#having knowledge from the books doesn’t mean that your interpretations and opinions concerning the show are more valid or superior

[hobermallowed]

really do not agree with some of these takes from the vc fandom concerning the show only fanbase

[dontjudgemeimawriter]

Excerpt/Sketch Scene: Ardisci

I shared lines from this recently but in looking it over I remembered how much I love it so I decided to share. From Ardisci’s POV, Ardisci is the god of knowledge and is living sort of in-hiding on Earth.

---

Alright. So we’re here: Kaitlyn is lying on the couch, reading chapter 3 of her textbook on cultural anthropology. Netalia is lying on the floor, her book— a thick book with thin pages that’s a survey English literature— open above her. It’s open to Lines Written in Early Spring by William Wordsworth, but I’m not sure if she’s reading it— Buttercup, her golden retriever, is licking her face, and she’s laughing and pushing her away. I’m taking notes in my notebook. My reading, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, is open as a pdf on my laptop, though that’s mostly for show, since Netalia is here. My notebook, which Kaitlyn insists is technically a journal (but it’s not my place to say it is or isn’t— language and labels aren’t my responsibility to determine), lies in front of me, and I’m scribbling in it with a recycled water bottle pen that I got at freshman orientation that Netalia always marvels that I haven’t lost and Kait and I then share a knowing look about. If Kait (and the collective’s) definition of “journal” is a place for writing out one’s own thoughts, rather than simply noting facts for studying purposes, then yes, it is a journal. I don’t have much need for notetaking— even without the constant stream of direct-and-all-encompassing knowledge, simple information—what’s part of the collective knowledge—is provided to me automatically. But that’s why I love philosophy classes. In the science class I took I did find it interesting what aspects they taught or what they knew, but still, so much of it was known information, simply a method by which to integrate that knowledge. It didn’t excite me the same way. But philosophy? No answer came to me automatically. I know how others have answered the question before, yes, but there’s no collective answer, and I can listen to classmate’s opinions and thoughts and I actually feel like I’m learning.

Focusing. I’m journaling on the allegory of the cave. I won’t be able to bring what I write up in class, but thoughts—my thoughts, my own!—are coming tumbling out. Because I know the outside world, the sun, all of it, I am the regular people in this metaphor when everyone around me are the prisoners who know only shadows and can but squint at the sun. Because not knowing and a limited perspective isn't something I was ever able to to really have. Because not that long ago I didn’t even have an “I” through which to narrate. Google doesn't have an “I” and never has a choice in knowing that these are shadows, not the extent of human existence, but maybe I could know only that. And who would feel jealousy of prisoners chained up in a cave with only a fire casting shadows to quantify as real— and since when has jealousy been a thing I feel?

Kaitlyn had been the one to suggest I write, to journal. She’d given me a look that she told me later was frustration (which I don’t feel bad about not recognizing— psychologically speaking, most people don’t recognize the facial expression “frustrated” as they do “happy” or “sad”—it’s not a basic emotion) and said in a very calm voice that as much as she loved listening to my rants, not everyone had the collective knowledge at their disposal—she actually had to study. And she later suggested writing out my thoughts, telling me that writing could be helpful in self-discovery, which got a green-light from the collective knowledge, so I agreed to try it. 

Netalia pushes Buttercup’s nose away. “Buttercup, go-lie-down. I gotta read this.” Buttercup harumphs and trots over to me, pushing her nose into the space between my arm and my waist. That’s something I never got to appreciate—the simple joy of an animal burrowing into you. Of loving you. I suspect that’s something few gods get to experience—at least, outside of the Nature domain. And to have that physical form in which an animal can burrow into.

I can’t write with Buttercup there, so I finish the sentence, put my pen down, and turn to Buttercup, taking her face in my hands and scratching behind her ears. Buttercup starts panting, her tail wagging loud enough to slam against the carpet.

“Did the good doggie get snubbed?” I coo to Buttercup. It’s lucky humans developed a way to communicate thoughts, or I may never have had access to even the concept of thoughts and emotions, just behavior and knowledge of consciousness. At least a person can tell me what they’re thinking and feeling, even if it’s not always true— or all I’d have is what I can tell about animals, what their behaviors indicate. 

“It was not a snub,” Netalia said. “I have to read this.”

I quiet, just smiling at Buttercup and scratching behind her ears. Kaitlyn’s looking at me. I know what face she’s making without looking up, but I look up anyway because sometimes using the human eyes helps me interpret it better. There’s a slight smile. I think it’s in reference to “Some of us need to actually read the assignment.” Just because that’s usually what Kaitlyn likes to tease me about. 

Kaitlyn closes her textbook and sets it down on the table. “Talia, can we take Buttercup outside and play with her a bit? I think Addie’s getting antsy.”

Addie’s not really my name—my god name is Ardisci, and before going into hiding, Kaitlyn called me Ardi, which I love—never had I been close enough with someone for them to need a shortened way to refer to me. It felt affectionate. But going into hiding I needed a name-name, something not quite my god name. Kaitlyn had actually said that Adelaide felt too close to Ardisci to her, but once I’d picked it it had felt comfortable and I couldn’t pick another one, so we went with it. Plus, “Addie” and “Ardi” sounded similar, which made the transition easier. 

“Sure,” Netalia sits up, folding the book over her finger for a moment. “Her toys are in the basket next to the porch.” She stood and sat down on the couch Kait had been lying on.

I stood, giving Buttercup a tug towards the door. Buttercup lept, realizing what we were doing, and ran to the door, barking when it didn’t open for her.

“Hold on, girl.” Kaitlyn followed us over to the front entrance and grabbed her jacket off the hook, then handed me mine. Now out of earshot from Netalia, she said to me, “The rest of us need to actually read the assignment.”

“I know,” I said. My jacket was thick, zippered, and knit, with cables curling up the sleeves. I wanted to try knitting sometime, to see if it was as easy as the information of “how to purl” came into my mind. Kaitlyn had said she’d knit when she was younger, had described how she’d learned to spot the difference between a knit stitch and a purl stitch and how to make a cable or bauble. When I look at it I know, but I have a feeling that that knowledge is different from recognizing it.

Kaitlyn takes a moment to adjust the collar of my jacket, which wasn’t folded properly. “I know you know,” she smiles—me saying “I know” is ironic, she’s said, just as anyone saying “do you know?” is to me. But “know” doesn’t, in my case, always mean knowing, it means understanding, and that (I know) is a different thing. 

Buttercup bolts out the door as soon as I turn the handle to leave—it’s into Netalia’s family’s backyard, where Buttercup has previously been allowed to roam freely, so I’m not concerned—and Kaitlyn shouts to Netalia’s mom that we��re taking Buttercup out. Her mom, Lynette, tells us alright, and that she’s heating up some hot apple cider for us. Lynette was horrified my first year living as a human that I’d never had hot apple cider, and had filled me up on it ever since. I’d told Kaitlyn how I knew what apple was used, the origins of the drink, different versions, what was considered the best mixture. 

“Alright,” Kaitlyn had said. “But the drink you’re drinking right now. Do you like it?”

I’d been confused at first. I’d taken another sip— not really familiar with the concept of myself liking things. I knew it was generally accepted as good, but then I really absorbed the flavor, the heat, the spice, the sweetness. “Yes,” I’d said finally. “I like it.”

I bound outside, running to the basket under the porch and grabbing a frisbee. “Wanna catch?” I ask Buttercup. Buttercup jumps side to side, ready. I swing my arm, try to snap my wrist, and let go. Buttercup runs after it, but the frisbee curves, making about a 60° angle away from where I thought I’d aimed. I laugh, and Buttercup, who started running straight, looks around in confusion.

“I gotta get better at that!” I shout to Kait, and run over to where the frisbee landed. Running is nice, a feeling I’ve gotten used to. The exertion, adrenaline, my lungs pulling in air, my heart beating, lactic acid starting to flow through my muscles (which’ll make them sore later). One of the things I can’t know, I have to feel. I get to feel. I scoop up the frisbee and toss it again. This time Buttercup knows to watch it, and runs after the very curved path it follows. I run back over to Kait, meeting Buttercup halfway as she trots back with it. Kait takes the frisbee.

“Here,” she holds it out, but instead of letting me take it, guides my hand to hold it. She takes me through the motion of throwing it, of the flick of the wrist. “And here you let go. Eyes on your target.” she says. 

I know how to on an instructional level, but when Kait releases my hand for me to try, this time I pay attention not to the collective knowledge, but her instruction. I follow through, and this time it goes straighter, only curving a bit at the end. Buttercup races after it, then picks it up from the ground.

“Better,” Kait observes. She’s staring at Buttercup at first, but her eyes don’t follow the return, so she seems to have spaced on the trees. “Russell never quite figured out how to throw one,” she said.

I take the frisbee from Buttercup, spinning it in my hand for a moment. I don't look at her, knowing she won’t notice me averting my eyes.

I still haven't told her. I should tell her. It’s my obligation really, to our friendship and to my role as god. But really, just because I am the god of knowledge, did that mean I have to tell her? I’m trying to escape that role.

She’ll find out eventually. And maybe I can say I just hadn’t thought of it— I’d been shutting down the constant stream of information, and one person's death isn’t collective knowledge. If I hadn’t wondered, I still wouldn’t know, not actively.

But I do know actively. I’d checked in and realized. And decided not to tell her.

Her brother had died two years ago. That’s why he’d never found her, never shown up. I hadn’t known him, not really, but I knew him somewhat through Kait, though her memories and relationship. 

Maybe it’s a bit selfish, too. I don’t know how she’d react, but I have a feeling (that was new too, having a feeling) that knowing might change things. It might lead her back to her family, and yes perhaps I can stay in hiding without her, but I don’t want to.

A part of me has always longed to do this. Live as a person, learn, experience. Not be the source of all knowledge for once. And part of why I finally had was the pressure had gotten worse—but really, a large part of it was meeting Kaitlyn. Kait, who never used me, who never asked questions I wouldn’t know if I wasn’t god of knowledge. Who actually got to know who I was, with enough patience to handle me. Who’d believed I even got the chance to be an I.

I throw the frisbee again. It arcs a bit, but Buttercup jumps up and catches it midair. “Whoo!” Kait cheers. 

I bend down, clapping and then petting Buttercup. “Good job!” I tell her.

“Good job to you,” Kait says, tousling my hair the same way I’m tousling Buttercup’s ears. I grin.

[jcogginsawriter]

Hand to Hand: Mark Waid’s Flash

I have been a fan of comic book characters for a long time. I started with the cartoons, and as I got older, I began doing deep dives into wikis, reading fanfiction, and participating in that shallowest of internet past times, the vs debate. I dabbled in writing fanfic for myself, but I spent far more time thinking about writing fanfic instead. I would come up with all these ideas about what I would take from the various different versions of the characters, and don’t get me started on the idea of Crossovers.     The point is, I knew a lot of what happened in the comics, but I never read many comics. I didn’t know where my local comic shop was, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have had the money to spend on them. The comics that I did read were usually fan translations of manga. I did read a few comics, big name stories like Death of Superman or Crisis on Infinite Earths, but they were few and far between.

Recently, I’ve begun to change that. I now follow several comics as they come out, most notably the current X-line. This change sprang in part because I began reading a lot more comics criticism. In particular, I followed the blog of a certain Superman fan, and began to eagerly digest his various takes. I wanted to be able to ask him questions about new comics without looking like an idiot (This is how 90 percent of my interactions on comics twitter go, BTW) and that was a kick in the pants for me.

After getting into a steady habit, I decided to look into reading some of the classic runs I’d read so much about throughout life. To go from knowing them second hand, to knowing them first hand. After a bit of hemming and hawing, I’ve settled on Mark Waid’s legendary run of Flash Comics to start off with.

(Spoiler Warning for some 30 year old comics, by the way)

As of this writing, I have read up to the final issue of his story arc Dead Heat, wherein Wally does battle with the speed cultist Savitar. Before we get into things like plot and characters, I want to discuss the art, because no discussion of comic books is really complete without talking about the art. Unfortunately, the art in this run hasn’t done much for me, but that’s not really it’s fault. I read this comics in manner that they were not created to be read, digitally and zoomed in. These comics were drawn with physical issues in mind, and I don’t doubt that they’re good in that format. It also doesn’t help that I’ve read far more manga than I have American comics. American comics have never clicked with me the way manga does. Even now, I still find the layout of manga more legible than the layout of an American comic. That’s not a value judgment, it’s just my personal experience.

I do distinctly recall thinking that the art was better up to issue #79 (The conclusion to the Return of Barry Allen storyline), than it was after. I prefer the less exaggerated character designs, and lighter inks, though it could very well be a case of me having gotten used to the initial style and not liking the change. One thing that thing I can say about the art is that it helped me grasp how Wally’s costume differed from Barry’s. Before this, I was incapable of separating them in my mind, but seeing them side by side made it clear to me how different Wally’s Costume was colored and shaded.

Now, onto the writing of the run, we’ll start with the lead, Wally West. My previous touchstone for Wally was the Justice League series from the DCAU, which I watched a lot as a kid. The Wally in these comics comes off as more serious that his DCAU incarnation. Not too serious, he still cracks jokes, but he’s more on the ball. He takes his adventures as seriously as any hero would, rather than the more carefree attitude I recall his DCAU version having. This is not unsurprising, Wally here is the lead whereas there he was part of an ensemble cast, and here we get his internal monologue which gives us a much more thorough sense of his headspace. Not to mention, the DCAU version was voiced, so we know with no ambiguity what tone his dialogue’s in. In text, tone is more up to interpretation.

Perhaps the biggest thing that set Comic Wally apart from DCAU Wally is that the Wally in the comic was more consistently angry and frustrated. While his DCAU incarnation had hidden depths, I can’t recall a time when he got seriously angry. This Wally is frequently irritated, usually by things which are enitrely understandable. On occasion, his irritability causes him to be rougher with the bad guys than he could be, and that feels uncomfortable sometimes, though thus far he hasn’t gone too far.

Going into this, I knew that one of the issues that Wally had to overcome was his mental block about surpassing Barry, and to my surprise, it wasn’t as much of a through-line as I expected. I was expecting it to be a reoccurring issue that was solved by the Return of Barry Allen storyline, but in reality there are only one or two times something like it comes up, usually in the context of him not being able to do the vibrating through walls trick. In the Return of Barry Allen, it feels more like an issue introduced in that story than a long running plot line. Granted, it may only feel this way because I’m solely reading Mark Waid’s Flash. I didn’t read the issues prior to his take over, so that storyline could have been more apparent there for all I know.

Moving on, starting with Waid’s run had another knock on effect, that being that the character introductions aren’t introductions. I came into this expecting to see when Wally met Linda, when he met Jay Garrick, when Pied Piper redeemed himself, but all of that happened before Waid took over the book, so they’re already part of the cast from the start. Again, not a flaw of the work, it’s just a result of my personal experiences. Now, let’s take a look at some of these characters.

I’ve heard a lot about Linda and Wally’s romance, and so far it’s not bad. I wouldn’t rate it as one of the best of all time, but I haven’t gotten to most of the major moments yet, so that’s not a huge surprise. One thing that’s very apparent is the Lois Lane DNA in her character. Some of that is to be expected, which the love interest to your superhero is a reporter, but I see a lot of similarities in their personality as well. There’s a lot of the same fire in her. Fortunately, the fact that Wally’s identity is public lends a very different arc to their relationship than what you see with Lois and Clark, so Linda doesn’t come off as a Lois rip-off. Linda’s concerns that there’s no place for her in Wally’s wild superhero life is the kind of relationship hurdle that isn’t present in Lois and Clark’s Relationship.

Next, let’s take a look at the first Flash, Jay Garrick. Within this series, Jay is perfectly pleasant, and by no means unlikable, but he also comes across as...kind of superfluous? There are three elderly male speedsters in this comic, and of all of them Jay is by far the least defined and has the least role. Max Mercury is the Wally’s mentor in the ways of speed, the one with the most knowledge of the Speed Force. He’s basically what I expected Jay Garrick to be going into this. The third of the group is Johnny Quick, a speedster who is the father of another speedster, Jesse Quick. Jesse is also very skeptical of Max Mercury’s teachings, which veer from the scientific into the mystical.

Because Johnny takes the role of skeptic, Jay is left without a role in the narrative because being the nicest of Wally’s friend group. Veering over to Hollywood for a second, whenever a book gets adapted into a movie or TV Show, minor characters get lost in the transition. Either they get composited with other characters, or they get cut entirely. Game of Thrones is the most prominent example in recent memory. I bring this up because, if Waid’s Flash were to go through that process, it’s hard to argue that Jay wouldn’t get the ax. Despite being the most important of them in the context of the universe at large, Jay is the least important Speedster in this narrative. Of course, Jay’s importance in the context of the larger universe means that in this hypothetical adaptation, he probably be composited into either max or Johnny. More likely Max, since mentor is the logical position for the first Flash to take in the Third Flash’s narrative.

I mentioned Jess Quick there, so let’s talk about her. Thus far, her most prominent role in the narrative has been to call Wally out and be his critic, though she does have very good reasons to be angry. In the Terminal Velocity storyline, Wally believes he’ll die soon, and tells the Flash Family that Jesse will be his successor, but it turns out to be a lie in order to motivate Bart Allen to take things more seriously. Jesse has remained angry with Wally since then, though it hasn’t seriously impacted her hero work. That’s good, because her continued competence lends legitimacy to her anger within the narrative. She’s not being punished for being mad at Wally for mistreating her. Hopefully it stays that way going forward.

Now let’s take a look at the character Wally chose over Jesse, Bart Allen AKA Impulse. I’ll say up front that I’m not reading Bart’s solo series during this read through, as I didn’t want the hassle of going back and forth between books. As such, the only issues of it that I’ve looked at are the ones that tie into the Dead Heat arc. I feel it’s important for me to say this, because I’m basing my opinions of Bart primarily on his showings in Wally’s book, not his own. In Wally’s book, Bart’s character flaws are more on display.

Bart is a character deliberately designed to be obnoxious, and such characters are a hard tightrope to walk in fiction. Gotta be annyoing enough to get the point across, but not annoying enough to turn people off from the work. Bart in Wally’s book isn’t perfectly balanced, and tends toward the too much pile. Not to an egregious extent, but a little bit. I found myself echoing Wally’s frustration with Bart more than a few times. In Bart’s defense, Wally does share some of the blame here. He doesn’t do a very good job as a mentor, and handing those duties off to Max is probably for the best.

I find it interesting, that a character like Wally who is so defined by inheriting a legacy is a poor mentor, to both Bart and Jesse. He makes different mistakes with both of them, but he still fails both of them. I’m eager to see how that plays out in the future issues.

