#is a scourge in our society

[internalriot]

cringe culture makes me so Sad and upset. why r u taking a picture of a random gnc and/or fat person in a walmart to make fun of them online. doing that is a lot weirder than the gnc/fat person i can tell u that much. why r u making fun of people for saying shit like ‘Hm i think minorities should have basic rights and also u shouldnt say slurs.’ why is caring about other people and not conforming to gender norms cringe. ppl will b like ‘hahaha hey look at this freak that has interests that dont align with what i think is cool and fun. haha look at this annoying loser that deserves to die for not speaking with a tone that i find acceptable or normal.’ and not see an issue with it

[bolithesenate]

i genuinely want to tear someones throat out with my teeth

[nctjpeg]

i think a lot of men think too highly of themselves and that needs to be corrected

for example: simone biles’ husband

[kiefbowl]

plastic surgery is such a scourge on our society. you've got 21 year olds getting bbls. I want those surgeons to die so bad

[thewertsearch]

ERIDAN: for all that trainin you did ERIDAN: i wwouldnt be the incredible holy wwizard i am noww wwithout your help […] KANAYA: I Hope You Use Your Magnificent Powers Of Light And Hope For Goodness And Purity And Lets Not Forget Science

At this point. Kanaya is Human Sarcasming better than most actual humans.

ERIDAN: dont wworry im all ovver that shit you dont evven knoww KANAYA: Uh Oh I Hope That Didnt Come Off As Too Sarcastic […] KANAYA: Please Dont Take Too Much Offense ERIDAN: haha damn kan if thats your idea of offense bein made then i honestly gotta fuckin wworry for you ERIDAN: tell you wwhat ill givve you some lessons in dealin out the dark umbrage to repay you for your tutelage in the wwhite science

I think Dave taught Kanaya more about the art of trolling in a single conversation than Eridan could in an entire lifetime.

That guy can troll better than most actual trolls.

ERIDAN: wwhats that thing there KANAYA: The Matriorb KANAYA: I Was About To Go Hatch It In The Core To Restore Our Race ERIDAN: that sounds ERIDAN: hopeful […] ERIDAN: if theres goin to be any sort a hope for our race as the prince of hope i demand to be invvolvved ERIDAN: so dont go anywwhere wwithout me got it […] KANAYA: Fine

I’m all for the construction of neo-Alternia, but I really don't think Eridan should be on the planning committee, unless we also want a neo-hemospectrum.

Honestly, the only trolls I'd really trust to rebuild their society are the bottom half of the hemospectrum, and possibly Gamzee. The other highbloods can go sit in the corner.

ERIDAN: its not magic wwe talked about this kar KARKAT: RIGHT, IT'S POWERED BY SCIENCE, I FORGOT. KARKAT: OR HOPE. WHATEVER THE FUCK THAT MEANS

I don’t see how Hope translates to a robot-exploding beam, though.

If it was wizards he was blowing up, I’d understand, because it would be consistent with my theory that he's weaponizing his hatred of FRAUDULENT MAGIC. If anything, his Science Wand should strengthen a robot, since it's a product of the TRUEST SCIENCES.

ERIDAN: i had a harder time than anybody wwith this game ERIDAN: it wwas really fuckin unfair wwhat challenges i got saddled wwith ERIDAN: i wwoulda fuckin MURDERED for a land full of a lot a harmless brains and fire ERIDAN: but no ERIDAN: it wwas so lonely ERIDAN: hey guys anybody wwant to come hang out wwith me in the land a wwrath and angels

That sounds cool, though. Angels, I assume, are how Hope is represented in his Land, and I’m sure Eridan synergized well with its wrath. I wonder what physical form it took?

ERIDAN: anybody at all i knoww it isnt anythin like one of your flippin land picnics ERIDAN: anybody please ill evven settle for the kittycat shipper cavve girl

You can't complain about loneliness and then insult your ‘friend’ in the same breath. That's not how any of this works, and the fact that you're unaware of this should tell you everything you need to know about why you're lonely.

So Karkat does know about Nepeta’s little crush. He is a relationship aficionado, after all.

Poor Nepeta.

I sort of figured Karkat didn't reciprocate her feelings. He's preoccupied with plenty of other redrom prospects, and he basically never mentions her.

Karkat’s honestly a little too nice to Eridan. He’s being such a bro here, but what Eridan actually needs is to be brought down to size a little.

Granted, I think Eridan needs a bigger shock to the system than an angry tirade from Karkat. I feel like Terezi could tear him to pieces - but since it's unfair to expect her to put up with him alone, I'd put both the Scourge Sisters on this assignment. >:)

What Karkat is aptly demonstrating here is that there’s a difference between an Eridan kind of asshole and a Karkat kind of asshole.

Let's be real, here - Karkat's a dick. But he's a dick who holds no true malice, knows when he's crossed a line, and is willing to sincerely apologize for his past actions, and make amends.

Eridan possesses none of these qualities, which is why he sat alone in his house for a month while Karkat befriended the entire cast.

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Dogs

Hildur Knutsdottir: submitted for the approval of the midnight society, i call this the tale of the night guest Knutsdottir: its about a woman who gets a full night's sleep so you would think she would be well rested (she's not) Knutsdottir: it's almost like something is possessing her while she sleeps (something is)

Knutsdottir: this possession Knutsdottir: you might think it's the yule lads (it's not the yule lads) Knutsdottir: or maybe grylla (its not grylla) Knutsdottir: perhaps its the hidden people (its not the hidden people)

Knutsdottir: now this woman also has a dead sister Knutsdottir: so you would think maybe the ghost of her dead sister is possessing her King: Poe: Lovecraft: Koontz: Barker: King: um King: was there supposed to be a parenthetical there Knutsdottir: not saying

Knutsdottir: now of course when this woman has weird sleep problems, you would of course take advantage of our socialized medical system to see a doctor (she does this) Knutsdottir: but even socialized medicine is not free from the scourge of sexism (there's a lot of it) Angela Carter: yes yes this scans

Knutsdottir: anyway that's the Icelandic socialized medicine system for you Dan Simmons: why do you have to bring politics into this? Simmons: i just want a nice apolitical scary story Knutsdottir: ok i'll fast forward to the cat murders Lovecraft: WHAT

Knutsdottir: yeah someone's been killing cats (it's her) which you wouldn't expect (she loves cats) Lovecraft: i can't listen to this! Lovecraft: i can tolerate rac- Barker: we know howard you say that everytime Lovecraft: it's my catch phrase! Barker: no it's not!

Knutsdottir: every night she walks across the city (to the harbor) Knutsdottir: now you think she might be visiting Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur (but she's not) Cynthia Pelayo: aw that hot dog ain't no good! King: what? hot dog? Knutsdottir: you're entitled to your opinion (it's actually the best in the city)

Pelayo: what dya even put on a hot dog over there? King: why are we talking about hot dogs? Knutsdottir: með öllu Pelayo: pfft! með öllu indeed! Pelayo: ya don't even know what you're getting!

Pelayo: i tell you, you want a hot dog, you get it CHICAGO STYLE Pelayo: mustard, chopped onion, pickle spears, sport peppers Pelayo: YEAH! CHICAGO STRONG, BABY!!! Pelayo: GO BEARS OR MAYBE WHITE SOX!!!

Knutsdottir: no no see a hot dog should have remolaði sauce (and apple ketchup) Pelayo: wtf! the only sauce that goes on a dog is mustard Knutsdottir: WHAT?! like the infidel bill Clinton?! (he ordered with only mustard during his 2004 visit) Knutsdottir: NEVER!!! Knutsdottir: it's með öllu!!! always með öllu!!!

Lovecraft: now i prefer my sausages providence style Barker: no you don't Barker: that's not even a thing Lovecraft: no it is! its when you put a Vienna sausage on a slice of white bread Barker: howard, we all know you don't eat ethnic food

Pelayo: who's ready for mouth watering hot dogs?? Lovecraft: ah sausages! Pelayo: Hebrew national hot dogs! Lovecraft: Lovecraft: [sweats]

[chihoshisai]

Double Arrangement

Sabo x Reader

cw : royalty au, strangers to lovers, arranged/political engagement, reader is royalty, sabo is cold (but will warm up over time in other chapters) // wc : 3.851 words

Part 1

“What a happy day, isn't it? For our families to have settled on this union.”

“Yes mama,”  you inclined your head towards your mother in an acquiescing manner — a tall astute woman known for her stern character hidden behind a kind smile. Seeing the faint smile blooming on your lips, one that had been forged through years of etiquette lessons, she turned her radiance towards the guests seated opposite the two of you. In turn you did as such, your eyes landing first and foremost on the man who had just been appointed as your fiance but not without stretching your lips further as decorum would have it.  

Much in contrast to proper manners, your betrothed far from spared you the necessity of giving you a smile, rather keeping a pointed expression that soon found interest elsewhere from your profile. His aversion made it easier for you to scourge his features — named Sabo, blond haired, round eyed, an ailment on his left eye that was enough to incite scorn as scars were the same as losing one's standing in society. Even if the decoloration of his affliction far from bothered you, society wouldn't be as kind behind closed doors. Nevertheless, he sat looking attractive in his blue colored garments, leaving your heart to delay its flutter only once enough time would be given to get acquainted.

