#descent ghetto

[sinisterexaggerator]

My recreation of Duro/New Tayana using graphics on Canva (which I pay for) and imagery from Star Wars media.

This is Cad Bane's home. I plan to use this as a banner for my upcoming long fic. Duro had a single orange star for its sun, and the smog I added for effect, as the planet is nearly inhospitable to life and highly polluted.

The nearby satellite/waystation is the floating city of New Tayana itself, which Bane lived in an area that was labeled the Descent Ghetto; he was not at all fond of it.

Original images from the comics used for inspiration:

[alpaca-clouds]

Gortash's Explosive Toys

Okay, I have found that at least some people are apparently confused about this quest.

One of the first quests you can get in Act 3 of BG3 is the one about the suspicious toys. And, spoiler, if you investigate the quest, you will find that the strange toys explode, and that Gortash is in fact behind it.

And people seem to be confused why Gortash is doing it, coming to the conclusion that it must be in there to just make sure everyone gets that he is evil.

But... Okay, here is the thing: Gortash's thing to become a tyrant kinda is rooted in him using a classic right wing playbook. Basically, a big part of Gortash's plan is, that he creates a politically unstable situation that he can exploit to build himself up as the savior and his tyrannical ways as the only valid option.

You know how Trump in the US will not shut up about the Southern border and the "immigrants" (most of them refugees) coming in? Yeah, that is what Gortash is doing here.

Through the entire Absolute army, he creates chaos in the land along the Chionthar. This chaos in turn produces a wave of refugees, who flock to the city of Baldur's Gate for its perceived safety. He then does not let them enter, forcing them to form a ghetto, forcing them to live in instability and desperate conditions. And then his plan is to distribute those toys to make the people angry, creating a situation in which the refugees rise up against the city. Basically creating a refugee vs Baldurians situation.

His plan is to then come in, be the strong man who solves the situation through force and violence, and through this create compliance in the people of the city.

That is the end goal of that plan. It is to rile people up. Create an atmosphere of fear and anger.

And I mean, sure. Gorts could not have planned for the Descent of Elturel - but man, it did fit his plan really well, didn't it?

[izabesworld]

Something in the Peaky Blinders community that has caught mine and a few others’ eyes, in the frequent and so relaxed use of the word “Gypsy” when not in book context.

As someone part of the Rroma community, having once lived in Romania, moving from country to country until we settled in England in 2008, I think it’s important to make it known to people who may not be aware before it becomes a widespread issue.

The word Gypsy has been used since the beginning of our communities in the North of India, where majority of us originated. The word has been used to enslave the Rroma community until the late 1800’s, it was used during the Holocaust to justify the slaughter and eradication the Rroma community endured and wipe out our community.

Between 200,000-500,000 (the records unknown due to the disregard of Rroma life) Roma and Sinti people were murdered by Nazi’s in the 2nd World War. Roma and Sinti people were sent to ghettos, Auchwitz, Dachau and Brikenau, which has a specific “Gypsy Camp”, made specifically for the Roma and Sinti communities.

Romani is not Romany, Romany is not Sinti. Rroma is an Indo-Aryan ethnic group that has a closed language. We wish that for the purpose of fanfiction, you do not attempt to learn that language as it is closed. The language has saved the lives of millions of Rroma through the years - being a symbol of our strength and integrity. If something were to happen to our community again, we would rely on our language to keep us safe once again.

Having Romani, Romany, Sinti or any other Rroma connection does NOT make you ethnically Rroma. Having Great-great grandparent connections to Rroma does not make you Rroma, for you will not be persecuted for living in a Vardo, nor will you be persecuted for the label on your birth certificate.

We want you to celebrate our culture, when you are invited. We want you to celebrate our dished and clothing, when you are invited. If you have a Rroma friend, you will more than likely understand a few basic words of our language.

In fan-fiction, it is expected to see the word Gypsy be used sparsely, giving context to the time period and the lack of regard for our community, despite the hardships. However, we ask you do not use it in reference to us or our people, fiction or not. We ask that when you talk about the Shelby’s as people, you refer to them as Romani, not as Gypsy.

We ask that you do not call yourself Gypsy in your usernames, for that is disregard to our culture and our people. We ask that you do not refer to yourself as a Gypsy in context of you like a person of Rroma descent.

We ask so little, but these changes can change the future of so many Rroma people. It can change the future of my grand-children’s lives, my children’s lives. If we understand now why Rroma are important, why we aren’t thieves, job stealers and lazy, we’ll make a change to the future and what may happen next.

Rroma has had so little rest, and we are still in a constant battle with the engrained systems that disallow us to do certain activities and events due to our heritage.

As authors on this app, we ask YOU to be the first to make that change.

Of course, any reblogs etc are appreciated, or if you choose to illiterate this piece into something else to spread to your friends on this app, we will also be entirely grateful. If the message is spread, maybe the next generation of will not have to be told the message at all.

All my blessings to anyone who has read this. Nais nais tuke <3

[uboat53]

And here we go, the process of forgetting has begun, aided and abetted by Jews themselves.

Israel is not Judaism. It is not anti-Semitic to oppose actions of the Israeli state, no matter how loudly the Israeli far-right screams otherwise. Certainly there are anti-Semites who oppose Israel because it's Jewish, but there are also anti-Semites who support Israel as a ghetto for Jews and will loudly proclaim their support of Israel to shield themselves from accusations of anti-Semitism.

Make no mistake, the people who proclaim that a state is only for certain people are anti-Semitic. They may hide it now, but eventually they will get to the Jews as they always do.

The left, even the far-left, for all of its faults, bases itself on multi-culturalism. In fact, this is why you see so much anti-Israel feeling on the left these days; the left in the western world is currently incorporating people of Arab and particularly Palestinian descent who, for many valid reasons, feel victimized by Israel. This is, naturally, a friction point with many Jews, but it's one that we can talk about and work through and will likely end with some sort of compromise.

To summarize, anti-Semitism is a core value of the political right, those who believe that there are different types of people and only one belongs. Don't get me wrong, anti-Semitism exists on the political left as well, but it's not core the belief and tends to flare up only in the context of some sort of conflict rather than when they feel they have the power to move against us as with the political right.

If you're Jewish, or if you care about Jewish people, the political right will always be a greater threat than the political left. The fact that even those who lived through the terror of the triumph of the political far-right long ago can forget that tells you everything you need to know about the current moment.

[ghostpalmtechnique]

Israel exists where it does because that was the only place it was conceivably going to exist. Every statement about "they should have put it in [x]" is intellectual wanking that is completely divorced from anything that was ever feasible in historical context. That is the short version for why I think Israel should exist (within roughly it's 1949 borders, to the extent that any state should exist).

I am not impressed by historical arguments from either side. If you start talking about "settler colonialism," I am already assuming you are both a fool and a scoundrel. The modal Israeli a) is not of European descent, and b) is third- or fourth-generation Israeli.

If you argue that Palestinians were there first (more or less credible depending on where, specifically, "there" is), then you should have to answer the question: After how many generations does a land claim expire? You obviously believe in such an expiration date, because otherwise you would have to acknowledge the Jewish claim.

-----

There are two possible Jewish responses to the world's long history of anti-Jewish hostility. One is to form an enclave; the other is to try and create a society where ethnicity doesn't matter. The argument against the former is that the proper term for an ethnic enclave walled off from encirclement by hostile forces is "ghetto," and this does not substantially change if there are guns inside the walls. The argument against the latter has been the continuous undercurrent of Christian Nationalism on the right in the United States (let's be clear here --2/3 of the global Jewish population lives in either the US or Israel; everywhere else is irrelevant as a survival strategy, except to the extent that dispersal itself is a strategy).

As you can tell from the fact that I live in the United States, I prefer the latter strategy, and have spent my entire life politically in what I regard as a life-or-death struggle with SoCons. But what I keep gesturing at, and people stubbornly refuse to absorb, is that watching my ostensible allies in this struggle downplay antisemitism when it comes from the left comes off as a stab in the back and is a damaging argument against the viability of strategy #2.

[ghostofacrow]

i watched the Somerton RGU video and I'm assuming this one isn't plagiarised besides the wikipedia synopsys because I don't think the person who wrote it liked Utena, he keeps joking about how weird the show is and spends half the video trying to pick apart what's real and what is a metaphor and says he dislikes the movie because it blurs the line between reality and the metaphorical events more.

That's not how fiction works! Ohtori academy is definitively real in the show, it's even what Somerton treats as the baseline reality - it's still a metaphor!! For patriarchy or gendered society or just for adolescence in general, the things that are real in the show still mean something. Fictional events aren't either a metaphor or definitively real, this is some dream theory ass analysis and especially with something like Utena that deals so much in symbolism this is such a useless approach and it takes up the bulk of the video. "Do they actually have sword fights or not?" is possibly the least interesting angle you could take here.

Knowing that every time he had a good thought, it wasn't his, really makes me question if he is actually capable of meaningful media analysis that goes beyond 1:1 mapping elements of a movie onto real life (by real life I mean the experience of a white cis gay man). Genuinely does he know what symbolism is?

