carierayvanilla

[grecoromanyaoi]

latin is just words i know from english in a funny way. ancient greek however, is just words i know from hebrew but in a 'OH FUCK OFF' way.

[edenfenixblogs]

Hey, I came from your post about Night. I’ve been wanting to read it for a while now, but I’ve heard that the English version is very watered down and stripped of the original emotions that are in the Yiddish version. Do you know if there are any more accurate English translations, or if the Hebrew one is more like the original? Sorry if you’re not the right person to ask about this, you just seem quite knowledgeable

(also coming from my vent account so I don’t get any hate on main for being a Jew lol)

No worries at all, @nonbinary-vents:

I want to be clear about something: My post was aimed at goyim.

You are a Jewish person, and reading this book (especially if you haven't read any other accounts of experiences in concentration camps) may be an important thing for you to do. And I'd cautiously encourage you to do so if you feel emotionally stable. But you do not need to worry about the experience of this book feeling watered down.

If you are Jewish and not in a very stable emotional state, do not read this book. Do not cause yourself harm.

(If you are goyiscshe, you should challenge yourself and force yourself to read this book. Obviously if you are in an actual emotional/psychological crisis or dealing with the death or illness of a loved one, then you are the only goyim who has an excuse not to read this book. No matter who you are, do not read this book if it will cause you actual mental harm or drive you to somehow cause yourself physical harm. But if it will make you upset, depressed, panicked at your own failings, or other extremely unpleasant but ultimately human discomfort, then you should read this book. Jews don't get a choice about knowing this shit, because knowing this shit is how we survive. And you NOT knowing this shit is what makes it so easy for you to dismiss and target us over and over and over again. You should be uncomfortable. You should feel guilty. Because unless you're actively learning how to disentangle yourself from the antisemitism that led to The Holocaust, then you are actively participating in thee fomentation of another. And that should horrify you.)

Sure, I bet this book is even more haunting and visceral in the original Yiddish. I've spoken recently about how hard Jewish language is to translate to English.

But there is no world in which this book will feel watered down to you.

@nonbinary-vents This book will haunt you. This book will change you. This book will challenge your faith and your ability to trust people.

Remember going in that Judaism asks us not to separate ourselves from our community--not just our Jewish community, but any community in which we find ourselves. Resist the urge this book may stir within you to become insular and fearful of goyim. That is not our way. We are a part of the communities and cultures and nations in which we find ourselves. And we must do good for those communities, because that is what we are called to do. The lesson of this book for Jews is different than the lesson of this book for goyim.

The lesson of this book for Jews -- in fact, the lesson of "Never Again" for Jews -- is that we cannot ever allow this to happen to ourselves again. No, of course, I am not blaming Jews for the Holocaust and if anyone thinks that's what I'm arguing here, then they can fuck off.

The lesson of this book for Jews is that we must never again let fear hold us back from fighting for ourselves. If he world calls upon us to die, we must refuse. Refuse to put ourselves on a list. Refuse to follow our oppressors' directions to the ghetto. Refusal to get on the train or to enter the gas chamber. And we must refuse to be silent for other people's comfort. While it is a Jewish imperative to believe that every human being is capable of kindness and has inherent goodness within them, we can never again trust that the kindness and goodness they possess will ever be directed at us. There was the very understandable thought back when this all started that if we just complied--if we were just willing to suffer a little bit by moving to the ghettos or registering on the lists of Jews the Nazis demanded or carried our papers with us at all time and wore our stars just as they said --then they would eventually realize we were good citizens. They would eventually realize we were just people like them doing their best to live quiet lives and follow the rules. People believed that, if we just complied, they'd remember their humanity and our own. If we just complied and let ourselves suffer, hen maybe our friends and loved one would be safe.

But that was a lie we told ourselves.

No amount of compliance or agree-ability or self-sacrifice will ever make someone who sees Jews as evil and subhuman realize that Jews are actually just human beings like everyone else. Compliance will never ensure our safety; it will just make us easier to kill. Compliance won't make antisemites see us as human; it will only ever make them see us -- at best -- as agreeable livestock.

(although I doubt any farmer would treat their animals as cruelly as Nazis and their supporters treated us).

I am not advocating for violence. But I advocating for discomfort and defense. That is why I am on here every day writing the things I write. I will not shut up for the comfort of people who don't care about my life or my safety. And neither should you. Neither should any of us. I will not allow antisemites to co-opt our own tragedies to demonize us further while casting themselves as warriors for justice.

No, we should not take to the streets and start harming goyim. But if the day comes that they once again start to round us up, I for one will tear those Nazis a-fucking-part with my bare hands. And if they live to have children and grandchildren of their own, they will have to explain to their children and grandchildren that they got the scars on their face and the missing eyeball because the Jew they were trying to murder wouldn't submit quietly.

And if this seems like a hyperbolic and absurd hypothetical to anyone reading this? Well, yeah. It seemed like one back then, too.

(And if any goyim chose to read "Night" by Elie Wiesel because of my post, please tell me. Please engage. I cannot be emphatic enough about this. If you are willing to read night in the way I asked of you in my post, then please do reach out to me with your experience and thoughts. Because that's the whole point. Jews need you to listen and engage with us about our own suffering. We need you to consider your impact on us and to not run away from that guilt or from us. If any of you are willing to read this book in the way that I have asked of you, please please please don't keep your experience to yourself. A lot of Jews desperately need to see goysiche growth in understanding antisemitism and its affects. I don't think you can even imagine how scared and lonely we are right now)

[tonydaddingham]

okay let's fucking crack into finally discussing the book of life, ive been putting it off for ages but the time is now upon me to chat shit about it, bc apparently i might have a meta/analysis rep to maintain?

so first thing's first, im going to look at the narrative itself and the references we have to the BOL. we start off with michael discussing it on the phone with an unknown person:

given this dialogue further on in s1, i think we're all in agreement that the conversation is with beelzebub; the precedent of intelligence sharing was definitely set in s1 with michael and ligur.

but beelzebub sounds surprised on the phone, and when speaking to crowley seems to slightly hesitate on whether extreme sanctions actually did exist... but the archangel michael has just threatened it, so of course it must be real. it's a threat to anyone without discrimination, by this account - any angel, demon, or human (i imagine) can be written into it - so it stands to reason that beelzebub chooses to take michael at their word.

now michael obviously seems similarly convinced that the BOL indeed exists and that it erases from existence any name that is erased from it. ive mentioned before that its interesting that the moment that the metatron appears in the bookshop is when michael is intending to make good on that threat with aziraphale:

but authorised by who? just in the general scheme of things, as supreme archangel duty officer? in which case, why wasn't this a chekhov's gun suggested in s1, even if in the very abstract? i guess it could have been information overload but, given aziraphale literally helped to divert armageddon and disrupt the great plan, you'd think that would be a situation that would warrant such a threat too, from gabriel as supreme archangel?

so by that reckoning, it must be knowledge that michael didn't know about much before the telephone call, because they weren't of sufficient rank (albeit the rank seems to be one they've assumed rather than been entrusted with in the interim). alternatively, the use of the word 'authorised' suggests they've received a direct green-light from someone above them... and who is above the supreme archangel? 👀

but the metatron interrupts the threat before it can be actualised, which obviously feeds into the whole 'came down here to get aziraphale back on side, here have this coffee 🙂' thing... wouldn't do for you to go out on a recruitment drive and have the angel you want to be blinked out of existence before you can make the job offer. so off the archangels go - after a very pointed interaction of michael and uriel not recognising the metatron at all.

but where does metatron fit in the narrative as concerns the BOL? well, nowhere yet. the conference scene in the beginning of ep6 that Crowley witnesses doesn't have any reference to the BOL at all, so it was never on the table as concerns gabriel's demotion (just a good ole memory wipe). so this is where i come to parsing out what i think the BOL actually is.

now im reluctant to go by other texts to riddle this out, mainly because GO is largely inspired by other works and religious texts so i don't tend to double down solely on what they themselves say, but in the absence of any other information from GO itself, this is what ive got to help it make sense.

BOL indeed, by both hebrew and christian text, records all those that are considered worthy before god. that those people are written into it before birth, and to be removed from it signifies death. now that this seems to be to be very human-centric, so how would this apply to angels? well, the re-wording of 'death' to 'never have existed' is an indicator here.

in Revelations, st john the divine of patmos recorded that those who were written and kept in the book would be saved from the Last Judgement; which i think can be agreed in this case would refer to the resurrection of christ aka. the second coming. and to be removed from the BOL would result in being "cast into the lake of fire" (20:15, KJV). which sounds somewhat familiar, right?

so can we be certain that the BOL just simply means oblivion for any angel written in it? i don't think so. there's the school of thought floating round that crowley had his memory wiped which - yes - there are clues that that may be the case (i still sit on the fence, because in some of the examples that support the theory i still also hold the thought that the angel that crowley was may have just been a bit of a work-obsessed knob). but i do wonder if there's some small grain of truth to it, because if we consider this hypothesis that being'wiped from existence' isn't actually that at all, or not as it sounds anyway, wouldn't an angel consider that not being an angel is essentially the same thing?

in falling, you lose who you were, and you're no longer that person. that person, that angel, ceases to exist?

it would certainly make sense to therefore not erase gabriel from the BOL, because it would make him fall, and they would lose another powerful angel to hell... after all:

"For one Prince of Heaven to be cast into the outer darkness makes a good story. For it to happen twice makes it look like there is some kind of institutional problem."

[ljbrary]

You absolute dunce. Either wake up, or stop trying to pretend you care about what’s happening on Gaza. It’s not a “war,” and it’s not a “conflict.” It’s a full-fledged genocide. A war or conflict can only occur between two free nations, who are more or less standing on equal ground. That is NOT what is happening between Palestine and Izrahell. In what kind of a conflict/war does one side control the water, electricity, food, aid etc going into the other side? None. It’snotreal is a parasitic, violent occupation, and the Palestinian people have every right to resist. You have literal Holocaust survivors begging for ceasefire and calling it a genocide, not wanting it to continue. But of course, zios are just modern-day nazis and don’t care about what even the actual Jews, the living Holocaust survivors have to say.

omg my first antisemitic anon hate!! thank you!!!!

Anyone who I actually care about knows who I am as a person and how I feel about the sanctity of human life, so I don't really care about your opinion of me, and especially don't feel the need to indulge in a litmus test on geopolitical politics from you of all people, hope this helps!!

Anyway, I hope you take constructive criticism.

Your review:

Delivery: 6/10.

You get points for decent grammar and sentence structure. It was easy to read, and I like how you used quotation marks correctly, so bonus points for that. First sentence was a good hook, but the incorrect use of commas at the end kinda threw me off a little :/

Creativity: 1/10.

Literally, did you even try?? Not one single independent thought was expressed. Boring. Seen it before. Try harder, please. If you're going to try to play with words, make sure you actually know what they mean; you semantically can't do that to the word "Israel," sorry. It's a Hebrew word, so butchering it in English just feels really juvenile. Would like to have seen better effort with that.

Word choice: 0/10.

You would have gotten points for the words "dunce," because I haven't heard that word since like the 1930s, and "parasitic," because I thought that was an interesting use of the word, but unfortunately you got points taken off for using a KKK slur :/

Literary devices: -17/10.

The Holocaust inversion was not part of the rubric, so I had to take extra points off for that, and unfortunately it went into the negatives. Sorry :/ (I would have given you points for the use of irony, when you equated a KKK slur for Jews to the entity responsible for the worst genocide of Jews in history, but I'm absolutely sure that you did not use it on purpose, so the points were voided.)

Other notes:

The choice to be a coward (anonymous) really added to the ambiance of the message, but unfortunately I don't see a spot on the rubric for that, so no points were awarded.

Overall: -10/40 = -25%. Congrats, you failed! Disrespectfully, go fuck yourself!

.עם ישראל חי

[shredsandpatches]

as i research into stuff for my jewish faust meta, i find there's a lot to unpack with mephistopheles originally being a demon from german folklore in the main legend. (in my retelling, we're not all that sure what mephi is to begin with, an allusion to satan/hasatan from "the book of job" simply translating to "the adversary" from hebrew. we just know that he sure as hell isn't human :])

in goethe's version, he comes much more off as a hasatan - the adversary - type from "the book of job". i think it's something about his very cavalier "hey, g-d, if i managed to corrupt this heinrich faust guy would that be fucked up or what :D" energy. marlowe's take on mephi bears similarities to lucifer with all of the internal conflict and insight we get into his character, though we don't get that same insight with goethe's. i love goethe's mephistopheles (as you can tell), but i think that a lot about his character motivations come off as a lot more ambiguous and we don't really get as much insight into who he is.

maybe this facet of how mephi's portrayed deserves an entire meta or analysis post of its own, though i find that the figures of satan and lucifer in more contemporary portrayals of the devil archetype tend to overlap as the same character. and maybe goethe was going for that, but i haven't really done much research into goethe's personal views on religion yet, nor have i read much of his other work.

