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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 18 days ago

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By: Michael David Cobb Bowen

Published: Dec 21, 2024

Today I came across some interesting material. It was a video that my brother Doc, retired LAPD, got to me from his network of insiders. It seems so long ago, but seeing it fresh four years later is quite the revelation. Today I’m publishing some of the last things I said on my old blog before moving to Substack. You can check it out at Stoic Observations.

From the Archives

Dateline June 2020 Some time ago I wrote My Black Life Doesn't Matter. As the machinations and shenanigans associated with BLM continue to disturb my peace, I think I have come to an appropriate way to describe it. Having come to this realization, I find it entirely consistent with my understanding of coming to grips with an identity one doesn't choose and how the Civil Rights movements of the past are so starkly and fundamentally different from what's going on today.

George Floyd has become a fungible.

He has been press ganged into a parade of celebrity victims by a crowd of activists and their sympathizers. His actual black life has been hounded into a representational dead end. Or to use more commonly bandied about language, he has been culturally appropriated. George Floyd is not his life, he is only his death. What his life might have meant has succumbed to the public acceptance, almost unanimous, about what his death has symbolized. I too, like the family of Floyd, know what it is like to lose a family member suddenly and tragically. I know what that kind of grief and loss feels like. I have experienced this for myself, twice. What I do not know, is what it feels like to have a family member's entire life be overshadowed by a moment of infamy and then converted into an avalanche of political activism. I have not had a family member erased.

On the other hand, I am familiar with the theme. Anyone who has attempted to write, as I have, as a black writer, knows how difficult it is to get your writing recognized as a legitimate and authentic representation of your lived experience. You can call this an economic injustice if that term suits you, because it is clear that the economic power of news organization and political organization and cultural production companies in any medium quite handily overwhelms the truth of any individual writer. Only the writer who is broadly published and becomes famous because of that, is relatively safe from misrepresentation. That safety is under a greater threat than ever in my memory, owing to the cowardice and volume of Cancel Culture and their blue meany alarm-clowns. As much as it is told that diverse voices are being empowered, these are only pigeonholes. They are as common and as generic as rainbow graphics and full [people of] color brochures for liberal arts colleges. Yet it is hard enough to have the actual details of life accurately portrayed in a world where racial stereotypes rule. When I moved from Los Angeles to Brooklyn around the corner from Crown Heights, it was assumed that black Americans all had the same negative connotations of Jews. So I was asked to join certain protests. I never had anything but normal relations with Jews my entire life. When I moved from NY to Atlanta's largely white Cobb County suburbs, it was assumed that I would inherit all of the black culture of Fulton County, largely black. Black diversity, that phrase you never hear, is real but it is always smothered for the premises of black cultural and political unity, and by the liberal confirmation bias that assumes it. That's why it's not part of today's narrative. That's why George Floyd's dead body means so much more than his life. It can't defy the narrative. It generated a perfect storm because it was racially predestined.

When I first got on the net in the early 90s, a close friend of mine said something fundamentally profound. It was that black Americans didn't need and weren't looking for a black leader, it was white people. White people needed a black leader to speak for the masses, someone they could accept or reject and then compare the ideas of the leaders to those black Americans with whom they wished to embrace or denounce. Where do you stand on Khalid Muhammad?, we were asked. Where do you stand on Mumia? What is your opinion on Cornel West? It was as if black America lived in an hermetic universe whose bubble could only be pierced by the Fungibles who communicated with the rest of us at the Wednesday Night Meeting. At the same time, we acknowledged it was true that black Americans were looking for symbols to back up their stories of "I told you so." to anyone who doubted the reality of racism. The dynamic remains. There is a hot market for tales from the hood. I cannot tell you how many breathless inquiries I have received in the vein of "What is the most devastating racist thing that ever happened to you?".

In this inverted world of show and tell, only the bleakest, blackest tragedies are monetized and taken up by the American elites. The short attention span theater of the mainstream media does not have the inclination, time, patience or budget to put more substantive non-fiction into their agendas, certainly nothing that defies the new conventions of multicultural political correctness that floats up from the teaming millions. The common man must be left to his own devices and of consumption, but they are not interested in their reality. If the New York Times survey says X, then the public had better believe it for its own good. All the acceptable alternatives are to be consumed by the first class citizens in the magazines that matter, mostly brought to you by Conde Nast. Perhaps I'm being cynical and shrill. I simply hate drowning in the vanilla fluff of deepest darkest horrors of the 'black lives' that matter. Once upon a time there were celebrated men like Vernon Jordan who got to represent what America could provide to its citizens. Now the examples are the mistreated, maimed, & murdered.

In my writing, I have dealt with just about every one of them. Sean Bell, The Jena Six, Latasha Harlins, Rodney King, Ron Settles, Michael Zinzun, Don Jackson, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Mumia Abu Jamal, Shaquanda Cotton, and many more that I don't currently have the patience to link to an appropriate post in my archives. Nevertheless I have no problem simply listing them:

Abner Louima

Genarlow Wilson

Dunbar Village

Jonny Gammage

Tyisha Miller

Eric Garner

Tamir Rice

Freddy Gray

Philando Castile

What did they do? How did they live? It doesn't matter. They were crushed, now all we have are their ghosts haunting every newsroom, every political mention of race. They have, in the hands of the priests of the death cult of the New Anti Racists, the only blacks that matter - the dead ones. Nobody is able to celebrate black life in this narrative. It's black death that pays the bills. It's black tragedy that keeps the newsrooms buzzing. It's black dysfunction that keeps people talking and editorializing and coming up with some of the most nonsensical political ideas outside of Lilliput. This game is old, tired and wrong.

#Michael David Cobb Bowen #Free Black Thought #BLM #Black Lives Matter #George Floyd #BLM riots #BLM protests #antiracism #antiracism as religion #woke #wokeness #cult of woke #wokeism #wokeness as religion #religion is a mental illness

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hjellacott · 2 years ago

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Really funny how 99% of your posts ab women's rights are about trans people. None about real issues facing your country or the world we live in right now. It's always the same with TERFs, y'all will claim to be on women side but if we look at your actions in the real world you never done any work for women. It's all words and hidden hate. If you took all that energy to help homeless women around your city you'd be a feminist, here you're just sad.

You know what's really funny? 1 that you clearly don't know me nor have seen all my posts, dozens of which are commenting the latest news on women's rights and feminism, and urging action. 2 I can also quite recall having commented issues affecting not just my birth country, but also my second country and Europe. 3 In fact, I've debated with people about those. 4 But what have you read, the last 5 posts on my blog? And "you've never done any work for women" well that's fucking LOL. I'm an activist in politics and feminism. I don't need to give you any fucking receipts, but I'll have you know I've done more for women in my life than you ever will. Not just actively defending them out there in the street when something happens to one of our sisters, but also going to protests, rallies, going on strikes for women's rights (a tradition that begun years ago in my student days), being active in politics, being well-informed all the time (because I do read the news several times a day, and contrary to most people who read the same newspapers all the time, I actually vary and also go international), knowing the latest laws concerning women and writing to my MP with suggestions, complaints and ideas, as my current country lets me do. I also use my actual profession, my career and any and all of my professional actions to empower women in the Arts and Culture, and I have now thrice reported powerful men in the British Film Industry for sexist and dangerous-to-women behaviour, such as sexual harassment (and that's three open and ongoing police investigations with Scotland Yard). And you're very quick to judge that I don't help homeless women when in fact, I do. I suggest you don't have such a big mouth to say what I do or do not do in terms of volunteering, donating and helping, because I'm not one to come to Tumblr and brag about "oh my God have you heard what a saint I am and the latest 50 things I've done today? paving my way to heaven!". But again, you want receipts? OK! I'll let you know I'm involved with women's shelters, I actively aid homeless, not just female ones but also men, and I'm an activist in a series of things including feminism, LGBT rights, Human Rights and BLM. That means that I don't just do protests and rallies, but that I communicate with politicians (here you can just write to them) every single fucking time they mess up, and have worked, in all the years I've been old enough to vote, towards a more feminist, LGBT, all-races-welcome city in every city I've lived in long enough to be able to vote. Because of active political involvement like mine, I can give you for example my birth city in Spain (although I won't tell you which one because privacy rights), is now one of the most feminist cities of Spain, where women can report you for rape if they didn't give specific consent to sex, and where gays can be gays and nobody hurts them. And that is without mentioning work in students' councils, in university students' associations, and out in the cold collecting signatures for one cause or another.

Also, you can use the word TERF to refer to me, even though I find it very stupid and I'll tell you why. One, you guys use it like an insult. And it's not. It means Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. And there's nothing wrong about being a TERF. The reason is, you should always start fighting for rights in your own home, and then expand. You can't take care of others' families until yours is safe. So if any feminist wants to focus on purely feminist issues, that's perfect. In fact, the whole idea of TERF is rather absurd. It'd be like having a White Exclusionary Black Lives Matter activism. We don't need to because we already understand BLM is about putting the focus on black lives, something anyone, doesn't matter who you are, can and should be involved in, and then we can all end racism, together. The same is with feminism. The whole idea of feminism is putting the focus on females (hence the fucking word, it's a no-brainer). So if you don't identify as female, the focus is obviously not on you. It doesn't mean we exclude anyone, because everyone can join and participate, as they should. And focusing on females means focusing on "the female", i.e. people with a female sex. That includes women and trans men who have not physically transitioned. So you can't really exclude at least some trans people from feminism. But as the word says and like I keep saying, we're talking feminism, so it automatically only includes females. Trans people don't frequently identify as females, so they exclude themselves. Just like the LGBT collective is not fighting or even thinking about straight people's rights, not because they're evil, but because it's the LGBT club. Feminism is the females club. If you're not comfortable in it, it's not like we exclude you, it's that you exclude yourself. Similarly, when trans women decide to start the Trans Women Movement, then nobody will say they're Female-Exclusionary, nor gay exclusionary, nor trans men exclusionary, because everyone will sympathise with the idea that you're focusing on trans women because you need to, and the name itself says what's about and what's not about. It was never about excluding anyone, it's about FOCUSING on certain population that clearly needs it. That's what feminism is about. And in my particular form of practising feminism, I've always fought for anyone who identified as woman, even trans women, as I've got a few trans women friends and know and sympathise with their issues, just like they've fought for me and my well-being. And of course, in my fight I also include trans men who haven't had surgery ergo, are still at risk of being vaginally raped, impregnated, and forced to deal with very female problems such as needing an abortion.