But for now, you had bigger worries for a forced engagement had been casted upon your shoulders, as the second child but first born daughter of your family. Your prospects were either to marry high nobility of your land or board a boat overseas. Following an unconventional past experience with the world beyond your borders it rendered you fearful of the unknown as someone thrown out of her element like a freshwater fish thrown into the ocean; you mused it wise to keep a higher authority, acquaintances and your family closer to your grasp in your homeland. 

Love stories were a luxury of fiction, a sweet temptation to divert the mind and the heart from reality. A reality which sat before you in all its grandeur, as the chatter of your soon to be family in law echoed in your mind. Perhaps other members of society were accorded the pleasantry of seeking love matches. Even if you seeked the answer to this question, envied them for it, the reality remained that you were constricted to the coffins of your rank. Suffocating as it sometimes were, your gender additionned with your birth number made for a more breathable world. And now, as your bottom rested on a rather comfortable sofa, the invisible entrapment of a promised marriage came to suffocate your reality. In a rather swift and decisive way too, as just only a week ago the notion of marriage remained as a simple afterthought in your mind.  

“I trust this union will make you see us as a part of your family. Of course we don't dream of ever replacing your parents, but that we will forge a similar bond over time dear,” the interpellation of the women sitting opposite you stirred you away from your musing.

Another polite smile. “Of course, Mrs. Didit,” you stared at the woman while hiding away the wretchedness she aroused in you through her pamperous and obscene behavior. Additionally, the father too, Outlook III, shared a common tinge of character as his wife, making the pair far from agreeable let alone likable. Despite their play at convincing your family, your heart far from agreed to entertain the false promises of accepting them as your kin. 

“I believe it is time we let our children get acquainted with one another,” your mother raised aloud,  stirring another round of stiff smiles and chuckles as last pleasantries were given. 

With the emptying of the room, you finally felt like you had space to breathe — nevertheless you kept your posture, back straight and hands resting on your lap, as your position demanded it. You gave a quick glance at your bothered who had yet to say much on the occasion with the adults present. Under normal circumstances, it would be considered rude to not so much as partake in the conversation. Was it an attempt at silently rebelling the mariage? Or was he simply the shy type? In any case you could only hope he wasn't the tied tongued type.

“They all seem over the moon, as if they're marrying themselves,” you gave a stark chuckle to lighten up the atmosphere. 

Sabo looked at you with a blank indecipherable expression. “Wish they would tone it down a bit but they'll probably be at it until the actual ceremony happens.” His voice was low, steady and devoid of any feelings.

A part of you rejoiced at his response — at least your days wouldn't be spent in total quietude. “And after that they'll fill our ears with talk of babies,” you added, hoping to bond on a shared enemy.

However your claims were met with an iron wall. “Are you opposed to this mariage?” Sabo asked, sending such an inquiring gaze to pierce through yours it took you aback.

“Should I be?” The bridge between your eyebrows furrowed itself.

“I always thought princesses like you dreamed of grand mariages and promises of love.” 

The incredulous statement made you spill out an offended scoff. To hear an unfiltered opinion of the masses made you realize just how absurd your gilded world must sound to others outside the walls.

“Am I wrong?” Sabo pressed further, raising an eyebrow as he kept his unreadable composure.

“Well,” you began, shifting over your sitting cushion. “I did in fact dream of love and all its promises once upon a time ago.” You fiddled with your fingers, blinking as a diversion to avert your eyes.

“I feel there is a but coming, feel free to speak freely,” Sabo gave a respectably nod.

You thinned your lips, feeling guilty of pointing out an obvious reality. “We're strangers,” you curtly said. “Even with a flashing ceremony, what love is there to be found with someone I know less of than my own personal staff?” You explained. 

Sabo hummed and nodded in approval. “Glad we agree on that. I wasn't planning on seeing this through either way.”

It was with utter unsettlement that you tilted your head to the side, bewildered at his announcement. “Excuse me?” 

“I do not wish to marry you,” Sabo frankly repeated, keeping his uptight sitting position and fists clenched on his legs.

“Surely you will not do me the humiliation of not seeing this through?” Your voice took on a breathy note while your core started feeling the restraints of your corset.

“Someone of your rank will recover from this,” his sharp words seemed to cut past the layers of lessons and facades built into you.

Your breathing quickened. “Surely not after such an affront, I will be sent abroad!” You slowly shook your head, mostly for yourself than to make him realize your desperation.

“Oh what a bad thing,” Sabo sarcastically said, and at the spiteful glare you  gave him he quickly added. “You will be fine, I'm sure.” 

“No. I agreed to this marriage, to avoid such a fate. We must work this out, find a common ground, something, please!”   

Sabo kept his walls, only allowing himself a slight disapproval shake of the head. “I'm afraid there is nothing for us to negotiate on.” 

“Then what is your reason for refusing? Responsibility? You will have none for my brother is king. Being a Duke shouldn't be far off your alley,” you rather harshly spat, feeling the rumbling of an unsure future elevate the rhythm of your breathing. 

“My circumstances are not for you to know,” Sabo dryly responded.

Your palms clenched into fists as a boiling down your stomach raged. Nevertheless your upbringing prevented you from spewing profanities at the man before you. “Then, if I may, how will you waltz your way through this engagement? Or am I not entitled to know?”

Sabo mustered your gaze for a few moments. “Well, as you are a part of this, you should be made aware that I intend to keep it up for appearance's sake and once…” he trailed off, furrowing his eyebrows not from anger but from discontent. “Once my affairs are in order, I shall disappear without pinning no blame on you whatsoever.” 

“And how long will this charade last?” The polished nails from your fingertips clawed at your skin unconsciously.

“Say two to five weeks at most.” 

You took in a deep breath, feeling the straightness of your back starting to burn in discomfort. “I thank you for your honesty. Had you been sincere from the start, we would have both greatly benefited from not having to be in one another's company for such a short time,” all traces of counterfeited courtesy left your face seeing as there was no need to keep up a facade with a deceitful stranger. 

“I had no intention of proceeding with this engagement. Things went haywire which led to this unfortunately,” Sabo tried to plead but you paid him no mind, receiving it instead with a dry scoff.

On this note you stood up, feeling betrayed and reluctant to stare a second longer into his emotionless blank eyes. “Oh what a bad thing to happen,” you sarcastically spoke in turn, scarcely refusing to accord him a curtsey before your brisk heels stomped the carpet and carried you elsewhere. 

----

Love never came easy to all. This you knew and were ready to make the necessary work towards achieving this desired necessity for a smooth mariage. But instead, you found yourself entrapped with a mixture of anxiety, fear and despise towards someone you were ready to move mountains for. Someone who had spoken their mind freely and truly, sparing you the hollows from darkness of the unknown by confiding in you rather than lie or keep secrets. Someone who had expressed their wishes, which you had, in retrospect, poorly reacted to. If your mind wasn't in such a frenzy as to what fate awaited you at the end of the month, you would instead be wallowing in self-deprecation for your poor display of understanding, let alone empathy.  

You had no knowledge of the whereabouts of your mother, nor the guests she entertained for that matter, therefore your pace led you to a secluded place, bolting in a respectable way between the hard workers of the castle. Climbing a flight of stairs, hands treading up the hem of your skirts, you ignored all until you reached the royal infirmary. 

There your body found comfort, basking in the sunlight that seeped through the open curtains, the transparency of the uniform white color that inhabited the room, leaping along in a similar way on the sheets from the single bed with rows of pharmaceutics surrounding it, the vague smell of antiseptics and the sight of the nurse. A kindhearted woman with purple hair, named Kobato and sporting glasses who had been accorded the privilege of nursing not only you but your family line as well, while the physician busied himself through other household summons. 

“Are you ill, your highness?” The woman asked, scrambling to stand from her desk to bend in a curtsey, her eyes luring over your form.

In fact, through your rush in coming here your cheeks had shot red in color and your breathing had increased in a ragged mess since leaving the sitting room. The nurse's concern was well placed.

“I'm fine,” you breathed and went to lie on the bed. Its plush, silk texture soothed the exterior of your predicament as the nurse went to stand nearby.  

“Would you like a glass of water?” She asked, taking notice of your breathless behavior.

You nodded. “That would be appreciated, yes.” 

As she busied herself, you slumped further into the pillow, staring at the pristine ceiling that, unlike the many other rooms lacked in lavish decorations, which often than not prevented your eyes from feeling overwhelmed. Your mind followed suit, sinking in the news you received the day before that you were to be engaged, plus meet with his family the next day. How, despite having the knowledge that no pleas or arguing would help your case, you gritted your teeth and welcomed an obscene couple into your home, played at false pretenses during a brunch and finally as private time had been bestowed onto the pair like a reward, you faced the soon to be news that it would all fall apart. 

“There you go miss,” the nurse handed you the glass. You propped yourself into a sitting position, eyes lingering in the past while you uttered a faint appreciation of her gesture before drinking. 

