#i mean i know its more complicated than that and americans really do worship the concept of consumerism and were already primed for

[witchblade]

everyone reacts to those old dvd/theater ads that are like You Wouldn't Download a Car like LOL this wouldn't work on anyone! but apparently it like did. An entire generation of weird Americans were like He's right I Would NEVER download a Car 😡

[shihalyfie]

hi! this is out of curiosity, since when do you start to watch adv series in its original jap. ver.? do you find any difficulty in trying to adapt, get used to it? like the voices, names of the characters, music, the way the story is presented. i first watch the series in my own language and the english ver (not the us ver., more like asian english ver.) before i encounter the original jap. ver. during my teenage years and get used to it over time until now. i'm okay with dub ver, but i always prefer, love to watch the jap. ver. more than other dubs.

(Note: This was cleared up later with the asker and various parties, so mostly leaving this for posterity: while it's not universally well-known, "J*p" is a slur originating from WWII, so I ask that people please be careful about not using that even as an abbreviation.)

Regardless of language, I've always been interested in original versions of any dubbed media for as long as I've been consuming media (I won't say I'm necessarily a purist, I just happen to have a natural curiosity for what must have been the original source), so I'd been interested in the Japanese version of Digimon ever since I first got into it, and had been following it ever since it started getting translated. If you know anything about Digimon and subbing, it actually took some years for most early Digimon series to get decent quality subs in full, so I thank everyone involved for their hard work, especially since the prevailing attitude at the time was that "the (American) English dub didn't change anything substantial anyway" (ignoring the fact that there would still be good reason to have the Japanese version on hand even if that were the case...) and the demand for it was even more niche than it is now.

I didn't really have problems getting used to names. I did have to get used to the voices, because since I got in with the American English dub initially, I had a strong attachment to the voices I'd associated with them there (and I still do, even if I haven't fully watched the dub in years!), so there would be things like Yamato (Kazama Yuuto)'s voice being much deeper than I'd expected, or Agumon's voice being completely different in general, but I got used to it quickly because I felt like everyone fit their character perfectly in their own way. The music was a bit surprising, but I was never too incredibly attached to the original music anyway so it was mostly just discovering something new and fun. Other than that, I guess I was incredibly surprised by how different of an impression 02 gave me, especially Daisuke; having been eyeing 02 in Japanese since translation efforts first started, I knew there had been some changes (Hurricane Touchdown...) but the actual degree really surprised me, especially since, as I said, the prevailing attitude was that "it didn't change much". Part of the reason I write so extensively about how much the 02 dub changed is that I personally witnessed firsthand how much my perception of the series abruptly shifted after my first time watching it in Japanese, and how nearly impossible it became to hold analytical conversations about certain smaller details with people who mistakenly over-applied dub things to the Japanese version because "we're actually talking about two different things, aren't we..." never comes up thanks to how prevalent this myth is. Driving this home further, I don't have this issue at all with fans who had their own local dubs more closely adapted from the Japanese version, so the problem really isn't whether it was in Japanese or not, or whether it was a dub or not, as much as the fact "the script really did change that much".

Currently, I guess I would say I have a pretty complicated relationship with Digimon's American English dubs. Like I said, I don't necessarily think I'm a purist or anything, and even though I have an increased stake in watching things in Japanese since I can actually understand much more about the language than I used to, I myself still enjoy a good dub and also completely understand and appreciate the nature of what dubbing entailed in those days, the dub's role in getting Digimon to a wider audience, the reason people prefer dubs and how important this one is to people, and, heck, I still love the voice actors. At the same time, this "it didn't change anything significant" myth has been really damaging and frustrating to deal with, because you get pointless, unnecessary arguments about people trying to talk about two very different versions of the series and arguing because they don't realize the characters they're discussing weren't even written similarly (hi, Mimi and Daisuke). Even if people do acknowledge the changes, there's also a tendency to worship that dub, so even though I feel my complaints about it are pretty legitimate ones (my gripes mainly being that I'm uncomfortable with the characterization changes, I feel many of the changes caused a significant adverse impact on the story and characterization integrity especially in the case of 02, and I get a bit of a bad feeling about some of the cultural localization attempts in dialogue borderline crossing into racism), it's frustrating to constantly get shut down because everything should be excused as long as it was in someone's childhood, and it's also frustrating to see these dismissals applied to people who had their own aforementioned local dubs and are upset at how this impacted their own childhood, but are thrown under the bus because their own dub is treated disrespectfully as if it were "secondary" to the American English dub somehow being the enforced, mandated standard for any kind of localized Digimon outside Japan.

I completely understand that a lot of this is lashback developed from Japanese-version-only purist camps being obnoxious about dunking on dubs, but it's uncomfortable observing the results of the fallout when you're kind of here in the middle not wanting to dunk on it for the sake of dunking on it, but also having concerns that you feel everyone is dismissing you for. (Not helping is also the fact that obnoxious purists love to dunk on people for having a personal preference for dubs; there are a lot of reasons to prefer them even if you're aware of the changes, personal emotional attachment and accessibility reasons being among them, and my grievances have more to do with the "it didn't change anything" myth still being prevalent, the experiences of having any criticism I have of it being so easily dismissed, and the fact that a combination of both means that having strong loyalty to the Japanese version gets you pinned as being an unusual purist or being overly picky.)

Also, I think one thing that isn't often talked about is that there's a huge difference between the dubs of everything up to 02 and the dubs of everything between Tamers and Savers (Xros Wars we'll...leave aside for now, haha). In the case of the latter, the aggressive joke-adding is much less intrusive, the changes (including to characterization) are less significant, and you can even see this in that Diablomon Strikes Back's dub has much closer dialogue and characterization to the original than anything else from the 02 dub. So a lot of what I said above actually just applies to Adventure and 02 more than anything. For series after, I don't make it a habit to watch their dubs as often these days, but I'm still familiar with them and have my own pretty strong sense of nostalgia for the Tamers and Frontier ones in particular, and for anything after 02, I haven't had any particular experience with other fans regarding trying to discuss the series but finding we're talking about two different things, other than maybe one or two minor things that had to be cleared up every so often. So in that case I myself also agree more with the idea of mostly treating the dubbed and Japanese versions as the same thing, whereas with Adventure and 02 I honestly feel they need to be treated as separate and distinct things.

In the end I guess the take-home I have here is that I feel like my experience going from the dub to the Japanese version has been a lot less shocking or eventful than dealing with the perceptions and stigmas around them from other people...^^;;

[godsofhumanity]

GODHUNTER by AMY SUMIDA | REVIEW

okiee this was recommended to me by @inkleaves ^-^ uhmm so i have a LOT to say about this book. spoilers under cut.

OVERVIEW: “Godhunter” is the epithet given to a young woman named Vervain who uses witchcraft and magic to go around committing deicide in order to save humanity from gods who drain their energy to gain immortality and other godly attributes. However, when Vervain is recruited by the Norse god Thor, she finds herself in an alliance with the people she originally considered her enemies, as they work together to save the world from the maliciousness of the Aztec god, Huitzilopochtli.

RATING: 2/10. i’m giving it a low rating because it doesn’t really have too much to do with mythology, but i did like its general portrayal of most deities even though this book was insanely cringey and dumb.. now, even though under the cut, i’ve kinda bashed the book quite a bit, i still have to admit that i’d be lying if i said i didn’t have fun reading it. i stayed up to 1 AM trying to finish it because i had to find out what the protag’s next stupid decision would be,, all in all, if you like trash/cringe fiction- this is for you.

WARNING: even though this book is a YA novel, I’d say there’s a definite emphasis on the adult part of “young adult”... Certain scenes and themes are inappropriate for minors.

AVAILABLE ON: pdf link here ^-^ ((i think it downloads immediately if you click))

THINGS I LIKED:

the book is cringe.

great diversity in terms of the god cast. i learned about some new deities that i was previously unfamiliar with, so that was cool

Brahma (Hindu deity) wears a Gucci belt as part of his attire ^-^

whatever Estsanatlehi and Tsohanoai (Native American deities) had going on.... they were really cute and wholesome

THOR-HORUS BROTP AGENDA!!!!!!!! everyone who follows me already knows how keen i am about this idea of all the war deities hanging out together (fite club), and this novel served up exactly that. disappointing that Huitzilopochtli wasn’t a part of it, but i am settling for Thor and Horus’ several centuries old friendship.

Horus’ falcon tattoo detail.. i LOVE the idea of the gods having their sacred animals tattooed,, it’s so awesome!!!

Pan... i liked the way he still had his little horns, and he was kinda chaotic and fun.

in general, the descriptions of the gods were so pleasant and so cool.. i really liked the way that pretty much all the gods were beautiful,, this is very much in line with my own idea of how the gods look, and i think it makes sense, because they’re meant to be charismatic, compelling beings- beings that you worship, beings that you praise- why would they be anything but beautiful? and even if they were considered ugly by other gods, that’s only in comparison to other deities.. from a human perspective,, i just can’t see how any mortal could consider a god to be anything less than perfection,, idk

in particular- i really enjoyed the descriptions of Huitzilopochtli in his debut. i know he’s a piece of shit in the novel, but i LOVED the way he was described with his war-frenzy being triggered by blood, and the way, as god of the sun, his body almost glows, and heats up as though you’re looking into the sun itself, and the only way he can cool it down is by bathing in blood... WOWOWOWOW it’s just such a neat and fantastic visual description. his physical appearance really paid tribute to Huitzilopochtli’s original domain and attributes.

i also liked the linking between Huitzilopochtli being the Father of Vampires.. links between Aztec culture and vampirism is a trope that i didn’t originally suspect, but have become exposed to quite a bit as of late,, and i think that it’s quite a clever little plot. i liked that Huitzilopochtli also debunks superstitions about the sun, garlic, crosses, holy water etc.

Huitzilopochtli as the villain. the man makes a BRILLIANT villain- his motives are very clear and also, i thought, justified, albeit unoriginal. his presence is quite terrifying, and the reader does worry for Vervain’s safety whenever she’s with him- which is good! this means that he fills out his role as a villain well. tbh,, i did love Huitzilopochtli from the moment of his debut, but he got knocked out of my books during a certain temple scene and i have some thoughts about that in the next section.

when Vervain wakes up after the temple dream with Huitzilo, and she relaxes because it was just a dream, but then she looks into the mirror and sees bite marks on her neck!!! CHILLS! now THAT was good writing- it was unexpected, and served well to navigate into the next part of the plot.

Odin and Huitzilopochtli holding a ted talk on “how to create panic and discord among the humans”, and the gods having to bring certain meals depending on what the first letter of their names were.

Vervain’s pop-culture references, and her weaponry- especially the gloves that have blades in them that get released when she swings her hand downwards. very cool, i want them.

casual appearances from Vladimir Putin (yes, i said Vladimir Putin)... i couldn’t stop laughing when i read that Huitzilo was trying to kill Putin’s daughter to instigate a war...... asdhshajdhasdjfhjdhf insane

also i know Vervain was trying to mock Huitzilo when she nicknamed him “Blue”,, but like.. that’s a really cute name and it wasn’t even insulting.. yeah, that one backfired on you Vervain... if anything, that just made it seem like she actually had affections for him and i feel like probably in part is the reason why he felt encouraged to pursue her.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE/THINGS THAT DIDN’T MAKE SENSE AND/OR CONFUSED ME:

the book is cringe.

it reads like a 15 year old’s fantasy AU where she’s a humble young woman, unextraordinary- yet somehow, she is the muse of every man’s desire. handsome, ripped gods who never wear clothes are laying themselves down at her feet,, and she is just overwhelmed by the choices before her; and all the while, she has to balance a complicated love life with her duty to save the world (since she’s the only one who can).

Vervain as a protagonist. idk how old she’s meant to be, but since the book is in first-person, and the reader is exposed to her innermost thoughts,, i’ve gotta say- she’s incredibly immature. as a protagonist, i just feel like she’s rude, pretentious, snobby.. she has no idea what “respect” even means. in every scene, she’s either fighting someone, or lusting after them (when Teharon told her off for having lascivious thoughts about him, and she simply responded with “well stop being so sexy then” i wanted to die.... WHAT is wrong with her)

i hate the way she looks down on the gods- even if you didn’t worship them, or even believed in their existence, surely you wouldn’t have the gall to lecture Hades and Persephone on how to be a good couple (especially when your advice is shit). surely you wouldn’t have the gall to say to Thor what Vervain says to him on pg 227, 4th line from the bottom, that i will not repeat here. Vervain is just too self-absorbed. i don’t hate her, but i definitely think her character is a bit,,, iffy.

relating to Vervain as the protagonist- everything just seems to happen to her.. and i know that she’s the protag, and things are meant to happen to her, but it all happens to her one after the other in succession, no breaks. it’s so easy for her... oh? Huitzilopochtli is going to kill Putin’s daughter? no worries, Vervain can read Huitzilopochtli’s thoughts! oh? the gods have never been able to transform more than half their body into their animal form? no worries, Vervain is so powerful she can force a god to change against their will! oh? Vervain is being attacked by blood-thirsty wolves? no worries, she saved the life of one werewolf and now he’s indebted to her and will literally kill himself in order to protect her! everything is easy, and nothing is a problem.

the way every male deity ever sees Vervain once and immediately wants to take her to bed. why was that a necessary aspect of her character? and also, why are the gods portrayed as such lustful beings?? it really wasn’t necessary.

Horus throwing a fit about how December 25 is his birthday and that it was stolen from him by Jesus... to quote:

“No big deal?” Horus puffed up. “I was called the Lamb of God. I had twelve apostles, and my myths spoke of my crucifixion and consequent resurrection in three days. His stories were my stories first!”

it’s fine that Horus is angry about his birthday which was i think, historically celebrated around this date- but the rest of it isn’t even true???? Horus didn’t have 12 apostles, i’m pretty sure he was also not called “Lamb of God”, and he wasn’t crucified!!! aghhhh even Thor says “It’s been so long that even you don’t remember things accurately.”

anyways.. my beef with this is the way it’s phrased so as to imply that “oh christianity just stole everything from the pagans” when this is so incredibly false and sounds like something an ill-informed person would say. you can read more about christianity, paganism and christmas here

kinda related to the previous point- the jokes about Jesus’ skin colour. i quote:

“... when Christ first became a god, he looked Jewish because those were the people he chose to align himself with. However, the Jews didn’t want him, and when Christianity spread, the white people wanted Jesus to look more like them. With the change in belief, Christ’s appearance changed. ... We used to tease him about how he looked whiter every time we saw him... Kind of like Michael Jackson...”

what the FUCK??????? seems like Sumida doesn’t understand that various ethnic groups illustrate Jesus as appearing as the local people do. Yes, obviously in a Western country, Jesus is going to look European, he’s going to look white. If you go to Japan, you will see Jesus and the rest of the gang looking pretty fucking Japanese. the point of this is NOT to erase Jesus’ Jewish ethnicity, and it is certainly not because of something like “the Jews didn’t want him”- it is because it is a way for followers to better relate to the Divine. including Christ in this story isn’t the problem- i’ve seen others do it very well. the problem is how uneducated her writing comes across.

all the gods have human jobs so that they can earn money and stuff,, which is fine- Thor, for example, owns a line of boats, which makes sense. but Pan? his job is making p*rn. now even though it’s true that everyone associates Pan with sexuality and stuff,,, this isn’t his primary role, and making Pan out to be just a playboy who has his mind in the gutter 24/7 i think is a bit of a mockery. Pan is, first and foremost, a god of the Wild. why Sumida elected to make him a p*rn manufacturer and not a wildlife conservationist is beyond me... i’m not even pagan, and i thought this creative decision was distasteful and stupid, especially because his character is actually quite light-hearted and cool.

the temple scene with Huitzilopochtli and Vervain. as i said previously, i really really liked Huitzilo’s character. he made an excellent villain. but this part?? i understand why it was done, but i HATED that it had to happen... not just because it was horrible for Vervain, but Huitzilo seemed so powerful and godly right up to that point- after which he seemed pretty pathetic- going back after Vervain after she’s rejected him countless times. she is JUST a mortal!!! c’mon Huitzilo, give it up!!! you are degrading yourself at the expense of achieving one mortal’s “love”.. the fact that he had to hypnotise her to get what he wanted AND had to achieve it through her dreams (when’s she can’t protect herself) was sooooo pathetic and disgraceful.. IMO, he committed the worst sin any person could ever commit and i just... AGHHHHHHHHH SMH WHY?!

speaking of morons- Thor. Thor just comes across to me as extremely possessive, and over-protective,, and idk how Vervain was NOT creeped out by the fact that Thor had literally been stalking her for two years before she even met him. wtf? god or not- that’s creepy. actually, i think it’s creepier because he is a god. 

Sif. i am still waiting for good media representation of thunder god Thor and his beautiful golden-haired wife Sif- i want them to be HAPPY, and i want them to be in love the way they should be! 

Persephone. i like the idea of Persephone being sweet-tempered, and kind- but in this book, she’s such a wimp??????? she totally just lets Vervain be rude to her, a goddess who’s name means “Bringer of Destruction”. also- her relationship with Hades seems toxic.. i mean,, he like tracks her? she starts stuttering when she talks to him, and gets nervous when people so much as mention his name. not to mention the fact that Persephone says that when she does go back to him, all he demands from her is a certain horizontal dance so much so that she is “sore” (<- quoting from the book here) every time she returns??????? WHAT IS HAPPENING?????????? and no one even questions it. Vervain doesn’t even question it! instead she suggests that Persephone MOVES IN with Hades permanently???? and that Hades should just start verbally saying how much he loves Persephone instead of “showing” her how much he “loves” her.....??? there are SO many issues with this.. i can’t even- *screams*

the Aphrodite-is-madly-in-love-with-Huitzilopochtli side plot. it could have been really good, but then it ends so abruptly,,, i mean.. why’d Aphrodite get done so dirty like that? Also summary of Hephaestus’ first and final scenes:

Hephaestus, entering the room: Right, what’s all this then? Vervain: Your wife is cheating on you (again) Hephaestus: Aight, i’m out *leaves and never comes back for the rest of the book*

what the HECK was the ending with Trevor?? i hate Vervain so much i can’t... okay first of all- WHY did Trevor decide to have a wolf-marriage with Vervain?? he kept on going on about how she’s so beautiful, and kind, and caring... NO SHE ISN’T TREVOR!!! i’m so mad that he would pledge himself for all eternity to this girl who doesn’t even like him in that way!!! you played yourself son

also- Thor accepts the fact that Trevor is going to have to be close by to Vervain because the terms of the marriage state that Trevor will literally die without her touch, which is VERY GENEROUS of Thor... but Vervain?? ooooh i HATE her.. she has the audacity to look at Trevor with her lecherous eyes thinking about lustful things IN THOR’S OWN BED!!!!! and then she thinks to herself “oh whoops i shouldn’t be thinking that”- yeah you’re darn right you shouldn’t be thinking that!!!! whatttt is wrong with her............. 

also- where tf did Huitzilo go??? he just gave up on trying to instigate a war and vanished?? the plot was so unresolved?????? AGH!

[autumnblogs]

Day 32: Through the Looking Glass

https://homestuck.com/story/4116

So right out of the gate, we learn a few things about the Scratched version of the universe, aside from the obvious fact that the new heroes are the previous guardians. Everyone is a little more mature, and identities are a little more fully-formed.

Jane’s name is already set in stone. Notably, the definition between the audience and Jane is also a little clearer here than usual - the Narration implies a distinction between us and Jane. Could be because we’re not controlling her yet - but as we get into Act 6, we will find a lot of cases where audience participation happens as part of the mechanic of narration, and this distinction will be called to a lot more.

More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/4117

So let’s unpack Jane’s interests and relation to pre-established parts of the Homestuck Universe, and see if we can’t start making guesses about Jane.

First thing’s first is that while we could read Jane’s affinity for these mustachio’d funnymen as being purely an attraction, she roleplays like John does - as a bit of a prankstress herself, and one who dons a fake mustache for one of her disguises, Jane roleplays as these men immediately suggesting to us that she looks up to them, and wants to be like them, rather than that she’s attracted to them.

(Though she certainly could be.)

Second thing is that Jane’s position as the Heirress parallels her not to John, but to Feferi. Like Feferi, Jane is a sweet girl who is the heir to a position of abominable power, and because she is beholden to the shape of that power, as long as she remains wedded to that shape, she will not only struggle to do anything productive with it, but in the course of the story, be subverted into a villain, at least for a little while, and it’s clear from the way that Crockertier Jane’s situation is communicated to us that she is an accomplice to her own brainwashing, and that the actions she takes in that form are meaningfully hers.

