#something that is understood to be something put in place wholly by the individual themselves

[springespronge]

???

Assigned male by tiktok user

[englass]

Hello ❤ hope you have a nice day 💖 can i request #14 from the dark prompts please?

Heya hun!!! Honestly, the day has been hot, but we push on. I hope your day has been good!! 💖 Hope you don't mind, but I went for a Fantasy AU for this one; I was super struggling with the prompt and the only thing I could think of was, "oooh, John as a mage..." so we kinda get that. The whole thing is more set up then anything else, but I didn't want to delete anything...

14. “You’re too sweet, darling. What type of monster would I be without you?”

- - -

There had been tales, whispers amongst the women and men of people going missing; of them being snatched off darkened paths and empty roads. Some reckoned it was a beast, spoke of a monster that was stealing people away to fuel their wicked appetite. Others thought it to be bandits, or other unscrupulous groups looking to profit off of the lives of inconspicuous civilians. But there were a handful, the few like yourself, that felt the shift in the air; that could feel the remnants of something foul and forbidden coiled around the scenes.

It had worried you greatly, the thought of such dark magic set loose in the town you had made a home of. Often you found yourself lost in your own mounting anxieties as the reports grew more and more frequent, and rumours gradianted into a much dreaded possibility. Even though you were no stranger to the darker arts, proficient as you are in the art of Summoning, you had never delved too far into its catalogue. In fact, Summoning was about all you ever touched and even then, amongst some other magically inclined individuals, it was considered somewhat of a lesser art; not as destructive and therefore not as notable as others.

However, just because you never strayed into more questionable arts doesn’t mean you know not of them. You’re aware that there are some dark arts that are a bit more accepted amongst the magically inclined than others, used for educational purposes and approved of as a means to protect oneself. Really dark arts are just offensive abilities, so no matter what there is always an element of wariness when it comes to the potential of such arts. As long as you utilise them in an acceptable manner there will be no questioning, no inquiries into your character.

For those not accepted though it is typically because they cross some form of moral or ethical line, taking an individual down a path that alters them irremediably. Stains the core of their aura with the makings of something dreadful, corrupts them until they lose all that makes them as they are.

Admittedly, if not studied correctly or the thirst for knowledge becomes too consuming, then any art can destroy a person; can set them down that very smart path. And sometimes a person can destroy the values of the art and stretch it into something it is not designed to be. There are many stories of Healers’ playing Maker, of a Conjurers’ calling going terribly wrong, of Astrologians’ going insane from their divinations. Once you were almost entranced by your own Summon; a rookie mistake, terribly embarrassing to recall.

Magic in general is a dangerous art and care will always need to be taken. But there are some arts where that danger is part of the art, and those are forbidden. They will always cross the line, and they will never fail to destroy a person; and that person will never fail to destroy others.

That’s what scared you so much about the recent happenings of the town. To think that such a person was lurching about the place, taking people off the street for who knows what nefarious reasons, terrified you. The idea that you could be next, that the stability of your own aura could be at risk because of this rogue caster sickened you. It tore you apart.

And John saw that.

It was a relatively small town, filled with all types of people coming in and out from across the region and the different towns within it. For a long time though the only people you knew that did magic was a spirited Pyromancer called Sharky and some eccentric Apothecary who lived on the outskirts called Larry (you were convinced the man tested his own potions on himself). The first you met when you had summoned a Kelpie to help you put out a fire he had accidentally caused a bit too close to your home, while the latter you had met by chance while looking for ingredients.

That had changed once the Seed brothers had moved in close to the town. They were surprisingly open about their magical inclinations and while the town wasn’t outrightly hostile they were openly suspicious of the three. You had even been a little suspicious of the three, not understanding their reasons for being so forward to a none magically inclined town; it could be dangerous to do so. Ultimately though they suffered little consequence of their reveal, other than strange looks and quiet gossip made of them. You had been envious of that freedom, to be forthright about what you were, but thought better of it. To reveal such a truth after so long would spell disaster for you.

Not even a full lunar cycle had passed before Joseph, the middle brother of the three, had made a point to come seek you out, introducing himself and his brothers to you. It had been a wholly uncomfortable encounter, especially the instance where he had suddenly questioned what arts you had studied. Desperately you had tried to deny it but thankfully the oldest brother, Jacob, had merely sighed and apologised on Joseph’s behalf. As an ex-Paladin turned Enchanter he had fully understood your need for secrecy and had been your saving grace during the whole thing. From then on the brothers become quick acquaintances to you, whether you wanted them to be or not.

Joseph was… okay. He made for interesting conversation no doubt and oftentimes his words gave you pause to think on things, but he could be a touch preachy at times, especially about his beliefs and divinations. Jacob on the other hand had become a confidante of sorts. You didn’t often talk, but when you did the conversation held well enough and his advice was always sound. He was also honest about his thoughts and opinions on a matter, and while you didn’t like being called out when you messed up you did respect his outlook. Your relationship with the youngest brother, John, however was a special one.

It had taken him a few days after the initial introduction to strike up a conversation with you, and for the most part he had purely asked you about yourself. But somewhere between admitting how long you’ve lived here and him nervously revealing himself to be a Conjurer, you had developed a fast trust of the man. It was unexplainable, completely foolish of you, but there was just something about him that you thought was pleasant; a believability to him. He was the first you deliberately told about your darker studies and thankfully, being of similar arts, he had taken it exceedingly well. You had even bonded over the differences and similarities between your chosen studies. He had become a dear friend, and only became dearer as the years went by.

So John noticing when your worries began to eat at you didn’t surprise you. He knew you extraordinarily well, sometimes it was even a little spooky how well he knew you, but it was also an odd comfort. He knew just what to say to put you at ease, to assure you that you would be safe and even going so far as promising that he himself would protect you from such a fate as those missing. You still had doubts, but his care was touching.

If only you had learned the truth sooner.

“My friend, please,” you cry, wrists shackled uncomfortably above you, the metal cutting into your skin, “I beg of thee, stop this! Such practises are a blight to the soul, you will doom yourself if you continue. I know not what it is you wish to accomplish, but please spare them this torture! Spare yourself! Surely there has to be another way, John; surely!”

John merely chuckles quietly, slowly shaking his head as he does so. “Oh, you’re too sweet, darling. Even now, as you are, you still think of me and my well being before yourself. Not to imply you have anything to fear, of course; you know I would never hurt you. I merely mean it as an observation. It is a charming trait, that sweetness of yours. It’s part of why I fell for you so.” He turns to you then, up to his elbows covered in blood. The person before him is still alive, but barely, their breaths shallow and their skin a deathly pallor. To think he was a Hemomancer this whole time…

“But why waste words on their behalf when they would never deign to do the same for you? You had to hide yourself, deny what you truly are just to be accepted by these lowly worms for years. Tell me, where is the fairness in that? In what world should we sequest ourselves away from those weaker than us, those deemed less worthy by the Maker themselves?”

Crossing the space in a few long strides he stops before you, bloody hands cupping your cheeks gently even as you try to turn away from him, bringing you back to stare helplessly into his sparkling eyes, “Don’t you see, sweet one? You are beautiful, in every part, as you are. We were blessed by the Maker, but they will never see that, blinded as they are. They will never appreciate our arts, our gifts, or even us as people, no matter what we may do or sacrifice for them. If I need to subject myself to risk to show them their place, to create a world that you need not hide in any longer, then I’ll do so gladly and without hesitation.”

Shaking your head softly, face still captured within his hands, a tear slips unbidden down your cheek. “But it will consume you. You’ll become a monster.”

“Maybe,” he admits, tone oddly calm as he carefully brushes beneath your eye with his thumb, smearing blood through the track of your tear, “but I wonder, what type of monster would I be without you, do you think?”

Perhaps it is vain of you, but something tells you that he would be another beast entirely without you chained to him as you now are…

[dwellordream]

“...Today, most – though by no means all – free countries (along with a number of rather unfree ones) have shifted from mass conscription based militaries to professional, all-volunteer militaries. The United States, of course, made that shift in 1973 (along lines proposed by the 1969 Gates Commission). The shift to a professional military has always been understood to have involved risks – the classic(al) example of those risks being the Roman one: the creation of a semi-professional Roman army misaligned the interests of the volunteer soldiers with the voting citizens, resulting in the end (though a complicated process) in the collapse of the Republic and the formation of the Empire in what might well be termed a shift to ‘military rule’ as the chief commander of the republic (first Julius Caesar, then Octavian) seized power from the apparatus of civilian government (the senate and citizen assemblies).

It is in that context that ‘warrior’ – despite its recent, frustrating use by the United States Army – is an unfortunate way for soldiers (regardless of branch or country) to think of themselves. Encouraging soldiers to see themselves as ‘warriors’ means encouraging them to see their role as combatants as the foundational core of their identity. A Mongol warrior was a warrior because as an adult male Mongol, being a warrior was central to his gender-identity and place in society (the Mongols being a society, as common with Steppe nomads, where all adult males were warriors); such a Mongol remained a warrior for his whole adult life.

Likewise, a medieval knight – who I’d class as a warrior (remember, the distinction is on identity more than unit fighting) – had warrior as a core part of their identity. It is striking that, apart from taking religious orders to become a monk (and thus shift to an equally totalizing vocation), knights – especially as we progress through the High Middle Ages as the knighthood becomes a more rigid and recognized institution – do not generally seem to retire. They do not lay down their arms and become civilians (and just one look at the attitude of knightly writers towards civilians quickly answers the question as to why). Being a warrior was the foundation of their identity and so could not be disposed of. We could do the same exercise with any number of ‘warrior classes’ within various societies. Those individuals were, in effect born warriors and they would die warriors. In societies with meaningful degrees of labor specialization, to be a warrior was to be, permanently, a class apart.

Creating such a class apart (especially one with lots of weapons) presents a tremendous danger to civilian government and consequently to a free society (though it is also a danger to civilian government in an unfree society). As the interests of this ‘warrior class’ diverge from the interests of the rest of society, even with the best of intentions the tendency is going to be for the warriors to seek to preserve their interests and status with the tools they have, which is to say all of the weapons (what in technical terms we’d call a ‘failure of civil-military relations,’ civ-mil being the term for the relationship between civil society and its military).

The end result of that process is generally the replacement of civilian self-government with ‘warrior rule.’ In pre-modern societies, such ‘warrior rule’ took the form of governments composed of military aristocrats (often with the chiefest military aristocrat, the king, at the pinnacle of the system); the modern variant, rule by officer corps (often with a general as the king-in-all-but-name) is of course quite common. Because of that concern, it is generally well understood that keeping the cultural gap between the civilian and military worlds as small as possible is important to a free society.

Instead, what a modern free society wants are effectively civilians, who put on the soldier’s uniform for a few years, acquire the soldier’s skills and arts, and then when their time is done take that uniform off and rejoin civil society as seamlessly as possible (the phrase ‘citizen-soldier’ is often used represent this ideal). It is clear that, at least for the United States, the current realization of this is less than ideal. The endless pressure to ‘re-up‘ (or for folks to be stop-lossed) hardly help.

But encouraging soldiers (or people in everyday civilian life; we’ll come back to that in the last post in this series) to identify as warriors – individual, self-motivated combatants whose entire identity is bound up in the practice of war – does real harm to the actual goal of keeping the cultural divide between soldiers and civilians as small as possible. Observers both within the military and without have been shouting the alarm on this point for some time now, but the heroic allure of the warrior remains strong.

...But as I noted above, we’ve discussed on this blog already a lot of different military social structures (mounted aristocrats in France and Arabia, the theme and fyrd systems, the Spartans themselves, and so on). And they are very different and produce armies – because societies cannot help but replicate their own peacetime social order on the battlefield – that are organized differently, value different things and as a consequence fight differently. But focusing on (fictitious) ‘universal warriors’ also obscures another complex set of relationships to war and warfare: all of the civilians.

When we talk about the impact of war on civilians, the mind quite naturally turns to the civilian victims of war – sacked cities, enslaved captives, murdered non-combatants – and of course their experience is part of war too. But even in a war somehow fought entirely in an empty field between two communities (which, to be clear, no actual war even slightly resembles this ‘Platonic’ ideal war; there is a tendency to romanticize certain periods of military history, particularly European military history, this way, but it wasn’t so), it would still shape the lives of all of the non-combatants in that society (this is the key insight of the ‘war and society’ school of military history).

To take just my own specialty, warfare in the Middle Roman Republic wasn’t simply a matter for the soldiery, even when the wars were fought outside of Italy (which they weren’t always kept outside!). The demand for conscripts to fill the legions bent and molded Roman family patterns, influencing marriage and child-bearing patterns for both men and women. With so many of the males of society processed through the military, the values of the army became the values of society not only for the men but also for women as well. Women in these societies did not consider themselves uninterested bystanders in these conflicts: by and large they had a side and were on that side, supporting the war effort by whatever means.

And even in late-third and early-second century (BC) Rome, with its absolutely vast military deployments, the majority of men (and all of the women) were still on the ‘homefront’ at any given time, farming the food, paying the taxes, making the armor and weapons and generally doing the tasks that allowed the war machine to function, often in situations of considerable hardship. And in the end – though the exact mechanisms remain the subject of debate – it is clear that the results of Rome’s victory induced significant economic instability, which was also a part of the experience of war.

In short, warriors were not the only people who mattered in war. The wartime social role of a warrior was not only different from that of a soldier, it was different than that of the working peasant forced to pay heavy taxes, or to provide Corvée labor to the army. It was different from the woman whose husband went off to war, or whose son did, or who had to keep up her farm and pay the taxes while they did so. It was different for the aristocrat than for the peasant, for the artisan than for the farmer. Different for the child than for the adult.

And yet for a complex society (one with significant specialization of labor) to wage war efficiently, all of these roles were necessary. To focus on only the warrior (or the soldier) as the sole interesting relationship in warfare is to erase the indispensable contributions made by all of these folks, without which the combatant could not combat.

It would be worse yet, of course, to suggest that the role of the warrior is somehow morally superior to these other roles (something Pressfield does explicitly, I might add, comparing ‘decadent’ modern society to supposedly superior ‘warrior societies’ in his opening videos). To do so with reference to our modern professional militaries is to invite disastrous civil-military failure. To suggest, more deeply, that everyone ought to be in some sense a ‘warrior’ in their own occupation sounds better, but – as we’ll see in the last essay of this series – leads to equally dark places.

A modern, free society has no need for warriors; the warrior is almost wholly inimical to a free society if that society has a significant degree of labor specialization (and thus full-time civilian specialists). It needs citizens, some of whom must be, at any time, soldiers but who must never stop being citizens both when in uniform and afterwards.”

- Bret Devereaux, “The Universal Warrior, Part I: Soldiers, Warriors, and…”

[evien-stark]

✧I Need You✧ Chapter 178

Stocks dropped the next day. Nothing detrimental, but even one or two points never felt good. It was hard to explain why, too. And explain you had to, as you and Tony sat in an uncomfortable room with the Board. You weren’t scared of those people, and they couldn’t demand much of either of you. But they wanted to know what was going on. And maybe more importantly, what the two of you were planning on doing about it. If you even could. 

The Senate meeting had ended in your favor, so you’d thought. It was hard to understand why the public had had their confidence shaken. Maybe Wenham was more trouble than you originally thought. But still not a problem you couldn’t overcome, something you told the Board very strongly. And while they had their shortsightedness set on Tony for some reason, as he bore the brunt of their questions despite it being your show at the hearing, you didn’t feel bad at all for… influencing them. Just a little. Just enough to quell the heat. 

Just enough to get them to back off of him and leave feeling like everything was under control. It was, after all. This was certainly nothing you couldn’t overcome. A drop in the bucket. The next move, in fact, was easy enough to determine. If the public at large didn’t like the thought of you or any of the other Avengers being on trial for what had happened, you’d distract them with something else. Something new and exciting and shiny. Something about legacy. Something about improving the world you were still trying to clean up. 

Luckily for you and Tony, you’d just restarted the discussion about scholarships and grants. It was nice to have an easy ace in your back pocket for once. Stark Industries called for a presser three days after the senate hearing. The room was packed. 

“Tony and I are pleased to announce the initiative stages of our new grant under the banner of the September Foundation. We are looking to help bolster the dreams of students who want a better and brighter future not only for themselves but for the world. We’re targeting promising young students who have been curtailed by poor budget restrictions from public schools. Kids who need help the most and often don’t get it. Kids who are boxed out of getting scholarships that they desperately need because they’re not from a connected background or not athletically inclined. 

Kids who then have to turn to predatory loan systems that keep them bogged down in messes so great, their dreams of the future often get put on hold while they dig themselves out of debt. Stark Industries is aiming to help shape the future through kids just like that. We are in the beginning phases right now, and invite you to take a look on our website for more information. In addition to this, the pilot program for our detailed internships was an astounding success, and we’re looking to expand that program again. We’ll be looking for well qualified individuals with a taste for businesses and sciences who want hands-on experience in multiple fields. 

Tony and I will take a few questions.”

Probably a mistake. Usually always a mistake, to take any sort of questions at any sort of media event. But you had to do it for this one. And while most reporters kept their questions centered and focused on this exciting new thing Stark Industries was promoting, a few skewed towards recent events. Telling them that you’d already made a statement- several in fact- wasn’t enough for them. And you knew if you didn’t cut the meeting, it’d devolve completely into Sokovia and Avengers and Senate hearing talks. So you thanked them for their time, and tried to leave. 

It would have been smart  to disappear upstairs where no one could bother the both of you. But you had places to be immediately after. So down onto the front steps the both of you descended, while other news outlets were littered out along the sidewalk, waiting for this exact appearance. Happy was waiting with the car door open, Tony had his arm around you, the other one waving off microphones shoved in either of your direction. 

It was also a mistake- so many made today- to let Tony escort you into the back seat first. Because he was two seconds from getting in so the both of you could leave, and a question from a feisty reporter really hit its mark- “Mr. Stark! Can you comment on the public’s fear of the Hulk? Where is Bruce Banner now? Do you think he should be imprisoned for being so dangerous?” 