Oh, Goethe's Mephistopheles is definitely a Job-like figure--that's one of the reasons I saw your Jewish Faust take and went "yeah, I could see that!" Goethe was not conventionally religious at all and may have been more of a deist or atheist, iirc--Faust uses Christian iconography for its conception of the universe but ascribes a lot of different meanings to it. There's a bit of a pop-cultural tendency to just read Mephistopheles as another name for "the devil" but if he's "the devil" he's the devil of another cosmography rather than just straight-up being the Christian devil, I think. More generally I do think it's important that Mephistopheles is inextricably tied to the Faust legend--it's worth noting that in the earliest references his name is spelled Mephostophiles, which basically parses to "not loving light" in Greek, but if you say it aloud with that pronunciation you can probably discern the wordplay, with Faust's name embedded in that of his demon. Insofar as he can be detached from it I think he's a very personal demon more so than the universal enemy of humanity implied by the idea of the Christian devil.

(As a side note, you should definitely check out Boito's opera Mefistofele, which is the only operatic version to include Mephistopheles' wager with Upstairs, although the divine voice is represented by the chorus because there's some stuff that's kinda hard to pull off in opera. The aria he has about how he just isn't having any fun these days because humans are corrupt enough without him is delightful--in general I think you'd like it, though, it's really good and all of the title character's arias serve incredible amounts of cunt. I'll finish this post and then I'll dig up a video of that first aria for you)

This ask also got me thinking, because you mention that Marlowe's Mephistopheles "bears similarities to Lucifer" -- I can't actually think of any tortured demon figures in literature that predate him. Dante's Satan doesn't even seem sapient, and devil characters in medieval drama tend to be slapstick figures. Of course the trope codifier for the tormented and even somewhat sympathetic Satan/Lucifer is Milton's Paradise Lost (although Milton is a devout Christian and consistently undermines the reader's sympathy) but Milton, despite his Puritanism, was a theater fan and draws on Marlowe's Mephistopheles for his characterization ("which way I fly is hell, myself am hell" definitely owes something to "why, this is hell, nor am I out of it"). Is Mephistopheles the trope codifier for putting the emo in demon? I think he might be!

(But it is, of course, important that in Doctor Faustus and its source material Lucifer is a separate character--when Faustus tries to strike his deal the first thing Mephistopheles says is basically "lemme ask my boss." Later on he shows up in person to put the fear of himself into Faustus. Since it's a play where the question of whether Faustus has free will hangs over the whole thing, it's important to Mephistopheles' function as a dramatic foil that he pretty manifestly does not. He may not even want to damn Faustus but that's immaterial, he's along for the ride anyway)

[jacensolodjo]

A lot of people point to Birobidzhan as proof of the Soviet Union not being antisemitic after all. But the fact of the matter is, while Birobidzhan was partially the brain child of a hopeful Jewish population, it was in fact a place they were allowed simply because it meant fewer Jews in the more populated areas of the Soviet Union.

Also don't get me wrong, Birobidzhan is not a ghost town. A bunch of Jews still live there (though honestly only 1% of the population now is actually Jewish). But it is a dying town. As Israel became a much more viable option for 'Soviet' Jews, the more Jews left for it. Or to the United States or Canada or wherever else. Birobidzhan's highest population numbers hit 80k in 1989, just before the Wall fell. It now hosts approximately 75k people, 1% of them Jewish. But there are also Gentile Koreans, Chinese, Ukrainians, Cossacks, Mongolians, etc.,

Birobidzhan was considered to some a compromise over going to Israel. The problem of course is that Birobidzhan was still in the USSR. However, you would not get blacklisted just by whispering its name like you would when talking of Israel. Because if Jews weren't dying in pogroms or giving up their 'Jewishness', having them leave the Soviet Union to instead be citizens of Israel was unacceptable. How DARE these Jews claim to not be Soviets? How DARE they leave behind the glorious Soviet Union? Even if we treat them like crap how DARE they leave!!

The area they were given for this new 'Jewish Autonomous Zone' was pretty much a desert. Jews were essentially being sent to wander the fucking desert again. Nothing really grew in Birobidzhan that could sustain such a population increase in the 1930s and anything that started to manage it often died off. Through a lot of hard work, they have greenery going on but not necessarily food. To say nothing of the infrastructure already there and just how isolated it really was. At least half of the Jews who arrived at Birobidzhan returned to whence they came because of just how difficult it was to live there.

By the way, did I mention that Birobidzhan was a place already occupied and the original population were told to pack up and get out if they didn't want to be around *gasp horror* jews?

While many Jews left for Birobidzhan of their own free will, many more fled there after being the target of pogroms and other antisemitic attacks in the rest of the USSR. It became a place that the powers that be (in a system that was supposed to give power to the people but didn't) knew they could find Jews to either exploit or kill anytime they fucking felt like it. Think Kristallnacht but many nights and many whims. You know, pogroms against people who had just fucking fled pogroms.

In this once upon a time in so called Jew Utopia, it was illegal to not only study the Torah (and the Talmud and everything else) it was also illegal to learn Hebrew or Yiddish (frequent visitors to my blog or just ppl who know will be aware this was true of basically every language that wasn't Russian which says a lot but i digress. But that does not mean everyone ONLY knew Russian because of course people will take the risk to learn a new language if they feel they must). Birobidzhan became a place eventually where they had a newspaper written in Yiddish (Birobidzhaner Shtern, meaning Birobidzhan Star in Yiddish appropriately enough) for a population that probably didn't even have it as a third language much less 2nd or 1st. It did however get the distinction of being the largest Yiddish language newspaper in the entire Soviet Union but as mentioned earlier that doesn't say much when the people of Biro barely got away with having Birobidzhaner Shtern in the first place.

It continues to publish to the present day so it can be considered one of the longest running Yiddish newspapers in the Eastern world (though not uninterrupted. There were many interruptions). It was also written in Russian, for all those Jews who never learned Yiddish (Not just because it was illegal. It sometimes wasn't viewed as necessary to know. Hebrew was used for worship and Yiddish for a long time was considered a lesser language when you already had German, Polish, Russian, etc., but many did still use it for everyday discussion. I have seen some people even now make fun of Yiddish which is... not cool. There is a difference between making jokes and making fun.)

Essentially, having any kind of proud Jewish soul was next to impossible in the Soviet Union. Worship was illegal, the language of our ancestors was illegal, our books were illegal. Yes, many still did all that stuff anyway but that doesn't erase it being illegal. If you were caught you could be executed for it same as many were executed for speaking or learning Ukrainian in the same time frame. Again, doing all this in Birobidzhan was basically living on borrowed time. At any moment the powers that be could decide they also could not stand having Jews in the ass end of nowhere being Jews.

Those living in Birobidzhan from the 1930s onward (remember, it was already settled when the Jews got there after a very trying journey) were all too aware that they weren't hidden. The powers that be knew exactly where Birobidzhan was, many Jews had actually been sent there from places like Ukraine and Belarus for being annoying about Russian settlement in their lands but not enough to send them to gulag. So they still lived in fear of the pogroms following them. They were also on the border with China and thus served as a low key deterrent for Chinese expansion. The Soviet Union even called the mass settlement operation the Birobidzhan Experiment.

In 1948, Stalin enacted a 'campaign against rootless cosmopolitans'. Cosmopolitan was almost always an antisemitic dogwhistle. 1948 is also when Birobidzhan was nearly bulldozed entirely. It had outlived its usefulness but managed to survive just barely.

Following this, 4 years later, in August 1952 came the Night (isn't it always for tragedies affecting Jews?) of the Murdered Poets. ALL 13 victims were poets who were Jewish and wrote predominantly in Yiddish. Some had a connection to Birobidzhan. Including a man who had the strongest connection to Birobidzhan, David Bergelson who came from a Ukrainian stetl before settling in Birobidzhan. Mere months later that same year, in November, St*lin erased all doubt about whether Jews were welcome anymore (and had never really been anyway): they weren't. He used the term Jewish Nationalist (basically any Jew that didn't consider themselves only Soviet) as well as a recorded use of the phrase "eat the rich" (again an antisemitic dogwhistle in that time frame; not saying it is now. it was also used against Ukrainian 'kulaks/kurkuls' to justify the Holodomor) in a speech to the Politburo.

It also continued his campaign for the Doctors' Plot, as that same speech had him railing about his belief that many doctors were 'Jewish nationalists'. From 1951 to 1953, any doctor was suspect even if they weren't at all Jewish (this was a belief shared by many nazis as well). With all of this going on, everything Jewish culture was closed down in Birobidzhan, just as in the rest of the Soviet Union. The mask had finally fully fallen approximately 30 years before the Iron Curtain fell and only 20 years after Birobidzhan was founded as a Jewish Autonomous Zone. Birobidzhan was never a true safe haven, nor had been the Soviet Union as a whole. The Soviet Union had always had the power to shut it down, it barely tolerated such a concentration of Jews simply because it was in fact so far away from 'civilization'.

Things only got marginally better for Jews in the Soviet Union when the Purim Miracle of 1953 happened: the death of St*lin. He had been ready to give the green light on a far reaching campaign that could have seen more than 75% of the remaining 'Soviet' Jewish population eradicated but, as the mention of Perum implies, this was stopped in its tracks with the death of St*lin. Even without St*lin, however, any Jew that so much as whispered about going to Israel was, again, blacklisted (which meant losing their jobs and homes) and given the title of the very thing Soviets hated: leeches aka people who relied on welfare (because remember they didn't practice what they preached about everyone deserving to have a life worth living no matter their ability or who they were).

Birobidzhan, while still populated, stands as a cautionary tale and proof positive that the Soviet Union lied for its entire existence about Jewish treatment and that russia has inherited this tendency. If it sounds too good to be true (especially for Jews), then it probably is.

TL; DR: there has never been a fucking Jewish utopia in the Soviet Union and anyone saying as such is a liar who has gaslit themselves into believing otherwise. With often the 'but there were SO MANY Soviet Jews' line being proof while forgetting (conveniently) that the USSR was a HUGE place to begin with that swallowed many countries that already had a well established Jewish population (Ukraine, for instance). And no points are given for pointing out 'marx was a Jew'. He was self-hating (and his entire family had converted away anyway) and led the charge in insisting Jews give up their Jewishness for the sake of communism. And Marxist Jews are deluding themselves.

[frogadir]

Okay I'm literally falling asleep as I type this so I just want to get my point out there while it feels immediate to me... 03 moment

Episode 1

The famous atheist speech we all know and love... never mind that ed has come as close as any human can to staring god in the face <3 his bad attitude and cynicism are all over this, so it's funny to hear al call it out by name at the end. Especially remarking on the fact that he's trying to push his beliefs onto someone who's fighting them...

Episode 50

So obviously a lot happens between episodes 1 and 50, and this increasingly difficult journey culminates in ed finding himself on the other side of the gate, disturbed by the revelation that equivalent exchange, the foundation of his belief system, might not be real. Ed's found himself in a similar position to rose in episode 1, whose beliefs he tore apart... now it's hohenheim telling ed what he doesn't want to hear, and ed fighting against it. Compare the first highlighted line in the episode 50 scene to the first highlighted line in the episode 1 scene... he goes from mocking rose's dedication to... more or less earnestly saying he believes in an idea he once made fun of... and the highlighted line at the end has been one of my favorites for a long time. cynicism is crucial to ed's character, so what does it mean for him to give up on it? to stop acting like he doesn't care about anything? because that was never true. He was protecting himself from getting hurt again. He put his faith in something that seriously did not work out for him lol and it changed the course of his life... and then he watched a lot of bad things continue to happen... it's no wonder he developed the attitude that he did. But at what is perhaps his lowest point he turns around and says actually I want to believe in something good... it's better than writing off the world

and I don't think faith is purely religious and/or spiritual. There are a lot of things we can believe in as ways of centering ourselves in this world. We're losing the plot here a little sorry just stay with me but like so many times growing up in hebrew school we would talk about whether or not we believed in god. and I didn't have an answer to that as a kid because if I spoke I knew I would say I don't think I do and I was too embarrassed to admit that to everyone. I would think why would god let bad things happen. and as I got older I decided that life wasn't that simple. I always think about the george costanza quote where he's like "I only believe in god for the bad things" lol. because sometimes when life gets hard and you don't understand why things are happening it's easiest to blame some higher power for fucking you up. but no one really knows if god is real and that aside ultimately our lives are our own. so you can believe in god you don't have to though but either way it helps to have a little faith that things will be okay... not necessarily in a religious way but in a like... I made it this far I'm still here and I can keep going as long as I believe in myself way... Okay so I literally don't know what I'm talking about anymore actually I do but like I am definitely saying some bullshit rn but yeah. That line. I think about it a lot and watching that clip from episode 1 over a few times because I put it in my presentation got me thinking about how these scenes reflect each other... and also I think it's awesome that after he says that a flaming zeppelin falls on him and he gets trapped under the rubble. Crazy stuff

[braveclementine]

Meeting the Family. Oh and of course- We make some Lovely Enemies

Warnings: None

Copyright: I do not own any Twilight characters or locations. I do own Davina Mikelson and Marcel. I also own the backstory for my OC. I do not condone any copying of this.