So I don't believe in the term Terf, I think it's completely absurd and makes no sense, I always laugh when somebody shouts it at me, and it's just one more way for the TRAs to try and insult feminists, try to make them feel bad, and I've studied this in propaganda techniques, you know? it's book stuff. It's all about using a term nobody really cares to know what it really means, and shouting it about until it becomes an insult. It's like the word "retard". Well, it never used to be an insult, did you know? It simply meant people behind in development, and it was used by doctors to call people and focus studies on helping them. But people began shouting it around as an insult, and so it became one.

I think in feminism there's just feminist or not feminist. You can, of course be a radical feminist (and there's radicalism in every activism, of course). Personally, I don't quite agree fully with the radfems I've known and talked with, and find radfeminism a bit too much for my comfort levels, so I stay in mere feminism.

#feminism #radfems #radical feminism #feminist #women #women's rights #women's shelters #terf #lgbt #lgbt rights #human rights #activism #lesbians #gays #blm #social activism #politics #transgender people #trans people

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evilelitest2 · 1 year ago

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I see your political predictions are as solid as your understanding of the military. And like how your are trying to find a left wing approach to justify Putin's right wing nationalist regime as the good guys, you are now also trying to find some way to spin the Republican Party as the left wing alternative.

So lets break down and have a look at this.

First thing to note, "The liberal Patriot" is a right wing blog that denies climate change so clearly @theculturedmarxist is getting his news from only the finest of sources. The article is part of a larger movement which tires to posit that the Democrats are the real racist party and the Republicans are actually the more racially conscious than there democratic peers. Now that might be weird considering that Trump had a Neo Nazi March in 2017 and an far right attempted coup in 2021, he enacted a horrific migrant policy on the border (one that Biden has barely changed incidentally), regularly praised the confederates, actively opposed the BLM, protests, has a long history of racial dissemination, and keeps associating with Alt Right Figures 9Michael Flynn, Laura Loomer, Steave Bannon, Nike Fuentes, STephen Miller)

Now

This

Has

Been

Debunked

Numerous Times

But the demographics speak for themselves, the GOP is 85% white . Anybody who has been paying the slightest bit of attention for the last 6 years should know that while the Dems aren't great, one party is objectively worse when it comes to every form of bigotry, you don't have a democratic Desantis in like New York making it illegal for teachers to acknowledge that homosexuality exists.

Now a lot of you might be wondering "Wait, isn't the cultured marxist a communist, why would they be reblogging a right wing thinker" and the answer is that there is a weird type of "leftist" who seem to spend a lot of there time defending far right reactionaries who hate the centrists they also hate, hence why they are so pro Putin

Now regarding the idea that Biden can't win 2024, anything possible, but it strikes me as very cocky to be super confident Biden can't win, because the pattern for the last three years has been democrats not liking biden, but voting for him anyway (I can speak to myself as an example). But the CUltured Marxists wants us to believe that because the Dems didn't nominate Cornel West or Biden or something, they are doomed in 2020, which shows a very naïve view of AMerican politics.

Notice how @theculturedmarxist focuses almost entirely on 2016, and not on 2018, 2020, or most importantly 2022, three elections where democratic dramatically over performed despite having major structural disadvantages.

2018 you might be able to write off as just a normal midterm reversal, after all the party in power almost always losses in the midterms, and democrats weren't able to get the Senate.

2020 though, this is where @theculturedmarxist's argument really breaks down. Because Bernie sanders was never able to get more than 25% of the votes in the primary, while Biden got about 52%. If you break down the Democrats by general progressives vs. moderate votes, moderates got 70% of the vote. Which sucks, but clearly the majority of democrats feel more comfortable with Biden's wing of the party.

Then in 2020, Biden didn't just win, he had a blow out. Despite Trump resorting to massive voter suppression, he won the electoral vote by 306 to 232, and won the popular vote by 4.5% , the largest margin in US history, 7.5 million more votes. Clearly most Americans supported Biden.

Now this is where The Cultured Marxists runs into a problem, he can't ever admit that somebody he doesn't like ever is good at something. When Biden won the Primary, I was sad because I didn't vote for him, but I basically was like "ok, well clearly Biden managed to run a better campaign and get most of the Dems to back him". CulturedMarixsts can't do that, he can't ever admit loss or weakness, and most importantly the key to his narrative is that most people deep down secretly agree with him (this is the same reason why Trump fans can't ever admit that they lost)

But the biggest evidence against the "Biden is unelectable" theory is the 2022 midterm, which almost everybody predicted to be a massacre of democrat. Inflation was high, Biden's approvals numbers were down, the sitting party always losses seats in a midterm, Afghanistan was a fuck up, Covid Response not great, and 50/50 split in the Senate. And Dems...did fantastically, the best midterm performance in the modern age if you discount the post 9/11 midterm of 2002. That is why Dems are sticking with Biden, because he delivered a very impressive victory.

Now if you have a mature and nuanced view of politics, you can acknowledge that somebody is good at politics and still be a bad person. LIke I think Ron Desantis is a fascist piece of shit who should be tried by the Hauge and shot, but it would be stupid to just ignore how electorally successful he was in 2022. That isn't to give him credit, wining an election doesn't make you a good person (Clinton won the 2016 primary, that doesn't make me a fan), but you need to try to understand it from a tactics perspective. Biden has bene extremely electorally successful for the Dems, including the special elections we have had these last few months, that is why the only people challenging him are grifters like Marianne Williamson or Conspiracy 1488 fucks like RJFK Jr (or losers like Cornel West). There is a reason why Dems, including Sanders, AOC and Warren, are rallying around Biden, because electorally its the better risk, especially if Trump wins the Republican Primary.

So why do we have a Marxist actively reposting a Right wing Blogger who is trying to pretend that the Trump isn't comically racist, something which any leftist should understand. Its because the CulturedMarxits vision of the Working class is very much...Season 2 of the Wire if that makes sense. White working class men in plaid with beards who have a Soviet Macho motif

If you are paying attention, that is the exact same faux populist narrative spun by the sort of Nazbol elements of the Far Right, very Andrew Jackson. The narrative the Reactionary Left and the Far Right agree on is that the Democrats needs to stop caring about "Woke issues" and focused on addressing the class issues, but only class issues in terms of rhetoric not policy. So focusing on issues like Trans rights are just a distraction from the important issues. Except not only is Marxists aligning themselves with the Right is always a bad idea (see 1938), but also it has not been...true. Democrats have actually had a lot of electoral success by leaning into being more Woke, its also has moved the Democrats to the left.

Honestly, I kinda think that the CulturedMarxist froze mentally in 2016 and hasn't evolved since.

On the Subject of Predictiosn

For the Record, The Culturedmarxists predicted that Sanders would win the primary here While the article they is responding too is bullshit, the problem is that his entire outlook is defined by conspiratorial thinking, so he can't actually accurately analyze the race, its all shadowy democratic puppet masters which are a few steps removed from an Elders of Zion joke (on that note, posting this..not a good look friend)

Now according to TheCulturedMarxist in there post here, Biden being nominated was basically ensures Trump was going to win

They also predicts Trump is going to win here

And here...

And here, where he says that the Dems "deserve to lose in November"

Here he says that Trump is going to be gone and that Republicans helped Biden win 2020

Here they seems to get cranky about dems disliking the electoral college instead of "Getting people to want to vote them" which is weird because Biden won the popular vote by the largest margin in US history.

Here They says that Trump was more proactive at stopping the Virus than Biden. Now Biden's response to covid has been pretty bad, but saying its worse than Trump is pretty comical when you remember that Trump inspired riots to try to stop shut downs.

This deeply angry post here I think is super revealing because it kinda shows where his political views have frozen, he is basically stuck in 2016 and hasn't evolved as a person since, retreating further and further away from electorilism rather than admit weakness or being wrong. Also I think they might have been on some Chan boards, notice the writing here "Do the world a favor and kill yourselves for fuck’s sake, you worthless, entitled weaklings."

This one here is very interesting, because he argues that the left in the Left in the United States is basically dead and that there is hope in communism. 4 years later we do see a much more active and powerful left, but it is a left defined by the BLM protests not from the most toxic element of the Sanders fanbase.

So clearly, like with Ukraine, CulturalMarixts likes to make these big predictions, and then kinda move on afterwards and hope that nobody noticed.

SO why is he so bad at this? Bear in mind, The Cultured Marxists's approach to news is "Find a headline that agrees with me" rather than "find a reliable source the accurately informs me of what is going on). Lets look at some of his sources

First we have notorious conspiracy theorist and reactionary who pretends to be a leftist Jimmy Dore (example here) so that might explain why he is so bad at predicting the future,

Then we have the fucking National Review, THE newspaper of the Republican party (proof here)

Oh and Donald Trumps Favorite Tabloid The New YOrk Post (here)

He cites Glen Greenwald, who constantly sings the praises of right wing figures in the name of leftism and is a well known conspirecy theorist here'

Oh and Chapo Traphouse, the go to for dudebro marxists who can't do politics, here

Looking at his media diet, we can conclude that 1) Its all conspiratorial, its a world where the world is secretly controlled by a cabal rather than a complicated series of overlapping systems and motives 2) It claims to be leftist while arguing that backing republicans is the secret "correct way" to be a leftist 3) It comes from the starting point of "the DNC is the greatest evil in the United States" while the Republicans are just sort of passive side characters 4) He really wants it to only be about class, anything that addresses other forms of bigotries only get acknowledge when its a way to attack the DNC 5) Most of his sources either have a long history of misinformation, or are infamous for palling with reactionaries...or both 6) Most of it is "anti woke" but tires to find a leftist take on it 7) its all very...angry. Much like Fox News, the focus is getting you pissed off and enraged, not actually thinking about politics as systems of interconnected power. Which is good for raising money, not so much for understanding the future

Also Most of it is funded either directly or indirectly by Russia, China or the Republican party

But this is a person who openly thinks that history isn't a real subject so maybe predicting isn't his best quality

Speaking of which Friend, a lot has happened in Ukraine in the last few days, but I noticed you predicted (checks blog) um...none of it. In fact, you were saying to me just over a week ago that Ukraine had bogged down and was basically done with offensive operations. Now, Ukraine still might lose, war is anything but predictable, but you seem to have a lot of confidence for somebody who keeps getting stuff wrong.

Democrats lately have been basking in good news. The fourth Trump indictment! Continued success for abortion rights (the defeat of the Ohio referendum)! Good news on “Bidenomics” (slowing inflation and strong job creation)!