Uselessly you reached up to try and get a hold of his arm, but he’d already turned towards the crowd. A fire had lit up inside him. “A comment? My comment is that those concerns are baseless and wholly irresponsible. You’re talking about an esteemed member of the scientific community- and a hero. Bruce Banner has made it a mission to save lives. Usually at the risk of his own. Anyone willing to try and cut him down to help their own narrow-minded view of the world isn’t even worth the ink you’re going to use to print this headline.” 

A real gotcha moment. Tony had realized it too little too late. But more realistically, he probably didn’t care. After saying his piece, after defending his friend, he did what he always did. Mugged for the cameras flashing in his face to show just how much that hadn’t affected him. Threw up a peace sign. And then got into the car. Happy was quick pulling off the sidewalk. 

You reached over, uncurling Tony’s fingers from their tight fisted hold. He relaxed, but only slightly. It was a stupid question to ask, but there was only one reason he’d blow up like that over a question that was at this point standard. Shouted constantly. “No hits on Bruce yet?” 

His head dropped in a small shake. “Got some on identical wreckage. Banda Sea. If Hulk went down there, he had to swim somewhere. We just don’t know where yet.” Tony would never give this up. No matter what happiness the two of you were trying to earn, in quiet moments alone you knew he was still looking for Bruce. 

The information was so scattered. Hulk had taken off in the Quinjet for some reason. And now Tony thought he’d crashed it? Maybe more likely it had run out of fuel and just went down. But if that was the case, Bruce had surely survived. It seemed like the Hulk was almost immortal, sometimes… you had high hopes that he’d found his way to whatever area was nearest. Maybe had turned back into Bruce… You soothed your fingers over Tony’s palm. “We’ll find him.” 

“Depends on how much he wants to stay gone.” There was a sure defeat etched in Tony’s heart about this. He and Bruce had always been close. This was a tough loss to swallow. 

“At least we know he’s alive.” You were sure about this. Tony nodded, so he must have agreed. “Alive and…” He sighed slowly. “Out there. Somewhere.” 

“He’ll come back.” Reaching up, you touched the side of Tony’s face, turning him your way. Gently you removed his tinted lenses, just looking at him for a long time. “He might just need time to himself. You know how he is.” 

“He’ll think himself into a hole.” Tony understood this because… he was the same way. 

“I know. But when he’s ready for help getting out of it, he’ll go to you.” This you knew in your heart. When Bruce had come to his senses and realized he wasn’t getting anywhere by himself, he’d come back to Tony. One of the only people on this planet that had treated him with such care and kindness and with such humanity from the moment they’d met. You’d like to think yourself as close, but you knew Tony and Bruce had a special bond. 

Your reassurances eased his heart a little. “You really think so?” 

“I do.” Bruce would come back. You knew this. It just might not have been for a very long time. “Until then… telling reporters off is one way of lighting the way home for him.” Giving your okay for little spats here and there. It mattered little anyway, Tony would defend Bruce as often as he had to. 

But with your blessing, he smiled. “Glad to see we’re on the same page.” 

Yep. Exactly as you’d thought. No plans to stop telling off the press. 

Because it was Bruce… that was fine. 

                                                                --- 

On July 18th, Steve’s updated, new and improved, museum exhibit was set to be live the moment the doors open that morning. But, as you checked the press docket, he wasn’t expected to show up until three, to see the exhibit for himself. Take pictures with guests. And maybe answer some questions- about the exhibit. And nothing else. But you knew better than that. 

Steve might not have. 

Which was why it wasn’t a surprise when you arrived, fifteen minutes after three PM that day, walking through the Met and its storied pieces, waiting at the back of the crowd with everyone else, finding Steve overwhelmed completely with everything going on around him. Girls were asking for selfies. Boys wanted autographs and arm wrestling matches. Press had questions he didn’t want to answer. Things he struggled to talk about- 

Even things that he should have practiced the night before. Things about the exhibit, even. It was a question by a reporter on the left, who asked something about the Howling Commandos- who asked something about James Barnes- 

It not only sparked some sense of hurt in Steve, but prompted recognition from you. That missing piece of the puzzle. Something had changed between New York and Sokovia. And its name was Bucky Barnes. The Winter Soldier. The one that had nearly killed you- and beaten the life out of Steve. Bucky. His old friend who had died and been reborn as some Hydra experiment. 

That’s what had changed. Steve had gone out looking for him, and as far as you remembered, had come back empty handed. 

But how did that translate into his current attitude problems? You were still missing something. 

Either way, you finally took pity on Steve and parted the crowd, drawing your arm around his as cameras furiously started flashing as soon as your presence was at the forefront of the crowd. You gave them a little wave, ignoring Steve’s dual surprise and relief. You were there to save him. It couldn’t be any more obvious. “I think we should let Steve enjoy his own exhibit, shall we? He’ll be around later for more autographs, if you’d like. Let’s say around four PM.” 

Questions started coming your way- What were you doing here? What did you think of the exhibit? What’s it like fighting alongside a piece of American history? ...is there any relief expected by way of the American government for the Sokovians? You remained collected. “Let’s not take this day away from Captain America.” And promptly after that told them, “No more questions.” Drawing Steve a little tighter in your hold, and urging him away from the questions, the cameras, and all his adoring fans that he seemed to have no idea about. 

Flexing your power of persuasion (or perhaps more your status in the world) you easily got staff to keep everyone away and empty out the Cantor Roof Garden. One semi-uncomfortable elevator ride all the way up and you and Steve were allowed a big open space with no one save the people servicing the bar. “How about a drink?” 

He wasn’t frowning, but he wasn’t smiling, either. “Sure.” And he didn’t waste any time once you put an order in for two glasses of wine. “What are you doing here?” 

“Checking on you. I know these things can be overwhelming.” After dropping a hefty tip for the bartenders, you took hold of your glass and lifted the other one up Steve’s way. 

“I appreciate it.” Even this was hesitant. And as the two of you moved away to lounge at the edge of the roof, looking at the city, he continued. “That’s not all though.” 

“No.” Agreeing with him, taking a sip of liquid courage. “I thought we should talk.” 

“We’ve been doing a lot of that, for someone who’s supposed to be retired.” Finally he found a little humor, smiling around the rim of his glass. Though it disappeared as he made a face. Clearly not a fan of his drink. 

“You know me,” sighed out as you rested your elbow on the railing. “Can’t help myself.” You’d had so much you wanted to say, but… now that you were here, you didn’t know how. Or what it was supposed to sound like. 

As quick as it came, Steve’s smile warped into something nervous. Apprehension took hold of him. “Why does it feel like I’m in trouble?” 

“Look, I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just gonna say it.” 

“Okay.” 

The both of you were looking at each other. You’d thought you knew how you were going to do this. But there was no good way. “What’s your problem with Tony?” 

“What?” Both his brows shot straight up. “Where’s this coming from all of a sudden?” 

It wasn’t fair to him, but you stayed focused. Watching him. Looking beyond the image he was presenting. “I feel like I missed every opportunity to address it, but something changed between you two. And I want to know what it is.” 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He went just slightly defensive, and wasn’t very good at hiding it. Turning away. Expression going just short of stony. “This is ridiculous. You came all the way here to ask me that?” 

You tried to be fair to him. You’d quite literally backed him into a corner. Without your protection he’d have to go back downstairs to the rabid mob that wanted to pick him apart. Yet… you had him on the rooftop doing the exact same thing. It made sense for him to be a little more than upset. “I came here because it’s bugging me. And I need to put it to bed.” 

“So do that. I don’t have a problem with Stark. I don’t know where you’re gettin’ that from.” 

“Every time you could, you put the blame on him for everything. I don’t know what you two argued about at Barton’s ranch, but I know it was bad. After the hearing you went straight for him. And you- Steve you hurled your shield at him. You remember that he’s just a regular person right?” 

“It wasn’t at him.”

 “Yes it was. I was there.” “So was I. And I think I know what I was doing better than you do.” Just like that the two of you had started arguing. It wasn’t with loud voices, but the pain was all the same. Steve shook his head. “Besides, Stark can take a little bit of heat- and he should have, considering Ultron was his fault.” 

“He was my fault, too. And Bruce’s. But you picked on Tony the most about it-”

“What now- I’m some schoolyard bully?” 

“Are you?” You finally raised your voice to ask this, edge sharp. The two of you were left staring at one another. Guilt wracked him heavily. “Steve, I don’t know what happened- but stop lying to me. You know I can tell, right?” His eyes dropped, and he set his glass down so he could cross his arms tightly. A storm was consuming him. “You left- to go find Bucky- things were okay then. Then you came back- you told me you had no luck- and suddenly everything was different. Why?” 

His heart squeezed, his stomach dropped. These feelings so heavy they penetrated you without much probing. But he was shaking his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about- and- even if I did- what does it matter? You two left.” There was a certain pain here. 

...some sense of betrayal that he’d either hidden very well or hadn’t had time to think about when you’d said you were going. Had he just been stewing this whole time? Was that it? But none of this helped you get to the bottom of what was going on with him. 

“We’re still here. I’m still looking out for the team. For you. I still care about you.” 

“Right.” He scoffed this out, looking up at you again. “That’s why you came here. Because you care about me.” This kind of smacked you broadside. “You came here to yell at me over Stark. If he has a problem with me he knows where to find me.” 

“He doesn’t. In fact, he didn’t want me to come talk to you at all. I do. I have a problem. I don’t like the way you’ve been treating Tony. You’ve changed and I want to know why- I need to know why, Steve, because you’re in charge of a team that needs your guidance. You’re a good man, I’m not questioning that. I don’t think I ever will. I just want to know what’s wrong.” Attacking him wasn’t helping anything. You cared about Steve, and giving him the impression you were picking favorites was not doing you any favors. You were careful as you reached out, putting a hand on his arm. He looked at the connection first and then at you. “Steve. Please. You know I care about you. I love you. You’re my family. Whatever happened, you can tell me.” 

If he needed help you would get him help. If he just needed to talk, you would spend hours talking until he was all talked out. Whatever he needed you would get for him. But he had to tell you. 

“I-” He was right there. On the edge. He was holding on to something. Something terrible. You felt it now. Only because it was bubbling to the surface now with your pressing. You held your breath. Something awful had happened to Steve when he’d left. Something that was making him act out. Maybe Tony was right. Maybe it had nothing to do with him, and Steve had just picked an easy target to vent his frustrations. “-Buck- he was in there. For just a few seconds. I put the shield down. I let him beat me. Because I knew he was in there. He could’ve killed me. But he saved my life.” 

Steve turned away, away from your touch. He settled his arms on the railing, looking out onto the city. You stayed standing in place, though you did hold your arms together. Trying to keep your balance. Steve was very suddenly bleeding emotionally. He needed to talk this out. 

So you had to let him. 

His head lowered. “He dragged me out of that river. And I spent months trying to get a lead on him. I found all his files. From- ...what Hydra was making him do.” Something clutched in his throat. You watched carefully but impassively. “And I- ...I-...” He stopped himself. Anxiety- dread hit a fever pitch inside him. But perhaps he sensed you were going to ask him to go on, so he pushed through to keep you from doing so. “-Buck is the only family I’ve got left. Except Peggy. And every time I go there… she remembers, and then she doesn’t. She gets startled. My being there hurts her every time. So really it’s just Bucky. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe you’re right. Maybe something has changed. It’s frustrating, not knowing where he is.” 

“Steve…” This wasn’t satisfying. You hadn’t come there assuming it would be. But this was… so much less than what you’d been hoping for. “We’re your family, too.” 

“Yeah. Sure. But. That part of me. Only he carries that. Only he understands me. I appreciate you- everything you’ve done- you mean a lot to me. But Buck is one of the last pieces of that life I’ll ever have. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m taking something out on Tony that I shouldn’t be. I’m sure he’s not holding his breath for an apology.” 

You felt your nose wrinkling, your lips pursing. This wasn’t everything. He was holding back. But this was… something. “Does he remind you of Howard or something?” Did that make sense? Steve had one foot in the past and one foot in the present- or the future, to him at least. Maybe where he had lost Bucky and had been unable to retrieve him, where he was lamenting Peggy’s failing faculties- 

Tony reminded him of a part of his life that he was grasping at. 

A chill swept across him that startled you. His eyes closed. He linked his hands together, and squeezed. It felt like you were holding your breath again. Something dark was swirling inside of Steve. And every part of you rejected it. “Maybe he does. If I’ve been careless- or even aggressive, I’m sorry.” 

This was not even close to good enough. He was holding on to something- something important. You knew it now. “No. This is not good enough.” 

This surprised him, though, and he looked up suddenly, turning towards you. “What?” 

“You’re a bad liar- and omission is still lying. What is it? Just talk to me!” 

He got angry again. “I thought that’s what we were doing. I’m sorry what I’m going through isn’t good enough for you.” 

“That’s not what I meant. And I can’t ever know what that’s like. And I’m sorry. But there’s something else going on. And if you’re not gonna tell me what it is- I’m going to find out.” 

Steve had left to find Bucky. Fine. The last piece of that part of his life. Fine. He’d been unsuccessful and it was hurting him. Fine. But something he’d done while he was out doing that- something he’d seen or come across- He was hiding something. 

He squared up to you, facing you completely. Waiting. A small pause while his gaze stayed with yours. “Nothing else is going on.” 

Lie. Guilt. 

 He continued, even through your hard-eyed stare. “And anything else that is- ...it doesn’t have anything to do with you. Or Stark. Not everything does, sorry to say..”

He was never going to give whatever this was up. Never. You knew it now. Maybe it was something deeply personal. Maybe you had no right to it. For all you knew, maybe he’d found Bucky. Gotten into a fight with him. Murdered him by accident. Who even knew? Who knew anymore? You thought you knew Steve but clearly… clearly that had stopped being the case right around the time Bucky had reappeared. Steve was even saying as much right now. To your face. 

“That better be true.” 

“Or what?” 

Was threatening him the right move? Especially if it was something personal to him. Maybe you were going about this the wrong way. You’d wanted to talk to Steve. To tell him to clean up. You’d… sort of done that. Now this had warped into something else. And you weren’t exactly handling it well. “Or I’ll never trust you again.” 

You didn’t have to say it, as the both of you stared each other down. He seemed pained again. Hurt that you’d say something like that. Hurt that you didn’t trust him even now. 

But. Finally, “Well it is true. So I don’t know what else to tell you.” 

                                                               ---

Tony looked up from the couch as you came in. You stepped out of your heels by the front elevator and walked over to him, falling in a heap, stretching out, putting your head in his lap. He stopped what he was working on, tossing his tablet away to the other end of the couch and ran his fingers through your hair. “Good talk, huh?” 

“Oh. Great.” You let out a slow sigh, eyes fluttering closed. “He apologized for the way he was acting, at least.”

 “All his sins are forgiven, I’m sure.”

 “Mn.” You started drifting just a little with those gentle massages at your scalp.

Tony waited, letting you enjoy yourself for just a little while. But, finally, “What’s your verdict?” 

Even now you hadn’t gathered your thoughts. They weren’t anything good, anyway. Blinking up at him, your eyes found his. He waited. Patiently. And eventually… “Steve is having some internal struggles about which life he’d like to live. And as long as Bucky Barnes is at large, they’re never gonna get better.” That was the one thing that was clearest. That was the one thing that made sense. 

“...but?” But Tony knew better. Tony knew you. He knew what you’d walked in with- some large, dark cloud. He could feel your hesitation. Your uncertainty. 

You just had no idea what to do with it. “That’s not all, I don’t think, but… Steve promised me that was it. Or at the very least he went pretty hard on the idea that it’s none of our business- and has nothing to do with either of us. So. For now I have to believe him.” 

Steve wouldn’t open up. There was nothing you could do but take him at his word. 

Tony’s head dropped a little in a light nod. “You okay with that?” He reached into his pocket with a small bit of a shuffle, but then settled, taking hold of your left hand so he could slide your engagement ring back into its rightful place.

Did you really trust Steve? Were you going to be able to let this issue rest? That’s what was really being asked of you. 

What more could you do? You let yourself be distracted by the fullness of being home with Tony, safe, sound and happy. In the blissful stupor you were tired of grasping for, you made up your mind. “Yeah. I’m okay with that.” 

Hopefully that would be the end of it. 

[larkfox]

icariahq task : 40 questions

Describe your character in a few words. Intense, curious, a resigned hopeless romantic, self-destructive

What do you know about your character that they don’t know yet? Oooof a lot. She puts the people that are most important to her on a pedestal, and it wrecks her perception of them. That she’s going to have to go through the wringer to become a better person, apologize a lot, and earn her happiness.

What are your character’s major flaws? While a compassionate person, Lark has volatile jealousy problems. She does not know when to give up in a fight. She is probably her own worst enemy.

What would your character give their life for? So many things. She would absolutely give her life to save other people. Remember when she was filming herself for a week? She was absolutely willing to give up everything if it allowed someone to have evidence.

What is your character’s greatest asset? Probably her intellect, honestly. She has some unusual ideas, but they’re apparently reasoned well. It’s something that she’s proud of.

What would completely break your character? Realizing previously unknown flaws in herself. Getting her heart broken. Someone she cares about telling her something mean (even if it’s true). Tragedies she tried to prevent

How does the image your character tries to project differ from the image they actually project? Lark thinks she is an honest person, but she bends the truth to further her own goals sometimes without being aware. Or that she isn’t as kind as she thinks.

What is your character afraid of? Seeing all of the negative impacts that she made on the world, especially seeing that she left the world a worse place than when she got there. Also termites. Not really other bugs. Termites. Oh. And spontaneous combustion.

Where would your character fall on a politeness/rudeness scale? If 1 is super polite and 10 is super rude? Maybe a 7? She’s a complete brat but likes to hear people out about their opinions.

If your character could choose a different identity, who would they pick? Anyone doesn’t feel so insecure and lacking confidence all the time. Maybe like... Miranda Priestly.

In what or whom is your character’s greatest faith in? Each individual person’s capacity for change

What was the best thing in your character’s life? Probably living in Germany. She really got a lot out of her education and lived experiences in Heidelberg.

What was the worst thing in your character’s life? When her grandfather died. No question.

What is a favorite flavor or smell of your character? Caramel in general. It’s comforting.

What seemingly insignificant memories stuck with your character? She remembers a lot of the mean things other kids said to her when she was little. They stuck with her.