Now that we’ve discussed the supporting cast, let’s discuss some of the book’s villains. We’ll start with the one who is most infamous, Eobard Thawne. Thawne’s spends the majority of his time in this book thinking he’s Barry Allen, and if I’m being honest, he’s more effective under that guise that he is as Eobard. The scenes where what appears to be Barry Allen turns evil out of jealousy of his successor are powerful, more so than the more traditional villain Eobard displays after the reveal. Not that it would have been a good idea for it to actually be Barry, of course. Much as I prefer Wally to Barry, having Barry go full supervillain would have been very out of character. In any case, this run had a profound impact on Eobard’s character going forward, solidifying him as an agent of toxic fanboyism, making him a dark mirror of Wally West.

The next major villain of the run is the cult slash terrorist organization Kobra. That might bring thoughts of GI Joe to your mind, and you honestly aren’t far off. So far as this run goes, the biggest differences between DC’s Kobra and Hasbro’s is A) DC’s version prefer green over blue, and B) Hasbro’s version has more in the way of distinct characters. Kobra thus far is more of a plot device than  anything else. They’re generic terrorists with little to make them distictive. Their storyline, Terminal Velocity, is more notable for it’s introduction of the Speed Force, Wally preparing for his upcoming ‘death’, and Linda going on a revenge quest after said ‘death’. All things that Kobra is incidental to, any villainous organization would have sufficed.

The final, as of my current point in the run, major villain is Savitar. Savitar was formerly a soviet test pilot who gained a connection to a the speedforce, gave himself the name of Hindu god, and started a speed worshipping cult. It says a lot about my mind that my immediate thoughts upon reading Savitar’s origin were. “Huh, an AU where Hal Jordan became a Speedster the same way would be neat.”. Savitar is in some ways an improvement on the Kobra Cult from Terminal Velocity. This time the Cult has a more direct connection to the Flash and his mythos. Dead Heat is by no means a retread of Terminal Velocity, but if you wanted to mesh them into one story, it wouldn’t be hard. And it’d improve on both, in some ways.

One of the things I like to do in my fanfic ideas is connect the other speedsters to Thawne’s theme of Toxic Fandom, and it wouldn’t be hard to do that with Savitar. His entire motivation is to deprive those he considers unworthy of their speed, and that can easily by played as a metaphor for gatekeeping.

Over all, while the run is far from perfect, I must say I’m enjoying these comics a good deal, and if you’re like me and have read a lot about comics without actually reading them, I don’t think you’d regret jumping into them.

[ademonandherbentley]

Queer Coding =/= Queerbaiting (A Defence of Good Omens)

So. Good Omens is here, and I’ve seen more than a few people dismissing it as yet another round of the queerbaiting we’re all so used to. I’m not trying to override anyone’s grievances, but I do think that we’re starting to fling the word queerbaiting around a little too freely, and I worry that it'll make the term lose it's impact. Queerbaiting is not just any relationship that doesn't end exactly the way we want it to. There's a worrying tendency to be very black and white in our judgments, which ignores the nuance present in... well, everything. On top of that, I think we've all been burned by shows in the past and have a few trust issues when it comes to this sort of thing.

For the uninitiated, queerbaiting is when a show continually teases and/or hypes up a queer narrative that it has no intention of delivering. Perhaps the most famous example is Supernatural, which has spent the last fifteen years portraying a textbook example of a bisexual character and twelve years crafting an epic m/m love story on a cosmic scale... only for all the cast and writers to continually laugh off and brush aside both these things whilst constantly shoehorning Dean and Castiel into chemistry-less and underwritten heterosexual relationships. The subtext (and any understanding of narrative) is the fish hook in your mouth, tugging and tugging, but the show has no intention of ever reeling you in or releasing you.

Sherlock is another one. Damn near everyone who watches the show sees a love story playing out between Sherlock and John. Meanwhile the writers take every opportunity to have John remind us that he's not gay, goddamnit, and as soon as the subtext hit a peak that had every meta writer posting theses about holy shit this is happening, season 4 came around and sank it all without trace. Not to mention so many people embraced Sherlock as asexual, only for Moffat to outright deny any chance of that being canon because it's "boring". Tug tug, goes the fishhook. The writers sit around asking why everyone’s so worked up about a few breadcrumbs, ignoring the fact that they’ve been building the entire loaf for years.

Which brings us round to Good Omens. Take a second. What were we promised, exactly, that we didn't get? Neil Gaiman said the show would go into more depth regarding Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship. It did that. He also said that nothing in the show would contradict the book. 

Pretty much all the most leading comments came from the many interviews in which Michael Sheen (and to a lesser extent David Tennant) described the relationship as a love story. Now, whether you think the show delivered on that or not, we’ve got to keep in mind that Sheen and Tennant are not the writers, producers, or directors. They’re the actors - they have no part in crafting the story, they just bring it to life. Any opinions expressed in interviews about the nature of their characters’ feelings are just their interpretations. And really, can you watch the show and say with any sincerity that those interpretations didn’t translate into their performances? As far as I’m concerned, both actors made good on everything they promised.

Like a lot of other shows, Good Omens hits all the markers in a romantic story arc (from awkward first meeting, to blossoming feelings, to Third Act Breakup, to ending the story finally free to be together) but stops just short of anyone acknowledging the romance in explicit words or actions. Unlike a lot of other shows, Good Omens makes no move to ever deny the validity of said romantic arc. There's no forced sexual tension between any third party characters. There's no "it's not like that" or "we're just friends" (and the characters themselves referring to each other as their best friends doesn't count, especially when said characters are quite obviously stewing in denial and/or repression). To the best of my knowledge, no one behind the scenes has denied a romantic element to Aziraphale and Crowley's relationship since the show aired. Quite the opposite, in fact:

It’s one thing to have wanted more form the show. But I don’t think there was anything that could have lead any of us to reasonably expect anything more, and there’s been no move to negate any of the (imo pretty undeniable) love story between Aziraphale and Crowley. Just because a story doesn’t end with the characters sucking face doesn’t mean that it isn’t inherently romantic in nature.

[otisadams]

Bankrupt: The Story of Donald Trump

Below is an excerpt from Presidential: America’s Great Non Sequitur by Otis Adams.  The paperback is available at Amazon.com.  E-mail pithbooks@gmail.com to be notified when the audio book is available.

Buy Presidential by Otis Adams here.

Bankrupt By Otis Adams

 President Trump’s ascendance to the White House as a Republican is truly baffling.  He is a middling businessman whose success came from inherited wealth, a reprobate by Christian standards, admires the Republican hobgoblin Vladimir Putin, champions the use of tariffs that are typically a tool used by Democrats…and he became the Republican nominee for President of the United States?

         The Republican Party is both the party of business and the party of Jesus.  This is a peculiar and conflicted marriage on a normal day, but how did Donald Trump become the choice for either group?  

 God’s Man

         Let us begin our two-part investigation into the Trump mystery with those among us who are most prone to singing with closed eyes.

         Christians have embraced Trump.  If this were not so, he would not be the president.  Many seem to do so with the childlike faith that God will excuse their votes if they were cast with a held nose.  Others, those with that boundless talent for belief, have elevated Trump to the cast of God-chosen biblical leaders.  

         Trump has not only reformed the philosophy of the Republican Party, but has done some remodeling work for American protestant Christianity.  For instance, President Donald J. Trump has rekindled a bit of the interest Christians once had in the Bible by autographing a few.  You too can own your own Trump autographed Bible for $325.

I have written and said for years that we are in the midst of a Second Reformation. Protestants, whose forefathers rebuked the authority of the clergy in favor of the infallible authority of the Bible, are now altogether adrift as they are no longer tethered to the Bible either.  Authority now resides with each individual’s interpretation of their own emotions.

This, I am certain, adds to the agility of the historically adaptable faith as there is no way to debate a believer’s beliefs if they don’t know what they are.  

The modern Christian’s ignorance of Christianity is not a hindrance to church attendance as an abundance of professed believers can be found serenading the Lord in every American town and city on Sunday mornings.    

This newish breed of dingbat is however doing damage to democracy and traditional American ideals and aspirations.  The most obvious evidence of this is that Christians elected former game show host and WWE Hall of Famer Donald J. Trump to preside over the United States of America…and afterward shifted blame by claiming this was God’s will.

If Christians are playing by the (Good) book, they are not allowed to be dazzled by the wealth of the wealthy.  Their concern is to be the teachings of Jesus. Jesus, who turned over the money changing tables.  Jesus, who told the rich man to sell all that he has, give it to the poor, and follow him. Jesus, who said a camel can more easily pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man can enter the gates of Heaven.

Trump’s cupidity, for centuries a disgusting sin in the eyes of Christians, is now a virtue. That the Bible says this love of money is the root of all evil is of no consequence.  The Bible is of little concern to the modern confused Christian. Neither do traditional elements of good character cross the mind.    

Christians are supposed to favor truth over lies.  Yet, they nominated and then voted in the millions for the most prolific liar in the history of the American presidency.  His demonstrable lie tally since becoming President recently rocketed past the 13,400 mark.

Christians are meant to be concerned with integrity but deflect any responsibility for handing the reins of power to a scoundrel who repeatedly cheated on his wives with pornographic actresses and nude models.  

Instead, they twist and contort their own beliefs in order to make room for Trump.  They pervert the New Testament teachings on forgiveness as a free pass to avoid any effort at attempting a virtuous life.  They draw tortured equivalencies between Paul of Tarsus and Donald Trump, pretending that infrequent mentions of God in speeches to religious groups is not bald pandering, but a sinner striving to repent and get right with his maker.  They circulate false equivalencies with Trump playing the role of King David and Stormy Daniels being a breast-augmented version of Bathsheba, apparently substituting Trump’s lies and cover up of the affair for David’s repentance and dead son.

I was shocked when I first heard a variation of the argument that the President of the United States needn’t be a Boy Scout to get the job done. I have since heard this a couple dozen times from Christians I went to church with growing up, who now divorce integrity, accountability, and moral fortitude from the list of qualifications for leadership.

In another vertigo-inducing example my 60-year-old mother, who has gone to church for 60 of her 60 years, describes herself as a “Trump girl”.  I tried to tell her some of the scandalous things Trump has said and she scolded me for using that language in her house.  I showed her the nude photos America’s First Lady posed for and she said, “Well, she is a really pretty lady.”

I keep waiting to hear a Rod Serling voiceover emanating from the heavens as he explains my plight in the Twilight Zone.

In an effort to lend a hand to those confused Christians I find using social media, I’ll review the story in which Jesus said the one without sin could cast the first stone.  This was the scene in which Jesus was writing in the dirt, deep in thought about something else as I recall.  The neighborhood watch dragged a woman over to Jesus and accused her of adultery and asked something along the lines of, “Hey, you want us to start throwing rocks at her?” Jesus then somewhat encouraged the Socratic tenet of living an examined life by requiring the rock hurlers be sinless.

The point Jesus was trying to get across was that throwing rocks at an adulteress until she’s dead was not an equitable response to her actions.  We might intuit that violence is a poor answer to another’s mistakes.  It is also fair to glean, from this and other New Testament scenes, that Jesus wanted us to look at our own motivations and actions before examining others.

However, he absolutely was not suggesting that a person’s character is meaningless and we should make the adulteress the leader of the free world.  

         The cognitive shenanigans American Christians are willing to engage in to scoot their belief in God aside to make room enough for Trump causes me to wonder if they actually buy into those claimed beliefs. If they truly think they will stand before God one day and explain why they granted power to this man, twisting Biblical teachings to do so, and making him an example for an entire generation of children.  

Surely arguments of ending abortion would fall short before such a judge as all the other Republican candidates were pro-life. Winning the Supreme Court for conservatives is another whimpering effort as Marco Rubio is unlikely to have nominated Bob Dillon and Gloria Steinem as replacement justices if he had won the Presidency.  

Hillary Clinton was the most beatable Democratic nominee in my lifetime and American Christians had several candidates to choose from to go and do it.  Without Christian support, Trump could not have won the nomination.  After getting him nominated, Christians then maneuvered to the position that it was a choice between two evils and Trump was the lesser of them, clumsily trying to shed responsibility for making him the nominee.

         Instead of acting as armor, the faith of American Christians was somehow transmuted into a religious faith in Trump.  It is almost as though being people of faith made them vulnerable to Trump, priming them to believe in the unbelievable.  They support Trump with disembodied faith that is no longer coupled with the traditional morality of the religion in which it was born.

         There is a growing bit of data to support this notion that the faithful are more gullible than the faithless, though the report card doesn’t look great for either class.

The number of Americans who can’t discern fact from opinion or something that’s known from something believed is staggering.  Millions of people who grew up going to American schools and living in towns and cities with public libraries have opted not to gather any of the logic skills that have been within arm’s reach their entire lives.  Instead, knowing something has become the finish line for belief rather than an entirely separate category. Regardless, knowing something does not mean believing it a whole lot.

         Pew Research Center findings suggest that American adults would benefit a great deal from asking a second grade teacher for a few of those worksheets where you circle facts and underline opinions. Only about a quarter of American adults could successfully identify the five factual statements among the list of ten they were asked to look at.  For those who do not trust the media’s honesty, the number falls to 18%.  

         The confusion Americans have over the definitions of fact and opinion were brought into the light by the research.  It shows, with overwhelming clarity, that believers are ravaged by the disease of the brain called Confirmation Bias.  They set up their conclusion first, then they call information they find supportive of that conclusion a fact while counterevidence is, at best, an opinion.

         This perversion of faith is evident among most of the Christians I know and even the preachers who are televised on Sunday mornings. Never mind the small scolding Jesus gave Thomas for seeking evidence, or the Bible’s repeated dismissal of knowledge and exaltation of faith.  Never mind that if something is knowable there is no option for belief, only acknowledgment.  These Second Reformation Christians have broken away from the authority of the Bible as Protestants broke with the clergy. They instead give their own interpretation of their own emotions at any given moment the dizzying authority of the true word and will of God.  As the Bible falls out of fashion for American Christians, so too does the value of faith – or even the understanding of what the word means.  Instead, they will say, without hesitation, that they know this or that about God and his will.

The faith a third of American’s have in Donald Trump is akin to deity worship in some ways.  Anything Trump does is good by virtue of Trump having been the one to do it.  Any reporting of his misdeeds is viewed as the enemy of the deity trying to confuse his loyal followers, as Satan confused Eve, and should be met with plugged ears and closed eyes.  The faithful await word from the deity’s spokesperson, Pope Sarah Huckabee Sanders so that they can hear and memorize the words of the deity and go forth and multiply, repeating Trump’s teachings throughout the day to non-believers.  If he says something that sounds bad, the flock will work together to explain what he meant by what he said, and it’s sure to be something good.  If a longtime Republican politician opposes Trump, they’re RINO heretics.  Anyone who disagrees with Trumpians are guilty of persecuting the flock.

         Republican leadership has discovered that repurposed Christian faith is a useful leash for millions of voters.  While some of these faithful are only people of average intelligence with a talent for willful self-delusion, it is also evident that there must be many millions of Americans with a genuine inability to distinguish truth from lie, fact from opinion, or reliable source from unreliable.  Nothing is gained from, and there’s something vicious about, mocking this latter group.  While the willfully self-deluded earn the bruising quips sent their way, a person without the ability to do the job should be offered patience and sympathy.

         Let’s run through a few examples of how faith has been used as a tool for manipulating voters.

         In 2012 the Associated Press conducted a survey that revealed that more than 40% of Americans believed the new health care bill included death panels.  The basis for this belief was a claim made by Reverend Sarah Palin, who invented an Orwellian Democratic scheme to create a panel of folks who would be in charge of whether to kill elderly parents or children with developmental disabilities in order to save on medical costs.

Before becoming President, Trump himself made enormous political headway by yanking on that faith leash as he championed the lie that President Obama is not a citizen of the United States.  In the lie’s heyday, about three-quarters of Republicans either agreed or weren’t sure. Over 40% of Republicans still believed Obama was secretly a Muslim in 2015.  

         Millions of Republican voters believe that Hillary Clinton had a side-gig of running a child sex ring out of a pizzeria basement in Washington D.C.  Trump, as the conspiracy theory goes, quietly began the heroic work of taking down these sex rings and bringing the celebrities and democrats responsible to justice immediately after taking office!

         These are good examples of believing on faith alone as twenty minutes of research, supposing common sense did not dismiss the absurd claims immediately, would reveal facts dispelling the lies above. Instead, they take their preacher’s word on it and see evidence to the contrary as stumbling blocks placed in their paths by the great deceiver, the mainstream media.

         Christians have butted heads with science for centuries, since evidence-based discoveries began disproving elements of papal teachings. This became another handy vulnerability for the Christian’s party mates, the businessmen, to exploit.  As the leadership in corporations that make money off things that cause harmful emissions started to get nervous, they found the solution of sending out Christian soldiers to roll their eyes at Global Warming any time it snows.  Beleaguered climate scientists, aware that this misunderstanding was more likely mischief than ignorance, began using the term Climate Change.

         When I was in high school their position was that Global Warming was not taking place at all.  Christians, with their marching orders, repeated this wholeheartedly in their daily lives.  A few years later this argument began sounding so absurd that the pundits shifted to the idea that maybe Global Warming was happening but it wasn’t any more caused by mankind than the last ice age.  Christians broke into new denominations.  Some held the line while others fell back to the new trench and pretended they had been there all along.  

The new position that’s popular today is that Global Warming is probably taking place, and maybe human activity has slightly contributed, but we have passed the tipping point and should not do anything that risks the economy in the name of a problem that needed action twenty years ago… back when they said it wasn’t real.

         The eager faith of American Christians and their predilection for opposing scientific discoveries when they move too closely to things that are believed made them a useful tool for the business side of the party.  When the decision was to either acknowledge the findings of a staggering number of scientific studies or believe a few conservative radio and TV talk show hosts, they chose the latter without hesitation.  They were well prepared to believe in often ridiculous lies about the opposing party while ignoring glaring truths about Trump.      

Those Christians who want to collapse the separation of Church and State should recognize this separation is not in place only to protect the state. American Christianity could not even survive, in any recognizable form, after mingling with a single political party. Instead, they lost themselves.

         Christians are mandated to have compassion for the poor, though they have become sycophants of the rich.  Christians ought to feel an empathic pain when they see a toddler pulled from his mother’s arms at the border as an added deterrent for illegal immigration, though they shrug and call them criminals.  Christians are meant to insist that leaders be devoted husbands, free of the filth of greed, not prideful, above reproach, honest, good tempered, patient, kind, and charitable.

Unfortunately, American Christians have abandoned their post.