The sentiment seems to be: we got this! How could we lose to a candidate (assuming it’s Trump) who’s under a blizzard of legal scrutiny for undermining democracy and represents a party that wants to take away women’s right to choose—especially when we, the good guys, are doing such a great job with the economy?

This “how can we lose?” attitude is uncomfortably reminiscent of Democrats’ attitude in 2016. Then too they thought they couldn’t lose. And yet they did.

Perhaps it’s time to take out an insurance policy. It may be the case that a multiply-indicted Trump is now toxic to enough voters and abortion rights such a strong motivator that even a candidate with Biden’s weaknesses will beat him easily. But it might not and that’s where the insurance policy comes in.

Consider that right now the race looks very, very close. The RealClearPolitics poll average has Biden ahead of Trump by a slender four-tenths of a percentage point. If that was Biden’s national lead on election day, he’d probably lose the presidency due to electoral college bias that favors Republicans.

In the latest Quinnipiac poll, Biden has a one-point lead over Trump consistent with the running average. Among white working-class (noncollege) voters, he’s behind by 34 points, considerably worse than he did in 2020. If Trump (or another Republican) does manage to prevail in 2024, we can be fairly sure that a pro-GOP surge among these voters will have something to do with it.

States of Change simulations show that, all else equal, a strong white working class surge in 2024 would deliver the election to the GOP. Even a small one could potentially do the trick. In an all-else-equal context, I estimate just a one-point increase in Republican support among the white working class and a concomitant one-point decrease in Democratic support (for a 2-point margin swing) would deliver Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin (and the election) to the Republicans. Make it a 2-point increase in GOP support and you can throw in Pennsylvania too.

So an insurance policy to prevent such a swing is in order.

The problem: these are very unhappy voters. In the Quinnipiac poll, white working-class voters give Biden an overall 25 percent approval rating versus 70 percent disapproval and 72 percent have an unfavorable opinion of him. On handling the economy, Biden’s rating is even worse—24 percent approval and 73 percent disapproval. Just 20 percent say the economy is excellent or good, compared to 79 percent who say it is not so good or poor. By 63 to 16 percent, these voters believe the economy is getting worse not better. Evidently they haven’t yet heard the good news about Bidenomics.

The temptation among Democrats is to ascribe the stubborn resistance of these voters to Democratic appeals and openness to those of Trump and right populists to misinformation from Fox News and the like and, worse, to the fundamentally racist, reactionary nature of this voter group. The roots of this view go back to the aftermath of the 2016 election.

As analysts sifted through the wreckage of Democratic performance in 2016 trying to understand where all the Trump voting had come from, some themes began to emerge. One was geographical. Across county-level studies, it was clear that low educational levels among whites was a very robust predictor of shifts toward Trump. These studies also indicated that counties that swung toward Trump tended to be dependent on low-skill jobs, relatively poor performers on a range of economic measures and had local economies particularly vulnerable to automation and offshoring. Finally, there was strong evidence that Trump-swinging counties tended to be literally “sick” in the sense that their inhabitants had relatively poor physical health and high mortality due to alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide.

The picture was more complicated when it came to individual level characteristics related to Trump voting, especially Obama-Trump voting. There were a number of correlates with Trump voting. They included some aspects of economic populism—opposition to cutting Social Security and Medicare, suspicion of free trade and trade agreements, taxing the rich—as well as traditional populist attitudes like anti-elitism and mistrust of experts. But the star of the show, so to speak, was a variable labelled “racial resentment” by political scientists, which many studies showed bore a strengthened relationship to Republican presidential voting in 2016.

This variable is a scale created from questions like: “Irish, Italian, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.” The variable is widely and uncritically employed by political scientists to indicate racial animus despite the obvious problem that statements such as these correspond closely to a generic conservative view of avenues to social mobility. And indeed political scientists Riley Carney and Ryan Enos have shown that responses to questions like these change very little if you substitute “Nepalese” or “Lithuanians” for blacks. That implies the questions that make up the scale tap views that are not at all specific to blacks. Carney and Enos term these views “just world belief” which sounds quite a bit different from racial resentment.

But in the aftermath of the Trump election, researchers continued to use the same scale with the same name and the same interpretation with no caveats. The strong relationship of the scale to Trump voting was proof, they argued, that Trump support, including vote-switching from Obama to Trump, was simply a matter of activating underlying racism and xenophobia. Imagine though how these studies might have landed like if they had tied Trump support to activating just world belief, which is an eminently reasonable interpretation of their star variable, instead of racial resentment. The lack of even a hint of interest in exploring this alternative interpretation strongly suggests that the researchers’ own political beliefs were playing a strong role in how they chose to pursue and present their studies.

In short, they went looking for racism—and they found it.

Other studies played variations on this theme, adding variables around immigration and even trade to the mix, where negative views were presumed to show “status threat” or some other euphemism for racism and xenophobia. As sociologist Stephen Morgan has noted in a series of papers, this amounts to a labeling exercise where issues that have a clear economic component are stripped of that component and reduced to simple indicators of unenlightened social attitudes. Again, it seems clear that researchers’ priors and political beliefs were heavily influencing both their analytical approach and their interpretation of results.

And there is an even deeper problem with the conventional view. Start with a fact that was glossed over or ignored by most studies: trends in so-called racial resentment went in the “wrong” direction between the 2012 and 2016 election. That is, fewer whites had high levels of racial resentment in 2016 than 2012. This make racial resentment an odd candidate to explain the shift of white voters toward Donald Trump in the 2016 election.

Political scientists Justin Grimmer and William Marble investigated this conundrum intensively by looking directly at whether an indicator like racial resentment really could explain, or account for, the shift of millions of white votes toward Trump. The studies that gave pride of place to racial resentment as an explanation for Trump’s victory did no such accounting; they simply showed a stronger relationship between this variable and Republican voting in 2016 and thought they’d provided a complete explanation.

They had not. When you look at the actual population of voters and how racial resentment was distributed in 2016, as Grimmer and Marble did, it turns out that the racial resentment explanation simply does not fit what really happened in terms of voter shifts. A rigorous accounting of vote shifts toward Trump shows instead that they were primarily among whites, especially low education whites, with moderate views on race and immigration, not whites with high levels of racial resentment. In fact, Trump actually netted fewer votes among whites with high levels of racial resentment than Mitt Romney did in 2012.

Grimmer and Marble did a followup study with Cole Tanigawa-Lau that included data from the 2020 election. The study was covered in a New York Times article by Thomas Edsall. In the article, Grimmer described the significance of their findings:

Our findings provide an important correction to a popular narrative about how Trump won office. Hillary Clinton argued that Trump supporters could be placed in a “basket of deplorables.” And election-night pundits and even some academics have claimed that Trump’s victory was the result of appealing to white Americans’ racist and xenophobic attitudes. We show this conventional wisdom is (at best) incomplete. Trump’s supporters were less xenophobic than prior Republican candidates’ [supporters], less sexist, had lower animus to minority groups, and lower levels of racial resentment. Far from deplorables, Trump voters were, on average, more tolerant and understanding than voters for prior Republican candidates… [The data] point to two important and undeniable facts. First, analyses focused on vote choice alone cannot tell us where candidates receive support. We must know the size of groups and who turns out to vote. And we cannot confuse candidates’ rhetoric with the voters who support them, because voters might support the candidate despite the rhetoric, not because of it.

So much for the racial resentment explanation of Trump’s victory. Not only is racial resentment a misnamed variable that does not mean what people think it means, it literally cannot account for the actual shifts that occurred in the 2016 election. Clearly a much more complex explanation for Trump’s victory was—or should have been—in order, integrating negative views on immigration, trade and liberal elites with a sense of unfairness rooted in just world belief. That would have helped Democrats understand why voters in Trump-shifting counties, whose ways of life were being torn asunder by economic and social change, were so attracted to Trump’s appeals.

Such understanding was nowhere to be found, however, in Democratic ranks. The racism-and-xenophobia interpretation quickly became dominant, partly because it was in many ways simply a continuation of the approach Clinton had taken during her campaign and that most Democrats accepted. Indeed, it became so dominant that simply to question the interpretation reliably opened the questioner to accusations that he or she did not take the problem of racism seriously enough.

We are still living in that world. Scratch a Democrat today and you will find lurking not far beneath the surface—if beneath the surface at all—a view of white working-class voters and their populist, pro-Trump leanings as reflecting these voters’ unyielding racism and xenophobia.

This is neither substantively justified nor politically productive. Democrats desperately need that insurance policy for 2024 and getting rid of these attitudes toward 40 percent of the electorate (much more in key states!) should be part of it. Think of it as a down payment on the “de-Brahminization” of the Democratic Party. This attitude adjustment might irritate some of their activist supporters, but considering the stakes, that seems like a small price to pay for a potentially vital insurance policy.

#ask EvliElitest2 #Reactionary Left #dirtbag left #Illiberal Left #Red BRown Alliance #nazbol #marxism

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hummingbird-games · 2 years ago

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A Postmortem

Some thoughts below the cut! Or, all the things I’ve been holding in that can now be out in the open, a memoir by...oh. Right. As I was saying!

There’s an upbeat version of this posted to itch.io, but I figure we can be a slight bit more honest over here.

It’s hard to be creative when you’re so sad.

There’s a quote from one of my favorite rom-coms that I’ve read maybe a million times but resonated with me this year.

It’s such a nasty slap in the face to work on something that brings you joy and that you hope will bring joy to others and feel your brain actively work to take that away from you. And then all your leftover energy is sucked away by outside circumstances. The whole year was a struggle, and I think I cried so much that I contributed to my perpetual hydration lol.

It’s a blessing that the script for HSD:JY was complete and the game deep into production early this year because either there would have been no game OR the tone would have been so outside of my original goal. 2020, the year of conception, I remember being hopeful. And spiteful. And DAMN did I ever have a leading healthy emotion during the creation of this game???

I’d had my last rant session with friends and family about one of my previous obsessions, the mobile app Choices, which taught me love, patience, and pain. All in that order. The BLM protests were reaching a fever pitch, and the app had put out a statement that made me see red. My Black body, and my sister’s Black and queer body weren’t being seen, not being represented in the gaming space like I’d always believed they could, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. So I said fuck it, I’ll make the game I want to play. I’ll color it with my experiences, and I’ll focus on the demographic that is either degraded or infantilized.

