#in fact you may have suffered more than jesus

[falkii]

like um...why are you creating cc for a game you dont even play

[dragoneyes618]

"Islam was the second religion to emanate from Judaism, but as its founder was not a Jew and as it was not originally a Jewish sect, Islam's encounter with Judaism was significantly less bitter than Christianity's. As Salo Baron notes: "It was, therefore, from the beginning, a struggle between strangers, rather than an internecine strife among brethren." Largely because of this factor, Jews in the Islamic world were rarely persecuted as violently as their brethren in the Christian world. S. D. Goitein, perhaps the twentieth century's leading historian of Jewish life in the Arab world, concludes: "when the known facts are weighed, I believe it correct to say that as a whole the position of the non-Muslims [Christians and Jews under medieval Islamic rule] was far better than that of the Jews in medieval Christian Europe."

Goitein's assessment is valid, but it tells us much more about the Jews' condition under Christians than about their treatment by Muslims. For while the Jews of the Muslim world may have rarely experienced the tortures, pogroms, and expulsions that typified Jewish life under medieval Christian rule, their life under Islam was usually a life of degradation and insecurity. At the whim of a Muslim leader, a synagogue would be destroyed, Jewish orphans would be forcibly converted to Islam, or Jews would be forced to pay even more excessive taxes than usual.

Like Christianity's, Islam's anti-Judaism is deeply rooted. Islam too was born from the womb of Judaism; it too was rejected by the Jews whose validation was sought; and it too suffered an identity crisis vis-a-vis Judaism.

When Islam was born in the seventh century, there was a substantial Jewish population in Medina, where the first Muslim community arose. The Jews of pre-Islamic Arabia were active advocates of their religion, to such an extent that several kings of Himyar, now Yemen, converted to Judaism. Contemporary inscriptions described Dhu Nuwas As'ar, the last Jewish king of Himyar, as a believer in one deity whom the king called Rahman, the Merciful One, as called in Judaism and later in Islam.

During his early years, Muhammad related well to the Jews of Arabia, and their religious practices and ideas deeply influenced him. As Goitein noted: "The intrinsic values of the belief in one God, the creator of the world, the God of Justice and mercy, before whom everyone high and low bears responsibility came to Muhammad, as he never ceased to emphasized, from Israel."

The profound influence of the Jews, their Bible, and their laws on Muhammad is clearly expressed in the Koran, the Muslim bible, and in Muhammad's early religious legislation. Indeed, Muhammad saw himself as another Moses. In the Koran, he writes of his message (Sura 46, verse 12), "Before it the book of Moses was revealed....This Book confirms it. It is revealed in the Arabic tongue." Moses is a dominant figure on the Koran, in which he is mentioned over one hundred times.The Jewish doctrine that most deeply influenced Muhammad was monotheism: "There is no God but God." Muhammad's monotheism was so attuned to the uncompromising nature of Judaism's monotheism that though he had also been influenced by Christian teachers, he rejected the Christian trinity and the divinity of Jesus as not monotheistic: "Unbelievers are those that say, 'Allah is one of three.' There is but one God. If they do not desist from so saying, those of them that disbelieve shall be sternly punished" (5:71-73).

Jewish law also deeply influenced Muhammad. In the early days of Islam, Muslims prayed in the direction of the Jews' holy city, Jerusalem, and observed the most solemn Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Only later, when Muhammad reluctantly concluded that the Jews would not embrace him as their prophet and convert to Islam, did he substitute Mecca for Jerusalem, and the fast of Ramadan for Yom Kippur. Similarly, Muhammad based Muslim dietary laws upon Judaism's laws of Kashrut: "You are forbidden carrion, blood, and the flesh of swine; also any flesh...of animals sacrificed to idols." The five daily prayers of Islam are likewise modeled on the three daily services of the Jews.

Second in importance only to his adoption of the Jews' God was Muhammad's adoption of the Jews' founding father, Abraham, as Islam's founder. In Sura 2, verse 125, Muhammad writes how Abraham and his son Ishmael converted the Kaaba, the holy rock of Arabian paganism, into the holy shrine of Islam.

Believing himself to be the final and greatest prophet of Mosaic monotheism, and having adopted so much of Jewish thought and practice, Muhammad appealed to the Jews of Arabia to recognize his role and to adopt Islam as the culmination of Judaism. "Even Luther," the late renowned philosopher Walter Kaufmann wrote, "expected the Jews to be converted by his version of Christianity, although he placed faith in Christ at the center of his teaching and firmly believed in the trinity. If even Luther...could expect that, how much more Muhammad, whose early revelations were so much closer to Judaism?" Muhammad's deep desire for Jewish recognition reflected the similar needs of Jesus and his followers. No group could validate Muhammad's religious claims as could the Jews, nor could any so seriously threaten to undermine them.

The Jews rejected Muhammad's claims as they had Jesus', holding in both cases that what was true in their messages was not new, and that what was new was not true. Islam may have served as a religious advance for Arabian pagans, but for the Jews it was merely another offshoot of Judaism.

One major factor that rendered Muhammad's prophetic claims untenable to Jews was his ignorance of the Bible. In large part because Muhammad never read the Bible, but only heard Bible stories, his references to the Jews' holy text were often erroneous. In Sura 28:38, for instance, he had Pharaoh (from Exodus) ask Haman (of the Book of Esther) to erect the Tower of Babel (which appears at the beginning of Genesis).

Another obstacle to Jewish acceptance of Muhammad was the moral quality of some of his teachings. They did not strike the Jews, or the Arabian Christians, as equaling, let alone superceding, the prophetic teachings of Judaism or Christianity. In 33:50, for example, Muhammad exempts himself from his own law limiting a man to four wives, and in 4:34 he instructs men to beat disobedient wives. Walter Kaufmann notes that "there is much more like this, especially in the 33rd Sura," and that "it must have struck the Jews as being a far cry from Amos and Jeremiah, and the Christians as rendering absurd the prophet's claim that he was superseding Jesus."

Finally, Muhammad's suspension of many Torah Laws invalidated him in the Jews' eyes.

For these and other reasons, the Jews rejected Muhammad's prophetic claims and refused to become Muslims. This alone infuriated Muhammad. But it was even more infuriating that the Jews publicly noted the errors in Muhammad's biblical teachings and may have even ridiculed his claims to prophecy. Goitein concludes, "it is only natural that Muhammad could not tolerate as a neighbor a large monotheistic community which categorically denied his claim as a prophet, and probably also ridiculed his inevitable blunders."

As a result Muhammad turned against the Jews and their religion, and never forgave them for not becoming his followers. And just as early Christian hostility to the Jews was canonized in the New Testament, so Muhammad's angry reactions to the Jews were recorded in the Koran. these writings gave Muslims throughout history a seemingly divinely-sanctioned antipathy to the Jews.

In the Koran, Muhammad attacked the Jews and attempted to invalidate Judaism in several ways. First, and most significantly, he changed Abraham from a Jew to a Muslim: "Abraham was neither Jew nor Christian. [He] surrendered himself to Allah....Surely the men who are nearest to Abraham are those who follow him, this Prophet" (3:67-68).

Second, he condemned the Jews and delegitimized their law by advancing a thesis similar to Paul's, that the many Torah laws had been given to the Jews as punishment for their sins: "Because of their iniquity we forbade the Jews good things which were formerly allowed them" (4:160).

Third, Muhammad charged the Jews with falsifying their Bible by deliberately omitting prophecies of his coming. For example, in the Koran (2:129), Muhammad has Abraham mouth a prophecy of his (Muhammad's) coming. Muhammad charged that the Jews "extinguish the light of Allah" (9:32) by having removed such prophecies from their Bible.

Fourth, Muhammad asserted that Jews, like Christians, were not true monotheists, a charge he substantiated by claiming that the Jews believed the prophet Ezra to be the Son of God. "And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah...Allah fights against them. How perverse are they." (9:30).

These anti-Jewish fabrications, articulated by Muhammad as reactions to the Jews' rejection of him, have ever since been regarded by Muslims as God's word. Though originally directed against specific Jews of a specific time, these statements often have been understood by succeeding generations as referring to all Jews at all times, and thus form the basis of Islamic antisemitism.

One common example is 2:61: "And humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them and they were visited with wrath from Allah. That was because they disbelieved in Allah's revelations and slew the prophets wrongfully.j That was for their disobedience and transgression." This Koranic description of the Jews of seventh-century Arabia has often been cited by Muslims to describe Jews to this day. *

(* In a speech before his army officers on April 25, 1972, the late Egyptian President Anwar as-Sadat cited this Koranic verse, and then added: "The most splendid thing our prophet Muhammad, God's peace and blessing on him, did was to evict them [the Jews] from the entire Arabian peninsula...I pledge to you that we will celebrate on the next anniversary, God willing and on this place with God's help, not only the liberation of our land but also the defeat of the Israeli conceit and arrogance so that they must once again return to the condition decreed in our holy book: 'humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them'...We will not renounce this.")

Muhammad and the Koran thus laid the basis for subsequent antisemitism just as the early Christians had - and for basically the same reason: Jews remaining Jewish constituted a living refutation of Islamic beliefs. Thus, under Islam, just as under Christianity, Jew-hatred was ultimately Judaism-hatred. Any Jew who converted to Islam was accepted as an equal.

Christians under Muslim rule fared little better. Muslims and their laws generally dealt harshly with both Christians and Jews.

As long as Christian communities survived in the Muslim world, discriminatory legislation also applied to them as well. However, whereas Jewish communities often flourished as vibrant Jewish communities, Christian communities for the most part did not survive the intense Muslim hostility. Under the yoke of MUslim laws against Jews and Christians, hundreds of thousands of people in some of the oldest and strongest Christian communities in the world converted to Islam.

No fact better underscores the intensity of Muslim persecution of dhimmis (non-Muslim monotheists) than this disappearance of so many Christian communities under Islam. The fact that under similar conditions many Jewish communities flourished bears witness to the Jews' tenacious commitment to Judaism, not to Muslim benevolence toward them. This is often lost sight of when favorably comparing Muslim antisemitism with Christian antisemitism. Yet the conversion to Islam of nearly every pre-Islamic Christian community in the Muslim world (the Copts of Egypt constituting the most notable exception) eloquently testifies to what Jews had to endure in their long sojourn through the Muslim world.

The two guiding principles of Islam's treatment of Jews and Christians are that Islam dominates and is not dominated, and that Jews and Christians are to be subservient and degraded. Nonmonotheists were usually given the choice of conversion to Islam or death.

The Muslim legal code that prescribed the treatment of Jews and Christians, or dhimmis as they are both referred to in Islam, was the Pact of Umar, attributed to Muhammad's second successor, but assumed to date from about 720. Its key characteristic was the requirement that dhimmis always acknowledge their subservient position to Muslims. Jews and Christians had to pledge, for example, "We shall not manifest our religion publicly nor convert anyone to it. We shall not prevent any of our kin from entering Islam if they wish it." The subservience that dhimmis were required to show publicly to Muslims is analogous to the behavior once expected of Blacks in the Jim Crow American South: "We shall show respect...and we shall rise from our seats when they [Muslims] wish to sit." They also had to pledge "not to mount saddles," since riding a horse, or, according to some Muslims, any animal, was considered incompatible with the low status of a dhimmi. The dhimmis also had to vow "We shall not display our crosses or our books in the roads or markets of the Muslims nor shall we raise our voices when following our dead."

Anti-dhimmi legislation did not end with the Pact of Umar. In the Koran, Muhammad had urged Muslims, "Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture...and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low" (9:29). Accordingly, Muslim officials often insisted that when paying tribute, dhimmis must be "brought low," that is, humiliated.

An early Muslim regulation precisely prescribed how to humiliate Jews and Christians when they pay tribute: "The dhimmi, Christian or Jew, goes on a fixed day in person to the emir, appointed to receive the poll tax, who occupies a high throne-like seat. The dhimmi stands before him, offering the poll tax on his open palm. The emir takes it so that his hand is on top and the dhimmi's underneath. Then the emir gives him a blow on the neck, and a guard, standing upright before the emir, drives him roughly away The same procedure is followed with the second, third, and the following taxpayers. The public is admitted to enjoy this show." The public was not merely "admitted" to this humiliating spectacle, but as Baron observes, "Public participation was, indeed, essential for the purpose of demonstrating, according to the Shafi'ite school, the political superiority of Islam."

In the course of time Muslim rulers developed additional ways to humiliate dhimmis. Baron describes one of them: "Equally vexatious was the tax receipt, which in accordance with an old Babylonian custom, was sometimes stamped upon the neck of the 'unbelieving' taxpayer. This ancient mark of slavery...expressly prohibited in the Talmud under the sanction of the slave's forcible emancipation, occasionally reappeared here as a degrading stamp of 'infidelity.'"

These humiliating and painful procedures had a terrible effect on the Jews: "An Arab poet rightly spoke of entering the door with bent heads 'as if we were Jews.'"

Another law designed to humiliate dhimmis required them to wear different clothing. The purposes of this law were to enable Muslims to recognize Jews and Christians at all times, and to make them appear foolish. In 807, the Abbasid Caliph Haroun al-Raschid, legislated that Jews must wear a yellow belt and a tall conical cap. This Muslim decree provided the model for the yellow badge associated with the degradation of Jews in Christian Europe and most recently imposed by the Nazis.

A Jew living in Baghdad in the days of Al-Muqtadir (1075-96) described additional measures passed by the vizier, Abu Shuja, to humiliate Jews: "each Jew had to have a stamp of lead...hang from his neck, on which the word dhimmi was inscribed. On women he likewise imposed two distinguishing marks: the shoes worn by each woman had to be one red and one black. She also had to carry on her neck or attached to her shoe a small brass bell...And the Gentiles used to ridicule Jews, the mob and children often assaulting Jews in all the streets of Baghdad.

During the same century in Egypt, the Fatimid Caliph Hakim ordered Christians to wear a cross with arms two feet long, while Jews were ordered to wear around their necks balls weighing five pounds, to commemorate the calf's head that their ancestors had once worshiped.