On another note, I think it’s interesting that on this side of the scratch, the Condesce has reimagined her empire as a megacorporation.

https://homestuck.com/story/4120

What do we learn about Jake right out of the gate? He likes movies - adventure movies. Jake, like Tavros, the other page, loves to bluster about subjects that he actually has relatively little affinity for - and in both cases, their lack of affinity can largely be described as performing their culture’s ideal of public personhood - warrior virtue. While Jake has all of the outward signifiers of masculinity, and is actually a pretty brave and technically skillful fighter by the standards of the real world, up until the Hopesplosion, he is outclassed by a lot of his friends, and ultimately, the cases where he most embodies warrior-manhood, Jake is being forced into it by someone who wants to take advantage of him.

We benefit from most of this knowledge with hindsight. It’s not actually there in this opening section, but the main thrust of Jake’s interests is his love of adventure and his love of wrestling, and I’m principally interested in Jake’s physicality in addressing his interests - he’s a very physical kid.

https://homestuck.com/story/4121

We’re hot off the heels of Terezi’s fake choice, and a lot of conversation about free will and fake choices in Act 5 - and here we’re presented with one almost immediately. We can pick either option, but the outcome will be the same whatever we do.

https://homestuck.com/story/4124

I’ve always thought the Condescension’s relationship with Jane is deeply fascinating. There is something about the prospect of cultivating an heiress, someone to take over her legacy, that brings out something tender and maternal in her, I think, even if it only manifests in a twisted way. She’s a bit of an enigma to me.

https://homestuck.com/story/4126

Well, Jane is certainly interested in Foxworthy, so I rescind my earlier comment.

We’ve barely been introduced to her and she pretty much immediately starts showing off her paternalistic disdain for rural and vulgar people through the narrative’s language, and her nostalgia for Problem Sleuth characterizes her enjoyment of its sequel.

Jane has an aristocratic mentality, and conservative leanings in the media she appreciates, and the way that she appreciates it. If Andrew’s commentary that he continued to examine the themes he started with Feferi in Jane, I think what we should take away is that Feferi’s concern for the lowly comes with a heaping helping of...

Wait for it.

Wait for it...

Condescension.

B)

https://homestuck.com/story/4127

Jane’s disdain for the vulgar - low culture, low classes - also shows itself pretty quickly. In stark contrast to the other two leaders - John and Karkat - Jane isn’t much of a movie watcher at all (Jake gets that attribute in his session) and her attitude toward’s Jake’s movies is one of snobbery. Both of the other two movie watchers have a playfully self-deprecating attitude toward their own bad tastes in movies, but they still enjoy those movies sincerely.

Her relationship of passive-aggressive one-upsmanship also distinctly recalls Rose’s relationship with her mother, suggesting that Jane shares some of the underlying pessimism and mild hostility that Rose struggles with.

Also, as a symbol Swanson is a representative of the sort of anti-government animus that characterizes the politics of Trans-Mississippi America outside of the heavily populated West Coast, where the wedding of big business and state planning have created a lot of disaffection toward the distant and disinterested corporate landlords and bureaucratic apparatuses that govern huge tracts of federal land and private property in the west. Pawnee Indiana may not actually be on the other side of the Mississippi from Washington, but having grown up in Montana for at least a part of my childhood, Swanson’s politics are immediately recognizable.

Unfortunately, this anti-state animus has manifested not in the form of a renewed commitment to emancipation, but to the uniquely American, get-off-my-lawn form of Right-Wing populism practiced by the short-lived Tea Party, and smug “It’s just basic economics” Reagan-worshipping conservatives.

What I’m trying to say is, Jane would probably be a Ben Shapiro or Steven Crowder fan in the modern day.

https://homestuck.com/story/4136

Jane’s skepticism prevents her from listening to her friends when they tell her about the extraordinary things that they do, but it’s also not exactly a kind of scientific skepticism, and more of a dogmatic realism - she has a narrow vision of what the world is like, and is dismissive of ideas that are outside of her bubble.

Quick Note that while Jake makes only an off-handed remark about it here, he is sensitive to the hostile, toxic relationship between the AR and Dirk in a way that neither of the girls really is, and while that may seem uncharacteristically emotionally intelligent of Jake, I think he’s a lot more aware of his surroundings than he lets on.

https://homestuck.com/story/4142

Now as long as we’re talking about Right Wing Populism and comparing Jane to John there is an extremely potent assertion.

The USPS, and the idea of privatizing it, is as much a symbol of the war of corporatists and authoritarians against social democracy as anything is, and because of the way John is associated with Mail in general as a Hero of Breath, Jane is almost immediately setting herself up as a foil to John.

https://homestuck.com/story/4144

Calliope is so cheery that it’s easy to take everything she says in stride, and yet, with all the horrors Sburb has to offer, in terms of the way it destroys planets, and traumatizes its players, her optimism toward the game is at least disquieting.

Sure, the Null Session isn’t going to destroy the kids’ session, but her language is contrasted against both Kanaya’s and Karkat’s when they berated Aradia and Jade respectively. Both Karkat and Kanaya rue the effects of the narrative on their lives, but Calliope is a superfan.

https://homestuck.com/story/4156

I know I’m spending a lot of time ragging on her here, but like, as long as I am; Jane is sure openly hostile to her best friend, in a way that comes as kind of surprising even given the precedent that we have to work with.

https://homestuck.com/story/4160

Poirot is from Belgium.

I wonder if Andrew or Jane is the one committing that error?

https://homestuck.com/story/4168

Jake is full of little contradictions like this. Likes Adventure, terrified of monsters. Not even ambivalent about them, certainly not excited by them. It’s like the opposite of how little kids are usually super into Dinosaurs.

https://homestuck.com/story/4171

So what is the deal with Jake and his fascination with Blue Women? Aside from the metaphysical connection with Vriska and Aranea (and to a lesser extent, Jake), like... what’s the meaning of it?

I think a possible answer to the question lies in the process of the initial portraits becoming blue - leaving them out in the sun to fade - and the relationship between that, and the way in which he likes mummies and suits of armor, and so on and so forth - and even his stuffed trophies.

Maybe this suggests that Jake is, on principle, far more comfortable with the idea of a thing, than with the thing itself. Jake’s Blue Women are comfortably static. They have ceased to change a long time ago, and now exist, preserved in perpetuity, without the need to worry about adapting to suit them.

https://homestuck.com/story/4175

While a lot of Jake’s guesses are incorrect, he’s still clearly spending a lot of time pondering over the mysterious time shenanigans - he just hasn’t quite put it all together.

https://homestuck.com/story/4177

The same way that Dirk’s fastidious organization is equated to his complicated and demanding modus, and the way that John being a big impulsive himbo is equated with his inability to manage his fetch modus, constantly getting distracted from his goal by the card on the surface, Jake’s Modus has an enormous capacity, but most of it is preoccupied inefficiently.

https://homestuck.com/story/4184

The Autoresponder continues the conversation that Andrew has with the audience about the distribution of the self - Dirk does this more generally, but the particular thread the AR tugs on is the question of where a person’s self really stops - just as the question lingers in the air because of John’s disposition toward Davesprite, the question of whether the AR is really a separate person from Dirk, or a part of him, is posed continuously just by the fact that it exists.

https://homestuck.com/story/4192

To be fair to Dirk, who I will have a lot of kind-of-sympathetic-antipathy for, I had forgotten that it is, in fact, the Autoresponder who sets up this particular challenge for Dirk.

The parallels between Dirk and English are nevertheless being set up through this conversation nevertheless - by sending him the parts and getting him to assemble the robot, Dirk makes Jake complicit in his own humiliation, even as he attempts to build Jake up into an ideal partner.

https://homestuck.com/story/4196

Already we’re seeing indications that this segment of Homestuck will deal with different themes of growing up than the first half. Which is already kind of obvious, but we’ve moved decisively out of Part 1: Problems, and into Part 2: Feelings. The second half has moved out of the territory of other humans and their emotional situations as somewhat idealized problems (somewhat) and into this situation where everyone is a moving body, complicated and the characters are each others’ biggest obstacles, and their own biggest obstacles. That’s a bit of a reductive way of describing it, but I think it rings true.

https://homestuck.com/story/4256

While I am willing to concede that Dirk is not literally responsible for siccing the Brobot on Jake today, he more or less assents to AR’s sexual harassment and physical abuse of Jake.

In addition to his vicarious physical abuse, Dirk’s persona as the Prince of Heart calls him to suppress the uniqueness of the people who are around him, moulding them like clay into shapes that better resemble him. Jake and Jane need to be more like each other in his eyes - which is to say, they both need to be more like Dirk.

We also get some insight into Dirk’s sense of humor here - it’s not just about the irony. I think there is an extent to which at the base of the thing, Dirk’s sense of humor is about simultaneously denying and affirming a thing’s meaning - making fun of it while cherishing it. Having a thing be incredibly silly - while also being incredibly serious business. He cherishes the absurd.

I wonder if he’d like Kojima’s stuff.

https://homestuck.com/story/4257

The way that Dirk identifies with logic and reason recalls the sort of “enlightened by my own intelligence” New Atheist jerks who were known to prowl the internet in the early half of the decade, and to some extent, still do. Like Libertarians, these folks have often in the present day gotten caught up in Right Wing Populism. Maybe it’s something about the way that Right Wing movements increasingly identify as a part of counter-culture even though they advocate reactionary policies.

https://homestuck.com/story/4273

This is extremely silly, but Jake is in mortal peril all the time, and I expect even at the best of times he might be uncomfortable being touched.

https://homestuck.com/story/4284

Here we shall pause.

Sorry for the late post. Early work was quite busy, and once the rush was over, it was already quite late.

So the first Act of Act 6 has been very informative! Compared to the first Act of Homestuck, we’ve been introduced already to all our Dramatis Personae!

Tune back in tomorrow to here Cam Say,

Some variation on Alive and Not Alone.

[evilelitest2]

The 40K fandom filling with alt-righters was predictable because GW won't stop rimming the Imperium at the expense of everyone else, original themes included, but how was Warhammer Fantasy going down the same way?

Its a lot more obvious with 40K because its basically been playing footsie with the Alt Right for decades now by openly embracing Neo Nazi symbolizing and imagery (its more complicated than that but i’m bitter).  Warhammer fantasy doesn’t do that, it does draw on Germanic imagery but its more Holy Roman Empire than fascist/Imperial Germany.  But it still has some narratives which appeal to fascists, even though the setting was 100% not designed to appeal to fascists (in fact a lot of the fluff is anti fascist).  So its not deliberate but here are some default assumptions (I actually wrote a paper on this) 

1) The lack of positive Emotions.  Warhammer fantasy is a parody and is designed as a dark comedy, and lets admit that a lot of its fluff is very funny.  But one of the problems with creating a setting where everything sucks and everybody is a bastard, is that it actually encourages the sort of nihilistic understanding of humanity which Neo Fascism (opposed to classic fascism) relies on so much.  This is a world where diplomacy doesn’t work, kindness is foolish, and decency is unrewarded, all that matters is cruel war.  And as a cynic myself, I can appreciate the joke they are going for, but the longer that joke goes on, the more it makes caring about humanity seem foolish.  This also combines with the hatred of cute stuff (see also Doom).  The Entire world view is very adolescent boy, which is about the emotional state of fascism. 

2) For all of the games cynicism, it has a soft spot towards the glory of war.  The world is shitty, incompetent, stupid, cruel, unjust and random, but Warhammer Fantasy tends to depict war as the only transcendental and glorious experience.  This is most exemplified with the Chaos Warriors, who come off as rather noble despite being a faction whose entire existence is defined by war.  Warhammer fantasy mocks many things but never war

3) It very much buys into the “Warrior Culture” myth (Seen also Conan), where some cultures are defined macho and violent opposed to softer and more civilized cultures.  The Northern cultures near the Chaos wastes get this a lot.  These cultures have a very “noble savage” way of writing, especially regarding the Viking/mongol based ones.   

4) The background of the Empire of Man still buys into the conservative perspective of “Things were great in the past, but society steadily fell”.  It actually takes this further because it attributes the fall to decadence, hedonism, and sexual immorality.  I was just reading Historian and conservative shithead Niels Ferguston, who wrote 

“the real threat is posed not by the rise of China, Islam or CO2 emissions, but by our own loss of faith in the civilization we inherited from our ancestors.” and that sort of view about what causes civilizations to fall fits into the Warhammer understanding of history.  In fact if you go unto fascit forums, they often describe the Queer movement, especially trans activism, as Slaanesh worshipers 

5) While Warhammer fantasy is not overtly sexist and I don’t think any of the writers have actual problems with women (though Games workshop is run by Satan) but the way female characters, especially female sexuality are depicted in the series is...telling.  the Dark Elves and Slaanesh worshipers have a very “Sex, especially kinky sex is evil” feel.  Now I don’t think the writers of Warhammer fantasy actually have a reactionary view towards sex and aren’t trying to make a fascist point, but I think that narrative supports the fascist narrative that decadence spiritually damages society.  The genre is super male coded very strongly and tends to buy into macho notions of aethetic (which Warhammer 40k will take much further) 

6) Because warhammer draws so much on real world societies, even by the standards of fantasy, its depiction of those societies is super telling.  The Holy Roman Empire as presented in Warhammer is actually both less complicated and less international than its real world counterpart.  Notably, the real holy Roman Empire actually controlled Spain and through it the New World, meaning it was by far the most ethnically diverse state in the world during the time of the Reformation.  Because its drawing its influence from the Holy Roman Empire rather than more fantastical element (which I will grant gives setting a distinct Aesthetic which I mostly like) it contributes to the warped understanding of “Medievalism” which the Far Right takes advantage of.  This is a problem with most fantasy and Warhamer is not alone here, but a lot of people’s default understanding of the Medieval/early modern Era is shaped more via fantasy than by an actual understanding of the era.  Notable the intellectual, cultural, artistic...really any non military part of history.  Which unfortunately is how a lot of people view the pre modern world, as just military history, which lends itself to conservatism.  

7) Its Euro Centric as fuck.  That is normal for most fantasy but because Warhammer is so balatant about its real life inspiration, the absence is notable.  You have Fantasy France and Fantasy Holy Roman Empire, but you are missing the North African states, the Caliphate, and probalby most important of all, the Ottoman Empire, the greatest Rival to the Holy Roman Empire.  The Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire had a century long series of wars/rivarlys/hatefucking relationship which is just absent.  There is mention of a China based nation (Cathay really?) and some sort of Muslim power (Arabay) which the setting doesn’t care about and nobody ever visits.  The new World exists, but the native Americans have been replaced by Dark Elves and Lizard People.  You are even loss most of the real like ethnic diversity, their are new Jews and the Romani are confined to the Romania inspired vampire setting and basically exist as Bram Stoker people who dabble in dark magic.  And the ogres (one of my favorite factions btw) have a very oriental visual design, which would be fine if there were actual asians in the setting.  All of the non human races except the Chaos dwarves tend to look white or entirely alien which compounds this problem 

8) The notion of cults.  The Witch Hunters in Warhammer Fantasy play much the same role as the Inquisition who targeted Protestants, “Witches”  (and in Spain at least) Muslims and Jews.  Basically the inquisition was just an exercise in cruelty that just targeted entirely innocent people.  In the Warhammer world, Daemon cults are real and the brutal methods of the inquisitions are largely justified, they kill a lot of innocents but they also destroy a lot of cults.  This one is something I’m kinda mixed on, because the presence of evil cults dedicated the forces of hell is fun and it is a great plot for adventure, but it has the unintended side effect of making the notion of secret societies dedicated to profane rites seem less silly.  Look at how Alt Rightists talk about the supposed leaders of the left, its language that is used to describe the cults in warhammer, I mean the Pizzagate conspiracy theory/Qanon conspiracy theory feel like people talking about Slaanesh and Tzeentch cults 

9) Finally, the cynical nature of the setting, combined with its pro war narrative creates a world view where the world is corrupt, cruel, and unfair, the vast majority of people are ignorant morons and the nobles are decadent have weird sexual kinks.  the only things holding the forces of hell at bay are the thuggish sadistic cruel soldiers who regularly indulge in torture and murder of civilians, and it is with these people you must trust.  Its a brutal world where the only appropriate response is more brutality, which in addition to being ahistorical (the Early modern period was more than just war) but fits the fascist world view.  The world is terrible and the only thing you can have faith in is a bunch of German war criminals with a fetish for eagles and skulls.  Anybody trying to challenge that world view is either a Daemon Cultist or a naive idiot who is going to be taken over by a Daemon cultist.  

(very Wagner) 

Again, Warhammer Fantasy is not deliberate fascists, in fact there is a LOT in the material which rejects fascism but there is a lot of thoughtless assumptions that confirms their world view.  

Also I never played/read Age of Sigmar so i don’t know if this carries over 

[calamity-bean]

Chambers (2019)

Anyone around here watched Chambers?

I binged it recently on a whim, knowing nothing about it, when I started, other than the basic premise: a horror series about a teenage girl who starts having strange experiences after receiving a heart transplant. Supernatural horror about transplant recipients is an established trope, so if you’re familiar with it, then I reckon you can imagine the major (heart)beats of where Chambers is going with it. But just because it may be familiar doesn’t mean it’s not an enjoyable ride!

And I did get pretty engrossed. The horror elements were not, to me, particularly scary, but they were well done. I grew attached to several characters quickly, especially the protagonist, Sasha, and her uncle/guardian, Big Frank. Characters almost always carry a story for me (more so than plot), and I liked getting to know the character dynamics here and watching the more domestic subplots unfold; Sasha’s actress (Sivan Alyra Rose) has to carry a lot of the tension and emotion based on her performance alone, and I think she did a great job. And I love the setting: the Arizona desert, which Chambers fills with vast expanses and roaring sandstorms and lightning that boils through the wide, wide sky. It’s a beautiful and effective backdrop, and I found the horror/mystery elements and the character work strong enough to rec Chambers to horror fans on the basis of those elements alone.

But I think what really makes Chambers stand out are its themes. Specifically, its critique of cultural appropriation, which underpins the setting as well as the narrative in many ways. It’s a story led by a Navajo protagonist that draws its horror from the idea of being taken over and used without permission by forces that are conspicuously ultramodern, performative, and white.

More explanation of what I mean by that below, but I’m going to get into spoilers to do so (some major), so... Short version, Chambers is worth a try if you’re interested in horror stories with female and/or Native American leads; for the long version, spoilers under the cut!

Cottonwood versus Crystal Valley

So. Like I said, Chambers is set primarily in Arizona, in two towns surrounded and separated by desert.

The first is Sasha’s hometown, Cottonwood. It’s smallish, working-class; money is a pressing concern for several characters there, and the high school Sasha attends is implied to be limited in its resources and academic opportunities. Notably, many of the residents we see are nonwhite. Sasha is Navajo, as are her uncle Frank and her boyfriend TJ, who is also half Pima. (Sasha, Frank, and TJ’s actors are all of varying Native American / First Nations backgrounds; I’ve seen articles saying Sivan Alyra Rose is the first Native actress to star in a Netflix series, and it’s certainly notable that this series has multiple Native leads.) Sasha’s best friend, Yvonne, is black, and we see plenty of other brown and black characters in supporting and background roles.

The other town, Crystal Valley, was home to Sasha’s heart donor. Becky was the same age as Sasha, and her sudden death under strange circumstances provides the mystery that drives much of the plot. The contrast between Cottonwood and Crystal Valley is... striking. Becky’s family and friends are all conspicuously wealthy and white-collar. Their school is extremely modern, in its facilities as well as in its sensibilities, and academically elite. And the vast majority of the students, Becky included, are white. Which makes it VERY intentional irony, of course, that Crystal Valley High’s mascot is...

...the Braves. YEAH.

I’ll say right up front that I’m (1) white and (2) not particularly well versed in Navajo culture (or the cultures of other Southwestern peoples) or in the specific issues relevant to them today. I’m sure there are people who could go into Chambers’s portrayal of Sasha, her community, and their concerns with much more nuance and depth than I can. But even a viewer with superficial knowledge can’t help but notice that cultural appropriation is very much a theme of this show, both in the details and in the grand scope of the narrative. Sasha feels like an outsider right away as (through the sponsorship of Becky’s family) she switches schools from Cottonwood to Crystal Valley, and the more time she spends there, the more the weirdness and isolation pile on.