 A Modern-Day Vanderbilt

As we rang in the New Year, 2019, the stock market was plummeting. The American government entered a shutdown for the third time in a year, a feat that had not been accomplished for decades.  The national debt reached its highest mark in the history of the nation.  Trump had been President for 24 months.

         Trump’s reputation as a self-made billionaire who rose to the top thanks to the buoyancy of his business genius is mostly a fiction manufactured by him.  Donald Trump has reportedly been the longtime clown prince of America’s wealthy since the 1980’s, often the butt of jokes at parties on yachts where I imagine women smoke cigarettes in those Cruella de Vil cigarette things and men exchange tips on how to improve their croquet games.  Among America’s top businessmen, Trump was a punchline.

         Trump’s business acumen is only impressive to those who are ignorant of his record beyond what they have read on magazine covers. Often, he made it into those magazines through self-promotion and a bit of trickery.

         John Barron is one of the characters Trump would play to promote himself in telephone calls to reporters and columnists. (Trump’s alias John Miller was in charge of calling gossip magazines.)  This alter-ego can be heard in taped recordings talking to Forbes reporter John Greenberg in an effort to get Trump on the magazine’s list of richest Americans.  Trump had been lobbying to get on the list since its inception a few years before and winced as it reported his wealth as being a fraction of what he had been boasting publicly.  Even so, Trump’s smoke and mirrors apparently benefitted him as the magazine determined he had $100 million.  Greenberg says that he now regrets the mistake as new research proves that at the time Trump had about $5 million.

         On a side note, the choice of creating an alter-ego named Barron gives some insight on Trump’s psyche.  Perhaps he sees himself as a baron from feudal times in Europe or a cattle baron from the 19th century American West.  In any event, he likes the name well enough to give it to himself when prank calling magazines and he gave the name to his youngest son as well.

         Trump wanted to be thought of as an American billionaire, regardless of having $5 million.  “Fake it until you make it,” might be a good credo for the Donald. The tactic he used was to try and confuse reporters as to how much of his father’s wealth now belonged to him. While Trump privately tried to convince magazines that he owned what belonged to his father, he publicly pushed the idea that his father gave him a small loan to get him started, but the rest of his success was well-earned.  

         By the 1990’s Trump was in fact extremely rich. He gained an enormous amount of wealth by joining with his siblings to create a fake corporation, its purpose being to, “disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents,” The New York Times reported.  He also helped dear old Dad evade millions of dollars in taxes by lying about the value of assets they held and advising the old man to take deductions illegally.  The tax fraud saved the Trumps more than $500 million.

         Donald Trump deftly played this shell game, wanting the public to think he was a self-made billionaire due to his swashbuckling brilliance in crafting deals, trying to convince magazines he was super-rich because he inherited daddy’s real estate empire, and telling the IRS he was living paycheck to paycheck.

         His mischief paid off though.  In today’s dollars, Trump was able to leach off over $400 million from his father’s empire to keep for himself.

         While Trump has had business successes, his numerous failures keep him off the list of the great businessmen he wants the public to believe he is the champion of.

         Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney provided a damning list of failures in his famous speech urging his party to choose a more qualified nominee in 2016.  He said, “But you say, wait.  Isn’t he a huge business success?  Doesn’t he know what he’s talking about?  No, he isn’t and no he doesn’t.  His bankruptcies have crushed small businesses and the men and women who work for them.  He inherited his business.  He didn’t create it.  And whatever happened to Trump Airlines?  How about Trump University?  And then there’s Trump Magazine, and Trump Vodka, and Trump Steaks, and Trump Mortgage. A business genius he is not.”  

         How the Republicans morphed from the party that nominated the upright Romney in 2012 into the one who nominated the degenerate Trump in 2016 is baffling, but the former champion of the GOP was swiftly villainized by Republicans for truthfully reciting Trump’s resume.  His loyalty to Republican policies and commitment to ideals of at least attempting to have strong character were rewarded with accusations of being a traitor.

Trump’s philosophy in life is that reality is the story he presents and truth does not exist.  Trump acolyte Kellyanne Conway revealed these teachings as she told Meet the Press’s Chuck Todd about, “alternative facts”. That Trump successfully sold himself as a modern day Vanderbilt, Carnegie, or Rockefeller to those voters enamored by the rich might unfortunately prove his philosophy of deceit as a workable path to success.  He was awarded the nomination over far more qualified Republican candidates.

It is part of Trump’s standard operating procedures to boast, even about failures.  His loss of the popular vote to Hillary Clinton is an example.  There he claimed voter fraud, without any evidence. Without this imaginary voter fraud, he would have won with record-breaking numbers.  His approach to business is much the same as he describes his bankruptcies as just smart business decisions that are commonly made by high rollers such as himself.  To support my claim that he is nothing more than a middling businessman whose success relied upon inheriting much of his father’s vast wealth, let’s look more closely at these bankruptcies.  

Tax records revealed in 2019 that Trump took a billion dollar loss between 1985 and 1994.  From 1990 to 1991 he was number one in the country in losses, more than doubling the hit taken by the nation’s second biggest loser.  As with the bankruptcies, Trump dismissed the story as smart business decisions that common people would not understand.

What is a bit more difficult to dismiss is that in 1990 Trump’s hotels, casinos, and airline were performing so poorly that they could not even cover the interest owed to the dozens of banks who loaned the future president money.  For Trump this could have meant bankruptcy.  Lucky for Trump though, it also would have meant heavy losses for those banks.  The banks decided to loan him another $65 million to keep him from missing his payment deadlines.  One cost of the loan was that Trump had to surrender managing control of his companies to the banks, who expected that Trump would spend the time they bought him to sell enough of his properties to pay them back.

Even after all this, Trump’s three casinos filed for bankruptcy. The Plaza Hotel had to do the same in 1992 and the banks took many of his remaining assets.  Trump would have had to file personal bankruptcy, damaging the fiction he was presenting to the public during these years, but the banks worked with him and his father gave him money to prevent it.

         It was because of these enormous failures that Trump was locked out of the big business deals he had been attempting. Instead, he began selling his name. The lie he had been telling about his legendary business genius somehow endured these setbacks that would have been crippling had his father not saved him.  He has been selling that lie ever since.

RINO

         The typical routine for candidates in both parties used to be to drift toward the extreme side of your party to get the nomination because that is where those eager enough to vote in primaries lived. Then the job for running for president was truly a race back toward the center, where most Americans lived, before the election.  

         When I was a kid, my neighbors had a two-party household.  My father, raised by a democrat mother and republican father, was a republican and my mother went along with it without having any real partisan convictions I can recall at that time.  Even so, we frequently got visits from my mother’s democrat friend and her pro-union husband.  My dad would grumble, “Those people are idiots,” before they arrived, and then for the next three hours I would watch television while they played cards at the kitchen table.  In those days, my home state earned its nickname as the Show-Me State because neither political party had Missouri in its pocket.  The nominees had to prove themselves.

         Those days have gone, though I hope not forever.

         Today, the parties have moved so far apart that the distance naturally creates more distance.  It used to be that a president could expect his fellow party mates in Congress to support him 60-70% of the time.  By the time of Obama’s presidency that party loyalty was closer to 90%, and has topped 90% with Trump.  The once commonplace pro-life Democrat, for example, is now seen as repugnant by both parties and is quickly shamed into compliance or shunned – as religious communities often deal with heretics.

         Being in the political center is now mocked by newcomers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who frames having centrist views as a symptom of having no convictions about America’s future.  

         The right also pushes this fiction that the greatness of your patriotism will be shown by how extreme your political views are. Conservatives shame people away from the center in many ways, but one of them is with the term RINO.  This stands for republican in name only.  

         Once some tipping point in recent decades was reached, the widening of the partisan divide took on some characteristics of a perpetual motion machine.  If Republicans took a step to the right, Democrats took a step to the left.  Each time one party moved farther from the center, the other party responded in kind.  

Center-left and center-right voters find few options. If you considered yourself a Democrat but voted for Ronald Reagan, you still voted for someone who agreed with you on about 80% of the issues.  To cross over now might mean voting for someone who disagrees with you on 80% of the issues that are important to you because politicians are fleeing from the center.  

         This divide and team sports mentality means that voters are no longer considering the character of the person running for office as they once did.  Instead, they are more and more voting for their team, regardless of the individual wearing the jersey.  The party leads the people.

         There are several popular explanations for how the Republican Party went against its own established principles to nominate Trump, and then how the nation went on to elect him.  They range from angry voters trying to teach Washington D.C. a lesson to angry voters trying to tell Democrats to get back to helping the working person.  These are not robust enough explanations to satisfy, and I am afraid I will not be offering my own guess.  

I will say, however, that in 2016 the Republican Party chose a RINO as their nominee.  This indicates to me that it is not only agreement with a nominee that leads to their winning the White House, but that voters’ revulsion toward that nominee’s opponent that motivates.  To put it more directly, voters have become so saturated with the poison of partisan loyalty that they were going to the polls to vote against Clinton, which they would have done no matter who her opponent was.

         My calling Trump a RINO does not mean that I consider him a centrist.  He is not genuinely left, center, or right politically – and at the same time he has been each of these things over the course of his life.  He is whatever works.  If Trump had seen a clearer path to becoming president as a Stalin Communist, he would have told his people to find Ivan Drago and talk him into being his running mate.  

By calling him a RINO, I am just saying that he won the Republican nomination, but does not keep with long held Republican ideals.  By this point, it would likely be more accurate to say that the party itself has shifted to meet Trump, transforming its claimed ideals so that it can fit around the president.

There was a movement of a sort when it began to look as if Trump might be the nominee.  These Republicans called themselves Never Trumpers.  This amounted to an enormous portion of established Republican politicians when it seemed like a safe bet that he would never become president. After he became president, the Never Trump movement lost a lot of momentum, but many soldier on in defense of what the GOP was before Trump.

From time to time a petition or letter signed by a few dozen preachers standing up to Trump will make the news, but they have little lasting impact.  Christians who are not moved by immigrants having their children taken away from them and held in detention centers are not likely to feel their spirits stirred by a petition.

One effort from a Christian magazine did hold a spot in the headlines for a few days.  Christianity Today, held in high regard by some believers because of its ties to the late Billy Graham, published a very clear rebuke of Trump concerning his impeachment.

“The typical Christianity Today approach is to stay above the fray and allow Christians with different political convictions to make their arguments in the public square… (We want to be) a place that welcomes Christians from across the political spectrum, and remind everyone that politics is not the end and purpose of our being… But the facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.  The reason many are not shocked about this is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration.  He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals.  He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationships with women, about which he remains proud.  His Twitter feed alone – with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders – is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.”

It did not take long for most Christians to forget the article, though it was an overdue stance from a significant Christian periodical and the magazine should be proud to have taken it.  

         The National Review is the conservative magazine that taught Ronald Reagan Reaganomics. It is safe to say that when they took their early stance against Trump being nominated to lead the party, they believed they still held a good deal of influence over voters.  As they tried to draw comparisons between Trump and Obama, it seems that not many were listening.

         The rise of Trump also marks the moment the main body of Republican voters broke with Republican intellectuals.  This could hardly have come as a surprise to those intellectuals.  The growing disdain for experts on the far right as well as the spreading virus of baseless hubris among those voters had been obvious to anyone paying attention. These are the voters who know more about current events than the press.  They understand climate science better than climate scientists.  Their Google-powered research makes their conclusions about vaccines more valid than that of the world’s community of medical doctors.  Their opinions are stronger than facts and their beliefs can withstand any evidence. What use could such a group as the far right have for conservative thinkers like George Will when they have emotion and intuition to guide them?

         Susan B. Glasser wrote an interesting article for the New Yorker in March, 2020 following the efforts of Never Trump Republican Sarah Longwell.  In part, the article describes some of the organized groups attempting to hold to traditional Republican principles, and how their disobedience infuriates the president who warns, “Watch out for them, they are human scum!”  Longwell’s hope is to build a coalition of the center and she hopes that Joe Biden can represent this.  Her hope beyond this is that, as after the Nixon debacle, the Republican Party can take the following four years to redefine itself.

         After Trump was the nominee, Longwell began feeling very lonely as her allies hopped over the line to join the New Republican Party. As the 2020 Presidential Election grows near, Longwell has found allies like George Conway and the Lincoln Project, and continues trying to make her case to likely voters.

         The aroma of petrichor is in the air as signs of a rejuvenating rain begin to mount. The avalanche of Trump’s scandals and embarrassments seem to vex reasonable Republicans who ignored them two years ago.  The very early polls suggest that Joe Biden could win comfortably against Trump in November, in part because he is not reviled by the right in the way Hillary Clinton is, and so his nomination may not ignite the same fire in Republicans.

         If the historical mistake of Donald Trump is corrected in November, we should keep in mind that the 30% of Americans who make up his base will remain.  They are the ones who showed themselves in a poll released yesterday, in which 70% of Americans were in favor of mail-in voting for November’s Presidential Election in order to protect lives from Covid-19.  The remaining 30% are not moved by the elderly poll workers who are distressed by the idea of risking their lives.  Instead, they either understand that the fewer people allowed to vote, the better Trump’s chances for re-election, or else they are so gullible that they can be manipulated by claims of mail-in ballots leading to a rigged election absent any evidence.

         People who are happy to undermine American Democracy, whether it be through the meddling of a foreign government or homespun ways to keep people from voting, have likely always been around but were too weakly organized to derail America.  Supposing Biden does win over the financially and morally bankrupt Trump, we will still have to wait to see if the reasonable center has been restored well enough to dominate the extremes in a lasting way.

         The checks and balances built into the foundations of our government by our Founding Fathers have remained intact, though they have been damaged in the Trump years.  It is naïve to take for granted that American Democracy will endure no matter how irresponsible the American people.  We have been reminded many times throughout our history that America is an experiment that can either succeed or fail.  America can only continue unbroken if each generation keeps it until passing it to the next.  

         The adults in the center must regain control of the children on the edges or our future might read like Lord of the Flies.

[xcziel]

After seeing your tags abt CQL vs MDZS, I wanted to throw my 2c in. MDZS is a 18+ book tagged with bourgeois tragedy. The horror aspects and hypocrisy of the characters is very much part of the point. WWX was *not* a hero. Censorship in China forbids all depictions of moral ambiguity, violence, resurrection/necromancy etc. and CQL is a product of that; relying heavily on the audience also knowing the novel, so it's extremely frustrating to see ppl bag on MXTX for "not knowing" her own characters

Yes, I've seen some posts in reaction to that sort of thing, and I can see that that kind of entitled assumption would be infuriating? And kind of ... bonkers? I guess I don't go in the tags enough because I've never actually seen the posts judging MXTX, just the more reasoned responses on blogs I follow.

I'm not sure if it's just the posts in the generic fandom tags (which I mostly avoid) or if some of these takes are coming from twitter, but my only experience with MXTX criticism is literally just these reaction posts. My preference for CQL is just that, a personal preference, not any literary criticism of the source material or its author.

I've seen many posts from people with deep experience of the novel, the genre, and c-fandom in general explaining why judging source material from another culture by western media standards is inappropriate and often disrespectful, and that MXTX's writing is both indicative of its genre and cultural climate, while also being substantially an intentional deconstruction of expected tropes.

Of course it's frustrating to see people with limited understanding (and seemingly little desire to acquire any) quip away with their "hot takes" and I sympathize. But I'm not sure why I'm being pulled into this - I'm not reblogging or participating in posts that are attacking the original novel or MXTX herself. I don't have any contact with people judging MXTX or MDZS in a negative light. I'm in the tags, in my feelings about people posting on my dash who seem disdainful of fans who prefer CQL because they consider ignorance of information covered in the novel to be some kind of ... scholarly lack? that the newer fans should be eager to rectify immediately, preferably, I can only infer, by reading the novel themselves. So I do have an untagged post where I try to explain why that's not happening for me personally.

All I've been trying to say in the previous tags is that, for myself, CQL is more engaging - as you point out, a lot of things were left out of the TV version for censorship reasons or just adapted for the realities of live action media production. And many of those things also just happened to be things that I personally don't care for or about - leaving out many of Wei Wuxian's darker moments for example, doesn't damage the narrative as far as I'm concerned. And the other aspects that are appealing to me have little to do with the source novel - the actors, the costuming, the sets, the music - these are what drew me personally to CQL, not necessarily the depth of the writing, aside the love story.

And I'm really not looking at it as a _ vs. _ situation? To my mind, it's two different canons and I'm basically advocating treating them as such. It's the opposite of say, Harry Potter, for me: I've never seen even one of the movies, only read the books, so book-canon is where I lived, while still being able to read fanfic that incorporated aspects of both. I'm not preferring CQL only because I dislike the MDZS novel. Without CQL I wouldn't even be aware that there was a novel. And if I had been aware, even in english, that most likely wouldn't have been a novel I would have chosen to read.

Definitely there are aspects of CQL that must have a deeper resonance with an informed and savvy Chinese audience, but I think the surge of international fans makes clear that it does also work as a piece of media without that more intimate knowledge of the source material? It may not be interpreted the same way (obviously) but it's still an enjoyable work and I think people are allowed to be fans of the more superficial view where, indeed, Wei Wuxian is not a "hero" - he's the protagonist of a romance: not specifically good or bad, but necessarily Loved.

In a way it's kind of a Death of the Author thing - I'm not criticizing MDZS, because I will never experience the novel in its raw form, without the interference of a translation process. Just as I cannot make any value judgement of MXTX herself, knowing nothing about her personally, nor enough about her works' place in, and reflection of, the larger culture of Chinese online fandom and entertainment to be able to form a valid opinion. So I accept that my experience of the TV show is basically independent of the original authorial intent. For me and many others, it's just a xianxia show, a very pretty one.

I can only rely on what I've been told by others with more knowledge, and the translations that I've seen, and I'm not fool enough to think that either is sufficient to give me a true grasp of the source work itself. So I find it simpler to rely on the parts that I can judge for myself - the visual elements of the CQL adaptation. I mean, no one seems to be able to come up with a single, holistic english translation for "Jinlintai", nevermind being able to somehow explicate or encompass all of the Chinese cultural and linguistic/literary associations embedded in the written text, or even just the dialogue of the tv show.

I lost my way in here somewhere, but I just wanted to iterate that no reasonable person will ever give credence to some weirdo claim like an author "doesn't understand their own characters" or any other delusional stance hot take fandom twitter mavens are advancing about non-western cultural mores being "abusive" or "regressive" (I have seen twitter bad takes - whoo boy is all I can say there), or whatever else they're saying here on Tumblr that is causing c-fans to feel they need to jump to defend both MDZS' source webnovel and its author.