What is your character’s secret wish? Like a really secret wish? She’s not great at those. She is very transparent about her desires but not her motivations or nuances. The closest thing would be that she wants a happily ever after.

What is your character’s greatest achievement? She would consider it to be completing her Master’s Degree.

What is your character’s deepest regret? How she treated Lina while they were in a relationship. And she has no idea how to overcome how stressful that is for her.

What is your character’s deepest disappointment? That her mother never really grew up. Lark finds it deeply disturbing that she is more mature than her own mother.

What is your character reluctant to tell people? About her insecurities.

What is your character hiding from themselves? How stressful it is to be so selfish all the time, but she isn’t sure how to stop.

What makes this character angry? What calms them? INJUSTICE; justice being served (also watching turtles)

List situations in which your character would not have control over themselves. Ohhhh so many. If someone is hurt, if she witnesses injustice, if someone hurts someone she cares about. Or even someone she doesn’t care about.

How strong is your character’s emotions? Controllable? Uncontrollable? Very strong, and she doesn’t have a lot of control over them. While she can take a lot of criticism, she can get riled up over odd things.

What wakes your character up in the middle of the night? That she hasn’t done enough to make the world a better place.

Describe a recurring dream and/or nightmare. She doesn’t really do recurring dreams, but she has a lot of similar dreams where she is really young and at the school she hates and nobody likes her.

Describe your character’s family. Lark was raised by her grandparents, Dale and Cecilia. Her grandpa passed away when she was twelve. Lark’s mother, Diana, was in and out, but never really figured out how to parent. If she happens to have any half-siblings, she has no idea because she does not give her father Zelus the time of day.

Name your character’s favourite person and why. Probably Steffi, but it’s a bit of an unhealthy attachment. She admires how completely self-assured Steffi is, and her sense of humor. It’s hurting Lark a lot that the two of the aren’t talking right now.

How many friends does your character have? More than you would expect. She’s not super popular, but she befriends people well enough. When she lived in Canada, she did not have very many friends, and kept to herself because other people did not seem to ‘get’ her.

How many friends does your character want? She’s happy with what she has. If more come along, she won’t stop them.

How would a friend or close relative describe your character? Smart, passionate, friendly, excitable

Who depends on your character? Why? Her mother depends on her for attention and validation. Moving somewhere her mom couldn’t go was a helpful outcome to setting boundaries.

Who does your character most want to please? Why? If she’s in a relationship, that person. If she isn’t, Steffi. She’s very devoted to the people that she cares most about, but doesn’t feel like she has to impress her family anymore, so it’s whoever she has the strongest feelings about otherwise.

How does your character feel about sex? Incredibly hesitant. She does not do one night stands, and finds the idea of casual sex wholly unappealing. She inscribes a lot of meaning into sex, and is not very experienced despite having been in relationships before. 

How does your character feel about romantic relationships? Desperately, Lark wants to be in a relationship that makes her feel loved, safe, and understood. After getting burned in her first relationship, she brought intense jealousy into her next relationship, destroying anything that could have been good all by herself. Even though she did not start dating until her twenties, she has already given up.

If your character had to live in utter seclusion, what six items would they bring? Computer; some device that lets her get access to the internet (very important. not sure where she is living in seclusion); hairbrush; one of those cute packs of a bunch of heirloom seeds so she can make a disaster of trying to grow food by herself; KNIFE; turtle tank (those fuckers are coming with)

What is your character’s most noticeable trait and most noticeable physical feature? Lark’s most noticeable trait is probably her volume level because that voice carries. Her most noticeable physical feature? Probably her eyes because of the color.

How does your character feel about work? Very badly because she does freelance copywriting for social media and digital marketing campaigns. She hates large corporations. And capitalism. Big economy in general, really. 

Write one headcanon. Lark is unusually knowledgeable about public transportation systems around the world. She’s put in the research.

Write one additional thing about your character. Do not eat Lark’s cooking if you expect it to taste like what it looks like. 

[7r0773r]

Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

Baldwin’s understanding of the American condition cohered around a set of practices that, taken together, constitute something I will refer to throughout this book as the lie. The idea of facing the lie was always at the heart of Jimmy’s witness, because he thought that it, as opposed to our claim to the shining city on a hill, was what made America truly exceptional. The lie is more properly several sets of lies with a single purpose. If what I have called the “value gap” is the idea that in America white lives have always mattered more than the lives of others, then the lie is a broad and powerful architecture of false assumptions by which the value gap is maintained. These are the narrative assumptions that support the everyday order of American life, which means we breathe them like air. We count them as truths. We absorb them into our character. (p. 7)

***

These, then, are the twined purposes at the heart of Baldwin’s poetic vision. He is not only motivated to transform the stuff of experience into the beauty of art; as a  poet he also bears witness to what he sees and what we have forgotten, calling our attention to the enduring legacies of slavery in our lives; to the impact of systemic discrimination throughout the country that has denied generations of black people access to the so-called American dream; to the willful blindness of so many white Americans to the violence that sustains it all. He laments the suffering that results from our evasions and refusals and passes judgment on what we have done and not done in order to release ourselves into the possibility of becoming different and better people. He bears witness for those who cannot because they did not survive, and he bears witness for those who survived it all, wounded and broken. (p. 40)

***

In the end, we cannot escape our beginnings: The scars on our backs and the white-knuckled grip of the lash that put them there remain in dim outline across generations and in the way we cautiously or not so cautiously move around one another. This legacy of trauma is an inheritance of sorts, an inheritance of sin that undergirds much of what we do in this country. (p. 46)

***

When we memorialize the Confederacy with monuments to Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson, what exactly are we commending? It’s never simply the military genius of a general. . . . The Confederate monuments are memorials to a way of life and a particular set of values associated with that way of life. To suggest they are not is just dishonest. The students at Princeton asked a similar question about Woodrow Wilson: What does the university’s uncritical celebration of him commend to us? Again, who and what we celebrate reflects who and what we value. This is why in moments of revolution or profound cultural shifts one of the first things people remove are symbols of the old values. Lenin’s and Stalin’s statues, for example, had to fall, but it is telling that Robert E. Lee continues to stand tall in parks across the United States—even in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Heather Heyer died. (p. 79)

***

An honest confrontation with the past had everything to do with the kinds of persons we understood ourselves to be and the kinds of people we aspired to become. Baldwin’s demand was a decidedly moral one: He wanted to free us from the shackles of a particular national story in order that we might create ourselves anew. For this to happen, white America needed to shatter the myths that secured its innocence. This required discarding the histories that trapped us in the categories of race. “People who imagine that history flatters them,” he wrote in Ebony, “are impaled on their history like a butterfly on a pin and become incapable of seeing or changing themselves, or the world.” (p. 82)

***

Even though Baldwin understood Black Power, its condemnation of white America, and its insistence on black self-determination as a reasonable and, in some ways, wholly justifiable response to the country’s betrayal of the civil rights movement, he never rejected the idea, found in this formulation, that we are much more than the categories that bind our feet. We, too, must never forget this insight.

“Color,” as he wrote in 1963, “is not a human or personal reality; it is a political reality.” Color does not say, once and for all, who we are and who we will forever be, nor does it accord anyone a different moral standing because they happen to be one color as opposed to another. But, again, Baldwin is not naïve. He understands history’s hold and the politics that make it so. As he wrote in The Fire Next Time, “as long as we in the West place on color the value that we do, we make it impossible for the great unwashed to consolidate themselves according to any other principle.” It makes all the sense in the world, then, that black people would look to the fact of their blackness as a key source of solidarity and liberation. White people make black identity politics necessary. But if we are to survive, we cannot get trapped there. (pp. 101-02)

***

Baldwin came to understand that there were some white people in America who refused to give up their commitment to the value gap. For him, we could not predicate our politics on changing their minds and souls. They had to do that for themselves. In our after times, our task, then, is not to save Trump voters—it isn’t to convince them to give up their views that white people ought to matter more than others. Our task is to build a world where such a view has no place or quarter to breathe. I am aware that this is a radical, some may even say, dangerous claim. It amounts to “throwing away” a large portion of the country, many of whom are willing to defend their positions with violence. But we cannot give in to these people. We know what the result will be, and I cannot watch another generation of black children bear the burden of that choice. (pp. 112-13)

***

To understand this is to see why the desire to distance oneself from Trump fits perfectly with the American refusal to see ourselves as we actually are. We evade historical wounds, the individual pain, and the lasting effects of it all. The lynched relative; the buried son or daughter killed at the hands of the police; the millions locked away to rot in prisons; the children languishing in failed schools; the smothering, concentrated poverty passed down from generation to generation; and the indifference to lives lived in the shadows of the American dream are generally understood as exceptions to the American story, not the rule. Blasphemous facts must be banished from view by a host of public rituals and incantations. Our gaze averted, we then congratulate ourselves on how far we have come and ruthlessly blame those in the shadows for their plight in life. Gratitude is expected. Having secured our innocence, we feel no guilt in enjoying what we have earned by our own merit, in defending our right to educate our children in the best schools and in demanding that we be judged by our ability alone. To maintain this illusion, Trump has to be seen as singular, aberrant. Otherwise, he reveals something terrible about us. But not to see yourself in Trump is to continue to lie. (pp. 173-74)

***

I have taken the title of this book from a passage in James Baldwin's last novel, Just Above My Head. In light of the collapse of the civil rights movement and the consolidation of the after times with the election of Ronald Reagan, Baldwin offered these words for those who desperately sought to imagine a way forward: “Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again.” Begin again is shorthand for something Baldwin commended to the country in the latter part of his career: that we reexamine the fundamental values and commitments that shape our self-understanding, and that we look back to those beginnings not to reaffirm our greatness or to double down on myths that secure our innocence, but to see where we went wrong and how we might reimagine or re-create ourselves in light of who we initially set out to be. This requires an unflinching encounter with the lie at the heart of our history, the kind of encounter that cannot be avoided at places like the Legacy Museum. 

Irony abounds. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in 2018, in the middle of Donald Trump’s first term. As I have argued, Trump's election represents our after times; all that he stands for reasserts the lie in the face of demographic shifts and political change represented by Obama’s election and the activism of Black Lives Matter. Every day Trump insists on the belief that white people matter more than others in this country. He has tossed aside any pretense of a commitment to a multiracial democracy. He has attacked congressmen and women of color, even telling four congresswomen “to go back to the countries they came from”; scapegoated people seeking a better life at our borders; and appealed explicitly to white resentment. On top of the racist rhetoric, his judicial appointments and his policies around voting rights, healthcare, environmental regulations, immigration law, and education disproportionately harm communities of color. In every way imaginable, Trump has intensified the cold civil war that engulfs the country. 

But to view Trump in the light of the lynching memorial in Alabama is to understand him in the grand sweep of American history: He and his ideas are not exceptional. He and the people who support him are just the latest examples of the country's ongoing betrayal, our version of “the apostles of forgetfulness” When we make Trump exceptional, we let ourselves off the hook, for he is us just as surely as the slave-owning Founding Fathers were us; as surely as Lincoln, with his talk of sending black people to Liberia, was us; as surely as Reagan was us, with his welfare queens. When we are surprised to see the reemergence of Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and other white nationalists, we reveal our willful ignorance about how our own choices make them possible. The memorial confronts both Trumpism and those who would never imagine themselves in sympathy with it, with the truth and trauma of American history. It exposes the lie for what it is and makes plain our collective complicity in reinforcing it. 

In his introduction to his 1985 collection of essays, The Price of the Ticket, Baldwin noted that America had become quick to congratulate itself on the progress it had made with regards to race, and that the country's self-congratulation came with the expectation of black gratitude. (This was particularly the case with the election of the country's first black president.) As Baldwin wrote, “People who have opted to be white congratulate themselves on their generous ability to return to the slave that freedom which they never had any right to endanger, much less take away. For this dubious effort . . . they congratulate themselves and expect to be congratulated.” The expectation was that he should feel “gratitude not only that my burden is . . . being made lighter but my joy that white people are improving.” 

Baldwin viewed this demand for gratitude from the vantage point of someone who had lived through and was deeply wounded by the betrayal of the black freedom movement, someone whose recollection or remembrance of that moment involved trauma. In 1979, on the eve of the election of Ronald Reagan, for example, in a short piece for Freedomways, Baldwin wrote of the difficulty of recalling the past. “Let us say that we all live through more than we can say or see. A life, in retrospect, can seem like the torrent of water opening or closing over one’s head and, in retrospect, is blurred, swift, kaleidoscopic like that. One does not wish to remember—one is perhaps not able to remember—the holding of one’s breath under water, the miracle of rising up far enough to breathe, and then, the going under again. . . .” Here Baldwin captures beautifully the cycles of the after times that illustrate how horrific the white expectation of gratitude is. 

Baldwin believed the after times required that we look back in order to understand the choices we’ve made that have brought us to the moment of crisis. We don’t begin again as if there is nothing behind us or underneath our feet. We carry that history with us. In the introduction to The Price of the Ticket, Baldwin formulated his point about beginning again a bit differently. “In the church I come from,” he wrote, “we were counselled, from time to time, to do our first works over.” Here Baldwin invokes Revelations 2:5: “Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.” In the mode of poet-prophet, Baldwin called the nation, in his after times, to confront the lie of its own self-understanding and to get about the work of building a country truly based on democratic principles. As he wrote: 

To do your first works over means to reexamine everything. Go back to where you started, or as far back as you can, examine all of it, travel your road again and tell the truth about it. Sing or shout or testify or keep it to yourself: but know whence you came. 

 America in the generality, he argued, refused to do such a thing because the exploration itself would reveal that the price of the ticket to be here in the United States was in fact to leave behind the particulars of Europe and become white. That transformation “choked many a human being to death,” because to become white meant the subjugation of others, an act that disfigured the soul by closing off the ability to see oneself in others, and to see them in oneself. Our task, Baldwin maintained, was to understand the history of how that disfiguring of the soul happened and, in doing so, to free oneself and the country from the insidious hold of whiteness in order to become a different kind of creation—a different way of being in the world. (pp. 193-97)

[milotry]

Louder Than Words

A Dragon Age fic

Ch 1/1 (Complete) ¦ 2,698 words ¦ AO3

Jowan & f!Amell backstory fluff with a sprinkling of angst

CW: Bullying, selective mutism

-

Aria spent most of her time in the circle’s library. She preferred the quiet solace of tucking herself away in a small alcove and studying to the alternative of exposing herself to the boisterousness of the other students, or to being under the prying eye of a templar. 

Outside of classes, where she would speak only when prompted, the library’s many tomes on herbalism, healing, and the fade could occupy her mind, distracting her from the fact that her brother had not written to her in months. Fausten used to write every other week, dedicatedly and without fail, each piece of parchment lighting up Aria’s heart with the assurance that the outside world had not blinked from existence in her absence, but the correspondence had ceased of late. Every attempt on her part to contact him only made the silence gnaw at her all the more.

Though she had been at the tower nigh on half a decade, Aria had not wanted to make friends. Making friends, she felt, would be admitting to herself that she was staying. It would be acknowledging that Fausten was not going to break down the great doors that sealed her prison, sweep her up and spirit her safely back to Kirkwall, back to her parents and her family. It didn’t help matters that she had lost the will to speak; ever since the day the templars took her, ignoring her cries and those of her mother, it was as if her mind and body had decided that her words were powerless. Aria frequently met direct questions with blank stares, something that had gotten her into trouble with the senior mages and templar stewards on more than several occasions, and it was certainly quite unhelpful when it came to fostering comradery with the other apprentices.

It was during one of her solitary library sessions that friendship - or something resembling it - was imposed upon her. The corners she chose to hide away in were selected very deliberately for their lack of visitors. Rarely did any of the tower’s inhabitants frequent the circle’s small collection of herbal remedies for digestive issues, or pay much attention to the dustier tomes that fell outside of the primary schools of magic. It was of particular surprise to Aria, then, when another apprentice appeared from behind one of the tall rows of bookcases. He glanced back the way he had come, looking quickly in all directions, then shrivelled against the shelves, breathing what seemed like a sigh of relief.

Aria recognised the boy as being a few years older than her, one of the apprentices who had already been in the circle when she had first arrived. He was a grubby, very unkempt individual at the best of times, but his hair looked more thrown out of place than she felt was normal, and a few patches of his robes were visibly singed. It was then she noticed that all the while she had been studying his appearance, he had been looking nervously back at her.

“Please don’t tell anyone.” He whimpered. It was a pleading, very pitiful statement, though Aria was not sure what he meant. She hadn’t spoken yet that day, but the longer his appeal hung in the air between them, the more she felt it would be best to reply. “...Tell them what?”

He paused, as if he didn’t particularly want to elaborate. “About me... them... about them chasing me. And this,” he gestured to his burnt clothing. “Please don’t tell the mages.”

“Why would I tell them?” Aria had experienced bullying between apprentices before, though luckily she had been so unresponsive that most would-be bullies quickly decided that she didn’t make for a very entertaining target. The boy looked down at his feet. “I don’t know. To get me into trouble, maybe.”

“I can’t see why I would want that.”

“Uhh, right. Ok.”

Uncomfortable silence.

“...Thanks.”

Aria stared at him for a few long seconds, then turned her gaze back to her tome, ‘Deep Mushrooms: An Extensive Study’. The boy remained. He crossed his legs beneath him and craned his neck to see the books behind him, shuffling a slim text out from one of the shelves and opening it at the halfway point, seemingly less interested in the contents than in simply having something to pass the time with.

The two of them sat in what felt like mutually appreciated quiet for the rest of the afternoon, until the circle tower’s meal bell rang out and made them both jump, snapping them out of the words on the worn parchment in front of them and back to reality. Aria gently closed her book and rose, returning it to its place, then watched as the boy did the same. She considered him for another moment, then left. He followed, and she heard his tummy audibly grumble for its supper.

Aria sensed that she may have inadvertently adopted a puppy.

Over the following weeks and months, Jowan - which was the boy’s name - attached himself to Aria like the moths that circled the tower’s sconces. If he strayed he was never gone long, and he joined her for lessons and meals whenever they coincided. If anyone else had latched onto her in such a way, Aria imagined she might have lost her mind, but Jowan appeared to have understood from the day they met that silence was her preferred method of communication, and he hadn’t said a single word to her since then. He greeted her with nods or a small wave of his hand, and seemed wholly content with it. As it was, Aria couldn’t bring herself to find him particularly annoying. Maybe she already had lost her mind, she pondered.