One of the most conspicuously weird elements involves a New Age–esque group called the Annex Foundation, which Becky’s family has some sort of connection with. The Annex folks are very into crystals. They are very into energies and yoga, ayahuasca and equinox festivals, and burning sage. Their beliefs and behaviors are a grab-bag of practices loosely adapted/reinvented from all sorts of traditions, whereas the members themselves, as far as I can recall, are almost all white.

I’m not super well versed in the New Age movement either, but I have read that this exact sort of thing is something that the movement has been widely criticized for irl — its tendency to borrow beliefs and customs from various world religions and appropriate them to the movement’s own purposes, thus using them without permission and divorcing them from their original context. We see this idea echoed everywhere in the speech and accoutrements of the Annex Foundation members. We see it in the way Sasha is pressured into leaving Cottonwood and trying to assimilate into Crystal Valley. And we see it in the way that Sasha’s supernatural connection with Becky, whose memories and personality begin to seep into her, literally begins turning Sasha white. 

There are tons of other little details that flesh out this theme — far more than I can get into. I don’t think Chambers portrays all its white characters as evil or unsympathetic. But it’s absolutely grappling with race and with a specific racialized phenomenon, and I think supernatural horror is an interesting context in which to explore it. Sasha’s relationship with her own race and culture is also complicated. As a result of her upbringing, she hasn’t had much contact with her extended family, and she feels disconnected from and somewhat ignorant of the wider Navajo community. In contrast to much of the horror coming from appropriation, her efforts to reconnect with her own family and heritage become a source of inner strength.

There is one major aspect of the overall plot that’s connected to this theme and that... didn’t quite work for me. But it’s a plot point that crops up VERY late in the game, so major end-of-season spoilers in this next section...

Spoilers! Big Ones!!

It becomes clear pretty early on, imo, that the Annex Foundation is the villain of the whole piece. I’m fine with that; it’s what I expected, it makes sense, it’s coherent with the overall theme. It’s furthermore eventually revealed that Becky’s death was connected to the Foundation’s attempt to use her as the earthly vessel for a demon they summoned out of the desert. I’m... like... okay with that. I’ve mentioned in the past that I find horror about spooky masked/robed cults of demon worshipers to be... How can I put this? SUPER cheesy. So cheesy that it can ruin an entire story for me. That’s just a personal preference, though, and even I don’t know how to completely account for it. But whatever. It’s just one aspect of the overall story here, and it fits in with the broader themes well enough. I can deal.

But what bothered me, in this case, is that the demon in question is revealed, in the season’s final episode, to be... Lilith? For some reason?

There’s no mention of Lilith before the season finale. There’s nothing, before the finale, related to Jewish mythology, Adam and Eve, “the divine feminine,” or conflict between male and female — like I’ve said, the primary thematic tension is based on race, not gender, and I don’t think gender really plays a role in the show’s exploration of cultural appropriation, either. Yet suddenly these concepts are brought in during the season finale?

I guess the idea that the Annex Foundation would glom onto a random figure from a different world tradition fits in with the whole idea of cultural appropriation, but I don’t see how Lilith specifically fits in. I don’t see why she’s taken the form of a cloud of dust/smoke out in the Arizona desert. I see themes of complicated mother/daughter relationships in the earlier episodes, but nothing related to femininity as a force unto itself (which is what the Annex folks start going on about at the very end). On the one hand, I really appreciate that this series casts a white neoreligion as its ~strange, mysterious, dangerous supernatural force~ (as opposed to the many stories that use a white/outsider POV confronted with ~strange, mysterious, dangerous~ indigenous forces), but honestly, I had been thinking that perhaps the “demon” was some sort of spirit that was native to the desert and that the Annex Foundation had simply stumbled upon it, mistaken its nature/identity, and was trying to appropriate it for their own purposes. I think that would fit in with the appropriation theme and would also explain why the spirit was not a good fit for Becky’s body (ultimately leading to her death). Moreover, the very end of the season implies that Sasha does have some kind of harmony with the “demon” inside her and can utilize it and live with it in a way that Becky never could. If this “demon” were some sort of spirit that was native to her own land and that the Annex people had tried to appropriate, I think that would fit in with the theme of Sasha reconnecting with her own heritage and finding strength in it.

So... yeah. Still trying to figure out how I feel about that aspect, or whether I missed something somewhere along the way, idk. Maybe it’ll make more sense to me in season 2, if it gets renewed.

Overall...

Regardless, though, Chambers still has a lot going for it. It has a talented and diverse cast with many likable and/or interesting characters. It incorporates difficult, relevant themes into its narrative and utilizes its setting to great effect, both in terms of the cultures it explores and in terms of the landscape itself. I think the horror elements were done well, though in much the way I expected. If you’re already familiar with the “transplant recipient has supernatural connection with the donor” trope, then yeah, it's the “transplant recipient has supernatural connection with the donor” trope! And imo, the members of the Annex Foundation telegraph “EVIL CULT EVIL CULT” from pretty much their first appearance, so I wasn’t exactly shocked. But the acting, writing, themes, and setting are all strong, and I became invested in several of the characters very quickly. So if any of this sounds interesting to you, consider giving it a try!

[transalfiesolomons]

I’ve had to deal w a lot of transphobia the last few days, you have any trans headcanons to spare? 🌸💀

You’ve come to the right place friend. I hope you’re cool with an unanticipatedly large dump of ‘em (specifically on Alfie and Michael) below the cut 

(oh I should mention up front these are all modern au) 

(a quick caveat with this. I talk a little bit about the intersection of being trans and being Jewish and while I try to be as culturally sensitive as possible, I am not myself Jewish, so if anyone reading this has something to add or to correct please please do not hesitate to do so)  

(there’s also probably some sentence fragments and thoughts that trail off because i’m a fool who can’t proofread) 

me: hey just do a few happy ones

also me, 3,000 words later, basically having written two fics: ah,

Alfie –

I.

Alfie Solomons spends a lot of his childhood chasing on the heels of older male cousins, refusing to be cooped up inside with the women of the family. He knows there are things that his cousins will never let their single little girl cousin know or see, condescendingly protecting her from a world that is her birthright just as much as it is theirs. 

He grows up hearing about the “family business” without ever seeing it or knowing anything about it, other than sometimes the police came to rough up family members and make arrests and hurl slurs while they did so. But whether this had anything to do with illegality on his family’s part or just people hating Jews, Alfie never really figured out, only that after such raids his cousins are quieter and afraid and those are the times a place for Alfie opens up among them, a desire to hold family close.

When he was younger, growing up around his father’s extended family in Camden Town, Alfie had pretty constantly railed against not being able to do what his male cousins did and also pretty constantly did that stuff anyway, which garnered him both amusement and consternation from his family who only occasionally attempted to stop him.

The men in the family paid him absolutely no attention, which he felt was wrong for some reason but could never find the words to explain why until much alter in his life, until after he stumbles over the word “transsexual” in a medical diary while waiting for a physical exam and until after he first applies the word to himself. Both of which come when he is already an adult. But even before he knows, it complicates a lot of his life, especially when he came to gender roles in worship. Even after he turned 13, he was not allowed to be part of a minyan which felt wrong until someone explained that it was because he’s a girl and only men can be part of a minyan which felt even more wrong but he didn’t push it because there’s a look on his mother’s face when he asked why that told him this was just one of those things (and there were many, admittedly) that just wasn’t up for debate.

II.

Alfie makes the realization that he’s trans when he is 27. Five years into his enlistment in the British Army, sitting on Basra air base in 2004 during the British-to-American turnover, twiddling his thumbs and sweating his ass off watching supplies be loaded and unloaded on the airstrip. Two months from home for good and suddenly skin-crawlingly aware he doesn’t recognize what he sees in the mirror anymore as himself. He remembers that word then, thinks back to not understanding it at the time, thinking it was strange and wrong, and he spends the rest of the day rolling it (and rolling he, him, his) over on his tongue until its stone-heavy and nearly wrung of meaning.

It’s a sudden and stomach-swooping realization, a long-time-coming clarity that still bowls him over with the sheer force of it.

His last month there, he buzzes his hair just to see how it would be, what it would feel like under his hands. When asked why - and he goes from a regulation cut, but just barely regulation to as short as the clippers will allow him without just shaving his head, so he is asked quite a lot - he claims that the heat just finally got to him and he couldn’t take it anymore. His face is too soft then, a roundness in the cheeks he’d never shed from childhood, to allow him to pass with just a buzz but it gives him a modicum of personal comfort to run his hands over his scalp and feel that soft prickle under his fingers.

He comes home and out-processes from the military and almost immediately jumps into figuring out where the fuck to go from here, pouring over what few online resources he can find and feeling more and more adrift from himself every day. He doesn’t fit into the common narrative of “knew all along” and he doesn’t exactly feel “wrong” in his body (frankly, he’s proud of it) so it’s a long time before he’s able to truly accept that he is transgender and not actively losing his mind and that there isn’t something wrong with him. 

His place as a trans man and his decision to transition put him not necessarily at odds with but in a weird position with his Jewishness. So much of Judaism is split along gender lines: where you sit in temple, what you wear, how you’re addressed, what prayers you lead, what prayers you say, if you can lead prayers at all. It causes a radical reevaluation of where he stands in relation to his faith and to g-d but in the end it wholly reaffirms both his faith and how he feels about himself.There are actually two (incredibly progressive) rabbis that help him - one who reaffirms his identity as a trans man and as a Jewish man and another who tells him in Halachic terms that he can get gender-affirming surgery if it is something he wishes to pursue.

The cool thing about realizing when he did is that Alfie doesn’t have anyone he has (or wants) to come out to - his mother had died some years before, he was estranged from his only (half) sister, he was only ever rarely in contact with any member of his maternal family (spread out between Russia and Israel), and he’d lost contact with his paternal family after his father died when he was eight and his mother moved them away from Camden Town out of fear. He had no close friends or relationships due to his “inability to relate to others” and “aloofness” (the army’s words) and his being “an utter sociopath” (his XO’s words). The not so cool thing is the not inconsiderable amount of loneliness he feels when transitioning alone, celebrating milestones like his first year on T alone, especially when recuperating alone from surgery with only his dog to keep him company (and the complications he didn’t consider - like having to take the dog on walks when he could barely get off the sofa.) But that’s, uh, that’s what alcohol is there for right? 

(Already fit from military training, he dedicates a lot of time during his early transition to weight training and a continuation of the hand-to-hand he learned in basic.) 

III.

His father’s family (the little that’s left of it after a brutal turf war between the Jews and the Italians over a decade ago) reaches out to him when he’s 31, after the murder of his uncle by a small Italian gang of upstarts who took old age for infirmity and, in his cousin’s words, “paid dearly” for it. The invitation is for his uncle’s funeral, but he ends up staying in Camden Town afterwards, working for his cousin who has assumed control of the gang after his father’s murder. Alfie very quickly garners a reputation for just vicious brutality against people that cross the gang. 

Alfie considers it strange that his cousin invites him back, considering, well – but no one (including his cousin) actually seems to remember him well enough to remember that he was a girl child once. People remember that he is his father’s child but apparently not what gender he was assigned at birth. People remember him roughhousing with the boys, not that he was reprimanded for doing so because he was not “one of the boys.” It begs the question of how his cousin tracked him down but Alfie supposes there may only be so many Solomons in England. And it’s weird but it’s also incredibly welcome. Gifts and horses and mouths.

Alfie’s assumption of control of the Solomons Gang right out from under his cousin (who was never fit for the job anyway) is an incredibly nebulous affair that followed very closely on the heels of his uncle’s death. Like, before shiva is even over close on the heels of (which is an exaggeration, but it makes him out to be all the more ruthless, really). Legitimately no one but Alfie knows how exactly any of it went down other than it has a body count somewhere between 2 and 15 people. He describes it to this way as a coup de grace. What that means, no one is even kind of willing to ask.

IV.

He’s outed twice: once by a man in his own gang (a few years after he gains control) and once not long after by a competitor who thinks it will cost Alfie everything. It doesn’t go the way either of them wanted.

His boy does it internally, digs up his service record and his discharge papers and starts to spread the “truth” in an effort to undermine Alfie and possibly gain control of the gang himself. He doesn’t live long past the first wave of rumors and it’s fairly quickly forgotten, just a power-hungry man trying to start something he couldn’t finish.

The competitor spreads it among his supplies and allies, many many of whom have negative reactions and cut ties with the Solomons gang. This costs him the most, at least in the short term - suppliers, support, respect, a modicum of safety - but he doesn’t let it intimidate him. And because it never destabilizes him or truly threatens his leadership of the gang (who actually stand by him, not because they’re supportive but because he’s already proven to be incredibly volatile and unpredictable but also fair to and protective of those loyal to him), he gains a lot in the long term.

(By the time Tommy comes into the picture when he’s 39, there’s been so much turnover in the ranks of nearly every gang and blackmarket business that barely anyone knows and the ones that do either don’t care or just don’t feel like its worth acting on.)

The second time someone internally tries to use his being trans against him, his boys doesn’t even flinch because, cis or trans, Alfie terrifies them. He’s 5′9, built like a brick shithouse, like an American Bulldog, probably 16 stone of mostly muscle, deadlifts twice that, and he punches like a freight train hauling cinder blocks and he terrifies them.

There’s not a person in this world that can make Alfie Solomons ashamed of who he is.

Michael –

I.

Polly spends so much of her life scouring the country looking for her stolen daughters, devastated beyond the ability of words to convey - after searching for twelve hard, long, lonely, terrified years - to find one daughter dead (buried in a country she has never been to and will never see, she can’t even visit her baby’s grave) and the other seemingly wiped from the system after her (private) adoption, no record or her past six years old.

She hits roadblock after roadblock, denied access to privileged and private information she has no legal right to access anymore. It’s helpless, desperate work and it almost breaks her because how could her eldest daughter just disappear?

It’s Tommy who eventually gets access to the records, who digs and digs (and bribes and threatens, but Polly probably doesn’t need to know about that part but probably does anyway, she knows her nephews too well to expect anything different, especially Thomas) until he hits pay dirt. The gender recognition certificate, the legal name change barely half a year ago, the parental consent forms for treatment of gender dysphoria.

It’s a week after he finds it all that he shows her, having mulled over how to tell her and finally settles on just laying it all out. He slides her the folder over breakfast and drinks his coffee – black, two sugars, a Shelby staple – while she reads what she initially thinks are some financial documents or some other Family Business™ family business.

He watches her face morph from shock to confusion to hope to awe and around to the same kind of fond exasperation she looks at him and his siblings with, the closest to love-comfort-softness that Polly gets.

And somewhere in that mix of emotions he knows there is a tug of grief (and it stings, it will never stop stinging, that grief, but for once it isn’t aimed at him), grief because she has lost both of her daughters, grief that is outweighed by the joy of having gained a son, just like the joy of gaining a nephew that outweighed the grief of losing a niece all those years ago. 

“Michael,” she says, awe unmistakable. Traces a hand along the papers with as much tenderness as if they were the face of her lost son, soon soon so soon to be found again and brought home to them.

(Michael, she thinks later, of course he’d somehow pick a family name. It’s only right and it’s perfectly right, she wouldn’t have chosen any different.) 

II.

They wait to reach out until after Michael turns 18, until he has been legally emancipated from his adopted parents. And the wait kills Polly but she understands it, given the circumstances. It’s Tommy that reaches out, somewhat awkwardly, a voicemail left on a cellphone. Perfunctory, because how do you explain the weight of a history like their family’s over voicemail, with a rushed callback number just before the cutoff tone.

And Michael, for his part, two years on HRT and attending uni in London and happy as hell and finally free from parents who were tepidly accepting (at least enough to help him medically transition) but suffocating in their palpable discomfort, jumps at the chance to meet Tommy.

It’s validating that his birth family has reached out to him and even more validating that, to have found him at all, they would have had to found out that he was trans. And to have reached out, they would have had to accept that fact or at least grapple with it. To have reached out, they would have had to want to see him and that’s reason enough to want to meet Tommy. That’s even reason enough to forget that his parents haven’t spoken to him since the day he moved out of their home, to forget that they looked relieved when he left.

III.

And two weeks later they’re sitting across from each other at a coffee shop in north London, a hipster hole in the wall place with good pastries - Michael’s suggestion. They both order coffee – black, two sugars. Michael doesn’t understand why that’s funny to Tommy.

Tommy sits across from him, eyes a shade of blue so startling it’s both hard to maintain eye contact and to look away at all, and offers Michael a a chance to rejoin the family he barely remembers he lost and it almost breaks Michael in half, because he didn’t expect any of this to be so easy. Except it’s not easy, of course it’s not, there’s a weight between then the heft of many people, fathers and brothers and sisters and daughters, but Tommy carries that weight somehow better, with a straight-backed pride Michael finds he would like to learn. To carry the weight of his past like a talisman and not an albatross.

“What does my mum think,” Michael asks just before they say goodbye, standing there on the sunniest day London has seen in months, on the corner outside Warren Street station. He’s put off actually asking this question, unwilling to hear the answer. Unwilling to have another parent see him as a disappointment. “Of me? Of… me.”

Tommy doesn’t speak for a long time, pulling drags and exhaling slowly. When he does speak, he doesn’t look at Michael and Michael can’t help the way his stomach drops to his feet in bitter, sickening anticipation of some kind of rebuff, some kind of confirmation that this will be hard. Instead, Tommy smiles, just slightly, the corner of his mouth blink-and-you’ll-miss-it twitching, and says “You’re her son. She loves you.”

Like it’s just that easy. And for the Shelbys, it kind of is. Family is family, all baggage included. (Ride or die, bitch.)

And Michael isn’t really given to strong emotions (another Shelby staple) but he carries that answer with him for days after, holds it in his body like a physical thing, right next to his heart tucked protectively behind his ribcage. Her son, her son, her son.

(He finds out later that Tommy himself is trans but that is not for some time - it’s definitely one of the last pieces of the puzzle for him, that last missing piece of sky that completes a nearly two decades long year search for who he is and where he belongs. But it’s not for a while yet.)

IV.

He meets his birth mother on a stormy day two weeks after he first meets Tommy. He stands on a curb in Small Heath with an address on a scrap of paper, hastily scribbled while on a confirmation call with Tommy (who does not and will not text, the neanderthal) when he arrived in Birmingham.

She’s not at all what he expected (smaller, thinner, stress-worn. but he has her nose he thinks, and her chin, the curls in her hair) but he supposes he isn’t what she suspected either so they’re at least on equal footing.

Her home smells of incense and perfume, the tea she brews is stout-dark but bright-sweet, her hands are soft and warm on his back when she hugs him and with tears threatening to choke him, his forehead on her shoulder, he thinks oh, I remember this.too

[killmvnger]

What You Need (Part 4) / Part 3 / Part 2 / Part 1

Killmonger/Black!Reader

Warning: Sexual content, use of n-word

Summary: You didn’t go to the club to find a man, but you sure as hell leave with one.

You rolled up the oversized sweatpants on your hips, folding the waistband over a few times so the material didn't drag under your feet. The jersey hanging loosely on your body, you tucked into the sweatpants so that it wouldn't look like a dress. He had the good grace to let you shower, providing you with toiletries and hair-care products that he said you were in dire need of. You squinted at his bold use of the word dire. If your hair was fucked up, it was his fault for ruining all the time you took to install your expensive ass wig. He had stumbled through the bathroom door with an armful of random hair products, saying something about his cousin needing to stop leaving her shit everywhere.

You were just about done fixing your hair when you heard a door slamming and then a chorus of 'ayy's.

You thought he was joking about the cousin thing, at first. For ten whole minutes, you laughed at him, rolling your eyes and hitting his shoulder insisting that he stop playing with you. But the proof was in the mysterious neon blue tattoo inside his mouth, the Wakandan letters sticking out and shocking you. You remembered watching the news on the day that King T'Challa announced the real treasures that lied within Wakanda, the vibranium and money, and brilliance. Then, you started reading up on Wakanda more, desperate to learn the customs and cultures that you otherwise wouldn't usually be interested in. You wondered if any of your family had somehow survived peacefully in the country if there was a separation between anyone while the slave trade happening. You'd often be around the new resource centers that they placed in Oakland, learning and sometimes just watching.

Now you're about to meet King T'Challa, the Black Panther, in huge sweatpants and without makeup.