So ... yeah. I get that the source novel is more sophisticated and transgressive than is represented in the television series, but on a personal level I really do care more about Wang Yibo's microexpressions than I do about debating cultural morality or societal hypocrisy, so I'm definitely gonna stop talking now.

[fandomshatelgbtqpeople]

On JK Rowling, Dumbledore, lycanthropy, and cultural context

I want to address an idea I’ve been seeing pop up a lot recently, which is that JK Rowling added Dumbledore being gay and lycanthropy being a metaphor for AIDS years later in order to seem progressive, and I’ve put a lot of time into thinking about why these claims bother me (since I’m definitely not mad on Jo’s behalf because she’s been dead to me since 2016), and I think it really comes down to this. These claims are based entirely off of how things are today and show a fundamental disregard for the cultural context at the time that’s concerning and feels dismissive to the people who lived through it. Basically, it goes hand in hand with the lack of knowledge and sometimes intentional rewriting of our community’s history that’s so prominent on this site.

Note that I am not arguing that Dumbledore is good rep or that the lycanthropy-HIV metaphor was well executed (or even a good idea in the first place). I just wish people would stop treating these things like JK Rowling said them yesterday as opposed to 12 years ago.

1. Dumbledore being gay 

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out in July 2007 and Jo first publicly said Dumbledore was gay and in love with Grindelwald in October 2007, so the idea that she added it years later is just factually untrue. It came out three months after the release of the final book. 

Let’s take a look at public attitude towards queer people in 2007. I’ll preface this by saying that I’m American, so I’ve done my best to find data on the UK, but most of my info is from the US.

In 2007, in the US, Gallup reported that only 59% of adults surveyed believed consensual sex between two people of the same gender should be legal, that 46% of adults believed that same-sex marriage should be legal and come with all the same rights are marriage between a man and a woman, and that 50% of adults favored a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Despite all that, only 22% of surveyed adults answered that they thought gays and lesbians (the language in the poll) should be more accepted in the US and 27% of adults thought gays and lesbians should be less accepted. Jumping back to 2005, 43% of respondents didn’t think gay people should be hired as elementary school teachers and 36% didn’t think we should be hired as high school teachers. I mention these numbers specifically because they’re relevant to Dumbledore. 

On the legal side of things, there were enforceable sodomy laws on the books in 13 states until 2003, four years before Deathly Hallows came out and Jo announced that Dumbledore was gay. In 2004, the fact that Kerry was in favor of same-sex marriage was considered a significant liability in his presidential campaign because even a lot of democrats still didn’t support it. In October, 2007 when Jo did that interview, same-sex marriage was legal only in Massachusetts, civil unions were legal in four states, and domestic partnerships were legal in three states. Meanwhile, twenty-five states had constitutional bans on same-sex marriage and twelve of those states also had constitutional bans on other rights, such as civil unions and domestic partnerships or extensions of employment benefits to same-sex partners.  

In the UK in 2007, just under 40% of adults believed that same-sex relationships were morally okay, 17% strongly agreed that same-sex marriage should be legal, and just under 45% believed that a same-sex couple could raise a child as well as a man and a woman. A 2005 Gallup poll found that, 38% of Brits believed homosexuality should be more widely accepted, 15% thought it should be less widely accepted, and 44% thought the currently level of acceptance was about right. 

On a more personal note, my high school hired its first openly gay teacher in 2008, and the fact that he was gay was considered pretty scandalous among the student body. We had a gay band instructor, but he only ever referred to his partner as his roommate. When we did debates in social studies classes, same-sex marriage was always one of the issues we had to debate over. Of the eleven people I went to high school with whom I now know are queer, only three of them were out in high school. That’s how uncommon it was at the time to come out before you were relatively independent. 

So this idea that announcing that a prominent character who was a headmaster at a school and had a close relationship to the teenage boy main character in a wildly popular children’s book series was gay would have been a popular move in 2007 is pretty laughable to anyone old enough to remember what 2007 was actually like. No one was using support for queer people just to bolster their public image unless their product was specifically marketed towards queer people, because the general wisdom at the time was that it would hurt them too badly with straight audiences. In fact, if memory serves, the queer fandom’s reaction to Dumbledore was initially pretty positive because it was more than we ever thought we were going to get. I didn’t start seeing people talk about how it wasn’t enough or about how the entire plot line was homophobic until maybe 2012.

You can’t use today’s context to interpret why someone made a decision in 2007 because it’s difficult to overstate how different things are now. The only reason to want to look pro-gay in 2007 was if you genuinely thought it was the right thing to do.

2. Lycanthropy and HIV

I was genuinely surprised when this caused a stir when JK Rowling tweeted (?) about it in 2016 because I was pretty sure she’d talked about lycanthropy being a metaphor for HIV years ago. It turns out I was right. She discussed it during the copyright trial she was involved in in 2008 (you can find it here, on pages 72-73). So it didn’t come out until nine years after Prisoner of Azkaban and three years after Half-Blood Prince (when Fenrir Greyback was introduced), but it’s not something she first mentioned on twitter in between tweets about how she meant for Nagini to be a Korean woman in 1989. It was before she was shooting off her mouth about ridiculous stuff every other day.

Regardless, I can understand why that would feel like her pulling something out of left field today because HIV doesn’t get talked about as much, but you have to remember that these books were written in the 90s at the height of the AIDS crisis. It’s difficult to imagine how much that permeated our culture if you didn’t experience it, even for someone like me who was in elementary school in a white suburban area and, as far as I’m aware, didn’t know anyone who was HIV+. My school had a how-not-to-get-AIDS assembly every year.  They probably showed us every movie in existence about kids with HIV. After-school TV shows did special episodes about how you shouldn’t be “blood brothers” with your friends because of AIDS. 

So when my friends and I were reading Prisoner of Azkaban as middle schoolers in the early 2000s, those memories were still fresh in our heads. We didn’t need to be told lycanthropy was supposed to be a metaphor for HIV because it had just been a huge issue five years ago and we knew enough about HIV and how the people who had it were treated to see the parallels. I imagine it was even clearer to the people who read PoA right when it first came out in 1999. It didn’t even occur to me that the metaphor is less obvious to people who are younger until I started seeing claims about this was just something she made up years after the fact and was like, "What do you mean this wasn’t clear to you when you read the book?” It fits perfectly with the general public’s preoccupation with and faulty understanding of AIDS in the late 90s. You just have to acknowledge that things have changed in the past twenty years.

I know that this comparison calls on a lot of stereotypes that are homophobic and otherwise bigoted against people who are HIV+, but those aren’t arguments against the metaphor existing and being intentional, they’re arguments about why that’s not a good thing. Fenrir Greyback is straight out of a 90s detective show. The “person with AIDS who wants to infect other people because they’re bitter about it” was such a common trope that almost every crime drama in the 90s and early 2000s did an episode about it. The “adult man gives a young boy HIV” thing grew out of the “gay men are pedophiles” and “queer people want to recruit your kids” stereotypes. These were prejudices Jo had that misinformed her writing.

I don’t have a whole lot to say on this one other than that given when it was written and how close it fits, including how much it draws on negative 90s-era stereotypes about people who are HIV+, I would honestly have a harder time believing it wasn’t intentional than believing it was.

Anyway, really my point is that it wasn’t always 2019 and if you’re using only today’s culture to inform your opinions about why someone made a certain decision a decade or two ago, not only is your understanding of the situation going to be incomplete, but the fact that it’s incomplete is going to be obvious to anyone who remembers what things were like during the time period you’re trying to talk about.

[bitch-of-ren]

“you’re not doing this, the effort would kill you”

okay guys, so I’ve been thinking for a while about a couple of Kylo Ren’s lines that I don’t find obvious in terms of meaning/justified by the plot at the point when he says them. 

namely, these lines are:

“you mean the murderers, traitors and thieves you call friends?”; 

“you still want to kill me” from TFA (which, I think, are both connected to some other lines from the novelizations)

“you’re not doing this, the effort would kill you.” from TLJ

I will hereby present my take below (and also a bit of context interpretation which is necessary to highlight in order to make my points clear - however, I’m not doing a full Reylo dynamic or Kylo Ren’s character analysis, because there are many excellent ones out there and I don’t have anything intelligent to add), but I’d also like to know what you guys think, so feel free to share your thoughts! 

also, this is my first analysis whatsoever, so be gentle please :P 

tl;dr summary at the end ^^

also, I used some gifs I found on Google, which are not mine - I noted the source each time, which I hope is okay. I mean no harm and don’t want to step on any toes, so if there is some other way I should approach this, please let me know. 

all right, so my initial hypothesis will be that there are a couple of lines which are a bit ambiguous and not obvious from the narrative perspective, both in TFA and TLJ, and separately these lines can be interpreted in various ways which make sense, but put together they have another meaning and shed some extra light on Kylo’s state of mind and how he thinks about Rey. 

so what we see in TFA is this: 

Kylo Ren gets a report about a lost droid and he’s a bit pissed off about that (understandably). he throws a tantrum when he learns that Finn helped BB8 escape, and then calms down - being his sarcastic, dry self, asks “anything else?” and Mitaka is dumb enough to tell him about A GIRL as well. this shouldn’t be that important, right, to get him from destroying objects to harming people? he has already learned the worst part, so basically Kylo Ren has no actual reason that we know of to be triggered enough to Force choke poor Mitaka and again lose his shit. but he does. “WHAT. GIRL?” of course, possible explanation here is that it’s just the final straw for him in this situation, as we know that overall he is not the most patient and put together character in the galaxy.

(gif from Inverse)

he again hears about THE GIRL who was spotted headed west with a droid once he arrives fashionably late to the battle field on Takodana. he proceeds to hunt her down like a goddamn tiger as she fires at him repeatedly. he doesn't harm her in any way though, but instead freezes her in place - even though he does not know that she has seen the map at this point, so he does not have a tactical objective to keep her alive yet. THE GIRL he’s heard so much about. yup, like literally twice, and mostly that she existed and was pals with BB8 but okay. again, it’s not uncommon to use that kind of line as an indication that despite that’s the first time characters meet, they’ve already caused some trouble for one another. 

then of course he hovers over her closely during initial interrogation, and is a bit spooked out once the stormtroopers show up, at which point he stops touching her face and takes a step back from here immediately, like a teenager making out with his girlfriend after parents suddenly burst into the room. and btw, I didn’t expect stormtroopers to be able to sneak up on Kylo Ren like that - the guy who is normally quite focused okay:

(gif from Uncyclopedia)

but hey, girls are distracting. she knocks her out, bridal-carries her to the ship - my head canon is that he held her all the way to the Starkiller Base - and then we head into The Interrogation Scene. 

(pic from Jedi Council Forums)

Rey wakes up restrained, on the goddamn bed torture chair, with a dude who hunt her down and kidnapped her crouching right in front of her. she has every right to be freaked out and not be very friendly towards him, right? she immediately demands to know where she is. he says she’s his guest, which is a villain enough, ironic line which has been used before and can easily be attributed to Vader parallel and generally “bad guys being good hosts”.

note: in the book, there is gentleness to his voice, and in any case less hostility than expected in this situation. 

and then. 

“where are the others?”

“you mean the murderers, traitors and thieves you call friends?” in a condemning tone (sniffing disdainfully, as the book tells us). 

okay, so what is happening here? a guy who ordered a whole village to be killed suddenly has something to say about other people? he accuses them of being murderers, but also traitors and thieves? like, stealing is a problem for Kylo Ren now? yes, they did act in a way that caused problems for the FO, but what is with this self-righteousness? yes, Kylo Ren is an elitist, but there is something more happening there as well, I believe. again, he is referring to Finn and Han, and so this line could be attributed to his father, particularly considering Kylo Ren’s thoughts from the novelization - “not a general, not a hero. just a small-time thief and smuggler.”; “Han Solo’s days of cheating and disappointing people were over” - Kylo doesn’t have that great of an opinion about his dad and he expresses it here (not to mention Finn the traitor, and I guess they both shot a number of people so technically are murderers). but I think it’s something else as well. 

for now, he says he has no idea. 

note: in the book, he also highlights here how he could lie to her and tell her they’re dead, but he wants to be honest with her. from the beginning. of the interrogation, but only? why would that matter if he was honest with his prisoner whom he could interrogate with the force? he didn't seem much concerned about that with Poe...

“you still want to kill me.” with an adorable head cock. like. what else does a sound person expect from a prisoner in this situation? it is perfectly logical that a person strapped to the interrogation chair, kidnapped and about to be tortured for information, wouldn’t exactly have much love for the person responsible, right? also, the “still” part is what I find interesting, because it’s like something has changed in the meantime that - in his mind - should change her attitude. was it that he spared her friends? 

note: in the book Kylo Ren said that in a response to reading her mind; Rey was worried before he said that line and she warned herself to be careful around him because he might lose his shit at any point if she does something to trigger him. again, she didn’t exactly think of harming him then.

then we also have another lines from the TFA novelization which are not in the movie, but were also interesting. 

“something... there is something. who are you?” when they first met at the forest, even before he proactively read her mind. he knew her. he sensed her. she was his.

then, during the interrogation, Kylo Ren sees something in her mind and thinks that “there was something there, of interest. not the image of the map. that would take another moment. but definitely something worth investigating.” in the end he doesn't get there, as she responds with the Vader thing. WHAT IS IT?! 

then there is famous line of “Hux was not worthy of such attention. the girl, on the other hand...” mmhhmm...

“taken aback, he whirled - to see the weapon land in the hand of a girl standing by a tree. Rey appeared equally shocked that her reach for the device had exceeded his. she gazed down at the weapon now resting in her grip. <<it is you>>, Ren murmured. his words unsettled her: not for the first time, he seemed to know more about her than she did about herself”. 

(gif from We Heart It)

I can't how he looks and sounds like young Snape in these forest scenes

now, moving on to TLJ. 

first force time. 

“you’ll bring Luke Skywalker to me.” 

she huffs and does nothing. 

“you’re not doing this. the effort would kill you”. 

like, what?

basically from this point onward, Kylo Ren loses interest in tactical knowledge about Luke Skywalker. he becomes more interested if Rey knows his version of events and how Luke screwed up, so she doesn’t see him as a monster anymore. he's also very curious about the force time and how it works, enough to relieve potentially tactically relevant information to her - “I can’t see yours.” he never asks her anything about Luke whereabouts again. 

of course, the first line serves to establish that he can’t manipulate her into doing anything she’s not willing to do (explicit in the novelization). 

the second line though? like, this is something a girlfriend might say to her boyfriend when she asked him to do something 2hs ago and he’s still playing Battlefront II or whatever. this does not fit into the situation.

now, I read some analysis that this is related to Luke’s sacrifice, namely Kylo Ren knows how the force projection works and understood immediately that his uncle would die and was devastated because of it. 

while I think it does make sense in general, I disagree with this interpretation, because if you put all of these pieces together, I think you get a more holistic interpretation which convinces me a bit more.

additionally, in the first line he doesn’t mention force projection or teleportation, I don’t think it makes much sense for him. what would happen? she would show up with Luke, without being able to do anything to him (the blaster bolt didn’t hit Kylo Ren, so he didn’t have much basis to assume he could kill his uncle via force projection - “so no, this is something else”) - and I doubt that Kylo Ren’s intention were to talk it out in “it was 2 AM!” style. I think if Kylo Ren thought much about force projections, he wouldn’t have humiliated himself as he did in front of his new army on Crait, because - being a smart ass - he’d figure it out. so no, I think he wasn’t referring to force projection effort there. 

tl;dr summary and overall conclusion and The Point I want to make:

I think Kylo Ren knew about Rey for a long time now. she saw him in a dream, in a nightmare, and since Kylo is 10 years older, I think he’s more aware of this connection and its nature than Rey is. it might have been dreams, it might have been glimpses, but she’s been there with him. 

I think because of that, in his head, they are way more advanced in this relationship than would make sense based on the plot thus far, and it’s almost surreal for him that they’ve just met, because they were connected for so long now.

that’s why he's freaking about when he hears about A GIRL. that’s why he is not happy with the company she keeps, while he would be obviously a superior choice. that’s why he is surprised she wanted to kill him while being strapped to interrogation chair, because he himself was so gentle (in context) with her. he is sassy with her and oblivious to her rage at the beginning, because in his head they are on another level. 

[logicalstansadvice]

From our resident astrologer & dream interpreter, HiDrama

/// Thank you so much! You ladies are awesome! I didn't expect someone here to take the time and interpret this for me in such a complex manner. This blog really is the best and I am so glad I found you ❤️❤️❤️❤️ You really got me thinking. And to answer your question about brown hair/eyes, there is nothing wrong with them, I was just describing the younger brother, that he does not look like Seb. He is handsome even though diff than him, but in the dreams I am not attracted to him for some reason. In reality if I saw a guy like that, I would probably be attracted if I'm gonna be honest. But in those dreams something is off with him from the start. He's like cold, really cold, like dead inside, but at the same time has so much passion to reach his goal.

I can't really think of any emperor type person in my life or what I may have unresolved. But you're probably right, something must be unresolved since I keep having them. And now I'm worried that I can't figure out what it is, lol.

And they really are like movies. They all start the same and end with kinda the same outcome (me getting my ass kicked or killed), but the ass kicking is done in various ways. I mean last night he crashed a helicopter on my apartment building and that was new.

I was always weird but these dreams are too weird even for me and the fact that they keep happening and that they're so vivid is concerning. I will follow your advice and try to think if maybe there is something in my life that makes me feel this way or if I have unresolved issues. But if I don't figure it out, do you think they could go away if I go to a doctor and they give me medication? Like something to make you not dream or not remember what you dream. The thing is, they don't actually bother me, I am not terrified or anything. I realize they are just dreams and that I have a very active imagination which is probably the main cause for them. But I remember every freakin detail every time and the days after I have them, I can't focus, I'm in a state of sort of fantasy just thinking about the dream over and over again like it's on replay. I became very absent minded since I have them. Or stuck in my mind. Hope you understand what I mean.

P.S: my bestie tried to interpret them too a while back, by her opinion, as she has no knowledge on dreams stuff or astrology, and she said that Alexander (the infamous younger brother, that's his name in my dreams) represents Covid. And that the dreams are fear of the pandemic or death. Lmao. I highy doubt it but I found it hilarious.

Anon to anon:

For the past year I have dreams about Sebastian having a younger brother // I’m curious, do you love fantasy books/tv shows where there’s a character trying to save/destroy the world? Cause it may be that being a part of an elaborate scheme or plot is something you find fascinating and you also want to be close to or get to know Seb. But you’re brain can’t accept you actually knowing/dating/being friends with him cause that’s too far fetched so you’ve invented his brother as your accomplice in this plan in your dreams?

