#slavery is material folks!

[clonehub]

"the Jedi aren't complicit in slavery!!" Girl they're using a slave army lmao. They may not be the buyers and formal owners (that would be the republic government, of which the Jedi work with but aren't actual members of, iirc) but the thing about systems of oppression is that you don't need to be at the top of it to support it.

The Republic is 100% at fault for buying millions of human beings, stripping them of all political, social, and material rights, and then sending them to fight and die in a war. The Jedi are definitely better than the commissioned officers who wouldn't have bothered to humanize the clones at all, but slavery is a material condition before an ideological or philosophical one. Are the Jedi in the right for calling the clones individual, sentient beings worthy of being treated as such? Yes! Does that mean they're off the hook for using slavery to fight other forms of oppression? No! Two wrongs don't make a right. Humanizing a slave and viewing them as a person worthy for dignity doesn't mean they're not still a slave or that the person doing the humanizing isn't still contributing to their oppression.

And listen I'm saying this as someone who loves the Jedi. I love seeing non-Coruscanti Temples, I'm always refreshing myself on what made Qui Gon's politics and ideas so different from the council's, I'm always reading what I can about Jedi philosophy and how much compassion is as much a part of their religion as meditation. When I look at how even the most upright members of the Order don't take a step back and say "something is deeply wrong here, and we can't justify it", I don't think "wow, every single Jedi is iredeemable and no better than the Hutts!" I think "something must have happened ideologically for one Jedi, a dozen, two hundred, thousands, to think there are times in which not only is a form of mass oppression at least partially justified, but they need to put off saying or doing anything about it because of a Bigger Threat." (It feels very much like the Illusion of Time)

Which makes me just wonder about Jedi politics and philosophy again. I don't go into this with anger or hatred, just pure curiosity and an interest in bridging that gap. The Acolyte might offer some insight into how the Jedi change enough to be okay with using a slave army to fight mass oppression and violence. The Jedi don't own the slave army, but they're complicit in it. I wonder about the Jedi who were against using the clones to fight a war.

(and no, this doesn't justify any of the atrocities they face later on as a people)

[kanagenwrites]

So. Tuesday sucked.

We've all had a chance to come down from the "what the fuck" of it all, and we're starting to see the usual circular firing squad. Lots of lib centrists are doing everything they can to throw trans people, minorities, and basically anyone who isn't a finance bro under the bus, as is (very tiresome) tradition after both victories and defeats in the Democratic Party. I will be 42 years old in a few months, so this is far from the first time I've seen it, and sadly, I'm sure it won't be the last. To the lib centrists and those carrying water for them: This never works. Please stop trying it. Trans issues were not a major motivator; I'll get into that below. Sit down, kids, it's time for Auntie Kana's Fireside Dialectics.

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of my followers are significantly younger than me. (Imagine that, an audience that skews young on Tumblr.) A lot of you folks probably haven't been following politics for very long, and you've been able to participate in them for even less time than that. For some of you this is probably your first election as an adult, and it kinda feels like everything blew up in your face, doesn't it? I was about your age for 2000, when the election was nakedly stolen by George W. Bush, and not much older for 2004, when despite his disastrous presidency Bush the Younger rode a wave of 9/11-brained racism to the last popular vote victory the GOP had prior to (likely) this year. So I get it. I really do.

If you're living in the USA you have probably had a subpar education in politics and civics. This is largely by design - education is horrendously underfunded and there is a sustained attack on the ability of teachers to even discuss things like the Civil Rights Movement, the legacy of slavery in the United States, the genocide this country was founded on, and so on and so forth. Economic education isn't much better; you very likely got a short lecture on basic supply and demand and an argument-from-authority that "socialism doesn't work." All this combines to leave a lot of folks totally baffled as to how something like this election happens.

But it's pretty simple. It's just material conditions. That's it. What the media isn't telling you (because there's no profit in it, and the media is nothing but a clickbait engine when they aren't open propagandists) is that there has been a massive anti-incumbent wave of elections across the world. How massive? Japan's LDP, which has held power almost uninterrupted since the establishment of Japan's postwar democracy, managed to lose their recent election.

And why are material conditions so shitty? That's a complicated question, but a lot of it is the fact that we had a lengthy period of low inflation followed by a period of extremely high inflation due to the absolutely botched response to the Covid-19 pandemic. A bag of Doritos used to be 2.50, and now it's like 6 bucks. That's worse than all the inflation (and naked price-gouging, because there's a lot of that going on too) I experienced in my life prior to 2020, squeezed into the space of a year or two. This smacks everyone in the face every time they buy groceries, and while the government and the Federal Reserve were doing everything they could to manage inflation (and understand what a big deal it is for me, the anarcho-communist, to say that the US actually did an extremely fucking good job of doing it, because every other country on Earth had it worse than we did), they did fuck all to actually improve the material conditions people were experiencing. Wages were not keeping up with the cost of living, and price-gouging wasn't being dealt with.

Remember the 600 bucks Joe Biden still owes you? The American electorate sure the fuck does. Invisible backrooms liberal wonkery does not connect, regardless of whether it works or not, but going back on a promise? People remember that shit.

It's a rare incumbent that could win in an environment like this, especially when tied to a track record of doing exactly fucking nothing to actually help people from the perspective of the vast majority of the population. Kamala Harris was not that incumbent. She was a singularly uninspiring candidate who failed to connect with voters so thoroughly that she was on track to lose her home state in the 2020 Democratic primary. Nobody liked her (except a few very eager and very loud fans in the K-Hive), and speaking as someone who lives in California, I am not surprised she ate shit. She was a terrible choice for VP and a terrible choice of successor for Biden, but because Biden('s handlers) insisted on pretending he wasn't obviously declining before our very eyes, Harris, a singularly uninspiring candidate, had three months to build and run a campaign.