Davina P.O.V.

"WAKE UP!" Someone's voice bellowed in my ear.

I shrieked, not knowing someone was in the house, grabbing the pillow next to me and swinging it with all my might into the face of someone large.

I heard chuckling and opened my eyes for the first time, seeing that I hit Emmett in the face. That made me sit up, looking around, and realizing that I was wearing one of Carlisle's shirts and was sitting in his bed.

Why did he have a bed?

"Fuck off Emmett!" I growled, tossing my body back down on the bed, pulling the pillow over my head, trying to go back to sleep.

"No. You have to wake up. Alice says that Edward will be bringing Bella over and we're going to introduce you as our mama bear." Emmett teased.

"Good you're awake." Alice tittered, probably dancing into the room.

"No I'm not." I grumbled.

"Yes, you are." Alice said, grabbing the pillow off my head. "And you're lucky Carlisle didn't hear you curse. He doesn't like curse words."

I scowled at her. "I don't curse unless I'm woken up when I don't want to be awake."

"Hmm, well you needed to get up anyways, it's nine o'clock." Alice said, lifting me out of the bed, making me yelp, and setting me back down on the floor. I turned to dive back into bed, but she wrapped an arm around my waist, dragging me towards her room.

We passed Carlisle on the way out and I glared at him and muttered, "Last time I'm sleeping over."

I could hear Emmett and Jasper laughing downstairs at my comment and Carlisle grinned.

"Let me wear my own clothes damnit." I grumbled as Alice started putting out some short thin purple dress on her bed. She tsked. "I'm serious."

"Fine." Alice huffed and I pulled on black jeans and a cute red top with knot at the bottom right that read: Math the only place where people buy 69 Watermelons and no one wonders why.

Then I pulled on my black boots, pulled my hair back in a ponytail, and relented to let Alice do my makeup for me because- to be honest- she was both quicker and better at it than I was.

"Alright there." Alice said, pulling back from my face, though she pursed her lips at my top.

"Great. Thanks." I muttered.

I pretty much ran from Alice's bedroom to Carlisle's, seeing him dressed in a navy blue sweater and I jumped. He caught my easily and I pressed my lips to his.

"Hi." He murmured as we pulled back. "You're in much better spirits."

"Well I'm hungry." I said as he put me down. "And I heard that we're making Bella food. So I'm excited."

Carlisle chuckled, "True, you haven't had breakfast yet."

"Come on." I said. "I should cook anyways. I can hear Esme downstairs watching a cooking show to know how to make food."

Carlisle laughed outright, scooping me up again, zooming me down the stairs to the second floor where the kitchen was.

I quickly got to work, dancing around the kitchen, not paying anyone else any attention. Emmett and Rosalie were throwing a salad together and since I figured they couldn't screw it up, I paid attention to the actually cooking, turning off Esme's cooking show.

"I was watching that." Esme pouted.

"And I actually know how to cook." I said, frying the meat that they wanted cooked.

"Is she even Italian?" Rosalie scowled behind me.

I tsked. I had become the mother of the group of course, long before Emmett decided to tease me about it and I looked at her.

"Her name is Bella." Emmett said in a voice that meant 'duh'.

I snorted, and then let out a little laugh. "Emmett that doesn't mean anything. I'm not Scottish or Hebrew and my name is Davina."

"Actually it's mamma bear, but ya know." Emmett muttered.

"I'm sure she'll love it no matter what." Carlisle said from behind me, his chin resting on my shoulder, watching me cook.

Suddenly, they all froze a little and Rosalie said, "Whew, get a whiff of that."

"Rose." I muttered darkly. Bella must be here.

"Here comes the human." Rose continued.

I sighed.

Esme walked across the kitchen to greet Edward and Bella as they appeared and she said, "Bella, we're making Italiano for you."

"Bella, this is Esme, our Aunt." Edward introduced the two of them.

Esme and Bella conversed in Italian for a second while Carlisle called over his shoulder- not willing to let me go- "You've given us an excuse to use the kitchen for the first time."

"Well, if I stay over lots of night I get to use it for breakfast too." I said, grinning up at him.

"Davina?" Bella's voice was clearly surprised and I stood on my tiptoes to wave at her from my position between the stove and Carlisle.

"I hope you're hungry." Esme said.

"I am." I muttered under my breath, transferring the meat to the platter, turning off the stove, moving to the island so I can eat.

"Yeah absolutely." Bella said as I walked to stand next to Rosalie.

"She already ate." Edward said at the same time.

The was a crashing sound as Rosalie smashed the bowl in her hands. I flinched away from her and Carlisle was there in an instant, pulling me backwards, checking me for any wounds from the glass- there weren't any.

Rosalie walked- in her heels, to stand in front of Bells and Edward. "Perfect."

"Rose." I hissed under my breath while Emmett walked over to be near Rosalie.

"Yeah, it's just because I know you guys don't eat. . ." Bella said, looking completely awkward.

"Of course. It's very considerate of you." Esme said as Carlisle went to stand next to his sister.

"Just ignore Rosalie. I do." Edward muttered.

"Edward!" I protested. "That isn't helping anything!"

"Yeah." Rosalie said sharply and as they were all ignoring me, I turned my back, going to the table and stared at the food unhappily. "Let's just keep pretending that this isn't dangerous for all of us."

"I would never tell anybody anything." Bella protested.

"She knows that." Carlisle said, placing a hand on Esme's shoulder.

"Yeah well, the problem is, you two have gone public now, so. . ." Emmett added.

"Emmett." Esme protested.

"No, she should know. The entire family will be implicated if this ends badly." Rosalie said, her voice shaking and I knew if she could cry, she'd probably be crying angry tears.

But the thing was, they were all targeting Bella in this. What about Carlisle and I? If things went badly between the two of us. I wasn't sure if they could distinguish between mine and Bella's hearts- probably- but mine was certainly in a panic.

I quietly got up from the table, not entirely sure how I could leave without them seeing.

"Badly as in. . . I would become the meal." Bella said.

Carlisle, Emmett, and Edward all snickered.

"Hi Bella." Alice suddenly said from the window. She jumped from the tree limb she had been climbing on to the floor.

She strode forward quickly, Jasper a few paces behind until he turned to face me. I smiled weakly while Alice did whatever the heck she was doing.

"You do smell good." Alice said from somewhere to my side and I tried not to laugh.

"Alice, what are you. . . " Edward asked.

"It's okay. Bella and I are going to be great friends." Alice said cheerfully.

There was a bit of awkwardness and Jasper turned his head from me and Carlisle cleared his throat and said, "Sorry, Jasper's our newest vegetarian. It's a little difficult for him."

"It's a pleasure to meet you." Jasper said quietly.

"It's okay Jasper. You won't hurt her." Alice said loudly.

"You're okay Jaz." I whispered quietly. He seemed to relax at my words.

"All right, I'm gonna take you on a tour of the rest of the house." Edward said, clearly wanting to leave and get out of there. So did I.

Jasper turned his head to me again, walking towards me. "Are you okay mama?"

Fuck, his accent too.

"Want to get out?" Jasper asked quietly while the others were talking about how well that conversation went.

"Yes." I whispered.

I didn't even register Japser's arms or the breeze, but we were suddenly out of the house, deep in the woods.

I breathed out. "Can they still hear us?"

Jasper shook his head. "I thought you'd want somewhere private. Doesn't mean that Carlisle won't try tracking you down."

"You're very strong, you know that?" I whispered as we sat down. I pulled him into a hug from behind.

"Am I?" Jasper whispered. "I'm the newest vegetarian." He mocked Carlisle's words.

"Yes, I think you're the strongest of my kids." I murmured. "Even if Emmett is brawny, you have to deal with emotions. And as you're- as your father puts it- the newest vegetarian, you have to deal with your own bloodlust, right?"

Jasper was laying with his head in my lap now, the way I had always wished I could lay in my mother's lap, stroking my hair and telling me she was proud of me. I knew Jasper could sense the sadness coming from me, but he didn't pry. Not yet anyways.

"Yes mama." Jasper whispered.

The way he said 'Mama' in that southern accent was to die for.

"So then, you have to deal with Edward, Rose, Em, Alice, Esme, and Carlisle's bloodlust too, right?"

Jasper was silent for a moment. "I never realized. . ."

"Well I'm not entirely sure if bloodlust was an emotion so I was never entirely sure if you could feel it. But I mean, humans feel hunger and I think bloodlust is the same sort of thing as hunger so I kind've assumed that maybe you could feel it."

"Yes, you're right." Jasper whispered. After a moment of silence, staring up at the extremely tall trees around us he asked, "Why are you so sad?"

"Rose." I whispered. "And how she said things would ruin the family if things ended badly between Edward and Bella. But it's the same with Carlisle and I, isn't it? Even if my scent calms the rest of you, I'm still a blood singer to Carlisle. So. . . wouldn't it be better? Wouldn't it be better if I stopped now before one of us gets hurt? But I can't. I can't stop loving him. I don't want to stop loving him and it's going to end badly, isn't it."

Jasper sat up, pulling me into a hug. "The only way it'll end badly is if you don't become a vampire. You don't have to become one today or tomorrow or in the next few years. But eventually, you should. You'll have to. Vampires aren't meant to live without their soulmates. Especially not soulmates with the bond you and Carlisle have."

"Are there different bonds then?" I asked curiously.

"Sure. There are sibling bonds, something like what Edward, Rose, Emmett have. Alice and I are just slightly different as we weren't made or born from Carlisle. Or Sibling bonds like Carlisle and Esme. And of course, there are different love bonds too. Most vampires have tier two bonds."

"What does a. . . tier two bond feel like?" I asked. It sounded like something in a video game. You've unlocked tier two love! Congratulations!

"It means that they can go without their soulmate for extended periods of time and not feel loss or anything like that, though they might feel lonely. And if their soulmate died, they wouldn't feel better until they avenged their mate. It means that they could also move on after time. That's what Rose and Emmett have. What Alice and I have. Most vampires have that."

"Are you saying mine and Carlisle's is different?" I asked, frowning slightly.

"It might be different because you are human while you are Carlisle's soulmate." Jasper said. "But yours is a tier three which is the strongest of the bonds and also the most dangerous."

"Dangerous?" The word sent chills over my spine.

"If you two were apart for extended periods of time, months at least, it could or would be detrimental to the mate's health. Usually for the female in the relationship as they could fall into a deep depression. Their health would diminish, even if they tried to take care of themselves. In this case, if the mate died, the pain would be to great for the other and they would have to be killed lest they destroy all of civilization."

"Wow." I said. "So Carlisle and I can't be apart."

"Maybe if you had broken away in the beginning, hadn't let a bond form at all. If you'd never gone to the hospital, never interned, never met Carlisle." Jasper said. "But you've been out on dates and you've kissed and whatever- not really my business- so now there's a bond there."

"I see." I whispered. "Thank you for telling me."

"Carlisle would've told you eventually mama, but he was just worried about how you would take it."

"I know. I think he was trying to mention it last night when he was saying how he thought I might be worried that because we're soulmates, the love is forced or something like that. . . is that how he feels? Is he afraid that he only loves me because of the bond?"

"No. He really loves you." Jasper murmured. "I can feel it."

"Well if you can feel it then I'll trust it." I said with a smile, feeling much better than I had before.

"Do you want to go back to the house now?" Jasper asked, pulling out of the hug. He was so warm, just like Carlisle.

"Yeah." I whispered. In a few seconds, we were back at the house, though Jasper had dropped us off at the front door, holding it open for me.

Carlisle was down on the first floor in a flash, embracing me in his hold. "I wasn't entirely sure where you'd gone."

"Sorry. Jaz and I had to talk." I said with a small smile over my shoulder for my adopted son.

"MOM!" Alice was suddenly right there by my side.

"Alice." I muttered, pulling away from Carlisle.

"Do you want to come play baseball with us later tonight?"

I heard Emmett laugh upstairs and he shouted for my benefit, "She couldn't keep up."

"I'll beat you in air hockey." I muttered. "And I'll do it as a human too."

Emmett was on the first floor in a flash too, "What's air hockey?"

I stared at him incredulously. "You. Don't. Know. What. Air. Hockey. Is?"

"Nope." Emmett said. "So, let's go do it now."

I shook my head incredulously. "You have no good arcades here. Not even a main event."

"What the hell is main event?" Emmett asked, frustrated.

I was getting more and more frustrated by the second and then there was calm and I glared at Jaz over my shoulder.

"It's official." I said with a grin, "Emmett, I'm officially disowning you."

Jasper and Alice roared with laughter and Emmett put on a fake pouty look. "But Mama bear!!"

"I'm just kidding Em." I said before he pulled me into a bone crushing hug. "Can't. Breathe."

"Put her down Emmett." Carlisle growled.

Emmett put me down quickly. "So? Are you going to come play baseball?"

