#Since most of the time it's either relatable or has been built up to exceptionally well

[some-pers0n]

I'm so close to writing about a character being beaten over the head with a rusty shovel and bleeding out dying to prove just how easy angst is to write

[qqueenofhades]

Do you really hate this county? Or were you just ranting?

Sigh. I debated whether or not to answer this, since I usually keep the real-life/politics/depressing current events to a relative minimum on this blog, except when I really can't avoid ranting about it. But I have some things to get off my chest, it seems, and you did ask. So.

The thing is, any American with a single modicum of genuine historical consciousness knows that despite all the triumphalist mythology about Pulling Up By Our Bootstraps and the American Dream and etc, this country was founded and built on the massive and systematic exploitation and extermination of Black and Indigenous people. And now, when we are barely (400 years later!!!) getting to a point of acknowledging that in a widespread way, oh my god the screaming. I'm so sick of the American right wing I could spit for so many reasons, not least of which is the increasingly reductive and reactive attempts to put the genie back in the bottle and set up hysterical boogeymen about how Teaching Your Children Critical Race Theory is the end of all things. They have forfeited all pretense of being a real governing party; remember how their only platform at the 2020 RNC was "support whatever Trump says?" They have devolved to the point where the cruelty IS the point, to everyone who doesn't fit the nakedly white supremacist mold. They don't have anything to do aside from attempt to usher in actual, literal, dictionary-definition-of-fascism and sponsor armed revolts against the peaceful transfer of power.

That is fucking exhausting to be aware of all the time, especially with the knowledge that if we miss a single election cycle -- which is exceptionally easy to do with the way the Democratic electorate needs to be wooed and courted and herded like cats every single time, rather than just getting their asses to the polls and voting to keep Nazis out of office -- they will be right back in power again. If Manchin and Sinema don't get over their poseur pearl-clutching and either nuke the filibuster or carve out an exception for voting rights, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is never going to get passed, no matter how many boilerplate appeals the Democratic leadership makes on Twitter. In which case, the 2022 midterms are going to give us Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House (I threw up in my mouth a little typing that) and right back to the Mitch McConnell Obstruction Power Hour in the Senate. The Online Left (TM) will then blame the Democrats for not doing more to stop them. These are, of course, the same people who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton out of precious moral purity reasons in 2016, handed the election to Trump, and now like to complain when the Trump-stacked Supreme Court reliably churns out terrible decisions. Gee, it's almost like elections have consequences!!

Aside from my exasperation with the death-cult right-wing fascists and the Online Left (TM), I am sick and tired of how forty years of "trickle-down" Reaganomics has created a world where billionaires can just fly to space for the fun of it, while the rest of America (and the world) is even more sick, poor, overheated, economically deprived, and unable to survive the biggest public health crisis in a century, even if half the elected leadership wasn't actively trying to sabotage it. Did you know that half of American workers can't even afford a one-bedroom apartment? Plus the obvious scandal that is race relations, health care, paid leave, the education system (or lack thereof), etc etc. I'm so tired of this America Is The Greatest Country in the World mindless jingoistic catchphrasing. We are an empire in the late stages of collapse and it's not going to be pretty for anyone. We have been poisoned on sociopathic-libertarian-selfishness-disguised-as-Freedom ideology for so long that that's all there is left. We have become a country of idiots who believe everything their idiot friends post on social media, but in a very real sense, it's not directly those individuals' fault. How could they, when they have been very deliberately cultivated into that mindset and stripped of critical thinking skills, to serve a noxious combination of money, power, and ideology?

I am tired of the fact that I have become so drained of empathy that when I see news about more people who refused to get the vaccine predictably dying of COVID, my reaction is "eh, whatever, they kind of deserved it." I KNOW that is not a good mindset to have, and I am doing my best to maintain my personal attempts to be kind to those I meet and to do my small part to make the world better. I know these are human beings who believed what they were told by people that they (for whatever reason) thought knew better than them, and that they are part of someone's family, they had loved ones, etc. But I just can't summon up the will to give a single damn about them (I'm keeping a bingo card of right-wing anti-vax radio hosts who die of COVID and every time it's like, "Alexa, play Another One Bites The Dust.") The course that the pandemic took in 21st-century America was not preordained or inevitable. It was (and continues to be) drastically mismanaged for cynical political reasons, and the legacy of the Former Guy continues to poison any attempts to bring it under control or convince people to get a goddamn vaccine. We now have over 100,000 patients hospitalized with COVID across the country -- more than last summer, when the vaccines weren't available.

I have been open about my fury about the devaluation of the humanities and other critical thinking skills, about the fact that as an academic in this field, my chances of getting a full-time job for which I have trained extensively and acquired a specialist PhD are... very low. I am tired of the fact that Americans have been encouraged to believe whatever bullshit they fucking please, regardless of whether it is remotely true, and told that any attempt to correct them is "anti-freedom." I am tired of how little the education system functions in a useful way at all -- not necessarily due to the fault of teachers, who have to work with what they're given, and who are basically heroes struggling stubbornly along in a profession that actively hates them, but because of relentless under-funding, political interference, and furious attempts, as discussed above, to keep white America safely in the dark about its actual history. I am tired of the fact that grade school education basically relies on passing the right standardized tests, the end. I am tired of the implication that the truth is too scary or "un-American" to handle. I am tired. Tired.

I know as well that "America" is not synonymous in all cases with "capitalist imperialist white-supremacist corporate death cult." This is still the most diverse country in the world. "America" is not just rich white middle-aged Republicans. "America" involves a ton of people of color, women, LGBTQ people, Muslims, Jews, Christians of good will (I have a whole other rant on how American Christianity as a whole has yielded all pretense of being any sort of a principled moral opposition), white allies, etc etc. all trying to make a better world. The blue, highly vaccinated, Biden-winning states and counties are leading the economic recovery and enacting all kinds of progressive-wishlist dream policies. We DID get rid of the Orange One via the electoral process and avert fascism at the ballot box, which is almost unheard-of, historically speaking. But because, as also discussed above, certain elements of the Democratic electorate need to fall in love with a candidate every single time or threaten to withhold their vote to punish the rest of the country for not being Progressive Enough, these gains are constantly fragile and at risk of being undone in the next electoral cycle. Yes, the existing system is a crock of shit. But it's what we've got right now, and the other alternative is open fascism, which we all got a terrifying taste of over the last four years. I don't know about you, but I really don't want to go back.

So... I don't know. I don't know if that stacks up to hate. I do hate almost everything about what this country currently is, structurally speaking, but I recognize that is not identical with the many people who still live here and are trying to do their best, including my friends, family, and myself. I am exhausted by the fact that as an older millennial, I am expected to survive multiple cataclysmic economic crashes, a planet that is literally boiling alive, a barely functional political system run on black cash, lies, and xenophobia, a total lack of critical thinking skills, renewed assaults on women/queer people/POC/etc, and somehow feel like I'm confident or prepared for the future. Not all these problems are only America's fault alone. The West as a whole bears huge responsibility for the current clusterfuck that the world is in, for many reasons, and so do some non-Western countries. But there is no denying that many of these problems have ultimate American roots. See how the ongoing fad for right-wing authoritarian strongmen around the world has them modeling themselves openly on Trump (like Brazil's lunatic president, Jair Bolsonaro, who talks all the time about how Trump is his political role model). See what's going on in Afghanistan right now. Etc. etc.

Anyway. I am very, very tired. There you have it.

[badger-writes]

Upon replaying it again, I think at its core the root of most of Bioshock Infinite’s failings comes from trying to make a video game that’s “smart” rather than “thoughtful”.

Compared to the original Bioshock, it comes up short in many ways, but one of the biggest is the deconstruction of extremism that makes for the series’ standby thematic thrust. The original game was as much about examining and deconstructing Objectivism as it was about shooting lightning bolts from your hands; much of its makeup is owed to Randian literature espousing its virtues, but part of the point of Bioshock is showing how quickly a society founded on strict observation of libertarianism would fall apart. Likewise with Bioshock 2 and its skewering of collectivism - in both cases, absolute conformity with the letter of ideological law is either A) impossible due to fundamental human fallibility or B) results in a body politic mutated into something so unlike a rational human society as to be unrecognizable. Usually both. Very often physically as well as philosophically. 

This is why ADAM, as a plot device, was adjacent to the story of Rapture’s decline rather than the focus of it. At a glance, sure, one would assume that letting people trapped under the ocean load up on drugs that give them superpowers would naturally destabilize any society - but ADAM and its place in the Civil War was always a symptom of the disease rather than the cause. Rapture was built with rotten timber. Plasmids just happened to end up being the match that set it ablaze.

With Infinite, though, there’s very little consideration paid to engaging with American Exceptionalism or its credos in any kind of intellectual sense. Part of this is because most of the story is wound up in Booker and Elizabeth (mostly Elizabeth, if we’re being honest), and most of their story, in turn, is wound up in being associated with the reality-jumping of the midgame and the climax. “Tears” in reality and their influence on the plot becomes so impossible to avoid as to become unbearable. So instead of deconstructing “Captain of Industry” style crony capitalism, Christian Dominionism, race relations in America, the authoritarian tendencies of both the left and the right when sufficiently roused to self-righteousness, faith as a vector for absolution and forgiveness -- all of these things end up just being used as haunted house props to distract the player from the creeping influence of Irrational Games’ understanding of quantum mechanics (which often works in whatever way it needs to to satisfy the needs of the plot) becoming the real star of the show.

Indeed, the entire final segment of the game is devoted to sitting you down and explaining that, yes, this has been a game about straight up quantum mechanics this whole time, no allegory intended. The supposed main plot is easily resolved by going back in time to before it ever happened and murdering the man responsible before it ever took place. The rest of it, the awful caricature of American history’s worst vices and excesses that Infinite marketed itself on allegedly exploring, just gets yadda-yadda-yaddaed away.

The intended takeaway is not that it carries any kind of meaningful message about the topics it raises, but that its ending was so smart, you guys, it’s such a good, smart ending and it makes you feel smart for playing and understanding it (insofar as we’ve spoonfed how you’re supposed to understand it directly to you). Tell all your friends how smart it is and how smart Ken Levine at Irrational Games was for making it. 

It’s just as smart as Bioshock 1 was, everyone. If not more.

And indeed, that was very much the popular sentiment when it was released in 2013. It has since eroded precipitously. Mostly because the politically turbulent times of recent years has forced a re-evaluation of its ridiculously heavy-handed caricaturing of the Founders and the Vox as morally equivalent without any prosaic evidence to back it up.

Because here’s the thing: whether or not Bioshock is smart is completely incidental. Any story can hit you with an well-crafted plot twist; Bioshock was one of the first to do so in gaming, and for my money, still one of the best. But whether Bioshock was smart enough to hit you with a good twist was always a secondary quality. The thoughtfulness with which it was imagined and created was ultimately far more critical to its sense of immersion and ultimately its success.

I sense none of that thoughtfulness in Infinite. But I do sense a pretension to “smartness” that, in the end, dominates every other element of its creation.

[harley-style]

DREAM SMP Swap AU

Dream = Wilbur : Dream comes into the server to help these two kids who are trying to stir shit up -- why not, right? He's got a fondness for chaos but also very protective and caring over his friends. VERY FOND OF TUBBO. To the point of.. well, brotherhood. Wilbur = Dream : He had a vision, to create a place where people could emancipate -- he's not above being the bad guy to keep that ideal in place. He's charming and self-confident and isn't afraid to use blackmail or get all up in your business. Has dirt on everyone but Dream. Constantly threatens secrets but subtle, yanno? Again, very charming, very persuasive.

Tubbo = Tommy : Still very sweet, but Big Crime often comes out to play more often than not. Also a huge trouble magnet, tried to start a...Honey smuggling empire? For some fucking reason, despite its innocent sounding plan, is a threat to Wilbur's land but no one has any idea why. Tommy = Tubbo : Tommy has an innate fucking fixation on music discs. He's got Cat and Mellohi personally. He dreams of starting up a music cafe/music area...? He and Dream get along swimmingly, Dream actually gifts Tommy a few music discs too, but also pins Tommy with the name discount Dave Strider.

Fundy = Eret : Was convinced earlier on by Wilbur to continue his 'legacy' and ideals. Fundy further grows into a neutral party, doing things only when it benefits him. Is the traitor from the first war. Eret = Fundy : Gets far too involved with stuff and the only way out is if he wiggles through the restraints on him. Yes that's metaphorical.

JSchlatt = Technoblade : Assists through uses of contracts and business deals. Like, hello, Tubbo's Honey smuggling business? He and Dream make an agreement, he supplies Dream and Tubbo with shit, and Dream does favors for Schlatt. Technoblade = Jschlatt : Anarchy lmfao. Was actually brought on by Wilbur in secret. Acted as a benefactor for Dream before turning around and causing chaos in the land Dream Tubbo and Tommy built. Blood for the blood god, only the strongest gets to the top kind of government. There's always fucking pitfights. Oops.

Philza = Callahan : Largely uninvolved in the events, mostly just there to supervise Wilbur, Tommy and Techno. Duh. Callahan = Philza : Has personal history with Dream, tries to convince him not to do the thing that could hurt everyone else. Minimally succeeds.

Alyssa = Niki : Ready to defend her home and her family. Niki = Alyssa : Neutral, but ready to back Wilbur up if need be.

Sapnap = Bad : Arsonist, goes around and burns shit whenever he wants to. His base is a Nether inspired fortress. Also, he has to deal with a Nether problem in reference to the Red Vine problem from the original SMP. Hotlands? LMFAO Bad = Sapnap : Helps when asked. Started out on Wilbur's side, as a favor, but slowly shifts neutral due to the conflict between factions.

Karl = Skeppy : Gets held hostage? That's what preoccupies Sapnap's time. He suddenly disappeears or gets trapped in a cell. Skeppy = Karl : Runs around doing supply runs. Gets his friends into various stints to try and settle the conflict through friendly rivalry and competition. It doesn't always work.

George = Ranboo : Unlike original Ranboo, George is highly unsympathetic and needs concrete fucking facts before he acts, and that kind of backfires on him in the end. As a favor to Dream (how many favors is Dream involved in honestly) he runs messages back and forth from Tubbo to Tommy. Ranboo = George : Largely uninvolved in the conflict, like Niki, but unlike OG George, is not absent. He's just there to assist. One of the most innocent and purest people on the SMP, knows when to keep his head down. When his house burns down, he doesn't really believe its Tubbo who did it -- he knows the kid has been framed because he'd been WITH him at the time, but Wilbur pressures him to admit it.

Quackity = Punz : Wilbur's loyal paid henchman. Quackity will cause shit for the appropriate price, he's not exceptionally picky. That stunt he did as Mexican Dream was great and everyone in L'Manberg loved it. Punz = Quackity : One of the best fighters under Techno. Has more morals, but keeps them secretly. Very good at hiding his true intentions/feelings.

(sorry about the other characters not being on here, i dont know them enough to make swaps, or dont know who they'd make a good swap with. Swap who you wanna swap though! i'd like to hear your take on this matter! HEADCANONS ACCEPTED TOO AT THIS POINT EVERYTHING HERE IS FROM WHAT I REMEMBER AND MY HEADCANONS)

PLOT

-Wilbur starts the SMP with Niki, slowly invites others like Ranboo, Tommy, and Tubbo.

-Tubbo expresses a desire to Fuck Shit Up and Tommy says they can get Dream, he's an expert at getting away.

-Dream is extremely protective of them both. Tubbo more than Tommy but that's fine because Tommy is largely independent.

-Tubbo gets in the weirdest shit but Tommy can roll with the punches really quickly.

-Wilbur gets tired of their crap and burns down Tubbo's establishment. It's like the Disc Wars except it's the Great Honey War. Bee War? Basically he's tired of Tubbo hogging all the Honey related expenditures.

-Dream gets the idea to make a honey smuggling empire, as a joke, but Tubbo is Big Crime and he's going with it. Tommy just wants chaos, and he was getting bored tbh.

-Eventually the Honey thing turns into Resource management, so Tubbo Dream and Tommy have a hold on all major supplies

-Shit happens and Dream, Tubbo, Tommy, Eret, Sam, Fundy and Alyssa establish an independent nation. Dunno what to call it bc the server is called the L'manberg SMP so....

-The fight for indepencence still happens. Instead of 'Green boy' Wilbur is named 'E-boy'. Dream still says "WE HAVE NO MERCY FOR YOU" when Wil calls for a ceasefire negotiation, but Wilbur does threaten the nation saying  "If there is no white flag by tomorrow, then you can kiss your sorry little arses good bye. That's my final warning."

-Turns out Fundy's been secretly funneling information to Wilbur in exchange for the safety of his friends, and also because Wilbur's his dad....uhm. Also! He and Dream are circling each other and others are like "OH MY GOD YOU GUYS ARE DEAD RINGERS FOR QUEERPLATONIC MATES JUST MARRY ALREADY" bc I like FundyWasTaken but others might not and its okay, we'll label it as platonic, but can be read otherwise depending on your tastes. But for this, it's very close platonic.

-Wilbur goads Tommy into a fight, as brothers do, but Tubbo steps in and Wilbur fucking jumps at the chance.

-This is the start of Dream's descent into madness. No one fucking threatens or pulls one of his friends like that. Denied. It's still subtle though, so he's okay for now.

-Tubbo and Wilbur face off. When Tubbo pulls back bc he genuinely doesn't want to hurt anyone, Wilbur takes the chance and beats him.

-Tubbo, however, makes a deal. Let their nation stand on its own, and he'll give up the Resource Empire he started. Wilbur accepts, with the condition that they unify their alliance with a...marriage? So basically, political marriage between Wilbur's heir, Fundy, and Dream, the leader of the revolution.

-YEAH I WENT THERE THIS IS VALID

-They're strained at first, but Dream and Fundy slowly mend their relationship post-betrayal.

-Fast forward a few months later. The Nation doesn't really have a leader, as per the agreement, but it does have a representative. All decisions are made via majority votes, and that decision is voiced by the rep and sub-rep, Dream and Tubbo respectively. Tommy's just there to have a good time and causes chaos as per usual.

-Enter Technoblade. He's been called in by Wilbur to...ah. Dismantle a little...nation. Sounds right up his alley. But he asks Wilbur to wait and see what happens.

-Tommy and Dream get the idea to hold a tournament to celebrate their independence, an all out brawl for everyone to kick back and relieve stress. There. That's where Techno comes in.

-He gets Punz to join him after like, being paid (ofc) and they fucking dominate the tournament. Dream's about to congratulate them but Techno turns the fuck around and declares his right to rule the nation. If anyone wants to fight him for the title, they're welcome to try.

-Dream loses another life to Techno trying and failing to fight it. He and a few others lost their first life sometime elsewhere? I guess? Probably by being blown up by Wilbur, idk.

-Tubbo and Dream are chased out by people who reluctantly follow Techno's orders, and Tommy, torn between his friends and his brothers, stays behind. Oh jeezus.

-Since Techno is a fighting GOD, no one's able to usurp him to make things turn back to normal. But Dream is smart, and knows Wilbur's 100% behind this. Fundy kind of knew but didn't do shit about it, which is why Dream rejects Fundy's offer of sanctuary. He can't be sure his husband will stay on his side, after all. It's nothing personal.

-Dream and Tubbo hide away somewhere, probably not a ravine but?? A mountain or something? They manage to get Sam away enough to ask him to build a super cool Redstone contraption thing that opens for them. ooooo.

-I'm not good at names but for the sake of jokes I'm gonna call their land the 'Bee's Knees' bc at some point Tubbo finds a fuckton of Hives hanging from Trees. Bee Mountain if Dream's feeling especially salty.

-SPEAKING OF DREAM. his insanity is on course now, it's slowly eating away at him and in fear of hurting Tubbo he's slowly distancing himself away. Tubbo's like what's wrong but Dream can't answer -- he doesn't know what's wrong with himself either.

-Tubbo and Dream need to go back and confront Techno, but they can't wait for long else Techno's going to obliterate everyone and their extra lives. They call Schlatt in.

-Schlatt's a pure business man and draws up a contract. He'll aid them in terms of supplies, but most of the revolution is on them. They agree.

-Tommy is actually really fucking good at lying and skirting around what he reveals to Dream and tubbo as a spy that Techno would have believed him if he didnt' know his brother. and Wilbur's warnings, of course. That results in Techno just being fucking done with Tommy's bullshit and plans his execution in another tournament? I guess?