2021 was colored by fear and spite, and then eventually I was excited again. My audience had started finding me and I realized I had eyes on me. But I was afraid that I was in over my head, afraid of asking for help and reaching out to people (I seem to have more bad luck than good when it comes to asking for help and it makes me second guess myself.) I had a loose timeline of what I wanted to accomplish, all while lurking on various discords, reading the ren’py documentation, and hopping on YouTube to teach me the things I needed to know.

Thinking back, there’s really nothing I would make myself do differently. I did the best I could with what I had. And there’s no way I could have predicted how 2022 would affect me or what would happen this year. So. Hence me always signing off my devlogs with “be kind/gentle with yourself” because I know what happens when you’re not.

Marketing is a bitch. But so am I. When I want to be.

I think I actively promoted my game like five times. I wasn’t looking to make a huge ground-breaking experience. I just wanted people who liked cute teen games with romance to find my game. But guess what??? That still requires marketing. 🤮

I’m so, so, so thankful to the other developers I met and the early supporters who spread my game when I either wouldn’t (stubborn) or couldn’t (brain go burrr) but it does not make up for actively promoting my game on a consistent basis. I get it. So. I need to either suck it up or like hire an honest to goodness marketing director or social media person or something. I will probably do neither of these things. 💩

That 2-star review will not kill you. Pinky promise.

Oooof, I see why authors don’t look at their reviews. But I need to know how to better myself!!! I do like seeing high ratings, but what makes my day is when people take the time to write out why they did or didn’t like something I created. To the person who wasn’t too happy that HSD:JY is told from a female perspective with she/her pronouns, I understand your frustration and I’m sorry my game wasn’t for you.

...for the fool who gave my game 2 stars but didn’t bother to explain their rating?? I’m taking it personal. So personal. I’ll hold my grudge forever 😂😂😂

Go where you want, not where you think you should be.

I think that just because a creative community gathers mostly in one place, doesn’t mean you should force yourself to spend time there. Yes, this is directed towards Twitter, but I also say this for Reddit and Discord, two other communities that I tried to find a rhythm with and ended up exhausting myself trying to participate in.

Hummingbird Games has a Twitter presence (barely) because I thought I had to be like the other indie game devs and make a home there. Instead, it’s become another place I talk about every other game except my own 😂 but with less characters! It feels a lot like I got a seat at the adult table, but I abandoned it to go draw with crayons on the back porch until it’s dinner time.

You’ve learned so much. Now learn some more.

I made music tracks that are in my game! I reached out to artists, a GUI and a character one and was anxious as hell but I did it. I went through three different text editors against my will and my hatred for sudden change, but I survived. Mostly. Canva and Photopea were my best friends! And they shall continue to be the tools I use until I die!

I would like to eventually code in accessibility options into HSD, both the full game and the bonus game, and of course have them moving forward. Also, while I never got around to doing it for this project, I’d like to incorporate character customization. It was a planned option (along with CGs, SOB!) that got cut due to lack of funds.

I also will make sure that I have some kind of beta testing moving forward. Yes, I did it for this project but looking back on it, with a few awesome people who gave me useable feedback, the overall process was such a trainwreck! I didn’t know what I was doing, and it bled into my confidence. I will do better next round.

You should stick with writing (affectionate)

I can’t draw. I cussed and cried every time programming was involved. Music was okay but I had more fun searching for tracks I liked and could use over creating my own stuff (which I did only because at the time nothing I came across fit my audio needs.)

But the drafting stage? And the writing and rewriting and the revelations I had? Super fun. 10/10, would recommend. If I can move into a direction where I can continue to delegate tasks to others and leave myself to focus on the writing and storytelling aspect, that would be the dream.

But. I am a solo dev. I still gotta put in the work 😭 So continue to look forward to posts of me crying and complaining about how much I suck and it sucks. I will sugar coat nothing.

If money doesn’t buy happiness, why does it make life so much easier????

There’s really nothing to elaborate on. Making a game is so expensive, oh my God, and while I hated the call center job I had, it helped fund 80% of this game, and that was more helpful that I realized.

But moving forward, I will seriously consider looking into grants. I’m not sold on crowd funding, and I’d rather not have to dip into my job paycheck so much to cover gaming expenses. I know other developers do this, and I did it too, but I don’t know how sustainable this would be for me. Plus there’s other things I wanna buy and it’s super unfair (to me) to have to choose between affording a programmer’s rates or additional poses for character sprites 🥺

You’ll need to recover

I know everyone is different and therefore it’s the only reason that explains why I made a game and I feel like death, and others have made a game or games and have already jumped into production for their next project.

...how does it feel to have endless energy? I wish I was like some of y’all but I really just want to sleep. Knowing this about myself now, I’ll need to factor in a ‘recovery period’ after each completed production cycle. I know a bunch of factors are involved in my slow down period, but whether it’s two months, or two years, I guess my body will let me know 😭

#High School Daze: Junior Year #postmortem #gamedev rambles #tw: mental health

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goongiveusnothing · 2 years ago

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https://at.tumblr.com/goongiveusnothing/since-the-bua-last-week-many-larries-and-harries/nvfp8nbsuimb

omg, i LOVE you

did you have a turning point where you started to see him for who he was? i can't said i was his fan but i liked him, but after his charade during the BLM protest where you can see it was so staged: the camera following him, him showing with POC. like this dude is around POC when he needed them. that situation opened my eyes

i wrote about why i got sick of him here.

i think for most of us it's becoming conscious of little things that seem indicative of more about him, but because nobody is allowed to talk about it, you just ignored it or looked away. until collectively you just have enough at some point.

the BLM stuff was one of the key turning points. him refusing to acknowledge the signs originally when they happened in 2017 or 2018. the fans starting to all hold signs. him still being too cowardly so giving an "all lives matter" type speech to try and assuage things. a journalist for i believe vice magazine saying she held up one of the signs right in front of him and he visibly "flinched" when he saw it. it had obviously become a trigger issue for him, something he clearly hated that the fans were seeking him to address.

when he held up a bunch of flags in a pile and one of them was the BLM flag so his fans claimed that as a triumph, even though it was clear he had no idea it was in the pile. him sharing a photo of the crowd with some BLM visible, his fans claiming this was him showcasing BLM, even though it wasn't him, he was just showing the crowd which were full of the signs. then finally him adding a tiny little sticker to a guitar, and the fans going out in rapture, claiming yes king, he saw them, "he gets it", he's so with them, such an activist.

then of course in 2020 when BLM became such a national movement, someone says they knew that he had deliberately planned to go to a certain place to pose in a certain position for photos, before leaving. of course taking along two random ethnic (i think one is asian?) people with him, acting like they were his good friends and like of course he knew anybody with melanin. when we've literally seen them with him at work maybe a handful of times. now how many times have they been seen with him since? it's not like they're jeff, cordon, ben, the gerbers etc.

at the same time he started following a few black models on instagram and liking their photos, as if he wanted to let us all know that yes, he thinks black women are okay to like on instagram? like, what? it was so fucking bizarre. he's never done that before or since. he seemed to think this was some legit black lives matter activism.

then in his blessed cocaine sideboob choke a woman with a view song he shares the line "riot america" inbetween all of that garbage about doing shit to a woman and other things. that's how he saw the events in america in 2020 involving civil rights for black people. riot america, moving on. that's all he managed to feel about it.

then there's the difference between him and ben winston and the azoffs, and him and i presume a catholic friend or person he knew, and zayn, the only brown member in the band. he never seemed to express the slightest bit of interest in zayn's background or pakistan heritage or islamic culture or food or traditions or language or literally anything. but he did manage to absorb as much as possible about like israel from ben/azoffs and then also got a cross/bible/crucifix necklace for someone catholic in his life. his sister has made weird islamophobic comments, one in particular i remember when she seemed to suggest that muslims in a particular area of london would lose their mind if she tried asking for a bagel in their shops. so, you know, there's THAT.

#harry styles #black lives matters #BLM #zayn malik #zarry #islamophobia #zionism #yeah #as you can tell #this shit has long irritated me #the man is a fraud your honour #a FRAUD

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talkingtea · 3 years ago

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Oh my anon, the Marlize actress was chef's kiss. Real talent. And quickly became friends with Candice in real life. I also noticed that when the Sue actress finally got to have some real one-on-one scenes with Iris, she speaks highly of Candice more. I will always side eye her for following Candice at the last minute during the height of the BLM protests, but in her latest interview where she talks about how they related to each other about how this industry is, idk maybe she finally saw for herself what the "mean girls" group was doing bts.

I hope this doesn't mean we won't see them act together on the show anymore. Sue and Iris is the friendship we were supposed to have a long time ago. It's comic canon legendary! It seems like every time Candice/Iris gets close to another actor on set, they're gone. I have always believed it was intentional. Look at how it never makes sense onscreen. They isolate Iris, therefore they isolate Candice. And GG's goofy ass is none the wiser. I used to bring this up all the time to the podcasts on anon, but even though the pattern is clear as day, they would still give tptb the benefit of the doubt. And now that this Zaslov dude is in charge from Discovery, given what's been canceled already, he might be the one delaying her fate with the show even further. What do you all think?

In terms of the Warner Bros Discovery deal we think the Flash is so irrelevant in the grand scheme of things that none of the higher ups are even worried about it, much less actively interfering in it.

And while we love the Sue/Iris friendship, its clearly it only exists because they don’t know what to do with Sue without Ralph and because they want to keep Iris isolated from the main characters and storyline but they still need her to interact with someone.

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excuseyouclarke · 4 years ago

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The fight for equality in the UK is far, far from over.

Last night, a 14 year old black boy playing football in the streets in was murdered by a group of men. Birmingham Police are trying to say it was not racially motivated, I say that once again that police are talking shit. I see no reason why a group white of men would get out of their car to chase down a group of teenagers and stab one of them to death. This a boy who was out enjoying the sunshine on a bank holiday Monday, ready for half term with his friends, a boy with his whole life ahead of him. He had a family at home, probably waiting for him to come home for his dinner, now they’re mourning their son while his killers are still out there.

This comes just weeks after Sasha Johnson, a BLM activist in the UK was shot in the head.

The government claim there’s no systematic racism, that is a clear lie. They have tried to put a positive spin on past slavery. Our invasions and colonastions throughout history are not taught in schools, 95 percent of young black people have witnessed or heard racist language at school in the UK.