These clothing regulations were not only enforced in the Middle Ages. Until their departure from Yemen in 1948, all Jews, men and women alike, were compelled to dress like beggars.

 In fact, Yemen offers us a unique opportunity to understand Muslim attitudes toward the Jews. For it was the one Muslim country with a non-Muslim minority (Jews) that was never ruled by a European power. It was therefore able to treat its Jews in the "purest" Muslim manner, uninfluenced by non-Muslim domination.

In 1679, Jews in most of Yemen were expelled from their cities and villages. When allowed to come back a year later, they were not allowed to return to their homes, but were forced to settle in Jewish settlements outside of the cities. During their expulsion the synagogue of San'a, the capital, was converted into a mosque, which still exists under the name Masjid al-Jala (the Mosque of the Expulsion).

Among the many indignities to which the Jews of Yemen were constantly subjected was the throwing of stones at them by Muslim children, a practice that was religiously sanctioned. When Turkish officials (the Turks occupied Yemen in 1872) asked an assembly of Muslim leaders to see that this practice be stopped, an elderly Muslim scholar responded that throwing rocks at Jews was an Ada, an old religious custom, and thus it was unlawful to forbid it.

The greatest recurrent suffering that Yemenite Jews experienced was th e forced conversion to Islam of Jewish children whose fathers had died. This was practiced until the Jews fled Yemen in 1948, and was also based upon Islamic doctrine. Muhammad was believed to have said, "Everyone is born in a state of natural religion [Islam]. It is only his parents who make a Jew or Christian out of him." Accordingly, a person should grow up in the "natural religion" of Islam.

When a Jewish father died, there was often a "race" between Jewish communal leaders who sought to place the man's children with Jewish parents and the Muslim authorities who wanted to convert the children to Islam and place them in Muslim homes (in the Yemenite Islamic culture it would appear that the surviving mother was regarded as irrelevant). The Jews often lost. Goitein reports that "many families arrived in Israel with one or more of their children lost to them, and I have heard of some widows who have been bereaved in this way of all their offspring."

Yet as persecuted as the Yemenite Jews were, they were also denied the right to leave the country.

By the nineteenth century, the Jews' situation under Islam went from degradation to being recurrent victims of violence - as these examples from Jewish life in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine illustrate.

Egypt

In his authoritative book, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyyptisns, Edward Lane wrote that, at the time of his study (1833-35), the Jews were living "under a less oppressive government in Egypt than in any other country of the Turkish Empire." He added, however, that the Jews "are held in the utmost contempt and abhorrence by the Muslims in general." Lane explained: "Not long ago, they used often to be jostled in the streets of Cairo, and sometimes beaten merely for passing on the right hand of a Muslim. At present, they are less oppressed; but still they scarcely ever dare to utter a word of abuse when reviled or beaten unjustly by the meanest Arab or Turk; for many a Jew has been put to death upon a false and malicious accusation of uttering idsrespectful words against the Kuran (sic] or the Prophet. It is common to hear an Arab abuse his jaded ass, and after applying to him various opprobrious epithets, end by calling the beast a Jew.

That this was the Jewish situation in Egypt, "a less oppressive government" than elsewhere in the Muslim Arab world, tells us a great deal about Muslim antisemitism in the nineteenth century - prior to the Zionist movement.

Syria

In 1840, some French Catholics introduced the blood libel into the Arab world. After a Capuchin monk in Damascus vanished, Ratti-Mention, the local French consul, told police authorities that the Jews probably had murdered him to procure his blood for a religious ritual. Several Damascus Jews were then arrested, and under torture, oneo f them "confessed" that leaders of the Jewish community had planned the monk's murder. Many other Jews were then arrested, and under torture more such confessions were obtained. French officials pressured Syria'sruler, Muhammad Ali, to try the arrested men, and it was only after an international protest organized by Jewish communities throughout the world that the Jews who survived their tortures were released.

The blood libel immediately became popular among Muslims, who attacked Jews as drinkers of Muslim blood in Aleppo, Syria, in 1853, Damascus again, in 1848 and 1890, Cairo in 1844 and 1901-2, and Alexandria in 1870 and 1881.

The blood libel played a decisive role in unsettling the lives of nineteenth-century Syrian Jews, and since then it has been repeatedly utilized in Arab anti-Jewish writings.

Palestine

Jews have lived continuously as a community in Palestine since approximately 1200 BCE. The only independent states ever to exist in Palestine have been Jewish. After the destruction of the second Jewish state in 70 CE and the suppression of the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE, Jews always maintained a presence in Palestine, awaiting the reestablishment of the Jewish state. But these Jews often had to live under degrading conditions.

In nineteenth-century Palestine, which was under Ottoman Muslim rule, Jews had to walk past Muslims on their left, as the left is identified with Satan, and they always had to yield the right of way to a Muslim, by "stepping into the street and letting him pass." Failure to abide by these degrading customs often provoked a violent response.

In Palestine as elsewhere, Jews had to avoid anything that could remind Arabs of Judaism; therefore, synagogues could be located only in hidden, remote areas, and Jews could pray only in muted voices. In addition, despite the widespread poverty among Palestinian Jews, they had to pay a host of special protection taxes (in actuality, a form of extortion). For example, Jews paid one hundred pounds a year to the Muslim villagers of Siloam (just outside Jerusalem) not to disturb the graves at the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, and fifty pounds a year to the Ta'amra Arabs not to deface the Tomb of Rachel on the road to Bethlehem. They also had to pay ten pounds annually to Sheik Abu Gosh to to molest Jewish travelers on the road to Jerusalem, even though the Turkish authorities were already paying him to maintain order on that road.

These anti-Jewish laws, taxes, and practices had a rather intimidating effect on the Jews. The British consul James Finn, who lived in Jerusalem in the 1850s, described in his book Stirring Times how "Arab merchants would dump their unsold wares on their Jewish neighbors and bill them, safe in the knowledge that the Jews so feared them that they would not dare return the items or deny their purchase."

Muslim antisemitism continued to be brutally expressed through the twentieth century. Albert Memmi, the noted French-Jewish novelist, who grew up in North Africa, cites a few examples:

"In Morocco in 1907, a huge massacre of Jews took place in Casablanca, along with the usual embellishments - rape, women carried away into the mountains, hundreds of homes and shops burned, etc....In 1912 a big massacre in Fez...In Algeria in 1934, massacre in Constantine, twenty-four people killed, dozens and dozens of others seriously wounded....In Aden in 1946...over one hundred people dead and seventy-six wounded, and two-thirds of the stores sacked and burned....In June, 1941, in Iraq, six hundred people killed, one thousand seriously wounded, looting, rapes, arson, one thousand houses destroyed, six hundred stores looted....[In Libya]: November 4th and 5th, 1945, massacre in Tripoli; November 6th and 7th in Zanzour, Zaouia, Foussaber, Ziltain, etc: girls and women raped in front of their families, the stomachs of pregnant women slashed open, the infants ripped out of them, children smashed with crowbars....All this can be found in the newspapers of the time, including the local Arab papers."

Memmi summarizes the Jewish status under Islam in the twentieth century: "Roughly speaking and in the best of cases, the Jew is protected like a dog which is part of man's property, but if he raises his head or acts like a man, then he must be beaten so that he will always remember his status."

It is the Jews' refusal to accept an unequal, inferior status that lies at the heart of the Arab-Muslim hatred for Israel. (It is this, not the Palestinian refugee issue, that has been the basis of Muslim antisemitism. Without minimizing the personal difficulties of the Palestinians, as Memmi notes [on page 35 of his book Jews and Arabs]: "The Palestinian Arabs' misfortune is having been moved about thirty miles within one vast Arab nation.") As Yehoshafat Harkabi, a leading scholar of the Arab world's attitude toward Israel, put it: "The existence of the Jews was not a provocation to Islam...as long as Jews were subordinate or degraded. But a Jewish state is incompatible with the view of Jews as humiliated or wretched." The call for a Palestinian Arab state in place of Israel is for a state in which once again 'Islam dominates and is not dominated."

This hatred of Jewish nationalism was so intense that during World War II, most Arab leaders were pro-Nazi. Among them was the head of the Muslims in Palestine, the mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini (who in 1929 had helped organize the large-scale murders of the ultra-Orthodox, non-Zionist Jews of Hebron).

An ardent supporter of Hitler, the mufti spent much of the war in Nazi Germany; on November 2, 1943, at a time when the Nazis were murdering thousands of Jews daily, the mufti declared in a speech: "The overwhelming egoism which lies in the character of Jews, their unworthy belief that they are God's chosen nation and their assertion that all was created for them and that other peoples are animals...[makes them] in capable of being trusted. They cannot mix with any other nation but live as parasites among the nations, suck out their blood, embezzle their property, corrupt their morals....The divine anger and curse that the Holy Koran mentions with reference to the Jews is because of this unique character of the Jews."

Though many Arab nations formally declared war against Germany in 1945, when German defeat was imminent, in order to be eligible for entry into the United Nations, extensive Arab sympathy with the Nazis continued even after Germany's surrender. The Egyptians and Syrians long welcomed Nazis to their countries, offering them the opportunity to further implement the "Final Solution," by assisting in their efforts to destroy Israel and wipe out the Jewish community living there.

Among many Arabs the Holocaust has come to be regarded with nostalgia. On August 17, 1956, the French newspaper Le Mongde quoted the government-controlled Damascus daily Al-Manar as observing, "One should not forget that, in contrast to Europe, Hitler occupied an honored place in the Arab world....[Journalists} are mistaken if they think that by calling Nasser Hitler, they are hurting us. On the contrary, his name makes us proud. Long live Hitler, the Nazi who struck at the heart of our enemies. Long live the Hitler [i.e., Nasser] of the Arab world."

On June 9, 1960, after Israeli agents captured Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official who had supervised the murder of six million Jews, the Beirut daily Al-Anwar carried a cartoon depicting Eichmann speaking with Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Said Ben-Gurion: "You deserve the death penalty because you killed six million Jews." Responded Eichmann: "There are many who say I deserve the death penalty because I didn't manage to kill the rest."

On April 24, 1961, the Jordanian English-language daily Jerusalem Times published an "Open Letter to Eichmann," which concluded, "But be brave, Eichmann, find solace in the fact that this trial will one day culminate in the liquidation of the remaining six million to avenge your blood." At the UN sponsored "Conference Against Racism" in September 2001, an Arab pamphlet displayed at the Durban Exhibition Center featured a picture of Adolf Hitler with the caption, "If I had won the war there would be no...Palestinian blood lost."

Arab Jew-hatred also has brought about the resurrection of the blood libel. In 1962, the Egyptian Ministry of Education reissued Talmudic Sacrifices by Habib Faris, a book originally published in Cairo in 1890. The editor notes in his introduction that the book constitutes "an explicit documentation of indictment, based upon clear-cut evidence that the Jewish people permitted the shedding of blood as a religious duty enjoined in the Talmud."

On April 24, 1970, Fatah radio, under the leadership of Yasir Arafat, broadcast, "Reports from the captured homeland tell that the Zionist enemy has begun to kidnap small children from the streets. Afterwards the occupying forces take the blood of the children and throw away their empty bodies. The inhabitants of Gaza have seen this with their own eyes."

Even more disturbing, the blood libel accusations have been made by the most prominent figures within the Arab world. In November 1973, the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia said that it was necessary to understand the Jewish religious obligation to obtain non-Jewish blood in order to comprehend the crimes of Zionism. A decade later, in 1984, the Saudi Arabian delegate to the UN Human Rights Commission Conference on religious tolerance, Marouf al-Dawalibi, told the commission, "The Talmud says that if a Jew does not drink every year the blood of a non-Jewish man, he will be damned for eternity." In The Matzah of Zion, a book that has remained in print since its publication in 1983, Mustafa Tlas, the Syrian Defense Minister since 1972, wrote, "The Jew can kill you and take your blood in order to make his Zionist bread." A 2000 article about Tlas's book in Al-Ahram, Egypt's largest, and government-controlled, newspaper, reported, "The Bestial drive to knead Passover matzahs with the blood of non-Jews is [confirmed] in the records of the Palestinian police where there are many recorded cases of the bodies of Arab children who had disappeared without being found, torn to pieces, without a single drop of blood. The most reasonable explanation is that the blood was taken to be used in matzahs to be devoured during Passover." As one American journalist commented: "If this is 'the most reasonable explanation," can you imagine an unreasonable one?" The Al-Ahram article went on to report that an Egyptian movie company is planning to shoot a multimillion dollar film version of The Matzah of Zion, which will retell, as truth, the story of the Damascus blood libel.

And still the blood libel goes on. A 2001 cartoon in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Dustour depicts an Israeli soldier presenting his mother with a Mother's Day gift of a bottle containing the blood of a Palestinian child. At about the same time (November 2001), Abu Dhabi Television depicted a caricature of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon preparing to drink a cup of blood taken from a Palestinian. A March 10, 2002, article in Saudi Arabia's Al-Riyadh, the government-controlled newspaper, by Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma of King Faisal University, creates a new twist to this ancient libel, claiming that Jews use blood for Purim pastry and not just for Passover matzo: "Let us now examine how the victims' blood is spilled. For this, a needle-studded barrel is used; this is a kind of barrel, about the size of the human body, with extremely sharp needles set in it on all sides. [These needles] pierce the victim's body, from the moment he is placed in the barrel. These needles do the job, and the victim's blood drips from him very slowly. Thus, the victim suffers dreadful torment - torment that affords the Jewish vampires great delight as they carefully monitor every detail of the blood-shedding with pleasure and love that are difficult to comprehend."

Arab Muslims have also reached back to classical themes of Islamic antisemitism to attack the Jews and Israel. Many Arab speakers and publications echo Muhammad's charge in the Koran (5:82) that the Jews are the greatest enemies of humankind. For example, an Egyptian textbook, published in 1966 for use in teachers' seminars, taught that Jews (not only Israelis) are the "monsters of mankind [and] a nation of beasts."