Then I remembered a clip from the Attack on Titan video where his main argument for why the Eldians aren't a metaphor for jewish people in ww2 is that there are some aspects of the story that don't match real life exactly but. They're marked with stars. There's an obvious ghetto. Everyone has german names in this japanese story. The general look of all the technology clearly say ww2 era. The idea that a story can use this many specific signifiers of a very narrow time and place but because there are some elements that don't match reality exactly, it's actually not about that history is so weird.

So I went to look up the clip and, of course, he is also wrong about the history, most of the things he list that didn't happen in WW2 did actually happen. Honorary Aryans were a thing. There's even direct examples of people of jewish descent (like Helmuth Wilberg) earning honorary aryan status through military service, the thing Somerton confidently claims didn't happen.

There wasn't a crack special forces unit in the Nazi military made up of Jews but the Sonderkommandos are a well documented historical fact. A lot of the day to day operation of the death camps was handled by prisoners who were forced into that position and they were killed and replaced on schedule.

He gets confused about what Paradis is because surely it must stand in for exactly one real historical thing or the whole allegory is fake and claims it's not a ghetto because there is a literal ghetto later in the story. He even admits that it might be Israel but "jewish exile island" is also literally the Madagascar Plan, the only reason this didn't happen was the logistic issues of moving thousands of people halfway across the world while under a naval blockade.

There's so much you can argue about how Attack on Titan uses it's historical elements (and personally I think it uses all of this very carelessly), but denying that they are there because there wasn't a jewish exile island irl is so stupid. I started out just being confused about the RGU analysis and just wanted to get a backup argument but what I actually found is Holocaust disinformation and it feels both wrong to tag this onto the "Somerton doesn't understand what a metaphor is" post but I also don't want to ignore it so here it is. Fuck this guy seriously

[bobemajses]

Patrilineal here, my mother's side is from Puerto Rico and has no Jewish ancestry. My father's side is 100% Ashkenazi. The areas I know are:

His paternal grandfather: Telšiai, Lithuania (Telz). Family appeared to have been in that area for centuries. Fled the tsar's army draft in 1900.

His paternal grandmother: Suceava, Romania (Shots). Was a citizen of Austria-Hungary (Bukovina) until the empire fell in 1918, and Romania did not yet consider Jews to be citizens. Came to the US in 1921.

His maternal side came to the US longer ago so some records are unclear or missing. His maternal grandfather's ancestors came from Hungary (unsure if Hungary proper or former Hungarian crown lands), Germany(?), Prussian Poland (I believe my research led me to Kcynia/Exin). His maternal grandmother's father came from Myszyniec/Mishnitz which was formerly part of Łomża, Poland, and mother came from somewhere else in Russian Poland. I wish I knew which area because we have photos of them and that line is descended from a rabbi, and I have that family's shabbat candlesticks.

Since I'm patrilineal I had to convert, but I've always been proud of my family history so I like to think of it as finally doing the paperwork for citizenship by descent :)

As eastern European as it can get! Thank you for sharing! Suceava had a very thriving Jewish community dating back to the 15th century. The Jews lived in relative harmony with the many other peoples in the region. In the 18th century representatives of Suceava Jewry took an active part in the struggle of the Bukovinians against the oppressions of Austrian authorities.

On July 28, 1914 in the house of the Rabbi Mosche Hager "the biggest wedding of the Bukovina", the double wedding of his two oldest daughters was held. It was supposed to last 8 days. On the eighth day, the District Captain, Dr. Korn carrying orders from the Austrian government appeared in the Rabbi's court and gave the official order to cancel the festivities since Austria had declared war against Serbia. As the Russian army approached Suceava in the process of this war, a Cossack was shot from his horse. The Colonel Bakunin gave the order that as punishment for the murder, the entire city should be set in flames. The mayor of the city, Orthodox Priest Dr. Sarbu, who was a friend of the Jews went with a delegation of citizens of the city to the Colonel and pleaded with him to withdraw his order. Eventually he gave in to the request of the delegation and so the city was saved from destruction. Today, the Jewish community still exists (although very small) with a functioning Jewish center, cemetery, ritual bath and synagogue.

The first account of Jews living in Łomża comes from 1494. Judka Blumowicz was the richest Jew in the town in the early 19th century and built the largest house in Lomża; it is said that Napoleon himself stayed there during the invasion of Russia. Jewish people from Łomża also participated, together with Poles, in the 19th-century national uprisings, for which they were sent to Siberia.

Between 1840 and 1846, Beniamin Diskin worked as the rabbi of the town and he became quite a distinguished figure. The Russian authorities invited him to participate in the European Rabbinical Council, which assembled in Petersburg in 1843. In 1893, 8,767 Jews (47,8% of the total population) lived in the town. During World War I, the community was quite supportive of Russian troops. In the great synagogue, the rabbi appealed to Jews to make sacrifices and be loyal to Russia; several superior officers were present at the ceremony.

The German army conquered Łomża in September 1939, left after a short time, and reconquered the town in June 1941. The local Jews were forced into a ghetto, and most were murdered in nearby forests and in death camps - thereby marking the community’s end.

[gaymormonmike]

MARGINALIZED

My focus recently has been on my marginalization as a gay, divorced, single man in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I had an insight last week as I studied scriptures and pondered and prayed about marginalization in general.

What does it mean if someone is marginalized?

Today, marginalize refers to the act of treating a person or group as though they are insignificant by isolating and/or disempowering them. The term marginalized applies to the person or group that is treated insignificantly, pushed to the margins of society and rendered powerless. Marginalization is the result of discrimination. Discrimination exists in many forms, such as racism, sexism, ableism, ageism, homophobia and xenophobia. Whether or not the discrimination is overt or covert, it marginalizes others and that is unacceptable.

As I thought about that some insights came to mind.

I was a small child marginalized in many ways. I was a Highly Sensitive Person in a family that did not like a HSP boy. I had a father who wanted a boy like his ideal, the man he never was. I grew up early, knowing I was not acceptable, something was wrong in me. I lived in the ghetto of a small Midwestern town. That side of town was regarded as trash. Child abuse was common and just part of life. We did not know any different. I went into a profession, Registered Nurse, dominated by females. Once again, I was marginalized as a "male nurse."  When I was 13, I understood I was attracted to my male friends. I knew that was wrong and I felt so different and so alone and so marginalized. After I joined the LDS church, I accepted that my sexual orientation was a sin that would result in eternal punishment, and I fought against it so hard. I got married, had children and grandchildren and tried to be happy. I was on the outer edge, and I was a man divided against himself.

As I think about the members of my ward and the many good people who pursue being good, I wonder how many of them are marginalized in some aspect.  Maybe they all fall into some marginalized group.

LBGTQA+ and allies

People of color

People of African American descent with family history of slavery

People of religious groups who may not be in favor for various reasons, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Mormons, Catholics, Jehovah Witnesses, Snake Baptists, Holy Rollers, Whirlimng Dervishes, etc. etc.

People raised in the wrong part of town.

Single parents, Orphans, Adoptees, Adopted parents, childless parents,

Shamed, self-loathers, want to be someone else’s,

People who project onto others, those projected on, those who use transference to defend themselves,

Married people, teen-agers, pre-teenagers,

People who went to schools that were not the best, community colleges, virtual colleges, home schooled, schools dominated by non-white races.

Latino people, pickers, illegal aliens, people with foreign accents that are not desirable,

People with everyday jobs, housekeepers, hotel cleaners, waiters and waitresses, sewer workers, garbage collectors, used car salesman, scammers, phone solicitors.

People with smelly homes, broken down porches with appliances and furniture on them, uncared for yards.

People with dirty children in bare feet and dirty clothes

Appalachians, hillbillys, southerners, racists, bigots, nazis, KKK, Haters,

women, girls,

Fat people, people with glasses, ugly people, people who spit in public,

Bullies, fighters, controllers, get their wayers

Abusers, sexual, emotional, physical abusers, their victims their survivors

Criminals, jail birds, cons, ex-cons, police, fireman, law enforcement

Lawyers, doctors, nurses,

Republicans, Democrats, Conservatives, Liberals, Communists, Fascists, Libertarians

Rich people, people with no worries or cares or need to help.

People of privilege who can have everything they want.

People who like snakes and lizards

People with odd looking hair, dyed or long or wild or standing up or part shaved, or all shaved or just different

People who are animals, dogs, cats, deer, pigs

People from Poland, Russia, Mexico, China, Asia, people with slanty eyes, with red dots on their foreheads, Muslims, people with turbans, women covered with burkas,

Blondes, especially female

Single people, unmarried, divorced, windowed,

People addicted to drugs, alcohol, pornography, sex, working out,

Lovers of fame, fortune, liars, thieves, politicians,

Heart breakers, non- committers, seducers, pedophiles, enticers, embracers, touchers, feelers,

Homeless people, beggars, street people, shopping cart people.