And it was still weirdly close.

Now, there's two possibilities: Either she actually ran an amazing campaign and it's incredible that it was even this close, or Trump is just so loathsome that even in a massively anti-incumbent environment he didn't bring anyone new to the table. Given that Trump is on-track to receive less votes this time than he did in 2020, and how many of those votes seem to have been cast for Trump and no one else down-ballot, I think it's more of the latter than the former. Trump brought the usual suspects, while Kamala successfully drove away voters that even Joe fucking Biden and Hillary fucking Clinton were able to bring home. Not on the left, not in minority demographics, but across the board. After all, if things are horrible and you're being promised that "nothing will fundamentally change," (literally an early-presidency quote from Joe Biden, whose agenda Kamala Harris 100% aligned herself with) and keeping in mind that the average American voter is not nearly so plugged into the minutiae and the day to day of politics (as evinced by the sudden peak in google searched for "Did Joe Biden drop out?" on Tuesday), why the fuck would you bother to vote?

Hopefully you have a better idea how we got here now. The question, of course, is where do we go from here? I will probably continue posting about this from time to time, especially if there's interest, but my advice is this:

We are still here. We will be here tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, and so on. Plan accordingly.

Things will get fucked up. Things will always get fucked up. That is the nature of things no matter who is running the government. Plan accordingly.

Organize. Develop parallel structures of power and assistance, because the government is likely going to be even more useless to directly assist you than it already was. Our greatest strength is each other, and our ability to care for and help one another.

I have been here before. You will be here again. It always feels like it's the worst thing ever to happen. That never really goes away, but your ability to deal with it, to plan around it, to endure it, and to rise up again on the other side of it and say "No, fuck you" is entirely under your control and within your capabilities. And you will get better at it as you do it. And you are not doing it alone. None of us are.

Do not give up. Do not surrender. This isn't the end, or the beginning of the end, or even the end of the beginning: it just is.

Now go watch a video of a cat doing something cute, or read some smut, or whatever gives you joy. You can't take care of others unless you take care of yourself. That's General Order #1: Take care of yourself.

Solidarity, y'all.

[wanderingswampbeast]

Long Post: Why I Don’t Like The Drow

I’ve been ranting about this to a friend on discord (a lot of points I make will come from him) but I’ve finally figured out what my issue with the drow is outside of inherently evil groups being dumb.

The drow are boring. Drow lore is less of a dive into a unique culture and more of a list of fucked up things they do. Like, I cannot name a single interesting aspect of typical drow society that does not directly involve murder, sexism, or slavery, or Lolth. And even then, most of those things are written about in an incredibly bland fashion with them.

The Drow don’t really have much depth to them, and are just kind of evil for evil’s sake (or “because Lolth said so”). They do slavery, but the only real purpose of doing slavery for them is “because Lolth said so”. It isn’t for cheap labor, it’s to be more evil. They betray each other purely because that’s what evil people do. They’re misandrist, not for any real societal reason, but because Lolth hates men. There’s none of what would make slavery an interesting topic or story element, no justification for why they should be allowed to commit one of the worst injustices possible, no real economic reason for it. They just do it because Lolth says they should, and from a writing perspective it hammers home the fact that they’re evil. They aren’t evil because they enslave and murder, they enslave and murder because they’re evil, if that makes any sense.

Them being written as comically evil as they are also hurts them from a worldbuilding perspective. They’re so reliant on slaves for menial labor that the lower class of their society struggle to get jobs. Drow culture so obsessed with betrayal and dumbass house wars that even when actively under attack from the outside they sabotage each other. They’re so decadent that their buildings are held up with magic and semi regularly collapse when a spell fails. To put it bluntly, drow society feels like one that should have collapsed in a few centuries, which, funnily enough, is way longer than D&D elves live.

Their culture being so monolithic also makes writing anything about them difficult. Every drow antagonist is going to have near identical motivations, methods, and ideologies as every other drow antagonist. Every drow protagonist is going to ultimately feel very similar to Drizzt, because leaving their fucked up society to become a do-gooder is such a common backstory element that they added a whole extra god just for doing that. In fact, you can divide 90% of drow characters from any official materials into these categories:

Manservant

Ambitious male, usually a wizard (5 bucks says he has long hair and a widow’s peak)

Dommy Mommy Warcrime Woman

Drizzt Do’Urden or one of his many duplicates

Self-loathing and/or resentful Drider

And finally, their existence almost purely to be humanoid enemies you can fight at nearly any levels is just kind of lazy. This is a problem that I have with the “evil races” of a lot of fantasy but having a group that’s evil by birth just feels like an excuse to not have to write actual motivations for your antagonists. It’s the difference between “go attack this camp of soldiers because they’re part of the SkullMurder army and their general wants to use our land to build a dread fortress” vs “go attack this camp of soldiers specifically because they’re drow/goblins/orcs/the dreaded peepee-poopoo folk”. Using stuff like this just feels like an excuse to not have to write an actual antagonist since it comes pre-written in the group’s lore. This has the side effect of whenever such a group is the antagonist of the plot, the players or audience know near exactly what to expect. The orc is here to conquer, the goblin is here to steal, and the drow is here to enslave or do some dark ritual.

I’ve legitimately heard people say “well if XYZ can’t be inherently evil anymore, who will we use as bad guys?” It’s very simple: whoever the fuck we want. Write an evil queen, or a scheming wizard, or an underground slave trade network. For God’s sake, anyone can be evil, you don’t need to tie that to a specific ethnic group and write it as “they’re just like that”. Write an actual character for your antagonist.