-It doesn't go like the festival. First of all, Schlatt can't fight for shit, so why would Techno call him up the stage? No, Schlatt fights dirty. techno doesn't set much rules so theres no rule against poisoning Tommy quick and easy before the fight. Tommy loses another life and is on his last. Tubbo is spitting mad, but Schlatt points out that nothing in the contract covered this, so he's free to do as necessary. Tubbo is stopped by Dream who, at this point, is just overtaken by the need to one-up Techno.

-Also, Wilbur's been slowly persuading Dream to just. Let go. Let the monster inside of him free, he 'deserves it'. By the end of it all, Dream does. He snaps and lets loose the monster crying for blood inside him.

-Callahan is left to convince his old friend not to do it. In a moment of clarity, Dream stares on in horror of what he'd done. In his rage he managed to deplete ALL of Techno's lives (not really but shhhh), cause massive bloodshed, and terrified everyone in the process. He asks Callahan to kill him. Callahan does.

-Yes we'll get to Ghost Dream eventually.

-Anyway, Schlatt still does the Wither plan, because, uh, Drunken Rage. He was so stressed out from the ensuing conflict that he's like "LETS JUST FINISH THE REST OF YOU. THERE WILL BE NO CONFLICT IF YOU ARENT THERE TO FIGHT."

-and then he uses the line from the Lego movie on Tubbo like "Oh, Tubbster. It's nothing personal. It's just Business(tm)".

-Schlatt still dies of stroke. He does come back as a ghost though, that's one main difference.

-After everything's said and done, and the dust has settled, everyone decides to disband the nation, and just live their lives. like, they're done, wilbur, they get your point, jfc, let them rest.

-but uhhhh someone frames tubbo for setting fire to ranboo's (the server sweetheart) house. wilbur immediately decides to exile tubbo in 'anger'. acutally, he wants tommy and tubbo separated.

-tommy's not standing for it though, he fucking fights his way until wilbur threatens him and tubbo's like YES FINE OKAY I'LL AGREE TO BEING EXILED STOP THREATENING YOUR BROTHER

-tubbo's exile arc is not as sad as tommy's, but rather very tense because wilbur keeps riling tubbo up and taunting him. he still keeps contact with tommy though because they arent going to be separated just like that. no way. tubbo just gets a little more mad and gets short tempered like a lot.

-ranboo's not even that mad about it, he knows tubbo would never burn his house, there was a conspiracy on board and even if there wasn't he's like "arent yall overreacting its just a house, didnt you all do this like before the first war even began, what even (also, ranboo was WITH tubbo at the time of his house allegedly being set on fire. Not that he'll admit to it, because he and tubbo made that agreement long before)

-eventually he finds out that wilbur just wanted to pin the blame on tubbo to make him leave, and ranboo's like "IM DONE WITH YOUR CRAP WILLBUR STOP HURTING THE PEOPLE I CARE ABOUT" and leaves

-with the nation gone, people started to solidify their groups. sapnap and karl deal with their own thing, quackity still runs errands for wilbur, george is the main person ferrying messages from tubbo to tommy back and forth, etc.

-there's a funeral for dream, ofc, fundy arranged it. all of dream's shit was hidden because fundy doesnt want wilbur to get it.

-niki's still there managing her bakeshop but doubles as an informant for wilbur because she's well liked within the server

-ghost dream is present and he's a chaotic troll who mostly hangs around tommy. he's really hyper active and is always on the move, you can never catch him sitting still for like, 5 minutes

THAT"S ALL I HAVE FOR MY SMP SWAP AU PLEASE BE GENTLE I DONT HAVE TIME TO GET ALL THE FACTS STRAIGHT FROM THE OG SMP qwq

[umbralstars]

Fódlan Ideas Time

While I'm writing this fic, I want to talk about the various Fódlan worldbuilding ideas that I've had for years. They are likely not supported by canon, but I don't really care since they're all either expansions on things or stuff that I made up for my own enjoyment.

Under the cut cause this got long.

Fódlan was actually split into many different human ethnic groups in pre-Calamity times each with their own cultures and religions. These religions were largely polytheistic and animist who did incorporate Sothis as one of their many Gods, and aspects of these old faiths survive in the Church of Seiros

After the Calamity and the devastation of Fódlan many ethnic groups, along with their cities and nations, were utterly destroyed. The human population dropped enough that many groups merged into the precursor Fódlanic culture that would spin off into the ethnic groups of modern Fódlan

The post-Calamity period saw a sharp increase in Sothis worship and the beginnings are the current henotheistic faith of Fódlan

Old beliefs and practices of these people have survived and evolved in modern Fódlan as folklore, folk practice, and names of many places in Fódlan

Some in Fódlan live apart from the rest of the continent in isolated villages to better preserve their heritage or simply do not have much contact with wider Fódlan on a regular basis

Agartha was only one nation among many, but the most powerful at the time due to their advanced technology and a once close relationship with the Nabateans. They fought with many Human groups even before their relations with Nabatea grew sour

Agartha itself was a very multi-faceted empire, and those who would go on to become Those Who Slither in the Dark were a minority of Agarthan superiority extremists even before the Calamity

Zanado was a muli-ethnic city state who was home to Humans and Nabateans alike pre and post-Calamity. The entirety of the Oghma Mountains, including the sections underground which is now Abyss, was the main center of Nabatea's culture and civilization

The Nabateans lived alongside Humans in Fódland for thousands of years and aided many Human groups as they built up prosperous nations. Outside of the few Nabateans who left on Sothis' direction to aid Human nations most stayed in Zanado with the only others leaving being merchants or travellers

The Nabateans were not as heavily decimated as Humans during the Calamity, but they were already far less numerous than Humans. Their population in Zanado at the time of the Massacre was roughly 30,000 Nabateans with Humans making up roughly another 100,000

CW For Death and Genocide:

Some Nabateans and humans from Zanado were able to flee during the Massacre and the Nabateans who lived outside of Zanado left the continent all together going to live in other lands. Overall, their population only numbers in the few hundreds at the very most with only four left in Fódlan proper

The vast majority of Nabateans were not able to be turned into weapons or have their blood used to give Crests to Humans. All the senseless violence and slaughter was to find the few exceptionally powerful Nabateans

Those in the Holy Tomb were all that Rhea could find and not many have their full bodies intact. Not all are Nabateans with some being Humans who died trying to protect their friends, family, and neighbors

Leicester is the area in Fódland who best preserves pre-Empire Fódlandic culture and religions. It's also the most diverse area of Fódland ethnicity wise

The Alliance has always been ambivalent towards the Church and does have many practitioners of Old Fódlandic Faiths who incorporate the Goddess into their pantheon. These faiths have had contact with Almyran religious practices for millenia so there are syncretic beliefs and practices. They are unrecognized by the Church, but mostly left to their own devices

The Alliance has plenty who are devoted to the Church and the Goddess, but is the most diverse part of Fodlan overall

The Noble Houses all follow the Church of Seiros officially, and many truthfully, but any given noble's true religious leanings are personal and largely private in the Alliance

Almyrans, and other ethnic groups in Almyra, have immigrated to the region for years between different conflicts and some of Alliance territory was once under previous nations connected to modern Almyra.

Leicester, the Golden Deer, is emblematic of the Alliance's difference from the rest of Fodlan as, even though he is the Alliance's symbol, the Deer is recognized by many Leicesteran faiths as a deity of the forest, the hunt, cleverness, fertility, kingship, and even a creator deity among a few

The Eastern Church and its adherents plays down the deity aspect of Leicester and has spent much time trying to redefine the Golden Deer as a servant of Sothis

Faerghus also preserved much of its own cultural identity from pre-Empire times, but due to how much influence the Church has had on their culture and politics these beliefs manifest more as folk beliefs than indicative of other religions

The Kingdom has a major ethnic split between the north and south parts of the country because of differing climates (warmer in the south and far more frigid in the north) and how they relate to the former empire. This split manifests in different folk beliefs and cultural practices and has been there even before the Empire was founded

Adrestia, despite the title of "Empire," is actually more ethnically homogenous than either Faerghus or Leicester especially. They've had a long culture of enforcing a pan-Adrestian identity to strengthen the Empire and that practice was one of the many things that lead to Faerghus and Leicester rebelling

As the region had their own ethnic groups their folk beliefs differ wildly from Leicester and Faerghus, but their beliefs did influence and cross ethnic lines extensively during the Empire's unified period

[lhs3020b]

In a very unexpected moment tonight, I found myself writing something. Yes, some actual fiction. Umm, wow. It’s not particularly-polished, I certainly wouldn’t call it “good”, but nonetheless, here is a thing.

This is a ghost from an old, 2015-era writing project of mine. You probably will have seen bits of it before. This would be the opening portion of the novel, if the novel was still in any way a possibility. The two main characters meet and compare notes on themselves and the confusing mess of the world they live in.

(A passing content note: their world is recovering in some ways and has been worse inside both Tai and Corazon’s lifetimes, but it is not a happy place, and some very bad things have happened. So a measure of reader discretion is advised.)

(Also, yes, the ending is quite abrupt - it’s 2 AM so I should probably consider calling it a night.)

Anyway, have about ~3500 words of fiction...

               ‘We have arrived at the Corazon residence,’ the car said.

               Lieutenant Tai Zhang looked up from her phone. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Lock the doors while I’m out, but don’t drive off. I should only be a few minutes.’

               The car said, ‘For insurance purposes I’m instructed to remind you that I have an anti-carjacking protocol-’

               ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Tai sighed. ‘If one of the locals tries to put you up on bricks, you’ll zap them with a stun charge and zoom off. And howl for the police. Who may even turn up, who knows. And Dr Corazon and I will have to walk back to the Fleet base. I get it, I get it. Now let me get on with my job.’

               The car took the hint and shut up. It wasn’t a full Tech Mind, of course – no way could the Navy afford their contracting rates – but its social simulation unit wasn’t entirely stupid either. The door unfolded upwards. Hot, damp January air flooded in, along with the smells of the city. Vegetation, oil, a hint of sewage and a whiff of something rotten. Actually, compared to the New Dockside area, this wasn’t so bad.

               Tai climbed out of the car; the door hissed down behind her. She took a look around herself. She was stood on a cracked and pitted curbside. Amazingly, it looked like pre-Contact concrete. There was certainly no sign that it had experienced any recent maintenance. To judge from the fractured blocks, some of which lay out of place, it may well not have had any repairs since the early 2040s.

               ‘At least there is a pavement around here,’ Tai muttered. New London had a lot of dirt tracks; the first tsunami had sunk a good chunk of the old city and the quakes had done for a lot of what survived. Rock One, after all, had come down right in the middle of the North Sea. Whilst it had been the smallest of the two impactors, nonetheless it had been big enough. It was fair to say that coastal and near-coastal Europe had had a bad day.

               Just as the car had promised, Corazon’s house was right in front of her. Tai was interested to note that it was a treehouse, clearly post-Contact. All bulbous and round, big fat leaves hanging over its top. Windows and a door had been incorporated into the bioengineered wood. The house-tree seemed fully grown, and from the lichen on the bark, it had to be at least a few years old. As she looked around, Tai saw that most of the neighbouring dwellings were also treehouses, though confusingly, there was a surviving pre-Contact apartment block on the corner of the street. The brickwork and the old-style PVC windows looked incredibly out of place, the building equivalent of a fly stuck in amber.

               Tai fingered the collar of her uniform jacket. She felt uncomfortably-hot. A glance at her phone revealed that the air temperature was hovering around twenty-five degrees Celsius – not exceptionally hot for the time of year, but certainly enough to be unpleasant. No point wasting any time, then. She needed to go and collect their guest.

               Tai opened the little picket-fence gate in front of the house and started down the path. Next to her, an array of solar panels was tracking the Sun. Corazon’s garden also had a backup wind turbine, parked on the opposite side of the path. Apparently the academic didn’t trust the municipal grid. Honestly, Tai couldn’t blame him, though on the other hand it did seem a bit excessive. After all, this was the 2060s, not the ‘50s. Even a chaotic urban mess like New London averaged about six hours’ reliable electricity per day.

               Tai reached the door. She lifted her hand and knocked smartly on it, rapping three times. It was an Academy instinct, repeatedly burnt into her brain by the Fleet’s officer candidate school. You always knocked three times and waited before entering, unless of course you really liked doing lots of push-ups. This January morning was, in Tai’s opinion, far too hot for push-ups.

               She heard some clattering from inside the house. ‘Wait, wait, I’m on my way!’ a muffled voice said. It was male, with an accent she couldn’t quite place.

               The door opened. Tai blinked. ‘Uh,’ she said.

               The man looked at her, seeming a bit confused. Then recognition flickered across his face. ‘Oh of course!’ he said. ‘You’re from the Fleet, aren’t you. They said they’d be sending a car, though I did wonder if it would actually turn up.’

               Tai managed to recover her surprise. She hadn’t realised that her passenger-to-be was old. From his grey hair and wrinkled face, he couldn’t be under fifty. With a slight shiver, Tai realised what that meant – he’d been born, and had grown up, beforehand. Before all of it happened.

               ‘Dr Carlos Corazon, I assume?’ she said. He nodded. ‘Lovely to meet you. I’m Lieutenant Tai Zhang, and I’ve been tasked with bringing you to the shuttle-dock. We’ll be going up to the Relentless together, for the shakedown flight.’

               Corazon blinked. ‘They’re farming out their officers on taxi duty? The Navy really must be a bit strained.’

               Oh great, Corazon was one of those people who thought the Navy was a waste of time. It was certainly a common opinion throughout AU-Earth. Certainly it wasn’t entirely wrong. Even the most powerful human-built warship wouldn’t do much damage to even a small Spiral Fleet cruiser. Still, Tai felt this criticism missed the point somewhat. Even if the AU-E Fleet was mostly an exercise in public relations, it was still important to show that the AU-E had something to offer to the wider Concordium.

               Also, Corazon had another point, though she doubted he realised it. Tai had no sooner arrived at the ship then she’d found herself immediately ordered off it again, to go and collect some random civilian. She supposed it reflected the last-minute chaos going on within the ship’s complement as it got ready for its first ever flight as an actual ship of the line. A lot of the ship’s officers hadn’t even arrived until yesterday; Tai wasn’t even the latest assignee to make their way to their birth. They were due to undock in less than twenty-four hours; this was not the best use of her time. Tai should be down in Engineering, meeting with her department, getting to know the crew’s names and faces and getting their shift-schedules and duty rosters finalised.

               Instead she was here, stood on a doormat somewhere out in New London’s half-resurrected urban carcass.

               ‘Well,’ she said, ‘the sooner we’re under way, the better.’

               The Relentless was the Fleet’s newest warship; its maiden voyage would also be carrying a complement of notaries. Some of them were journalists, some of them were various apparatchiks linked to the current federal coalition government, and a few were people of note from wider society. Dr Corazon was apparently somewhat known within the astronomical community, presumably hence his invitation.

               ‘Cool,’ Corazon said. ‘Just let me grab my bag…’

               He turned around and disappeared back into the house. Tai fought the urge to roll her eyes at his disorganisation. A few moments later, the academic reappeared, clutching a carry-bag. To Tai’s eyes it didn’t look like he had remotely enough changes of clothes – but, she decided that was his problem and not hers.

               ‘This way,’ she said, gesturing him toward the car.

               He closed the door of the house behind him, locking then double-locking it. ‘Just let me arm the security system,’ he said, pulling out his phone. Tai waited patiently as Corazon fiddled with the keys. Something beeped and he looked satisfied. His phone disappeared back into a pocket. This at least was an urge Tai could understand.

               ‘Lots of crime around here?’ she asked.

               He shrugged. ‘Some. Barnet’s not too bad. There are worse boroughs, it’s actually fairly good around here. Most people on this street have formal jobs, you know?’

               ‘That might attract the gangs,’ Tai noted. ‘Rich neighbourhood and all that.’

               Corazon shrugged. ‘My security system is a licensed Tech Mind unit. Non-sentient, of course, but advanced enough to handle itself.’

               ‘That and a treehouse,’ Tai observed. ‘Those are triffid products. You clearly like your aliens.’

               They started walking toward the car. Corazon said, ‘Might as well get used to it. They’re here to stay, you know. I probably know that better than most.’

               ‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ Tai said, ‘how old are you?’

               Corazon rolled his eyes. ‘I knew that question was coming. I get that a lot. Apparently I’m the first old man some of our undergraduates have ever seen.’

               That was unlikely in practise – even today, about twenty percent of the AU-E’s population had been born before 2040 – but it wasn’t entirely-impossible either. People in the mid-to-late 2040s and the ‘50s had produced a lot of kids, and that was probably just as well given how few of them there had been left. The New Baby Boom was showing signs of cooling down, though honestly, that was probably not a bad thing either. The planet wasn’t in a great state, and overshooting its carrying capacity was probably a bad idea.

               ‘You didn’t answer the question,’ Tai said.

               Corazon looked irritated. ‘No, I suppose I didn’t, did I? All right, if you insist, I’m sixty-three. I was born in 2004.’

               Tai blinked. ‘Shit,’ she said.

               ‘Yeah,’ Corazon agreed. There wasn’t any need to elaborate on that one.

               An awkward silence descended as they approached the car. Tai sent the all-clear to the security system. The doors were folding up and quite suddenly, it began to get dark. Tai felt confused – she couldn’t see any clouds and the forecast for the day had been for clear weather.

               ‘Oh,’ Corazon said. ‘Of course. Right on cue!’ He pointed up at the sky.

               Tai glanced quickly upwards. A big bite was eating the side of the Sun. Corazon said, ‘Parasol Two. Bang on time.’

               Oh, of course. Tai had completely forgotten about the parasol-satellite’s scheduled appointment with the Sun.

               ‘Let’s get in the car,’ Tai said. Even though this was a relatively upscale neighbourhood, she didn’t really want to be stood around on the pavement during the parasol-eclipse. There was such a thing as asking for trouble.

               Corazon needed no urging. Moments later they were both safely ensconced in the car. Outside, smoothly and without fuss, an artificial night was falling over the city. Lights flickered on inside buildings, stars bloomed across the now-nightfallen heavens and a few of the streetlights even turned on. The rest were either broken or missing their bulbs.

               ‘Car,’ Tai said, ‘take us to the Fleet’s dockside complex, please.’

               ‘Acknowledged,’ the vehicle’s electronic voice said.

The electric engine gently purred to life and the headlights came on. The car pulled out from the curb and began its journey through the city.

‘It will rain later, I expect,’ Corazon remarked. ‘Once the Parasol moves over, I mean. The drop in air temperature can drive condensation in the clouds.’

The forecast hadn’t mentioned that, but Tai supposed it wouldn’t be surprising if it was wrong.

‘Do you find the eclipses weird?’ Tai asked. She realised, just a moment too late, that the question was probably too personal and probably too judgemental. Her passenger certainly thought so. Even in the internal lights of the car, his face darkened.

‘Young lady,’ Corazon snapped, ‘I find everything about this world weird. This is nothing like the place I thought I’d grow old in. It’s the same planet, but a different universe. Though I’m sure that won’t make much sense to you. From the looks of you I’m guessing you’re a post-Contact child.’

He was, Tai thought, rather patronising. She wondered if it was deliberate. No, she didn’t think so. It was just how he was. Perhaps this had been normal behaviour, perfectly average for the world prior to June the Eighth, 2040.

‘I was born in 2042,’ Tai said. ‘I never knew my parents. They got Lung Rot and died not long after I was born.’

The academic didn’t appear to have heard her. He was still staring upwards at the sky.

‘No,’ Corazon said, ‘at least the eclipses make sense. Giant mirror-satellites in orbit, blocking out some sunlight, keeping the temperatures down. Stopping a damaged atmosphere from frying the planet. People did have ideas like that, you know, before. The Contact War made it worse, but climate change existed before 2040. Hell, I vaguely remember hearing about it back in the 2000s!’

Tai boggled. ‘You remember back then?’

‘A bit. I was six in 2010, remember? I do recall the family being very upset about something around ‘08, though I didn’t really understand it.’

‘What could it have been?’ Tai asked. ‘There weren’t any problems then!’

‘There was a planet-wide economic collapse,’ Corazon said. ‘Though nothing like as bad as what happened in the Forties – or the Twenties, for that matter. Anyway it hardly matters now. It was something we did to ourselves, without any external help.’ He looked at the sky, and shuddered. A haunted expression flooded across his face. ‘You know, not like that.’