I twisted so that I could crack my back from his hug and then said, "Sure. Why not?"

Why not indeed.

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

I joined the others on the baseball field just as Edward and Alice got here. While they were all decked out in baseball gear, I was wearing black leggings, a blue and white sweatshirt crop top, and my sneakers. My hair was pulled back in a ponytail and I was wearing a Kentucky Wildcats baseball cap with the ponytail pulled through.

Carlisle and Rose were manhandling the bat to see who would bat first- Rose winning. Esme pulled Bella away from Edward saying, "Glad you're here. We need an umpire."

Jasper was in the back, swinging the bat around, his hair down on both sides, looking much better for that style. His hat on his head.

"She thinks we cheat." Emmett smirks.

"I know you cheat." Esme said while I laughed.

"Call them as you see them Bella." Esme suggested.

"Okay." Bella whispered.

"How are you?" Carlisle asked, wrapping his arms around my waist, kissing my cheek.

"Excited. I wish I could play." I said, bouncing up and down on the balls of my feet.

The lightning started, the thunder raging, and Alice called that it was time to play. And then of course, she had to show off by- when she was pitching- kicking her leg up much higher than need be.

Although, Jasper quite appreciated it.

Rosalie hit it, sounding with the thunder as she went to run the bases. I didn't particularly like thunder, so I just pretended it was the sound of the metal bat hitting the ball and not actually thunder.

Rosalie ran the bases and Edward zoomed off into the forest to get the ball. The ball came out of nowhere and Esme caught it, getting Rosalie out before she touched base.

Rosalie glared at Bella as they both stood and Carlisle clapped her on the back and muttered, "Nice Kitty."

Oooh yes. Say that again. In bed.

Brain. Please shut up.

"It was a good hit Rose." I said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

"Thanks mom." Rose murmured.

Now Carlisle was up to bat and my heart was beating ridiculously out of my chest. The way he looked so serious, the bat over his shoulder, shaking it just slightly so that it was loose in his hands while Alice prepared to throw the ball. Mmm Chefs kiss. He was a work of perfection.

He hit the ball and both Emmett and Edward went for it, crashing with each other, missing the ball as Carlisle slid into second. The slam of their bodies echoed with another roar of thunder and I winced just slightly.

Jasper was up to plate now, tossing the bat in his hands like it was a bottle. You know, tossing a water bottle or something to grab the same end. Jasper's ball went far, his tongue sticking out of his mouth, and I smirked. Jasper and Carlisle took off and I bounced up and down on the balls of my feet, hoping that Carlisle would make it to home.

Emmett however, climbed up the tree, grabbing Jasper's ball, which made Jasper out.

Rosalie hit again- though she was out- because of course- it wasn't like I could bat or anything.

Alice however, froze on the field as Carlisle was trying to run to third again. Edward's head whipped to her and I knew what that meant.

"Carlisle." I called out in a whisper.

"Stop." Alice called out in a whisper as well.

They were all suddenly running infield and I could see the fear on Carlisle's face as he zoomed to my side, throwing an arm around my waist, pulling me into him. "Carlisle?" I questioned.

"They were leaving. Then they heard us." Alice explained.

"Let's go." Edward said, grabbing Bella and my arms.

"It's to late." Carlisle said.

I wasn't sure who was coming. Probably other vampires. "If we leave out the back way then they won't see us, right?"

"They might smell you." Emmett pointed out.

"The wind is blowing the other way." I argued.

"Davina, stay back here with Edward and Bella." Carlisle muttered, heading to the front of the family as he was the head.

"We shouldn't have brought you here. I'm so sorry." Edward muttered to both of us while the rest of the family spread out like a guard in front of us.

"Edward, will they kill us?" I asked.

"You shouldn't smell to them." Edward said. "But Bella. . . "

The three other vampires appeared. Two males and a female. The female was beautiful, like they always were. Her hair was a brilliant orange which made her pale face more natural as red-heads were usually pale. She wore a white fur cloak over her shoulders, so I wasn't sure what other clothes besides her black pants she was wearing.

All three of them were barefoot.

The one in the front was African American, his skin glossy from trying to contrast with the paleness of a vampire. He wore deadlocks and his orange coat was open to reveal he was wearing no shirt underneath. In his hand was the baseball that Rosalie had just hit.

The last one was the scariest of the three. He had brown blond hair tied back in a ponytail. His eyes were dark red and terrifying. He wore a black leather jacket, blue jeans, and chains. Had mystical creatures not existed in this world and he was a normal college boy, he would probably be feared by the men and craved by the girls for being such a bad boy.

The African American man held up the ball and said, "I believe this belongs to you."

He had an accent, French, I think, and his voice was smooth. He tossed it and Carlisle caught it easily.

"Thank you." Carlisle said, his English accent just slightly thicker than normal.

"I am Laurent." He continued. "And this is Victoria and James."

I tried not to laugh, tucking my bottom lip under my teeth, but really, at that moment he said 'James' all I could think about was James the red engine from Thomas the train and I honestly couldn't help it.

Ah, the places my brain goes sometimes.

"I'm Carlisle. This is my family." Carlisle said.

"Hello." Laurent said, his eyes roving from one end with Jasper, down to the other end with me on the outside.

I nodded slightly with a small smile.

"I'm afraid your hunting activities have caused something of a mess for us." Carlisle continued, sounding slightly angry. Hunting activities? I hadn't picked up the newspaper in a while. I tried not to look surprised. Now that I thought about it, Bella had mentioned something about her dad- Charlie- being on a search team for someone who had been killed. Waylon?

"Our apologies." Laurent continued, though he didn't sound very sincere. "We didn't realize the territory had been claimed."

I tried hard not to grit my teeth. Territory? Like a fucking colony or some shit?

Food. Humans. Population. I shivered just slightly.

I felt James eyes suddenly, staring at me and I stared back, unfazed. I would not give up, no matter what. I was very stubborn. Neither of us backed down as the conversation around us continued.

"Yes, well, we maintain a permanent residence nearby." Carlisle continued, his eyes only on Laurent.

I realized, as I was staring down James' red eyes, that he probably realized by now that my eyes were brown, almost black. But then again, I remembered that Carlisle and Edward's eyes had gotten black before so maybe he'd think I was just hungry.

"Really?" Laurent asked, turning his head slightly to look at James, who of course, was looking at me.

James tilted his head slightly but I didn't move an inch.

"Well, we won't be a problem anymore." Laurent continued when nothing else was said. "We were just passing through."

"The humans were tracking us, but we led them east." Victoria's voice was a surprise to me, but though I was tempted to look at her, I didn't move. "You should be safe."

James was slowly grinning.

Carlisle made a noise that sounded like it could've been a laugh, but was more of a scoff, "Excellent."

"So," Laurent said with a slight chuckle, "could you use three more players?"

Everyone- except me- looked at Carlisle.

"Come on. Just one game." Laurent continued.

Carlisle looked down at us and then said, "Sure. Why not? A few of us were leaving. You can take their place. We'll bat first." He tossed the ball back to Laurent, but it was Victoria who caught it.

"I'm the one with the wicked curveball." She says quickly.

"Oh well I think we can handle that." Jasper says in amusement while I snort.

Everyone started to move. Laurent and Victoria turned their backs on the Cullens, heading out field. The Cullens started to move. James and I continued to stay where we were, eyes locked.

"Davina." Carlisle and Edward muttered at the same time.

Finally, James turned away and I smirked, victorious, turning my back on him quickly and flouncing towards Carlisle. "I won the staring the contest."

Carlisle sighed, sounding relieved but before anything else could be said, there was a furious breeze that ruffled all of our hair towards the nomads. Carlisle and Edward stiffened as James voice said behind me, "You brought a snack."

Edward shoved Bella behind him, but James launched himself towards me. Carlisle collided with him in mid-air, tossing him away.

The rest of the family quickly blocked Bella and I from view as Laurent and Victoria joined James.

"The girls are with us." Carlisle growled, his eyes going black and I knew Lord was going to emerge any second if they didn't back off. "I think it best if you leave."

"I can see the game is over." Laurent said, looking almost in a confused way between me and James. He held his hands out in a peaceful way and said, "We'll go now."

Laurent backed away slowly, "James."

James straightened up, eyes on me. Victoria leaned back with a snarl. And then the three of them were gone.

"Edward, get Bella and Davina out of here." Carlisle said, pushing Edward towards us.

"Carlisle." I growled. "I'm not leaving."

"Get them out of here." Carlisle repeated. Edward grabbed both Bella and I, dragging me to the jeep while Bella walked willingly.

"Edward let go." I snarled.

"No." Edward said. "It's even less safe for you than it is for Bella. You're James blood singer."

"Fuck. No I'm not." I said as he pretty much tossed me into the Jeep, shoving Bella in after me. "I'm Carlisle's blood singer."

"And now you're also James. Except, unlike Carlisle, James wants to drink you dry."

"Oh! How bloody fucking wonderful!" I snapped.

Edward started to drive and I stare angrily out of the Jeep. I was pissed that Carlisle hadn't just come with us.

"He couldn't." Edward said. "He's going to be joining the hunting party."

"What! No!" I protested.

"James is a tracker." Edward snapped. "He'll be tracking you. He'll probably check your houses first-"

"Charlie! My dad!" Bella protested.

"She's right Edward." I said.

"But what do I tell him?" Bella asked.

I hesitated. "I know. Umm, say Alice, Esme, you, and I are going on a trip to. . . um Texas for spring break. Just for three days. If it turns out to be more we can fake something. He knows how Alice is, planning things sporadically, hopefully he can just go along with it."

"Sounds like a plan." Bella breathed. We pulled into Charlie's driveway and the minute her and Edward got out- Edward to tell Charlie what Alice had done- and Bella to pack, I called Sam's phone.

"Sam?" I asked when the phone was picked up.

"He's in the shower right now." Emily answered.

"I don't have time to wait. I need you to leave him a message. It's important." I gasped.

"What?" Emily asked quickly.

"There are vampires in Forks. Not the Cullens. Three nomads. One of them is leaving though, I think, I'm not sure. But their names are James and Victoria. They're hunting me and Bella. I don't want Sam to join any hunting parties, I just need him to keep an eye on Bella's dad because James might use him for leverage, do you understand?"

"Just have him keep an eye on Bella's dad?"

"Yes. If Billy- Jacob's father- if he can get Charlie down there all day for say the next three days, that would be fantastic." I continued. "I have to go, Bella's coming back."

I quickly slammed the phone shut. Bella got into her own car though, driving away and I panicked before Alice slid into the driver's seat. "We're going to follow them. That was also very smart thinking your part."

"What was?" I asked.

"Both Sam and the excuse for Bella being out of town." Alice explained, driving behind Bella's truck.

Emmett hopped into the bed of the truck in front of us.

"Although," Alice continued, "I don't know how I feel about werewolves joining in."

I scoffed, "Sam's nice."

"To you." Was all Alice said.

I didn't reply. In a few moments, we were pulling up to the house.

I sprinted past Edward, Bella, and Emmett, wanting to see Carlisle.

Through the door however, Carlisle and Laurent of all people- vampires- was standing there.

"Wait." Carlisle said to Edward who was immediately protective of Bella and I. "He came to warn us about James."

"This isn't my fight and I've grown tired of his games." Laurent said, his eyes roving between me, Bella, and Edward. "But he's got unparallel senses, absolutely lethal. I've never seen anything like him in my three hundred years."

So he was around the same age as Carlisle.

"And the woman, Victoria, don't underestimate her."

And with those wonderful words of wisdom and joy, he walked out the door.

Carlisle took my hand, pulling me after him towards the garage where Jasper had just entered with Emmett saying, "I've had to fight our kind before. They're not easy to kill."

"But not impossible." Emmett added.

Carlisle let go of my hand, opening one of the cabinets saying, "We'll tear him apart and burn the pieces. I don't relish the thought of killing another creature, even a sadistic one like James." He was pulling money out of the cabinet and I wondered what the hell he needed it for.

"What if he kills one of us first?" Rosalie asked the question brooding in my mind.

My phone rang and I picked it up without thinking, "Hello?"

"Davina where are you?"

Aw fuck nuggets.

"Ah. Sam. Hi." I muttered under my breath, walking away from Bella. "Look-"

"Where are you?" Sam growled.

"Cullen house. You can't come here. You know that."

"Then come to La Push." Sam said in a voice that said he wasn't arguing this one.

"Hmm, yes, well, the thing is, I have to go with Bella and we're going to Arizona so-"

"Come to La Push." Sam argued, "You'll be safer here than anywhere else."

It truly was tempting. I could go to Arizona or I could go to La Push. "I don't want to put you in danger."

"We can handle a vampire or two." Sam muttered.

"No! There's only three of you." I protested. "At least with the Cullens they have seven!"

"Davina, I can protect you. We can protect you. Just come to La Push. Put the leech leader on the phone."

"Who?" I asked angrily.

Sam growled. "The Doctor."

The phone was plucked out of my hand. Carlisle was standing there, "She's not going to La Push."