[r3dkn0ts]

I'm somewhat curious because everyone has their own perception of killers in dbd before they came into the realm. Out of all your faves (like Caleb, Tarhos, Billy ect..) do you think any of them are still....well virgins?? Most of them were either too focused on revenge and bloodshed to even think about ass or coochie (lookin right at you slinger also I LOVE UR BLOG SM)

I have other stuff in the drafts I'm working on atm ( do not worry followers! it will be posted! eventually! ) but Man this just. rattled my brain so hard that I had to start writing Immediately

I'm just gonna pick the guys you listed or else I'd be rambling way too much and also idk what the hell to categorize this as so ummmmm just putting it under the cut. I guess these are more like character studies than anything?

SEXUAL HEADCANONS FOR THE DBD KILLERS Featuring Caleb Quinn, Tarhos Kovács, and Max Thompson Jr.

Themes: Smut, smut, and a little bit of fluff at the end. Honestly, what did you expect? Warnings: Mentions of canon-typical violence

The Deathslinger / Caleb Quinn - I'd imagine Caleb is around his mid-to-late 60s ( if you don't think too hard about the time-fuckery that is the Entity's Realm ), so the man definitely has some years under his belt. - When it comes to sex, though, he might've fooled around with one or two folks in his younger days. Like most other cowpoke of his time, he didn't really care what gender he was laying down with. - Yes, I am saying that Caleb is pansexual. All cowboys are at least a little bit gay. I don't make the rules. - He definitely didn't see any action after nearly killing Bayshore and being stuck in a penitentiary for 15 years straight, that's for sure. - Plus, there's no good reason to be horny in a place like that. - That being said, he knows the basics and maybe a trick here or there, so he's not a total buffoon, but he's not a floozy either.

The Knight / Tarhos Kovács - Being taken from his home and put into slavery at such a young age, he didn't exactly have a normal childhood. - Tarhos didn't have the time to be concerned with anything remotely romantic or sexual, constantly going on campaigns with his men and killing everyone that stood in their way. - He would never admit it to anyone, even himself, but this man is so touch-starved and needy that just hugging him would probably give him a boner as stiff as his claymore. - Tarhos tries to ignore sexual urges until they go away, but that doesn't always work, so he might have to rub one out once in a while. He feels guilty about it every time. - Yeah, he's a virgin. No experience at all.

The Hillbilly / Max Thompson Jr. - Oh, this poor boy. We all know his story by now. It's pretty obvious that he never had any physical contact, much less that of a romantic or sexual nature. - Back in his time, television shows weren't nearly as scandalous as nowadays. There was no way of accessing pornographic material unless you got special magazines, which he of course never did. - Going through puberty, he would feel strange and uncomfortable, just trying to ignore the weird feelings he had. It made him want to crawl out of his own skin. - Those habits stuck with him into his adulthood, constantly fighting his own body and trying anything to get the strange feelings to go away. Eventually, he figured out that friction was the easiest method. - You could say he's "innocent", but I prefer "clueless". - If someone were to truly earn his trust and explain to him what erections, masturbation, and sex are, he'd get super flustered and cover his face in shame. - His first time would need to be slow and more of a tutorial than anything else. Dude's probably gonna cum as soon as a hand touches him. Just be patient.

[alpaca-clouds]

The Lies We Are Taught In School

Talking about science this week, let me talk about the thing that irks me more than anything: The fact that we get taught so many lies in school. Both in regards to science, and in regards to stuff like history. Like, holy fuck. Why do we get taught that much garbage?

If you google "Lies we got taught in school", you will find an endless amount of listicles going over a variety of lies.

A lot of people in America will of course know that the version of American history they get taught in school is very "clean". Be it their version of how Thanksgiving came to be ("And then the indigenous people and settlers got along just fine"), how the entire story of Matoaka/Pocahontas happened ("And then everyone just got along and no 12yo girls got raped"), or how the Civil War went ("And then slavery was ended and everyone had equal rights, yay").

Another thing that school keeps telling us is the thing I mentioned yesterday: IQ. IQ is not real. At least not as any measure of intelligence. All IQ tests will test is, how good you are at taking IQ tests.

Or one that I found in so many listicles: The food pyramid. The food pyramid is a great example of a thing that a lot of people believe, that is not based on science, but fully on propaganda by an industry. And yet... It is very common in the US - and almost as common in Europe. At least I learned about it in primary school, and never learned a correction of it until I entered university.

Or getting back to history: A lot of history classes teach so much bullshit when it comes to medieval history and how people in medieval times lived. They will act as if the medieval world was just one thing, rather than many things. Oh, and a lot of schools place the witch burnings into the middle ages - even though they all happened AFTER the middle ages.

Or something quite relevant to trans folks: Schools very much teach that there are only two genders and sexes, and that those usually are based on the chromosomes. Even though intersex people exist and might be a lot more common than we actually realize, given that most people are never tested for intersex conditions. And since we know that other than what was long assumed (the supposed fact that almost all intersex people were infertile) is wrong... Yeah, some scientist argue that intersex is a lot more common than assumed. So even from the very biological aspect - without going into gender - it is quite wrong.

The list really could go on and on.

And mind you, some of those myths (especially in regards to history) are so prevailant, that folks who even go to universities and study ajacent stuff will still be believed. I still remember: Two years ago I talked in a historical podcast about the witch hunts, how they happened after the medieval period, how they looked different in different countries, how they did not happen everywhere in Europe, and how they not always were going for women. Mind you, we linked the historical sources under the podcast... And yet, someone I know, who studied history (though with their main focus on Victorian England) went on a long rant how that was all wrong. Was she able to come up with counter sources for her claims? No, obviously not. But she kept insisting even months later.

In general the entirety of all those lies taught in school usually go back to one of three reasons for those lies.

Propaganda. There are quite a few lies in school - especially in regards to history - that are propaganda. Especially when it comes to the sanitizing colonial history. Stuff like how settlers and indigenous people got along fine. How Lincoln ended slavery. Or for us in Germany, how we totally never really were ever involved in any colonialism whatsoever. That is all propaganda. Even stuff like the medieval prejudices are based on the propaganda that history only ever moves forward. The food pyramid also belongs to this.