We need to step up, we need to be calling out racism and showing that this is not okay, and we should not be standing for this. I hear casual racism being brought up in conversation all the time, it took me a long time to educate myself and get the confidence to not only call out this behaviour, but attempt to educate. I’m sick to my stomach with what has happened, i can’t even begin to imagine how the black community is feeling. I’m linking some resources below, please, please support anti racism causes in the uk, we have such a beautiful and diverse culture, we should be embracing it.

Resources below.

Organisations:

Stop hate UK - anti-racism charity

Show racism the red card - anti racism charity

Charity So White

Black Lives Matter

BMECP Centre – a sustainable resource centre which champions the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) community in Brighton and Hove and supports BME communities and their families.

MOSAIC Brighton – Black and Mixed-Parentage Family Group

Immigration and Asylum Helpline from Rights of Women

Southall Black Sisters – addresses the needs of BME women empowering them to escape Domestic Violence, Forced Marriage, Honour Based Violence, FGM, Rape

Karma Nirvana – supporting victims of honour-based abuse and forced marriage

Imkaan – “addressing violence against Black and minoritised women and girls”

Justice for Grenfell

Movement For Justice

Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust

The National Memorial Family Fund is the first permanent national resource of its kind specifically for those that are affected by deaths in custody.

UK Black Pride

Imaan London – LGBTQ Muslim Charity

Liberty help challenge injustice, defend freedom and campaign to make sure everyone in the UK is treated fairly.

The Black Curriculum

Runnymede Trust – the UK’s leading independent race equality think tank

The United Families & Friends Campaign, is a coalition of those affected by deaths in police, prison and psychiatric custody.

BAME recruitment consultancy website

Black LGBT organisations you should know about: a list from Stonewall staff

Books:

Why I Am No Longer Talking to White People About Race, by Renni Eddo Lodge (non-fiction)

Me and White Supremacy, by Layla F. Saad (non-fiction)

White Fragility, by Robin Diangelo (non-fiction)

Kill the Black One First by Michael Fuller (non-fiction)

Brit(ish) by Afua Hirsch (non-fiction)

Black and British by David Olusoga (non-fiction)

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (fiction)

The Windrush Betrayal by Amelia Gentleman (non-fiction)

Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins (non-fiction)

Ain’t I A Woman by bell hooks (non-fiction)

Redefining Realness by Janet Mock (non-fiction)

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde (non-fiction)

Me, Not You, by Alison Phipps (non-fiction)

Queenie, by Candice Carty Williams (fiction)

Sula, by Toni Morrison (fiction)

How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi (non-fiction)

Assata, by Assata Shakur (non-fiction)

Articles and social media posts:

Welcome To The Anti-Racism Movement — Here’s What You’ve Missed

“Where are the Black girls?” about (in)visibility in Childhood Sexual Abuse bu Jahine Davis

Report from Imkaan: Reclaiming Voice: Minoritised Women and Sexual Violence Key Findings

Intersectionality infographic from Listen Up Research CIC

The Truth About Women and White Supremacy

How We Make Black Girls Grow Up Too Fast

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

What will you do to continue the work? (IG)

What to do if you can’t protest on the streets for Black Lives Matter

Why you need to stop saying “All Lives Matter”

10 Steps to Non-Optical Allyship

When Feminism Is White Supremacy in Heels

I want to be an ally but I don’t know what to do (IG)

What does black British activism look like in 2020

We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe – statement from Diversity & Ability and resource list

Structural Racism vs Individual Racism (IG)

Everything else on Gal:Dem, an online and print publication committed to sharing perspectives from women and non-binary people of colour.

Black Ballad, a UK based lifestyle platform that seeks to tell the human experience through eyes of black British women.

A more extensive list can be found here, please feel free to add more!

#BLM #black lives matter #TW: Racism #TW: Murder #anti-racism resources #uk resources #birmingham #I came out of my depression break to make this #literally feel sick to my stomach thinking about this

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ashandboneca · 5 years ago

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Paganism’s problem with racism

Let me make myself very, very clear: Black lives matter. I am not here to take up space and talk about my white feelings about the #BLM protests. But I 100% support everything the protestors are doing, and I 1000% support defunding the police (like actually dismantling the policing structure, not just clawing back funding). If you want to help and can’t protest, donate to bail funds and the NAACP. Donate to your local Black Cultural Organization. Uplift and elevate black voices, and call out your racist fucking uncle.

Okay. Strap in, this is gonna be bumpy, and long.

I am so unbelievably disappointed, but so massively not surprised at the response of many during this incredible time of revolution. I am disappointed in the pagan and witchcraft community for continuing to excuse and practice cultural appropriation, including ATR and Voudou. I have seen some NASTY arguments and racist backpedaling.

I am also, as someone who reads a lot of books, am really pissed off at most of the occult publishers right now. Let’s talk about why, one by one:

Llewellyn: Llewellyn as a publisher makes a lot of money from white folks writing about ATR and cultural practices that don’t belong to them. They spent Blackout Tuesday promoting their own magazine and events, and did not mention #blm in any capacity until JUNE 11. They made the following statement:

“Llewellyn Worldwide stands together with all those who have been working tirelessly to enact the changes needed to eradicate racial injustice and systemic racism here in our hometown of Minneapolis-St. Paul, across the country, and around the world. We are, as we have always been for our 100-plus years, deeply committed to elevating a diversity of voices and to act as a conduit reaching and teaching their respective audiences. We stand with our employees and authors, our local community, and our readers, who are united in the effort to build and sustain a more inclusive world. However, words are often not enough, and we are looking at what we can do better as a company. Inspired by the progressive work of our late President and Chairman Carl Llewellyn Weschcke, we have recently donated to the NAACP, and to “We Love Lake Street” and “The Hamline Midway Coalition” - two organizations working to rebuild the neighborhoods and cities our company and our employees call home. We hope that our small steps for change join with many others to create a large and lasting global footprint for generations to come.“

Which is nice, I guess. But unless you’re changing your practices and publishing more books by BIPOC authors and stop letting lily white men write about African diaspora traditions, it’s performative as hell. I mean, The money is nice, but how much did this multi-million dollar publishing house donate? $100? We don’t know because they didn’t tell us. Be accountable, and if you’re a multi-million dollar company that is HQ in Minneapolis, show the damn receipts.

They also had some horrible comments on their FB page stating that occult subjects are generally white. Wow.

Red Wheel/Weiser: I was pleased to see they’ve been promoting Lilith Dorsey’s work, as of June 10, as she’s a black author who writes about Voodou and ATR. They generally have a more balanced catelogue, and most of the books written about Voodoo and ATR are by actual BIPOC practitioners. However, they’ve made no mention of #BLM specifically on their social media, which is disappointing. I think in these times, you need to be very clear, very direct about your support. I wish they would just come out and say they support black folks and support organizations that help people fighting for rights.

Troy Books: They haven’t been active on social media since April.

Anathema Publishing: Very active promoting their own authors, but nothing about what’s going on in the world. Their stance is completely apolitical (which is BS).

Moon Books: They don’t seem to have any social media I can find, but their website says nothing.

Three Hands Press: Not active on social media since 2016, nothing on their site, and all of their authors are white.

Scarlet Imprint: Active on social media, nothing mentioned.

Avalonia Books: Active on social media multiple times a day, nothing mentioned.

I’m sure I missed some publishers, but this is a big chunk of them.

So, why is this a big deal?

It’s a big deal because it means that the majority of the information going out (specifically by Llewellyn) about ATR and Voudou is being written by white authors. It means that what should be a black led discussion about their diasporic traditions is a white led discussion. It’s a big deal because many BIPOC don’t feel at home in the pagan community, and are often told things like ‘you should just practice things from Africa’. It’s a big deal because white people have already done enough to silence and obfuscate black voices, and the last place we should be doing this is in our spiritual communities, which are supposed to be built on understanding and acceptance.

Now is not the time for pretty words and fence sitting. You are either unequivocally behind Black Lives Matter, or you are complicit. You need to directly, loudly, and authentically support BIPOC fighting for their rights. You need to join the fight.

What do I suggest? Start putting pressure on these publishers to uplift and promote BIPOC voices. Speak with your wallet. But truly? Read more writing by BIPOC. Follow people on here like @witches-ofcolor, @borinquenaqueer, @hellboundwitch and @blackwitchspace. Read more blogs from folks like Bri the Hoodwitch, Crystal Blanton, and Black Witch. Elevate those voices and really, really listen.

AND TELL OFF YOUR RACIST UNCLE.

#Ash and Bone #ashandbone.ca #witchcraft #traditional witchcraft #heathenry #The Crooked Path #black lives matter

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thegreymoon · 4 years ago

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A year ago you answered an ask about people hating you for liking Bradley that popped up on a search of mine and you said there that "some Colin fans think you can't like Colin if you don't hate Bradley" and I was wondering why? Like did Bradley do something to Colin? Aren't they friends or at least friendly? There also seems to be some hate for Bradley around the same time period and I was wondering what happened.

Hello!

No, there was no enmity between Bradley and Colin. As far as we know, they were always good friends. Relatively recently, Bradley said that he and Colin don't see each other that often anymore but when they do meet up, they go right back to their old ways, so there is no bad blood between them, just normal life setting them on diverging paths.

As for that whole gigantic mess, what happened is that there was this group of Bradley antis (mostly on Twitter but some spilled on to Tumblr too) who were engaging in mass hysteria, taking harmless things he'd said out of context, giving them the worst possible spin and literally making up things to make him seem like the devil. They made Katie McGrath and Colin Morgan into their mascots and devolved into pure tinhatting and personal RPS fanfiction of how Katie and Colin hate Bradley, how they are disgusted with him and how his attempts to keep in contact with them are annoying to them. Mind you, there is zero evidence of this whatsoever, it was all malicious fantasies on their part. This is where the Colin vs. Bradley nonsense originated from, there was never any actual beef between the two of them that the public knows of. The reason I said what I said was because this particular group of Colin's 'fans' (note the quotation marks) was sending me anti-Bradley anons and when I pointed out the holes in their reasoning, they called me anti-Colin, which is just ????????