Atheists, Agnostics, God haters and profaners, 

People who believe they are saved, condemners, better than thouers, people who know it all, prideful people.

Have I left anybody out? Or have I failed to insult you or the group you align yourself with? Or the group you want to forget you ever were a part of? Or the group you are happy to be a part of and do not appreciate being lumped into here?

I also fear that we will compare who has it worse. I say that each situation, whether of our making or by our birth or others’ choices, are legitimate. I have heard or read of thousands who had it worse than me. It did not take away my issues and what I go through. Your trials and tribulations and joys are yours and deserve the same reverence and respect of all others.

These words cannot define or describe the people they may represent. They cannot be equal in their results or effects. First there is the person who experiences these words in their lives. Each is different and unique and deals with a myriad of ways.. Some can turn these experiences into stellar personality adaptations. The environment that you grow up in and the attitudes of those who influence you can change the effect of these situations. They can become a reason to overcome or a reason to despair. Your faith can change how you view life, and its' vagaries can change the outcomes. The options you have or the perceived options you have can change how you react to all situations. The intensity of the experience and its effects on you can vary greatly. It is true that some of these are a result of things you cannot control or change. Others have the potential to be choices that you can control or change. But to some degree we all have traits or situations that others judge, feel superior to or dislike enough to not want to acknowledge your worth or value. If we examine ourselves, we will find we are both victims of and people who sometimes, marginalize others.

My question is how any of us can feel superior or look down on anyone else, when we are all in some way marginalized people?

I am a strong believer in Heavenly Father and Mother and my Savior Jesus Christ. I attest that he made all of us, everyone on the lists above. He loves us fully and completely as we are. He wants us to be better, but He loves us with our faults and offers a way back home to His side. Many of the people I listed above are people that I am either a part of or have judged in my life. I seek to be a better man, a better queer man, a better Christ-like man by realizing that the people at church and in my social sphere that marginalize me are themselves marginalized in some capacity. My goal is to help us all see that and accept that we can love one another because we are different and we have incredible stories and incredible pasts and that we can all become more loving, accepting and affirming.

[gortashs-skidmark]

Our Beloved Tiefling Headcanons and Canon facts

(UNFINSIHED)

!! Rolan and Dammon headcanons. Canon History about Asmodeus Tieflings, Tiefling abilities, Arcana and Blacksmiths. Rolan and Dammon are both Asmodeus, which will be the only Tiefling bloodline we take a look into. More bloodlines linked in the Info Source: dnd5e.wikidot below !!

CONTENT WARNING:

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Info Source: World Anvil, Officialbeastiary Wiki, DND BEYOND, dnd5e.wikidot, Forgotten Realms Wiki, World Anvil, 5th Edition SRD Utilizes 5e, 1e, 3e, and 4e

What is Arcana instinct in Tieflings? Asmodeus Traits and History.

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Differences in Devils, Cambions, and Demons and what to know about them.

𝕯 Cambion's are direct descents of evil beings, such as Raphael who's father is Mephostipheles. True Cambion's are half-fiends, who's one humanoid planetouched, and one who's Tana'ri. Succubus do not count as Tana'ri or Demon Lords, they cannot have a Cambion persay, though still half-fiend. The mortal mothers always die in childbirth. The most common terms for Cambion, is breeding between a mortal female and a Devil. Terms of what a Cambion are have changed over the years because of the spellplague, but this is the simplest breakdown. Their extremely bitter beings, for their societal rejection and potential orphanage or demon abuse. Their mothers die, abandoning them and leaving them in the Material Plane (orphanage) or The Abyss (demon abuse). They often seek out each other for companionship, or humanoids to create Tiefling offspring.

𝕯 Tiefling's blood is only slightly tainted with an evil being's blood and can be an array of alignments, but often end up in the "ghetto" of town as thieves and crimelords.. Mistrusted and feared on the streets of the Material Plane for their tainted lineage. Asmodeus being the most common bloodline. Tieflings are from human blood, they're basically humans with horns and tails, and darkvision. Different bloodlines will get slightly different looks and abilities.

𝕯 Demons are chaotic fiends who only seek to destroy, originating from the Abyss. "They were personifications of ferocity, vile perversion, and elemental devastation" without compassion or empathy, these are vicious creatures that only exist to sow strife and disorder through evil. Demons intend to cause the most pain in any situation, simple killing is too boring for them. Their wickedness knows no bounds.

𝕯 Devils are highly vindictive Lawful (Evil) beings who seek to control. Devils seek vengeance more than anyone for their misery, seemingly for no reason other than conscious relief. Devils will have vengeance even if in the long run it demoted them. they're lazy and lay their work onto others. They are always looking forward towards the rise to promotion, and changing the rules in their favor. They act on emotion if it's strong enough, ignoring their seek to avenge or potentially ruining their goals, even leading towards their death.

𝕯 Succubus/Incubus and a male mortal can have Alu-fiend offspring. Female offspring were seductive in their manners, had sharp teeth and a set of wings, and had high sexual proclivity. Males struggled were seen as only half-fiends with similar traits, which destroyed any sense of gender hierarchy. Alu-fiends are incapable of long-time shapeshifting. Naturally deceptive, dexterous, and charismatic, a race of "social butterflies" not only in sexual encounters. They crave interaction, don't kill their prey, and don't go after their prey's spouses, their cravings for any social activity makes them incredibly gullible. They can have a charming aura without people noticing their presence.

𝕯 The difference in an Incubus and a Succubus is the sex of the victims. Often Succubi are feminine forms seeking male victims. Incubi are often masculine forms, seeking female victims. Their abilities are the same. What is something that fucks both? I don't fucking know. A Bincsubus. That's made up. That's not real.

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Tinkerers or Tin-Smith? 𝕯 A Tinkerer is a possibly class, is a master crafter, repairer, manipulator, and creator in the engineering world, ancient and new techniques.

𝕯 "Many tinkerers explore how magic and engineering mix, developing complex powers of item imbuement and mastering crafting- and mechanics-related spells. Others eschew magic as a cheap trick that ignores the brilliance of pure engineering and crafting, or focus on constructs and clockwork or alchemical weaponry, or train to get more out of their tools and magical devices, or kitbash and juryrig what they need when they need it. " - 5th Edition SRD

𝕯 A tin-smith, can also be referred to as a "White-Smith" which an umbrella term, means they specialize in light metals like tin or pewter. It can fall under Adamantine or Mithral, which falls under the specific term "Bright-Smith"

𝕯 Adamantine can only be found in hot magma-producing areas. It's brittle which makes it delicate to work with, it's high in cost and requires a strict process with high temperatures.

𝕯 Adamantine can be used in weapons, armor, spell-casting, and constructs.

𝕯 Tin-Smith's can work with tin, silver, bronze, and pewter alloys. It requires a low-melting point, and can easily be manipulated.

𝕯 I ask this question, just to make you think about Dammon, this could leave to any kind of headcanon you want about him.

What happened to Elturians during the Descent? I'm way too tired to go over the history of Elturel again.

"Kreeg coaxed Grand Duke Ulder Ravengard of Baldur's Gate to come to Elturel to resolve several disputes that had troubled the two cities for some time. After greeting the Baldurian delegation, Kreeg escaped Elturel in secret, shortly before the Companion changed into a black orb that tore the whole of Elturel and its populace from the Material Plane and spirited it away to Avernus, first of the Nine Hells, with only a crater left behind"

"Over the next few days, hundreds of refugees, both citizens who'd escaped Elturel or been outside at the time, and folk from wider Elturgard, made their way to neighboring Baldur's Gate, with some blaming Elturel's rival for the city's loss. However, they were barred from the city and the resident Flaming Fist began arresting Hellriders on sight, fearing they would cause trouble, but this only led to fighting."

 "Torn from the land, the city was fractured in twain along the ravine that ran through the city. The black Companion still hung malevolently over the city, raining down lightning that raised ghouls, ghasts, and zombies. While devils besieged the city, demons attacked them in another battle of the Blood War, and the surviving Elturians fought off both or simply hid in the ruins. Many people died in the devastation, to the demons and devils, or to thirst and starvation. With the city's leaders lost, none other than Grand Duke Ravengard rallied the defense. The High Hall was the center of the defense effort, and also the focus of the devil assault."

Sorcerous Sundries and Razamith's Tower

Small Note: "Elturian wizards, meanwhile, were safer in the saddle, being skilled at attacking from their mounts. They were much more capable of avoiding or resisting attacks while mounted than they on foot, being less able to react fast enough"

[yallcantread]

If you haven’t yet I highly recommend you read this article. (Link in quote) interviewer also confirmed his relationship with Taylor Swift.

It’s almost like he saw my blog post about me ranting how none of this matters. Life’s kinda crazy innit?

Here’s part of the article where he addresses the podcast/The Adam Friedland show situation/Ice Spice.

“On “The Adam Friedland Show,” Healy and the hosts roamed more or less randomly around the cultural landscape, cracking jokes. One of the hosts asked if the rapper Ice Spice, who is of Nigerian and Dominican descent, was an Inuit Spice Girl, and the group then did crude approximations of an Inuit accent, veering from vaguely Chinese to quasi-Hawaiian.

