#everything was so systematic and politically considered
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The Impact of Islam on Paganism (and Why That Still Matters Today)
So as a lot of my followers may or may not know, I am ex-Muslim. I was raised in a comparatively lax (though still extremely conservative) Muslim family and was made to start reading the Qur’an as early as I started reading English, and made to start memorizing the prayers just as early.
One thing that’s prevalent in Islam is the stories of Muhammad’s life. And during his life, specifically his youth, he grew up during a time when Paganism was very prevalent in Arabia. I always see posts about Christianity's influence on paganism, so I figured it would be a nice change of pace to hear from someone that has a different experience. Especially considering Islam historically has done a lot more damage to paganism than any other of the "Big Three" in my opinion, for reasons we'll see later.
NOTE: Most things we know about this specific patch of history come from Islamic sources, some directly from the Qur'an itself, so take everything with a river of salt.
NOTE 2: THIS IS NOT AN ANTI ISLAM POST. THIS IS PURELY FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. ISLAMOPHOBES ARE NOT WELCOME HERE.
Before Islam, much of the Arabian Peninsula was polytheistic. People worshipped a variety of gods and goddesses tied to tribes, natural elements, and celestial bodies. The Kaaba itself, now the holiest site in Islam, was once a shrine that held numerous idols representing different deities. This pre-Islamic era is often referred to in Islamic texts as Jahiliyyah, meaning the "age of ignorance."
In Islam, there is only one sin that is genuinely irredeemable in the eyes of Allah. It's called shirk, and it refers to "associating partners with Allah". Many in the modern day take this to mean worshipping a god that is not Allah, but when we look at the historical context, things change. See, in the Kaaba, one of the gods worshipped was Al-Lat, who was a goddess worshipped by the Quraish tribe (a tribe who basically served as the villains of Muhammad's life). It's believed that Al-Lat and Her sisters were daughters of Allah, and thus, worshipped alongside him. This is where that particular phrasing comes from; others quite literally worshipping Allah alongside other gods.
Islamic teachings later framed these polytheistic practices as misguided or demonic, and many of those practices were systematically dismantled as Islam spread. This erasure wasn’t just spiritual, it was political and cultural. Many polytheist traditions were destroyed, and over time, the idea that polytheism was inherently evil became deeply ingrained in many Islamic teachings.
In fact, the Qur'an directly calls the polytheists of pre-Islamic Arabia pagan, as an insult. It is still used as an insult today in many Islamic countries, though I can only really speak for the one I used to live in so take that with a grain of salt.
That anti-pagan sentiment didn’t stay in the past. It’s alive and well today, not just in Muslim-majority societies, but even in ex-Muslim and secular communities where Islam's historical influence still lingers. For many Muslims and ex-Muslims alike, the word “pagan” is still deeply stigmatized. It’s associated with devil-worship (in the stigmatized way, my demonolatry friends), chaos, and moral depravity. Not because of anything inherently wrong with paganism, but because that’s how it was framed for centuries.
Even when people leave Islam, those inherited fears and associations don’t just vanish. If you were taught from early childhood that polytheism is evil, it’s not easy to deconstruct that belief, even if you stop identifying as Muslim. This contributes to internalized stigma for those who explore or convert to Paganism later in life.
It’s also worth noting that Islam isn’t the only "Big Three" religion that demonized Paganism, Christianity and Judaism have their own long histories of doing the same. But Islam’s specific influence on North African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian cultures means that in many parts of the world, “pagan” is still a dirty word.
In some countries, even being accused of “witchcraft” (a concept that overlaps heavily with modern pagan practice) can be grounds for legal punishment or even violence. This isn't just about faith. It's about state power, colonial legacy, and institutional control over spirituality.
And yet. They survive.
Interestingly, not all of those ancient beliefs were wiped out. In places like Sudan, Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey, you can still find folk practices that trace back to pre-Islamic spirituality. Sometimes these practices are “Islamicized” (e.g., calling a spirit a jinn instead of a god), and sometimes they’re practiced quietly, under the radar.
Examples include:
Zār spirit possession rituals in East Africa and parts of the Middle East
Nowruz, the Persian New Year, which has Zoroastrian roots but is still celebrated widely
Sufi mysticism, which often incorporates music, poetry, and ecstatic rituals that feel more aligned with animist and shamanic traditions than orthodox Islam
For modern Pagans (especially those coming from Muslim backgrounds) it can be hard to fully embrace Paganism without guilt, fear, or social consequences. But understanding why that stigma exists is part of the healing process.
Islam, like all religions, is shaped by its context. It developed in a time of rapid cultural change, political consolidation, and theological urgency. Its opposition to Paganism was part of a larger project of unification. One that worked for many people, but also suppressed other spiritual paths.
If you’re a modern Pagan, especially one from a Muslim background, you are not regressing. You’re not betraying your roots. You are choosing a spiritual path that makes sense for you, and you are also part of a much longer tradition than many people realize. One that predates Islam and Christianity, and that has always, in some form, resisted erasure.
Sources & Further Reading:
Hawting, G. R. (1999). The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History. Cambridge University Press.
Shahid, Irfan. “Pre-Islamic Arabia.” In The Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 1.
Amira El-Zein (2009). Islam, Arabs, and the Intelligent World of the Jinn. Syracuse University Press.
Sa'diyya Shaikh (2012). Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn 'Arabi, Gender, and Sexuality. University of North Carolina Press.
Sabrina Peric (2015). “From Spirits to Science: Exploring the Jinn in Contemporary Muslim Contexts.” Comparative Islamic Studies.
#information by me ♡ 𓈒 𓈒 𓈒#ex islam#ex muslim#exmuslim#ex-muslim#pagan#paganism#paganblr#pagan witch#helpol#norse polytheist#norse pagan#kemetic paganism#greek paganism#hellenic paganism#hellenic pagan#islam#hellenismos#hellenic polytheism#hellenic deities#hellenic polythiest#hellenism#history#religion history#religious history#religion#history of religion#hellenic polytheist
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One of my criticisms about Dragon Age, and this isn't unique to Veilguard, is how antirevolutionary their narratives are. (Spoilers for Veilguard ahead, naturally)
Narratively, they're not adverse to all change (since stories have to have some change in order to exist) but they're hardly accepting of it either.
Any change that happens to the status quo has to happen within the system, otherwise it's deemed extremism and wrong in universe.
Contrast that with when Anders or Grand Enchanter Fiona take actions against the systems of the Circles that spark the mage rebellion - they're vilified for it by the narrative and everyone around them. They're painted as fools at best, malicious murderers at worst. All because their steps for change were taken outside of the system. (Anders blows up a Chantry, Fiona starts a vote to disband the Circle of Magi)
In a worldstate where Leliana becomes Divine Victoria and disbands the Circles to allow for the formation of the College of Enchanters, she's celebrated because she stayed within the Chantry, rose to the top through unconventional but still allowable means, yet achieved radical societal change nonetheless.
If Dorian becomes Archon, his anti-slavery views aren't seen as unreasonable or too radical because he stays within the system. His work with the Shadow Dragons - an anti-slavery group, who by all standards aren't that different from the mage rebellion in the south, is deemed different because their leaders are still trying to work with the systems for change.
Solas gets both versions of this anti-revolutionary treatment. In Inquisition, he felt honestly quite reasonable to me in his motivations to tear down the veil, but he can't escape that same vilification as when he's trying to fit the mould of a force for rebellion, he's treated like a monster or has significantly more flaws in the narrative. When his motivations are framed as complete systematic change, he's shown to not view anyone in modern Thedas as 'real people.' In one of his approval scenes in Inq, he goes out of his way to tell the Inquisitor essentially "you're one of the good ones." He's ignorant, racist, and singlemindedly focused on destroying the world to have a second Elvhenan but better.
But in Veilguard, in order for the narrative to consider him redeemable, his reasons for wanting the veil to come down get changed from wanting betterment for the elves and restoring the Elvhen people, into personal regrets he needs to fulfill. He's no longer framed solely as a political, rebellious force for change, but as a mere man who went too far for a woman he loved. Suddenly the narrative gives the player permission to give him redemption. Because he doesn't actually want change, it's just what he thought Mythal wanted, so that's fine and different.
Your player character protagonist can never actually flat-out agree with the vilified rebel characters either. I can't have my pro-mage rights Hawke say "hey, actually, Anders was right to blow up the Chantry, I agree with him," you always have to ultimately condemn his actions, even if you agree with the outcome.
I can't have my Dalish Inquisitor or an Elven Rook say "hey, actually, maybe Solas has a point, this world does suck for elves and maybe the veil coming down would fix that," they always have to ultimately believe that the veil has to stay.
The games do everything they can to avoid letting the player come to the conclusion that revolution is a good thing. Instead, they force the idea that the only way change is ethical is if you do it within the preexisting status quo.
#dragon age#dragon age inquisition#dragon age the veilguard#dragon age 2#solas dragon age#anders dragon age#dorian pavus#leliana dragon age#bioware
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The Many Names of Peace (pt.1/?): Mercy
Inspired by Why We Did Nothing by BairnSidhe
Part I | Part II
CONTENT WARNINGS: THE RUUSAN REFORMATION AND HOW IT PUT THE JEDI IN A TERRIBLE PLACE, MANDALORIAN-JEDI HISTORY AFTER THE RUUSAN REFORMATION WHICH INCLUDES PADAWAN HUNTING. THIS INCLUDES:
Cultural genocide (discussed in detail). The Ruusan Reformation is made much worse here, and the Dral'han/Excision is also commented upon.
Child murder (discussed). Padawan hunting, and how Mandalorians killed children and took braids and beads as trophies.
Corpse desecration (discussed in detail). Lightsabers and Padawan braids and beads are taken from their owners. I realize this doesn't seem important for many of us, but it's very important for the Jedi.
Systematic identity erasure of a mixed race character (discussed). Tarre Vizla's Jedi status is barely known by Mandalorians because House Vizla treated it like a dirty secret.
Please mind your headspaces.
"If you hate genocide so much, where were your people at the Dral'han?" Terith asks with a scoff.
The Jetii stops muttering and goes still. Slowly, she turns, with a movement too fluid for a human. She's shorter than them, very slim and apparently frail, and her blond —almost white— hair is tied in a braided bun. Her eyes, which are a glowing emerald green, are burning.
"Where were we? You're asking me why we did nothing when your people were attacked?" The kage Jedi asks the Mandalorian with a soft tone of voice and a polite nod, looking almost like a respected jaieh accepting a padawan's question.
It is not.
Underneath their buy'ce, Terith's lips curl at her words, at her threat.
Zahara begins to move from one side of the room to another. It's too controlled to be called pacing, but the tension is visible in her movements.
