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pepsi-writes · 4 years ago

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among us AU

Japan took one step in Medbay, careful not to make any noise. Ironically, it echoed throughout the entire room. "White," he whispered. "I'm here. You can come out now." I'm saying this to reassure the other, and definitely not to make me feel better, he reassured himself. He couldn't see much with the beds blocking the way, but he could see a bit of red. He peered closer. And it was blood, because of course it was. It led to a shallow, dark corner in the back of the room, where some thing covered with blood lay. "White? スイス?" He stepped closer to that thing.

And then he saw-

------

"I can't find the ejection lever in this dark." Russia complained. He was never one to whine, but it was especially getting on his nerves that America wouldn't turn on the lights.

"Look for the lever for goodness sake, I want to get this over with." America threatened. Of course he thought that now was the time to practice his 'energy conservative' plan for the lights. "Что мне искать в этом месте, где нет ничего, кроме отчаяния?" He muttered, rolling his eyes.

"Light on," the other rather unenthusiastically said. The lights responded by slowly crackling on, save for a stubborn bulb that continued to flicker on and off. America groaned, muttering something about replacing lights, then sprinted to the cafe.

He pulled down the lever with a hard clunk. The garbage chute slowly opened its outside barrier, and the remains slowly floated away among the pieces of leftovers and the scraps of garbage. As soon as it shut, Russia rushed out to the cafe, sprinting around the hallways to meet the crew. He had exactly twenty-seven seconds to make it to the cafe, and he had to make it count. He pressed the door to the cafe, and there he saw the crew, somberly seating themselves around the cafeteria table. He followed suit, placing himself between Japan and Belgium: code name Gray.

Japan trembled, desperately trying to wipe away tears, and failing to do so. Russia had heard him rambling along about how white was the color of death. Poor kid must be afraid of getting ejected; maybe it was because he was found next to her rotting corpse. Across him, Germany: code name Lime was drumming his finger on the table, desperately trying to figure out how to console himself without looking suspicious, while a distressed Spain: code name Red was also trying to get him to stop making noise.

Denmark: code name Maroon's face was blank as a sheet of paper, but her eyes were beginning to fill up with water-tears. They were tears, Russia said to himself. Denmark was crying-of course she was. Who wouldn't cry at a time like this?

She shut her visor, squeezing her eyes shut behind the plastic barrier. "I-I-I can't look," she sputtered through tears. Of course: the happiest of the crew finally knew what true grief was. Such is life. France: code name Pink patted her back in sympathy, whispering some happy stuff that he didn't care to listen to. The rest of the crew's faces were either blank stone, or indecipherable.

Russia couldn't understand why everybody was so sad, he really couldn't. Weren't they angry? Was it because he was heartless? Was it because he was in denial? Was it because he had no tears left-

The first scrap of garbage accidentally threw itself at the window, leaving an audible bang! He whipped around at the noise. Canada barely muttered to himself, "It's- it's happening." (Russia also barely muttered to himself "No shit, Sherlock.") Soon, the cluster of yesterday's leftovers followed it, some pieces barely clinging on to the rest of the pile. He held his breath. From examining the trash very closely, he knew what was next. And he was, for some reason, thrilled at the thought of knowing exactly what was to come.

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

gore starts here

A bloody, stiff hand peeked out from the corner of the window, while some dismembered fingers followed suit. Of course, the ejection chamber has done a horrible job of butchering the rest of her. Weirdly, he wasn't quite nauseated by the hideous scene that was unfolding.

The body - was it a body when there was only half of it left? - followed the hand, interrupting his train of thought. It was grotesque, several deep cuts lining all over the arms and chest. Blood leaked out from the aforementioned cuts, but clear crystals replaced those immediately. Some organ had melted to a ripped up piece of white coat and dragged itself across the window, leaving a slick trail of red. Severed pieces of skin followed, covered in blood and shards of glass where it had mixed with the garbage.

Russia couldn't even make out the difference between the skin and the blood, just pure, raw flesh. A mass of greyish-pinkish matter and shards of bone trailed behind that, probably what was left of her head.

This, this butchered up piece of gore, was White. He couldn't imagine what kind of pain she must have been in if she were alive. A mixture of feelings began to stir up inside of him, but he pushed them down, trying to decipher them. A lot of nostalgia, a bit of pity, and obviously a pinch of irkiness, and what was that, joy? No, he must be queasy from food poisoning. Orange was a good friend, but not a good cook.

Russia pursed his lips in an attempt to appear disgusted right in front of the others. This was a victim of a murder, he thought, she was your friend! She was killed, her body is cut in half. That must hurt how'd she actually die or did she just bleed out wait no stop thinking about that why are you happy why does this make you happy stop thinking about that this is bad what would everybody think stop thinking about that ejecting me would be their first option i don't want to die too soon why are you starting to smile what are you doing stop thinking about that-

He tried to get any sort of grief out of him, but all he did was rejoice at the thought. Why couldn't he feel anything but happiness? Was he some kind of sick monster that reveled in the death and destruction of others? What kind of monster was he that he wouldn't notice that someone was crying? The last of the garbage disappeared, dragging his thoughts away with it.

White was gone. Forever. And it was relieving to him, like a weight had just been lifted off his chest.

"L-let's just get to the trial." America spoke, about as smooth as jagged glass. He patted Russia on the back half-heartedly. "Ruski, I know you must feel really sad, but we have to find out who killed her." Weird that he was saying that, because Russia was smiling.

------

"And that concludes the events of this case," Russia: code name Cyan said. France: code name Pink exhaled, showing off a weak smirk to cover her solemn expression. "So," she declared. "Japan really did it."

"Damn it!" America: code name Green exclaimed, "I had my bets set on Russia, but now.." Russia sent a small glare at him, but their silly little affairs were meaningless compared to this. France continued, nonchalant about America's response. "This is something I absolutely don't want to accept, but since all the evidence has been brought to light, it is the truth."

"The Japan we've come to know..." Brazil: code name Fortegreen uttered, suddenly as earnest as even Black, "Is a complete and utter disguise."

"He did murder Zwitserland," Netherlands: code name Black said, "everything he said was to manipulate us, to deceive us. He wanted to hurt us for no good reason, and that's the truth I choose to believe."

"If that was a lie as well, I'd have nothing to believe in," Sweden: code name Tan remarked. He glared at the cobalt blue table as if it itself committed the crime. Japan: code name Yellow shook his head. "You guys..." he stopped, looking up to glance at each member's faces. "I don't know anymore. You guys must be lying. Tell me this is just some elaborate prank. Tell me she's still alive! Tell me that you're not blaming me!"

Canada: code name Purple shifted away from Yellow, trembling like he didn't want to believe this. "All evidence points otherwise," he squeaked. "But I'm still voting to skip, if that makes you feel any better." A faint smile played across Japan's lips. He mouthed a 'thank you' at Canada, who nodded back. "Canada!" UK: code name Blue chastised. "You're seriously not going to vote for a murderer?" Canada nodded yet again, as if it was the only thing he knew how to do. "Yeah, I want to make Japan feel at least a little bit happy." Japan already knew he was going to be ejected anyway. He should just accept it and get it over with already. It's not like anybody was going to magically save him with a contradicting piece of evidence. They saw him in front of White, they presented the evidence, they gave him a chance to speak. That's it. It was a fair trial. He couldn't call on ISS, or MIRA, or even JEM. They would all see him as some cold-hearted murderer that did nothing but lie and decieve. Because that's what he was, at least in the crew's eyes. Now he was beginning to believe it too.

------

"The happiest part of my life was the end of it," Sweden: code name Tan lamented in a sultry tone.

Japan cocked his head. "Would you mind describing that?"

He gave a soft smile. "No."

"Sweden."

He groaned obnoxiously, then chuckled at Japan's insulted expression. Japan was obviously not used to being treated so casually; he probably thought it was some form of disrespect. "All right, but that's just because Russia is here. Oh, just thinking about it gives me butterflies in my petite stomach!"

Sweden inhaled deeply, marking the start of a long monologue. Netherlands covered his ears with his ghost hands right away. "I'm out. I'll see you all tomorrow. I'm not hearing whatever comes out of that mouth. I suggest you come with me, Denmark," he said as he floated out of the room. To catch up to him, Denmark scrambled out of her seat and phased through the wall.

"So, Russia didn't vote me out because he clearly likes me. Anyway, after I was outed, Rus romantically-"

Russia flushed, despite the fact that the story was, of course, just another one of Sweden's made for his own amusement. "Hey!"

"-carried me all the way to the ejection chamber, bridal style. He then leaned in close to my fragile little ears and whispered," Sweden imitated Russia by raising his voice two octaves higher, which sounded exactly like him, while he was basically a tomato at this point. " 'I'm so sorry they had to hurt you like this. I wanted to cradle you in my arms and bask in your warmth, and~"

"I've found someone!" Switzerland: code name White exclaimed, with her head poking through the wall and a big garbage bag in her hand. (He secretly appreciated her for interrupting Sweden because he knew Japan wouldn't be ready for what he was about to say.)

Sweden muttered a curse to himself. "I wanted to tell Japan about my love story! Can it wait- wait. You found someone? Is it a ghost? Do you know who it is?"

"Well, it's not one of us right now because they're in bits, but I'm sure they'll wake up soon, and I saw a bit of green," she rambled as she opened the bag and dumped its contents on the bed. "but I guess it was lime, so it might be America, Italy, or Germany. I believe that if I study this closely enough, I would be able to figure out who this is."

She crossed her arms and leaned in close to Sweden, whisper-yelling at him. "Where are Denmark and Netherlands anyway? I want them to see this," she said, not looking away from the mass of guts and blood.

"They both left because I was too awesome." he quipped.

"Hol' up," Russia interrupted. He raised his hands in contemplation for a while, really. "Are you asking me this blood and stuff belongs to a crew member?"

"Well, I did see a red finger and some chicken noodle soup somewhere in there," Switzerland replied, gesturing to the bed, "so my guess is that they were chopped up and thrown into soup. It took two entire days for me to form and I was only chopped in half, so it might take at least a week for this one to form."

"This murder seems a bit extra," Russia pondered. "Maybe even too extra. Who would do that to someone and not get away with it?"

"Now all we have to do is wait," Japan said, completely ignoring Russia's insecurities.

"Yeah, now we sit here and wait for this one to form."

#countryhumans #countryhuman

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lilybaud · 5 years ago

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So I'm curious what oppression do asexual people face? I do understand there are some minor discrimination similar to homosexuality like being told it's a phase, but there have 0 laws against i, very few if any deaths because of it, few forced marriages. Maybe there have been cases of corrective rape?

sorry i took a few days to answer this -- i wanted time to give you a thoughtful response! this is kinda a version of an ask i answered last month, but i hope it helps answer your question!

here are some good posts that explain better than me:

https://livebloggingmydescentintomadness.tumblr.com/post/148453657895/the-aphobia-masterpost (This one goes into ace history, as well as many other topics – big recommend)

https://newt–x.tumblr.com/post/183606679191/a-spec-people-dont-experience-oppression (includes more comments/edits on the above)

So how are aces oppressed?

Let’s start with medical discrimmination: asexuality is classified as a mental disorder that you can get diagnosed with. Although the DSM-5 says that asexuality is a valid identity, it still lists hypoactive sexual disorder as – well, a disorder. This is basically defined as when someone is disinterested in sexual activity, and this disinterest causes them distress. This is the same boat that homosexuality was in until a few decades ago – and obviously, aphobia (and homophobia) are very likely to make people feel “distressed” about their sexual identity (I know that I do!) Imagine going to a psychiatrist and having them tell you that your orientation is a disorder that needs to be fixed: not great.

Even when ace people are not being explicitly diagnosed with Being an Asexual Disease, asexuals can often get into hostile medical situations, particularly in mental health settings. I have had several appointments with psychiatrists, counselors, and the like that were meant to be about unrelated topics, but when it came out that I was ace, the conversation turned to why this was a sign of isolation/pathology/other fuckedupedness. Other aces might be able to better speak about their experiences in this area, as I often avoid bringing up the topic in medical settings for this reason.

the discrimmination you’re talking about

Asexual people, particularly (but not only) female-identifying aces, have also long (long!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) been targets of corrective rape and sexual assault. Here’s a good (altho far from exhaustive) HuffPost article on the subject. Corrective rape is a huge issue. This is a very prevalent fear for a lot of ace people, who also face other types of violence. A really horrible and tragic example is the murder of ace teen Bianca Devins last year by a man that she refused to sleep with (I won’t post links because they’re pretty upsetting) -- a death that aphobes online are still making terrifying comments about.

So yes! Ace ppl do actually face violence and death!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here’s a post that talks about why it’s hard to be an ace PoC (like me!)

Tl;dr, many people don’t know what asexuality is – it’s sometimes called an “invisible identity.” But that doesn’t mean ace people aren’t discrimminated against as aces.

Exclusion from the LGBTQIA+ community

As I’m sure you know, many fellow people in the queer community hate ace people. There’s a perception that ace people are being special snowflakes, that we are basically straight, that we are not oppressed enough to be part of the community, that we diminish the importance of other sexual orientations, and on and on. This is really hard for ace people, because we seek queer spaces, spaces that are supposed to be safe for marginalized identities, are often those that are most explicitly anti-ace.