Hesitantly, you tip-toe out of the bathroom, looking left and right through the huge hallway, then following the distinct sound of bickering. Your heart raced faster the closer you came to the disembodied voices, the more clearly you could hear that beautiful accent that you've only heard on television. As you continued down the hallway, you came to an opening which led to the largest, most lush kitchen you've ever seen. But you couldn't appreciate it now as your hands were shaking and the beginnings of sweat began to form in the pores of your forehead.

You could see the backs of their heads from your place in the hallway, sitting on the kitchen stools talking about God knows what. He's shorter than Erik, but he radiates this undeniable power, this authority that's as gentle and kind as it is biting and firm. You're stunned at his casual wear - a denim jacket with a black v-neck and basic jeans with black Jordans.

You were so lost in your analyzation of T'Challa that you didn't hear Erik say your name. He called you again, louder, and you jumped, almost bumping your head into the wall.

"You need to learn to be more sneaky, this shit getting embarrassing," he comments off-handedly as you get yourself together and walk into the kitchen, eyes stuck to T'Challa who was already staring at you. Awkwardly, and because you don't have a single clue as to how you could address him, your arms cross over your chest. The king laughs at you, mimicking your salute before sticking his hand out for you.

"Pleased to meet you." He says. The smile on your face is so big that it hurts. You rush to put your hand in his, shaking firmly, hoping he doesn't acknowledge sweaty palms.

"Likewise, Your Highness." You gush. He chuckles more at the obvious fangirling you were doing. Distantly, you think you hear Erik suck his teeth.

"It's okay. You can call me T'Challa." He takes his hand back once realizing you weren't eager to stop holding his.

"Okay, T'Challa. I don't mean to interrupt your conversation or anything, but there's just so much I want to ask you and talk to you about, ever since I first--"

Erik clears his throat too loudly. You ignore him.

" -- Since I first saw you on the news as the Black Panther fighting against--"

Hands grip your waist and pull you away from T'Challa. You finally break and glare at Erik. He looks mildly annoyed.

"Please, ignore his silly antics, I imagine it cannot be esteeming for him that your beautiful eyes have not yet given its full attention to his whining." T'Challa jokes. You blush pitifully, purposely avoiding Erik's eyes on you as you're blatantly flustered over his cousin.

"Nigga, watch your mouth. You may be the king, but you can still catch these hands."

T'Challa turns to you, smirking. "He thinks he's intimidating because he almost threw me off a waterfall."

Your eyes widen. Okay, family issues on one thousand.

"And I could've if I wanted to! Don't forget that shit. Flip-flop wearing ass bitch."

"I'm wearing sneakers!"

"Because you know I banned yo ashy ass feet from this house. Don't even think about taking them shits off, bro."

You're standing awkwardly in the middle of their bickering, so you carefully slide away towards the refrigerator. It's stainless steel and stocked to the brim, of course. You turn back to the island where they're still arguing.

"T'Challa," you call sweetly. He turns with a smile. "Would you like a drink?" You ask, gesturing to all the options inside the fridge. T'Challa places his hand over his heart dramatically.

"You have shown me more hospitality than 'Erik' here ever has, probably in his life." He gets muffed on his head by an annoyed Erik. "No thank you, beautiful, I should be on my way now, actually. Shuri wants to visit some amusement park."

"A'ight, bro. Tell Ri-Ri to bring me back a funnel cake."

They give each other a brief side-hug, in which you hear T'Challa whisper something in Xhosa to him. His eyes flicker to yours and back again, saying something else with a smile. He may be the king and all but this switching language has you feeling targeted. You realize that you were right when you suspected him speaking in a different language in bed, he's Wakandan, of course, he knows Xhosa. Erik replies out loud, so you could hear.

"Esi si cwangciso." He winks at you and you know it's just to rile you up because you don't understand him. You eye him suspiciously because he has that look on his face, the one that screams 'I know better than you', the one that made you want to kick his ass.

"Ndiyayithanda. Musa ukuphazamisa oku." T'Challa says, then walks over to give you a hug as well. You gladly accept though you're a bit wary because they could be talking about anything. "Hopefully, I'll see you again." He says and gets another blush out of you.

"I hope so."

"Okay, damn, get the fuck out." Erik sneers, interrupting yet another moment that you wanted to have with your literal hero. T'Challa rolled his eyes at him, waving you goodbye as he left the kitchen. You stared after him in awe, never breaking from your stupor until the front door shuts closed. When you finally relax and turn around, Erik is glaring at you.

"If I had known you had this weird hero worship thing with him, I would've told his ass I wasn't home." He comments. Your mind is still reeling.

"How are you two related? He's so..." You begin, then decide to let the thought fade out of existence once you see his expression. "It's not like I'm tryna flirt with him or anything," you walk up to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. He doesn't look too convinced, which was ridiculous considering you've let him keep you at his house after what was supposed to be a one-night-stand, you're wearing his large clothes around his house, and you've held your tongue multiples times when you had the opportunity to curse him out. What kind of girl would do all of that just to flirt with his cousin a couple hours afterward? Judging by the suspicious look on his face, apparently a few girls.

"Really?"

"Of course not, Erik. I wouldn't flirt with him right in front of you, I was waiting for you to use the bathroom or something!" You joke, laughing at his betrayed face. He tries to grab you but you run out of his reach. "I'm playin', c'mon! Trust me, if I wanted T'Challa instead of you, I'd be out that door following him. You know I'm not one to waste an opportunity."

"You was smiling a lil too hard."

"He's a king!" You justify. There's no way he expected you to mindlessly accept the fact that you were in the presence of black royalty. He's lucky you didn't ask for a picture like you really wanted to do.

"So? I'm a prince. You ain't trippin' over that."

"Aww," you settle closer to him and pinch his cheeks, "T'Challa was right, you just want a little attention." He flicks your teasing hands away from him.

"Attention? You couldn't ignore me if you tried." He pulled you in for a kiss. You smiled into the kiss before pulling away. It's like you had completely forgotten about all your plans on leaving, deciding to enjoy your time with him as long as possible. "That reminds me. I left your phone on the end table in my room. It's charging."

You laugh, pulling him back to your lips. The kiss lasts a few seconds, but it's sweet and solid. "I'll let it charge then. Tell me about you and T'Challa."

"Long complicated story." He huffs, looking too put off just by the mention of it to even dig into whatever happened. You shrug and move to sit on the stool beside him.

"Give me the short uncomplicated version. You can't just parade your royal superhero cousin around and not say anything. I don't care about the weird waterfall business, gimme the good stuff."

He looks away, hiding a soft smile, then turns back. "Okay. Good stuff only."

You lock into him as he begins his story, hanging onto his every word, filling in the blanks as well as you could. He spoke of his brief American life in the slums of Oakland before being taken to a place he's only ever fantasized about, being granted his fairy tale life and moving into the royal palace of Wakanda at only seven years old. He didn't linger on specifics, like his parents or his relationship with the previous King T'Chaka. He spoke of the mutual hatred that he and T'Challa shared for his first couple of years in Wakanda, how T'Challa was this spoiled brat that knew nothing of real pain. He didn't elaborate on that pain. They eventually grew on each other, though obviously the bickering never stopped, and as the years went on in Wakanda, Erik began feeling more and more like an outsider. He left when he turned eighteen, returning to America to attend MIT. Instead of returning to Wakanda, he joined the Navy Seals - for reasons he also didn't enlighten you on.

"And, what, you just decided to link up again after all those years?" You ask. He shrugs.

"Something like that. I told him to do more for America and...well, he opened them fucking resource centers." He scoffed, looking so personally offended that you didn't even wanna open that door. "But that shit's over with. All this," he gestures around him. "It's my inheritance as the 'prince' and shit."

"It's...a lot."

"Girl, don't act like you'd know what to do with millions of dollars in ya bank account. Probably fuck around and buy the entire section at Yves Saint Laurant because you can."

Oddly specific. "Is that what you did?" You laugh at his guilty face.

"Mind ya business." He replies, but you're already standing up and pulling him towards his bedroom.

"Oh, my God! Show me your closet, I gotta see if you really this damn foolish." He reverses the directions you're going in, pulling you this time.

"Nah, my bedroom closet is my everyday clothes. I keep my good stuff upstairs." He smirks and you squeal happily.

"You rich ass motherfucker! Two closets? Fuck you, oh my God."

"Hate is an ugly emotion, baby girl." He teases, which you hit him for. He drags you to the staircase that you noticed when first walking into the house and starts rushing up.

"Nigga, ain't nobody hating on you..." you say, but even you hear the obvious lie. "Okay, maybe a little bit. But you have two closets!"

"Three." He mutters under his breath but you still catch it and kind of want to kick him. Once you reach the top of the staircase, the hall splits three ways, but he continues pulling you forward to the middle. He guides you through a wide marble tiled hallway, stopping at the third door down. This door was different than the rest, it was doubled and had frosted glass with a golden lining around it. He opens it and you stand there slack-jawed.

You could barely call it a walk-in closet. Does it even count as a walk-in closet if the entire room is a closet? Another chandelier dangled in the middle of the room, shining down on a variety of shelves, cabinets, drawers, and mirrors. You walk in after him, admiring how tidy everything was. He must have a maid around somewhere because this house seems to be spotless in every nook and cranny. He opens a random drawer, revealing a collection of watches all lined up inside, all of them either Rolex or Cartier and glittering like the inside of a treasure chest.

You squint up at him once a certain thought crosses your mind. "I bet your third closet ain't nothing but shoes." You accuse, knowing just how niggas like him think. He has a goofy smile on his face that highlights the gold caps in his bottom row of teeth as well as those dimples you like so much.

"You already know. But that baby sealed with a vibranium forcefield and it only opens to my voice." He explains and you roll your eyes. Too much, as usual.

"This whole place is ridiculous." You mention as you walk towards his shelves, inspecting the folded stacks of dress shirts and varieties of ties.

"Oh, this ain't even half of it."

"For the love of God, do not show me the rest of this house, I will never fucking leave. Seriously. You'll get sick of me." You chuckle at the idea of just up and settling in one of his many rooms.

"How you livin' now?" He asks, his voice is much closer to you than before.

"Uncomfortably cramped with my two best friends in an apartment. The ones you referred to as 'sloppy'. That's Casey and Aaliyah. We've been together since grade school." You confess. He doesn't know much about your personal life, and after hearing all about his crazy one, you doubt he'd be interested enough to ask. Just thinking of your girls made you anxious to talk to them again and tell them about your day. You had an itch for your phone again. You turn around to tell him as much only to jump back in surprise at him being right behind you. He steadies you and shakes his head in amusement.

"I'll drive you back." He offers.

"Thanks, but you don't have to."

"It wasn't a question."

He spoke to you like certain things were a given like this was normal. It seemed all too good, especially with your track record of men. You didn't want to get too real with him only knowing him for less than a day, but you needed to know why he was acting like this, allowing you to invade his personal space and hear about his otherwise disclosed life. So, in a moment of insecurity, you look up at him with curious eyes and a stone-faced gaze.

"Erik. Why are you being so nice to me?"

He recoils at the question, visibly confused.

"I'm being nice?" He says the word like he's never heard it before in his life. You cross your arms.

"Yeah. I'm not gonna cry if you kick me out if that's why you're afraid of."

"Damn, do niggas be kicking you out?"

You continue on, ignoring his question. "I know you aren't nice, I can tell. You don't have to pretend with me to uphold whatever royal image you're trying to keep." You go on.

"Okay, you've obviously dealt with some 'ain't shit' niggas. I understand that. What I don't understand is why are you questioning a good thing?"

"Because it's too good." You reply too quickly. He smirks, sliding in closer to you.

"Oh, I'm too good?" He licks his lips. You groan, silently wishing he'd stop being so cute. His arms snake around your middle and pull you into his body. "I never heard a girl complain that I'm too good."

"You know that's not what I meant." You pout, staring up at him. He leans down to kiss your pouty lips.

"You never know when to shut up and let things happen." He responds. The comment stings a little because it's true and you know he's right. You sigh and wrap your arms around him, too.

"Only when I'm drunk." You snort.

"We could fix that with one trip to the kitchen," he suggests and you slap him away from you.

"Hell no, I'm not drinking ever again...until next week." He shakes his head at you. "C'mon, take me home. I'm not paying for your premium ass gas. In fact, you owe me money for ruining my underwear."

"Mhmm. How much you want, baby?" He asks, backing you into one of his dressers. You slightly hesitate at the mention of a specific price. You've never been put in the position to ask someone for money and, in a way, it felt wrong, like you shouldn't take anything from him. But he'd only insist if you didn't answer him. He noticed your awkward inner conflict and lent down to kiss your neck. "Let things happen." He whispers before swiping his tongue against your skin.

"They were really expensive, daddy," you moan out indecently as his hands move down to grab your ass.

"Bout a hunnid?" He asks, pulling you up to sit on his dresser as he kissed your neck. You shake your head, smiling.

"Five." You state boldly, half expecting some type of uproar. He just hums in approval, pulling the large jersey out from its tucked place in the rolled sweatpants. His hands slip inside the shirt, feeling up your stomach to your chest.

"Five hunnid? A'ight, show me how much you want it." He orders you and you two quickly fall back into your cycle of sex, except this time he was fucking you on top of thousands of dollars worth of clothes and jewelry, which somehow made it even hotter.

The drive back home was faster than you would've liked. You and Erik had been having a good time rapping along to his old school rap playlist. He was even somewhat impressed with your extensive knowledge of old school rap. When the car stopped in front of your apartment complex, you huffed and turned to him.

"This is me." You state. He nods. "I guess, I'll see you later?" You ask him.

"Definitely."

He grabs you by your neck and pulls you into him across the armrest, giving you a deep, passionate kiss that leaves you breathless. You almost don't wanna pull away, but you have to get back home, so you slowly come up for air and rest your forehead against his.

"Getcho fine ass outta here before I change my mind." He threatens. You smile as you unbuckle yourself and exit the car. He waits until you're through the front door of the apartment complex before driving away and you're left with a permanent smile on your face and fresh hundred dollar bills stuffed in your purse.

Esi si cwangciso - That's the plan. Ndiyayithanda. Musa ukuphazamisa oku. - I like this girl. Do not ruin this.

(Should she trust him, though?)

@sweettea-and-honeybutter  @coldcrevices  @nakh-es  @shesfromwakanda @nyxieso  @jaaystaar95 @tiava143 @lafayettes-baguettes-1 @tenxouttanine @ashleychristina73 @panthergoddessbast @artpoetx @im-not-always-a-jellyfish @thehomierobbstark @muffytheaardvarkslayer  @k-michaelis @yung-glvdn-goddess @localtrapgod  @scrumptiouslytenaciouscrusade @pumpkinmcqueen  @lalasparkles @princessstevens @maya-leche @coldcrevices @youreadthatright @buttercup812 (sorry if I missed anyone, thanks for the love & support)

[dailynewswebsite]

Trump has made America nostalgic again for a past that never existed

President Donald Trump supporters wave a flag throughout an election watch occasion Nov. 3, 2020, in Chandler, Ariz. (AP Photograph/Matt York)

As a Canadian, I sit on the fringe of my seat each election evening in America.

Although it isn’t my nation, like many, I really feel the magnitude of what’s at stake in a rustic more and more divided over problems with race, gender, the economic system and the coronavirus pandemic.

Whereas this has been the narrative of the previous 4 years, America has at all times been a nation divided. This division was totally examined within the New York Instances 1619 Mission, which sought to reframe the nation’s historical past by putting plantation slavery and the African American expertise on the centre of American historical past.

Regardless of historic info, what has made the Trump period distinctive in its divisiveness is the way in which wherein his presidency has been marked by a stark failure to disavow white supremacy whereas discrediting African American makes an attempt to reclaim their place in American historical past. He condemned the 1619 Mission whereas paradoxically claiming that he has accomplished “extra for the African American group than any president except Abraham Lincoln.”

Whereas we might not know the winner of the election for a while, what was clear on election evening is that Trump did higher than pollsters predicted. Why was this race so shut?

Completely different ideologies

Trump and Biden couldn’t be extra totally different when it comes to ideology. However in relation to nostalgia, each candidates relied on an analogous notion of returning America to a unique time.

For Trump, “Make America Nice Once more” has not solely functioned as a political slogan, it has additionally morphed right into a battle cry for his followers who yearn for a previous that has by no means existed.

By way of repeated invocations, the slogan just isn’t solely a reference to the previous but additionally a “construction of feeling” — a time period cultural theorist Raymond Williams coined within the 1950s. The time period describes the paradox between the truth of individuals’s lived experiences — with its intangible and undefined components of cultural life — and the official, materials and outlined types of society.

In different phrases, MAGA has nothing to do with coverage — therefore why Trump’s re-election marketing campaign had undefined coverage goals — however every thing to do with how and what his followers “really feel” and take into consideration MAGA.

President Donald Trump gestures to supporters after talking within the East Room of the White Home, Nov. 4, 2020, in Washington, as he and Melania Trump depart. (AP Photograph/Evan Vucci)

Biden additionally has a model of nostalgia and has performed on the trope of an industrial America of yesteryear, the place folks work laborious, love their households as they do their neighbours. It’s a spot the place “sincere Joe” can acknowledge that a number of the neo-liberal insurance policies of the Democratic Social gathering that he endorsed, together with the 1994 crime invoice, may need harmed African Individuals — the very folks whose votes he wanted — however for which he, not like Trump, is at the least capable of apologize and present some modicum of empathy.

Biden’s promoting level, then, was that “at the least” he cares. Was that sufficient to win over African Individuals?

Black males iffy about Kamala Harris

Even with Kamala Harris, a Black girl (who additionally identifies as South Asian) on the ticket, African Individuals have been divided about her loyalty.

Whereas Black ladies have been enthusiastic about Biden’s choose, many Black males weren’t. That wasn’t due to coverage choices as a California senator, however due to her former job as California’s legal professional common, and earlier than that, as district legal professional of San Francisco the place, below her tenure, Black folks made up lower than eight per cent of the town’s inhabitants however accounted for greater than 40 per cent of police arrests.

So not like the narrative of group organizing and activism that was hooked up to Barack Obama throughout his 2008 presidential run, a story that appeared to supersede his work as a senator, Harris’s previous has seemingly overshadowed her Senate work, whilst her votes have been in support of Black America.

The closeness of the 2020 election has a lot to do with the way in which wherein each Trump and Biden have invoked an imagined previous, a story that means America must perpetually look again as a substitute of wanting ahead.

Trying backwards

Obama’s 2008 slogans — “Change we are able to imagine in” and the mantra “Sure We Can” — have been so highly effective as a result of they projected an air of risk in regards to the future, that issues may enhance and that voters had the ability to make it occur.

Trump’s “Make America Nice Once more” and Biden’s “Battle for the Soul of America” don’t have anything to do with the voters or their skill to create a future; as a substitute, each slogans ship the identical message — there was a time in America the place issues labored, the place the nation was untainted by division, and that it should return to.

This act of forgetting actuality by clinging to a fictive, golden-days previous is harking back to the title-track of the 1973 movie The Means We Have been, starring Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford. The tune, carried out by Streisand, was an enormous hit, No. 1 on the Billboard 12 months-Finish Scorching 100 singles in 1974.

Most individuals don’t keep in mind that Gladys Knight & The Pips additionally launched an R&B cowl of the identical tune in 1974. Within the collective reminiscence of The Means We Have been, the tune belongs to Streisand; it’s laborious to even think about anybody else singing that tune. In different phrases, folks overlook particulars, however what will get remembered is the long-lasting. Streisand is an icon. (Knight’s an icon in her personal proper, however primarily amongst African Individuals.)

Trump is iconic

Equally, Trump is an iconic determine whose fan worship has managed to actually trump the Republican Social gathering itself. He has satisfied his loyal following to cling to the previous as a result of it was less complicated then, and it offers folks an opportunity to dwell out that simplicity — nonetheless fictional Democrats imagine it to be — over and over.

Our recollections of the previous don’t matter; what issues within the Trump period is the rewriting of each line of precise historic reality. Biden has relied on empathy and sentiment to win again the presidency, to carry again a sort America along with his quite a few folksy “Bidenisms” whereas Trump has accomplished what no one thought was doable — he has confused the citizenry to the purpose the place many doubtless can’t keep in mind what the U.S. was like earlier than 2016.

Whereas Trump likes to evoke Lincoln’s title, it was Lincoln who famously mentioned: “A home divided towards itself can’t stand.”

America is split. However the query is, when the mud clears and the ballots are all counted, will it nonetheless aspire to turn into the nation it so desperately tells itself (and the world) that it may be?