Ordinarily, Jowan, being a few years her senior, would have attended more advanced classes than Aria. It seemed that destruction spells were not his forté, however, and he had been frequenting the novice classes for the past several weeks - apprentices were only allowed to start throwing fireballs once they could be trusted not to set themselves alight. Jowan had apparently required new robes and swiftly-applied burn ointments more frequently than most.

“When summoning fire, a mage must be in complete control. Do not think this is an element one may use flippantly, or without focus; even the act of lighting a candle will require you to keep a strong will.” The senior mage eyed the class with mild derision. Teaching was not exactly every mage’s first choice of profession, but the circle offered few options. “Today we will be doing just that - lighting candles. You should each have your own. However,” she glanced pointedly at Jowan, “I do have a few spare.” He looked back at her, sheepishly.

The lesson continued smoothly. It took Aria several tries to will the wick of the candle to flicker to life, but eventually she held a warmly glowing flame in front of her. She didn’t have much interest in magic that couldn’t be used in healing or herbalism, but she supposed that one day she might need to cauterize a wound, or light a fire by which to heat a poultice, so it wasn’t completely without its uses. Jowan, unsurprisingly, was having much less luck with his candle.

He stared unshrinkingly at the wick, and Aria could see the determination in his expression, but his magic alluded him. A few voices on the other side of Jowan began to snicker and whisper. Most of the other students had managed to light their flames by now, and the senior enchanter was approaching those who had not in order to offer them guidance, beginning on the other side of the large library clearing they were occupying. Her back was turned. “Having a bit of trouble are we, bed-wetter?” Aria turned her head in the direction of the speaker, the apprentice nearest to Jowan. “Are you going to piss yourself again?” The tormentor had a friend at his side, egging him on, both smirking. Jowan was trying firmly to ignore them, continuing to stare at his candle in front of him. His fists were clenched around it, his knuckles turning a bony white.

“Do you know what they do to pathetic mages like you?” Jowan didn’t look up. “They make them tranquil. Wouldn’t that be nice? You’d finally have an excuse to be useless-”

The boy was cut off by the fire that had suddenly started at the hem of his robe.

“Shit---shit! Put it out!” He shrieked, his panicked friend trying to stomp out the fire but repeatedly kicking him in the process. The chaos lasted only a few seconds, as the enchanter had immediately swivelled on her heel at the noise and sent a torrent of icy water directly onto the wailing apprentice, drenching him from head to toe. He sobbed miserably.

“Who, precisely, is responsible for this?” She rounded on them, glowering.

“It was Jowan! I know it was!” The bully’s friend blurted, having edged a safe distance away from the other boy. Jowan’s eyes widened.

“What? No- this wasn’t- I didn’t-” He tried to sputter any kind of coherent defence, but choked once he saw the senior mage’s unconvinced frown.

“I believe this will be your first night in the dungeon, hm? Setting yourself on fire is one thing, but we cannot abide endangering your fellow apprentices.”

Jowan’s mouth hung open, speechless. The younger apprentices had all heard the horror stories about the tower dungeons, whispered between their bunks long after dark - the rats; the skeletons; the rumour that the veil there was weak, and that if you managed to fall asleep on the cold, damp ground, demons would infest your dreams and tempt you until your mind broke. Jowan tried to plea his innocence again, but no words escaped him.

“It was me.”

Everyone gawked in the direction of Aria’s voice.

“I did it.” She reiterated.

“You?” The senior enchanter raised an eyebrow.

“Yes.”

Jowan was staring at Aria in shock - or perhaps it was awe.

“In that case, you will follow me. The rest of you, class is dismissed.” She addressed the remaining apprentices, then gave Aria a look that seemed to be a combination of disappointment and scepticism. “You, with me.” Aria followed the enchanter out of the library without protest. Jowan wordlessly watched her go.

The dungeons weren’t quite as grotesque and horrifying as Aria had been led to believe. Sure, there was a stain of what appeared to be dried blood on the floor of her cell, and the moulding pile of hay that had possibly once passed for a bed was infested with rat droppings, but the bit about demons had been nonsense. Aria had felt the veil before, tickling along her skin and pressing against the air around her, and she could feel no such sensation here. She sat propped against one of the uneven stone walls, scratching at the dried flecks of blood on the ground with a stalk of sharp hay.

She had gotten into trouble for her mutism many, many times, but never for any other kind of misbehaviour or misdeed. She suspected that since the boy hadn’t been hurt her punishment wouldn’t progress passed this unpleasant stint in detention, but she didn’t really like the idea of being branded a troublemaker, or “kid who sets people on fire”-er. She let out a muffled sigh into her forearm as she hugged herself, and decided that wallowing in self-pity wasn’t going to help anything.

A tapping sound at the cell bars made her flinch. “Aria?”

Jowan’s grubby face could be seen dimly in the low-light, peering through the bars at her. “I snuck you something at supper. I don’t think anyone saw me come down here.”

She imagined he had had to bribe an older, savvier mage for the dungeon keys. That was usually how any of them got anything. She shuffled over to the cell’s entrance, Jowan becoming more visible as she reached the grating. His expression was guilt-ridden. He stuck a skinny wrist through the bars, a loaf of bread in his hand. “It wasn’t you. I set his robe on fire. I didn’t mean to, but I did it."

Aria knew that. She wasn’t stupid. She had seen the anger flaring up in Jowan’s eyes as the boy had mocked him, and they had long been taught that magic and rage were a terrible combination.

“It’s ok.” she said.

She had spoken far more than was preferable today.

“But you got yourself into trouble for me. Why? You didn’t have to.”

“...I know.”

“So, why?”

A long pause stretched out between them.

“What they were saying. About the rite of tranquillity. I was scared. The templars already know you’re falling behind in class, what if they knew you had almost hurt someone?”

This was the most Aria had said to Jowan in the entire duration of their weird, unique friendship. He was looking at her thoughtfully, now.

“Thank you. But they don’t perform the rite on children - at least, I don’t think they do.”

“They might if they thought you were dangerous enough.”

He didn’t respond. Maybe she had frightened him with the idea.

Aria felt emboldened by her sudden lease of verbal capacity, and moved closer to the bars, looking into Jowan’s eyes. “Why did you start following me around in the first place? I can’t be very interesting. I don’t understand.”

He studied her face for a few moments and then broke from her gaze, looking at the floor. “It’s silly. You might laugh at me - or you might be offended, that’s also a strong possibility.”

“Tell me anyway.”

He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Since you never said anything...I knew you wouldn’t tease me, or tell me I’m annoying, or ask me to leave you alone. It was selfish. And then you went and did this,” he gestured at the dungeon cell, “for me, and now I feel horrible.”

Aria could see why he thought he might offend her. Someone telling you they like you solely due to your unusual mental issues would probably be offensive to most people. But she couldn’t help that the last few months had been the least miserable of all the time she had spent in the Circle of Magi, and the least lonely. Jowan was clearly anxious, gnawing at his bottom lip, waiting for her response. She thought a moment longer, then said, “I didn’t want you to leave me alone. You’re...the closest thing I’ve had to a friend in five years.”

He relaxed slightly, but seemed to be waiting for her to continue. He should really have known better than to expect a speech from her. “I took the blame earlier because I wanted to protect you, so you have nothing to feel bad about. You didn’t make me do it.”

Jowan seemed embarrassed now, blushing at the earnesty of their exchange. “Thank you. Again.”

Aria found herself smiling.

“Thank you. For not leaving me alone.”

He stayed a few minutes longer, the two of them chatting quietly as Aria nibbled at the bread he had spirited away for her. Then they heard what sounded like the clattering of armour coming in their direction, and Jowan scrambled to his feet and toward the exit, glancing back briefly, then vanishing up the stairs.

She wolfed down what remained of the loaf, making sure there were no crumbs visible on her person, and moved further back into the cell again. A templar arrived shortly after, peering in at her from beneath the slits in their helmet for longer than felt comfortable. They moved on without saying a word, which was probably for the best; Aria did not respond to templars.

Her night spent on the dank dungeon floor was not as awful as she had expected it would be. The conversation with Jowan echoed in her mind, and Aria made a mental note to write to Fausten the next day. She had given up hope that he would ever continue writing back, but how could she not inform her brother that she had finally, at long last, made a friend?

[deahsohun]

What Is Ensemble?

How Can ‘Ensemble’ Be Defined?

‘Ensemble’ can have a variety of interpretations, dependent on the situation it’s used in. The Collins English Dictionary (2009) brings attention to the Latin origin of ‘ensemble’ to mean ‘at the same time’. However, in Ensemble Theatre Making by Bonczeck and Storck (2013;7) they write ‘in our work, an ensemble may be a cast, a class, members of a program, students, amateurs, or professionals.’ which helps me to understand that no matter what the circumstance, ‘ensemble’ is used in relation to a group of individuals who come together in order to achieve the same goal. Although it is certain that individual members of the ‘ensemble’ have independent goals that they would like to meet, it is also found that they have a common ground which causes them to work together in order to ensure it is carried through, in turn making it a success. I believe that over time the true meaning of ‘ensemble’ has been lost, particularly in the world of theatre, as I often only see it being used to describe a cast of people who support main roles, when in actual fact, it is the entirety of the cast in a play, or is even relevant to builders on a construction site. All in all, whilst ‘ensemble’ in itself is defined, the people who make the ensemble up, cannot be. An ‘ensemble’ can and will appear at any point in life, there are ensembles all around us, everyday, which is something we fail to recognise. From the ensemble working at the on campus Starbucks, to the ensemble of flatmates working together to make the recent life changing venture seem less scary, the idea of ensembles are something that we have been a part of for a long time, and will be for a long time.

What Makes A Successful ‘Ensemble’?

If I was to be asked ‘what makes a successful ensemble?’ before starting at Bath Spa, I would have answered that it is simply having the co-operation and collaboration with one another to create synergy and order. But after the few short weeks of being here, it has become apparent that whilst those things are essential to creating a successful ensemble as they create balance, above all else there must be a deeper bond and connection between those involved -something that has been brought to particular attention in the work of Bonczek and Storck, in Ensemble Theatre Making (2013). Whilst reading through Chapter 1, ‘What Is Ensemble?’ of their book, their idea of ‘we hope for lightning to strike. Yet think about it: lightning doesn't happen by happenstance.’(pg.8) resonated deeply with me, as it had me thinking about the true roots that bind an ensemble. If we are all seeking the same end goal, then surely, no matter how different we may seem at face value, there is something deeper, something more that we have in common? There has to be a way for us to develop in one like-mindedness, where whilst we retain our unique individuality, we can put any and all judgement aside in order to produce and achieve the result we all desire. Bonzek and Storck make it clear that ‘...change is possible’(pg.8;Ensemble Theatre Making) emphasising that we should ‘...research it, create a plan, take specific actions, and assess those actions as you go...we sometimes hold back from taking action because we fear killing whatever good chemistry remains’(pg.8;Ensemble Theatre Making) this fear is something that I know to be true from my own experience as part of an ensemble, and I'm sure it is something heavily felt by people who have been/are too, as we have a sense of not wanting to hurt other peoples feelings, however from this it puts into the perspective that we have a duty as an ensemble member to do whatever it takes to make a situation work, even if it may feel like you shouldn't, everyone who is a part of the ensemble has the responsibility to step up and smooth out problems with solutions -and be one to ideas of hoe to doses well. ‘Fear of killing good chemistry’(pg.8;Ensemble Theatre Making) is sometimes needed in order to breakdown and re-build the ensemble in a way that everyones desires are met and understood fully, only after this can we move on to taking action and putting into practice what we feel needs to be done in order to succeed.

Within ensembles, or any part of life where we are presented with the opportunity to speak up and give our ideas or opinions, I will happily admit to the anxiety I feel paired with the fear of judgement that comes with it. It’s daunting -no one likes being wrong, let alone being told they're wrong in front of other people who they want to impress. I know I have a need to be validated, and a desire to be accepted by my peers; but this can often be my downfall. Out of consciousness of being told that what I have to say or think will be deemed as irrelevant or stupid, I often bite my tongue and hold back because the idea of rejection is far scarier than opening up -despite knowing in myself that feedback and criticism of my own ideas will be helpful in teaching me something. An ensemble should be a place that is safe. ‘We find that protection in the form of a safe ensemble. It is a place where, for better and worse, we can be ourselves and be accepted’(pg.9;Ensemble Theatre Making) this statement encapsulates why I love acting in general, and why I want to pursue a career into drama therapy, because having a space where you can fully just be, with no limitations is rare and so should be taken advantage of. Ensuring that the ensemble is fully un-judgemental and prejudice free allows for a space where members can feel at ease and ready to share ideas and express themselves fully, which in turn develops the ensemble into a more successful one as there are no limits to what people share, making possibilities endless and ideas to be built on and expanded to reach full potential.  It is through a shared struggle, a common love, and gaining a deeper knowledge that takes any ensemble to the next level, allowing it to blossom into one that is successful -due to being fully reared by the minds of its members giving all of themselves to their craft, without any boundaries. In turn of being ready to fully express ourselves, however, it is also important to learn how to readily accept other peoples ideas fully, and welcome them with a positivity and open mindedness, so we ensure that everyone feels the same sense of ensemble as we wish to experience ourselves.

What Are My Own Experiences With Being In An Ensemble?

One key ensemble I was a part of which stands out the most, is last year when I was part of my high school’s production of Grease. Now, it isn't the fact that I was a cast member and the acting ensemble is what I remember most, but in the final weeks before we were due to perform, the set, which was a mirage of 50s/60s features like jukeboxes and poodle skirts was left un-painted after the art team refused to paint it. With two weeks to our first performance, 13 or so of us worked together to paint, sketch, outline and bring to life the backdrop of our set. Now, putting drama kids who could barely even hold a pencil the right way in charge of creating an artistic set was always going to have it’s challenges, but we made it work. Our drive to get it completed and make our already stressed director feel some sense of release was enough of a common goal to work together during our free time during the school day, and after school, in order to make it look somewhat decent. From begging for paintbrushes, to climbing scaffolding and standing on stacks of chairs, it is a time that I feel wholly represents the true nature of what makes an ensemble -because of how we handled the challenges. We played to each others strengths, listened to each others ideas and our constant communication with one another fuelled us to finish as efficiently as we could. Despite being in the midst of exams and having other life stresses, spending time in the school hall, painting vibrant colours whilst practising the Grease songs and dances was an escape from it all, and it became something we looked forward to just letting go of whatever else was bothering us -and something we all missed when the show was completed. Whilst I would say it was a largely positive experience, as we did indeed manage to put aside the dramatic bickering you’d expect from leaving 13 drama students alone with paint, we relentlessly worked together to complete what needed to be completed. The common goal was to have a finished background -we all took pride in our acting and in how our drama department at school was presented and so we wanted to do everything we could to help, but I also believe it was deeper than that. These were people who were also my fellow actors, we’d grown up and been around each other from 11 years old, we were in many ways a small family -and our ability to bond together in the face of what could have been a disaster, and take that risk was what resonates with me most. And perhaps it felt easier because we were all friends, or maybe its because we used our natural intuition that came with our actor/director nature to divide and conquer and complete our tasks on time, but either way, it is an example of a positive, hardworking, and dynamic ensemble that I always aspire to replicate the values when working in ensembles now.

Bibliography

Collins English Dictionary; 2009; HarperCollins; Glasgow.

Ensemble Theatre Making; Rose Burnett Bonczek, David Storck; 2013; Routledge, London (Page 7/Page 8/Page 9)

[qm-vox]

So You Want To Play A Beast

(Meme version of Queen Ramona Rabbit provided by cantankerousAquarius, character by me. Catch her in New Avalon.)

Here I am, back on my bullshit again. As I mentioned in So You Want To Run A Spring Court, a series of Seeming articles are starting up next. Unlike Courts, Seemings are not political or religious bodies, and are only loosely social identities; rather, one’s Seeming is part of who and what one is. Lost develop a Seeming because of the abuse they have survived, the labors they were forced to undergo, and what they did to survive both. It can be a complicated and hurtful subject for Changelings, but also a source of pride; the things you learned to become a Beast, a Darkling, an Ogre, are also the things that ultimately helped you to escape.

At this point you may be wondering why I started with the Courts when Seemings are more fundamental to an individual character, as well as less optional (you can have no Court, but it’s hard to have no Seeming). I’m gonna be real with you, it’s because there’s six of these damn things and each of them is about to be as complex, if not more, as the Court articles.

The following article draws primarily on Changeling: the Lost core and Winter Masques, with additional information drawn from Swords at Dawn (that last book has come up a lot because it deals with the Lost in change and conflict). Other books, where used, will be cited. And so, without further ado:

A Miserable Menagerie - Beast Overview

Beast is the first Seeming presented in Changeling: the Lost, and is well-represented in the published material and the fanbase alike, being one of the most popular and therefore most common. Stripped of their human reasons, Beasts had to remember how to think like human beings again before they could escape and seize their Homecoming. It’s never exactly a complete reversion. Aside from this common loss of reason, and a certain surprising sociability (more on both of these later), few experiences unite Beast to Beast, a reality that can make their fellow Lost mistakenly think that their Beast peers lack common strengths and common bonds. It’s true that many Beasts have strong similarities to Lost of other Seemings that share similar functions (a Truefriend kept as a loyal and loving hound has a lot in common with a Playmate forced to serve as an ornamental factotum and the Chateline condemned to maintain her Keeper’s house), but it’s also true that any Beast has more in common with their fellow Beasts than with the troubles of their non-Beast peers.