Soon the glass was freed from your person and you laid back down, propping your hand on your core like a corpse as you felt your rapid rise of the chest quell down. 

“Is royalty unlovable?” You asked the nurse, fully expecting a certain answer.

Her honeyed voice filtered through your ears like butter. “Of course not! It would be everyone's greatest honor to marry into the royal family,” she assured you. 

A silence occurred in which you focused only on your breathing. 

“Is this about your recent engagement?” Her tone carried uncertainty as she felt dubious whether her question was appropriate.

“I'm afraid I am not to marry,” you dryly said.

“What terrible news, how so?”

Your eyes maintained their focus on the white ceiling. “He has other obligations inquiring him to run away and which he does not wish to share with me.” Seeing as the nurse had returned to her desk, you failed to witness the compassionate gaze she bore. “What am I to do? I do not wish to leave everything I've ever known behind to marry another elsewhere,” you murmured in a low voice. Your heart clenched while your knuckles turned white. Such a display would grant you a lecture from your mother, but thankfully the nurse was one of the few discreet, tight lipped individuals of the palace.

“Your highness could accompany him into his business if she doesn't wish to end the engagement,” the nurse spoke after a moment of musing. 

You bit your lower lip, feeling she had a point for as -if- the marriage would come to pass, both of you would be thrown out of your respective residence to start anew in a new one. “Is that my only option?” You asked. Begging your family to betroth you to another at this stage would not only be folly, but a complete affront they would never be compelled to face. 

“Or you could give him a reason to stay. Convince him that the pros of your alliance far outweighs those of his obligation.”

You shifted over the bed covers, turning towards the nurse to glimpse at the truest smile one could find here. There were no traces of malice from her face or words of advice. The history that had settled over the years compelled you to trust in her words as you gave her a hopeful smile. 

“Thank you, I'll try,” you sat up as she nodded. At the end of the day, you were also a member of the royal bloodline — if your brother and mother were too proud to marry you off to another member of society, then why let the man in question fly his wings elsewhere? Why, after knowing of his intentions, would you sit by and let it happen? What good would come off it but your own loss of face? Like many, you had your own pride too. Plus arranged marriages weren't uncommon, and God forbids you let it dissolve without a common ground of understanding. 

It was with this resolution that you bid farewell to the nurse, thanking her for the advice and time she spared you and headed down the halls once more. You marched, once again sparing few notice at the constant buzzing of the staff amidst the castle, instead forging a rough plan following the guidance you had received. 

After having a general idea to propose, you confidently turned the doorknob of the room you previously sat in only to be met with absolute desolation from the lack of living being. A pout rounded your lips — of course Sabo wouldn't have stayed alone in the same room for so long. You closed the door behind you, thinking of the places a guest might take interest in from the palace but resorted to asking the working personnel for any sightings of your fiance until you found the answer.  

“Sabo, there you are,” you walked upon the grass and further into the garden; flowers of all kinds lounged the side, and lush wisteria trees descended like an accomplice to partly hide the height of your betrothed. 

Hearing his name, he perked his head up in your direction, giving a look, again far from decipherable. “Are we to return to our parents?” 

You shook your head, stopping once you had entered the coffins under the tree to stand before him. “Not at all.”

“Then what is it?” His tone was rather impatient, which didn't come as a surprise.

The scent of the flowers blooming into one aroma prevented you from losing your cool. “May I ask, are you refusing to marry because you love another? Will you wed someone else?”

“Far from that actually. Though you could say there are others whom I love outside of this life,” his reply sounded disinterested, almost as though he owed you that much for the sake of your inner peace. 

Good. Then it meant there is place for negotiations. You ignored his innuendo, pressing further with your plan. “I'm aware you previously refused all forms of negotiations, but will you hear me out?” 

“Anything for her highness,” he sarcastically said, his eyes visibly fighting an eye roll.

Once again, you brushed aside his rudeness. “You are, as I imagine, planning on leading a life outside of your noble status, correct?” 

He nodded. “So?”

“Have you considered the cons such a life would provide?  Think, if you, or those you briefly fondly spoke of, were to fall ill how will you pay for the medical bill? I may not know which part of town you wish to live in but how will you seek refuge if a plague were to break out? How will you eat if a famine occurs?”

It was enough to compel him to roll his eyes properly. “Discomfort is of no concern to me. If nobles weren't living such a life, maybe the issues you spoke of wouldn't be a problem.”   

“Perhaps not, but the reality remains that it is. They exist, and you, who have been sheltered under the roof of said nobles, have made your body acclimated to such a life.”

“Which I refuse to lead any longer,” he darkly said.

“Then perhaps you could consider the benefits of a double life?” He raised an eyebrow which internally left you gleeful to have aroused his interest. “Look, political engagement like ours isn't only for couples to get to know one another while our respective parties benefit from it. We can also both get something out of it.” You took in a deep breath. “We marry, apart from your required presence at certain events, you lead a life free from the responsibilities of a Duke, which I shall assume instead while you maintain the financial security and aid the title provides.” Now that the cat was out of the bag, your heart raced in anticipation while awaiting his answer.

Sabo scoffed, baffled at your statement. “And how is it, your highness, that you can utter such words with confidence? Have you ever done paperwork?”    

Your expression twisted, offended. “Do not assume my capabilities based on my title. I'll have you know that as the second in line, I received an education, perhaps not as precise as my brother, but nonetheless fit enough to rule the kingdom if his life was to slip away! Managing a mere dukedom is like child's play!” You reeled in his face, even if the hidden truth remained you sometimes indulged more in dilly dallying than work.

“Apologies,” and for once he spoke of sincerity, for the fire in your chest quelled at his words. “Say we proceed with your plan, what is there for you in this? Surely not love?”

You briefly exhaled through your nose. “Love?” You brushed aside the preposterous idea with the wave of your hand. “What love is there to be found while trying to make a common agreement? I desire nothing more than to avoid being sent abroad.”

To your relief, Sabo didn't pry further in your reasoning, inclining his interest elsewhere. “How will you be so sure no one will pry into our business?”

“We could consider moving to the countryside. None will take interest in a couple that moves so far away from the town and it's gossip.” Finally, you felt seen, as the look he casted on you wasn't so devoid of emotions but one with keen interest. “Furthermore, if you do not desire this path, I am willing to sacrifice my privilege to be your companion on your journey.” With hesitancy, you wrapped your fingers around his hands, at first delicately for it was the first time you physically interacted with a man outside of your family. “Our worlds collided today, but it doesn't mean we can't make the most of it.” Your fingertips that now found ease on the warmth of Sabo's hands gave a slight squeeze to emphasize your point.

Sabo's eyebrows furrowed. “No,” he abruptly pulled his hands away from your grasp, showing no remorse from the abrupt shock on your face. “You speak without knowing of my plans. It may all sound grand to you, but I do not wish to carry dead weight with me.” 

“I am not dead weight!”

“But have you ever walked down commoner’s streets?” His eyebrows drew closer together and his voice had raised an inch, the reality of his location preventing him from properly shouting.

Ashamed to answer aloud, you bit your lower lip while averting your gaze.

“There is no telling whether the life I want for myself will be suitable for you. I can't let you accompany me.” He firmly said.

His tone was final, however you longed to plead your case further. Therefore you parted your lips, but before the sound of your resistance came forth, the voice of your mother came to interrupt instead.

“Ah, finally. We were beginning to wonder where you both had wandered off to.” Yet you spared none of your attention towards her voice, keeping instead a disappointed but hopeful look on Sabo.

Feeling more hurt than you'd like to admit, you watched as Sabo walked past you, his ignoring the following of your gaze along himself to rejoin the group of adults. It was also with reluctance that you stiffened your features, squared your shoulders with a straight back and followed in his tracks.

--------

Part 2

[heliphantie]

"Leap of Faith", ep. 20(85) of season 4 (March 29, 2014).

“Flim Flam Miracle Curative Tonic is Granny Smith tested and Applejack approved! Granny Smith drinks it, why shouldn’t you?”

“Leap of Faith” may be my favorite Applejack episode, favorite S4 episode and one of the top favorite episodes in entire FiM! Applejack-focused episodes in particular are interesting in that, rather than having her learned to be true to her Element, they’re often about testing her faithfulness to it, making her putting her sense of justice in question and having to decide when she ought to follow her moral compass without risk to bring harm with it instead of benefits.

Flim & Flam, in that regard, make pretty good antagonists for her. Two families have quite a few similar priorities: like Apples, Bros are pragmatic, seeking profit from their actions, and work perfectly in sinch for common goal, but their ethics are diametrically different, and as it happens, Applejack sometimes even prone to fall into temptation to use rather similar tactics (take decision to rationalize technology in lieu of traditional work, or use invitation to gala for /pretty sure, illegal in these circumstances/ selling apple products here to rich attendees – wouldn’t she just ask Celestia for financial aid to the national hero’s family instead? – and don’t we forget her alliance with Filthy Rich without Granny’s consent) before it backfires on her as well. So, she has valid reasons for having disdain for methods of Bros, because she’s been here as well and reaped the bitter fruits of blindly following such policies.