Cheryl Thompson doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or organisation that might profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their tutorial appointment.

from Growth News https://growthnews.in/trump-has-made-america-nostalgic-again-for-a-past-that-never-existed/ via https://growthnews.in

[thedreadvampy]

First off, what do modern Quakers believe? 

This is a really complicated question because as a non-dogmatic religion, there is very little you can say that’s universally true of all or even most Quakers. Many modern Quakers are atheist, agnostic, or non-Christian, while others are extremely Biblical; I could speak to some universalities of practise between most British Quakers, but those ideas too are not universal.

British Quakers tend to self-describe in terms of silent worship and non-hierarchical communities, but that’s not globally true - the two largest Quaker congregations outside Britain are in Kenya and North America, and many Kenyan Quakers don’t do silent worship (because silence has very different connotations in Kenyan cultures than British) and many American Quakers have pastors and church hierarchies. So in many ways there’s no 100% throughline.  So throughout this post I’m speaking only of my experience of British Quakerism.

Historical (17th century) Quakerism was very insular, with rules against “marrying out,” and somewhat puritan. That isn’t really the case any more. I think a lot of people’s sense of Quakerism is very rooted in bonnets and theeing and thouing and a Stern Christian Morality - as me and my friends often observe, traditional George Fox type Quakers would be horrified by most modern Quakers. 

However, as you might know, the foundation of Quakerism is anti-dogmatic. George Fox and other early Quaker thinkers believed that dogma, the hierarchy of the Church, and highly stratified social structures were a barrier to a personal relationship with God and scripture - he was very much of the ‘flipping the moneylenders’ tables’ school of revolutionary Christianity. Quakerism is founded on the idea of that of God in everyone - that none of us are closer to God than any others, and that nothing is holier than anything else, and that we all have an equal capacity and responsibility to work towards the Light.

(a lot of modern Quaker thinkers elide God in this, including, sometimes, myself, and they frame it as That of Good in Everyone and frame the Light in terms of more, I guess, a universal good? A sense of connection and care? A moral duty? Some people also frame it in terms of Gaia theory or in terms of the needs of the world. Basically ask 10 Quakers what they mean by the Light and get 30 very wordy answers)

Quakerism doesn’t have a dogma - that’s sort of the point - but there are some core principles. The most explicit of these principles are the Testimonies, which are the ideas set forth by the Society of Friends as what we should work towards, both within ourselves and in society as a whole. Living in the Light means accepting that all of us have a responsibility to build a better world, which means Quakers have an almost 400 year consistent history of progressive activism. For most Quakers I know, politics and faith are inextricable not in the sense of a church-led state, but in the sense that our faith explicitly demands that we stay politically aware, engaged and active, because as part of the world it’s our job to be global citizens and to uphold and support every other part of the world (again - that of Go(o)d in everyone). I think there's some resonance there between the Quaker value of walking in the Light and the Jewish idea of Tikkun Olam (at least as I've understood it from how Jewish friends have talked about it)

The Testimonies are as follows (testing my knowledge seeing if I can remember without looking them up):

Peace Quakerism is opposed to violence in all its forms, and committed to deescalating conflict where possible (this has driven a lot of Quaker involvement in places like Palestine and Ireland where Quakers are often trusted to act as mediators in religious conflicts, and it also ties into a lot of Quaker action in the past century in domestic policy, from locking on at the Faslane nuclear facility to leading conscientious objection movements in the World Wars (my sibling is actually writing their PhD on the Friends’ Ambulance Service in WW1)). All life has value and all people have the capacity for good, and respecting that means brokering peace.

Equality Equality is a huge thing. As above, Quakerism is founded on the presupposition that everyone has equal, innate worth and access to God/Light/good/whatever you want to call it. This generally means Quakers are non-hierarchical and a little bit innately anarchistic, but is also a big driver behind stuff like the Quaker push for same-sex marriage allowances and anti-apartheid work (and further back in history, abolition, workhouse reform and workers’ rights)

Simplicity This one took me a while to come around on, tbh, for a long time it felt like a hangover from the sort of Very Christian Very Protestant 1700s. But I do get it actually - it’s about thinking critically about the difference between Need and Want, and not letting yourself get bogged down in the trappings and details; identifying what’s actually important and what’s a distraction. That’s going to differ from person to person, but it’s a valuable thing to make space to question.

Justice Everybody has worth and value, which means that justice is vital. Justice in this context isn’t a law and order sort of justice, but I guess a “natural justice” - it means standing up against oppression or unfairness even when everyone’s yelling at you to sit down. It means that nobody should be sacrificed so somebody else can get ahead. It means we don’t tolerate injustice and we try to build a world where everyone has access to true justice, where the scales are balanced.

Truth Without truth, there can be no justice. This goes beyond ‘not telling a lie’ - it means acting honestly, not doing things that you feel are wrong because you think you’re supposed to or to keep the peace, not obfuscating or hiding the truth, and also being honest with yourself - being self-critical and also giving space to see the good in yourself, genuinely questioning why you believe what you believe, interrogating your choices and biases, and so on. It can also mean seeking truth - devoting yourself to questioning the world and exploring and learning beyond your own experience.

Sustainability (This was added fairly recently and somewhat controversially in around 2010 after a few decades of to-ing and fro-ing) Whether or not we believe in an afterlife, we almost all believe that the most important thing is how we act in the world. And that means making sure there will still be a world in the future. A lot of the introduction and subsequent interpretation of this Testimony is to do with environmental sustainability, but it also means social sustainability - building systems that maintain justice, truth, equality, simplicity and peace without the need to be acted on, you know?

Be Still and Silent in thy own heart: Quaker prayer and worship is about creating a quiet space to listen. It’s almost a meditation, but not really; Quaker meetings consist of an hour of silent prayer, in which anyone can speak if they’re moved to speak (I’ll talk more on that in the next bit) and the idea is that by creating a place of stillness, you connect with yourself and with God/the world and...access that inner Light, I guess. It’s physical silence, but it’s also about creating the simplicity and honesty in yourself that lets you strip away the layers you hide behind and connect with something more direct. The rejection of pastors and dogma is, from my perspective, largely about removing a barrier to that still silent place - you can’t be directed there, you have to have space to find your own way to it.

As a kid I was taught to think of them as four triangles (this was before Sustainability was added) forming a tetrahedron - each Testimony supports the others and together they form a stable and whole shape where every side is equally important, and if you remove one then the whole thing collapses.

Some other important concepts which feed in and out of the Testimonies and more or less hold steady between past and present Quakerism are:

Faith as a living, breathing thing: As I’ve alluded to, Quakerism is a constantly changing thing. Quakers tend to view faith as a progression towards, not as this set, stable thing - Quakerism encourages questions without answers, and it aims to change in response to changing information. For example - we don’t want to deny that early Quakers didn’t have investments in slavery, or pretend that abolitionism wasn’t a controversial issue in the Society for decades, but it was a process of change. Quakerism sees faith as of the world, not beyond the world (one interpretation of That Of God In Everyone is that the corollary is that God is That Of Everyone, ie there is no God beyond the pieces of God in everything material) and so it has to be able to change and make room for its own fallibility. We change the rules (very slowly, but we do) and we don’t consider any of the precepts or ideas of Quakerism to be divinely ordained or set in stone - they were made by humans as an interpretation of a divine reality. Most Quakers, even a solid number of Christian Quakers, I know aren’t even sold on the Bible being immutable truth - most people I talk to may see Jesus as a philosopher and prophet and even as God in human form but they don’t see him as the Literal Infallible Voice Of A Perfect God (being in human form means human fallibility)

Plain speaking We’re...we’re not always good at this one. This is a combination of Truth and Simplicity - the line is “let your ayes be ayes and your nays be nays.” We’re meant to try to avoid beating around the bush or using weasel words; historically Quakers also didn’t tend to promise things or swear vows, on the basis that either everything you say can be equally trusted or it can’t. Unfortunately we’re human and fallible and also often trying to Keep The Peace so this can be......a challenge....

No kings no masters This is an extension of the Equality testimony, but it’s a biggie. It’s why we don’t tend to do priests, and also incidentally where the “theeing” comes in - until the Victorian era, Quakers used thee/thou as second-person plurals for everyone, rather than the respectful “you”, even talking to kings and emperors and popes. In Quaker thought, no earthly hierarchy is valid - we are all equal so nobody is due deference. “Because I said so” is never a valid reason - why should I listen to you? Why did you say so? Why should I listen? (this is why Quakers were historically viewed as a seditious element, because they kinda SUPER ARE - Quakers are awfully difficult to control, if you say “you can’t do that” they will say “WELL WE’VE AGREED THAT IT’S THE RIGHT THING TO DO SO WE ARE DOING IT NOW”)

Religion is personal We tend to try not to proselytise because of the no-kings-no-masters thing. Again, people are flawed (and British Quakerism is overwhelmingly Old White Middle-Class Christians who sometimes REALLY STRUGGLE with the sort of Patronising Tolerance that is honestly just. the worst) but ideally we believe that all paths to the Light are valid and meaningful on a personal level (although we may be critical of it on a political level - for example, we are not against the Church of England but we might criticise its involvement in the government or its missionary aspect). This is something there’s some wrestling over, but my interpretation of the Testimonies doesn’t leave much room to say “I know God better than you.” Advices and Queries (more on that later) says “Do you respect that of God in everyone, though it may be expressed in unfamiliar ways or be difficult to discern?” which to me means not just making space for other religious beliefs but other ways of being and living. Tolerance is a core precept of Quakerism (although I hate the word ‘tolerance’ like it’s something you do on sufferance - I prefer acceptance) and we are asked to think about how we make space for other people to be whole valuable meaningful people in ways that have nothing to do with our values or beliefs.

Consider it possible that you may be mistaken This is from the same passage in Advices and Queries I quoted above and I think it’s just. it’s vital. Quakers have a tendency to get a bit self-righteous so sometimes we need reminding that when we say everyone is fallible that includes us.

Would you mind talking more about being Quaker? I dont really know anything about the modern community but historically they are so interesting! Im sorry if this is disrespectful or anything! It is not my intention to be!

Ok I have no idea where to start with this (not in an I AM OFFENDED way just in a WOW THAT’S A BIG QUESTION way) so hang fire for a series of very longwinded reblogs of this post where I try to pull out some sense.

[zenosanalytic]

Reply-Reply to Sheabuttertwistout: Waxing Moon

sheabuttertwistout replied to your post: Deities, Death, and Devotion

shadow sees laura as a god how white feminist of you

I didn’t really mean that in the sense of worshiping or him seeing her as “greater than” in someway, but more in the context of what Gods are in AG. Johnny Appleseed is a God. Paul Bunyan, which the book mistakenly presents as a creation of marketing without any basis in actual folktales(or maybe it was just presenting Appleseed as thinking that out of bitterness), is a God. Later in the book you see Car Gods and Train Gods and TV Gods. Does anyone see these as worthy of worship in the conventional sense, or as “greater than”, more “real”, than people? Any person(post-mortem, it seems; I don’t think they present any living people as gods), or thing, or concept infused with sufficient belief, devotion and attention, or love, becomes a divine being/a daimon/a god in the American Gods universe. There’s a line in the Nunyunnini bit which says, “gods come from the heart, and to the heart they return”; who or what do humans hold in their hearts more powerfully than the people they’ve lost, Good and Bad? That, for the most part, is what I meant by the “something like a God” comment; Shadow remembers and is devoted to his wife, even after her betrayals, even after the pain she’s caused him. He loves her, and he doesn’t stop loving her, even if that love becomes more painful and complicated after her death, and what she did, forces him to see her more clearly.

But I also mean it in a different way. Shadow’s concept of Laura, the Laura that Shadow “believes in” most strongly, isn’t the real Laura at all, but rather a sort of  “image of faith” he has constructed out of the meaning he has invested her with. The show is very clear about this in ways the book never is, both because it’s mostly from Shadow’s perspective and he never really questions his devotion to Laura, and because it never really takes the time to be interested in her as a character. The first time we see her in the series she is literally laying, cruciform, on their conjugal bed, in their home, floating in a sea of pure white light which is pouring through a hole in Shadow’s cell wall. Like, the religious imagery in that scene, and thus in Shadow’s concept of Laura(along with his concept of the outside world and domesticity and freedom) is obvious. Equally obvious is how unrealistic it is, and that unreality only grows the more we learn about Laura. But this isn’t a one-sided thing; neither of them sees the other accurately.

Laura -misanthropic, thrill-seeking, selfish, manipulative, very likely deeply depressed, deceitful Laura- saw Shadow as a dangerous, muscular, stupid, exciting thief; strikes him when he refuses to play that role sexually, comes to resent him for loving her and being happy in a boring domestic life and seeking to better himself, hates herself for “bringing a thief(him) home” and sees nothing emotionally fulfilling in how he’s turned his life around with her, blames him for a lack of happiness that definitely plagued her before she ever even met him and which she’s never, seemingly, even considered doing anything about.

Shadow -lonely, love-starved, grief-stricken(before Laura the death of his mother), big-hearted, quiet and invisible Shadow- saw Laura as a way out; as a redeeming love and attention, a lifeline in high seas, a safe harbor from, since the death of his mother, an aimless, self-destructive, and empty life of risk and physical danger. He takes for himself all the blame of his decisions, even the “bad luck” of getting caught, but gives himself zero credit for becoming a better person and making a better life for himself; he credits Laura with that when how he has changed is something she not only doesn’t appreciate, but deeply resents. Like Polunochnaya says he “keeps giving his life away”. Shadow invests too much meaning and loyalty in others, and not enough in himself. He is looking to be part of something; to give himself to something or someone. I don’t think this is racial. I think this has to do with his background, his childhood, and the death of his mother, which I hope they’ll go more into later in the series, and I think it ties into how he chooses to see the people he aligns with and particularly his romantic partners.

That the show goes to such lengths to establish this, far beyond what the book does, suggests to me that this connection between relationships and faith, this metaphor of love-as-religion, as both sustaining and inaccurate, is something the showrunners intend to dwell on, and to use to characterize Shadow and Laura. And race is definitely a part of that.

It’s pretty clear how Laura interprets Shadows blackness; her ease with hitting him, her immediate decision that he was dangerous and “rough”, her resentment at his domesticity, the dehumanizing and patronizing nature of calling him “Puppy” and, as Aubrey says, seeing him as a pet. Frankly I think they make Laura’s racism, how unexamined it is by her, and its role in their relationship rather clear.

What isn’t as clear at the moment, I think, is how Shadow thinks of race. We’ve seen some of it. He worries over racial violence in prison. He physically restrains himself in the face of white racism a handful of times, glosses over being lynched to a doctor to keep cops out of the situation, and we’ve seen his anger, frustration, and fear at being lynched expressed to Wednesday. Aside from this confrontation, though, Shadow doesn’t talk about these things; they’ve been expressed through Whittle’s body-language and the cinematography. I think it can safely be said he is comfortable being black at the same time that he is constantly aware of the ever-present danger racism presents to a black man in America. He is very careful about how he moves and holds himself, and what he does and how he speaks -about making sudden moves, being intimidating, saying or doing anything that could be conceived of as threatening, violent, or loud- because he knows how that gets over-interpreted and where that leads. He is always prepared for racism from white people(his reaction to Wednesday talking about Jesus), and really likes not encountering it(his interactions with Low Key and the Zorya sisters as opposed to how on-edge and closed off he is around Sweeney and Chernobog). He works hard to present himself as non-threatening(the coin and card tricks, how calm and soft and soothing his normal speaking voice is), really doesn’t like being put in situations where he has to be threatening or “tough”, and cultivates patience and a cool head. In this respect Whittle’s performance has been great; I think the critics who’ve said otherwise just can’t see what he’s doing physically. I don’t think Shadow is self-hating by any means. How his concept of whiteness influenced his relationship with Laura is still unclear at this point, I think. I think, perhaps, Shadow’s the sort of person who blinds themselves to the flaws and difficult qualities of the people they love.

No question, how Shadow see’s Laura(and vice versa) is screwy and how Laura repeatedly takes advantage(or attempts to as in Lemon Scented You) of his rose-toned image of her is worse, and no question race is a part of this, but I think this is intentional characterization on the part of the showrunners, and I don’t think they’re done with it yet.

[riverofhistory]

Episode 1: Dissecting the Past

The following is the transcript for the first episode of On the River of History.

For a link to the original podcast, go here.

The podcast will now be hosted here. This episode has now been split into 4 parts for easier listening.

Part 1

Greetings everyone and welcome to the very first episode of On the River of History. I’m your host, Joan Turmelle, historian in residence.

In this series, I will be taking up the task of explaining the history of the world. As any historian may tell you, it is never an easy job and it is certainly never one that will be truly complete. Put basically, there is just so much to tell and so many ways to tell it. While I am devoted to my goal of keeping this series holistic in scope, it may be inevitable that some parts of the story will be left out.

In preparation of this series, I had gone through several different options for how I wanted to tell this story. One way was an old-fashioned route: going through a complete nation’s history from past to present and then onto the next nation and starting the same process over, much like Will and Ariel Durant or Henry Cabot Lodge. Another way was to focus on geography: staying on one continent, going through the history of all the societies that were birthed there and moving on, a method similar to the work of Ralph Linton or Glenn King. In the end, I settled on a compromise.

Our journey on the River of History begins with the formation of the Earth and the subsequent origin and evolution of living things. Afterward the focus will shift to just one organism, that being (of course) our own species Homo sapiens. Following humanity’s spread across the world and the various ways in which different peoples adapted to the ice ages and their aftermath, the series becomes slightly episodic. While always moving forwards in time, I will be jumping from various geographic locations, tracing different societies as they develop and change. For example, in the story of China’s history, I will discuss the rise of states and the Shang Dynasty, before leaving to focus on another region, but in time I will return to China to discuss what happens next. And this will continue further and further forwards towards modern times.

As far as what will be discussed itself, I do not intend to just simply talk about the basics of a nation’s rise and fall or single out major events like key battles. When relevant interest arises, I will take the time to discuss the different aspects of a historic society: breaking down the intricacies of its art, language, belief systems, architecture, and science, as well as notable individuals.

Indeed, the river is vast, and we will sail it together.  

For all intents and purposes this episode acts a sort of prologue. Before we jump into the main narrative, I’d like to spend some time talking to you all today about historiography. This is the study of how historians look at and record history, be it that of their home nation or of the globe. In doing so, I hope to share with you all just how complicated it can be to write a history of, anything really. There are many ways to do it, and they all have their pros and cons.

But now comes the million-dollar question: what is history? In analyzing the various aspects of historiography, I hope to be able to provide an adequate answer.

We often divide our past into two parts: history and prehistory. Prehistory, as the etymology suggests, is the time before history. So then, where is that cut off point? The most common definition is that history begins when people started writing down records of events in their lives. As such, many historians tend to focus on documents, records, and journals: anything that can be traced to an individual or many at some point in the past who can be named and perhaps traced to a living lineage. These can be found among families who have held onto these documents, or they can be found in places of worship, banks, libraries, and museums. So, in a sense, history would be tied to the practice of writing.

With this in mind, we recognize that history would have begun at different times for different societies. The people of Egypt created hieroglyphics around 5,300 years ago. Sumerian cuneiform developed from earlier pictorial systems around a hundred years later. In present-day Pakistan, the people who settled along the Indus River Valley created a script (still undeciphered) 4,600 years ago, and the Minoans of Crete made an equally undeciphered script 3,900 years ago – though these latter two may have arisen from contact with the peoples of Sumeria and Egypt. The written word did not see the light of day in the Americas until 2,400 years ago, probably among the Olmec. China gave us the last independently created writing system roughly 4,500 years ago. Over time, as peoples and ideas moved across the world, so too did their writing systems, slowly changing and developing into new forms. Thus, the histories of those different societies could officially begin.

In keeping with this concept, we must also recognize that many peoples around the world would not have had their own histories because they never developed writing. For the indigenous peoples of Australia, New Guinea, much of the other Pacific Islands, most of the Americas, and in vast regions of Africa and Asia, their histories came when outsiders (primarily Europeans) introduced writing to them. In keeping with a good definition for history that we want to work with, should this be so? I say, no.

As many indigenous peoples will tell you, there are other ways of recording the events of the past. Oral traditions are words and stories transferred by speech. These have often been dismissed by historians and others, on the assumption that a) they are unreliable because of the nature of human communication, essentially working like one long game of telephone and b) they can only go back a few generations. But continuing work with first nations peoples are shattering those assumptions.

