druids would get paired because they’re working with creatures, spores & blighted druids would work with more necrotic spells, dreams & stars druids would get paired because they’re associated with night in differing ways, land druids have their own classes, and wildfire druids would be arsonists. Just kidding.

Fighters

Fighters are explicitly trained warriors, so learning strategy, different fighting styles and martial skills depending on what fits their needs best. Learning to use action surge and attacking quickly would be a big one.

Subclasses: Each subclass would get slightly different training, but ultimately they’re all learning to fight, so it would be more like groups within a larger class. Fighter is also a solid multiclass, so I’d expect a bunch of multiclassed kids to join in with training.

Monks

Monks are also  explicitly trained warriors, though the focus is ki and finding enlightenment at a base level. We haven’t had a monk PC in the world of Spyre, but there is a monastic studies chair, so there presumably are monks at the AAA

Subclasses: some monks learn more ki-based techniques while others learn more arcana, so there’s probably some really split classes there.

Paladins

Paired with the clerics for deific history, though they have electives on the different forms of oaths as well as fighting classes/training. Ultimately paladins are a partial caster combination of a fighter and a cleric, so I would expect them to share classes with both of those

Subclasses: as stated, it would mostly be based on the differing oaths and the magics they get from each.

Rangers

They’d share ecology/survival classes with the druids, though the rangers are given more specific combat training and ways of tracking favored enemies and such. There’s probably a class that helps you decide your favored terrain.

Subclasses: all of the animal companion subclasses would get paired, while the hunter/assassin types would probably have some kind of stealth and tracking classes.

Rogues

Rogues would get skills training for expertise but also stealth training. Basically assassin training but also charisma classes for charisma rogues and elective magic for the arcane tricksters

Subclasses: not huge differences here except for the arcane tricksters because they’re partial casters. they're learning to sneak around and kill people by surprise.

Sorcerers

Sorcerers would get basic magic training, with a focus on controlling sorcery points/fonts of magic, and understanding where sorcerers come from. Sorcerers don’t technically have to do work to get their magic, rather, it’s a matter of precise control of what they have i.e. metamagic.

Subclasses: There’s a wide variety of sorcerous origins, so each would have pretty different classes associated. Divine soul sorcerers would probably get paired with the clerics, but everyone else would have their own options.

Warlocks

Warlocks are the weirdest type of full caster, so they probably don’t combine with other classes very much. I imagine that not many high schoolers are making these kinds of deals early on, so it probably involves learning about patrons, and maybe negotiation with your patron? There’s also probably classes on invocations and the different benefits of each. To be completely honest, I wouldn’t expect them to offer much in the way of warlock classes anyway. The only warlocks we’ve run into have been Johnny Spells and the greasers, Fig, Bill Seacaster’s cult, and Sam’s eldritch adept feat. Most of these are outside organizations, and if they aren’t it’s been based on in-game deals and negotiation.

Subclasses: very split. Different patrons have very different demands.

Wizards 

They’re already nerds that learn magic from books. Arcana and history classes, split courses to work in different schools of magic. Aguefort is a wizard–you think he wouldn’t have a robust wizard’s education at his academy?

Subclasses: one for every school of magic and also chronomancy. 

Next Question:

How does leveling work at the AAA?

Everyone presumably starts around level one in freshman year, probably with some variance based on family background and previous experience. The seven are level 10 when they get their GED, and all of them lost at least part of a school year. According to the RTX college visit oneshot, college students are ~level 15. I would say they probably don’t enter at level 15–somewhere around level 12-13 maybe?

This is not canon, but I think what’s maybe intended is annual progression requirements. You start at level 1 and get to 5ish freshman year, start at 5 and get to 8 sophomore year, start at 8 and get to 10 junior year, and start at 10 get to 12 in time for graduation. While they’re forming adventuring parties on the first day, most groups are not going to be going out and finding encounters immediately in Solace. They’re going to school. They’re learning how to work together as a party. They’re participating in extracurriculars. The lower levels are easier to get through–that’s why the progression slows down at the higher levels, because you get diminishing returns on leveling the higher level you are.

This seems to fit–the 7 are evenly leveled, but fit into the junior-senior model that would allow them to get their GEDs while being a little underleveled for graduation. The assumption is that they’re immediately going to go and be an adventuring party–they’ll make up any difference very quickly. By contrast, the bad kids had progressive leveling during freshman year that left them at level 8 during the Prompocalypse fight. I’m fairly sure that Penelope and Dayne were level 10 at least, and during sophomore year she can cast 6th level spells and has 3d10 fire bolt damage, so she’s at least 11th level if not higher. So being at level 12 in senior year tracks.

Thus the bad kids over-level during freshman year, even going by milestone leveling. if you go on an xp model you’d have to get around 10000 throughout the year to hit level 5–they’re running into so many encounters that they overshoot. And thus they’re still over-leveled in sophomore year, but if they had a relatively quiet year up to spring break, then not leveling up significantly makes sense.

Numerically, if a student is assessed on xp basis for what they have to earn in that year to level up appropriately, if they go back to zero at the start of each level.

Freshman year: 10,400

Sophomore year: 71,000

Junior Year: 112,000

Senior Year: 185,000

That tracks for high school–you can do very well in freshman year classes and then all of a sudden start struggling, and it’s more work every year. you’re capable of more, sure, but you also have way more responsibility. 

How does the quest assignment system work?

What we know: they have adventures during the year as a party that serve as a sort of capstone project–60% of their grade. My hypothesis: Knowing how high school classes work in a non-fantasy public school, I’d posit that the adventures are considered a form of independent study; every student is required to do a certain amount every year, in order to move to the next grade as an adventuring party. If they don’t complete a quest of a high enough level, or enough lower-level quests, the party can be disbanded, and they may need to repeat grades in order to move to the next grade.

In order to support the infrastructure of a modern school system, and modern technology, Solace can’t be unstable enough to require adventurers. That’s the crux of what Charity Blythe was advocating for with Project Reset–using a catastrophe to drive the market of adventure. Since this was a distinct event that the Ministry of Adventure was planning for, one can conclude that these Class A, B, and C quests are not happening all that often. What are those you ask?

The Ministry of Adventure classifies quests in a six-tiered system, from class A to class F, in order of decreasing severity. Class A quests threaten the existence of the Universe and planes beyond the prime material; class B quests threaten the prime material/the world of Spyre; class C quests threaten nations; classes D-F are for localized threats, the ‘bread-and-butter’ quests, though an adventurer that can handle a class F quest may not be able to handle a class D quest. There is likely some further calculus when it comes to these classifications–the classes simply refer to the scope of the threat with regard to what it threatens, not specifically how difficult it is to complete the quest.

A GED from the Larger Solisian School District requires the sign-off of the Superintendent of Schools as well as the completion of a Class A, B, or C quest. By classification: the Bad Kids’ defeat of Kalvaxus was a class C quest, their defeat of the Nightmare King was class B, and the Seven’s quest to release Talura to infinity was a Class A quest. Sidenote: if a GED requires quest completion, how does anyone not from the AAA get a GED? Do they still have exams for non-adventurers? What subjects are required in the world of Spyre? Is it even needed?

So, Solace isn’t unstable enough to induce quests beyond class D on a regular basis; where, then, do these teen adventurers get high level quests? We first need to talk about how the rest of the world and their capacity for teen adventurers.

Highcourt: Nation ruled by monarchy that reigns over most of the rest of Spyre, the have an ongoing treaty with spyre–they were the source of the original Sol worshippers that became the harvestmen. Thus, the mentions of perditional contradoxy in their treaty with Solace make sense. Not suitable for adventures beyond D class as it would likely violate treaties, unless the adventurers are specifically hired.

Fallinel: high elven nation ruled by the court of stars, or Seven Immortal Dancers on a Spindle, who Sing to the Various Phases of the Moon, with lower courts for bureaucracy. No lawyers. Not suitable for adventures beyond D class as it would likely violate treaties, unless the adventurers are specifically hired.

Sylvaire: aka the forest of the nightmare king. south of Highcourt, home of cassandra’s original worshippers, the town of arborly, and a bunch of captured gnomes who were sustaining magic for the druids of the storm king. The forest itself was walled off for ~850 years. Quests are feasible along the coast and around the borders of the forest, but quests to enter the forest would not succeed without infernal permission.

Red Waste: Kalvaxus’s initial territory but his lair was in the mountains of chaos? Desert-like, full of Kalvaxus worshippers and Yorbies. The Seven went there for their sophomore year quest. Developed enough to have a tattoo parlor where Antiope could get her leader tattoo. Suitable for higher level adventures.

The Baronies: collection of small city states/nations that are constantly at war, where the richest of the rich have access to technology while others are still operating in a medieval society. Suitable for higher level adventures.

Mountains of Chaos: where Kalvaxus’s lair is located, but also home to the Temple of the Earth Defiant. Sklonda Gukgak has family from there, though she is from Bastion City in Solace. Suitable for higher level adventures.

Swamps of Ruin: Not much that we know currently; Kristen was building swamp Venice there while on a humanitarian/missionary trip. Suitable for higher level adventures.

Nekronomicron: subterranean city of necromancy and the undead, the location of Talura’s final stand. Kalvaxus was allied with the necromancers–which extended his control beyond the Red Waste. Suitable for higher level adventures.