Later, he laughed as the hosts did impressions of hypothetical Japanese guards at German concentration camps. He joked about watching the brutal porn channel Ghetto Gaggers. After the episode went up, outraged headlines and furious tweets—“matty healy, how are you getting on stage every night and mocking toxic masculinity and then going on a podcast and undoing the whole thing by being wildly ignorant, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, everything else under the sun”—predictably ensued.

I asked him about the podcast. He’d been doing so much promo, he told me, that he wanted to do something that felt more like simply talking with his friends. But, of course, he had done this all in public, on mike. Had he baited his fans on purpose? “A little bit,” he said. “But it doesn’t actually matter. Nobody is sitting there at night slumped at their computer, and their boyfriend comes over and goes, ‘What’s wrong, darling?’ and they go, ‘It’s just this thing with Matty Healy.’ That doesn’t happen.”

“Maybe it does,” I said. “If it does,” he said, “you’re either deluded or you are, sorry, a liar. You’re either lying that you are hurt, or you’re a bit mental for being hurt. It’s just people going, ‘Oh, there’s a bad thing over there, let me get as close to it as possible so you can see how good I am.’ And I kind of want them to do that, because they’re demonstrating something so base level.””

Part of the interview speaking on Taylor and Matty’s relationship. I hope people give them the space and best wishes they deserve. Many fans of hers have been hoping he does something bad to her so she realizes he’s no good for her? It’s quite disgusting.

“In May, tabloids reported that Healy and Swift were an item. Both of them, onstage during their respective tours, seemed to conspicuously mouth the words “This is about you, you know who you are, I love you.” Healy flew from the Asia leg of his tour, in the Philippines, to attend Swift’s show in Nashville. There was chatter, online, that it was a joke, or a publicity stunt, or perhaps simply two ardent self-chroniclers gathering material about intertwined egos for devastating pop albums to come. Neither of their representatives would comment on the record, but I kept getting texts from people who knew them, and who insisted: this time, it’s real.”

[sinisterexaggerator]

I casually explained the cause of Bane's modulated “accent” in Stars Above and then promptly forgot about it.

Headcanon:

“So, ye've gotta lil' problem on yer hands, dhen?” Bane feigned interest to keep his potential employer entertained, his voice tinged with a certain air of sinister directness, words laced with an accent that was commonplace among his kind; his vocal cords vibrated in a unique way, even though he spoke in Basic. Duros' epilaryngeal tubes were naturally more narrow; it took practice to not slip up, as this language was not his first.

OK, SO.

I have already talked about how I think Duros use cutaneous respiration, absorbing oxygen through their skin and also the slits beneath their eyes where their olfactory organs are:

“Cutaneous respiration, or cutaneous gas exchange (sometimes called, skin breathing),[1] is a form of respiration in which gas exchange occurs across the skin or outer integument of an organism rather than gills or lungs. Cutaneous respiration may be the sole method of gas exchange, or may accompany other forms, such as ventilation. Cutaneous respiration occurs in a wide variety of organisms, including insects, amphibians, fish, sea snakes, turtles, and to a lesser extent in mammals. It also occurs in reptiles."

That is not to say he doesn't have lungs, he definitely does (Cutaneous respiration may be the sole method of gas exchange, or may accompany other forms, such as ventilation), but this may just be the way that Duros absorb oxygen, as it is obvious he doesn't have a nose, and these organs beneath his eyes must be slit-like or nearly microscopic, as we have never seen them, even with the mask off.

It makes sense Bane can breathe from the same place he can register smells, BUT, Cad has a different accent in Clone Wars than he does in The Bad Batch, and I felt this would be a fun way to explain it. The leading theory was it was due to the mechanical breathing tubes he sounds this way; his voice is modulated, BUT, Duros in Battlefront 2 ALSO SOUND LIKE THIS. And to me, Durese sounds a lot like Huttese.

I tend to think this ALSO sounds modulated, as stated above, therefore maybe it has something to do with the functionality / " cranial edge of their larynx."

Found in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America:

A hypothesis was presented: The shape (length and diameter) of the epilaryngeal tube in nonhuman mammals is related to morphological parameters (vocal fold morphology, larynx size, body size) and parameters characterizing the species vocal repertoire (repertoire size, maximum sound amplitude, fundamental frequency range, occurrence of nonlinear phenomena). Preliminary results indicate that the length of the epilaryngeal tube is a poor predictor of repertoire characteristics such as maximum sound amplitude and fundamental frequency range. However, species with a prominent epilaryngeal tube produce a large proportion of high fundamental frequency call types.

Basically, what if Duros had NARROW tubes? Thus, this is the cause of the way they sound. It doesn't have to do with the BREATHING tubes being physically down his throat - the breathing tubes provide extra oxygen in the case he is force choked and his normal air pathway is blocked, therefore increasing intake through the scales/slits - it has to do with the actual shape, and "morphological parameters" of the Duros as a species.

The accent itself is the accent of the Descent Ghetto, or the accent of the last of the Duros who populated the planet before escaping to the orbiting way stations to avoid the pollution of their dying home world. That's just how it comes out in Basic.

As Bane spent more and more time around sentient beings, he possibly began to lose the accent, or he chose to undergo vocal training, most likely in the privacy of his hideaway, and needed something or someone to use as an example. Maybe he also has to train himself to relax his throat, which is entirely possible.

Now let's say he hates holomovies, but the only ones he can stand to watch are the westerns. Maybe he liked the style of the old cowboys, too. ;D I think you know where I am going with this.

This may also explain why Shriv doesn't have an accent, but he does have a lisp. He may or may not have been raised on Duro around other Duros, and he may have spent so much time around humans or other beings who speak Basic that he just talks normal and not like a Duros at all.

It should also be noted Bane slipped up once in the latest episode of the Bad Batch. There was a line that @allsystemsblue pointed out that also sounded like his old Clone Wars way of speaking. This proves to me he mostly “got rid of it,” but still slips up on occasion, and most likely especially when emotions are high, as his epilaryngeal tubes are still narrow. It is a part of his morphology.

BONUS (found after the fact. seems to me, I am right. ;D):

[killjoyfem]

Agree on not accepting feminazi in any way even ironically!! Human rights protectors should never be compared to murderers and criminals

Funny story: I only live in Brazil nowadays because my family had to flee Poland during WW II due to the persecution of Jewish folks and the occupation by the Germans and Soviets. I am, literally, of Jewish descent.

Trying to compare Radical Feminists to how Nazis operated would be comical if it wasn’t so tragic. We know today the amount of women who were raped by both sides of the war, and we know it only happened because they were women and that males didn’t get targeted that way nearly as often. Sexual humiliation of the Jewish body was an inevitable consequence of the dehumanizing Nazi racial theories and the misogyny of the soldiers - the latter coming again from both sides of the war.

When you put it into perspective, saying things like “feminazi” or “I’d punch a terf before a Nazi” is extremely cruel. Not only cruel, but ignorant too; of the realities of how horrific nazism was/is and specifically how bad it was for women, who were often made targets because of their sex:

Edmond Baumvald, Holocaust survivor of the Janowska camp in Lviv, recalled that a member of camp leadership forced Jewish newcomers to strip in order to take their possessions. One of the young women refused to do so. For disobedience, he forced her to lift her skirt from behind and then shot her in the genitals. He called up a Jewish man and ordered him to cart her around the square until she died.

Selections would take place in the barracks, in training yards, during recruitment, after the women came back from work, or before deportations. They would usually take several young women at once. A survivor of Stepan ghetto remembers: “At night, policemen would bring Germans, and they would grab young women and rape them. They really brutalized them… They took [the women] away, and then brought them back and left them half dead.”

In some camps and ghettos, women went through forced abortions, sterilizations and medical experiments. Beila Habis, Holocaust survivor from the Bershad camp in Vinnytsia oblast, remembered that women in the camp “had formaldehyde solution injected in utero,” which caused strong pain and bleeding. Such violence constituted an attack against women’s reproductive body biologically designed to reproduce the Jewish nation; it can thus be considered genocidal sexual violence.

Gang rape was not a rare phenomenon during the Holocaust. Groups of perpetrators would barge into barracks and rape young women right in front of everyone present. Those who resisted could be beaten or killed. Some girls and young women were chosen specifically for sexual abuse. They were selected among permanent residents of ghettos and camps.

Women’s experiences of WWII prove that some suffering is indeed based on sex. Nazi camps and ghettos in Ukraine were just some of the places in the topography of sexual terror against Jewish women and girls. But it was there, in the spaces of forced confinement and lack of freedom, where sexual violence was especially concentrated, widespread and brutal. (source)

[xinambercladx]

"Figment" Ch3: Persuasion

Rating: T Characters: Cad Bane, Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu, Soopan Summary: When three of the most powerful Jedi try use Force Persuasion on the best bounty hunter in the galaxy, he resists. His subconscious barricades itself in a childhood memory, back to another time when he was equally helpless. It was a time he had tried to forget. Word Count: 5,500

Chapter warnings: Psychological Torture, Gang Brutality (Full fic tags in the # section). ----------------------------------------------------

“For the greater good” is too often the excuse for acts of evil.