Brothers, in particular, make formidable kind of antagonists on the show: for representing most realistic, mundane, everyday sort of evil, which can’t be redeemed or obliterated unlike any other foe our heroes had to stand against. The evil of commerce and material greed! Moreso, they even can be amicable and work together with heroes without having to change their ways, if that means any mutual benefits. (And basically cemented as allies of Mane 6 in the end of the series.) For, as it turns, money is at once the major drive and major scourge of society, be it mankind or ponies.

Anyway, the moral of this particular story is, one crazy old lady is enough to put the crushing end to your successful scam operation. Fatal flaw of these sleek guys appears to be not thinking their schemes far enough to prevent coming close to any possible source of damage. Other than that, they’re pretty fine, aren’t they? They’re, essentially, an embodiment of the main reason for the franchise itself – product promotion, no wonder they’re more frenemies than foes in the end of day.

[theghostofloganroy]

I also understand that some of you may be appalled at the general lack of sympathy in regards to the death of five uber wealthy individuals but just consider this for a moment. In the last century or so billionaires have created an environment that is so financially hostile towards the lower and middle classes that we have to scrutinize every penny we spend just on the basic necessities often having to go without just to stay solvent, while they profit off of our blood sweat and tears.

The truth of the matter is that while you are crying on the bathroom floor having to make the choice between feeding yourself and going without just to pay the rent they would not give a flying fuck about you.

If anyone is to weep about this situation than it may be for Sulemen Dawood, a nineteen year old boy who didn't want to be there in the first place but went to make his father happy. And yes there is a solid argument to be made that he too benefited from the profits of our labour but he was nineteen years old he could of had the opportunity to make a difference in a positive sense, he could have had a lifetime to make right and perhaps he wouldn't have, we shall never know now.

Billionaires have so much power in their hands that they could make a real positive change for the good of all if they simply stopped exploiting us and that starts by them not hoarding the majority of the worlds wealth and for them to do that would mean they stop being billionaires.

There is so much unwarranted vitriol towards those on benefits many people believing that they are cheating the system and seeing them as as a scourge on society. When the ones who are truly cheating the system and are the real scourge society are the 1% with their tax loop holes and tax havens.

Remember Capitalism has always been and will always be a poison on humanity.

[ladiablesse]

republicans: haitians are a degenerate cannibalistic subhuman scourge on the earth and should be forcibly removed from our society

liberals: haha silly old men,,,,donald trump thinks haitians are cannibals because they eat oranges and he’s mr. orangeman hahaha,,,can’t wait to see what SNL has to say about this!!

[blimbo-buddy]

I still reel back over the fact that FireStar not only feels bad for TigerStar after he’s killed, but actively wishes that they had his strength in the battle against Bloodclan, who he now sees as a worse enemy, viewing Scourge in a even more deplorable light than Tigerclan and TigerStar

let me repeat that: FireStar feels bad for Tiger-“I can finally enact my plan of executing half clan cats in order to purify my new and improved Tigerclan and in the process, I will make an empty promise to this group of foreigners and take advantage of their desperation for food and a better life”-Star when he’s dead because of how he died at the hands of a non-clan cat. Now setting his fucking sights on destroying a foreigner group that’s introduced at the last second in an attempt by the writers to diverge attention away from the fact that the most dangerous villain - who actively wants to execute cats based on their lineage and “impure blood” so that a perfect clan can be made -that has been a looming threat throughout the entire series up to this point is a fucking clan cat.

Because god forbid we have the good guys defeat a horrible cat from their own society, because that would imply that something is wrong and needs to be fixed about this society! And we just can’t have that, no no no! We gotta shove a “scary murderous group of foreigners who are loyal to a cat who hates families” into the story! Because remember what FireStar says kids: Foreigners are the real enemy and our superior society never ever breeds any horrible individuals ever! Also our religion makes us better!

And by the way this is after he entirely, actively acknowledges TigerStar’s crimes against humanity through giving this big ass speech to everybody. This series has always been awful, The Prophecies Begin has shit writing, always has and always will

[djuvlipen]

07/04/2024, Chief Saidou Kabore ousts child marriage from his community

In Burkina Faso, in 6 years, child marriage rate fell from 51.3% to 38.2% among women married before the age of 18, and from 8.9% to 7.8% among women married before the age of 15.

“If we had three or four young women from the village in the civil service, our village would be more developed. Women would care about our well-being more than men. This is my vision of girls’ empowerment,” says Saidou Noom Kaboré, community leader in Bagma, some 20 kilometers south the Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou.

The 65-year-old man has always worked to ensure that girls from his village go as far as possible in school. For several years, he has been resolutely committed to end child marriage, a scourge that could prevent his community from thriving.

Chief Kaboré is on crusade against child marriage

Whenever he has the opportunity, the charismatic community leader brings men, women, boys and girls together under the palaver tree in the middle of the village to discuss girls’ education, which he easily contrasts with child marriage.

“My wish is that our girls succeed because the success of a girl, of a woman, benefits her entire community. That’s why nowadays no girl at school age stays at home. We support them as best we can after they enroll in school,” says Kaboré, standing in the middle of the circle.

At the audience in awe Chief Kaboré explains how to protect girls up to the age of 18 and even beyond, for them to have a happy marriage.

“A girl should not be given into marriage early, much less by force. Even if she is old enough to get married, she should not be given into marriage against her will. Girls are sometimes forced to marry old men. We must let the young girl choose her husband. Thus, her marriage will be filled with love and happiness,” he explains. 

In Burkina Faso, the efforts of the government, civil society, communities and community leaders like Kabore have yielded good results. From 2015 to 2021, the proportion of women aged 20 to 24 married before turning 18 fell from 51.3% to 38.2% and that of women aged 20 to 24 who married before the age of 15, fell from 8.9% to 7.8%.

Chief Kaboré works with the NGO Voix Des Femmes [in English, Women’s Voices], thanks to funds from the UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to End Child Marriage. The programme was launched in 2016 in 12 of the most high-prevalence or high-burden countries, including Burkina Faso. It promotes the rights of adolescent girls to avert marriage and pregnancy and enables them to achieve their aspirations through education and alternative pathways.

In Chief Kaboré’s village, everyone, girls and boys alike, understand the risks of child marriage and the consequences that result from it. Veronique Nikiema, a 14-year-old girl, is keen on her studies and believes that getting married before majority means jeopardizing your future.

“In my opinion, early marriage has many negative consequences. You can't do long studies. At this age, you are not able to carry a pregnancy, nor take good care of yourself, or a baby. You will no longer be able to obtain a degree that will allow you to have a good job,” she explains. 

Chief Kaboré’s success is recognized outside Burkina Faso

Saidou Noom Kaboré has saved many girls from child marriage, and his success is known beyond the borders of Burkina Faso. In 2019, Nafissa Ouedraogo fled neighboring Cote d’Ivoire to Bagma to escape child marriage, knowing that Chef Kaboré, who is also her uncle, would protect her.

“I was 14 when I was introduced to a 42-year-old man who already had two wives. I refused his advances. My parents therefore decided to forcefully marry me to this man they had chosen,” says Nafissa, now 19 years old.

When Nafissa's parents went to the village of Bagma to bring her back to Cote d’Ivoire, Kaboré made made them aware of the dangers of child marriage. Later, the man who tried to marry Nafissa was prosecuted for child enticement and sent to jail.

Kaboré's message is heard and assimilated by members of the community and relayed by the young people. For Thomas Kaboré, a young man of 30, thanks to awareness raising, no one will agree to give their daughter into early or forced marriage.

“Some of our aunts and older sisters fled forced marriage. They no longer speak with their families and have never come back to the village. Their children won’t know their maternal families,” he complains.

With UNICEF’s support, Nafissa Ouedraogo followed training sessions and strated her own business, a very popular one with young girls in the village.

“The NGO Voix Des Femmes helped me get started with saponification. I produced and sold liquid soap. I wasn't making huge profits. So, I gave it up and learned how to do henna tattooing,” she says.

Building on his succes, Saidou Kaboré will continue his fight against child marriage. He wants the girls of Bagma to complete their higher education, have university degrees and contribute to building the Burkina Faso of tomorrow.

[skaruresonic]

...do you think antis know that their obsession with seeing taboo NSFW content everywhere is really weird? nobody goes to work thinking "oh man Sonegg art will be the downfall of our society, I'd better harass the artist to protect hypothetical ten-year-olds," like what do you think the average person thinks about lol

nobody would even be thinking about polar bears in their day-to-day lives were it not for antis screeching that polar bears are a scourge on society every two seconds

[y-rhywbeth2]

'Filthy hierophant of the broken and the damned' is still a fun line. That's definitely the kind of company Durge would be keeping, yes. Two kinds of people pray to Bhaal, as a rule; predators who delight in causing suffering, and the utterly ruined and desperate who turn to Bhaal for mercy/salvation - to kill their tormentors. I'm sure that provided a very healthy view of humanity, always seeing the worst of it.

