#even the muslim girls I am friends with have more freedom and you know what’s amazing ab this is

[astridthevalkyrie]

feeling like you’re 12 when you’re 22 is genuinely such a humiliating experience.

[aroacesafeplaceforall]

Thanks for the reblog!

I'm so glad you have created a safe space for aroace people! We really need more of those.

I do not have a support group or anything because I do not know anyone who is aroace. But my friends are great and even though they don't understand, they're supportive enough and I couldn't ask for better people in my life.

Anyway, this blog is awesome because I'm always looking for a way to vent. I blabber to my friends all the time even if they're not listening, but I'm seizing this opportunity lol. So here I go (and this goes without saying, but I'm sorry because this is gonna be kinda long probably)...

So I'm a female Indian and I'm Muslim which basically means arranged marriages are a thing and that getting married in your early 20s is also a thing. So if you're a girl, most times the moment you turn 18 or maybe even before that, your family will start looking for a suitable groom for you. Some families value education and so they let the girls study and at least complete their degree. And if you're lucky, the family you're married into also values education and financial independence and will let you continue your studies or work. But not everyone is that lucky. Sometimes even if your in-laws are supportive, your husband might not be, and will stop you from studying or doing something you love.

The maximum age you can be unmarried as an Indian Muslim woman is around 25. And getting till 25 unmarried is very rare. So unmarried women above the age of 25 are even rarer. All the Muslim spinsters are either widows or divorced. Getting married is not a choice here, it's a part of life.

Most people know of the LGBTQ community here. India is not in any way progressive when it comes to the community, since it's only recently being gay stopped being a crime here. Culture and tradition is considered very important and most beliefs are rooted in religion, whatever the religion may be. So homophobia and transphobia is rampant. But the general population is aware of the existence of gay and trans people. Very few of them might now about the existence of aromanticism and asexuality. The idea of wanting to be single and/or celibate is foreign to them. And my family belongs to that group of people (that took a turn eh?)

My family is what I would like to call a semi conservative family. They are religious enough to push us to learn the holy book and pray regularly and follow religious teachings but not that much that they force us to do things that are not compulsory or whatever. They value education and freedom of choice and are not stuck in the past (which unfortunately cannot be said about most Indian families).

My mother actually got married when she was 24 and after completing her degree, which is surprising to me because that can be seen as progressive as it was rare at the time.

So yeah, I'm lucky to be part of a family like this. They're understanding, more than I think they are, but obviously I'm scared because I do not know how much that understanding extends.

I am 22 right now and mentally ill. I have been from the age of 14 or so. I haven't been diagnosed properly but I started therapy last year and my current therapist called my condition high-functioning depression which basically means that I function well enough in society but am depressed. It's apparently something most celebrities have.

My journey with mental illness is a long and exhausting one and it's still not going steady, but what I would like to mention is that what prompted me to take the big step that is therapy after many years was an event...the wedding engagement of my best friend.

My best friend and I have been friends from kindergarten. We were neighbours and classmates and our families are also very close. The news of her engagement shocked me (maybe not as much it shocked her though. It was a very sudden engagement. But she's happy and in love now and I'm happy for her.) and it made warning bells go off in my head. I suddenly felt like I was running out of time. And since I'm scared of getting married and obviously haven't come out to my parents or told them or even ever implied that I wasn't into the idea of marriage, that fear of getting married in the near future pushed me into getting therapy. It was an on and off thing for a while. Me and my first therapist did get somewhere and I'd made some progress before I was back in square one. But I have many underlying and standing issues that I never really got a chance to talk to her about marriage or any of that stuff. I have a new therapist now and I haven't talked to her about it either, I've only mentioned not wanting to get married in passing. I think it's because I know nothing I say will change the fact that I haven't told my parents and thus my future will not change or become closer to the one I have envisioned.

I am now doing a post graduate degree and I will complete it next year, after I turn 23. I don't think my family has actively started looking for proposals but they are open to accepting good ones. I have no hand in this, not right now at least. After my graduation, I will. I will be expected to look pretty and pose and look through proposals and all that shit. It sounds like torture. I've heard enough stories to know it's not a fun process.

I really want to tell my parents because if it means I have to live the rest of my life miserable, then at least I'd have spoken my truth, but I keep waiting for the right time but I've realised there is no right time, there is only a wrong time and that is when they start actively looking for a poor chap who'll want to marry me. I'm just so scared because I'm pretty sure I know what they'll say. They'll either say something along the lines of "you're just lazy and/or unprepared and/or scared" and "that is not even an option. It is compulsory (not true btw)/encouraged in Islam to get married. You will lose your ways and go astray and get into haram (Islamically) unlawful romantic/sexual relationships". Worst case scenario is that I stand my ground and refuse to get married and they'll lock me up or send me off to a mental hospital or just disown me or something. Best case scenario is they agree to not marry me off but insist I become an Islamic nun or something (which I'm not completely against. But I'm not deeply religious enough to devote my whole life to being an Islamic teacher or missionary or whatever. I will and want to do it along with whatever job I get).

Of course, there is a chance it'll not go anything like this and go in a completely different direction I didn't even think of but i seriously doubt it. You see, even if my parents are supportive of my decision to not get married, pressure from the rest of the family and societal pressure will be really strong, that even if they hold on for a while, they'll break eventually.

Now say it will go my way and I get to be a happy (or trying to be happy) spinster, then I will become the talk of the town and considered an outcast. It will not be easy attending gatherings and my family will get the brunt of it, especially my parents. Gossip is after all very destructive.

I could cut off my family after becoming financially independent but I have never even considered that an option. I love my family and I owe them a lot and I would and could never cut them off from my life (assuming that it even is possible. It's not very easy to do that here.)

So I'm stuck and this has been a burden that I've been carrying around for a while now. I knew I didn't want anything to do with romantic relationships from when I was 14 or something but then after I realised I had really low self esteem, I realised that might be why I wasn't interested in being in a romantic relationship but I have thought long and hard about it and I have come to the conclusion (one of many) that it's just something that I do not want for myself.

It had always been at the back of my mind though but this has become a more immediate worry as I'm running out of time, and so I panic every now and then when my thoughts wander and I think about the future. It's getting exhausting being so unsure of something like marriage when I'm also worried about finding a stable career and just surviving because even that is a huge question mark for me when I think about the future.

And that's that. Sorry for any typos/grammar errors! (I'm too lazy to proof read this 😅, not that that proofreading would help 😛)

I should probably go to sleep now. If you read all of that, thank you so much. It really means a lot.

Hey there! I’m glad you found a good place to vent and I hope you find happiness and love (platonic) where ever you go in life!

I honestly don’t really know what to say but I’m here for you! You sound like an incredible person and I know you’ll do well in life <3

Stay amazing and stay safe, remember no matter what happens we are all here for you and you are always valid!! <33

[excuseyouclarke]

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

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

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

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

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

Resources below.

Organisations:

Stop hate UK - anti-racism charity

Show racism the red card - anti racism charity

Charity So White

Black Lives Matter

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

MOSAIC Brighton – Black and Mixed-Parentage Family Group

Immigration and Asylum Helpline from Rights of Women

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

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

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

Justice for Grenfell

Movement For Justice

Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust

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

UK Black Pride

Imaan London – LGBTQ Muslim Charity

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

The Black Curriculum

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

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

BAME recruitment consultancy website

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

Books:

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

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

White Fragility, by Robin Diangelo (non-fiction)

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

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

Black and British by David Olusoga (non-fiction)

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (fiction)

The Windrush Betrayal by Amelia Gentleman (non-fiction)

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

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

Redefining Realness by Janet Mock (non-fiction)

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde (non-fiction)

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

Queenie, by Candice Carty Williams (fiction)

Sula, by Toni Morrison (fiction)

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

Assata, by Assata Shakur (non-fiction)

Articles and social media posts:

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

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

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

Intersectionality infographic from Listen Up Research CIC

The Truth About Women and White Supremacy

How We Make Black Girls Grow Up Too Fast

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

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

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

Why you need to stop saying “All Lives Matter”

10 Steps to Non-Optical Allyship

When Feminism Is White Supremacy in Heels

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

What does black British activism look like in 2020

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

Structural Racism vs Individual Racism (IG)

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

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

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

[whitehotharlots]

The point is control

Whenever we think or talk about censorship, we usually conceptualize it as certain types of speech being somehow disallowed: maybe (rarely) it's made formally illegal by the government, maybe it's banned in certain venues, maybe the FCC will fine you if you broadcast it, maybe your boss will fire you if she learns of it, maybe your friends will stop talking to you if they see what you've written, etc. etc. 

This understanding engenders a lot of mostly worthless discussion precisely because it's so broad. Pedants--usually arguing in favor of banning a certain work or idea--will often argue that speech protections only apply to direct, government bans. These bans, when they exist, are fairly narrow and apply only to those rare speech acts in which other people are put in danger by speech (yelling the N-word in a crowded theater, for example). This pedantry isn't correct even within its own terms, however, because plenty of people get in trouble for making threats. The FBI has an entire entrapment program dedicated to getting mentally ill muslims and rednecks to post stuff like "Death 2 the Super bowl!!" on twitter, arresting them, and the doing a press conference about how they heroically saved the world from terrorism. 

Another, more recent pedant's trend is claiming that, actually, you do have freedom of speech; you just don't have freedom from the consequences of speech. This logic is eerily dictatorial and ignores the entire purpose of speech protections. Like, even in the history's most repressive regimes, people still technically had freedom of speech but not from consequences. Those leftist kids who the nazis beheaded for speaking out against the war were, by this logic, merely being held accountable. 

The two conceptualizations of censorship I described above are, 99% of the time, deployed by people who are arguing in favor of a certain act of censorship but trying to exempt themselves from the moral implications of doing so. Censorship is rad when they get to do it, but they realize such a solipsism seems kinda icky so they need to explain how, actually, they're not censoring anybody, what they're doing is an act of righteous silencing that's a totally different matter. Maybe they associate censorship with groups they don't like, such as nazis or religious zealots. Maybe they have a vague dedication toward Enlightenment principles and don't want to be regarded as incurious dullards. Most typically, they're just afraid of the axe slicing both ways, and they want to make sure that the precedent they're establishing for others will not be applied to themselves.

Anyone who engages with this honestly for more than a few minutes will realize that censorship is much more complicated, especially in regards to its informal and social dimensions. We can all agree that society simply would not function if everyone said whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. You might think your boss is a moron or your wife's dress doesn't look flattering, but you realize that such tidbits are probably best kept to yourself. 

Again, this is a two-way proposition that everyone is seeking to balance. Do you really want people to verbalize every time they dislike or disagree with you? I sure as hell don't. And so, as part of a social compact, we learn to self-censor. Sometimes this is to the detriment of ourselves and our communities. Most often, however, it's just a price we have to pay in order to keep things from collapsing. 

But as systems, large and small, grow increasingly more insane and untenable, so do the comportment standards of speech. The disconnect between America's reality and the image Americans have of themselves has never been more plainly obvious, and so striving for situational equanimity is no longer good enough. We can't just pretend cops aren't racist and the economy isn't run by venal retards or that the government places any value on the life of its citizens. There's too much evidence that contradicts all that, and the evidence is too omnipresent. There's too many damn internet videos, and only so many of them can be cast as Russian disinformation. So, sadly, we must abandon our old ways of communicating and embrace instead systems that are even more unstable, repressive, and insane than the ones that were previously in place.

Until very, very recently, nuance and big-picture, balanced thinking were considered signs of seriousness, if not intelligence. Such considerations were always exploited by shitheads to obfuscate things that otherwise would have seemed much less ambiguous, yes, but this fact alone does not mitigate the potential value of such an approach to understanding the world--especially since the stuff that's been offered up to replace it is, by every worthwhile metric, even worse.

So let's not pretend I'm Malcolm Gladwell or some similarly slimy asshole seeking to "both sides" a clearcut moral issue. Let's pretend I am me. Flash back to about a year ago, when there was real, widespread, and sustained support for police reform. Remember that? Seems like forever ago, man, but it was just last year... anyhow, now, remember what happened? Direct, issues-focused attempts to reform policing were knocked down. Blotted out. Instead, we were told two things: 1) we had to repeat the slogan ABOLISH THE POLICE, and 2) we had to say it was actually very good and beautiful and nonviolent and valid when rioters burned down poor neighborhoods.