“You will take us to the Holocron.”

Is he serious? Bane thought. Skywalker had his hand out in front of him in a failed attempt to penetrate his mind. Bane’s previous opinion that the young man was clever vanished. Bane leaned forward on an elbow, and let the disdain soak his words. “Jedi mind tricks don’ werk on me.”

The Jedi Kenobi on the right raised his hand, eyes closed in concentration as well. Both him and Skywalker repeated the phrase together,

“You will take us to the Holocron.”

The voices somehow echoed in the small holding cell. The words repeated in his ears, then in his mind. The Jedi were his clients. Their outstretched hands offered a deal. The assignment seemed a reasonable one… except that sense of danger that crawled around Bane’s skin intensified. Something pressed against his temples, his chest. He shook his head. They weren’t his clients. They were Jedi, he reminded himself. “Forget it!” he hissed. They were asking the wrong question. Why were they suddenly on about the Holocron? Why weren’t they asking about the children? The children that were already in danger? It was always like this with the Jedi. Sacrifice the few for the good of the many. Sacrifice human clones instead of enlist citizens of the Republic. The high and mighty Jedi, Mace Windu, raised his hand last.

All three repeated the command, “You will take us to the Holocron.”

The voices echoed louder in the room and in Bane’s head. The pressure on his temples was becoming unbearable, and his chest was becoming heavy. He tried to remember to breathe. Why wasn’t his breathing apparatus functioning? It should have kicked in with the air so thin. The Jedi minds grabbed at him now, pulling him. He resisted their pull, scrambling for a foothold. He panted, “I won’t!”

Mace Windu commanded, “And you will take us…”

“NOW!” they all commanded, and the word speared through Bane.

Suddenly Bane wasn’t in the ship’s holding cell. He was in the Descent Ghetto. The planet Duro hovered in view of the orbiting space station, New Teyana. There was nothing new about it. It was still the scrap heap he remembered. The hatched together building blocks of the city was as tall as he remembered. The foul smelling, recycled air was as thin as he remembered. It was as though he had never left.

Skywalker and Kenobi had him on his knees in a side alley. His tiny, child sized arms were arrested painfully in their iron, adult grip. The humans were the aliens here on a Duros colony. He had picked a fight with too many. They were bigger than him, stronger than him, and he was now at their mercy. He struggled to breath. His head and chest hurt from where they had beat him. Windu’s hand tightened around Cad’s throat. The message was clear. Give them the score or die. Cad didn’t want to relent. He had worked so hard for it.  But was it worth dying like this? They’d leave him in the gutter like the others. He’d never be able to leave off this stink hole. He just needed time to grow taller, to get stronger, then he would show the galaxy his capabilities. Then it would be his turn to teach them a lesson. Just not yet.

The young Duros relented, hanging his head. He relaxed from their tightening grip, even though his arms were bruising beneath it.

“I… I will take you…”

Cad heard his own voice. It was deep and resonant. It was not the voice of a child. Bane blinked and his vision flashed between alleyway and holding cell. He pushed himself away from the table, “NO!” He shook his head, the pressure squeezing like a vice. When he closed his eyes, the alleyway waited for him and the smell of trash and rot ruptured through his cheek nostrils. All the while, the voices repeated the demands, bouncing off the brick and rusted iron beams. The Jedi were forcing him to relive a terrible memory so vividly it was horrifying. He had sworn to never return. The bounty hunter found himself begging, “GET OUT OF MY HEAD!” His plea was answered with more pressure and pain. It hit him like a kick to the face.

***

There was a loud metal crunch. A small body impacted the dumpster so hard it left a dent, and fell to the ground nearly as hard. For a moment Cad couldn’t move, the wind knocked out of him. He tried to put his hands under him. He tried to get up. He tasted iron. Out of his good eye he saw green blood drooling on the dirty duracrete where his face had been. He spat it out of his mouth.

“Stay down, grubbie!” came a threat.

The boy’s lips curled, showing fang. He put his hands underneath and pushed. He put one foot under him and then the other. He rose, clutching his ribs, but he rose. He growled, but it only sounded like a childish “Grrr!” The three adults laughed at his face. They had broken one of the unspoken rules of the space station’s streets: pick on someone you’re own size. He had taken it for granted. He had been naïve to think outsiders would be expected to know or follow it.

“Listen to that. He can’t even rattle yet!”

“Pathetic little grub.”

“What’s wrong? Blue balls haven’t dropped yet?”

The three men all snickered, towering over him. Their foreign accents annoyed Cad. These alien creeps didn’t belong here. The Descent Ghetto was Duros territory. The leader tossed a package to their fourth member. “Take this to the hideout. We’ll meet you there after we-”

“My score! Dat ain’t yours, off-worlders!” he spat, green blood spraying the Human’s nerf hide shoes.

The leader looked down in disgust, his weirdly pink lips curling away from his blunt human teeth. “You green-blooded gutter trash!” He kicked at Cad’s stomach, but Cad sidestepped and the man nearly sprained his ankle. The man grunted, regaining his balance. Cad cursed himself for not taking that opportunity, even though he himself was struggling to stay standing.

“Whatever, let’s go, Bleak,” asked the brunette human. “We got what we came for. I’m starving.”

Bleak kissed his teeth, making a clicking sound with his pink lips as Humans could unlike a Duros did with their throats. “Nah. I don’t think we will. I think I’ll teach this grub a lesson. See, that package was never yours,” Bleak said, now addressing Cad. He reached and grabbed Cad by the throat, slamming him against the dumpster again. Cad coughed, more blood spattering the human’s sleeve. “You messed up by getting unreliable backup. A fatso, dumbass kid like him stands out too much among all you skinny poor folk.”

“Don’ you talk about Soopan like dat!” Cad shouted, struggling against the man’s grip. He wished he had claws to scratch the man’s face.

“Shut your mouth!” Bleak punched him in the gut. Cad would have buckled if he weren’t pinned. “Soopan is a fatso and you’re nothing but skin and bone. All of you are. You think we couldn’t notice him staking out the place for you? We might have different eyeballs, grubbie, but we’re not blind.” Bleak shifted his weight to one hip. He stuck his face closer make sure Cad was listening. “Your second mistake was having a shitty escape plan. You didn’t check your exits, otherwise you would have seen us watching. You didn’t have a getaway vehicle waiting except for your own two, short, scrawny legs. And you expected Fatso Soopan to keep up with you?”

Every point was on point. Cad hated it, but had to agree. He had retrieved the package, but failed the escape due to lack of foresight. But he couldn’t have done it without his friend…

“Your third mistake,” Bleak continued, his voice darkened, “was running passed cops and bringing heat toward us.” He motioned to himself and his gang. His free arm retreated and then swung low. His fist contacted Cad’s ribs with a sickening crunch. Cad’s wind was gone. The boy opened his mouth, but his diaphragm refused to pull air inside. Bleak sneered with his blunt, yellow human teeth. “I don’t like unwarranted attention to my dealings. But you’re just a stupid amateur. We were kind enough to dispatch them for you. And for that, you owe us blood and money.”

“Looks…” Cad wheezed. Cad looked him straight in the eye and shrugged, “Looks like we’re even den. Your man took a package with five thousand credits inside,” he coughed, “and my blood is decoratin’ yer fancy shoes.”

The statement took Bleak a second to process. His head reeled back, and he cackled. “Hahaehaha! The grub has a point!” Bleak exclaimed. Bleak laughed some more and his goons joined him. “Five thousand, you say? That’s not bad at all. That’s worth more than your scrawny hide ever will be. Take my advice, grub. If you’re going to steal, never do it for yourself. Do it for other people and get paid to do it. Then you’re less likely to wind up dead.” He released Cad’s throat. Cad leaned heavily against the dumpster, legs shaking but refusing to falter.

Cad barely noticed they had left. It wasn’t until smaller footsteps pattered down the alley did his vision refocus.

“Cad! Cad, you’re alive!” Soopan exclaimed, waddling up to him. “I saw dem come out of de alley and thought dey…” He round cheeks sniffed, “You’re bleedin’ everywhere.” Soopan put his hand on Cad’s shoulder, and the other braced his arm, trying to help Cad walk. Cad showed fang and smacked his hands away.

“No thanks to you! What took you so long?!” Cad wheezed.

Soopan back-stepped. “What? I tried! You know yer faster than me! You took off runnin’ and when I saw dem chasin’ ya I tried to keep up, but I-”

“But nothin’!” Cad seethed. “I was countin’ on you to have my back.”