Ancient material. This is probably the most common reason. See, a lot of material in school is just outdated by decades. At times because the curriculi have not been updated in decades - at times because the people updating them are actually not professionals in those fields, hence basing their ideas mostly on what they learned in school 40 years ago.

Simplification because kids "won't understand it otherwise". A lot of stuff in school gets dumbed down in comparison what you learn in university, because a) not everyone needs to know it (they say), and b) kids cannot understand it (they say). This is true for a lot of stuff in the science classes. Stuff like "only two sexes", "only five senses", "only three states of matter" is mostly based on this.

But honestly... While the first two reasons are bad either way (propaganda does not belong in schools, and schools should work with modern material), some people might think the last reason is somewhat understandable. But honestly... It is not. Because kids are actually not stupid.

It is one thing to not teach everything and leave out stuff. Otherwise we would not need universities. But... Lying to kids? Yeah, that is not good. It is not a good thing to begin with. And really, why do we keep doing that?

[racefortheironthrone]

In A Guildsman Goes Forth to War, what can you tell us about fae society? I'm assuming they're monarchies, feudal or absolute? Do they bear any resemblance to Celtic society? Do they practice slavery? What of their gender dynamics? Etc

Great question!

So there's a lot that I'm not going to share with you, because the fae/Fair Folk/etc. are supposed to be a mysterious people who live in their own realm that connects to the human world via thin places in the forests and underhill and deep in the mountains or underground rivers, and humanity doesn't particularly understand them very well despite centuries of intermarriage, as the fae are both very cryptic and contradictory in the information they've shared with their Gentry kin.

Government

As far as humans have been able to glean, the Fae do organize themselves into Courts that seem close enough to European feudal systems that the leading families of Europe can do business with them when it comes to dynastic marriage alliances and diplomatic relations.

That being said, status and power in Faerie society don't seem to be based in land as they are among humans. (In the interests of full disclosure, I'm borrowing some ideas here from the Feywild in D&D.) As far as people have been able to glean from correspondence and diplomatic and cultural interactions, titles are based on elements of nature (the Duke of Hoarfrost, the Viscount of Watermeadows) or from emotions (the Lady of Wistful Rememberance, the Prince of Sorrow), or from ideas and beliefs (the Duchess of the Dark Side of the Moon claims to have once been a handmaiden to the goddess Selene).

Quite a few scholars of geography and history from the leading universities have theories and taxonomies about how Faerie society is organized, but they're all second-hand and can offer only partial explanations and there's absolutely no consensus about what's going on. It does not help that the rare diplomatic missions or marriage parties that go to Faerie from the human world rather than in the other direction tend to report memory issues, such that much of what is recorded owes more to dream logic than accurate observation. Needless to say, this has been a rich vein of material for poets, playwrights, and painters only, and intensely frustrating for academics and statesmen.

Culture

Faerie culture is highly localized in accordance with regional folklore and mythology, although scholars disagree whether human folklore is a record of pre-historical encounters with Faerie, or whether the Fae pattern themselves after the human cultures they interact with.

So for example, the Fae of Éire, Alba, Anglia, and northern Gallia seem to correspond to Gaelic and Brythonic literature, Arthuriana, and the Matters of Britain and France. In the Sacrum Imperium and the Danelaw, however, the dominant Fae cultures are distinctively Germanic and Scandinavian - whether that's the Rheintöchter of the Rhineland and Palatinate, or the dvergr who predominate in Bavaria and the Hapsburg lands or the trollkind and various álfar in the land of the Northmen. In much of southern Europe around the Mediterranean, one is much more likely to encounter Faerie peoples recognizable to students of Greek and Roman mythology: many Gentry from the Lega or the western half of the Rhōmaîoi-Rashidun Federation claim descent from oreads, naiads, nereids, satyrs and other bloodlines.

Human scholars are particularly confused by the fact that all of these different peoples all call one another "cousin," no matter whether they belong to the more humanoid elfkind or the distinctly non-human trollfolk or even the potentially fictional or extinct dragons.

Class and Slavery

As already suggested, Faerie society seems to have some sort of a hierarchy, but it does not seem to be one based in the inheritance of land passed down from generation to generation. Rather, as far as humans can tell, status seems to be associated with proximity to or control of or possession of or identification with magical power from various sources.

What does seem to be the case is that those with more power can command those with less, and Faerie embassies ubiquitously feature both vips with titles and what appear to their servants, but there is no consistency on which kinds of fae serve and which rule. Human visitors and diplomats are very unsure whether this consistutes a caste system or clientilism, because the Fae themselves speak in rather vague terms about "obligations" and "debts" and "true names."

Gender

Again, humans have a rather hard time understanding Faerie gender norms - and are rather unsure whether various Fae kinds have genders and how many they have. What is known is that, among what passes for royalty and nobility in Faerieland, there is a tendency for the female to be announced first - correspondence often arrives in the form of "Queen Titania and King Oberon" or "The Baroness and Baron"- which suggests a slight tendency to the matriarchal, but that is mere supposition. Human cultural conservatives both within and without the Church do grumble about the "immodest" and "amazonian" habits of Faerie women when they comport themselves in their visits to human society or in their Gentry marriages, but they make sure to do so under their breath.

[coldalbion]

Narc

"I am available to provide information or quotes to media, law enforcement, governmental, or non-governmental organizations"

Really? Good to know you'll narc on anyone and their spiritual practices if there's a buck or exposure in it for you. Mate, law enforcement could conceivably come knocking at your door in a resurgent Satanic panic, but you, a white guy in the US, are publically admitting you'll give quotes to cops because you think Vodou is uniquely responsible for human trafficking in some way, and not that folks would, and do use any particular religious, spiritual or social belief or orthopraxy as a method of social control. Again: you, an American white guy, are publicly saying you'll talk to cops about an Afrodiasporic Religion's 'role' in modern slavery, a religion practiced by millions - the majority of whom are people of colour (but not all).