Now, in a relatively healthy discourse, it might have been possible for someone to say something like "while I agree that American policing is heavily violent and racist and requires substantial reforms, I worry that taking such an absolutist point of demanding abolition and cheering on the destruction of city blocks will be a political non-starter." This statement would have been, in retrospect, 100000000% correct. But could you have said it, in any worthwhile manner? If you had said something along those lines, what would the fallout had been? Would you have lost friends? Your job? Would you have suffered something more minor, like getting yelled at, told your opinion did not matter? Would your acquaintances still now--a year later, after their political project has failed beyond all dispute--would they still defame you in "whisper networks," never quite articulating your verbal sins but nonetheless informing others that you are a dangerous and bad person because one time you tried to tell them how utterly fucking self-destructive they were being? It is undeniably clear that last year's most-elevated voices were demanding not reform but catharsis. I hope they really had fun watching those immigrant-owned bodegas burn down, because that’s it, that will forever be remembered as the most palpable and consequential aspect of their shitty, selfish movement. We ain't reforming shit. Instead, we gave everyone who's already in power a blank check to fortify that power to a degree you and I cannot fully fathom.

But, oh, these people knew what they were doing. They were good little boys and girls. They have been rewarded with near-total control of the national discourse, and they are all either too guilt-ridden or too stupid to realize how badly they played into the hands of the structures they were supposedly trying to upend.

And so left-liberalism is now controlled by people whose worldview is equal parts superficial and incoherent. This was the only possible outcome that would have let the system continue to sustain itself in light of such immense evidence of its unsustainability without resulting in reform, so that's what has happened.

But... okay, let's take a step back. Let's focus on what I wanted to talk about when I started this.

I came across a post today from a young man who claimed that his high school English department head had been removed from his position and had his tenure revoked for refusing to remove three books from classrooms. This was, of course, fallout from the ongoing debate about Critical Race Theory. Two of those books were Marjane Satropi's Persepolis and, oh boy, The Diary of Anne Frank. Fuck. Jesus christ, fuck.

Now, here's the thing... When Persepolis was named, I assumed the bannors were anti-CRT. The graphic novel does not deal with racism all that much, at least not as its discussed contemporarily, but it centers an Iranian girl protagonist and maybe that upset Republican types. But Anne Frank? I'm sorry, but the most likely censors there are liberal identiarians who believe that teaching her diary amounts to centering the suffering of a white woman instead of talking about the One Real Racism, which must always be understood in an American context. The super woke cult group Black Hammer made waves recently with their #FuckAnneFrank campaign... you'd be hard pressed to find anyone associated with the GOP taking a firm stance against the diary since, oh, about 1975 or so.

So which side was it? That doesn't matter. What matters is, I cannot find out.

Now, pro-CRT people always accuse anti-CRT people of not knowing what CRT is, and then after making such accusations they always define CRT in a way that absolutely is not what CRT is. Pro-CRTers default to "they don't want  students to read about slavery or racism." This is absolutely not true, and absolutely not what actual CRT concerns itself with. Slavery and racism have been mainstays of American history curriucla since before I was born. Even people who barely paid attention in school would admit this, if there were any more desire for honesty in our discourse. 

My high school history teacher was a southern "lost causer" who took the south's side in the Civil War but nonetheless provided us with the most descriptive and unapologetic understandings of slavery's brutalities I had heard up until that point. He also unambiguously referred to the nuclear attacks on Hiroshmia and Nagasaki as "genocidal." Why? Because most people's politics are idiosyncratic, and because you cannot genuinely infer a person to believe one thing based on their opinion of another, tangentially related thing. The totality of human understanding used to be something open-minded people prided themselves on being aware of, believe it or not...

This is the problem with CRT. This is is the motivation behind the majority of people who wish to ban it. It’s not because they are necessarily racist themselves. It’s because they recognize, correctly, that the now-ascendant frames for understanding social issues boils everything down to a superficial patina that denies not only the realities of the systems they seek to upend but the very humanity of the people who exist within them. There is no humanity without depth and nuance and complexities and contradictions. When you argue otherwise, people will get mad and fight back. 

And this is the most bitter irony of this idiotic debate: it was never about not wanting to teach the sinful or embarrassing parts of our history. That was a different debate, one that was settled and won long ago. It is instead an immense, embarrassing overreach on behalf of people who have bullied their way to complete dominance of their spheres of influence within media and academe assuming they could do the same to everyone else. Some of its purveyors may have convinced themselves that getting students to admit complicity in privilege will prevent police shootings, sure. But I know these people. I’ve spoken to them at length. I’ve read their work. The vast, vast majority of them aren’t that stupid. The point is to exert control. The point is to make sure they stay in charge and that nothing changes. The point is failure. 

[dazeddaisieso-o]

If you wish to provide aid in some way, Please consider donating to one or more of these recognized and trusted charities in order to help make the world a slightly better place:

To Donate to specifically to Refugee Aid amidst the Afghanistan Crisis : irusa.org/asia/afghanistan/

To Donate to Support for U.S. Veterans : www.hopeforthewarriors.org/

To Donate to Humanitarian Aid all around the world, including to Middle East Refugees and the Survivors of the Haitian Earthquake :  www.unicefusa.org/

___________________________________________

If you haven't already seen in the news, Afghanistan's government has fallen to the Taliban extremists and the United States is pulling out the country, putting a messy, unsatisfying, and worrying end to a 20 year war in Afghanistan against Islamic extremism.     This news hit me hard, but I know my shock and fear at this failure of freedom is just an insignificant percentage of the fear, sadness, anxiety, and uncertainty Afghan refugees, current Afghan citizens, and even Afghan and Islamic families living all over the world and within the USA must be facing. I am not here to say whether the President's decision to finally leave was right or wrong because the situation is complicated and I have never been here to promote political rhetoric (unless it has to do with civil rights for minorities, women, or the LGBTQA+.) However, I am deeply saddened by the sadness and fear, perhaps even anger, no doubt being felt by the Afghan and Islamic people and being felt by our own Afghan American and Islamic American citizens. The night I heard the news I stayed up to make this piece as quickly as I could in order to process my emotions about the situation and all my worries: worries about the fate of women and young girls in the country, worries about the fate of good progressive and supportive men in the country, worries about little boys growing up under hateful and sexist doctrines, worries about unwarranted growing Islamophobia within this country and around the world. Peaceful Muslims are going through enough right now, and we would all do best to remember that for the vast majority of Muslims the Taliban is their enemy, too. Unfortunately as with any religion or group with power (ex. with the U.S. police force, Catholics, other sects of Christianity), a few bad apples seem to spoil the bunch in terms of public perception. I know we might be scared for the safety of U.S. troops and our safety as U.S. citizens under the growing Taliban threat but I implore everyone to remember who the most impacted victims are and to see the humanity of peoples whose traditions and clothing may differ from that of you or I. The Islamic people, as a whole, are not scary or a threat, they are people with families and interests and passions and dreams, dreams of freedom and fairness, just like you or I. If you are a member of the Islamic or Afghan community or have family or close friends who are, I am sorry for any pain you may be feeling at this time. To U.S. soldiers and military members who did what they could to provide humanitarian aid in the area and fend off terrorist threats, thank you for your service to the American people and to the Afghan people. I offer my condolences if you felt your work was not yet done.     At this juncture, there is little that I see can be done to directly help the people within Afghanistan while the Taliban has control, besides praying for the safety of good and innocent people within the country and not forgetting about their current struggle. So all I want to do is send the message to remind anyone feeling hopeless that when we can seemingly do nothing, our last resort can always be holding each other closer and not losing the hope that a better day will come. We must support and love one another even in the darkest times. We may lose wars, but whatever happens we must not lose the war in our hearts and minds. We must not give up hoping. ___________________________________________

If you wish to provide aid in some way, Please consider donating to one or more of these recognized and trusted charities in order to help make the world a slightly better place: To Donate to specifically to Refugee Aid amidst the Afghanistan Crisis : irusa.org/asia/afghanistan/ To Donate to Support for U.S. Veterans : www.hopeforthewarriors.org/ To Donate to Humanitarian Aid all around the world, including to Middle East Refugees and the Survivors of the Haitian Earthquake :  www.unicefusa.org/

[iggy-of-fans]

Of Being a Ladybug 12

Previous   Master Post

Okay, NOTES! Please read! Now, I don’t think I ever went into detail about DC timelines or ages… Damien is a year older than Marinette (putting him at 15 years old right now, the average age for the Robin to take over a leadership position), Making Tim 22 and Stephanie 21 (unless anyone can tell me where the hell I can find her actual age in comparison to the others), Jason is 24, Richard is about to turn 30. Cassandra Cain is 24, and Barbara Gordon died in the Joker attack (I have plans).

So in the hands of good we have the (dormant) Turtle, Juleka as the fox (Ruse), Luka as Vipereon, Chloe as Vespa and Kagami as Ryouko. Marlene Seely (my OC) has taken on the Ladybug Mantle and is known as Kaefer.

Loose on the world at large: The Mouse Miraculous (Thief in India), The Horse Miraculous (human trafficker in Germany), The Black Cat (causing destruction at random in Paris), The Butterfly (also in Paris), Monkey Miraculous (in Jump City, causing all weapons but Death Stroke’s to fail), Peacock Miraculous (dormant).

SEND ME ASKS!!!!

The cons of missing jewelry

*!!*

Alya walked into her school for the last week before winter break. Mandatory counselling, restricted internet and computer use, controlled and regulated interaction with friends, bi-weekly community-service… Alya was happy to be preparing for Lycée the following year. Francois-Dupont had agreed to wipe clean their records for a full year of good behaviour, but they had to adhere to a very strict regime put into place by their new principle, a Monsieur Asselah. French-Muslim born, Bilal Asselah came to the school at the beginning of this year and had come down on the student body for their descending grades and lack of emotional control. He enforced counselling and even therapy sessions on all students. He enforced anti-bullying rules. He enforced equality among the students and equal treatment to all. Monsieur Asselah was also very quiet, hard to anger, and polite. Alya liked him, for all that she wasn’t allowed to speak with her old group of friends anymore. She also knew (from counselling) that she was one of the few still having a hard time moving on. Alya was stuck in the past, but hopefully moving to Lycée will help her think of the bigger picture.

“Yeah, Luka really missed her. He hasn’t picked that guitar up since she left. He was gone way longer than he was supposed to but being with Marinette was more important to him…” Alya stopped dead in her tracks. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Juleka walking next to an unfamiliar girl with brown hair. The girl nodded.

“So weird. I didn’t know him before, but seeing how relaxed he was? I bet you they start dating soon!”

“I don’t know… Luka always had a thing for her, but Marinette always… I don’t know…”

Alya was struck. How long had it been since she thought about Marinette? She tried not to, really, because thinking about Marinette meant thinking about Ladybug and the new fox hero (that still gave her a twinge in her chest, that still made her eyes sting with frustration) and Alya didn’t have much time to focus on the things she couldn’t fix. A part of her, a small part, recognized that had Alya simply listened to Marinette, had she trusted her best friend, Alya wouldn’t be in as much trouble now. Marinette hadn’t tried to find Alya to bestow the fox miraculous to. She hadn’t said goodbye. Or tried to send a single letter to her. Alya hadn’t thought much of Marinette in the past year. But it sure hurt to hear Juleka and some random stranger knew where she was and Alya didn’t.

‘Hello Loner… I am Mourning Cloak. You and I, we both lost someone precious. Let’s wreak some havoc and see if they won’t come back…’

“Yes, Mourning Cloak.”

_ - _

Adrien sat forward as he watched the News in Paris. Another random Akuma with no actual direction. Another sighting of Svart Katt, fighting against the Parisian heroes and causing destruction for fun. Adrien frowned. How… How could Plagg let Wilhelm use him like this? How could Wilhelm think this was what he’d wanted? The TV went blank and Adrien almost screamed.

“You shouldn’t be watching those things. You’re away from there now” his aunt Amelie walked further into the room, putting the remote down on a shelf as she walked. Adrien had never told them that he had been Chat Noir, which is how he was acquitted. Only that he had never known anything was amiss. His aunt and cousin did their best to shield him from the masses, from the news, and from the situation in Paris. But they couldn’t hide everything, and Adrien knew that his father had tried to get in contact multiple times since the first sighting of Svart.  

“You don’t understand Aunty…”

“No! Enough! Adrien, you need to live in the now! And right now, you are in London, not Paris. Now, get ready, we’re meeting with the Johnson & Johnson agents” and with that she walked out of the room.

Adrien sighed. How had he messed up so badly?

< ( ^ ^ ) >

Batman walked the halls of the Justice Tower with quiet steps and clenched fists. This was his first meeting with them since taking Marinette in. Marinette had a dancing lesson that night.

“Batman, you finally made it!” Flash called from the left.

“… my daughter needed me…” he was usually the last person to volunteer personal information but seeing Diana flinch in her seat was well worth it.

“How is Maria?” Diana asked gently as he took his seat.

He didn’t answer. Instead he turned he gaze to Superman, telling the room to shut up and listen. As Superman went on to give reports about recent problems around the world, caused by the accursed Miraculous Jewelry, Batman sat in his seat, impassive. In his head he kept a constant monologue of “Do not Kill. Do not Attack. Do not Shout. Do not, Do not, Do not…”

When the meeting concluded, Batman made to make a quick exit. He couldn’t be around them. Not right now, when he felt like he might actually attack them, whether verbally or physically.