"Not all Jedi are human. In fact, most aren't. There are species with very long lifespans and, considering Force-sensitives tend to live a few decades longer than others of their species, two hundred is far from an uncommon age among Jedi" The Jetii doesn't seem to be answering their furious question at first. "We were not there, Mandalorian, because every sitting member of the High Council during the genocide of your people remembered how Mandalore reacted when they came for us, first."
Drovan, her crechemate, her enishee, her brother of the soul, was a member of the EduCorps. He hadn't wanted to be a Knight, done the math, and decided to free up a space for somebody else. In particular, he was fascinated by the History of the Order. Zahara remembers quiet nights, when she was at the Temple resting after a taxing mission, when she Drovan used to sit down on comfortable cushions and her closest sibling rambled about what he was learning.
She's heard him ranting about the Ruusan Reformation, and the cruel limitations it places on her people even now. She's read it herself, once she began her Shadow training, learning every single restriction in search for loopholes that could be exploited to make the Order's job and life easier.
Her people's memories are long. Kages remember. The Jedi remember. Zahara remembers.
"They vividly remembered when the Republic we served brought down our Temples, when they took us from our homes, when they tried to destroy a whole branch of our Order" Zahara lists, voice cold and eyes blazing, "when they took our armor, our back-up and defenses, when they stole everything but our Lightsabers… and when your people laughed and called it easy hunting."
The Mandalorian pride in Terith's heart wants to protest, to deny the Jetii's words. But she speaks like a scholar in a subject she's clearly well versed in, like a grieving verd mourning the violence against her people they'd known nothing about.
History isn't always kind, Mandalorian history in particular rarely is, but it's always worth learning from. It's something Kyr'tsad and the extremists among the Nu'Mando'ade don't understand, and Terith refuses to make their same mistakes.
So, they swallow the growing lump in their throat, ignore the stone sinking in their stomach and try to listen.
Zahara's voice begins to break away from the calm, even tones of a teacher, and slowly fall into the ragged tones of soul-crushing grief. Her breath becomes shallow and rapid, and air gets stuck in her throat. Still, she continues.
"The Republic had been destroying us for two hundred years by the time of the orbital bombardment on Mandalore, and in that time, the number of Lightsabers and Padawan braids and beads seen on Mandalorian armor as trophies skyrocketed" The Jetii hisses, spitting the word trophies with the same venom he would use to say hut'tuunla or demagolka. "We were trapped, betrayed and dying… and your people murdered our young and desecrated our corpses, and had the nerve to carry the stolen lives of our kin as proof."
The air grows colder, a sharpness in it that's as familiar as her own reflection. The galaxy around her sings with promises of vengeance, of justice. Justice for her enishee, justice for Feemor and his charges, justice for Jaieh Ta'ra's murdered Padawan, for the all Jedi dead during the Mandalorian sack of the Anohrah, for the bastardization of Jaieh Tarre Vizla's story and the systematic erasure of his Jedi identity, for all the Jedi younglings dead at Mandalorian hands.
Not against the Mandalorian that did any of those things, but against a Mandalorian, anyhow.
"Your people sacked the Temple, stole the life and soul of a respected Jedi Master, got two of his Padawans murdered, erased every single hint of his Jedi upbringing, and perverted everything he stood for in life, all because he happened to be Mandalorian as well."
The song reaches a crescendo, the highest notes she's ever heard in a Force song, making her ears ring. The melody sounds off-key, and the final notes become loud and insufferable high-pitched screams. Zahara grits her teeth, and breathes in deeply. The xari in the air slowly dissapears.
She will not take revenge.
She's a Jedi, and revenge is not the Jedi way.
She will not Fall. She will not let her anger act upon her and betray everything she, Drovan, Feemor, Ta'ra and her Padawan, Tarre Vizla and his Padawans have ever stood for.
Zahara will not take revenge because it's not what Drovan would have wanted. It's not what any Jedi would want.
She will not take revenge because it's not as useful and satisfying as the thores of passion lead you to believe.
This Mandalorian is innocent. They haven't done anything wrong. They're angry about their people's genocide and rightfully so. They're ignorant, and ignorance can be fixed.
Words, the sharing of knowledge, bringing understanding when there was previously none. Those are her greatest weapons, and she can wield them freely and with as much efficiency as a Lightsaber.
Terith is frozen in place, mind racing with the desire to be anywhere else, away from this hurting, angry sorceress that sees them as an enemy. The manda in their chest screams, in offense or the pain of dishonor Terith isn't sure.
They wish their buy'ce was recording. That way they could investigate the Jetii's claims.
Everyone and their mother has heard the rumors about the Jetiise. Sorcerers from the Core that don't reproduce like other beings, but take children from their parents and train them to be as emotionless as droids, beings that beat all the love and concern for others out of themselves because they believe attachment is a weakness.
Terith believed them, once.
Now Terith doesn't know what to believe. The Jetii speaks with too much knowledge and pain to be lying, nobody can fake that well, and the air around them both is mournfully singing as the truth of her words sink into the depths of their runi.
Zahara breathes out slowly. Still hurt, but… determined not to Fall, not to take out her grief and anger on someone who's done nothing wrong.
"So" the kage Jedi flashes a polite but completely unfriendly smile, "why did we do nothing when they came for your world?"
Within their battered heart, stung with the pain of dishonor, with the stain on the manda itself, Terith knows the answer before the Jetii says a word.
"We did nothing because Jedi are merciful, Mandalorian."
(Notes under the cut)
Dai Bendu
Jaieh — Jedi Master (rank and role).
Padawan — apprentice, learner, student. Lit "the one who learns". Please picture a Jedi hearing a politician saying "Padawan learner", and containing the urge to eye twich.
Enishee — crechemate.
Anohrah — Jedi Temple, home. Before the Ruusan Reformation used to refer to the Temple the speaker was from.
Xari — darkness, the Dark Side of the Force.
Mando'a
Jetii(se) — Jedi (add 'se' at the end to make the plural).
Buy'ce — helmet.
Verd — warrior.
Kyr'tsad — Death Watch, lit "death society".
Nu'Mando'ade — New Mandalorians.
Hut'tuunla — coward. Very harsh insult.
Demagolka — someone who commits atrocties, a real-life monster, a war criminal - from the notorious Mandalorian scientist of the Old Republic, Demagol, known for his experiments on children, and a figure of hate and dread in the Mando psyche
Manda — collective soul of the Mandalorians.
Runi — spirit, soul of the individual.
Zahara is a kage Jedi Knight, officially a Sentinel and a Finder, which is used to explain why she can be in places she isn't supposed to and bust slave rings without prior Senate authorization. Unofficially, however, she's a Shadow. It's common practice for the Jedi to register Shadows as Finders in order to give them more freedom of action.
Terith is a Mandalorian bounty hunter, but they're very picky about their jobs and have interest in medicine, particularly "mind-healing". They were born in a New Mandalorian family but found greater calling to Jaster and the True Mandalorians and switched allegiance once they were of age. They are mildly Force-sensitive, not enough to become a Jedi and only gives them good instincts.
The Dral'han is the orbital bombardment of Mandalore done by the Galactic Republic in roughly 800BBY. The Republic used Jedi ships, but there were no Jedi involved. Mandalorians believed the Jedi were guilty at first, but the truth was uncovered only a decade later.
Dai Bendu is not my creation. It's a colang, although the story of the language is something I made up. Dai Bendu is the language spoken by the Order of Dai Bendu and, later on, the Jed'aii Order. It fell out of use after the Jedi joined the Republic in 25,000BBY, but came back in full swing during the Jedi-Sith Wars when it was very useful to speak a language the enemy couldn't understand.
I don't know if it's canon, but in this story Force-sensitives live longer than the average of their species. Those who aren't trained only live a little longer (a decade in humans), but for those who, like the Jedi, have training that lifespan increases (three to four decades in humans).
"Free up a space". Taken from the Jedi Apprentice series, where Jedi age out at thirteen and there are limited Masters, and where those who aren't chosen are sent to the Corps. Drovan knew he didn't want to be a Knight, so he requested to be sent to the Corps as soon as possible to give the chance of becoming a Knight to someone who actually wanted to be one. Unlike Jedi Apprentice, however, this is an imposition from the Ruusan Reformation, and the Jedi try to bend this rule as much as possible.
Kages' memories begin forming almost at birth. Zahara remembers with vivid detail most of her life. She's doing an alliteration: she remembers because she's a kage and because she is a Jedi.
This is the "Ruusan Reformation but make it worse" AU:
"Brought down our Temples". The Ruusan Reformation demanded the centralization of the Jedi Order. Therefore, all Jedi were forced to move to Couruscant, and their other Temples were either destroyed or repurposed.
"Took us from our homes." Although Terith doesn't know it, Zahara is being redundant. The word for Jedi Temple in Dai Bendu also means home. She's putting enphasis on how painful it was for the Jedi to lose their homes.
"Tried to destroy a whole branch of our Order." The Shadows were supposed to be dissolved after the Ruusan Reformation was signed. However, the Jedi managed to keep training Shadows in secret.
The Jedi used to have weapons, armor and many defenses besides their Lightsabers, but the Ruusan Reformation ordered their demilitarization and "demilitarization". Among the things they lost were the right to carry their birth cultures' sacred armor and weapons. A Mandalorian Jedi wouldn't be allowed to have armor, for example.
Mandalorians tend to take trophies from their enemies after a battle. This is done both for, well, bragging rights and to respect the memory of a worthy opponent (similar to their remembrances for their fallen comrades). However, the bragging rights part can overshadow the respect for a worthy opponent part, and many Mandalorians hunt down defenseless "enemies" to steal important objects from them. The Jedi in particular were a favored target for these… individuals, seeing as they had no armor, only carried one weapon and were usually alone or in pairs because that's how the Senate decided to send them in missions. The victims were usually Padawans, hence the name Padawan Hunts.
Tarre Vizla's story shows the greatest difference between how Jedi and Mandalorians (at least in that era) treat different cultures and double cultured children. The Jedi don't hide that Tarre Vizla was Mandalorian, everyone knows that he left the Order to rule Mandalore, and know what happened to his armor and what he wanted to happen to his body and Lightsaber. However, Mandalorians either don't know or refuse to recognize Tarre Vizla's Jedi status.
"Sacked the Temple". Tarre Vizla left his armor to his Clan and his Lightsaber to the Jedi. When he died, he wanted to be burned in the Temple (both cultures burn their death, so little to no issue here) and his ashes to be spread on Mandalore. House Vizla, however, did the equivalent of spitting on Tarre's funeral pyre and sacked the Temple to steal the Darksaber.
"Stole the life and soul of a respected Jedi Master". Tarre Vizla was a Jedi, and the Darksaber is his life. House Vizla, however, had no respect for their relative's other culture and did the worst thing they could do to him: killing and hurting his Jedi family, and stealing a sacred item they knew was sacred.