Perhaps the favorite antisemitic publication in the Arab world for over fifty years has been The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.. In an interview with the editor of the Indian magazine Blitz, on October 4, 1958, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt praised the Protocols: "I wonder if you have read a book called 'Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.' It is very important that you should read it. I will give you an English copy. It proves clearly, to quote from the Protocols, that 'three hundred Zionists, each of whom knows all the others, govern the fate of the European continents and they elect their successors from their entourage."

The late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia gave copies of the Protocols to the guests of his regime. When he presented the Protocols, along with an anthology of antisemitic writings, to French journalists who accompanied French Foreign Minister Michel Jobert on his visit to Saudi Arabia in January 1974, "Saudi officials noted that these were the king's favorite books."

Article 32 of the 1988 Palestinian Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement) Covenant claims that the Zionist "scheme" foe takeover of the Arab world "has been laid out in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present [conduct] is the best proof of what is said there." Hamas literature repeatedly accuses Jews of controlling the world's wealth and its most important media, and using them to promote Jewish and Zionist interests, even of having established the League of Nations in the 1920s "in order to rule the world."

Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority (and therefore supposedly less extreme than Hamas), regularly contains references to the Protocols. Thus, even during the height of the Oslo peace process the paper published the following: "It is important to conduct the conflict according to the foundations which both are leaning on...particularly the Jews...such as the Torah, the Talmud, and the Protocols...This conflict resembles the conflict between men and Satan." At about the same time in Egypt, Al-Ahram, the country's largest newspaper, reported, "A compilation of the investigative' work of four reporters on Jewish control of the world states that Jews have become the political decision-makers and control the media in most capitals of the world (Washington, Paris, London, Berlin, Athens, Ankara)." As the journalist Andrew Sullivan comments, "It is worth noting that every word Al Ahram prints is vetted and approved by the Egyptian government, a regime to which the United States - i.e., you and I - contributed $2 billion a year."

It is perhaps no surprise that, as of 2002, over sixty editions of the Protocols are being sold throughout the Arab world, and this libelous "warrant for genocide" is probably more widely distributed today than at any other time in its history. In 2002, the New York Times, in a front-page story, reported that a major Egyptian television station was about  to launch a forty-one-episode TV series based on the Protocols (complete with Jewish villains dressed in black hats, side curls, and beards) to run before and during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The Islamic world today has combined antisemitic motifs from Nazism and medieval Christendom, as well as from its own tradition. This potent combination has made the Arabs the major source of antisemitic publications in the world today. And as in other forms of antisemitism, in the words of Yehoshafat Harkabi, "the evil in the Jews is ascribed not to race or blood, but to their spiritual character and religion." Thus, when Pakistani Islamic terrorists kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in January 2002, they forced Pearl to say, "I am a Jew," (and videotaped him doing so) before slitting his throat.

Only through an understanding of the deep theological roots of Muslim antisemitism and an awareness of its continuous history can present-day Muslim hatred of Israel be understood. Only then does one recognize how false are the claims of Israel's enemies that prior to Zionism, Jews and Muslims lived in harmony and that neither Islam nor Muslims have ever harbored Jew-hatred. The creation of the Jewish state in no way created Muslim Jew-hatred; it merely intensified it and gave it a new focus.

So long as the Jews acknowledged their inferior status among Muslims, they were humiliated but allowed to exist. But once the Jews decided to reject their inferior status, to become sovereign after centuries of servitude, and worst of all, to now govern some Muslims in a land where the Jews had so long been governed, their existence was no longer tolerable. Hence the passionate Arab Muslim hatred of Israel and Zionism, a hatred that entirely transcends political antagonisms. Hence the widespread Muslim call not merely for a military defeat of Israel, but for its annihilation.

As so often in Jewish history, it is the Jewish nation's existence that arouses hatred and needs to be ended. Despite peace treaties between Israel and Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994), for most Muslims the source of their hatred remains the Jewish sate's existence, not its policies, nor even its borders.

The Muslim and Arab claim that the issue is anti-Zionism rather than antisemitism really means that so long as the Jews adhere to their dhimmi status in Arab Muslim nations, their existence as individuals is acceptable. But for a Jew to aspire to equality among Muslims, for a Jew to aspire to a status higher than "humiliation and wretchedness," is to aspire too high."

- Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism, Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, chapter nine

[allwormdiet]

Extermination 8.7

In which nobody is happy and everything is pain

Wuh oh, the worst chapter of Taylor's life has just received a series of footnotes that provide further context, and none of them are making her feel any better

And now things are getting even worse

Hey Colin, looks like you've lost some weight, trying something new with the asymmetrical look?

Also I like how even Taylor's paranoid ass is like "no you know what, they didn't need to know Sophia was a superhero for them to fuck me over"

Really copping it up in here, huh you two?

This is bad for everybody. A supervillain who's taken explicit actions against the PRT and Protectorate has discovered the identity of a Ward, and a teenage girl is being surrounded and lambasted by adults who could make her life Hell with very little effort.

God, Birdcage would be nightmarish, especially with Lung in there probably nursing the mother of all grudges

Also, interesting that Taylor changing her mind translates to Armsmaster as her being a master manipulator and spinner of lies. There's no possible way that she stopped trying to be a hero because he acted like a gigantic asshole the second time they met or something.

Skitter has gotten the absolute worse perspective that the heroes can offer, so she's suffering a biased stance here, but even without that her anti-authority streak is way too strong to tolerate it for long

Don't throw a fucking shitfit, Colin

You're an adult, fucking act like one

Yaaaaaaay, the crew's alright and they're backing Skitter up, there's no way this immediately blows up

Grue is making himself look bigger in this moment, scarier, more authoritative. If I'm understanding right that means he's way on the fucking edge about all of this and feeling tense and a little scared.

Glad Regent got out of it with only some stitches, wonder if that cut is anything noteworthy or if he just got gouged by some glass or shrapnel or something

Bitch is handling things about as well as could be expected

Hey Tattletale, glad you're not dead

Oh boy!

Sophia would fucking lunge across the tent and go for the murder attempt then and there, I'm pretty sure

Also, Legend is technically right, insofar as Taylor has made a lot of situations more difficult by digging her heels in

Unfortunately, he would.

Look at her getting her little debut to the Protectorate leader

The greatest asset and weakness of the Protectorate: image

These people are about to get their shit rocked by a teenager with access to a PA system and I'm not convinced they didn't bring this on themselves

Also, love an ultimatum, very heroic

Tattletale you're so cool and real for this

We love an ultimatum, very villainous

Colin, you dumbfuck

I think the most damning part of this conversation is that Miss Militia literally doesn't have any trouble connecting the dots

There's the setup

And there's the knockdown. Armsmaster has once again been outplayed by a teenager, and now the best thing to do is probably to quit while he's behind

So of course he decides to double and triple down

Let's review facts here

Armsmaster is a grown-ass man who is really upset that a pack of teenagers are beating him

He has admitted, out loud, that he broke truce conditions and got villains killed in order to try and get a moment of glory

He knows full well that at least two of the Undersiders have killed before and may kill again if suitably motivated, such as, I don't know, finding out a teammate tried to betray them

So with everything in consideration

he throws a tantrum that could get a girl killed because of wounded pride

This hurts, a lot

Also hey early hint that Tattletale knows what's up

Panacea like "wow this girl is some kind of disaster, thank god my worldview guarantees that I'm way better than her"

Also Jesus fucking Christ what a way to end the chapter

Current Thoughts

God fucking dammit Colin, you could literally get a teenager killed because you had to throw a fucking tantrum over how you got your kill stolen and your super cool plan to win glory and recover lost pride got foiled by the common fucking sense of "you can't kill an Endbringer"

I know that isn't what happens, but hey guess what he doesn't know Taylor's story goes for another twenty-plus chapters, he's willing to roll those dice because his feewings got huwt

I hope they make him choke on whatever book ends up thrown at him for this

[absurdthirst]

Sleep Tight {Joel Miller x F!Reader}

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 4.4k

Warnings: Minors and dirty magazines, only one sleeping bad troupe, masturbation, fingering, vaginal sex, unprotected sex, semi public sex, SPOILERS for TLOU Episode 1 x 04

Comments: Fucking Joel in that sleeping bag, that's the summary.

Co-written with @storiesofthefandomlovers

**Follow @absurdthirst-writes and turn on notifications to stay up to date on all new fics.

|| MasterList || Joel Miller MasterList ||

gif by @pedropascalsx

Click Keep Reading only if you have read the Rating and Warnings and understand the warnings may not be complete to avoid listing spoilers. As AO3 says 'creator chooses not to use warnings'. You also agree that you're the right age to be consuming anything here.

“Hey, quit kicking back there.” You huff, rolling your eyes as you look back at the teenager in the back seat. She was a little too excited about her first day in the car and after a few hours, she had wanted to swap seats, coinciding with the first of multiple pitstops. Gas just didn’t go as far as it used to. 

Ellie rolls her eyes and huffs, leaning back in the seat and crossing her arms as she stares out the window. “I have to pee.” She huffs, making Joel groan again and let out a long suffering sigh even though it’s only been four hours.

“There’s a rest stop up ahead.” He grunts after another mile. “We’ll stop there and you can pee while we try to find some more gas.” He looks over at you for a moment, before glancing back at the road. You know he’s irritated by the fact that you aren’t getting farther than you would have back when gas was fresh. It’s taking longer to get to Wyoming than he would like, leaving you exposed out on the road. 

When Joel pulls over into the rest area, he immediately grabs his hose and gets to work siphoning some gas from the abandoned cars. It’s like water now, nowhere near as potent as it used to be, but it gets you somewhere. Ellie disappears and comes back with a joke book. “Volume Too.” She points out and you snort, looking over at Joel who rolls his eyes. Ellie starts to read out a joke and you bite your lip to smother your chuckle. 

“Jesus Christ.” Joel grunts, struggling to stand after kneeling down.

You hum and walk back over to the truck. “Did you pee?” You ask, opening the passenger door to the truck and pushing the seat forward.

“I did, did you?” Ellie asks, smirking slightly in the way that only smart ass teenagers can. 

“I don’t have the bladder of a thirteen year old.” You snort, watching her climb into the back before you slide the seat back and climb inside the cab. Watching as Joel secures the gas can and gets into the driver's seat. “Let me know when you want me to drive.” You offer again, knowing he will turn you down, again.

“I’m fine.” Joel says, getting back into the car. He starts the engine and pulls away from the rest stop. You sigh and look out of the window. 

“Must’ve been some trick.” Ellie says as she looks out of the back window. 

“Yeah they used to stick big ass plows on them and clear the roads for their tanks and such.” Joel explains and Ellie grins, “I wanna see a tank.” 

You look back at her, “you will.” 

Joel nods, “tank, choppers, all that stuff. But they’ll fight the wrong enemy. Just scattered around now.” 

Ellie fumbles, reaching into her backpack and pulls out a tape. “I got something.” She hands it to you and you show it to Joel, “here. This make you all nostalgic?” You ask Joel who snorts, “this is actually before my time.” 

Ellie settles back in her seat, “great.” 

You sigh, “it’s a winner, though.” 

Joel nods and you put the tape into the player. Joel smiles, shaking his head as he drives along to the music. “Oh man.” He sighs and you smile at him. 

Ellie rummages in her backpack again, pulling out a magazine, “got something else”. 

“What is that?” You ask, eyes wide and you nudge Joel and he looks in the rear view. 

“It’s light on the reading but it has some interesting pictures.” 

You watch Joel’s face, “no, no, no, put that back.” Ellie opens another page while Joel says, “that’s not for kids.” 

You try to reach for it but she pulls it back, “how would he even walk around with that thing?” 

You snort, reaching again, “please get rid of it.” Joel begs and Ellie shakes her head, “hold your horses. I wanna see what all the fuss is about.” Ellie looks at you then Joel, knowing exactly what your relationship entails. 

“I’ll take it.” You tease and Joel’s eyes widen, “no you will not.” 

You giggle and Ellie grimaces, “why are all these pages stuck together.” 

Joel’s face is shocked, “uhhhhhh. The—” Ellie whacks his shoulder with the magazine, “I’m just fuckin’ with ya.” She tosses it out of the window with a “bye bye dude.” 

You pout, “I kinda wanted that.” 

Joel rolls his eyes, focusing on the driving. “Ain’t I enough for you, sweetheart?” He teases but his eyes are serious.

“If he’s got one like that, I don’t know how you do it.” Ellie huffs, and you smother your giggle since it looks like Joel is about to have a stroke. 

“I’m going to decline to comment, but yes, you’re enough.” You promise Joel, mollifying him slightly. 

“Okay, we’re done talkin’.” He huffs, looking in the rear view mirror. “Let’s play the quiet game.” 

Ellie wrinkles her nose, obviously not happy with that option but she turns her head to look out at the surrounding landscape. Sighing, you reach over and touch his hand, smiling at him slightly when he looks at you. The thing with Joel was both easy and complicated. Easy because you never defined anything and complicated because you never know where you stand with him. You think that he cares for you, in his own way but it’s not like you’ve had conversations about feelings.

You look out at the scenery, abandoned cars. FedEx trucks in a depo that sit empty, ransacked not long after shit went down. The train hanging off of the bridge. The abandoned tanks. It’s eery and reminds you of the harsh reality of this world. Joel notices how quiet you get, Ellie is napping on the backseat. “You sure you don’t want me to drive?” You check and he shakes his head, “gonna stop soon. It’s getting late and I wanna be parked up before bedtime.”

It’s only about ten more minutes before Joel decides he’s done. “That’s enough for today.” He slows down and pulls off the Highway into a large field. Jolting Ellie awake as the truck bounces through the grass as he heads for the forest on the other side. You know why he is pulling away from the road but you don’t say anything as he starts to drive through the trees, making sure that you are well away from the road before he stops the truck. “Well, I’ll start unloading supplies.” You offer, knowing he probably needs to stretch his legs and take a piss after driving for so long. “Why don’t you walk around?”