Take aboriginal Australians, for instance. Linguist Dr. Nick Reid and colleague Patrick Nunn have worked with various nations throughout the island continent and were able to analyze 18 oral histories and stories. They tell of times when the continent looked different from the present day: The Great Barrier Reef was originally connected to the mainland of Queensland and the Wellesley Islands near Carpentaria formed a sharp peninsula. What fascinating the researchers was not so much the stories themselves, but these tidbits of information preserved within them. It is nothing new to historical geologists that Australia’s coastlines looked very different once upon a time: with the growth and decline of the great glaciers of the northern hemisphere during the ice ages, the sea level rose and fell in tow. Parts of the coastline originally extended for hundreds of miles and New Guinea and Tasmania belonged to the same landmass. For living aboriginal Australians to keep memories of these environmental changes in their stories means that their oral histories extend not for centuries, but for thousands of years. Dr. Nick Reid has estimated that the oldest of these histories could be at least 10 to 12,000 years old.

The situation is similar for indigenous Americans too. The Klamath, who live in present day Oregon and California have an oral history of a large volcano that once erupted, later collapsing and becoming what they call giiwas, but we you may know as Crater Lake. Geologists, again, are very familiar with the formation of Crater Lake: like many such phenomena, after the caldera cools rain falls and slowly fills the crater until it turns into a lake. This particular event has been dated to 7,700 years ago and that means that the Klamath have retained this cultural memory in their stories for that long.

It is clear that oral traditions can be just as accurate and just as informative as written records. I have just spoken of the memories of geologic events. But that is just a small fraction of the knowledge preserved in this manner. There are tens of thousands of myths, medicines, recipes, natural histories, agricultural techniques, chronologies, and other aspects of society that have lasted millennia.  

I think the point has been made. Whether written or spoken, history should not be so clear cut as this. Besides, though both methods are valuable in their own ways, they can be prone to issues. It cannot be denied that biases have always be present in many historical records. Sometimes, people lie or do not recall things clearly. Sometimes there are contradictions between different texts that report on the same events. Sometimes not enough information on a particular battle or ceremony of holiday was not collected, and the author was forced to make up details. Places names are recorded but never their locations. Documents may lack signatures or dates. Perhaps most frustrating of all, the livelihoods of one nation’s people can be observed and recorded by representatives of another neighboring nation. Should these nations be in conflict with each other, those records may be biased and even derogatory. And the historian is left to figure out fact from farce. What then?

Part 2

There are other tools that a historian can use to unravel the past and indeed the following three methods have provided some of the richest (and in many cases the most accurate) details.

Archaeology is the study of past peoples and their societies from a purely material perspective. Despite what you may think or have heard, archaeologists are not concerned with prehistoric animals, like the popular Mesozoic dinosaurs: that is the domain of the paleontologists (though the two fields share many methods). The historical evidence an archaeologist is looking for is in the earth and soil, where time and environment have overtaken the hands of workers and warriors and buried them away. What an archaeologist may find is nothing more than scraps (indeed, there is a technical term for a garbage dump – they’re referred to as middens), but on many occasions are the rewards breathtaking. Entire cities buried in sand, horse-drawn chariots with horse and chariot still attached, beautiful frescos, and even long lost written documents. If I’m making things sound romantic, you’ll have to forgive me, much of archaeology’s early history was treated this way, often by people who sought recognition or a source of personal riches. Interspersed among these individuals were dedicated researchers who truly wanted to know the past like the back of their hands.

In the deepest ways, archaeologists face a tougher time reconstructing the past than traditional historians. The impression is given that a researcher working with scraps or pottery shards or fragments of wood has little to imagine or even work with. Thankfully, archaeology nowadays is blessed with a rich back catalog of past sites and societies. One fantastic resource, for example, are the Human Relations Area Files which include a database of archaeological traditions that can be used by students and researchers (and I will put a link in the show notes). Many archaeologists have become specialists of a particular time period and locality, so what may look like useless pebbles to the layperson can be like diamonds. And if any artifacts happen to me in poor shape, they’re kept anyway for future students. They may yet be diamonds themselves.

Though the technology has changed dramatically, the methods of archaeologists have more-or-less remained constant. First and foremost, appropriate permission must be given by government officials or anyone else involved – sometimes sites are found by accident on a person’s property, sometimes a construction project has to be delayed for fear of destroying a historic site. Because their targets are underground, the next step in an archaeological project is to do a survey of the area. Sometimes an old map or document must be consulted for clues on what to expect. Often a site is much too large to be seen from the ground and drones or helicopters need to be used to fully observe a site. In the air, the team can conduct photographic or geophysical surveys: mapping out the land from above and looking for anything that might aid the eye. During a survey, it helps to plot out the desired excavation site onto a grid. This can be done with simple tools like string and posts of wood or nails. This ensures that any artifacts found are identified with their locations in the place they were originally buried. If you want to reconstruct a historic site accurately, or even understand the circumstances that led to a site’s demise, it helps to know where you found everything exactly.

Archaeologists nowadays rarely excavate entire sites unless absolutely necessary. The process is long, costly, and inherently destructive. Rather than simply pick up a shovel and start digging, all possible excavation sites need to be carefully planned out and singled to the most appropriate spots as determined by the previous survey work. Then the work begins, digging vertically through parts of the soil and dirt to reveal any layers present. These layers correspond to specific points in time. The farther down you dig, the older the remains or, alternatively, the youngest layers are the newest: this is the law of superposition. At all times there are workers cataloguing recovered specimens, creating drawings and taking photos of the excavation process, and generally recording any information recovered. Often there are conservators on site as well, developing strategies to best collect fragile objects like pottery shards or thin human bones. Timing is key: some archaeological sites are lifelong projects with researchers returning every few years or so, while others come and go depending on what restrictions on time are present. The site of Little Egypt in Georgia (preserving Native American burial mounds from the Pre-Columbian period), was only excavated twice before the construction of a local dam resulted in the site being flooded in and destroyed.

Archaeology offers a materialistic look into the human past that is often missing from traditional historical practices, and when brought together sometimes the two can corroborate and expand our understanding. More often than not, the two can also cancel each other out: usually it is the work of archaeologists that run historical records afoul. The anonymity of the subjects is prevalent as well. When you’re dealing with periods of time that extend far beyond written records it’s impossible to know the names of any individuals found. Their careers and stories of demise, sure, but never their names. Not to mention the names of societies as well. Archaeologists have had to provide technical names to now lost cultures, because they’ve been gone for so long that no one survives to inform us about what those people called themselves. In this series, when I use names like Solutrean, Mississippian, or Afanasievo, I’m referring to archaeological terms, not the actual names of the societies themselves.

Linguistics is the study of languages and historical linguistics concerns the evolution of languages and how much (or how little) they have changed. Nowadays, learning a language is easy and most countries today provide education for students wishing to learn any number of world languages. Back in the past, however, languages were often tied to specific societies. Whenever a people had to move, they brought their language with them. Sometimes they came across new aspects in the places they traveled to or ended up inventing a new tool that had to be named. This was the way that new words were created, and these would have been taught to the younger generations, eventually becoming a basic part of the lexicon. In other cases, when peoples spread to new lands they conquered and subsumed the local populations. If these people were to be integrated into the dominant culture, it made sense to teach them the dominant language too. If the process is forced enough, the local languages may become extinct, but there were occasions when subjugated or enslaved peoples were able to incorporate the dominant language among their own: thus keeping their original tongue alive in a modified form. These creole languages eventually developed into full languages in their own right. In the era of European colonization, several creole languages formed, with the most familiar being those among enslaved Africans in the Americas. Languages can also have cognates: these are words that share a common ancestor. Sometimes cognates stem from related languages, but they can also derive from completely unrelated languages too. The word for ‘hurricane’ in English was created from the Spanish ‘huracán’, which itself stems from the Taino name for the god of hurricanes ‘Juracán’. The Amerindian language of the Taino peoples, called Arawak, is as distantly related to Spanish as Spanish is from Mandarin Chinese. Cognates can be found everywhere. But there can also be false cognates as well: two words that seem to be related in a common origin but are actually completely different.

So, what does this all have to do with history? Simply put, when you study a language, or two, or three, you are reading the work of hundreds or thousands of years. The presence of certain words can reveal what sorts of items were used or what animals and plants past peoples encountered. Historical linguists are also faced with the task of analyzing and classifying languages, trying to find the familial relationships between them. They have recognized that Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese share enough features that they belong to the same language family, called Romance. Similarly, Romance languages are similar to Osco-Umbrian languages. This is a family that includes historic languages spoken in Italy that are now mostly extinct, but we have records of them from documents. So, the two families are grouped together in an even larger family called Italic. And you can take it even further. By grouping languages in this way, researchers can reconstruct the evolutionary history of languages, and because in these pre-modern times societies and their words were often closely knit, the past movements of peoples can be deduced as well. It’s not the most exact method and many studies trying to tie languages to the movement of peoples have since been debunked, but it offers an accompanying body of information that, save for written documents, would otherwise be lost.

The last method, and perhaps the newest (relatively speaking) is the use of DNA or Deoxyribonucleic Acid to study the past. All humans, indeed, all living organisms on Earth, use DNA to house the genetic material needed to grow and reproduce. The field of biology has advanced tenfold in recent years, and the process of collecting and sequencing an organism’s DNA is pretty mundane stuff. What fascinates scientists is the information that is available in DNA, and what it can tell us about the past.

Nearly all DNA sequences contain differences between each other, the result of copying errors during the process of DNA replication. These mutations remain in the genetic code, and when an organism reproduces, those mutations can be transferred from parent to offspring. Often a mutation does nothing in particular; sometimes it alters the way a gene is displayed; other times it can prevent a gene from functioning. When a mutation changes how a gene is expressed, it can have consequences on the organism that houses that genetic code. If the mutation provides a benefit for the organism, like it helps the animal or plant survive in its environment, then there is a likely chance that the mutation will be transferred again once that organisms reproduces. And so on, until that change is present in the entire population. I’ll be discussing the ramifications of this process in a later episode, but for now I want to illustrate why this process is important for the historian.

In an individual’s genome (that is, their complete genetic code) there are a multitude of different mutations that have accumulated over time through that person’s family history. Compare two people’s genomes and you can see how much of their DNA are similar or different to each other. Biologists have been able to work out the average rate of mutations in human beings, and so they can examine two people’s genomes and see how long it has been since those family lines diverged from one another. This is a bit of an oversimplification, but the basic idea is there. Human geneticists have now studied the DNA of millions of people (from the past and present) and have been able to build enormous data sets that analyze the population histories of human beings. People are notoriously messy, however, and populations have often interbred with one another. This the traditional historian, as well as the layperson, knows too well: we live in a vastly interconnected global ecosystem, and it is nothing for two people separated originally by vast expanses of land and water to meet up and start a family. And the opposite end of the relationship spectrum is unfortunately present as well: years of study of historic societies have demonstrated a sickening trend of warring nations raiding a settlement, killing the men, and sexually assaulting the women. In time, the subjugated women give birth to children, and those children will eventually grow up and start their own families. All of this complex history of genetic mixing can be found in human genomes, and researchers have been able to reconstruct the past movements and intermixings of populations. They have even been able to discover demographics of people who no longer exist in an uncontacted form. Again, I will be elaborating on these discoveries in later episodes.

Historic documents and records, archaeology, historical linguistics, and human genetics. The story of the human past, and the methods used to uncover it, has never been as rich and as fascinating as it is right now.

Part 3

It’s easy to think about the past hour, or the past day, or the past week. Extend your reach and the month will be familiar too. Continue on to a year and then gaps will appear in your memory. The further you go back in time, the difficult it is to remember what occurred. Such is the issue of the historian who wishes to understand the events of the past. Many individuals from several different societies have developed calendars that help us make sense of everything, but even then, there is room for disagreement.

The most commonly used calendar in the world is the Gregorian Calendar. Named for Pope Gregory the 13th. In 1582 AD, he established the calendar as a replacement and an update to the older Julian Calendar, which itself was the creation of Julius Caesar in 46 BC. Both calendars had the same purpose: the year was divided into 12 months, with the months at their current lengths. However, the Julian Calendar originally reduced the actual solar year by 10 minutes. Trivial? Perhaps. But from its inception, the Julian Calendar gradually began to slow down the passage of time. Every three years, a leap day had to be added as an attempt to correct this. However, the years continued to shorten, until the time of Pope Gregory, when Christmas Day was now 10 days behind schedule. As Christmas was seen as an important day, the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, it was urgent that something be done. Thus, Pope Gregory sought to reform the calendar and institute his own. The difference? Those 10 unnecessary days were removed, and the leap day was added every four years, on February 29. Our last leap year was in 2016 and the next will be in 2020. This reform greatly improved the accuracy of counting the years and was widely accepted among the Catholic Church. It took two centuries before the Protestants made the switch, and now most of the world uses the Gregorian system, save for some of the Orthodox churches.

What makes the Gregorian and Julian Calendars unique are the way they divide the past. Both calendars officially start in 1 AD, that is, Anno Domini (a Latin phrase meaning in the year of our Lord). Thus, we are currently in the year of our Lord 2019. All times prior to 1 AD are labeled with BC, which means in basic English “before Christ”. The decision to start the date in 1 AD stems from the work of Dionysius Exiguus, a monk of the Eastern Roman Empire, who developed the system in 525 AD. It is currently unclear as to why Dionysius argued that Jesus of Nazareth was born on 1 AD, but no matter how he came to that conclusion, we now recognize that he was mistaken. The work of biblical scholars and other historians have argued that the most accurate date for the birth of Jesus was sometime in the year 4 BC (and no, it would not have been on Christmas). That is the current consensus, so both calendars are technically flawed in this respect. Despite this, the Gregorian Calendar is the most accurate method for calculating time as it closely matches the actual solar year and there are no signs that it will be replaced any time soon.

But others have tried. In 1993, geologist Cesare Emiliani created his Holocene Calendar. He recognized the accuracy of the Gregorian Calendar and its system of leap years, but he was concerned that the recognition of a ‘year of the Lord’ posed a philosophical problem for historians. While the life of Jesus and the advent of Christianity were (and are) important events in their own right, in the grand scheme of human history highlighting this date of birth is, to put it as polite as possible, arbitrary. Many regions around the world did not have any means to recognize this era, nor would they have known of Jesus himself: in the Pre-Columbian Americas, for example, it can be argued that the effects of Christianity wouldn’t take part until Christopher Columbus and his men forcibly placed them upon the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean after 1492 AD. Then there’s the inconsistently of the lack of a year 0. There is no 0 BC nor 0 AD: it goes from 1 BC straight into 1 AD. It’s a strange mathematical situation.

As a better and more holistic solution, Cesare Emiliani’s calendar begins roughly at the start of the Holocene Epoch, the time in the geologic history of the Earth to which we currently live. The International Commission on Stratigraphy recognizes the beginning of the Holocene at 11,700 years ago, but Cesare’s calendar extends to 12,000 years ago (it is based on an earlier calculation). Within this period of time, all of human civilization developed, from the earliest agricultural projects and community structures to the modern age. Thus, Cesare argues, the beginning of the Holocene is a more noteworthy start to a calendar. In essence, 10,000 years are added to AD dates, and BC dates are to be subtracted from 10,001. That makes our current year 12,019 of the Human Era (this is the calendar’s Anno Domini), and also gives us a year 0.  

It’s a nice system, in this historian’s opinion, and others have made attempts to gain the calendar more acceptance. But for now, it’s a niche calendar.

Moving on to the other concerns in understanding time, we recognize that our calendars only work to a limit. When a historian finds a document that was written before the advent of the Gregorian or Julian Calendar – that is, another calendrical system is used or just none at all – they have to find a means to place the true age of the document in its place. Archaeologists face this issue too. Nearly all of their finds lack signatures or dates, so they have to find other ways to calculate their true age.

In the study of time, there is relative dating, and there is absolute dating. Relative dating is elementary: as I have previously described in my discussion of archaeological methods, artifacts and settlements buried in the uppermost layers of the ground are younger than those buried below them. Archaeologists can excavate many items from several layers and then place these in a row and trace their development over time. Flinders Petrie, an Egyptologist working at the beginning of the 1900s, famously cataloged hundreds of preserved Egyptian pots and placed them in an intricate system from oldest to newest. In doing so, he was able to identify any pot that came his way just from its shape and form alone.

Absolute dating is more precise, and its methods varied but always based upon the rate of decay of atoms.

In radiocarbon dating, samples are recovered from organic materials like wood, bone, coal, and hair. Chemists recognize that carbon-14 is taken in by plants during photosynthesis, where it is converted into oxygen. These plants can be ingested by animals that will eventually die, or the plants will die on their own, or the wood from trees is cut and re-purposed into furniture or housing, which will eventually be destroyed by rotting or by fire or whatever. In any case, the exchange of carbon for oxygen ceases, and the carbon-14 undergoes decay at a known rate. The half-life of carbon-14 – the time when half of all the carbon has decayed – is 5,730 years. The older a sample is, the less carbon-14 it has. And this can be taken back 50-40,000 years, when nearly all of the carbon has broken down. By taking organic samples, archaeologists can measure the rate of decay and determine how old the samples are and these can be checked against our own calendar for precision.

The other method is potassium-argon dating. Here the situation is similar: potassium atoms decay at a known rate, only this time they develop into a new atom, argon. Samples have to be uncovered in volcanic rocks in order for potassium-argon dating to work, but the method is great for remains as old as 4.5 billion years. As you might guess, this is one of the preferred methods of archaeologists concerned with the earliest humans and their ancestors.

There are other methods as well, but I’ll leave you all with these for now. It is important to recognize that historical records do not have to end with writings or even oral traditions; they can be extended as far as the beginnings of the Earth. Historians today have access to a larger set-piece than they previously had.

Part 4

I’ve spent a while talking about how historians find out about the past, but now I must discuss what we do with this information. While it is one thing to study human history in order to know when events occurred, many people have made attempts to find meaning in it all. The questions beg: why does our history matter? What can our history tell us about ourselves today? What was the causation or chain of events that led to event x happening? Is there a natural progression to history, like some underlying process of growth or progress? Can a study of historic happenings help us predict future events? These are deep and loaded questions, but that has not stopped historians.

One of the most familiar attempts to reveal hidden truths to history was by historian Arnold J. Toynbee in his 12 volume work A Study of History. This was a major book series, with the first volume published in 1934 and the last not seeing the light of day until 1961. Through an exhaustive comparison of world civilizations, Toynbee attempted to find a set lifestyle for society. He imagined civilizations like living organisms: being born, reaching adolescence, experiencing a peak age, and eventually declining into unrecognizability. Toynbee argued that the key to a civilization’s success was in the efforts of what he called “creative minorities”, who were essentially rulers that sought solutions to any issues facing the societies they oversaw. If the issues threatening a civilization were at the right caliber (just shy of insignificant, but far below apocalyptic), then they can be overcome, and the society grows. If the opposite occurs, and a civilization’s leader ceases to come up with good solutions, then that nation simply faces desolation. Toynbee’s study of history relied on a supposed notion that all civilizations share a form of destiny. Ideas like destiny are ambiguous matters: there is no hint that the future is written in stone and no way to test that idea scientifically. Many critics have pointed this out among their reviews, and so Toynbee’s view of history has faded into obscurity.

The writer H. G. Wells, familiar to many through his science fiction work, completed The Outline of History in 1920, right at the end of the first World War. His outline was just that: a rundown of the events of the past. One of the larger overarching themes in Wells’ book was that the history of humankind was marked by a near ubiquitous goal of creating the most beneficial and most educated societies. Over time, different nations slowly drew themselves together through alliances, and there was be a steady path that culminated towards a single nationality, humanity. War, famine, poverty, nationalism, and prejudice would have to be fervently abandoned, while reason, science, and compassion be embraced wholeheartedly. One world religion, one education system, a democratic political system, and a single economic system that benefited all. This vision of utopia was common among many twentieth century authors, as the horrors of World War 1 provoked many into wishing for a better future for humanity. Indeed, some even argued that this Great War would be the last major war and that their vision of a perfect world was on the horizon. While there can be no doubt that a brighter future for the human species is a noble goal, the failure of H. G. Wells and of the other utopian authors laid on the circumstances of the world history that happened following WW1. Instead of the “Modern World State”, they saw the Great Depression and the ten-fold devastation of WW2. The vision of world history as a road to utopia was quickly expunged, and by the time of the final revised edition of H. G. Wells Outline of History in 1971, the final chapter became sharply agnostic and worrisome.