I headcanon that Tarre Vizla had three Padawans. He finished the incomplete training of the first because their Master died, did the whole training of the second and got promoted to Master as a result, and only started the training of the third before he went to his home planet to unite Mandalorians against the Sith Empire. Two of them were killed during House Vizla's sack of the Temple.
"Erased every hint of his Jedi upbringing." House Vizla replaced the Jedi Order symbol on Tarre's armor with the symbol of House Vizla, refused to acknowledge Tarre's desire to be remembered as a Jedi and forbade anyone from speaking about his Jedi status, and never say that the Darksaber is actually a regular Lightsaber they stole.
"Perverted everything he stood for." Lightsabers are a Jedi's life, hold their souls in the same way beskar'gam holds a Mandalorian's. Tarre. Ever since it was stolen, the Darksaber has been used as a symbol of authoritarian and tyrannical leadership, warmonging, imperialism and military violence. It's so fucked up that the crystal is beginning to break (the white cracks, originally the Darksaber was pure black) and, had those who held it been trained Force-sensitives, the crystal would have bled.
Terith doesn't know they're Force-sensitive, but they know their instincts are rarely wrong, and they can feel the honesty and grief coming from Zahara in waves. They don't doubt her precisely because they know she's not lying, she's seeing things as she sees them and, even if she's wrong, it's something Terith believes to be worth looking into.
#star wars#my fanfic stuff#the many names of peace au#alternate universe#pro jedi#jedi culture#jedi as indentured servants to the republic#ruusan reformation#star wars history#jedi history#mandalorian-jedi history#jedi friendly#abuse of italics#tw child murder#discussions of child murder#there are a hundred ways to be a slave#anti mandalorians#mandalorians critical#terith is a decent person but… well#zahara IS talking about a very dark part of mandalorian history full of child murder#mando'a#dai bendu#conlang#jedi oc#mandalorian oc
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Hi, I saw your post about the whole godspousing thing and was wondering how you felt about people worshipping the Greek gods in general? Genuinely just curious!!
Hi! To me it is pretty much like believing in any other religion. I take no issue in this versus other worships, I am very pro respecting all religions and believers, when they don’t attack other people or when they don’t try to proselytise or use fraud and manipulation.
Because of those boundaries I have though, I tend to be more suspicious towards certain belief systems and specific worshippers than others. A lot (not all of course) of the new Hellenic Polytheists belong to this category unfortunately.
There are two reasons I am more reserved / suspicious in their case. The one reason is because I question the onset and the nature of their decision to devote themselves to this religion, when everything they say and do seems like a roleplay game, seems like a one-sidedly claimed mutual relationship with a god that sounds more like an imaginary friend (or spouse, as we saw). I would be more open to it though, if I didn’t know Greek mythology / culture is trending massively amongst western young people, who try to transform it to a type of pop culture. And it just so happens that those are also the big bulk of the “believers”. Coincidence? Unfortunately, it’s like a game for some and others believe it will make them seem cool, I don’t know why but they do. Furthermore, even those who treat this more seriously sound for the most part like they want to go the exact opposite way from Abrahamic religions as an act of rebellion and not as genuine faith in the existence of these old gods.
I know many who will see this will be like “NOT ME!!!! NOT ALL OF US!!!” and yes, of course, not all of you. But A LOT of you. I mean, it would be bloodchilling to consider that this ancient religion could be earnestly revived, but when I was attacked by a person during a polite argument who told me “Aphrodite just appeared to me and told me that you are wrong so shut up” (happened a few years ago!), well this type of believers is not a good look for the resurrection of any religion. I mean, this type of argument made the most fanatic Christians and Muslims seem perfectly reasonable. Again, of course not everyone is like that, just like not every Christian or Muslim is like that, but it’s disappointing to see this old faith make a comeback only to be the background for teen role-players or newly emerging brain rotten fanatics.
Which brings me to the second reason I am suspicious, which is exclusive to the Greeks. The Hellenic polytheism is (very) slowly making a come back to Greece. Again, NOT EVERYONE, but A LOT of the new converts seem to be ultra-nationalists and Ancient Greek supremacists. They start flooding social media with historical revisionism and a systematic attempt to misinform and reject entirely all the medieval and modern part of Greek history, simply on the basis that during those eras the Greeks had made the crime to become Christians. In fact, they claim that a “true Greek” can’t be a Christian therefore the Greeks lived oppressed under the rule of the “Christians”, those people of apparently undefined ethnicity. We’re talking TOTAL historical revisionism and with a ferocious hatred for a good chunk of 2,000 years of Greek history and existence. They try to revise the initially hellenized character and eventual genuine Hellenic core of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, try to reject it, try to reject all the Greeks of the modern age, all Greeks of the Anatolian lands, really half our history and identity. And then they think they are patriots and they do Greece good. So, in their case, I doubt they truly believe in Zeus and Hera or they just want to spherically shove their ahistorical hateful rhetoric to our faces. And if they think that the reason they PERSONALLY don’t like medieval and modern Greek history (SIKE, it’s great) is because Greeks believed in Jesus instead of Hermes and they think that if we had stuck to Artemis and Hephaestus we would be building colonies in the galaxy of Andromeda by now, then they are dangerous idiots and we REALLY do not need them in our society. Sadly, this is the tragedy of religions, especially newly emerging, the wackos are overshadowing the normal respectful believers.
But right now those problematic ones are more visible in Greece than those who worship with dignity and a peace of mind. Their presence in social media is significant. And I have seen a lot of truly bad comments and posts and I was even greatly disillusioned by the behaviour of people I admired once, so all that has made me have knee jerk reactions of suspiciousness.
* Hopefully this will not offend people, it has nothing to do with the worship and the gods themselves and of course nothing bad to say for the people who believe with all their heart and realise it’s a religion and not an aesthetic.
#greece#religions#not sure how to tag this#Hellenic polytheism discussion#helpol matters#anon#ask#greek mythology
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Aristotle
Aristotle of Stagira (l. 384-322 BCE) was a Greek philosopher who pioneered systematic, scientific examination in literally every area of human knowledge and was known, in his time, as "the man who knew everything" and later simply as "The Philosopher”, needing no further qualification as his fame was so widespread.
He literally invented the concept of metaphysics single-handedly when he (or one of his scribes) placed his book on abstract philosophical speculation after his book on physics (metaphysics literally means “after physics”) and standardized in learning – how information is collected, assimilated and interpreted, and then communicated – across numerous disciplines.
During the later Middle Ages (c. 1300-1500 CE), he was referred to as "The Master", most notably in Dante's Inferno where the author did not need to even identify Aristotle by name for him to be recognized. This particular epithet is apt in that Aristotle wrote on, and was considered a master in, disciplines as diverse as biology, politics, metaphysics, agriculture, literature, botany, medicine, mathematics, physics, ethics, logic, and the theatre. He is traditionally linked in sequence with Socrates and Plato in the triad of the three greatest Greek philosophers.
Plato (l. c. 424/423-348/347 BCE) was a student of Socrates (l. c. 469/470-399 BCE) and Aristotle studied under Plato. The student and teacher disagreed on a fundamental aspect of Plato's philosophy – the insistence on a higher realm of Forms which made objective reality possible on the earthly plane – although, contrary to the claims of some scholars this did not cause any rift between them. Aristotle would build upon Plato's theories to advance his own original thought and, although he rejected Plato's Theory of Forms, he never disparaged his former master's basic philosophy.
He was hired by Philip II, King of Macedon (r. 359-336 BCE) as tutor for his son Alexander the Great (l. 356-323 BCE) and made such an impression on the youth that Alexander carried Aristotle's works with him on campaign and introduced Aristotelian philosophy to the east when he conquered the Persian Empire. Through Alexander, Aristotle's works were spread throughout the known world of the time, influencing ancient philosophy and providing a foundation for the development of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theology.
Early Life
Aristotle was born in 384 BCE in Stagira, Greece, on the border of Macedonia. His father, Nichomachus, was the court physician to the Macedonian king and died when Aristotle was ten years old. His uncle assumed guardianship of the boy and saw to his education. Aristotle probably spent time with the tutors at the Macedonian court, as the son and nephew of palace staff, but this not known with certainty. When he was 18, Aristotle was sent to Athens to study at Plato's Academy where he remained for the next 20 years.
He was an exceptional student, graduated early, and was awarded a position on the faculty teaching rhetoric and dialogue. It appears that Aristotle thought he would take over the Academy after Plato's death and, when that position was given to Plato's nephew Speusippus, Aristotle left Athens to conduct experiments and study on his own in the islands of the Greek Archipelago.
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By: Mike Brock
Published: Jul 8, 2025
The word “liberal” has been so thoroughly mangled by American political discourse that it now means everything and nothing. Republicans use it as an epithet for anyone who disagrees with them. Democrats embrace it as a badge of progressive virtue. Cable news hosts deploy it as a tribal marker. Political consultants focus-group it to death. And through all this semantic chaos, we’ve lost sight of something crucial: liberalism isn’t a political position—it’s the philosophical foundation that makes political positions possible.
This confusion isn’t just academic. We’re living through a moment when the basic framework of liberal democracy is under systematic assault from forces that understand exactly what they’re attacking. While we argue about whether being “liberal” means supporting higher taxes or transgender rights, oligarchs are constructing parallel systems designed to make democratic accountability obsolete. While we debate the proper scope of government, they’re building infrastructure that operates beyond government entirely.
The irony is exquisite: we’re losing liberalism because we’ve forgotten what it actually is.
So let me be precise about what we’re defending—and what we stand to lose.
The Liberal Insight
Liberalism begins with a simple but revolutionary recognition: human beings are fallible, disagreement is inevitable, and yet we must somehow organize society together. This creates what I call the fundamental liberal problem: How do conscious beings pursue truth and build institutions across disagreement, uncertainty, and difference?
Every other political philosophy tries to solve this problem by eliminating it. Authoritarians impose a single vision through force. Religious fundamentalists appeal to divine revelation. Technocrats defer to expert knowledge. Revolutionary movements promise to create new humans who won’t disagree. But liberalism does something different—it builds systems that work because people disagree, not despite their disagreement.
This is liberalism’s genius: it doesn’t require consensus on ultimate values to create functional societies. It provides a framework for collective reasoning that allows people with fundamentally different worldviews to cooperate, compete, and even change their minds through peaceful means.
Consider the miracle of what we take for granted: societies where Catholics and Protestants, capitalists and socialists, traditionalists and progressives can coexist not just peacefully, but productively. Where power changes hands through elections rather than violence. Where yesterday’s heretics can become tomorrow’s leaders through persuasion rather than revolution.
This doesn’t happen naturally. It requires a specific set of institutions, norms, and practices that must be continuously maintained against forces that would tear them apart.