‘Marinette need you to pick her up from dance. Marinette needs you to help her with her physics homework. Marinette needs help in filling out her University application.’

“Bruce! Please, how is Maria?” Diana had followed his brisk exit.

“Who is Maria?” he asked instead. If he sounded like he normally did when fighting Joker, well…

Diana stepped back. “Maria, my -- ”

“Your Nothing! Her name is Marinette! Marinette Wayne, and she is alive and growing and coming out of her shell, not thanks to anything you did! How… How could you have possibly thought anything you did to her was acceptable?! How would shaving her hair and telling her to basically kill herself help her?!” Bruce couldn’t hold back his fury anymore. He shoved his cowl off his head and glared at her as he stepped into her space. “You had one job, Diana. To protect her. You failed.”

He turned on his heel and slammed the elevator button to get the hell away from this place. He would tell Alfred to take over meetings until it became relevant to him. Otherwise, he was going to avoid this place like the plague.

^ ^ ^ ^

In Arkham, a maniac laugh could be heard through out the halls. Freedom!

TAG LIST IS FULL!!!

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[dailyaudiobible]

01/10/2021 DAB Transcript

Genesis 23:1-24:51, Matthew 8:1-17, Psalms 9:13-20, Proverbs 3:1-6

Today is the 10th day of January, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is great to be here with you as we greet a brand-new week, a shiny sparkly new week that we are entering into as we continue to move into this brand-new year that we have together. So, it is wonderful. We are falling into a rhythm and it is a meaningful one. Every day we come around the Global Campfire together as a community and hear the word of God spoken over us, and then it becomes a part of who we are, it becomes a part of the soil, the fabric of our lives and it yields a crop. We’re planting seeds right now that are going to come up and it will be the fruit of the spirit, like it will be good in our lives. It will be perspective and context in our lives. And, so, we got a good thing going here and let’s dive into our next week together. We’ll read from the New Living Translation this week and pick up where we left off yesterday. Genesis chapter 23 verse 1 through 24 verse 51.

Prayer:

Father we thank You for Your word. We thank You for bringing us into this brand-new week. We thank You for what wisdom has told us today, that we should trust You with our whole hearts. That's all of us, that we should trust You with who we are and not depend on what we think we know, not depend on our own understanding. We should seek Your will in all that we’re doing, and You will show us which path to take because we will be walking with You at this point, and You will be pointing out the beauty of life together with You. You know all of the hidden vistas, You know all of the secret lookouts, You know all of the cool places of life, and You have invited us to walk through life with You, the most-high God. And, so, often we’re just so busy trying to appease our fellow human beings and get some sort of identity from them when You have invited us into an adventure. So, come Holy Spirit, help us. This begins by trusting You with everything and not thinking that we’re gonna figure it all out but knowing that You know it all. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In Jesus’ name, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here. Of course, if you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app you can access pretty much all of this as well using the app. But this is where we get connected. This is where we stay connected. This is home base. It's the home of the Global Campfire. It's…well…I mean we’re a virtual community. We are far-flung. We are all over the earth. And, so, this is the place that we can come back together and be together. So, be aware of that and check it out.

Check out the community section, either via the app or the…the website and that…that's where the Prayer Wall is. There’s always someone to pray for, always, and there are always people praying. So, you can always reach out for prayer. So, be aware of that and…yeah…pray for each other. That's what we do here. It’s one of the distinctives. It’s one of the beautiful things that we do here, is just accept people where they are on their journey and no matter…no matter where they’ve been or how this is all gonna play out, we’re…we’re willing to accept each other where we are on the journey right now knowing that everybody's in process, none of…none of us have…have reached perfection and just to accept…accept each other where we are and be willing to walk the path and pray for one another and encourage one another. We’re very very good at that here maybe better than anywhere I have ever seen. In fact, not maybe, better than anywhere I’ve ever seen. And, so, we love one another well and there are places like the Prayer Wall to always have a place to reach. So, be aware of that.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link on the homepage. I thank you. I thank you profoundly. If what's happening here, God's word spoken read fresh every day and given into the world and community built around that rhythm, encouragement and prayer for one another, if this brings life to you than thank you for being life-giving. There is a link on the homepage. If you’re using the app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Good morning Daily Audio Bible friends this is Kimberly calling from __ first of all I just wanted to welcome any new listeners and just want to know…just wanted you to know that I’ve been praying for you for this new year that you would be truly blessed by this podcast as we…we all are that listen. Along the way you will find that people share wonderful manifestations of the way that this podcast has changed their lives. And, so, I pray that that is…is your case. I…I pray truly that you are blessed and that your relationship with God it grows so much deeper this year than you could ever imagine. Second thing is I just heard Hope calling from the Heartland and I just love your prayer and hope I…I heard about your mom and I wanted to offer my condolences, that I just so appreciate the blessing that you gave of your perspective on her passing. And I often think about what heaven will be like because none of us have seen each other for the most part. I guess at the More gathering and things like that we’ve seen each other’s faces but to a large extent most of us haven’t met or seen each other’s faces but guess what? In heaven we’re gonna know each other and we’re gonna know Hope’s mom. And as I’m driving to work on this beautiful beautiful January morning, I’m just in of the beauty that God has given us on this side of heaven. We had a nor’easter last night and dropped quite a bit of snow and it was a powerful storm and the clouds are low over the town as I drive in the sage brush is covered with snow and it’s just…

Hi DABber family this is Tonja with a J in South Florida and I am so excited. It is January 5th of 2021 and I did it. I did it, I did it, I did it thank you Brian thank you Jill and China. God bless you and your baby girl. I actually did the Bible in a year. And to anyone who thinks you can’t do it just listen and if you…if you forget a week or day…I actually forgot…almost forgot a month because I just was busy with life but I caught up and today I finished the Bible in a year. And I can’t wait I’m already started January with everybody. I am just so happy to be around the campfire and we really our family here. And I did the Bible for the first time in my whole life in the year. I…I’m so excited and even my hubby is getting excited and…and you know…let’s pray to get him listening to this every day as well and…and I’m just…I love the way Brian that you explain what you’re going to say and then you read the Scriptures and then you talk afterwards. It’s very educational. I can’t wait. This is my second year and I’m going nowhere. Stick to everyone. Stick to it. If you fall behind just…no…listen to two or three. I mean lately I’ve been listening to ten a day because I was behind in November and December. And oh I’m just so happy. It is an accomplishment. It was my goal I wanted last year, and I reached it. Thank you very much. I…I love everyone and I love listening to you all and I pray with you all when you pray. I’m just so happy that I’m…I’m crying. How stupid. Anyway…so, have a lovely day and you can do it. If I can do it, you can do it. This is Tonja with a J and have a good day. Bye-bye.

Good morning this is Daniel in Arizona. Good morning family. It is the 6th of January I’m trying into work and I just felt overly compelled by the Holy Spirit to reach out and I’m sorry if I butcher your name. I have some…I do have some hearing problems. So, Zinab in London. I just I heard you call, your first call in to the Daily Audio Bible and I just want to let you know welcome, welcome welcome to this great and wonderful community where we can come together and learn more about Jesus, about the Bible and what…how great it is to be in community with each other with our great Savior. Welcome and I’m just praying for you. My heart goes out to you. And I know that you were saying that you come from a Muslim background and from a lot of stories and that I’ve read and people that I met there could be some…there can be some great rejection. And I just wanted to welcome you with open arms and that we will be continuing, that I encourage everyone in this community to be praying for our…our…our friend here and just encouragement and love. And I just felt so compelled by the Holy Spirit to reach out to you and to know that this is just a wonderful place to be and that we can walk in the freedom of Jesus. And thank you for…for reaching out and may the Lord bless you that may He keep you and as we journey together in 2021.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible family. Hallelujah to God and grace and peace be to all of you. I am calling in this morning for our sister Zinab from London to welcome you sister to this community and just tell you that it’s going to be fantastic journey, to encourage you to lift you up and tilt you know that you will be well loved here. Zinab I encourage you to continue in this journey to be faithful to it to God’s word and faithful to the prayer and the prayers of the community. Love you, we encourage you, we look forward to hearing from you, Zinab. So, blessings to you all.

Good morning DAB family its January 6th and this is Amazed by Grace Sally in Massachusetts. Just wanting to wish you all a wonderful blessed new year as we walk in the Lord together. And I was just so blessed by our Christmas party. So good to hear all of your encouragements and just thankful that I can be out of this body, part of this ministry. And today as Brian was introducing the reading, he mentioned how important it is for us to grow in awareness of God’s presence and our dependence on Him. And that just really struck me because that is so true how much we need to be aware. God is always with us He will never forsake us. And I and we are so dependent on His love and grace and His spirit to guide us. So, thank you for that reminder Brian. And I am thankful that we have this ministry of the Daily Audio Bible to encourage and to support each other. Isn’t it wonderful that God made us a body, a body that can support and encourage each other? So, I pray for each of us as we go into the new year that we will grow in our awareness of God’s wonderful loving presence and our total dependence upon Him. And I’m thankful for the call from our sister in London who is a recent Muslim convert. We do support you and we do love you and we’re so thankful that you joined us. We pray for you to grow in your walk with God along with us as we each need to grow. And again, thank you for all those, Brian, Jill who make this ministry possible and each one who puts a log on the fire. Thank you and thank you God.

Hey guys I actually just found the Daily Audio Bible app.  This year I want…one of my things for the new year was that I wanted to read my whole Bible this year and so I found this, and it has just been such a blessing in my life and I am…I’m just so overwhelmed and amazed at how fast God has worked in my life and the amount of love that I feel from this whole community. So, I’d just like to say thank you and I’d like to thank God for kind of showing me and giving me all of you. It’s actually…I’m coming up on my last ever semester of college in a couple of days and I’m already feeling pretty overwhelmed and stressed out about it. So, if anyone wants to take a couple seconds out of their day and just shoot a prayer for me that’d be very appreciated. Just thank you all.

[ahagia-sophia]

Thesis Statement: Manhood is poorly defined and actively attacked in Western society and this has caused me problems. Selfish I know, but this is my blog. So.

I have a lot of problems with the US. There are the political ones. The not so political ones. And the personal ones. When I first hit adulthood and realized that adults don’t exist I held out the secret hope that somewhere adults existed. When I saw that our political system was not run by these mythical adults I became very angry. And when I went overseas I, like some sort of idiot, thought that I had at last found the place that the adults were hiding. I found a place where people had their roles. Knew how to act. Knew how to behave. But I was a tourist. I saw people doing their jobs and just sort of assumed that everyone was like that. While I was having the epiphany that human beings are, in fact, exactly the same no matter where or when you go, this part of the revelation passed me by. And it took me three years of self reflection to figure that out. But back to the topic. Problems. This might be because of my rather, uh, unique upbringing. But I never really figured out how to be a man. Like I know some stuff. Stand up for people, don’t hit girls, have sex. That’s the basics. But I also saw a lot of other men who grew up and ‘knew’ how to be men. I was raised almost exclusively by women. My father figure was either dead or isolated from the rest of us. So it was me, my mother, my sisters, my grandmother, and my cousins. And after I was transplanted to the south it was just my mother and my sisters. My mom knew how to raise girls. And she married my step father, and stayed with him, almost exclusively for my benefit. Assuming that a man was needed to raise a boy. And because that man was around she was uh. Absent. From my raising. I’m still a little mad that my sisters got ancestral rings on their 18th birthdays and I just got a pat on the back (I’ve got a lot of angst when it comes to rings). But that’s not what I’m here to complain about. Because I was sort of left to raise myself, I turned to any manly source I could find. Those were the military and paramilitary groups. I was small and pale (still am, really) and kind of migrated to bottom bitch status. So I learned that being a man, for me, was being quiet, being studious, and being as unobtrusive as I can. Funnily enough my JROTC program was run almost exclusively by women. The only men really present were 1SG and Colonel. Colonel was a tired old Creole man who had lived a very long life. 1SG was a raging misogynist surrounded by nothing but strong women and scrawny boys. The other organization I found myself is was the 5th Louisiana Reenacting Company. A group of Totally Not Racist See We Have A Black Guy (One Of The Good Ones, A Credit To His Race) Civil War Reenactors It’s kind of surprising that I’m not some frothing trumper, really. From them I learned Machismo and Duty. A man has his Duty and he does his Duty in a manly fashion. I also probably hated women. I was definitely chock full of hormones and mad that they had it so easy sexually (yeah I know better now). I was certainly jealous of my sisters for being mothered.  And I definitely hated women who attacked the fundamentals of Manhood. Because it was all I really had, beyond my own special interests.