Release the Hounds - Homecoming as a Beast

Compared to Beasts, only the wretched Wizened have a higher disparity between those who are taken by the Fae and those who manage to return. Anyone at all might become a Beast; the process of transformation is a sort of corruption, one a mortal prisoner might catch from being forced to live among animals, from being treated as subhuman, by deliberate malice, alchemical transformation, or even deliberate pact - but not anyone who becomes a Beast can manage to achieve their Homecoming. The first and most difficult step is to find their reason again, some powerful trigger or memory that reminds the Beast that they were once human and that the Fairest of Lands (Arcadia) is not their home. Though not all Beasts degrade in intelligence in the same way or to the same degree (one might be seemingly wholly feral, condemned to live as a rabbit or a rat, while another has memories of being a hunter-gatherer among a pack of others, with axe and bow to hand and no thought but the kill and feast), no Beast can escape without remembering what it was like to be mortal. It’s more than just a matter of cunning or intelligence; indeed, the actual physical act of escape is often shockingly simple. It’s that without human intellect, human memory, the Beast cannot yearn to return home, and thus cannot escape the Fairest of Lands.

The second obstacle is having something to come back to, and believing that you deserve to have your Homecoming. This is easier, in some ways, than regaining your mind, but infinitely more insidious. All Lost need mortal memories to make their way home, of course, but for Beasts they need something to focus on that keeps their reason anchored while they’re still trapped in the lands of unreason. It can be all-too-easy to slide back into the animal’s mind, especially if your moment of clarity and your opportunity to escape don’t coincide. The hound knows how to survive the mad lands when the man might not.

Memories of loved ones to come back to help, but for many Beasts the light that guides them home are distinctly human places, places where they felt that they belonged and which in some way belonged to them. The library where a Beast spent her childhood, full of her fond memories and imagination, can help her cling to her human half long enough to get home, as might the memory of the funeral home where her father’s wake was held, or even the stadium where she was cheered on by adoring fans. These human places hold significance that can be understood on some level by the animal (safety and contentment, loss and sorrow, joy and thrill), but require human reason, human perspective, to be wholly understood. That reason, and the shining light of the mortal world, draws the Beast back home.

Beasts are among those Seemings least likely to escape with someone else’s help. It’s not that they’re asocial or incapable of cooperation, but rather that need to find human reason. Most of the time if someone is making their own Homecoming and stops to rescue their Keeper’s favorite catgirl, that catgirl’s mind isn’t her own. Maybe on the way home something shocks her memory back into place, but all too often that doesn’t happen and you end up with a hob or a catatonic victim rather than a free Lost. On the other hand, Beasts freed by their Keeper can make almost ideal Loyalists; their ability to produce great Composure on demand, and the general prejudice of other Lost against them, mean that a Beast still enslaved to her Keeper can often go years without being detected, if she ever is. For an example of such a Beast, check out Maya Sharptongue in Night Horrors: Grim Fears.

All Creatures Great And Small - Beast Kiths

The magical bonds that unite Beasts as a Seeming are subtle and often overlooked. All Beasts can spend Glamour to flare their Presence and Composure, a capability that makes them second only to the Fairest for sheer sociability even if the Beast in question shares the essence of a decidedly non-social animal. Additionally, all Beasts have an affinity for all animals (that 8-again with Animal Ken though) which, while seemingly limited in modern application, has a lot of impact on their day-to-day life. A Beast will rarely have, say, rats in her home unless she prefers those rats be present; her pets will be well-trained and well-behaved (and likely well-loved) and her ability to just walk up to and befriend any given animal is not to be underestimated.

Psychologically, Beasts regardless of Kith tend to be territorial, a fact many Lost don’t think about a lot despite it being somewhat odd on its face. After all, not all animals are particularly territorial, and yet a swan-like Windwing, a lupine Hunterheart, and a Swimmerskin mermaid all display a similar concern over their spaces, their places. This is the Beast’s human nature at work; just as the places of human connection draw them home from Arcadia, so too do they stake claims over such places in their new lives, creating spaces where they can feel safe and in control, and able to indulge in both their animal instincts and their human desires and sorrows. For those Beasts with an especial affinity for their physical environment, Contracts of the Den and Contracts of the Wild (the latter being shared with the Elemental Seeming) can go a long way to creating and safeguarding their personal places of power.

And then there’s the back end. Beasts genuinely struggle with their Intelligence; compared to a human whose Intelligence attribute is equal, a Beast will always achieve worse results, and can’t benefit from the flashes of inspiration and intuition that sometimes characterize human thought. They struggle more with unfamiliar intellectual processes, though putting in the time to learn can solve that problem. The end result is that Beasts, regardless of Kith, tend to be some of the smartest dumbasses their friends know, who provide better results when they have to think at speed or under pressure than they do outside of the moment. Still, this perception of stupidity haunts Beasts, and in all too many Freeholds they can find themselves gently shunted away from power or complex duties or responsibilities that others believe they’re incapable of handling.

When it comes to Kiths, Beasts present an odd combination of being greatly defined by their Kith (in much the same way that Elementals or Wizened are) and their Kiths having very little relation to the folkloric archetypes that inspire Beasts. The overwhelming majority of the options for your Beast character concern themselves solely with the physical properties of one or more animals, which is great for the fantasy of playing an animal-person and completely fucking useless for the fantasy of a fae animal-person. More than most other Seemings, a Beast character meant to invoke a figure from folklore might want to consider the Dual Kith merit, with an eye towards Fairest and Ogre Kiths to snag most of what you might want.

Some expanded thoughts on the individual Beast Kiths follow.

Hunterheart - Arguably the quintessential Beast, Hunterhearts are infused with a predatory nature expressed through deadly fangs and claws. They tend to be reshaped in the vein of mighty wolf-men, cunning cat-people, or as archetypes of Beasthood or the hunt - mighty Hunters with racks of stag’s antlers, or even near-Ogrish beings like the Beast of French legend, whose price for a stolen rose was a bride to soothe his burning heart. Almost any predator might lend its nature to a Hunterheart though; a tarantula, for instance, is more appropriate here than as a Venombite, and Summer’s smallest and most surprising berserker may well be a Hunterheart with the soul of a shrew and an unshakeable lust for blood. Hunterhearts tend to be very physical people, who have a lot in common with Darklings - including an inability to escalate violent confrontation in an appropriate manner. Among the more thematic of the Beast Kiths, Hunterhearts might benefit from a Dual Kith into Flowering or Whisperwisp if you’re looking to embody a predatory trickster figure.

Windwing - Perhaps the poster child for Kiths that deal solely with the physical attributes of an animal, Windwing is a prime candidate for the other half of a Dual Kith concept if you’re after a more folkloric concept rather than looking to explore a more straight mixture of human and animal. A graceful Swan Maiden might look towards Dancer or perhaps Artist, while a Mothman type might lean towards Shadowsoul (a wise owl, on the other hand, might be an Antiquarian on the back end). Most carrion birds will also be Roteaters, but especially corvids of all stripes. Regardless of their nature, a Windwing is an incredible asset for a Freehold, and can expect to be courted aggressively for their abilities as a messenger, guard, spy, and scout.

Skitterskulk - I have no god damn idea what the writers were thinking on this one. Skitterskulk is, in theory, supposed to represent hard-to-exterminate vermin such as mice, flies, cockroaches, or mosquitoes; things that move fast and bother people with their filth, thievery, and pestilence. Unfortunately not only does their blessing of Impossible Counterpoise have almost nothing to do with this (and almost nothing to do with the perception of Skitterskulks as spies presented in Winter Masques), it is shamefully fucking useless. If you find yourself looking at Skitterskulk for the animal natures it’s associated with, consider some combination of Roteater, Windwing, Truefriend, Venombite, and/or Runnerswift instead. Don’t use this Kith.

Roteater - Speaking of, meet what is probably my favorite Beast Kith. Roteaters embody those animals that scrape, scavenge, and feed on carrion or refuse. Crows and vultures are obvious candidates (and probably Dual Kith’d with Windwing), but Roteater is also great for Beasts in the vein of Rat Kings (fleeing from the gnawed halls of a Sugarplum Fairy), raccoons (whether sly thieves or powerful tricksters) and even for social insects such as ants when used in combination with Truefriend. Roteater strikes a very good balance of the physical properties of its animals and their folkloric qualities, with the power of the Beast Seeming itself filling in the back end. Given that Lost tend to struggle both with money and with legal access to certain goods, the propensity of a Roteater to scavenge, salvage, and scrape can be a godsend to their Freehold and especially their Motley, if they can put in at least a minimal effort to clean themselves up.

Truefriend - Truefriends have a lot in common with Fairest; as “beloved” pets, they had a lot of their Keepers’ personal attention, and their memories of Arcadia may be cut through with the bloody consequences of the kindness and discipline of the True Fae. Regardless of what kind of animal they are (and they can be most of them; Truefriend is rife for thematic Dual Kith opportunities inside of the Beast Seeming), they tend to be, well, friend-shaped; Truefriends are often well-groomed, sleek, colorful (or with an interesting color pattern in their fur or scales) and might even be cute or drawn from a twisted branch of pop culture as embodiments of more ‘modern’ takes on Beasthood such as catgirls or animal mascots. Like Fairest, Truefriends may take to manipulating others in order to feel in control of their own life, and given the lack of suspicion that attends to Beasts they may get away with it for a whole lot longer.

Broadbacks - In a Seeming marked by a tendency to be kinda dumb motherfuckers, Broadbacks are the guys that make dumb ideas work by outlasting their consequences. Their bonus to Stamina rolls is most famous for satyr-like partying, but it also means that they can guard a door for hours on end without so much as a bathroom break, run marathons long after even the Runnerswifts have keeled over to beg for the sweet release of death, and brave hazards or traps in the Hedge that might force back other Lost. Aside from the (again rather famously represented) satyrs and fauns, Broadbacks might also take after minotaurs, be infused with the essence of camels or llamas, or even Dual Kith into Swimmerskin (as mighty whales) or Windwing (with Contracts of Hearth or of Omen, embodying the albatross).

Swimmerskin - The lines between Beasts and Elementals blur with Swimmerskins, especially those who take after mermaids, selkies, and nixies; Elements (Water) is a popular enough buy that it can be hard to tell the difference. Mechanically, Swimmerskin is a case of a Kith that sorta has to be about the physical properties of its animal nature; it’d be a strange sort of mermaid who couldn’t swim. Consider investing in magical Merits such as Siren’s Voice, specific Contracts (Elements was already mentioned, but Omen for a powerful sea-witch or Wild for a storm-brewing sea dragon can be equally striking), or investing in the Dual Kith merit to bring out further specific animalistic or folkloric traits, such as Hunterheart for a sharp-toothed shark, Tunnelgrub for octopi and other escape artists, or Farwalker for an ambush predator or a Thing From The Deep, emerging to prey on the ignorant and innocent.

Steepscrambler - The opposite of Swimmerskin in some ways; Steepscramblers are all about the physical act of climbing, but they really did not have to be and as a result they’re a big whiff on the folkloric elements of the animals they embody, including and especially the specific ones spoken of Winter Masques. Still, in a lot of ways Steepscramblers have the same practical uses as Windwings, especially in highly urban environments, so for concepts that are looking to invoke those folkloric trickster elements, eat the Dual Kith into Whisperwisp, Drudge, Farwalker, or Flowering and live ya best life. If you’re more interested in direct physical animals but are looking into something like a spider, fly, or beetle, consider Dual Kithing inside the Beast seeming to pick up the other aspects of your animal.

Runnerswift - For when you absolutely, positively have to GO FAST, there exists the Runnerswift. Though most famously associated with prey animals such as rabbits and deer (which are also common fertility symbols, go fucking figure), consider Runnerswift for more predatory concepts as well; as hunting hounds, cheetahs, or man-eating horses straight out of Greek legend, Runnerswifts can make terrifying pursuers and hunters. Though it can be tempting to Dual Kith in the latter case, it pays to keep in mind that the human side of your Beast definitely remembers how guns and baseball bats work, and those are probably going to be a better option than fang and claw if you’re already in a situation where you feel comfortable running down your frightened prey. Like quite a few Beasts, Runnerswifts skew towards being tricksters in much the same way as Hunterhearts, though in this case the prey animal often comes out on top rather than being made out as the villain.

Venombite - A cool concept with a bad case of being a late bloomer; Venombite’s Blessing is nearly useless until you start punching up into high Wyrd, at which point you are a POWERFUL MAGICIAN who can also fang people to death if they get too close or you can catch them unawares. Still, Venombite can be quite attractive for many concepts, especially spiders, deadly nagas, and treacherous scorpions. Their tendency to be associated with small and easily overlooked animals make Venombites surprising brokers of information and dealers of death; it might be awhile before your own poison can kill the human, but the brown recluses that obey your commands can kill one now.

Cleareyes - What if you had Contracts of Fang and Talon 2 but all the time? Cleareyes is an odd Kith; mechanically they’re solid, but also redundant with one of the game’s more attractive Clauses in one of its most attractive Contracts. There’s a few ways to split this difference, though I tend to suggest either making that Clause and/or their Blessing free if they have both (similar to how Gravewights get a discount on Contracts of Shade and Spirit) or permitting Fang and Talon 2 to give them a different sense the animal is known for (a cat-eyed Cleareyes able to see in the dark might invoke her Clause to also gain cat-like balance or perhaps a cat’s sensitive hearing). Thematically, Cleareyes is great for a lot of concepts and can hold down a lot of the same niches as Roteater and Runnerswift in a different way. It Dual Kiths well with almost any other Beast Kith if you want to double down on animalistic aspects, but as a task-driven Kith it also goes surprisingly well with those outside of Beast; Draconic (feral drake guardsmen, or perhaps a ‘failed’ Fairest), Antiquarian (wise owls in a different vein from Windwing), Oracle (a churchyard grim, or a cat kept as the familiar of a terrible witch), and Farwalker (straight-up werewolves or, with Contracts of Mirror and a nasty disposition, vicious rakshasas) are just some of the potential combinations on the table.

Coldscales - Not the flashiest, but they get the job done; Coldscales (typically but not necessarily reptilian in nature) benefit from a further bonus to Composure that makes them unusually hard to manipulate, a boon not to be underestimated given just how much fae magic attacks people emotionally. Though this Kith is intended to represent cold-blooded reptiles, consider it as well for animals famous for their sloth and endurance; a sleepy Bear Prince who can’t be bothered might display the calm endurance of a Coldscales, as might a terrible wyrm that must be roused to wrath (perhaps Dual Kith’d with Fireheart or Draconic), or even a big cat, deadly only if hungry or disturbed and otherwise content to feed on the carrion left behind by those who flee before him.

Riddleseeker - The Kith, the myth, the legend; Riddleseeker is the closest you get to a Mental-focused Beast (for, ah, obvious reasons) and is introduced in Night Horrors: Grim Fears. Its sample character, the loyalist Maya Sharptongue, has a sphinx-like aspect to her but Riddleseeker is also a great choice for ravens and crows (perhaps clutching fragments of lore stolen from their Keepers that their human minds could understand when their beast ones could not), legends of oracular serpents, and tricksters like the fox who made Mighty Miko a king. Riddleseeker holds down thematics on its own, but if you’re looking for the physical aspects it doesn’t do on its own it Dual Kiths inside of Beast pretty easily.

The Animal Kingdoms - Beasts in the Courts

As alluded to earlier, Beasts are often the backbone of the Freehold. Wizened do the thankless jobs that everyone relies on, but often it’s Beasts that fill in the miscellaneous roles. Messages and packages need carried? You’re probably calling a Beast. Loyalist needs his shit kicked in? Beasts are ready. Need to connect with a lonely mortal and see if their dreams are poisoned? Whistle up a Beast. Obviously not every single job a Freehold wants or needs will be filled by a Beast even if in theory it could be, but given how diverse the Seeming is and their combination of on-demand sociability and poise, they’re attractive for many duties. After all, even the most standoffish Venombite or Coldscales can put on a charm face with the best of them if you can keep a steady supply of Glamour on the table.

Given their difficulties with abstract reasoning, Beasts tend to relate to the ideals of their Court on a practical level, which can make them either sorta-kinda bad at being Courtiers on a formal level or paragons of their Court’s ideals, without a whole lot of in-between. Both perspectives are valuable; there’s not a whole lot of point in constantly debating the ideals of, say, Fear, if no one is going to go out and spread fear. For those Beasts who place great faith in the ideals of their Court, their commitment can serve as an inspiration and example to others, and a living reminder that sometimes living up to high ideals means making choices that aren’t easy for you personally or politically.

Beasts are surprisingly common in leadership positions, especially in Summer (where their physical focus and access to talented officers can carry them far) and Spring (where their instant sociability and diverse spread of talents can help them catch the eye of the Court). Unlike Fairest (who have a steadier and stronger social focus), Beasts aren’t prone to losing their entire goddamn minds in singular, shattering moments, which can make them more stable officers, nobles, and Crowns than their more glorious peers. They can also make surprising spymasters and even money-makers. Depending on the Court, though, a Beast in a leadership position may require an assistant to help with the paperwork (or the math), or else be prepared to work a lot of overtime patiently making and decoding ciphers on her own.

Like Elementals, Beasts can be somewhat more sensitive to the physical temperament of the Seasons than other Lost, to the point where it may be surprising to find, say, a snake-like Beast bundled up in layers beneath her Winter Mantle (gently muttering ‘fuck snow’ under her breath every so often). Those who choose to endure such discomfort are often some of their Court’s most avid members, and known as such.

Spring - Insofar as any Lost are natural joiners of Spring (typically a Lost’s second or even third Court), Beasts make for natural Spring Courtiers. They’re sociable, hard to visibly ruffle even if they’re screaming internally, often physically striking, and talented at living in the moment. Unfortunately that same talent can feed into a Beast’s difficulties balancing their human and animal aspects and leave them stuck in the middle between healthy and toxic even worse than Spring generally gets stuck. Despite this, Beasts can go quite far in Spring and often end up as movers and shakers who influence opinions.

Summer - Most people think of predators as Summer’s Beasts, but herd animals are much more common. Sure, every now and again you get a canine Beast who goes far, or a would-be King of Cats that remembers the twisting alleys of his Durance and the silver nets of Arcadia’s animal control enforcement, but Summer’s brotherhood and focus on physical defense is much more appealing to Beasts whose natures are shaped by animals such as deer, oxen, and dolphins. Those Beasts whose Durance was defined by fear and flight also sometimes flock to Summer, seeking the strength the Iron Spear offers to ensure that they will never again be Arcadia’s prey.