The Architecture of Liberal Democracy
Liberal democracy isn’t just majority rule—it’s majority rule constrained by constitutional principles that protect the conditions of democratic reasoning itself. The architecture has several essential components:
Constitutional constraints on power. No individual, group, or even democratic majority gets unchecked authority. Power is divided, separated, and constrained by law. This isn’t inefficiency—it’s insurance against the concentration of power that makes democratic reasoning impossible.
Independent institutions. Courts, bureaucracies, universities, and media organizations that can resist capture by political or economic interests. These institutions don’t need to be perfect—they need to be independent enough to provide checks against abuse of power.
Free expression and open debate. Not because all ideas are equally valid, but because the process of testing ideas against each other is how societies learn and adapt. Mill’s “marketplace of ideas” isn’t a perfect market—it’s an ongoing experiment in collective reasoning.
Rule of law. Equal treatment under legal frameworks that apply to everyone, including those in power. This creates predictability and prevents the arbitrary exercise of authority that makes democratic planning impossible.
Democratic accountability. Regular opportunities for citizens to peacefully replace their leaders through elections. This forces power-holders to justify their decisions to those affected by them.
Notice what’s not on this list: any particular policy position. Liberalism is compatible with a range of economic arrangements—from more market-oriented systems to robust welfare states with significant government intervention. You can be a liberal who supports universal healthcare and high progressive taxation, or a liberal who prefers market solutions and lower taxes. You can be a liberal conservative who emphasizes traditional institutions or a liberal progressive who prioritizes social reform.
What you cannot be is a liberal authoritarian, because authoritarianism destroys the conditions that make liberal reasoning possible. And you cannot be a liberal socialist in the traditional sense, because socialism's commitment to collective ownership of the means of production requires a level of economic control that tends to undermine the institutional independence and distributed power that liberal democracy requires.
The key distinction: Liberalism can accommodate extensive welfare states, significant government regulation, and redistributive taxation—these are questions of degree and democratic choice. But it cannot accommodate systems that concentrate economic power to the degree that political independence becomes impossible.
The Nordic model works within liberal democracy precisely because it maintains private property, market mechanisms, and institutional independence even while providing extensive social benefits. But actual socialism—collective ownership of production—tends to require the kind of centralized control that makes the separation of powers and institutional independence very difficult to maintain.
The Epistemic Foundation
Here’s what most people miss: liberalism is epistemic before it’s political. It’s fundamentally about how we know things and how we organize knowledge in societies. The political arrangements—democracy, constitutional government, individual rights—flow from deeper commitments about truth and reasoning.
Classical liberals understood something profound: no individual or group has privileged access to truth. Not kings claiming divine right, not philosophers claiming rational insight, not scientists claiming objective knowledge, not even democratic majorities claiming popular wisdom. Everyone is fallible. Everyone has incomplete information. Everyone operates from particular perspectives that both reveal and conceal aspects of reality.
This doesn’t lead to relativism—it leads to institutionalized humility. If no one has access to final truth, then our institutions must be designed to remain open to correction. If everyone is fallible, then power must be distributed so that mistakes can be recognized and corrected rather than compounded.
This is why free speech isn’t just about individual expression—it’s about collective intelligence. Why independent media isn’t just about holding politicians accountable—it’s about creating information flows that help societies learn. Why competitive elections aren’t just about representation—they’re about institutionalized error-correction.
The liberal commitment to open inquiry, free debate, and democratic accountability isn’t based on faith that these processes will always produce correct answers. It’s based on recognition that these are the best mechanisms we’ve discovered for remaining open to better answers.
What Liberalism Isn’t
The systematic confusion about liberalism serves the interests of its enemies. So let me be clear about what liberalism is not:
Liberalism is not progressivism. Progressives believe society should move in particular directions—toward greater equality, environmental sustainability, social justice. These may be worthy goals, but they’re not inherently liberal goals. A progressive who wants to impose their vision without democratic consent or constitutional constraint is being illiberal, regardless of how noble their intentions.
Liberalism is not conservatism. Conservatives believe in preserving valuable traditions, maintaining social stability, respecting established institutions. These may be wisdom, but they’re not inherently liberal commitments. A conservative who wants to preserve arrangements without democratic accountability or constitutional limitation is being illiberal, regardless of how venerable the traditions.
Liberalism is not libertarianism. Libertarians believe in minimal government and maximum individual freedom. But the crypto-oligarchs who call themselves libertarians while building parallel systems to escape democratic accountability have abandoned liberalism entirely. When Peter Thiel declares that “freedom and democracy are incompatible,” he’s not being libertarian—he’s being anti-liberal.
Liberalism is not socialism. Socialists believe in collective ownership and democratic control of economic resources. But when socialist movements try to implement their vision through revolutionary violence or authoritarian control, they abandon liberal principles. Democratic socialism can be liberal; revolutionary socialism cannot.
The confusion arises because liberalism provides the framework within which all these other philosophies must operate if they want to remain committed to democratic reasoning. Progressives, conservatives, libertarians, and socialists can all be liberal—but only if they accept constitutional constraints on their power and remain accountable to democratic processes.
The Anti-Liberal Assault
Which brings us to why this matters now. We’re facing a coordinated assault on liberal democracy from forces that understand exactly what they’re attacking. The crypto-oligarchs, neoreactionary intellectuals, and authoritarian movements aren’t trying to win within the liberal framework—they’re trying to replace the framework entirely.
When Curtis Yarvin argues that democracy is “inefficient” and should be replaced by corporate-style governance, he’s not making a policy argument—he’s making an anti-liberal argument. When Elon Musk declares that empathy is “civilizational weakness,” he’s not critiquing particular social programs—he’s attacking the moral foundations that make liberal society possible.
When tech oligarchs build cryptocurrency systems designed to operate beyond democratic accountability, when they construct “network states” that escape constitutional constraints, when they choose fascism over progressive taxation—they’re not being libertarian. They’re being anti-liberal.
The danger isn’t that they disagree with particular liberal policies. The danger is that they reject the entire framework of democratic accountability, constitutional constraint, and moral obligation that makes peaceful disagreement possible.
The Stakes
Here’s what we stand to lose: not just particular political arrangements, but the capacity for democratic reasoning itself. The ability to organize societies where people can disagree productively rather than destructively. Where power can be constrained by law rather than exercised arbitrarily. Where tomorrow’s truth can emerge through today’s debate rather than being imposed by yesterday’s authorities.
The alternatives aren’t mysterious. We can see them emerging in real-time: algorithmic governance that replaces democratic deliberation with computational efficiency. Oligarchic networks that operate beyond constitutional constraint. Authoritarian systems that eliminate disagreement through force rather than organizing society around it.
These aren’t dystopian possibilities—they’re operational realities. The infrastructure is being built. The precedents are being set. The philosophical justifications are being developed and deployed.
The Defense
Defending liberalism requires more than voting for particular candidates or supporting particular policies. It requires understanding what liberalism actually is and why it matters. It requires recognizing that the framework is more important than any particular outcome the framework might produce.
This doesn’t mean being neutral about everything. Liberals can and should have strong convictions about justice, equality, freedom, and human flourishing. But they must hold these convictions in a way that remains open to democratic accountability and constitutional constraint.
The test isn’t whether you support the right policies—it’s whether you support the conditions that make democratic reasoning about policies possible. Whether you accept that your political opponents have legitimate standing in democratic debate. Whether you’re willing to risk losing elections rather than abandoning democratic processes. Whether you believe power should be constrained by law rather than exercised through will.
The Choice
We face a choice that will determine not just what kind of policies we have, but what kind of beings we remain. Do we preserve the framework that allows conscious creatures to reason together across difference? Or do we surrender to forces that promise more efficient solutions through the elimination of democratic accountability?
The crypto-oligarchs have made their choice. They’ve chosen sovereignty without constraint, power without accountability, efficiency without democracy. They’ve built the infrastructure to implement their vision. They’ve captured the political mechanisms to enforce it.
But they haven’t won yet. Liberal democracy remains possible—but only if we understand what we’re defending and why it’s worth defending.
Liberalism isn’t a political position. It’s the condition that makes political positions possible. It’s not a set of policies. It’s the framework that allows policies to be democratically chosen, implemented, and changed.
It’s not perfect. But it’s the best system we’ve discovered for remaining human while organizing society—for preserving the capacity for reasoning, disagreement, and growth that makes consciousness worth having.
Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And conscious beings reasoning together across difference is more valuable than any particular outcome that reasoning might produce.
The framework is the foundation. Without it, everything else becomes arbitrary power dressed up as necessity.
The choice is ours. For now.
#Mike Brock#liberalism#liberal ethics#liberal values#liberal democracy#classical liberalism#illiberalism#authoritarianism#anti liberalism#religion is a mental illness
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Contemplating Bullshit
Quick, Fandom Police, screencap this and send it to CO. ASAP:
'Dear' CO (or should I say, eh... 'Glinda'? 🙄),
You wrote what amounts to a PhD thesis about one of my recent posts (https://www.tumblr.com/sgiandubh/753845334988423168/they-watch-they-hate-then-they-copy?source=share). So long for your carefully curated 'I don't care about Those Tinhat Shippers' narrative, in the process: but hey, common sense never bothered you and your ilk, right?
You don't care, but you write. Abundantly. Prompted by a denunciation that should give your 'US progressive beliefs' pause. Between you and me, lady: our European shipper community cannot give a dead rat's ass about you systematically dragging the US politics current evolution in this TV series fandom, in an effort to-
a) brown nose the US more conservative, MAGA crowd (with which 'Erself seems to be resonating, but that is suddenly and conveniently of no social and political import to you, of course)
b) sound sophisticated towards what you think (wrongly) is a primitive, uneducated, politically unaware shipper fandom crowd.
Some of the shippers chose to go political, for their own reasons and if they are happy with it, so am I. I do happen to believe in freedom of speech and editorial choices. Many, such as myself, chose to never mix politics and mundane, private beliefs (such as all this fandom thing), just because we happen to think, in Europe, that mixing those two notions is extreme poor taste. With dramatic historical precedents to boot. So you see, I am not very sure what point are you trying to prove, spare that you somehow consider yourself superior to those who do not share your political views. Told you: so long for your progressiveness and I am sorry, but your are such a Cheap Demagogue, lady!
Then, you couldn't help yourself but tell a Big, Fat Glinda Lie:

I did not invent the Orc concept. Your running mate, BIF (the Poor Man's CO, btw) did - and proud of herself, too:

Discerning Orcs vs. Stupid Shippers, Circle of Trust vs. Rectangle of Reality. We know that song, that is so 2019. And sure, I did mention an Orc Army (five to ten blogs, the rest are parrots, unable to make the difference between 'pixilated' and 'pixelated', when talking about a blurry picture - pixie/pixel, btw). My understanding is that someone as genuinely intelligent (that, I grant you) as yourself was piqued by the irony. But you chose to be nasty. Fair enough. Your problem, not mine.