Sam must be arguing on the other side because they had a quick, heated debate before Carlisle hung up, handing the phone back to me. "You're going with Bella."

"Are you coming?" I asked.

Carlisle shook his head. "James will expect me to be with you."

I pouted, "Carlisle please."

Carlisle pulled me into a hug while Edward and Rosalie argued about whether she was going to wear Bella's clothing for the tracker's scent.

"Davina, I love you. Please. Go with Jasper and Alice."

I swallowed. "Right. I love you too."

Carlisle kissed me on the lips and I pressed hard against them, trying to be as close to him as I could.

"Rosalie, put the damn jacket on. Bella is family and we protect our family." Carlisle growled over his shoulder, turning back to me and kissing me again.

"Come on Mama." Jasper said, grabbing my arm. I glanced one last time at Carlisle, letting Jasper lead me to the car.

I swallowed hard.

Alice and Jasper pulled out of the car at the same time as the other car did, leaving Edward in the garage.

I quickly fell asleep in the back of the car.

[xclowniex]

I agree with your post about starlight 100%. My issue is that these are the types of Jews spewing Nazi shit back at us which will hurt us in the long run so how do we deal with it? This is a sincere question. Starlight is Jewish of course and denying their Jewishness makes no sense but my issue is this enabling of Nazi rhetoric and how the rest of us will pay for it. Jews who are willing to be tokenized and are enabling and supporting antisemitism do pose a serious threat to us so what do we do?

I am assuming you are talking about the post where I defend starlight against someone who said that they have no right to speak hebrew because of their opinion (which is still a fucked up thing to say, starlight did not deserve that one bit).

I don't feel comfortable making this post as I do not have any jews stored in the ol' memory bank besides starlight who have posts things which can be considered internalized antisemitism and I do not feel comfortable making a call out post for a person who has no reach beyond tumblr, is obviously going through it atm and isn't posting just full mask off stuff.

Not saying you are saying/doing this nonnie but I do just want to say that I do find it in poor taste to be putting all the blame jews going through internalized antisemitism/self-tokenization as those who eat up internalized antisemitism/self-tokenization also have a part to play.

[dolokhoded]

80s jesus 'verse disciple headcanons pt. 3 (jesus, judas, jb)

my sincere apologies i know i said i'd bost judas "in a little bit" about. 2 weeks ago. here they are. @ that one anon who asked me about judas, my brain works very slowly, there he is

JESUS

ok starting off jesus is gender wacky. idk what he is i use he/him for him but calling him a man feels off. he's my favorite gender identity which is wack.

being somewhat divine does that to you you don't really care for the labels society has completely made up. ANYWAYS

i don't even know what i'm gonna write for jesus i'm sure you know what kinda guy jesus was. 

okay. grew up in nazareth with his parents miriam and yosef and his siblings 

(don't ask me why im using the hebrew form of names for the parents but not jesus himself. it's because we have a hundred marys.)

he has three siblings, two sisters and one brother, and he's older than all of them with a pretty big age gap, he was kind of an accidental pregnancy

(or, y'know, the son of god. but who knows ! )

had a relatively normal life compared to everyone else. i guess reparations for how well his life went last time idk.

jesus is also the only one out of them all who has somewhat of a sense that they've all existed together somewhere before ? he doesn't clearly remember any of it, but he did recognize his disciples when he met them.

he also has a lot of nightmares. they're vague, but very painful.

anyways aside from that pretty decent upbringing. he always knew that he wanted to help people as much as he can.

he learned carpentry from his dad and although he did study political science he ended up just running his father's shop.

however of course he also runs his organization ! which i really struggle to pick a main cause for because like it's jesus ? i feel like he'd care about anything that helps people he's just trying to make the world a little better.

idk. i'll think about it.

before he was doing that he was doing a lot of activist and volunteer work alongside his cousin john ! you guys know cousin john !

and therefore already had a lot of peers and a lot of friends who then followed him and supported him. the first being andrew, who was very close with john and was there when there was just talk between the three of them and maybe some more friends about jesus starting his own cause

aside from carpentry, which he obviously likes and is very good at, jesus is actually a little bit of a creative in general.

he just started with woodcarving with his leftover supply for fun and then slowly moved on to clay and occasionally even sculpting.

likes to give stuff shape anyways

cares so much for his whole team and always reminds them to be kind to themselves and take care of themselves however he has not practiced self care a single DAY in his entire LIFE

will overwork himself to exhaustion if someone doesn't physically drag him away. has before.

for an all loving creature he has the emotional intelligence of a doorknob

dgmw he's great. he's kind to everyone and all that. he's understanding.

still has not known what the fuck is going on a day in his entire life. each time any of his friends looks the slightest bit off he comes to the wildest possible conclusion.

most of the time said conclusion being that it's his fault

he might be a tiny bit self-centered. usually not in a positive way towards himself either, it just means he thinks he's the cause of everything bad happening in his life.

feels like the world revolves around him, just in a very pessimistic way

but he's got a lot on his plate can you blame him.

love how i went "yeah he's relatively doing pretty well" and then gave him a bunch of issues lol sorry jesus

JUDAS

welcome, queers, i know you're here for him, here he is

judas is an only child and comes from a very rich family.

his parents own an insurance company and have like a bunch of buildings they're renting.

generational wealth, basically. it's all inherited and they're making a shit ton of money out of nothing it's all already set up.

judas' family is also very religious.

and i know that so far two out of the two times i've said that it means the parents are assholes but i swear it's not like that james and john's parents are also religious it just wasn't relevant.

but yeah judas' parents are, in fact, assholes. judas was very involved at the temple from very early childhood.

which unfortunately led to him being abused by religious officials that he could supposedly trust and grew up with.

especially once he started growing into his teens and came to the realization that he very much Does Not like women.

which his parents didn't love either.

somewhere around that time he started to distance himself from his family, especially once he moved away for university. judas studied political science but halfway through kind of changed career plans and double majored in journalism

which was very demanding but he did it anyways !

in university he meets jesus. jesus is in his third year when he's in his first and helps him out a lot. they're both very politically active too and always meet at protests and charity events etcetcetc so, yeah, they know each other. and sure there's something there but judas is very closed off and they drift apart when jesus graduates.

oh, judas also has depression, he was diagnosed at age ten, his family was very ashamed of that as well.

in his last year of university, he falls out with his parents once and for all.

they already weren't close, judas was very hurt by them and obviously he had a lot of personal issues with them but to him the line came when he found out about a lot of things that were going on behind closed doors in his parents' company, they were scamming a lot of innocent people and also partnering with a lot of . really just scum of the earth kind of people.

judas got rightfully very upset and had absolutely zero reason to keep covering up any of this. so he didn't ! and obviously that was very disastrous for the company.

judas gets disowned. not legally, but his parents cut all ties with him. not that he wasn't going to do that himself anyways.

obviously though as a consequence he suddenly has very very limited money. luckily for him he's currently in a relationship with his guy, isaac, who's very happy to let him move into his apartment. it would benefit him too to share the rent anyways. as it turns out, isaac's not a great guy ! judas himself isn't too well either so they have a very weird very unhealthy very codependent relationship and though they fight a lot it takes judas two years until he finally finds the strength to walk out on him.

judas didn't think that through very well because he doesn't really have anywhere to go. to his luck, guess who he runs into !

it's jesus. of course it's jesus this is the dolokhoded bible where the main character is still jesus, no matter how much i love to talk about james and simon.

jesus is on his way to a meeting with his team and he's like hey why don't you come along. and judas does. and that's it, he meets the whole gang, he ends up rooming with andrew and philip for a while before he gets his own place.

and, y'know. he does, eventually, in an excruciatingly slow process that tests the patience of all of their friends, get together with jesus.

okay i prob have to write this too uhh sad stuff ahead judas attempts once.

he's spiraling and overworking himself and hiding it pretty well. has some petty fight with john that jesus scolds him about and then has another fight with jesus over that and overall it's not going swell.

strangely enough it's john who decides to check on him after that. he has not gotten along with judas a day in his life but he could tell how upset he was and jesus is hurt and also a little petty and isn't gonna go do it himself so he decides he might as well. to his horror he stumbles into. well. yeah

he survives.

he moves in with jesus, john and matthew for a while after that.

(a lot of them are rooming they don't have much money)

goes back to therapy too.

okay sad stuff over. it gets better. he's doing well. gets a job at an independent news page and becomes quite known among his circles for his work too.

JOHN THE BAPTIST

or JB.

he does not baptize anyone. his first name is john baptist. don't ask me the logic of being named after himself when he hasn't existed yet for people to be named after him ok making an au of a defining characteristic of current human society is fucking difficult

jesus' cousin. his mother, elisheba, is miriam's sister. she's a good fifteen years older than her, and was in her fourties the year that both jesus and jb were born so her getting pregnant was a bit of a surprise.

grew up with jesus and they're very close. they studied together and they theorized together and they discussed everything together.

very big on environmental activism. and by consequence very very anti-capitalism. very anti-fast fashion, for multiple reasons. also vegan :).

jb genuinely believes the human race is the universe's biggest abomination and we should just go extinct. he's not wrong.

he doesn't pick favorites (but he does and they're andrew and philip they're his favorites)

philip was sort of his right hand

he's kind of there to encourage all the shit jesus can't if he doesn't want absolute chaos and zero planning. give simon a pat on the back for getting into fights with racists and all that.

generally he's a little more radical that jesus is. they don't agree on everything but they both respect each other's stances.

he's so well read. it's obvious too, they're all educated obviously, but this guy talks and you can tell he knows his shit. it's very impressive.

and not even in the sense of being well informed and reading theory he knows literature he knows art he's so cultured and i don't like using the word cultured because it often brings to mind a very western very white very high class perception of "culture" but that's not what i'm talking about here.

jb calls himself an atheist in a more political sense. he believes that people shouldn't rely on some higher force to give humanity and morality substance and should instead search for meaning inside those things alone, otherwise they won't have the right motivations to be moral and therefore their beliefs will have no strong foundation.

he grew up jewish but his relationship with his faith is very personal to him and stays between him and god. he doesn't care to discuss it with anyone, except maybe jesus a few times.

sort of everyone's go-to person for advice. he's there to talk the stupid out of them.

his mother was a seamstress, and he learned from her. he likes to make a lot of his own clothes.

professionally, however, he's a translator. he speaks hebrew, english, greek, russian and arabic. (also a little bit of french and german. he's not qualified to translate those though) (is constantly in the process of learning more)

he just fixated on different alphabets as a teenager a little too hard.

[neverwritewhatyouknow]

Fuck it, here’s a post about Ted Malawer.

Playwrite, trained opera singer, literary agent, and co-writer for RWRB.

I knew nothing about him prior to about fifteen minutes ago.

He wrote one play called Daddy Issues: a gay romp through history starring Adolf Hitler!

The synopsis: Von Blergh is an aspiring Jewish artist in New Rochelle. Adolf Hitler is an aspiring artist in Germany. As they mature, their lives intertwine in ways neither of them thought possible, leading to the discovery of love, the pursuit of passion, and their own coming-of-age and ultimate destruction. A fast-paced, dark comedy set against a historical re-imagining of the early-to-mid twentieth century.

The reviews say it’s a lot of fun.

Now, when I think Hitler, I don’t think “lots of fun.” Call my opinion unpopular, I guess. And I’m not immune to comedy, The Producers had an entire thing about a Hitler musical (Springtime for Hitler, anyone?), but that was the joke. The Producers made fun of people making Hitler shows because it’s weird, it’ll make money, but it’s weird and harmful. Ted’s play is tagged as being a satire… but that doesn’t matter, it’s still a play about Hitler finding love and then starting the Holocaust over a breakup. Ted said, let’s downplay the entirety of a genocide that killed 6million people, because I can make it gay and funny.

Anyway so Ted made gay Hitler fanfiction. It starred Robin De Jesús, who I personally really love and have seen basically every film he’s in, but uh, were there no gay Jewish actors in New York who wanted to play Hitler’s love interest? Hmm… wonder why.

Next!

Ted wrote a little thing and described the Jewish character as the following: “He is neurotic and hungry — in other words, Jewish.”

Ah, yes, the classic “Jews are neurotic” thing haha. While you’re at it, why don’t you make a joke about women staying in the kitchen and someone taking your wife. Calling Jews neurotic is dead. It’s a dead joke. It’s dumb, it’s untrue, and it’s old. It’s a stupid, stupid stereotype joke that has become literally the biggest way Jews can be presented in media.

He then uses the whole “First they came” poem(?) as the basis of the opening, but changes all the words. First They Came is a WW2 writing about how they come for the groups you’re not and if you don’t speak out, by the time they get to you, there’s no one there to help you. It’s powerful. Anyway, he says “they came for the Jews but I didn’t speak out because I had a nose job, a good one, so I could pass.”

Ah, yes, Jews have big noses, but once you get yours ripped off you can hide your Jewishness and no one ever has to know you were a Jew. Isn’t it so great to pass? What the fuck, Ted. Come on, man.