Autumn - Where most of the predators actually end up; human nature turns an animal’s innocent hunger and instinct into cruelty and schadenfreude in places, giving rise to Beasts that take after vicious werewolves or treacherous serpents. Though they can have a hard time fitting into the scholarly aspects of Autumn, Beasts go quite far in the Leaden Mirror through practical applications of sorcery and being quick on the draw. They may not necessarily understand the nature of their power, but Beasts definitely know how to hammer it home.

Winter - The Coldest Court is as pragmatic about its Beasts as it is about everything else; Winter tends to recruit Beasts by openly asking them to serve in jobs the Court believes they’re suited for, and paying them for that work. Summer might be content to make, say, a Runnerswift into a mighty Knight, but Winter is going to ask them to run (and, at times, to hide). The ability Beasts have to crank their Composure on demand can make the talented and discreet candidates for Winter’s higher-level social positions, and as the keepers of important information or Tokens.

Until Proven Guilty - Beasts and Changeling’s Themes

Beast is in an awkward spot compared to the other Seemings. In a game that is very explicitly about abuse, trauma, and recovery, Beast lacks a clear connection to those themes. Core introduces the idea that Beasts are united by a sort of innocence, a refutation of corruption that protects them from Arcadia on some level, but literally none of the rest of the game did anything with that theme. Their other primary theme - the mix of literal or folkloric animal instincts with human ones - is engaging and interesting, but disconnected from that central aspect of the game in a way the other Seemings aren’t.

You don’t necessarily have to address this. If you aren’t looking to deep dive into the nature of your Seeming, or your Chronicle doesn’t have a strong emphasis on those themes of abuse you can probably just let it ride. If you are looking to focus on those themes, one idea that’s gotten me personally a lot of mileage is to look at how your Beast relates to Seemings that had similar functions and asking yourself why are are not that Seeming, exploring your Beast’s trauma through comparison and contrasts.

From life experience though, there might be something to that dropped ‘innocence’ theme. That idea of an innocent, damaged and transformed by circumstances beyond their control, trying to build a new life in a world they weren’t prepared to live in has some strong similarities to children raised in cults or by survivalists and conspiracy theorists. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve connected with someone only to watch their entire worldview fall apart as they realized the world they’d been raised to live in doesn’t exist, and that everything they know how to do only works in the context of that fictional world. Fairest can also be strong candidates for depicting this kind of abuse, but I’d still encourage you to consider Beast if you’re interested in engaging on this concept directly.

We Don’t Bite People, And Other Lies We Tell Children - Coping With Beasthood

To be a Beast is to be caught between worlds twice over (three times, for Swimmerskins and Windwings, which, y’know. Sucks to be you guys); like all Lost they are influenced by both fae and mortal nature, but Beasts are also caught between instinct and reason. The animal within is entirely comfortable in the now in a way humans just aren’t, but their human half treasures things the animal can never understand. In the heat of the moment, though, when it comes down to instinct or reason, instinct often wins - sometimes to the Beast’s benefit, and sometimes to their great sorrow.

This balancing act defines the Beast’s life, and generally starts at home. Beasts usually live alone if they can, even if they’re otherwise sociable, so that they have a space in which they can entirely be themselves and decide who is welcome, when. Rarely does this influence stop in the physical bounds of a Beast’s house, apartment, or sewer drain though; any place the Beast thinks of as their turf (the broader neighborhood or apartment building, their office in the Freehold’s Commons, even their job if they have enough pull to get away with it) is going to be shaped to let them express some part of both sides of themselves. How that comes out varies from Beast to Beast. An affable satyr might become the neighborhood darling, doing favors and bringing food to their neighbors in unspoken payment for letting odd behavior slide, while a spidery Venombite might be more likely to trade on passive intimidation or even adopt a performative identity (it’s strange if a pastor’s wife is creepy, but no one thinks twice about a goth gal that’s spooky). Having those safe and/or welcoming spaces available is vital for a Beast’s ongoing mental health, and without them a nervous breakdown is only a matter of time.

Outside of the matter of their home and places of power, Beasts have a tendency for straightforwardness that has little to do with their particular animal (though it might) and everything to do with the fact that as a Seeming, Presence is their strongest source of social prowess. Dealing openly, for good or ill, plays to their strengths and has the added advantage of keeping their social life relatively straightforward, even if it’ll never quite be simple.

Stability, ultimately, has to be the goal of a Beast looking to build a new life after their Durance. They need to find a way to live their life that acknowledges and nurtures all parts of their divided nature; even those Beasts dumb enough to favor one side over the other can’t do it for long without losing their entire god damn minds. Few Freeholds are without stories of would-be Cat Kings (Autumn Nightmares) or Riddleseekers who turned into crows one day and just never turned back. Having escaped Arcadia only by finding their minds again, Beasts tend to be among those Lost most cognizant of what their issues are, and most willing to face those issues on direct terms. They did it once already, after all; the hard part is showing up to do it again every day.

Sample Beast - The Toy Taker, Autumn Riddleseeker/Windwing

Margaret Bellman is called Maggie by her Freehold and the Toy Taker by an increasingly mystified local media. Her memories of Arcadia are more like a gap than the usual splintered and fractured recollections of the Lost; one minute she was a teenage girl staring in fascination at the twisting figure in a mirror, and the next she was a grown-ass woman with crow’s feathers for hair and tiny, somehow functional wings, staggering through that same mirror and bleeding all over the place.

It didn’t take long for Maggie to swear herself to Autumn, though she’s an odd bird for the Leaden Mirror. Though she adores and practices magic, Maggie’s primary profession and hobby is theft. She steals things the Freehold needs stolen and sometimes robs homes for money, crimes the media has yet to connect to her other persona.

For Maggie also steals toys.

It’s never often. When her life is at a low point and spiraling out of control, Maggie slips into a child’s bedroom and takes one of their toys. She rips the shiny bits from it to add to her collection at home (displayed this way and that in her room, in shadowboxes, on strings, glued to the walls, dangling from coat hangers), crucifies the remainder, and leaves it on the kid’s door. Though the Winter Court disapproves of her methods, her hobby sows Fear and Sorrow in equal measure and her dedication to it has earned her some small formal appreciation from the Coldest Court.

As with all of my articles, I welcome questions, comments, discussion, feedback, and criticisms. Please, feel free to reblog if you’re feelin’ it!

Next up: Wizened

[beinglibertarian]

Civilized Society: On the Death of Civility

One of the most influential questions I’ve ever encountered came not from a great philosopher or writer, nor from any inspiring conversation or work. Rather it came from a black comedy at the end of a rant about people throwing used tampons at each other and ripping on American Idol.

The movie (and I highly suggested giving it a watch) was called “God Bless America” and was a story of a man who decided to address the idiocy and (un)culture of the U.S. Of A.

The question: “Why have a civilization if we are no longer interested in being civilized?”

The weight of that question has stayed with me for many years. In all aspects of our lives, we see a continuous shift towards not just tolerating but accepting and rejoicing at the de-evolution of our moral and normative standards.

Before this gets misinterpreted, I am not attempting to start the “objective/subjective” morality debate. Rather I want to touch on this trend, the damage it has and will continue to do, and its effects on not just discourse but human interaction at large.

For the purposes of this piece, I feel that I need to define what I mean by “civilized” in this context.

I am referring here to a standard. A level of culture, of self-betterment, and of social advancement. I am referring to refinement, tact, principles, and all of the other things we have allowed to be eroded from our social norms. The very things that made us as advanced as we are as a civilization are the things that we are allowing to disappear, and it’s primarily due to either apathy, intellectual laziness, or the false belief that these cornerstones of our society are mere relics compared to our own decay.

Make Politics Civilized Again

When we talk about politics we usually end up discussing how terrible one politician is compared to another (which I’ll touch on later). Worse still is attempting to engage with people themselves. Moreso than our politicians, people in general need to be more civilized when discussing these topics.

God forbid one disagrees with someone these days! Outline the belief in an opposed idea and you will be beset by the tribalistic howler monkeys hungry for the flesh of the heretic.

To many, it has become as if the mere existence of opposition is equal to a personal affront or attack.

If one believes or is thinking something different than the hive they are implying that the other is somehow mentally deficient.

Everything gets couched in false dichotomies of us/them, yes/no, right/wrong, all when the world of political ideologies are far more convoluted and nuanced than that. I may disagree with someone’s views on a topic like gun control, but that doesn’t mean that that alone is justification for me to start screeching “Statist!” the second someone suggests some form of restrictions. Just the same I would hope that my opposition wouldn’t immediately jump into saying I support the deaths of children or some other absurdity simply because my stance remains unchanged after a school shooting.

The purpose of debate and civil discourse is to present and challenge ideas; not to pontificate and organize pissing contests.

I find it odd that people will demand to have their voices heard, then squander the opportunities to shift hearts and minds to their cause through empty vulgarities.

Despite millennia of evolution, we still allow ourselves to be put into the little boxes of our self-designed tribes. Even those of us who preach for individualism can be found guilty of this.

Not all is lost here though. I’ve found that much of it lies in approach. If one approaches a discussion from a good faith position with a true willingness to objectively debate and review ideas you will eventually find those on the opposition that are the same. Even the ones that aren’t can eventually be swung into a proper discussion with the right levels of tact and respect.

Obviously, there will be those that are simply there to screech, but that doesn’t grant a license to debase one’s self and do the same. Ideologies can and ought to be discussed on an ideological level. Any lower and one may as well not speak at all.

The Death of Nuance

By and large, this might be the biggest contributing factor to the issues spelled out above and below.

Even those that maintain the ability to discuss, debate and create tend to have lost this necessary skill. The ability to understand and look for the nuance in things.

We design things around simplicity rather than quality. Whether it’s our political arguments or our art, we are constantly aiming to accomplish some form of streamlining that in turn means the frills need to be trimmed.

Arguments are reduced to dichotomies and art reduced to the most easily packaged thing. We see this with our politics especially. We will ignore the nuances of arguments that have vastly different implications because they are outside of our tribes.

There is a massive difference between saying “I’m against the existence of unions” and saying “I’m against government empowerment of unions.” Supporters of unions will treat these as the same thing, even if the latter statement came from a supporter of unions themselves, or if the opposition is some form of left-libertarian. Logical consistency and honest review of the details of their opponent’s arguments are thrown aside for the sake of their tribe.

As I mentioned above, we try to reduce all things into “yes/no” categories and trap ourselves within them. This does far more harm than simply amputating the civilized tones political discourse once held. It also kills our ability to think outside of these dichotomies.

If what one has to say can’t be reduced to a tautology or syllogism then it isn’t worth hearing in the eyes of our generation of pundits and keyboard warriors. As a society, we have stopped our exploration of philosophy and the arts and moved into a phase of rearrangement. We no longer strive to make something wholly new, but simply remix and argue over what has already come before us.

Most of our media and ideas are not our own anymore. They are remixes of ideas and arguments from before.

While it is worth understanding and appreciating what came before us, we should strive to move past it. We should strive to improve rather than regurgitate the ideas that came before us. We should take the time to learn the subtleties of what we engage ourselves in. I brought it up in one of my podcast episodes where I talked about the human habit of overcomplication, yet I am equally astounded by the amounts of those complications and nuances that we add to our interests that we then summarily ignore.

We will spend all of this time debating philosophy, politics and economics, but we won’t take an equal amount of time to review the basis for the arguments our opponents use, or in some cases ourselves. Instead, we will defer to the basics of what we encounter and fight from there.

In art, we will accept a lower quality of music lyrically because we’ve reduced our listening experience to the beat. We examine our world from generalizations rather than attempting to view things as a whole. We discard the whole once we’ve decided what is in front of us. There are some out there reading this that likely saw the repetition of the word “we” and got their backs up. It should be easily understood that the usage of the word here is in a generalized form and thus should receive no contention from those this critique doesn’t apply to. The fact that this likely needs to be explained further illustrates my point.

“It’s Art”

It is saddening when people say this in defense of baseless vulgarity or unoriginal pieces of “art.”

Through the postmodernist lens, we’ve come to accept anything as art so long as it was made in expression of whatever the “artist” whips up as a reason after the fact.

While some pieces can indeed be interesting, on the whole, much of the talent the art world use to hold has been replaced with expression for the sake of expression; no actual skill required. We’ve turned the study of the aesthetic into a scatological field.

The truest shame of this is the amount of true talent that gets passed over in place of these works of “art.” The amount of technical skill and artistic vision that likely went into your phone’s background or those random “cool art” Facebook page posts you’ve seen massively outweighs anything I’ve seen from the “performance art” crowd in recent years.

Outside of the regular talentless hacks that throw the term “avant-garde” around like they actually know what it means, there’s the overpackaged side of this decline as well.

Now it needs to be stated first: I understand that most television, movies, and pop hits aren’t designed to be masterwork expressions of the craft. They’re designed to be popular. The problem is twofold here.

First, we are a very systematic species. We’ve devoted thousands of man hours and resources into the study of what makes certain music or shows popular and reduced these fields to a science rather than the art it ought to be.

Not every TV show needs to be some high-level journey of wonderment, but at least they could stop redoing the Three’s Company formula every time they need a new hit. Even some of the better works that have come out in recent years like Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad, while refreshing, ended up doing little more than creating a new system for companies to flood the market with.

With every repetition of the model, it becomes weaker and more deformed.

Pop music has always suffered this, but the emphasis on it has eroded the usefulness of the media form.

Even older pop hits still had to reach a certain level of quality before we would begin to eat it up. Instead of keeping up with that trend, we’re fed things that are scientifically designed to be appealing; rather than being appealing on its own artistic merits.

Luckily there are definitely acts out there that bring that higher level of quality, but sadly they simply aren’t as big or on the same level of reach as the cookie-cutter ensembles that I’m referring to.

I’m not suggesting we need to go back to some idyllic civilized high society that only listens to classical and jazz (though I wouldn’t really oppose that either), but rather that we pay more attention to the art we consume and demand more than a catchy tune with an appropriate level of compression.

The Pursuit of Knowledge

As of the beginning of this sentence, this article was already at 1795 words. For most of those that read web articles, I’m already over the average attention span by about 1000 words.

Even in libertarian circles, there are tons of people that will fight you to the death on an economic or philosophical concept, yet they’ve never read the source material these ideas came from.

They’ll have gotten their arguments from watching others debate online or by parroting whichever YouTuber they happen to follow.

They’ll attack commies for their ideological views, but have never picked up a copy of anything by Proudhon, Marx, or Kropotkin. This isn’t a libertarian issue alone though as those same commies are just as likely to have never read the material either.

We’ve bred a social order that values the products of knowledge, but not it’s acquisition. Sure, we push our youth to run off and get their degrees, but we do that for the sake of them gaining better  employment rather than to actually learn.

Shows like “Are you smarter than a 5th grader” are only possible in a society where we treat the civilized pursuit of knowledge as a means rather than an end in and of itself.

Even when we do pursue knowledge, we aim for summaries. In order to stand for something one first needs the legs that true knowledge grants you. After reading a single Wikipedia article or listicle people consider themselves educated enough to discuss the finer points of Spinoza. And that’s if they even read non-fiction to begin with.

The average person reportedly reads twelve books per year, though this is largely believed to be inflated with the actual average closer to four. This is out of the nearly one million books published every year. Obviously, it would be physically impossible to read that much per year, but even when we do read the quality is suspect.

Look at the explosion of YA novels. Most of it is average, slightly above dime store level tropes repackaged in slightly different arrangements. These sell millions of copies and get turned into blockbuster movies.

Even “Adult” (no, not that kind) novels tend to follow the same path of repetitive swill. The bulk of the variety ends up coming from the types of characters rather than the plot itself, or the authors will predictably try to over M. Night Shyamalan their works with more twists than a 50‘s sock hop.

All of this may sound like some form of intellectual elitism, but rather it is a call for standards. We can enjoy the odd bit of trite every once in a while (one of my favorite films is still “The Room”), however, we cannot sustain ourselves on it.

Civilization and culture around the world has been built on the backs of the thinkers and the dreamers. If we only feed our brains garbage then we will produce the same. To make society more civilized we need to start by making ourselves more informed and demand of others and ourselves the higher standards that would grant us.

Psuedos: A Cancer on Culture

In listing all of this I feel it is important to list the worst offenders of those that erode all that is civilized: Psuedo-intellectuals.

These are the types that list their IQ and pedigree within the first 5 facts you learn about them. They learned all they need to know about being successful from reading 7 habits of successful people and a handful of Malcolm Gladwell books. They took not one, but two CrossFit classes and are ready to become personal trainers and dietitians. They are plebs in Armani.

The reason I think they are contributing to the uncivilized trend that we have been experiencing is that they steal the limelight from real thinkers in the name of egotistical desire.

They speak less for the purposes of sharing any real knowledge they might, by chance, have gathered, but solely to express that they are the ones that know it. They are not agents of enlightenment, but rather of sophistry.

They make compelling arguments completely devoid of any nuance that could show true thought behind their ideas, and become excessively defensive should their supposed superiority be questioned.

They’re willing to show how civilized they are in a discussion right up until any of their ideas are challenged. In their eyes, to challenge them is to say they are wrong which is tantamount to blasphemy.

Their involvement in a conversation sullies it, which in turn turns people away from engaging in the material at all.

Worst still, it can lead to people quietly settling into their little tribes on the topic.

A true thinker should want people to engage in their material. Critiques help people hone their ideas, add to their knowledge base, and offer perspectives that may previously have been unconsidered. A Psuedo-intellectual wants none of that.

The Psuedo just wants to be right from the start, and acknowledged for it. Most painfully, they are likely to self-victimize. They will claim they argue purely from facts and reasoning, but they will also be offended on a personal level if they are sufficiently challenged.

Most commonly this results in pedantic commentary, condescending remarks and stances, and a transition of the discussion from the topic at hand to an emptier game of linguistics. If one dares stoop to their level they’ll immediately decry that they’re being attacked and turn the discussion towards tone and words to gain some level of superiority out of the exchange.

This erodes not only civilized and intellectually honest discussion, but also the foundations of knowledge in the public sphere. Discussion gets driven not by the wisest voices, but rather the loudest.

I think the best example of this committed to film was in the movie “Good Will Hunting.” In the famous bar scene where the pretentious grad student attempts to browbeat Ben Afflick’s character solely for the purposes of browbeating him and making a spectacle. Matt Damon’s character (Will) comes forward and begins to pick him apart for the ideas stolen from entry-level books, generic stances, and walks him through what his academic and general future will encompass being that way.