Going into college all I really knew about my role in society was that I was to Fulfill My Duty and Have Sex. I was bitter about that. I was a virgin. And because I had sort of been raised in a military mindset I had it in my mind that my Duty was to Suffer and Die. (On a related note I fucking despise American Protestantism.) Because of that I was very upset when all my new female friends kept saying that men were pigs who have it easy. I know why they said that now, and to an extent I agree. But at the time I couldn’t understand how they could be so blind. In my mind they had it easy. I had to register for the fucking draft and get ready for a career of suffering and they got to do whatever they wanted while being cared for by those of us who were busy Suffering. Again, don’t yell at me, I’m just trying to explain some shit here.

So college wasn’t really helpful for determining manhood. I was on my own for the first time and all I was learning was all the things ‘men’ were. Men were creeps who raped their children. Men were creeps who followed girls around on dark nights. Men were assholes who tried to control every aspect of a woman’s life. Men were abusive. Men were stupid. Men were, by and large, Bad. It’s funny that you can say that in front of someone and then immediately turn around and say ‘Oh no, you’re one of the good ones.’ And not see the obvious connections. But I’m not here to discuss prejudice. I’m here, really, to discuss the nebulous nature of manhood in American society.

I still didn’t really know what a man was. Which meant (in my mind at the time) I didn’t know what the fuck I was supposed to be doing with my life. I have since learned that no one knows. But then (and now) I was keenly interested on what a man was supposed to be. I took a course on sexual violence and relationships and we got to a thing called the ‘Be A Man Box’ where we outlined the traits of manhood. I was very interested in this box. Perhaps I would get some goddamn answers. Did I mention the class was entirely composed of women? That’s important. They took this as a time to outline everything about men that they hated and provide a few of the staples like ‘provider’ for diversity or something. The box was not helpful. All I really knew was what a man shouldn’t be. Which is good, yes. But it wasn’t giving me the answers I so desperately sought. There were other men on campus, obviously. But beyond my one conservative friend all of my male friends were some flavor of gay. And seemed more interested in figuring out their sexuality and enjoying their newfound freedom than figuring out what the hell masculinity is.

Enter that ‘Muslim’ in my bio. We’ve entered my third year of college. I’m devastated by a breakup, I’m binge drinking, I’m flirting with suicide, I’m completely rudderless. And my friend’s girlfriend was trying to fuck me. A recurring theme in my life, that. A lot of bad shit was going on concurrently. My only real male role models were my professors. One of whom was Muslim, the other tired and Mormon, and the third was/is slowly dying while his wife fucked anything that moved. I was asking myself a lot of questions. Questions like, ‘Is it okay to fuck my friends girlfriend?’ ‘Did my ex break up with me because I couldn’t meet her expectations?’ ‘How have I even gotten this far?’ ‘What will I do next?’ ‘What am I supposed to be doing?’ My parents were also on the edge of a divorce and I was balancing an overfull course load, work, and being drunk/finding booze.

It was a sort of catalyst. I remembering drunkenly kneeling in my bedroom. Naked. Begging anyone who was listening for answers. And that answer was Islam. Islam had the ultimate set of honored male figures. The local Masjid was populated by academics and civil rights activists. Old black men who had clawed their way up from literal slavery to being pillars of their community. There’s no wisdom like that given by an old black man. I doubt I will ever be dissuaded from that belief. Islam had exact answers to all my questions. God. Community. Aid. Prayer. It had role models. It had answers. You’ve probably noticed that I’m still putting everything in past tense. I still consider myself a Muslim, but I’m definitely not a good one. The last time a knelt in prayer was Ramadan. But at the time religion did what I needed it to. I got sober. I got focused. I got my shit together.

It took me 21 years to find anything even resembling a guide to manhood. And it came from what many would describe as Un-American. Absolutely nothing that was presented to me before gave me a satisfactory answer. No American institution. No ‘American’ religion. No facet of American culture gave me an answer. Clearly other men have gotten answers. And, really, they got them from the same place I got mine. Old timers. People who remember, or have learned, how to be Men. And a lot of those old timers are racist old fucks who are actively poisoning young men who are desperate for answers to questions they don’t even know they’re asking. Maybe somewhere. In a country with an old faith and an old population. A place where you are confronted with civilization thousands of years old every day. Maybe there they know how to be men. Maybe that’s the place where the answers lie. Because I know for certain where they don’t lie. Sadly there aren’t any answers here. For any man or any stripe who’s trying to figure it out, I don’t think I can help you. One day I will. That’s my goal in life. To figure out what real manhood is and spread the word far and wide. But. sadly, I don’t have the answers yet.

[gamer--grill]

Catherine: Full Body game review. Spoiler alert!

Catherine: Full Body is a recreation of the original game Catherine made in 2011 by the game company Atlus, the same creators of the Persona games. It's a very story oriented platform puzzle game and follows the story of a man who's questioning his life and relationships.

Plot

So the story follows a man named Vincent Brooks, age 32, as he struggles with his hesitancy to commit to his girlfriend of 5 years Katherine and with the terrifying nightmares that plague him. At the very start of the game we meet Rin, formaly known as Qatherine, as she's running from her stalker in the streets. Vincent saves her and finding that she has amnesia and doesnt know anything about herself, she gets a job at the Stray Sheep playing piano, she is also Vincent's new neighbor.

2nd, we meet Catherine, a young, sexual blonde who comes into the Stray Sheep and has a drink with our protag. Vincent gets drunk out of his mind and in the morning he wakes up with Catherine naked beside him. He freaks the fuck out and here starts the love square as he struggles to hide his infidelity from both Katherine and Catherine while dealing with his growing affections for Rin.

Gameplay

The real meat of this game is in the nightmare segments. Every night you're transported to a world where you have to climb a tower of cubes before they fall out from under you and you become a heaping plate of sheep meat. And what they don't tell you about the puzzles is THEY ARE HARD, OH MY GAWD! If you play on hard or even normal be ready to throw your controller out the goddamn window and question your life choices bc if puzzles aren't for you then you're gonna have a bad time.

The game's puzzle segments have improved greatly with an additional difficulty setting called Safety where it's impossible for you to die, there's no timer so the floor doesn't fall out from under you, and you have an auto play and skip options so if you're feeling lazy you can have the game play its self or just skip the puzzle entirely. There's also a back camera so if you need to climb to the back of the puzzle you can actually see what you're doing instead of scrambling around like a sheep with its head cut off. The trap blocks are also disabled in Safety mode. After you get to the top of each block tower you'll come to a platform where you can save, talk to people and buy items that help you climb (they bring down your score of you use them fyi.) After that you'll get into a confessioanal booth where you'll be asked a question where you'll have to answer either 1 extreme or the other. This is the main thing that will determine the outcome of the game. This game has multiple endings and depending on what you choose that will decide the ending that you get and the paths you take. There's a total of 14 endings in this game including alternate endings that are exclusive to Catherine: Full Body so this game makes up for its relatively short play time by having high replay value. They've also added new questions to the game so it won't be the same questions that you answered if you played the original Catherine.

There's an option called Remix where there's entirety new kinds of blocks in the puzzles to deal with, I didn't play that but it looked intersting.

Other than the nightmare parts of the game, you spend you're time at the Stray Sheep drinking, talking to you're friends, bar patrons and Rin. You freqently get txts on your phone from all 3 of the girls and unlike the original game you get phone calls now and pics from all of the women, not just Catherine 😈😈. The best thing about the bar is that it's entirely optional. There's no extra fluff you need to slog through. You can just skip entirely passed it if you don't feeling like drinking or talking but it's all so atmospheric that you'll want to do it. Plus drinking more helps you move faster during the puzzles so bottoms up, bitches. 🍸🍺🍻🍷🍹🍶

Character's

I'm only gonna cover the love intrests bc they're the only ones who matter really.

Qatherine (Rin)

Oh. My. God. I can't even begin to tell you how good her story is. Her genuine innocence, kindness and sincerity help Vincent greatly as he deals with the traumatic nightmares and his relationship problems. Early on we can really feel the affection that he has for her and it seems completely natural that they would fall in love. In fact later in the game he kind of admits that he did fall in love with her. This is how good it was, when I messed up and didn't give the right answers for her path to be unlocked I was so pissed off when the cutscene finally came that I would have shouted at my screen if my dad hadn't been sleeping next door to me. Rin also has a unique place in the game. Unlike the other 2, she actually appears in the nightmares and helps you by playing her piano. That added comfort she gives Vincent really adds to her relevance and pefectly supports the way to a loving relationship should you choose to persue one. She's the most fulfilling love option. She's also not human. Or a girl.

Katherine

Katherine is already your long time steady gf when the game begins. Mature and sensible, she almost resembles a mothering role with the protag. She's always worried about him and his drinking habbits and how clean his apartment is. But she's not without her soft side either. She brings him cake and wants to persue a deeper commitment with him. She's very smart and ambitious but also quite understanding when it comes to Vincent's bumbling clumsiness. She truely wants the best for him and their relationship. This is expanded by the memories that are shown to you about their early relationship when they first fell in love. Which didn't happen in the original game. She represents the security and familiarity that comes with having a long time relationship.

Catherine

Catherine isn't actually a human at all. She's a succubus who was brought to specifically temp the protag into a steamy affair. She's described as "his dream girl" and represents the fantasy and freedom that people secretly crave. She's appears unassuming and innocent on the outside but is actually very shrewd and aggressive as shown when she beats the shit out of Vincent in the bathroom of the bar if you choose to break up with her. She also threatens to kill you early on if you cheat on her. She's very emotionally vulnerable and actually falls in love with the protag as the game progresses. If you break up with her she'll beg to stay with you, stateing that "I just wanna be your girl." And that she's ok with you marrying some one else. Then she cries. Then beats you up. It's all very hilarious and strange. Also no one else can see her except Vincent which leads to chaos near the end of the game. Her endings are actually pretty nice so give her some consideration.

Graphics

As this is a ps4 game, it goes without saying that the graphics are better than the original. The cematics really have the polished Persona 5 look to them. The colors are super bright and vibrant it's like a feast for your eyeballs, I just love it. When you do get a loading screen, which isn't often, you get blasted with that signature vibrant pink and the title screen has a whole new look to it. The style is there and I am here for it.

Interesting stuff

These are just things I personally found awesome.

In the begining, the hostess Trisha (she explains the whole story and presents it to you as a soap opera) aknowleges that this game is the new better version of the first.

The cubes with faces on them open their eyes when you stand in front of them.

When you reply to txts in the bar, you don't have to cycle through options anymore, just scroll and select.

There's Persona music on the bars jukebox including the opening song to Persona 5

There's Persona 5 Easter eggs. Just look around. 😉

There's a rich Muslim dude who you get to talk to on the platform after you climb the puzzles so if you're concerned about "representation" it's there.

Overview 8.5/10

Catherine: Full Body is an intersting, unique and stylish game that brings a fresh new concept to gaming and I really recommend it. It's strange and it does what it does and it does it well bc it's not trying to please or pander to anyone. The story is good and the style is showy and I love it.

I hope that you enjoyed this review and that your gamming experience is a little better.

[sisoyyoalgunproblema]

SKAM ESPAÑA SEASON 1 EPISODE 2

So I’m doing a recap of every episode of seasons 1 and 2 of Skam España, if you want to check out episode 1 click here. By the way, I can’t wait for Saturday, we’ll get new content, I’m so happy!!!

SKAM ESPAÑA SEASON 2 EPISODE 2 “HAY LÍO” “IT’S ON”

Episode número dos! Here we go!

CLIP 1  ➡  “TRUST”

So the episode starts with Eva on her bed eating and trying to study, she’s actually on her phone, as we all would be. We see as she tries to gather her thoughts and text something to Jorge that makes sense, that will make him tell her the truth and that won’t sound needy or desperate, or extremely jealous and paranoid, she is not paranoid, not yet.

He basically just rings on her door and appears with, you guessed it, a pizza, I swear Eva doesn’t eat anything healthy, ever, in the whole season. He’s sweet, they have such great chemistry and you can see Eva relaxing against him almost immediately. She’s so willing to believe anything he tells her, he’s cute, nice, funny and really, really, really seems to care about her, and love her…  

Jorge is kind of captivating, the way he hugs her, walks hugging her to him, kisses her, makes her diner, yes, it’s only a pizza, but it’s food and it’s nice… He makes all of these little voices, you can tell he feels safe with Eva, that she’s as important to him as he is to her. I think Eva can feel it too, she feels loved, but there’s that voice in the back of her head, I mean, she saw them, and he didn’t say anything about it…

It’s so important that the clip ends with a shot of her hand aching to reach for his phone and read through his massages to prove herself wrong, to KNOW that he’s not cheating on her. She doesn’t wanna be clingy, and jealous, wants to hive him freedom, but she saw what she saw. Everything is a mess.