“Cad, you ain’t breathin’ right,” Soopan said, voice full of worry, not caring about the accusation. “Let’s go to the medical center. We can pay for it wit’ de money we stole!” Soopan yelped in surprised when Cad snatched his collar and shook him, fangs fully bared. Soopan could see what Cad went through. The boy’s left eye was nearly swollen shut with bruises already turning a dark blue-green. His lip was cut and bruised from a punch to the mouth, and green blood stained his teeth. His breath was labored, each intake a wheeze.  He could smell a distinct irritating odor of Cad’s rib organs releasing oil from extreme stress. Soopan’s bottom lip quivered, guilt overcoming him. Soopan blubbered, “Cad… I’m so sorry.”

Somehow the genuine apology hurt worse than everything else. Cad let his friend go. His small arms clutched his ribs and he walked away.

“Cad!”

“The credits are gone,” Cad admitted. “Bounty hunters took’em.”

“Cad!” his friend called after him.

The beaten and bloodied boy didn’t listen. He kept walking and disappeared into the crowds beyond the alley. It was a long walk back to his block, a lot longer than it should have been. His legs felt like sand. Everywhere hurt. One good shirt was torn. He only had one spare. He realized the space station was already orbiting the evening cycle. The streets slowly filtered out as people headed home or to restaurants for dinner. The planet Duros above now only showed a sliver of the daylight side, making a crescent like a moon. It loomed above the patchwork buildings. Most days he found it a beautiful sight, comforting almost. Tonight was different. He felt it was mocking him and how small he was. What’s wrong? Blue balls haven’t dropped yet? the goon’s voice mocked in his head. It wasn’t Cad’s fault. He was still stuck in the grub stage for likely a few more years. It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t get the food needed to grow properly. His lip twitched because he knew that wasn’t entirely true. Soopan had offered to feed him from his parent’s table, but Cad had always slapped suggestion away. How could a middle class grub understand? Call it poor man’s pride. He had to earn it. He had to take care of himself, by himself.

You will take us to the Holocron, the goon’s voice said in his head.

… what?

Cad looked up and saw he was nearly to his hideout.

A Duros woman across the street exited her house with a bag of trash. Her features were soft and gentle. Unlike a male, Duros women had much less pronounced brow ridges, and rounder eyes. She was slight of build, but had perfect egg-laying hips that swayed as she stepped down into the street to deposit the bag in a rubbish chute. The thing chimed and the bag was blown through the tubes to the back alley dumpsters. She wasn’t the ideal beauty, but a beauty none-the-less. The woman turned back to reenter the house, but stopped. She noticed the someone observing her. The woman saw the boy across the street. It was not the first time she had seen him in the neighborhood, but it was the first time she had seen him bearing such injuries. She gasped and a hand went to her mouth. The poor thing… The boy looked around nervously, having been caught watching her. He scampered off with his head down before she could stop him.

Later, Cad had crawled and climbed up to his hideout, which is what he called it anyway. He pulled himself through the grate and shut it behind him. The attic served him well. It was warm, being above a used apartment. He had found the place a year ago during his initial wanderings of the area. Exploring the urban ladders, alleys, and rooftops was fun. This place was a bonus on a particularly cold few weeks when the environment control center had malfunctioned aboard the station. He had cleaned the attic out of the critter nests and dust and had pawned off most of the items found in the forgotten space. The couple that lived below were none the wiser. As long as he kept quiet and moved carefully as not to make the ceiling creak, he lived rent free. Cad crawled to his bed mat and lay down. He crawled around here anyway due to the cramped space and low ceiling. Next to him were a few things he had pilfered on previous “heists.”  A small cooler kept his food cold. A jug of water. On an old ammo crate were stacked several tools. His prized possession was an old poster showcasing a human gunslinger from the days of the Old Republic, wearing a wide brimmed hat like the Durosian grim reaper of legend. He was dual wielding antique blasters and the barrels smoked from the heat of rapid use. It was wizard.  There were two other grates besides the one used as a door. One was like a window that filtered city light onto that poster. The smell of a home cooked meal filtered up through the grate on the floor nearby.

The smell of it drew him out of his daze. It smelled much better than the blood in his mouth, or the irritating odor of his own rib cage oil sacs. Cad became self conscious, worried if it were odorous enough for the residents downstairs to smell. He pulled off his shirt, gingerly, and used it as a rag to clean himself of blood and oils. He used water and soap, bathing as best he could. Cad decided he’d have to visit a public shower at the mall’s gym to bathe more thoroughly. He stuffed the ruined shirt in a trash bag. It was summer cycle on the station. Tonight he wouldn’t have to use the blanket, but he draped it around his scrawny shoulders anyway.

The scent of the food downstairs drew his attention again. Cad pulled himself to the grate and peered down, ignoring his pained ribs. Below, there was the woman from the street. She hummed a random tune as she stirred a pot of soup. There were chopped vegetables and meat cooking in the thick broth. She wafted her delicate, long fingered hand over the top to smell before ladling some to taste. Displeased, she pinched some salt from a bowl and added it. Cad’s stomach growled loud enough he almost feared she would hear it. He hid from view, even though it had happened many times before and the woman had never noticed. The grate over the kitchen was the only view he had into the lives of the family below. He feared losing his hideout, but couldn’t resist glimpsing the charming domestic scenes playing out in real time.  The front door opened and boot steps entered the kitchen. Cad peered down again to see the husband had returned. The man approached his wife from behind and wrapped his arms around her in a tender embrace. She leaned her head against his, returning the gesture.

“Where’s our little grub? Is he sleepin’?” the man asked with a raspy, yet kind voice. He was much taller than the woman, had a strong chin and broad shoulders, at least for a Duros.

“Yess,” she cooed. “In the crib by de table.”

He hummed an approval, and touched her collarbone. Silver scars circled the small of her neck. They didn’t mar her perfectly blue skin, they marked it with beautiful declaration. A claim. She had been bitten by her husband in the old fashioned Duros way. The husband bent and kissed the sacred spot. She made a soft rattle sound in reply.

“Smells good,” he said, resting his chin on her shoulder.

“Thank you. Set the table, it’s ‘bout ready.”

The tenderness made Cad’s heart ache. If only his own parents were like them. If his father had been gentle, would he have run away? Cad frowned when the husband let go and started setting the plates and utensils on the table. He wondered if he’d someday be able to hold and kiss a woman like that. It seemed like it would be nice.

Cad reached inside the cooler and grabbed a wrapped bit of mealcake. He filled a cup with water and took a sip. He swished it around his mouth and spit it out into a bin. Then he took a drink with less blood taste involved. He shuffled back to the grate and ate as the couple ate, imagining himself beside them. The first bite made him flinch. A tooth was loose. He checked it with his tongue and was glad to find it was his last remaining grub tooth. The bounty hunters must have knocked it. He chewed on the other side of his mouth.

“Did you have a talk wit’ dem?”

The man nodded. “I don’t think he liked finding out there were criminals working behind his back, but I think he respected what I had to say. We’ll see how it goes.”

“I’m sure it’ll work out,” she assured him. “You’re a man of integrity. He can’t afford to lose a man like you in the business he runs. Who will keep people from embezzling if someone doesn’t hold them accountable?”

“Exactly.” After another bite he trilled, “Good soup…” he threw a hand signal of approval.

The conversation faded to the background as the boy drifted off to sleep. The first few days were the hardest, and he had great difficulty breathing. They soon passed and his wounds began to heal, and his bruised eye opened up again. His ribs still screamed whenever he climbed to and from his hideout, but that couldn’t be helped. In the street where he had botched his latest heist, cops were everywhere. Wanted posters plastered street light poles and news billboards. The bounty hunters were now in hiding since they had killed four cops. He was glad of it, since that meant they weren’t likely to jump him.

His days were filled with several activities. Sleeping was to help himself heal. Pick pocketing was to refill his coffers so he could eat. Afternoons, provided he had gathered sufficient money for food, he’d spend at the public holonet tables. He’d play a few free games, but mostly as a reward for keeping up with his studies. Cad, like every Duros, had dreams of space travel. He forced education on himself so he could leave one day and be a pilot, an engineer, anything. He had a photographic memory, a blessing of his species, but he also liked puzzles and couldn’t help finding patterns where math and physics met with mapping courses in hyperspace. It was fascinating. He would lose himself for hours until his stomach would remind him of necessities. He’d purchase dumplings or meat mash on a bountiful day, and then race to his hideout because evenings were his favorite. Evenings were spent pretending he was a part of the couple’s meals. He knew it was a silly pass time, but what was the harm? He always took care to never use the same route home twice. Evading Soopan was proving difficult. Cad was slower than normal and his friend knew their romping grounds just as well as he. Soopan no doubt wanted to make up for what happened, but Cad didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t begrudge him, he just wasn’t ready yet. Soopan did catch him eventually.

You will take us to the Holocron.

Cad stopped and looked around. There it was again. Did he imagine it? He didn’t find the origin, but he did see someone he recognized. There he was, his friend, waiting for him less than a block away from the couple’s apartment. While Cad had the agility and stealth to break into places, his friend had always been good at scoping them out and tracking down targets. He had a knack for it. He would have found Cad’s hideout sooner or later. Soopan ran, as best he could, up to him. A frantic expression was on his face.

“Cad!”