The artificial night had filled the sky with stars. Some of them were moving – spacecraft, on their journeys to and from any number of destinations. A lot of them were concentrated in the direction of the Moon, though there was no surprise there. The Moon was the main reason the Spiral Concordium bothered with Sol and its planets, after all. It was indirectly the source of all this trouble.

But Corazon wasn’t looking at any of that. His eyes were locked on something else, lower down in the sky. It was pitted and cratered, a rough spheroid, greyish in colour. It was currently in crescent phase, hanging low in the sky and close to the artifically-occluded Sun. But there was no mistaking it.

‘Rock Three,’ Corazon said. ‘That fucker. The one that would have ended us.’

It was harmless now, of course. The 3008th Division of the Spiral Fleet had seen to that, stabilising it onto a safe-if-low orbit around the Earth. But the engineers of the New And Bountiful Prosperity Combine had done their work correctly – had Rock Three impacted, it would have been sufficient to end the Earth’s biosphere, and hide all the evidence of New Prosperity’s crimes forever. The Moon would have been theirs, along with all its reserves of precious Lovecraftium, and the uninhabitable neighbouring planet would have been passed off as a tragic cosmic accident.

‘Three hundred miles wide,’ Corazon said. ‘They actually towed it in all the way from the Kuiper Disc. It wasn’t even in our records before they tossed it at us. Not even a tsunami-making rock. An ocean-boiling rock.’

Rock Three was now a de facto second moon and a permanent fixture in the Earth’s skies, but it was also something that had very nearly been the tombstone for an entire planet. For all the horror they had inflicted, for all the hundreds of millions of people they’d killed, Rocks One and Two had merely been the opening salvos.

‘And of course they tossed in Lung Rot,’ Tai said. ‘As a nice little fuck-you parting-shot.’

‘Yeah, had that.’ Corazon looked grim, then he shrugged. ‘Wasn’t fun. It was like doing Covid all over again. Just joyous. Gotta love hacking up fungal slime out of your own alveoli all day.’

He shuddered. It was a whole-body convulsion.

The Contact War and the two Rocks had been bad, but it was Lung Rot that had done the real, lasting damage. During the early Forties, people had been dying fast enough that the survival of the species had seemed in question for a time, though in practise the Spiral Concordium would never have allowed that. Even if it required raising a cloned population somewhere else, in some carefully-sterilised biodome on some other planet, the Concordium would not have allowed an actual extinction-event. The whole point of the galactic union, for all of its many flaws, was preventing exactly that sort of horror. The Contact War itself should never have happened, of course, but once the Concordium had belatedly become aware of what New Prosperity was doing, they had moved to shut it down. New Prosperity no longer existed; the entire organisation had been declared traitors and anyone who survived the Battle of Earth had been mercilessly hunted down. If there were any former Prosperity scions left out there somewhere, they knew better by now then to advertise their survival.

Lung Rot had been a vicious punch in the face, a final little parting-present from New Prosperity, the spores air-dropped into multiple locations across the Earth even as the Combine’s forces crumbled under the Spiral assault. No-one was really sure why they’d done it. It had gained them nothing; if Rock Three had left any questions unanswered, then Lung Rot surely had removed any doubt about the Combine’s intentions. Their fall had been absolute, from one of the oldest, wealthiest and most-celebrated organisations in the Milky Way to one of the most-despised collections of traitors who had ever lived.

Suddenly, Tai had to talk. The urge was abrupt, dominating, complete. It was probably also a bad idea, but you didn’t always get the choice with these things. The words were flowing from her mouth, and like it or not, they weren’t going to just magically turn off.

‘My earliest actual memory is when they sprayed the camps,’ Tai said. ‘I was in one of the refugee ones, just another orphaned toddler. I had a cough by then, of course. Everyone did. There was space in our tent – a lot of people had been taken out. New people weren’t coming in, not anymore. I didn’t really know what it meant then, of course. But then one day people were – excited? It was weird. I’d never seen them like that. There was suddenly not any crying. People were hugging each other and smiling. I remember they pulled me out of the tent. People were coming out of the tents, everywhere. There was an actual crowd. Cheering, even! It was some triffids that came through. They were pulling a spray-tank. They sprayed all of us – one of them even shoved the nozzle in my mouth!’

‘And the retroviral agent re-wrote your lungs,’ Corazon noted. ‘So they now secrete a natural fungicide, keeping the Lung Rot mycelium at subclinical levels. Yeah, something similar happened to me. Kind of crazy, one of the happiest days of my life, you know? The day in 2045, when the aliens came to genetically-engineer all of us.’ He shook his head. ‘Flying saucers spraying the cities with bio-agents, and people dancing in the streets below! Would’ve been unimaginable just ten years before.’

This chatter was, of course, a normal thing. Tai had had lots of conversations like this. It was quite an average event for people to compare their traumas – virtually everyone living in the AU-Earth had some emotional burden that they were carrying around with them. It was true that social conditions were improving – things were merely “bad” now, rather then the “borderline-apocalyptic” of twenty years previously – but an important part of getting to know someone was trying to gently figure out where their personal sore spots and pain-points lay. Triggering someone into a flashback episode was generally considered to be a social faux pas, especially if it was done deliberately. There were also practical concerns too. It was difficult for a workplace to function if half its staff were either lying on the floor sobbing or had been driven to flee the building by their own inner demons.

Corazon sighed, shrugged and opened his bag. Tai read that as his cue to dismiss this topic. He’d said his piece. And so, she supposed, had she. He knew not to mention the camps, she knew not to mention Lung Rot. They’d told each other what they needed to know, and now it was time to move smoothly onwards.

To Tai’s surprise, he pulled out a pair of knitting needles and a ball of wool. Moments later, a pair of half-finished socks emerged. ‘I am glad someone decided to save the sheep,’ he remarked. ‘We lost so many of the others.’

Lung Rot had been aimed at humans, of course, but the mycelium was at home in any warm, enclosed, moist, dark space. There had been extinctions all throughout Class Mammalia. A whole host of species now only existed as captive populations in carefully-maintained bio-domes, and they were the lucky ones. Someone had cared enough to try to rescue them, during the end of the world.

And the less said about that, the better.

‘You like knitting?’ Tai asked.

Corazon nodded. ‘Actually I make sixty percent of my income from it. My lectureship is nice, but academia is more like a hobby with an office.’ He started up on the socks, the needles twisting and twirling through a series of moves that Tai’s eyes struggled to follow.

‘You sell socks?’ Tai asked. It didn’t surprise her that Corazon had a side-hustle – the AU-Earth’s budgetary situation was tight, and that was very visible in public sector salaries. It was just as well that Tai’s role as an officer came with government-subsidised housing, because there was no way she could afford anything minimally-pleasant on the private market.

‘No, scarves, usually,’ Corazon said. ‘They’re mostly bought by ash lizards. I got into it almost by accident, when I went to Nine Shadows And Six Rivers back in ’52. Took my needles and stuff with me, made a scarf on the ship out. It was just something to do, you know? But when we arrived I gave it to one of our liaison team, as a gift – and they loved it. Before I knew it I had a waiting-list of gender-bending alien lizards, who all wanted individual knitted scarves.’ He snorted. ‘I got to live the high life out on Nine Shadows, while the rest of the exchange group had to slum it, down on the cheap floors of the arcology.’

‘Oh of course,’ Tai said. ‘They like decoration, don’t they?’

‘They don’t go in for clothes in quite the way we do – heat retention messes up their metabolisms something chronic. But they do go in for decoration. Necklaces, wrist-sheathes, sashes. Scarves. Natural materials are particularly-prized.’ He shrugged. ‘Who would have known that knitted goods would be a key export from this planet?’

[rachelannc]

Gilmore Girls (Credit: Warner Brothers).

Call me late to the game, but I have joined the world of Stars Hollow and fallen in love with the girls we know as the Gilmore Girls, twenty years after it first debuted, and I’m not even mad about it.

Mind you, I had no intention of binging or even finishing the entire show, but as I casually watched one episode on Netflix and found how easily-digestible it was, one episode turned into three, and then it turned into every other day, and then it became a nightly ritual and, well, you know how it goes.

So grew my uncanny obsession with mother-daughter Lorelai and Rory Gilmore’s witty banter, exceptionally close relationship and charming small town, that I became so invested in their world and was able to finish the show in the two months I have returned and been quarantined in my own little small town. (A surprise for me, as someone who hardly ever watches or keeps up with a show, let alone ever binged a show. Seven seasons? Where do I even start, I thought?!)

Twenty years ago, I was just a seven-year-old girl listening to Hilary Duff and the Backstreet Boys while watching teeny-bopper shows and everything on the Disney Channel. I never really got into soapy teen dramas until (obviously) later in my life when I became a proper teenager.

My first reaction to watching Gilmore Girls? Wow. This Rory girl seems a lot like me.

Rory, the shy and introverted goody two-shoes and bookworm who loves school and always hangs out with her single mother and lives and grows up in a small town where everyone knows each other and loves her; and me, a girl who grew up in a town called Pleasant Hill. And if those Chilton uniforms didn’t remind me more of my own private school uniform? Ha, well I don’t really know what to say.

But really, the resemblances are uncanny and watching the show made me think: What would have happened if I had watched this as a girl growing up? Would I have handled situations with boys differently or treasured my girl time and female friendships a whole lot more, if I had seen Rory and Lorelai grow up, interact, and handle regular growing pains alongside me, as well?

As a first-time viewer, the writing and pacing of the show immediately stuck out. It’s incredibly quick and entertaining, witty through and through. I appreciate all of Lorelai’s references to eighties pop culture and Rory finding refuge in classic literature and the strong female characters and feminists I had so long been inspired by, too.

Moreover, it was incredibly comforting to find another person I could see myself reflected in, onscreen, growing up and making mistakes and always trying to do the right thing, but still staying true to who she was all along.

Her experience was so similar to how my adolescence had felt and been: my mom, who had given me all I ever needed to grow up, and me, just wanting to do right by her, was always responsible and loved at school, receiving attention from boys but never really ever cared for it because I was just happy reading a book or playing my guitar, ha.

And if that scene between Dean and Jess getting into a fight over Rory at a party couldn’t feel even more familiar to my high school days — when I was caught in a love triangle with boys who confessed their feelings to me on the same night, pressured me to make a decision, only for me to see their friendships fall apart right in front of me at school. Wow, that was high school in a nutshell, ha! And it was funny to see moments like that played back onscreen, happening to Rory as she had wished for none of it to happen, yet couldn’t really do anything about these boys’ feelings for her at the same time. (I feel you girl.)

The fact Rory wants to travel and pursue journalism as well couldn’t hit it home for me any more. Her university days reminded me of my own writing articles and chasing stories for my school newspaper. And when her and Paris wanted to experience “all the college experiences,” embarking on a cliche spring break trip trying to do “spring break right,” I couldn’t help but giggle as I found myself in college as well, very well knowing I am not the party type, but decided to get “all the college experience” as well, embarking on a Vegas trip with friends which, I do have to say, was a hell of a time.

There are so many moments from the show that have stuck with me, but here are a few memorable thoughts and moments I’ve had:

When Rory said, “I cannot do this alone. I need my mommy and damn it, I don’t care who knows it!” (s3 e13) I think she was speaking for all of us.

“I don’t want to be that kind of girl. That kind of girl who just falls apart because she doesn’t have a boyfriend.” (s1 e17) Yup. Yup, yup Rory. That was me.

Lane and the Kims and their lifelong friendship was just charming, and I couldn’t help but feel for the Asian best friend and strict mom who means well.

Rory and Paris and their ongoing escapades. Man, you can’t help but love them. Their spring break trip was all too relatable: Rory drinking and drunk-calling Dean for the first time and them doing spring break even if they never want to do it again because they realize they just aren’t the partying type. “It’s a college memory. I intend on having as many college memories as possible.” (s4 e17) Yeah, all too relatable. Ha.

Also Paris being that one friend we all know who is a little too much, too bossy, too aggressive, can turn people off but is also one of our very best friends? It was also incredible to see how their “hatred” (and Paris seeming to pop up everywhere Rory was, lol) turned into a real friendship over the years. I loved seeing that.

Rory’s graduation speech: “My mother never gave me any idea that I couldn’t do whatever I wanted to do or be whomever I wanted to be. She filled our house with love and fun and books and music, unflagging in her efforts to give me role models from Jane Austen to Eudora Welty to Patti Smith. As she guided me through these incredible eighteen years, I don’t know if she ever realized that the person I most wanted to be was her.” (s3 e22) That was a moment that made me just cry and tear up, for being a grateful kid myself, but also feeling just how mushy Lorelai must have been feeling as a mother, raising a good kid, all on her own. Ugh. 😭

Oh, Dean and Jess. They represent the boys we all meet and fall in love with when we’re young: Dean, the dependable boyfriend who is ready to give you everything, support you, be there for you, and may always love you even when you might take him for granted; and Jess, the said “bad boy” and mysterious romantic who leaves you hanging onto every single word that makes you fall head over heels for him, even if you know it might be bad for you.

When Rory has sex for the first time (s4 e22): It was such a big, telling, and coming-of-age moment. And you could feel that. I could feel and know exactly how she was feeling: how excited she was, how dumb it was, how one’s feelings get the best of you even when you normally think every action through and make reasons to justify it. God. I was also afraid to see how the show would handle the situation, especially Lorelai. I’m glad she was never quite overbearing to Rory and trusts her and lets her grow as her own individual, but I’m glad she put her foot down and told her how it was not okay for her to sleep with Dean, who was still a married man. #greatmothermoment

When Rory drops out of Yale and takes some time for herself:

I couldn’t have felt more seen. Going back home, bored at home all over again, finding things to preoccupy myself with until I got bored of it and wanted to move on to the next thing, because I genuinely wanted to… that feels very familiar. And it was heartwarming to see her have this moment and want it for herself. I know it may have been a controversial choice for many, but Rory’s quitting school let her evaluate her own choices, have the space and time to figure herself out — who she was beyond what everyone expects her to be — only to realize that she really does want to be a journalist. Her whole life had been predetermined by her surroundings, and we see just how hard of a worker she is, that to have this “slip-up” is actually the best thing she can do for herself — she realizes she can be and is responsible for her own actions. To experience that in college, rather than many years later down the road, is admirable.

And moreover, I appreciate how Lorelai handled the situation. She never forced Rory to do anything or made her feel bad about her decision. Rather, she let Rory have the space and time to want to go back to Yale and school to be a journalist. She realizes that no one can make that decision for her, but her. And I loved that. Another #greatmothermoment.

Even more so, when Jess surprisingly came back and tells her he’s written a book and reminds her that “this isn’t you,” (s6 e8) that moment almost broke my heart. It reminded me of a time I felt so lost myself and a boy who once knew me would be tough on me, because he cared for me and knew who I was and always have been, and wanted me to do “better” because I was better… I think we’ve all had those people who know us very well who tell us hard truths about ourselves. And we don’t really want to listen, but a part of us knows that maybe they’re actually right. 💔

I actually really liked Logan and Rory’s relationship and the sense of trust and maturity they had built since that infamous “You Jump, I Jack” life-and-death brigade episode (s5 e7). Beyond that, Rory and Logan were completely smitten with each other the whole time. They came from worlds that were incredibly similar, yet wanted to be different. I appreciate how Logan knew and acknowledged his privilege and mistakes. I appreciate how Rory made herself clear that she is a “relationship kind of girl” instead of an “every girl” and gets a boy like Logan to stop his ways. (If I had to be honest, I was never that kind of girl, either.) When they said they’d “factor each other in,” they showed ultimate support for each other. And it’s clear that they were each other’s biggest fans. (When Logan took Rory, Lorelai and Luke out for a Valentine’s Day weekend getaway? Wow.) It’s clear they have a lot of chemistry and fun together. And Logan’s smile to Rory. Ugh.

On Lorelai:

I thought Lolelai and Jason were actually kind of cute. A part of me wanted it to work out, but I knew it never would.

Oh man, I had a fat crush on Max Medina too.

I loved seeing Chris and Lorelai stick by each other throughout all those years, and actually try to make it work. He’s a good guy who means well, and it’s clear how comfortable they are with each other, but timing was never on their side.

The letter Lorelai wrote to Luke’s defense to have custody over his daughter legit brought me to tears. Luke really was there for Lorelai and saw Rory grow up. You can’t ever take that back. Ever. Ugh.

What happened between Lorelai and Chris was bound to happen, and I was actually so happy for Lorelai to be with him. I’m incredibly impressed at how the show was able to show such a raw, real and complicated feeling of never really being “in love,” so well.

Emily and Richard: what a hoot of grandparents. I loved all their comic banter. All those Friday night dinners and the show they always put on. Richard’s relationship with Rory was so warm and comforting, and Emily’s incessant complaining and nitpicking was great. But when Emily actually had a moment towards the end explaining to Lorelai how Lorelai was able to be a single mother, independent and all on her own, while she herself has always been a wife, not knowing how to be independent, couldn’t be a more self-aware moment.

After all of this, it’s incredibly refreshing to see a show like Gilmore Girls let its characters be who they are: wholeheartedly immature and charming, unabashedly flawed yet real. And while these characters could be problematic — Lorelai is at times immature and inappropriate, yet means well; her relationship with Rory may be too codependent that Rory ends up dropping everything to tend to her mom; Rory is part of an elite society that comes from wealth and privilege; Emily constantly hates on the help; etc.

As much as the above is true, it’s still inspiring to see how Lorelai and Rory take on — and maybe even take down — their given worlds. They bicker and laugh, whine and moan, lust, laze around and criticize, but they are also incredibly real. Just as we humans can often be short-sighted in our lives, Rory and Lorelai are too. Too often we are given female characters who are either a saint or a sinner, a wife or a girlfriend, a prude or a prostitute, that with Rory and Lorelai, we get both. I think we all are at times a little annoying, yet incredibly fascinating the next. And that’s probably what has made the Gilmore Girls so beloved and such a cult-classic since its debut in 2000: Its heroines are flawed, yet deeply human, just like us all.

https://twitter.com/rachelannc/status/1295641850913501185?s=20

https://twitter.com/rachelannc/status/1292361621071790091

Thoughts I Had While Watching Seven Seasons of ‘Gilmore Girls’ for the First Time, Ever Call me late to the game, but I have joined the world of Stars Hollow and fallen in love with the girls we know as the 

[themattress]

TROS’ Backtracks on TLJ

Critics are up in arms about them, but I’d like to look them over and analyze them:

Luke throws away his lightsaber -> Luke catches his lightsaber

This was a joke that both TLJ lovers and haters should be able to enjoy: lovers can enjoy the parallel and how it shows Luke’s change of heart, while haters can enjoy the reversal and “a Jedi weapon should be treated with more respect” line throwing shade on Rian Johnson.

Luke is cynical and jaded about the Jedi -> Luke embraces the Jedi again

I am baffled by this complaint. Did any of these critics actually understand what even happened in TLJ?  Luke already realized he was wrong to be so cynical and jaded about the Jedi and about being a legend following his talk with Yoda, which is why he did his Force astral projection at the end and proudly declared that he “will not be the last Jedi”, the opposite of his earlier “It’s time for the Jedi to end” mantra. It’s character development.

Luke sunk his X-Wing underwater -> Luke raises his X-Wing from the water

Yes, and it was beautiful. Whether Rian Johnson meant to or not, by placing Luke’s X-Wing underwater he had just placed Chekhov’s Gun on the table. It needed to go off, Luke had to do accomplish the thing he couldn’t in The Empire Strikes Back because now he believed.

Luke's lightsaber is broken -> Luke's lightsaber is repaired

Rey took the pieces with her so that she could repair it in TLJ.

Leia's Force flight is not explained -> Leia had undergone Jedi training

Good. That turns her Force flight into foreshadowing. Also, apparently the original plan in TLJ was that Leia, not Rey, was to be “the last Jedi” following Luke, but that plan couldn’t happen once Carrie Fisher died, so this was the only way to achieve any sort of “Jedi Leia” at all.

Rose is a major character -> Rose is a background character

This one’s a touchy issue: I believe Rose’s reduced role was inevitable given the sheer amount of characters that needed to be juggled, plus J.J Abrams’ desire to give Rey, Finn and Poe a big adventure as a trio. On the other hand, I feel like she probably had more substantial material that was filmed and was left on the cutting room floor, and that’s troubling since we have no way of knowing if this done in good faith or to appease toxic fans.