Leviathan: the pirate city made of ships cobbled together into a functional city. if you can find it. They have their own adventurers though. they’re more likely to kill you. Technically suitable for higher level adventures.

Throshk: North of the Mountains of Chaos and Solace, home to Kalebrimbor, not much known in canon. clear for adventure. Suitable for higher level adventures.

Frostheim: North of Throshk, snow-covered according to maps of Spyre.  Suitable for higher level adventures.

And that’s just the continent we’ve been shown; there’s probably more to Spyre that we have yet to explore. Sidenote: the map poster from the seven has been taken off the dropout store and i’m sad about it. I know this means they’re probably doing a poster for this season but still.

So what does this all mean? Well, all students of the aguefort adventuring academy must engage in a quest of an appropriate level with their adventuring party in order to jointly pass the year and move to the next grade. They are allowed to travel to achieve their objective, and can enlist paid assistance from non-students known as hirelings. They must go on at least one higher level quest, or multiple D-F quests, presumably starting in sophomore year, since parties are generally formed on the first day of freshman year, and the expectation is that the students are not of a high enough level to engage with threats of class C and above. 

This contextualizes Antiope failing a year for non-palimpsest reasons–her party would have failed their yearly quest and been disbanded. It also gives context to the rest of the Seven losing their adventuring parties; if one of your members is not participating in the completion of the quest, they can be removed from the party and left as a solo adventurer.

That’s all I have for now on this because I don't have the energy to keep digging at the moment. We’ll see about more as this season progresses.

[menlove]

hiii I have a question as u are starting ur masters soon… I’m transferring to a university this fall to get a bachelor’s (undeclared major) and history is one of the majors I’m considering… are you a history major or something more specific? And would you recommend it? Just out of curiosity :)

aaaaah I have my BA in religious studies w a minor in history! but the Type of religious studies I focus on and primarily give a shit about are historical religious studies. like obviously w my degree I Know and Care about modern religion (& it particularly interests me where it intersects w feminism & queerness) but like. my Primary focus is religious history!

and honestlyyyyy I would absolutely recommend it it's so so so fun and it teaches you so much about the world around you. I will be a downer and say keep potential jobs in mind bc a lot of history focused jobs take a MA or PhD..... buuut I absolutely love my degree and I loved all the classes I took for it and would honestly not trade it. I started out as an early childhood education major but I was Miserable and this made me so so so much happier and more fulfilled

even if you don't go for a degree in it I'd HIGHLY recommend taking some random, niche history classes for electives. some of my favorite classes have been history of american religion, history of sexuality, history of religious tolerance, and art history of china.... like they're just so interesting & for sure worth gaining some Knowledge

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday Ian Anderson, born 10th August 1947 in Dunfermline. After attending primary school in Edinburgh, his family relocated to Blackpool in 1959. Following a traditional Grammar school education, he moved on to Art college to study fine art before deciding on an attempt at a musical career. He was influenced by his father’s big band and jazz records and the emergence of rock music, but was disenchanted with the “show biz” style of early American rock and roll stars like Elvis Presley. In 1963 with some school friends he formed his first band The Blades, a soul and blues outfit. In 1965 they regrouped into The John Evan Band with major lineup changes. They disband two years later when Anderson moved to Luton. In his new surroundings, Ian meets the drummer Clive Bunker and the guitarist Mick Abrahams and with Glenn Cornick, a bassist - of The John Evan Band-, Anderson creates the seed of the group that would become the legendary Jethro Tull. Still enjoying a lengthy if intermittent ongoing career, Jethro Tull has released 30 studio and live albums, selling more than 60 million copies since the band first performed at London’s famous Marquee club. After undertaking more than 3000 concerts in forty-something countries throughout four decades, Tull has played typically 100 concerts each year to longstanding, as well as new fans worldwide. Widely recognized as the man who introduced the flute to rock music, Ian Anderson remains the crowned exponent of the popular and rock genres of flute playing. So far, no pretender to the throne has stepped forward. Ian also plays ethnic flutes and whistles together with acoustic guitar and the mandolin bouzouki, balalaika, saxophone, harmonica, and a variety of whistles. I briefly met Ian on Skye in 1987 on my way back from Benbecula where he had an estate and ran a Fish farm, well 11 fish farms as my research has unearthed, he also employed over 400 people before selling it in the 90’s. Anderson recalled in an interview how he started as a flautist… “ once owned a 1960s Fender Stratocaster, which had previously belonged to Lemmy Kilminster before he found fame with Motorhead. But when it dawned on me I was never going to catch up with the growing band of hotshot British guitarists at that time – Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton – I traded it in for a Selma Goldfield student flute worth £30. I knew Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton didn’t play the flute, so I thought I would be in with a chance. A lot of people told me it was a ridiculous trade because the Strat was worth at least £150. But in fact it was a great buy because learning to play it was the start of Jethro Tull.” Anderson lives on a farm in the southwest of England where he has a recording studio and office. He has been married for 37 years to Shona who is also an active director of their music and other companies. They have two children. In 2006 and 2010, he was awarded Doctorates in Literature from Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh and the Abertay University of Dundee. He received the Ivor Award for International Achievement in Music. Ian admits he owns no fast car, never yet having taken a driving test, and has a wardrobe of singularly uninspiring and drab leisurewear varying from light grey to black in colour. He still keeps a couple of off-road competition motorcycles, and a saxophone which he promises never to play again.

Our birthday boy likes to play more intinate venues rather than grand halls, I noticed in the past he has played in religious buildings like cathedrals, he said in an interview ‘Playing in a cathedral gives you a sense of history, responsibility, and humility’ He seems a man after my own heart, while I am not a religious man I do get this same feeling when visiting these sites.. It's not about profits for Jethro Tull, again I have posted that he doesn't charge over the top prices for his tickets, and when he plays in historical places he gives back….The profits from the sales of tickets for my Christmas concert in Bristol Cathedral will go to the upkeep of these sacred buildings, and, perhaps, also in support of the musical liturgy of the church.

Ian admits that he is responsible for an enormous carbon footprint over the years —" I’m a climate sinner — but I’ve planted over 50,000 mixed deciduous trees on our farm. Its heavy clay isn’t not capable of producing arable crops. At best, it grows grass for grazing, but some margins aren’t suitable; so we’ve extended our ancient woodlands with many oak trees. They are an emblem of the Anderson-family clan, whose legend is “Stand sure”.

Jethro Tull are playing Bristol Cathedral on December 11th, tickets are £25-45 snd Salisbury Cathedral next day. These dates are sandwiched between a European tour.

The video features the song, Dun Ringill, from the group's 1979 album Stormwatch, it is an ode to the Iron Age-era fort of the same name. The fort, located on the coast of the Isle of Skye in Scotland, was occupied by the Clan Mackinnon for centuries.[1] The ruins of Castle Ringill, located near Loch Slapin, were located on Anderson's Scottish property, thus inspiring him to write the song. Anderson explained: " Dun Ringill" [is] about the ruins of an old hillside in the Isle of Skye, off the west coast of Scotland, where Nordic invaders would have landed to pillage and plunder and the local folk would have hidden the women and children and the sheep under fortifications.

It's a cool video, pity it was filmed at Dover rather than on Skye though!

[viaetor]

hi everyone! i hope you're all doing well and taking care of yourselves and having good days. i haven't been very active here because of my surgeries, but i plan on being more active soon since i've been missing writing a lot. before that though, i need to state something very important for my blog going forward: i will not be interacting with any natlan characters/blogs or characters related/inspired by the region (including ocs), only if they're canon divergent. this will not change with the release of the archon quests. i will simply take whatever i feel is relevant to my aether and that’s it. my reasons for this drastic decision will be explained below. please take this post not only as an announcement but as well as a vent and an attempt to call for awareness, especially since many of us are not only roleplayers but writers, artists and content creators. i'd appreciate it if you could all read this post in full.

this post is also not directed at my mutuals or any people i have contact with. this is just me trying to make my boundaries clear, explaining them, and hoping you can understand (and perhaps relate to) my hurt. read this post and make your own judgement. i appreciate your time regardless. 

i'm latin american, proudly born and raised. my parents fought in the dictatorship of our country, my grandparents were of indigenous settlements. i'm a history graduate with honours, and before that, i studied social and political sciences. i've been a part of political movements in my university to guarantee equality and education, and i only stopped being part of some of them because i received threats by alt-right extremists targeting my family. even so, i still continue to be a constant participant in assemblies and projects. i'm an avid volunteer worker in local schools, and i worked in hospitals, too. i speak portuguese, spanish, french and english with varying levels of fluency. i've lived most of my childhood and early adolescence in villages. i've participated in many religious rituals, invited by practising people of those beliefs, and i've shared so many wonderful memories with people from so many latin american backgrounds that i can't even make a cohesive timeline of all my adventures. 

i'm saying all this to emphasise that i'm speaking from a place of experience, knowledge, and culture. my word is by no means the law, but i sure do believe it holds weight. you're free to disagree with me and think otherwise, of course. but i do think that, if that's the case and you have very strong positive feelings regarding natlan as a whole, it'd be best if you would unfollow and block me for both of our sakes.

i've been playing genshin impact since its launch, and ever since the release of inazuma as a region, i've been discontent with how the game has been progressing in design. i've also written and published scientific articles about the inherent colourism, racism and orientalism found in genshin, specifically in sumeru, while also nodding in acknowledgement to some of the research that the design team put in some characters—namely al-haitham, nilou and cyno. i know the issues we are seeing today are not new. however, it for sure has gotten worse. 