More, the character refers to himself as Anne Frank on PrEp.

Says that he would rather be buried in a Jewish cemetery than get a tattoo. In some places you can’t be buried if you have a tattoo since it’s technically against religion rules, but that’s pretty relaxed nowadays from what I’ve seen. Like, pretty sure only the really religiously places might reject someone on tattoo basis. It was in the context of saying that the main character made a group of friends, but they dropped him when he wouldn’t get a tattoo, because he’d rather be buried in his family plot. So basically saying that by picking his religion, he loses all his friends. Basically Ted is saying that if you pick being overtly Jewish over fitting in, you lose out.

But then it talks about, of course, the overbearing mom wanting her son to be a doctor and never leave home. Because of course all Jewish moms are overbearing and want a doctor in the family. I’m literally so over these stereotypes.

Mention about temple membership being expensive. That made me laugh, because it is kinda expensive. Butttttt also, you don’t have to pay for weekly services. Those are free. You can join a temple and pay, you get better high holy day tickets that way, your kids can go to Hebrew school, etc, but the majority of temples just let you walk in. Because we’re not, like, a money making organization. But obviously Ted had to make sure the audience knew that Jews have a whole money thing going, so he made sure to talk about how expensive going to temple is. Tell us more how you feel there, Teddy!

Talk about low self-esteem and a bad stomach.

I think Ted has low self-esteem and takes it out on himself by writing some…interesting…stuff.

Ha ha ha another classic Jew™️ moment. A bad tummy. 1. There are genetic things (I’m not a doctor don’t ask me) that make Ashkenazic Jews more prone to gastrointestinal problems, but NOT everyone!!! 2. I repeat not. Every. Jew. Has. Stomach. Trouble!!!!!!!!! Every race/ethnicity/group of people has shared genetic markers, that’s how DNA works, and different races have different issues. But, god, it’s so damn annoying for this to be what Jews are known for. I swear to god I’ve had people ask me if I should be eating something because I’m Jewish, like, what the fuck? Anyway, Ted thinks Jews are only a collection of stereotypes.

Hasidic drag queen named Torah Portion murdered someone. First off, lazy name. You can do better than that. There’s like a bunch online. Regardless. Torah Portion is a terrible drag queen name. And is more telling that Ted is saying that the Torah killed someone. We’re seeing his inner thoughts here for sure. This is a man who does not like his Jewish religion or being seen as visibly Jewish. Plus, Hasidic being specified really shows what he thinks of the other branches of Judaism.

Lastly, the Jewish character says he’s done a lot of mitzvahs, like selling a blind girl to the zoo.

Because Jews love money and are awful people haha, right Ted?

So what’s the point of this post, I’m sure you’re asking. It’s to show that self-hatred is big in the Jewish community. It’s the whole “I’ll punch myself so you don’t have to” thing. It’s why there’s so many Jewish comedians. We can make fun of ourselves so you don’t. It’s a survival thing. But, there becomes a time when it stops being for survival or for comedy, and it becomes believed by society and by that Jew themself. Ted wrote these things because it’s what’s expected of a Jewish character. To be full of stereotypes. He wrote a gay Hitler play, I don’t even have any idea where to go with that. So, it’s easy to see that Ted is someone who is embarrassed by who he is, and hides that in self-deprecation on stage. It’s literally the self-hating Jew trope that some Jews use to pretend that they’re not different, they’re not like those other Jews, they’re cool Jews. Well, Ted, imho you just seem kinda like you hate that you were born Jewish and, like, kinda gross with your Hitler fanfic

When RWRB erased their only Jewish character for the screen, was it Ted saying to do so? Because I don’t want a man who thinks exploring a Hitler romance is funny or saying that a nose job means a Jew isn’t really a Jew anymore because they can pass, making the calls for which Jews get to exist and which don’t. Like, Jews are so little good representation, and based on Ted’s past stuff and the fact that RWRB literally erased their Jewish character, it really looks like the brain trust there (Matthew, Casey, Ted) don’t think Jews are worthy of anything better. That Nora couldn’t possibly be Jewish onscreen, because she’s not riddled with stereotypes (I mean… not any more than usual and easily changed), instead she was a strong character first and Jewish second. Which, to Matt, CMQ, and Ted, I guess they don’t think a Jew can be that

So, Ted, what the actual fuck?

[olderthannetfic]

Goyim goysplaining shit to me is why I don't write Jewish characters anymore. "Well actually that name is this AGAB so the character isn't NB they're *insert AGAB here*" "well actually according to Google you shouldn't have used the word candle you should have said this" "well actually goy is a slur and it's not bad of commenters to use 'Hebrews' to refer to all Jewish people even though I *will* get mad if you call Catholics 'Latins' in response" "well actually it's a kippah not a yarmulke you can't use the word yarmulke it's a kippah" "well actually Jewish people are white so why is this Beta Israeli character not white Jewish = white" "uh excuse me but your Jewish characters didn't exchange Hebrew names that's really unrealistic" "uh excuse me why is your character breaking kosher to stay alive? everything I see on TV says Jews would rather die than break kosher and live - no I don't know or care that pikuach nefesh is a thing I just wanted to correct you on the proper way to write a Jewish character" etc. Whether it's goyim commenting on Undertale fanfics to say all Jewish people would be Red souls (because we don't have individual souls, personalities and colors like the non-Jewish characters, that'd be silly) because we survived the Holocaust or goyim saying Jewish Bruce Wayne makes sense because Jews have all the money, or being confused on how you can headcanon anyone as Jewish who isn't white because Jewish people are white (which is a surprise to my Iranian Jewish self but go off I guess) there is always someone there to tell you that you're not human like other people. These people would never go "oh Latinos all have Red souls and the same personality, definitely" or "Muslim Bruce Wayne makes sense, those people all have oil money" but they'll say antisemitic shit right to your face and then have the gall to be annoyed when you don't like it.

This is why I pulled all my fic without leaving copies up for archives. "B-but I love your fic it's the only multichaptered one for this rarepair!" Well you didn't respect me enough not to say Jews have all the money, so fuck you. "Nooo I loved that fic it had such a good magic system!" Yeah well I didn't love being told my "race" shares a single personality type/soul color so tough shit.

And then afterwards of course they write "Jewish Batfam" fic where there's 1 line in the entire thing where one character mentions Hanukkah once and they pat themselves on the back for being such good, diverse, inclusive writers. They're so woke and accepting and galaxy brained, devoid of prejudice, aren't you going to pat them on the back for clogging up Jewish related tags with fic where skipping one line could erase all presence of Judaism from it? No? Well then why don't you go write your own fic then?!

It's a rhetorical question, but here's the non-rhetorical answer: I don't go write my own fic because I'm tired of having to hear Jewish people talked about the way y'all talk about Tolkien's elves or Undertale's monsters and having to advocate for the idea of treating Jewish people like people is exhausting work.

Literally the only fandom I've ever been in that didn't go "oh well that's just fandom! if you don't like it don't write fics lol" was Star Trek. And even then, you venture outside of AO3 at your own risk.

--

[thenightlymirror]

We had a bit of a snow day yesterday.

The blizzard took out two suburban Merkavas who smashed into each other on Church street sending me out of the way. Then when I got to the cemetery, Manuel was still plowing the entrance, so I had to drive around the block until there was safe passage.

The internet was out immediately and stayed out the rest of the day. That’s Cisco phones and everything. No email. No printers. This happened once before and I asked the Help Desk to send someone to inspect the router, and they closed the heat ticket two days later. So here we are.

I just spent the day organizing all these packets I have to scan. But then we have burials this weekend so how the hell am I supposed to print tags? Only solution, I was just going to handwrite them, was to drive to the funeral home down the street.

Now, background, I’m in love with everyone who works at this funeral home. More or less. Ron, is the funniest meanest fuck alive. He’ll call the office and just start going in on somebody, and everyone else will know who I’m talking to based on how I’m laughing. Pretty sure he calls me a hermaphrodite behind my back. Fair. He keeps trying to get me to work for him.

The girls are totally insane. There’s a certain type of woman that works for this Jewish funeral home that can only be described as Exactly Tony’s Type. Who the fuck is hiring these women?

This one girl, we’ll call her Margot (though that belies how hot her actual name is) calls the office, and for some reason we just immediately decide to pretend we’re in love with each other. As a bit. A little song and dance I like to call Borderline Personality Disorder. And then she walks in, and she’s the hottest fucking girl alive. What have I done?

Anyway, my irony poisoning is as such that I am able to make it seem like a joke and that I am not insane the whole time, somehow. And it is really just a bit. It’s a great bit.

But I walk into this funeral home from the blizzard and, boom, Margot is right there. She jumps up and does this little anime girl curtsy. Fucking dying. “It’s the love of my life!” We start going in, but truth be told, I was so nervous. I totally psyched myself out. Fucking hilarious.

So we don’t know each other at all, and in between staring into each others eyes and fawning, we’ll just have these funny conversations that are like, oh yeah, so, this is what my life is like. She gets a phone call, I get the computer going.

Everybody is popping in to Margot’s office to say hi. Ron’s got these three little orthodox boys, I swear to god little boys, from Chabad down the street to bless him for a service. They look like they’re hooking him up to the internet, wrapping the telefilm around his arm. He’s going in on these little boys about “So why are you digging tunnels to steal Christian babies now?” Hahahaha these are little boys studying to become rabbis. They had the whole line down.

This funeral home hired this new young guy, Dan, with long hair. I swear, again, the hottest fucking guy alive. How do they keep getting away with this! They wrap him up too. Ron’s explaining in front of the boys how they’re in a cult. Haha I’m trying to show these boys respect. I love these kids.

I realize I’m around a bunch of people who speak Hebrew, so I utilize some child labor to check the spelling on this monument I’m working on, and of course it’s all fucked up. These family’s just trust a whole line of people with no familiarity with the language at all to make this thing that’s going to last a couple hundred years, and as I learn the language it’s like, Oh shit, I’m in a graveyard full of typos.

But they confirm this Ahron spelling I have for this guy is legit, so I figure I should head back. Margot jumps up into my arms and I lift her off of her feet for a hug. I figure when I love a place, you gotta dip in and out. Don’t overstay your welcome. I can’t imagine I’m great in large doses anyway.

Everyone else in the cemetery has left for the day already. Everyone in my office has been gone half the week anyway as soon as they heard it was going to snow for a few hours. I’m in a beatific ecstasy.

[mariacallous]

At around 8 am local time the morning of October 7, Haaretz’s cyber and disinformation reporter, Omer Benjakob, was woken by his wife at their home in the historic port city of Jaffa. Something was happening in southern Israel, she said, but Benjakob shrugged it off, presuming “another round of the same shit.” Flare-ups between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and militants in southern Israel are not uncommon. “No, no,” Benjakob’s wife insisted. “It’s more serious.”

There was nothing yet on television or state media except unverified reports of casualties. The authorities were silent. In response to requests from Haaretz, the IDF said the situation was “under review.” On social media, a different story was unfolding. There were clips of dead IDF soldiers. Paragliders descending on a rave in the Negev desert, 3 miles from the $1.1 billion militarized Gaza-Israel Barrier. Militants commandeering IDF military vehicles. “You’re seeing videos of kidnapping. Hamas guys going over the border, and then like shoot-’em-up-style videos going in kibbutz houses,” Benjakob says, still sounding stunned. Like many other Israelis that morning, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Telegram was already familiar to many Israelis, who, among other things, often procure cannabis through the app. Sustained government pressure on the country’s press had also driven people in search of alternative news sources, Benjakob says. Previous escalations of violence tended to coincide with an uptick of activity on Telegram. Now the Hamas attacks brought a surge of users. “Hundreds of thousands are signing up for Telegram from Israel and the Palestinian Territories,” Pavel Durov, Telegram’s Russian founder, posted on his public channel on October 8, adding that the company was bringing support for Hebrew and Arabic to the app. “Everyone affected should have reliable access to news and private communication in these dire times,” Durov said.

Maria Rashed, a longtime resident of Tel Aviv who recently moved to London, had flown home to Nazareth for her sister’s engagement party the night before the October 7 attacks. “It was overwhelming to wake up facing war,” she tells WIRED. A Palestinian who grew up in a Christian family, Rashed is now an independent journalist. The morning of October 7, she scoured mainstream platforms, especially Instagram. But in the absence of official information, she wanted to see for herself how Hamas fighters had entered Israel. “The only way for me to do that was to go on Telegram, enter the channel related to Hamas’ press team,” she says. “And there you could see unfiltered videos of the attack.”

During the course of the day, Telegram, which has 800 million users worldwide, became the main source of videos and information spreading to other social media platforms, including X, Instagram, and TikTok, where content was being reposted with little to no verification.

In one open source intelligence war-watching group on Telegram, Benjakob saw videos of IDF forces being humbled—basic quad drones dropping grenades on Israel’s state-of-the-art Mark IV Merkava tanks, followed by footage of soldiers fleeing their vehicles and being captured by Hamas fighters. But Benjakob couldn’t be sure if the videos were real. “All the [official] Israeli groups are silent. The official government groups are silent,” he says. “Fucking crazy.”