Also brings me to my opinion that at least some Bhaalists must be the hellfire and brimstone types (and the Baldur's Gate sect almost certainly is);

This world is unclean and its denizens full of wickedness, and they must be punished and encouraged to live a godfearing life, which his clergy will reinforce (specifically fearing the Lord of Murder, whose embrace is clearly a merciful act of love, and under his rule all will be good with the only ones left breathing his faithful in a pure world ruled by the (un)dead, free of living needs and the suffering and corruption they bring, or something.).

Living, a torment of sorrow and strife is a burden to great and to small. We faithful cure mortals of burdensome life and present it to death-father Bhaal.

Particularly when you bring in the hints of vigilantism in - his unexplored alliance with Hoar, god of retribution, and Bhaalists being noted to prey on criminals (who won't be missed) and ritually murder 'the deserving' for the appeasement of potential converts. There's definitely an air of moral police and divine retribution you can potentially read in there.

To bring death is a sacred duty.

You can get a similar vibe from the other Dark Gods. Myrkulytes apparently share the 'life is fucking awful, hail death' attitude; Loviatans 'the true nature of the world is pain and suffering so we should learn to endure (and enjoy)'; Talontars have victim complexes the size of mountains and want the world scourged with plague; Sharrans think the world is a cosmic mistake needing undoing; Malarites condemn human civilisation and higher thought; Banites think love and goodness is a lie used to manipulate and we all need to live 'in our place' carefully controlled by a strict orderly society by the 'deserving' (with careful watching for thought crime). Everyone here is so healthy.

Of course there are undoubtedly other interpretations of doctrine, as with all faiths. (Like in the Moonshae Trilogy Hobarth was clearly in Bhaal's church for the power it brought him, the luxuries he could get with that power, and the pleasure of killing and feared death for himself.)

'Within each god's church, mortal followers of the divine divide themselves into lay and ecclesiastic followers and splinter into multiple factions, sects, heresies, and cults [...] to the amazement of faithful worshippers, differences among the faithful - sometimes escalating to the level of heresy - are seemingly tolerated by most deities.' - Power of Faerûn

Past the core doctrine given by the deities, religious leaders are expected to interpret and pass on edicts for the faithful. These edicts often shape doctrine further, and Bhaal's temples and high primates/primistresses tend to be independent from each other, giving different edicts...

And the Baldur's Gate denomination has apparently gone for 'vile world must prepare for the End.'

[alicefromwhichplanet]

My new work! In this fiction I made my first attempt to create my OCs. They’re actually sparklings to be more specific:

Jinglestorm— Blitzwing and Bumblebee’s daughter, an orange jet, blue optics

Skystrophe— Megatron and Optimus’s son, a black truck, red optics (a bit inspired by Scourge)

Clobber— Strika and Lugnut’s daughter, a ground unit (like tfc Clobber) but in Strika’s color, red optics

This story is an AU of tfa/ my tfa fiction Heroic Nonsense. The three main characters, as members of a new patch of sparklings born after the Great War, also children of decepticon veterans/ autobot-decepticon parents, are going to blaze a trail to building a new world where autobots and decepticons are peacefully united, while exploring and healing scars left by the old warring world.

Follow their adventures! This will be a story about: trauma after war and how the gap between two race/fractions can be healed after war ended; the growth story of three children with complex identities.

Excerpt:

“Then why don’t you tell us about the beginning year of the Great War?” The old professor just can’t let her go. This time she isn’t sure. Her optics wander to her friends— Clobber sitting front right of her, is now staring at the window as well, her mouth agape in a daydream, her biggest optic half-shut, her history tablet almost shut down from power off. Slag! Her optics again wander to the back row. Skystrophe is there giving her a silent condemning look. His book is neatly opened to the page in use but he is clearly not going to give her the answer, and probably does not agree with her behavior of distracting in history class. Skystrophe loves history class, like his famous sire Optimus. Sometimes he is just insufferable.

Looking at Skystrophe’s silent condemning red optics, Jinglestorm is suddenly hit by an idea. She looks back at the professor and says with confidence:

“The Great War began about 5 million years ago. When the decepticon leader Megatron decided to start a riot.”

The classroom falls completely silent. Skystrophe suddenly looks down, pretending to be intrigued by his pencil. Alpha Trion frowns at the young bot, slightly nods and then shakes his helm, looking both satisfied and disappointed at her answer.

“Yes, that was written in textbooks before the war ended. But today, with the united government formed, and a peace treaty being reached permanently between autobots and decepticons— (his mouth corner twitches as he says that) today we say the Great War began when the former autobot government refused to pay decepticon miners full salary at year 917.”

He walks back to his podium with a slightly upset look, while muttering more comments. “The current government believes there are blames on both sides of the Great War, and they required us to be neutral about this part of history teaching. In the past we teach about the dangers decepticon riots posed to our society, but now they say the former autobot government was maintaining an unequal system on Cybertron as well.”

Jinglestorm nods attentively. “Yes. My carrier said…”

“Your carrier, Blitzwing, right?” Alpha Trion’s blue optics narrow as he looks into Jinglestorm’s optics. The girl shrinks a little at the coldness in them.

“You may sit down, Trainee Jinglestorm. ”

[thecurioustale]

It Is October 7 Again

I am going to talk about genocide today, and anti-Semitism, and a few other things. This is a long post.

Over the past year you have perhaps noticed the drastic uptick of Jewish people, both online and in person, who are reporting anti-Semitism. And you may have noticed that they are also talking much more often, more openly, and more passionately about Jewish cultures, traditions, and identity.

You should heed this: This is the telltale of a group of people who are being socially isolated, repressed, and wronged. Even casual, non-religious Jews like myself, for whom Jewishness is far from the center of their identity, are experiencing this. To the extent that the vilification of Jews is a reliable canary in the coal mine whenever a society is headed down an especially bad path, the past year has been an alarming one for Western nations, both inside and outside the English-speaking world. You know how we've been worried sick about all the book bans the fascists are doing? Yeah, well, this Jew-hate stuff on the left is cut from the same cloth.

Anti-Semitism is only one small plank of the fascist resurgence on the mainstream right, but it is one of three principal ideological planks (together with racial revolution and the elimination of capitalism) on the authoritarian left, and in the past year it has become the hottest of the three despite being the smallest. And this is where most of the consternation comes from among Jews, because most Jews (including myself) are also leftists. Our backstabbers this time are the people with whom, and for whom, we have done so much work in the pursuit of justice.

And it hurts. Despite our small numbers, Jews have always been integral to the struggle for queer rights, for sexual equality, for racial justice, for environmental stewardship, for fair wages, for safe workplaces, for affordable healthcare. And the hurt is palpable: "We were there with you. We were there for you. And now when it is our turn to call upon our friends, you cast us into the sea." And it's not like we can just stop being leftists. We have to coexist now in this awkward alliance of antipathy.

Let me tell you something, as a queer person myself (agender) and more importantly as a lifelong leftist: If you're siding with Hamas in this—an Islamic terrorist organization whose view on gay and trans people is that they should be put to death and whose view on women is that they should be docile servants to their male guardians—if you're siding with that over the existential self-defense of the free democratic nation of Israel, you need to get your head examined, because you're a special kind of fool...and also probably a bad person too, in dire need of some self-improvement.

If nothing else, even if you do side against Israel in the war against Hamas, you should be doing more to speak out against the deluge of anti-Semitism that is infecting leftist discourse and spaces, because it is discrediting the entire leftist coalition. Failure to speak out against hate speech makes you not only a fool and a bad person, but also a fake leftist. It means everything you've ever said about opposing racism and prejudice was meaningless, superficial blather, likely meant more so to make yourself feel self-righteous and socially accepted among your peers than to actually contribute to the causes of justice.

When an animal, or a person, or a whole society, is attacked by a predator—when one is already in the predator's grip and it is too late to flee—the first instinct is usually to resist. And at first there is the strength to resist, before the wounds accrue. So, in societies, this is the stage when people raise their voices in resistance. This is where we are at now. This is the time of story-telling among Jews, of reminders to one another that the gaslighting by our fake friends is false, that all of these narratives about Jews being the scourge of the Earth and Israel a land of Nazis are lies, no matter how ubiquitous these narratives may seem.

The language and imagery coming out of Jewish communities and people for the past year has been language largely of self-affirmation: "We are here. We are real. We are valid. What is being done to us is wrong. What is being said about us is false." This has been the growing refrain of Jews around the world for the past year, and you should heed it, because it concerns you. It concerns you because we share this society together and are in it together.

In the West we enjoy broad free speech rights and relative physical and economic safety to use those rights. And I am hopeful that the current spate of anti-Semitism is at a high-water mark, and that things won't get significantly worse from here. But even if this bears out, and things don't get much worse than they are right now, even this current level of bigotry is still deeply wrong and unacceptable.

And so there is that other refrain that Jews are also saying: "It hurts to be betrayed by our own allies, for whom and with whom we have done so much." I know I just said it, but it bears repeating: Few groups of people in the world have been more passionately committed to the causes of liberalism, liberation, civil rights, and progressivism than Jews, particularly secular Jews and Reform Jews (i.e. the least strict denomination of Judaism). This is because Jews are deeply cosmopolitan and civil-minded, believing in community action and coming together. And even more so it is because Jews are the ultimate refugees, with deep knowledge of the barrel end of guns and tyranny. Jews bear deep generational traumas and cultural conditioning, informing the near-universal Jewish commitment to the importance of upholding and expanding universal education, public health, civil rights, and personal liberty and dignity.