According to them, because Bradley was unimpressed with the writing for Arthur's romance with Gwen and vaguely expressed it during filming, of course he was a racist. During the early years of the fandom, rabid Brolin shippers (as in shipping Colin and Bradley, not their characters) who don't know how to behave and have no boundaries stalked and harassed them, their real or rumoured girlfriends, friends and family members. This led to Colin and Bradley avoiding appearing in public together and discussing Merthur as freely as they used to. Of course, this meant that Bradley was a homophobe. This, in turn, meant that all fans of Bradley and Arthur were also racists and homophobes, so these toxic assholes descended in droves to harass fic writers and other content makers into changing their usernames or leaving the platform all together. One beloved content creator was openly dealing with mental health issues and particularly vulnerable and they came to her inbox with the worst kind of bullying, including telling her to kill herself, and eventually driving her out of the fandom. They were awful and it was disgusting.

As a side episode to this dumpster fire, Alexander Vlahos was also a mascot for this particular group for a while there. It does seem that there is at least some bad blood between him and Bradley because at the time, when the Merthur/Brolin shippers were harassing real people, he would not stop fueling it and bringing it up, even after he was asked not to by Bradley and Colin, so Bradley unfollowed him on social media. This, of course, caused the antis to latch on to him as some saint, especially since he indulged their nonsense and got himself involved in the fan war, saying some really mean-spirited things about Bradley and Arthur as a 'joke'. This lasted until he stopped cooperating with their agenda and refuted their pet lesbian!Morgana fan theory, at which point he also became the devil.

During the BLM protests, they went on Bradley's Twitter, Instagram, YT and FB to hurl abuse at him directly because he was a white man and (according to them) not doing enough to be a spokesperson for the movement. Mind you, Bradley had expressed his support for the movement on social media and liked and reblogged posts to this effect, he just never took on an active and visible spokesperson role. He (or his team) also deleted the toxic deluge the antis left in his comments section and blocked the most vocal harassers, which just set them off even more and it was full-on delusional thinking from these people on all social media platforms.

Anyway, I have not encountered any of this bunch in a while now, so I am assuming they grew up, moved on, or got the psychiatric help they so desperately needed. Either that, or I finally managed to block the right people.

#bradley james #anti nonsense

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sparklecryptid · 3 years ago

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The only pathetic thing here is you condoning riots that destroyed more PoC livelihoods than it helped, while condemning a lower class uprising against the corrupt political elite in your country. Ironic that the left finally gets what it wants, but it can't tolerate that those rebelling have different beliefs than they do. But please, continue to act as though you're educated on the situation while refusing to see the bigger picture. It's very amusing.

Okay. This is the last time I’m interacting with you and it’s largely to point out to my nice followers that anon is coming offline because I really don’t have the spoons to deal with you.

First of all, the idea that truckers in Canada are lower class is amusing. My step-father - who is a trucker - routinely brings home 5k a month. I don’t know what world you live in where five thousand dollars a month is lower class but as someone who has lived in poverty its laughable you think these guys don’t have money.

Second of all, the BLM protests were against people actively killing us. It was against police brutality. We were dying. We still are dying. It is a struggle to be seen as a person with all the rights that entails. So yeah, yeah I do support my people going out and protesting because we’ve finally had enough of watching our own die. The violence inflicted upon us in both Canada and the States is inexcusable.

Third of all, buddy, you’re the one harassing someone over the internet because they dare to think that the truckers causing a standstill in the capital of their country while waving confederate and n*zi flags is a prelude to full blown fascism if anyone here is pathetic it’s certainly not me.

Beside that, it’s not simply a matter of ‘different beliefs’ here. Your desire not to get vaccinated puts people in danger. It puts me and my crippled ass in danger because if I catch Covid because someone I interacted with wasn’t vaccinated there is a high chance I could die due to my underlying conditions. The persons without the shot has a higher chance of dying because they refuse to get it and you don’t seem to care about that.

Like.

If you actually cared about others you wouldn’t be standing on top of disappointment hill shouting about how those who don’t get vaccines are heroes.

So yeah, anon is going off because I simply no longer want to deal with you.

Bye.

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pray4jensen · 4 years ago

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What do you mean by "who he (jared) is as a person" in the tags of the walker ask?

i mean that jared has done many things that i find reprehensible to the point that i have no interest in supporting his career. it’s unfortunate since i really love sam, but this is why distinguishing between an actor and their character is so important, and this is why the whole walker situation in regards to spn’s ending is particularly unpalatable

i think newer fans are unlikely to be aware of the things that he’s done, because for the most part, jensen and misha both keep him in check. he also struggles with depression and anxiety and has been very vocal about that, but that doesn’t make his other actions excusable.

i’ll put it below the cut because my intention isn’t to hurt anyone who may be a fan of his but i also feel like it’s important information to know:

anyway, to get straight to the point, he regularly uses his straight/white/cisgender/male/economic privilege to either actively or passively hurt others that don’t have the same type of privilege to protect themselves.

he has, for example, doxxed people on his twitter (he has 3 million followers), providing names and addresses in the hopes that his fans will go harass people who he felt did wrong to him. who are these people? usually people like us, working low income jobs and struggling to pay the bills. he’s done it to waitresses, flight personnel, ticket counter agents, etc., not once stopping to consider that these people might just have been having a bad day. he does this knowingly and with the hopes that these people will lose their livelihoods; he is aware that his fans are often malicious and it can’t have escaped his memory that these same fans have intended to do real harm to real people, often sending death threats to not only his wife, but also misha and danneel and literally anyone who gets too close to jared and/or jensen.

he’s also relentlessly transphobic and homophobic. the number of times he’s bullied misha (because tbh, that is the only appropriate word for it) by questioning his gender/sexuality just because misha doesn’t fit the masculine mold of societal stereotypes is countless. this is also why it’s particularly hurtful when, like last night, he said that sam could have different pronouns and/or may not be as straight as presented onscreen because, despite appearing to support a genderqueer reading of sam, he doesn’t actually understand the implications of such a thing fully, and you can bet your ass he’ll be making another transphobic/homophobic joke in no time. his statement also neglects to acknowledge the vast amount of textual evidence that fans have come up with to support a queer dean reading. by his suggestion that sam could also be queer, he implicitly suggests that bi dean is similarly a fan reimagining of dean’s character, rather than a canonically and textually supported argument for dean’s sexuality.

in more recent history, and especially in regards to the ongoing BLM protests, he’s more than once demonstrated his lack of awareness when it comes to the privilege he holds. after getting drunk and getting involved in a bar fight during a break away from shooting s15, he was arrested and tried to bribe an officer to get off on his charges. luckily, it didn’t work, but the whole incident was caught on camera. to be completely honest, the fact that he tried it means that he’s done it before (and probably successfully). this is extremely distressing to think about, especially when you know that if a person of colour had tried the same thing, they either would have been in jail or dead on the ground.

finally, just this past summer, when george floyd was murdered, he wrote a muddled post about his reaction to the BLM movement (he didn’t even bother calling george floyd by his name), ultimately concluding that he could do absolutely nothing to help and that he was sad about that which...thanks, jared. this man has 3 million followers that he doesn’t mind utilizing to harass innocent people but when it comes to standing up for black lives? he’s fucking useless apparently.

#boredombabbles #sorry my anger got the best of me towards the end of that #but yeah...this is what it is #i rlly expect now that neither jensen nor misha will be around to be positive influences on him #he's gonna end up doing or saying more hurtful things #and this time...he won't be able to get out of it #anon #ask

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sosthemortalcoil · 4 years ago

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BLM Donation Shorts: Kiss It Better

Cinnerman, from the discord, requested a nsfw m!Gabriel and Michael

Michael crawled into your lap as soon as you started kissing him, as if his weight can hold you down, keep you here with him. It’s strange to feel the short hair beneath your fingers as you slide a hand over the top of his head to cup the back of his neck, a reminder that he’s changed.

You wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t.

“Gabriel,” he groans, fingers haphazardly dancing across your chest, as if unsure where he wants to touch first. “I want—I want all of you.”

You can feel that much pressing into your stomach. He keeps making short, aborted thrusts with his hips, as if trying to fight against the base urges coursing through him.

“I want you too,” you remind him. You catch one of his wayward hands and slide your fingers through his, squeezing his hand. It’s difficult to try and be the cool and collected one, but one of you needs to steer this encounter and Michael’s ‘references’ are a bunch of books written for horny teenagers.

They do nothing to help him cope with the feelings he, as far as you know, hasn’t explored with anyone. For him it’s always been you, or no one.

“Slow down,” you pant as he makes a noise of frustration. His neatly manicured nails tug at the collar of your t-shirt.

“I don’t like these clothes,” he whines.

“If you give me a second, they’re really quite easy to take off. Nothing like some of the older fashions. No stays, no hosiery, no doublets—”

“I. Don’t. Care,” Michael states petulantly, tugging, again, at your shirt collar. “I want it off now.”

Well, this shirt is already a lost cause, his insistence causing the fabric to strain and tear, leaving it loose and sagging. “Take your shirt off and I’ll get mine,” you offer, releasing his hand to grab the hem of your top and yank it off. The sound of small objects hitting the floor follows and you tense, glancing to see what you knocked over.

It’s the buttons from Michael’s shirt. He’d been too impatient to bother pulling it over his head or undoing them, opting for the quicker route of ripping it off.

“Okay, we can’t go about ruining all of our clothes,” you protest. Finding a comfortable shirt that fits well is harder than you’d expected. Sure, you can get it tailored, but finding the time for that with everything else—your son, your boyfriend, your work, trying to make sure you don’t give your cover away and invite a horde of demons upon the city—is another activity on your ever-growing list.

“You’re not going to need them,” he grunts, struggling with the button on the front of his pants. He gets it done and immediately goes to jerk down the zipper. “I didn’t even bother—ow!”

It takes a moment to realize what happened, and when you do, you have to look away to stop from making an inappropriate laugh. “I think—” You have to stop, clear your throat, and try again. “I think we need to get you some underclothes after this.”

Still beet-red, Michael manages to get his zipper down, wincing the entire way.

Expression mostly under control, you help him pull out the wounded member, power surging through your fingers, soothing the abrasions on his tender flesh. Once that’s done, you leave your hand there, stroking him tenderly. Michael’s mouth drops open and he groans, the red in his cheeks not abating the slightest.

“W-wait,” he stammers, fingers searching for your zipper. You stop his hands, squeezing them.

“You know humans have a thing they do,” you whisper, guiding his hands to your bare skin.

“Humans do lots of things,” Michael replies, though there’s less of a bite to his tone than usual. Probably because he’s distracted by tracing the contours of your chest, staring oddly at the strangeness of your belly-button before refocusing on your nipples, amused by the responsiveness of them.