He quotes the authors he’s stealing from (and even the damn page number), and generally summarizes all of the issues with this breed of person; all through a thick Boston accent.

I highlight this scene because it perfectly encapsulates what I’m referring to. Unfettered pedantry by those that overvalue their own knowledge and capabilities.

Now, I’m not lacking in self-awareness to the degree to not notice that one might think the same of me for writing such a lengthy piece as this attacking all of these aspects of discussion and society as if I am somehow above it all.

I am the first to acknowledge if and when I slip up on the things listed here, and truly without pretense welcome it when others notice so that I can course correct and improve. Noticing these traits and taking the time to improve upon them is what separates us from those that are simply in it to put on a show. True learning and development start with a real hunger for the knowledge, and a humble willingness to be wrong.

Civilized Office Starts With Civility

Look at the news. Just look at it and weep. People have always gotten heated and thrown mud in the political arena, but it had generally been understood that there are levels to which one simply does not stoop.

As time progresses that notion has been eroded.

Even during the infamous Watergate fiasco, we could still see a level of civility in the commentary and discussions on Nixon’s actions, and what should follow. I doubt that reporters from most MSM outlets could sit down through an interview with Trump and remain as civilized yet to the point as Frost could.

Even amongst the general public, we’ve seen this shift. After Clinton and that little blue dress, the respect for the presidency as an office plummeted as seen with the open hostility towards Bush, the baseless attacks against Obama (which tended to ignore the large list of factual reasons to criticize him), and the circus around this current presidency.

I welcome the reduction in the worship of the office as much as the next libertarian, however, I cannot support the lack of civilized discourse regarding it.

One doesn’t need to pretend these politicians are good people (generally they aren’t), but debasing one’s self for the sake of attacking them is unnecessary and pointlessly negative as well.

Civilized discourse is built around maintaining a level of decorum and mustering enough respect to effectively and fairly engage an opponent. As we remove our respect and decorum we also erode our expectations.

You don’t get a Trump (or a Hillary, or Bernie) in office if you actually demand a higher quality from these offices. While one may be on the anarchist side and against the existence of the offices themselves, that doesn’t mean we should treat the offices so poorly as to turn them into a joke. When we do that we don’t reduce the power these offices currently hold; we only reduce the quality of those who hold them.

Put another way, one can question the legitimacy of these offices and want them abolished, but simply treating them sloppily only results in lower quality people hold these positions of power, making them that much more dangerous. Conflating that these offices ought to be removed or reduced with the idea that they hold no power is a root cause of the continuous degrade in the quality of people that hold them.

Conclusion

This also needs to be said: I’m not dictating that we need to make these changes by force. That’s an important detail that is likely to be missed by some on first glance.

Cultural direction works the same as markets in the sense that changes only happen three ways. They happen by environmental factors (abundance of a resource in one area, natural disaster, etc), by the force of an interloper (such as the government), or by the sum of the actions of the individuals of society.

The environmental influence on civilized societies are mostly immutable (note: mostly), and, while there are those that attempt to enforce their cultural views via force and law (From the Puritans of old to the archetypical SJWs of today) I am attempting neither.

I write this in an attempt to get people on a different track and to change how the sum of our culture will look. Between these three factors, I personally will always bet on the individual as being the greatest genesis of change. It’s the individual I seek to showcase this to, and to engage. At the very least I hope this sparks a discussion and consideration of the points herein.

The Dalai Lama had a book titled “How to see yourself as you really are” that I think is apt to mention here. The book discusses the concept of self-knowledge, and removing the biases that attribute to both false negative and false positive interpretations of yourself.

The goal of the exercises and philosophy presented is to direct the reader towards being able to see the reality of themselves, and act accordingly rather than from empty pretenses they might have of themselves.

While I most definitely am nowhere near his levels of understanding or wisdom, my intentions here are the same.

It is my hope that those that read this will aim for more civilized heights than they had before, and will look for opportunities to improve the way we function.

I hope that you will self-reflect and take something away from all of this. It is my hope that we can answer the question of whether to have a civilization anymore with a resounding yes, but that will only be possible if we as individuals are willing to fulfill our parts.

* Killian Hobbs is a writer for Think Liberty.

The post Civilized Society: On the Death of Civility appeared first on Being Libertarian.

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The Preservation of the Saints

INTRODUCTION

Our topic is the Reformed doctrine of the perseverance or preservation of the saints. In the study of theology, it falls under soteriology. It is the final item in "The Five Points of Calvinism," designated by the "P" in the acronym TULIP, referring to "the perseverance of the saints." The doctrine asserts that once a person becomes a true Christian, he never truly and finally turns away from his faith, and that he can never truly and finally become a non-Christian again. Therefore, once a person truly converts and becomes a believer, he will surely be saved.

THEOLOGICAL EXPRESSIONS

This teaching is designated by several different expressions. Although some may be better than others in that they contain more information about the doctrine, all of them are accurate, and each carries important theological implications.

Eternal Security The term "eternal security" suggests that the believer's salvation is safe – it is not in danger, and it will not be taken away.

Although the word "security" stresses the final result, it does not tell us, by whose will, by what power, in what state, and by what means the believer's salvation is secured and kept safe; nevertheless, the word is accurate as far as it goes.

As for "eternal," if it is understood as denoting an endless duration, then it is synonymous with "everlasting," and thus emphasizes the perpetual nature of the believer's security. It is not something that will last for a while and then dissipates; it is something that will last forever.

Although some people has in mind mainly this emphasis when using the expression, its meaning becomes even richer if we also understand the word "eternal" as referring to the eternal decree of God in election. That is, "eternal" can also refer to God's sovereign and immutable decree in timeless eternity for the salvation of his chosen ones. In other words, a believer's salvation is forever secure because in eternity God has decreed the salvation of this individual.

Once Saved, Always Saved Another popular description of the doctrine is "once saved, always saved." It clearly conveys the idea that once a person is saved, his salvation continues unchanged and uninterrupted for "always."

Again, although this description is accurate as far as it goes, it does not tell us by whose will, by what power, in what state, and by what means the believer's salvation perpetuates once it began. The description does not in itself contain any information that would counteract the false accusations that are often leveled again this doctrine.

In addition, in itself the expression is too broad to exclude unbiblical versions of the doctrine. For example, some people affirm that once a person professes Christianity, then he is "saved," and he will never lose his salvation regardless of his subsequent beliefs and actions. However, this is not the biblical version of the "once saved, always saved" doctrine.

The Perseverance of the Saints Calvinists frequently employ the expression, "the perseverance of the saints," when referring to the doctrine.

In some ways, this expression is superior to the previous two. First, it includes more relevant information, in that it states not only the result, but also the state in which a believer's salvation remains secure. Specifically, it conveys the idea that a believer spiritually and morally persists in the converted condition. It implies that that he faces temptations and difficulties in his walk with God, but that he "perseveres" through these challenges.

This in turn counteracts the misunderstanding that one who once professes Christianity can abandon his faith and permanently return to sin, and still be saved. Instead, this expression points out that a person who has been saved remains saved in that he perseveres against temptations and difficulties.

Nevertheless, this expression still allows for misunderstandings and distortions. Although it tells us in what state a believer remains saved, it does not tell us by whose will, by what power, and by what means he perseveres. It leaves room for one to think that, once converted, a believer then has within himself the will and the power to forever persevere through all temptations and difficulties, even if he does not possess this disposition and ability before conversion. This is still not the biblical version of the doctrine. Of course, the expression does not necessitate this distortion, but neither does it directly exclude it.

The Preservation of the Saints Perhaps the best expression to describe the doctrine is "the preservation of the saints" – it is rich in content, and biblical in emphasis.

Like all the previous expressions for this doctrine, this one tells us something about the end result, that a believer will remain forever saved. But it tells us much more than this. As with "the perseverance of the saints," the idea of "preservation" implies that the believer will truly and finally remain in the positive spiritual and moral condition that regeneration has produced in him.

In addition, it tells us that the reason a believer perseveres in his regenerated and converted state is because he is "preserved." This implies the believer's continual dependence on the grace of God, and that a believer remains saved because of the will and the power of God, and not the will and the power of man. Moreover, to be "preserved" implies that one is protected against some hostile forces and influences, and thus conveys the idea that the believer continues to face temptations and difficulties after conversion, only that God preserves him, so that his faith does not fail.

Therefore, this expression has the advantage of including much relevant information, if not by direct assertion, then at least by implication. It honors the work of God, excludes the boasting of man, and reflects the biblical emphasis on the sovereign grace and active power of God throughout the elect's salvation, from conversion to consummation.

Of course, this expression still does not say all that can and should be said about the doctrine. It does not adequately and equally emphasize its every aspect, and neither does it directly exclude all distortions and misunderstandings. Also, it does not tell us about the means by which God uses to preserve us other than the implication that it involves his active power. Nevertheless, for a short expression, this is probably the best, in that it is the most God-centered, and refers to all relevant aspects of this doctrine, at least by implication.

REFORMED CONFESSIONS

Since our current interest is the Reformed understanding of the preservation of the saints, it is appropriate to examine several Reformed confessions. These documents provide us with historical, formal, and systematic expressions of the Reformed faith. All of the following confessions contain some statements that are relevant to the doctrine.

The Scots Confession We begin by looking at The Scots Confession of 1560. Mainly written by John Knox, it contains no section narrowly addressing the preservation of the saints; however, the following paragraphs from chapters XII and XIII are sufficient to establish a clear position on the subject:

XII. To put this even more plainly; as we willingly disclaim any honor and glory for our own creation and redemption, so do we willingly also for our regeneration and sanctification; for by ourselves we are not capable of thinking one good thought, but he who has begun the work in us alone continues us in it, to the praise and glory of his undeserved grace.

This is an excellent place to start, because it shows how the Reformed view of the preservation of the saints is integrated within the context of the general pattern of biblical soteriology. That is, biblical soteriology presents salvation as something that truly and wholly comes from God, and that it works out in the lives of the chosen ones in such a way as to exclude all human boasting.

Because men are completely depraved and helpless, it is only by God's sovereign grace and power that the elect are regenerated – it is God who must begin this good work in us. Then, it is he who "alone continues us in it, to the praise and glory of his undeserved grace." Notice that it is he "alone" who causes us to continue, so that no credit is due to man. Both conversion and sanctification completely depend on sovereign grace.

XIII. The cause of good works, we confess, is not our free will, but the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, who dwells in our hearts by true faith, brings forth such works as God has prepared for us to walk in. For we most boldly affirm that it is blasphemy to say that Christ abides in the hearts of those in whom is no spirit of sanctification. Therefore we do not hesitate to affirm that murderers, oppressors, cruel persecuters, adulterers, filthy persons, idolaters, drunkards, thieves, and all works of iniquity, have neither true faith nor anything of the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, so long as they obstinately continue in wickedness. For as soon as the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, whom God's chosen children receive by true faith, takes possession of the heart of any man, so soon does he regenerate and renew him, so that he begins to hate what before he loved, and to love what he hated before….But the Spirit of God, who bears witness to our spirit that we are the sons of God, makes us resist filthy pleasures and groan in God's presence for deliverance from this bondage of corruption, and finally to triumph over sin so that it does not reign in our mortal bodies….But the sons of God fight against sin; sob and mourn when they find themselves tempted to do evil; and, if they fall, rise again with earnest and unfeigned repentance. They do these things, not by their own power, but by the power of the Lord Jesus, apart from whom they can do nothing.

Chapter XIII continues to set up good theological reasons for integrating the preservation of the saints with a coherent and biblical view of soteriology. It states that a real inner transformation occurs in the person at regeneration. The believer then continues in his new spiritual direction because he is no longer the same as before. Regeneration is not simply a short-lived experience after which the spiritual disposition of the person remains uncertain; rather, it is a fundamental and permanent transformation caused and sustained by the Spirit of God, who now indwells the believer.

This does not mean that regeneration imparts to the believer a new power in the sense that he can now function to produce spiritual good apart from the continual grace and power of God. This Confession explicitly denies that a person produces good works by any human "free will" even after he has been regenerated.

Instead, it says that "the cause of good works" in believers is "the Spirit of the Lord Jesus" who dwells in us through faith, which is also a gift from God. In addition, the very good works that we perform have been "prepared for us" by God. This points out to us that God's foreordination, his eternal decree, has not predetermined only our conversion, but also our sanctification. It is not as if God predetermined that we would be saved, and then left subsequent events uncertain. Instead, he has predetermined both the conversion and the sanctification of his chosen ones, foreordaining the very good works that they would perform after their regeneration.

Therefore, just as "free will" is not an issue in conversion, "free will" is not an issue in sanctification. It is God's will that causes conversion, and it is God's will that causes sanctification, and this means that the perseverance of the saints is not subject to their own weaknesses, but to God's powerful preservation.

However, this does not deny that believers continue to face temptations and difficulties after their conversion. In fact, at times they even fall into serious sins, although even these failures occur by the sovereign will and power of God. The difference is that, because of God's foreordination and preservation, the chosen ones "sob and mourn when they find themselves tempted to do evil; and, if they fall, rise again with earnest and unfeigned repentance."

The Confession then repeats the emphasis that, "They do these things, not by their own power, but by the power of the Lord Jesus, apart from whom they can do nothing." Again, the believers do not persevere because they have a "free will" to choose good after regeneration, but because it is God's will to preserve them by his power, and he has decided that they would "finally triumph over sin." It is unscriptural to say that a man's will is under bondage to sin before conversion, but that he has "free will" after conversion. Scripture teaches that man is bound to wickedness before conversion, and that he is bound to righteousness after conversion.

It follows that those who demonstrate no real change in thought and conduct, and those who do not persevere in holiness, have never been converted in the first place. And the Confession boldly declares that it is "blasphemy" to say that a man can be a true believer and at the same time be without the "spirit of sanctification." All those who "obstinately continue in wickedness" have never been converted, even if they claim to be believers.

The Heidelberg Catechism Second, we come to The Heidelberg Catechism (1563). Like the Scots Confession, this German catechism of Reformed doctrine contains no question or set of questions specifically designed to address the preservation of the saints. However, it includes numerous references to the doctrine throughout the Catechism, from which we can derive a definite position on the subject:

Q. 1. What is your only comfort, in life and in death? A. That I belong – body and soul, in life and in death – not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who at the cost of his own blood has fully paid for all my sins and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil; that he protects me so well that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that everything must fit his purpose for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

This first question in the Catechism introduces something new to our discussion, namely, the implication of Christ's effective particular atonement for the preservation of the saints. Opponents of the doctrine must invariably place the focus of perseverance upon the believers themselves, as if God has no final say on the matter. In contrast, the Reformed confessions agree with Scripture that God is really the only one who has any say on the matter.

Thus when we consider the perseverance of the saints, we must not deal with only what the saints can or would do, but what Christ has done and is doing. Now, by his redemptive work, Christ actually purchased the chosen ones, the elect. He bought them, and he owns them. Therefore, the Catechism begins by pointing out that the believer belongs to Christ, who protects and preserves the believer. It also points out that God has foreordained all things to "fit his purpose for my salvation," and it is the Holy Spirit who "makes me…willing and ready from now on to live for him."

For this reason, it is not entirely accurate to say that God has regenerated the believer so that he can "freely" choose that which is good – the word "freely" must at best be used only relative to sin, and not relative to God. Rather, even after regeneration, it is God who causes the believer's will to choose that which is good. Since "his purpose" never changes, the believer's foreordained destiny never changes.

Q. 31. Why is he called Christ, that is, the Anointed? A. Because he is ordained by God the Father and anointed with the Holy Spirit to be our chief Priest and Teacher, fully revealing to us the secret purpose and will of God concerning our redemption; to be our only High Priest, having redeemed us by the one sacrifice of his body and ever interceding for us with the Father; and to be our eternal King, governing us by his Word and Spirit, and defending and sustaining us in the redemption he has won for us.

This question points out that Christ is "defending and sustaining us in the redemption he has won for us" as part of his ministry as Mediator. He intercedes for us with the Father, who always hears him. Therefore, the preservation of the elect is as certain as the permanence and effectiveness of Christ's ministry as King and Priest.

Q. 49. What benefit do we receive from Christ's ascension into heaven? A. First, that he is our Advocate in the presence of his Father in heaven. Second, that we have our flesh in heaven as a sure pledge that he, as the Head, will also take us, his members, up to himself. Third, that he sends us his Spirit as a counterpledge by whose power we seek what is above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God, and not things that are on earth.

Because the believer is joined to Christ in inseparable union, the ascension of Christ into heaven necessarily implies that the believer is also guaranteed a place in heaven.

Q. 54. What do you believe concerning "the Holy Catholic Church"? A. I believe that, from the beginning to the end of the world, and from among the whole human race, the Son of God, by his Spirit and his Word, gathers, protects, and preserves for himself, in the unity of the true faith, a congregation chosen for eternal life. Moreover, I believe that I am and forever will remain a living member of it.

Again, the emphasis should not be placed upon the believers' perseverance, but God's powerful preservation, causing the believers' perseverance. Thus the doctrine cannot be attacked based on the weaknesses or the capriciousness of the creatures. It is Christ who "gathers, protects, and preserves" his elect, those whom God has "chosen for eternal life." Because of this, once a person becomes a believer in Christ, he "forever will remain a living member of it."

Q. 56. What do you believe concerning "the forgiveness of sins"? A. That, for the sake of Christ's reconciling work, God will no more remember my sins or the sinfulness with which I have to struggle all my life long; but that he graciously imparts to me the righteousness of Christ so that I may never come into condemnation.

This question refers to the imparted righteousness that every believer receives from God because of Christ, or the doctrine of justification. It points out that the effect of justification in Christ is that one "may never come into condemnation."

Q. 64. But does not this teaching make people careless and sinful? A. No, for it is impossible for those who are ingrafted into Christ by true faith not to bring forth the fruit of gratitude.

If the believer will "never come into condemnation," then the question becomes whether this leads to spiritual recklessness and moral licentiousness. It does not, because one who has been justified by God has received not only imparted righteousness, but also a new nature. He is now united with Christ as a branch is united with the tree, so that he naturally and necessarily bears fruit that corresponds to the nature of the tree. Union with Christ results in Christ-like thinking and behavior in the believer.