In addition, some in the queer community used to identify as ace because they had internalized homophobia or other things, and view asexuality as a cover for those feelings based on their own experiences.

From queer tumblr bloggers I follow to comments by queer friends and acquaintances, I’ve personally had spaces that I thought were safe revealed to be aphobic. That’s a pretty upsetting experience – I don’t talk about being ace very often, but it’s devastating to know that people you encounter in your everyday life spend so much time thinking about how much they hate people like you.

All this leads to many ace people being scared and unhappy. In a UK government survey of LGBTQIA+ individuals, asexuals were the group least likely to be “open” about their identity (at 89% reporting that they were not open). Cis aces were the least comfortable being queer in the UK, and had the lowest life satisfaction scores, out of all cis responders (the survey did not break down the responses of trans responders into allo/ace).

(Side note – many ace people emphasize other parts of their identities in order to participate in queer spaces. For example, if pressed in a pride group or seminar or friendly gathering or etc., I might just say I’m bi. This sucks too! All parts of your identity are legitimate and that should go without saying?)

Personally, there are few environments where I am comfortable with people knowing that I am ace. I don’t wear obvious pride gear, and I don’t call myself ace when I’m in LGBT+ groups. I’ve never come out to a romantic or sexual partner as ace. My sexual experiences have been highly traumatizing in part because of my identity. Only a few of my closest friends know that I’m ace. The negative perceptions of ace people, particularly those in the queer community, are main causes of this.

Why do we need to be oppressed to be let in?

One of exclusionists’ favorite sticking points is that aces aren’t oppressed enough to be part of the queer community. We do face discrimination in major ways – see above. But this raises a question: why do we have to be oppressed to be welcomed into LGBTQIA+ spaces? What qualifies as oppression? Is societal oppression “enough,” or does every ace person have to be personally subjected to a hate crime? I’m not sure if this line of thought comes from a genuine belief that society has to personally take a shit in your bed every day for you to even think about feeling comfortable in queer spaces, or if it is just cover for an instinctive dislike of ace people. Regardless, it’s something to think about. To quote the first masterpost linked at top:

“Nobody is trying to say that asexuals have it “as bad” or worse than gay or trans people, but we don’t HAVE to “have it worse” to be included and for our experiences to have merit without being compared to anyone else’s. Let me say that again: our experiences have merit without being compared to anyone else’s. “

Anyway thanks for your question! I don’t know if this helps or changes your mind on the topic. Please reach out if you have any other questions about my experiences as an ace person!

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anomiezine-blog · 5 years ago

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The Cult of the Proletariat

“Because the horror of Communism, Stalinism, is not that bad people do bad things — they always do. It’s that good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great.”

-Slavoj Zizek

‘But as in all cults, what’s central to the Communist Party is the belief system and the elimination of nuance. From there you’re very slowly led down the road to fanaticism and mass murder.’

– Alexei Sayle

I have found a way to tell apart Leninists (otherwise known as Communists or Bolsheviks in the common parlance) from what you might call the reasonable left. It is not the outfits, stained by take-away and Tippex, or their odour, because deodorant is a bourgeois affectation. Instead it is their answer to one rather simple question: ‘Do you trust people to make their own decisions?” I have never met a Leninist that didn’t say No. An addendum to that might be the question: “If you could have your revolution but it would make people poorer and less free, at least in the short term, would you still want it?” Once again I have never met one that didn’t answer in the affirmative. It is the same toxic combination of misanthrope and fanaticism that you can now see in Brexiteers in Britain, and amongst Fascists the world over. It is the belief that you and your tribe alone have received the revealed truth from on-high, and however you see fit to make that a reality is acceptable. It is the language of a cult.

It’s a word that is thrown around a lot and there are even multiple competing definitions, but it is essential to understand what a cult is if we are to understand the toxicity at the heart of Leninist parties of the past and present. What are the obvious signs of a cult? In my opinion, there are 10 unequivocal signs:

1. A small group of people united by a Utopian ideology (or religion) who stand outside normal society.

2. A dominant leader/s that hold complete power over the lives of its members.

3. An all-or-nothing worldview. “Either the Revolution comes or the world will end.”

4. A cadre or administrative class that directs the majority of members.

5. Gaslighting. The changing of facts and reality to suit the party.

6. Mental, physical or sexual abuses (see the SWP in the UK)

7. The policing of language, opinions and the effective creation of secular blasphemy.

8. The welding of the social and the political. The party becomes your only community, sometimes to the detriment to your family and older friends.

9. Those that leave the party become apostates and are to be shunned and demonised.

10. A uniform. In this case conformity of clothing is encouraged through bullying and mocking rather than an order from above.

It is hard to explain to those that have not experienced life in a cult why anyone would willingly join such a toxic entity. Left wing cults, like all cults, don’t look toxic from the outside. In fact, when you first join you are often showered with not only attention, but with a sense of purpose. You feel that finally you are with people that see the problems of the world as you do and are motivated by high ideals of humanism and solidarity. This is described by some psychologists as the lovebombing stage. It is a very powerful indoctrinating tool and often keeps individuals attached to the party long after the toxic nature of the party has become apparent.

In this I can at least speak from personal experience. I was a member of a Trotskyist party, that shall go unnamed, in my youth and I got a firsthand experience of cult tendencies within the left. All the cliches were there; the lovebombing; the close social circle; shadowy General Secretary; the strict hierarchy; the self-censorship of speech; the pandering to party leaders; the Gaslighting; the blasphemy; and the apostates. I have done a large amount of study of what are known as cluster B personality disorders (anti-social, narcissistic and Borderline) since, to try and understand what had happened to me, and I can attest to the presence of these toxic behaviours within all levels of the party structure. I am not the first to notice the cult tendencies within Leninist parties, in fact a cursory google search will present you with ample evidence of how commented upon this is. It really is one of the worst kept secrets on the left. Yet, these parties still persist and in the case of Ireland are the only real alternative to the parties of the Landlord class. As an Anarchist with a sense of history and responsibility this is exceedingly worrying.

This is not to suggest that Anarchist groups can’t become cult like. I spent time in a certain British anarchist group, that again shall not be named. In many ways it functioned along similar lines to the Leninist party I had formerly been part of . While there was a rotating leadership role, the same small group of people swapped the officer positions, and there was the same narrow mindedness to new ideas. Thankfully there is a great deal more individualism amongst Anarchists and this small toxic group were eventually expelled from the organisation. To some extent cult behaviour is a human failing. The legitimate and noble desire to make the world a better place can easily be perverted by disordered people for their own pleasures. You can see this in countless churches, sects, and organisations of every hue. In the case of political groupings, at least, anarchism has an answer and it is in our very DNA. A distrust of authority. Leninists parties can never be reformed from within given their very inspiration was taken from the mind of an authoritarian cult leader, Vladimir Lenin.

If you have the time or inclination to read about the father of 20th century Communism, you will learn many things, none particularly endearing, whether it be his: accepting German Imperial help in 1917; crushing the Soviets, snuffing out workers’ democracy; the invasion of Poland in 1920; the founding of the vile gulags; the rejection of a democratic vote in 1917 that the Bolsheviks lost; the creation of the brutal Checka, etc. The figures vary, but Lenin’s Red Terror is believed to have killed anywhere between 100,000 and 1.3 million people. The fanatic view of the Lenin towards any challenge to the new regime was published within the organs of the party: ‘anyone who dares to spread the slightest rumor against the Soviet regime will be arrested immediately and sent to concentration camp”. By 1921 70,000 were imprisoned in the brutal gulag system. The authoritarian and genocidal views of the Leninists were apparent quite early with Grigory Zinoviev declaring in 1917: ‘To overcome our enemies we must have our own socialist militarism. We must carry along with us 90 million out of the 100 million of Soviet Russia’s population. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them. They must be annihilated”. The fact that so many within the left still celebrate this man is stunning to behold, but then again he had the good fortune to die before the experiment of Leninism reached its apex under his protege Stalin. He would order the deaths of tens of millions of his own people, whether through the repression of the secret police or through man made famines, and after World War II enslave the population of Eastern Europe for half a century. And yet, the failure of the Left to ever really exorcise the ghost of the USSR and Leninism is one of our greatest failings. The supposed unique evil of Josef Stalin is a lazy way to avoid the truth, that the Bolsheviks were totalitarians in their very DNA, due to the teachings of Lenin. The USSR was in its origins a cult of Leninism extended to the entire Russian Empire. The Left need to except that the USSR is ours to own much like the right must accept Fascism as the logical extension of their own ideology. There is little to salvage in this experiment and the left should have long ago acknowledged Leninism as the twin evil of Fascism in the 20th Century. Unfortunately, it has not and we are left in a situation where anarchism remains at the fringes and the Leninist parties remain the only likely alternative to what must soon follow another violent collapse of Capitalism.

Any reasonable look at the enormous debt bubble forming around the world can not help, but lead you to the conclusion that a major global depression is looming. The conservative estimate is that there is 420 trillion dollars of debt worldwide. In Ireland we are one of the most indebted countries in the western world. Our debt to GDP ratio is 170% of GDP with some estimates as high as 210% of GDP. Each Irish citizen owes 42,000 Euro of debt. We will never be able to pay that off. This global debt can be combined with the huge wealth now centred in the hands of a very small cabal of oligarchs. Less than 100 persons now own over half the wealth of the entire globe. A vampiric ruling class long ago tore up the post-war social democratic settlement and could give a shit about the long term cost of their greed. As a result, the middle class’s spending power has shrunk to a fraction of what it once was. (Economics 101: the middle class buy the products of the ruling elite. If they have no money, and cannot borrow anymore, a crisis of capitalism ensues. It is that simple!) This makes a major depression almost inevitable, with some recent estimates saying it will arrive by as early as 2021. A collapse of capitalism will in rather short order unleash not only the demons of Fascism, but also the demons of Leninism. If, as I fear is likely, we are in the midst of another era of capitalist crisis similar to the 1920s and 30s, the corrupt parties of the centre across Europe will fall, and the masses will look for answers and alternatives to croney capitalism. At the moment the working class is bearing the brunt of neoliberalism and are looking to Trump, Brexit and the European Fascist right, the Orban’s and Le Pen’s. In the future there is no reason to suppose that some of remaining middle class will not make the same choice. In such a situation, it will seem wise to align ourselves with the Leninists in hopes of preventing another epoch of Fascist authoritarianism, but I would ask all anarchists to consider the old Bakunin quote: ‘When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called the People’s Stick’. We have been here before and we know what the Leninists will do if they get a whiff of power, therefore ‘What is to be done?’

Well, surprise, surprise, I recommend anarchism, but not in its current form. These days anarchists are a scattered and clicky sect within the left, rightly mocked for both the black block and its disinterested hipster membership alike. We must accept some of the blame for failing to take advantage of the post-Leninist era of the 90s-today. There were even some signs of anarchist ideas permeating the general left in the Seattle demonstrations of 1999, the occupy movement of 2011, the Arab Spring, and the yellow jackets, but these were to come to nothing. Clearly we have not learned from our own mistakes of the 20th century. Here I will perhaps lose some of my audience when I say that our principles held us back in the past. We were firm believers that ‘the Great is not enemy of the Good’. That ‘pragmatism was defeatism’. We, too, believed in an ‘all or nothing revolution’. Either it was complete eradication of the state and class system or it was not worth fighting for. This did us no favours in the past and it will do us little favours in the future. The world is not as we hope it to be, but rather as it is. Who will our allies be in the times to come? Unless we want to repeat our ancestors mistakes in Russia and Spain, it can’t be the Leninists. Rather I suggest the reasonable left I mentioned at the start of this article: Socialists, Left-Communists, Social Democrats, Republicans and even Liberals have all proved in the past to be determined enemies of the cults of Bolshevism and Fascism and capable of pluralism, though not always willing. It is possible to imagine a society of differing political structures coexisting, and of this being a truer reflection of the will of most people than any monolithic authoritarian Leftism can provide. These are our logical allies, some more than others, but to ensure history does not repeat itself we will have to find a way to both defend ourselves and inspire hope for a better future. For such a pluralist society of state socialists, anarchists, and even liberals, must not sap the hope and idealism of a genuinely Libertarian Socialist Revolution. We will have to walk a tightrope between reactionaries, both left wing and liberal. For without going down another rabbit hole, it was not just the Leninists that betrayed the Anarchists of Spain, it was also their republican and liberal allies. It will not be easy and much like our ancestors we will probably fail, but the difference between fighting for a society that allows differing political ideals the chance to bloom and the totalitarian cult of Leninism, seems a worthy trade off.