Joel nods, knowing he needs to check out the area for any clickers or dangers. “Get the steak out for tonight.” He orders, knowing you’ll need energy for tomorrow. Who knows what tomorrow brings? If there’s one thing Joel lives by, it’s eat the damn steak. He hears you talking to Ellie as he strides through the trees, eventually feeling safe enough to pull his dick out to take a piss. He sighs in relief and leans against the tree, ears open for anything moving around. When he makes his way back, he sees Ellie reading that damn joke book again and you are opening the portable stove. “Everything alright?” He asks you, setting the gun down as he helps you open the ancient can of Chef Boyardee

“Yeah.” You take the can and sniff it, nodding when it smells good. Amazing how it hadn’t gone back, and you don’t want to think about how many preservatives had to be in it for such a thing. “We are having steak with a side of the finest Chef this side of the Mississippi.” You joke as you dump it into a pan and start opening the next one. “Find anything out there?” You lower your voice slightly and glance over at him, not wanting Ellie to overhear and worry. Your job was to help him protect the girl and you were slightly softer than Joel, but both of you didn’t want her to fear for her safety until it was necessary. She’s still just a kid. 

Joel shakes his head, kneeling down beside you to place his hand on your lower back, the only indication that he is emotionally connected to you. He helps, stirring the ravioli and he looks over at Ellie.

You can’t help but lean into the warmth of his hand. It’s been a difficult few days and while Joel isn’t overly affectionate at the best of times, you are enjoying the feeling of his hand on your body. The small steaks are next, another pan ready and you sigh softly. “Just a weekend getaway.” You joke, “camping in the woods. All we need is a cooler full of ice cold beer.” Those things seem like a dream and you know that this isn’t a fun weekend bonfire in the woods. The sun is starting to set and soon you need to get the bedding out of the truck after cleaning up from dinner. 

Joel watches you finish the meal and he sighs, wishing this was a camping trip and nothing more. Yet it isn’t. It’s deadly and dangerous and he wishes he could keep you and Ellie safe but it’s going to be a challenge. When you get the dinner served up, Joel watches Ellie wolf it down and tells her to slow it down. You snort in amusement and Joel rolls his eyes at the teenager.

“What am I even eating?” She asks between bites. 

“That is 20 year old Chef Boyardee ravioli.” He tells her, cutting up his own small steak and you smirk when she shoves another large bite in her mouth. 

“That guy was good.” 

Joel grunts. “I actually agree.” You do too, but hunger has a way of making a lot of things taste good. 

Ellie looks over at you for a moment. “How long are we staying out here?” 

Knowing Joel, it will just be for the night, he doesn’t like to stay in one place for long when he is outside the QZ. “I figure I sleep tonight, and drive tomorrow all day.” He glances over at you. “And let her drive all night and get us to Wyoming by next mornin’.” 

You nod, agreeing with that idea, although if he doesn’t sleep, you’ll drive in the morning and let him crash in the passenger seat. Ellie scoops up some more of her ravioli. “So can we start a fire? I’m freezing.” It is cold out here, but there is no way Joel will allow a fire. 

Joel’s head shoots up from his plate. “Now why I am gonna tell you no?” He demands like he’s talking to his daughter about dating or staying out past curfew. 

Ellie rolls her eyes. “Because the infected will see the smoke.” She huffs, shoving another bite in her mouth. 

“No.” Joel insists. “Fungus isn’t that smart.” 

You nod. “It’s too remote for infected anyway.” You add on, knowing what Joel is worried about. 

That gets Ellie’s attention. “People?” Neither you nor Joel answers but the look he gives her is answer enough. “So what are they going to do? Rob us?” She asks next, full of questions because she’s never experienced the horrors outside FEDRAs control. 

“Oh, they’ll have way more in mind than that.” His look turns dark and you shiver, he would know first hand what some of these people were after and you want to forget what men are capable of. 

Ellie seems to get the message and she swallows slightly. “Okay….” 

Joel knows that it would be devastating for you to end up with others. You’re pretty, gorgeous, and he knows that you would be- well, he will fight to the death to protect you and ensure that that would never happen. You finish your meal in silence, fork scraping the metal and eventually the food is put away and Joel is double checking the perimeter while you gather the sleeping bags. 

“We have a problem.” You tell Joel and he turns to look at you, “what is it?”

You hold up one of the three sleeping bags that had been packed in the back of the truck under a tarp. You hadn’t unrolled it before now. “This sleeping bag is ruined.” You tell him, showing the large urine and rodent droppings, as well as the obvious destruction of the material. 

Ellie unrolls hers and picks it up to sniff it. “Mine actually smells kinda good.” She informs you, making you roll your eyes. 

“Well that would be Frank’s then.” Joel tells her, making her laugh quietly. 

You sigh and drop the ruined bedding to the ground. “What do you want to do?” You ask Joel. 

Joel sighs, annoyed by the fact that there’s one less sleeping bag. “We can share it. You and I. Ellie gets her own.” Joel says and grabs his rifle, ready to ensure that you and Ellie are safe, even if it means not getting any sleep himself. “Are you tired?” He asks Ellie, gesturing for you to get into the sleeping bag.

Ellie smirks at Joel and waggles her brows. “Of course you want me to go to sleep.” She teases, making him roll his eyes and shuffle uncomfortably. 

“Get in the fucking sleeping bag.” He grunts at her and it makes you snicker quietly as you spread out the other sleeping back you will have to share with him. You know he will put you in the innermost part of the bag so he can get out quickly so you don’t hesitate to go ahead and climb in. Ellie pulls out her book and while Joel grunts again as he kneels down next to the sleeping bag, she turns down the lamp that was set between the two bags.

Joel is hesitant to share a sleeping bag with you, knowing that he wants to be able to move at a moment's notice. Also, the ribbing from Ellie has him rolling his eyes. Another part of him wants to hold you tonight.

“Come on.” You order and Joel shifts to get in beside you after checking his rifle. 

Ellie tries to tell Joel a joke, but he already knows the punchline. “Because he was outstanding in his field.” Joel replies, and Ellie claims that he has already read the joke book. You snort and laugh and Joel smiles to himself, but he’s turned away from you so you and Ellie can’t see. 

“Get some sleep.” He says again and turns to pull you into his arms.

It’s a tight fit in the sleeping back with both of you, making you wiggle slightly and push your ass against his groin. Joel grunts in your ear and you hum. “Sorry.” You whisper, aware that he is trying to fall asleep. Of the two of you, he’s the one that barely moves unless prompted at night.

Joel doesn’t respond, trying to close his eyes and not think about how you feel pressed against him. It’s been a while since you slept together. It was before leaving the QZ and Joel wants you to get some sleep. You wiggle against him again, trying to get comfortable and he grunts. “You gotta stay still.” He demands gruffly in your ear.

“Sorry.” You close your eyes and try not to think about the warmth and weight of him behind you. Although you flatten yourself out to give him more room and he follows you, pressed right up against your ass and you feel the bulge of his cock even though he’s not even hard.

His hand comes to your hip, trying to keep you still but his body still reacts to yours. His cock hardens and he closes his eyes, trying to ignore the way his body needs you. You’re so warm against him, he knows how hot you are when he’s inside of you and he curses himself internally for thinking like that. “Get some sleep.” He murmurs, more to himself than to you but his fingers caress your hip, slipping under your shirt to touch your skin.

Biting your lip, you try to not move. It’s hard when you feel his fingers on your skin, hot and rough from the callouses. Instinctively, you rock back just the slightest amount, pressing your ass against his cock more firmly, the handy excuse that you are getting comfortable. It’s been too long since you’ve had him inside you, the fear and sorrow and danger not allowing it. Now, you just want to feel normal for twenty minutes.

Joel can sense what you want. He knows you inside and out by now. It’s too risky though. You’re in the open. The kid is a few feet away. He can’t risk being lost inside of you and not paying attention to what’s around him. “Behave.” He growls into your ear, “or take care of yourself.” He demands, flicking the button of your jeans. You get excited but he pulls his hand away, “I’m not fuckin’ you so you better take care of yourself, baby.”

You pout, sighing in disappointment, but you don’t hesitate to unzip your jeans and slide your hand into your panties. You’d rather have Joel’s cock inside you or his fingers on your clit, but you’re not going to bed. “Probably jerked off in the trees.” You huff quietly, pressing the pad of your index finger against your clit and moaning softly.

Joel doesn’t respond, deciding to just press against you. “You can feel how hard I am. Feel like I jerked off thirty minutes ago?” He scoffs, “I’m too fuckin’ old, baby.” He rolls his eyes and reaches up to squeeze your breast.

Closing your eyes, you push your ass back against him again, grinding slightly. He is getting older but that doesn’t mean he can’t fuck you like he’s still young when he wants to. It just means that his recovery time is longer. You circle your clit and start rubbing it quickly, wanting to cum before you go to sleep. “St-still can get it up.” You murmur quietly. “Still good.”

He chuckles, burying his face in your neck to breathe you in so he can hear your whimpers while you try to keep quiet. He loves it. “Fuck baby. You sound so sweet.” He rasps into your ear, “rubbing that little clit like that. Feel good?”

You know that it’s risky, that Ellie could hear or someone could sneak up but you think that the first option is more likely. Especially as remote as you are. “Y-you’re b-better.” You admit breathlessly, your cunt clenching and your hips rocking slightly to chase the pressure.

He snorts when you say he’s better. His cock is hard and he is desperate to touch himself, touch you, but he can’t risk it. His ears are honed in on the surrounding while you bite your lip to smother your whimpers. “You need fingers inside of you?” Joel asks, knowing he can help you if you need him.

“Fuck yes.” You moan quietly, eyes rolling at the thought of his thick fingers curled up inside you. He always manages to press against your g-spot perfectly. It makes sense due to knowing your body as well as he does. He chuckles quietly against your ear and squeezes your tit once more before he slides his hand across your tummy and into your panties where you are still rubbing your clit.

He presses your hand against your clit, almost unable to move your fingers, and he pushes two of his thick digits inside of you, curling them. “That better?” He whispers, pumping them in and out of you and groaning softly at how wet you are.

His cock would be so much better but you whimper your agreement. Loving how immediate your reaction is to him and the arousal floods his fingers. You push back, wanting his fingers deeper inside you and twist your head so you can kiss under his chin and along his jaw.

“Good girl.” He murmurs, biting down on your earlobe. “Always so good for me.” He grunts, working his fingers inside of you, pressing his palm into your hand to force you to rub your clit a little faster. “I need you to cum for me. Clench around my fingers.”

“Joel.” You whine softly, rolling your hips down against his hand. You want him inside you. You want him to roll you onto your stomach and push your jeans down, pull out his achingly hard cock and fuck you into the hard, forest floor. “Fuck,” you feel your walls start to flutter, body tensing up to cum as he curls his fingers and yours rub your clit.

Joel turns your head to press his lips to yours, wanting you to be quiet, to not wake Ellie. You cry into his mouth, smothered and muted, while your walls clamp down on his fingers, soaking them, and it ignites something inside of him. He pulls his fingers out of you, pushing you onto your back and it’s tight but he manages to push your jeans down to your knees, fumbling with one hand to open his pants and he pulls his hard cock out. “Need you.” He grunts, pushing inside of you while you are still shaking from your orgasm.

Your hands curl into Joel’s shoulders, biting down on your lip to smother your moan at his intrusion. It’s so good, having him fill you up like nothing else can. You can fill him twitch inside you and you whimper. “Fuck me.” You beg quietly, knowing it will be quick and rough.

He groans softly, pressing his lips against yours and sliding his tongue into your mouth so he can start to fuck you. He grinds deep, barely pulling out of you as he rocks his hips. Reassured that you’re beneath him. After losing Tess, losing Bill and Frank. He’s on the edge, desperate, not his usual self. Too many people have died, left him, and he won’t let you join that list.

Ellie snorts, shuffling in her sleeping back and Joel freezes inside you. Both of you listen for any other movement or indication that she’s waking up. The silence ticks by and Joel’s cock is throbbing inside you at the same beat of his heart, making your cunt clench around him. You exhale softly, relaxing when Joel starts to move again. Kissing him desperately in order to recapture the moment.

He is slow, grinding deep, and he allows himself this time to enjoy the fact that you’re here, in his arms, and alive. “Fuck baby.” He grunts into your mouth, loving how wet and hot you are around him. You both listen for Ellie, making sure she doesn’t wake up, and the sleeping bag doesn’t allow for a lot of movement.

It’s easy to forget everything when Joel is deep inside you. The slow grind of his hips keeps his cock buried deep and it’s like he’s making love to you. Whatever is between you isn’t defined and you won’t ask him to put a label on it. You just are, but you love this tempo.

He kisses you, keeping his mouth fused to yours to smother the way you cry out his name. Not wanting to wake the kid or alert anyone to your presence. His hands slide under you, gripping your shoulders to help him thrust a little harder inside of you.

Every gasp is poured into his mouth, urging him on. The thrusts aren’t sharper, but you love that he can push into you with a bit more force, making your walls flutter around him and the roughness of his jeans grinding against your clit. The fact that your jeans are pulled down but still on your legs only allows for you to take his pace, unable to wrap your legs around him and urge him on.

He wants you to cum, needs to feel it, so he pushes deeper inside of you, thrusting a little harder, and he groans your name into your ear, shifting one arm out from under you to cover your mouth with his palm.

Joel being vocal always does it for you. That gravely, raspy voice sounding wrecked makes your cunt lock down around him as your core twists even more until you are gasping his name against his palm. Shaking underneath him as you come apart in perfect, shattering pleasure.

Joel hisses your name, loving how you feel clamping down around his cock, and he hisses your name again, pushing deep a half a dozen times until he’s spilling inside of you. Thanking God for the umpteenth time that he got a vasectomy after Sarah was six and he and his ex had decided against having more kids. “Fuck.” He pants, kissing your forehead then he pulls his palm away from your mouth. 

You hum quietly, aware that this isn’t the safety of your apartment in the Boston QZ. He can’t sleep inside you or just lay here basking in the afterglow for too long. You kiss his lips and along his jaw before he shuffles to the side, both of you trying to put yourself back to rights under the cover of the sleeping bag. “You actually gonna sleep?” You as Joel as you pull your panties and jeans up.