Look, it's obvious you had an intense magical and spiritual experience 20 years ago. You were loud enough then about how you were thrust into a world of what you described as hostile and dangerous spirits. You were loud enough about how you believed the problems of Haiti were down to the lwa as apparently insectile-iike beings that were larva - masks of dead and ancestral people being worn by Horrible Things. You were loud enough about how you believed they sucked the souls out of people: fed on fear, pain, and suffering. You were called out for your racism then. You are being so now, by others. You won't see this, but by all the gods that ever were, mate, of course modern slavery is a problem. But its not just Vodou. There's Christian-trafficking operations, Falun Gong trafficking, etc etc. You've had a massive magical experience that's inflated some ego biases and made either personal or cultural biases come roaring out and distorted your perceptions. That shit happens. One deals with it. One processes. Or one goes full on David Icke. I believe that you believe this. I know you won't see this as anti-blackness influencing you, that you are repeating colonial propaganda. That if anything got into you, it's cultural fear of a non-western spiritual ontology has been riding you for decades. And I also know you'll see this argument as being an apologia for enslavement - that I'm in denial. I'm not. As I have said, this stuff happens. But solely focusing on Vodou, your fervour inspired by a bad magical experience 20 years ago? That's fucked up. It truly is. And then, to set yourself up as an authority. To say you'll give quotes? To media. To governments. To NGOs. To cops.

You, who set yourself up as a teacher? Who has a website that has as its banner: Unleash Your True Self.

Master Magick, Master Your Reality.

A website with "thousands of video lessons on the core teachings of the world's sacred traditions. " We know you've appeared on media, worldwide. On podcasts. On sodding Netflix. Sure. Its your business. I wonder what'd happen if the police took all the data you have on your students? This isn't sour grapes - this is pure practicality here. What would happen if folks who were quietly practing magick were outed in a hostile environment But it's OK to give statements on Vodou and slavery to the powers that be. Isn't it? Because you're saving people. People can make their own judgments. Me? I view that as fundamentally untrustworthy. I wouldn't be happy placing my undoing of standard western materialism in such hands. Like I said, there's a word for that.

[tuulikki]

...there is no evidence that the expression “rule of thumb” has its roots in spousal abuse. In fact, this claim has been consistently debunked by scholars for decades. It’s a folk etymology, and an incredibly persistent one at that, that arises with whack-a-mole insistence as fast as linguists and historians can challenge it.

“Rule of thumb” isn’t the only English idiom haunted by folk linguistic history. Nor is it the only case in which that false history is redolent of past (and present) atrocities: domestic violence, slavery, brutal class inequality. Around the same time the Stanford list came out, a viral tweet thread claimed the phrase "knocked up" has roots in slavery. Periodically, somebody—a Florida politician, for instance—insists that the word “picnic” originated with lynchings in the Jim Crow South (the Brandeis list notes somewhat less apocryphally that the term is associated with lynchings and suggests “outdoor eating” instead). Meanwhile, in the U.K., it’s often claimed that “chav,” an insult for young working-class people, isn’t merely offensive, but that it is also an acronym for “Council House and Violent,” with rudeness in its very roots. Similarly, “pussy” hasn’t just become a slight over time—its source is a truncation of “pusillanimous,” meaning “cowardly.” None of these sources are real. They’re folk etymologies—rumors, essentially—some relatively new and some perennial. The relationship between “knocked up” and slavery has been disproven, and seemed to stem from a well-meaning misconstrual of (nevertheless severely depressing) primary sources, in particular a joke made by Davy Crockett, of all people. The joke was wildly racist, but it’s not where “knocked up” comes from. “Chav” is likely borrowed from a Romani word meaning “child,” and the “Council House and Violence” source has been identified as a “backronym” rather than a true acronym. Even if “pussy” is now lobbed as an emasculating barb, nobody uses the word “pusillanimous” except to pretend that it’s the source material for “pussy.” 

[whitehotharlots]

A quick note re: 2 exciting innovations in Anti-Racist Science

First, there's this piece from CNN titled "Major Hollywood stars press Academy to include Jews in representation and inclusion standards." Low-IQ actors such as Debra Messing and David Schwimmer have requested that the Academy of Motion Pictures begin auditing the number of Jews in their ranks, explaining that refusing to do so might cause people to believe Jews are white, instead of a completely separate racial entity. Very neat!

Second--and this is from a conservative source, sure, but the documents are verifiable--we have some new DEI materials that were taught to employess of the University of Wisconsin health system. These include many of the greatest hits from older DEI materials: it's racist to cry when someone yells at you, it's racist to disagree with a black person about anything, it's racist to say you're not racist, etc etc. But there are two exciting new twists: it's racist to have supported the 1960's Civil Rights movement and it's only possible for anyone to feel comfortable when they're interacting solely with people who "look and think" like themselves.

For years, I have complained that the left's all-consuming obsession with identity has accidentally turned progressives into Bush-era Republicans. Sadly, they have blasted beyond that. These people now have the politics of a fringe 1960's Birch Society candidate who thinks fluoridation causes race mixing. They have been Spiro Agnew-pilled.

This would all be a dumb little thing to snicker at if it were, indeed, confined to tumblr and X studies courses at liberal arts colleges. But it's not. It's absolutely not. It's being normalized in a staggering number of white collar spaces and people can and do face formal discipline for pointing out how utterly fucking insane it is.

Does anyone truly want this? Is this what you marched for in 2020? Is this what your workplaces and schools should look like? Are these the people we truly desire to empower? Because we are barreling toward the point of no return with this stuff.