#anomie #anomiezine #anarchism #anarchy #article #proletariat

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delongcisbunk1974-blog · 6 years ago

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I'm making a custom dm screen for my husband/dm. It will feature all our character and the 2 big bads in a very movie poster feel. I was inspired by his cardboard 3e dm screen he received in a dragon magazine (look up 3e dm screen and you'll find it; it's pretty iconic scene of adventurers fighting some sort of demon in hell). Like the other poster, I chose medical tourism because I didn think doctors where I live (UK) had as much experience operating on noses of my ethnicity as Middle Eastern doctors. I had rhinoplasty in Istanbul the hospital was amazingly clean and modern, better than any I ever been to here, and I would do it again. I had more confidence in my doctor than I would have in a British doctor who hadn operated on many noses like mine. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I 김포출장안마 am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. I can trace my family tree back to the 1500s and not only can I not find a woman who got married below fifteen, that fifteen year old married a sixteen year old. Only two of my "underage" ancestors married men in their twenties and most of the women weren married until eighteen or older. It was far more common for the nobility though, which Juliet was. I still went on dates with my boyfriend, went to friends birthday parties, spent time with my family. I know people that went on international vacations and passed. It possible. I fucking hate the notion that Disney princess are TOXIC. I grew up with those movies and they made me feel incredible. I was adventurous like Ariel, I read lots of books like Belle, and I tried hard to take care of the earth, like Pocahontas. Usernames of non public figures (those who are NOT BGs, brand owners and reps, other influencers and social media personalities, or celebrities) must be obscured in screenshots. I feel like when she tweeted the "joke" was horrendous, being when Trayvon martin was a huge story. I also feel like POC being murdered by the police is such a sore subject for a lot of Americans, it's a horrible thing and there seems to always be a new case of it in the news, joking about pulling their pants up to run from the police isn't even kind of funny especially when POC are being murdered by the police. We didn always know we were going to be one and done. My husband is an only child and hated it. But his mother left him when he was a toddler and he was raised by his father and extended family who didn have a lot of money. She was 12 when the movie, "The Diary of Anne Frank," came out. Her mother took her to see it. At some point in the film it clicked for Klara; she suddenly understood what she'd 김포출장안마 been picking up through osmosis all her childhood. It didn't happen all at once. It took over 3 years. Yes, over 3 years of eating late at night, morning, noon, whenever I felt the urge. No one has a right to say "you may not chop that tree down because I own that tree." These sort of claims are not rights but are indeed privileges. So I cannot rightly lay down some fence and say, "look, don cross that fence." I mean, I can do this and just force my way, but I am abridging the inalienable right of others to access the land and use it for their own purposes. So I can put up fences in the same sense that I can also be an unjust dick.

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cromulentbookreview · 6 years ago

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Acer palmatum 'Atropurpureum'!

Yes, Acer palmatum 'Atropurpureum'! AKA Bloodleaf (also called Bloodgood). Described by Monrovia as a “ delightful small tree with gracefully branched stems that hold beautiful, palmate, red-purple leaves.” This deciduous tree is hardy to US Zones 5-8 (I have no idea what zones that’d be in the UK, Australia or New Zealand sorry guys), prefers partial-to-full sun exposure, requires regular watering, and will reach up to 18 ft (5.4 meters) in height! The beautiful red-purple foliage turns an even more brilliant red in the fall! I mean, just look at this gorgeous tree:

Fuck yeah, Japanese maples. Did you know there are over 1000 cultivars of Japanese maple? They’re gorgeous.

This is a gardening blog, right?

No?

Shit.

Whatever, nobody cares.

And by that, I mean: Bloodleaf by Crystal Smith!

I wasn’t kidding about how amazing Japanese maples are. Seriously, if you’re in a compatible zone (most are 5-8 on the USDA hardiness zone map, which includes the western areas of the Pacific Northwest, fuck yeah!). Anyway, the eponymous bloodleaf of Smith’s novel do not belong to a Japanese maple. It’s more like a flowering ground cover, like a little white, three-petaled Lobelia. Only super duper poisonous and the only safe part are the petals, which can save lives, but are practically impossible to harvest. Hurray?

Anyway! Book review! That’s what this blog is for. Not for recommending various plants that I like. It is for reviewing books. I’m pretty sure no one actually reads these, though, so I can include whatever the fuck I want. My favorite Japanese maple? Well, I don’t just have one, but I am partial to lace leaf Japanese maples, because the leaves are just so damn pretty...

Bloodleaf! By! Crystal! Smith! I am capable of focus!

Princess Aurelia of Renault is having a hell of a time - for one, everyone thinks she’s a witch, a crime punishable by death in her country. Even being accused of being a witch is enough to get you hanged by the neck until dead. Or burned. Seems like the preferred method in Renault is hanging, but burnings work, too.

What, did you think there weren’t going to be Monty Python gifs here?

Everyone in Renault, even the royal family, lives in fear of the Tribunal, a shady organization that apparently has jurisdiction over witches and seems to possess absolute power. The public is on the side of the Tribunal (witches = bad), so the fact that Aurelia is rumored to be a witch isn’t exactly great.

The fact that she is, indeed, a witch, is even worse. Aurelia is a blood mage - she can see spirits of the dead and do magic with her blood. Fun! I wish I could do magic whenever I get a paper cut - if that were the case, I’d be doing magic all the time at work. Or whenever my cat springboards off me or I nearly slice my thumb off shredding Parmesan cheese. Anyway: Aurelia has to keep her witchy-ness secret re: regular hangings and burnings. Aurelia has been engaged to Prince Valentin of the neighboring kingdom of Achelva since infancy. Things look a bit better for witches in Achelva, which sounds great, but Valentin himself? Not so much. Valentin is rumored to be a weak and infirm invalid who rarely ever leaves his rooms. The current king of Achelva, Domnhall (no relation to the beautiful, red-headed Domnhall Gleeson) is the worst. He’s basically Donald Trump in everything but name. So Aurelia isn’t overly thrilled at her upcoming marriage, but she’s eager to get the hell out of Dodge before people catch on that she’s a witch, holding out to the hope that, in uniting her country with Achelva and becoming a queen, she can lessen the influence of the Tribunal and make things better for her fellow witches.

(Seriously, did you think I wasn’t going to use Monty Python gifs here?)

That’s all well and good, but just as Aurelia is getting ready to head off to Achelva, the Tribunal stages a coup - Aurelia’s mom, the Queen, is captured, while Aurelia and her little brother Conrad, the future king of Renault, just barely manage to escape. Things get even worse when the people who helped Aurelia escape Renault turn on her. They take Conrad and head off to Achelva with an impostor posing as Aurelia, while the real Aurelia just barely manages to escape being murdered.

Now stuck in Achelva with no money, no friends, no papers, nothing, Aurelia has to do her best to survive. Then a handsome stranger called Zan steals her horse. Well, he tries to pay for it after the fact, but still. The only thing Achelva has going for it is that Aurelia can now practice her blood magic without fear of immediate hanging and/or burning. But there’s still the fact that the Tribunal still has her mother hostage back home, and Conrad is in the hands of the impostor and her Tribunal-loyal father. Plus there’s something weird happening within the walls of the city-state of Achelva. Old magical protections seem to be failing and Zan is determined not only to find out why, but also find a way to stop it. When he learns that Aurelia (now calling herself Emilie) is a blood mage, he offers to teach her how to use her power in order to save his country. Can Aurelia manage to save her family and Achelva and Renault from the grips of the Tribunal without dying a horrible death?

Good luck with that, Aurelia/Emilie!

Sometimes its hard for me to be objective about books that I enjoy. If I like a book, I’m willing to forgive most of its flaws, embrace the story and roll with it. For the most part, the books I review here on this stupid tumblr blog are books that I’ve liked. I don’t really want to waste my time slogging through a book that I don’t like. Life’s too short, if I don’t like something, I’m not going to read it. If I like a book, I’ll finish reading it, even if it takes me a while.

And then sometimes I encounter a book like Witchmark or The Binding books which, once I started reading them, I literally could not stop and now I love them forever holy shit those books are so good you guys, you should buy copies of both right now I am not joking, Jesu Christi people, READ THEM!

Uhm.

Bloodleaf happens to be among the latter. It’s one of those books where I started reading and then would not stop. I remained at the gym for an extra ten minutes just so I could finish a chapter. I was ready to hiss at anyone or anything that would stop me reading. For example:

Housemate: hey, we’ve got a bunch of old bananas here, would you be willing to make banana bread tonight?

Me, reading Bloodleaf:

Needless to say, I enjoyed this book a lot. It has its flaws typical to YA fantasy (mostly just some weak characterization and worldbuilding) but once I got going I really didn’t care. I went into full YA Fangirl Mode. And once I enter Fangirl Mode it’s difficult to convince me not to like or enjoy something.

Plus there’s a bunch of not-so-subtle Donald Trump references to the regent of Achleva, who is definitely a Trump-type. One of the characters even refers to him, sarcastically, as a “stable genius.” Another character tells him, very publicly: “Facts is facts. Wishin’ ’em false and declarin’ ’em fake don’t make it so.”

Heee. I see what you did there, Crystal Smith. I see what you did there! And I very much enjoy it.

So if you’re looking for a strong, female-led YA fantasy novel featuring blood magic and the occasional witch burning, Bloodleaf is the book for you. And a brilliant scarlet-leaved Acer palmatum var. atropurpureum is the tree you’ll be wanting for your garden. Don’t let it die of a fungus like mine did. RIP, Mr. Bloodgood. You were a tree that I got for free.

RECOMMENDED FOR: Fans of YA fantasy with a strong female lead, magic, romance, etc.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: Anyone who came here legitimately hoping to read about Japanese maples, non-YA fans, people who can’t stand the idea of a kickass female protagonist.

TRIGGER WARNING: Midway through the book there’s a scene of a very violent near-rape - be warned and prepare accordingly. If that’s really not your thing then you may want to steer clear.

RATING: 4/5

TOTALLY UNBIASED FANGIRL RATING: 500,000,000/5

RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

ANTICIPATION LEVEL FOR SEQUEL: Chhogori

TREE RATING: Eucalyptus regnans

#bloodleaf #crystal smith #acer palmatum #renault #achelva #princess aurelia #Zan #Prince Valentin #aurelia/zan forever #young adult #young adult fantasy #book review #monty python and the holy grail #burn the witch #japanese maple #Acer palmatum 'Atropurpureum'

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gatefleet · 3 years ago

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The Afterlife Sucks

Being Human UK: Annie Sawyer, Gilbert Word Count: 651 (T)W: mentions of death, minor profanity Request: No A/N: Found in an old memory card.

There had been many theories as to how I had been murdered. The prevailing theory at the moment was a ‘lover’s quarrel gone horribly wrong’, pssh because that’s the only reason a female would be burnt beyond recognition. Jackasses. Honestly though, I’m surprised they were even able to tell that the body on their autopsy table was a female. The worst part, I’m stuck wherever my body is for the moment. That means stuck in the Medical Examiners cold room until they can figure out what to do. I can’t be seen by anyone either, which then also means that I can’t tell them who I am or what happened to me. Actually, scratch that, the worst part is people walking through you, like you were a cloud or something. It always feels uncomfortable. After a couple of weeks at the M.E’s office with no leads, my case was classified as ‘cold case – unsolved’. The M.E’s office signed off on my body being sent somewhere to be buried or cremated… I don’t know which I wasn’t paying much attention after I heard ‘cold case – unsolved.’ What do you do when you are essentially invisible? Couldn’t speak to anyone, couldn’t eat anything, couldn’t drink or feel. The movies never made the afterlife seem so dull, so boring. I mean, I can’t even make a frickin’ breeze! Can’t make lights flicker and I thought life before death was boring.

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The sound of voices arose me from my cloud watching. One voice sounded distinctly female, the other was distinctly male. The male’s accent was thick, like he was from Manchester, and the female’s accent was London, maybe? Wait, were they talking about auras? What are they, psychics or something? Huffing I sat up and tried to see between the headstones, no luck. Great, that means moving. I stood and, quietly, moved closer to the voices. The guy was telling the girl to ‘relax her mind’ and ‘really look’ at the people in front of them. I followed his instructions, more out of curious boredom than anything else. I was just about to give up when I saw it, the aura of the man in front of us was a pale colour but with a darker shade around his head. What the hell did that mean? The girl in grey described the exact thing I saw to the Manchester dude. I must have gasped aloud because the girl in grey turned around with her hands raised to her mouth.

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Apparently, the girl in grey’s name is Annie, and she talks…. A lot… and really quickly too, it’s hard to keep up. Seriously? What is she an energiser bunny or something? After Annie introduced herself and, I think it was Gilbert, but I’m not entirely sure if that’s his name, she invited Gilbert(?) and I back to her place. It was weird how okay she was with being a ghost, how she seemed to be so… put together, for lack of a better phrase. Later on, Annie started talking about her ‘tenants’ like it was the most normal thing in the world. She spoke so fast that all I really caught was George, Mitch, Were…pire? And that that’s how they could see her… to say I was confused was just scraping the surface of how I felt. Like, was it even possible for us to be seen by others? When he was finally able to get a word in, Gilbert (he confirmed that that was indeed his name), told me that George and Mitchell were a ‘werewolf’ and ‘vampire’ and that’s how they could see Annie and him. This was a joke, right? Vampire’s and werewolves exist? I mean I was still trying to get to grips with ghosts being a thing never mind wrapping my head around the idea of vampires and werewolves too. This was going to be a long afterlife, I could tell.