HiDrama -

No worries Anon! I was only teasing about the Brown eyes and Curly Brown hair! hmmm...but it’s his character that is unattractive to you. Dead inside but passionate about his goal. He seems like the Loki we got at the end of Thor and in the Avengers...

Keep in mind its male energy but doesn’t have to be strictly male gender.

Alexander?! Like Alexander THEE Great? Ironically, that name means “Defender of the people, Defending men, or Protector of men.” ...Sebastian means Venerable: “Commanding respect because of great age or impressive dignity.”

Wait - Little Brother Alexander kicking or killing your ass? And he’s highly inventive! Death in dreams can mean the end and beginning of something; Needing to move on; Also punishing ourselves over guilty feelings.

I advocate seeing a professional if you have mental health concerns, in general. HOWEVER, If the dream itself is the only issue, here’s a couple things you can try:

Keep a Dream Journal: Record your dreams right after having them. It helps you document and recall things you may have forgotten/missed.

Brainstorming: Just need a notebook/journal and a pen. In the center of the page, write a word or phrase about the dream, keep circling the word with your pen until another word pops up. Draw a line to the new word and just keep doing that as new words come to you. You will KNOW when something important comes. If it does focus on that word for a bit.

Meditation/Hypnotherapy audio/video: I’m new to the Hypnosis world, but it has helped me figure out emotional triggers that affected my relationship w/ food. It wasn’t like I expected from movies & TV. More like guided Meditation. Marisa Peers is the coach, she’s on YT.

As for feeling dazed after the dream: I had a romantic dream about IDRIS ELBA (yum!) and was in a daze the whole damn morning, trying to recall the details...Yowza. But seriously, I know that feeling. Best Regards!

[dfroza]

we share differences, but are part of the same Body of faith and hope in Love

and so we should strive to get along.

Today’s reading of the Scriptures from the New Testament is the 14th chapter of the Letter of Romans:

Offer an open hand of fellowship to welcome every true believer, even though their faith may be weak and immature. And refuse to engage in debates with them concerning nothing more than opinions.

For example, one believer has no problem with eating all kinds of food, but another with weaker faith will eat only vegetables. The one who eats freely shouldn’t judge and look down on the one who eats only vegetables. And the vegetarian must not judge and look down on the one who eats everything. Remember, God has welcomed him and taken him as his partner.

Who do you think you are to sit in judgment of someone else’s household servant? His own master is the one to evaluate whether he succeeds or fails. And God’s servants will succeed, for God’s power supports them and enables them to stand.

In the same way, one person regards a certain day as more sacred than another, and another person regards them all alike. There is nothing wrong with having different personal convictions about such matters. For the person who observes one day as especially sacred does it to honor the Lord. And the same is true regarding what a person eats. The one who eats everything eats to honor the Lord, because he gives thanks to God, and the one who has a special diet does it to honor the Lord, and he also gives thanks to God.

No one lives to himself and no one dies to himself. While we live, we must live for our Master, and in death we must bring honor to him. So dead or alive we belong to our Master. For this very reason the Anointed One died and was brought back to life again, so that he would become the Lord God over both the dead and the living.

Why would you judge your brothers or sisters because of their diet, despising them for what they eat or don’t eat? For we each will have our turn to stand before God’s judgment seat. Just as it is written:

“As surely as I am the Living God, I tell you:

‘Every knee will bow before me

and every tongue will confess the truth

and glorify me!’ ”

Therefore, each one must answer for himself and give a personal account of his own life before God.

So stop being critical and condemning of other believers, but instead determine to never deliberately cause a brother or sister to stumble and fall because of your actions.

I know and am convinced by personal revelation from the Lord Jesus that there is nothing wrong with eating any food. But to the one who considers it to be unclean, it is unacceptable. If your brother or sister is offended because you insist on eating what you want, it is no longer love that rules your conduct. Why would you wound someone for whom the Messiah gave his life, just so you can eat what you want? So don’t give people the opportunity to slander what you know to be good. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of rules about food and drink, but is in the realm of the Holy Spirit, filled with righteousness, peace, and joy. Serving the Anointed One by walking in these kingdom realities pleases God and earns the respect of others.

So then, make it your top priority to live a life of peace with harmony in your relationships, eagerly seeking to strengthen and encourage one another. Stop ruining the work of God by insisting on your own opinions about food. You can eat anything you want, but it is wrong to deliberately cause someone to be offended over what you eat. Consider it an act of love to refrain from eating meat or drinking wine or doing anything else that would cause a fellow believer to be offended or tempted to be weakened in his faith. Keep the convictions you have about these matters between yourself and God, and don’t impose them upon others. You’ll be happy when you don’t judge yourself in doing what your conscience approves. But the one who has misgivings feels miserable if he eats meat, because he doubts and doesn’t eat in faith. For anything we do that doesn’t spring from faith is, by definition, sinful.

The Letter of Romans, Chapter 14 (The Passion Translation)

Today’s paired chapter of the Testaments is the 33rd chapter (the halfway point) of the book (scroll) of Isaiah that points to a cleansing of sin:

Oh, how bad it will be for the one who ruins and is not yet ruined,

who lies, cheats, and steals without experiencing the same in return.

It will come back to you. When you’ve exhausted your destroying,

you will find yourself destroyed,

And your treachery will come back to haunt you at the treacherous hands of others.

We’ve been waiting for you, Eternal One, to come and shower us with grace.

In the morning, be our strength; in times of trouble, be what saves us.

People flee when they hear the crashing thunder of Your voice;

nations scatter when You arise.

The spoil of the nations is gathered—swiftly and decisively—

as a hungry locust gathers, as a swarm of locusts rushes to strip the land.

The Eternal One is high above it all; for that is where He lives;

He will fill Zion (that heaven on earth) with justice and all manner of doing right.

God will be what holds things together,

fast and firm during these times.

He will be boundless salvation,

the roots and fruits of wisdom and knowledge.

Zion’s most precious possession

is the people’s awe-filled respect of the Eternal.

Look, their stoutest men run screaming in the streets;

their messengers of peace have broken down in bitter tears.

The roads are empty; no one ventures out.

The Assyrians have broken their treaty,

Disavowing the promises they made before witnesses.

They show no respect for anyone.

The land itself, like a new widow, grieves and wastes away.

Lush Lebanon decays, once-rose-covered Sharon looks like a desert,

And the tree-topped mountains of Bashan and Carmel

are completely denuded.

Eternal One: Now’s the time for action. I will arise.

People will esteem Me and recognize My greatness.

For you have produced nothing but chaff and worthless stubble.

Your breath is a fire that will sweep back and consume you.

Your people will be burned to ashes

like thornbushes cut down and burned up in the fire.

Listen well, wherever you are; make sure you know

that I have accomplished this.

Near and far, you’d better take note of My incomparable strength.

Those who do wrong, the guilty and criminal in Zion, are terrified;

in the presence and power of God, the godless tremble.

They ask themselves,

“Who could possibly survive this all-consuming conflagration?

Who can live through the unrelenting heat, the flames, the smoke?”

I will tell you who: the one who goes through life with integrity and

speaks truth with conviction, refusing to take part in fraud and abuse,

Whose hands are free of bribes, whose ears are covered to violent schemes,

and whose eyes are shut to the temptations of evil.

That one will survive and prosper on the heights of Zion

and take comfort in the shelter of rock fortresses,

And never be hungry, never thirsty.

Ah, you will see for yourself the beauty of the One who rules over all.

Your eyes will take in a land that stretches far beyond the horizon.

You will think back on the terror you experienced:

“Where is the officer who counted the plunder, weighed out our taxes, and calculated our defenses?”

You will no longer see rude and arrogant people in charge of the city,

and you will no longer have to listen to their strange babbling and incomprehensible muttering.

Ah, just look at Zion! The city where we celebrate,

where we make our God-appointed feasts.

You’ll see a Jerusalem at peace, untroubled, undisturbed,

like a permanent tent with stakes driven deep and ropes that never break.

There, the Eternal, so splendid and regal,

will be for us a place of broad rivers and wide canals.

No large boats will pass through them—

no mighty ships will sail their waters.

For the Eternal One is our Judge; He has prescribed our laws;

He rules over us, and He is the One who will save us.

You who try to sail in will be unable,

as if your lines are limp, your mast is wobbly, and your sails are furled.

The spoils in your hold will be divided among the deserving.

Even those who can hardly walk will take what you had taken.

And nobody who lives in God’s city will say he doesn’t feel well.

For everyone will be washed clean and forgiven for their wrongdoing.

The Book (Scroll) of Isaiah, Chapter 33 (The Voice)

A link to my personal reading of the Scriptures for Sunday, july 11 of 2021 with a paired chapter from each Testament of the Bible along with Today’s Proverbs and Psalms

A post by John Parsons that looks into the sacred space of the heart:

During his lectures on Jewish values, Joseph Telushkin used to ask his audience if they could go 24 hours without saying any unkind words about, or to, anybody. Most people said no, they couldn’t. Rabbi Telushkin then commended them for their honesty, but pointed out that if he had asked them if they could go 24 hours without drinking alcohol and they likewise said they couldn't, wouldn't that mean they have a serious drinking problem? (Words that Hurt). His point was that if you can't go 24 hours without saying unkind words about others (or raging at the world!), you have lost control of your tongue. As Yeshua explained, words express the condition of the heart, since "from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Luke 6:45). Therefore the root issue concerns the heart (לֵב), the “midst of the self” that wills, desires, and chooses how to interpret and describe the world. If we choose to see from a heart of fear, we will tend to use our words as a weapon; but if we see with a heart of faith, we will seek to build others up....

In the Book of Proverbs we read, “Whoever restrains his words has knowledge, and one with a cool spirit is a person of understanding" (Prov. 17:27). The Chofetz Chaim comments: "When people are preparing a telegram, notice how carefully they consider each word before they put it down. That is how careful we must be when we speak." As James admonishes us: "Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger" (James 1:19). Friends, let us earnestly pray to be delivered from agitated passions and hurtful words we sometimes say... May God give us hearts of peace that are restrained by the Spirit of God. Amen, and Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Tov, chaverim. [Hebrew for Christians]

7.9.21 • Facebook

Today’s message (Days of Praise) from the Institute for Creation Research

July 11, 2021

A Mighty Fortress Is Our God

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear.” (Psalm 46:1-2)

Martin Luther’s journal entries inform us of his continual battle against evil forces and that Psalm 46 was a great comfort to him. As he meditated on the words of our text, the thrust of a mighty song was born that openly declared victory in the great battle: “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

A mighty fortress is our God, A bulwark never failing;

Our helper He, amid the flood Of mortal ills prevailing:

For still our ancient foe Doth seek to work us woe;

His craft and power are great,

And, armed with cruel hate,

On earth is not his equal.

The battle to be fought is “not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12). Satan, along with his henchmen, is an ancient foe, “a roaring lion,” as it were, “seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8). But there is no need for alarm, “the LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge” (Psalm 46:11). He “is our refuge and strength” (today’s text), a bulwark never failing. “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8).

Only God could accomplish this victory, for Satan is “the prince of this world” (John 14:30), “the prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2). No man on Earth is his equal.

But how did the Son of God gain the victory? By taking on Himself “flesh and blood” and dying a substitutionary death, “that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). JDM

[quranreadalong]

SO YOU AFFLICTED THE PEOPLE OF YOUR HOMETOWN WITH A FAMINE BECAUSE THEY ARE DISBELIEVERS

We’ve talked a lot about the Medina days in history lessons, but the Mecca days have been left fairly blank beyond that one history lesson in surah 6 and some tidbits along the way. There is a simple reason for this: far more was written about the Medina days in reputable sources. Mohammed lived as a Muslim in Mecca from 610 to 622 AD, and there was animosity between Mohammed’s camp in Medina and the Quraysh of Mecca all the way through 630 AD. That’s a long time! But the reliable information that we have on what exactly was occurring in Mecca during those 20 years is really skimpy.

Of course, we know the general outline, with the Quran itself as the most important source--how the majority of people in Mecca not only didn’t take to Mohammed’s “message” but thought he was a bit nutty and irritating, and all the drama that unfolded as a result of that. We know a bit about what happened towards the end of this time period, with the Treaty of Hudaibiyya and the conquest of Mecca. But we just don’t have a serious record of everything that happened in between, and most of what Muslims are taught about Mecca in this era relies mostly or entirely on weak traditions.

None of this is really surprising when you think about the numbers involved here. The vast majority of Meccans were not Muslim when Mohammed and his followers left for Medina. Those who stayed and later “embraced Islam” only after the conquest of Mecca (and subsequent hunting of polytheists) years later would naturally have been reluctant to talk about the years they spent in opposition to “Allah’s apostle”. Those who were Muslims at the time and migrated from Mecca to Medina with Mohammed numbered fewer than 200 even by the most optimistic accounts, and not all of them survived long enough to tell the tale. Compare that to the thousands of men that Mohammed led to conquer the city within a decade. Islam was born in Mecca, but it didn’t go from Local Man Becomes Cult Leader to Local Man Becomes Warlord until Medina.

So in addition to a dearth of material to work with, we ultimately have a dearth of potential original sources. Of those who narrated a thousand or more ahadith, in fact, the only two who were present in Mecca at any point during that era (Aisha and Mohammed’s cousin Abdallah ibn al-Abbas) were both very small children at the time of the migration to Medina. As such, trying to piece together exactly what went on in Mecca takes some work and some willing suspension of disbelief. This applies to not only Mohammed’s days in Mecca, but also to what happened in Mecca before Mohammed conquered it. Today we will look at a very good example of this problem.

In the last section, we were talking about this hadith from Bukhari, which is repeated in several sahih ahadith:

We were with `Abdullah and he said, "When the Prophet (ﷺ) saw the refusal of the people to accept Islam he said, "O Allah! Send (famine) years on them for (seven years) like the seven years (of famine during the time) of (Prophet) Joseph." So famine overtook them for one year and destroyed every kind of life to such an extent that the people started eating hides, carcasses and rotten dead animals. Whenever one of them looked towards the sky, he would (imagine himself to) see smoke because of hunger. So Abu Sufyan went to the Prophet (ﷺ) and said, "O Muhammad! You order people to obey Allah and to keep good relations with kith and kin. No doubt the people of your tribe are dying, so please pray to Allah for them." So [Mohammed recites part of surah 44 about how Allah will take them in a “mighty grasp”]. Ibn Mas`ud added, [that] happened in the battle of Badr

After that, Mohammed recites an ayah from surah 44, in which he says that the Meccans would just return to disbelief and would be destroyed by Allah, which is interpreted as a reference to the Battle of Badr. Other ahadith on this subject have some alternate dialogue--in this one Mohammed curses “Mudar”, which was an enormous tribal confederation including the Quraysh--but the general idea is the same.

That famine is assumed to be what Mohammed is talking about in 23:76, where he tells the Meccans that Allah has already punished them for their disbelief, as a warning. Well, fair enough, right? Here’s the issue: this is supposed to be a Meccan surah. And there is no record of such a catastrophic famine befalling Mecca before Mohammed left the city in 622 AD. It could have happened, I guess, but there’s nothing said of it in any reputable source, and one would assume that A) if such a famine had happened, a hell of a lot more people would’ve converted to Islam and followed Mohammed, and B) it would have been mentioned in the ahadith by people who suffered through it. But there isn’t any mention of this event anywhere. In fact, it’s really hard to tell when this apparent famine happened at all!

Let’s look at some sketchy stories that pinpoint the supposed famine in Mohammed’s Mecca days. Here is one from the guy mentioned in the Bukhari hadith. Abdullah ibn Masud is mentioned in another sahih hadith which says:

One day I went to Ibn Mas`ud who said, "When Quraish delayed in embracing Islam, the Prophet (ﷺ) [said:] I invoked Allah to curse them, so they were afflicted with a (famine) year because of which many of them died and they ate the carcasses ... Asbath added on the authority of Mansur, "Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) prayed for them and it rained heavily for seven days. So the people complained of the excessive rain. The Prophet (ﷺ) said, 'O Allah! (Let it rain) around us and not on us.' So the clouds dispersed over his head and it rained over the surroundings."

This and all of the other sahih ahadith concerning this topic stem from the same three narrators: Mansour, Masruq, and Abu al-Duha; they mention Ibn Masud as the ultimate source of this knowledge.

Reader, it is my opinion that one of these people is lying.

There is no record of any such famine in Mecca before the migration to Medina, nor is there any trace of this supposed famine from any chain of narration not involving the people named above. If Mohammed created and ended a drought on demand, I’d guess that he’d have won more than a couple hundred converts in 12+ years in Mecca. After all, one of the Meccans’ persistent criticisms of Mohammed, as the Quran itself states, was that he could not perform miracles. In fact, the account of Mohammed sending rain to relieve a drought, the people getting soaked and complaining, then the rainclouds being pushed out in a circle above is extremely similar to another mythical account... about this happening in Medina, which does not involve the Quraysh at all. It seems like that myth got transformed a bit and then backdated to the Mecca days, and that’s how the first hadith came to be.

This does not mean that the famine itself is purely mythical. It is mentioned by plenty of other narrators--just not the part about Mohammed performing a miracle to both invoke it and stop it, then placing it pre-Badr. I am now going to show, in obnoxious detail, why this detail was almost certainly false and early Islamic myth-making, and why the real famine, if it happened, instead occurred while Mohammed was in Medina.

There are plenty of other famines mentioned in Islamic histories and the sira we’ve been reading, but none that properly fit the timeline here. Ibn Ishaq, for example, references a famine that led to the young Ali coming to live with his older cousin Mohammed and his wife Khadijah:

God showed His favor and goodwill towards him (Ali) when a grievous famine overtook Quraysh. Abu Talib (Ali's father, Mohammed's uncle) had a large family, and the prophet approached his (other) uncle al-Abbas, who was one of the richest of Banu Hashim (their clan) ... the apostle took [in] Ali and kept him with him and al-Abbas took (Ali's brother) Jaafar.

But this was before Mohammed’s prophet days. So that one doesn’t work as a punishment for disbelievers. And anyway it’s unclear whether the people in Mecca were dying of hunger here--the implication is more like Abu Talib in particular was suffering because he didn’t have enough money to feed his large family. That was possibly because fewer people were coming to Mecca for the hajj, and Abu Talib made money catering to pilgrims. And Ibn Ishaq mentions no other “grievous famine”.