“But I think this one will catch your interest.” You interrupt his wanderings, and Michael’s attention returns to your fly. Again, you stop him. “See,” you continue, ignoring his pouting, “When one of them gets hurt, someone close to them will offer to kiss it better.”

“So?” Frustrated, he tries to shove a hand inside the band of your pants but he doesn’t get far.

“So…” you reply, getting his attention by cupping his sac. “Wouldn’t you like me to kiss your boo-boo better?”

Michael blinks, slowly processing your offer. It probably doesn’t help that you’ve started rolling the soft skin in your hand, enjoying the way he trembles at your touch.

“I—I’ve never heard of that as an effective healing method but one must test it to find out. So, we shall have to experiment,” he agrees, leaning into your hand, eyes fluttering closed and a blissful smile crossing his lips as you slide your fingers over the crown.

It takes a moment to roll him off of you and onto the couch, his whine at the lack of stimulation assuaged with a kiss on his lips. Then you kneel between his legs, smiling up at him. He bites his lower lip, hands fisting on his thighs as he watches you, almost bouncing in his spot.

“Someone is a little eager,” you murmur. You brush your thumb across the head before you lean down to kiss the tip, enjoying the sound of Michael sucking in a breath and then forgetting to exhale.

“Don’t forget to breathe,” you remind him, worried that he might just.

“I can’t promise that,” he squeaks. “I don’t—I’m not—how am I even supposed to think—” His voice rises and cuts off as your slide more of him past your lips, sucking on the head of him. “Oh, oh, Gabriel, I—”

Hastily you pull back, glancing up at Michael. His expression changes from rapture to confusion in a few languid blinks. “Wha—”

“I didn’t want your first time to be over so quickly,” you explain, resting your head on his leg.

“That’s—I wouldn’t—”

Raising one eyebrow, you brush the tip of your nail over the crown again. He shudders and gasps, lips moving but no words coming out.

“I want you to enjoy yourself, Michael. But I think you’ll get more out of it if we can make you last a little longer.”

“I have plenty of stamina,” he huffs churlishly.

You grin. “I look forward to seeing how much.”

#Michael only #spicy #lemon #Michael RO #I have no regrets #let's call it karma #I can and will bully my own characters #BLM shorts #BLM prompts #shorts

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teachingtales · 4 years ago

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I’ve had to answer this a couple times already so I want to share it with you to help make some sense of the Capitol Hill Attack. In bold are the questions/comments from someone else and then my response follows.

I don't know what these people expected by doing this. We must first remember that these are not the "average person". These are people who firmly believe in an underlying persecution. I grew up in such a cult, where we were taught that everyone is persecuting us, secretly or overtly. To account for the fact that we were part of a religious majority in the US, we were taught that the "other Christians" were not "true" Christians. They were liars who pretended to believe in God hoping for eternal life, but would vote for "worldly and Satanic" ideas like gay marriage or abortion.

These people genuinely believe that the entire political system of the United States is a Satanic cult that sacrifices children. They are told not to donate blood because the Satanic Leaders (politicians and celebrities) steal this blood in order to use it for youth (by putting it on their skin or ingesting it or both). In some cases, young Christian children are stolen and drained of blood for this purpose. They believe that Trump, and only Trump, was fighting a secret battle against the Powers That Be. They believed that Trump's lack of presidential activity/effects was due to him being far too busy fighting the secret Satanists. In other words, the fact he was ineffective (in public) meant he was effective (in private).

So, to your question: what did they expect by doing this? Any or all of the following:

die a glorious death for the man hand-selected by Jesus, thus gaining access to Heaven

they believed they would find the "hidden votes", exposing the Satanic Politicians and showing the world they were really right this whole time

force another recount, which would finally prove that Trump actually won

The election was fair, there's no damning evidence of election fraud and Trump's legal bullshit is baseless and a desperate attempt to cheat the system.

True. But these are not reasonable people we are dealing with. In their minds, the lack of evidence is the evidence, that cheating the system was done so well that they made sure to really cover their tracks. Oddly, they also believe that it was done so sloppily that they do have evidence in the form of a video that Trump referenced multiple times in his Georgia Phone Call. It doesn't matter that the actual, unedited footage wholly disagrees with Trump's accusations; remember, he was hand-selected by Jesus, and the people in possession of the unedited footage are hand-selected by Satan. This, then, means Trump's video and Trump's claims are automatically correct, while anyone else is a liar and holds forgeries. After all, Lucifer is "the Father of Lies", so his agents (politicians) surely can lie effectively.

Again, we are left with this problem: the lack of evidence is the evidence.

Storming the Capitol was a shitty idea, what was going to change? People are dead because of this "overthrow". The government wasn't going to be affected by this.

In addition to what I mentioned earlier, they have a very small view of the world. These are people who typically believe the Earth is only 6000 years old and evolution cannot happen because they cannot fathom the long periods of time it takes. These are people who believe that those of us outside of the US are all collectively lying about the SARS-CoV-2 virus so we can hurt President Trump's reputation. They cannot understand scale. They are the people who watch movies like “Independence Day”, where a single person who has no knowledge of alien computers can take down the entire fleet. They don't understand how complex things really are. Thus, they genuinely think a "last stand" type of attack on a building will bring on the glorious end to this troubled tale.

Trump repeatedly bashed people who protested for BLM and said it was violent, unnecessary, etc. But when people riot and kill in his name he's just like "well they didn't do anything wrong".

This is unfortunately an easy one to answer: if they're against me, they are wrong...but if they are for me, they are right.

This is a classic "in-group/out-group" type of thinking. In-Group: the group you belong to Out-Group: the group you do not belong to (often with directly opposing views) In this type of thinking, you stereotype the Out-Group by their worst actors but your worst actors in your In-Group are different. We can see this in the media in the form of the following examples:

Example A: foreigners who attack something on national soil are "terrorists", but domestic attackers are "troubled individuals"

Example B: if the majority is white, a 17 year-old black male who shoots some people is written about in the news as a "violent man" or "man opened fire on innocent victims". If the shooter is a 17 year-old white male, the news is characterizes him as a "troubled teen" or "boy open fires at school, family wonders where they went wrong"

Example C: if the minority religion has a passage in their holy book that says "Women are less than men", it's because that religion is clearly false and laughably erroneous; if the majority religion has a passage in their holy book that says "Women are less than men", it's not sexist and just needs to be understood in cultural context

The subconscious reasoning for this type of thinking is very tribal but also ego-preserving...that we each believe we are always making the most correct and most reasonable/logical choices, so if someone makes a different choice, that person and choice are unreasonable and illogical.

None of this excuses the behavior, but I hope it helps shed some light on this type of extreme thought process.

#capitol hill #teacher #teaching #student #students #history #capitol hill attack #trump #insurrection #terrorism #terrorist #impeachtheloser #impeach the president #impeach45 #government

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vanderlindemangofarm · 4 years ago

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The Van der Linde Gang - Jobs in a Modern AU

I’ve been really inspired to write about this lately and I’d love to hear your takes! These are the occupations that I think each gang member would have in a modern AU. Some were more challenging than others, but hopefully you guys can see where I’m coming from with each!

Arthur: Film location scout. His natural eye for photography and framing makes Arthur the perfect member of a pre-production team. His no-bullshit approach to everything means he keeps to deadlines, although he’s known to go wandering off into the wilderness for unknown amounts of time. He enjoys the lone working side of his job and finding exactly the right spots that would make the film come to life. He doesn’t always like the films once they’re finished (in fact he’s often bought cinema tickets and walked out half way through, grumbling that it wasn’t worth the popcorn) but he can’t deny the excited buzz he gets every time he gets hired. In his early years as an assistant he met Bertie Mason, a nervous but talented photography intern. Despite an ill-advised hookup after a week joined at the hip they have remained close friends and still go out on shoots together.

John: landscape gardener. John? Flowers? Yes, alright, I found it hard to believe too. But look, it’s not about the flowers, even if he does get misty-eyed at the sight of a sunflower in the early morning light. It’s about the challenge, the outdoors, and solving problems. After all the renovations he did to his house and garden (some more successful than others) John found how much satisfaction he got from digging and reshaping and planting. Don’t get me wrong, he’s often without a shirt, even in the colder months, much to the delight of some and the horror of others. He always makes friends with the household pets and is wonderful with the kids, always dropping his task to throw a frisbee around for a bit or cheekily accept an ice cold glass of lemonade from their mothers. Whenever he drives past one of his projects he feels himself glowing with pride - “I did that!”.

Dutch: philosophy lecturer. As always, late with Starbucks. Will he actually grade your essay? Will it mysteriously disappear? Keeps you on your toes, doesn’t it? Sitting precariously on the very edge of his desk, leather jacket hanging off his shoulders and losing his balance every 15 minutes, Dr Van der Linde is nothing short of a wonder. For the love of all that is holy, do not get him started on Kant. Kant has no place here. You want to talk about your precious Kant? Get your butt down to Dr O’Driscoll’s class, he has plenty to say about Kant. Perhaps a little too fond of Socrates. Plato who? Completely illegible handwriting and definitely sleeping with several members of the faculty. But somehow his students always walk away with excellent grades. At the end of each term Dutch takes everyone out to a local bar for drinks, insists on buying tequila which no one really fancies at 11am. Claims to ride a motorcycle called The Count which no one has actually seen. Impossible to hate, and he writes everyone great references for their summer internships.

Hosea: social worker. In a crisis, there’s no one better to knock on your door. Hosea has seen it all and he’ll see it all again, but that doesn’t stop him from treating every single case he gets with the upmost respect and care. His no-nonsense approach to his work means he gets things done, but he never sacrifices his compassion. He mostly works with teenagers and has a way of being able to connect to each individual without coming across as patronising. He’s been in the field for over two decades and is an invaluable mentor for any newcomers, always willing to share a word or two of advice or be a shoulder to cry on.

Javier: guitar teacher and music therapist. During his worst years, Javier’s guitar was his lifeline. And he wants to help others find their lifeline, too. He works on a freelance basis, mainly going into mental health hospitals, schools and prisons. He runs workshops focusing on guitar playing, but brings other instruments (mainly percussion) to try too. He’s a gentle teacher, always with a joke in his back pocket for when you need it most. He has nicknames for everyone and remembers everything they’ve ever told him. He’s patient and never lets anyone feel bad for making a mistake. Javier also runs an after-school guitar club at the local middle school alongside playing his own music at gigs whenever he can. No, he doesn’t reply to DMs no matter how thirsty they are.