(GIF Credit: @letskzuniversescreations)

#being human #being human uk #annie sawyer #requests open

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terribleco · 4 years ago

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BLM

I've sat on the fence about whether to post anything about racism, as on one hand I thought "This is really important and I need to make my stance clear", and on the other I thought "Do people just want me to post about skateboarding, and will they get pissed off by this?". Ultimately I thought "Fuck it": anyone who takes issue with me posting about this probably sucks and I don't want them reading my blog anyway. If skateboarding is as progressive, open, inclusive and utopian as we all think it is, having the opinion that innocent people shouldn’t be murdered by the police shouldn’t be a controversial take.

I am an (admittedly pale) mixed race Black/British skateboarder, and there is a really horrible undercurrent of racism in the UK. As much as we like to think otherwise, it does often worm it’s way into skateboarding. I have either been silent or compliant in casually racist conversations, or actions from other skateboarders in the past. If there are any people out there I have personally offended with my actions or words in the past, I'm truly sorry. As someone from my background, you are also taught to shut up when these conversations happen - lest you become the butt of the next round of racist bullying. I chose self preservation instead of sticking up for fellow skateboarders, and it's something that makes me angry at myself to this day.

Skateboarding can be utterly hypocritical when it comes to race. For years this lifestyle was the preserve of angry, white boys who just wanted to shred and get gnarly. Many years ago in Coventry, Black skateboarders were quite rare, and I remember one of the groms in the scene bemoaning the lack of influential skaters from a Black background in the city. And although, yes, I do come from a Black background, I did understand his point - Black skaters were rare in the city at the time.

Knowing you ethnically differentiate from many of the other skateboarders in your city can be lonely, and I can also imagine this can be said for anyone who wasn’t a straight, white male at that time in skateboarding. But, being a Black skateboarder is important in inspiring others from the same background to pursue this activity, and become part of this community. Skaters like Jordan Thackeray, Shaun Currie and Korahn Gayle are all no doubt influential to younger Black British skaters who never thought this lifestyle was for them.

In the current climate, could you imagine skating street spots as a Black skateboarder and having to deal with police kicking you off of spots? If you were skating in the US, would you even make it home from the session alive? This is the shit white pro skaters never had to deal with - a ticket, a slap on the wrist, or maybe a board being confiscated at worst. We like to hold up the "Skateboarding makes everyone equal" card, but regardless of this we are all still different and experience social interaction differently based on who we are, what we look like, and how society perceives us. It isn't about erasing our differences, but embracing them and realising we are all awesome in different ways.

It's been revealing to see the wave of apology posts coming out from board companies about specific bigoted incidents: Julien Stranger apologising for TMo's racist encounters on the Anti-hero insta, Kyle Walker apologising for spouting a racist slur whilst singing along to a rap song. I’d like to say I’m shocked and surprised, but skateboarding has had a problem with bigotry (and sweeping it under the rug) for a while:

Danny Way’s involvement in being an accomplice to second degree murder of a gay man whilst Josh Swindell took the blame didn’t stop him getting featured as the face of the Skate video games.

A wave of shock washed over the skateboarding industry when Brian Anderson came out as gay (thus proving that gay skateboarders do exist, and yes, they fucking rule). But it took a legendary pro like Anderson to reveal his sexuality before skateboarders started to lay off on the homophobic in-jokes.

Constant comments of "that's a dude" when insta accounts promoting female skateboarders post a clip of a trans skateboarder, which in turn raises the other issue of people only following these accounts to see hot girls riding skateboards (as opposed to, you know, just wanting to see some skateboarding).

This community is not as inclusive and open as we like to believe, and the sooner we collectively accept that the sooner we can do better. It’s probably because skateboarders still skew toward mainly young boys, and comes with a bit of immaturity attached... But maybe that isn’t fair, as many young kids now are very conscious of being inclusive and trying to curb bigotry. In some cases kids are more accepting than adults twice their age.

As a group largely consistently of straight men, we have accepted many male, Black skaters as “one of us” for a long time, but this doesn’t really mean a lot until we stick up for our fellow skateboarders, and use whatever privilege’s we have to prove that skateboarders stick up not only for their own, but anyone who is bullied and pushed down by society.

How many unreasonable, shitty police officers have you dealt with when you are politely trying to leave a spot? I got stopped and fined for even carrying a skateboard in Coventry City Centre once, and the police made me feel like I'd been out there shooting people. I got “profiled” by police many times in my late teens because I “looked like” someone they were after - questioned about where I was going, where I lived, where I worked, because I looked a bit “ethnic” and was walking home near some nice houses. Only now do I question why I was stopped so many times, despite having no criminal record.

Years ago police in Coventry were throwing people in cells for the night if they were skating street. Young men get stopped and searched by police all the time in hopes of finding weapons, drugs or both - and this has happened to skateboarders in attempts to deter street skating. And here's the kicker: if they are doing that shit to white skaters, can you imagine the shit they're pulling on Black skateboarders? You can't champion Black skateboarding legends like Stevie Williams, Ray Barbee or Chris Pastras on one hand, and then sit there saying "All Lives Matter", or saying we must retain statues glorifying slave traders, or stick up for police brutality.

Rather than just being silent and sticking to skateboarding, be loud and make some noise.

As a start, you can donate to the following charities to help the cause:

BLM UK - https://www.gofundme.com/f/ukblm-fund

Stop Hate UK - http://www.stophateuk.org/donate-to-stop-hate-uk/

#skateboard guff

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alexanderwrites · 7 years ago

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Hack Job: Why Were Hacker Movies Ever A Thing?

Lately i’ve been thinking about that weird and almost completely failed subgenre of movie that attempted to light up the LCD screens of our hearts, but instead faded like a broken computer screen: the hacker film. Now, I could ask what good the sub-genre has ever done for us, but the answer to that is clear and just a few inches above this block of text. The genre birthed this iconic Matthew Lillard role from the movie Hackers, in which he plays a (wait for it!) hacker named...erm...Cereal Killer. Because....he likes Cereal? Sure, lets go with that! He’s a character described by June Diane Raphael on an episode of the podcast How Did This Get Made? as “Disgusting”, and she is not completely wrong. He is disgusting, bizarre and the strangest character Lillard has played, and i’m including Shaggy in the live action Scooby Doo films. He’s a character that must be experienced, and once experienced, never forgotten. I mean - you’ve seen what he fucking looks like.

But my point remains: outside of Cereal Killer (I am bolding his name because he is an Important Man), the genre has offered up very little to the world. I admittedly know nothing at all about hacking, and I don’t care at all about Hacking, like, i’d presume, 90% of people currently residing here on earth. But I cannot imagine that people who love Hacking (or Hacker Fuckers, if you will) queuing up to see Hackers, a film that thinks this is what the internet looks like:

Now, i’m no city-slickin’ mouse-clickin’ hacker, but I don’t think that’s what the internet looks like. I could be wrong, and character actor Fisher Stevens (I was about to write “beloved” character actor, but then I remembered Short Circuit) could be skating through a flashing pillar of internet right now. It’s a cool thought! Hackers came along in 1995, when future optimism was higher than it had been in years, as everyone believed the tech-bubble would never burst (spoiler alert: it did!) and that the new millennium would bring a world of positive changes and possibilities. The poor, innocent souls of 1995 could never have possibly imagined the true horrors waiting for them on the other side of the millennium...

But before Fred Durst became a thing in a hat that you had to look at, technology was booming, affordable and exciting. You got transparent Macs that allowed you to see through into the mechanical nonsense inside it. The new fangled e-mail gave us (I don’t know why i’m saying “us”. I was 3 years old in 1995. Babies don’t get emails) all the opportunity to open your email and then close it again as many times as you liked! So this is what producers saw when they started making movies like Hackers. They put their strongest marketing minds together and came up with “People got computers now. Make comPUTER FILM!”. Those wild bastards actually went and did it! And weirdly, Hackers was kinda ahead of its time. It might’ve been wildly inaccurate in almost every possible way, but it paved the way for a wave of (well, like 3) films. The Matrix wouldn’t be released for another 4 years, and Swordfish a further 2. If it did incite a trend, it was the only trend started by Director Iain Softley, his later film K-Pax tragically failing to kick start a new genre of films in which Kevin Spacey eats bananas with their skins still on.

Good stuff! Hackers does feel like a film that is unsure of whether it’s trying to replicate fads or start them off. I mean, characters rollerblade everywhere for no apparent reason in the film. That might be something Hackers do? I’ve never seen Mr Robot, so I cannot categorically say that Rami Malek doesn’t rollerblade his way around town like a Starlight Express extra who really hates computers. But I doubt it. So with the rollerblading, and the way....ugh...Cereal Killer dresses, it seems like the film is offering you up its own funky ideas that you could follow on from if you want to get murdered on the streets. Did its aesthetic style have influence? Was the game Jet Set Radio from 2000 and its rollerblading theme influenced at all by Hackers? Did Eminem see Johnny Lee Miller’s bleached blonde hair in the film (quick deeply important side note: his character is named Dade. DADE.) and think “huh. that would really compliment my insufferable personality!”? We’ll never know. The film is a weird exercise in style and trends, and the soundtrack, crammed with The Prodidgy and Underworld, is proof that at least the soundtrack department had its finger on the pulse. And, it could be argued that the film’s costume department at least came up with some creative cyber-punk clothing, and were bold enough to make Penn Jillette look like this:

The thing is, I liked the weirdness of it all, I like this misfires in capturing modern life, and inaccuracy doesn’t bother me really if a film is fun enough. I’m not a stickler for realism. I didn’t sit down to Face/Off and complain that it’s totally unbelievable that John Travolta is a human person. That’s not the issue. The issue, really is that with all the giant screen Playstations, pounding trance tracks and references to Coca Cola (weird, I thought Mountain Dew would be the Hacker’s choice), the film is in troubled water because of the fact that Hacking is unbelievably, deeply fucking boring. It is not interesting in seeing someone go clickety clack on a keyboard and make occasional faces to indicate that “oh no! the mainframe is busting my chops!” or “Huzzah! I clicked the mouse really fast just now!”.

Thankfully, the film has some fairly decent editing which intersperses the clickety-clacking with some long exposure, sped up shots of New York City just in case you forgot it was the 90′s. The fact that they need to cut away to exciting, zooming shots that have nothing to do with anything highlights the fact that the Director and Editor knew exactly what i’m talking about: HACKING IS FUCKING BORING (if you’re a hacker reading this, please don’t hack me). And they’ve built an entire film around it! A whole nonsensical plot which involves (as far as i can remember) big ships and evil corporations that want to sink the big ships is built on Hacking. Thank god this film is so wildly ridiculous, which keeps it from being entirely boring. It’s smart in that it knows to not make the film actually about hacking, but then you kind of ask yourself the question: why is this film about Hacking at all? Why is it called Hackers? Maybe a better name would’ve been ‘Bladin’ Teenz’, as an ode to their endless rollerblading. It’s a fun film, but a dumb film and proof that films entirely about hacking cannot really work.

The Matrix was a wise film. Exploiting that hip, late-90s techno excitement that everyone was buzzing over, it featured a hacker at its centre who really doesn’t do much hacking at all. In fact, Morpheus might as well have said “You Hack? Dude fucking grow up. Come on, i’ll make you a treat”. Sure, you’ve got the iconic green gibberish that turns up on the computers and would inspire a million shitty screensavers, but again the hacking is intercut with other action going on in the film. You have characters typing away and yelling shit like “I’m nearly in!” or “i’m not nearly in!” or “I am unsure of whether I am, in fact, in, nearly in, or not nearly in!”. But that is manageable and minimal, and in the end there’s so much more to remember about The Matrix that I don’t think anyone, when asked what it’s about, would say “Oh it’s about Keanu Reeves hacking on his dell”. It understood this caveat, and created its own style which would influence every single music video ever produced over the next 5 years.

These are screenshots from the video for Don’t Wanna Let You Go by 5ive, a very bad UK Boy-band that had 4 singers and 1 rapper, all of whom it’s safe to assume have passed away.

The Matrix had the style, and the smarts to sidestep bland hacking scenes. You know what film doesn’t understand that hacking is boring? Fucking Swordfish.

Fucking Swordfish. A film so aesthetically ugly and repulsive in every way that it does the unthinkable and makes you hate Hugh Jackman. But it commits the biggest sin of all by giving John Travolta a teeny tiny beard - a decision which we still feel the fallout from today, whenever a new red carpet photo arrises of John’s new chin abomination.

Looking like a cup of concentrated Michael Bay piss, the film leans heavily into stylishness - or lack thereof. Hugh Jackman is basically...sigh...DADE in the movie, and Travolta is regularly outfitted with funny sunglasses. It borrows a lot from Hackers, but while that had a naive, 1995 goofy charm, Swordfish is an aggressively stupid and oblivious movie, that gives us a LOT of Hacking. Like...so much Hacking. The Most Hacking. Oh, The Fucking Hacking. Its a reminder of just how boring Hackers or The Matrix could’ve been if they’d fallen into the wrong hands, and a big, horribly colour-corrected reminder that films about hacking really aren’t the best. Instead of cutaways of cityscapes, Swordfish tries to build the tension during one hacking scene in the grossest way possible: by having Hugh Jackman’s character receive forced fellatio while he works, and while John Travolta smiles. It doesn’t make a boring scene exciting, it makes a boring scene fucking disgusting (the movie’s grossness doesn’t stop there. Halle Berry was heavily pushed into taking her top off in the movie, and promised extra money if she did it.). The Hackers method of randomised cutaways feels a million miles away during these scenes, and you will be willing to pay any earthly sum to make the scene unfolding in front of you stop. Maybe that’s how hackers should make their money from here on in: stop hacking, and just start blackmailing people by forcing them to watch Swordfish. Fucking Swordfish.