Joel shifts to the side, tucking himself away, and he offers you a look, knowing that you know he won’t sleep. He never does when he’s on the road. “You get some sleep.” He orders, kissing your forehead and he shuffles out of the sleeping bag, grabbing his rifle. He will keep watch tonight over you and Ellie. It’s his job to keep you both safe and he’ll be damned if he fails. He’s lost everyone but he won’t lose you. He will keep you and Ellie safe, even if it’s the last thing he does.

You shuffle slightly, turning so you can see Joel as he stands guard, eyes ever watchful for any approaching danger. You sigh slightly and close your eyes. You’ll let him sleep while you take the first shift driving tomorrow morning. And make some coffee for him to drink. He would like that. For now, you drift off to sleep, feeling protected since you know he is watching.

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

An (incredibly long) "I want"-style song dedicated to the most unruly of trios: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison.

The setting is the late 50's – it's deliberately a bit of a mish-mash :-)

Lyrics below the cut!

John: Green

Paul: Blue

George: Purple

P&G: Pink

J&P: Red

JP&G: Neutral

Liverpool gave up on me the first day of preschool

Teachers called me unruly cause I don't suffer fools

And my aunt who says she can't believe I’d throw it all away

Quarrybank, that school for cranks suspended me the other day

All those lads who quit this band to learn a proper trade

Think that I don't understand the facts of getting paid

But you both see,

It's them not me, it's us and this here prophecy

Do you see us five years on – well

Maybe three, that's sort of long

As they're writhing for our songs

And “Your group's on now, John "

Earning some preposterous wage

Free of this less-town-more-cage

As we enter center-stage

In our gold disk age

And the birds will have to queue

For a single peck at you

Then, emboldened by the view

Watch them molt on cue

And all we need is not to quit,

They'll call us Great Britain's

Newest stars, brand new guitars, guaranteed not to split

Picture us: the favourite band

With a record deal in hand

Going deaf from screaming fans

As per my new masterplan

Where we going, fellas? Where we going?

Where we going, fellas? Where we going?

(To the topper-most of popper-most of popper, to the topper)

To the toppermost of the poppermost!

I hear music in my head

Wherever I go

It's like it's bursting out my soul

It's something I cannot control

Meanwhile I can't drop this tune

Every night When I get home

I watch dad roll his eyes

"Heard of this thing called a comb? "

I sigh as he implies

That mum would be

So unhappy and so disappointed in me

However inopportune

There's a decade dawning soon

Shooting for the moon

And John may seem unreasonable

But his dream is feasible

Sometimes yes, guess he's a gull

I'll appease him though

And then I see how for we're come

Joined, we're greater than our sum

See, the rhythm's in the strum

Of the guitars and then some

Playing my part in your vision, I'll

Grab a pen, so much to discover

Let's produce another

Lennon-McCartney original

See the day John and me met

And Yes George, I didn't forget!

We become a matching set

Writing tete-a-tete

Where we going, Johnny? Where we going?

Where we going, Johnny? Where we going?

(To the topper-most of popper-most of popper, to the toppermost)

And where do I fit in?

And when do I come in?

Is there a spot for me at the

To the toppermost of the poppermost!

I'm the youngest, there's no day when they let me forget

But the part Paul will not say: I'm their safest bet

See the fact is they don’t practice systematically like me

I know my chord charts, strings, fretboard, parts of my soul, sorted by key.

Still the world is their playground

And I am watching from the fence

I can't yet jump with confidence

But mum taught me about patience

I still feel Julia's arms around me every time I play

What would my mum say? (She tells me)

Anything I set my mind to  (She taught me everything)

The heights I'll climb to (She wanted everything)

My time soon

Anything to prove I'm worth it (Wouldn’t approve)

Move the earth, they'll learn…

I had to learn to be the only one believing in me

And ever since she's gone, I can hardly stand it (Mum says I can stand it)

No one understanding (Don’t quite understand it)

The thing she saw in me

And dad, he just wants me to be practical

She’d call me her rebel without applause and tell me

Just keep making noise, always play in your own key

I will wait patiently

He may believe in me but not my choice

They will have no choice but to love me

Where we going fellas? Where we going?

To the toppermost of the poppermost!

Insert band name here.

Liverpool has no idea what’s coming

Liverpool will never be the same

They’ll put up posters of us

Like on this truck

John, that’s a bus!

Put your glasses on, Jesus!

And dad will be non-plussed when

Walking down the street he’ll see John (John), Paul, George (George) of the…

Johnny and the Moondogs… What! Definitely not. The Shoes!

The Quarrymen… Nononononono, JaPaGe3!

Liverpool has no idea what’s coming

Liverpool will never be the same

When they all see us one as three the blasphemous song trinity.

Everybody’s bitching

Where’s that old ambition

That got you essay prizes and into the institute?

I’m not a delinquent

I’ve just been rethinking

No one realizes I’m still just as resolute

Just keep making noise

Always play in your own key

They will have no choice

But to love me

Anything I set my mind to

The heights I’ll climb to

My time soon

Anything to prove I’m worth it

Move the earth

They’ll learn from me.

Where we going, fellas? Where we going?

Where we going, Johnny?

Where we going, fellas? Where we going?

(To the topper-most of popper-most of popper, to the topper)

And where do I fit in and when do I come in?

Toppermost of the poppermost.

[tw1stedthicket]

Just found out apparently the Winter Olympic Games in 10 years or so are gonna be held in Salt Lake City, Utah. I sincerely hope and pray that in the next 10 years, this fact will mean something different to me.

As it stands right now, I am pissed off. Of all the beautiful places on this green earth, Utah certainly has captivating natural beauty, but I don't trust that there may not be the influence of what is so flagrantly defining about Utah in that it is the central hub of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Something as beautiful and hopeful as a long-held tradition kept amongst all nations of the world to send some of their best in stunning athletic feats that sometimes seem to transcend humanity's physical potential to one place, so they may compete in the name of their home and a title of honor recognizing the boundaries they pushed in the name of their sport, is almost downright spiritual. I can't help but feel the parallels of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believing themselves to be sending out the best and the brightest fledgling flames of the younger generation to spread a similar light of God, the truth of the "latter days" in today's evolving world, and unity of all of us in God's plan and in one human legacy and divine birthright for all families to participate in that binds us and seals us together. I know not all Latter-day Saints are as inclined to putting forth a presentation of righteous, precious duty for this spiritual sentiment of "being a light" or would as such be engaged in the kinds of acceptance, social change, radical hope, equality, and more that it would require, but that sentiment of all the above mentioned is baked into the religion no less, as to what its members are called to do and be.

Unfortunately, the gruesome underbelly that gets overlooked in their politeness and sweetness and eagerness to just help everyone come unto Christ, is one that suffers from absolutely crippling enforcements of conformity. Conformity that white-washes the cultures that are "invited" to join -- asks them to sacrifice aspects of their identity and assimilate into Whiteness and to alter long-held beliefs and ways of life for the sake of a "restoration of the truth"...eliminating personal beliefs, personal practices, personal behaviors, and by extension personality, and where isolated from broader cultures and one's own ability to make choices freely, to own what one finds true, to walk as one will and where one will, to find meaning, express values, call upon one's ancestors or their own sources, grow in wisdom, and so much more, as though these might not be a path up the mountain, eliminates so much identity even in one's very personhood.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints venerates freedom, honored in a free American country with a "restoration" and the bestowing of God's keys of power to guide the world at a time that could have only been made possible then, a freedom that is held up in its triumphant insistence that the greatest gift to humans was "agency", and captivated in its role as the supreme poser of such deeply rooted human questions at the heart of our souls as to how and why we are here and the gifter of the answers - should we be free to honestly ask the question ourselves, honestly ask it of the missionaries in the world, honestly ask it of the promise laid out in the Book of Mormon to God, who will testify of the truth that sets you free. And yet. The stunning implications that it was never a choice are chained to their idea of freedom.

It was never a choice for the families that Joseph Smith encountered and who persuaded their perspectives and faith to change, families he then asked to take their young daughter's hand in marriage for himself under threat of damnation, or to women whose husbands were off serving missions in other parts of the world. It was never a choice to the people of the world today who do anything less than fully accept, with choking implications that they are denying the very thing that will save them, save them from unhappiness and unfairness. And offering this promise to the members of the world that have been oppressed, in colonized parts of the world, in enslaved parts of 1800's America, in Indigenous Native parts of the colonized Americas and colonized Utah itself, a name directly referencing the tribes that lived there. Offering this to people whose civil rights the Church's extensive arms and threaded branches in local governments lobby to repress. To the queer community that it tragically imposes the question of "agency" and "chastity" that you might just simply choose to be different. For all these people, the implication that life could be different for you. For countries of the world today in need of aid that are promised temples, for families in need of aid that are asked if they tithe. For people in the world asking for more freedom, and the levying of power that all along it will be, if you conform; from the enslaved American promised to find emanicipation in Zion in Utah under Joseph Smith's presidential platform, to the Pacific Islanders today that have family lineages populated with Latter-day Saints that move from their ancestral homes to Utah as Utahns crowd them out, to women everywhere that are promised a Relief Society for women and perhaps an advancement of the cause for women, but find themselves taught by priesthood holders about what great mothers and wives God made them to be. For people in need of guidance and counsel for self-worth and a justification to still be here in a hopeless world, that get asked about sin and "valiance" and given the choice to remain an active member for the sake of fulfilling gender roles, family roles, having posterity. The implication that families can be together forever, but only if you accept and obey to the highest order of covenants, promises you make to the entire dedication and consecration of your life to it. A culture of shaming for less than true perfection and that you must choose less if you get less, and you must have chose hell if you got it, and a power to send you there.

The Church has very carefully, very saintly, made of all its members, "pure", "converted" people striving for perfection even as Christ is perfect. Perfection that comes across to many as diligence, dedication, and integrity. Perfection that to be sure of, might reflect in the Olympic ceremonies as a reverence for that which is sacred, and an adoring display of its temples, its hallowed history of saints and pioneers, and its citizenship of those who Build Up Zion. The world community at large may be deeply saddened as many of us are to find that hallmarks of the human spirit in all the corners of the world from belief systems far and wide, ancient and new, will be swallowed up inevitably in a sweeping display of a sinister thought: that we, Latter-day Saints, are the vested light in a darkened world, and we bear the "torch", so to speak, of shining out evils that we decided long ago were not what defined the power structure of the 1800's world Joseph Smith grew up in and that have shaped the globe ever since.

Their dazzle conceals the weath it took to build it, and who it takes it from. Its celebration of oneness washes out the exclusion of those it defines as needing to "change", "convert", or "overcome" in the name of conformity. Any humility involved will belie a supremacy that earnestly, and audaciously, believes that people should be sent out into the world for the sake of one truth, and one path, and one plan, and that after death, each member should plumb the archives and annals of human ancestry to convert all to its religion in the afterlife. A family religion, a family culture, an Olympic celebration of the human family, yet damned and condemned to separation in the afterlife in tiers of glory the same as its tiered chandeliers in every temple building dotting the desert and mountain Utah landscape.

It's revolting, to me, and I find my only solace in the hope that in ten years, more progress will have been made that shifts our world just a few more degrees toward the acceptable belief that the things the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believes are unacceptable.

[toxicrivalries]

hi! i saw your tags when you reblogged the f1 and linguistics post :) i am so fascinated with italian and how lyrical it seems to be (but my contact with the language is limited so this might be generalized). i would love to learn anything you know about the language, any lore, facts, etymology, history, etc ahahah anything really.

(plus i am a ferrari fan, i adore how passionate the italians are!)

oh my god okay so ! you've pressed the infodump button times 2 because italian is part of my research so Uhm. Yeah 😅🫡

(just so we're clear: i don't properly speak italian, i understand it very well and can bootleg speak it because i speak french and spanish - but i have read so many fucking papers on the linguistic features of it, and my native language is heavily influenced by it as well)

Okay I'll spare you the hard science and math side of it even tho it makes my brain go BRRRR (listen. you can take the physics & engineering man out of physics & engineering but not the physics & engineering out of the man. resonant frequencies im love.you) BUT

so there's 3 different things that combine to make italian sound very melodic, especially to english speaking ears: intonation (the pitch variation sentences have), rhythm, and word stress. all languages have these features (and some also have tones, for example famously: mandarin).

italian has intonation that varies a lot within a sentence (compared to english), there's a very notable up down nature to most simple statement sentences, and even more variations when you get into complexity. that's the first thing that makes people say italian sounds melodic or lyrical.

rhythm is a biiiiit more complicated to explain but if you've ever had any classes on shakespeare or the homeric epics you've encountered the concept at least theoretically. the "iambic" part of "iambic pentameter" is the rhythm that shakespearean texts have when spoken. now, unfortunately there's no academic consensus on what rhythm italian has (for reference english has trochaic which is the opposite of iambic - stressed syllable followed by unstressed syllable) (DUH dun DUH dun DUH dun). but there IS academic consensus on spanish, which is a sister language to italian: spanish has the same as english. anyway yeah languages have rhythms, this definitely plays into the equation, we (i) just don't know how. (any native speakers who may have an answer to this are welcome to PLEASE TELL ME I'M SO CURIOUS)

and then finally word stress! okay sorry but english kiiiinda sucks at expressing word stress because one of the reasons english speakers suck at saying names from my culture is they seem to not perceive word strsss the same way. Regardless yeah, word stress means there's one (or more) syllables in a word that are louder and/or longer than the rest. some languages always stress the same syllables in words (french always stresses the final syllables, which is why it often can sound very staccato). most languages with varied word stress have rules about which syllables can be stressed. italian varies it - the most common word stress is the penultimate syllable, but the two on either side of it (antipenultimate, and ultimate) are often common too. figuring out where the FUCK the stress goes when you're faced with a new word you've never heard someone say out loud before is every italian learners nightmare (send help i am SUFFERING).

all these features combined mean there's a lot more variation in the overall melody compared to english which is why it sounds lyrical (I've heard people describe it as sing songy before too) to english speakers!

jesus that's a lot of words 😅🤣 hope that answers one of your questions ❣️

[angeltreasure]

hi angel, i have a question/prayer request. Ever since I was brought into the church in March I have been having very vivid dreams in which i am mortally sinning (things that are very specific to me and my struggles) and IN THE DREAM i think about having to confess these things. sometimes when i wake up i do not know if it’s real or not. once im more awake i have a better handle on the fact that it was a dream but this is like almost every night. at least 3 times a week. do you think this is spiritual warfare? Please pray for me. thank you 🤍🤍🤍

According to my personal experiences and asking an exorcist, yes this is absolutely spiritual warfare when I was in a state of mortal sin. The exact same thing happed to me and the nightmare would often make my sin even worse than what I had done. I recommend doing an Examination of Conscience tonight before bed. Write down in a list the type of sin you made AND the number of times you committed the particular sins. Go to confession as soon as possible with the list and immediately to penance after. The nightmares should then stop. Don’t be afraid to go to confession!!… I’ll absolutely pray for you!