CLIP 2 ➡ “WISCONIN, YOU’RE BEHIND”

The girl squad is becoming the girl squad, and Viri is being way to enthusiastic about the end of the year school trip, I guess she sees it as ger ticket to popularity, she keeps redirecting the conversation towards the merch they could sell to pay for it, but the girls are way more worried about food, how can the American people live without their favourite chips? Well, they have reese’s pieces.

There’s a little nod to Viri’s eating disorder here, she refuses to eat because the chips are full of calories and she really doesn’t want to talk about food (I know it’s not been confirmed, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we tackled the topic next season).

Also Jorge appears and Eva leaves them, because Jorge is still too important and they all comment on how cute he is and, honestly? Same. He’s adorable.

CLIP 3 ➡ “ LIKED EVERYTHING”

I know we all like Viri now, but god she was unbearable the whole first season, I think that her problem is that she only wants to be friends with those who will make her popular, so Amira, as a Muslim person of colour, doesn’t fit the mold. She’s so disrespectful and I don’t think Amira is half as mean or direct to Viri as Sana was to Vilde. If I were her I don’t know what I’d have done because Viri keeps forgetting her on purpose, and I think we can all agree that Viri’s ideas aren’t the greatest ones in the world.

Anyway. I think that this clip should’ve been called peer-pressure. I really like that the girls are hanging out together, they don’t click yet, which is understandable, but they are trying. And Cristian comes in for the kill. He basically introduces himself to Eva in a very obvious way and doesn’t say anything to the rest of the girls who are all giving them the biggest WTF eyes in the world. Anyway, Cristian leaves and Viri talks like she had known who Alejandro was all her life, when she saw him for the first time the week before, and like Nora was from another planet because she didn’t know who he was.

And then Cris likes every single photo Cristian has ever posted on Insta, which is not weird at all. And this is something that I have a problem with, because Eva clearly is uncomfortable by the whole situation and actually says so, but nobody apologises, and poor girl, this is awkward. And Eva is forced into a situation she didn’t wanna be in because of, you’ve guessed it, peer pressure.

CLIP 4 ➡ ”CAN’T BE BOTHERED”

I L O V E this clip, there’s one really big reason, Jorge doesn’t give a fuck that Eva is talking to a guy who clearly wants to sleep with her, there’s no possessiveness he trusts her to do what’s right and doesn’t think twice about it. He actually congratulates her on using a guy to get into a party and, although he doesn’t want to hung out with those people, he says he’ll go to make her happy.

I also really like how Lucas interacts with Eva and Jorge, in the OG, Isak always felt to me like he was Jonas’ friend way more than he was Eva’s, but here they are three really close friends who actually like hanging out and each others’ company.

CLIPS 5 & 6 ➡ ”THE PARTY”

THE SLOWMO WALK AND CRISTIAN BITTING HIS LIP.

I could end it here but I really like how happy the girls look, they wanna have fun and they have the whole night ahead of them.

Eva is constantly texting Jorge and reminding him to come, I feel like she can’t be happy, not truly, until she’s with him, it’s the whole toxic relationship they’ve got going on.

They have here the little throwback of Eva wiping off her lipstick, even though nobody calls her a whore. Thank god.

Cristian is confusing to me, I hate the “I’m not the jealous kind of guy” comments. Like, the girl is clearly not interested, leave her alone. Cristian ends up understanding it, though, and is kind of nice afterwards, but that comment irked me. The thing here is, in season 2 Alejandro basically tells Nora that Cristian is really into Eva, like 100% in, and I think he really likes her, even here, and not in a “I wanna get in your pants” kind of way. But… I don’t know, man, that comment.

Do you know what really bothers me about this clip? And every party clip in Skam España? NO ONE HERE STARTS A PARTY THAT EARLY. NO ONE. NOT ONE FUCKING PERSON. For those of you not fortunate enough to have lived in this country, dinner in Spain starts at 21, you start getting ready at 22.30 and get to wherever you’re going at midnight, and that’s when you’re going early. I usually get out of the house at midnight or even at 1am and parties don’t end before 3. They just don’t. So, it really bothers me that Eva tells Jorge the party starts at 20.30, like. NO. that’s just… no. 00.30 it’s okay, I’ll even give you 23.00 because it’s a house party and not a club, but 20.30? WHEN DID YOU GUYS EAT?!?!

CLIP 7 ➡ “IT’S ON”

Eva is so clingy, like, I feel for her and Jorge told her he’d come and everything, but girl, enjoy your night, she should be able to forget about Jorge for a second, she’s at a party with her friends, she should be having fun and not checking her phone every 2 seconds.

Cris and Amira imitating Viri and Alejandro is ICONIC, I love them.

And then comes the fight. The fact that all of the girls jumped in to defend Eva? Magic. But Eva feels so guilty, it’s not even fair, Inés overreacted but she’s so uncomfortable and feels so guilty and small compared to her that she’s willing to let Inés step all over her, she’d literally let her hit her if that made her feel better. And I never noticed it before, but Cristian is behind them and doesn’t say a word, the little bitch… I knew you couldn’t be trusted!

I love how they added this detail of Eva finding her bag covered in wiskey, like you think your day can’t be going any worse and in comes destiny or karma or god or whatever to prove you wrong, it’s so fucking relatable, as is applauding a friend for getting the man she likes.

Do you ever get those kinds of weeks where you think you are not gonna have a lot of work and you’ll be able to do everything you want to but then Monday arrives and you’re like fuck, there’s so much more to do than I previously anticipated. And then you have to cancel your plans. Well, that’s the kind of week this one is turning out to be for me, I hope you are doing better than I am.

[nunaya-business]

Hi, Let’s Talk About Some Controversial Shit Yeah?

So lately people have been telling Horikoshi Kohei to go kill himself, because they’re trying to be a shitty version of Shane Dawson exploring conspiracy theories that have no right to exist. I don’t even know where to fucking start, but since I’m not a YouTuber, but I’m a writer, I decided to ditch my phone for this one, and am currently typing this shit out on my laptop. Yes, that is how pissed I am.

A new decade and a new start to the shittiness that was 2010-2020. More and more people of the LGBTQ started coming out of the dark and trying to accept who they are to the chagrin of assholes who have no business in their lives anyway. I feel like there’s been a lot more racism here than there was from 2000-2010, or maybe that’s just me. I think it’s because people are getting more vocal with their opinions as the earth goes to shit. We are slowly killing it after all. Not only is there more racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ pricks, and people prejudice against other religions (the prejudice against Muslims is a big one. Poor Muslims, it’ll be okay, Brookie’s on your side), but there are now people who don’t like freedom of speech, or the right to write a story, and people who are just plain pussies because they don’t wike dere wittle feewings huwt 😥. 

I could write for hours about all of those subjects. But since I’m an aspiring writer myself, I picked the right to write. What do I mean by that? I mean the right for an author of any kind to write their story, their way, without these little pussies coming around and being like, “bro can you not mention the Mongols breaking through the Great Wall of China? Yeah, because I’m from a Chinese family and I don’t want to be reminded of my ancestor’s tribulations even though it was 800 years ago. Thanks”. Let me break this shit down like I’m in debate class and my entire University grade depends on me winning this “argument”.

Writing is an art. Duh. People don’t write because they had a good life, I don’t care what anyone says. Writers write because it relieves stress, allows them to get their feelings out in a healthy way, take them away to their own little world in their own special way to escape the hell they’re living through, lets them vent the dark desires and thoughts they may have, and get their opinions out there when they feel like no one listens. Writing is a cure for depression for some people. It’s a healthy kind of drug that doesn’t make someone overdose (unless they’re like me and write’s for hours on end losing sleep and starving themselves just to write an idea down before they forget it). 

People write about what they can’t speak. My mom has this saying “say it forget it, write it regret it”, and in certain contexts that saying is a good moral to have, but that’s not always the case. My mom and I watched the movie “Her” the other day and (spoilers) at the end of the movie, the main character Theodore, who’s a writer, writes a letter to his ex-wife. He writes about how they met, how they grew up together, how they grew to be the best of friends, then lovers, then built a trust they couldn’t replace, and the sorrow he felt when the relationship started crumbling. Joaquin Phoenix did an amazing job lamenting about the character’s past, most likely because he’s been through a lot too, and the character did an astounding job putting his words to paper (or in this case email) and getting out years of stress and sadness so that he can start loving life again.

The point of me describing that scene was to show the impact writing has on some people. It’s the escape they need and sometimes the emotions they feel put into a context where they can explain it all they want without having to waste a breath.

Now, picture if you will, that you’re a writer down on your luck. You have an amazing story to tell and the audience in mind that you want to tell it to, but no one believes in you. They want to alter your story to suit a wider audience, but, you don’t give a shit about appealing to people, you’re telling a story that helped you and may help others too, no matter the money you might lose or recognition you’ll never gain. Imagine that you found a way to both appeal to a wider audience and tell that story you have in your mind’s view. It gets more popular than most media to come out of your country and helps you bring in more than enough money you need to survive. Suddenly people are falling in love with the characters you wrote in more ways than one. People are starting to call it a modern classic and then, you start getting letters from people all around the world telling you how much your writings helped them and that they’re living better lives because they were inspired or motivated by the words you oh so carefully put onto a page, with the art you spent hours, upon days, upon weeks on opening people’s eyes to what they’re capable of.

I may have put some personal shit in that last paragraph, but I was mainly talking about the subject of this... (essay?) Horikoshi Kohei. A man who never gave up because dammit, he had a story to tell and fuck anyone who doesn’t want to hear it. All that matters to real writers is that someone feels special because of the words you put together on a page. Horikoshi puts a lot of time and effort into My Hero Academia, and what does his fans do? They tell him to kill himself because he dared wordplay to get the names of some characters. Y’know it’s funny, I don’t hear a lot of Jews, trans, gay, or Polish people complain about the shit their ancestors went through 70 years ago during the Holocaust like they went through it as well, but I always hear about Korean, Chinese, and Black people (off the top of my head don’t @ me) complain about shit their ancestors went through from 70 all the way back to a thousand years ago. Not to say that everyone in those races do that. because they don’t. I’m sure a majority probably doesn’t give two flying fucks what someone writes as long as they aren’t being personally targeted or threatened. But go on Horikoshi’s Twitter once and tell me that you don’t see hundreds of his followers (mostly Asian) threatening him and criticizing his naming of his characters. If you’re Korean or Chinese and you find issue with the fact that Horikoshi named a mother fucking villain character after a place where your specific race was tortured and experimented on, decades before were even fucking thought of, please tell me why. If you feel personally attacked then you’re... (I don’t wanna use retarded because people will automatically stop reading and DM me about my word choice) doltish. That’s a fancy word for stupid by the way. Maybe if it were one of the heroes named that way then I would completely understand, but it’s not. It’s a fucking villain. 

But hey, what do I know? I’ve never been through shit. I’m just a plain, short and chubby little white girl with a big mouth that’s never been the victim of prejudice or racism. No one’s ever taken a look at me and judged me based on my ancestors or religious choices. No one’s ever made fun of my accent or the color of my skin, or the birth defect that effected my feet and slightly effected my hands. 

Oh by the way, my mom’s a closet Psychopath that wasn’t diagnosed because the rest of the family is too fucking psycho for anyone to notice her torturing animals at a young age. My dad was a Paranoid Schizophrenic with an undiagnosed Psychosis and severe PTSD (diagnosed) that grew up in a home with an abusive father and a mother that was too busy grooming her oldest son (take that how you will) to pay any attention to him. Not to mention she also killed him. It’s not like my dad’s dad was also a psychopath that purposefully killed my unborn brother and laughed when my mom miscarried It’s not like my life was at risk because there was people shooting at my house (where I lived with my grandfather) and I could hear the bullets bouncing off of the trees. It’s not like I was bullied when I was little leading to a brain injury that caused my memory to be fucked up and my speech to slur and stutter. Oh and I definitely didn’t have to start being a second mom to my brother, and an actual mom to my little cousin because my family doesn’t give a fuck how their actions effect others.

I didn’t have the worst life by all means. There’s a lot more people that I know personally that have had it way worse than I have. I’m just saying, don’t take shit so fucking personally. Grow some goddamn balls and stop telling people to go kill themselves because they named a character something you didn’t like. Stop bringing up shit from the past unless people ask about it, or you’re telling you life story. It’s 2020. It’s time to stop being pussies and act like functioning members of society. 

Oh and one last thing. Ya’ll are telling a man to kill himself while the corona virus is spreading like the plague. I think we should be more fucking worried about the fact that humanity could easily be wiped out thanks to the Chinese government silencing a scientist who know about the damn virus a year ago. If anything, we should be targeting them and Trump for being awful, not a poor mangaka that was just word playing with the names of his characters. 

[darkspellmaster]

Young Justice Theory: So I want to talk about Halo...

I’ve seen a lot of discussion about Halo the character in Young Justice. And, while I’m loathed to throw myself into this discourse, I feel like a lot of misinformation is being bandied about in regard to the character.