“I’m fine! Nothin’ some sleep couldn’t cure,” he lied.

“That’s not it at all! Don’t go home. They’re waitin’ for you!”

“Who?”

“The bounty hunters! The ones who took our score!” he pointed at the apartment.

Cad shook his head, “We’re even. Bleak said so himself.”

“But I heard him threatenin’ your father!”

Cad rose a brow. “My father? My father don’ live ‘round here, Soopan. He lives in de factory district on level Seven.”

“Den... who’s de family you live with? Ain’t he the manager at Curious Bizarre?”

“I don’ live with dem. And what do dey have to do with-”

A scream filled the air. They both looked to the origin and saw a Duros woman on the ground. Two alien men stood over her. The two more humans pointed weapons at her. Cad was running toward them before he realized it. As he got closer, he recognized the men as the ones from the alley. They were the four bounty hunters. Cad stopped dead in his tracks and hid in a store entryway. He peeked out at the scene that was actively drawing a crowd. Blue and green skinned, red eyed Duros onlookers were attracted to the violence, but also the off-world collection of aliens.

“Tell your husband that the game is over. His boss isn’t happy with the stir he’s caused, and now his company is being investigated. If he turns himself in, maybe we’ll be more lenient. You have until midnight.”

With that, the bounty hunters left as though nothing had happened. Cad backed as far as he could into the entryway as they passed. They didn’t notice him. He watched them leave and saw Soopan nearly piss his pants, knees shaking. A bounty hunter laughed at him and pushed a finger roughly into the boy’s nose-less face. His head jerked backward and the boy lost his balance, landing on his large rear. The whole group laughed at the boy’s expense. Then they were gone.

The woman picked herself up onto her knees, upright but still in shock. A hand went to her cheek where they had struck her. Tears welled in her eyes. Confusion haunted them, trying to understand what had happened. Then she saw a small pair of worn shoes standing before her. She looked up and it was the same boy from weeks earlier. The boy’s injuries looked both better and worse. His eye was no longer swollen, but the bruises had turned that ugly shade of deep, purple-green as they did before the body cleared them out. He looked at her with… was that sympathy? Anger? Shame? He took in a breath as though to speak, then hesitated. He looked around them at the dissipating crowd and found he was the only Duros to approach her.

Cad said, offering a hand, “Dey beat me up too.”

She replied in horror, “They did that to you? A child?” 

Cad shrugged, “I survived. Can’t say I’ve had worse though.” The woman took his hand and he pulled her up. He was almost two heads taller than her. He looked up at her kind, crimson eyes. He realized this was the first time they had spoken. He felt suddenly awkward and guilty. He had spied on her family, innocently, yes, but it was still spying. He had invaded their privacy for… some reason. He turned to leave and said, “You and your family should ditch town. Bounty hunters like dem mean bid'ness. Wanted posters everywhere warn ‘bout ‘em. If you leave, den they’ll have no more reason to hunt you.”

“We have no where else to go,” she said. “Dis is our home. We’ll fight for it.”

“Sounds like a good way to wind up dead,” he said angrily. The bounty hunters would slaughter them. It wasn’t just his experience that told him this, but the records he had looked up about them on the public holonet. Altogether the men were wanted in twelve systems and worked for the Bounty Hunters Guild. He sighed when she said nothing. “Suit yourself. Don’ say I didn’t warn you.”

“Wait!” she said, grabbing his hand. She pulled him toward her apartment. She stopped at her door. “Wait here a moment.” She let go and rushed inside. Cad stood there and awkwardly obeyed. She returned a moment later with a package wrapped in a cloth. “Please take this. I wanted to help you, when I saw you last in the street? You looked so broken… but I didn’t know how to find you. Well. Dat’s it, I guess. Please take care on your way home, okay?”

Cad clutched the warm package in his arms. The gift felt wonderfully warm against his chest. He looked up and said, “I don’t have a home.” He left her speechless on the porch just as he had last time. Cad returned to his hideout in the attic. He didn’t have the heart to peer into the kitchen that night. He smelled the soup boiling and it made his stomach growl. He made a face. 

My stomach rattles better dan I can, he thought.

He placed the package on his lap and stared at it with curiosity. He undid the knot and saw a tub of soup and a spoon placed on top. It was the same soup he was smelling coming through the grate on the floor. The one he had watched them eat so many times. Cad snatched the lid off and dipped the spoon and brought it to his mouth. It was heavenly. The young Duros enjoyed every bite. He alternated between a spoonful of seasoned broth and chunks of vegetable or meat. There was so much of it. It was piping hot. He realized his mouth was too heated. He sprawled across the floor to pour some water into a cup. He took a drink and it cooled his tongue down some. He didn’t stop eating until the tub was near empty. There was just a few pieces of ingredients left and a couple spoonfuls of broth. He recapped the lid and set it carefully inside the cooler. It would be cold the next day, but it was very worth saving. Cad laid back with a very full stomach, happy as could be. Sleep found him quickly.

He dreamed of the planet Duros looming overhead. Soopan and he played a game of chance in the one park the neighborhood had to offer. There was no grass, but just a dirt lot with a few basic play sets and benches. The trees were real, though stunted from lack of care. They didn’t play to win anything, but purely just to play. The chance cubes rolled and they were both red. Cad won. Another roll and they were blue, and Soopan won the bet. Cad snatched the dice for his turn. He shook them in his hand and teased that he was going to win with first red and then blue. The cube rolled. One turned up red. He laughed. The second cube rolled and then began to spin. Cad and Soopan watched in wonder. The cube had never done that before. The cube grew in size. The surface blue tiles expanded until the whole thing was blue. The cube slowed down and opened its shell. It glowed. A crystal within shined brightly, angrily. It was a Holocron.

Cad jumped back, but hissed as his arm touched an ember. The trees were on fire. The park around him was engulfed in orange and red light, it seemed to swallow even his shadow. His mouth stung with the taste of sulfur. Suddenly it was difficult to breathe. He coughed, calling out to Soopan. Where did he go? His eyes searched the flames for his friend. He heard a scream. It wasn’t his friend. It was smaller, a far younger scream, a Duros baby’s scream. Voices echoed,

“You will take us to the Holocron!”

Cad woke up coughing. His eyes stung from smoke billowing into the attic. Fire. It had to be fire. The apartment was on fire! It wasn’t a dream. He needed to get out. He heard more screams. The couple’s grub below was screaming. He crawled to the exit, trying not to inhale more smoke. Voices echoed around him.

Take us to the Holocron!

Where were the voices coming from? They sounded malicious. His eyes watered, trying to see. It was getting hotter the further he crawled. He reached the exit grate. He flinched from the metal surface. It was incredibly hot. He shifted his legs first and kicked it open. Cad needed to pull himself through.

I need to get out! He kept pulling himself but the exit seemed so far away. He pulled himself and pulled himself until finally he fell from the attic to the rooftop below...

*** Cad Bane thrashed in his chair, wrists cuffed and hands clawing at nothing. The Duros’ cries sounded like someone dragging a board across duracrete. The Jedi concentrated even harder. Despite their best efforts, Kenobi only had flashes of images telling him useless information. He saw more Duros, other bounty hunters, soup for some reason, a sea of rolling grass, and a rolling chance cube turning into the Holocron. Kenobi sensed unease behind him and he let go. Anakin Skywalker and Mace Windu did as well. The bounty hunter collapsed forward on the table with a gasp. His chest heaved desperate for air, clearly exhausted. The bearded Jedi Master Kenobi looked behind him and saw that Ahsoka was shaken. Perhaps it hadn’t been a good idea to let her witness the Mind Persuasion technique, though she would need to use it one day herself in the future. To his side, Anakin Skywalker’s focus was only on the bounty hunter.

“Perhaps we should try again,” he threatened the prisoner.

Cad Bane panted and raised a hand in plea, “I… I’ve had enough o’ dat.” Bane realized he was back in the holding cell. The voices and echoes were gone. The screams of the Duros child were gone. The taste of blood, ash, and sulfur was gone. He could breathe again, but the pain still lingered at his temples like a migraine. He hadn’t given in like a zombie, as he had seen so many other, weaker minded fools in the past when it came to Jedi Mind Tricks. He had never experienced it himself until now, and it had taken three Jedi to … do what? He didn’t know what to make of that experience beyond the pain and awful memory. Was it because he resisted so furiously? It didn’t matter. He had fought this battle, and won it, in his opinion. Now he needed them to think they won too. “You’ll get your children back,” he promised.

He needed to play this game for just a while longer.

---------------------------------------------------- Chapter Links: Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Next Chapter

[ryanmeft]

Movie Review: American Fiction

Thelonious Ellison is an angry man. You get the feeling that he is always angry, always has been angry and unless he changes something, always will be angry. He is right about the world and about people when he thinks that they all want easy answers and spoon-fed entertainment, but being right won’t fix what’s wrong with him. The movie is about whether he can do that himself.