Litany of St. Pio of Pietrelcina

Lord, have mercy.

Christ, have mercy.

Lord, have mercy.

Christ, hear us.

Christ, graciously hear us.

God the Father of Heaven, have mercy on us.

God the Son, Redeemer of the World, have mercy on us.

God the Holy Spirit, have mercy on us.

Holy Trinity, One God, have mercy on us.

Holy Mary, Virgin Immaculate, pray for us.

St. Pio of Pietrelcina, pray for us.

Beloved of God, pray for us.

Imitator of Jesus Christ, pray for us.

Good shepherd of the people, pray for us.

Model for priests, pray for us.

Light of the Church, pray for us.

Adorer of the Blessed Sacrament, pray for us.

Faithful son of St. Francis, pray for us.

Marked with the stigmata of Jesus, pray for us.

Patient in suffering, pray for us.

Helper of the dying, pray for us.

Director of souls, pray for us.

Heart of gold, pray for us.

Apostle of mercy, pray for us.

Worker of miracles, pray for us.

Consoler of the afflicted, pray for us.

Lover of the Most Holy Rosary, pray for us.

Helper of souls in doubt and darkness, pray for us.

Comforter of the sick, pray for us.

Example of humility, pray for us.

Source of wisdom, pray for us.

Mirror of the divine life, pray for us.

Lover of Jesus Crucified,

Resigned to the will of God, pray for us.

Doing good upon earth, pray for us.

Filled with the spirit of self-sacrifice, pray for us.

Our help and hope in all our needs, pray for us.

Vessel of the Holy Spirit, pray for us.

Leading us to Christ, pray for us.

Our spiritual father and advocate, pray for us.

Crowned with glory in Heaven, pray for us.

God our Father, You helped St. Pio of Pietrelcina to reflect the image of Christ through a life of charity and self-sacrifice. May we follow Your Son by walking in the footsteps of St. Pio and by imitating his selfless love. Amen.

[fourswords]

y'know just the fact that hylia had to ask link whether he was going to take revenge on the kingdom that held him in contempt or save it from doom was enough of an eye-opening moment as it was (even though hylia already knew what his answer was going to be):

but genuinely if he hadn't already died and could've heard what hylia said about his imprisonment and suffering being "willed by the heavens" because it was "necessary to transform him into the one fit to wield the master sword" i think he might've just been like Actually. Fuck you guys. Revenge it is. because while link DOES stand with his comrades again after his imprisonment and DOES call them his friends even after their betrayal and DOES pray for their happiness above the clouds with all his heart and DID want to take to the sky with them.....the emphasis on the land itself being what link fights for more than the people is absolutely woven into the story here. when he stands above the crowd of people and promises to always defend the land of hylia, he looks out at the mountains, not down at the crowd, and even says:

"Though people's hearts may change with time, this land's beauty, pride and purity never change. If you have need of me... ...then I will forever fight to defend you."

and the amount of times the destruction of the land is emphasized....

"Wicked desire assaulted the world's surface, staining it the color of obsidian... ...and the mountains, the plains, and all that flowed pure on the earth were ruthlessly scoured by fire."

and when the demon king strikes link down and goes on to continue his rampage before hylia eventually seals him away, link doesn't think even once of the people until the red loftwing appears and link asks him if he would show their people to the skies. instead, he thinks this:

"My hometown... The beautiful air... The mountains... The rivers... ...reduced to this. Will this be the last thing I ever see?"

like. he stands with the people even after all they've done to him. he acts as their figurehead. their pawn that they cast aside to torture and rot and only dragged back out because lord dagianis died and they finally decided that a hero was needed again. he fights with them. he calls them his friends despite everything. he hopes for their happiness. but first and foremost, it's the land itself that he fights for, not the people living on it. not really. when he says "people's hearts may change with time" he kind of even acknowledges that—it's a verbal slight against them and all of their fickleness concerning him and his imprisonment and his freedom the instant they were in danger again (same as when he said "It was you—my own people—who said you had no need for a powerful hero. And now that it's convenient for you, you want me to fight?"). and maybe nothing would've changed if he'd heard his suffering was ordained by the gods. maybe his love of the land still would have won over his hatred of the people and the gods doing what they did to him and he still would have fought just the same. but i honestly would not have blamed this dude one bit if he'd just decided to be like "Fuck This. Fuck All Of You." and dipped. he's suffering more than jesus out here

[allegraforchrist]

Being someone who is not eager to tell the truth, is something the Holy Spirit has heavily convicted me about. It’s taken me so long to learn that lying, white lie or convincing, is worse than telling the truth; because of the burden of being deceptive, being secretive, and holding onto guilt, shame, and fear.

While it seems obvious to others who are more self-aware and have been able to prevent themselves from lying on any occasion - it’s much more difficult when you’ve spent so many years cultivating an identity for people’s approval, by lying. Through lying, you kept relationships. Believing that being high maintenance, and receiving high levels of constant attention, meant I was important and ‘cared about.’ I admit I’m a liar. I’ve been a liar for years, and this damaged my ability to be vulnerable, reliable, mature, and confident. It’s ruined my ability in the past to maintain friendships, and even now is testing my ability to have a relationship with Jesus.

Yet, the Holy Spirit doesn’t depart from me, it constantly catches me in thoughts of scheming lies or covering for myself, or making excuses, or throwing blame to old circumstances. I don’t feel ashamed any more, because I know the root of lying - and that is being uprooted by centering my identity in Christ. I have already been forgiven, as 1 John 2:12 says. And in being forgiven, I can only be forgiven if I forgive Matthew 6:14-15, and curb my trespasses.

My sin of lying is a burden that is being lifted, as matter of fact, it is lifted, because I am a new creation. However, it doesn’t mean I don’t take responsibility for when I am tempted to or do. God convicts me instantly when I think about it or merely try to. The same is with any other way I may be disobedient towards God. I have to read my Bible and treat it as the weapon it is. I must put time into fasting, I must learn to pray, I must not be lazy, I mustn’t be angry or bitter, I mustn’t let my thoughts of love keep track of wrong, or debt. No. None of that. So as a liar, I encourage you to let Jesus move you, let Him teach you to love. Because love is the greatest fruit of the Spirit, the greatest Act of all. You cannot expect to do miracles and live a Holy life, without love being at the center of it all. Who is love? It is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, our Almighty Adonai, our Holy Personality that lives within us. Any sin, any wrong, any improper self-fulfilling desire, can be uprooted by the works of love. Meaning you must love to receive discipline and correction, for that is how God shows you He loves you.

(Proverbs 3:11-12 “The Lord disciplines everyone he loves; he punishes everyone he accepts as a child.”)

There’s nothing wrong in being corrected, your suffering builds endurance, which builds character, and makes you mature in emotion and Spirit. It makes you seasoned with salt. Don’t despise God’s correction or discipline. Let your heart be open to it and obey it.

(Deuteronomy 5:29 “Oh let their hearts be inclined to fear me, and obeys my commands always, so that it may go well with them and their children forever!”)

It is easier said than done, but that’s where love moves you. All that you should do and should not, be for the Glory of God, the one who so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him, shall not perish but have eternal life! (John 3:16).

My weakness as a liar, opens me up to repent, and learn what it truly means to unconditionally love, and live in the commands and life of Jesus. To be humbled, severely, and speak truth. To live in the Way, the Truth, and the Life. To make Christ stronger in me, in my Spirit, for that is where the battle is won. Knowing Christ is in my mind, my heart, my body, my tongue, and my Spirit.

Amen. Amen. Amen. 🩷

[faithfromanewperspective]

i'm not sure i have strong enough words to express just how bad it is for everyone on the planet in every possible way it is that christians are using the name of a god who became a man who humbled himself to the point of being killed by people after and during a lifetime of showing and teaching how to turn power structures on their head--just to have power over people. like, the more you understand the gospel the more you realise there are no words to describe how opposite of it what is currently happening with every self-proclaimed christian who is wanting, let alone actually expressing and getting away with taking power over another human made lovingly in the image of God. i don't know if you realise how bad it is.

it's bad for those people (well OBVIOUSLY) because their hearts aren't soft and ready to listen to God and fear is ruling and they don't know God's love, not truly, they're not able to love others, not when they think love involves wielding any power over them. it's bad for them because they are leading little ones astray. that is bad because--and you can interpret this in different ways depending on your theology of how universal salvation is and whether you believe in eternal punishment--Jesus literally says if you do that it's better to be drowned in the sea with a boulder tied to your neck. that's what they're threatened with and they're so far gone they don't realise that they might just be the ones leading the little ones astray. and how do you even get to that place? that you're so arrogant and not at all self aware? this is why it's bad for them. they just go further and further down that path.

it's bad for anyone impacted by it, obviously, oppression helps no one and also--what comfort can you offer?? i don't know how to express how doubly worse it is when christianity is presented and has been for millennia a hope for those who are oppressed now. a theology telling them they are valued when the world doesn't. a hope of an eternity of freedom and no suffering and getting to hang out with God and not have to be 'below' any classes of human just straight up dignified. a theology that when those who are 'above' them get ahold of it, they have a tendency to let them be freed or at least be a lot nicer and more respectful. how can we hold out that hope to anyone on the planet right now, when it's in the same name as something that has caused oppression for centuries? how can we let them decide if they want to choose it, how can it ever seem real to anyone, when you've got this mainstream narrative of what being a christian is, and it sucks?

and it's bad for every single christian who may not be directly oppressed by it. who might not be oppressed by anyone because they're seen as 'good' for believing the right things and they know how to be nice people and live out the gospel in ways that ordinary humans can--why is it bad? because for millennia christians have been just ordinary people who have gotten through incredible things because of hope for something that's bigger than themselves. i'm not talking about personal salvation here; i truly don't believe it can ever be the same motivator as the fact that we have a God who believes in righting injustice and who cares for every single one of us and when people start talking about him, captives get freed, people get dignity, there's a little bit more equality. and if some suffer still, they at least get the hope of an eternity where we have to deal with none of this.

but the eternity we're painted a picture of is the opposite. it's where the privileged oppressor gets to never experience pain again just because they said some words and believed some things and the hundreds of people they have driven away from being able to choose the same thing don't matter. an eternity where there is no justice, only the idea that every sin is the same and deserves mortal punishment but if you happen to be one of the few who gets taught the right things you get out of it, yippee. it's an elites club who are supposedly chosen by God to have no consequences for the way they have lived lives carelessly, tom and daisy from the great gatsby style or even worse. no consequences for the people they have killed and not thought about even offering the idea of this bliss after death to, after they took all the bliss they had in life. no consequences for how they drove person after person away from this hope through their own behaviour. no consequences for how they twisted the words of an ACTUAL GOD to mean the opposite. no, because Jesus died for them.

THIS IS THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF WHAT THE MESSAGE OF THE GOSPEL IS, AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN.

the message of the gospel is that the ways you've messed up, you can take that pressure off yourself and feel the love of a god who was willing to hang out with you and die for your sake. you can love others with that same love too, watch as they let go of the pressure as well. pressure to be a certain class of society, because all are valuable under God. pressure to please people. pressure to believe what someone else believes. pressure to be perfect. pressure to convert people ???? (like. who even added that one?) pressure to appear good. pressure to perform. all of these things. and be caught up in a wave of something that is inevitable: when people feel this kind of freedom, it's always going to catch on and spread and the source of it is going to go viral. we all want and need that. it's simple.

but then you have the people who are meant to be stewarding the source of this peace, now unable to feel it for themselves. now adding on themselves and each other all the pressures described above. now the gospel means nothing. now it's a tool used to oppress. now it drives a colonialism that robs those that have been reached out to supposedly so they could feel the same peace. now it drives weapons and wars and campaigns twisting science so taking someone's choices away somehow equals protecting them from sinning (??) as if it's not driving them away from the very thing they need, should they choose to embrace it.

i genuinely don't know how we're not all mad. but i do, and it's been a strategic game of turning the best qualities of people who want to submit to a god who loved us so much, against truth. against justice. against taking a stand. and it's happened for centuries; so long that it's become the norm that people want to 'conserve'. and i know i have a stronger sensitivity to injustice than most. but the point is that this is wrong is a fact so glaringly obvious that anyone coming in from the outside can see it. can see what's being presented is so opposite what is written in the book waved around to justify all that is being presented. and then if you're used to it you might try to explain it away. to extend grace to those who may have unknowingly perpetrated it, while ignoring all of the damage control that needs to be done that there simply aren't enough people who see through the bullshit to do.

but the gospel is also about justice. and you seek refuge from what doesn't work, find more progressive christian spaces, and when you start to question things like eternal conscious torment you might start to forget this a little. the premise of why a god would die being that humans are capable of this. humans are capable of taking something so good and using it for things so bad. so bad that nothing done by humans is going to fix it. because humans can't undo death. that's kind of the point right? and all this, everything i've described, taking away hope and a concept of equity in eternity if not now for so many is literally that bad. that Jesus had to die. something drastic had to be done to fix it. and sure, question what you've been taught on hell. but don't think that God doesn't care about this huge injustice that is being committed in his name. why aren't these people scared? that their faith isn't being proven, quite the opposite, by their works? why don't we warn them?