with these disclaimers out, i'd like to put some of my grievances out in the open. 

when you play genshin, you can feel that liyue is china. mondstadt feels like germany. inazuma resembles japan. fontaine is an ode of love to french steampunk and was very well designed. even sumeru, with all its issues of blending all of swana in one single region, has some research done when it comes to the islamic golden ages and pre-islamic mythologies. so if you see anyone arguing that hoyoverse is “just a videogame company”, know that they can and have done better. as their popularity and revenue grow, as players—free to play or otherwise—we are entitled to expect the same quality or more from them.

i don't feel the same way about everything we've seen of natlan so far, and i've been feeling more and more disrespected. 

i was sceptical when natlan was first announced, and some leaks were happening. i expected the worst, and honestly, it sunk even deeper than i thought. the names of the characters we've got, alongside some leaks, suggest that the characters we will be getting are based on the north, central, and south americas, africa, and oceania. this worried me very, very deeply and today, with the newest released trailer, i just gave up hoping for anything good, really.

although some people may (ignorantly? optimistically? blindly?) claim that all these continents are connected—and they certainly have many influences on each other through religion, culture and economics, born from colonisation processes—, it's at best stupidly naive to believe that one single entire region in an online videogame will tactfully tackle complex non-western and non-asian cultures and customs. because, yes, those are non-western and non-asian societies: we are progressively denied a place in western politics and cultures, we are treated as lesser, and we do not participate in global economics. when did you last buy a chilean videogame in the united states or europe? or a fiji pair of shoes? or a nigerian movie ticket in your city theatres? if you've answered "never" to just one of those questions, you've proven my point that these countries and regions are not "part" of the west or even asia. we are outsiders. we have always been treated as outsiders. while these european and asian powerhouses were allowed to stand as their own regions, genshin muddled all these cultures and ethnicities into one melting pot that they are calling natlan. the game is quite literally a global phenomenon now. imagine the impression natlan will be projecting to an audience that is none-the-wiser to the cultures natlan is meant to be inspired from.

so, again: when it was announced that natlan would take inspiration from all these regions, my heart sank. it feels like we're all being put together in one single frying pan of "exotic," "distant," and "unknown." everything that is considered "tribal" (because that's how westerners and asians tend to see us) is being thrown in natlan. it's demoralising. 

this is not to mention the clear money-grabbing and capitalist recycling of character designs going on with some of the characters—something never seen before in genshin impact’s history, by the way! they always came up with new concepts—and the abhorrent colourism that has been intensified. 

the disrespect has been getting rampant. some of the already shown characters have tribal tattoos that are used by some of the indigenous people for important rituals. the patterns of clothes they've shown also mix many cultures and peoples (sometimes even historically rivalling ones, to top that off) that are disrespectful. they went for a streetwear/biker kind of look that looks completely soulless and unimaginative, instead of doing the bare minimum of researching beautiful contemporary indigenous-owned fashion companies. because it's easier. i think it’s also easier to hire voice actors who aren’t latines, right? we must be “scarce, barely existent”.

and, what kicked the bucket for me, after trying so hard to give genshin the benefit of the doubt: an important deity for the yorubá people, iansã/iansan/oyá, has been shown as a fucking child in the game. she… and olorun, who you might know as ororon if you play in english, even though in all other translations (japanese, korean and chinese), his name is written correctly as olorun. but of course, the english translation team for hoyoverse, as usual, couldn’t do the bare fucking minimum. because it’s a nigerian name, right? why do they/you care? but just so you know, in case you’re the least bit curious: iansan and olorun are two of the most important orixás/deities in african and african-latin american religions. they’re worshipped to this day. they’re real, representative religious symbols. not tokens. not your average dead gods. i want to ask you, sincerely: what would you think and how would you feel if genshin named a guy "mohammed", or "allah", or “jesus christ”, or a girl "mary magdalene"? what do you think happened when cod vanguard showed the quran's pages on the floor? people were pissed. and of course, people should be pissed. and don't try to "oh, but people do that with greek and egyptian gods". don't be disingenuous, i know you’re smarter than that and that you know there's a difference and creeping power dynamic here. 

if this is not enough for you, then please, enlighten me. where are the beautiful forests of natlan that could have been inspired by the amazon? where are the amazing deserts inspired in bolivia or chile? how about the colourful cities of el salvador or cuba? is it truly enough for you guys to have something slightly resembling the aztec empire and its continuous fetishisation? wouldn't it be easier to play crash bandicoot or the old indiana jones games? why are we celebrating this?

i'm beyond heartbroken. 

to my latine siblings, whether you’re celebrating/enjoying natlan in your own way and finding light in it or if you’re as disappointed as i am, we deserve better than this. 

to my usamerican, canadian, european and asian friends, please, please, please listen to people who have lived and loved latam and all the other regions. i already did what i could: i've sent tickets to hoyoverse, i'll be muting natlan-specific words, and i will not be rolling on any upcoming natlan banners. 

so this here is just the nail of the coffin: i will not be accepting anything natlan-related on this blog.

thank you for reading!

[thevoidscreamer]

Stop Talking About "Proportional Responses" and Read This.

Okay. So as an Intelligence Studies student who has had a longstanding special interest in the Middle East, I feel a little bit compelled to talk about the Israel-Hamas-Palestine situation going on right now.

First off, there are tons of great resources to learn about the history that pertains to this conflict. I highly recommend the book The Contemporary Middle East, 3rd edition, for a good start, but for those of you who don't learn well through reading, Warographics has a great short video that can help you get the bare minimum bit of context necessary to understanding what's going on.

Secondly, it is paramount to note that there are no good guys in this situation aside from the civilians and non-combatants whose lives are being horrendously upended (again) by this conflict. Anyone who tells you that either Israel or Hamas is the sole hero or the sole victim in this story is not looking at the full picture. The world is made up of shades of gray, and there is no truthful black-and-white view of this situation. I caution anyone against listening to those who make statements that glorify the actions of either party or who refuse to accept that both have committed atrocities over the past decades preceding this particular event and the days containing it or who equivocate Palestine with Hamas.

Third, my personal bias is against the use of egregious violence, shock tactics, and ethnic cleansing in any efforts to effect lasting change. I am also against the apartheid state model, the definition of which can be found at this hyperlink. I stand against any form of extremism and terrorism, be they enacted on behalf of an individual, a group, or a recognized state. If you are a proponent of these things, you will not like my analysis. I also assert that LOAC should be staunchly adhered to, not just in letter but also in intent. If you think that exceptions to LOAC should be made to religious or ethnic groups, you will not like my analysis. I do not believe in making exceptions for "divinely inspired" behaviors and I harshly disagree with the assertion of some Christians that Israel reserves the right to reign unfettered damage on any and all others because they are the "apple of G-d's eye."

Fourth, I don't believe in the principle of "reciprocal action" for nations that are actually seeking peace. Responses to terrorist behavior should not be met with equal terrorist behavior. War should not be an avenging action, it should be an procedure that seeks to end the conflict with as little collateral damage as possible. Counter to what most US Americans seem to believe, war is not just bombs and guns. It is ISR, agreements, support, appeals to other countries for aid, international propaganda campaigns, cybersecurity efforts, counterintelligence, economic shifts, and a lot more, all of which has become tremendously more accessible (and impactful) thanks to technological advances. Throwing bodies at the problem and throwing bombs at the bodies until enough people die that it slows down or stops is not our only option anymore, and it hasn't been for a long time.

Finally, I strongly believe in the responsibility that journalists and reporters bear to inform their viewers. Does the average US American news viewer understand Israel's defense capabilities? No, and I wouldn't expect them to. But it's helpful for them to know, when forming their opinions about the conflict. Instead of only showing the tragic final moments of Palestinian and Israeli civilians on loop for the entire 24 hour news cycle, why not dedicate some of that time to discussing the armaments and capabilities of each side of the conflict? What missiles are being used in the air strikes? What about the aircraft? What is the method that the IDF is using to decide where to strike? It's not sensational, but it is important.

Okay so now that that's all out of the way, let's talk specifically about Israel's response to Hamas' coordinated attack on its citizens on 7 October 2023.

My thesis statement here is this: Israel has the knowledge and means to locate and deal with the most important/influential members of Hamas who reside in Gaza while sustaining minimal collateral damage to buildings and civilians, but they have chosen instead to inflict a moderate amount of collateral damage -- more than they have in the past, but less than they are capable of. To what end? That is yet to be seen, though inferences can be made.

In my opinion, this is reckless and will only serve to stoke the flames of anti-Israel sentiment in Palestine and around the world while appealing to the radicalized far-right fringe groups Netanyahu is beholden to, as well as radical Christians, Messianics, and Zionists in the United States. It will not result in peace and will further divide the Middle East and the US along archaic religious extremist lines.

The following post will provide the puzzle pieces that support this hypothesis, and bring them all together in a conclusion.

Let's start by talking about Israel's intelligence apparatus, Mossad. Background on Mossad here for those who need it.

Why is everyone upset with Mossad? Mossad is actually one of the most effective intelligence agencies in the world. The fact that they didn't catch this before it happened comes as such a shock to me as an analyst-in-training that I actually think they may have allowed it to happen in order to enact a war on Palestine. That's simply my impression, but we have yet to see evidence of why this attack was not caught and stopped. The IDF's actions seem to back my hypothesis, but we won't know for sure until the dust settles years from now. At this point, I don't feel speculation is particularly useful.