Finn/Rose is hinted as a couple -> Finn/Jannah is hinted as a couple

I think that was done because the writing was on the wall in TLJ that John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran have no romantic chemistry on screen, and they work a lot better as just friends. Although honestly, I’m not sure we’re meant to totally buy into Finn/Jannah either. Finn is pretty much a bachelor the whole way through and he has the best chemistry with Poe.

Poe develops into a leader -> Poe develops into a leader again

I think this is similar to a compliant people made in TLJ that Finn backtracked on his development in TFA about not running away from fighting. Except that was not true: in TFA Finn stopped running away but was only willing to fight for and with Rey, the Resistance meant nothing to him. TLJ was about him learning to shift his primary allegiance to the Resistance, to a cause rather than a person. Likewise, Poe developed into a leader in TLJ, but his arc in TROS is about him developing as a leader; there’s a difference between the two. Becoming a leader as Poe did in TLJ isn’t going to erase all personality flaws and hurdles to overcome any more than Luke becoming a Jedi did for him. He still has much to learn.

Snoke was never given an origin -> Snoke is given an origin

Good. TFA and even TLJ built Snoke up as a character who needed to have at least one line of dialogue explaining who he was and where he came from, there needed to be something.

Snoke is dead and Kylo Ren is the new Big Bad -> Palpatine's back as the Big Bad

I’m sorry, but there was no fucking way that the majority of the audience was going to buy Kylo Ren as the Big Bad. He was humiliatingly defeated by Rey in TFA and then humiliatingly defeated by Luke in TLJ. I liked him as the new Supreme Leader and all, but we needed a truly formidable Big Bad to be the Final Boss, and Palpatine was the best one we could get.

Kylo Ren broke his mask -> Kylo Ren repairs his mask

Because he was going back on the field with the Knights of Ren, who all wear masks.

The Knights of Ren aren't there -> The Knights of Ren are here

Yeah, their presence is really just perfunctory. Nothing bad, nothing special.

Kylo Ren slides towards irredeemability -> Kylo Ren is redeemed 

Either route would have been valid, and you’re entitled to your preference. With that said, I feel his redemption was handled exceptionally well, adding such emotional weight to the film.

Hux is set to have a major role going forward -> Hux is killed and replaced by Pryde

Similar to Kylo Ren as the Big Bad, Hux was no longer believable as a threat due to being made a fool of too often, so he was replaced by a more competent villain. With that said, killing him off so abruptly was lame. He had potential as an uneasy ally to the heroes.

Rey's parents were nobodies -> Rey's parents were somebodies

Yeah, just like how TFA blatantly foreshadowed that they were somebody of some kind of significance to the Force. And Kylo Ren only saw a brief snippet of them lacking context, and we didn’t even see it; we only had his word for it. How exactly is this change any worse than changing “Vader killed Luke’s father” to “Vader IS Luke’s father”; or “Leia is Luke’s love interest” to “Leia is Luke’s twin sister”; or all the blatant retcons done in the Prequels?

Also, the Skywalker Saga’s first two trilogies were about Anakin and Luke respectively, so why should the final one heavily center around someone who has no connection them whatsoever? Her being a Palpatine, since Palpatine is the one who created Anakin, is a brilliant way to tie things together and helps give the Skywalker Saga some cohesiveness.

Rey being OP has no explanation -> Rey being OP is explained

Good. “Anyone can use the Force” should not mean that anyone should just hit the Force jackpot from birth and be automatically more powerful than most other people who can use the Force, even those who have been using it longer. And the Force being stronger in some families has nothing to do with bloodlines or midichlorians, it’s a spiritual thing that was literally mentioned in the OT (”the Force is strong in my family”.) Plus, Rey as a Palpatine is what gives the resolution where she chooses to become a Skywalker its power: the spirit is stronger than blood, and who you are biologically related to doesn’t dictate your destiny.

Rey doesn't need much training -> Rey undergoes full training

Idk, I think part of the original “Leia is the Last Jedi” thing was always going to involve her completing Rey’s. I mean, it just seems like a natural f3miNeest ajehnDA! thing to do.

Random Force-sensitive children may be important -> They're not

They can be important in future stories beyond the Skywalker Saga. It was not their time yet.

The conflict might move beyond the familiar -> The conflict is a familiar one

For one thing, this is the final installment of the Skywalker Saga, so no fucking shit the conflict needs to be familiar. It’s a curtain call for the film series as it’s been since 1977, this “fanservice” should be expected. And for another thing, TLJ didn’t move things back toward the familiar? Rey stayed good, Kylo Ren stayed evil, the Jedi were not going to end, we were back in a Rebellion vs. Empire situation. If Rian Johnson really wanted to move things beyond the familiar in the following movie, he did a piss-poor job setting that up. 

"Kill the past" is the message -> "Honor and celebrate the past" is the message

I’ve brought this up before, but it needs to be said again: that was NOT the message of TLJ!!! I cannot believe how many people who both love and hate TLJ got this so wrong! The guy saying this is Kylo Ren, the fucking villain. He’s not supposed to be listened to! Rey doesn’t, and while Luke starts out with a similar mindset, he changes his views following the scene he has with Yoda, he realizes that the past, even the ugly parts of it, is valuable and should not be killed, it should be remembered and learned from. Rian Johnson’s message was a debate as to whether Star Wars’ past was all that good and that maybe it’s worn out its welcome and should be torn down so that the franchise can start anew, and the answer he concluded that debate with was no, that should not happen, the way forward is to always keep the past in mind but never get stuck in it: instead build from it and seek to improve from it. As the saying goes, “those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it”, and “killing the past” is like saying “don’t learn from history”. It’s a bad message from a bad person, so don’t believe it.

And again, it’s the last installment of the Skywalker Saga. Honoring and celebrating all that’s come before is kind of a requisite for big finales like this; just look at Avengers: Endgame!

That’s everything, unless “explaining why the Holdo Manuever won’t work again” is also something that critics are complaining about, and if it is actually is then, well, I give up.

[simplysolveduae]

Dig Into the Best Outsourcing Services Providers

They state the new pattern in business is Outsourcing Services. This developing system is currently regularly taken by both little organizations and considerable companies to decrease cost and bolster business development. Outsourcing Services for IT, HR Outsourcing, bookkeeping, client care, and different capacities have undoubtedly become a familiar pattern.

There are loads of choices that should make, and various stages to attempt before this strategy can emerge. A portion of the fundamental exercises should incorporate arranging a Outsourcing Services methodology, sourcing numerous specialist organizations, and picking the redistributing area.

In this article, the last is to talk about in more subtleties. In beginning phases of building up a redistributing plan, choosing which nation is the ideal cut for a business' particular activities occurs. There are two elements in the determination procedure for the best redistributing goal. These incorporate the workforce's appealing quality and its financial aspects and dangerous allure and dangers of the nation.

The Workforce to Deal With 

One of the fundamental reasons that pull in outsourcers to move to Outsourcing Services is the entrance to an exceptionally qualified workforce at a decreased expense. Envision the contrast between a six-digit pay request of an UAE programming engineer and the $500 for a Filipino designer's specialized capability. That is a lot of reserve funds directly here, a sound reason for the dynamic inclining to redistributing development.

Be that as it may, besides the lower overhead expense, there still are various contemplations redistributing customers need to consider before making any agreement. What's more, the nation's HR Outsourcing services in UAE ought to be first to given a lot of consideration.

Instinctually, the workforce is a significant player in the redistributing game. The achievement or break-down of the Outsourcing Services relationship is enormously tie to the connection between the customer and the specialist co-ops' laborers.

Chiefs ought to guarantee that their possibility for their quest for appropriate redistributing goals' workforce has the accompanying characteristics: capability in English and different dialects, skill in IT apparatuses, applications and programming, prevalent instruction quality, best strategic policies, and social versatility, and magnificent administration forms.

Outsourcing Accounting Services - Generating Competitive Advantages for Small Businesses!

For non-money related individuals taking care of Outsource Accounting Services in UAE and funds can be the mammoth errands. What's more, when working in a private company, you will wish to give more consideration towards the central parts of the business as opposed to investing energy while dealing with the records and funds.

Be that as it may, the significance of accounting services for merely any business can't dismiss. To deal with this errand legitimately, presently, you ought to consider redistributing accounting administrations.

Nowadays, numerous entrepreneurs are doing as such and getting incredible advantages. Presently a day's finding the most moderate and viable accounting administrations are anything but a severe deal.

With the web's assistance, you can discover these administrations effectively and recruit one that best suits your prerequisites and spending plan. By going to such aid, you can without much of a stretch upgrade the efficiencies, security means, and adaptability for your private company and its related information.

Most definitely, it is growing at an extraordinary pace over the globe. Both the recipients and players' numbers are taking off in this industry. Simultaneously, a few organizations are approaching to offer redistributing accounting, like the support of the entrepreneurs who wish to give more consideration towards the center of their business.

This office has genuinely improved the level of network, speed, and space for the entrepreneurs. If you search for this redistributing industry, at that point, you can find that it is the most recent few years; it has developed exponentially.

This industry has offered the private company the best money related accounting administrations and helped them accomplish new statures. Things being what they are, how one can take advantage of the redistributing accounting administrations?

• Making it work can help you in focusing more on a few different business necessities and needs

• It can robotize the voluminous and complex procedures

• It can set aside cash, time and exertion

• It will assist you with accessing practical, huge and gifted work pool

• Redistributing accounting administrations can produce upper hand

• Outsourcing Accounting errands can cultivate rapidly

• Entrepreneurs can appreciate the upsides of cutting edge joint efforts

• Now you will have the option to improve consumer loyalty while offering them convenient and effective handling identified with their solicitations, extends just as administration changes.

• You will be liberated from dealing with the records and representatives

VAT Guide and Advice for Business Starters  

Individuals who want to begin a business in UAE should get familiar with the correct ways regardless of how little or large the company is. At the point when you open a shop, store, or organization, it is essential to get acquainted with the legalities incorporated.

As a starter, you have this expectation that your organization will develop, and it is your objective to guarantee the business' development. Else try not to wander. Indeed, something you ought to be sharp about is the worth included assessment items or VAT Filing.

That is why learners should ask exhortation from individuals who have been in the field for some time. There is not a viable alternative for data that you can get from experienced representatives. You can't depend on your senses since business needs considerably more than impulses.

If you imagine that viewpoints like VAT Filing in UAE can ignore until some other time throughout your business, you ought to reexamine. Each entrepreneur is ordering to enroll for Worth Included Expense. You will document charges toward the year's end at any rate, and you have to present your settlements on schedule. Hesitation may have positive results.

The measure of significant worth included expense depends on the estimation of the products or administrations, which incorporates those being imported and traded. As you would have heard, the rates are either 17.5% or zero.

Most merchandise and ventures are liable to esteem included duty, and they are called available supplies, yet not all are enrolled, however. All organizations ought to employ for respect included commitment once they produce available merchandise surpassing built-up limits.

For example, in UAE, when the available supplies surpassed the estimated 50,000 DE in the earlier year, the vendor or dealer should enlist inside a month (30 days). Otherwise, he could confront punishments.

Calculation of duties on merchandise can be taken care of by bookkeepers, and it's just a case when these experts require in the business. Their job inside the organization traverses something other than figuring charges.

Worth included duty raises the costs of products purchased by shoppers. Be that as it may, the significant motivation behind this duty on products is to give the VAT legislation extra income. This duty will help inspire the economy of a nation.

On account of this, numerous countries around the globe have forced this sort of assessment on most merchants.

Company Liquidation - What It Means and What Happens     

How you handle organization liquidation relies upon the conditions prompting it. Fundamentally, there are two different ways that an organization can wind up in liquidation, and they are deliberate, which happened involuntary liquidation and automatic happening because of permanent settlement. 

 Your business is rendered indebted, and resources are these lines sold, and the returns from the deal used to reimburse lenders to clear any obligation you may have.    That means they are followed in the liquidation procedure rely upon the liquidation type. 

Yet, the system generally includes auctioning off organization possessions and property, and afterward, this is trail by complete disintegration and even conclusion of your organization.   

 It implies that whether liquidation is mandatory or deliberate brings about something very similar; loan bosses paid as could reasonably be expected, and the organization essentially stops to be in presence.    

 Necessary liquidation - what occurs?    

 For this sort of Liquidation Company in UAE, a wrapping up request is held up by a gathering with the court, so that bankrupt organization ended up recuperating any outstanding obligation. 

Generally, the solicitor is a lender.   However, it cans likewise an official recipient or an investor or even a secretary of state now and again. It is also genuinely workable for organization chiefs to hold up this request lawfully, yet view as a deliberate sort of liquidation.   

 There are a few circumstances that can prompt an organization to compel to go into obligatory liquidation. Probably the most well-known things that lead to the settlement are:    

Owed  charges 

Liabilities  and obligation adds up to that surpass the genuine resource estimation of  the organization 

Powerlessness  to pay due obligations 

Organization  individuals falling beneath legal least recommended 

Inability  to re-register the private or open organization as suitable 

No  exchanging initiated inside a legal time of fuse set up 

At the point when the liquidation procedure is in progress, the benefits of the bankrupt organization start too sold and all suit that include the organization stops. That necessarily implies any right move made by the leasers to stay void when liquidation begins.

[pallet2-blog1]

What are pallet?

What are Pallets?

The bed, ordinarily a type of tertiary bundling, is a level structure utilized as a base for the unitization of products in the gracefully chain. The MH1-2016 standard characterizes the bed as a "compact, even, unbending, composite stage utilized as (a) base for amassing, putting away, stacking, taking care of and shipping merchandise as a unit load; frequently furnished with (a) superstructure." The superstructure is the gathering that is appended to the supporting base of the bed.

Beds are utilized to stack, store, ensure, and transport materials over the span of being taken care of by materials taking care of gear, for example, forklifts, bed jacks or transports, being put away in racking or mass stockpiling or being situated in transport vehicles. The bed is the most well-known base for the unit load, which incorporates bed and products stacked on it, regularly made sure about by stretch wrap, lashing, recoil wrap, glue, bed neckline, or different methods for adjustment, including reusable wraps, ties and nets. For more information please visit here

A Short History of Pallets

Beds along with palletized taking care of included one of the key coordinations instruments to develop in the twentieth Century. Beds showed up and kept on advancing over the previous century, empowering the improvement of current coordinations. The significance of beds to gracefully chain applications today has been critical, permitting sensational proficiency upgrades in the dealing with and transport of unit loads versus the free stacking of products. Extra refinements were added to bed structure and the executives during World War 2. For instance, bed reuse in the gracefully chain turned out to be progressively drilled, and bed collars were created to empower the twofold stacking of delicate materials. The bed pooling idea started to be truly talked about during this time.

Pallet Selection Considerations

Nonessential or Reusable

As a site committed to reusable bundling, one significant differentiator is between strong or reusable beds versus nonessential or single-use beds. Where beds can be reused, they give a lower cost for each outing and less natural effect than beds which can be utilized just a single time, subject to the expense of opposite coordinations. In reusable bed applications, an interest in a superior quality bed generally endures longer, giving a lower cost for each utilization than less expensive other options.

Pallet Materials

Beds are made from an assortment of materials. The wood bed commands the commercial center, giving a great worth with respect to cost and execution. Wood is a hardened material, cheap, and effectively manufactured into different sizes as required. Beds fabricated from different materials likewise assume significant jobs. Plastic beds are valued for a few reasons, including toughness, simplicity of cleaning, exception from ISPM 15 prerequisites and different advantages. Paper beds are mainstream because of their light weight, neatness, ISPM 15 exclusion, and simplicity of reusing. Wood composite beds are additionally ISPM 15 absolved, giving a solid, seriously valued item which can be promptly reused, and which are regularly nestable to improve 3D shape usage in transport and capacity. Metal beds additionally have a nearness, particularly in applications where bed quality and toughness are necessities.

Square or Stringer, Directions of Entry

Beds can be delegated square or stringer beds. Square beds give more alternatives to bed passage by material dealing with gear. Beds with strong stringers ordinarily permit two-route passage (at each finish of the bed) while scored stringers permit halfway four-path section (by forklifts through the indents, just as full access from the closures), while square beds normally permit full four-way entrance.

Pallet Style

Bed style identifies with highlights, for example, a solitary or twofold face (single or both top and base deck), and whether a bed is reversible (either side can be utilized for the top deck) or non-reversible (having top and base deck however just one expected for use as a top deck). Different base deck arrangements are likewise contemplations in bed style. A solitary confronted bed is additionally normally called a slip.

Bed Pooling and Management

Bed pooling, regularly as bed rental or bed recruit, or on the other hand through bed trade, as rehearsed in the EPAL framework, has gotten progressively famous since its commencement in the years following World War 2. On account of rental, bed clients can appreciate the utilization of an excellent bed at a cost related distinctly to the utilization, as opposed to in the inside and out acquisition of the bed. In this regard, pooling can uproot the requirement for superfluous beds, giving a lower cost-per-trip while dispensing with strong waste and offering operational efficiencies all through gracefully chains.

Where to purchase Pallets:

As per the NWPCA, there are more than 1.8 billion beds in administration in the United States every day. Ninety-three percent of these beds are produced using wood. Wooden beds are utilized in an assortment of utilizations from transportation and capacity to presentations and improvement. All in all, where would you be able to discover wooden beds available to be purchased? Start with an educated bed provider who will go nearby and survey your activity to decide the correct size and most financially savvy material for your bed dispatching needs. Rose Pallet can gracefully standard and non-standard estimated new wooden beds utilizing a blend of hardwoods, softwoods, and oven dried warmth rewarded (KDHT) blunder. Species, for example, the Southern Pine are normally used to make softwood beds. Oak, Elm, Maple, Ash, and Hickory to give some examples species–are utilized to make hardwood beds.

For more information please watch this video

Purchase Plastic Pallets at Rose Pallet

Where to purchase plastic Pallets:

Plastic beds are exceptionally reusable, however more costly than their wooden partner. Along these lines, only two percent of the country's beds available for use every year are produced using plastic. In any case, plastic beds are perfect for associations that work in a shut circle distribution center or for organizations that have double purposes for beds, for example, use in a store show. Pharmaceutical, car, and refreshment ventures frequently incline toward plastic beds for their toughness and dampness obstruction. Rose Pallet offers both utilized and new plastic beds in custom and standard sizes. Assortments incorporate rackable, stackable, nestable, FDA affirmed, and fire retardant.

Where to purchase utilized beds:

Remanufactured, combo, or reconditioned beds are totally viewed as utilized beds since they are developed altogether or halfway with utilized bed material. Businesses that need odd-sized or custom beds, for example, assembling or food and refreshment, depend on the remanufactured assortment to help cut expenses. Other perfect circumstances incorporate single direction travel, organizations that acquire little amounts of beds, or for material taking care of frameworks that require beds with one of a kind board dividing. Remanufactured beds are built from different segments of utilized bed material. They can be modified to any details or size required. Combo beds are perfect for single direction delivering. They are additionally reasonable for global delivery since they can be heat rewarded to consent to the ISPM 15 Standard, required for send out shipments. They as a rule contain new stringers and utilized deck sheets. The most widely recognized form for combo beds is new stringers (up to 144 inches) and utilized deck sheets (up to 42 inches) or utilized stringers (up to 48 inches) and new deck sheets (up to 120 inches). Reconditioned beds have been utilized and fixed and utilized again commonly. They are a savvy and naturally inviting option in contrast to buying new wooden or plastic beds. Rose Pallet keeps up a stock of commonplace industry sizes of a few assortments of utilized beds, however we likewise can make exclusively utilized beds. To figure out which bed type, size, and material is directly for you, contact the bed professionals at Rose Pallet.

Is it conceivable to get Pallets for nothing?

Truly, it is conceivable to discover free beds for DIY creates or other upcycling ventures (changing over a bed that has arrived at the finish of its lifecycle into another thing, frequently with more incentive than its unique design, is known as "bed upcycling"). Yet, ordinarily, enormous box or popular store stores as of now have an arrangement set up to reuse or reuse beds (a considerable lot of these retailers use Rose Pallet's altered reusing program). Along these lines, it's ideal to begin with privately claimed (or littler) organizations and just inquire as to whether you can take their pre-owned bed material. Great applicants are nursery and tool shops, machine/gear rental stores, furniture stores, pet shops, and claim to fame food/drink stores. Sit tight for a more slow time of business so the proprietors have the opportunity to talk (you would prefer not to redirect their consideration away from paying clients). At the point when you ask, make certain to clarify why you are searching for their utilized or scrap beds. At the point when individuals are attracted to your arrangements, they are bound to need to help. What's more, when you do discover willing providers, ask about pulling endlessly material on a progressing premise, as it opens up.