Sadie: self-defense instructor. After surviving an attack several years ago, Sadie used her ferocity to get her qualification in self-defense to teach other women how to fight back should they need to. Her husband Jake helps out in her classes, happily allowing himself to be thrown around and slammed onto the mat as many times as required. Her students are terrified of her in the best and nicest way. Sadie also volunteers at a women’s refuge, providing emergency care and taking phone calls.

Charles: environmental campaign manager. Charles has always been drawn to charities and started doing voluntary work for Greenpeace when he was at university, securing an internship with them in Canada which led to a full time job. Whilst Charles mainly hosts meetings and organises events, he also works closely with elementary schools and runs workshops with outdoor activities, crafts and music. Last week they made bird feeders! It was awesome. He’s also a keen activist and regularly meets up with Javier to go to protests and community events, most recently for BLM.

Micah: motorcycle mechanic. Micah is massively invested in motorcycle culture and treats his beloved bike better than his own mother, if he still spoke to her. Although he pretends not to care, fixing bikes is his greatest passion and almost looks...happy when he’s doing it? Maybe? He likes knowing more than the people who stop by his shop and makes sure they know it. Occasionally he leaves his number on a scrap of paper inside women’s handbags when they’re not looking but for some reason none of them call. Like it or not, he’s incredibly skilled and will have your motorcycle singing a tune if that’s what you want. Euphemism? Of course not.

Abigail: nurse. She was so shy when she realised she wanted to pursue nursing - would people laugh at her? Was she too impatient, too nagging, too shrill? Her dyslexia always put her off going into further education and she was always discouraged by her parents. But with lots of encouragement from Hosea (who helped her to fill out her applications and other forms) and her friends, Abigail went to university in her 30′s to get her degree. She graduated top of her class and now works full time in her local hospital, based mostly in the emergency room. From drunken brawlers to tearful children and grumpy old men with lumbago, Abigail has learnt to keep her cool and to have faith in her own ability.

Molly: holistic therapist and masseuse. It took years to get that bastard of a philosopher out of her head (and out of her bed - damn those happy hour drinks “for old times’ sake”), but she’s finally free. Molly radiates a kindness that few took to the time to see, and she wanted to take strength from her past struggles to help others who may need someone to listen, just as she did. Molly took a bunch of online courses in various holistic therapies, including aromatherapy and massage, as this was something she had always been interested in. She runs a tiny clinic on a quiet street, the rooms filled with sunshine and the scent of geraniums. She also has a quite popular ASMR YouTube channel, Emerald Eyes ASMR, which she shyly admits just reached 500k subscribers. Her most popular video, ‘Irish Girl Helps You Fall Asleep (soft spoken, tapping, mouth sounds)’ just reached over a million hits.

Kieran: veterinarian specialising in equine care. Much like Abigail, Kieran didn’t like the idea of going back into education. He’d had a rough time of it as a teenager, dropping out of high school early and working a string of menial jobs for the next decade. They paid his rent, but he still felt poor. His favourite job, however, was working at a stable. The horses made him feel calm and he found that he could read them better than most people. He went to the library and read as much as he could about them. From there, he got himself an apprenticeship which paved the way for him to earn his degree in veterinary science. He smiled so hard in his graduation photo his eyes disappeared into his cheeks. He travels all over the local countryside, visiting farms and ranches to care for the horses. His confidence picked up after the first few blunders, and little by little he’s saving up to buy his own ranch one day.

Lenny: political science student. You know that kid who always looks amazing, even in 9am lectures? Yeah, that’s not Lenny, but he’s sat just behind. See him? Yep, the one rubbing sleep from his eyes as he pushes through the effects of another all-nighter. It’s not due to procrastination, but from perfectionism. He spends hour agonising over references, appendixes and even titles. One time he was so tired he signed his work “Ynnel”. He’s completely in love with his course and relishes every class he takes. Oh, he’s taking Dutch’s ‘History of Western Philosophy’ module by the way. Sitting in the front row, middle seat, directly in front of Dutch, his eyes glinting wickedly. Poor Dutch. Lenny has a counterpoint for absolutely everything and can barely stifle his laughter as Dutch gets more and more flustered. He’s been dating Jenny Kirk, an English Lit student, for the past few months and it’s going well. So well in fact, that he might stop hiding his Doctor Who merchandise every time she comes to his dorm room.

Tilly: business student. Tilly started university at the same time as Lenny and they still always go to the library together, rolling their eyes at each other over their morning peppermint lattes. Tilly is at the forefront of any and all on-campus activism. Think of Sam from Dear White People - that’s our Tilly. She wears her Ravenclaw scarf all autumn and winter long and posts scathing Instagram stories about the cafeteria food. But she’s powerfully kind and very ambitious, taking on a part time job tutoring kids with dyslexia in their reading and writing.

Susan: midwife. Think having a baby is scary? Try crossing Nurse Grimshaw. She’s here now, and that baby is coming out of you one way or another. She’ll hold your hand through thick and thin but if you dare say “I can’t do it” one more time she’ll unleash hell. Susan will make sure everyone has a job to do. Partner just standing there like a lemon? Not on her watch. She’s harsh but kind to her trainees and will always offer a cup of coffee and a shoulder to cry on, but there’s a time and place for slacking and it’s not on her labour ward.

Trelawny: talent agent. Our Josiah is cunning, infuriatingly charismatic and with an eye for the best of the best - what else could he do so effortlessly? He’ll wrangle you a 10 second role as a latrine cleaner in a non-profit film and he’ll still make you feel like the next DiCaprio. You’re a diamond, don’t you know? Of course you could nab Elphaba, we’ll worry about the singing later. How do you feel about cat food commercials? No no, it’s not pornography, it really is cat food this time - he double checked. On top of this, he knows everyone in the business. No, really. He can’t move 3 feet down Broadway without someone booming his name. The tone of said boom depends, of course, but who hasn’t been caught with his bottom out in that director’s wife’s en-suite?

Sean: outdoor activity centre instructor. You mean you can actually get paid to swim in lakes, ride ziplines through the forest and eat roasted marshmallows?! Sean couldn’t believe his ears. But it was true, and he’s living his best life. He may be on his penultimate warning for unruly behaviour, but he knows he could never really get fired. How could they? Everyone loves him. And to his credit, he’s a fantastic instructor, especially with kids. Everything from canoeing to caving, wild swimming to climbing, Sean has mastered it all and he always makes it fun. No one is allowed to feel left out or silly for not being able to do something. Sean has a way of making everyone feel included, even if you can only make it up the first few rungs of the ladder. Hey, that’s still off the ground! He once knew this feller Bill who cried because a moth flew into his face. You’re doing fine.

Mary-Beth: librarian and YA author. Sweet Mary-Beth, how could she be anywhere else but surrounded by books? She adores her job at her small, local library and is always looking for ways to make it even better. She often gets tangled up in the stories she reads whilst organising shelves, but it’s quiet enough most days that she’s rarely caught. She loves helping people find their books or recommending her favourites. She also runs the toddler storytime groups and a writing club for older kids. Of course, she’s also writing her own books. The first of her ‘Valentine Mysteries’ books made a modest profit and she’s excited to write more about the adventures of Leslie Dupont.

Karen: actress. Realising that she had a knack for accents and even after an especially successful high school lead role as Roxy Hart, Karen didn’t really acknowledge her would-be passion for acting for a long time. But she used her talents to get herself and her friends into X-rated films, dive bars and successfully pull off dozens of prank calls. It wasn’t until one of her friends was going to an open-call audition for a short film and wanted someone to go with her that Karen had her epithany. She was cast on the spot, much to the dismay of her friend. Since then, she’s been in a handful of arthouse films, a commercial here and there, and recently enjoyed a short run as Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at a small theatre downtown. Does she want fame and fortune? Honestly, she hasn’t really thought about it. Right now, she’s just enjoying the ride. And the phone numbers left for her at front of house from many admirers.

Strauss: financial loan adviser. Oh boy, perhaps you saw this one coming. Then again, maybe not. Old Leopold isn’t quite the two-pronged-tongued eldritch horror people often mistake him for. In fact, he actually advises people against loan sharks. He had his fair share of debts y’see and he genuinely doesn’t want anyone else to go through the same thing. He’s not exactly sweet and cuddly, but he might let you have a free pen if you call by his office. I mean, technically they’re not free but...never mind, just take it.

Bill: plumber. It was purely accidental that Bill bashed his way into his career. No, really. His sink was blocked and after an hour of poking and prodding the pipes he started hitting the poor thing with a spanner out of pure frustration, cursing all the way. To his shock, it worked, and he suddenly had running water again. What shocked him more is that he realised he wanted to know how. So, he bought a book. And he read the book. And one thing led to another, and now he’s the proud owner of Williamson Plumbing Inc. The money is very good, but for Bill that’s not it. You have to understand that for him, it’s the act itself of fixing something that brings Bill immense satisfaction. And Bill isn’t used to knowing more about something - anything - than those around him. For the first time perhaps in his life, he can sit down, solve a problem, and know that he’s done a good job.

Swanson: AA group leader. After getting completely sober almost a decade ago and staying that way, Orville wanted to give something back to the people who had helped him out so greatly. Becoming a volunteer to help those who were trapped where he was seemed like the only path, and it felt so right. Orville is there in meetings, making coffee, handing out donuts and training new volunteers. If anyone wants to talk about their faith he’s all ears, but he never pushes it as a cure-all in any situation. Orville’s sobriety has also meant that he’s learnt to make the most phenomenal mocktails.

Pearson: grocery shop manager and cooking teacher. Simon has his small grocery shop on the edge of town which has a wide range of regular customers. But he wanted to do more, so he set up a small class to teach fellow veterans how to cook. His wife helps out, and they grow the ingredients together in their garden and down at the allotment. It’s just an therapeutic for him as it is for his students, as he’s only just realising how much he wants to talk about his time in the navy.

Uncle: unknown. For the longest time, everyone thought Uncle worked at one of the worst dive bars in town, as whenever they stumbled in for a nightcap he was there, behind the bar, happy as a pig in shit. Turns out that he just started going there one night and no one could get him to leave. And so every evening he’ll appear like a phantom, sit himself in the half-broken chair behind the bar (clearly labelled “not for customer use”), order the cheapest beer on the menu and sit there until midnight. No one can understand how he gets the means to live as he ragingly denies receiving any government handouts despite his lumbago. Claims to be a veteran but hasn’t fought in any wars anyone has heard of.

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