What benefit does Mossad have to offer now that the conflict has popped off? Hamas is a large organization, estimated at around 20,000 individuals. However, Mossad likely has profiles (and possibly even patterns-of-life) on the high ranking and influential members of Hamas who reside in Gaza. This is because Mossad is a highly adept, globally notable intelligence service, and Hamas is a well-known enemy. Even if Mossad does not have profiles on those individuals, it would only take some patience on Israel's part to locate and identify them and their patterns of life, especially given Israel’s UAV capabilities.

What are Israel's UAV capabilities?

Israel's use of UAVs is not publicly acknowledged, but it is well known that they not only use but manufacture three specific UAVs. In fact, they are one of the world's foremost suppliers of UAV technology.

Of these, the Hermes 900 and Heron TP most resemble the MQ-9 Reaper. Why is this important? Comparison. The MQ-9 Reaper has hella capabilities I won't go into here, but follow this link if you'd like to learn more about the technological marvel that is General Atomics' MQ-9B. What you need to know for this comparison is that the MQ-9 can surveil and destroy a target without that target even knowing the MQ-9 was there. It's stealthy and incredibly precise. The US DOD version has a suite of sensors for all kinds of tasks, and it can carry a decent payload, which is addressed in the next bullet.

The missile we'll be talking about today is the November-class Hellfire. These 104 lb missiles have a unique capability. They are often called a zero-collateral weapon, because they eliminate their target(s) and nothing else. The short of how this missile works is by pressurizing an enclosed space and liquifying what's inside it. This missile does not explode because it has no explosive material. That means no shrapnel, no molten metal, nothing. And, its effects are confined to the four walls, floor, and ceiling of the room it "detonates" in. People in the next room? Unharmed. And it will not pressurize an open space. Which means, by using the laser guided air-to-ground missile system mounted on an aircraft like the MQ-9 or similar, this missile can be deployed to hit one target in an open space and impact no one else. Once deployed, the missile will make impact with the target, destroying it via sheer velocity, bury itself in the ground, and detonate without harming any other people or structures.

So how would Israel get their hands on something like that?

Prior to the Hamas attacks, the Biden administration requested Israel receive $3.3 billion in foreign military financing for the upcoming fiscal year -- the same as the past three years. For comparison, $2.8 billion is going to Europe and Eurasia aid, with an additional $1 billion earmarked specifically for Ukraine. The DOD version of the MQ-9 Reaper costs about $32 million, and Hellfire missiles cost around $120,000 per, including costs for technical support and training -- and its many variants are compatible with multiple platforms, not just the MQ-9.

For context, the Hellfire missile was initially developed in the late 70's. Its newer iterations are much more elegant and efficient, but the point still stands that Israel has had access to the same technology for just as long as everyone else. So even if they were not receiving funding from the US, Israel likely already has figured out an equivalent tool.

Now that we know what the most effective, least damaging option is... what kinds of missiles is Israel using?

Right now, since explosives are still flying, we won't have that information. But we do have information about the last big barrage of missiles and bombs used by Israel on Gaza, back in 2021.

Gravity bombs (mark 82, 83, and 84) fitted with JDAM guidance kits (GBU-38, GBU-32, and GBU-31 respectively) giving the weapon the capability to hit a designated GPS coordinate. These are general purpose bombs built to penetrate concrete and then explode, spreading lethal shrapnel. Lethal area: 2,400 m2

2,000 lb GBU-31 (V)4/B (bunker-buster subvariant), used to level high-rise buildings in Gaza.

500 lb GBU-54 'laser-guided JDAM.'

Semi-active laser-guided Mikholit missile (ATGM). These small missiles can be carried by the smallest of the UAV, but are often deployed by helicopter.

"Spike" or Tammuz NLOS anti-tank missile, which in some models has a staggering range of 16 miles, features a built-in video feed, and can be controlled like a drone.

So... they don't seem to have a track record for using precision missiles that cause minimal collateral damage. Okay, well maybe they have a reason.

So where is Israel sending its explosives?

Gaza is the world's third most densely populated polity, with a population of over 2 million Palestinians -- 70% of those being refugees from other parts of Israel. Below are two maps. The first one shows the population density using dots to depict the general clustering of humans in Gaza. The second one shows the IDF airstrike locations. There is a citation in the image itself, but the hyperlinks in this paragraph take you to the same places. I will let you draw your own conclusions regarding the impact the bombs will have on the Gaza Strip populous, based on the impact locations and population clustering.

From here, it is important to address the considerations that go into what missile to use on a target.

There is generally a three-point system that helps determine which munition is necessitated by which mission and which targets.

Value of target

Missile capability

Estimated collateral deaths

These are all important because of the Law of Armed Combat, sometimes called the International Humanitarian Law, or the Law of War, which is backed by both the Geneva Convention and the Hague Convention. The intention of the LOAC is to minimize collateral damage and unnecessary death, especially to that of non-combatants. And yes, it does apply to "non-international conflict" i.e. engaging in conflict with non-State armed groups -- but it offers a unique exception. "Leaders of non-State armed groups are also subject to attack on the same basis as other members of the group." See subsection 5.7.4 of the DOD Law of War Manual. But that's a rabbit hole for a different day.

How effective was the 2021 bombardment on damaging or destroying Hamas assets?

This is important because the current bombardment is on trajectory to be much more deadly and costly than any IDF bombardment in the past. If the goal of Israel's bombardments is to stop Hamas, then the damage to Hamas should outweigh the damage to the civil Palestinian population. When reading these records, remember that Hamas has controversial political control over Gaza -- many Palestinians do not want Hamas as their governing body, but Hamas enacts legal power there anyway.

Most of the boats and many of the personnel of Hamas' naval cammando force were destroyed

10 Hamas government buildings, including its Interior Ministry, were destroyed

11 military buildings, including one housing Hamas' cyber branch, were destroyed

Five banks that were allegedly linked to Hamas were destroyed

"Nearly 30" (yes, that's the quote) senior commanders and one rocket engineer expert were allegedly killed

The family homes of at least 15 Hamas leaders were destroyed, some including the families inside

Over 60 miles or roughly 20-25% of Hamas' estimated 250-310 mile "Metro," which is an underground tunnel system -- the demolished area included 15 cross-border strike tunnels

Let's compare that to the impact of those same strikes on Gazan infrastructure and non-combatants.

Gaza's only COVID testing and vaccination center was destroyed

Gaza's largest bookstore was destroyed

A critical desalinization plant was disabled

The sewer system was rendered unusable -- reportedly 50% of the water pipeline network was destroyed

53 school buildings were damaged

11 health centers and 6 hospitals were damaged

17,000 residential and commercial units were damaged, including 5 residential towers

An estimated 72,000 Palestinians were rendered homeless

800,000 Gazans lacked access to clean drinking water and were receiving 5 hours of electricity per day, down from 12

At least 243 Gazans were killed, including over 100 women and children

So how is this current conflict shaping up, just five days after it's begun?

Let's look only at total reported deaths so far, because the damage and bombings are still happening and it is not easy to project the impact of something like this.

Gaza: 680, plus 1500 militants reported found dead by Israel

Israel: 900

Hamas Leaders: 3

US: 11

Note: this data is from 10 October, because I could not find a reliable source for reported deaths more recently. However for the curious reader, of the many projected death counts available, I felt AlJazeera would be most accurate.

So what does this all mean?

The current scenario unfolding showcases Israel's prowess in defense and the capabilities they hold, with potential access to precision weapons that minimize collateral damage. However, their choice to utilize munitions that cause significant collateral harm raises pertinent questions about their objectives. Israel's historical actions, while crippling to some of Hamas's assets, have also disproportionately affected Palestinian civilians, disrupting their infrastructure and causing substantial loss of life. It's evident that conflict responses shouldn't be retaliatory actions but must aim for lasting peace.

Israel's approach to the conflict manifests a concerning disregard for the safety of Palestinian civilians residing in Gaza. The destruction of essential infrastructure in 2021, show a pattern of excessive force that suggests a stubbornness against employing more efficient, precise methods of eliminating targets. Instead, their recent actions in the 2023 conflict will inevitably lead to devastating collateral damage that affects non-combatants more than the intended targets. Moreover, these tactics will serve to further tarnish Israel's international image. The global community is increasingly conscious of human rights and the usefulness of discrimination in warfare. Israel’s actions, therefore, risk isolating them in the global theater and could potentially invite international sanctions or legal action, as well as continued aggression from Palestine and its sympathizers. These factors all combine to indicate a blatant disregard for Palestinian civilian lives and a lack of foresight in their strategic actions and international relations.

With technological advancements, nations no longer have to resort to conventional warfare tactics. As the current conflict unfolds, it becomes even more critical to highlight the importance of a balanced approach and the dire need for solutions that prioritize humanity over political or religious objectives. However, Israel and Hamas have both made their positions clear, and neither of those positions reflects the idea of regional security.

Tl;dr ... Israel could have chosen to do better, but they didn't. And that's not okay.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note about the author: I grew up in a radicalized far right evangelical household, and at least one of my parents is still radicalized. I did a brief foray into the radicalized far left side of US politics before settling into my current moderate position. As a white, atheist, transgender individual who has experienced homelessness and chronic illness, and who has been a victim of sex trafficking, but who now lives a stable and solidly middle class life with a bachelor's level education and a partner in the military, I recognize that my moderate political position is a privileged one.