Now let me say this much, I am not coming at this from the standpoint of the character being a Muslim girl. Rather I’m coming at this from the standpoint of what and who the character is and why I think a lot of this commentary is…a bit of an issue when it comes to Halo and her role in the series.

So let’s start at the beginning. Who is Halo...?

The original Halo is a girl by the name of Violet Harper who was a troubled teen. She and her then boyfriend stole a drug formula from Tobais Whale (if you watch Black Lighting you will know about this kingpin) and ran off to Markovia where she was killed by an Assassin sent out by Whale. Her body was later found by the the Aurakle, who took it over and revived her. Batman discovered her, and she had no idea who she was. Due to her using Light powers he gave her the code name Halo, so he could at least call her something, and the two helped form the Outsiders to deal with the war in Markovia.

During her time with the Outsiders, Halo takes the name Gabrielle Doe and lives in a penthouse with Katana, becoming Katana’s Legal ward. She attended high school and started to date, making Brion a bit jealous, and the two realized when they spoiled one another’s dates that they loved one another. Eventually Batman found out Halo’s past and she eventually went to live with Violet’s parents, discovered that Violet needed to make amends for her past behavior and then broke things off with Brion.

Tobais Whale came back into Halo’s life seeking out the drug formula, and kidnapped her parents. She had no idea what he was talking about as the memory of the theft was gone, even with the help of her friends Violet’s parents were killed. Her memories were returned when the JL discovered what possessed her body, and the Auakle wanted to split her and their friend, killing her in the process. The outsiders saved her, and was finally left in peace to go find herself.

During this time she got lured into the Kobra cult and had to be saved by the Outsiders once more, rejoined them. However her body was killed during events of an attack on Markovia, where the ex wife of one of the Outsiders allies, and Halo took over the body of Marissa Barron, but went by the name of Violet due to connections to her former body.

In addition the new 52 redid her story to have it where Violet was imprisoned by the Kobra cult in Markovia. During this time Katana, who is on her own mission, frees Violet and steals a police van with the girl, only for the two to be caught when they stop the van to rest, thinking they’re safe.

In the redone story of Halo, the Aurkles have been captured by Kobra, and with the help of a kidnapped Scientist (I think it’s Dr. Jace) Violet is forced to experimented upon and this gives her super powers. The try to mind control her, but the Aurkles breaks free and kills everyone present but shields Violet from harm. Katana threatens to kill them and they back off allowing her and Violet to escape.

When awake from her ordeal Violet uses her powers but Katana and her partner the Entchantress knock her out. Enchantress at the time tries to free Violet from the Aurkles, but the bond is permanent. During this time the Aurkles try to free their friend, but their actions would have killed Halo, so Enchantress has to kill them to keep her alive. Halo saves Katana and Enchantress and Katana takes Halo on as a sister and offers to let her live with her.

Second question…what is Qurac?

Okay so while one can see Qurac as a fake name for Iraq the two nations are not the same and are independent of one another’s history.

Qurac is a gulf nation that runs along the eastern boarder of the Sinai Peninsula from Oman and Rub’al Khali on the south, Saudi Arabia and the Summan on the west and Iraq and Wadi al Batin on the north.

It’s considered an Outlaw nation due to it’s anti-u.s. policies and was a major sponsor of terrorism in the west. Originally, it was ruled by the Ottoman Empire until around the time of WW1 when English and Arab forces defeated the Empire, and the area then held by England until WW2. Now things get interesting…

So during WW2 the Premier of Iraq, one Al-Gailiani, who was a Arab Nationalist, decided to replace the then moderate Iraqi government with a Pro-Axis one. The Brits were having none of that thus the Invasion of Basra in 1941.

Hassan al-Sadr, one of Al-Gailiani’s supporters, fled south and galvanized Arab tribesmen into an army, and, taking the name Sulieman, he was aided by the Germans with materials and funding to establish the nation of Qurac. Because of their alliance Qurac allowed the building of Jotunheim, a giant fortress which was later assaulted by the Suicide Squad when a terrorist organization took hold of it. Jotunheim wrecked the shipping in the Oman and Persian gulfs during this time, and eventually Sulieman’s regime was defeated by the end of the war.

After WW2 Qurac became a republic and that lasted until the 1970s when a military coup led by General Marlo, overthrew the elected government and declared it a military dictatorship, against the will of the people. During his reign Marlo has tested nuclear devices that contaminated the oil supply which is the foremost natural resources. This lead Marlo to attack several international locations, among them Metropolis, causing Superman to come after him and destroy much of his military capability. Marlo eventually was defeated and brought to stand trial thanks to the work of the Suicide squad. Sometime later Cheshire used a nuclear missile on the nation as a means to show she wasn’t afraid of using the weapons she had stolen, causing trouble for aid workers to help survivors.

So that is the comic history of the nation and character…

Question three is…what is a mother box and a New God?

So a New God is a being that is from New Genesis or Apokolips. Respectively you can see them as a heavenly place or a hellish landscape. Batman believes each New God represents something, like Orion is War, Mr. Miracle is Freedom, etc. They live on the Fourth world which is in close proximity to the Source, which is basically a place where most of the powers of the universe come from.

“The Source is the "source" of all that exists and acts as the limitless energy from which all life sprang forth in the Universe. The Source created and was created by the emergence of the Universe approximately 19 billion years ago.[1] Mostly associated with the New Gods, the Source was the supposed origin of the "Godwave" that is believed to have been responsible for creating and empowering the "Gods" with their divine abilities. It also seems to be partially responsible for the ability of certain people to develop super-powers, especially those which defy the laws of physics.

Lying at the edge of the known multiverse is the Source Wall, which protects the Source, and traps all those who attempt to pass beyond it as Promethean Giants.”

So New Gods evolved into almost perfect beings due to their close connection to the source, their technology and other factors. They’re faster, stronger, smarter, etc. than their cousins the humans of earth, even though they look like us.

Another factor about the New Gods is that they are technically immortal, have acceletated healing, and you can’t really kill them with natural means, you need a specific sort of material to use against them, or they just will keep healing up and fixing themselves. Now I don’t know if anyone of them has ever revived directly from death, but near death…yes, several times.

They also obtain powers that are pretty much super depending on who it is.

As for the Mother Box…

So these “living computers” are half sentient being half highly developed machine. The New God Himon, who used Tenth Metal to build the boxes, which is seen as possibly being alive, created them and they can do a number of things. Anything from forming a boom tube, to translating, to energy manipulations to teleportation to, even healing an injury.

According to Metron, one of the smartest New Gods, the Mother box shares a rapport with nature and it’s user, providing unconditional love to the person that owns it and will self destruct should the person that owned it die. Keep in mind the mother box can be woven into just about anything, Scott Free has his in his costume as a part of it.

The list of things they can do is wild:

Change gravity

Transfer energy from one place to another

 Control the mental state of a host

 Communicate with other life forms

 Manipulate the life force of a host to sustain it past fatal injuries,

Open and close boom tubes

Take over and control non-sentient machines

Merge sentient beings into a single more powerful being

Sustain a life form in a hostile environment.

Okay so now about Earth 16 Halo….

So what do we know about Violet? We know that she was named Gabrielle and that she was a citizen of the republic of Qurac, which has been having strife with Queen Bee. We know that she came to Markovia after being chased down by a group of monsters that seems to be attacking. For some reason she agreed to open the door to let assassins in to kill the King and Queen and then was killed herself to install a mother box in her.

It’s clear by now it’s a mother box. But who did it belong to.

This becomes important I think in understanding the character we have here. Gabriella died, and while the Mother box did revive her, much like the original Halo, this is not the same girl that was Gabrielle. This isn’t a case of amnesia, the only thing keeping Violet alive right now is that box inside her, and that box, should the owner die, will destroy itself, unless it sees Gabriella as it’s owner now.

This means that the girl that we have before us isn’t really Gabrielle, she is the Mother box (or New God) taking on a new form, and reading the memories that are storied in Gabrielle’s mind. Because of the fact that the original Gabrielle died, we can then view this person as someone that is, for lack of a better term, wearing Gabrielle’s skin. This also brings up the question of identity and if the being inside her, that being this Mother box, identifies with Gabrielle’s religion or not. Violet at this point clearly feels that continuing to at least wear the hijab is the right thing to do for her, as she says, “it feels right” shows that at least the Mother box is reading the remaining emotions or whatever, inside of Gabrielle’s memories.

A lot of the issues people seem to be having with her centers around if she is her nationality, and honestly I have to say, no, she is not. The moment Gabrielle died and the Mother box activated reviving her, she lost all of that. She became a new person who is learning to be the person that Gabrielle was, but she is not Gabrielle. Thus the taking of the new name. Because of this, you can’t really judge the character on the outfits or actions they put her in based on who Gabrielle was, because this isn’t her anymore, and I don’t think this is ever going to be again. The girl that was Gabrielle died, she is dead, and there is no bringing her back. All we have now is Violet, a person who is learning to be a person, who is experiencing things for the first time inside a person’s body.

Now was it a smart idea to make her a Muslim girl from Qurac, compared to her original form, I don’t know. On the one hand, I can see where the issues regarding her being killed over and over can come off as something horrible. And that her outfit wouldn’t be seen as proper (and compared to M from Marvel this is a pretty fully covered look) compared to say Ms. Marvel’s look. However, on the other side of things, this isn’t Gabrielle anymore and because of that she has to be looked at by a different standard as she has no clue what Gabrielle would and wouldn’t wear. It’s also important to note that their costumes were designed to best suit their powers, and more than likely Fire set Violet up with cloth that would make it easier to use her abilities, much like Geoforce not ripping off all his clothing.

As more and more of Gabrielle’s memories come back, the likelihood is that Violet will have to face a choice to live as Violet or as Gabrielle. There’s also the added issue of the Mother Box and, well, who’s it is and if there is a New God in her or at least, accessing her body.

Keep in mind also that Mother boxes don’t normally create illusions, but New Gods do. Right now there’s some form of confirmation that the Mother box is inside Halo, thus making her what she is. We know that the powers she has seems to mirror that of the Mother boxes, and yet there are a few that don’t.

Halo can fly, while the Mother box can alter gravity it can’t make someone fly. Halo can cast illusions, create beams, Force fields, etc. the Mother box can’t do that –unless that falls under energy manipulation, which it could, but it still leads to the other option that could be happening here.

The Mother box is working in tandem with a New God is one of the other options for this. We’ve heard that the Mother box is inside Halo and keeping her alive. However there is the option for a New God to be using the body as well. New Gods can poessess others, it’s one of the options of their powers, and the one New God that matches a lot of the powers that Violet has right now is Solis, or Light Ray.

Lightray or Solis,  is the best friend of Orion, a powerful New God that can fly, has accelerated healing, Photokinesis or the ability to manipulate light in many ways, including force fields, blasts and casting illusions. The reason I bring him up at all is because of what Bear states in Away Mission. During the episode Bear, says that that the Real Orion is away from New Genesis. Now why could that be?

Originally I thought that this meant that the Mother box could be Orion’s and that they were holding him captive. However, the big thing about this is that you don’t just capture a Mother Box, it’s not easy to get, and the other factor is that Orion’s controls his beast/rage form. Without it he becomes a wild animal. 

Which could explain the monster we see chasing down Halo and the others in her memories.

The other option is that the mother box belonged to Lightray who is being  held prisoner, as with Orion, only he tapped into his connection with his Mother box and is now connected to it allowing Halo to access his powers until help can arrive in the form of Orion.

So we have three options here.

Option 1. Halo’s powers come strictly from the Mother Box and the Mother box has become the person Violet that is now inhabiting the mortal remains of Gabrielle Doe, who was the girl from Qurac that died at the hands of Ecks and the others.

Option 2. Halo’s powers are coming from a mix of the Mother box and Lightray/Solis who is right now incapacitated and is using his mother box inside Halo to keep others from using him for whatever purpose that they will. And that Orion is looking for his best friend, thus why M’comm was able to pretend to be him.

Option 3. Halo’s powers are coming from the Mother box, but the box belongs to a captured Orion. Should Orion be saved this could put a serious issue up in the air for Halo. As the Mother box would belong to Orion this would mean it may have to be removed as it has a connection to Orion and would want to go back with him home, since it helps calm him down. Orion could be a dick about it and want it back as well leading to a fight over Halo and her life, or he could be talked down from it by Bear and the other Forever people, which is also an option here.

Ultimately I feel like a lot of people are viewing Halo in a way that seems to be under the impression that she’s alive. Let me reiterate, she is not. She is not the girl that died, she is a vastly different character, one who’s deaths I think mean something. Each death may be processed by the Mother box for a reason, and probably will be used later in the story. As she understands that pain the box can then probably dish out everything upon someone that is attacking them at some point. That is honestly where I think we are going with this.

I hope this all makes sense.