Five hours after the attacks started, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that his country was at war. With little to no official information, many desperate Israelis were not just watching violent videos released by Hamas; they were also getting caught up in a mess of conspiracy theories. In some groups, the attacks were already being blamed on the IDF for having betrayed Netanyahu. Other conspiracy theory groups on Telegram and X claimed it was all a false-flag operation by the Israeli prime minister. “One of the biggest fronts Israel failed on, and one of the biggest things that helped create panic in Israeli society, was mis- and disinformation during the first 72 hours of this thing,” Benjakob says.

While videos and images of victims were soon going viral on major social networks, the most extreme content can all be traced back to Telegram. Benjakob describes Hamas’ real-time broadcasting of its attack on Israel as “psychological warfare.”

“As [Hamas] entered Israel, there was a digital onslaught launched as well,” says Benjakob. It was “insane” to see militants jumping the border fence, old women being taken away, people being murdered in their beds. “It’s honestly beyond anything the Israeli psyche has experienced, at least in my lifetime.”

The weaponization of Telegram played a key role in this psychological attack, sources argue. The platform’s lack of robust content moderation, alongside its sprawling honeycomb of public channels and groups, enabled content to rapidly reach millions of people.

Although Apple and Google, which host Telegram in their app stores, have now begun asking the company to ban Hamas’ main channels, Telegram has otherwise declined to block channels disseminating extreme content. In a post on his public channel on October 13, Durov alluded to the difficulty of policing speech in a conflict, and cited a Hamas warning before a strike on the Israeli city of Ashkelon as a reason not to act: “Would shutting down their channel help save lives—or would it endanger more lives?”

As with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Telegram, which is headquartered in Dubai, has once again found itself at the center of a complex geopolitical and humanitarian crisis. How this happened—not once, but twice—reveals the outsize power of one of the world's most tight-lipped technology companies. More than a dozen interviews with sources on the ground, analysts, and former Telegram employees reveal the power of the platform to quickly spread unfiltered content ahead of traditional media, as well as the true extent of Hamas’ weaponization of the app—and what seems to be an ideological aversion to interfere at the upper echelons of Telegram.

The Weaponization of Telegram

Hamas accounts have been banned from most social media platforms for years. But, when it launched its attack on Israel on October 7, Hamas had a huge presence on Telegram. The platform’s potential to rapidly disseminate easily downloadable and sharable content made it a crucial weapon. Hamas’ Telegram channels grew rapidly in the first five days of the conflict. Qassam Brigades, the channel dedicated to the organization’s military wing, tripled in size from 205,000 to nearly 620,000 subscribers, alongside a tenfold increase in the number of views per post, according to analysis by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab). In the year prior to the attacks, the channel had only grown by 20,000 followers. Before the takedown requests from Google and Apple, the Qassam Brigades channel was nearing 800,000 subscribers. It is currently down to roughly 670,000 subscribers.

DFRLab analyst Layla Mashkoor followed the October 7 attacks in real-time on Telegram. One of the most-viewed videos she saw featured professionally filmed and edited footage of armed paragliders landing on sandy terrain and storming buildings. It isn’t clear from when or where the video was filmed. Other footage, seemingly recorded on body cameras and phones, shows fighters crossing the Gaza-Israel Barrier and exchanging fire. There are also scenes of Hamas fighters dragging bloodied IDF soldiers from burning tanks. Cameras pan over slain Israeli soldiers in the aftermath of an attack. This video, and others like it, have received more than 700,000 views apiece on Telegram.

“On the actual day of the attack, Hamas was very prepared to spread their message,” says Mashkoor. “We saw highly produced content and there was a more sophisticated media strategy than we've previously seen from them. They definitely had content ready to go, and then their ability to post and upload in real time as the attack was unfolding also shows there was a degree of media strategy,” she adds.

Mashkoor argues that the vacuum left by Israeli authorities let Hamas take control of the narrative in those first few hours. The delay in any official response from Israel meant that Hamas could effectively shape the conversation. By the evening of October 7, the IDF, which had been concentrating on X, began posting more regularly on Telegram. By then Mashkoor was already observing a “very clear pipeline” of images and videos from Telegram to X.

Mashkoor watched as content first uploaded to the Qassam Brigades Telegram channel was reshared by supporters and news outlets, before proliferating all over Telegram and spreading to other social platforms. This pipeline meant that facts were distorted and events were exaggerated or misinterpreted. “A lot of the content is also obviously in Arabic, which adds to some of the confusion when people might be using machine translation while trying to share real-time updates,” says Mashkoor.

Other channels became popular, too. Gaza Now, which the DFRLab describes as “Hamas aligned,” doubled its 350,000 subscribers in the first 24 hours of the crisis, while the average number of views in the first five days increased tenfold. The channel currently has more than 1.9 million subscribers and consistently reposts Hamas content.

Hamas’ own channels still played the commanding role. Analysts at SITE Intelligence Group, a consultancy which monitors the Qassam Brigades channel, claim that Hamas’ Telegram strategy totally changed on October 7. Whereas before it was somewhat dated, now it was specifically designed for “2023 virality,” SITE says. Livestreams were accompanied by a deluge of short, branded clips that could easily be shared. “I couldn’t believe what Hamas was posting,” says Rita Katz, SITE’s executive director and founder. She believes the group’s strategy was partly inspired by the Islamic State’s playbook.

Katz alleges that Hamas’ social media activity has been effective in cultivating rare support across disparate radical Islamist groups around the world, whether Sunni or Shia. “It’s the first time anything like this has happened,” she claims.

Without Telegram, this would have been impossible, argues Katz. “What you can do on Telegram, you can’t do anywhere else. It allows for quick uploads and sharing, to utilize automated bots, to stay anonymous. No other platform comes close.” Katz points to what she claims is an alleged inconsistency in Telegram’s actions given Durov’s stated refusal to move against Hamas’ channels despite the platform removing other groups.

Telegram used to be the app of choice for Islamic State (IS) and other jihadist groups. When asked about this in an interview in 2015, Durov replied that IS would simply find another app if kicked off his. “I don’t think we should feel guilty about this,” he said. “I still think we’re doing the right thing—protecting our users’ privacy.” Shortly afterward, the Islamic State carried out a series of attacks in Paris, killing 130 people, earning Telegram widespread criticism. Telegram subsequently banned 78 IS channels, created a bot to track and eliminate new IS channels, and cooperated with Europol.

This didn’t stop Durov from indulging in a spot of shitposting when, in 2017, he shared a photo of himself on Twitter with the caption “My new passport photo is strangely suitable for media articles about terrorists using Telegram 🤔”, and followed a few days later by changing his profile picture on VK, the Russian social network he ran from 2006 to 2014, to a photoshopped amalgam of his face and the body of an armed IS suicide bomber. That image is still the background image for what appears to be Durov’s YouTube channel.

Only yesterday, October 30, Durov posted a meme of the same image to his Russian-language Telegram channel with the words “Persecuting people on the basis of nationality or religion is unacceptable,” in reaction to Telegram’s blocking of a channel linked to the mob that surrounded a plane arriving in Russia’s mostly Muslim region of Dagestan from Israel. “Channels calling for violence (as in the screenshot above) will be blocked for violating the rules of Telegram, Google, Apple and the entire civilized world,” Durov wrote. While human rights defenders will welcome this rare intervention from Durov and Telegram, the choice to use his IS militant meme may raise eyebrows.

Ruslan Trad, a researcher at the Atlantic Council's DFRLab, argues that IS has had a major influence on how other militant Islamist groups use social media. “IS has shown how to reach a wider audience and how to process content in such a way that it evokes both fear and admiration, and also reaches users who have not been relevant before.” But, he adds, Hamas, unlike IS, maintains international contacts, and many governments don’t regard it as a terrorist group, particularly in Asia and Latin America. “Hamas is also an enemy of the Islamic State,” Trad says.

Even so, Hamas’ ability to widely share images and videos of its attacks have the potential to inspire further violence, Katz argues. “Unless Telegram immediately takes action,” she says, “this is going to escalate and be a much bigger problem. Because this will lead to more violence around the world.” And for that, Katz claims, Telegram will be in no small part responsible.

Inside Telegram

In a bid to understand how Telegram is handling its role in the crisis, WIRED contacted three senior employees: founder and CEO Pavel Durov, vice president Ilya Perekopsky, and head of communications, Mike Ravdonikas. None responded. Neither did Telegram’s press spokesperson. All anyone outside Telegram has to go on is Durov’s public channel, where he has posted twice about the crisis: first on October 8, when he announced large numbers of new signups in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories by people in search of “reliable access to news,” then on October 13, when he claimed that Telegram’s moderators and unspecified “AI tools” were removing “millions of obviously harmful content.”

But, he went on, “tackling war-related coverage is seldom obvious,” highlighting Hamas’ warning to civilians prior to air strikes. “It’s always tempting to act on emotional impulses. But such complex situations require thorough consideration that should also take into account the differences between social platforms.” Durov argued that Telegram users only received the content they have specifically subscribed to—unlike other apps that “algorithmically promote shocking content to unsuspecting people.” As such, he concluded, it was “unlikely” that Telegram channels could be used to “significantly amplify propaganda.”

WIRED spoke to four ex-Telegram employees to try and understand what’s going on inside the company. A former developer agreed with Durov about algorithmic amplification, arguing that “if there are no algorithms to recommend content, then the platform has no responsibility for what the users post because they themselves choose to expose themselves to that content.” The former employee also suggested why Durov may be treading a careful line: “Let’s not forget that Telegram is headquartered in a mostly neutral Arab country that is friends with its less neutral neighbors.” A location tag on an Instagram post dated October 19 shows Durov was recently in Saudi Arabia, as was Perekopsky, according to a photo of Riyadh he posted to Telegram Stories.

When asked how staff would feel about the extreme content on the platform and Telegram’s role in the current crisis, the developer responded: “I don't care about this organizational boringness. I write code. That's what I do. I don't moderate content and I don't solve human problems, I only solve technical ones.”

Elies Campo, who directed Telegram’s growth, business, and partnerships from 2015 to 2021, argues that Durov has chosen to “maximize” amplification of content on his platform. Public channels, for example, can have an unlimited number of subscribers while private groups can reach 200,000 people, far more than WhatsApp’s 1,024-member limit.

Telegram also has built-in tools for spreading content to other platforms: “Being able to upload any type of file of up to 2 GB enables Telegram to become a bridge for content between social networks and other platforms, and we've seen this in recent events,” Campo says. “These features are fantastic in a healthy society with no bad actors, but in today's world, any good product with such a large audience will have a complete representation of the good and the bad in humanity.”

Axel Neff, who helped cofound Telegram and worked at VK, the Russian social network Durov used to run, believes that Durov sees Telegram as an almost neutral, public utility: “He very much views it as a tool of the people.” Neff claims his old boss accepts there will always be both good users and bad users—but that Durov believes good people will prevail against bad people. “They use Telegram to communicate safely, and reliably. And in situations like the [current conflict in the] Middle East, they ideally warn each other of danger which might hopefully save some lives,” Neff says.

Ultimately, Telegram’s employees are “stretched very thin and not positioned to handle situations like this,” Neff says. (As of February 2023, there were only 60 employees.) “The almost nonexistent trust and safety team in no way can keep up with the daily global chaos they are now faced with at the scale they’ve become,” Neff adds.

Unlike other platforms, Telegram does not appear to have a codified process for dealing with crises like this, instead tending to make changes under intense legal or media pressure. Anton Rozenberg—who worked with Durov from the early days of VK in 2007, before, he says, becoming director of special areas, which involved anti-spam work, at Telegram from 2016 to 2017—is clear about who makes the decisions at Telegram. “Moderation rules, especially in high-profile cases, are set by Pavel himself,” Rozenberg claims.

Based on prior examples, Durov appears to have an aversion to interfering or taking sides in political and international crises, based more on pragmatism than principle. “First of all, he’s worried about the size of the audience. And if he started blocking channels or content with pro-Palestine and/or pro-Israel positions, he would be blamed by huge parts of Telegram's audience in a lot of countries, that he supported another side of the conflict,” Rozenberg claims. “So, it’s just business.”

Finding a Balance

As Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg might attest, the leader of a major social media platform is often damned if they do, damned if they don’t. Many people who are distrustful of official narratives in the Israel-Hamas crisis are depending on Telegram for unfiltered information. It’s also a free space compared to other major platforms. Maria Rashed says that many believe Instagram has been censoring and shadow-banning pro-Palestinian accounts, some of which had resorted to burying the #IStandWithIsrael hashtag in posts to get seen. Meta, which owns Instagram, said it had fixed a number of bugs that may have been causing such issues.