Nikolai Berdyaev, a philosopher, released The Meaning of History in 1923. His analysis was, in the end, rather pessimistic. He saw history as an endless series of human failures and that any attempts at achievement were doomed to fail as well. Likewise, the historian Oswald Spengler saw that the outcome of all world civilizations was decline and death; like Toynbee, he suggested that societies had natural lifecycles and elaborated on that idea in his 1918 book The Decline of the West. In an honest and thorough examination of world history, it is truly difficult to find any indication that societies truly die at all. While many distinct cultures have certainly seen their day, aspects of those cultures have survived to the present day. Take the Phoenicians, for instance, who no longer dominate the Mediterranean and its trading routes but have provided the world with the modern alphabet.

Most of these attempts to find an overarching theme to world history have not succeeded, but there was at least as many attempts to uncover the lessons of history. I, like many historians, would agree that there are valuable things to learn from an understanding of the past. One of the most famous and continuously repeated quotations regarding this matter comes from a Spanish philosopher, George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” These words derive from a volume of Santayana’s book The Life of Reason from 1905-1906. Admittedly, the quote has been reproduced many times into different forms, but the meaning is generally the same. What Santayana was arguing was that human beings should look to events of the past to see what has worked and what has not, so that they do not make the same mistakes twice. The usefulness of this philosophy can only work so far, because in principle it relies on the suggestion that human affairs are predictable. If something is done one way and had this outcome, then if repeated the outcome will be the same. Many philosophers have debated the truth of this matter: how exactly can we be sure that things really play out in this way? What about “third times the charm”? These are questions that historians have debated fervently, especially when political parties and their followers suggest solutions that have been attempted in earlier times to little avail.  

What about the notion of progress? Progress is defined as the improvement of some aspect of life. Many have argued that history has an inherent progress, and that human societies naturally follow a path from primitive to advanced. Things have steadily improved and the world of the 21st Century is a better place than any other period in history. On the surface this seems to be true: human life expectancy has risen over the years; the birth rate is higher than the death rate (so children are actually surviving through childhood); literacy rates have increased; education is now available for more youth; and so on. However, there are cracks in the façade. Certain aspects of human existence are improving, but our global environment is failing rapidly. The world’s natural resources are in decline; wild populations of plants and animals and their habitats are being wiped out with no replenishment; not to forget the rise in carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels that is warming our atmosphere at such an alarming rate that vast populations in Africa, India, and the Pacific Islands are dying due to their effects. The oceans are swamped with microplastics and are gaining acidity and many parts of the land are no longer viable for agriculture. Human beings have created a healthier and well-educated population, but they’ve also disregarded the natural environment that this same population depends on. What measure then is this supposed progress, if all that we’ve gained can so easily be taken away in the coming decades? Human beings have bit the hand that fed them, and that hand is their own.

Some historians have more or less abandoned any suggestion that progress is something that can be measured, or even something that matters. Historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto has provided a strong counterargument to the idea that there is a progression from primitive to advanced: he writes “Strictly speaking, ‘primitives’ do not exist: all of us are the products of equally long evolution.” Groups of uncontacted peoples in the Amazon, subsisting on foraged meals, are on equal ground with the citizens of São Paulo, the most populated city on Earth. These Amerindian peoples have lasted as long as their Latinx neighbors: when you travel back in time far enough, you find a common ancestral population that started with the same circumstances. Similarly, one could argue that periods of time in the past were better than modern times: see the various arguments by archaeologists about the apparently better health of pre-agricultural groups than their farmer descendants. A foraging lifestyle is difficult, and starvation was often at your doorstep, but at least you didn’t have to worry about arthritis, cavities, or monocultural diets. Progress is at best illusionary: as a concept it is useless to the historian and it is not a view that I will be subscribing to in this series.

I’ve discussed the various ways in which historians can know the past, and I’ve followed with a rough and patchy look at how those same historians have attempted to make sense of this knowledge. But what about you, the listener? If my presumption is correct, you’re listening to this series in the hopes that you will gain some insight into the history of the world, or at least you’re here because you genuinely like history as a topic. I enjoy history because of the doors that it opens. The worlds of the past offer a far more enriching experience than any imaginary world, in my opinion. In a fictional setting, any and all of its laws and causations are already set in stone. Everyone has a name, every place has a known location and system of rules, and every event has an explanation. Historic times do not have this luxury. The farther you go back in time, the more difficult our understanding becomes. There is always a sense of mystery here. There are details that are still unknown, details that may never be known. The past is enticing and exciting.

That’s why it saddens me to see world history treated with such carelessness by both young and old. In many polls, history classes are among the least popular subjects among students. Some schools have even removed history as a compulsory subject, relegating it to an elective. National histories are often given precedence over world history, and while it is certainly valuable to know the history of the nation to which the students belong, most of the time those classes are swamped with nationalism and falsehoods. Key facts about historic individuals and events are inaccurately told and these errors are repeated through textbook after textbook. The complexities and nuances of battles or political debates are downgraded into “good vs. evil” stories as if they were fairy tales. Lists of dates and names are required to be memorized, but teachers often fail to give explanations as to why these records are important in the first place. Then comes the issue of so-called “great-man” history: the idea that all the events of the past were the result of singular men (and it is usually always men) and the actions they took to change their world. Any historian can tell you how difficult this view is to hold in light of a proper understanding of the past. It’s not so simple. There is rarely (if ever) any role of Socratic discussion in these classes – textbooks treat the historical narrative as a series of facts that are to be regurgitated. Concerned and responsible individuals are working to change this, and there are some beautifully rich resources out there for students of history, but there is still much work to be done.

The famous musician Sting offers a curious recount of his time in history class: he said “I once asked my history teacher how we were expected to learn anything useful from his subject, when it seemed to me to be nothing but a monotonous and sordid succession of robber baron scumbags devoid of any admirable human qualities. I failed history.”

History is important because it is our shared heritage. It is the accumulation of millennia of individuals with now unknown names who were able to adapt themselves to their environments and then create their own habitats. Despite the distances, peoples around the world fostered beautiful and rich cultural traditions that have slowly changed over time and influenced each other. There were times of dread and death, but these were punctuated by periods of hope, hope that always kept people inventing and exploring and creating. That you are here right now is the result of an endless chain of individuals who survived despite the odds. A proper history of the world can do more than recount the stories of the past, it is a chance to answer questions about the present, and the future. The issues of our times, the circumstances that led to the development of all our conditions, the reasons that peoples and nations act the way they do, all those quandaries are available to you when you explore world history. That is what history is.

With all this being said, what makes me qualified to talk to you about the history of the world? I’m a United States citizen of Puerto Rican and French-Canadian heritage. I’m a transwoman and a secular humanist. I have never left the United States or its territories. My experiences are not universal to all people, not even members of my own family. Why should I speak for Earth?

This is the same problem that faces all historians around the world. Some solved the problem by collecting their peers together to tell the story – so that no single voice takes prominence. Most world history books or television productions are the result of work by multiple people from various backgrounds and historic fields. Singular authors of world history do exist, of course, but to complete their task they have often found themselves having to move beyond their sphere of life in an adventure of “thinking outside the box” and often the results fail due to personal prejudices slipping in anyway. With an appropriate use of cultural relativism, a historian can understand other past societies. Not to the level of the people who actually lived there and experienced the world in their own ways, but just enough to give an honest voice. Physicist Nigel Calder offered the analogy of looking at world history “like a Martian”. That is, separating yourself from all your personal opinions and identities and looking around the world as if you had never been born on this planet. Each new society and culture is a learning experience, like being in kindergarten again. In this light, everything – from politics to science to the arts – are given a new perspective and a new light. From there, you can gain new understanding, not just of others, but of yourself, and tell the story of humanity in an enlightened way. That is easier said than done, but it can be done.

We may look different, believe in different things, live in different places, but we all belong to the same species, Homo sapiens. With this recognition in mind, I will use the humanity I share with all of us to tell the greatest story of all time, the history of the world.    

And with that, we must lay anchor to our river journey. On the next episode: we will begin at a time long before humans. Before life on Earth. In order for there to be a world history, there had to be a world, and I will share the long-lost secrets that geologists and cosmologists have revealed about the formation of the Earth and its land and oceans, which laid the foundations for all that we know.  

That’s the end of this episode of On the River of History. If you enjoyed listening in and are interested in hearing more, you can visit my website at www.mixcloud.com/RiverOfHistory. A transcript of today’s episode is available for the hearing-impaired or for those who just want to read along: the link is in the description. And, if you like what I do, you’re welcome to stop by my Twitter @KilldeerCheer. You can also support this podcast by becoming a patron, at www.patreon.com/JTurmelle: any and all donations are greatly appreciated and will help continue this podcast. Thank you all for listening and never forget: the story of the world is your story too.

[libertariantaoist]

Upon waking this [Tuesday] morning, with some vague idea of what I’d be writing  about today – the weakness of the antiwar movement, the utter uselessness of  what passes for the “left,” the seeming impossibility of accomplishing anything  meaningful in the current political atmosphere – I went directly to my computer.  As is my wont, I first checked Twitter, and immediately came upon two tweets  that crystallized, in 149 characters each, my thoughts.

The first was this tweet by Glenn Greenwald:

Eric Boehlert, who works for Media Matters, is your archetypal Boomer-progressive  Clinton-worshipping Democratic party activist, the sort who shows up at a town  hall meeting called by some hapless GOP congressman carrying a sign adorned  with a hammer-and-sickle that says “Trump is a traitor!” Forgetting his liberal  past – indeed, ditching the historical memory of an ideological tradition exemplified  by such now-forgotten figures as Adlai  Stevenson – Boehlert and his numerous clones have embraced the methodology  and mindset of someone who was once their version of the Anti-Christ: Sen. Joseph  McCarthy. And, in the process, they are transforming their party and its liberal  periphery into the “left” wing of the War Party.  Not that the party leadership  hasn’t always been a sword in the hands of Ares,  but today the difference is that even the “left” wing – yes, even the sainted  Bernie Sanders – is jumping on the anti-Russian bandwagon.

The second tweet was by journalist Mike Tracey:

That day hundreds of thousands of Yemenis rallied against the vicious war being  waged against them by Saudi Arabia and the United States – and look at the faces  in that photo. These are children, their faces distorted by rage at what is  happening to their country,  and their lives. Their youth is no accident: most  of the victims of this sickeningly immoral war are children, felled by US-supplied  bombs dropped by US-manufactured war planes, the rest killed by starvation.  The Saudis are committing war crimes in Yemen  – one of the poorest nations on earth – with the aid and active assistance of  the Pentagon, which is now contemplating an even  deeper involvement by the US.

Yet this massive outpouring of protest received minimal coverage in the Western  media compared to another protest that occurred on that same day in Russia,  where the Russian bourgeoisie mobilized in the big cities, demonstrating against  official corruption. This received front page attention in the Western media,  while liberal commentators and their neoconservative allies demanded that President  Trump make a statement of support (he did not). Naturally, the photographers  from the Western media were swarming all over this manifestation of discontent  with the hated Putin (hated, that is, by Western liberals), and, as per usual,  they settled on one photo as the “iconic” image meant to convey the plight of  the Russian people. Here it is:

There she is, a well-dressed and apparently well-fed young woman being ever-so-gently  lifted by the police. There is no expression on her face except for a vague  emptiness, an absence of anger, passion, or any of the other emotions  one associates with a righteous cause. Contrast this with the faces of those  Yemeni children, their visages reflecting the utter desperation of their condition,  their little fists raised in expressions of outraged militance – a militance  that will, not so far in the future, be aimed at those who killed their brothers,  their sisters, their parents, their nation. Aimed, in short, at us.

I don’t mean to denigrate the legitimate grievances of the Russians who oppose  Putin and his government. Yet I have to wonder what Western liberals think they  can do about it: expressions of support for that well-dressed well-fed woman  and her comrades are bound to have the opposite of their intended effect, much  like Russian expressions of support for anti-Vietnam war protesters during the  cold war era rebounded to the benefit of Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard Nixon.  Beyond that, what are our options? Shall we launch a regime change operation  against the Kremlin, as we did in Iraq against Saddam Hussein, funding exile  groups and eventually invading the country? That seems off the table to all  but the crazies among us – although, let me tell you, the crazies are more numerous  and powerful than one would hope.

On the other hand, there is something Americans can do to alleviate  the situation in which the Yemenis find themselves. Our government is not only  supporting the murderous assault on those children but is also contemplating  even greater crimes on that blood-soaked soil. So where is the outrage? Where  is the coverage? Where are the “liberals”?

I’ll tell you where they are: they’re too busy holding witch-hunts disguised  as congressional hearings devoted to rooting out “Russian influence” and – yes!  – even “treason”  in the Trump administration. They have no time for those Yemeni  children, no energy to protest their fate, because all their passion is exhausted  in an anti-Russian crusade that they imagine will bring down the hated Trump.  It’s easy for them and their cheerleaders in the media to identify with that  Russian lady in the “iconic” photo: a photo that’s “iconic” because its subject  is so much like those who took it and published it and spread it worldwide.  Our Birkenstock-wearing Boomer liberals can imagine themselves in her expensive  shoes, being carried (ever so gently!) by the police to the paddy-wagon, much  like the anti-Trump protesters of “The Resistance” here in the US – except they  aren’t being arrested here, are they? Oh well, one can always fantasize…

I thought about all this while reading a  recent piece on The Nation – that flagship of the Old Left – on the  future of the antiwar movement. It’s quite a depressing read: indeed, it’s infuriating.  Not because they never mentioned Antiwar.com – I’m used to snubs from the left  – but because there are hardly any references to specific countries where the  US is currently militarily engaged: instead, we are told that these wars are  “secret.” To which one can only respond with astonishment: how “secret” is the  Afghan conflict, the fighting in Iraq and Syria, and US complicity in the Saudi  invasion of Yemen? The answer is: not at all. And NATO’s provocations aimed  at Russia are never mentioned, although The Nation has indeed run articles  warning of the dangers of poking the Russian bear.

Instead of concrete analysis of what the US is actually doing abroad, and how  to oppose it, author Daniel May writes about how to “merge social justice and  antiwar activism,” i.e. how to turn what’s left of the antiwar movement into  a playground for “social justice warriors” who are more concerned with “intersectionality”  than international action to stop the slaughter. And of course there is the  requisite Trump-bashing, which nevertheless underscores the complete lack of  any understanding of either Trumpism or what’s really going on in this country  on the part of the left:

“    [T]hough he was a loathsome vehicle for the message,  when Trump asked whether the United States should provide defense services for  Germany, Japan, and South Korea, when he questioned whether we should remain  in NATO, and when he lamented the disaster of the Iraq War, he raised issues  familiar to critics of American empire.”

Well, yes, and millions of Americans voted for him precisely because of that:  the sort of Americans who the antiwar movement has never had the slightest hope  of convincing, and has made no effort to reach out to. And of course they couldn’t  even bring themselves to make such an effort because, after all, those people  are “loathsome.”

?The left, today, is worse than useless – they’re an obstacle, perhaps the  greatest obstacle, to peace. The “liberals” who are the mass base of the Democratic  party have been rapidly transformed into left-neocons, whose virulent ranting  against Russia has made them into NATO’s most loyal foot-soldiers. This also  goes for those “leftist” hustlers who exist on the Democratic party periphery,  like Bernie Sanders and his supporters, who exist solely to raise the flag of  the “left”-wing – and then hurriedly haul it down once they’ve been gypped out  of making any gains by the party leadership.

It’s true that there are people on the left, like Glenn Greenwald and the folks  over at Consortium News, for example, who are sincere in their opposition to  the neocon-ization of American liberalism, but their isolation and small numbers  only highlight the fact that they are lone voices in the wilderness, drowned  out by the Eric Boehlerts and Adam Schiffs.

So – where are we? What does the current political landscape look like for  those of us who are fighting for a rational foreign policy?

On the left, as I’ve said, there is nothing – zero, zilch, nada. The  remnants of the old Marxist left have been absorbed by the “social justice warriors,”  and their agenda is simply to subordinate ending imperialism to their various  identity politics hobbyhorses.

On the right, we have a mixed bag: the old-style Republicans, of course, are  hopeless. However, as even May pointed out, the Trump people are another matter  altogether: millions of them voted for Trump on the basis, at least in part,  of his anti-interventionist rhetoric. Of course, as any student of American  history knows, “America first’ was the rallying cry of the biggest antiwar movement  on record, even bigger than the anti-Vietnam war movement. (By the way, that  war, World War II, was supported by the left, and the old America First Committee  is today demonized by liberals and leftists alike.)

Standing apart from both left and right are the libertarians, who, today, are  more confused and disorganized than ever. And in the Beltway, their representatives  are – like the left – viscerally hostile to Trump’s supporters, and, in the  case of the  Cato Institute, show every sign of going along with the anti-Russian hysteria  that’s has Washington, D.C. in its grip. As for the Libertarian Party, the record  of the Gary Johnson-Bill Weld ticket is hardly encouraging: in the end, the  campaign degenerated into a joke, with Weld advocating a “global” military presence,  and, in the end, all but endorsing Hillary Clinton. On the plus side of the  ledger, there are the old-style Rothbardians, who understand the possibilities  of right-wing populism: alas, they are few in number.

To summarize: we’re in pretty bad shape. But there is a silver lining: the  Trump voters may soon recognize the huge disconnect between what Trump said  and promised on the campaign trail –no more regime change, no unnecessary foreign  wars, no more “globalism,” anti-NATO – and what he’s actually doing in office.  By highlighting this disconnect at every opportunity, and screaming bloody murder  (literally!), we can win them to our cause.

Of course, readers of The Nation would be horrified by this strategy:  for them, these people are not only “loathsome,” they’re also “deplorable,”  as their heroine Hillary infamously put it. And there’s more than a few libertarians  – many of whom are simply liberals with a thin “free maket” veneer – who would  react similarly. The Trumpkins are too crude for their delicate sensibilities.

Well, isn’t that just too bad. As the great Camille Paglia would put it, my  message to them is: “Go take a  hike!” Let the liberals, the lefties, the “liberal-tarians” virtue-signal  to their hearts’ content, while the children of Yemen are sacrificed on the  war god’s bloody altar. The rest of us have work to do.

We’ll work with what we have, and do our job – which is to address the majority  of the American people, who have long suffered under the War Party’s reign and  are finally beginning to rebel in their own uninformed, inconsistent, and inchoate  way. Our job is to inform them, point out the inconsistencies of those they’ve  placed their trust in, and show them the way forward. We don’t shrink from it:  indeed, we embrace our task — because there is no alternative.

I, for one, am optimistic: we may have lost a great deal of the politically  conscious types, but we have an opportunity – for the first time in many years  – to win over the Great American Middle. And therein lies hope for a new generation  of anti-interventionist activists to take shape and rise to the occasion. Can  this country be saved from falling into the abyss of endless wars and inevitable  bankruptcy? I don’t know – but I have the feeling I’m going to spend the rest  of my life finding out.

[siavahdainthemoon]

Wicca is a religion, not a snazzy word you can appropriate for your fantasy novel

Hey, @crystalcestari, I feel like we need to talk.

You’ve written a book and it’s being published. Congrats! That’s a couple of serious accomplishments right there. The reviews coming in are glowing, and it’s even managed to snag a pretty cover. You can’t see me, but I’m unironically toasting you. As a would-be author, I very much hope to follow in your footsteps someday.

But here’s the thing; you seem to be a bit confused about what the word Wicca means. Your book is about witches, and I get it, if you go looking for modern witches you’re probably going to turn up a few Wiccans too. Lots of witches are Wiccans. Lots of Wiccans are witches. 

But these two things are not interchangeable. They are not the same. They mean different things. And while at this point I think the witches of this world are resigned to the fact that fantasy books often include witches - even if, generally, fantasy witches don’t look anything like the real thing - Wicca is not witchcraft.

Wicca is a religion.

Now, I’ll grant you, it’s not a big fancy religion like Christianity or Hinduism. Despite what some people will tell you, it’s not really thousands of years old, although a lot of branches of Wicca incorporate older practices into their own rites. It’s not an organised religion, which means there’s no one holy rule book and no central authority. Wicca is a little bit different for every Wiccan, and that’s part of what makes it fabulous. It has its flaws, and so does the Wiccan community in general, but at least being relatively new on the ground means we don’t have a bloodstained history behind us, like the Christian Crusades, and no central authority means we’ve never had a conspiracy of hiding and moving pedophile priests from one parish to another, like the Catholics. So we’ve got that going for us. 