Some modern-day scholars instead try to connect the mysterious famine with a “boycott” of Mohammed’s clan, the Banu Hashim, mentioned in some history books, though it is not referenced in any strong ahadith. At some point, these books say, the Quraysh got so pissed off at Mohammed that they agreed to stop trading and marrying with his clan, even though most of his clan wasn’t Muslim at the time. The boycott was not very effective because people went around it and quietly traded with them anyway, then two or three years later the boycotters gave up. Even the sketchy sources describing this event have been drastically dramatized in modern times, implying it was a boycott of all Muslims (it wasn’t) and that it resulted in people dying (it didn’t). The actual sources that mention this never say this “boycott” starved anyone, let alone that it killed people. And at any rate, even if you do connect the Meccan famine to the supposed failed “boycott”, there’s still no mention of the supposed retaliatory famine in this era in any history books!

There is no other famine mentioned anywhere between 610 and 622 AD that we can even semi-plausibly connect with the famine. So we’re gonna have to ignore the belief that this was from the Mecca days if we want to make this work. The first hadith has to contain mythical details--a hadith being sahih does not necessarily mean that it is a true recollection of events, but simply that the statement probably does ultimately trace back to the alleged source (see examples of mythical sahih ahadith here or here). So let’s expand the timeline a bit. Al-Wahidi records a version of the story that does imply it was from the Medina days:

When Thumamah ibn Athal al-Hanafi (a powerful tribal chief) was brought to the Messenger of Allah, Allah bless him and give him peace, as a prisoner and the latter embraced Islam, he set him free. Thumamah returned to al-Yamamah (Najd region) and prevented the people of Mecca from getting any provisions from al-Yamamah. Allah, exalted is He, sent upon Quraysh years of scarcity until they were forced to eat animal hair mixed with blood. Abu Sufyan went to see the Messenger of Allah, Allah bless him and give him peace, and said: ‘I beseech you by Allah and our ties of kinship; do you not claim that you have been sent a mercy unto the worlds’. He said: ‘Indeed!’ Abu Sufyan said: ‘But you have killed fathers with the sword and children with hunger’

So, okay, here we have a clearer story: the “famine” is caused less by natural causes and more by a blockade of goods that results in starvation, courtesy of this powerful tribal leader from the Najd region east of Mecca and Medina. Allah’s “divine punishment” comes in because the guy doing the blockading is a Muslim. Ibn Ishaq relates the incident in which Thumamah here was captured:

The apostle's cavalry went out and captured a man of the Banu Hanifa not knowing who he was ... The apostle went to him and urged him to accept Islam .. When they let him go he went as far as al-Baqi, where he purified himself and then returned and paid homage to the prophet

If you remember from way back in surah 9, the early Muslims did engage in some raiding and attacks before Badr, most of which involved them trying to attack a caravan; they succeeded in the Nakhla raid, which resulted in a Meccan trader being killed during a supposedly “sacred month”, prompting the Quraysh to put together a defense force for the next caravan. The Muslims at the time did not have the numbers to raid all the way into the Najd region, though, and there’s no record of them having done so in 623-early 624 AD. So... if we want this story to work within the timeline, we have to assume that Thumamah was captured in some small, otherwise unmentioned raid when he was just hanging out in the Hijaz region for some reason. Again, it’s possible. But it seems very unlikely. And based on where this incident is listed in Ibn Ishaq’s work, this happened long after Badr, anyway, closer to 630 AD. Another dead end...

If we assume that the famine really did happen and is not just some early Islamic myth-making, going by the sources available to us, we’re gonna have to ignore 1) the belief that this ayah is from Mecca, and 2) Ibn Masud’s alleged interpretation of the ayah, mentioned in the hadith, as referring to Badr. We gotta put the famine post-Badr. No other timeline makes sense. In this case, the famine would be a warning whereas the outright conquest of Mecca and subsequent elimination of polytheism would be the true punishment, I guess. Basically a variant of the standard Allah Will Destroy You Like Past Disbelievers thing.

This paper records some other opinions of scholars and tafsir authors, which do gel with the al-Wahidi account as long as we assume this is happening after Badr:

al-Thalabi in his Tafsir: the [Quraysh] suffered hunger for seven years and the Arab tribes cut off their food supplies according to the order to the prophet. ... [Abu Sufyan] asked the Prophet to invoke God for them, which the Prophet indeed did. Then the prophet permitted to carry food to them while they were still unbelievers

This 11th century account expands the famine so it lasts the full seven years, whereas the Bukhari hadith says Mohammed asked for a seven year famine but only got one year. It also says that Mohammed graciously stopped the famine upon Abu Sufyan’s request and relieved the starving Meccans. This last part, where Mohammed saves the Meccans from hunger, seems to have sprung up in the works of the Arabic grammarian al-Farra but is not found in any reputable ahadith. But still, keep it in mind for later. The tidbit about the famine lasting seven years is not found in earlier stories and seems fabricated, but the core idea--that the famine was caused by some Arab tribe blockading Mecca--at least does fit with the Thumamah story.

So the best vague approximation for what the famine really was and when it really occurred (if ever) is that it was a blockade of Mecca carried out on Mohammed’s orders at some point between 625 and 630, which is when Mecca was conquered. That at least gives us a better starting point than “idk it happened at some point somehow”.

There is more evidence for putting the famine in the later end of that period (~628) than the earlier end, simply due to Abu Sufyan’s presence in the hadith--his visit to Medina just before Mohammed conquered Mecca, in which he tried to resolve the situation peacefully, is the only time he’s mentioned as actually visiting the city in reputable sources. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that there was some otherwise unmentioned visit. This will let us look at some alleged incidents that put the famine closer to 625.

Al-Wahidi mentions one other incident involving Abu Sufyan visiting Medina, this time at some point after the Battle of Uhud.

After the fighting at Uhud, [Abu Sufyan etc] travelled to Medina and stayed as guests at ‘Abd Allah ibn Ubayy’s (Medinan leader called one of the “munafiqun”). The Prophet ... had allowed them to come to speak with him with his assurance of protection. ... They said to the Prophet ... “Reject the mention of our idols al-Lat, al-‘Uzza and Manat and say that they have benefit and the power of intercession for those who worship them, and we will leave you alone with your Lord!” Their words hurt the Prophet

This incident isn’t mentioned by any of the sahih ahadith, but it apparently stems from around the 8th century (allegedly from Muqatil), so at least it’s a pretty early tradition. According to this, at some point after Uhud, Abu Sufyan stopped by Medina and asked Mohammed to just keep the names of their goddesses out of his mouth and say that they could respond to prayers. Mohammed and Umar rejected this and the delegation went back to Mecca. The story seems to imply that it wasn’t right after Uhud, because it implies that the Muslims weren’t in a very subservient position here, so maybe it was after the later non-battle at Badr or else the siege of Medina. That would be 626 or 627. If you remember from surah 9′s history lessons, one of the reasons why Abu Sufyan refused to fight at Badr that year is because it was a drought year. A drought coupled with a blockade would have produced some seriously awful results. Maybe we’re on to something here? Could this be the visit in which Abu Sufyan pleaded for relief?

Some traditions, again not found in any sahih ahadith but still worth mentioning, imply that in the period between the failed siege of Medina and the conquest of Mecca, Abu Sufyan began to reconsider his strategy and tried to appease Mohammed by accepting gifts from him and sending Medina gifts in return. The paper quotes the scholar Ibn Asakir (1100s AD), citing a tradition supposedly going back to Mohammed’s follower Ikrimah:

[Abu Sufyan] sent to the prophet weapons and other things which the prophet accepted. Then the prophet sent him [dates] and Abu Sufyan sent him in return hides.

Similar traditions suggest that Mohammed sent food to the people of Mecca in general, which is like that account from al-Farra mentioned above.

So, hey, we maybe got something going on here. The general idea would be that at some point between 626 and 627 AD, Mohammed told one of his followers to blockade the eastern routes to Mecca, depriving them of crucial food supplies in a drought year. In addition, Mohammed ordered his followers to raid their allies and some related clans (the other “Mudar” clans), depriving the Quraysh of outside help. After the collapse of the siege of Medina and the defeat of the Jews and various Ghatafan clans, the Quraysh were isolated and, apparently, starving.

Within a year of that happening, Abu Sufyan recognized the inevitable and interceded with Mohammed to ask for relief, at which point Mohammed sent supplies to Mecca, establishing his control over the city in advance of the Treaty of Hudaibiyya and subsequent conquest of Mecca. Despite the fall of the city, Abu Sufyan would ultimately be rewarded for his subservience, as his family was taken into Mohammed’s inner circle and his son and grandson would both go on to be caliphs. Yaaaay mystery solved!!

...

HOWEVER.

As this other paper points out, this all relies upon sticking different traditions together. The one where Abu Sufyan visits Medina to ask Mohammed to stop talking shit about their goddesses doesn’t mention any famine. Even if the Thumamah story is true, it seems like the effects of the famine weren’t disastrous by the time of the supposed “after Uhud” visit. I mean, that seems like a pretty damn crucial piece of information to leave out. So while, yeah, it’s possible, again, it relies on highly tenuous readings of already shaky traditions. Let’s take one more swing at this riddle and try to place the famine in the latest years possible--closer to the time of the conquest of Mecca itself. After the Treaty of Hudaibiyya, in the years 628-630 AD. Maybe “Allah” only gave Mohammed one year of famine instead of seven because Mohammed would be in control of the city not long after that year. A sahih hadith mentions the following incident of a guy from Mecca leaving for Medina in this period.

Abu Basir a man from the Quraish (who was a Muslim), came to [Medina]. And [the Quraysh] sent (two men) to look for him; so [Mohammed] handed him over to the two men. They took him away ... and alighted to eat some dates which they had, Abu Basir said to one of the men: ... I think this sword of yours is a fine one; the other drew the sword and said: Yes I have tried it. Abu Basir said: Let me look at it. He let [Abu Basir] have it and [Abu Basir] struck him till he died, whereupon the other fled and came to Medina, and running entered the mosque. ... He said (to Mohammed): I swear by Allah that my Companion has been killed, and I’m as good as dead. Abu Basir then arrived and said: Allah has fulfilled your covenant. You returned me to them, but Allah saved me from them. The Prophet (ﷺ) said: Woe to his mother, stirrer up of war! ... When [Abu Basir] heard that he knew that [Mohammed] would send him back to them, so he went out and came to the seashore. Abu Jandal escaped and joined Abu Basir till a band of them collected. 

So this guy, Abu Basir, is sent back to Mecca as per the conditions of the treaty (Mohammed sent the men back at first but kept the women, even though the treaty itself made no such distinction). But on the way back Abu Basir stabs one of the guys escorting him and chases after the other one, who runs back to Medina and tells Mohammed what happened. Mohammed is irritated and says that Abu Basir now really has to go back, because he’s just killed a guy for no reason. Instead of returning to Mecca, Abu Basir instead joins up with this Abu Jandal fellow--a runaway from Mecca who had secretly converted before the Battle of Badr and had switched sides during the battle along with his brother, much to the chagrin of the Quraysh. After the battle, he was dragged home and imprisoned for his betrayal, but he later made his way to Medina. Mohammed said had to go back, mentioned in another sahih hadith.

Abu Basir and Abu Jandal, along with various other Muslims, set up a “band”, as the hadith says. Hey...... haven’t we heard of these guys before somewhere?

Oh yeah! They were in this hadith from surah 9!

Abu Jandal bin Suhail got himself released from them (i.e. infidels) and joined Abu Basir. So, whenever a man from Quraish embraced Islam he would follow Abu Basir till they formed a strong group. By Allah, whenever they heard about a caravan of Quraish heading towards Sham, they stopped it and attacked and killed them (i.e. infidels) and took their properties. The people of Quraish sent a message to the Prophet (ﷺ) requesting him for the Sake of Allah and Kith and kin to send for (i.e. Abu Basir and his companions) promising that whoever (amongst them) came to the Prophet (ﷺ) would be secure. So the Prophet (ﷺ) sent for them (i.e. Abu Basir's companions) and [Allah] revealed the following Divine Verses: "... After He made you the victorious over them. ... the unbelievers had pride and haughtiness, in their hearts ... the pride and haughtiness of the time of ignorance." (48.24-26) And their pride and haughtiness was that they did not confess (write in the treaty) that he (i.e. Muhammad) was the Prophet of Allah and refused to write: "In the Name of Allah, the most Beneficent, the Most Merciful," 

So the “band” in question was a band of murdererous converts from among the Quraysh who attacked every Qurayshi caravan along the Syria route they could get their hands on, killed the traders, and stole all their goods. During the “truce”. The Meccans--presumably including Abu Sufyan--asked Mohammed “for the sake of Kith and kin” (his family/clan) if uhhh hey could you maybe stop your people from attacking us please we kind of have a treaty with you bro lol?? But in response Mohammed blamed them for refusing to recognize him as a prophet in the treaty (remember that debacle?).

Now hold the fuck up. Here we really do seem to have something. There was a drought going on--starting around 626 and continuing at least until the time of the Tabouk expedition, as we’ve already talked about--and here we have a sahih hadith telling us that the Meccans were also being deprived of their trade, not just from the east as in the other story, but also from the north--from their absolute most vital route. And, as the paper I linked above mentions, the scholar Ibn Hajar connects this incident to a time in which:

(Quraysh) sent Abu Sufyan b. Harb to the apostle of Allah to ask him and to plead with him to summon Abu Jandal and the people who were with him.

...Abu Sufyan went to Mohammed in person during the “treaty” era, which would be 628 or 629! And this ties into the earlier explanations about the stories supposedly set a couple years earlier in 626/627--because Abu Sufyan’s visit here still led to Mohammed relieving the Meccans of the blockade, as long as the Quraysh agreed to ignore the one part of the treaty that was actually beneficial to them, which they did:

They (i.e., Quraysh) said: 'anyone who sets out from us to you may stay with you lawfully, and there is nothing objectionable in it'

So it all ultimately fits together!

TO SUM UP A VERY LONG READ: If we assume the famine did happen, the most logical way to put together the story is this. Mohammed first started blockading Mecca from the lands of the Najd in the east, courtesy of Thumamah. Gradually the allies of the Quraysh were defeated or made to submit to Mohammed, from Bedouin clans to the Jews of Medina. There was a drought going on, and times were tough but not unbearable, because the Meccans still had their other trading routes to rely upon. But years later, after the Quraysh’s strength had collapsed and the treaty had been signed, the people of Mecca still “persisted in their unbelief”. And so a band of Muslims began to blockade them from the north with Mohammed’s support. Mecca was cut off from vital trade routes in two directions, and a famine began. After a year or so of misery, Abu Sufyan realized that defeat was inevitable, and began taking steps to effectively surrender to Mohammed, including begging him to stop the blockade in exchange for getting rid of a pro-Quraysh stipulation in the Treaty of Hudaibiyya. Mohammed agreed to this and the condition of the people in Mecca improved once he sent them supplies, but by now they knew that they lived and died on Mohammed’s whim, and it was only a short time before he took over the city itself.

To me this timeline is really the only one possible, given the evidence. The Bukhari hadith is almost certainly mythical, and based on a myth that puts this incident in a totally different era at that. When it comes to the surah we’ve been reading, some parts of it, perhaps including 23:76, appear to be from the Medina era instead of the Mecca days. And the punishment-famine referenced in the various ahadith we’ve read is likelier to be this famine, caused by a combination of drought and blockades prior to the conquest of Mecca, than any other supposed famine.

So there you have it. I think that is the single clearest explanation for that ayah, and several related others that we will later come across. In addition to raids, ambushes, forced conversions, massacres, sieges, mass enslavements, rapes, feudalism schemes, and ethnic cleansing, evidently Mohammed was not adverse to using hunger as a weapon. Nobody ever said that establishing a theocratic empire was a cute process fam!!

⇚ previous day | next day ⇛ 

[ramon-balaguer]

Fake Teaching

I used to hear the phrase “false prophet” and imagine a mean guy in a suit jacket, with intimidating eyebrows and maybe a snake-like, forked tongue. False prophets or fake teachers were a big deal and worse than Leftist Liberal Fake News. Manipulators. These fools are Tricksters. Surely, they were obvious—right?

A fake or false teacher is not always an impostor with an evil agenda commanding the stage and presenting a false gospel—there are unfortunately plenty of people in the pulpit today preaching a message they believe to be accurate and from God. There are men out there who believe they are Saved and preach a method of Salvation that’s sadly not in the Bible; like Eternal Salvation or Once Saved Always Saved so they can continue sinning without consequence of ever losing their “Salvation,” or Water Baptism a requirement to be Saved, Speaking in tongues as only evidence of salvation and Holy Spirit filled, wives and children in Heaven now and or later, and the one where everyone will be given an opportunity to be Saved when Jesus returns and no one will go to Hell except Satan and his demons, and even they might end up in Hell after all.. Sad bunch of folks Jesus will quickly reject and they’ll ask why… And there are many teachers claiming to know the Word who don’t know it at all. They’re blind, leading the blind, and they’ll be held accountable for it in the end. “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness”  (James 3:1).

With all the potential deception abounding, how can we know if we’ve been exposed to false teaching?

Here are five ways to know if you have been raised on false teaching:

1. Phrases you thought were Biblical, aren't. ~I saw an online quiz a few years ago that gave a list of statements, and the reader was supposed to determine if the phrase was Scripture or a common phrase. Quotes like “God helps those who help themselves” and “Cleanliness is next to godliness” and “God will never give you more than you can handle” were just some of the choices that people fell for as Scripture that are actually not in the Bible.I read somewhere that when US Treasury teaches their agents to recognize counterfeit money, they don’t have them study the fake bills—they study the real ones. When you’re familiar with the Truth, the Lies are easier to recognize by default. Christians would do well to enforce this same habit. Through the Holy Spirit study the Word of God and know The Word (Jesus), so when someone makes an inaccurate claim, you can immediately know the truth.“I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against You.” (Psalm 119:11)“

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” (Joshua 1:8)

2. You put more trust in experiences than in the Word of God. ~This is a particularly sticky area, because different denominations tend to place more emphasis on charismatic elements than others, but that doesn’t automatically mean they don’t Believe in the inerrancy and authority of the Word and should be discarded. Be careful what you condemn and write off, just as you should be careful what you take in and believe. Experiencing God is a crucial element of our faith journey. There’s a connection and a relationship we have with God that assures our hearts of our salvation.“

The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him.”  (Romans 8:16-17)

Our walk with God isn’t information only. After all, the Word says that even the demons believe and tremble (James 2:19). They have head knowledge, and head knowledge clearly doesn’t Save one’s soul. We experience God every time we read His Word, every time we pray. And sometimes, God does miracles in our hearts and in the lives of others. Some of these miracles are tangible, some are internal. The act of Salvation itself in every depraved sinner’s heart is a miracle! We experience God!

However, when we start to trust someone’s experience over what the Word says, we get in trouble quick. If a pastor or teacher claims to have heard from the Lord, especially about you and your future, be careful what you believe. Test it. And if that pastor or teacher claims the Lord told them something that is contrary to the Bible, you can be certain it is false.