[rainraincomethisway]

What It’s Like to Not Have a Dad

There are a few things that I think people who lacked a male parent in their upbringing can relate to.

Just saying “dad” feels exceptionally wrong. Also, for that matter, hearing phrases like “Mom and Dad” seems off because we weren’t accustomed to saying them.

The awkwardness of someone asking you if your dad taught you that. No, they only taught me to deal with abandonment issues after they threw me into a shark tank of reality when I was a child. Thanks.

Father’s day. Need I say more? Probably not, but I will. As the years go on, it feels like the roller coaster of emotions revolves around this day. It’s either devastating because you never had a dad but always craved one, or infuriating because you could have had a dad, but they weren’t a part of your life. Someday, hopefully, it won’t make a difference anymore.

Knowing that your kids aren’t going to have a grandpa from you. I personally can’t relate to having grandparents, but the idea of depriving my children of a grandpa to love and give them wisdom, eats at me. I wish I could give them an old, wise grandpa with quirks like chewing sunflower seeds and not being able to hear them if they whisper.

Imprinting on father figures with the hope that they will adopt you as their own, like a lost baby bird. I’m pretty open with the fact that growing up, I had an unhealthy attachment to Jackie Chan (as well as many other actors, like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins) with the hope that they could be my father (Particularly Jackie Chan because my dad is Chinese). I also put a lot of pressure on my big brother to love me like he was my dad, which obviously didn’t happen since I was four years younger and a weirdo who shaved off half her eyebrows at twelve. No one really wants to claim that, I suppose.

A lot of crying at dad movies. Amanda Bynes, What a Girl Wants? Oh hell yeah. Cried my eyes out on that one.

Being at the least, slightly jealous of people who have loving dads. It gets even harder to deal with when they complain about them. I hold back my pettiness, because it’s not my place to snap at them for being upset about their dad being overbearing since they had no say in the fact that my dad was just absent. The worst, though, is when you see their moments. Like when dad’s walk a girl down an aisle, or a father daughter dance. 

A whole bucketful of insecurities that sound a lot like “Why am I so worthless? Why couldn’t he love me? Why wasn’t I worth keeping?” Yep, sounds like a fun time being a teenager.

Fighting with your only parent makes you fantasize about having a dad. Would your dream dad take you to that concert you were dying to go to? Would that dream dad hug you when you were upset?

Getting older and finding someone who you wish could be your dad. For me, that was my history teacher. If we could buy dads like a puppy at a shelter, that’d be the one for me. I only mentioned it to him once, but I carried it all throughout high school with the idea of what it would be like to have a dad who cared, and wanted to be there for me. So I, like any other rational misfit, just picked on him a lot so I wouldn’t let on my screwed up wish that I could have been born in a different household. (Sorry, Mr. Gooding)

Lastly, whether I realized it or not, most of my issues with my mother might have been because she had four kids and she was only one parent. She has mental health issues, and she was carrying all of us on her shoulders. I was having a hard time dealing with an absent parent, but she had to deal with it too. With that said, we didn’t have an easy time growing up. At all. If I still lived with her we would still have issues, but now I think that part of it was because of the whole ‘father’ ordeal.

These are just the ones that pop into mind. The only thing that has helped me cope with all of this mess is that I did forgive him. When I did that, all of the anger washed away and all I felt was annoyance. I forgave him, and then I cut him out of my life even further than he had done to me. I blocked him on everything after I gave him a piece of my mind.

Not having a dad in your life is hard. It’s harder to deal with when you wish that they could be someone else, but the reality of it is that the father you wish you could have is never going to be them. They aren’t built to be the loving parent you wished for. They aren’t worth the tears, the self worth issues, the anger. Don’t let them have that power over you anymore.

They aren’t worth it.

You are.

[issadai]

sentient peoples of issadai (pt 2): tousa

The tousa are a species of primate that received aetherial souls around the same time humans did. They aren’t as widespread as humans, who have proven hardier and better able to adapt to new environments, and live primarily in the jungles and coastal mangrove swamps south of the Mysskaean Sea (map). They have good relations with the human peoples closest to them, the Shuwafi, whom they trade with extensively.

Tousa are taller than humans, with the average individual standing about six and a half feet tall, and slighter, with long, thin limbs. Their species started out as gracile tree-dwellers, so at one time they had disproportionately long arms and hand-like feet. Their faces were also longer than humans’, with a snout-like nose, large canine teeth, and long opposable ears. Modern tousa have become bipedal land-dwellers like humans, and thus their body plan has become more human-like. Their faces, too, have become flatter and smaller-jawed, closely resembling the human face, though they have retained large, round eyes and a long nose. Most have pale or pinkish skin which flushes easily, gold or light brown eyes with little sclera showing around the iris, and coarse straight hair that ranges from gold to burnt orange in color. Their faces are heart-shaped, with broad cheekbones, a shallow brow ridge, and a low hairline that often has a pronounced widow’s peak. Their opposable ears are used extensively in body language, and their eyes retain the tapetum lucidum. Tousa generally have heavier body hair than humans, bordering on fur—except on the chest, belly, and face, which are usually hairless. They exhibit minimal sexual dimorphism. Tousa are semi-nocturnal; they are most active around dawn and dusk, and sleep through the hottest point of the day. Like humans, they live about a hundred years, and individuals with strong magic have the potential to live much longer.

The tousa vocal tract differs from a human’s; they have higher voices, usually in the alto or soprano range, and they cannot pronounce some vowels that are essential to the human languages. Because of this, a pidgin speech has evolved between the tousa and the human peoples they deal with, which omits vowel sounds that they cannot pronounce.

Tousa can interbreed with humans, but they’re much more fragile, physiologically speaking, so hybrid offspring are rare. Generally hybrids have a much better chance of surviving to birth if they’re being carried by the human parent. Most tend to take after the human parent in appearance, but it is common for them to exhibit tousa coloring.

Culture

Most tousa follow a semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle, though within the last thousand years or so they have adopted agriculture from the human peoples they are in contact with, and since then have begun to build permanent settlements. They also rely heavily on fishing for food, and in human or mixed-species areas they can often be found working as fishermen.

The only major tousa city is known as Hle’alu. It is located at the broad, shallow mouth of the Eto’a River where it runs into Alo’ikalo’ani Lake, and consists of wooden structures that sit on stilt-supported platforms above the water, or on the hundreds of small islands that dot the river delta. There are no streets, and city-dwellers get around either by boat, navigating the channels between islands, or on narrow wooden bridges. Founded over five hundred years ago, it was built on the site of one of the first great tousa civilizations, the Eto’a River Valley Civilization, which grew up during their agricultural revolution. While the swamps that surround the city offer little in the way of farmland, the islands of the Eto’a River have been built up and expanded with earth over the centuries, creating tiered fields of rich, wet soil that is exceptionally well-suited for growing rice and beans, two main staples of the tousa diet.

Plentiful fishing and the rich farmland they have engineered has allowed the Eto’ans to devote time that had once gone to hunting and gathering towards the pursuit of art, music, and mathematics. They have also developed a writing system, Udu, which is written in ink on banana leaves, and used mainly for recordkeeping—at the time it was invented, Hle’alu had become a bustling center of trade, which it remains to this day. Farmers, craftsmen, and fishermen from villages both human and tousa travel to the city to participate in its floating markets. Hle’alu is ruled by a priest-king, who not only oversees the city government, but also performs the sacred rituals that must be observed on each holy day. The great temple and the priest-king’s palace are located on Gis, the large island at the center of the city.

Tousa are known as fine weavers, and their cotton is famous among the southern peoples for its delicacy and strength. Much of their clothing and other fabric goods are colored with an unusual reddish-purple dye called axim, which is obtained by collecting and boiling the mucus of a snail found in jungle waterways.

The primary Tousa religion, Qe’elateqa, revolves around a demigod hero named Ateqa. Son of the river goddess Yu’a, he is considered to be the father of the tousa, and the first sentient being in Issadai. They call themselves “tousa”, which means “children of the river” in their language, for this reason. According to tousa mythology, during the early ages of the world Yu’a, becoming lonely, created for herself a son out of the clay that lined her riverbank, breathing life into him. She named him Ateqa, which means “earth that walks”—because he had the soul of a god but a mortal body, he would someday return to the earth Yu’a had shaped him from. When Ateqa grew to adulthood, he left Yu’a to wander the world, awakening the sentient species as he went, and doing battle with the evil gods and spirits that threatened their safety. He was eventually killed while fighting Bedu, the leopard god of the hunt and of darkness, but the children he had with a tousa woman lived on to become a great line of wise and powerful mages. The priest-kings of Hle’alu have long claimed descendance from Ateqa.

[vexredain]

Perks (and some cons) of Dating :: Vex Redain

“Been said by a well-beautiful lass that I’m either dangerously bold, or dangerously stupid. I’d say I’m much more o’ th’former’n th’latter, but ye know what? I think bein’ both’s what makes me bleedin’ great.”

Both the pros and cons of dating the dashing Captain Vex Redain can be found under the cut below!

Tagged by: @mother-muscles [Thank you!!!]

Tagging: @keeperslovebetrayal, @moonlifter, @moko-ffxiv, @fiendofearth, @zurri-xiv, @kaori-ishikawa, @vayduh, @stygian-steel, @humanrevolt, @ahuska-ffxiv, @elezendad, @chxsingthemoon, and anyone else that sees this and wants to participate! Tag me in it!

Passion. Whether in romance, or a multitude of other activities ranging from sailing to fighting to drinking, Vex takes to them with unbound passion. There’s not much that gets her down, and she lives her life with a staunch, unstoppable belief in the optimistic. Vex is a skilled and passionate romantic who is exceptionally prone to fits of flair, whether it’s by grandiose shows of her affection, or through simple physicality. 

Charm. Perhaps the quality she’s most proud of, Vex has a famously, or maybe infamously, silver tongue. Having spent many of the cycles of her youth travelling across Hydaelyn Vex quickly learnt the importance of charisma from her previous captain, seeing how far it got him and at first doing her best to replicate it. Of course, it’s been a long time since then, and Vex has truly mastered the art of talking herself out of - and into - situations as per her fancy. 

Wealth. A lifetime of privateering, and a particular taste for robbing Thavnairian ships, has enabled Vex to accumulate a large fortune. Having, quite frankly, far more gil than she knows what to do with, Vex lives more than comfortably. 

Confidence. It’s likely that no one could be said to love Vex more than Vex does, and this gives her a near insurmountable amount of confidence in herself, her activities, and her relationships. She’s hardly prone to jealousy when no one could possibly be better than her, or so she thinks, anyway. This brings with it an unrivaled sense of security in any relationship. 

Looks. Vex is a well-built woman who takes more than a little pride in her looks, she invests much of her free time into keeping herself in shape. While Vex is certainly strong, her time is often spent making herself look good, a body more made for showing off. An athletic figure with thickly corded muscles underneath perfect, unblemished grey skin, it’s easy to see why she’s so proud of it. She’s also got a stunning chest. 

Power. The captain of the Navigator’s Prow, a corvette in service to the Maelstrom-aligned Black Sails Privateers, Vex wields a significant amount of personal power, having a crew of experienced privateers who most often serve as the vanguard, as per the Black Sails’ particular choice to specialise in assault operations, not to mention a vessel with a decent amount of cannon. She has a good standing amongst her peers in the Storm and her city-state at large. 

Cons:

Self-Absorbed. Vex’s pride, ambition, and love of herself can often make her completely blind  to the emotions of others, or cause her to appear distant as she’s often wrapped up in, quite simply, herself. It’s also quiet difficult to get through her delusions of grandeur, of which there are many when dealing with one that sees herself at best as the chosen of Llymlaen, and at worst, her daughter. Things can, at times, become too much about her. 

Wanderlust. Never being able to stay in one place for long, Vex is fit to disappearing for moons at a time as she plies her trade across Hydaelyn, and she’s more than equipped to do so in both wealth and equipment. It’s hard to get Vex to stay in one place, and even then, she’s often dreaming of her next adventure. 

Blindness. Not so much in the physical sense, but Vex does tend to find it difficult to relate to others, particularly when they’re vulnerable or acting differently. This might cause her to seem distant, or that she’s creating distance, when in fact she’s simply blissfully unaware. 

Rude. Vex isn’t the most savoury person on the Crystal, and is quite prone to belittling and insulting others when she doesn’t approve of their behaviour, actions, or personalities. If she doesn’t like someone, it can be almost impossible to change her mind on such matters. This can cause problems if she were to take a dislike to friends or family, as Vex has little patience and hardly is one to hide her emotions, thoughts, or feelings. 

Rear. Vex has incredibly narrow hips, as well as not being particularly plentiful in the rear. She’s also incredibly touchy about it, to the point that she wears padded clothing and jackets that make it seem like she has more than she does. This is a sore point, and one that she does not react well to people bringing up. 

Commitment. Being brought up in a staunchly traditionalist Keeper clan, Vex sees the concept of monogamy and eternal bonding, too, as trappings of Hyur, Elezen, and other Spoken. The concepts not existing in her culture have caused her to have a particular disdain for both. 

[examiningmormonism]

Critically Examining the Case for Book of Mormon Historicity

Preface: This started as a YouTube comment and turned into a much more extended essay, as I had meant to work on such an essay for some time. In case you're inclined to ask why I bothered to write all of this, here's why: for different reasons, I find the ancient Near East, the Bible, ancient Mesoamerica, and Mormon origins to be profoundly interesting, and these subjects converge in discussing with LDS scholars the origins of the Book of Mormon. I've never been LDS and my interest in Mormonism is largely academic, though as a believing Christian I have an interest in engaging Mormonism from an orthodox Christian perspective. For those who are interested in reading through this, I hope it both stimulates your own consideration of these issues and sharpens up your ability to engage credibly with LDS family and friends who use such arguments. This essay considers seventeen arguments made by Dr. John Clark, a well-regarded archaeologist of ancient Mesoamerica.

As a non-Mormon and an interested reader of LDS scholarship (which I enjoy reading in the midst of deep disagreements) , I think that this video provides a good encapsulation of where defenses of Book of Mormon historicity tend to go wrong:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkF4hlddGfw

 The basic model of these arguments for Book of Mormon historicity are that there is a feature of the Book of Mormon text which was unknown or absurd in Joseph's day but which is now confirmed by historians of the ancient Near East and Mesoamerica in our own day. In order to evaluate these arguments, I want to spell out what I take to be important methodological points:

1. The two models we are comparing are a) the Book of Mormon as an ancient Mesoamerican codex engraved by authors of roughly Near Eastern extraction and b) the Book of Mormon as a production of the 19th century, written by author(s) familiar with the then popular ideas about the "Mound Builders." These mounds no longer occasion much interest because most of them have been removed or have been built over. But to persons of Joseph Smith's time and place, the Indian Mounds dotted the landscape and provided observers with much material upon which to speculate. Dan Vogel's "Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon" provides a clear and well-argued defense of this model of Book of Mormon origins.

2. This means that we are not looking at what scholars of ancient America thought in Joseph Smith's day. Then, as today, what academics thought and what was ingrained in the popular understanding were very different things. As LDS scholars often point out, Joseph Smith was relatively unlearned. We would therefore expect a production by Smith or someone associated with him to reflect popular understandings of ancient American civilization rather than academic understandings of that civilization. Hence, to compare what **academics** thought of ancient America in the 19th century with the Book of Mormon is a false trail. Nobody is suggesting that a 19th century scholar of ancient America composed the Book of Mormon.

3. We are not comparing 19th century conceptions of Mesoamerica with 21st century conceptions of Mesoamerica, as nonbelieving accounts for the production of the Book of Mormon do not set its narrative in Central America. Rather, as just described above, the setting of the Book of Mormon according to those who reject its historical authenticity is generally in the North American Heartland, including upstate New York.

These considerations lead us to the most important principle in evaluating claims of Book of Mormon authenticity. If a feature of the Book of Mormon text is found **both** in the ancient world **and** in the popular understanding of Joseph Smith's time and place, then the feature of the text **provides no argument for its authenticity or for its non-authenticity.** Both skeptics and believers of the Book can fall into this trap. In the same vein, we must understand that American culture in the 19th century was far from a monolith. What was believable and normal in 1830 Palmyra might be laughable to a scholar of that period or to a layperson in another area of the country. Thus, that critics once laughed at a feature of the Book of Mormon which has since been found in the ancient world is only significant if the feature was laughable and unexpected in the precise cultural context which enveloped Joseph Smith himself.

Each of the arguments made by Dr. Clark is a point which concerns two worlds. While Dr. Clark is an eminent expert in one of these worlds, in the other, he is merely a layman. The former is Mesoamerica, the latter is 19th century upstate New York. This point must be emphasized, because in several instances Dr. Clark explicitly makes a claim about what was conceivable for "19th century Yankees", with similar claims implied for his other arguments. My argument is that the major failure of his argument turns not on a misunderstanding of Central America (Clark is too much of a scholar to simply have "misconceptions" about Central America), but on a series of failures to grapple with Joseph Smith's own cultural context. Because of the paramount importance of a well-crafted methodology in approaching the question of Book of Mormon historicity, I will be returning to this point again and again in relation to the specific arguments presented by Dr. Clark.

With these points in mind, let's turn to the specific arguments.

1. Metal plates in stone boxes.

The first concerns metal plates sealed in stone boxes. We are told that this claim was thought to be ludicrous in Joseph's time but has since been shown to be authentically ancient. The engraved gold plates of Darius, sealed in a stone box, probably provide the closest analogue to the Book of Mormon plates. But there are serious issues with using this as an argument for the Book's authenticity. First, while engraved metal plates have been found in the ancient world, there has never been a text of the size of the Book of Mormon found- not even close. That a local aristocrat such as Laban had much of the Old Testament translated into Egyptian and engraved on brass plates indicates that the engraving of large records, comprising multiple scrolls, must have been somewhat common in the 6th century BC. The plates that have been discovered provide only a moderate parallel to the description found in the Book of Mormon.

Still, were there no analogue of similar precision found in Joseph Smith's own time and place, this would be a remarkable parallel. However, there are such analogues. The first comes from the surviving Spalding Manuscript, which I use only as an example of what was current in Joseph Smith's background, not as an argument for the Spalding-Rigdon model of BoM authorship. The Spalding Manuscript describes a colony of Roman Christians from the 4th century AD, blown ashore to the American continent accidentally. The internal narrative of the story is that Fabius, the leader of the colony, recorded the history of his people on a document and then sealed it away in a stone box, placing that box inside a cave. Fabius does so in order that the record might come forth and be translated by future Europeans so that they might know the history of Fabius' people. The plates of the Book of Mormon are similarly supposed to record the history of an ancient civilization extracted from the Old World, sealed away in a box with the intention that they should later come forth and be translated so that the later inhabitants of the American continent might know its history. Moreover, testimony from Brigham Young and Oliver Cowdery suggests that the stone box was thought to be hidden away inside a cave filled with records. I am not suggesting literary dependence. Rather, I am pointing out that analogues, even relatively close ones, were indeed present to Joseph Smith in 1830, and that the currency of these ideas indicates that the Book of Mormon's internal account of its sealing in a stone box does not need to be explained in terms of the ancient world: ultimately, it would be a wash.

But what about metal plates? Fabius' account is not engraved on plates of metal. Was this laughable in Smith's context? No, it wasn't. Fawn Brodie (whatever one thinks of her reconstruction of Smith, I refer to her book because of its citation of primary texts) notes that "a Palmyra paper in 1821 had reported that diggers on the Erie Canal had unearthed 'several brass plates' along with skeletons and fragments of pottery." (No Man Knows My History, 35) So, we find that in the cultural world immersing the young Joseph Smith, there are already ideas of records sealed up in stone boxes as well as engraved metal plates, and that these ideas were linked with the Indians, particularly the Mound Builders which forms the setting of the Book of Mormon according to nonbelievers.