It’s getting easier and easier to ‘come out of the broom closet’, but generally speaking it’s kind of hard to be an out and proud Wiccan. There are a lot of idiots who think Wicca is about devil worship. There’s a lot of mockery and a lot of abuse. Exes have brought up the other parent’s Wiccan practices in custody hearings. Families have been investigated by social services because of allegations of satanism. Children and teenagers have had their altars and sacred spaces destroyed by anti-Wiccan parents, or been bullied at school for wearing their holy symbols. My Roman Catholic mother threw holy water on me and screamed that I was going to hell when I told her I was Wiccan. My Religious Studies teacher refused to let me give my ‘talk on a religious figure’ on a Wiccan personage. I’ve lost count of how many people have told me I’m damned to a Hell I don’t even believe in.

I’m not going to pretend there aren’t a lot of other religious groups that have had it harder than me and mine, but that doesn’t mean it’s always easy going, either. There’s a lot of Christians who think ‘thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’ applies to Wiccans too.

At it’s best, Wicca is something beautiful. It’s about venerating nature and trying to be a good person and honouring the Goddess (and often Her Consort too). It’s about Drawing Down the Moon and embracing the feminine (although I think a lot of us could use some lessons on intersectional feminism); it’s about following the Wheel of the Year and doing your best to love your neighbour and take care of our world. 

Do you know what our Sabbats are? Do you know what an Esbat is? Do you know the difference between Fairy Wicca and Feri Witchcraft? How about the difference between an athame and a boline? Do you know when American Wiccans won the right to have their faith marked on the headstones of Wiccan veterans? Do you know the Rede, or where it came from? 

Wicca is complicated. Like I said, it’s different for every Wiccan, and for every Wiccan Path there’s hundreds, maybe thousands of solitaries who practice alone. No one can say what Wicca is exactly, because it’s many things to many different people.

You know what it’s not, though? It’s not a buzzword you can take and stick into a fantasy novel. In your book, witches have a ‘Wicca gene’. Since religion isn’t genetic, I’m going to assume that you grabbed a witchy-sounding word and stuck it onto your magical gene concept. I guess you thought it sounded cool.

That’s not okay.

It’s not something anyone would do with Christianity or Buddhism. I’ve never heard of a story with an ‘Islam gene’ or a ‘Shinto gene’. No one would take the name of an organised religion and stick it onto a random concept, because besides being nonsensical, it would also be disrespectful. 

It’s disrespectful to Wicca, too. 

I don’t know if you genuinely didn’t know what Wicca was, or if you just didn’t care because Wicca is ‘weird’, or ‘not a real religion’, or whatever excuse you’d like to trot out, and therefore it didn’t matter. But it does matter. It’s not okay. You’ve taken the faith of thousands of people and reduced it to a gimmick, and that is no more acceptable because Wicca doesn’t have a pope than it would be if you’d done it with Hinduism. It’s offensive. It’s ignorant. It feeds into the idea that Wicca is not a real religion that so many of us have to fight every day. 

Wiccans can be witches. That doesn’t make us fantasy. It doesn’t make us not real people. It doesn’t make the name of our faith something you can stick onto something you made up. 

Did you ever think about the teenage Wiccans, many of whom have had to fight and claw - like I did - for their right to practice their religion amidst families or communities who don’t understand what Wicca is, who will pick up your Young Adult book, and feel a sick drop in their stomach when they see the faith that matters so much to them reduced to a not-even-plot-device?

If you want to write a book about Wicca, go ahead! If you want to write about a Wiccan character, please feel free! Personally, I would love more books with Wiccan characters. You can even write fantasy about witches who are Wiccans - Cate Tiernan had no problem writing about both and differentiating between the two.

But don’t take the name of a real-world religion and use it for your hand-wavey ‘magic gene’ because you think it makes you cool and modern. It doesn’t. To anyone who knows what the word actually means, it makes you look like an idiot, and a jerk. And it’s way too late to change it - your book is out in a month, I’m sure it’s already at the printers’ - but maybe you could apologise. 

Or at the very least, do better next time.

[alexteltevskiy]

Vintage camera review - Vivitar 220/SL with 50mm f/1.8

Intro

Always on the lookout for vintage cameras to try out, me and Kris (from 43 Stories) stumbled upon by chance on another long-lost closet treasure - her Grandfather's Vivitar 220/SL, complete with original strap and the Vivitar 50mm f/1.8. I was told the camera was originally bought for family candids of the grandkids but later also entered active duty in her Grandfather's business as a Private Investigator, chronicling the daily stream of evidence, clues and suspects. Quite honestly, the no-nonesense jet black finish of the camera lent it an aura of cool composure much more suited to covert snaps than trying to get the kids to smile. Seriously, the thing looks like something Darth Vader would carry around. Camera looked and felt like a tactical tool, with a weight of authority to it, oversized controls and chiseled, no-snag tapered lines.

First impressions aside, second impressions told me that this derelict detective's sidekick will need quite a lot of CLA to bring it up to spec. Viewfinder was dimmer than a dark forest path on a moonless night and the shutter was in no hurry to count the time at speeds of 1/30th and slower. Lens seemed almost opaque. Foam seals were stickier than gorilla glue and there were as many layers of dust on it as layers of family history, with the camera being handed down a couple of generations until it was ultimately phased out by its distant digital cousins. Oh, and the entire lens helicoid assembly, focus ring, front elements and all, rattled back and forth about half an inch. This one was going to be a piece of work.

History

Until this camera I honestly had nearly zero knowledge about Vivitar as a brand, always writing them off as not only a second-rate, but closer to third-rate third-party lens maker from the distant past. A regular in the discount dust bins of used camera stores, I wasn't expecting much from a body/lens package going for $10. Delving deeper into their history proved there was more than met the eye. An American company from California, in the late 30's two partners began importing first German and then later Japanese cameras into the US market. When it came time to expand in the 60's, they created the brand name Vivitar and started to make first their own lens, then bodies as well.

Turns out they were of pretty decent quality too. The design and construction of the lens was contracted to different factories at different times across the US, Europe and Japan. The bodies were made mostly by Cosina of Japan (as far as I could tell). All of these items were know for their great quality at a modest price, sold by the truckloads in department stores from one coast to another. An every man's camera.

Specs

Due to Vivitar not having exactly the same level of cachet as, say Leica, BMW or Apple, there are very few dedicated resources available online that would shed light on the more delicate historical intricacies of this particular product line. Best I could tell, the 220/SL was introduced in the mid 70's and was in production sometime into the early 80's. Was made by Cosina in Japan, ditto for the lens. M42 mount, accepts myriads of other lens spanning multiple decades and budgets.

Marketed as a mid-grade SLR, the package was decidedly minimalistic, save maybe for the light meter. After having handled a few significantly older cameras lately, shutter speeds of 1sec-1/1000sec seemed like a luxury. Bulb and cable release are always welcomed. Knurled knobs and medium stroke winder lever are decently ergonomic, nothing to rant about though. Viewfinder has a split center and circular prism focusing aids. Not sure about coverage, but I'm guessing around the 90% mark. Has a "film is loaded" indicator, might be useful for some, especially with multiple old cameras in circulation (wink wink).

Self timer, rewind knob, light meter activation switch. That's pretty much about it. CLA took longer than expected, all the lens elements were out of whack and the lens needed an entire reconstruction (with subsequent ground-glass-taped-to-film-plane focus calibration). Pentaprism had de-silvered and I could see a Milky Way through the viewfinder, but that requried too much work to fix so that had to be left alone for the time being. Shutter speeds and all related gearing was cleaned of lube-tuned-hard-wax and freshly oiled up and run through click-clack boot camp to bring it in sync. The meter was adjusted to work off the slightly higher voltage due to original spec batteries being discontinued for eons. Nowadays it takes 675 hearing aid batteries.

Design & build quality

This little black SLR’s design is a rather slippery little beast to nail down - split between being a 747 seat buckle on a 70’s Pan Am flight and an 80’s experimental stealthy lunch box for Lockheed F-117 pilots on covert combat sorties. Some might call it a little bland, lacking any embellishments that spearheaded Japanese SLR design of the time (think of the Pininfarina-envy dials and pentaprism housing of Olympus OM-1 and the pre-digital transformer-esque lines, panels and angles of the Canon AE-1), instead aspiring to the stoic looks of a 1981 Buick Century. But, if one does the math, it doesn’t look out of place at all. I quite like it - it’s a product of a less complicated time and a place where heavier meant better quality, and black meant professional. It may be a bit disproportionate here and there, but I enjoy its company. Besides, Mies van der Rohe would probably totally dig it, so it’s cool in my camp.

Where I do have a bone to pick is with the QA department. A little note on Cosina, where both the body and the lens was made in… As much as I respect and admire (nearly to the point of worship) quality products made in the Land of the Rising Sun, Cosina products get very little love from me. They are a company with an interesting history and a knack for innovation and at finding an ever-evolving niche for themselves. But most often that niche is inextricably tied to providing an increased value compared to the competition. I personally feel like they cheap out on the quality. I own a number of modern Voigtlander products (all made by Cosina) and in the short time I’ve had my Bessa R3M I’ve had a meter LED burn out (!) and, wait for it, the rubber grips are starting to unglue all around. Also had a really hard time adjusting the rangefinder (the mechanism was supposedly loctite’d by the factory, but a screw came loose that shouldn’t have anyway). Also have a brand-new Voigtlander VM 40mm f/1.4 Nokton Classic MC and the helicoid jams at times. Why? Also why does the little plastic red mount guide dot on my Voigtlander VM 21mm f/4 come off so easily? Why, oh why?? Now I’m starting to see why people shell out for Leicas (even though they have problems too). I guess Cosina has to cut corners somewhere.

All of this applies to a camera they made 30-40 years ago as well. Chop shops do a better 5-minute paint job on hot cars than this camera has ever been treated to. The shutter speed dial was coming loose. The hot shoe is crooked and the bakelite underneath it is starting to crack. The detent on the meter switch has gotten snuffed out. The pentaprism has started to de-silver. Badly. Heck, even the enamel they used to fill in the embossed lettering on the body has aged worse than the hieroglyphs on King Tut’s tomb. And don’t even get me started on the lens. That thing had more loose parts than a bucket full of loose… bolts. And that says a lot. It certainly cemented my opinion on the quality of used vintage Cosina and Vivitar products.

In use

Angry rants aside, as soon as the CLA was done it was time to put the hefty little slab of black steel to the test. Taken on a couple of street sorties several days apart, I’ve run a couple of rolls through it chronicling a wide gamut of topics, from moody bouts of existential angst in gentrified neighborhoods to an impromptu photo documentary of my niece and nephews’s trip to the zoo.

Mechanically, the camera operations were sound, predictable and relatively smooth. Biggest gripe on the first trip was the supremely dim viewfinder which made focusing possible only via f/8 + scale on lens. This was promptly remedied before the second trip (had to tear the entire top down and give it a hot bath). Focusing accuracy was dramatically improved after that and a reliable f/1.8 became almost within reach.

The meter pulled a total Pinocchio on me every single time I flipped the switch, almost making me regret the $7 I spent on the batteries, but luckily I was able to readjust the meter the second time I went in to clean the viewfinder/prism assembly. Like I said, the voltage of the only modern-day battery that would fit was a bit higher, so the pots inside had to be toned down. Metering is now in-sync with both of my Sekonics, and has a center-weighted pattern. For those curious, the prism houses two CdS cells. But I still relied on my Sekonics every time I pulled the shutter, as early pre-matrix meter tech was very temperamental.

With such a simple camera, there’s not really that much else to write about. It has nothing nostalgic about it for me, as do some of the older cameras I test, and it has no exotic features or form factors which might still pique my interest if all else fails. It is a photographic tool, one that just works. Somewhat clumsy at times, but works. I mean, the camera is just as fun to use for photos as a horse saddle is to sit on. They’re practically invisible. If the camera didn’t have the looks which I still admire, I would almost call the camera character-less. On a side note, I really enjoyed popping the back open with the little lever on the bottom. Haven’t seen that one before.

Image quality

Image quality is something that comes mainly from the lens and film being used. The Fuji Superia 200 that I used both times enjoys the reputation of rather mediocre film stock, with somewhat muted, true-to-life colors but still a somewhat solid, finely-grained structure. I know I can get sharp results from this film. But they were nowhere to be found on either of the two rolls I ran through. And it’s not just the sharpness, which is abysmal at f/1.8 and only becomes decent at f/5.6 (optimal at f/8 then a sudden rollercoaster drop into endless mush) - the contrast is nonexistent. I was really surprised that the lenses on the Made-in-USSR Zenit-B from ’70 and the Argus C3 from good-ol’ 1955 offered more contrast than this Japanese-made lens which might have even had computer input on the optical formula.

No visible distortions, flares irregularly, although appears to have some coating on it. Chromatic aberrations are there, but don’t bother much as long as you embrace the 70’s faded-textbook-color-photo look.  Honestly, by the time of the second outing I didn’t care much about the lens anymore or the image character it brings with it (was none), so I just skimmed past the rest of the planned tests. Bokeh is probably the nicest thing about the lens and, at f/1.8, there is generally plenty of it. Not too busy, not too bland - just the right level of blurry pop to bring the center subject truly into focus, just don’t forget to add a generous serving of unsharp mask to start seeing the hair details again.

Conclusions

So, it’s that time again, huh? What do I think of the camera? I look back at the review and notice how I started on a high note and then cycled lower and lower through the octaves, tapping out a brooding baseline in a D minor by the end. That’s how I feel about this camera. It gets you hooked with its looks (all black, must be pro) and heft (very heavy, must be reliable), but then starts to fail at impressing you with every stroke of the winder. Don’t get me wrong - it is a decent camera. If we just look at just the body and discard the almost-legally-blind lens it ships with (no, just no), it actually performs reasonable well and has competitive specs compared to its peers. But the biggest turn-off and the last nail in the coffin for me was the camera’s complete lack of character. This camera seems like it was made for citizens of Lucas’s dystopian THX 1138 or Equilibrium’s Libria, or some other dystopian work of fiction where people aren’t bothered by quaint silly little things like emotions and feelings. It works, just not on an emotional level.

PS: for the (ever so slightly more) money, just get a Canon AE-1 or a beat-up Pentax K-1000.

Sample images

[woodworkingpastor]

Palm Sunday, April 5, 2020 Bound to God Matthew 26:36-46; Philippians 2:5-11

Call to Worship, Matthew 21:1-11

When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them,

“Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me.  If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.  And he will send them immediately.”

This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying,

“Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,

“Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying,

“This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

Hymn, What Wondrous Love is This, # 530

Bound to God,  Matthew 26:36-46; Philippians 2:5-11

One way that television show writers construct an hour-long episode is to pick a theme, and then have the characters interact with that theme through an “A” story and a “B” story.  The “A” story is the main drama of the episode and receives about 2/3 of the airtime. The “B” story allows other characters to work with the same theme for the remaining 1/3 of the episode, but often in a more personal way.  

I mention this because when I began studying the account of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane in these moments prior to his arrest, I realized that this A and B storytelling technique really works here, and might be a way of helping us wrestle with this text and its application for our lives.

In Matthew 26:36-46, the A story involves Jesus’ wrestling with his fast approaching crucifixion and death. The theme of the story is relinquishing. Jesus has relinquished his position in heaven to come to earth to do this very thing.  At the end of this passage Jesus tells the disciples, “See, the hour is at hand.” Will Jesus be obedient all the way through the cross and the grave? This is what Jesus is wrestling with in prayer as he measures the cost of this battle with sin.

The B story involves the disciples’ inability to stay awake. Do they have any sense of what is coming so they are prepared to relinquish their own desires so that their lives can resemble what God’s has in store for us all?

Jesus’ prayer of relinquishment

As our imaginary camera zooms in on Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, we realize that Jesus knows what is ahead. And if this were an episode portrayed on television, it might be that the writers would have begun the episode with a “flash-forward.”  We might have been shown seen clips of something that hadn’t happened yet: the crucifixion. In our humanness, we probably think that Jesus’ prayer is focused on the brutality of the crucifixion.  

But with Jesus, the issue is more complicated that than. Jesus had relinquished is position in heaven to be born. Because of this, there always the possibility of his taking back what rightly belonged to him at the wrong time.  In one sense the temptation Jesus faced is the same as what we face: to take the easy way out. Jesus’ ministry is filled with temptations to take the short cut and get the position God wanted for him by some other method.

Jesus will be tempted to seize back his position in heaven without enduring the cross.  That temptation comes just a few verses after today’s text: When Jesus is arrested, Peter pulls out his sword to defend Jesus.  But Jesus rebukes Peter with an appeal to Scripture, saying, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled, which say it must happen in this way?” (Matthew 26:53-54).

Later on the cross, Jesus will also be tempted: “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross” (Matthew 27:40). It can be so hard to keep silent in the face of a false or embarrassing allegation like this. The temptation to prove right then and there in a spectacular fashion that Jesus is the Son of God must have been tremendous.  But Jesus knows that the short-cuts are really dead ends. His commitment to his Father is also a commitment to Scripture. There was no shortcut to the problem of human sin and our need to be brought into right relation with God.  Jesus’ path must go through the cross, which means it must go through the anguish of separation from God.

All of this was possible because of a prior decision Jesus made: to relinquish his will to the Father’s will.  This is why the hymn from Philippians 2 is important; where the Gospels tell us the story of the cross, the Epistles tell us the meaning of the cross.

Philippians 2:5-11 gives us insight into the mind of Christ. We’ve all looked at the decisions people made and said, “I wonder what they were thinking?” When it comes to the cross, with Jesus, we know!  What was on his mind? Relinquishing what was his so that all of creation can be reconciled to God.  Philippians 2:7 says that Jesus “emptied himself.”  It means “to deprive something of its proper place and use.” Jesus’ proper place is at the Father’s right hand.  But on Thursday evening of Holy Week, Jesus isn’t at the Father’s right hand—he’s in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying before his arrest.  All of time and space is converging on Good Friday. Everything from the creation of Genesis 1 to the New Creation of Revelation 22 will pivot on the cross. Jesus was present at creation, because he is Lord!  Jesus will be present at the New Creation, because he is Lord!  But here, Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane, heading to the cross.

Jesus had relinquished his position of equality with God.  He chose to deny himself the benefits of that position so that he could be born in human likeness. Jesus humbled himself to death on a cross, where he experienced the fullness of that relinquishment—separation from God, as seen in his cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”

But here in the garden there were things Jesus could grasp. Jesus could grasp his position in heaven and side-step the struggle, the pain, the separation from God, and the grave. The “A story” of Matthew 26:36-46 shows us the full meaning of Jesus’s work, relinquishing that which was his so that eternal life would be more than Jesus’ possession, it would be something all of us could enjoy with him.  

The need to stay awake

The “B” story of our Scripture involves the disciples’ inability to stay awake and pray for the spiritual strengthening they would need to endure what was coming. As the story reveals, they were not prepared.  When the moment came, their “fight or flight” mechanism kicked in, and they did both.  They did not reveal a transformation that offered another way of interacting with the situation that presented itself.

In the coming and going of our lives, how are we relinquishing our will, rejecting the shortcuts to our own heart’s desires, and allowing the commitment we made to Christ and the church at our baptism play out in our lives?

Rick Wolfe recently gave me a copy of Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning.  Of the many fascinating and challenging things Frankl has to say, he observes the following: “To the European, it is characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to, ‘be happy.’ But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.”

I think our current circumstances are revealing our inability to manufacture happiness, as we’re being forced to relinquish so many of the things—spiritual and social—that had defined our lives. I’m realizing this week that our stay-at-home order might cost us 13 weeks of congregational life: a full quarter!

There’s certainly a temptation to rush in with grand pronouncements over how God might use this time.  Such temptations should be avoided at all costs.  But I do wonder if imagining ourselves in the garden with Jesus can help us understand ourselves a bit better.  We’ve been forced to relinquish a lot these days.  But some kind of normal will eventually return. And when it does, what will we choose to relinquish then? What attitudes will need to be laid down? Will we spend our time and money differently?  Will we learn to be more patient with others? More generous toward the stranger and the enemy? How are we preparing ourselves now, for whatever is to come?

Like Jesus, we have made a prior commitment; ours is to Christ and the church through our baptism.  And so, dear church, on this most strange Palm Sunday, the word I have for you—and the word I hope you have for me—is simply this: “Stay awake and pray.”