Have you moved on? It doesn't sound like you did. And yeah, you sound angry and bothered and barely keeping up a civilized demeanor, there.
I could go on and on and on, debunking everything you said, but I am merciful to my readers and I happen to think that sometimes being clear and concise is far more effective than being verbose. So, here is the deal, CO:
Take your condescending, US-centric world view and your intolerant nastiness and shove them right up your Glinda nose, ok?
As for me, I am firmly on the ship deck. You are not to tell me what I saw with my own eyes. Better stick to whatever you post on your political blog. You have a LOT of work to do there. Seriously.
PS: in the book, Glinda is the Good Witch from the South. Just pedantically sayin'.
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"So: what is the Israeli long-term strategy, really?
Insofar as there’s an answer, it seems to be that they simply don’t have one; the Israeli government no more has a long-term strategy for dealing with their future in the region than Exxon Mobil has a long-term strategy for dealing with climate change. They seem to just figure that, if US power does collapse or give up on them, something will turn up. No doubt too they have people in thinktanks brainstorming that, too, coming with reports and scenarios, but all this is basically an afterthought. The driving force behind the colonization of ’67 Palestine is not any sort of grand strategy; it’s a kind of terrible confluence of short-term political and economic advantage.
First, the settlements. They were originally the project of a relatively isolated, if well funded, collection of religious zealots. Now everything seems to be organized around them. The government pours in endless resources. Why? The answer seems to be that since at least the ‘90s, rightwing politicians in Israel have figured out that the settlements are a kind of political magic. The more money gets funneled into them, the more the Jewish electorate turns to the Right. The reason is simple. Israel is expensive. Housing inside the 1948 boundaries is exorbitantly expensive. If you are a young person without means, you increasingly has two options: to live with one’s parents until well into your 30s, or find a place in an illegal settlement, where apartments cost perhaps a third of what they would in Haifa or Tel Aviv—and that’s not to mention the superior roads, schools, utilities, and social services. At this point the vast majority of settlers live on the West Bank for economic, not ideological, reasons. (This is especially true around Jerusalem.) But consider who these people are. In the past, young people in difficult circumstances, students, well-educated young parents, have been the traditional constituency of the Left. Put these same people in a settlement, and they will, inexorably, even without realizing it, begin to think like fascists. Settlements are, in their own way, giant engines for the production of right-wing consciousness. It is very difficult for someone placed in hostile territory, given training in automatic weapons and warned to be constantly on one’s guard against a local population seething over the fact that your next-door neighbors have been killing their sheep and destroying their olive trees, not to gradually see ethno-nationalism as common sense. As a result, with every election, the old Left electorate further dissipates, and a host of religious, fascist, or semi-fascist parties win a larger and larger stake of the vote. For politicians, who can barely think past the next election, the lure is inescapable.
...I only came to fully understand the agony of the Palestinian situation when I came to understand that the entire point of life, in traditional Palestinian society, is put oneself in a position where you can be generous to strangers. Hospitality is everything.
...Wherever we went, Palestinians would tell us about all the different sorts of people they had historically welcomed to the Holy Land: Armenians, Greeks, Persians, Russians, Africans, Jews… They saw the Zionists as originally their house- guests. Yet they were the worst house-guests one could possibly imagine. Every act of hospitality, of welcome, is turned into license for appropriation, and the world’s most skillful propagandists leapt into action to try to convince the world that their hosts were depraved inhuman monsters who had no right to their own homes. In such a situation, what can you possibly do? Stop being generous? But then one is absolutely, existentially defeated. This is what people really meant when they talked about a life of calculated degradation. People were being systematically deprived of the physical, the economical, and the political means to be magnanimous. And to be deprived of the means to make that kind of magnificent gesture is a kind of living death."
https://davidgraeber.org/articles/hostile-intelligence-reflections-from-a-visit-to-the-west-bank/
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If one wants to a quality literary critic, what texts would you recommend they read? What past or present critics would you deem worthy of aspiration?
In answer to a recent question like your second one, I once made a list of favorite critical essays and collections. But it's a long list, and, in answer to your first question, you probably want more manageable advice. (My favorite piece of unmanageable advice is T. S. Eliot's line, "The only method is to be very intelligent.") Two pieces of manageable advice, then:
1. After you read a famous or classic work of literature, read critical essays about it, often essays that are themselves famous or classic or by famous or classic critics, so that you can sharpen your own methods and responses on the often fiercely divergent responses of others. (For print books, I recommend Norton Critical Editions or the Signet Classics editions of Shakespeare or anthology series of criticism like Bloom's Modern Critical Views, all of them readily available in public libraries. Online there's always JSTOR for licit activity and libgen for illicit.)
2. Read some large-scale foundational critical-theoretic works, works from the middle 20th century when, emboldened by developments in psychology, anthropology, and sociology, literary scholars attempted to put criticism on an almost scientific footing. (Note that I'm not sympathetic to this idea, but it's an idea to work with and wrestle with, and it produced some brilliant studies.) Perhaps the two most notable and classic of such books are Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism and Erich Auerbach's Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. The systematizing impulse in Frye and the historicizing impulse in Auerbach have a way of making everything that came before and after them line up, though their two approaches have almost nothing in common. Books like those will give you a solid foundation, even if it proves to be a foundation you need to repair, revise, demolish, etc.
Finally, I used to teach a class intended to be an introduction to the English major; it could have been considered a class in "how to become a critic," even if it was necessarily too focused on academic methodologies and their attendant political fashions. You can look at my old syllabi here, here, here, and here.
As with anything, you shouldn't worry too much about where to start; just jump in anywhere, and after a while you'll make your way. To quote the man who has been called the greatest literary critic in English, Samuel Johnson:
The traveller that resolutely follows a rough and winding path, will sooner reach the end of his journey, than he that is always changing his direction, and wastes the hours of day-light in looking for smoother ground and shorter passages.
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i do think kankris definition of "trigger" is pretty deeply distorted, i don't think he realizes it's a PTSD/mental health term. considering how anti-negativity beforus is, and also that highbloods are expected to constantly coddle anyone below them both in a systematic sense and in a social coddling silly sense while also being forced to repress any actual anger they may be feeling, i can see "trigger" meaning two different things on beforus (that parallel how they're seen in real life, which is the purpose of beforus in the first place)
Something that deeply deeply upsets a lowerblood troll and sends them into a tantrum that needs to be coddled, typically used in a sense of "oh don't trigger him, i don't want to deal with it." and seen as a sort of ridiculous oversensitivity towards something in lowbloods.
Something that sends a highblood into an improper explosion or negative mindset that can make them more probable to lash out or less likely to coddle those below them and do something violent instead. This is typically seen with more importance because the highbloods can actually do something about it beyond having a "Fit" but it also drastically effects their social credit; it is embarrassing and taboo to have a tantrum as a highblood.
I believe this is why Kankri brings up the slur discourse in regards to Mituna calling Meenah a wader despite it being a class based insult specifically punching upwards. In my interpretation at least, Kankri isn't so much telling Mituna off for hurting the feelings of Meenah, but is telling him off for not being MINDFUL of Meenahs feelings, which could have lead to an undesirable situation if she were triggered. It's his way of warning Mituna to watch his tongue around someone of power, and also why he gets so frustrated when Mituna absolutely refuses to listen.
I think he puts stake into both definitions. He cares for lowbloods who have triggers because he is constantly constantly being categorized as overly sensitive, whiney, and unpleasant for trying to communicate his needs. But due to the fact that he's a red blood and EVERYONES higher than him, he still sees them that way, and has a hard time relating to any of them or wanting to give them his sympathies. Again, Mituna for example, he cares a lot less about triggering Mituna because... Mituna is Mituna. He literally has no power to do anything about it TOWARDS Kankri, but also, Kankri still views him as higher and more privileged than he is, and gets deeply frustrated at Mitunas lack of social graces to keep himself safe, as well as Mitunas refusal to HIDE how disabled he is. He thinks it's pretty insulting that Mituna is implying that anyone cullable or disabled should be THAT incapable of taking care of themselves. (masked autism vs unmasked autism)
But I also think he cares a LOT about triggering highbloods specifically because it can directly impact his safety, and even if he himself has never experienced intense violence due to this (or at least if he has, it was very infrequent) he has constant visions of it through the signless and it fucking terrifies him. He cares a lot about not triggering anyone he thinks could drastically hurt him or impact his life in any way because he thinks if they're triggered they have the full right to do anything to him back in their emotional state. Which I believe is also a mindset encouraged on Beforus.
this is all just high edible ramblings. my point is i think beforus believes that highbloods should have their asses pat so they don't explode and kill everyone, and lowbloods should be placid and have everything done for them because theyre sooooo cute and sooooo helpless and soooooooo stupid. and while kankri doesnt agree with these mindsets he definitely interacts with the world through the lense of beforan politics, assuming everybody else does too. he thinks everybody has the same context that he does, and he doesn't understand that he actaully lacks a signifigant amount of knowledge and perspective
#ooc#[headcanon#((sorry this was initially going to be a small thing ab triggers nad became kankri analysis))
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The struggle against the Opposition was for the ruling clique a question of life and death. The program, principles, ties with the masses, everything was rooted out and cast aside because of the anxiety of the new ruling clique for its self-preservation. These people stop at nothing on order to guard their privileges and power. Recently an announcement was released to the whole world, to the effect that my youngest son, Sergei Sedov, was under indictment for plotting mass poisoning of the workers. Every normal person will conclude: people capable of preferring such a charge have reached the last degree of moral degradation. Is it possible in that case to doubt even for a moment that these same accusers are capable of fostering the anti-Semitic prejudices of the masses? Precisely in the case of my son, both these depravities are united. It is worthwhile to consider this case. From the day of their birth, my sons bore the name of their mother (Sedov). They never used any other name – neither at elementary school, nor at the university, nor in their later life. As for me, during the past thirty-four years I have borne the name of Trotsky. During the Soviet period no one ever called me by the name of my father (Bronstein), just as no one ever called Stalin Dzhugashvili. In order not to oblige my sons to change their name, I, for “citizenship” requirements, took on the name of my wife (which, according to Soviet law, is fully permissible). However, after my son, Sergei Sedov, was charged with the utterly incredible accusation of plotting to poison workers, the GPU announced in the Soviet and foreign press the “real” (!) name of my son is not Sedov but Bronstein. If these falsifiers wished to emphasize the connection of the accused with me, they would have called him Trotsky since politically the name Bronstein means nothing at all to anyone. But they were out for another game; that is, they wished to emphasize my Jewish origin and the semi-Jewish origin of my son. I paused at this episode because it has a vital and yet not at all exceptional character. The whole struggle against the Opposition is full of such episodes. [...]