The movie was also a bit of a death knell for a subgenre that never really took off. People realised “Oh, this is dull and crap to watch!” when it came to hacking, and technology moved on rapidly that there was a lot more to do with it than watch some guy slapping the keys of his iMac. I find it a really interesting subgenre to look back at, because i’m a huge fan of outdated technologies, fashion styles, turn of the millennium culture, and really quite poor films (besides The Matrix which holds up nicely). Hollywood has tried to make a manner of subjects interesting. Stock markets. Fishing. White people who buy zoos. Some work, some don’t, and it’s all about the way the subject is handled. Because of their reliance on technology, these hacking films feel so dated that maybe Hollywood doesn’t want to risk dipping its toes back into the cyberwaters again. I kind of hope they don’t, because I would literally rather never see a film again than have to even know that a film about Anonymous is being made. I don’t want an ‘edgy’ modern movie that’s made for Banksy to watch while he plunges his hands down his pants and goes to town. I want silly old Cereal Killer and towers of nonsense computer language dammit! I want rollerblading, coke-drinking cyberpunks! Oh well. Whatever happens to the genre, at the very least, we’ll always have Dade and The Gang....

#hackers #johnny lee miller #matthew lillard #the matrix #swordfish #technology #film trends #film

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shadowtearling · 7 years ago

Photo

Jane Steele by Lindsay Faye

Details

Goodreads Rating: 3.93 Genre: Publisher: Headline Review Published: March 22, 2016

*side note: left photo is US Hardback cover & right photo is UK Paperback cover

Summary

Reader, I murdered him. A Gothic retelling of Jane Eyre. Like the heroine of the novel she adores, Jane Steele suffers cruelly at the hands of her aunt and schoolmaster. And like Jane Eyre, they call her wicked - but in her case, she fears the accusation is true. When she flees, she leaves behind the corpses of her tormentors.

A fugitive navigating London's underbelly, Jane rights wrongs on behalf of the have-nots whilst avoiding the noose. Until an advertisement catches her eye. Her aunt has died and the new master at Highgate House, Mr Thornfield, seeks a governess. Anxious to know if she is Highgate's true heir, Jane takes the position and is soon caught up in the household's strange spell. When she falls in love with the mysterious Charles Thornfield, she faces a terrible dilemma: can she possess him - body, soul and secrets - and what if he discovers her murderous past?

My Thoughts

My Rating: none

Bear with me here, but this is going to be a long and complicated one. I’ll be splitting my review into non-spoiler and spoiler because I want to hash out all of my thoughts.

Non-Spoiler

This was a great read. As a fan of Jane Eyre, I really enjoyed the sprinklings of the classic within this retelling. The writing style emulates that of Brontë’s, and it does so wonderfully. I was engaged the entire way through, I felt sympathetic to our main character, I found the romance in this one better than in Brontë’s (the age gap doesn’t sit well with me), and I love all the revelations—the layers—to the story. I love the parallels with Jane Eyre, but I also love that it took so many different routes, and each change felt true to the story Faye was writing.

Some of the criticisms I’ve seen are in regards to the feeling of redundancy. I’ve seen a lot of people claim that Jane Steel too often mentions how much she adores Jane Eyre. It’s true and a valid criticism, but I think that if you really love a book, to the point of seeing your life mirrored within, really relating to the heroine, shutting up about it would be difficult. I sure as hell never shut up about my favorite books. There’s also the complaint that she dwells too much on the fact that she’s a murderess and how much of a horrible human being she is. This is also true, but it’s important to note that these are her self-reflections. Part of who Jane Steele is is this struggle to figure out who she is, and oftentimes, it leads to questioning her morals and obviously, murdering people isn’t what a good person does. Thinking about her actions are merited though redundant.

Faye also brings out a different aspect to this retelling by including Sikh characters and an entire storyline with their history included. I can’t speak to the accuracy of the representation of that culture, as I do not belong to it. BUT there is a point in which her inclusion of POC in this story becomes problematic. Essentially, one of the villains is a character of color. (More in the spoilers section)

The other piece that could be considered problematic (and which I’ll discuss further in the spoilers section) is the gay character in the novel. It’s unrequited love and ultimately used as a plot device/something brushed over/used to further the narrative of the straight character.

Trigger warnings: abuse, attempted rape, domestic abuse, violence, suicide, drug abuse

Spoiler

I definitely have a lot of feelings about this book, and I’m finding that I can’t give it a solid rating nor can I say whether or not I recommend this.

I really loved the murder aspect of this book. Every single man Jane murders is justified in dying. Her list of reasons include attempted rape, abuse (verbal and physical like starvation), domestic abuse, and general nastiness. She’s not meant to be seen as a cold, heartless woman. Instead, we see her as someone who kills for a reason, and it is often to benefit women or others around her, particularly loved ones.

Growing up, she was deprived of love. She experienced all sorts of torture when she went to school at Lowan Bridge because of Versalius Munt (victim #2). He was cruel, let the girls starve, loved embarrassing the students (by revealing actions of their parents of which they are not guilty), and does everything in the guise of religion and repentance of their sins. Her aunt hated her. She never knew her father. Her “cousin” tried to rape her (he’s victim #1). Her mother killed herself and left Jane at the age of 9. So all her life, she thought herself unloveable.

Which is where Rebecca Clarke comes in. Near the end, it is revealed to us that Clarke was in love with Jane this entire time (yes in a lesbian sort of way). I loved that instant where they kiss, but then I realized I spoke too soon in voicing that approval. This is the last we will ever see of Clarke, and she’s cast aside for the rest of the novel. Instead, Jane/Faye use this attraction of Clarke’s as a way to make Jane feel good about herself. All this while Jane thought herself unwanted and undeserving of her love (especially in the case of Mr. Thornfield), but then she sees that Clarke loves her. So maybe Jane’s het love life could now flourish. If Clarke could love her, then maybe Thornfield can, too. That... stings a little. While I certainly understand what Faye was trying to do, I don’t think she went about it in the right way. She could have given Jane the validation she was seeking but not at the expense of the little scrap of LGBT rep (never explicitly stated if lesbian or bi). What this comes across as is Clarke just being used as a plot device and a way to further the het relationship.

The other thing I wanted to touch on is POC rep. I cannot comment on much beyond what I know (aka very little). So, in regards to how well Faye portrayed the Sikh culture, I can’t tell you if she did a good job or not. You’d have to look to Own Voices reviewers for that. What I can say is this: the novel could have done without the villainizing of a WOC. What we find out in the end is that Garima Kaur is essentially the person behind all the problems and trouble Thornfield and Sardar experience. All in the name of love. Then she dies after being found out.

With this as the backdrop of Jane Steele being the hero to save the day, who is very much white, it really adds on to the stereotypes and harms us POC by depicting us as violent and Up To No Good™. It doesn’t matter that Jane Steele is a murderer. She’s made it clear they were equal in that part, but then to have Garima commit the final act of treachery, kidnapping the child, lowers her standing against Jane. Then of course, Jane is the one to save the child and thus becomes the hero against a VOC (villain of color). Garima is depicted as selfish and full of anger. The cherry on top? The white villain, the Sack guy, gets off without a scratch. He just loses his job and will probably end up homeless. But he’s a man and alive. He’ll be okay. In a book about murdering heinous men, you’d think Sack would be dead, too, but nope. He gets off free. Not even jail! Come on!!

Overall, my relationship with this (such as with Jane Eyre) is complicated. There were some parts I absolutely loved, and some that I hate and are harmful to me (and potentially to others). But I don’t hate it. Maybe I’ll come to resent it in the future, but right now... it’s a solid “I don’t know.”

Thanks for reading! If you’ve read Jane Steele, let me know what you thought about it!

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devoursjohnlock · 8 years ago

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That’s not what happened at all: False alibis in The Lion’s Mane and The Six Thatchers

The Lion’s Mane is the second of only two stories narrated by Sherlock Holmes; the first of these was The Blanched Soldier. Both of these stories were published in 1926 and collected in The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes, which seems to have become a major source for Sherlock S4 (see my related meta here, partially about the erasure of John Watson’s character).

In The Lion’s Mane, Holmes opens by talking about his lonely life in his house on a hill in the Sussex Downs, with his housekeeper and his bees, and relates the story of a case that nearly stumped him.

“At this period of my life the good Watson had passed almost beyond my ken. An occasional week-end visit was the most I ever saw of him. Ah! had he but been with me, how much he might have made of so wonderful a happening and of my eventual triumph against every difficulty!”

Yes, it’s certainly a pity that John is being kept from writing these stories.

As I mentioned in my recent meta on The Blanched Soldier, Mofftiss appear to believe that Doyle removed Watson from that tale in order to tell a story about him in him allegory (this is the only explanation for James Sholto’s character in The Sign of Three). I think he did the same thing in The Lion’s Mane, but it’s difficult to tell, because the story is a bit like a game of musical chairs. In fact, past Sherlockians have observed that lines in The Lion’s Mane appear to have been handed out to the wrong characters.

“Why did you betray us?” (The Six Thatchers)

The only character in The Lion’s Mane that we recognize by name, Sherlock Holmes, isn’t acting like himself at all. John Watson is outright missing. The first manuscript of this story, most of which has survived, included a new and important character who was then cut out of the published version. Can we trust what we see on the page?

“That’s not what happened at all.” (The Six Thatchers)

... Edwardian skinny-dipping, secret love notes, and lots of other spoilers for The Lion’s Mane under the cut.

Doyle’s stories frequently went through rewrites, and often American versions (in various magazines) varied slightly in wording from their UK counterparts in The Strand. However, The Lion’s Mane is unusual in that we have an entire manuscript that differs significantly from the published version. That early manuscript was published in 1992 – so, we have two versions of this story. At least something like that would never happen in the Sherlock universe. Oh, wait.

This becomes very complex, so I’ve tried to organize this in a way that makes it easy to refer back for details if needed. I’m going to talk about the published version first, then The Six Thatchers, and then the early manuscript.

THE MYSTERY

First, the details of the case, which remain largely unchanged between versions. Holmes is visited by his good friend, Harold Stackhurst, who runs the local school. Like I said earlier, Holmes describes his existence as lonely, but apparently he and Stackhurst visit each other every few evenings. And... apparently, Holmes is quite the swimmer? He and the teachers (particularly Stackhurst and Fitzroy McPherson, who we’ll meet in a moment) come here regularly, to swim in the buff (this being a story about naturists naturalists Nature and all).

The pool they swim in:

(no, not that pool!) was worn out of the chalk cliffs by the sea. One day, a particularly fierce storm deposited something sinister into the pool: a lion’s mane jellyfish. The following morning, Holmes and Stackhurst are both startled by the sudden death of one of their fellow swimmers, Fitzroy McPherson, whose last words, “The speckled band!” “The lion’s mane!” are a puzzle. Holmes is certain it’s murder, or at least some sort of foul play, due to the horrible marks on the man’s back.

“His back was covered with dark red lines as though he had been terribly flogged by a thin wire scourge. The instrument with which this punishment had been inflicted was clearly flexible, for the long, angry weals curved round his shoulders and ribs. There was blood dripping down his chin, for he had bitten through his lower lip in the paroxysm of his agony. His drawn and distorted face told how terrible that agony had been.”

Ah. No, that’s a different story. This story’s very straightforward, and considered one of the worst stories in the Sherlock Holmes canon. There’s no Watson, and Holmes is... well... a really terrible detective in this. His first and most serious mistake is failing to notice that the victim’s body is wet when it should be dry. One of the first things we’re shown in A Study in Pink is that Sherlock Holmes pays attention to exactly this kind of detail.

To make things worse, The Lion’s Mane borrows its narrative hook from a previously published story,

No, not that story.

Just like in The Adventure of the Speckled Band, the killer mentioned in the dying victim’s last words turns out to be an animal: not a snake this time, but a jellyfish. The Lion’s Mane is therefore generally thought to be a very poor retelling of The Speckled Band. In The Six Thatchers, both stories are referenced as Norwegian boat names that we see during Mary’s escape to Morocco: Løvens Manke and Flekkete Band.

But despite the criticism that The Lion’s Mane was a diminished version of a classic Holmes story, Doyle described it as one of his absolute best:

“If I were to choose the six best Holmes stories, I should certainly include The Illustrious Client, which is one of the last series, and also The Lion’s Mane.”

That... sounds familiar.

“We’ve just finished filming the fourth series... We’re very excited about it. I think it’s the best one we’ve done.” [x]

What did Doyle see in The Lion’s Mane that none of his readers did? What do Mofftiss see in Sherlock S4 that we don’t? The answer is subtext, and loads of it.

I think that the published version of The Lion’s Mane is two stories told simultaneously: one in text and one in subtext. I think that The Six Thatchers also tells two stories simultaneously, and uses the loss of the manuscript-only character to do it.