So this, at best, is a wash. At worst, the immediacy of the parallel to Joseph's own context and the lack of precise analogues in the Near East (given the length of the record) provides a slight advantage to nonbelieving models for BoM origins. An argument could be made for either, but this is miles away from the slam dunk suggested by Dr. Clark.

2. Ancient American writing

Dr. Clark argues that the Book's description of writing and books in ancient America are exceptionally prescient, given what was then thought of ancient America.

The above examples suffice to show that it was hardly inconceivable in Joseph Smith's world that ancient Americans had writing systems. After all, the fundamental idea undergirding popular ideas about the Mound Builders was that the Mound Builders represented a lost civilization of basically Old World extraction, having all the sophistication known from the Old World, but wiped out by the ancestors of the American Indians known in the 19th century. The Book of Mormon provides a particular spin on this narrative, but it is recognizable as a form of the narrative. So, given the Book's situation in this narrative world (according to those of us who don't believe the Book is historically authentic), it is entirely reasonable that writing systems should be described. And since nobody is alleging that Joseph produced the Book based on an academic understanding of Mesoamerica current in his day, Clark's comparison of the BoM with the scholarly knowledge in 1830 is a false one. However ludicrous ancient American writing might have been to the scholars of 1830, Joseph Smith wasn't acquainted with their ideas, but with the ideas of those for whom ancient American writing was to be expected.

There is thus a close analogue in both the world of Joseph Smith and in ancient Mesoamerica, if one is simply considering the presence of written language. Given that the writing systems of ancient Mesoamerica are not presently related to any Old World writing system, the parallel to the Book of Mormon is quite vague, as the latter describes writing systems derived from Hebrew and Egyptian. So the parallel is merely in the concept of written texts- hardly precise enough to be striking.

3. Ancient American Warfare

Dr. Clark describes the notion of warfare in ancient America as having been "ridiculed" in the Book of Mormon until about twenty years ago. But as before, the question concerns the source of that ridicule. Would a person in Joseph's environment ridicule the idea of wars of extermination among the ancient inhabitants of the Americas? Certainly not. This was the basis for the mythos of the Mound Builders- that the creators of the advanced civilizations of ancient America were savagely wiped out by the ancestors of the Native Americans known to Joseph and his contemporaries. These immense wars of genocide were then seen to explain the ubiquity of the mounds heaped up with the remains of ancient inhabitants of the continent. The Book of Mormon contains a number of passages suggesting its origin, in part, as an etiology of these mounds, where the bones were visibly heaped up almost immediately under the surface:

Alma 16:11: "Nevertheless, after many days their dead bodies were heaped up upon the face of the earth, and they were covered with a shallow covering."

Alma 28:11: "And the bodies of many thousands are laid low in the earth, while the bodies of many thousands are moldering in heaps upon the face of the earth; yea, and many thousands are mourning for the loss of their kindred, because they have reason to fear, according to the promises of the Lord, that they are consigned to a state of endless wo."

Mormon 2:15: "And it came to pass that my sorrow did return unto me again, and I saw that the day of grace was passed with them, both temporally and spiritually; for I saw thousands of them hewn down in open rebellion against their God, and heaped up as dung upon the face of the land. And thus three hundred and forty and four years had passed away."

Ether 11:6: "And there was great calamity in all the land, for they had testified that a great curse should come upon the land, and also upon the people, and that there should be a great destruction among them, such an one as never had been upon the face of the earth, and their bones should become as heaps of earth upon the face of the land except they should repent of their wickedness."

Even apart from the link between the Mound Builder mythos and the Book of Mormon, bloody wars with Native Americans were a matter of living memory and direct knowledge for contemporaries of Joseph Smith's. This is one place where I am genuinely mystified by Dr. Clark's assertion. Why would anybody in Joseph Smith's environment be surprised that he describes ancient Americans as fighting wars?

4. Nature of Civilization

Dr. Clark states that the account of ancient American civilization differs markedly from what Joseph would have expected from his own knowledge of the American Indians and their culture, But this misses the point in a crucially important way. The Mound Builder mythos itself arose as an explanation for an apparent discontinuity for the high civilization evident from the mounds and the perceived low culture of the Native Americans of the 19th century. As wrong as Rodney Meldrum is, he and his compatriots have played a helpful role in reminding everyone that there is evidence of civilization in North America, with highways, fortifications, and the like. In their efforts to demonstrate that "Joseph knew" the setting of the Book of Mormon in the Heartland of North America, they have also provided extremely helpful documentation showing that this evidence of civilization was known to Joseph and his contemporaries.The important point is that these features were immediately apparent in Joseph Smith's own day, as the mounds which have now been eradicated or built over were visible to the naked eye and well-known as a feature of the landscape.

[As a minor footnote, even if these things were not known to Joseph and his contemporaries, anyone describing an ancient civilization of Old World extraction would draw features known from Old World cultures, which is particularly predictable for a narrative like the Book of Mormon, anchored in the detailed information given about ancient Israelite civilization.]

According to the Mount Builder mythos, the architects of the great civilization evident in the Mounds were wiped out by the ancestors of the Indians known to 19th century Americans. In the Book of Mormon, this position is neatly filled by the Lamanites, cursed with a red skin (which is at the very least the strong prima facie evidence of the BoM text) and identified as the forefathers of the Indians. 2 Nephi 5:24 serves as an etiology for the perceived low culture of these Indians:

2 Nephi 5:24: "And because of their cursing which was upon them they did become an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety, and did seek in the wilderness for beasts of prey."

Enos 1:20 provides an even clearer example:

Enos 1:20: "And I bear record that the people of Nephi did seek diligently to restore the Lamanites unto the true faith in God. But our labors were vain; their hatred was fixed, and they were led by their evil nature that they became wild, and ferocious, and a bloodthirsty people, full of idolatry and filthiness; feeding upon beasts of prey; dwelling in tents, and wandering about in the wilderness with a short skin girdle about their loins and their heads shaven; and their skill was in the bow, and in the cimeter, and the ax. And many of them did eat nothing save it was raw meat; and they were continually seeking to destroy us."

And see also:

Mormon 6:9: "And it came to pass that they did fall upon my people with the sword, and with the bow, and with the arrow, and with the ax, and with all manner of weapons of war."

The red-skinned Lamanites are noted for their association with the bow and the axe- both well known associates of Native Americans known to Smith, whose favorite weapons were the bow and the tomahawk axe. I'm not sure when the teepee became a stereotype for Native Americans in general, but if it was present in Smith's day (I'm working to confirm or deny its presence), then the notation about the tents provides another specific convergence to Smith's background and context. The reference to the shaven heads likewise hits the mark for the Native Americans known to Smith, for whom a partially or entirely shaved head was a common hairstyle. And the reference to loincloths is easily accounted for in terms of the "breechcloth" which was common to most Native American tribes and would have been immediately known to Smith and his contemporaries. Thus, while the Nephites (and righteous Lamanites who are turned white- thus suggesting a path of redemption for the Natives known to Smith) are described in terms of civilization familiar to the Old World, the Lamanites who are the ancestors of the American Indians known to Smith (in the unbelieving model of Book of Mormon origins) are described in a way which immediately rings true with what was thought in the 19th century. I don't write this to attack Smith or his contemporaries for believing this, but simply to note that the Book of Mormon resembles almost precisely what one would expect from a text drawing on the Mound Builder mythos.

5. Weapons and Armor

Dr. Clark then states that the description of Book of Mormon weapons and armor converge unexpectedly and specifically with ancient Mesoamerica. As evidence for the historicity of the Book of Mormon, this point cannot prove very much, since the weapons described are easily explained as a result of a) a biblical history of ancient America mirroring biblical warfare, where all of the mentioned weapons and armor are described and b) knowledge of weapons used by Indians of the 19th century and found in Indian Mounds. The latter accounts for the peculiar prominence of the axe (tomahawk) and bow in relation to the Lamanites, who are linked with the Native Americans of the 19th century on the non-historical model of Book of Mormon authorship.

5a. Excursus on Metals in Mesoamerica

By itself, then, the presence of these weapons is neither an argument for or against the Book of Mormon, as their textual presence can be explained both as an authentic Mesoamerican history and as a projection of biblical warfare. However, when further detail is considered, the weapons described point away from Book of Mormon historicity and towards a 19th century origin. First, as mentioned above, the weapons associated with the Lamanites are suggestive of a 19th century cultural background. Second, and more seriously, while most references to Book of Mormon weapons and armor are nondescript concerning their makeup, those details which do exist each point towards a metallic origin. No reader of the Book of Mormon without knowledge of ancient America would have any reason to suppose that they were made of anything else- on "bloodstains" see below. Evidence of metallurgy in Mesoamerica during Book of Mormon times is slim to nonexistent. It is important to distinguish metallurgy from the use of metal. John Sorenson has plausibly noted linguistic and some archaeological evidence for the use of metals in Central America during Book of Mormon times.

However, as Deanne Matheny points out:

"It is important to distinguish between metalworking, 'the act or process of shaping things out of metal' and metallurgy, the 'science and technology of metals' which may involve such processes as smelting, casting, and alloying." ("Does the Shoe Fit" in "New Approaches to the Book of Mormon", p. 283)

The Book of Mormon is very clear that the Lehites and the Jaredites possessed advanced metallurgical technology. Not only does the text describe tools (such as swords fashioned after Laban's model) which can only be produced by metallurgy, it makes explicit references to metallurgy. "Dross" is used as a metaphor in both Alma 32:3 and 34:29. The latter is placed in the mouth of Alma himself, preaching to the people and saying "if ye do not remember to be charitable, ye are as dross, which the refiners do cast out, (it being of no worth) and is trodden under foot of men." This comment is immensely significant in evaluating the presence of metallurgy in the Book of Mormon, because its use as a metaphor indicates that it must have been common enough for the average person to understand. Hence, in the society described, metallurgists would play an important economic and civic role, and given the intelligibility of the metaphor, it would be strange if Book of Mormon civilizations did not use their knowledge of advanced metallurgy to produce metal weapons and armor, as such implements would provide a decisive advantage in war with those cities which did not use metallurgical technology.

Helaman 6:11 explicitly describes the extent of metallurgy at this point in Book of Mormon history: "And behold, there was all manner of gold in both these lands, and of silver, and of precious ore of every kind; and there were also curious workmen, who did work all kinds of ore and did refine it; and thus they did become rich."

Helaman 6:9 describes the geographical extent of this knowledge: "And it came to pass that they became exceedingly rich, both the Lamanites and the Nephites; and they did have an exceeding plenty of gold, and of silver, and of all manner of precious metals, both in the land south and in the land north."

Thus, in the first century before Christ, advanced metallurgy is known among both Nephites and Lamanites and is prominent throughout the entirety of the lands described in the text. Given the vast extent of this knowledge- in both land northward and land southward, among both Nephites and Lamanites, among both rich and common (as evident in its intelligible metaphorical application)- it would be totally unexpected for this knowledge to simply pass away, as some Book of Mormon scholars have suggested occurred. Metallurgy is an important enough technology that once it is established on a large scale, it will not be forgotten by accident.

2 Nephi 5:14-15: And I, Nephi, did take the sword of Laban, and after the manner of it did make many swords, lest by any means the people who were now called Lamanites should come upon us and destroy us; for I knew their hatred towards me and my children and those who were called my people. And I did teach my people to build buildings, and to work in all manner of wood, and of iron, and of copper, and of brass, and of steel, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious ores, which were in great abundance.

The close textual conjunction of the making of swords like Laban's sword and the description of metallurgy strongly mitigates against an interpretation which suggests that the swords were like Laban's in form but not in their metallic constitution. 1 Nephi 17:10-11 describes the process of Nephi's metallurgical knowledge, where ore is mined, refined through the use of bellows as smelting tools. The emphasis placed on the working of various metals suggests that they must have been of supreme importance in Book of Mormon societies. Indeed, the use of metal seems to be a literary motif that runs throughout the Book, as signified in its engraving on a book of metal plates.

Jarom 1:8: And we multiplied exceedingly, and spread upon the face of the land, and became exceedingly rich in gold, and in silver, and in precious things, and in fine workmanship of wood, in buildings, and in machinery, and also in iron and copper, and brass and steel, making all manner of tools of every kind to till the ground, and weapons of war -- yea, the sharp pointed arrow, and the quiver, and the dart, and the javelin, and all preparations for war.

The text here links the use of metallurgical "machinery" with the making of both agricultural tools and weapons of war. Such would be expected from a projection of Old World civilization as known from the Bible, but would be manifestly unexpected as a description of an ancient Mesoamerican civilization.

Ether 7:9: Wherefore, he came to the hill Ephraim, and he did molten out of the hill, and made swords out of steel for those whom he had drawn away with him; and after he had armed them with swords he returned to the city Nehor and gave battle unto his brother Corihor, by which means he obtained the kingdom and restored it unto his father Kib.

Here, almost at the earliest point in Book of Mormon history, we are told of metal swords being produced by metallurgy in ancient America.

Ether 10:23-27: And they did work in all manner of ore, and they did make gold, and silver, and iron, and brass, and all manner of metals; and they did dig it out of the earth; wherefore they did cast up mighty heaps of earth to get ore, of gold, and of silver, and of iron, and of copper. And they did work all manner of fine work. And they did have silks, and fine-twined linen; and they did work all manner of cloth, that they might clothe themselves from their nakedness. And they did make all manner of tools to till the earth, both to plow and to sow, to reap and to hoe, and also to thrash. And they did make all manner of tools with which they did work their beasts. And they did make all manner of weapons of war. And they did work all manner of work of exceedingly curious workmanship.

Several centuries later (during the time of Kish and Lib) in Jaredite history, metal is a central feature of Jaredite civilization, and the mining of ore and its refining into metal is described in the context of agricultural tools and weapons of war. The phrase "exceedingly curious workmanship" is also generally used of metallic implements in the Book of Mormon.

At the very latest point in Book of Mormon chronology, Moroni indicates that metallurgical knowledge was available to him in Mormon 8:5: "Behold, my father hath made this record, and he hath written the intent thereof. And behold, I would write it also if I had room upon the plates, but I have not; and ore I have none, for I am alone."

If ore were available, the text clearly implies, Moroni had the skills necessary to extract the necessary metals and make additional plates. Thus, metallurgy is in evidence from almost the beginning of the Jaredite history to the exact end of the Lehite history. Moreover, it is not presented as an ancillary feature of Book of Mormon civilizations. Rather, metallurgy is presented as central to the economies of both Nephite and Jaredite peoples. It is described in conjunction with the creation of agricultural and military implements during both the Jaredite and Lehite periods. War and food are twin pillars of any ancient society, including ancient America. It was known at the beginning, middle, and end of the Lehite period, with its use spanning the entirety of Book of Mormon lands and both Nephite and Lamanite branches of the nation.

Evidence for metallurgy during this period in Central America is basically absent. I say "basically" only to leave open the possibility that I have missed the publication of marginal evidence for metallurgy during the appropriate period. However, as far as I know, the first evidence for metallurgy in Mesoamerica comes around 700 AD. Before this period, the only evidence for pre-Columbian metallurgy is in ancient Peru, which is not relevant to Book of Mormon lands on the standard Mesoamerican geography. What is remarkable is the absence of the evidence in Mesoamerica during Book of Mormon times when its presence is clearly known in Central American archaeology from 700 onwards, especially in light of the centrality of metallurgy to Book of Mormon civilizations.

While it is always possible that evidence for metallurgy will be forthcoming in the future, as long as one is speaking of the present state of the evidence, one is faced with the complete absence of archaeological evidence for one of the most central features of Book of Mormon civilizations for the entirety of its timeline of two and a half millennia. Given the appearance of such evidence several centuries after Mormon's death, this is evidence that one would expect to see if the Book of Mormon were truly an ancient Mesoamerican codex. But it is missing.

Back to Weapons and Armor

I spent so much space discussing the issue of metallurgy because of the centrality of warfare to Book of Mormon history and the importance placed on the convergence between Book of Mormon history and ancient America in this respect by Dr. Clark and other LDS scholars. Below I will return to the issue of specific weapons and the nature of the convergence with Mesoamerican evidence.

5b. Breastplates:

Breastplates are described several times in the Book of Mormon, and are known from ancient America. However, the one time that the makeup of a breastplate is identified, we are told that it is of brass and copper, referring to Jaredite armor brought to King Mosiah:

Mosiah 8:10: And behold, also, they have brought breastplates, which are large, and they are of brass and of copper, and are perfectly sound.

5c. Swords:

Ether 7:9: Wherefore, he came to the hill Ephraim, and he did molten out of the hill, and made swords out of steel for those whom he had drawn away with him; and after he had armed them with swords he returned to the city Nehor and gave battle unto his brother Corihor, by which means he obtained the kingdom and restored it unto his father Kib.

1 Nephi 4:9: And I beheld his sword, and I drew it forth from the sheath thereof; and the hilt thereof was of pure gold, and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine, and I saw that the blade thereof was of the most precious steel.

2 Nephi 5:14: And I, Nephi, did take the sword of Laban, and after the manner of it did make many swords, lest by any means the people who were now called Lamanites should come upon us and destroy us; for I knew their hatred towards me and my children and those who were called my people.

Mosiah 8:11: And again, they have brought swords, the hilts thereof have perished, and the blades thereof were cankered with rust; and there is no one in the land that is able to interpret the language or the engravings that are on the plates. Therefore I said unto thee: Canst thou translate?

Thus, when it comes to swords, the only textual evidence for the composition of swords in the text of the Book of Mormon is that they are metal. Dr. Clark, however, argues that there is evidence for non-metal swords in Alma 24, where the swords are described as having the ability to be stained with blood.The first thing to point out is that the text describes the swords, after having been cleansed, becoming "bright", an adjective which makes far more sense in reference to a clean metal sword which shines in the sunlight than it does to a wooden sword. Second, the use of "bloodstained" in reference to swords provides little evidence that the swords were anything other than metal, as "bloodstained" is used of metal swords in the parlance of Joseph Smith's day.

To give just one example (searching Google Books produces a good number of examples) from 1825, Augustin Thierry's "History of the Conquest of England" (p. 127) describes a "bloodstained sword." Language of staining with blood is frequently metaphorical- one says that one has bloodstained hands if one is guilty of murder, not because the skin on one's hand has reddened permanently. Given, then, that this phrase was attested in Joseph Smith's day when speaking of metal swords, one cannot take this as evidence that the swords are anything other than metal. Of course, it's possible, given the constraints of the text, that some of the swords described could be made of something other than metal. But there are a number of passages which clearly describe metal swords, and there are no passages which clearly describe a non-metal sword. There are no hermeneutical grounds for assuming that every sword in the text refers to a non-metal sword unless it specifically states otherwise. Such an interpretation must be brought to the text on the basis of Mesoamerican archaeology, in which case the strength of an independent convergence between the text and the evidence disappears.

Evidence for metallurgy in the appropriate time periods is presently lacking, and the Book of Mormon text needs to be supplemented by conjecture to bring it into line with the archaeological evidence. Thus, the picture that Clark paints of a specific convergence between the Book of Mormon text and Mesoamerican civilization of the appropriate time period is exaggerated at best. At a deeper level, however, this point reveals the profound discordance presently existing between Mesoamerican archaeology and the Book of Mormon. Throughout the text, metallurgy is presented as widely known and centrally important for agriculture, warfare, and trade. With regard to the specific issue of weapons, the convergence suggested by Dr. Clark is actually a substantial discordance, for the weapons known from ancient Mesoamerica are not made of metal, while the only indications provided in the text are for metal weapons and armor, along with a substantial metallurgical industry. This must be regarded as a substantial argument against the historicity of the Book of Mormon- a major textual feature permeating the whole narrative which is entirely absent from the appropriate time and place.