What does he need to fix? Everyone around him has an opinion, and everyone may have a point. Understanding broken people requires broken people, so Monk, as he is usually called, is fortunate that his whole family is broken. They are still suffering from the suicide of the father, an unseen phantom. The mother (Leslie Uggams) is in the early stages of dementia. The plastic surgeon brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown) has recently been divorced after being caught with a man, and has responded to his outing with unreserved debauchery.  The only really responsible member of the family is the older sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross), a doctor at a fictional version of Planned Parenthood, but when she unexpectedly dies, the family’s remaining broken pieces must come together to solve the puzzle that is them.

Monk does this while struggling with the low sales of his books as readers prefer more salacious fiction that gives them what they think the black experience is like---guns, drugs, hopeful stories of rising out of imagined ghettos painted in the most generalized of lights. Monk doesn’t want to tell that kind of story, and indeed argues that he cannot. He is a well-educated black professor from an upper-middle-class background, and he wants to write about the experiences of black people like himself. The audience doesn’t want to read them, and eventually in a night of doubt he gives in and dashes off a quick book that plays to the stereotypes, with Keith David and Okieriete Onaodowan as the hilarious personifications of two of his characters. Like the play in The Producers, he intends the book to be derided and to fail, and also like The Producers, it is an unexpected hit. Hurting for money, Monk and his long-suffering agent Arthur (John Ortiz) play along to increasingly hilarious results.

The most pressing issue on Monk’s mind is his mother, who deteriorates rapidly. Uggams’ performance is full of sympathy. She has a single screenplay-dramatic moment that ends up forcing the family’s hand, but mostly her condition is treated as a slow descent. Notes of The Father, one of the few successful depictions of Alzheimer’s on screen, can be detected here, as she becomes abrasive as a defense and only turns lucid long enough to recall her husband’s infidelity. Brown as the brother injects comedy into the proceedings with his many drug-loving younger lovers and his acid tongue, but it is to the film’s great credit that he doesn’t remain merely comedic relief. His story eventually gets a catharsis that allows Monk to think he might, at some point, receive his own. Monk’s only real ally seems to be newfound girlfriend Coraline (Erica Alexander), but there are cracks there from the beginning, as he covers up for his actual abrasive nature with the kind of humor that is meant to hide hostility.

Monk’s nemesis is Sintara Golden, a best-selling author who “writes black” in every way Monk disapproves of. Played by Issa Rae, she comes off initially as a cheap plot device, but shifts a little when the two are thrown into the same panel of judges for a book award contest. Yet another brave touch in the movie is how their inevitable confrontation is handled. We can at least sort of respect her as long as she thinks she is doing a genuine thing, even if she isn’t. Trapped in a candid moment, she lets down her practiced talk circuit defenses and reveals her true reasons for writing the way she does. What those are I will leave for you to discover, but the character is much stronger and a suitable nemesis for Monk by not being made into a “girl boss” figurehead.

The movie is rife with conversations meant to expose the deep racial and personal biases well-meaning white liberals often inadvertently show. It is sometimes subtle and sometimes not, and for the most part each kind of depiction is effective. What strikes me most about this aspect of the movie is entirely subjective. I saw it in a preview screening at a film festival where the audience was mostly older and mostly white. Every time the film skewered some convention of “black” popular culture and the way non-black people see it, I couldn’t help wondering if I was the mark. If I was, I didn’t feel attacked by that, but rather encouraged to re-examine my views. The fact I did all this while laughing my ass off should at least tell you one thing: you should go see this movie.

Verdict: Highly Recommended

Note: I don’t use star ratings. Here are my possible verdicts:

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid Like the Plague

[mariacallous]

In the late 1990s, when I was a New York Times correspondent based in West Africa, international airline connections made passing through Paris a rite of both work and vacation. On one such visit, I received a shock that has stuck with me. As I approached a subway station not far from the Champs-Élysées, out of its stairwell came running two policemen, their guns drawn, as they pursued a young Black man whom they caught up to, badly manhandled, and then hauled away under arrest.

As someone who had grown up in Washington, D.C., and recently moved to Africa from New York City—or simply as someone who had watched U.S. local news broadcasts and grown up consuming his country’s violent small- and large-screen offerings—I had been trained to think that urban scenes such as these were a unique product of my own country.

On subsequent transits through Paris, I was disabused of yet more of my naivete when I began taking trains into the central city instead of taxis. Maybe it was a labor strike that had caused me to do this at first, but the experience so intrigued me that I began making a habit of it. Not even in New York had I felt such a gulf between the popular image of a city and this kind of lived experience of it via public transportation.

For long sections of these rides, the cars were filled with Black and brown people–– overwhelmingly young and, I surmised, overwhelmingly either the children of recent immigrants or immigrants themselves, with France’s former colonies in North and sub-Saharan Africa the most likely places of origin. Before reaching the stylish, urban dreamland exalted in countless romantic Hollywood fantasies and more than a century of novels and travel writing, one must traverse something altogether different and discordant: a huge expanse of what the French rather delicately refer to as banlieues. They needn’t have resorted to the term, though. For many of these places, the old European word “ghetto” would have fit just fine.

Passing through and eventually visiting some of them, I was reminded of other grim cityscapes I have known in other parts of the world. The comparisons are admittedly not perfect, but segregated townships built under South African apartheid came to mind, as did some of the bleaker sections of New York where I had once paid dues as a local reporter, such as the more depressed parts of the Bronx.

As with the notorious infrastructure schemes of the powerful New York master planner of the last century, Robert Moses, which deliberately isolated Black communities and cut them off from areas privileged in terms of race and class and from public amenities such as the city’s beaches, Paris’s banlieues are poorly connected to the city’s transportation system, heightening their economic and social isolation and therefore their misery. For those looking for points of optimism after France’s recent civil disturbances, projects underway or on the books are expected to dramatically increase subway connections for these long-neglected parts of the city.

There is an old saw that holds that history never repeats itself but often rhymes. And it was just such a resonance—and not the recent events in Paris themselves, per se—that has brought France’s capital powerfully to mind for me.

To briefly review those events, though: On June 27, a French teenager of Algerian descent was fatally shot by a police officer during a traffic stop in what amounted to a virtual execution. A video of the incident that was widely shared online shows a police officer shoot 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk at close range through his window as his car pulls away.

Outraged young people, who were disproportionately “of color,” then rose up in protests that lasted for six days and included numerous acts of looting, vandalism, and even violence. This, in turn, drew florid condemnations from broad segments of French society, with many people using racialized language or outright racism to denounce not just the protesters’ behavior, but also the growing presence of minority groups in France and the immigration that helps drive it.

What has intrigued me here is a powerful coincidence of timing—and, as I will explore below, perhaps a deeper connection in terms of history and significance with a major decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. And therein, a paradox arises.

France has long prided itself on its all-but-unique handling of racial diversity. Official policy comes close to pretending that such a thing does not exist and takes this for an unqualified positive. The republic is indivisible, says one often invoked phrase, and in the pursuit of its supposed universalism, France has made it illegal to collect data on the basis of a person’s race.

If it is possible to glimpse some admirable idealism in France’s notion of universalism, it has an insufficiently acknowledged dark side as well. Firstly, it requires a near complete assimilation into the dominant national identity of we might call “Frenchness,” which is overwhelmingly defined and policed by people of one race. This might even be considered one of its main, if unstated, features. In order to function, French universalism requires a charade: pretending to be colorblind.

This colorblindness may help prevent French people from noticing that their television news industry or their cinema, to take two industries, are crushingly white, well beyond the true demographic breakdown of the society. But it does nothing to alleviate the underlying reality that opportunity still correlates strongly to race in the country. The same, for that matter, is true of life in the isolated banlieues, as opposed to the tonier parts of the city. I have little doubt that the same patterns hold in other spheres of society as well, from elite educational institutions to national politics.

France’s readiest and most powerful counterexample is, of course, the United States, which has long served as an almost archetypical national “other” to justify French policies and obtain buy-in from a French public that has been socialized over generations to view the United States both with haughty disdain and as a menace to the French way of life. Any idea of taking race or color into account in forming public policy is dismissed as succumbing to a dangerously corrupting Americanism.

The recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that race-conscious college admissions programs violate the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, however, suggests the French may have little to worry about on this score. The two countries would indeed appear to be converging in favor of the French way: pretending that color doesn’t exist and that race has no place in social policy.

The Supreme Court ruling may have barred the overt consideration of race in college admissions in the United States, but it cannot pretend away the fact that Black students are dramatically underrepresented in higher education in the country, as they have been for generations—a product of actual policy during the United States’ long era of segregation and Jim Crow.

In fact, as the University of Chicago law professor Sonja B. Starr has argued, racial gaps exist across a very wide range of categories in U.S. life, from income and employment rates to maternal mortality and life expectancy to exposure to toxic environmental pollution and incarceration.

The question is: What are wealthy societies such as the United States and France to do about such realities? Overtly taking race into consideration clearly displeases large numbers of people in rich democracies, especially among those who have benefited most from inequality. If governments are not allowed to even weigh the racial facts before them, what realistic hope is there for public policy to redress these problems?