Bad-faith actors psychopathically call this uptick in affirmative language coming from Jews an attempt to distract from "the genocide in Palestine," as though it were merely a tactic in some insidious Jewish effort to portray Jews as the victims of their own violence. A disgusting lie, is what that is. But it does niggle at the mind, doesn't it? "Why are Jewish people pretending that the war isn't happening? Why are they ignoring the destruction in Gaza? Why are they only talking about themselves and their dumb traditions and music and crap?"

Well, we're not ignoring what's happening in Gaza, of course. We talk about it often. No one I've come across is happy that the Palestinian people are suffering. Rather, this kind of spin is just one of the many tactics of propagandists and radicals to distort the truth of their own anti-Semitic wrongdoings through any means, and, moreover, it is a time-tested tactic of racial supremacists and other cultural bigots worldwide to portray a persecuted minority's efforts at sanity and self-defense, i.e. through the sharing of their stories and customs, in a negative, selfish, and menacing light.

I want it to be known that Israel is not the systemic aggressor in the Middle East, and never was. Israel is a small country, alone in the region, surrounded and vastly outnumbered by mostly hostile, at best indifferent nations, and vilified by the wider world because of generations of successful anti-Jewish propaganda by anti-Semitic actors. Israel is fighting to preserve its very existence. It does get money and some amount of weaponry from America, and lip service from Europeans who are embarrassed by their past, but when terrorists are streaming over the border and rockets are flying, America feels very far away indeed, and Israel has always known that if it fails in its own self-defense there will be no one coming to help. None. Israel would be destroyed.

And many if not all of you who are opposed to Israel's ruthless prosecution of this war would be singing a very different tune if the name "Israel" were removed from the picture and you were inserted in its place: if, across the railroad tracks in your own town, there was a neighborhood full of people who would take any chance to murder you—literally murder you—with no far-flung federal government to swoop in and protect you. You're on your damned own.

That's Israel.

One year ago today was the October 7 massacre in Israel, when Hamas fighters did exactly that: They breached the Israeli border out of Gaza and murdered over a thousand people, and took hundreds more hostage—including people of numerous nationalities around the world—many of whom have since been murdered by their captors.

In addition to murder and abduction, Hamas fighters on that day committed sexual assault, physical assault, bodily mutilation, arson, robbery, and many other felonies. Going by the videos and voice messages they so boastfully recorded and posted for the world to see, they did so mostly in a frenzy of wild bloodlust. Madness, in other words. True madness, perpetrated by the insane, who had been radicalized into it through a culture that glorifies holy war, mass murder, and martyrdom, and which dehumanizes Jews as thoroughly as any society ever did, including That One.

On that day Hamas committed the single-biggest music concert slaughter on record anywhere in the world. They practically annihilated several small Jewish villages on the border. (And, to be clear, these were not newly-established settler homesteads within Palestinian territory, not that that would have justified it, but these were longstanding Jewish communities clearly on the Israeli side of the border.) The murder committed by Hamas fighters was indiscriminate—not the fake sort of "indiscriminate" charged of the Israeli Defense Forces, but truly indiscriminate, targeting people purely on the basis of opportunity. It didn't matter to these terrorists if their victims were passive and compliant, physically disabled, or children. Death to them all.

It was an act of terrorism. It was a crime against humanity. And it was, to put it mildly, an act of war. And you might find that inconvenient, but too bad for you. The most comparable milestone in American living memory would be the September 11 attacks. Israel formally declared war immediately—something that nations, including Israel in the face of past invasions, have done increasingly less frequently done since the Second World War, as the language of "war" has fallen out of fashion amid an arrogant belief by Westerners that we have somehow grown beyond it. A formal declaration of war is what Israel made, and it was proper that Israel make this declaration, and Israel was warranted in so doing.

As soon as the events of October 7 became publicly known, there were celebrations among Islamic terrorists, their sympathizers, and anti-Semites of all stripes worldwide—including Western progressives who have a whole punch of pride flags and hearts and kittens and puppies in their bios. The celebrations were immediate. They always are. When you belong to that bunch, there's never a wrong time to celebrate the murder of Jews, civilian or not, no matter how few or how many. And bear in mind: At this point there had been no Israeli counterstroke yet; none of the arguments which would find their voices in the ensuing months, about the supposed heavy-handedness of Israeli's response, applied yet. People celebrated this slaughter on principle, on the notion that Israelis—Jews, really—should be killed wherever possible, and the State of Israel destroyed. They celebrated on the notion that Jews are white colonizers (a lie that would be laughable if it weren't so deeply vile) and that only Muslims may inhabit this part of the world and govern its peoples.

And, so, like I said, I figured today would be a good day to talk about genocide.

Let's get into it.

That word, genocide, more than any other, is how anti-Semites, lamentably parroted by those who uncritically believe the emotionally-charged accusations of anti-Semites, distill the Israel–Hamas War. They reach for this word, which occupies the very top shelf of human atrocity, wantonly and shamelessly, in order to claim the mantle of righteousness for themselves, and to rationalize their own genocidal policy goal of exterminating Jewish life and self-determination in the Middle East.

It is unfortunate that we live in a time where people of bad faith and limited intellect instinctively reach for the most powerful, emotionally evocative language possible, bypassing any hope of nuance or accuracy in any arena of discourse where they are participants. It is unfortunate for two reasons: It misrepresents and thereby obscures the truth of things, and it saps this severest of language of its essential power when it is actually needed.

Most people in the West have never experienced war and don't understand just how horrible it is even under the best of circumstances. So, because of this, genocide is a very hard accusation to defend against amid the backdrop of war. Nobody wants to be a "genocide denier," and if you try and bring nuance into the conversation by arguing that all of these blown-up buildings and dead bodies are not "genocide," then you look either cynically pragmatic and ludicrously detached from the horrors of war, or you look like an apologist for genocide.

And anti-Semites know that, and therefore use the word all the more fervently and frequently. It is in virtually every piece of media they publish: a constant reminder, whose familiarity and repetition makes it become truer and truer over time in the minds of the people exposed to it. That is how propaganda works, after all.

But the thing is, "genocide" isn't just an arbitrary word. We have that word as a way of describing actions which serve to erase an entire people. Blown up buildings, dead bodies, displaced communities...as horrible as these things are, they are not, by themselves, going to erase an entire people. They are not, by themselves, genocide.

The reason the distinction is so important is because genocide is almost indefensible while war is frequently highly defensible. War, though it is terrible, is a legitimate recourse in many situations. Among them, when your people are physically attacked—your community, your nation, your ethnic group, your entire identity—war is sometimes the only means of self-defense.

You know how the fascists like to accuse their enemies of doing the things that they themselves are guilty of? It's the same thing with the people who raise the charge of genocide against Israel: Their policies toward Israel and Jews are not so subtly—and sometimes outright openly—genocidal in nature. They believe Israel should be erased from existence, its Jews either killed or again scattered across the world in a new Diaspora. (A word originally invented to describe an atrocity committed to Jews, just like the words ghetto, pogrom, and others.) And let me tell you something: A person who can condone genocide in their own heart, and who knows of the power of the word genocide to horrify the public, will have no reservations about using that word to sully their would-be victims.

There are so many comfortable Westerners with dark hearts who loll about on their phones and keyboards and talk about how they would just love for Israel to roll over and die.

But Israel isn't going to do that. Sorry, not sorry. So long as the Israelis have a say in their own fate, they are going to protect themselves. A murderous terrorist organization like Hamas must be stopped. It must be dismantled completely if possible, or at least so badly degraded that it cannot again commit large-scale atrocities. As an Israeli military commander said shortly after October 7: "What [else] are we supposed to do? Send them roses?"

When your enemies are determined to use physical force to hurt you, and have utterly no qualms at all about using any means they can no matter how unethical or inhumane, and cannot be stopped through dialogue, war is a defensible option.

My thesis today is a simple one: 1) Israel is in the right and Hamas is in the wrong, unambiguously; 2) the war was forced on Israel and Israel is justified in fighting it; 3) most of the people who are claiming that Israel is the aggressor are at best misinformed and bafflingly naïve, and at worst are sick individuals with deep-seated anti-Semitic views that those around them perhaps weren't aware of; and 4) global anti-Semitism is sharply on the rise and needs to be acknowledged and reconciled with respect to people's opinions on the Israel–Hamas War.

But before I continue to address these points, I also want to lay out three markers in the ground, for you to contextualize the rest of this essay by:

Firstly: Conditions in Gaza are indeed very bad in many places, with many civilian deaths and injuries, and massive displacement of people from their homes. I make no denial of that whatsoever, nor do I uncritically condone it. But neither do I primarily blame Israel for it. I primarily blame Hamas, for stationing its fighters among civilians for the express purpose of causing as many civilian casualties among their own people as possible.

Secondly: Go count the number of Jews in Middle Eastern and North African countries other than Israel, and compare those numbers to what they were a century ago, and then come back and speak to me of genocide.