5d. Cotton Armor

Dr. Clark briefly mentions cotton armor as a convergence between the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerica. Such a convergence, as something not present in the Bible nor (to the best of my knowledge) to the Indians of Joseph Smith's day, would be exactly the kind of convergence which is striking. But it is not present, as Dr. Clark suggests, in the Book of Mormon text. On screen, Alma 43:19 is cited, which refers to the "thick clothing" of the Nephite armies. At most, this is a vague convergence rather than a specific one as cotton is not mentioned. However, a better textual explanation for this feature can be found. I discussed above the description of Lamanites as wearing loincloths and its connection with the "breechcloths" widely known among the Indians of Joseph Smith's day. This is described in the text as one of the features differentiating the civilization of the early Nephites with the wildness of the Lamanites, who are nearly naked, live in tents, and subsist on uncooked meat. Here, in Alma 43, we see Nephite and Lamanite soldiers clashing, and the differences between the two cultures (the stereotypical contrasts present in the Mound Builder mythos) is drawn into focus. In Alma 43:20, we are told about the Lamanites who see the Nephites with their armor and "thick clothing":

"Now the army of Zerahemnah was not prepared with any such thing; they had only their swords and their cimeters, their bows and their arrows, their stones and their slings; and they were naked, save it were a skin which was girded about their loins; yea, all were naked, save it were the Zoramites and the Amalekites"

This text is very similar to the above-cited text concerning the initial wildness of Laman's people. We are told of their typical weapons of warfare and their near-nakedness except the "skin which was girded about their loins." The meeting of these armies thus provides a glimpse at the sharp difference between the civilized Nephites and the wild Lamanites who explain the perceived savagery of 19th century Native Americans. The reference to "thick garments" then, is explained best as a contrast between the near-nakedness of the Lamanite army with the sophistication and civilization of the Nephite army. While it is possible, given the constraints of the text, that it refers to cotton armor, the literary contrast is sufficient to explain why "thick garments" are described, so that absent any additional evidence (which is not, as far as I can see, present), it is an unjustified leap to identify characteristically Mesoamerican cotton armor in the Book of Mormon text.

To sum up this most important section, there is nothing that I can see in the textual description of Book of Mormon implements of war that is convergent with ancient Mesoamerica in a way that is discordant with Joseph's own context. On the other hand, there are major discordances between present knowledge of Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon- discordances which are convergent with Joseph's own context.

6. The Use of Severed Arms as War Tribute to the King

Dr. Clark next turns to the story of Ammon and the presentation of severed arms to King Lamoni as evidence of a convergence with ancient Mesoamerican war practice, which is said to include the presentation of severed arms as a traditional feature of warfare. However, the documentation provided about ancient America is too vague to make this a strong convergence. This article cites the specific sources underlying this argument:

https://knowhy.bookofmormoncentral.org/content/why-did-the-servants-present-lamoni-with-the-arms-of-his-enemies

In this case, two sets of parallels are cited. The first set comes from the ancient Near East, but the parallel concerns merely the severing of any body part as a war trophy, including heads, arms, hands, or legs. This practice is attested in the Bible, obviously available to Joseph Smith, and does not apparently include the ritual presentation of the severed body parts to the king. From ancient America, Izapa Stela 25 is cited, which is mythological in nature. It shows two heroic twins in a fight with Seven Macaw. When one attempts to grab Seven Macaw, Seven Macaw tears off his arm and hangs it over a fire. Here, the only parallel is in the tearing off of an arm, hardly specific enough to require situating the Book of Mormon in the ancient world. And while the authors state that the story "likely reflects actual Maya attitudes and practices in war and conflict", no specific evidence for this practice is described. The other example cited comes over a thousand years after the close of the Book of Mormon and refers to the Aztecs throwing severed limbs of Spanish soldiers at the Spaniards to taunt them. In addition to the chronological gap, there is no evidence that this was an established ritual among Mesoamerican civilizations, and the severed limbs are used to taunt enemy soldiers and strike terror into them rather than being ritually presented to the king.

Ultimately, then, there is no specific evidence that the practice described (once) in the Book of Mormon was a ritual practice in ancient Mesoamerica. Alma 17 describes Ammon's enemies "lifting their clubs" against Ammon, who cuts their arms off. The image which one is supposed to derive from this is of a number of soldiers attacking Ammon all at once, who is so skillful in battle that as soon as one raises an arm against him, he slices the arm off, and within moments, he swiftly maneuvers to cut another arm off in the same way. Thus, the severed arms are significant in that they particularly reflect Ammon's valor and skill in warfare and his ability to decisively win an engagement in which he is significantly outnumbered. The peculiarities of the text are explained in terms of the literary purpose of the story. As above, this does not rule out ancient Mesoamerican context, but absent more specific evidence, hypothesizing such a context is unnecessary to explain the text's production and thus does not indicate an anomaly in a model of 19th century authorship requiring the Book's ancient authenticity as an explanation.

7. Towers as a Place of Final Surrender

Dr. Clark then turns to the scene described in Moroni 9, where Mormon narrates the Lamanites' taking prisoners from the tower of Sherrizah. This, he argues, reflects the ancient Mesoamerican practice of fleeing to the tower/pyramid (the two are used interchangeably in the Bible and thus reasonably so in the Book of Mormon) as places of last defense and surrender. While he may have additional evidence for this practice, the only evidence he cites is the fact that broken or burning pyramids are a symbol of a city's conquest in Mesoamerican art and iconography, which is vaguer than the specific convergence being cited. More importantly, however, the notion of the tower as a place of last refuge is present in the Bible and thus directly available to Joseph Smith:

(Judges 9:50-52)  Then Abimelech went to Thebez and encamped against Thebez and captured it. But there was a strong tower within the city, and all the men and women and all the leaders of the city fled to it and shut themselves in, and they went up to the roof of the tower. And Abimelech came to the tower and fought against it and drew near to the door of the tower to burn it with fire.

While Abimelech is then unexpectedly killed, the story closely resembles the story in Moroni 9, where women and children had apparently fled to a tower at which they were defeated and captured. Since this textual feature was available to Joseph Smith, it cannot provide evidence for an unexpected convergence with Mesoamerican civilization at a point which diverges from Joseph's time and place.

8. Human Sacrifice and Cannibalism

Clark briefly mentions human sacrifice and cannibalism as a convergence between the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerica. This is true, but both were also present among the North American Indians with whom Joseph and his contemporaries were familiar. North American Indians were often especially reviled because of the exquisite ritual torture exacted by some tribes upon captured European settlers. Likewise, while the evidence for cannibalism among North American Indians has been controversial, there is no question that Europeans who encountered them believed them to have practiced cannibalism, as is documented among early Jesuit encounters with the Iroquois. As above, then, since the feature is present both in ancient Mesoamerica and in Joseph Smith's world, it cannot provide an argument for either as the source of the Book of Mormon.

9. Large Troop Numbers

Both the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerica featured large battles, but such large battles were also believed necessary to explain the heaps of human bones found throughout North America, so the presence of large armies in the Book of Mormon provides no specific evidence for either time period as the Book's production context.

10. Large Structures Such as Temples and Palaces

This was discussed in #4 above. Far from being "foreign to the gossip along the Erie Canal" as Dr. Clark suggests, the known presence of an advanced civilization in ancient North America was the foundation for popular speculation about the Mound Builders which forms the nonbelieving production model for the Book of Mormon.

11. Cement Buildings in the Land Northward

Here, Dr. Clark refers to the presence of cement buildings mentioned once in Helaman and states that the notion of cement buildings was "considered ridiculous" in 1830. Actually, cement plaster had been discovered in the aforementioned North American mounds and thus forms a part of the most pertinent background for the production model of a non-historical Book of Mormon. The Spalding manuscript (which I again present only as an example of what was present in Joseph Smith's cultural world, not as a literary source for the Book of Mormon) also refers to the working of stone to build walls and other stone implements.

The description in Helaman 3 is the only place where cement is mentioned in the Book of Mormon, and the specific content of the reference is highly problematic. First, it states that the use of cement to build houses came about because of the lack of timber in the land, suggesting it was a novelty. However, in Mesoamerica, the use of cement was relatively common before the time of Helaman 3. Second, Teotihuacan did suffer from deforestation, but the deforestation occurred as a result of the use of cement, which requires the burning of timber. To attribute the rise of cement buildings to a lack of timber reverses the order of causation and makes little sense in itself.

Brant Gardner suggests that Mormon has unintentionally anachronized his abridgment and has projected the deforestation he knew onto Helaman's time. If one were already persuaded of Book of Mormon historicity, then this is a potential explanatory route, but for the person who is not persuaded, the fact that this kind of textual massaging is necessary appears to undermine the utility of the parallel as an argument for the Book's authenticity. Moreover, the text reports that Mormon was working with far more extended sources, so that if he were making a specific explanatory connection, one would assume that it had a basis in the sources he was abridging.

As a general parallel, then, cement appears in both the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerica. But since its presence was known among the Mound Builders, it cannot be used as an argument for an ancient Mesoamerican setting over and against a modern setting in the genre of Mound Builder myths. Moreover, the specifics of the parallel are problematic for an ancient Mesoamerican setting, suggesting a 19th century Mound Builder origin as a cleaner and simpler model, at least in this respect.

12. Kings

Dr. Clark suggests that Joseph's own context provides no basis for inferring kings among ancient American tribes. This is another instance where I find his claim mystifying. Kings among Native Americans were known from the historical memory of European settlers, who remembered "King Philip's War" and the "Four Mohawk Kings" to pick two examples almost at random. The Spalding Manuscript (again, just as an example of what was circulating at the time, not a literary source) also has Fabius immediately encounter a Native American king. It would be more surprising if the Book of Mormon did not mention Native American kings than if it did, and this is certainly not an argument for an ancient Mesoamerican production context.

13. Coriantumr's Stone

Here, I'm willing to grant a slight advantage to the proponents of historicity. The text in Omni 1 describing Coriantumr's stone fits very well with Mesoamerican royal stelas where the history of a particular king or dynasty was engraved iconographically on a large stone. Given other considerations, this argument is relatively minor, but this is a good match.

Nevertheless, one can find enough analogues to plausibly situate this in Joseph Smith's context. The Spalding Manuscript (above qualifications holding) describes engravings and art on stones among the Native peoples encountered by Fabius. Petroglyphs of North American Indians were also known (to the best of my knowledge) in Joseph Smith's day. A closer analogue is perhaps the stone box in which the record is sealed, which as described in #1, was a feature of Joseph's cultural background. This also fits with the overall literary themes of the Book of Mormon. Additionally, the idea of writing on stones is analogous to writing appearing on seerstones, which is directly described in King Mosiah's translation of this very stela and of course is present to Joseph Smith in his use of a seerstone. Writing appearing on the Liahona runs in the same vein. As a nonbeliever in BoM historicity, I find the link between Mosiah reading the translation in stones and Coriantumr engraving his record in stones to be the probable explanation for this textual feature. That the stone is "large" likely relates to Coriantumr and the Jaredites being "large."

14. King Benjamin's Labors

Clark states that a king "laboring with his own hands" as is recorded of Benjamin was a remarkable thing to claim. I'm not sure what the argument is, since Clark doesn't cite a Mesoamerican parallel, though perhaps he meant to. But the remarkable nature of this work is part of the point of King Benjamin's speech- that he was not a king who lorded his power over his subjects. Additionally, this is part of the larger literary theme in the Book of Mormon which presents relative economic egalitarianism as the ideal to which societies should confirm. This was a common theme in Restorationist movements of Joseph Smith's time, and one which the early Latter-day Saints attempted to put into practice with the "United Order", where all things were held in common. The inspiration for this is in Acts, where the apostolic Church is said to have "held all things in common." So this motif was directly available to Smith in his own world.

15. Riplakish's Throne and Olmec Thrones

Dr. Clark suggests that the Book of Mormon's description of Riplakish's "exceedingly beautiful throne" in Ether 10 presents a remarkable convergence with what is known of Olmec culture, which produced elaborate stone thrones. Remember that the key in determining Book of Mormon authenticity is to present features of the Book of Mormon text which would be unexpected to someone like Joseph Smith but are confirmed in ancient Mesoamerica. However, in this case, biblical parallelism is sufficient to explain the presence of the throne of Riplakish. As described in the methodological discussion above, the description of the building of the throne is concordant with what is known of the Olmec, but it is also perfectly concordant with what one would expect to see from a biblically-based narrative of a covenant civilization in America. As such, the throne is consistent with both models but alone points in neither direction.

Moreover, the parallel is not specific enough to alone indicate a connection with the Olmec people, and the story of Riplakish is linked in a number of respects with the story of King Noah, who is polygamous, gathers up precious metals, and erects a beautiful throne. King Noah comes long after the end of Olmec civilization, and while one might suggest that he represents a remnant of Jaredite culture, the presence of these features in his story as well decreases the specificity of a proposed link with Olmec culture. Along these same lines, were this derived from Olmec civilization, one might expect the "exceedingly beautiful throne" to be a staple of the Jaredite history rather than something mentioned only in connection with one king. This is, of course, intelligible in light of the fact that Ether is identified as an abridgment of a very extensive history, but it reduces the value of the throne as a specific parallel which would stand out as a sign of connection with Olmec peoples. All we are told of the throne is that it is "exceedingly beautiful", a description which could be applied to most royal thrones. Thus, the convergence with Olmec civilization is simply that Riplakish constructs a throne as the Olmec constructed thrones. This is consistent with Book of Mormon historicity but is far too vague to be indicative of it.

Can one find a more specific explanation for the presence of the throne in the narratives of Kings Riplakish and Noah in Joseph Smith's background? I believe we can, in 1 Kings. All commentators on the Book of Mormon, believing or not, agree that the KJV Bible was available to Joseph Smith, known prominently in his time, and formed an influence upon the text. To be clear, I do not think typological resemblances are arguments against historicity, a fallacious argument made by a number of critics of the Book of Mormon. What we seek is a model which is sufficient to explain the specific features of the Book of Mormon text. The specific links with the story of King Solomon are not incompatible with historicity, but they seriously weaken the usefulness of the "throne" as an argument for the setting of the Book of Mormon in ancient Mesoamerica. Both ancient and modern authorship are sufficient to explain the presence of this textual feature, and it cannot be used to advantage one model over the other. Joseph (or Solomon Spalding, or Sidney Rigdon, or whoever) could be creating a fictional narrative based on the biblical Solomon just as easily as Mormon and Moroni could be telling the stories of Kings Noah and Riplakish in such a way as to echo the biblical Solomon narrative.

Note the multiple connections with the story of King Solomon. Riplakish has many wives and concubines, as does Solomon:

(Ether 10:5) And it came to pass that Riplakish did not do that which was right in the sight of the Lord, for he did have many wives and concubines...

(1 Kings 11:3)  He had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart.

Riplakish taxes the people heavily and uses the funds to build great buildings, as Solomon:

(Ether 10:5) ...and did lay that upon men's shoulders which was grievous to be borne; yea, he did tax them with heavy taxes; and with the taxes he did build many spacious buildings.

(1 Kings 9:15-19)  And this is the account of the forced labor that King Solomon drafted to build the house of the Lord and his own house and the Millo and the wall of Jerusalem and Hazor and Megiddo and Gezer (Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up and captured Gezer and burned it with fire, and had killed the Canaanites who lived in the city, and had given it as dowry to his daughter, Solomon's wife; so Solomon rebuilt Gezer) and Lower Beth-horon and Baalath and Tamar in the wilderness, in the land of Judah, and all the store cities that Solomon had, and the cities for his chariots, and the cities for his horsemen, and whatever Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and in all the land of his dominion.

Riplakish is especially interested in precious metals, which are similarly abundant in the time of Solomon:

(Ether 10:7)  Wherefore he did obtain all his fine work, yea, even his fine gold he did cause to be refined in prison, and all manner of fine workmanship he did cause to be wrought in prison. And it came to pass that he did afflict the people with his whoredoms and abominations.

(1 Kings 10:21)  All King Solomon's drinking vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the House of the Forest of Lebanon were of pure gold. None were of silver; silver was not considered as anything in the days of Solomon.

And after a reign of about forty years (42 in the case of Riplakish, 40 in the case of Solomon) the heavy draft of forced labor causes a rebellion which tears apart the kingdom and instigates a civil war:

(Ether 10:8) And when he had reigned for the space of forty and two years the people did rise up in rebellion against him; and there began to be war again in the land, insomuch that Riplakish was killed, and his descendants were driven out of the land.

(1 Kings 12:1-4)  Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king. And as soon as Jeroboam the son of Nebat heard of it (for he was still in Egypt, where he had fled from King Solomon), then Jeroboam returned from Egypt. And they sent and called him, and Jeroboam and all the assembly of Israel came and said to Rehoboam, "Your father made our yoke heavy. Now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke on us, and we will serve you."

(1 Kings 15:6)  Now there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all the days of his life.

Given the multiple links between the story of Solomon and the story of Riplakish which exist already, it is reasonable to look for the source of the "exceedingly beautiful throne" in this context. And indeed, it is in the immediate context of all of these parallels that one finds the most detailed description of any human throne in the Bible:

(1 Kings 10:18-20)  The king also made a great ivory throne and overlaid it with the finest gold. The throne had six steps, and at the back of the throne was a calf's head, and on each side of the seat were armrests and two lions standing beside the armrests, while twelve lions stood there, one on each end of a step on the six steps. The like of it was never made in any kingdom.

As a sidenote, additional links with this story are found in Morianton, who is the eventual successor of Riplakish. Morianton is said to have gained power over all the land by easing the burdens of the Jaredite people (Ether 10:9) so that the people themselves anoint him as king (Ether 10:10). This matches quite closely the story of Jeroboam, who gains power over all the tribes except Judah after he promises to ease their burden of forced labor. Like Morianton, the people themselves gather and crown Jeroboam as king (1 Kings 12:20). Morianton, like Jeroboam, is said to be faithful in easing the burdens of the people but unfaithful to the Lord. This additional set of textual links reinforces the argument made above that the biblical story is sufficient to explain the distinctive features of the Book of Mormon text.

16. Trees Growing from Hearts

Next, Dr. Clark points to the metaphor of a tree growing from the heart in Alma 32, comparing it to an image from the Dresden Codex of a tree growing out of the heart of the Maize God. Perhaps a closer connection, though not mentioned here, is in Piedras Negras Stela 11, where a plant is seen growing from the heart of a sacrificial victim. Alma 32:28 describes a seed as a symbol of "the word" of God. The growth of this seed into a tree is likened to the growth of faith in the believer. Is there a reasonable explanation from Joseph Smith's context? Yes- as with much of the above, the KJV Bible provides a sufficient source for the language of the Book of Mormon.

In Matthew 13, Jesus tells the parable of the sower, where the sower sows seed upon different sorts of soil so that the seed grows with different strengths. Jesus, like Alma, identifies the seed as a symbol of the word of God. The soil symbolizes the heart of the hearer. In Matthew 13:19, Jesus describes the seed as having been "sown in the heart." In the same context (Matthew 13:31-32), Jesus likens the kingdom of God to a "mustard seed" which then "becometh a tree." The literary dependence of Alma 32 on Matthew 13 is also indicated by the phrase "good seed" in Alma 32:28 and Matthew 13:24 and the comparison of an unprepared recipient of the word with barren ground in Alma 32:39 and Matthew 13:5. Additionally, given the literary link between the mustard seed-tree relation in Matthew 13 and Alma 32, it is notable that in Matthew 17 the mustard seed is itself the symbol of faith, the growth of which is the principal subject of the parable of Alma 32.

In ancient Mesoamerica, by contrast, the tree growing out of the heart is an image of human sacrifice, which is patterned after the cosmic offering of the gods to give life to the world. In the Dresden Codex cited by Clark, the heart depicted belongs to the Maize God, whose sacrificial death gives birth to the renewal of the agricultural year, symbolized by a tree growing from his heart, the focal point of Mesoamerican sacrifice. In the Piedras Negras Stela 11 which I cited above as a potentially closer parallel, the tree grows from the heart for basically the same reason: human sacrifice, focused on the heart, is what sustains the world in existence and secures a good harvest, the primary concern of all agrarian societies.

Thus, the interpretive matrix wherein the parable of Alma 32 is intelligible is found in what is perhaps the most well-known parable of Jesus, which is present to Joseph Smith in KJV Matthew 13. Matthew 13 alone describes a seed representing "the word" sown in "the heart", unable to grow in barren soil, and growing into an enormous tree. An innertextual echo from Matthew 17 links the seed with faith, thus accounting for each of the symbols in Alma's parable. By contrast, the Mesoamerican images of a tree growing from man's heart, while superficially resembling Alma 32, is intelligible in a symbolic matrix unrelated to Alma 32 except in a marginal way- the proponent of the BoM as a Mesoamerican codex might link the human sacrifice with the heart of faith by reading the former through the sacrifice of Jesus in which one is called to believe. But these connections are extraneous to the actual text of Alma 32. While such a connection might provide new light on the text for a person who is convinced of the Book of Mormon's ancient pedigree on other grounds, the imagery of Alma 32 itself provides no argument for situating the Book of Mormon in an ancient Mesoamerican setting.