After Zinoviev and Kamanev joined the Opposition the situation changed radically for the worse. At this point there opened wide a perfect chance to say to the workers that at the head of the Opposition stand three “dissatisfied Jewish intellectuals.” Under the direction of Stalin, Uglanov in Moscow and Kirov in Leningrad carried through this line systematically and almost fully in the open. In order the more sharply to demonstrate to the workers the differences between the “old” course and the “new,” the Jews, even when unreservedly devoted to the general line, were removed from responsible party and Soviet posts. Not only in the country but even in the Moscow factories the baiting of the Opposition back in 1926 often assumed a thoroughly obvious anti-Semitic character. Many agitators spoke brazenly: “The Jews are rioting.” I received hundreds of letters deploring the anti-Semitic methods in the struggle with the Opposition. [...] In the months of preparations for the expulsions of the Opposition from the party, the arrests, the exiles (in the second half of 1927), the anti-Semitic agitation assumed a thoroughly unbridled character. The slogan, “Beat the Opposition,” often took on the complexion of the old slogan “Beat the Jews and save Russia.” The matter went so far that Stalin was constrained to come out with a printed statement which declared: “We fight against Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev not because they are Jews but because they are Oppositionists,” etc. To every politically thinking person it was completely clear that this consciously equivocal declaration, directed against “excesses” of anti-Semitism, did at the same time with complete premeditation nourish it. “Do not forget that the leaders of the Opposition are – Jews.” That was the meaning of the statement of Stalin, published in all Soviet journals.
When the Opposition, to meet the repressions, proceeded with a more decisive and open struggle, Stalin, in the form of a very significant “jest”, told Piatakov and Preobrazhensky: “You at the least are fighting against the C.E., openly brandishing your axes. That proves your ’orthodox’ action. Trotsky works slyly and not with a hatchet.” Preobrazhensky and Piatakov related this conversation to me with strong revulsion. Dozens of times Stalin attempted to counterpose the “orthodox” core of the Opposition to me.
The well known German radical journalist, the former editor of Aktion, Franz Pfemfert, at present in exile, wrote me in August 1936: “Perhaps you remember that several years ago in Aktion I declared that many actions of Stalin can be explained by his anti-Semitic tendencies. The fact that in this monstrous trial he, through Tass, managed to ‘correct’ the names of Zinoviev and Kamenev represents, by itself, a gesture in typical Streicher style. In this manner Stalin gave the ‘Go’ sign to all anti-Semitic, unscrupulous elements.” In fact the names, Zinoviev and Kamenev, it would seem, are more famous than the names of Radomislyski and Rozenfeld. What other motives could Stalin have had to make known the “real” names of his victims, except to play with anti-Semitic moods? Such an act, and without the slightest legal justification, was, as we have seen, likewise committed over the name of my son. But, undoubtedly, the most astonishing thing is the fact that all four “terrorists” allegedly sent by me from abroad turned out to be Jews and – at the same time – agents of the anti-Semitic Gestapo! [...]
Again, if such methods are practiced at the very top where the personal responsibility of Stalin is absolutely unquestionable, then it is not hard to imagine what transpires at the factories, and especially at the kolkhozes. And how can it be otherwise? The physical extermination of the older generation of the Bolsheviks is, for every person who can think, an incontrovertible expression of the Thermidorian reaction, and in its most advanced stage at that. History has never yet seen an example when the reaction following the revolutionary upsurge was not accompanied by the most unbridled chauvinistic passions, anti-Semitism among them. In the opinion of some “Friends of the USSR,” my reference to the exploitation of anti-Semitic tendencies by a considerable part of the present bureaucracy represents a malicious invention for the purpose of a struggle against Stalin. It is difficult to argue with professional “friends” of the bureaucracy. These people deny the existence of a Thermidorian reaction. They accept even the Moscow trials at face value. There are not “friends” who visit the USSR with special intention of seeing spots on the sun. Not a few of these receive special pay for their readiness to see only what is pointed out to them by the finger of the bureaucracy. But woe to those workers, revolutionists, socialists, democrats who, in the words of Pushkin, prefer “a delusion which exalts us” to the bitter truth. One must face life as it is. It is necessary to find in reality itself the force to overcome its reactionary and barbaric features. That is what Marxism teaches us.
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What Are Americans Allowed to Ask for this Election Season?
Well, the (US) American election season is well underway, and oh boy are things happening. Joe Biden is stepping out, Kamala Harris is the new Democratic nominee, Walz was picked over Shapiro for VP, Donald Trump was shot and people kind of forgot about it. Everything is changing - the possibilities are endless!
Except, are they? After the stumbling, fumbling mess that was Biden's 2024 campaign, the marketing for Harris was framed as a breath of fresh air where new, progressive politics were back. But ask the average voter what policies they like from the Harris/Walz campaign and the answer will probably be vague. The most concrete reason most people seem to have for supporting Harris and Walz is that they will prevent another Trump presidency and stop the Republicans' proposed Project 2025. The Harris campaign seems to reflect this attitude, with slogans like "Let's Win This" and "Not Going Back!" featured prominently.
But what about positive policy platforms? Well that has been a vague area. There is a little talk about infrastructure and defending reproductive rights, but not much talk about adding to the Supreme Court to counterbalance the judges that overturned Roe vs. Wade. And it doesn't seem like packing the court or making changes that might break through the systematic obstructions of the GOP is something the DNC is even willing to consider.
And there's one thing the Democrats are definitely not making promises about: ending the US-funded Palestinian genocide.
Oh, for months the White House, Biden and Harris have all talked routinely about being in talks for a "ceasefire," "negotiations," and "deals," etc. with the Israeli government, everything short of actually establishing red lines or stopping funds and arms for Israel's military. Despite their repeated statements of concern with Israel's bombardments and the swell of popular opposition to the latest acts of destruction against Gaza and Palestine in general, words and assurances are all the present Democrat White House is willing to offer.
No, they will not consider doing more. When protesters came to campaign events demanding that the incumbent Vice President take real action to stop funding the genocide of Palestinians, they were met with scorn from dedicated party supporters. In one campaign stop in Michigan, the Candidate herself told protesters that they were basically asking for Trump to win...

All of this raises some questions. Why shouldn't voters ask a political candidate to support a certain policy in exchange for their votes? Is that not one of the central concepts of representative democracy?
Moreover, why shouldn't voters ask that currently sitting elected officials use their offices to take action on an international humanitarian crisis that the same government is funding?
Is it really so extreme and rude to organize a protest when the government has taken no meaningful action to stop the mass killing of civilians by a nation that it supports?
The situation with Palestine and the USA's unwillingness to take meaningful action is an especially stark reminder that the Democratic Party is still firmly in the era of policy-free politics.
More specifically, by policy-free I mean that the Democrats' campaign is promising voters no policy platforms other than Not Being Republican and Not Being Trump. Trump and the MAGA movement represent a fascist, existential threat to American democracy, they say, and therefore the most important issue of this election is making sure they do not gain power and destroy democracy as we know it. Ending the war (and genocide) against Palestine, restoring nationwide reproductive rights, protecting labour rights, limiting the damage of climate change, all of that can surely wait until the existential threat to the nation is defeated at the ballot box, right?
This would be compelling - except for the fact that the Democrats have been in power for just about four years now and have not only been slow to address some of these issues (If Harris is committed to enshrining abortion rights into law, why not introduce such a bill in this term?), but have in fact conceded and embraced Republicans' policies on others.
Remember the families of migrants and asylum-seekers who were being cruelly separated by ICE at the southern US border? Remember the outrage over kids being locked in cages alone? The Democrats and the media that favour them don't. In fact, this year's DNC showed that the Democrats are embracing the MAGA policy of militarizing the border as much as possible. From "Abolish ICE" to "Build the Wall" in just four short years.
What about addressing climate change? Well, all those oil drilling permits that the Biden administration has handed out since 2021 probably haven't helped much with that.
End the Israel/Palestine war? We hear you, we see you, but the munitions trade must continue.
And when any of these issues and the DNC's inaction are brought up on the campaign trail, when someone asks the politicians to commit to something in exchange for a vote, the politicians reply, "Do you want Trump to win again?! Don't you know how important it is that we win this election?! How can you throw your support to the other side???"
The specter of Trump really has been a boon to the DNC and all of its staffers. Since 2016 - that's three elections now, they have been able to keep their donations and supporters coming in with just the threat of Trump gaining power - no positive campaign promises required, and no accountability needed.
Did the Democrats win an election? Great, now we can get back to normal and stop thinking about issues and stuff. Don't worry about the ICE stuff or renewable energy, we'll get to that eventually.
Did the Democrats lose an election? We need your donations now more than ever so we can fight Trump and make things better in ways we weren't doing while in office!
Did the Democrats fail to act on their promises before the campaign, or even move to the right on them? Look, it's difficult to get stuff through the Senate or whatever, and we can't do executive orders because that's what the other guys do. The important thing is to vote for us so Trump doesn't win and then we'll definitely do the thing next time.
The Democrats frame this Presidential election as a vote to prevent the ultra-right and fascism from taking over America, just as they did in 2020 and in the midterms of 2018 and 2022. This begs the question, however: If America has been one election away from descending into fascism for two election cycles now, how well is the country actually doing at fighting fascism? Is there any plan to use executive power to strengthen real democratic rights and lessen the ability of fascists to influence government? If the stakes are so high, why is the supposed "only party that can stop MAGA" letting their policies ratchet to the right and embracing some of the very things that MAGA has supported?
It should be clear by now that voting every four years for the Party that Promises to Stop Fascism and then hoping they don't slide further towards the fascists is not going to get anywhere. If we are told that addressing the most urgent issues cannot be asked of candidates, then it is time to demand they are addressed.
We are seeing now how electoralism is once again failing working class people in the USA and abroad. It's time now more than ever for people to organize beyond the established electoral system - in protest movements, in boycotts, in labour unions, in community orgs and affinity groups, even in a revolutionary party if that's your thing.
Vote if you must, but remember that voting is not enough to stop fascists at home or acts of genocide abroad. Rights and liberties are not handed down through begging. They are won through power.
#us elections#election 2024#electoralism#activism#socialism#leftism#anarchism#palestine#free palestine#protests#anti capitalism#israel palestine conflict#organize#monstro thoughts
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(Ableism warning)
To add to that community thing- I've been seeing people advocating to remove psychiatry as an institution wholesale and have "the community" provide diagnosis and treatment instead. All great in theory, the psychiatric field has a ton of problems- until you remember how "the community" treats people who talk to themselves on the street and gesture emphatically at nothing. "Those people shouldn't be let out in public," is the nice and polite version of what "the community" considers proper treatment of these individuals. At least a psychiatrist understands it's an illness and should be treated as such. The only thing separating me from those on the street arguing with their hallucinations is luck, and well trained medical intervention. The number of average people who hate those of us showing symptoms of psychosis, OCD, autism, and emotional disregulation etc. is much too high to trust our vulnerabilities to someone with no training.