I acknowledge that the unfortunate truth is that often the only option left to oppressed groups seeking change is violence, especially provided there is no substantial humanitarian intervention available to them. I believe that Israel's actions will further that sense of no-other-way-out for Palestinians, especially those not affiliated with Hamas.

[softmatzohtruther]

There's something I've been thinking about, and since this is my personal blog, I figured I'd write it out and maybe share it -- maybe I'll get to the end of this post and close it without saving, maybe I'll tuck it away into my drafts. I don't know yet.

I am ethnically Jewish, but I wasn't raised in the culture. My family situation is complicated, due to divorces, remarriages, and relocations, but I usually just tell people that I'm patrilineal, raised secular, and that I'm reconnecting with the community, with a potential conversion in my near future. After nearly 10 years of independent study and hanging around with other Jewish people both online and offline, and then moving into a city that has a large Jewish community, I decided this year to take a more earnest stride into Jewish communal and religious life.

This started with me signing up for social events around the High Holidays, and that's how I found myself in the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History on the evening of Yom Kippur. I'd been to the museum a few years before for a film festival, so I had seen some of the things they had on display, but I've not yet actually toured the building. This time I was there for an event being held in one of the empty conference rooms, meeting with a friend to have a pre-fast dinner before sundown and then joining in group prayer. It was an emotional evening for me for many reasons, particularly because it was my first time observing the holiday in the ritual sense, and that it seemed like an appropriate time to meditate on the nature of the new life that I'm trying to live. But it was also a memorable evening for me for another reason.

If you ever find yourself in Philadelphia, you can visit this museum yourself. Admission is free. On the ground floor, there is a piece on display across from the elevator, and I noticed it there as I was leaving the event. At first, I thought it was misplaced, because the display is a chair, and a cup of tea.

These items were donated by the Congregation of Beth Israel, a reform synagogue in Colleyville Texas. It was a somber sight for me on that night in September. I had only really heard a vague overview of what had happened there barely two years ago -- if you read the Wikipedia article linked above, you will notice it happened in January of 2022. And I remember that the one thought that crossed my mind as I stood in front of that chair is that when you enter a history museum, you expect to see things that are old, maybe from the 40s or something. And you will. But you'll also see the chair a rabbi threw at a man who was holding his synagogue hostage in 2022. Because this part of our history is still ongoing.

Read this part of the article:

A livestream of the synagogue's services on its Facebook page streamed the ongoing situation, including the forceful taking of hostages. In the livestream, Akram could be heard speaking to authorities, who attempted to negotiate with him. At one point, Akram claimed (apparently falsely) to have a bomb. The livestream also streamed Akram saying that he had flown to the city where Siddiqui was imprisoned with the intent of taking hostages. He also said that he chose to take hostages in a synagogue because the U.S. "only cares about Jewish lives" and because "Jews control the world. Jews control the media. Jews control the banks."

And that has been in the back of my mind constantly since a group of people in this city decided to protest outside of a fucking falafel restaurant chanting "we charge you with genocide." It's this idea that Jews are responsible for the acts of every other Jew, and on top of that, Jews are responsible for everyone else, too, when convenient. Like a sort of universal scapegoat. It makes me furious, of course, but mostly it just makes me sad.

I have zero regrets about throwing my lot in with this side of my family, my heritage, my history... but it is unbelievably heavy at times. Still, I feel like I have to carry it. Stronger people than me have died for it, but I will do what I have to do. I do have hope for the future, and more broadly speaking I have hope for the world, too.

מיר וועלן זיי איבערלעבן. עם ישראל חי

[chronicparagon]

Writing About Historical and Intergenerational Trauma

This is a post I've been thinking about since last night. I won't go into detail about what happened, but it made me think. I wasn't involved (but it came to my dash). It involved how different races, ethnicities, and cultures are represented in media. That includes writing and yes, even rps.

I want to make a post about including People of Color (PoC) in writing and the trauma they faced. This incident was what I viewed as an attempt to be historically accurate but wasn't handled properly. There is nothing wrong with including experiences that PoC characters had or perceptions other people had of these characters, but it must be handled appropriately because it can reinforce stereotypes, trigger people who are very sensitive to these topics, hurt readers who are PoC or otherwise, cause drama, and risk bringing in toxicity in communities.

I thought it may help if I share a bit about how to write about historical and intergeneration trauma, specifically racism, and how it's perceived.

Before I begin, I want to give my positionality. I am Native American (southeastern) and I also work in tribal health and studied Indigenous Health. While I specialized in infectious diseases and cultural competence in medicine, trauma and its impacts on PoC are frequently discussed in my work and with my colleagues. My work includes appreciating Indigenous knowledge and cultures, and how to improve healthcare research by including the knowledge and cultures of Indigenous people as our leaders and partners. Although I am not perfect and still learning, I hope this post will be a resource that serves as a starting point on being careful with writing about historical trauma.

There is so much I want to say about writing about historical and intergenerational trauma, but I will try to keep this brief with the main points for writers to consider.

The topic of this post is about including trauma that PoC face. It is intergenerational trauma, which is also known as historical trauma. I will call these IT/HT for short.

IT/HT means trauma inflicted by generations of abuse. This can happen from cycles of abuse between generations, but it is often used to describe trauma caused by colonization. It refers not only to genocide but also to cultural erasure, such as banning religious practices, banning languages, and forcing the minority to assimilate. Racism also contributes to IT/HT by reinforcing the ideas that caused grave harm.

IT/HT is very real and still causes problems. In fact, it is the root of health disparities minorities like Indigenous people face. It influences social determinants of health, such as poverty, food insecurity, violence, addiction, inadequate health care, and the list goes on.

Although discussing IT/HT can be uncomfortable, it is important to consider when representing PoC characters. This isn't to say the discomfort is invalid. In fact, history should make people uncomfortable so there will be improvements. However, talking about IT/HT promotes change, which is what we need. Addressing IT/HT also gives PoC like Indigenous people time to grieve. Grief is part of the healing journey.

Having said that, including the impacts of IT/HT can be tricky. It is a subject that requires a lot of thought, research, and asking questions. Avoiding stereotypes, and crude terms (such as derogatory terms or descriptors) are important. The impacts of racism and IT/HT should be through the eyes of PoC, and also be specific to the race or ethnicity of the character. This is because every group may not experience the same impacts or severity.

Look up sources about IT, HT, or racism from the perspective of the ethnic or racial group you chose. In my experience, while there are so many resources in Indigenous health and how PoC faced impacts of racism, they are often done with Western academics or medicine. This isn't to say that's bad, but we cannot understand the entire picture, or even address the disparities and trauma unless we include Indigenous people or PoC in the research.

There are books, articles, videos, and interviews of people sharing their experiences like First Nations people retelling their experience in boarding schools. Of course, there are many, many other examples. The main idea is to consider PoC's view of these impacts. Their experiences should guide you in how your character faced the same challenges and not so much on how other characters may perceive them.

Another important thing is to never be afraid to ask questions. Most PoC wants to share their experiences, perspectives, and cultures with others who want to listen.

Additionally, when you write PoC characters, focus on the strengths of the people. While there are some cases when bringing up the disparities, representation needs to focus more on strengths. One example is Indigenous people. They have been researchers for centuries and their knowledge to explore the world. They developed innovations far before other people knew about them. This isn't just Native Americans either. This includes Indigenous groups all over the world.

To summarize, there is nothing wrong with including sensitive topics like IT/HT, but it must be done with great care. That means doing plenty of research, especially on materials that include PoC or minority communities as partners and leaders in research. Also, write PoC respectfully without stereotypes, never use crude terms, include experiences from PoC's perspectives, and include their strengths.

I hope the information here helps. My intention in this post is to help people be on the right path to learning about their character's backgrounds, the people who faced hardships from the same backgrounds, and present IT/HT with respect to PoC with their views, cultures, and strengths in mind.