In light of the methodology described at the beginning, the features of Alma 32 are sufficiently explained from Joseph Smith's own background and do not require anything else. While they do not rule out a Mesoamerican background, the sufficiency of Joseph's background undermines this image as an argument for an ancient production context.

17. 400 Years as a Significant Block of Time

Dr. Clark notes that 400 years was a Mesoamerican "baktun", one of the most important blocks of time on the Mesoamerican calendar. He connects this to the repeated prophecy of Nephite destruction "four hundred years" from the coming of Christ. The difficulty is that there is no evidence (at least not here or that I've seen) for the use of twenty as a base number or the use of four hundred as a number which is intrinsically significant. What explains the 400 year prophecy? First, note that the 400 year prophecy is mentioned three times: Alma 45, Helaman 13, and Mormon 8. The first two are prophetic, the last records the year when the 400 year prophecy is fulfilled. But equally significant to the Book of Mormon is the 600 year prophecy, marking the time from Lehi's exodus to the coming of Christ. This is mentioned four times: 1 Nephi 10, 1 Nephi 19, 2 Nephi 25, and 3 Nephi 1. The first three are prophetic, the last records the year when the 600 year timeline is completed.

Even though the 600 year prophecy is mentioned once more (and we can say that it's about equally significant to the Book of Mormon's prophetic calendar), Dr. Clark doesn't mention it, because it is not a specially significant number in the Mesoamerican calendar, and even if it was, the prophecy originated in a Near Eastern context. What about the 400, then? Why 400? If Joseph was to make up a text, why not 300 years, or 500 years? The answer seems to me to be simple. The roughly 600 year timespan between Lehi and Christ is fixed by the date of the exile at around 600 BC and the coming of Christ at around 1 AD. So the 600 year prophecy is locked in, as it were. Then, a millennium is one of the most significant timespans in biblical prophecy, especially in a millennarian environment, in which Joseph moved. So if Lehi leaves Jerusalem on the eve of its destruction and the whole story is to take place over a millennium, 400 years is the consequence.

While I doubt that the following passage was a literary source for the 400 year prophecy in the Book of Mormon, it is useful to show how a 400 year prophecy exists biblically in a context uncorrelated with the Mesoamerican calendar:

(Genesis 15:13-14)  Then the Lord said to Abram, "Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.

This is cited in Acts 7:6 as well. If one wanted to suggest a literary parallel, the 400 year timespan in both Genesis 15 and the Book of Mormon is completed with a cataclysmic national judgment. But I'm not suggesting a literary parallel.

Since a 400 year timespan is only used in these three instances in the Book of Mormon, and since it can be neatly explained in terms of the necessary result of a millennium long history combined with the known historical date of the exile in relation to Christ's birth, this cannot be considered a remarkable connection between the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerican calendrical cycles.

---

For those who have read this, thanks a lot. I initially meant this to be a relatively brief comment only touching on one or two of the issues raised in the video. However, after I accidentally hit the back button and deleted the entire thing, I decided to turn it into an extended essay. Dr. Clark is a good scholar, certainly not a hack. He thus provides a good test case to see how well the best defenses of setting the Book of Mormon's production in ancient Mesoamerica can hold up. My intent has not been to pick holes here and there with Dr. Clark's arguments. Rather, it has been to demonstrate a series of systemic failures which explain what I take to be the failure of LDS defenses of the Book more generally. The flaws are fundamentally joined to each other in that they seek convergences between the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerica without really engaging with a detailed portrait of Joseph Smith's own time and place. My intent has been to show that the Book of Mormon is better explained in terms of the 19th century Mound Builder mythos than as an ancient Mesoamerican document. Far from being "crazy" or "unheard of", again and again, specific features and details of the Book of Mormon narrative are exactly what one would expect to somebody like Joseph Smith, who was immersed in that world. Were it a Mesoamerican scholar of 1830 producing the Book of Mormon, I would not expect the text that we have. But nobody thinks that a Mesoamerican scholar of 1830 produced the Book of Mormon. Instead of comparing the expectations of such a scholar to the text of the Book and modern archaeological knowledge, one should compare the expectations of someone like Joseph Smith to the text. While the narrative diverges from an academic understanding of ancient America as it was conceived in 1830, it strongly converges with a popular understanding of the North American Heartland in 1830. While the connections with Mesoamerican civilization are at times tenuous, where those connections do exist, they almost always simultaneously exist in Joseph Smith's background, and so cannot be used as an argument for or against either model. What differentiates the two models is those instances (which I would argue are frequent) where the text converges with the 19th century and diverges from ancient Mesoamerica. I have focused on the former in this piece, but I have also touched on the latter.

Thanks again for reading!

[everythingtimeless]

Historical Hour With Hilary: 1x13

If you’re still catching up from our hiatus, the old installments are here. Meanwhile, Wyatt and Rufus are heading to Hawkins, Indiana Toledo, Ohio in May 1983, era of terrible fashion, big hair, and the Cold War, in an attempt to save Jessica.

The Midwest in 1983 sounds like the opening to your favorite retro-80s-horror show on Netflix, but things were quite a bit stranger than you might think, even without the presence of the Demogorgon (or was it named Ronald Reagan? Stay tuned to find out!) Aside from the seriously questionable fashion, achievements this year included the first cell phone call being placed on October 13, 1983, from Soldier Field in Chicago, with Alexander Graham Bell’s great-grandson picking up in Germany. (AT&T had figured the technology would never get more than a million subscribers, and the researchers spent time wondering if people would actually want to walk down the street on the phone. It was clearly a different time.) A Star Wars movie with the name “Jedi” in the title was doing bank at the box office. Michael Jackson’s legendary Thriller video dropped in December ‘83. When most of us think about the eighties, that’s usually the image that comes to mind: cheesy pop culture, hair metal, spunky kids bicycling around to battle supreme evil, etc. But there was a dark side that should not be overlooked in the wave of childhood nostalgia, has direct relevance to today’s politics, and resulted in a lot more real-world evil than the Upside Down.

1983 was at the height of the Cold War, and it was also the moment that came closest to ending the world than any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis -- if not even closer. On September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov, a 44-year-old lieutenant colonel in the Red Army, was on observation duty in Moscow, when just after midnight, the warning system lit up with news that nuclear missiles were inbound from the United States. Petrov had less than five minutes to decide if the alert was real and signal the USSR’s missiles to be launched in retaliation. As he later said, “I had a funny feeling in my gut,” and decided -- against Soviet military protocol -- that the warning systems had malfunctioned and to report it as a false alarm, which it was. To say the least, if Petrov had made the opposite decision, most or all of us would not be here today. As noted, this was at the absolute height of U.S.-Soviet tensions, nuclear holocaust was (yet again) barely averted, and yet... here we are today with the American and Russian presidents bragging about their nukes?

Great.

Why were tensions so high, you ask? Well, let’s get to the main body of this entry, otherwise known as “We Burn Down Ronald Reagan and Have a Nice Pee on the Ashes.” Because seriously, you guys. Ronnie Raygun was so terrible. Everything you dislike about the modern American right wing and/or overall political system? All the GOP’s core philosophies and the way in which the 1980s entrenched themselves as the model for the next thirty years? Well, Reagan’s your man. He has been relentlessly mythologized and honored since leaving office -- his status is close to godlike among Republicans, and he’s received plenty of deference and kowtowing from Democrats as well. His 1984 re-election victory was the most overwhelming of all time. In 2005, he beat out Lincoln and MLK Jr. for “Greatest American,” and he’s ranked highly on most lists of presidents. The cultural reverence around him is pervasive and persistent, usually supported by the idea that Reagan "won” the Cold War. (Spoiler alert: He didn’t.) He also had done everything possible to increase it beforehand, not just with his “Evil Empire” rhetoric against the Soviets, but with his constant funding of any group, anywhere in the world, that could call itself anti-communist. Spoiler alert the second: These... were not good people.

The Iran-Contra affair, in which the Reagan administration illegally sold weapons to Iranian terrorists in order to fund right-wing death squads in Central America, is just one thing you should know about the folksy everyman your grandparents (and parents) probably loved, who built his political career on a simple diet of American exceptionalism, inducing people to regard government as the enemy, and the astronomic rise of the religious right as a political force in the early 1980s. This was accurate, insofar as Reagan’s government often was the enemy. “Reagonomics,” or “trickle-down economics” (i.e. give all the money to the rich and it will “trickle down” to the lower classes) wrecked the American middle class and gave big handouts and tax breaks to the rich long before the 2017 GOP and their heinous tax bill came along. Reagan complained about government spending, and then in a few short years, managed to triple the deficit and turn America from the largest international creditor to the largest international debtor:

The fiscal shift in the Reagan years was staggering. In January 1981, when Reagan declared the federal budget to be "out of control," the deficit had reached almost $74 billion, the federal debt $930 billion. Within two years, the deficit was $208 billion. The debt by 1988 totaled $2.6 trillion. In those eight years, the United States moved from being the world's largest international creditor to the largest debtor nation.

Reagan was also responsible for the acceleration of the “War on Drugs,” the policies that massively and disproportionately convicted and incarcerated an entire generation of African-Americans, and aside from his support of constant CIA coups in Central America, promoted the genocide of Mayan Indians. His Executive Order 12333 was what set up the basis for the mass surveillance and information gathering on American citizens (which George W. Bush later amended and re-issued). He was dubbed the “Teflon President,” not as a compliment, because he would basically do whatever illegal shit he wanted and nothing would stick. As this op-ed notes, “Don’t add Reagan’s face to Mount Rushmore.” Because really, he was terrible.

Possibly nowhere is there more blood on Reagan’s hands, however, than in his handling of the AIDS crisis. The disease first appeared around 1980, and for the entirety of his presidency, Reagan never once addressed it publicly. The Center for Disease Control constantly had funding requests turned down, and got more money to fight Legionnaire’s disease (which killed less than 50 people a year) than to fight AIDS, which at its height was infecting 20,000 people a year and was essentially an instant death sentence. As exemplified by the heartbreaking story of Ruth Coker Burks, the “cemetery angel,” it is impossible to overstate the amount of fear and loathing that existed in the American mind around the very idea, and how those diagnosed were often immediately abandoned by their friends and family. Why? Well, the original name for AIDS was GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency) and since it predominantly affected the gay community at first, it was viewed as a disease come to scour those good-for-nothing homosexuals out of existence. And as we have noted, Reagan enjoyed a huge amount of support from white Christian evangelicals, who had mobilized for the first time as a united political force. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had driven them away from the Democratic Party, but they had not joined the Republicans instead. Not until when, in 1975, the federal government tried to force Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist Christian college in South Carolina, to racially integrate. This moment helped serve as the clarion call for evangelicals to get involved in politics, and vote en masse for Reagan (whose administration argued on Bob Jones’ side at the eventual Supreme Court case in 1983. You can also read more about partisan change and political behavior in evangelicals from 1960-2004. But yep. Racism!)

1983 was the year that HIV, the root cause of AIDS, was identified for the first time, and by the end of Reagan’s presidency, it had killed over 100,000 people. Reagan, however, did and said absolutely nothing about it, in order to keep his religious base of support happy. (This seems like the opportune moment to mention that the human form of the AIDS virus may have been mutated in the late 19th century, in the brutal, filthy colonial regimes in Equatorial Africa, especially those of Worst Person Leopold II of Belgium. Worth restating: Colonialism had a large role in the origin of AIDS as a human disease. It’s all right, you can take all the shots. I’m already doing them.)

So yes. Ronald Reagan was the reason for the creation of the Republican Party’s entire modern platform, and is what made the Orange Führer possible. America is still damaged and disadvantaged to this day by policies that his administration enacted, and his GOP successors reinforced. However, ask just about any politician of either party, and they’ll have nothing but praise for the Gipper.

Say, Wyatt and Rufus, you guys have any more drinks from that bar...?

Next time: Paris in 1927 with Ernest Hemingway, as well as Chicago 1931 with Al Capone, and D.C. 1954 with Joe McCarthy. Cheery!

[lovemychinchilla]

Can Chinchillas Eat Walnuts?

Chinchillas enjoy snacks, especially fatty or sugary snacks. So what about nuts like walnuts? Do chinchillas like them, and are they nutritionally suitable?

Can chinchillas eat walnuts? They can, as they aren't poisonous and won't make your chinchilla choke. They are also unlikely to cause bloating. However, they are not nutritionally suitable: they have far too much fat, and not enough fiber. As such, we don't recommend them. You should feed your chinchilla suitable treats like rose hips, herbs or sweet hay instead.

The guide below looks at the precise nutritional value of walnuts to explain why they aren't suitable. If you're planning on feeding them anyway, we've also explained the likely health effects they'll have (gaining weight) plus portion recommendations.

Can Chinchillas Eat Walnuts?

Chinchillas can safely eat walnuts without choking or being poisoned. So long as you keep portions strictly controlled, they won't even make your pet gain weight. However, since there are snacks that aren't so liable to cause health issues like overweight or bloating, we recommend these instead—treats like shredded wheat or rose hips.

Do Chinchillas Like Walnuts?

Chinchillas enjoy eating anything new and different. Whether that's something like a walnut, fruit, a vegetable or a different kind of hay your chinchilla will gobble it down. That's because in the wild, they eat a variety of plants, not just one. This gives them the broadest number of vitamins and minerals available in their habitat.

Beyond that, most animals have an in-built instinct to eat highly fatty or sugary foods. That's because these foods tend to be dense in calories, and dense foods like this are difficult to find in the wild. As such, the animal—be it a chinchilla, a dog or a person—wants to eat as much as it can of the food in one sitting. The food tastes good so that the animal is encouraged to go and find more and eat more to increase its chances of survival.

Walnuts are one of these foods. They're very, very high in fat, meaning they're high in calories too. So, your chinchilla will want to eat as many walnuts as you'll give it! But that doesn't mean they're a suitable snack, in the same way that exceptionally fatty foods aren't a good snack choice for us.

Why Can't Chinchillas Eat Walnuts?

We don't recommend feeding your chinchilla walnuts because they'll likely gradually make your chinchilla gain weight.

Nutrients in Walnuts

To understand why walnuts are suitable or unsuitable, we have to look at their nutritional values. The table below uses data from NutritionValue.org, and relates specifically to 'English walnuts', another name for the most common kind of walnut.

NutrientsAmount per 100gRequirementsCarbohydrate14g35gSugar2.6g5gFat65g2-4gProtein15g16-21gFiber6.7g30gWater4.07g10-15gCalories654200

It should be immediately obvious from these data why walnuts aren't suitable. The rest of this guide breaks these issues down and addresses them one by one.

Carbohydrates, Protein, Fat & Water in Walnuts

Contrary to what many believe, no nutrient should be entirely cut from the diet to promote optimal health. Carbohydrates, proteins and fats each provide energy to the body and your chinchilla needs some of each. Walnuts, however, have too much of some and not enough of others.

Carbohydrates are an essential source of energy. They are more easily converted into energy for cells than protein and fat. Both simple and complex carbohydrates are broken down in the digestive process through chewing, dilution in acid and through the use of enzymes. This is done until all the carbohydrates/sugars have been broken into their constituent parts, which are glucose, fructose and/or galactose. These enter the bloodstream and are taken directly to the cells of the body to power them in their functions, be they parts of organs or muscles. Walnuts don't have enough carbohydrates for chinchillas.

Proteins are essential for their amino acid content. Amino acids are the building blocks of protein, and have all sorts of uses in the body: restoring and repairing tissue, building new tissue, and creating new proteins. In fairness to walnuts, they contain roughly the amount that chinchillas need, so this is a mark in their favor.

It's fat, however, that walnuts have far too much of. Fat is broken down in the gut into products like glycerol, which can be transmuted into sugar. Unfortunately, walnuts contain so much fat that they will very quickly make your chinchilla overweight.

Fiber in Walnuts

Fiber is a kind of carbohydrate, a complex carbohydrate, but it's perhaps the nutrient you have to pay closest attention to in your chinchilla's diet. That's because your chinchilla has evolved to have a very high-fiber diet, and the way it digests things is tailored to this adaptation. And walnuts, even though they might have lots of fiber when considered as part of a person's diet, don't have enough for chinchillas.

To understand why, you have to understand how a chinchilla's gut works. Chinchillas chew and swallow food like we do: grinding it up with their molars and mixing it with saliva. It's broken up further in the stomach, becoming a kind of wet slurry. At this point, some sugars have been absorbed, but the core nutritional content of the food has yet to be processed. It's when the food enters the small intestine, the next stage, that most nutrients are absorbed.

However, chinchillas eat highly fibrous foods, and no stage up to this point has managed to break these complex carbohydrates down into simple sugars. As such, much of the nutritional content and energy in the food passes through the small intestine without being taken in. It's when the food mixture reaches the cecum, a pouch at the beginning of the large intestine/colon, that these fibers are finally processed by bacteria. Unfortunately, since the large colon is better at absorbing nutrients than sugars, these pass through and out without being used.

As such, the chinchilla eats the poop it produces at this point—a special kind of poop called a cecotrope. This then passes through the chinchilla's digestive system again, with almost all of the food's nutrients finally being absorbed.

If a chinchilla eats food that doesn't contain enough fiber, this process is thrown out of sync. The stool it produces isn't as solid, and its gut bacteria/enzymes can't switch from one moment processing fiber to the next processing lots of fat. Some constituent parts of the food may therefore ferment and cause gas/bloating.

Calories in Walnuts

Another way in which walnuts are unsuitable is their calorifi content. Walnuts contain 654 calories per 100g, which is much more than hay contains. The reason they're so calorific is that they primarily consist of fats, which contain more calories per gram than carbohydrates.

Compounding the issue, walnuts are much denser than hay. It's far easier and takes less time for your chinchilla to eat 100g of walnuts than 100g of hay. This makes it even more likely that they would make your chinchilla gain weight.

It is possible to avoid the worst of this problem by only feeding small portions of walnut. However, since there are snack foods that don't cause this or other problems, there's no justification for feeding walnut instead.

Vitamins & Minerals in Walnuts

The vitamin and mineral content of nuts, walnuts included, is one of the main reasons people eat them. Below is another table, again with data from NutritionValue.org, which lists the micronutrients that walnuts contain significant amounts of:

Vitamin/MineralAmount per 100gVitamin B10.34mgVitamin B20.15mgVitamin B31.125mgVitamin B50.57mgVitamin B60.537mgCalcium98mgCopper1.586mgIron2.91mgMagnesium158mgManganese3.414mgPhosphorus346mgPotassium441mgSelenium4.9mcgZinc3.09mg

This may seem like an endorsement of walnuts and other nuts, but it's not. That's because your chinchilla should be getting the nutrients it needs from its hay, not from snacks or supplements. Chinchillas can thrive their entire lives on nothing but hay and pellets.

How Many Walnuts Can Chinchillas Eat?

We would recommend against feeding your chinchilla any walnuts due to their dense calorific content. However, walnuts aren't as bad for your pet as sugary, watery fruits and vegetables which cause bloating in even small amounts. As such, feeding small amounts of walnut won't be a problem.

Keep portion sizes firmly controlled, and only offer a sliver of walnut the size of your pinky fingernail at a time. This shouldn't be enough to have a significant effect either on your chinchilla's digestion or its weight.

How Often Can Chinchillas Eat Walnuts?

The more frequently you feed your chinchilla walnuts, the more likely it is to gain weight. You absolutely must think of them as a very occasional treat rather than something you feed regularly as a core part of your pet's diet.

As such, feeding treats like walnut once per week is the absolute limit. This may not seem like a lot, but your chinchilla doesn't need snacks to thrive or survive. If you want to feed your pet more frequent treats, pick something less calorific like shredded wheat, rose hips or herbs.

Should Chinchillas Eat Walnuts?

We don't recommend walnuts, although they won't make your pet sick like many other snack choices. As such, they are an option available to you, so long as you understand the effect that they have.

If you do plan on feeding your chinchilla walnuts, we recommend regularly weighing your pet. This is something that's beneficial to do anyway, whether you're concerned about the snacks you feed it or not. Do so once a week and keep a log of its weight, so you can spot any sudden drops in weight or long-term trends. If your chinchilla is gaining weight because you're feeding it walnuts, we recommend cutting them from its diet until it returns to a normal weight.

Below, you can find our chinchilla quiz, new posts for further reading, and a signup for our Chinchilla Newsletter!

#chinchillas #chinchillanutrition