“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.”  (1 John 4:1-3)

3. You don’t question anything. ~ In some denomination, this was a sign of a “good girl or boy” Good boys didn’t question the pastor or girls ask questions at all. They listened, took notes, and believed every word that was spoken from the pulpit as solid gold and infallible Truth. There was no need to go read the Bible and find out for yourself, because you were “a good boy and girl.”

One of the reasons I left the church I attended for several years as a (much younger) adult was because the pastor occasionally tried to present his opinion as scriptural. The topic in question was a controversial one among Believers, but instead of pointing that out and encouraging each Believer to seek the Lord in this area for themselves, he proclaimed his position and opinion as authoritatively Biblical. It broke my trust in his interpretation and exposition of the Word and ended up an atheist for most of my young adult life that eventually dibbled and dabbled into mysticism, spiritualism, magic, Mormonism, Islam, etc… before giving my life back to Jesus Christ. We should certainly have a measure of trust for our pastor and leaders in the church, but it’s also good and right to check their words against the Word of God. A solid pastor would encourage you to do so, and to correct him when in err.

4. Your church is too concerned with numbers and budgets. ~ Unlike military chapels, churches require income to keep the lights on and provides salaries for the staff and their families—there’s nothing wrong with that. But even in chapels, when budget meetings take priority over sharing the Gospel, and numbers in the pew take priority over disciplining souls, you can bet that's a Big red flag. Too many pastors today lead lavish lifestyles that place possessions and worldly gain over their flock.

1 Timothy lists the qualifications of an overseer, or a pastor, quite plainly:

"The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil."  (1 Timothy 3:1-6)

This obviously does not mean that any pastor who lives in a nice house or drives a decent car is a false teacher. Far from it—the Bible allows enjoying the fruits of one’s labor. However, there is a discernible difference between the pastor whose heart is for giving, and the one whose heart is focused on his paycheck and wealth and notoriety building.

5. Your church tries really hard to "sell" the gospel. ~ When the emphasis on meeting quotas to provide financially is so high, it only serves to pressure the staff to create a “more appealing” gospel to bring people through the doors. Why do you think so many churches today rely on fog machines, light shows, Broadway-talented worship singers, and coffee bars to rival Starbucks? or an actual Starbucks in the church (talk about oxymoron). There’s nothing innately wrong with any of those things individually, but when the heart of the church is beating to the tune of a performance rather than having the Gospel speak for Itself, something is amiss.

When the church believes they have to pretty up, go "Hollywood" and “sell” Christ, rather than simply presenting the Word of God and making way for the Holy Spirit to do what only He can do, there’s something very wrong. Only God can Save. The role of a pastor is to exposit the Word of God, not imply that it isn’t sufficient.There are certainly more signs than just these on identifying false teachers and false gospels, but this is a start on learning to recognize the red flags of false doctrine. The more you stay in the Word of God, the easier it will be to see even the more subtle hints of false teachings that exist today.

Fake News is relatively new and harmless compared to fake or False prophets, pastors and teachers teaching False Doctrines and personal beliefs in the war between Good and Evil.  #REBTD

[judaphotography]

An exploration of who has the right to judge art

Art is a vast topic that can span across different mediums, context, and expression. It is equally a form of expression as it is execution, which makes it seemingly subjective. However, art does have guidelines and patterns, which create what people class as good or bad art. This creates an apparent correct way art should be viewed and how it should be judged. This essay will be exploring who has the right to make those judgments. 

When judging art and it's worth and quality there is a  consensus of what to evaluate. When looking at judgement criteria from art competitions like LightSpaceTime’s we can see that the standard for art being judged is “Interpretation and the clarity of the theme to the viewer. Creativity and originality of the depicted theme. Quality of artistic composition and overall design based on the theme. Overall impression of the art.” With looking at other competitions, criteria art critiques use and educated views of what makes good art, for instance examples from the art of education university and interviews with artists,  we can see an emerging pattern that context, technique, concept, and originality are the qualities in which we base art. Li Hongbo has said “My artistic creation has lots of themes… I want to change the image, change how people see things so they think in another way, and more deeply.” In response to what makes good art, supporting the idea that good art needs to be original and have meaning. 

However, John Baldessari’s photographic series “Wrong” challenges the idea of what art needed to be to be good. He took the traditional “rules” within the art world and decided to create pieces that challenged them. The series is a collection of images paired with text, the most famous being entitled wrong, which is an unfocussed poorly composed image of a man with text that says wrong underneath. Baldessari created these pieces because he wanted to convey that we do not have to conform to traditional qualities in art for it to be good; art doesn’t have to be judged, and when talking about work he has said “You don't want anyone to say 'You can't do that!' But you do get a lot of that in New York. One of the healthiest things about California is - 'Why not”.Baldessari made his art for himself and because he wanted to, but through that has become a renowned conceptual artist. From the series  we can see there are exceptions to what people class as good art and although Baldessari’s series is not technically good it still meets the criteria of being original and being rich in context.

The museum of bad art is a place showcasing “bad art” “since 1994,The museum of bad art has been dedicated to bad art… our mission; to bring the worst of art to the widest of audiences” Obviously the art which they showcase is bad; like the painting Eyes see you by F.W Covington which is paired with the interpretation “The artist has effectively portrayed life-sized pairs of disembodied eyes on a flame-red background; some staring straight ahead while others glance left or right. They are realistic and iconic in their simplicity.” by Holly Maxson. By this description alone we can estimate the technique is not good with use of effectively as a descriptor conveys a standard skill level. Also the meaning wouldn’t appear complex or profound, as they are just eyes. Perhaps art that lacks these two characteristics are what we as a collective deem bad art. 

The difference between these two works purely lies on the intent behind them. Both are technically bad, however Baldessari’s piece was created for the intent to challenge why? So as people judging art it is not all about the physicality of it but equally the context. Without context both would be seen as bad art, but this idea of contextual knowledge revises its worth, causing the idea of elitism within art as you need to have context to fully enjoy it. 

Antonio Houmen, former art director of the Sonnabend Gallery has said “The definition of art will change and who it can be judged by will change also.Video art was popularised in the 1970’s but made people question if it was art.  Every time art takes a form people don't recognize, they ask ''Is that art?”. Houmen expostulates the idea that art is one thing, the idea that art is stagnant is incorrect and the idea that the merits of what art is and who judges it needs to be inconstant. The idea that art is really integrated into current culture and is ever changing is not a new premise, and how art can also influence and change society around us.

The recent social isolation is proof of how integrated art is into mundane things, as many people have been turning to comforts like television and video games, subtly depending on the artists which have created them. “ That is just the reason why art is so valuable! While art may not be vital to fulfill our basic needs, it does make life joyful. When you look at a painting or poster you’ve chosen to hang on your living room wall, you feel happy. ...These varieties of art forms that we are surrounded by all come together to create the atmosphere that we want to live in, which is personable to us.” Due to art having a natural comfort, it becomes every day. 

In Neil Gaiman's book “Art matters” he talks about how art is created to challenge the current system and possibly change it, ““I believe you have the absolute right To think things that I find offensive, stupid, preposterous or dangerous, and they have the right to speak and write or distribute these things ”.If art is so integrated into society it should be those who have the right to judge it.

Some believe that it is only the right of an artist to judge their work. Many artists themselves believe that only they have the right to judge their own work, such as Jenny Holzer, an neo-conceptual artist. “The artist is someone who can judge the art as they are the only one that truly knows the art.” “I think you can rely on the artist's representation; he or she would have no reason to lie.” showing us that the intent is what artwork is truly about not the finished content, and by this only the person that created the work can know the true meaning. Carrying on from this Robert Hughs, an art critic said “As far as I am concerned, something is a work of art if it is made with the declared intention to be a work of art and placed in a context where it is seen as a work of art. That does not determine whether it is esthetically rich or stupidly banal.” Anyone can have an opinion on a piece and see it how they wish, however, the process of art relies on the artist having intent and judgment, and therefore can be the only opinion that matters.

The case of Beau Stanton’s Eva Gardner mural, shows the two sides of an artist being responsible for the art. Many people found the artwork offensive and wanted it removed from Koreatown L.A, as the background offended korean activists as the sunray pattern is similar to the japanese imperial flag. Stanton has said he created the mural as “ a homage to the Cocoanut Grove’s Hollywood history”  artists like Shepard Fairey have said “ It’s not the same color scheme. It’s not the same focal element. It’s stupid to me.” and he finds it a form of censorship and threatened to remove his mural of Richard F Kenedy. Eventually the mural was removed showing that people see the judgment of others and how they see work, is more important to the public than the intent of the artist. 

Many people within art academia believe that to truly judge art you need to be educated within it, for example Robert Rosenblum, former Professor of art history, New York University; curator at the Guggenheim Museum said “But there has to be consensus about good art among informed people -- artists, dealers, curators, collectors. Somebody has to be the first to say something is good”, and William Rubin former Director emeritus of painting and sculpture, Museum of Modern Art said “There's a consensus as to what is art in most periods, but it's not made by the man on the street. It is formed by those deeply concerned with the substance of art.” “There is no single definition of art that's universally tenable. Cultures without even a word for art nevertheless produced great art”. Implying art is more than an aesthetic but also a history and something deeply contextual, so for a person to truly be able to judge art and see what it is you must be educated and know these histories. Regardless, some people and artists see this as a classist belief that to be an artist means you need to be educated and pay for that right through education.

“ Art has landed in many more households and in the awareness of many more people than ever before. You could argue that because art is so ubiquitous it is even harder to make judgments.”Philippe De Montebello former Director, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Undeniably art is a part of everyone's lives, especially with growing use of social media, and as everyone has access to art they have the right to judge it, and every opinion is correct, as art is an experience that can only be felt by oneself. When forming an opinion on art we look at our past experiences with the outside world, as well as other art we have viewed,due to the omnipresence of art through televisions, phones and even mundane objects like tea towels there is such a diversity of experience, which no two people would share. Combined with the independent experience of living no two people would see art as truly the same. Therefor claiming one to be more important holds judgements of  others, and arguably holds ideas of classism. 

I created a survey of my peers, many of which are artists from different backgrounds, which use different mediums. As in theory any question can be asked but that doesn’t take into account the reality of theoretical questions, and that there are artists who will all have a say and view on art judgment. When asked “Do you feel your art practice and art knowledge has grown with more experience creating or with education?” 50% of people said it was a mixture of both creation and education. “My art knowledge has grown through education, but my art practice has definitely just grown through creating” artists can see that there are two sides to art: a creative and educated side, which both can grow over time and make people better artists. Assumably there is the belief that some art knowledge is inherit, as 100% of the artists believed that they can judge art and 50% unprompted said that it is possible for everyone to judge art. While others say they have bias’ to certain art but can still judge it, however, it is just as possible for the bias’ to come from education therefore making the judgment more correct, which is highlighted by one of the responses when asked if they can judge art; “ Everyone can. Its a visual platform and everyone is going to have a response. But there is a moral line where some people either have no knowledge or too much and their opinions can be a bit out of place” implying that everyone can judge art but some people have more of a right to judge. 

When asked if they believe if art has a set meaning, all of those questioned said no. Clearly showing that art is meant for other people to view and not just the artist “I don't think so, even if the artist makes it with an intended meaning, whenever it is viewed the meaning is shaped by the viewer's life experience and perspective. It can also vary with context”, “There's an intended meaning but unlimited meanings beyond that”. Many artists are open to the idea that their art can have multiple meanings, as the context of the viewer is what really creates the meaning of an image; supporting the theory that everyone can bring judgement and meaning to art.

Seemingly artists tend to view art as something anyone can find meaning and context in and rightfully so if the piece brings emotions. Yet see judgment as something different but still crucial to the process.  Overall “It is in the sense that every time someone views art that are making some kind of judgement or critique automatically, but I don't think it always has to be formalised, or that certain judgements should be considered more important than others just because of someone's status.” summarises the view on art judgment from practitioners. Judgment is a part of art, or judgment is a part of humans, either way it will naturally occur when looking at a piece of work. The judgment is not what we should be questioning but, who and why and what are people judging and being able to see people's views without the elitist ideology of certain people having a more correct opinion, but rather an equality of views. 

When looking at “Who can judge art” we do not take into account the process of art and the fact that judgment is a part of it. When deciphering “what is art?” in his book “How art can be thought: a handbook for change” Desouza argues that art can be whatever the artist makes. He proposes that art is created by two things, prior to the art being made. There is a proposal then an action and then an object.Then after the art is created it has to create a conversation, not for it to be art but for it to be profitable art. “But more importantly art is a conversation.” If we look at art as a non verbal form of communication, then the judgment and perceptions are a part of it as a language, the nature of art is to talk about it. Which can be related to the idea that educated and experienced artists could be held to higher regard in their opinion as they can “speak art” better as they have a richer context and understanding. However, the idea that art should or can only be judged by a certain type of person rather than everyone, is absurd as judgment is clearly a part of art,as much as it is a part of humans.

[wicked-messenger-tarot]

The Radiant Sun Redux

Introduction

Maybe I wouldn’t have realized the need for an extensive, plotted rewrite of the book and definitions accompanying the Oracle of the Radiant Sun if, in fact, my moon was not in Leo, and if I had not drawn the card representing the Moon in Leo on New Year’s Eve.

Here’s the card that made the decision for me, about whether or not to go forward:

Because even though I had already toyed with the idea, THIS card’s write-up was so egregious, and reminded me so much of those useless newspaper horoscopes that turned me off to astrology for decades, and highlighted such an extreme cultural difference between America and England, (and by the by affronted me and my Leo Moon personally), that something obviously had to be done.

So I am starting with this card even though I’ll be doing the rest of the deck in the order the authors gave them.  This card, APPRECIATION, is the begining for me, and so apt, in all regards.

Things I Appreciate about The Book

The idea of merging Horary Astrology and the form of an oracle on cards was, on the surface, pretty ingenious, and also incredibly complex.  The entire concept necessitated a lot of work, study, knowledge, and decision-making in two fairly incompatible directions, and despite the extreme drawbacks of the book, this shows-- Smith and Astrop put a lot of work into this.

John Astrop was an extremely experienced astrologer who designed some of the first computer programs for astrologers.  He was the author of over a hundred books on the subject of astrology, including a whole series for parents to help them understand their wee baby Scorpios or what have you.  So this guy was no slouch.  My beef with him and his book has nothing to do with my sense of his expertise or seriousness.  This wasn’t someone who threw something together carelessly. 

Another thing I like about the book is how well organized it is. 

And that’s pretty much it.

What I Do Not Appreciate

The idea just doesn’t work.  Merging two entirely disparate systems seems like a good idea at first but it becomes, pretty rapidly, an attempt to merge one set of things that are tangible with arbitrarily assigned meaning (astrology) and another set of tangible things with arbitrarily assigned meaning (cards), but the party of the first part is, you know, an actual thing that is happening regardless of what you think it means.  The moment you are born, the sky looks a certain way, period.  The moment you ask a specific question the stars and planets are in specific places, period.  That’s what horary astrology is-- the moment the question is “born” is the moment the stars are consulted, which is pretty neat and the basis for most ancient astrologers’ jobs with royal courts.

And what the sky looks like when you ask your question will have, most likely, ZERO to do with which cards you pull from this oracle deck.  The two things are operating on a totally different wavelength.  There’s nothing wrong with either of those wavelengths, but there is also nothing whatsoever connected between those two things.

That said, it’s not that there’s zero connection symbolically between astrology and, say, Tarot.  Tarot cards have a lot of interconnections to astrology.  There’s no reason these cards can’t be utilized in that fashion, perhaps even more directly.  The germ of the idea isn’t terrible, but the way the book attempts to carry it through is kind of a disaster.

The main thing I do not appreciate is the fact a PERSONAL HOROSCOPE makes no sense to include on a card that anyone can pull out of the deck.  There is no good context in which this will work, hence my comparison to cheesey newspaper sun sign horoscopes that are largely useless.

Example:  APPRECIATION

At the top of the page it reads:  APPRECIATION.  Moon in Leo.  [Shows the astrological symbols.]  MOON-Security.  LEO-Creative Self-Expression.

Take a good look at that card.  Here’s the description in the book:  “...a rich and elegant lady performs on a lute.  Her audience is a swift symbolizing spring and new creation.  Below is a cornucopia bursting with fruit symbolizing man and woman, Sun and Moon.”

And now the book definitions:  “PERSONAL.  The emotions of somewhat prima-donna-ish Moon/Leo characters require affection, appreciation, and lots of good opportunities for over-dramatic expression.  This card indicates a need to be center stage as regards feelings, because for Leos big is beautiful, and they can be as emotionally generous as they are bullying.  Emotionally, Moon/Leo people are great romantics.  Feelings are important to them and must be apreciated and respected if Moon lions are to maintain their usual warm optimism.  Children can be an important part of their life and, whether they have any of their own or not, people with th is planet/sign combination are fond of the company of young-thinking people.  This basically emotionally optimistic person has a tendency to over-impulsive actions where loved ones are concerned.  He or she often has a good natural feeling for art and can benefit from developing latent talents in this area.”

Okay, it’s New Year’s Eve, a traditional time to consult an oracle.  Usually I use Tarot but this year I got funsy and used this deck.  One of the three cards I pulled was APPRECIATION.  A word that has a definition, and a word that, when it appears on a card, by itself with specific images, gives you a very particular feeling, idea, advice even?  You know, the main reason people consult an oracle on the New Year, combined with wanting to know what might lie ahead?

And instead you get a whole slew of ideas about... Moon Leos.  Say you are a Moon Leo, you’re nothing like any of that, and you are aware that your entire chart is in play so that’s probably why, but how is any of that helpful?  That’s a lot of real estate taken up on a page to make a bunch of general commentary on someone with their Moon in Leo, and emphasis on “general” and “commentary” because

None of that commentary is implied by the card, either in terms of image, the word it is illustrating, or even the notation at the top of the page about the astrological symbols and their meanings.  But say you are NOT a Moon Leo-- what does any of that have to do with you?  Was this entire process of consulting your oracle deck a waste of your time?  Sure seems like.

He goes on:  “When this card appears in a reading, it can indicate a powerful need for recognition in some aspect of life.  There may be a feeling that those around are not responding appreciatively enough, provoking an unhelpful over-the-top response”  Imma stop him for a sec, how on earth is anyone going to get that from this card?  From the image?  From the word APPRECIATION?  In context with many cards in a traditional Tarot type reading maybe the first sentence, okay, but the rest of it?  And in a single-card draw?