Thirdly: The people who are most emphatically promulgating this anti-Israel, anti-Jewish rhetoric on social media, regardless of what color their skin is or what gender they are or how many pride flags and cute doggos are in their bio, are bad people. They are bad people and you should be deeply wary of trusting anything they say or relying upon them in this chaotic leftist coalition of ours. At the very least, you need to be on your guard around them. Someone who spreads anti-Semitism and tries to make you feel bad for not agreeing with them is giving you a capital-letter Clue about their true nature as a person. I am someone who naturally overestimates people's good faith and underestimates their willingness to lie and cheat. And maybe you're more pragmatic than that. But if not, then beware.

So. With all that said:

The mission charter of Hamas is to destroy Israel, and Hamas is the government of Gaza. There can be no avoiding military action in Gaza to dismantle Hamas. The only questions are what kind of force, how much, how long, and to what end.

I'll leave the answers to those questions for another time, or to others better-suited than me. Originally I went off for many paragraphs on a tangent about this, but my purpose with this essay isn't really to armchair quarterback Israel's military strategy, and I'm hardly an expert on that stuff anyway.

I will say, however, that one thing Israelis and Jews worldwide have been talking about with increasing concern for many months now is that the war isn't going well. After many years of relative quiet and the opportunity to build up its forces and human resources, Hamas is better-organized and equipped than I think any of us thought, while Israeli's military strategy has been almost bafflingly incompetent: The IDF goes into Hamas hotbeds, eliminates as many of the individual fighters and commanders as the intelligence and reconnaissance provides for, and then pulls out and moves on.

It sounds good on paper, like firefighting: Go put out one hot spot in force and then move on to the next one. But the way Israel has been carrying out this process isn't working: All the fires that get "put out" come back aflame again after the army leaves. Hamas has learned from its own experiences, and from the teachings of other terrorists and Islamist fighters who have been involved in actions throughout the Middle East, how to deal with this strategy in a most resilient way.

This is frustrating and disturbing, because all the reasons for the war are still valid and urgent, but Hamas, though it has been militarily weakened and many of its fighters killed, is still very much intact and functional. As long as the war can realistically be won, then I would be willing to support it for as long as it takes. But if it cannot realistically be won, then either the strategy must be changed or alternative solutions must be sought out. The trouble is, I don't see any acceptable alternative military strategies or viable non-military solutions. I originally went into many paragraphs on this topic as well, but, again, it felt like it was derailing my purpose with this essay. Suffice it to say that Israel is in a difficult position.

The reason why Israel is in such a difficult position is because Palestinian society is fundamentally broken, and is unable and unwilling to act as a good-faith partner in peace.

Few peoples in the world have had a sadder history in recent times than the Palestinians. They were doomed to failure from the beginning: The Arab political borders in the region are nonsensical, the result of two empires (the Ottomans and the British) having their way with the region and ultimately drawing nearly-arbitrary national borders that do not reflect the true cultural mosaic of the Arab world. Palestinian society was created by chopping off bits of several of these arbitrarily-delineated surrounding Arab countries, and ever since then the Palestinians have been in thrall to these richer, stabler, and more powerful neighbors, not just their closest neighbors but other countries farther afield across the Middle East and North Africa. The cultural identity of the Palestinians is therefore largely defined by their history since the founding of Israel, i.e. in terms of the conflict with Israel. The Palestinians' whole story, and their ongoing fate, is to be the thorn in Israel's side that keeps Israel involved in continual armed conflict against a small Muslim population, enshrining Israel as a common enemy for the Arab world (and the Persian world i.e. Iran and its proxies) to unify against and thereby distract from the corruption, incompetence, and extremism of their own authoritarian governments...all at the expense of the welfare and future hopes of the Palestinians themselves.

Before the founding of Israel, the people who would become the Palestinians originally had the chance to have half the land of what is now Israel and Palestine. And not just any half, but the better half: the more agriculturally productive half. The Jewish Zionists who would go on to found Israel were on board with it. But the Palestinians were compelled by their masters to say no, because the Arabs thought they could defeat Israel militarily and thus get 100 percent of the land. That's why several Arab nations invaded Israel immediately after it declared independence in 1948. And the Arabs lost decisively, despite having far superior numbers, better weapons, and more equipment, because the Jews faced utter annihilation if they lost whereas the Arabs were only in it for marginal territorial gains. Hell, in those days Israel didn't even have the US support pipeline to help it out; it did get some help from the outside, but for all intents and purposes the new Israeli state was completely on its own, significantly more so than today.

Israel won even so, and the Palestinians lost their best chance at a fruitful land to call their own.

What followed were decades of Islamic radicalization throughout the region and the continued exploitation and manipulation of the Palestinian people by nearby authoritarian governments, by the Soviet Union, and of course by the ever-growing Islamic terrorist organizations as regional Islam sank into a dark age of ultraconservative radicalism and violence. The Palestinians were convenient puppets. And their neighbors, who paid them so much lip service, did nothing to actually help them. They accepted very few refugees and did almost nothing to build the Palestinian economy. They wanted the Palestinians to remain weak, volatile, and oppressed.

Israel, for its part, has tried so many times over the decades to make peace with its most intricated neighbor. Under left-wing and right-wing governments alike, Israel has sued for peace. It is in Israel's overwhelming economic and security interests to have peace with the Palestinians, and Jews in general are a peace-loving people. We have our hawks, too, but on the whole Jewish culture is oriented around peace because Judaism has aligned with peace for centuries, and because Jews throughout history have always been a persecuted minority, and you can't be bellicose when you're at the mercy of a cruel majority.

Over the decades Israel has tried every approach there is to try: They have tried offering land concessions. They have tried economic investment and aid packages, almost to the point of outright bribery. They have tried physical force. They have tried cooperation, occupation, de-occupation, and mediated international negotiation...all to no avail.

Nothing works, because the Palestinians are never given the chance to say yes: The Islamic extremists and self-interested foreign governments ensure that Palestine always says no, always maintains a front of armed opposition to Israel. The Palestinian demands for peace are always compelled to include provisions that would essentially destroy Israel, and thus are unacceptable by the Israelis and never truly serious. (A claim often preemptively made against the Israelis as a way of deflecting from this, though perhaps it is also fair to say that Israel's present government might not be willing to make enough compromises to reach an agreement.) Consequently, Palestinian terrorism against Israel has been a fact of life for most of Israel's history. Israelis suffer for it, but Palestinians suffer even more.

This is why the Israeli occupations of Palestinian territory happened in the first place. Palestinian terrorists were murdering Israeli civilians, Israeli children, in indiscriminate attacks of opportunity. Long before most of us were born! The Israeli public demanded action, and, slowly, the modern shape of the conflict took form, with Israel, in all its superior military might, brutally suppressing the never-ending fountain of Palestinian terrorism, further solidifying Palestine's fate as a broken society and a failed state.

Palestine has never had good governance. The various Palestinian governments, mainly the PLO and Hamas, have always been ludicrously corrupt and self-serving, vacuuming up international aid for their own consumption or to sell off for cash, living high on the proverbial hog while their people suffered—the near-inevitable story of undemocratic societies run by religious extremists. It's a bitter truth to face, but the Palestinian governments have never cared about the Palestinian people. Nor have other Islamic societies in the region, who pay so much lip service to Palestinian liberation but are actually the chief perpetrators of Palestinian suffering.

Hamas apologists in the West, mostly on the left, like to claim that Palestine is justified in any and all violence against Israelis, because they frame this violence as a righteous resistance to Israeli oppression. They frame Israel as the source of all Palestinian suffering. It isn't. Israel is the instrument of that suffering, the weapon that bludgeons, but the hand that orchestrates the blow is neither Palestine nor Israel, but the larger geopolitical forces in the region. It was true then, and it's true today. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, and others bear most of the blame, together with the Islamic terrorist groups who force violence even beyond what the authoritarian governments want.

I don't categorically reject armed resistance against oppression. I don't unconditionally sanction it either, but my point is that if the Palestinians had a real argument on their hands for why they should be giving Israel so much grief, I might be more sympathetic to their cause. But they don't. There is no such argument. The Palestinians, by reason of being controlled by terrorists and authoritarian governments, continually provoke Israel. This is not a chicken-and-egg problem. The Palestinians are always either taking the first shot explicitly, or are preempted by Israeli countermeasures shortly before being able to take the first shot. They have to take the first shot, because Israel isn't going to. Israel wants it calm and quiet. Whenever Hamas and all the other Islamic terror groups operating in Gaza and the West Bank calm down, the whole Israeli–Palestinian Conflict calms down, because Israel isn't the aggressor. The Palestinians are.

And I think many Westerners lose sight of that, or aren't able to conceptualize it in the first place, because Israel is the more populous, richer, and more technologically and militarily sophisticated of the two nations, and in Western conceptual framing we don't often imagine the smaller party being the aggressor. But this is one of the cases where it is.