Nadim Nashif, a Palestinian digital rights activist, wasn’t just thinking about Hamas when he read Durov’s October 13 post about not blocking channels. “That means that Telegram is also not going to shut Israeli channels inciting [violence],” Nashif tells me via video call from his home in the northern Israeli city of Haifa. Nashif and 7amleh, the civil rights organization he leads, have been documenting cases of Palestinians being threatened by Israeli channels and groups on Telegram since the conflict began. Doxing is rife, and attacks, arrests, and threats against their jobs are increasing. Nashif has also seen Israeli channels mocking murdered Palestinians. “Horrible videos you don’t want to see,” Nashif says, grimacing. “People abusing the [dead] bodies, making jokes …”

Back in May 2021, when there was an outbreak of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories, Nashif recalls that activists were able to persuade some social media platforms to remove racist comments and hate speech, especially against Palestinians living in Israel. “But the feeling now is that [Telegram is] not closing anything,” Nashif says. He’s conferred with other digital activist colleagues from organizations like Access Now, who have been escalating cases with contacts at Telegram. “But nobody’s answering,” he says.

“I think that the owner and leadership of the company are very aware that this is bringing to them millions of people and subscribers,” Nashif alleges. “I think it's part of the business model.” The leaders of companies like Telegram are not stupid, Nashif adds: “They have reached this decision that maybe it's better to have a controversial platform where more people keep joining and engaging with what's happening there.”

It remains to be seen whether Hamas’ channels will stay up on Telegram. On Android, people now see a message telling them that two of the main Hamas-run channels, including Qassam Brigades, cannot be displayed on “Telegram apps downloaded from the Google Play Store.” Hamas-run channels are also now blocked on iOS. Such blocks can be circumvented, however. Telegram instructs Android users who want “fewer restrictions'' to download the app directly from its website. People wanting to get around restrictions and view blocked Hamas channels can also purchase anonymous Telegram numbers at auction using a Telegram-approved cryptocurrency called Toncoin; download the messenger via Telegram’s website and then log in via anonymous numbers.

In the European Union, regulators have warned social media platforms against content that contravenes its Digital Services Act. A spokesman for the European Commission told WIRED that they are in contact with Telegram, without offering details. After a recent meeting of the European Union Internet Forum and pressure from Germany, Hamas’ Telegram channels are now blocked in a number of EU member states.

Even if Hamas is definitively removed from Telegram, it will find other ways to share its message. The group is trialing a rudimentary app for keeping people updated on the latest news and announcements from the Qassam Brigades—another example of its expanded technical capabilities. “Hamas seems to be preparing for their communications to be disrupted in the event that Telegram does remove the group,” says Mashkoor.

Whatever happens, as Telegram continues to develop into the de facto platform for witnessing war in real-time, unfiltered and unmoderated, it is changing the way the world experiences violent conflict.

As October 7 ended, Maria Rashed cried herself to sleep. “Because you’re receiving so much information at once and you don’t know what to feel,” she says. “I’m seeing my Israeli friends struggling and they’re losing people that they love. But I’m a Palestinian at the same time.” She fears how Israel will respond and the repercussions for friends in the West Bank and Gaza.

Benjakob, who viewed scores of violent videos released by Hamas on Telegram on October 7, spent the rest of the morning trying to ground himself in his local community. Accompanied by his wife, he went to their favorite café in Jaffa: “The Palestinians from Jaffa who are my neighbors made a massive effort to talk to us,” he says. “We ended up sitting for three hours with Palestinian people we’d never spoken to before.” It was a very Tel Aviv–Yafo type of statement, he says, one that declared: “We refuse to be enemies.”

[artwithoutblood]

i'll start you off by saying the bec de corbin was picked up later in his demonhood. someone showed it to him and he thought it was cool as hell, and so a custom one was gifted to him that runs red in its veins with a hunger.

Nice. Maybe it was Aeron. Middle Eastern culture, blood, history, war. Artisan. Fits their vibe.

The blood thing actually gives me an idea which fits well with something I already had planned.

him being some sort of mercenary turned cult leader is actually really, really fun, and if i wasn't the person i am i would've stolen that. that's fucking brilliant.

It does work. Perhaps Dorian found himself short of cash or needing to escape an unsavory reputation, consequences, or just his miserable life. And he enlisted as soon as possible after his mother passed (I think the minimum was age 17). Perhaps as he grew in confidence he used his deployments as a way to spread the gospel and accumulate followers. Even just camp followers who began to encourage him until he believed his own hype.

There's actually some more interesting things when digging about Gilles de Rais, who comes to mind - being a knight and alleged to have been involved in cults. (Huge TW for child death and SA if googling him. Not a good dude.) 

There are mentions of alleged witch-cults weirdly similar to Dorian's that were being stamped out as heretics. Dianic with an element of fertility, and a sun god that was becoming popular among Roman soldiers. Not related to each other but the Church was not happy and went after a number of the smaller religions including a sub-sect of Christianity. (I already knew about that one.)

in the reality of 10:16, the tattoo on his arm is of the player's name.

Ahhhh... of course. Because the player shares his mother's name. Why didn't I see that coming.

Rebecca is Hebrew so not a great fit. But perhaps she likes to go by her middle name, Agnes, so that's what bird Dorian was always hearing her called. I chose it because in Greek it means pure/chaste/holy and the Roman 'Agnus' means lamb.

Which is an animal motif - she has a trusting naive nature, is unknowingly a prey animal to those who shelter her, and there's the religious overtones. A sheep being protected by a shepherd and a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter. It also lets Dorian call her Lamb.

It doesn't really fit with Germanic roots... I think the closest there would be Inessa or Nessa.

But Rome did have a Saint Agnes. (Massive TWs there too.)

Ironically while she did get martyred eventually (for refusing a man and her Christianity being judged a cult), attempts to defile her purity failed and the wood at her stake refused to burn.

in ways i like to keep dorian's human life vague because that no longer matters to him. at this point, he's nearly forgotten his own name. people can fantasize about what they think, about what they want. what matters is that dorian sits in his cathedral, sorting through books, wishing he could leave. wishing he could take the muzzle off.

and perhaps he will, one day, but he has not been killed, and i don't think anyone has told him that this was an option.

it's not to say i don't love all of this, because i do! but it is a detail that i will give to the players and the readers to ponder about. what was he before? scary, of course. led the lambs astray, of course. but anything else? does there even need to be anything else?

[batboyblog]

Hello! You may not remember me, but I am the anon from a whiile ago, who found out about their grandma being Jewish, and who you were really nice to (and had a pretty big impact on how they're going with it). I don't know why, and it may be a lil creepy to keep doing this, but I thought I'd give you this update, because you're genuinely really nice!

So here it is, update 4 or 5 from a complete stranger to you: I am kind of considering starting a conversion journey. A little impetuously, one might argue (I would also argue). But here's how it's going, since I told you about this in February and we only found out in December:

Grandma, who is probably in her early 90s (we can't be sure since neither her or her siblings had documents of the year she was born), has decided to live 'her precious last years' (said in quotations because these are not her last years, as she like all grandmas will live to her hundreds) like herself. This includes being an unapologetically grumpy old lady who refuses her hearing aids and practicing judaism. She started kind of going to the Synagogue since January this year, but from my aunt's birthday on the 18th of February she's gotten a lot more religious, attending service every week, keeping in close contact with her Rabbi. We've offered to her to change her last name, that she got from my grandfather, back to the one she and her siblings shared, Kalinowksi. She said it was a waste of time, which fair enough, but apart from this my aunts are not really sure what to grasp with this suddenly pious old woman, and since I'm the family member closest to her it's up to me to accompany her when she leaves the house, including to shabbos service every saturday morning. I don't mind, and at her encouragement Ive started kind of observing shabbos with her. In the beginning I felt... weird, a little fake, like I do when I go into the Synagogue, but it just naturally started becoming more natural. Even when I'm not home, and thus am not eating mostly kosher like we do since recently, I still kind of find myself keeping to myself. Last sunday I absent mindedly recited to myself the prayer we do before eating when eating lunch at work, and even in broken hebrew (because i only know it from ear) it felt right?. It's just, the little things, you know? I love my grandma to pieces, she's been my best friend since I was a kid and she'd arrange my toys in fun scenes as a surprise from when I got back from school. Seeing her living as she pleases now is the happiest Ive ever seen her. I'm so happy to be here to see this. And slowly the things I was doing just to appease her, to keep by her, are starting to touch me in very like, weird ways. It's like this weird feeling of 'oh obviously. this is what i should have been doing!" it's peaceful. it's like something i never knew i wanted. and it's so weird.

Last month for Yom HaShoah we went to a service together. I took the day off from school to stay with her, and it was a very emotional moment. It felt like only the two of us when we talked. Later that week, my city's Holocaust Remembrance Museum held an event about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and I attended reluctantly. It was my first time going to a Jewish space without grandma as a cover, and I was fully expecting to feel like an intruder, or an imposter (the event was not exclusive to Jewish people!!! If it were I would not have gone), but to my utmost surprise I didn't. I felt all the emotions, of course. The Warsaw Ghetto story is not one you can hear without emotion. But I didn't feel like I shouldn't be there. At the end, the museum guide concluded talking about the relation Jewish culture has with spaces of memory, and it fucking hit me so hard. I'm a Museum Studies/Museology student, for context, and everything he said about Museums and spaces dedicated to remembering was like a fish line straight to what I felt about my career of choice. Things I didn't even know I thought.

So that's around the time it really started to build within me the idea of considering starting a conversion journey. I feel so weirdly connected to all these little parts of Jewish culture and faith and life that I don't know what to do to myself. I want to live in this beautiful way not just as my grandma's granddaughter (although I am and will always be honored to be just that) but as myself. Like for real. And I know conversion to Judaism is a deep, complicated, strenuous process, and with absolute good reason, but I also feel like I can't start it soon enough. I will of course give it time, I want to make sure I'm doing this in the long haul and for the right reasons, and in the meantime there is so much to study and learn - just a few thusand years to catch on - before I can even look in the face of a Rabbi and call myself a Conversion candidate. But I want to get there, I think.

So this is the update! Sorry again to keep coming back to you, and thank you for listening. I also thought I should introduce myself properly - I'm Laura! Thank you again <3

First off of course I remember! This story is one of my all time favorite things that has ever ever happened because of having this silly little Tumblr.

secondly! no one, NO ONE should feel bad about dropping into my ask box and telling me a story, I love it, wish people would do it more often.

Your grandma reminds me of my grandma (Z"L) she grumpily refused to get hearing aids at all insisting she'd be dead soon so why bother, it was like 10-15 years of basically yelling, her house shook when she watched TV. Oh also your joke about Grandmas living into their hundreds, Jewish tradition, since its maybe rude to ask someone's age and in the Yiddish world view to ask such things is to invite trouble and misfortune (Eastern European Jewry pessimistic? nooooo) you would say "How old are you? till 120" or "how old is he? may he live to 120" 120 being the maximum age set in the Torah for the human life (some early figures are said to have lived for hundreds of years but God slowly flexed us down to the standard ages we have now) so "may you live to 120" And may your grandma live to 120

Any ways I can't tell you how much it warms my heart to hear about your grandma reconnecting with her religion and culture. It really makes me tear up thinking all the miles and years she's traveled to get back home again. If I might meddle in your life I would encourage you to push your mom and aunts to come to Synagogue with your grandma. It's such an important part of her life now but also a core part of her story and who she is, I think in years to come having been able to share that with her will be a comfort. Likewise shabbos, is traditionally celebrated by a meal to welcome it, and a blessing done by the woman of the house, I wonder since your grandma missed out on years of making Shabbat meals and lighting the candles for her family it might be nice for her to do at least once for all her children with someone else doing the cooking of course, you had mentioned trying your hand at challah, Cholent (stew) and brisket are the other traditional dishes.

Also I'm very happy you're connecting to it as well, Judaism is a very mindful Religion, there's a prayer and ritual for basically everything so if you want and you mean it you can turn daily life into a moving meditation on the divine. The sanctification of the mundane is Judaism's great gift. To say the same words in the same language and link yourself back through thousands of years to Bronze Age sheep herders and olive farmers and all the many many Jews in the times and spaces between is magical and does make something like eating a sandwich at your desk into something special.

Any ways I know just what you mean about memory and Judaism having such a space for it, I mean the whole religion is about story telling and memory, its even how we talk about the dead "may their memory be a blessing" its remembering that is the blessing, and many of the holidays are about remembering. And how even if we weren't there, we were there.

On the conversation path of course take your own time, and for sure be sure you want it forever. But I'd also say your grandma sounds like she's close with her Rabbi who I'm guessing also knows you since you always go with her. So there's no harm in having an informal chat with him about it, likely he might have questions that might help you more clearly articulate what you want or be able to point you to books or other resources that can help shape this. I don't think you need to be fully ready to start the path and assembly a beit din to start asking questions of "where do I start?" and "is this even right for me?"

finally I guess thank you for this wonderful update, and very nice to meet you Laura, I'm Max

PS I wonder how Passover went? did your Grandma go full Kosher for Passover? that can be quite the production, also matzah can be un... and experience for the new comer so I hope you didn't mind it, also matzah pizza... idk