[flowerwebs]

hi! I saw your post/answer about xiran and hui and I gotta say I absolutely agree as someone who's half hui and grew up muslim/in a hui household jklfdhfhg I've been meaning to post about it but I'm glad other people are pointing it out. Aside from the host of other problems in her work, her refusal to ever really bring up hui culture outside of when its politically useful while basically making Han Culture Bite Sized Lectures for a white audience has always really rubbed me the wrong way - and although like you said Hui is a diverse term and there are many ways to be Hui, her Zachary Ying book had some aspects to it that made me raise my eyebrows and didn't really ring true to the experience of being Hui diaspora. Especially the fact that there was a big fuss made in the books about the political repercussions of Zachary being Hui, but the rest of the book is about him being possessed by Qin Shi Huang and 'magic' and such (?????) which feels a lot like it's in direct opposition to Hui culture and beliefs... it leaves a really bad taste in my mouth that she strongly establishes his Hui heritage in order to write twitter rants abt politics at the beginning but then totally erases his Hui culture and makes him 'reconnect' to a Han Chinese culture :/ Hui have been in China for literally over a thousand years and there's a whole host of unique and diverse mixed cultures across China that are categorized under 'Hui' but his story doesn't even explore a single one... it's really disappointing, especially as she positions herself as Hui and a position of authority. Of course there are people with Hui on their birth certificates that don't practice Islam, but she goes beyond that by pulling it out for points while being so dismissive of the unique culture and context of our people. Anyways, I'm sorry for rambling in your inbox but I was really excited to see someone mention it when my friend linked me your post kfjldhgf

hi, ty for the insight! and yea like you said a lot of her stuff about being hui comes off as like pure exotification and sometimes dare i'd say orientalism...it gives off "i only have a supposed native american princess great grandmother so i call myself indigenous to people for brownie points" energy. xiran claiming she is hui when she is definitively not is erasing actual hui chinese voices and at its very worst is unfortunately her views of han ethnocentrism projected onto a chinese ethnic minority; even on the slight chance that xiran is actually muslim, she needs to repair a lot of how she poorly represents hui culture. (also narratively` making a hui muslim character happily assimilate to han chinese folk religious customs is fucking racist as hell can we talk about that?!) i actually despise how much she's spread possibly dangerous and very flimsy misinterpretations of hui culture to her broader audience...how tf is girlie a leading expert on chinese culture/history when by this she's no better than the racist white scholars who've ruined the east asian studies field to the point where its reputation is almost tarnished in leftist circles

[likealittleheartbeat]

hey!

this is more of a personal ask so if you do not feel comfortable answering it, feel free to ignore.

what did u mean in your previous post about 'finding your lane finally'? what profession/outlet did u find for writing about your interests if i may ask?:) it just sounds interesting!

So I really have never enjoyed the career I’ve been in, and I’ve been considering grad school for a long time (even did a semester in a professional track counseling program that I did fine in but really did not enjoy). I read academic texts for fun, which no one else I’ve met does, so it seemed like the best path. But I have always struggled to feel confident in figuring out which field would really let me integrate all my interests that I could reasonably break into without having to do a whole bunch of extra work. I’ve considered studying Literature bcuz I love literary fiction, thematic analysis, structuralism, and literary hermeneutics; Film Studies bcuz I love a lot of tv and film but I’m not super into the more masculine parts of the canon nor as many technical aspects of the craft; Gender and Sexuality Studies to get at the focus on queer subjectivity and dynamics that are a core interest for me; History since I was a history major in undergrad and still really enjoy that type of research; Religious Studies so ai can dive into Buddhist and Reformed Christian religious ideas; even American Studies so I can touch on indigeneity, colonialism, and gender in American contexts, which is another special interest of mine.

But none of those fields felt like they’d let me obsess over the contemporary tv and movies that form the hub from which all those other interests spring. American studies felt close, but I really wanted to study media beyond its American context when applicable, and I really don’t care about a lot of political and legal mechanisms tbh unless the stuff I’m watching is engaging with them.

Today while reading a book of essays on the development and impacts of the Boys Love genre in Asia, I was looking at what each of the scholars studied in (I’ve done this a lot as I’ve been trying to figure out what to do) and one of them, whose writing and analysis was inspiring me, had studied Media Studies. A lightbulb turned on.

It’s wild because media studies was my sister’s major in undergrad, and I even edited and helped develop her essays throughout college and her final thesis. It had never occurred to me, though. I realized media studies would let me explore the development, content, conveyance, and reception of all the stuff that makes me feel the most fulfilled 🥰 And I could take it toward working in the tv industry or, probs more likely, a career in academia (which I know has plenty of it’s own issues and criticisms but it also seems like it might possibly be a great fit for me personally).

But yeah, that’s the realization I had today. Just feels good to have some clarity.

[cinnbar-bun]

My question, how do you feel about FV being…Yknow. That stuff. I’m not trying to start an argument or anything I just want to make sure you’re not excusing it, because you seem rlly nice and I love your stuff 😭 ofc I know it’s a rough topic so no rush on answering 🙏

I don't mind answering this- TLDR: no I obviously do not excuse his actions nor will I ever. My fave character is Miss Lucy Steel herself I would never excuse anything he's done especially to her. This is gonna be a bit rambly, sorry.

Do I still like him? Yes. Because evidently, he's a fictional guy and I am no stranger to liking evil men (cough cough Sir blow up a kingdom Crocodile cough cough). I do think FV is pretty attractive and charismatic (duh, of course he is!), but I don't like him because I think he's a good guy. I'll try to explain why I like him so much (I'm putting this under the cut because I rambled too much lmao)

I've said this before and I'll say it again, FV is a complex character. He's a hypocritical imperialist who is the token for how charismatic nationalists use and abuse pride and religion to their advantage. I like SBR for many things, including the religious symbolism and as a commentary on American/Western imperialism. SBR is deeper than just 'Johnny touches Gyro's balls and decides to race across America for Jesus', and Valentine showcases SBR's complexity both with his motivations, his ideals, and his physical prowess.

I don't like FV because I think he is right, either. He's not. I hope my messaging has been clear that he's very bad and very wrong. He is just interesting to me as a character. As a brown woman who was born and raised in America (I specify this for a reason), has extensively studied American history and American literature for my degree, Valentine is a gold mine of introspection and criticism from Araki. He is one of my favorite characters because he is the worst type of guy around- but he's also a realistic portrayal of a 'patriotic' politician taken to its limits and given the powers of essentially god. I had to study a lot of war topics and political speeches for my education, and Valentine is easily someone I could study all day and night about because goooood he is such a BEAUTIFUL representation of how corrupt leaders come into power (but people will say 'why did so-so come to power and why did no one argue against them' great, you have the exact blueprint right there with FV).

I love reading about politics and history. That's why FV specifically appeals to me. He would not work in another setting nor would he appeal to me as much if anything was changed. And it's especially important that he was a charismatic American with the specific goal of American world domination and suppression of all other countries. I, in fact, am working on a series based on his life before SBR because I love trying to imagine how this young boy who's father died in a war became the power hungry zealot he is later.

So yes, I am not ashamed to admit I love and adore him as a character. He's an evil that still exists in the world and I love reading about him. I do not excuse his actions, because they're fucking terrible, obviously. But his character and role in SBR is truly remarkable and without him, SBR would not be as praised as it is. FV drives the narrative beyond being a stationary macguffin, and I'm so glad Araki used him to portray the power-hungry politician as indecent and terrible.

Hope that cleared it up! Please feel free to discuss more with me about him, I love talking about him so much!!!

[jeannereames]

Hi Dr Reames!

Would you say that Macedon shared the same "political culture" with its Thracian and Illyrian neighbours, like how most Greeks shared the polis structure and the concept of citizenship?

I don't really know anything about Macedonian history before Philip II's time, but you've often brought up how the Macedonians shared some elements of elite culture (e.g. mound burials) with their Thracian neighbours, as well religious beliefs and practices.

I've only ever heard these people generically described as "a collection of tribes (that confederated into a kingdom)", which also seems to be the common description for nearby "Greek" polities like Thessaly and Epiros. So did these societies have a lot in common, structurally speaking, with Macedon? Or were they just completely different types of polities altogether?

First, in the interest of some good bibliography on the Thracians:

Z. H. Archibald, The Odrysian Kingdom of Thrace. Orpheus Unmasked. Oxford UP, 1998. (Too expensive outside libraries, but highly recommended if you can get it by interlibrary loan. Part of the exorbitant cost [almost $400, but used for less] owes to images, as it’s archaeology heavy. Archibald is also an expert on trade and economy in north Greece and the Black Sea region, and has edited several collections on the topic.

Alexander Fol, Valeria Fol. Thracians. Coronet Books, 2005. Also expensive, if not as bad, and meant for the general public. Fol’s 1977 Thrace and the Thracians, with Ivan Marazov, was a classic. Fol and Marazov are fathers of modern Thracian studies.

R. F. Hodinott, The Thracians. Thames and Hudson, 1981. Somewhat dated now but has pictures and can be found used for a decent price if you search around. But, yeah…dated.

For Illyria, John Wilkes’ The Illyrians, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996, is a good place to start, but there’s even less about them in book form (or articles).

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Now, to the question.

BOTH the Thracians and Illyrians were made up of politically independent tribes bound by language and religion who, sometimes, also united behind a strong ruler (the Odrysians in Thrace for several generations, and Bardylis briefly in Illyria). One can probably make parallels to Germanic tribes, but it’s easier for me to point to American indigenous nations. The Odrysians might be compared to the Iroquois federation. The Illyrians to the Great Lakes people, united for a while behind Tecumseh, but not entirely, and disunified again after. These aren’t perfect, but you get the idea. For that matter, the Greeks themselves weren’t a nation, but a group of poleis bonded by language, culture, and religion. They fought as often as they cooperated. The Persian invasion forced cooperation, which then dissolved into the Peloponnesian War.

Beyond linguistic and religious parallels, sometimes we also have GEOGRAPHIC ones. So, let me divide the north into lowlands and highlands. It’s much more visible on the ground than from a map, but Epiros, Upper Macedonia, and Illyria are all more alike, landscape-wise, than Lower Macedonia and the Thracian valleys. South of all that, and different yet again, lay Thessaly, like a bridge between Southern Greece and these northern regions.

If language (and religion) are markers of shared culture, culture can also be shaped by ethnically distinct neighbors. Thracians and Macedonians weren’t ethnically related, yet certainly shared cultural features. Without falling into colonialist geographical/environmental determinism, geography does affect how early cultures develop because of what resources are available, difficulties of travel, weather, lay of the land itself, etc.