THE ROLES

Let’s have a look at the cast of characters as they are in the published version of this story:

Fitzroy McPherson: The victim. Science teacher. Excelled in every game, but kept from reaching his potential by a physical flaw: a weak heart. Swam with Holmes often. In a secret relationship with Maud Bellamy.

Ian Murdoch: The suspect. Mathematics professor. Name means “mariner”. Surly, with bursts of anger. Initially hated McPherson (threw his dog through a plate-glass window once, nbd) and fell for Maud Bellamy. Once he learned of McPherson’s relationship with Maud, he became best friends with McPherson.

Maud Bellamy: Pursued romantically by both McPherson and Murdoch. Chose McPherson, but he and Maud both needed to keep their relationship secret because their families would disapprove. Sent McPherson notes to set up romantic trysts. Surprisingly unsentimental when interviewed by Holmes and Stackhurst; prioritizes finding the killer over all else.

Harold Stackhurst: Excellent scholar. Competent investigator. Close friend of our narrator.

Sherlock Holmes: The story-teller. Athletic. Deductions are mostly wrong. Compares his mind to a “crowded box-room with packets of all sorts stowed away therein – so many that I may well have but a vague perception of what was there”. Quite an eye for the ladies; says of Maud Bellamy, “I could not look upon her perfect clear-cut face, with all the soft freshness of the Downlands in her delicate colouring, without realizing that no young man would cross her path unscathed”. Loves “the soothing life of Nature”, dismisses the “gloom of London”.

This is... wrong, just terribly wrong. Let’s finish with the details of the case, then see about setting the characters right.

THE SOLUTION

Holmes and Stackhurst interview Maud, and learn of her affair with McPherson. Murdoch believes that the duo think he is guilty; his angry outburst over this provokes Stackhurst to fire him on the spot. A week passes, and we hear the sad tale of McPherson’s dog dying of heartbreak. Apparently, he lay down by the pool where his master died, and suffered the same fate.

Shortly afterwards, Ian Murdoch bursts into Holmes’ cottage, his back covered in the same whip-marks seen on McPherson’s body before he died. Murdoch’s heart is stronger, so he survives. On hearing that Murdoch had been bathing, Holmes remembers a story about a jellyfish (stuck in the clutter of his mind palace attic, we suppose), finds the relevant book in his literal attic to confirm his hypothesis, and rushes out with Stackhurst and the local Inspector to kill the lion’s mane. As far as the reading public knows, it’s an open and shut case; this story is over.

But... there’s something about Murdoch’s reaction to Holmes’ deduction.

“Then I, at least, am cleared,” said Murdoch, rising slowly to his feet.

Hmm. It’s lucky for Murdoch that he was attacked when he was. The Inspector was there intending to discuss arresting Murdoch for McPherson’s murder. The jellyfish’s timing is awfully suspicious. Is it really possible that McPherson, McPherson’s dog, and Murdoch – and no one else – were attacked by this aquatic fiend in such a busy swimming pool? What if this wasn’t a “Man vs. Nature” story at all? What if it was murder?

Murdoch had killed one of McPherson’s dogs before. Could he have killed this one, too... as practice? To make sure he knew what to expect in a lion’s mane attack, before subjecting himself to its sting to evade suspicion?

Maybe Mofftiss aren’t the first writers to subtextually reference The Sussex Vampire in their Holmes stories. Maybe Doyle did it, too.

If this is right, The Lion’s Mane is actually the story of a murder and a cover-up, and people’s roles are being assigned to different characters to guard their secrets. What’s the real story, and who is who? I’ve given this some thought and present my theory here, but it can probably be read a few different ways, so I encourage you to take a look at the original story. Keep in mind that Doyle will have had one solution in mind; Mofftiss may have guessed that solution or come up with a different one, and they will either have presented that solution in The Six Thatchers and/or S4, or have spun it in an entirely new direction.

THE PLAYERS

First, let’s assume that our two investigators are Holmes and Watson. They provide our narrative structure.

The traits associated with Holmes belong to Watson. The traits associated with Stackhurst (another "SH") belong to Holmes.

In The Blanched Soldier, Doyle hid Watson in order to tell a story about his past. In The Lion’s Mane, Doyle hides Watson, then hides Holmes, too. I think this is about their pasts, together. I think the characters in the case are also them.

The rest is a lot easier to put together in the context of the relationships we’re given in Sherlock. We have a love triangle. One character (Maud) is pursued by the other two.

Of these two relationships, the first (with McPherson) is true love, but clandestine; they must exchange secret notes until they can finally be together openly.

The second (with Murdoch) is more like possession, with Murdoch threatening violence to get what he wants.

The subtextual parallels probably differ between canon and Sherlock, because of the existence of Mary.

Text → Canon subtext | Sherlock subtext

Maud Bellamy → Sherlock | John

Fitzroy McPherson → John | Sherlock

Ian Murdoch → Moriarty | Mary

The Mary Morstan we know in Sherlock did not exist in canon, obviously. However, Mary in Sherlock is closely associated with Moriarty, who was the canon villain. Murdoch is a maths professor, violent, has a penchant for killing pets. Murdoch’s name means “mariner”; Moriarty’s name means ‘navigator’ or ‘sea worthy’. Murdoch is Moriarty.

With all of this put together, it looks like this is the subtext story Doyle was telling (or, at the very least, the subtext story that Mofftiss think he was telling) – another version of The Final Problem, one that is substantively closer to The Reichenbach Fall:

Moriarty and Watson were competing for Holmes’ romantic interest. Holmes chose Watson, but they were forced to keep their relationship secret. At first, Moriarty showed his anger, threatening Holmes’ pet (Watson), but eventually appeared to accept that he’d lost. Once Holmes and Watson thought they were safe, Moriarty killed Holmes, and faked an attack on himself to create an alibi and avert suspicion.

In Sherlock, with our version of Mary Morstan in the mix, we have a different story – The Six Thatchers:

Mary and Sherlock are competing for John’s romantic interest. John chooses Sherlock, but they are forced to keep their relationship secret. At first, Mary shows her anger, killing Sherlock, but eventually appears to accept him as part of their happy, crime-solving threesome. Once John and Sherlock think they are safe, Mary shoots John, and fakes her own shooting to create an alibi and avert suspicion.

(Incidentally, this reading also directly links Moriarty/Mary to Sherlock’s/Ajay’s torture because the lion’s mane is Moriarty’s/Mary’s weapon.)

Based on the subtext in The Lion’s Mane, I think that we must expect swapped dialogue and actions among Sherlock, John, and Mary, at the very least, although I will not try to analyze that here (cough - Mary’s death speech -cough). We must also expect Mary to have faked her own death, and we must expect her to have shot either Sherlock or John – probably John – at the end of The Six Thatchers.

I’ve been on the fence about this for a long time, but here it is: I don’t think that The Lying Detective is real. I think that both The Lying Detective and The Final Problem happen in John’s mind. Alternatively, if The Lying Detective is real, John is not real within it.

This is already a lot, but.. there’s more. What about the big changes from that early draft?

THE DISAPPEARING EXPERT

In the early manuscript, the surprisingly inept Holmes (i.e., Watson) had help from a new character to solve this case: Professor Mordhouse. Mordhouse appears at the crime scene, and Holmes describes him as an expert, a natural historian whose name the reader must surely recognize.

The name Mordhouse literally means “murder house” (that reference to H.H. Holmes in The Lying Detective must have been too tempting to resist). Even without the grim surname, we must suspect that he was in cahoots with Murdoch. Mordhouse would have known how to procure a lion’s mane and use it to kill McPherson. This makes Mordhouse Moriarty’s assassin – he’s essentially Sebastian Moran (linked once again with the Mor- surname). ETA: Shout-out to @victorianfantasywatson for spotting that both Sebastian Moran and Professor Mordhouse drop rocks on their victims: the former on Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls and the latter on the lion’s mane.

Mordhouse’s involvement transforms our narrator’s opinion of the case and of his role in it. In the published version, Holmes calls this “as abstruse and unusual as any which I have faced in my long professional career” and foretells his “eventual triumph against every difficulty”. In the manuscript, Holmes describes it as a personal failure:

“I do not think that I can look back on the adventure of the Lion’s Mane with any particular personal pride.”

The reason for this discrepancy is that it is Mordhouse who makes every advance in solving this case. He negates Holmes’ theories about the case throughout the story, and eventually recognizes the modus operandi of the lion’s mane, producing a rare text on jellyfish to prove his point. He rallies everyone back to the pool, and instructs Holmes to help him kill it. If the manuscript version of The Lion’s Mane is Holmes’ failure, it is Mordhouse’s success. He takes over the narrative.

The creation of Mordhouse’s character appears to have been very deliberate; this manuscript was edited consistently (changing his name from Mordhurst to Mordhouse throughout one revision) before Doyle obliterated him, in the pages that became The Lion’s Mane, and in an additional 6–8 pages of this manuscript that have never been recovered.

Comparing the manuscript to the published version, Mordhouse’s narrative role was to diminish Holmes/Watson, facilitate the assassination of McPherson, and then to disappear.

In The Six Thatchers, there are two characters with elevated capabilities, like Mordhouse’s. We have Mary, who somehow usurps John’s role at Sherlock’s side:

John: Hang on – Mary's better than me? Sherlock: Well, she's a retired super-agent with a terrifying skill set. Of course she's better. (The Six Thatchers)

And we have Vivian Norbury, the MI6 secretary who secretly wielded a team of assassins for personal gain.

“I didn’t do this out of jealousy!” (The Six Thatchers)

But we know that’s not quite true. As the super-secretary and the super-agent, Norbury and Mary are both representations of Mordhouse, who was abetting Murdoch’s homocidal jealousy. Like Mordhouse, once they’ve fulfilled their roles, facilitating Fitzroy McPherson’s (John’s?) end, they need to be erased from this tale. They need to be written out.

“Agents like Mary, they tend not to reach retirement age. They get retired.” (The Six Thatchers)

And just as Doyle “retired” Mordhouse, Gatiss/Mycroft must retire his super-agent. Gatiss wrote the episode, and I’m guessing that Mycroft wrote this cover story (perhaps with the pen he keeps brandishing). In the afterword for the 1992 publication of the manuscript, Richard Lancelyn Green noted that one of the curious things about The Lion’s Mane is that it took a true story (Doyle based the story on an actual jellyfish attack) and made it less plausible. That doesn’t sound so curious to me now. Whether or not Doyle wrote The Lion’s Mane as a cover story, Mofftiss seem to have read it that way, and created their own less plausible version of events in The Six Thatchers. I wonder when we’ll get to see the true version of events.

Lastly, if you’re wondering how I managed to write all this without ever talking about the jellyfish we saw onscreen in The Six Thatchers, please see my separate meta here: Predator and Prey: The Jellyfish of Sherlock.

Phew! I’ve been working on this one for ages. Sorry to those I’ve been teasing with it for so long!

@may-shepard @tjlcisthenewsexy @longsnowsmoon5 @ebaeschnbliah @221bloodnun @sarahthecoat @just-sort-of-happened @gosherlocked @green-violin-bow @the-7-percent-solution @monikakrasnorada @sagestreet @hawksmoor17 @jenna221b @gloriascott93 @inevitably-johnlocked @isitandwonder

#Sherlock #TST #The Lion's Mane #meta #alibi theory #but not John's alibi #mirror versions of the same story #Moriarty #Moran #jealousy #ACD #S4 #canon subtext

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abarahman-richard-chignell · 6 years ago

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Nationalism...A Whole Lotta Nationalism!

Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatulahi wa barakatuh, The original title was going to be "A revert's thoughts on the rise in Nationalism drawing on the Quran and Sunnah", but "a whole lotta nationalism" is appropriate given the rise of it everywhere and the length, I',m afraid, of this podcast! I normally try to avoid politics but in this day and age, it's almost impossible (Brexit, Trump, Saudi, China, to name just a few that seem to be all that is in the Western news). As always I want to try and tackle this in a way that is helpful to reverts or those rediscovering their Islam as this can be a rather difficult area to navigate as it involves it seems one has to question identities, nationalities, allegiances, religion, etc. It is rather a lot easier to understand if you are of Pakistani or Bengali heritage in the UK or Latino in the US, you've sadly experienced navigating this complex mix of where you fit in one way or another on a daily basis. If you are a refugee, life has always been hard, you never left your home just for a giggle, contrary to what it seems many people think you are not an expat who is just from a quote-unquote 'undesirable' country. If you are from Palestine the struggle is in your blood. And of course this is just a snapshot of cases and far from fully inclusive. But of course, as a revert, you may be from none of the cultures under 'attack' you may even be from the culture or nation that is doing the attacking of your now new Brothers and Sisters. As a Brother from Britain or France, for example, you have the colonial legacy to deal with too. A Sister from the USA has the modern colonial warmongering of her own country to somehow come to terms with. As an Arab, you have the difficulty of leadership that never seem to represent the Islam that is everything to you, in a good light...I found and find this topic incredibly complicated and I hope that InshaAllah my thoughts and how I try to navigate this minefield may be of some value. Let me set the scene by giving some examples of rife nationalism and then tackle the Islamic view on this through some excerpts from the Qu'ran and hadith. Although a warning ahead of time: my efforts to deal with this through an Islamic lens are going to be in no way exhaustive. Alhamdullilah this is simply because there are so many references that I could choose. Allah is the most Kareem (Kind) and his Messenger pbuh the best of examples - it should not surprise you that like most things - we've got this covered! DOCUMENTARIES I cut the cord to the TV ten plus years ago but still sometimes go down a YouTube rabbit hole now and then with my wife! We basically stick to lectures or documentaries in some pseudo attempt perhaps to be educated or intellectual ha ha. I am more than aware that our recent 'watchlist' is thanks to Google and whatever clever algorithm they have deployed to nicely serve up things for us to watch on a plate. Thank you YouTube algo-developers you clever little things! The 'freedom of choice' that we have online and the 'echo chamber' effect is a whole other topic. I'm not going there today!! Anyway recently we watched a series of interesting documentaries, from what I can remember, on VICE channel, Journeyman Productions, Ross Kemp on Gangs, BBC, Al Jazeera, etc I said it was a binge so let me share the ones I can remember: Immigration - the harsh, fraught, struggle filled, emotional journeys of Syrians / Sub-Saharan Africans / Eritreans (the North Korea of Africa) / kind British people on the island of Lesbos / less kind Greek locals with a 'treat them mean and they won't continue to come' approach (as if that is going to do anything when they are willing to risk injury and death to leave where they are coming from) / unkind French and Italian police / kind local French people willing to go to court over providing refuge in their gardens to tens of refugees every day / the disgraceful French police behaviour at the Calais Jungle camp. Israel, although we normally don't watch things on the Israeli occupation as my heart breaks at the barbaric nature of this ongoing apartheid and the international communities unwillingness to act on behalf of the Palestinian victims, we did watch an interesting thing on how the Haredi Jews have refused to serve in the Israeli military for religious reasons and yet how the Zionist government are not letting them get away with it. Now persecuting their own people for their religious beliefs which they are meant to share. As I'm an Englishman and we have a bit of a dark humour, I must confess to being amused by how un-Jewish the Zionist government are, and how if you are actually a practising Jew you are also borderline, or maybe not even borderline, an 'enemy of the state'! Also, I had no idea what a large number of practising Jews were opposed to military service. A cursory bit of research highlighted that there are many other Jews like the Hasidic Jews who are against the occupation and service in the IDF. We watched on Guantanamo Bay and how it is still open and on a 'tour' were quite amazed by how little the US soldiers guarding knew about their 'enemy' that they were holding. This is rather damning of the educational level and natural intellectual inquisitiveness. Even the base commander with rather a lot of stars on his shoulder confessed to knowing next to nothing! Quite staggering. Of course, the former guard who reverted to Islam featured in the documentary, mashaAllah, so it is wrong to totally generalise - we come to Islam in some very unexpected ways! Allahu Akhbar! We also watched Hate Thy Neighbour on the Deep South of America and the horrid EDL in the UK which was simply staggering for the total demonstration of ignorance and racism that are on both sides of the 'pond'. As an Englishman watching the EDL I just felt horribly ashamed. It is quite hard for me to fathom how this country can produce such disgusting characters from its midst. A documentary on the most insane murder rate in Mexico border towns controlled by the cartels and how El Salvador is just so dangerous that those expelled from the US who have never really known El Salvador as home are willing to walk this 'caravan' that takes a minimum 30 days, and is truly treacherous, to try and get back into the US. Fully aware of the stakes involved if they are caught and that is if they beat the odds and even get anywhere near the border in the first place. We watched one on Afghanistan being, amongst a cornucopia of other natural resources, a gemstone capital. The one we watched focussed on emeralds and if you can afford them and want the greenest in the world then Afghanistan surely has them! This backed up what Afghan friends of mine had said about mineral resources in the country that I confess to never quite believing. It is amazing when you see for your own eyes that it rams home the point that you've been sold a dud by the media. It might even make one question the real motivations over the presence in a country that historically has been a graveyard for one army after another? Also, a debate hosted by intelligence squared and Chaired by Lyse Doucet (BBC's Chief International Correspondent) with the motion that "The West should cut ties with Saudi Arabia". For the motion were Mehdi Hassan (Journalist and Al Jazzera Broadcaster) and Madawi Al-Rasheed (LSE Professor and expert on Saudi Arabia). Against the motion Crispin Blunt (Conservative MP for Reigate - just up the road from me) and Mamoun Fandy (Egyptian born Middle East expert). It was a thoroughly good debate and well worth the watch. Before coming into the event 41% said they were for the motion, 22% against, 37% undecided. After the debate the positions had changed to 63% for the motion, only 5% were undecided, 32% were against. That was a swing of 6% towards the motion that "The West should cut ties with Saudi Arabia". An obvious trigger and feature of this debate was the alleged but clearly fairly solid 'off with his head' order by MBS on journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. We also watched an interesting Oxford University Hard Talk on "What is the human cost to China's economic miracle?" again with Mehdi Hasan who this time was challenging Charles Liu on China's economic and human rights record - particularly on the Uighur Muslim detention or extermination depending on who you choose to believe. Many are calling this ethnic cleansing and again it is happening pretty much undeterred. I forget where we watched it, but a just heartbreaking look at the humanitarian disaster that is Yemen, with a war that has been going on since 2015! The civil war was ongoing but everything got significantly worse and became the worlds worst humanitarian crisis upon the involvement of the Saudi-led coalition. As in every war, civilians are bearing the brunt and suffering. Normally Scandinavia is portrayed as the lands where everything works, people are the happiest in the world, etc. Yet another documentary on the rise of Far Right parties puts pay to that notion - at least in my mind. In the sidebar, there were similar documentaries on neighbouring and regional countries. Sweden was even interesting and frightening in that there is a vicious battle between these right wing hate filled groups and militant violent left groups that actively combat the fascist right. All of this centred around the topics of nationalism, immigration, race, etc. It is not just the algorithm served documentary binge fest where nationalist, separatist, racist, derogatoriness seems to be the global norm. The Christchurch terrorist act occurred and is obviously fresh in everyone's mind. As everyone knows this was nationalist, racist and hate inspired. I will not elaborate on that here. You may like to listen to my former podcast that covered the global Muslim reaction I experienced to this dreadful event, especially as it may not have been the reaction you may have expected (you can find it here). WHATSAPP Another example is from my own WhatsApp. I am a member of a number of Malaysian WhatsApp groups, after having lived there, and there is always a whole heap of Malay nationalism due to their concerns about the Chinese takeover of their country and the economic destruction that comes from not following Islamic economic principles at the state level. Post Christchurch I have received a troublesome number of links to mosques being vandalised in the north of England, we had Surrey Police talk in my local mosque and say that there had been a terrorist act against Muslims in normally sleepy Surrey. A 50-year-old man ranting about 'white supremacy' knifed a 16-year-old in a supermarket carpark..... and what is sad I am sure there are far more examples that someone with less aversion to media and social media could add to this already saddening list. The Today Show was shared with me where Muslim parents are upset about primary school sex and relationship education and Piers Morgan, taking on the mantle of a gay rights activist, decided to slander the Muslim journalist on his show, and Muslims in general, with an Islamaphobic and racist rant which was aired on an apparently well watched national TV channel. Although interesting the last 6 minutes or so were not featured online via the TV station where Piers steps a little too far over the line (the full version was sent to me). Piers, Piers, Piers, we are here to stay, when are you going to get that? Many of us are white like you mate. No, we're not going back to Islamabad, most of us never came from there, we're as British as you and have contributed more to building this society with real-world jobs than you. Wind your neck in mate. Accept that in a pluralistic society a favourite soundbite that you like to throw out, which is defined as: "A pluralistic society is a diverse one, where the people in it believe all kinds of different things and tolerate each other's beliefs even when they don't match their own.", you are going to have to accept that there are a whole bunch of us who face Mecca 5 times a day, wear different clothes, and rank God above all things. We accept you, time to actually be pluralistic and stop always targetting Muslims. That my friend is called Islamaphobia and you are only getting away with it because we don't seem quite as good as the Jews have been at getting it to be a term that people quake at being associated with, like anti-Semitism but.... we will get there soon inshaAllah, so watch out! NEWSPAPER Now I don't normally get a newspaper as I have a method that suffices my needs using my investment platforms excellent resources and I prefer books or periodicals for their deeper more thoughtful analysis. In general, I am not a fan of the 'news' per se. I know many successful people who seem to be just fine operating in a complete news blackout or reading headlines on the daily newspaper as they walk past a newsstand. However, after my family took my Dad out for lunch at the Shard last week I picked up an FT. I did it as a kind of walk down memory lane as I used to take the FT every day. As a finance chap, there really is no substitute. Now, this is not meant to be topical but rather an example of what is being pumped out and consumed. What I mean is that it is not specifically these stories that matter but rather the type of content I want to highlight. Scanning other newspapers in preparing a bit for this podcast, there is a commonality running through almost all UK publications - the examples I'm citing are indicative of the general state of affairs. I'm going to be referring to the Tuesday 19 March 2019 International Edition. Amidst the pages, on literally almost every page, what do you get but: Nationalism, Nationalism, Nationalism! Also, I quite like the FT as they don't mess about! The news section is a few condensed pages before they get full-on business. So let me walk you through this sample Tuesday from our look-for-the-nationalist or leaning-that-way articles and references:

- The front page headline has of course Brexit with "May's Brexit hits block as Bercow rules out third vote on same deal", naturally this sets the tone for a number of other articles where everyone guesses about the fiasco that has become the Brexit. The FT indicates what is coming in the rest of the paper on the front page. - Turning to page two, blissfully we get a pass. - Page three has four articles all of which are loaded with nationalistic, and because this is Britain schoolboy antics of our esteemed politicians. The main article is "Bercow adds to May's problems while delighting Europhiles and Brexiters". The photo below showing Union Jacks and European flags jostling for our attention. As its a Brexit piece it is safe to say that this is nationalistic, them and us stuff. Then we have "Leavers will back PM's deal 'if she agrees to go'. In short, this is where conservative party members seem more interested in their positions in parliament than the future of the country. Pretty standard fare for politicians. We also have "Article 50 Back to Brussels with extra baggage" which is of course more of the same about poor old Theresa May having to go back and forth to Brussels to try and find some way out of this pickle we as a nation have got ourselves in. Finally, we have more of the games in the Conservative party with "Johnson and Raab jockey for position" which is all about how to slip into the PM spot as Theresa May leaves. Oh yes, it's not about serving the public interests first but rather serving their own. Loyalty to none it seems. Of course, cherrypicking some terms we have plenty of "leading Eurosceptic contenders", "prominent Brexiters", "insisting they are acting in the national interests", "hardline Brexiters", "pro-Brexit hardcore", etc, etc, yawn, yawn. - Page four we have a detour from Brexit woes for a little foray into Europe-land. "Staff resist Czech tycoon in battle for Le Monde" is an article on a Czech billionaire looking to acquire control of the famous Le Monde newspaper. We have quotes like "I'm very suspicious of a foreign billionaire trying to get a foothold in the western establishment through the ownership of a media, especially through a newspaper such as Le Monde, which sets the tone and agenda of news in France and beyond". Yet we also have someone presumably talking on behalf of Kretinsky the billionaire saying "He is a Francophile and believes that France plays an important role in the fight of populism.". So here we have suspicion, foreign, western (making Czech back to the Eastern Bloc I presume), French nationalism in Le Monde as voice, Francophile, populism. Then it gets deeper as of course, we have "French interior minister in hot seat after yellow vest protest". This is more of the yellow vests protests that descended into violence with rioters setting fire to newsstands, a bank, restaurants and ransacking more than 90 shops. Sadly also for this chap they report on his playing around with waitresses rather than his wife. Who only knows what this movement is about anymore. It may not be so nationalistic but it is certainly popular and violent. And of course the French are often quick to say that everywhere immigrants come from are uncivilised and yet here we have France regularly looking like a war zone. - Page five, oh dear me, we have "Brazil's Trump pivots towards US in boost for White House", with subtitle "Rightwing Bolsonaro's Washington visit brings hope on both sides of closer ties". I can probably rest my case here but there are two disturbing quotes I will site to ram home the point: Firstly: "Day's before Jair Bolsonaro's meeting with Donald Trump this week, a select group of enthusiasts gathered at the Trump International Hotel in Washington to celebrate the ideas that helped bring the two rightwing populist leaders to power.Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the Brazilian president who won a landslide election in October, was there. So too, as co-host of the event, was Steve Bannon, the former White House strategist who has set up a club for nationalist populist leaders called The Movement. "This is a very important movement and not just for Brazilian-US relations.... but the world," Mr Bannon told the gathering. "Ideas have consequences, and with the arrival of Bolsonaro [in Brazil], Trump [in the US], Orban [in Hungary], and Salvini [in Italy], it's a critically important time."We're at last doing what communists and socialists did a long time ago," added Eduardo Bolsonaro, who is also head of Brazil's congressional foreign relations committee. "We're organising ourselves internationally". All I will say personally is that I find this level of organisation globally of Nationalist leaders, the language used, and the titling of their club as The Movement, simply terrifying. - Page 6 and I promise we're done, inshaAllah, but there are a couple of things here which are both nationalistic and divisive. I have to make a little detour here. The first is "Erdogan angers Wellington by airing video" where we find out the Mr Erdogan screens footage of the mosque killings during his election rallies. It seems whilst everyone else is noting how well the NZ Primeminister has dealt with the whole affair Erdogan is trying to garner voters that he is struggling to hold onto. Now I am not sure who his advisors are but even my local Imam preached to the community not to share the videos due to the hurt it would cause the victims families, the disrespect to the martyrs, and the fact that it aids the intention of the killer himself. Oh no it seems Erdogan went and dove in with both feet the videos even being captioned "A terrorist who is the enemy of Islam and the Turks". In the rallies, Erdogan said 'the "real target" of the New Zealand killings was the Turkish people, the Turkish flag and the Turkish state.' Do we need to remind Mr Erdogan that whilst he might be struggling for votes that Islam, Muslim and Turk are not synonyms. But, without going too deep into this from the Islamic perspective, we have again(!) another example of rife nationalism. Next, we have "China talks up close ties with EU in riposte to 'systemic rival' label" and language like "concerns Beijing is trying to divide the bloc", China being an "economic competitor" and "systematic rival". China's representative making a big thing of "co-operation is a mainstay of European relations". The whole thing, of course, suggests discomfort from both sides with Europe marking their turf and China doing the same. I am going to finish with the headline "Beijing attempts to justify Uighur detention". As we all know by now Human Rights groups, international concern, yet not enough governments speaking out about the atrocious, ethnic cleansing, abuse, forced marriage, forced consumption of pork and alcohol, all in the name of education, oh and torture, murder, etc, treatment of the Uighur people in China. Here we have Erdogan reclaiming some class by being the "first leading Muslim-majority country to call on China to close its mass internment camps holding Uighurs." Of course, I don't have to work hard to convince you that this is nationalistic, ethnic, racist, behaviour at play. I do have to say one thing.... you know you have that one friend or family member who is prone to massive exaggeration. Well, it seems China's state council has a serious case of exageritis! Let me read you this quote "Xinjiang has destroyed 1,588 terrorist groups, arrested 12,995 terrorists" and it goes on. But really? Really? 1,588 terrorist groups. 1,588 terrorist groups inside Xinjiang province. I spat my tea out reading that! Come on China state council pull the other one! I think you need to double down on your editorial control to ensure that the 'stats' you produce have at least some basis in reality. WRAP UP THROUGH THE LENSE OF ISLAM Ok, ok, no I haven't turned this into a news review podcast but what I do hope I have done is demonstrated how everywhere you look there is the talk of nationalism or conditions that trigger nationalistic feelings. There are whole regions in flux and mobile populations at unprecedented scales. I want to say unprecedented but I'm not a good enough historian to know if that is totally true. What is for sure is that there is a significant amount of population movement and a significant amount of nationalism. What I'd like to do now is address nationalism through the eyes of Islam and my views as to how we as Muslims are meant to actually tackle this specific issue of nationalism. I'll start with making the point that Muslims living in non-Muslim majority countries can have issues that are kind of hard for them to deal with although I emphasise they have to rely on the religious teachings of our Deen (religion). Let's note the ease with which Muslims can feel awkward in Western countries with things that are nowhere near in line with our Religious views e.g. homosexuality, sex education at increasingly younger and younger ages, public debauchery, the promotion of gambling, sexualisation of almost everything, diminishing moral standards, etc, etc. Regrettably, the list is quite long. As this warrants a whole other podcast in its own right I am going to cover this in as short and sharp a practical manner as I can without giving any specific scriptural references, I'll save that for the full podcast inshaAllah. The key point: Muslims as long as able to practice their religion have to respect and uphold the laws of the land. After having travelled in many Muslim countries, you will find that many in those lands are jealous of the law and order in the West. There is no perfect Islamic environment in the world. We have to simply make do with what we have and in the West you are really rather blessed, whether you know that or not. Just wise up and be pragmatic. Thank God that you can freely worship, that you can listen to khutba's (sermons) that are not written by the state, that you can homeschool your children if you don't like the state education, that there is good state education at all, that there is access to medical care - which is often free, the rule of law is more balanced, bribery is not rife, etc. My suggestion is don't be a complainy-pants. Don't focus on the few things that are less pleasing and overlook much that is good. We should have shukr gratitude, for the blessings Allah swt has bestowed on us and sabr for those things he has also bestowed upon us that we find hard. As Muslims, remember we are people of shukr and sabr. So what do you do my brothers and sisters about things you are uncomfortable with, like homosexuality? Well how about this? Don't go to any gay bars!! What if you meet someone 'strange' or 'odd'? Be kind and well mannered. You never know if you may be an instrument of Allah swt and a trigger for them looking to Islam. There is no compulsion in religion and we are all the creation of Allah swt after all. A simple heuristic is to worry more about yourself, then your family, then your community, and work your way up. I am sure there are more than enough things for you to work on in those first three areas before being outraged by fringe groups. Even if they are rather vocal considering their meagre numbers. Back to Nationalism. Look I checked my logic on this whole topic of Nationalism and being a Muslim with one of my close Arabic Brothers who has memorised the Quran mashaAllah. I also asked him for verses that he thought were relevant. There are honestly so many on this topic and additionally many many Hadith. I messaged him the following: "I would like to write something on nationalism and its dangers. It will be along the line of what I believe is stated in the Quran and the Sunnah: that we are Muslim first and from a nation second. That cultural things from our national traditions are cool as long as they don't contradict explicitly something from the Qu'ran and the Sunnah. This is my logical understanding so far." My Brothers response was "I stand with you for this Brother, flags and colours should not take us away from each other, we are being called by Allah swt as "one Ummah" and the only differences between us are in Taqwa which no one can judge except He." Note the key points here. 1) we are an ummah before we are nations with flags, colours, etc, (2) our unity as brothers and sisters in Islam supersedes our allegiances to nation states, (3) in the eyes of Allah swt we are all the same except in our taqwa. Taqwa if you have not heard of it before is our God consiciousness or you can have it translated as fear of Allah swt. It is what makes us do acts in remembrance of Allah swt. This can only be judged by Him the Most Magnificent as He is the only one who can look into the hearts to see this taqwa. None of us mere mortals possibly can. Actually, there is another area I want to share in my communication with my Brother that I think is important to reflect on as Muslims. I laughed with my wife that it is so amazing that I can just ask him for references and he closes his eyes and can just pull relevant verses from the Quran database that is his brain. What an incredible blessing that is from Allah swt and for someone who didn't grow up with any knowledge that people have memorised God's word in its entirety with no errors I continue to be astounded when I see this. I told him we thought this and he laughed. He said "Alhamdullilah Brother, when someone says this to me I really would say as Prophet Suleiman (Solomon) said in the Quran 27:19 "... "My Lord, enable me to be grateful for Your favour which You have bestowed upon me and upon my parents and to do righteousness of which You approve. And admit me by Your mercy into [the ranks of] Your righteous servants" Alhamdullilah" Then he tells me "you should teach your kids Arabic Brother, they will be grateful to you afterwards, they will appreciate how much you really love them especially when they read the Quran and understand it the way it was revealed" Then he said: "Walahi Brother, Quran is the only guidance in my life, and without it, I am completely NOTHING. It is my soul's oxygen! and every Muslim's too (supposedly)!" I share this as I feel it imperative to ask anyone still listening or reading: is this how you feel about the Quran? Is this your relationship with it? Is it your oxygen? Are you nothing without it? It is meant to be! This is what creates our unity, creates our understanding, means that when there are issues like nationalism we know 100% where we stand as Muslims. We know that we're united with every single other Muslim on the Straight Path as we all go our understanding from Allah swt's direct words to us in the Holy Quran as well as the example and explanation of those words from the Prophet pbuh and what we have learnt from the Sahaba (may Allah be pleased with them), and the great scholars who have helped ensure in these modern times we understand as we were meant to the way to live. May Allah swt enable us as an Ummah to reconnect with Him through His Words and may we have the Qu'ran such a part of our life that it testifies on our behalf in the hereafter. Ameen. So here are a few quotes from the Qu'ran: 21:92-93 *"[Prophets], this is your community, one community, and I am your Lord, so serve Me. They have torn their unity apart, but they will all return to us."* 23:52-53 *"This is your community, one community - and I am your Lord: be mindful of Me - but they have split their community into sects, each rejoicing in their own." * In both of these the emphasis, the angle that is being stated if you like, is referring to us as a community which is understood as an Ummah-nation. A community united by shared beliefs. One where our religion is the unifier, that is what makes us a nation, we are not separate from any other Brother or Sister, we are united as an Ummah through our religion, through the Lord we worship, the Lord we fear, and the Prophet pbuh who's example we follow. Allah swt reminds us of the risks of division and how we will all ultimately return to Him. He swt also highlights at the end of the second verse how the Jews and the Christians split into sects "each rejoicing in their own". Here the Quran is warning Prophet Muhammad pbuh and us that we are meant to be united as an Ummah, as a community, and not divide up into groups, making the errors of the former peoples of the book. Do you see how this trumps all human constructs of nations or nation-states? How it runs so much deeper? *3:102-103 *"You who believe, be mindful of God, as is His due, and make sure you devote yourselves to Him, to your dying moment. Hold fast to God's rope all together; do not split into factions. Remember God's favour to you: you were enemies and then He brought your hearts together and you became brothers by His grace: you were about to fall into a pit of Fire and He saved you from it. In this way God makes his revelations clear to you so that you may be rightly guided." * This is massive! We were enemies, and He brought our hearts together, through the religion, and His favour and we became brothers. Allah swt tells us that this saves us from the pit of the Fire. He swt tells us that we must "hold fast to God's rope all together". So why are we fighting, killing, making enemies of other Muslims, fighting as nations against other nations, when that favour of Allah swt and brotherhood in religion that he has given us is what keeps us from the fire? *3:104 "Be a community that calls for what is good, urges what is right, and forbids what is wrong: those who do this are the successful ones."* As is the case throughout the Quran Allah swt tells us what makes us "the successful ones" and it as a community - a global ummah again - calling for what is good and forbidding what it is wrong. Calling to good is about as expansive as it gets. Are nationalistic motivations, the superiority of one type over the other, calling for good? Is this treating our brothers as we would hope to be treated? A community is stated here, not multiple nations. A community of believers where collectively, we focus on good. United we are successful as a single global community. I see this as knowing that deeper than the human constructs of nation-states there is a bond between me and my Moroccan brother, or between me and my Yemeni brother, or between me and my Colombian brother, or any other brother you can think of.... that transcends that nation-state man-made construct. *3:105 "Do not be like those who, after they have been given clear revelation, split into factions and fall into disputes: a terrible punishment awaits such people."* This should make us think, should it not? Are we going down the route of those in the past who became divided? Have we not been given clear revelation? Have we not witnessed the mess that has become of those who have split into so many factions they lost all unity and are clearly in confusion? Do we no longer fear the punishment of Allah? Allahu Akhbar! La illah ill Allah. We hear and we obey! Or at least we should be unified by that La illah ill Allah. There is a community or a nation but its the community or nation that unites across all languages, races, and types under the shahada: La illah ill Allah, Muhammad rassululah. THIS TOPIC REQUIRES MORE I actually got into this topic without thinking it through fully! I realise that I have only really scratched the surface of what needs to be said on this matter. For example, I need to address the race and racism part. How the inclusiveness of Islam is one of the biggest draws and how the Quran and indeed the Prophet pbuh's last sermon covered how we are all the same no matter our skin colour or where we happen to have been born. Maybe even more so than this is the importance of highlighting the importance of brotherhood and sisterhood as a broad concept in Islam and how this adds to the trumping of nationalism. However, this is already exceptionally long and so I guess I shall inshaAllah break this topic up and cover these in future podcasts. InshaAllah I also didn't lose everyone with the length of this one, in what seems to be, unintentionally, my first long-form podcast. CONCLUSION To wrap up I hope that I have made a clear case that as Muslims we must be very careful around nationalism and tribalism. We are Muslim first and of our countries second. Or maybe even deeper we are of the human community first and foremost, as all are created by Allah swt irrespective of belief. Then as Muslims, we believe in Allah swt and we happen to live in a particular nation, for what is ultimately a very short period. The purpose of this residence being to work so that we get where we so desperately hope to in the hereafter which is eternal. Furthermore, I hope that, although I didn't drum it home so much that, as long as we are able to practice our religion we are bound by the laws of the lands we reside in. This can raise emotions that can be difficult to deal with but we must be patient (have sabr) as well as being grateful (having shukr) for all those things we are blessed with. I've lived in different European countries most of my life and then in Muslim countries. I have good friends and business interests in many different countries and I can categorically tell you that even if things look 'idyllic' somewhere else - they aren't. Remember this is the dunya - you want idyllic? - work for it through your worship and remembrance of Allah swt. May Allah swt draw us together as Muslims, enable us to be the best of examples and the ones no one fears, may we not harm our brothers and sisters in any way and may our leaders lead with wisdom and mercy for all humankind. Ameen.

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