and in answer to that i think that they actually are scared. i think that was their problem all along, they were scared of losing power, scared of losing God, that they had to go above and beyond in such twisted ways to make sure they were in, they were better than others, and it made them so scared that they had no room left in their heads to realise, actually, the only thing they had to be scared of was losing the hope they were shown so that fear might take over in cruel, self-preservational ways and they might drag others away with them. and when that happens, that is when, yes, what they're scared of can happen. they can lose God. and they already think that it's going to be bad. but they don't even realise the extent of what they've done.

whatever befalls oppressors is up to God. may he have mercy, but have greater mercy on those who have been impacted by these fear-power-control spirals which weren't of their own making. may he have the mercy to give a humanity the tools to undo all the bits and pieces of hurt and generational trauma that get people going down this path to begin with, tools that begin at the very humanification and death and resurrection of a god who loves us. and may he hurry up. because even if you don't freak out every time a person on this planet dies and there's a possibility they'll go to hell (try not to go down that path if you're not there, nothing good comes of it and you'll just be stressed all the time) there are people being driven away from hope by people turning it into the opposite constantly. even if you're far away from the West, the minute you try to find authorities on christianity you get exposed to this and no one taught you how to be wary of power did they? no one taught any of us. that's what led us to be complicit in this for so long.

and i'm sick of screaming at closed ears. i'm sick of people saying it's not quite so bad or 'just the americans' or thinking queer acceptance might solve every problem in the church. we need to go deeper than that. question the very foundations we're built on, do they line up with what we say we believe, or what is the most effective way to get rid of ideologies and habits we don't need? we mightn't need to cut off physical hands and eyes but we need to know when to be brutal with ourselves as a community or we're never going to heal. we need solid theology that drives us from the very heart to live like it. i'm sick of arguing back an forth if a singular action is permissible or not (when did we even learn to view things so black and white?) when we need to go back to our roots; our mission.

i still believe it all lines up. the weird things we might choose to do to show our God is good, with our lives. the pattern of the powerful and cruel and careless and power-hungry with their power being shot down by God in order that liberation might occur, both in our bigger social systems and in our own hearts. i still believe that from abraham and right down to Jesus there's a hope that's going to rock the world in good ways and it's going to have no racial profile to it but it's going to be a hope for anyone who is oppressed and a kind call to work against oppression in yourself and outside for those who are not. i still believe it's not a white thing. not a thing you need to abandon your culture and its rich history and mythology for, but a straight up hope that can motivate us to love others in ways that we'd burn out from doing otherwise.

but right now we are getting burnt out. because how can I ever feel a part of something with the very people who are causing harm or are at the very lease unwilling to call it out? how can i ever rejoice in the hope i have when it seems like things are going the opposite way? how can I ever relax around anyone when i'm either doing damage control when i share my faith or i'm trying desperately to reconcile the horror i'm seeing with people who genuinely have no idea that a religion could do so much harm. and that's the thing. it couldn't do so much harm if it were not used so oppositely to what it's supposed to be. and i don't know if there's anyone else who has to see this so constantly. to try and escape with other things but it always comes back. in the way i'm desperate for justice. for kindness and equity to prevail. clinging to a belief that no one seems to see the same way that I do.

[star-eyed-angels]

Journal Entry

This is about the recent election. If the topic is not something you want to read please scroll away🤍

I feel it goes without saying on my stance on the election results. It’s so strange. To be here for two disastrous election outcomes. I remember the first time coming to my blog and feeling an agony I prayed I would never experience again. Yet here we are. It’s like entering a cursed time machine.

This is nothing like my usual writing. In fact this will not be tagged. If you choose to read please just keep in mind it’s heavy. Heavier than anything I’ve posted thus far.

This is a letter not to anyone on here, but to people I thought I could trust. People that I’ve found would not save me in a burning room. I’ve written this as a way to come to terms with it. It’s been hard to digest. In the back of my mind I always knew, but seeing it come to fruition is its own type of heartbreak. I’m not ready to post it anywhere else. But I figured I’d post it here as an outlet. And In case anyone feels the way I do so you know you’re never alone.

I’d like to preface this by saying while I’m not a very religious person, I do believe in a God. I do believe in Heaven. I do believe in more. There are mentions of religion of God in this letter so if that makes you uncomfortable feel free to scroll away.

Last thing. I want to make it clear, this is a safe place. You are safe here. With me. Anyone who disagrees can kindly get the fuck off my blog. You are not welcome. You have every right to feel the way you do. Know that you are loved, if by no one else then by me. I am here if you need someone. Sending nothing but love and comfort your way my lovelies. Thank you for reading this far. If you’d like to continue the letter is below the cut 🤍

Last warning lovelies.

You tell us to choose peace, to choose love and avoid hate. But my dearest friend how can you say such a thing? How can you preach such a belittling comment when you’ve chosen a man who wants anything but peace. Someone who supports violence, enjoys it in fact. He doesn’t care about us. He doesn’t care about our beautiful earth as she wilts and dies. He doesn’t care about our children who are watching us adults tear each other into pieces. He doesn’t care about us as we fight just to stay alive. He doesn’t care about anyone. He does not care. HE. DOES. NOT. CARE. He’s started a fire with no intention to put it out. He will watch our country burn from the inside out.

You keep preaching that Jesus is king. That God is above all else. But who has called this into question? Not I. I’m well aware of who my king is. And so is everyone else. We pray and plead with him to save us. To protect us through what we know is going to hurt. Murderous growing pains. Jesus is still my king, let me be clear. That will never change. But right now my mighty king weeps in the skies above. For his people’s suffering is just beginning. And our mother. Our beautiful mother mourns for the sorrow sweeping over her children. So no I have not forgotten. I know them as they live on through me.

Maybe it’s you that’s forgotten, dear friend. Could it be that deep in your heart you know? You know what this is doing? How wrong it is? How this is not what he would have wanted? Is this your way of justifying putting us up for slaughter? By preaching love and peace when it didn’t bother you before? Are you uncomfortable? Is the voice louder than you thought? Is your conscience not as forgiving as the ones you defend? But it still won’t change your mind will it? You won’t see until it’s late, if you come to see that is.

So friend, where does that leave us? I suppose it’s a turning point. At a crossroads, if you will. You may continue to rejoice. You may continue to cheer. You may continue to smile and celebrate a victory in your book of wins. And what will we do? Even though you do not care to ask I will tell you anyways. We will prepare for the worst. We will do our best to navigate through the fear. Through the uncertainty. We will not ‘be okay’. But we will manage.

I fear I already know the answer, but one thing still nags at me.

Can you tell me old friend, will you stand and protect me when they come for us? Will you witness as they rip us to shreds? Will you watch as they burn us alive?

I suppose it doesn’t matter.

I’m not sure I could even pretend to believe you no matter how hard I try.

You’ve already sacrificed so many of us. You’re already preparing your front row seat to watch us be slaughtered. You’ve already thrown us to the wolves.

And you’ve done it for a wolf in sheep’s clothing, no less. You’ve allowed him to deceive you in the name of God. Sacred words twisted and broken into daggers. sharpened at the hands of the ‘righteous’.

So forgive me stranger, but you may not ask for peace. There is none left. For it now lays among our bloodied corpses.

[rentedvsl]

honest question: do you believe that people who have raped children should be forgiven? i just cant believe the idea that God would want me to "forgive" someone who hurt me like that multiple times throughout my childhood. i can forgive all the sins committed against me except that one, because that one is just... so much worse than anyone else understands.

sorry if this question is more than you can handle. i saw a post where you talked about God wanting us to forgive, and i just honestly want to know, do you think people who have raped children should be forgiven for what they have done?

Hi there! Thank you for asking this question, as heavy as it may be. This is definitely a difficult topic.

Mark‬ ‭11‬:‭25‬ says, “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”

According to God's word, we are called to forgiveness. That includes the things that feel impossible to forgive or the things we feel don't deserve to be forgiven. People treated Jesus in corrupt and immoral ways while He was here on earth as a man. Things happened to Him that He did not deserve in any shape or form. They beat him, mocked him, flogged and tortured Him... He was stripped bare of his humanity and dignity as they cast lots for his clothing & degraded Him in every way that they could. These men were wicked. They were unaware of how corrupted they had really become, they were slaves to their own evil thoughts. When they hung Him on that cross, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing..." Luke‬ ‭23‬:‭34‬ ‭

‭‭God does not agree with what happened to you. He does not condone it or want to brush it to the side and ignore it. In the Bible when Lazarus died, we see that Jesus wept, even though he knew Lazarus would raise from the dead & was already aware of the eventual good outcome. But when Jesus sees the people weeping, he is described as “deeply disturbed in spirit.” Your pain, your hurt, your mourning... it moves the Lord & he weeps with you. He understands. He knows why you're angry and broken from what happened. He doesn't blame you... He wants to heal you.

Forgiveness doesn't mean that we stop hurting completely. Forgiveness doesn't mean that we no longer feel angry, or no longer question why things happened, or feel broken and bitter from it. We are human. Forgiveness is the act of releasing someone from the debt of their sin against you, meaning you no longer hold it against them. Forgiveness says, "i acknowledge this and the pain it caused. but like my Father did on the cross, i choose mercy. i release you."

Forgiveness is just as much for you as it is for your debtor. Matter of fact, I think you will find it is actually far more powerful for you than them. What happened to you was intended for harm, but God is a great redeemer. He wants to transform your suffering into glory, your mourning into dancing; take whats broken & make it beautiful. (Gen. 50:20). He longs to hold you, heal you, hear you.

The idea of forgiving this person may feel overwhelming, incorrect, or even impossible. But take heart, what is impossible with man is possible with God. (Luke‬ ‭18‬:‭27‬). Under the wings of the Lord you will find refuge. He will restore parts of you that you thought you may have lost forever.

Anon, you will be in my prayers. Please don't hesitate to reach out for anything & know that you are abundantly loved.

[honest-moth-of-silver-grove]

Ask: soldier poet king thing but for the castlevania trio

Ask: Soldier, Poet, King thing but for the Castlevania Trio? 

A/N: Okay this is a newer ask, so I’m skipping ahead, but I was obsessed with this trend when it came out on uquiz…Fun fact: did you know the original song was written about Jesus? And not D&D? Such a bizarre world we live in. 

As always, please REBLOG.

❂ Soldier, Poet, King: Castlevania Trio Edition ❂

♘ Soldier

Trevor is a soldier; one who’s been training since birth to do one thing only: kill monsters. His entire family's legacy, at least before his family was killed, was protecting Wallachia and the surrounding area from creatures of hell, from beings belonging to the supernatural. The Belmonts made it their mission to seek out the powerful and terrifying- to study its strengths and weaknesses and to record them for future fights. Their library, the infamous Belmont Hold, is a testament to their guardianship of the people. Honorable and caring, Trevor may seem aloof and cold on the outside but it’s merely a facade. Dealing with his own inner demons, he may have shyed away from his destiny in the past, but now, he’s embraced it and accepted his role as a protector of people, and a keeper of tranquility. He does not hesitate to sacrifice himself, his body, or his life- if it means protecting the people he loves. 

♤ Poet

Sypha is a poet as a Speaker, a wordsmith, and a seeker of knowledge. Her people dedicate themselves to the preservation of knowledge across generations and regions. While Speakers rely on oral history, preferring to keep their stories in their memory banks. In this way, Speakers are writers without pens and authors without paper. Speakers are also advocates: they go where the work is hard, yet necessary in order to serve people who are suffering. They see the beauty and the potential in everyone- every living thing has its place on the earth. They are a people who see time as fluid, not as an uncontrollable cruel mistress but as a wave that binds people together across all eras. Sypha has such insight and heart which give her great strength. Using her Speaker Magician abilities and knowledge, she shields the legacies and the hearts of the people she loves. The things she records will continue to embolden her lineage to come.

♔ King

Alucard is a king, the sole son of Dracula, and the inheritor of Castlevania. His birth is more than noble, thanks to the genius stature of his father, but also of great significance thanks to the renowned kindness and virtue of his mother. Born between worlds, a dhampir must see beyond what people and vampires want, to distinguish what they need. Not truly belonging in either world, royal or peasantry, Alucard is tasked with sitting above it all, choosing to use his knowledge and vantage point for the betterment of humanity, even at his own expense. A man of few words, Alucard acts where lesser men would merely boast. Following the founding of Village Belmont, he will continue to hold himself to a higher standard as he oversees the birth of a new age. Poised and committed, his immortal self will no doubt continue to govern a new era of monster hunters and scholars. 

[thequietmanno1]

Thelreads, MHA 294, Replies Part 1

1) “Last time we had mirio and then Machia went hooonk shiuuuu, because Momo is as badass as we think she is. Now, let us see what shall take place, on Chapter 294: Final Performance”- The closing moments of the arc, and the League’s time together, as one of the Core members prepares himself to leave the spotlight for good…

2) “oh hey look, dead people

that was certainly their last performance, that’s for sure.”- And they won’t be the only ones, if Compress succeeds in getting Tomura out of this Jam the League are currently facing. 3) “WAIT WHY THE FUCK THEY PUTTING GRAN TORINO INTO AN OXYGEN MASK

THAT FUCKER IS DEAD

HE GOT CRUSHED THE FUCK UP AGAINST THE GROUND BY SHIGARAKI AT FULL FORCE, TRUST ME HE IS NOT GONNA NEED THAT MASK”- Well, they did the same for Nighteye after he got shish-ka-bobbed, so I think it’s standard medical practice. Besides, Gran Torino might not be dead – he’s almost certainly paralysed though, with his spine broken clearly in two. If any adult hero survives this war, they’re almost certainly losing a piece of themselves doing so, judging by the count so far. 4) “Yeah Jeanist, but let us not beat around the bush, those people there are dead. Mt lady? Dead. Midnight? dead. Gran Torino? Super Dead. Endeavor? I wish. But perhaps eventually.”- I’m honestly going to start keeping a record of all the adult heroes who’re still alive and in one piece by the end of this series, and I don’t think we’re gonna be breaking the single digits with it. 5) “Yeah, but remember Mirio those are high-ends, they can learn as the fight goes along. The longer the fight goes on, the harder things are gonna become.”- They’re Near-High Ends actually, according to Garaki. The difference seems to be that they have above-average intelligence for a Nomu, but still no sense of true self, and so can’t vocalise or anything like that. Thankfully this means they can’t strategize and are little more than attack animals. Sadly, this means they still have capabilities that are close to the High-Ends’ own, so are still tough and dangerous regardless. 6) “Also, oh my god Ida calling Bakugo by his hero name- I’m still not used to that. And the fact that Bakugo of all people couldn’t come up with a comeback? Jesus, he really is beyond saving, he’s gonna be buried right next to GT”- Things are dire when not even Bakugou’s feral energy can keep him in the fight anymore. 7) “oh dear god Mr Compress is gonna do something to save his pals, isn’t he?