For instance, the Pindus Range, while not especially high, is rocky and made a formidable barrier to easy east-west travel. Until recently, sailing was always more efficient in Greece than travel by land (especially over mountain ranges).* Ergo, city-states/towns on the western coast tended to be western-facing for trade, and city-states/towns on the eastern side were, predictably, eastern-facing. This is why both Epiros and Ainai (Elimeia) did more trade with Corinth than Athens, and one reason Alexandros of Epiros went west to Italy while Alexander of Macedon looked east to Persia. It’s also why Corinth, Sparta, etc., in the Peloponnese colonized Sicily and S. Italy, while Athens, Euboia, etc., colonized the Asia Minor and Black Sea coasts. (It’s not an absolute, but one certainly sees trends.)

So, looking at their land, we can see why Macedonians and Thracians were both horse people with their wide valleys. They also practiced agriculture, had rich forests for logging, and significant metal (and mineral) deposits—including silver and gold—that made mining a source of wealth. They shared some burial customs but maintained acute differences. Both had lower status for women compared to Illyria/Epiros/Paionia. Yet that’s true only of some Thracian tribes, such as the Odrysians. Others had stronger roles for women. Thracians and Macedonians shared a few deities (The Rider/Zis, Dionysos/Zagreus, Bendis/Artemis/Earth Mother), although Macedonian religion maintained a Greek cast. We also shouldn’t underestimate the impact of Greek colonies along the Black Sea coast on inland Thrace, especially the Odrysians. Many an Athenian or Milesian (et al.) explorer/merchant/colonist married into the local Thracian elite.

Let’s look at burial customs, how they’re alike and different, for a concrete example of this shared regional culture.

First, while both Thracians and Macedonians had shrines, neither had temples on the Greek model until late, and then largely in Macedonia. Their money went into the ground with burials.

Temples represent a shit-ton of city/community money plowed into a building for public use/display. In southern Greece, they rise (pun intended) at the end of the Archaic Age as city-state sumptuary laws sought to eliminate personal display at funerals, weddings, etc. That never happened in Macedonia/much of the northern areas. So, temples were slow to creep up there until the Hellenistic period. Even then, gargantuan funerals and the Macedonian Tomb remained de rigueur for Macedonian elite. (The date of the arrival of the true Macedonian Tomb is debated, but I side with those who count it as a post-Alexander development.)

A “Macedonian Tomb” (above: Tomb of Judgement, photo mine) is a faux-shrine embedded in the ground. Elite families committed wealth to it in a huge potlatch to honor the dead. Earlier cyst tombs show the same proclivities, but without the accompanying shrine-like architecture. As early as 650 BCE at Archontiko (= ancient Pella), we find absurd amounts of wealth in burials (below: Archontiko burial goods, Pella Museum, photos mine). Same thing at Sindos, and Aigai, in roughly the same period. Also in a few places in Upper Macedonia, in the Archaic Age: Aiani, Achlada, Trebenište, etc.. This is just the tip of the iceberg. If Greece had more money for digs, I think we’d find additional sites.

Vivi Saripanidi has some great articles (conveniently in English) about these finds: “Constructing Necropoleis in the Archaic Period,” “Vases, Funerary Practices, and Political Power in the Macedonian Kingdom During the Classical Period Before the Rise of Philip II,” and “Constructing Continuities with a Heroic Past.” They’re long, but thorough. I recommend them.

What we observe here are “Princely Burials” across lingo-ethnic boundaries that reflect a larger, shared regional culture. But one big difference between elite tombs in Macedonia and Thrace is the presence of a BODY, and whether the tomb was new or repurposed.

In Thrace, at least royal tombs are repurposed shrines (above: diagram and model of repurposed shrine-tombs). Macedonian Tombs were new construction meant to look like a shrine (faux-fronts, etc.). Also, Thracian kings’ bodies weren’t buried in their "tombs." Following the Dionysic/ Orphaic cult, the bodies were cut up into seven pieces and buried in unmarked spots. Ergo, their tombs are cenotaphs (below: Kosmatka Tomb/Tomb of Seuthes III, photos mine).

What they shared was putting absurd amounts of wealth into the ground in the way of grave goods, including some common/shared items such as armor, golden crowns, jewelry for women, etc. All this in place of community-reflective temples, as seen in the South. (Below: grave goods from Seuthes’ Tomb; grave goods from Royal Tomb II at Vergina, for comparison).

So, if some things are shared, others (connected to beliefs about the afterlife) are distinct, such as the repurposed shrine vs. new construction built like a shine, and the presence or absence of a body (below: tomb ceiling décor depicting Thracian deity Zalmoxis).

Aside from graves, we also find differences between highlands and lowlands in the roles of at least elite women. The highlands were tough areas to live, where herding (and raiding) dominated, and what agriculture there was required “all hands on deck” for survival. While that isn’t necessary for women to enjoy higher status (just look at Minoan Crete, Etruria, and even Egypt), it may have contributed to it in these circumstances.

Illyrian women fought. And not just with bows on horseback as Scythian women did. If we can believe Polyaenus, Philip’s daughter Kyanne (daughter of his Illyrian wife Audata) opposed an Illyrian queen on foot with spears—and won. Philip’s mother Eurydike involved herself in politics to keep her sons alive, but perhaps also as a result of cultural assumption: her mother was royal Lynkestian but her father was (perhaps) Illyrian. Epirote Olympias came to Pella expecting a certain amount of political influence that she, apparently, wasn’t given until Philip died. Alexander later observed that his mother had wisely traded places with Kleopatra, his sister, to rule in Epiros, because the Macedonians would never accept rule by a woman (implying the Epirotes would).

I’ve noted before that the political structure in northern Greece was more of a continuum: Thessaly had an oligarchic tetrarchy of four main clans, expunged by Jason in favor of tyranny, then restored by Philip. Epiros was ruled by a council who chose the “king” from the Aiakid clan until Alexandros I, Olympias’s brother, established a real monarchy. Last, we have Macedon, a true monarchy (apparently) from the beginning, but also centered on a clan (Argeads), with agreement/support from the elite Hetairoi class of kingmakers. Upper Macedonian cantons (formerly kingdoms) had similar clan rule, especially Lynkestis, Elimeia, and Orestis. Alas, we don’t know enough to say how absolute their monarchies were before Philip II absorbed them as new Macedonian districts, demoting their basileis (kings/princes) to mere governors.

I think continued highland resistance to that absorption is too often overlooked/minimized in modern histories of Philip’s reign, excepting a few like Ed Anson’s. In Dancing with the Lion: Rise, I touch on the possibility of highland rebellion bubbling up late in Philip’s reign but can’t say more without spoilers for the novel.

In antiquity, Thessaly was always considered Greek, as was (mostly) Epiros. But Macedonia’s Greek bona-fides were not universally accepted, resulting in the tale of Alexandros I’s entry into the Olympics—almost surely a fiction with no historical basis, fed to Herodotos after the Persian Wars. The tale’s goal, however, was to establish the Greekness of the ruling family, not of the Macedonian people, who were still considered barbaroi into the late Classical period. Recent linguistic studies suggest they did, indeed, speak a form of northern Greek, but the fact they were regarded as barbaroi in the ancient world is, I think instructive, even if not necessarily accurate.

It tells us they were different enough to be counted “not Greek” by some southern Greek poleis and politicians such as Demosthenes. Much of that was certainly opportunistic. But not all. The bias suggests Macedonian culture had enough overflow from their northern neighbors to appear sufficiently alien. Few Greek writers suggested the Thessalians or Epirotes weren’t Greek, but nobody argued the Thracians, Paiones, or Illyrians were. Macedonia occupied a liminal status.

We need to stop seeing these areas with hard borders and, instead, recognize permeable boundaries with the expected cultural overflow: out and in. Contra a lot of messaging in the late 1800s and early/mid-1900s, lifted from ancient narratives (and still visible today in ultra-national Greek narratives), the ancient Greeks did not go out to “civilize” their Eastern “Oriental” (and northern barbaroi) neighbors, exporting True Culture and Philosophy. (For more on these views, see my earlier post on “Alexander suffering from Conqueror’s Disease.”)

In fact, Greeks of the Late Iron Age (LIA)/Archaic Age absorbed a great deal of culture and ideas from those very “Oriental barbarians,” such as Lydia and Assyria. In art history, the LIA/Early Archaic Era is referred to as the “Orientalizing Period,” but it’s not just art. Take Greek medicine. It’s essentially Mesopotamian medicine with their religion buffed off. Greek philosophy developed on the islands along the Asia Minor coast, where Greeks regularly interacted with Lydians, Phoenicians, and eventually Persians; and also in Sicily and Southern Italy, where they were talking to Carthaginians and native Italic peoples, including Etruscans. Egypt also had an influence.

Philosophy and other cultural advances didn’t develop in the Greek heartland. The Greek COLONIES were the happenin’ places in the LIA/Archaic Era. Here we find the all-important ebb and flow of ideas with non-Greek peoples.

Artistic styles, foodstuffs, technology, even ideas and myths…all were shared (intentionally or not) via TRADE—especially at important emporia. Among the most significant of these LIA emporia was Methone, a Greek foundation on the Macedonian coast off the Thermaic Gulf (see map below). It provided contact between Phoenician/Euboian-Greek traders and the inland peoples, including what would have been the early Macedonian kingdom. Perhaps it was those very trade contacts that helped the Argeads expand their rule in the lowlands at the expense of Bottiaians, Almopes, Paionians, et al., who they ran out in order to subsume their lands.