You gotta stop it with the "golly gee we're just trying to teach folks about racism and slavery" bullshit. That was annoying in 2020; it's outright dangerous now. This is not education. This is not a process of healing. This is an extremely reactionary ideological project that's going to have negative reverberations for decades to come.

[lagosbratzdoll]

Whenever I see adaptations of novels, comics, and games that elevate the source material, I get deeply and monstrously bitter. Wheel of Time, Foundation, Percy Jackson, The Boys, Outlander, Big Little Lies, Pachinko, Sharp Objects, WATCHMEN!!! All are so good, so beautifully written and moving that when you stack shit like Game of Thrones beside them, it falls flat on its face.

I still think about Jon telling Angela that he is in every moment they spent together all at once. Every time I think about Watchmen S01E9, my throat gets tight and my mouth wobbles. A triumph of storytelling. When you compare this with the disappointment that is Game of Thrones, it becomes clear that being mediocre, white, and a man often leads to success even when you fail.

I get angry because it’s possible to take novels/comics with so many moving parts and rich history, update them for our time and make the rich source material even richer. Those men just didn’t know how. 

And before anyone says the first three seasons are good. Are they? Are they really? Or are we just blinded by the perceived faithfulness to GRRM’s work when we weigh it against the utter shit show that was the last season? The show lifts all the best parts wholesale from the books and magnifies all the worst parts. 

They portrayed the Dothraki with a lack of care compared to the Free Folk. They furthered the lack of non-white perspectives by erasing what little we had. Presenting freedom as if it is worse than chattel slavery. The extinction of the Dothraki in service of white Northerners who were less than welcoming. 

The show does not name more than half of Daenerys' more prominent Dothraki characters on screen. Killing Irri, Jhiqui and Doreah to further isolate Daenerys. Transferring all the better traits from women to the men in their lives. Turning Jorah from an old paedophilic creep into whatever the fuck that was on the show. Alluding to the “first they came” poem for rapists, slavers and other monsters. Peddling the gentle slave-owner myth as if owning a person is not inherently violent. 

Having Missandei be beheaded in chains to fuel madness for literally no reason. Cersei could’ve bargained for her life or at least some concession from Daenerys with Missandei’s life, but they have her behead Missandei for no other reason than to piss off a woman with a large army and an even larger dragon. It made little sense then, and it makes even less sense now. 

I know it’s a bit much to still be so affected by that dumpster fire almost a decade in, but I saw that interview with those idiots yesterday, and I have been furious ever since. 

[zahri-melitor]

November Solicits:

Justice League Unlimited: look. I am unlikely to read this. But I'm glad to see they've got the satellite back.

Batman: I'm here for this (please let Eddie be having a good turn for a while, we are due for one)

Action Comics: between Waid and Tamaki I'm probably dropping back in to read this (and given Tamaki is doing a full set of Kara backups...is this the launch pad for a new Supergirl?)

Already planned to drop in on the new Catwoman and Nightwing runs and what's here sounds fine.

Birds of Prey: Very interested to see how Thompson keeps balancing this because she clearly wants to play with ALL THE TOYS.

Batgirl: I am excited, the premise sounds good. "Clutch your pearls" though...are we seeing the return of the bracelet????

Green Arrow: I know nothing about Chris Condon. I just hope he can pace a story better than Williamson (and realistically releases several of the characters back into the wild to focus a bit more tightly). Looking at his previous works it looks like he does horror? Which, hmmm, that would certainly be a tone pivot for GA as a book.

Flash: Irey's back getting attention, after Jai just had the whole last storyline!

Batman & Robin: PKJ definitely also looks to be pivoting this title and I'm not upset.

Black Lightning: oh I am definitely interested in this one, especially as it looks like they're finally going to actually do some work with the Pierce family again rather than just sort of handwaving that they're kinda sorta back where they were as of preboot.

JSA: ...goddammit I may actually be picking this up given the cast. Will at least test it.

Black Canary: yes of course I am reading it. I am trotting my ass down to my LCS and buying it and making considered decisions about what covers I want. It's a Dinah book, if I want DC to put out material that's actually about Dinah as a character not about Dinah-Ollie's-Girlfriend I have to support that. And as I said, it's already looking like it'll shape up to be middle of the road as far as BC solos go, so I don't know why everyone wants to cry so much; I'm getting a Dinah book and the premise doesn't include, so far as I can tell, "Musician" or "Let's Send Sin To A Monastery" (as she's actively being used in BOP) or "White Slavery In The Middle East Is Bad, Folks". It's got Dinah and Shiva in it. I just want to see my girls fight.

The Question: All Along the Watchtower: like everyone else I am currently staring at the "ad hoc support team" line and dreaming of the possibilities, 99% of which are so shatteringly unlikely.

Shazam: this remains looking so fun, the most reliably entertaining book being published by DC right now.

My Adventures with Superman: now I have only watched Season 1 so far and haven't made it through Season 2...but hah! Team 7! I called it! It made sense given the line up of opponents appearing!

Silent Knight: who let Goliath into this.

Jenny Sparks: want to talk about the ACTUAL Tom King title where I have no optimism and even the premise is awful? This is it.

The Nice House by the Sea: omgwtfbbq omg omg omg Max's group is encountering Walter's group omg omg omg god I am so hyped for this title you do not understand

[ceasarslegion]

I don't think that anti-fandom can really be blamed on kids being "cringe" and having an AU or OCs or ship that's far-fetched. I think it's due to a popularity treadmill. Things start getting pointed out as media ages, it may not have aged well, and instead of taking it into consideration they just blow the whole thing off and treat is as evil. This site is not good at nuance. Don't blame it on people having fun, blame it on the people who can't take "it's complex" (btw not trying to be rude!)