…

OH DEAR GOD THE TITLE OF THE CHAPTER- OH GOD MR COMPRESS YOU BETTER NOT”- I’ve seen people give an arm and a leg to save their pals, but I’ve never seen them give their ass before. 8) “Now tell me Mr compress, couldn’t you compress yourself so you can escape the cables and then just decompress? Surely you could, right? And it won’t require you making a dramatic sacrifice, right?”- I’m honestly uncertain if Compress can compress himself – we’ve never really seen him pull it off as an infiltration tactic before, despite how useful it’d be, and whislt he can do so to the league and pull them back out, he may be incapable of undoing it fro the “inside” so to speak, which would only lead to him suffocating or something. At the very least, he was forced to resort to this more drastic measure instead of self-compressing to evade Jeanist’s wires.

9) “I think you can exclude Dabi from that list, he already did got everything he wanted an- OH MY GOD TOGA IS CRYING”- Sadly, Dabi’s dreams can only be satisfied with maximum suffering inflicted on his family, and everybody else by proxy. And it’s a tragic case of dramatic irony, whilst Compress has sympathy for Dabi’s unfulfilled wishes as a part of the team, and Toga’s own emotional turmoil – and Toga would do the same were the situation reversed – Dabi does not give a crap about either of them, save the usefulness they can provide to him in the frenzied death-match he desires. 10) “Well you better act soon Compress, because Jeanist is getting sick of having to tie you guys up for longer.”- Now his attention’s no longer distracted by Machia, Jeanist is free to ensure the conscious members of the league are no longer left that way whilst the battle is pitching up. The less variable they have to keep track of, the better, and given what Compress does here, despite his lack of overall combat power, it was the right call. 11) “ACTUALLY I’M GETTING MORE WORRIED ABOUT SPINNER DYING BEFORE COMPRESS DOES GOOD LORD MAN I KNOW YOU WANT TO PUT THEM TO SLEEP BUT LOOK AT THAT FACE”- It’s not like Jeanist can accurately track their pulse and breathing from a distance away through the cables,  especially with the chaos erupting around him. The best he can do is focus on not breaking their necks and hoping that they pass out quickly so he can ease up on the pressure…but again, the situation is dire enough that even if Jeanist were to accidently kill them like this, he wouldn’t be blamed or held accountable for it. 12) “OH GOD HE’S NOT GONNA COMPRESS HIMSELF COMPLETELY, RIGHT? JUST A CHUNK OF HIS OWN BODY SO HE CAN ESCAPE THE CABLES

OH GOD NO”- Also a neat attention to detail that Compress can only perform this move on his right side, as that’s the only one with a flesh-and-blood arm remaining, Overhaul’s injury against him further handicapping the league’s chances of success at the crucial moment. 13) “AT LEAST YOU WILL SURVIVE THIS ONE, RIGHT? SURE, YOU’LL BE THE ASSLESS COMPRESS, BUT STILL, YOU’RE NOT GONNA DIE, RIGHT?”- He got them out, but in such a manner that means he himself won’t be able to flee with them – not that they even could overall, with the surrounding heroes mobbing them in an effort to prevent the primary instigators of the war from escaping and rendering the overall point of the conflict null and void. All Compress can do is sacrifice himself to give the others some breathing room, and leave the rest in Spinner’s hands to get Tomura out of there. 14) “HOLY SHIT HE WAS FAST

WELL, HE WAS MORE AERODYNAMIC WITHOUT HIS ASS AFTER ALL. LESS WEIGHT TO BE CARRIED.”-Compress is an under-looked member of the league, but his abilities have always been a source of support for them, giving them an edge with infiltration and similar, along with his observations of the others and accurately judging who needs help the most. In this moment, both the powerhouses of Tomura and Machia have been felled, and Dabi is not interested in lending his aid to the “leader” when his own goals are nearby, yet the support of a weaker, yet genuine team player proves crucial for the League to not completely lose this war. 15) “I’M STARTING TO FEEL LIKE THE ASS IS NOT GOING TO BE THE ONLY THING THAT WILL BE SACRIFICED IN THIS ESCAPE OF HIS”- Sometimes, winning a war comes down to having a person who’s willing to sacrifice more than the enemy in order to score a victory for his side, no matter the cost to him personally. 16) “YES BUT CAN YOU PLEASE DO THAT WITHOUT KILLING YOURSELF PLEASE? TWICE DOESN’T NEED COMPANY RIGHT NOW HE’S FINE”- Desperate times, desperate actions – and yet, the effort put into those actions is undeniable. Compress is no powerhouse fighter, but he’s always been one to lay down his life on the line for the others, which is a quality that Tomura is able to attract in his followers. 17) “That name seems familiar, but I can’t remember from where. Also, is this gonna be a Compress backstory reveal?”- It was name-dropped as one of many noticeable Quirk-users in history by Gentle during his infiltration of UA, desiring to be a standout villain of notoriety similar to him and Re-Destro’s ancestor. Ironically, Gentle actually seems to have more in common with Harima’s methodology than his actual descendant.

18) “Well, I must say, his ancestor must be extremely disappointed with the path he picked then, because what Compress got involved with is a long cry from exposing injustice, if the piles of civilian corpses they left behind those past 20 minutes alone are anything to go by.”- Not unlike Re-Destro’s own past, the legacy of a notable ancestor become twisted and distorted over time, becoming a negative influence on the next generation that guided them down a wrong path when they may have chosen otherwise if left to their own devices. In fact, the same can be said of both Dabi and Tomura’s own pasts as well – many of the league are those whose past histories isolate them from normal society in some manner and drive them together in a common cause in opposition to it, and Compress’ backstory shows how even a well-meaning example like his Robin Hood ancestry can change a man for the worse in trying to emulate that. (MHA ch 291) 19) “Wonder how much a DNA test is worth considering people with Toga’s quirk, who can become another person.”-And a hint towards Compress’ impending reveal, that he too, is one of such a renowned bloodline in their little group. 20) “Oh, not worth the time to kill him if your dad is not up to watch it huh, alright Dabi, can you fuck off then I want to know more about the assless compress”- Some translations I saw said that Endeavour had passed out from the exertion of body-checking Machia unconscious, and Dabi didn’t want to kill Shoto whilst their father wasn’t awake to see it. He’s got a plan in mind for how this fight’s going to play out, and he won’t accept deviations. 21) “THE MASK

IT’S OFF

OH GOD NO AM I READY TO GAZE UPON WHAT MR COMPRESS IS LIKE UNDERNEATH IT? DARE I WITNESS THINGS HUMANKIND WAS NOT MEANT TO KNOW?”- Behold and witness the Hawtness!! 22) “hello?”- Compress had to lose half his cake to balance out his good looks underneath that mask.

23) “Also, he’s the heir of a lineage of vigilantes wanting to fix society and he ended up a super villain trying to bring forth the destruction of it, as well as the genocide of an untold number of innocent people. Ouch Compress, that’s not gonna look good when you get to the pearly gates, your grandpa is gonna fucking kick your ass.”- Even if change is important to fixing society’s flaws, it’s arguably more important to bring about the right kind of change, not destructive anarchy like the League enacts in a short-sighted effort to “fix” things, no matter the good intentions. @thelreads

[firstumcschenectady]

“Starting With Care” based on Genesis 2:1-3 and Matthew 6:26-34

We're going to start with the bad news: you can't control anything.

Or, at least you can't control anything important.

You can't control how long you'll live, what the quality of that living will be, what illnesses or injuries you will endure, how long your loved ones will live, if or when traumatic events will occur, nor how they'll be responded to.

I was recently a part of a conversation about suffering led by a medical professional who – rather appropriately I thought – was worried about the fact that patients sometimes assume their suffering is God's punishment. I agreed with him that this is just not TRUE, and it is awful to think that you are both in pain and that you deserve it. But, I am also aware that if pain and suffering aren't a punishment from God, another option is that life is a crapshoot and there isn't any meaning to be found in it – and for a whole lot of people that's MORE uncomfortable than thinking God wills it. Because if God's punishing them, or teaching them a lesson, then the suffering AT LEAST means something and maybe even has redemptive value. But if it was just a random thing, and it could have happened to anyone and just happened to happen to them – well, for a lot of people that's WORSE.

Because then it is entirely out of their control. If God is punishing them, then IF ONLY they'd acted differently, then they could have prevented this from happening.

Right? It is an awful theology, but the human desire to pretend we have control is really quite powerful.

And, let's be honest, we can't control things but we can …. impact probabilities, right? Cancer is MORE likely if you smoke, if you don't exercise, if you don't eat well. Even better, you aren't likely to get hurt falling off a rock wall if you don't attempt to climb a rock wall. Right?

That said, once I broke a toe because a container of chili fell out of my freezer and landed on it. No rockwalls involved. Another time I sprained an ankle horribly – at the ski mountain – on the INDOOR stairs when I was grabbing lunch. Probabilities aren't guarantees.

I find some comfort in the Matthew passage that tells us that worrying and trying to control the uncontrollable is in human nature. This one isn't a modern day problem and we don't have to blame the 24 hour news cycle, smartphones, or social media. This is a human problem. We are aware enough of the uncertainties of life to worry about what may happen.

Jesus seems to recommend not worrying about the little things – about eating and drinking and finding clothes. Which, funnily enough, were exactly things that most of his audience was worried about most of the time because he was speaking to people who often didn't enough enough food, or drink, or a change of clothes.

In the face of their daily struggle for survival, Jesus says,

“Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?”

And I get his point. Life is vivacious, nature takes care of itself, hoarding is unnecessary, and truly no one is as beautiful as a flower. But also, I don't get his point. Because it sounds a whole lot like saying, “Sure, there is a system of oppression out there that took away your family's land and livelihood, and now you are hoping every day to get hired back to work the land so that you can afford to eat tonight, and sure you are likely to die soon of malnutrition, but don't worry about it, God will take care of you.” And, while I TRULY believe that God does want to take care of everyone... well, deaths from malnutrition HAPPEN so it seems like that “promise” isn't one that often works out.

Compassionate people don't say to starving people, “don't worry about food.”

So, what the heck is Jesus doing?

I think I did a bad job in picking this passage, particularly that I didn't look at the verses PRECEEDING these ones. Namely, “No one can serve two masters for a slave will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” These lines are a big deal in the Bible. For a world in which people thought being wealthy was a sign of God's favor, it really turns the tables. This passage encourages the poor while challenging the wealthy. And it is placed before the bit about the lilies of the field.

And I wonder if Jesus is at this point talking to wealthy people. The ones who DO have enough to eat, but are worried about it anyway. The ones who do have clothes, but fret that they're not enough.

And I wonder, too, if Jesus is doing one of those really deep teaching things where he is saying to the poor - if you work together you'll have enough, but when you have enough don't worry about getting more like the rich people do. Trust in each other and God, don't horde.

Furthermore, I think maybe Jesus wants those who are oppressed to look up long enough to see they system that is oppressing them, and that it isn't God's will. God made a world of abundance, PEOPLE are keeping each other from accessing it. Part of the problem of trying to survive is that you can be so pre-occupied with it that you don't notice you shouldn't have to fight that hard.

God made enough. It was true then, and it is true now, just as it is true that people died of not having enough then and people die of not having enough now. God made enough, people have distribution problems. And I think it's OK to worry about the distribution problems.

I really appreciated this week's essay from We Cry Justice. I'd like to read a little more of it to you:

God creates human partnerships. In short, God created a system whereby all material and emotional life is tended to. So if we are to be fruitful and multiply – if we are to add to creation – the systems we create must extend the provision of care.

…

Within us lies the potential to create and re-create a system that revolves around and produces care, a system where needs are met. We will need each other to do so. We will need to be in partnership, working together to be fruitful and multiply.1

We can't CONTROL anything, although we can do a lot of damage trying. We can, however, be in partnership with each other and God and seek to “extend the provision of care.” We can choose to notice that care is inherent in creation, and that God's care hasn't changed. We can remind ourselves that there is ENOUGH, and that's good. We can remember the lilies of the field – when they're useful – that creation is beautiful and awe-inspiring.

(Image of mutual care: Ellis Nurses with supporters picketing for better care for their patients, and for each other. Photo by Sara Baron)

We can remember that things aren't now as they should be, but they CAN get better, that God is working with us to make them better, that we're working together, that many people are in this together. That we want a world where no one has to worry about what they will eat or drink or wear, because the resources of the world are abundant there is enough for everyone – and in the kindom of God the resources are shared with the abundance of God.

It is a dream worth holding onto, and remembering, and seeking. We can start with care. And every little bit helps. We can't control it, but we can shape it. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Solita Alexander Riley “In the Beginning, There Was Care” in We Cry Justice (Minneapolis, 2021), p. 145.

Rev. Sara E. Baron  First United Methodist Church of Schenectady  603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305  Pronouns: she/her/hers  http://fumcschenectady.org/  https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

May 26, 2024