My main point is that the northern Greek mainland/southern Balkans were neither isolated nor culturally stunted. Not when you look at all that gold and other fine craftwork coming out of the ground in Archaic burials in the region. We’ve simply got to rethink prior notions of “primitive” peoples and cultures up there—notions based on southern Greek narratives that were both political and culturally hidebound, but that have, for too long, been taken as gospel truth.

Ancient Macedon did not “rise” with Philip II and Alexander the Great. If anything, the 40 years between the murder of Archelaos (399) and the start of Philip’s reign (359/8) represents a 2-3 generation eclipse. Alexandros I, Perdikkas II, and Archelaos were extremely capable kings. Philip represented a return to that savvy rule.

(If you can read German, let me highly recommend Sabine Müller’s, Perdikkas II and Die Argeaden; she also has one on Alexander, but those two talk about earlier periods, and especially her take on Perdikkas shows how clever he was. For those who can’t read German, the Lexicon of Argead Macedonia’s entry on Perdikkas is a boiled-down summary, by Sabine, of the main points in her book.)

Anyway…I got away a bit from Thracian-Macedonian cultural parallels, but I needed to mount my soapbox about the cultural vitality of pre-Philip Macedonia, some of which came from Greek cultural imports, but also from Thrace, Illyria, etc.

Ancient Macedonia was a crossroads. It would continue to be so into Roman imperial, Byzantine, and later periods with the arrival of subsequent populations (Gauls, Romans, Slavs, etc.) into the region.

That fruit salad with Cool Whip, or Jello and marshmallows, or chopped up veggies and mayo, that populate many a family reunion or church potluck spread? One name for it is a “Macedonian Salad”—but not because it’s from Macedonia. It’s called that because it’s made up of many [very different] things. Also, because French macedoine means cut-up vegetables, but the reference to Macedonia as a cultural mishmash is embedded in that.

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* I’ve seen this personally between my first trip to Greece in 1997, and the new modern highway. Instead of winding around mountains, the A2 just blasts through them with tunnels. The A1 (from Thessaloniki to Athens) was there in ’97, and parts of the A2 east, but the new highway west through the Pindus makes a huge difference. It takes less than half the time now to drive from the area around Thessaloniki/Pella out to Ioannina (near ancient Dodona) in Epiros. Having seen the landscape, I can imagine the difficulties of such a trip in antiquity with unpaved roads (albeit perhaps at least graded). Taking carts over those hills would be daunting. See images below.

[trashquisitor-shirozora]

Full-on disclaimer for anyone who's never seen the disclaimers on my Star Wars fics - I never saw ROTS (I've tried, I've fucking tried, but retaining knowledge of TPM and AOTC to understand ROTS is impossible when my mind just wanders the fuck away during every attempt at a marathon PT watch), I only saw a handful of TCW episodes to study Satine and Mandalore, I never saw Rebels, I haven't seen TOTJ, and my non-OT/ST/Mandoverse/Andorverse/Kenobi/TBOBF/Solo knowledge comes from getting lost in the Wookeepedia, fandom osmosis, and several years playing SW Galaxy of Heroes.

The point is, I have half-baked knowledge and I am trying really hard and I can see the little kernels of interest and intrigue and "A ha! that's a Star Wars!" and my concluding thought for the 3rd episode of Ahsoka is, "FUCK YEAH, SPACE WHALES!!!"

Can someone just.... please explain the fuck to me what Dave is doing here with Ahsoka and Sabine? I don't know if it's the "Sabine thinks the best way to honor and also find Ezra is to become like him" or the whole "everyone has the Force Actually but you need talent, training, and some other fucking thing that sounds exactly like all the times I've been scolded for not trying hard enough thanks to my ADHD brain so that's fucking cool" bit. I don't know if it's that interview press tour thingy where Daisy told Domhnall that even Hux has the Force! Everyone has the Force! The Force is in all of us! We can all become the Jedi! I don't know if it's George's original idea that everyone can use the Force but not everyone does that eventually got changed to "a certain number of midichlorians in your blood gets you into the Jedi Temple". Or is it the whole "the Force is female" campaign? Is it Disney saying, "You can be a Jedi, too!" Are we Spider-man-ing the Jedi? Is that's what's going on? What the fuck is going on? Someone please tell me how we got from "the Force is in all living things and some people are able to sense and use the Force" to "the Force is in all living things and also everyone is capable of sensing and using the Force with the right amount of discipline and training and desire/'can do' attitude" because it feels like I'm being lied to. I'm being fucking bamboozled about what I know about Star Wars.

I don't even know what to say about the spacesuit. Just a lot of hysterical laughter maybe. Cool idea and I bet the concept designs were real fun but still. Hysterical laughter.

Slap some green hair on a kiddo and call him half-Twi'lek. OKAY THEN. Brilliant character design y'all got going. I guess you'd rather invest in the Volume than practical FX and makeup and shit?????

You know that feeling where you have all these thoughts and feelings and WORDS at the tip of your tongue but you lack the vocabulary or the fucking memory to hold that vocabulary and use it well? That's what I'm experiencing after watching Hera argue poorly with Mon and the Senators (they just formed the band and it's not going well, or so they say). This characterizing of bureaucracy, politicians, government is useless, clunky, stubborn, foolish, naive, soft, obstinate for no reason other than to hinder the rogueish hero, is such a tired, cheap trope. Haven't we learned enough from American copaganda shows? Haven't we learned from watching our hero cops and detectives bending and breaking rules to catch the bad guys while the Internal Affairs people are antagonists, rule-abiding busybodies who don't see that they're only getting in the way of our intrepid heroes catching the real bad guys?! Politics is messy and it is complicated and it is hard and it does have people who did sit on the sidelines during the war but to villainize them just because they didn't fight in the war, they didn't lose friends and family and Kanan, they won't give our general what she wants? Or do these senators already have history in the GFFA that I would've already known if I already watched some other TV shows or read the 'pedia religiously?

I thought the first 2 seasons of the Mando Show explored the post-OT galaxy pretty well. I liked how Din and Greef called the New Republic "a joke" and insinuated that they were unreliable and can't be counted upon to protect little Outer Rim worlds like Nevarro from Imperial remnants. It gave the impression of a baby Republic that is trying hard but struggling and their patrols are stretched so thin because of Mon's decision to demilitarize the Republic, and that's why they're such a non-presence out here in the Outer Rim. That's why Carson went out of his way to recruit Cara. She's been out here, she's done shit, she knows shit, she knows the lay of the land, she can be the eyes and ears that Carson and the New Republic can't be. You can build so fucking much out of these little interactions and conversations... but Dave & Jon chose to make things easy for themselves by characterizing the New Republic as incompetent, feckless, nonsensible, cruel, decadent, apathetic, uncaring, utterly useless to our very active rogueish heroes. They fast-tracked the New Republic's downfall to make it so much easier to prop up our heroes, and for what? To remind us that in the end it all doesn't fucking matter because Starkiller Base blows it all up anyway?

At least, at least, make it look like our heroes fucking tried to rebuild the galaxy after the Empire fell. At least make the New Republic fumbling and earnest but ultimately weighed down by so many voices demanding that they be prioritized in the rebuilding. Mon's government inherited a really fucking bad situation but at least have them reach halfway to something that she and Leia can be proud of before the infighting started and political factions started ripping down all that hard-fought and hard-won progress. Talk about the fucking whiplash from the despair and hope of Andor to whatever the fuck Mandalorian Season 3 showed us and whatever the fuck Ahsoka is continuing to show us.

Anyway.

I get that having a droid sidekick is the Cool Star Wars Thing To Do, but should Huyang really be treated as a sidekick and an expodumper? He really fucking should have gone to Ossus with Luke but nah, leave that fucking loser to his own business ignoring Ahsoka and Hera trying to stop a new war that nobody believes is actually going to happen. I mean, if you really think about it, did Hera really sell anything to these senators? It seems to me that all they see is a general who has only known war and will only ever see war around every corner, in every nook and cranny, under every bed. Of course they're going to be fucking skeptical and of course they're going to question her request for even more resources to find Ezra and maybe stop Thrawn, and the fucking answer, Hera Syndulla, is to not question if these people ever fought in the Rebellion and shame them for the sacrifices they did not make. This is such fucking cheapsass writing and it really sucks all the fun out of the episode.

Speaking of fun, how about them space whales! Bring them back, Felony. I want space whales and I want space cats. Give me purrgils and lothcats all day, every day.

I can't stop thinking about Disney's decision to give Ahsoka a primetime slot. I can't stop thinking about why that show got a primetime slot and not any of the other ones. Is it the numbers? Are they trying to catch a particular kind of crowd? What are the numbers, Disney? Why won't you show us the numbers? Where the fuck are the numbers, Disney? What are you afraid of? What are you hiding? What won't you tell your writers and your actors, Disney? What aren't you saying?

Anyway, space whales rule and I got other goddamn shit to do like keep writing my own ideas on a post-OT galaxy through fic.

P.S. The way Ray just fucking oozes charisma even if he was only there for like 2 minutes. And Diana remains fantastic. I love her brand of villainy even if I'm still baffled by her being a human Witch. What the fuck.