I think you misunderstood me. I dont care about people having fun, ive been vocally anti cringe culture for a long time now. I think everyone should do whatever they want forever. I think there is a certain group of individuals however who ignore a lot of the source material and then get angry that... its the source material.

Thats why i used marvel as an example in the tags. It was the biggest fandom on tumblr and arguably the wider internet when superwholock ran its course, and yet ive seen the same people who ran marvel blogs claim its the worst thing ever made and that anybody who likes it has terrible taste, as if they didnt... used to run with the URL stevelovesbucky or something. They become cold and mean and cyberbullies over something as inconsequential as blockbuster movies and you end up not with the critique they claim to be doing but just cyberbullying over other people liking the same thing they used to like. Except they didnt really like MARVEL, its more that they liked what their IDEA of marvel was. And theres nothing wrong with fanworks and fics, ive been in fandom all my life and I participate actively in those things too, its that they never actually liked whatever the source was, just the other people who did.

Theres a lot more examples I can think of that fit the same metric. Voltron, Steven Universe, Hamilton, hell I once saw someone get driven out of the Fallout fandom because they wrote a fic where their OC was a legion slave. Meanwhile, roman-style slavery has been a major theme in the Fallout universe since day 1! Thats a perfect example of what I'm saying: someone engaged in the actual source material, but it wasn't approved of by the folks who only liked Fallout aesthetically and not genuinely, because they were bullied and driven out for exploring problematic themes through the safe medium of fiction in the game series ABOUT exploring problemic themes through the safe medium of fiction

I dont have any issue whatsoever with people making fics and art and AUs and fanwork. My issue is with people who act like that fanwork is devoid of a source, and don't actually like the source at the end of the day, take the fanon as gospel, and then end up crucifying the source material and everyone who engages in it genuinely

[britcision]

"other cultures have different ideas of freedom and duty" is this not still about the catgirl who very much wanted to leave but was prevented from doing so with an exploding slave collar?

Yeah, this is about the 10 year old that was bought from a freak show and kept trying to run away into the woods

So they put the exact same “don’t wander off” charm on her they put on the clan leader’s kid and trained her to be a ninja, and then when she was 17 and worked out how to break the charm they pretty much just shrugged it off and wished her well

(Note: buck fucking wild “don’t wander off” charm that makes a scary ghost lady chase you around with a knife until you go find the ninja who absolutely should not be a governess

No physical damage, but scary as shit and something that is actually worth calling the family out on)

People are real intent on calling it slavery because what actually happened was that she got bought by Eastern Islands Batman and put into service to his clan, to be trained along with a couple other girls he bought from similar parent free situations, and the young daughter of one of families who served the clan

Cuz y’see, to understand the concept of being in service, you have to understand that the feudal system is not in fact the modern West, and for a lot of people (3/4 of these girls in fact) being fed, trained, cared for, and given home and board was a pretty sweet deal and well worth deep and abiding loyalty

(And you get to be a ninja, also cool, and other exclusive things like an education and regular baths which were not available to common folks)

1/4 preferred actual freedom to do what she wanted when she wanted (our catgirl Izutsumi), so when they were convinced she wouldn’t actually immediately die or be stuffed back in another cage (breaking the curse), she got her wish

But the Asian man from the family they’re all in service to had a fight with our beloved autism creature Laios, and despite them coming out the other side still ride or die besties people have decided He Must Be Evil, so you get nuance-allergic takes like “HE PAID MONEY FOR HER THIS IS SLAVERY”

She was trained as a ninja and asked to help with chores like clearing snow off the roof in exchange for housing and food. Her only objection to staying was she didn’t like someone else picking what she ate day to day

To be fair though, the actual purpose of the curse was never addressed in the original source material (because it’s not particularly relevant), so a lot of people did get left with the idea that it would actually hurt or kill Izutsumi

It’s included in the Dungeon Guide, as is the nod that the curse is a fucking ridiculous thing to put on kids and an incredibly bad idea; this is why ninjas are not ideal governesses

There are so many things to rag on the Nakamoto family for. Refusing to understand that service to a feudal lord is not slavery just because it’s not what you were raised with is not one of them

The curse is, and much more personally satisfying to my mind, but people get real upset when you take their buzzwords away and it’s easier to cry “slavery!!!” than think for five minutes about another culture where you might be expected to have a duty to those who feed, shelter, train, and care for you

They didn’t let a marginalised preteen whose body had already been experimented on against her will run out into the woods alone, the greatest curtailment of freedom known to man

But for some reason admitting that they were missing key pieces of information and context is also a terribly difficult thing to do, so people would rather dig in and insist that understanding the concept of the feudal system is the same as supporting slavery

Not surprising on tumblr dot com, but always disappointing

For some people being wrong is terrifying and a personal attack that must be crushed

[thenixkat]

M1 dead prez & Bonnot - Real Revolutionaries ft. General Levy and Paolo Frescu

Lyrics:

[Intro: Bob Marley] ...overcome our little trouble

Brother you're right, you're right You're right, you're right, you're, so right! We gon' fight (we gon' fight), we'll have to fight (we gon' fight) We gonna fight (we gon' fight)

[Verse 1: M1] Soon we'll find out who is, the real revolutionary

Bob hit the nail When he fell on his deathbed The streets ran red With blood, sweat and tears It was too many years for liberation Colonization enslaved a whole nation Cecil stole that called it Rhodesia Too many white folks catchin' amnesia How convenient! History is not an agreement I guess It's based on how you see it Nas was wrong, Mugabe was right! We gotta fight! Izwe Lethu i Afrika! Afrika's our Land The future is in our hands So here's a list of demands Reparations for what they stole The People, the Land, the Diamonds, the Gold Stop the bombing us Neo-coons Uncle Tom-ing us Sellin us your empty promises Your Economist Propagandizing what time it is Fuck that digital shit Back up off our nuts a lil' bit And let's take it back to the Futuristic I'll testify as a material witness These muthafuckas is too sadistic If you got some melanin You can get with this X - that, if you, hear this That's the bizness!! [General Levy] (the site didn’t have this man’s verses and I’mma do my best, some help would be appreciated)