[tazbhuiyan-blog]

My Father: The Biggest Feminist I Knew

My Muslim, eighty-year-old father, was without a shadow of a doubt, the most progressive person I had ever known.

An academic of the highest order, he was a Professor of Political Science, Oxford-educated and MENSA certified. He was also the sort of man who demolished a bagel when he tried to put cream cheese on it, cried at almost everything and often lost his glasses when they were perched atop his head.

He was fifty when I was born and had always suffered from health problems. A great deal of my childhood was spent in hospitals, watching doctors stabbing every part of his arm to try and find a viable vein to insert a cannula.

I never appreciated at the time how difficult it must have been for my parents back then. We barely scraped by on my father’s teaching wage and my sister and I were hardly shrinking violets (illustrated very clearly by the photo below).

My father had asthma, chronic eczema and cataracts in both eyes but his biggest problem was his heart, which I always thought was ironic because my father had the best heart of anyone I knew.

But he had always been that way.

Being a freedom fighter in his youth, he did it all, from being jailed at fourteen for fighting for the civil rights of his people to demonstrating against the Vietnam war alongside Vanessa Redgrave and John Lennon.

"John was in a band, apparently," dad had once said nonchalantly, shrugging as though it was a trivial fact that was barely worth mentioning. "Something to do with insects."

At the time, I had remembered gaping unattractively at him when he said it but in hindsight, my father had never really paid much attention to celebrity or the superficial. He knew Gandhi and didn't like him, couldn't tell you anything about contemporary culture and was so disparaging about the shallowness of social functions that my mother, frankly, had to stop taking him out with her for fear of losing all her friends.

My dad's rampant feminism also wasn't a big hit back then. He often cited men as the cause of all the problems on the planet (much to the chagrin of all the other men in the room) and loudly scoffed at the other Bangladeshi parents who sympathised with him for not having sons.

“Why would I want a boy as useless as yours when I have my girls?” he had once shot back to a particularly pushy auntie. I think my mother had nearly fainted at the time.

My lasting memory of my father, however, was that he never, for a moment, thought I couldn't achieve anything I wanted to. My cousins were doctors, engineers, architects and scholars. I wanted to run off and draw pictures. 

That wasn’t a deal breaker for him.

My father never doubted my abilities. If anything, he worried about the inequality my sister and I would face because of other people; people who might judge us for our lack of wealth, our sex or even the colour of our skin.

He talked about racism to us at a young age, something I had laughed off because I had been born in possibly the most multi-cultural part of London and had never experienced it.

"Racism doesn't exist in this day and age, Abbu," I had countered countless times, young and stupid and convinced I knew more than he did.

I changed my mind when I received my first sneer of "Paki" at twelve, however.

(I also promptly chased the little shit who said it until he squeaked and bolted himself inside his house but I digress.)

It made me think of my dad as a young student in the sixties, clever enough to attend Oxford and become a Professor but too dark to be an acceptable tenant to the landlords in the area, who would put up signs that clearly stipulated, 'No Blacks. No Indians. No Irish. No dogs'. “We smell like garlic apparently,” my dad had said a little wryly. It was darkly amusing in a way - he never cooked.

The progress that has been made since those years is so staggering that I honestly can't fathom what it must have been like back then.

I used to wonder just how my father stood for it, being the smartest man in the room and still maligned for his differences. I soon realised, however, that it was because he was different that he was so dogged in his convictions, being the loudest voice in the room even - especially - if people didn't want to hear what he was saying.

The above was the last photo I took of my father before he died of heart failure in 2012, an event that was the single worst moment of my life. It also made me truly appreciate all the many life lessons I learned from him, the main one being never to think less of myself, even if society might have.

The funny-sounding name I loathed in school is now one I appreciate for being exotic. The skin I always worried about being too dark is an all year tan without the hassle.

So here I am. An Asian girl who was born in a poor area, working in an industry I never thought a person like me could ever be part of.

And I know who I have to thank for that.

So thank you, Abbu. For everything.

[news4dzhozhar]

I FIRST MET Dzhokhar “Jahar” Tsarnaev in seventh grade, on the basketball court at the Cambridge YMCA in Central Square, where I played on weekdays & in a Saturday league. He went to the gym to use the weight room & shoot around. I disregarded him  —  he sucked at basketball.

Basketball helped me feel like an American, instead of a Muslim whose single mother dragged him here from Morocco looking for a better life, then worried constantly that we wouldn’t find it. Before basketball, I didn’t really fit in. I wasn’t particularly smart or witty. Worse, I had started second grade in Cambridge the very same month that the Twin Towers fell. On the playground, kids would call me “sand [expletive]” “Saddam Hussein’s son,” or “Abu,” after Aladdin’s monkey. One kid nicknamed me “Unicef,” which was brilliant, in a way: It rhymed with my name & alluded to my African heritage, financial situation, & emergent unibrow. When we were a little older, kids would come up to me, place fake “bombs” on my body & then run away making ticking noises. I got into a fair amount of fights until my mother, who worked three jobs, told me I had to stop. Even if it meant saying nothing when bullies taunted me, I had to exercise self-control. It felt completely debilitating.

My mom always made me stay in the apartment until I finished my homework. But she agreed that as long as I kept my grades up, I could play basketball after school. I began spending hours on courts across Cambridge. This freedom allowed me to meet a slew of people who helped me develop as a young man & truly feel a part of the culture of Cambridge. As I improved, I gained confidence, sociability, & friends.

I met Jahar again in high school, when we enrolled in the same lifeguarding course in my sophomore year, his junior year. Lifeguards were paid well for minimal effort: You sit in a chair & watch people swim, or so we thought. We were actually terrible swimmers, but our teacher stressed that if we failed during a rescue attempt, people could die. So we learned how to breathe while swimming with our heads in the water, & swam endless laps to get in shape. We took turns “drowning” at the bottom of the pool, holding our breath & waiting to be “rescued.” Jahar & I learned to trust one another in the pool — and that trust soon extended beyond class. After we became certified, a group of us from the class applied to be lifeguards at Harvard University during the summer of 2010. To our surprise, we each landed positions.

Jahar & I became part of a small group that would gather at “808,” a tall apartment building off Memorial Drive overlooking the Charles River. After dark, we frequented a party spot nearby that we referred to as the Riv. We were all classmates, peers, co-workers, & good friends who shared common interests. We called ourselves the Sherm Squad. We didn’t know that “Sherm” referred to Nat Sherman cigarettes dipped into liquid PCP (I didn’t even know what PCP was). All we knew was the word Sherm had a negative connotation. We used it to mean someone who messed up a lot; we called it being a Sherm. I felt Jahar & the Sherm Squad accepted me unconditionally; they became my home base of friends, almost an adopted family

My real family’s life centered on Islam. I was raised to follow the teaching of the Koran & the five pillars of Islam, which boil down to self-discipline, love for yourself & toward others, & growing your relationship with God. We typically went to the mosque on Prospect Street twice a week, plus whenever my mother forced me to come to some event she’d volunteered for. I never looked forward to it. Men & women separate when they enter the mosque, which drove home my lack of a father or other male role models (I have an older brother, but we haven’t talked in years). So I would sit by myself or with someone else I knew who didn’t want to be there, engaging only when the call for prayer was sung.

One Friday near the end of sophomore year, my mother yelled at me to go to prayer.

When I walked in, I did a double take  —  Jahar was sitting there, listening intently to the imam. We had been hanging out all that year & he had never mentioned being Muslim. I picked my way through the large crowd sitting on the patterned carpet & squeezed into a spot next to him. “What are you doing here?” I whispered. “You’re not supposed to be here!

He chuckled and whispered back: “I’ll tell you after.”

After we prayed, he told me his family were also Muslim immigrants who expected him be a model Muslim. We both were trying to maintain an image as wholesome Muslim youths at home while being normal American teenagers away from it.

Balancing our family & American lives was stressful. As a junior, I played point guard on Cambridge Rindge & Latin School’s famed basketball team, and Jahar, a senior, was the wrestling team’s co-captain. During the fierce month of Ramadan or on the fast day before Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, we might endure grueling sports workouts on empty stomachs & no water. At least we could complain to each other.

Maintaining separate Muslim & American lives sometimes meant keeping secrets from & even lying to those closest to us about our other life. We were shamed just for being Muslim by strangers, the media, & even some of our peers, just as our Muslim families shamed us when we were caught committing a sin. Jahar & I shared countless hours toking herb, hanging out, & hitting social events. We lived near each other, & often walked home together from parties. We’d hit Cambridge Street, dap each other up with a handclap and bro hug, then head off to our Muslim lives.

He was fun to be around  —  always cracking jokes, coming up with things to do. He was smart, warm, respectful & a good listener; and many of us admired his ability to “code switch,” moving effortlessly between social crowds & people of different races. He was also adept academically, holding his own in honors & Advanced Placement classes. He was generous, too. Whenever I ran short of funds, he’d give me money for lunch & crack “Stop being a broke boy!” in a way I found endearing.

Sometimes, when we were hanging out, he’d get calls from his older brother, Tamerlan, telling him to get home. Jahar mostly heeded these requests without question. (He admired his older brother, and I envied their seeming closeness.) At one point, Jahar told me that his family was arranging a marriage for him & he was considering it. All I could say was, “Well, it’s your life, bro.”

* *

IN SENIOR YEAR, my priorities were playing basketball, finding the right college, my fantasy basketball team, girls, watching the Celtics, partying with friends, the prom, & making sure to get my homework done. In the secular, diverse melting pot that is Cambridge, I had my American life at school & my Muslim life at home. Adhering to the tenets of Islam, especially the daily prayers, was a struggle, & it didn’t help that Jahar, one of my main confidantes, was off at college.

My mother still expected me to act like a strict Muslim, even though by now I was really only going to the mosque on the major holy days. She forbade me from attending “unwholesome” social gatherings, including school dances & any event held at the home of a female. I was not to swear, use drugs or alcohol, or flirt, among other vices. My mother knew little of what I actually did when I left the house, since I usually climbed out my bedroom window after she had gone to bed. But she often guessed at what I was up to, & frequently berated me as unworthy.

I was much more interested in my American life, where religion was immaterial. You were judged on your social standing, whether your personality added life to the party, and how you expressed yourself through fashion or music. When Jahar was back from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth on breaks, it seemed like we picked up right where we left off, cruising the city with the homies in his green Honda, looking for a party. My future felt bright. I was going to attend Bentley University, & become an entrepreneur. I had fulfilled my mother’s American-immigrant dream of getting into college & building a real life in America.

* * *

DURING MY FRESHMAN YEAR at Bentley, I realized that I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in school. I took a leave during second semester & went back to Cambridge.

I was at a friend’s house on April 15, 2013, when the bombs went off on Boylston Street. We ended up on a nearby rooftop, watching the commotion — the helicopters scouring the city & flashing police lights everywhere. I felt angry & under attack. I wanted the monsters who had committed this atrocity to get what they deserved.

On the 19th, I was at another friend’s house and still up at 3 a.m. when I got a call. “Turn on the news!” my friend said. They were broadcasting a photo of the possible suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing. “Just look at the picture, fam,” he said to me.

I looked at the blurry image on screen. “What am I supposed to be looking at, bro? I don’t know who that is.”

“Yo, doesn’t he look like Jahar!”

I thought that was outrageous. I fell asleep on the couch, & the next morning I woke up to see my friends huddled around the TV. I had never seen kids my age so absorbed in the morning news. I wondered if maybe a late spring snowstorm was approaching. They told me Cambridge residents had been asked to stay inside, and it did sort of feel like a snow day.

Suddenly, Jahar’s face appeared on the screen — there was no mistaking him this time. He was the bombing suspect still at large, the anchors said. Aside from the sound crackling on the TV, the room was dead silent. I felt like 10,000 volts of electricity were coursing through my body. It had to be a mistake. The Jahar I knew wouldn’t even do something mean, let alone commit an act of terrorism.

One of the girls’ cellphones rang; the call was from a TV newsroom where her sister’s friend was working. As our friend answered questions, her name appeared on the screen & we heard her voice come from the television. Within minutes, the doorbell rang. Our high school principal came into the house, along with two FBI agents wearing bulletproof vests. The FBI agents said they were looking for Jahar, and collected our cellphones. They had us sit in the living room & pulled us into the kitchen one by one to question us.

It didn’t take long for one of the FBI agents to step in the room and say, “To save time, which one of you knew him the best?” I raised my hand. In the kitchen, they asked what I knew about the bombing  —  nothing  —  where I thought Jahar was, whom he might try to contact. I answered their questions as best I could, and then they left.

Much later on that surreal day, a group of us were walking around Central Square, saying almost nothing. A pizza shop had its TV on & that’s where we saw a news update: A body had been found in a boat in Watertown, it said. Though we’d later learn he’d been captured alive, at that moment we believed our friend was dead. I remember a man riding toward us on his bike screaming like some sort of modern-day Paul Revere: “They caught him! They caught the bomber!”