And, remember, it's not Palestine acting by itself: Today when you see Palestinian terror groups (including Hamas and others) lashing out, what you are really seeing is the long arm of Iran, of Syria (more so before the war), and of other belligerent nations, as well as the long arm of large-scale Islamist terrorist networks like Islamic State, and, more so in recent times, the supposedly long arm of Russia. So Palestine itself may be the smaller party compared alone with Israel, but in the broader geopolitical scheme of things Palestine has huge forces behind it. Israel does enjoy a strong amount of US support, but not that much, and the Israeli population is still very small compared to the total population of all the belligerents who actively plot against it. They may look like the big dog compared to the Palestinians, but they are very much the underdogs regionally.

And Westerners clearly don't understand this, or most of this anti-Israel rhetoric would simply not land.

What is happening in Gaza right now? Carnage. Destruction. Not genocide, but bad enough that it raises fundamental questions about urban warfare and the ethical defensibility of guerilla tactics, and also about how nations should respond to this kind of terrorism given that terrorists are going to do what they do regardless of the ethics.

With regard to the first point, urban warfare with modern artillery is just about as bad as warfare gets. And Gaza is so compact and so densely populated, and so heavily urbanized, that basically the whole theater is urban; and Hamas deliberately stations its fighters among the civilians for the exact purpose of causing as much destruction and as many civilian casualties as possible; that basically any Israeli artillery or air support is going to leave giant piles of rubble in its wake. The alternative would be sending in ground forces only, but Gaza is Hamas' home turf and this would lead to horrendous Israeli casualties. That's not how you fight a way. Israel has to use heavy weapons. They try to be smart about it, but collateral damage is unavoidable, and in this war in particular, owing to the brutal nature of the October 7 attacks, Israel has adopted a military stance that leans more toward effectiveness and less toward minimizing collateral damage compared to previous Israeli operations in the Palestinian Territories. It's not genocide. It's fierce urban warfare against a sophisticated terrorist enemy using guerilla tactics with no regard for human life, including that of its own fighters and its own civilian people. I thought Hamas would have been beaten by now. I think many people did. But it hasn't, and so the war continues.

With regard to the second point, I think people who oppose Israel's actions in Gaza need to step back and ask themselves what they would do differently? There are thousands of armed terrorists literally just a few miles away, who will use any means they can to kill as many of your civilians as possible. This ensures that the fighting will be as destructive and as harmful to civilians as possible. So what do you do? Do you let that daunt you? Do you not fight back? No, really: What do you do?

Because every non-violent solution you can name, Israel has already tried, and they've tried it sincerely. Other than rolling over and dying.

The Palestinians are committed to fighting. At any cost. They support this Hamas government. They embrace the Islamic extremism that has ruined so much of that part of the world. They hate Israel with a passion. And in so doing they have brought this disaster on themselves, and there are moments when it is incredibly tempting to say they deserve it. When I think of them, I think of MAGA Republicans here in the United States: people gripped by religious extremism and racial supremacism, who are always full of bluster and spoiling for violence, and whose policy goals—which they want to forcibly impose on the rest of us—are a mixture of abhorrent and absurd. The Palestinian people as a whole share many of these lamentable qualities. But at the end of the day I cannot bring myself to say that any civilian population deserves the horrors of war, no matter how ugly or extreme their culture is. I think what the Palestinian people really deserve is a long rest—the kind that only a cessation of war operations can bring. They need this war to end. And they are the ones who are in the best position to end it. If they rejected Hamas and demanded ceasefire talks, a cessation of fighting would come very quickly. And my fear is that, as they always have, the Palestinians will make the wrong choice. Indeed, they have made the wrong choice up till now.

This is where Western anti-Semitism becomes particularly deleterious in its power. One thing that the Islamic world has always been excellent at is Western PR for the Palestinians. For my entire lifetime, anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian propaganda and PR has been leaps and bounds better than the Israeli efforts at controlling the messaging. Just look at how easily a new generation of young leftists in the West has been beguiled and deceived. I see ordinary accounts on Tumblr and elsewhere, ordinary people living ordinary lives, interspersing their posts about fanart, or what they're cooking for dinner, or whatever, with reblogs of literal Islamic propaganda, complete with anti-Semitic hate speech, genocidal calls for the destruction of Israel, the works! It's incongruous and disorienting, and serves as a reminder that ignorant, uninformed people are easily fooled. When you check out the sources of this reblogged content, and see what accounts they follow, it's only a couple more layers deep till you get to paid agitators and literal terrorists. It's not subtle at all. But it works anyway, because people don't scrutinize what they see.

And by winning over the hearts and minds of gullible young leftists with their suave propaganda, the forces that doom Palestinian society to a state of perpetual suffering also give the Palestinians false hope, hope that the world will come to their cause, reject Israel, and embrace the Palestinian people. It's insidious, because it's halfway a false hope—no one on the world stage actually cares about the Palestinians, despite all the lip service; they just hate Israel and want to prop up its enemies—and because it's halfway a real hope: It actually is possible to imagine a world where the anti-Israeli propaganda campaign succeeds, and Israel becomes an international pariah that is able to be picked off by its enemies. And the Palestinians are holding out for that outcome. But because it's so unlikely to actually come to pass, it very much functions like a false hope.

This is a very old truism, but I think it still applies: I think the Palestinian people need to decide, as a people, that they want peace for themselves more than they want death for their enemies. And, until they make that decision, I think the Palestinians are going to continue to suffer. And I hate that for them, but more so I hate it for Israel. The Israelis do not deserve what the Palestinians are doing to them. It's one thing to see the Palestinians doom themselves to suffering, but another to see them doom an innocent society. And although Israeli cities are not being pummeled like Gazan ones are, and thus the physical dangers and privations are much lower, Israelis still sustain serious trauma and anxiety from the constant threats of violence and attacks. And Israelis have not had a proper chance to rest either, nor grieve October 7, because the war came on immediately and the anti-Semitism followed suit instantly. Jews have been on the defensive ever since. I have heard a great deal to this effect over the past year from Israelis and by secondhand reports from visitors to Israel.

Meanwhile:

Even though Israel's war operations in Gaza are not genocide, I think there is an argument to be made that Israel's actions may not be commensurate with a positive security outcome either. I wouldn't personally agree with that argument, at least not currently, but with the war getting bogged down and Hamas regenerating it's always a good time to step back and remember that the Palestinian people are actively suffering while Hamas is only being eroded extremely slowly. Is it worth it? And what should Israel do if it isn't?

We must never let ourselves be locked into war. This war is justified on principle, and I would support it for as long as it takes if it were winnable. But if it turns out not to be winnable, then the earlier we can identify that, the better. Right now I don't think we're there. But, like I mentioned earlier, I can see that moment possibly coming. And winter is on its way. I think Israel needs to change its strategy to something more effective, and soon, or else look for alternatives to continuing its current, highly-disruptive operations. And it doesn't help that Israel's government is far-right, and therefore less trustworthy than a typical democratic government would be. So all the more reason for the feasibility of winning to become a principal and urgent question to answer.

Jews have lived in the land that is now Israel for thousands of years. Usually as a minority to the various societies of the day, but, like I've said elsewhere, since when did being a minority ever make a population illegitimate? They are natives. They have every right to be there. To call them white colonizers is an abuse of the language of anti-colonization, and a mockery of anti-racism. Many Jews are not even white-skinned to begin with, but even those who are were never "white" enough to be spared the white supremacist policies of the various majority-white societies where Jews have lived. And the reason so many Jews ended up living in Europe at all is because they were driven out of the Middle East long, long ago.

Any effort to portray the Israelis as white colonialist aggressors is laughable in the very worst way. It is a joke. It is a joke that anti-Semites would think that anybody with half a brain and half a heart would ever buy such flimsy and blatantly false logic. It is a joke that these so-called progressives immediately reach for words like "genocide" and "colonization" because they lack any ethical basis for their preconceived opinions or any intellectual appetite for the contortions of rationalizing those incoherent opinions.

The Palestinians have no shortage of sympathizers and supporters. That's perfectly clear judging by all the scam fundraisers I receive in my inbox nearly every day. I could almost laugh at these odious leftist anti-Semites being scammed out of their money, but, honestly, I think the people who actually donate are probably less likely to be in the "bad people" camp and more likely to be in the "deeply misinformed" camp. Putting your money where your mouth is is very meaningful, and I was recently reminded in a visceral way of the desperation and pain that often accompanies a person's decision to donate to somebody who is in dire need. And so to them I would merely say: Please make sure your donations are going to real fundraises to actually help real Palestinians. If you do nothing else, please at least do that.

Jews, meanwhile, have some support too. It's a "silent majority" kind of thing, though probably not an actual majority. But I often see surprisingly high levels of likes and reshares of Jewish content that speaks out against anti-Semitism, and even content that lays out the justifications for Israel's legitimacy and right to self-defense. And that heartens me.

On every other day, we think about Palestinian suffering. But today is the one-year anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in Israeli history, and one of the worst terrorist attacks in the history of the entire modern world. And every day since then has been rife with Jew-hate, including from allies and even friends. Today is a day to think about Jewish suffering, and elevate Jewish voices.

And if you find someone who can't do that, who has to play the partisan game to the bitterest end, it's fair to say there's something wrong with them.