He continues:  “The card can also indicate emotional dependency on a partner or close friends.  Positively, if the card does not refer to the questioner, it can portray someone popular, generous, and much admired by others.”  So if this card is drawn by you for you, you’re a mess, but if you want to know about someone else, they’re awesome, and also if neither of you has a Moon in Leo it still somehow applies to you for reasons, or it doesn’t and you need to find a card that does.  Got it.

And last:  “EVENTS:  A lavish occasion;  theatrical event, children’s performance; pride in an achievement;  short-lived fame, excessively dramatic behavior;  family party or gathering.”  Three of these things are not events, by any stretch of the imagination.

(Sigh.)

This is what makes any book accompanying any deck, what’s the word, BAD.  It is a bad book if it doesn’t mesh with the cards.

One of the constants throughout this book is how resolutely negative each of his definitions are compared to the images on the cards.  Some of this negativity is really excessive, especially for a deck that doesn’t use reversals (I do, so we’ll get into that a bit.)

Also many of his definitions don’t fit the card at hand but will fit another card that actually means the thing he ascribes to another card.  For example, OPTIMISM is for no apparent reason also about “extreme and immovable fundamentalism”, and yet this deck literally has a card called EXTREMISM.  You’ll note the repeated references to “drama” and “over the top” and such with APPRECIATION-- yet there is literally, in this deck, a card called DRAMA.

Books on oracles and Tarot often step into the role of a professional reader to ostensibly help the amateur who is trying a deck of cards for the first time to have a successful reading, and that’s fine.  But it’s often unclear when an author’s opinions are just that, opinions, and not a hard and fast definition.  It would be more useful to add an example of the card in a reading so the person excitedly trying out their first or second or thirtieth new deck will clearly see there are myriad ways of interpreting the card, and this deck would have benefitted from this.  Then the author, a man of experience and a wide knowledge base, could have put his opinions of Moon Leos or whatever in there without ruining what is probably a perfectly good and perhaps brilliant divination tool.

So let’s fix this.

My Rewrite

When this card appears upright in a reading, it can indicate a powerful need for recognition in some aspect of life and that it is time to pursue this.  It can mean that the querant is appreciated more than they realize, or are unaware of how much they should appreciate about themselves and their circumstances.  It is time to be thankful and show your gratitude for this.  If the card does not refer to the querant, it can portray someone popular, generous, and much admired by others, or someone the querant should appreciate more.

When this card appears reversed, it can indicate emotional dependency on others to show appreciation for the querant-- for example, if this card appears reversed in a reading with cards indicating jealousy, insecurity, and drama, the meaning might be that the querant needs to take a step back and remember they cannot find in others what they cannot find in themselves. This card might indicate a need to be center stage, and there may be a feeling that those around are not responding appreciatively enough.  Acknowledge these feelings.

PERSONAL.  Moon/Leo characters require affection, appreciation, and lots of good opportunities for self expression.   Moon/Leo people are great romantics. Feelings are important to them and must be apreciated.  He or she often has a good natural feeling for art and can benefit from developing latent talents in this area.

EVENTS:  A lavish occasion;  theatrical event, children’s performance; pride in an achievement;  family party or gathering;  awards ceremony;  promotion or congratulations

See how I moved and shortened “Personal” so those who might have a Moon in Leo (and know about it) can see a general newspaper-horoscope definition and find something useful in the context of the card?  I’m a big fan of usefulness in a reading.  It does nothing to tell someone a bunch of general opinions about something they can’t change-- it’s perfectly fine to tell someone the consensus opinion, sans judgement, and let them see if it fits them.  (No, this definition still largely doesn’t fit me, but that’s okay, because in the context of my overall chart I can see where the parts that do fall into place.)

Conclusion

So that’s where I’ll be going with this over the course of the year.  As I go I’ll be writing each of my rewrites out and putting them in the book, possibly even gluing over the pages, so I can consult it when I need to.

Because above all, I deeply appreciate the feel of this deck, the images, the energy of the ideas behind it, and the couple who put it together as what was probably an exciting labor of love.  That energy wasn’t destroyed by my objections to the follow-through that is the book, and that alone is a testament to how worthwhile this deck really is.

Thank you for reading.

[bellarosepope]

How to Get Honest Feedback About Your Writing

We all know there are certain types of feedback we get about our WIPs and unfortunately, not much of it is helpful feedback.

I completely understand how difficult it can be to give someone else your writing and ask for their opinion. Honest and helpful feedback about your writing is a rarity that all writers need. Personally, I’ve only sent my writing to two people (so far, since my book isn’t completed yet ) who weren’t close friends or relatives and their own writing is AMAZING. So naturally, I was a wreck. I was so anxious and nervous to get their feedback that I was actually sweating (attractive, I know).

But that’s understandable because writing is personal and intimate. Allowing someone to read what you’ve written is a vulnerable process and quite frankly, it’s terrifying (even though you eventually plan to have LOTS of people read it when the book is published).

But in order to become a better writer, you need criticism.

Not asshole criticism. Constructive criticism. You need to have people give you their honest opinion about what you’ve written so you can use that knowledge to make it better.

But getting honest and helpful feedback isn’t as easy as it sounds.

You can ask your friends and family, but they’re likely to be biased and they won’t want to hurt your feelings. Their feedback about your writing will be something along the lines of, “This is great! I like it a lot!” Then you’ll ask them to elaborate on what exactly is so great about it (because you should always ask for details) and it’ll be nothing more than, “I just liked it! It was cool.”

That’s not helpful and it won’t help you become a better writer.

That’s why you need a system for getting honest, helpful feedback. Here’s my system for getting real, honest feedback about my writing.

1. The beta reading process

You need to have a beta reading process before editing and publication. The way you conduct your beta reading process is also super important. You need to make sure you’re asking people to elaborate on their responses. If someone says, “This chapter was rather boring and I found myself not wanting to read on,” you need to ask them why they felt this way. Ask them what part made them want to put the book down specifically.

For those of you who aren’t sure what the beta reading process is, it’s when you enlist a large number of people (20 minimum) to read your manuscript well before it’s published (and even edited) from the perspective of just a reader. Then you ask them a series of questions that will help you understand if the elements in your book are coming across as intended.

For example, you could ask things like:

What was your favorite scene and why?

What are your thoughts on this character?

Do you have any predictions?

Did you find anything offensive?

You’ll be able to clear up any confusing parts and get a feel for how your audience will interpret the story.

You can find beta readers from a number of different places including:

Facebook

Twitter

Tumblr

Instagram

Reddit

Friends/Family

Friends of friends/family

You also don’t want to enlist all of the same types of readers. You’ll want a variety of ages, genders, ethnicities, sexualities, etc. This way, you’ll get a broad range of feedback about your writing from different perspectives. One person may catch something another didn’t even think about or something that’s not actually relevant to them.

2. Ask strangers for help

This doesn’t necessarily mean you walk up to some random person on the street and ask them to read your book. That would be a horrible idea. And you would seem very creepy.

By strangers, I mean people who have no direct relationship with you. Like I said above, this can be done via the beta reading process by recruiting people from social media.

The great thing about asking people you don’t know for help is that they don’t usually care about crushing your feelings. And that means their feedback will be honest and you won’t have to worry about them lying to protect your feelings.

3. Join online critique groups

There are plenty of groups online (mostly Facebook) where other authors get together and trade chapters for critiques. This is really helpful if you want a large number of opinions that are honest because you don’t usually form close relationships with others in the group so they don’t often feel the need to lie.

The issue with this method is that you might not get very good feedback about your writing. Meaning, there are a lot of aspiring authors. There are tons of people who want to write books that have no idea what a great book actually consists of. Meaning, they’re not good. And that means you can get some pretty crappy feedback that won’t actually help you.

The trick here is to critique a lot of other writers and if you find certain ones you think are particularly great, make a note and work with them the most.

Another tricky part about this is that it’ll take a lot of time to find good writers to work with. But if you find 3 writers whose opinion’s you trust, it’ll be worth it.

4. Pay for a critique from a reputable author

Not all authors do this. However, there are some great authors who offer critiques for a reasonable rate. If you do go this route, make sure you’ve actually read some of their work.

You never want to pay for a critique service from an author when you have no idea whether or not they’re actually a good writer. Some “authors” try to scam aspiring writers by talking up their services and their “published” work that’s just a quick piece of writing that’s slopped together and not even professionally edited. Do your research and read their work so you don’t waste your time or money.

5. Find a great, reliable critique partner

Every writer should have a critique partner (says the girl who doesn’t actually have one – yet). A critique partner is another writer who reads your book as it’s progressing. And more likely than not, they’re also a friend. You write a chapter or two (or however much you want), then ship it off to your critique partner to get their feedback.

They critique everything from the storyline to characterization to the structure. They give you constructive criticism about the entire thing but they also tell you when you’ve done something great or when you’ve provoked a powerful emotion within them - both of which you need in order to improve.

Basically, they give you an entire overview of everything; the good, the bad, and even the boring.

The benefits of having a critique partner are pretty extensive:

You get another set of writer eyes on your piece

They can point out inconsistencies from a plot perspective

They know how structuring a book works

They help you see your weaknesses so you can actually improve

They can show you your strengths so you know what methods to repeat

Qualities a great critique partner should have:

They should be at the same writing talent level as you – or very close

They should also be a writer (you can’t have a non-writer critique your manuscript – they’d be clueless - and that would be dumb)

They should be very reliable – if someone takes weeks and months to critique a chapter, they’re not worth it

They should be able to give you great feedback about your writing in a constructive way

But where can you find critique partners?

You can find these types of people in a magical place called….the internet. I’m assuming you don’t have real life friends who are also writers (I don’t know any writers in my life). If you do, great! Most people don’t and so they end up making writing friends online (because online friends are the best) and those friends end up becoming critique partners.

There are tons of writers all over social media so you can honestly just search hashtags like:

#amwriting – Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr

#writer – any platforms

#writersofig – Instagram

#writeblr or #writblr – Tumblr

#writingtips – any platforms 

Just remember that having a critique partner is not a one-way street, hence the word partners. You are expected to be just as involved in their writing as they are in yours.

Bonus tip: Trust what people are telling you

I know how writers are. We believe all of the bad shit people tell us about our writing but we don’t believe the good things. You need to trust what people are telling you – no matter what it is.

Yes, there will be those occasional dick-wads who just want to put you down (usually this is because they’re jealous or just terrible people), but the majority of the time, people will be honest. Most people aren’t shitheads (or so I’d like to believe). And a lot of the time, you’ll be able to tell when someone is talking out of their ass because their feedback won’t be consistent with everyone else’s. So trust when they say your writing is great and address the concerns they mention.

Getting honest feedback about your writing will only help you. However, getting that real, helpful feedback can be difficult if you don’t know where to get it. These are some of my personal methods for getting feedback about your writing that will actually help you in the long run.

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

Episode 55*: Shirt Club

“This sounds like a very abstract problem.”

For fear of echoing Buck Dewey’s condescending assessment of Steven’s drawing, there’s just something endearing about a cartoon about making art. Animation as a medium is remarkable for how many types of artists are involved: for instance, Steven Universe exists as a collaboration between visual artists, writers, songwriters, actors, singers, composers, and instrumental musicians. It’s a crew that by necessity has a passion for art in many forms, and episodes like Shirt Club let this passion shine. (See also: James Baxter the Horse from Steven Universe’s big brother Adventure Time.)

Many of the artists behind Steven Universe have multiple roles: most famously, its storyboarders are also its scriptwriters. Some boarders even pull triple duty, like guitarist Jeff Liu and voice actor Lamar Abrams, who brings Buck to life. It’s fitting, then, that Shirt Club revolves around guitars and Buck as Steven navigates his way through the perils of publishing his art.

As sincere as this episode is, it’s also ridiculous. The final sequence of Steven as a faux assassin straight up shooting Mayor Dewey in the chest is absurd both as a situation within the show and as something that was allowed to be on the show itself, but sure enough, Steven Universe manages to give a lone gunman sniping spree an emotionally fulfilling resolution.

This scene proves a core lesson of the episode: just because something’s silly doesn’t mean it’s not art. Buck hits the nail on the head when praising Steven’s drawing for its sincerity and naïveté, even if he’s being a wad about it: the Guitar Dad shirt is awesome because it’s a pure expression of a kid looking up to a parent, even if that expression won’t win any medals for aesthetics (and because it won’t). Steven Universe doesn’t need to prove its artistic merits, and the episode is wise to avoid this path and devolving into meta defensiveness, but I appreciate how its structure demonstrates its message. 

That Buck recognizes Guitar Dad’s merits but sees its meaning in a negative light speaks volumes about his own relationship with his father, as well as the general adolescent obsession with irony. And let’s face it, Buck is mean in this episode. The other teenagers laugh at the shirt, but don’t necessarily laugh at the subject: Sour Cream is a bit of a jerk to Greg, but Jenny seems to honestly appreciate him even if she thinks he’s funny. Lars is easily swayed, having no opinion on the shirt but seeing the value in at least pretending to appreciate it (which certainly lumps him in with real-life folks who feign an appreciation for art for impress people, if you’ll allow me an overanalysis). But Buck is cruel in a way that’s uncomfortable, but not totally out of character.

In Lars and the Cool Kids, Buck is the most enigmatic of the Cool Kids, as per his mirroring of Garnet. As he repeatedly pulls the rug out from under Lars with a straight face, it’s hard to tell how much he’s intentionally messing with the guy. The same goes for his ordering salad at the Big Donut after examining its salad-free displays. He plays it so cool in both situations (and in general) that some of it has to be an act, and he’s perceptive enough that he has to notice Lars’s barefaced need to please, but he’s such a closed book that we can’t get a read on what’s in his head.

We see more of him in Shirt Club than ever before, and while he’s always been friendly to Steven, we really don’t know him all that well. His father’s an obvious sore spot, and seems to be the only thing that can make him completely crack, whether from embarrassment or being genuinely touched (or feeling remorse or feeling more embarrassed, a tear from this guy could mean anything). It makes for a fascinating “villain” when compared to our emotionally open hero, and he’s really the only kind of antagonist an episode like Shirt Club can have.

Regardless, the fact that Buck is still somewhat out of character (he’s utterly kind to Steven everywhere else in the series) is worth noting, because this is one of the last collaborations between storyboarders Lamar Abrams and Hellen Jo before the latter left Steven Universe. While this team is responsible for some terrific episodes and my all-time favorite scene of the series (the ending of Winter Forecast), they’re also behind House Guest and Fusion Cuisine, which are essentially about evil twins pretending to be Greg and Connie. 

For whatever reason, the Abrams/Jo team seems to enjoy bringing out the worst in beloved characters (or inventing negative traits out of nowhere) in ways that wildly diverge from their typical depictions. It allows for drama within a contained story, but in a way that clashes with the consistency of the series; with the exception of Island Adventure and its lesson that emotional and physical abuse is okay sometimes, these kinds of character-nuke episodes are my least favorite. Shirt Club is the best of these divergences by far, in that I can actually deduce Buck’s rationale and because he’s a mysterious character by design, but it’s still an unfortunate trend that happily gets ironed out as the show continues.

(Bear in mind that beyond letting us watch the snow fall, Abrams co-boarded The Answer and Chille Tid and When It Rains, and while it may be a coincidence that each contains a breathtaking scene of a character coming to grips with a scary new environment, I tend to think that he’s really good at framing them. He’s also the only boarder to work on every Onion episode; even if Onion Gang is a dud, Onion as a character certainly isn’t, and I get the feeling we mostly have Abrams to thank for that. I want to give no impressions that this isn’t a brilliant animator.)

Mayor Dewey and the Crystal Gems are here for comic relief, and oh boy do they deliver. Jo and Abrams are brilliant at giving the Gems incongruous background tasks: in Watermelon Steven it’s reading the paper, and here it seems to be assembling IKEA furniture. Their criticisms of Steven’s art and unwillingness to help his strange problem highlight Shirt Club’s casual tone, and they get little moments of self-parody without dipping too deep into meta humor: Garnet’s twinkling shades during a pregnant pause certainly counts, but Amethyst and Pearl’s escalating concerns about Steven’s shirt problem takes the cake.

Mayor Dewey is incredibly, but not unbelievably, lame. Between his outdated slang and his blatant desire to connect with youths (without putting in any actual effort) it’s easy to see Buck’s disdain. Bill’s speech about losing his speech is overshadowed by Steven setting up his sniping position, but is worth paying attention to for Joel Hodgson’s masterful meandering.

And despite his selfish and thoughtless intentions, actually seeing Buck and Steven making shirts is a bunch of fun. It evokes Steven and Greg’s adventures in rocket science from Space Race, but with the wrinkle of Buck demonstrating actual knowledge of the craft to contrast with Steven’s silliness. While the distribution and interpretation of art once it’s complete makes up the episode’s conflict, the creation process itself is joyful and pure, as it should be for a kid making art.

Buck comes around at the end, of course, apologizing to Steven and offering to take guitar lessons. But honestly, the nicer he is to Steven, the weirder his behavior here seems, whether or not he’s a mysterious guy. The best thing I can say about Abrams/Jo character-nuke episodes is that there’s only three of them, and finishing Shirt Club, from that lens, is a huge sigh of relief. 

Future Vision!

The Good Lars not only shows Buck wearing the Guitar Dad shirt, but showing off what he’s learned! And he’ll continue to play guitar as one of Sadie Killer’s Suspects, a band that will eventually be managed by Greg himself.

I guess you could read it that way…

On the one hand, watching this after Joy Ride makes Buck’s cruelty even stranger. But on the other, getting to know him better there, and Bill better in Political Power, makes an examination of their relationship a nice coda.

Tonally, Shirt Club simply doesn’t fit where it’s intended to go. Open Book and Story for Steven at least have their dramatic moments that fit the simmering tension of post-Marble Madness Season 1, but Shirt Club’s lightness thoroughly deflates the momentum. The Gems casually building furniture makes no sense in this time period, and Pearl and Amethyst’s list of fears don’t even hint at them worrying about Homeworld.

Still, the reordering leaves us with pre-Jailbreak Garnet, which is a little confusing without context. (I certainly prioritize this minor continuity error lower than harming dramatic tension.)

Regardless of your opinions about the order shift, I’m happy to say that Shirt Club is the last of it! No more asterisks!

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

Buck’s strange meanness doesn’t tank Shirt Club down to the bottom, but it does make me less inclined to rewatch what’s an otherwise wonderful episode about art. It’s a shame, but there’s still a lot to love when you get shirt!

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

The Return

Jailbreak

Rose’s Scabbard

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Winter Forecast

On the Run

Warp Tour

Maximum Capacity

The Test

Ocean Gem

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Future Vision

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

No Thanks!

     4. Horror Club      3. Fusion Cuisine      2. House Guest      1. Island Adventure