(post) (bonus related post I also like)
Yeah, like!
I consider myself at least somewhat anti-psych. Because the institution is shit and I hate everything about how it is constructed. But the issue a lot, is strict categorization and the ways it makes abuse so easy. The ways being misdiagnosed can make your life hell. The way diagnosis is gatekept so intensely.
All accessibility tools should be available to everyone, and people should be free to find what makes their life easier. Like, in the informed-consent way. That's a side-tangent to all this but I just think that a lot of the structures of power cause harm and the way disorders are tied into one's ability to function while appearing neurotypical is bullshit. That's what I mean. It creates such a divide between people who "can" function and people who "can't" and doesn't allow for space in-between or for people to be complex.
But yeah. Like. No one's life should be left to the whims of a community whose good-will can run out, whose issues can isolate someone from that support group. That doesn't protect people.
Instead, it leads to issues like you mentioned. People who don't know how to help can make things worse, and many people's first instincts are "well why are you acting like that in public?"
Instead, because no community can ever be perfect, reliance on the community leads to discrimination, bigotry, and people being hurt and judged because a community will always end up with at least some people who are deemed "outside" that group.
We need systematic support that cannot be revoked.
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The new book by the Argentine journalist, published by Anagrama, narrates the life of Silvia Labayru, a former Montoneros militant kidnapped by the military, tortured, raped, forced to accompany Astiz in his infiltration into Madres de Plaza de Mayo.
A passage that really stood out to me in the article was-
Each person incorporated into this process was in charge of a responsible soldier who, sometimes, was the same one who had carried out the torture. If it was considered that the recovery process was giving results, the prisoner began to make some sorties. For example, he could stay a few days at his relatives' house. The kidnapped women were forced to dress "femininely" as a demonstration that they were willing to leave behind the unisex life of militancy—all those unsexy shirts and jean pants—and taken out to dinner or to the beach. fashionable bar , Mau Mau, owned by a jet-setting man named José Lata Liste.
It reveals how the forced intimacy between leftist women captives and Junta guards was not just about lust, but was a deliberate plan of systematic control. An intimate relationship between man and woman, would keep her in total control at all times. Also the way in which "unsexy shirts and jean pants" was seen as a problem in leftist women. Being unsexy was part of revolutionary women's gender subversion. The "unisex life of militancy" with equality between mal and female comrades. They had to leave that behind. They were taken out to places the very opposite of unsexy unisex jeans, like beaches and bars. Beaches where they were expected to show off their bodies in bikinis. Bars where they were expected to get drunk, loosen their inhibitions, dress sexy and shake their bodies. And typically it was a club owned by a "jet-setting man". The revenge of the capitalist class on the Marxist women who would have stolen everything from him. Making revolutionary women "sexy" against their will was the key to rehabilitating them. And it was in an everyday ordinary way like a girlfriend going to the beach or club to dance with her boyfriend. It reveals how everyday patriarchy is itself a dictatorship. If we are to understand capitalist patriarchy in its rawest form we must see the tools it used to break Marxist-Feminist women who most challenged it.
The unsexy clothing of Marxist women was seen as a problem that needed to be corrected. In a passage from the book she refers to the sense of protection her jeans gave her. And how her Junta caretaker took her to a fashionable store to get her more feminine attire
Cover photo: Silvia Labayru and her daughter Vera in Madrid in 1978. Wearing jeans again was a way for her to reclaim her political identity from the trauma. Photo by Dani Yako extraday from her book 'Exilio 1976-1983'
From the recollections of Silvia Labayru
"Where are you taking me, Alberto?" I asked authoritatively as I finally turned up my head to face the man sitting next to me. A man who in that moment was dressed in a military uniform with a pistol on his hip, and who put these cuffs on me. His response was a harsh slap on my face.
"That's Lieutenant to you, puta." He responded, laughing heartily. "God, I don't think it'll ever get old knowing that I can finally treat you like you deserve." He added as he leant forward, riding a hand along my thigh and up to my crotch amidst my uncomfortable groaning. I don't think I've never been or ever will be so grateful for the protection that my jeans offered there, and I was even more grateful to hear the car stop. Well, grateful at the time.
As we stopped and the doors opened, I expected to find some horrible torture dungeon on the other side, but instead I saw something far, far worse. A Lingerie store. Rather than whips and nails on the walls, it was panties and lacy bras, and I honestly don't know if I felt relief or even more terror. I got pushed inside, flanked by soldiers and a salesgirl marching forward as if she anticipated our arrival.
"Good morning, Sir! How can I help you today?" The girl asked in a cheery voice as she faced Alberto, her eyes occasionally darting towards me but only to offer disapproving glares rather than the sympathetic eyes I hoped for.
"This little Communist needs a new outfit. Can you help?" He replied, smiling at my misfortune and jumping his gaze between me and the salesgirl.
"Of course! These reds used to cause quite a bit trouble for us, and for my family. I'm very glad to help them reform." She replied back with no hesitation. I had to wonder if this was genuinely how the public felt about us, or if this was just some pre-selected sympathizer. I hoped the latter. "What size is she?"
In response to that question, I immediately felt a tug on my back. "Let's find out!" my captor shouted, before signaling the guards to grip me tightly. I could barely process what was going on as I felt those jeans I valued so much get torn right off of me, before the rest of my clothes quickly followed. With each piece that got thrown onto the floor I hoped it would be the last, but the ravenous hands of Alberto's men never stopped grabbing.
A minute later, I was lying on the floor completely naked, my entire body on view for the whole shop to see. The salesgirl calmly stated my measurements, before walking off to collect her cloth torture device.
"I've always wanted to see that lovely body of yours, slut!" Alberto shouted with glee as his men pulled me to my feet and gripped my arms to deny me even the slightest bit of dignity. "Why did you hide it for so long when you knew it could make me so happy?" He continued, pushing himself against me so that I could feel the hard bulge already growing in his pants.
The salesgirl returned quickly, carrying a handful of outfits that were all equally degrading. One was little more than a few straps that didn't even cover my nipples. Another was a thong so thin that I wondered if it actually covered anything or was just designed to make the user feel uncomfortable. The next was a lacy bikini that you'd see on the front cover of a porn magazine, but never really expect to see in the real world.
"What would you prefer, sir?" The woman asked, facing toward Alberto as he carefully eyed the outfits. The only time that anyone faced towards me was to take a look at my nude body and laugh.
"Give me the bra from that one, and the thong from that one!" He replied as he decided there and then the only clothes I'd be allowed to wear for the next year or so. Moments later both were forced on, and while I appreciated the limited protection that the bra offered, the thong just felt like an insult, which was fitting given how everyone was treating me.
There were at least a dozen eyes on me as I stood there in my new costume dressed as a whore, my old outfit now lying in pieces on the floor. I never saw it again. I did see the inside of that shop about three or four more times after I left though.
After letting me wallow in my humiliation for a few minutes, I was dragged back outside into the freezing wind before being thrown into the back of the car, shortly joined by Alberto. As the door locked itself shut and the car began to move, I felt his fingers land on my thigh yet again.
"Now you finally look like you did in all those fantasies I had about you." He announced, but in a way that made it sound more like he was talking to himself than to me. As his hand rode it's way up my thigh and reached my crotch, there was nothing I could do as his fingers slid underneath and began burying themselves inside of me. I let out a cry, but that only seemed to encourage him.
I locked my eyes shut, but easily heard as his belt fell to the floor of the car. "I'm going to enjoy this. You should try to as well. It'll be happening to you a lot." He explained as that small protection the thong offered was brushed aside, and a painful journey back began…
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Character meta - Sortinghatschats
Based on the sortinghatschats system that describes the why and the how of characters and is the best personality system I know. For more info check out @wisteria-lodge and @sortinghatchats
Isaiah
Isaiah Wolfson is a bird primary. No other primary is this good in designing a completely new personality to go with a new system and this is exactly what Isaiah did, when he left his family at 18. He was eager too follow his father's system, his pack's system, until he witnessed it falling down. He saw the worst from his father, the double face, the masks, the paranoia and control, the abuse. Isaiah saw him at his lowest and he covered for him, cause he didn't want his brothers to know.
This brought him an existential crisis though. Cause obviously his father's system was flawed and so was his. Leaving gave him space to find himself, or rather, to completely rebuild himself. He gathered information. Studied psychology to learn more about the human psyche, to understand his own issues, his own confusion. And then it built into fascination. He got new role models, new work, new thoughts and figured out new codes for himself to live by. To be someone he can be proud of.
This new system led him to really embrace his badger secondary. Very untypical for a wolves, who like to posture, who need to have clear power ranks before they are capable of functioning in one room with others, who have their insistent shadows reflecting their deepest desires, raw, ruthless and always, no matter the rationality of it.
But Isaiah's method is caretaking. He bonds with people, offers help, considers their needs, remembers names. He bonds and community builds, throwing himself at young wolves, problematic cases. Seeing a person, he can't help but be kind and considerate. This is something he can only afford because of how insanely powerful and well-trained his shadow is. He gets respect for his power and skill - and that's how he gets away with acting out for character. Being polite, nice and kind, because he wants to. Because he can put people in place if they take it as a weakness.
His emphasis on politeness and good manners, on being gallant and well-dressed, orderly and systematic are all expressions of his smooth courtier badger wanting to be respectful and pleasant to people. And it works, cause man, this guy has contacts. He knows someone, who knows someone, who will help out. He doesn't live in packs or whole communities, he doesn't need it, but when he starts calling in for favours, the city bend itself over for him to fulfill his wish.
It's ironic Isaiah got to deal with an abusive exploded lion badger (his goal of keeping the pack strong is everything and he is willing to sacrifice everyone for it with a very sly badger secondary including the general opinion in his favour) for a father and a glory hound lion for a brother, only to meet and fall for Seline. Seline Silverstein, a proud loud lion primary.
There is steady certainty in how she trusts her instincts, her gut decisions and feelings. She doesn't do anything she absolutely doesn't want to do, following her dream as a cultural studies student and researcher at the university. She believes in being responsible for your own happiness, she has a clear goal and purpose and follows it.
Her outspoken morals, her inability to be silent, the need to provoke and challenge people when something doesn't feel right get her into trouble frequently. True to her primary she is very willing to go against the flow, her friends, people around her. Society won't pressure her away from what she feels is right and she backs it up with research. And she isn't loyal to people or sides either, she follows thoughts. Idealist to the core.