Africa the rights will land up with our forefathah  with school and we about to be antifa rebah they empty our land to take our silvah they take the revolution but not the cultchah you think a little thing a black mon u’ll fight fair we wan back the da land of our forefathah Christopher Columbus was a rapscallion to be quite precise he was a freaking robber

[Verse 2: M1] Kwame Nkruma, Sekou Toure Thomas Sankara The leaders of tomorrow The future Garveys The future Lumumba The future Bikos The future Heros Let's celebrate a free Zimbabwe We doin it our way A national holiday No more Imperialism, not today Fuck the I.M.F., Fuck the World Bank United States of Afrika Not AFRICOM Do you think I'm dumb I know where I'm from The Continent I ain't claimin' no blocks You got me bent I meant what I said And said what I meant Obama ani't my President That's just white power In a black face This is about Liberation... not race!

[General Levy] ��(the site didn’t have this man’s verses and I’mma do my best, some help would be appreciated)

M1 what I say The sands of Aragones the violence in the weir you know the spot to look for the message will be clear let’s read between the lines and pick the sense from nonsense  don't be fooled by the lies politics propetense they think they can keep us blinded lies about the truth stop collaborating they divide us into groups racialism projectism sexism to name a few unity issues we should defy as a rule Bonnot

[M1] (rest of the song not on the lyrics site either doing my best)

Put your hands up let me see you stand up Put your hands up let me see you stand up Put your hands up let me see you stand up Put your hands up let me see you stand up Put your hands up let me see you stand up Put your hands up let me see you stand up Put your hands up let me see you stand up Put your hands up let me see you stand up

[General Levy]

Oh if we just demand and make moves so illegal They’ll kill the innocent or buy the island with diesel  They wicked and deceitful and have the gall acting regal People is inevitable wait till you see we will be free Ghetto you is free ghetto you is free From the mental slavery Killing your youth we wanna to be free Free free free Fight for your rights and your liberty

[transgamerthoughts]

a vast methodical fragment

(this is a cross post from cohost. pretty much all my stuff ends up there first. that said! writing here is what initially led to me getting a job as professional critic so some stuff will still end up here)

i am playing Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth. no spoilers in this post! don't panic! though I have seen the ending and will eventually write on What This Remake Business Is Even About Now I'm taking a slower recircling back through the world and doing side content. because this is a good world. that's maybe the biggest strength of the entire game! there's a remarkable sense that the world has been as well-considered as the characters. part of what makes the remake trilogy feel more solid than something like final fantasy 16 is the ways in the texture added into every location. final fantasy 16 had a lot of maps and lore and codex entries that were meant to create a sense of "realness" to Valisthea but the sum total of that falters compared to even some of Rebirth's smallest moments. no timeline, however meticulous, can compare to watching protesters in lower Junon wave signs outside of the Shinra-controlled entrance to the city or seeing how bars are themed in the Gold Saucer.

when I wrote about the end of Final Fantasy 16I made comparisons to Triangle Strategy. both games tackled similar matters on paper but in practice, I felt that the latter succeeded because it had an understanding of its settings material realities. In their podcast on ff16, the folk at Abnormal Mapping (I think specifically Austin as the guest third chair) noted that while the game had aspirations about tackling slavery, it only ever really showed Bearers being used for servant work. they aired out laundry or lit fireplaces. it belied a certain lack of consideration for the world and its needs why is someone airing out laundry with magick when they could be cultivating a field? yes, Titan is a great summon useful in war but would his existence not affect the Dhalmekian Republic's infrastructure and architecture?

Rebirth doesn't have this issue. Walking in any town or exploring the outlying regions starts readily reveals locations that have a great deal of consideration and consistency. I know where the food come from, I can stumble in on teachers reading stories to classes or else telling them some local folklore. there are popular songs, i run into veterans of old wars and stumble on abandoned forts that still have old ammo boxes in them, local superstitions and phrases. the pieces fit together.

I've quibbles with Rebirth in the sense that I think it's a bit distracted as a story. there are times when the larger sound and fury threaten to signify nothing and I don't think that's simply to do with the fact that it's adapting a fairly freewheeling portion of the 1997 original. but that's a very particular complaint targeted at the meta-narrative. What Is This All About?

for the moment, i'm content putting that question on hold. the contrast to ff16 is perhaps what's ringing most loudly in my mind. this is a world with wave-race dolphin riding, combat simulators where an android named Chadley digitizes local gods into pocket-sized summon materia. it's a place where your ninja friend accidentally creates countless copies of a joke-character and they all team up to renovate a seaside inn. but I take it more seriously.

a jaded person might say that it had that grace built in because of my nostalgia but the truth it that earned this consideration through the care built into the world. it didn't make demands of me. the developers looked at the world, asked how it would work and wove that into everything. i know the latest gimmick popsicle flavors for crying out loud!

the difference between a heap of lore and a properly built world can be thin and arbitrary but if there's one thing I really appreciate from this ongoing Remake project, it's the how much the player understands How It Got The Way It Is.

[spoonsandscars]

FL banned AP Psych because College Board refused to change their curriculum to accommodate the “Don’t Say Gay” law (ie taking out sections teaching about gender and sexuality)

And now two other providers of educational material/college-level exams, International Baccalaureate and Cambridge Assessment/AICE, have signed agreements saying that their curriculum will now align with the “Don’t Say Gay” law. This will cause history surrounding chattel slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction to be majorly distorted and for gender/sexuality lessons to be completely removed.

Check out the link from Color of Change to send a letter to IB And Cambridge to stop whitewashing and erasing queer folks from their curriculum.