This infuriated us, and we started screaming insults & epithets at him. I’ll never forget his shocked expression. That’s probably how most people reacted over the next few days when some of us defended Jahar, saying he was a good kid. But really, that’s the Jahar we knew.

* * *

SOON WE KNEW THE FACTS of the despicable acts Jahar committed with his brother, Tamerlan. We witnessed the heartbreak & loss suffered by those they hurt & by the families of those they killed. Jahar left behind an ocean of pain that is still washing across my city, & my country, sowing hatred & division between people who hardly know each other’s lived reality. Jahar wounded those he grew up with as well as millions who practice a religion he perverted with his crime. He made suspects of everyone who knew him.

Jahar put our safety & freedom in direct peril. Cambridge gave way to the real world, a place where I found myself feeling clueless. Like many of my friends, I did not have easy access to a lawyer. Later, I would realize I didn’t have access to what I needed even more: medical advisers, counselors, or therapists. Some of our mutual friends made bad choices & ended up in jail.

In the fall of 2013, I returned to Bentley to start my second semester, but I was still struggling to cope with the aftermath of the bombing, the FBI calls & questions. I felt guilty I even knew Jahar, after what he’d done. I was ashamed about what had happened to his victims  —  I still feel terrible for them. It feels awful that innocent people were hurt by a person I cared so deeply for.

That November after the bombing, three days before midterms, the FBI interrogated me for five hours, as far as I could tell simply because I had been friends with Jahar. I had nothing to tell them; I still felt betrayed by him, & knew he deserved the full brunt of the judicial system. After that interview, I found myself completely unable to focus on my studies. I asked my professors for extensions, but all of them made me take my midterms. I failed several of them, & soon after I took another leave.

This time I entered a downward spiral of addiction, insomnia, severe stomach pains, & depression, which fed off each other. I didn’t sleep more than a couple of hours a night for months. I felt paranoid & distrustful in every social interaction. Every aspect of my American life I had had to figure out on my own, and it seemed as though I hadn’t figured out anything at all. I felt like I had fallen behind my peers, unable to compete with their intelligence, their access, their privilege.

I was exhausted from maintaining multiple, often conflicting identities as a Muslim-American, from not being Muslim enough for my family, but too Muslim to feel secure in a hostile, post-9/11 environment. It was soul crushing; I felt I had lost touch with the person & identity I fought for years to establish. It got to the point where I could no longer follow a normal conversation. I lost around 25 pounds, and the ability to play basketball, which had been my sanctuary.

CONTINUED AT THE LINK

[lovingtheroyals]

I’m not trying to pick a fight, but when you said you’ve stopped sugarcoating words when answering messages, I’m becoming more cautious when reading people’s answers here; because I don’t know for sure whether someone’s being honest and true to themselves or just being fake. Maybe it’s just me, but I guess this is why I’m hesitant to make friends here because I could say a wrong thing one day and people might talk about me in their whatsapp group. I’ve had enough of such things in real life..

Well I never said that I don’t sugarcoat words (I always try to be conscious of the language I use), I’ve just stopped being sugary sweet. I used to be very “OH EM GEEEEE thaaankk you!! you’re so sweet! Oh gosh no don’t worry about anything at all! Isn’t the world just GLOWING today??? That dog FARTS RAINBOWS!!” Where as now I’m more “Oh thank you for sending this! I really appreciate it :)” And sugary sweet is how I tend to be when I meet people for the first time or when I’m trying to be more… assimilative, tbh. Being Muslim is this society is weird and I tend to be a very nice girl when I meet someone for the first time because I want them to get to know me before they start hating on me and calling me a terrorist. It’s just… its a coping skill or a way of living or a something that was built up over time that carried over to my blog that I’m trying to make a conscious effort to do less of. I’m trying to remember that when something makes me feel that way, I can react that way, but that I shouldn’t feel the need to put that out always no matter what even if it doesn’t match my emotions. It has nothing to do with me being fake and everything to do with me trying to cope with the weird reality I was brought up in and trying to reverse the weird mental weirdness that I’ve surrounded myself with.

I think the thing with making friends online is that it’s practically impossible to ever know someone truly and fully when you only know them through a computer screen. But for me, it has been about getting to know those people slowly and over time. I think that if we always live in fear of what if, we’ll never live at all, and if we concern ourselves with what others might or might not be doing, we’ll never have the chance to experience joy and freedom. I talk to my kids about this all the time (though in more simple terms) and I do think it’s important to free ourselves from the worries of external forces. We can’t control everyone else, so I sure as heck am not going to spend my time worrying about what they might or might be doing. That doesn’t bring me joy. 

I know that for me, the only time I’ve ever brought up someone in a group chat is to speak about them positively or if someone has attacked me in a ridiculously horrible manner (*cough cough* we all know who). It’s often “oh I’ve had a really positive experience with this person and I enjoyed that post they made”. Though I know for a fact that others don’t also do that. I do know that I and many others actively try to avoid negative talk and try to only speak in positive manners or manners that affect us. But not everyone chooses to do that. I know for a fact that there are people on here who talk about me behind my back, whether that’s in private chats or on other websites. Heck, a ton of my community does it in real life too! That is what it is. I can’t control that. But I can control how I behave myself, how I interact with others, and how I chose to spend my energy. 

Idk if that makes any sense at all or if it was helpful at all… I might have gone off an a tangent… but I hope it helped. If not, please totally feel free to come back and continue this conversation with me. 

[southeastasianists]

Against a backdrop of widening religious fault lines and concerns over freedom of speech, a group of fearless Indonesian comics is using the power of laughter to tackle society’s ills

Cheers, whoops and enthusiastic applause accompany Iqbal Muzakki as he shuffles off stage. The night’s MC bounds onto the platform in his place, keeping the energy of the show high: “How about Muzakki, everyone? He killed it, right?” There’s a strong “yes” from the audience. “And you know what?” the MC continues, “This is the only place where a Muslim can kill successfully… and nobody actually dies.”

This is Keminggris, a live, English-language, stand-up comedy show in Malang, the second-largest city in Indonesia’s East Java province. In a modern, open-air bar, the show’s eight performers deliver two hours of very funny, but often brutal, material that holds nothing sacred. From Chinese parents to Indian farmers; Indonesian politicians to Zumba-loving pensioners, nobody is safe from ridicule.

But in the world’s most-populous Muslim country, it is the religious jokes that stand out from the rest. Indonesia’s reputation as a moderate, secular democracy has taken a bit of a battering in recent times. Religious intolerance is on the rise, and many in the country feel free speech is under threat. For the past two years, the national debate has become increasingly dominated by the right-wing Islamist group, the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI). FPI members have been accused of violent attacks on religious minorities, intimidation of journalists and targeted online abuse.

There have been many calls for the group to be banned as the country’s religious fault lines widen, but a number of young Indonesians are attempting to fight back and help heal the damage through comedy. Muzakki, a student at the Islamic University in Malang, filled his set with jokes about a failed attempt to turn him into a suicide bomber at school and his mistaken belief that he could buy halal beer. He says he wants to “fix” how Islam is increasingly portrayed in the country.

“[The idea] that Islam is a strict authority – it’s not like that, you can have a sense of humour like me,” he says. “I just want to show that to other people, especially non- Muslims. Islam is not dangerous.”

The use of comedy to help effect social or political change is not a new idea, but it’s still at a fledgling stage in Indonesia. In fact, stand-up comedy itself has a relatively short history in the country. Indonesian humour had long tended to favour comedy troupes performing sketches and physical comedy skits; it wasn’t until the mid-2000s that a few pioneering stand-ups began to make some headway, first in Jakarta and then at national level.

The scene exploded in 2011, when two television channels ran stand-up comedy talent shows that garnered a big national audience. One of those shows, Stand Up Comedy Indonesia, on Kompas TV, is still running and still popular. Most of Indonesian comedy’s biggest names have won or appeared on the show.

Despite its popularity, many comedians have found television a difficult medium for pursuing edgier social and political comedy. “In TV shows, the censorship is quite severe,” says Reggy Hasibuan, the organiser and MC of Keminggris. “No political jokes, no ethnicity jokes and especially no religious jokes. I think personally that has reduced the quality of [Indonesian] comedy because only safe material goes through.”

Is it going to be dangerous? Is it offensive? I think before I go to the stage. But why should I feel afraid of it? My religion is funny

Under an umbrella organisation known as Stand Up Indo, there are now more than 30 stand-up comedy ‘communities’ across Indonesia. Many comics are students or part-time performers, but while the audiences are generally good, the money generally isn’t. Despite the financial restraints, it is live shows where comedians can hone their craft and, more importantly, really get their teeth into risky material.

In Malang, Fajar Ardiansyah says he doesn’t set out to deliberately offend anyone, but he believes the best way to deal with social problems is through comedy. “I never touch any kind of personal belief,” he says. “I make sure that everything I deliver is being considered by my comic friends. Is it going to be dangerous? Is it offensive? I think before I go to the stage. I consider everything. But why should I feel afraid of it? My religion is funny.”

“We need to be honest,” says Hasibuan. “If you’re living in this country and you don’t have any problems with religion, then you’re a liar, because it’s everywhere. We’re just wrapping that up in a funny way, so it’s easier to accept. Religion is not absolute; you can make fun of it and it’s OK. We have always had a problem with extremism; it’s always there. But I think what’s hopeful is that now we see people fighting back. They’ve had enough; they’ve arrived at that boiling point at which they think something must be done.”

The comics admit they still have a long way to go before their dissent drowns out the voices of Indonesia’s emboldened hardline Islamic groups. They also think that what they are doing carries a risk far greater than just causing offence. The current climate in Indonesia does not easily allow for anybody to speak out about tense religious issues, particularly non-Muslims.

A survey earlier this year by the Wahid Foundation found that nearly 40% of respondents from across Indonesia were “intolerant” towards non-Muslims. In May, this intolerance reached fever pitch when, after weeks of FPI mass rallies demanding his arrest, the ethnic Chinese and Christian governor of Jakarta was found guilty of violating Indonesia’s strict blasphemy law. Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, better known as ‘Ahok’, was sentenced to two years in prison after he referred to a Qur’anic verse in one of his speeches. His conviction followed a bitter gubernatorial election campaign in which religious identity was a major issue. Human Rights Watch called the verdict a “frightening future” for moderates and non-Muslims.

Hasibuan is himself half-Chinese and from a Christian family, though he now considers himself an atheist. He has been subjected to abuse and violent threats online after he posted a promotional flyer for a show he called Halal Christmas. Nothing happened, but he was concerned enough to put security on the door of the show, something he hadn’t done before. He is also well aware of the potential legal risks.

“Its an absolute no-no in this country to speak, make fun of, or ridicule people from different religions,” he says. “If a Christian makes a joke about Muslims, that will go bad very fast.”

Doing the shows in English helps protect him and the other performers, “because bigots are generally stupid and don’t understand English, right?” he says with a laugh.

But he also closes the show by imploring the audience not to post any videos online – “or we’ll all end up in jail!”

It’s difficult for performers to balance risk versus reward. Posting material online exposes them, but it’s also one of the few ways to gain national and international attention outside the constraints of television.

One of the most high-profile comedians in Indonesia is Sakdiyah Ma’ruf. She is one of the few comics who have gained international recognition and also one of a limited number of women on the standup comedy circuit.

Ma’ruf grew up in a very conservative Muslim family of Arab descent in northern Java. She says she was expected to grow up as a “decent Muslim girl” and eventually be married off to an older man. Much of her comedy focuses on her upbringing and the treatment of women in conservative Muslim families. Some of her most provocative material is easy to find online. During a TED Talk in Bali last year she told her audience: “In my community, people work fucking hard to pretend they still live in the desert.”

In 2015, Ma’ruf was awarded the Vaclav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent in Oslo – previous winners include Ai Weiwei and Aung San Suu Kyi – but her profile has also attracted vitriol from inside Indonesia.

“I cannot have that in the back of my mind if I want to continue working,” she says. “I know that there’s a danger. I don’t want to go to jail or receive death threats. I cannot allow myself to get scared of that. It’s hard enough to write jokes that work; it’s going to be even harder if I have to self-censor.”

Though Ma’ruf describes herself purely as a comedian, she, like the others, feels a greater purpose in what she is trying to do. “Comedy has the potential to combat extremism because it creates a safe space for everyone to discuss their issues. But, for me personally, the most important thing is to be able to talk honestly about how human we are, that we are all flawed.”

Recalling her last television appearance a few years ago, Ma’ruf says she was repeatedly reminded that the programme was live. The warning being: don’t say anything controversial.

“What am I going to say?” she laughs. “What are they so worried about? I’m just a girl in a hijab. It’s not that dangerous.”