So when the family situation with her brother being a spoiled little brat as a wolf and using his puberty and wolf shadow as excuses made the situation unbearable, she didn't have qualms to move out. She isn't sorry to not belong in any witch coven or wolf pack, if they can't lower their pressure of her being a nice, soothing little witch. The classic role would be a very gentle, caring, tolerant female to calm the wolf tempers in the pack. Thanks, but no thanks. And even though this provokes and irritates the wolf society around her, she values her independence and he beliefs too much to back out.
The lion sometimes gets covered by a very strong and passionate bird secondary though. Seline researches, plans, strategizes and analyses. She is a prepper for all kinds of situations. The tendency to prepare is too much at times, the way she researchers every new skill, verifies information, reads herself into discourses before getting onto something.
Very fitting little bird secondary for her research work. A lion goal and determination followed by a meticulously prepared bird? She is a force to be reconed with, no matter her gentle sweet appearance.
Now as for the pairing, Seline is very attracted to Isaiah's thought out intellectual bird thinking. Isaiah has everything reasoned out, overexplains his tiniest beliefs and habits and Seline digs that stuff. She just loves to reason and think and she likes to back her feelings with clear evidence and eloquent thoughts and loads of reseach, true to her bird secondary. Bird Isaiah is an ideal intellectual sparring partner for her.
Matthew Blackwell has a very straightforward snake lion sorting. The lion secondary is very loud and direct, goes with his tough guy persona and angry wolf image. He has his temper issues and a very blood knight kind of passion for fighting. It's just fun for him, like a sport or a game. Getting into boxing and running really helped him find a good outlet for it instead of just causing him trouble.
The snake is more subdued and living in a rather neutral zone. Matthew didn't have people in his corner for a long time, and with no snake circle he relief on his agressive lion instead. Finding Isaiah, befriending Seline, getting a sort of maybe pack with them was a key moment for him. Now his snake is adopting people and though he is sometimes awkward in caring for them as well as he would like out of sheer inexperience, he is getting there. Maybe even on the way to built a useful badger secondary model for the caretaking required around his people who are strong and yet havr vulnerbilitied he can cover for.
And Matthew is a sweet marshmallow inside who will put his people above everything. He is the only loyalist in the trio, with Isaiah and Seline being idealists. As long as he fits Seline's felt goals and Isaiah's built system of how the world works, it's a stable combination.
Hector Wolfson is a double lion. Very intense sorting. His lion primary has a very Badger like flavour, influence of how he had been brought up in the pack. Duty, greater good of the whole, community. He accepts and tries to follow this, but inside he is a loud glory hound lion in it for himself, for acknowledgement of his strength, his leadership, him being the best.
Hector struggled with the idea that as the second oldest brother Isaiah had a stronger claim to succeed their father for the leadership of the pack than him. Not to mention that catching up to Isaiah was difficult on its own, but Hector never stopped trying. He worked his butt off in training, control, education. For how arrogant, ambitious and self-centered he is, there is lots of hard work, skill and determination to back him up. Lion willpower, let me tell you.
Hector never recovered from Isaiah abandoning what he considered his greatest goal and honour. Isaiah basically spit on what had been unfairly handed to him by leaving the pack instead of leading it. Hector should be happy about this, now he will most likely be the successor. Except Isaiah's reasoning doesn't make sense and Hector now never got to defeat him in a fair fight. He will never be able to prove he was better and more suited, when Isaiah doesn't consider his life long goal worth the fight. It angers him to no end.
Add to this the lion secondary that likes to power through, kick down doors, burn down bridges and say everything directly...not effective in schemer politics of the wolves, but very much so in getting respect and recognition for power and posturing alone. Wolves respect him. Not to mention his double lion has a very inspiring leadership quality to it. Lions are intense, loud and easy to make people follow them.
At the same time his lion secondary isn't destructive or aggressive to the point he couldn't fulfill his obligations. At civilised wolf parties and strategic meetings, Hector can keep his cool and insult people in a very polite measured manner no one can dispute. He cuts the pleasantries and talks around it short and gets things moving. No-one said lions couldn't be polite. They are just very direct and no nonsense about it.
By the way, his second in the pack, Delaney, shares the double lion sorting. Idealistic, goal-oriented, steady in her determination and very on par with Hector's direct approach.
The Wolfson trio (Hector has brown eyes though) is rounded up by a double snake youngest brother. Arnold "Arnie" Wolfson really got an unfortunate hand. A human brother in the family, he wasn't interesting for his father's ambitions and was left out of lot of the wolf pack business and power struggles.
Arnie has that air of shameless self-worth and self-interest of a young snake though. He likes fun, joy and the pretty things in life. He is here to enjoy himself. And he doesn't care about politics. The most he cares about other than himself is his tiny circle. The pack doesn't matter to him as a whole, he doesn't feel obliged to it. Isaiah and Hector are his people, and he wants them back and nice to each other. That's it. Where Hector can't forgive Isaiah for betraying their common goal and can't move past this to try to understand or figure out his mysteries, Arnie just longs to get back to his brother and reconcile. Isaiah can betray them or leave them or do incomprehensible stuff for wolf standards, but he is Arnie's person so he will be forgiven and given the benefit of the doubt. Arnie, in contrast to Hector, wants to understand, wants to find out, wants to get along.
His secondary is a playful snake. Arnie likes to tease, lie, push and change strategies in the middle if they don't work. Silver-tounged with mischief in his eyes, he enjoys the freedom of his humanity. He might not matter for the wolves, but he knows them and their etiquette enough to play at whatever situation to turn it in his favour. While wolves are busy figuring out ranks and fighting off their shadows, he will design the positions and talks to support his agenda. Quick on his feet and sneaky and very much enjoys it. Sonny Carter is a double snake as well - it's just very handy for charming behind the scene schemers.
Rip has a very obvious Lion secondary. He is instinctive, acts before he thinks and how he feels and he has that inspiring quality of buldozering lions who throw themselves at things as a solution.
A lot less obvious is his badger primary. Rip thinks in groups and wants to belong, but because of the abuse from his father and losing his family because of him, he basically kicked himself out of his own community. Even though he doesn't trust people and doesn't think he can be part of anything anymore, he still creates a role for himself with the strays, protects younger wolves, keeps the street strays off radar and big conflicts to not attract bigger pack's attention. This is something he feels like doing.
Rip has a strong sense of justice, that's why I first thought he might be a lion primary. But it's just a very strong felt primary. His sense of justice is about what's best for the weakest person and for the overall community. He is always aware of his role, what he can offer and who he can burden, in relation to others. Isaiah and Rip understand each other well, because of Isaiah's incredibly badger flavoured system. He recognises the values in Rip, although Rip is actually the actual badger here.
...
Isaiah - Bird with strong badger flavoured system/Badger
Seline - Lion/Bird
Matthew - Snake/Lion with a Badger model on the way
Hector - Lion/Lion
Arnie - Snake/Snake
Rip - Badger/Lion
Dylan - Snake/Badger
Kieran - Lion/Lion
Alessia - Snake/Snake
Shawn - Badger/Snake
Domincik - Snake/Badger
Melissa - Badger/Badger
Roy - Lion/Badger
Liliana - Snake/Snake
Mr Wolfson - exploded Lion/Badger
Delaney - Lion/Lion
Sonny - Snake/Snake
Caleb - Lion/Snake
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Red White and Royal Blue Notes Day 1
WARNING: Spoilers for both the Red White and Royal Blue movie and the book up to chapter 5
I think it’s funny that Alex’s love story is referred to as Shakespearean considering what’s to come.
“It’s funny how you think everything is about you” (page 14). Lol- especially bc he’s the literal main character of this story.
“Systematically drunk” (15) LOL
“Mutual antagonists” (17)
“Sorry I’m not obsessed with you like everyone else” (18). Oh buddy that’ll change soon. (Alex about Henry)
OMG that whole conversation is so good!
Cakegate is really funny for some reason.
“As the president all I want is to have the CIA fake your death, and ride the dead kid sympathy into a second term.” (23) I see where Alex gets it from.
The foreshadowing! Like Zarah telling Alex to gush about Henry like he’s his prom date.
“I’ll do it but I won’t have any fun” (Alex) “God, I hope not.” (Zarah 27) HAH! Alex is going to have fun, maybe too much fun.
Look I know Alex thinks it’s nerdy but if someone told me Great Expectations was their favorite book I would like them even more.
Ugh! the foreshadowing in this is just so good like when Nora speculate on why Alex has to sign an NDA and one of the reason she give is that he’s (the prince) is Gay. Lol (page 39)
Lol Alex being unable to decide if he Texan or Mexican side is more upset about English Breakfast (page 41)
Foreshadowing- Alex says Henry is “annoyingly attractive (43)
I don’t know if being an English major broke me or if I’m a mega nerd, but I want to write a literary analysis paper on this so badly.
Alex’s reasoning for wanting to get into politics is so wholesome (43)
Henry’s interaction with the caner patient is so cute (45)!
“You’re not the prince of me” (47). It’s just so good. Has this author written anything else? Please tell me they have. OMG they have! I will be needing all of their books now thank you very much.
“Are you trying to psycho analyzed me?” (49) lol, I feel like I say a variation of the this all the time when I’m with my psych major friend.
“I’m sensing an ellipsis (Henry) “It’s just…” (Alex) 51. This book sort of dose that thing that White Teeth did where it’s aware that it’s a novel, but it doesn't do it the same way. It’s more subtle and uses more irony.
Okay Alex and Henry bonding over Star Wars is sweet and kind of nerdy. I like it.
“But isn’t there something to be valued in a happy ending as well?” (52)
Alex taking a class called The Press and The Presidency is absolutely hilarious to me.
That one commenter ships it (55)
“B*tch McConnell- I’m dying homygod
Like Senator Luna, I to can be easily bribed with candy
More foreshadowing on 57. Also I don’t know why but I’m not getting good vibes from Senator Luna
Old money Sith powers also has me dying
The president of united states comparing her children to possums is so funny.
Also her reminding her children to not discuss their murder plots in front of her
Ugh this book is so good!
“Leeme romance the hell out of some focus groups” (66) This book is gold
The text exchange on 68-9 is amazing
I can only hope to write something this amazing one day.
Nora asking Alex if he’s reading fanfiction about himself made me laugh out loud- at work, granted it’s deader than Marley in this place today
The whole bit with the Turkey is just glorious! Ya did it to yourself Alex.
The way Henry talks to his dog is so cute, and so it the fact that he watches The Great British Bake Off
Amy’s great!
Page 90- Yes Alex go off!
I love Bea, she’s great, peak sister energy
June is also peak sister energy.
95- more foreshadowing when June talks about it being like a rom com
“You know I love chaos” (Nora)- 96
I think its really sweet that Henry wants to be a writer
107- the first kiss! (Squeals)
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