Q. 87. Can those who do not turn to God from their ungrateful, impenitent life be saved? A. Certainly not! Scripture says, "Surely you know that the unjust will never come into possession of the kingdom of God. Make no mistake: no fornicator or idolator, none who are guilty either of adultery or of homosexual perversion, no thieves or grabbers or drunkards or slanderers or swindlers, will possess the kingdom of God."

The previous questions are already sufficient to exclude nominal believers, or those who outwardly profess the faith without truly affirming it. To become a true believer, a person must have been first chosen by God in eternity, then regenerated and converted in history. Mere profession does not indicate election or conversion. Scripture warns us against deception: As long as a person remains an unrepentant sinner, he is an unbeliever regardless of what he verbally professes. This means that one cannot cite those who profess the faith and then fall away as examples against the doctrine of the preservation of the saints, since these have never been "saints" in the first place.

The Second Helvetic Confession Our third confession is The Second Helvetic Confession of 1566. Like the previous two, this Swiss confession contains statements based on which we can clearly derive its position on the preservation of the saints:

XIV. The doctrine of repentance is joined with the Gospel. For so has the Lord said in the Gospel: "Repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in my name to all nations" (Luke 24:47)….By repentance we understand (1) the recovery of a right mind in sinful man awakened by the Word of the Gospel and the Holy Spirit, and received by true faith, by which the sinner immediately acknowledges his innate corruption and all his sins accused by the Word of God; and (2) grieves for them from his heart, and not only bewails and frankly confesses them before God with a feeling of shame, but also (3) with indignation abominates them; and (4) now zealously considers the amendment of his ways and constantly strives for innocence and virtue in which conscientiously to exercise himself all the rest of his life.

To say that "repentance" is "joined with the Gospel" means that the gospel is not preached unless repentance is also preached, and this also means that one who fails to truly repent has also failed to receive the gospel. Conversion involves repentance and "true faith," and "the recovery of a right mind." In other words, conversions involves more than mere profession of the faith, but a real inward belief and transformation.

Anyone has the physical ability to say that he believes the gospel, but unless there is true repentance, true faith, and true transformation, there is no true conversion, and the person is not a true believer. Therefore, when this person "falls away," he is not falling away from true faith, since he never had it in the first place; rather, he is only changing from one version of sinful existence to another.

But the same God who grants a believer true repentance and true faith, by granting continual repentance and persevering faith, also preserves him such that he "constantly strives for innocence and virtue…all the rest of his life."

XVI. But this faith is a pure gift of God which God alone of his grace gives to his elect according to his measure when, to whom and to the degree he wills….The same apostle calls faith efficacious and active through love (Gal. 5:6)….The same [faith] keeps us in the service we owe to God and our neighbor, strengthens our patience in adversity, fashions and makes a true confession, and in a word, brings forth good fruit of all kinds, and good works.

The preservation of the saints logically comes after regeneration and conversion, although these are all united in the eternal decree. Now, when it comes to conversion, the Reformed view is that faith is a gift that God sovereignly grants to his chosen ones. Then, chapter XVI says that this faith is not an impotent and lifeless faith, but an active and efficacious faith. It is living, powerful, and preserved by God's decree and power.

Therefore, once granted to the elect, this faith never dies, but it abides and "brings forth good fruit of all kinds." In other words, the believer perseveres because God preserves his living faith, so that even if it flickers at times, it is never allowed to completely extinguish

The Canons of Dordt When we come to The Canons of Dordt and The Westminster Confession, we find entire chapters dedicated to the preservation of the saints. This is not surprising, because whereas the previous three confessions were produced during the second half of the sixteenth century, these two were produced after the Remonstrance of 1610, that is, the controversy with the five articles of Arminianism.

The Canons of Dordt (1618-19) were written several years after the Remonstrance, but still during the early part of the seventeenth century; The Westminster Confession was completed several decades later, in 1647. Of course, Dordt was designed to counteract Arminianism, and after the Remonstrance, one would naturally expect a distinctively Reformed document like the Westminster Confession to affirm the preservation of the saints.

Dordt not only dedicates the Fifth Head of Doctrine to address the preservation of the saints, but it makes explicit and important assertions about it in several other places in the document. We will cite several examples here:

I. Article 7. In other words, he decided to grant them true faith in Christ, to justify them, to sanctify them, and finally, after powerfully preserving them in the fellowship of his Son, to glorify them.

This article points out at least two important points for the preservation of the saints. First, it states that sanctification, preservation, and glorification are not standalone doctrines, but they are the necessary products of divine election. This is because in election, God does not decide to merely convert those whom he has chosen, but to actually save them. This necessarily implies preservation and glorification.

Second, Dordt recognizes that the biblical emphasis is on God's sovereign grace and power, and on his immutable faithfulness to his own decree and promise, from conversion to glorification. The emphasis is never on man's decision and response, since these are also determined by God's will and power. Of course the chosen ones must believe to be saved, but it is God who "decided to grant them true faith in Christ." And of course they must persevere to the end, but it is God who decided to go on "powerfully preserving them in the fellowship of his Son."

I. Article 11. Just as God himself is most wise, unchangeable, allknowing, and almighty, so the election made by him can neither be suspended nor altered, revoked, or annulled; neither can his chosen ones be cast off, nor their number reduced.

Although the article is still addressing divine election, to accurately present this biblical doctrine Dordt finds it necessary to indicate that the chosen ones consist of an immutable number – the decree for their salvation is precise, and cannot be changed in any way. Therefore, all those whom God has chosen will be converted, and persevere to the end. Dordt places the truth of this doctrine on the very nature of God. Because God is who he is, divine election must be individual and immutable, and all the chosen ones will indeed be converted, justified, sanctified, and glorified.

II. Article 8. For it was the entirely free plan and very gracious will and intention of God the Father that the enlivening and saving effectiveness of his Son's costly death should work itself out in all his chosen ones, in order that he might grant justifying faith to them only and thereby lead them without fail to salvation….that he should faithfully preserve them to the very end; and that he should finally present them to himself, a glorious people, without spot or wrinkle.

We have already mentioned that the effective particular atonement of Christ necessarily implies the preservation of the saints, since this is what Christ died and paid for – the complete and final salvation (not just the conversion) of all the chosen ones. And so, what the Son has set out to do, he shall surely accomplish, which is to bring his chosen ones "without fail to salvation."

The Fifth Head itself is too lengthy to reproduce here – it explains and affirms in detail the Reformed doctrine of the preservation of the saints, and then makes elaborate denials against the corresponding errors in Arminianism. We will examine only several of its articles:

V. Article 3. Because of these remnants of sin dwelling in them and also because of the temptations of the world and Satan, those who have been converted could not remain standing in this grace if left to their own resources. But God is faithful, mercifully strengthening them in the grace once conferred on them and powerfully preserving them in it to the end.

V. Article 6. For God, who is rich in mercy, according to his unchangeable purpose of election does not take his Holy Spirit from his own completely, even when they fall grievously. Neither does he let them fall down so far that they forfeit the grace of adoption and the state of justification, or commit the sin which leads to death (the sin against the Holy Spirit), and plunge themselves, entirely forsaken by him, into eternal ruin.

V. Article 7. For, in the first place, God preserves in those saints when they fall his imperishable seed from which they have been born again, lest it perish or be dislodged. Secondly, by his Word and Spirit he certainly and effectively renews them to repentance so that they have a heartfelt and godly sorrow for the sins they have committed; seek and obtain, through faith and with a contrite heart, forgiveness in the blood of the Mediator; experience again the grace of a reconciled God; through faith adore his mercies; and from then on more eagerly work out their own salvation with fear and trembling.

V. Article 8. So it is not by their own merits or strength but by God's undeserved mercy that they neither forfeit faith and grace totally nor remain in their downfalls to the end and are lost. With respect to themselves this not only easily could happen, but also undoutedly would happen; but with respect to God it cannot possibly happen, since his plan cannot be changed, his promise cannot fail, the calling according to his purpose cannot be revoked, the merits of Christ as well as his interceding and preserving cannot be nullified, and the sealing of the Holy Spirit can neither be invalidated nor wiped out.

V. Article 14. And, just as it has pleased God to begin this work of grace in us by the proclamation of the gospel, so he preserves, continues, and completes his work by the hearing and reading of the gospel, by meditation on it, by its exhortation, threats, and promises, and also by the use of the sacraments.

Article 7 reminds us that spiritual regeneration is permanent, because in it God imparts to us indestructible spiritual life. Dordt repeats this point from a negative perspective in V. Rejection of errors 8. To say that regeneration is reversible is to misconstrue the very biblical definition of regeneration, distorting one's view of the whole of soteriology.

However, even some Reformed believers are confused about this point. They correctly affirm that the saints persevere because they have received indestructible spiritual life at regeneration, but they fail to consider why this life perpetuates. Because of this neglect, some almost speak as if they affirm the teaching that although salvation is obtained by grace, it is nevertheless maintained by works, that to persevere in salvation means to maintain it by good behavior.

Dordt corrects this misunderstanding by making an important clarification. Believers are not enabled to persevere by themselves or by their own will and power after conversion. In fact, "those who have been converted could not remain standing in this grace if left to their own resources." Rather, they persevere because God is "mercifully strengthening them" and "powerfully preserving them." In other words, the believer's new spiritual life is indestructible because God makes it indestructible.

This means that if a believer does not persevere, it would not be because of him, in the sense that if the believer is going to depend on his own will and power, his failure is certain anyway. That is, if perseverance depends on the believers, then no one would persevere. Rather, perseverance depends on God's preservation, and the only way that a believer would fail to persevere is if God does not preserve him, and the only way that God would not preserve a chosen one in faith and holiness is if he changes his eternal decree, which is impossible by definition.

Article 8 mentions Christ's intercession for the elect, which is part of his ministry as Mediator. Since Christ is always faithful to carry out his work as intercessor, and since God always hear him, this intercession "cannot be nullified." Then, this article also refers to the sealing of the Spirit. We will say a little more about this in a later section on the scriptural support for the preservation of the saints. For now, we will just say that the sealing of the Spirit guarantees the salvation of the elect.

As with the other Reformed confessions, Dordt is careful to note that this doctrine of the preservation of the saints does not deny that a believer continues to face temptations and difficulties in this life. In fact, it acknowledges that some believers may even "fall grievously"; however, "according to his unchangeable purpose of election," God will never allow his elect to "fall down so far that they forfeit the grace of adoption and the state of justification."

Finally, Article 14 brings up something that we have not yet really discussed, namely, some of the means by which God uses to preserve his people. Just as God summons the elect to conversion through the preaching of the gospel, "he preserves, continues, and completes his work by the hearing and reading of the gospel, by meditation on it, by its exhortation, threats, and promises, and also by the use of the sacraments." The people of God, therefore, would be wise to make deliberate and frequent use of these means of grace.

The Westminster Confession The Westminster Confession devotes chapter XVII to the perseverance of the saints. Compared to the previous confessions, there is nothing entirely new here, but this chapter clearly and concisely summarizes many of the important points that we have discussed above. It reads as follows:

1. They, whom God hath accepted in His Beloved, effectually called, and sanctified by His Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved.

2. This perseverance of the saints depends not upon their own free will, but upon the immutability of the decree of election, flowing from the free and unchangeable love of God the Father; upon the efficacy of the merit and intercession of Jesus Christ, the abiding of the Spirit, and of the seed of God within them, and the nature of the covenant of grace: from all which ariseth also the certainty and infallibility thereof.

3. Nevertheless, they may, through the temptations of Satan and of the world, the prevalency of corruption remaining in them, and the neglect of the means of their preservation, fall into grievous sins; and, for a time, continue therein: whereby they incur God's displeasure, and grieve His Holy Spirit, come to be deprived of some measure of their graces and comforts, have their hearts hardened, and their consciences wounded; hurt and scandalize others, and bring temporal judgments upon themselves.

Having already discussed the other confessions, I trust that no elaborate explanation is necessary. Section 1 affirms the Reformed position on the perseverance of the saints. Section 2 summarizes some of the theological reasons for such an affirmation – God's immutable decree in election, Christ's effective particular atonement and priestly intercessory ministry, the Spirit's indwelling and influence, the indestructible seed of spiritual life imparted in regeneration, and the covenant of grace. Section 3 serves to prevent the typical false accusations and misunderstandings by acknowledging that even the truly converted may at times fall into serious sins, but they are nevertheless preserved from total and final apostasy by the will and power of God.

The Larger Catechism The Larger Catechism, of course, entirely agrees with the Westminster Confession on the preservation of the saints both in its language and substance:

Q. 79. May not true believers, by reason of their imperfections, and the many temptations and sins they are overtaken with, fall away from the state of grace? A. True believers, by reason of the unchangeable love of God, and his decree and covenant to give them perseverance, their inseparable union with Christ, his continual intercession for them, and the Spirit and seed of God abiding in them, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.

The Catechism here stresses the perseverance of "true believers." In other words, some are false believers, and they will not persevere in the faith, having never even started in the faith in the first place. On the other hand, true believers are those whom God has truly converted, and these "can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation."

The expression "by the power of God through faith" is excellent. It affirms that it is the power of God that preserves the saints, and that this is done by sustaining their faith, first granted to them at conversion.

The Shorter Catechism The Shorter Catechism is also consistent with the rest of the Westminster Standards:

Q. 36. What are the benefits which in this life do accompany or flow from justification, adoption, and sanctification? A. The benefits which in this life do accompany or flow from justification, adoption, and sanctification are: assurance of God's love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, increase of grace, and perseverance therein to the end.

Here the Catechism emphasizes the fact that preservation is one of the benefits following from justification, adoption, and sanctification. In other words, preservation is not just a mere possibility produced by justification, adoption, and sanctification, but is rather a necessary consequence, inherently included in them.

SCRIPTURAL EXPOSITIONS

Biblical soteriology, of course, does not start with the preservation of the saints, but with divine election. A truly biblical soteriology is in turn founded on a biblical view of theology proper, or the nature of God. Scripture declares that God is one who works out all things according to the counsel of his own will, and according to all his good pleasure. This becomes the controlling factor in a truly biblical soteriology, and any theological conception that contradicts this must be immediately judged as false.

As the Reformed confessions illustrate, the preservation of the saints is not a standalone doctrine, but it follows from other biblical doctrines concerning salvation. If I tell you that I have determined to reach the finish line in a race, it is assumed that I will transverse the distance between the starting line and the finish line, and that I will also jump over any hurdles in the way. The preservation of the saints is thus not a standalone doctrine, and to deny it would be to contradict not only this particular doctrine, but the whole pattern of biblical soteriology.

Thus even before we examine the biblical passages that directly support the preservation of the saints, we are already assured that it is indeed a biblical teaching, because it is the necessary implication of other biblical doctrines. The whole pattern of biblical soteriology demands it.

That said, there are numerous biblical passages that are directly relevant to the doctrine. We will list a number of them in this section. We cannot take time to examine each passage; however, we will place many of them under well-defined sections. This will make the meaning and relevance of each passage more easily discerned. Also, for most passages, we will highlight the relevant words to aid in understanding.

Election The biblical doctrine of election teaches that God has chosen a definite and immutable number of individuals for salvation. The other side of election is reprobation, in which God has chosen a definite and immutable number of individuals (all those not chosen for salvation) for damnation.

Just as reprobation is an eternal decree predetermining the final destiny of the reprobates, and not just their spiritual condition for an undecided duration, so election is an eternal decree predetermining the final destiny of the elect. It is not a decree to simply convert certain individuals, but to actually, completely, and finally save them. Therefore, if an elected individual could be truly converted and then fall away, it would mean that the eternal decree of election has failed, which is impossible.

Romans 8:28-39. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: "For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Ephesians 1:11-12. In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.

Redemption Christ's atoning work is an actual and complete purchase of all the individuals for which the atonement is designed to redeem. The atonement does not only make salvation a mere possibility for the elect, but it ensures their actual salvation. This means that the atonement guarantees the complete and final salvation of all those for whom Christ died. Since not all will be saved, we know that Christ did not die for everyone, but only for those whom God has chosen in eternity; therefore, the reprobates are justly condemned. However, there is no condemnation for the elect, for whom Christ died. The implication for the preservation of the saints is obvious.

Christ's ministry as Mediator does not end with his death and resurrection, but he lives forever to be our High Priest, interceding for us with the Father and preserving our faith in him. Since Christ will never fail in his ministry as Mediator, true believers will never truly and finally fail in their faith.

John 6:35-40. Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."

John 10:25-30. Jesus answered, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father's name speak for me, but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one."

Hebrews 7:25-28. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest meets our need – one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. For the law appoints as high priests men who are weak; but the oath, which came after the law, appointed the Son, who has been made perfect forever.

Hebrews 10:10, 14. And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all….because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

Hebrews 12:2. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Regeneration In regeneration, God imparts to the elect indestructible spiritual life, transforming the very nature and dispositions of their hearts. Since this spiritual life is indestructible, it means that regeneration is irreversible. Therefore, once regenerated, a person cannot then truly and finally turn away from God or denounce Christ. This means that all those who are regenerated will also persevere. Any doctrine that denies this contradicts the very meaning of regeneration.

1 Peter 1:23. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.

1 John 2:18-19. Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

1 John 3:6-9. No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.

2 John 1:9. Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.

Certification As with God's election and Christ's atonement, the biblical teaching on the Spirit's sealing also implies the preservation of the saints. Scripture declares that the Holy Spirit has been placed in the believer at conversion as a seal. This seal is not mere decoration, but a guarantee that the believer will reach his designated destiny, which is glorification in Christ.

2 Corinthians 1:21-22. Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

Ephesians 1:13-14. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession – to the praise of his glory.

Ephesians 4:30. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Sanctification In God's sovereign and eternal decree, he has not foreordained only the conversion of his elect, but also his justification, adoption, and sanctification. Just as the elect have been foreordained to conversion and thus given faith in Christ, so they have been foreordained to sanctification and thus made holy by the Spirit. In fact, God has predetermined the very good works that the elect shall walk in, and he is the cause and the power behind both the will and the act of these good works done by the elect. Therefore, the elect have been just as certainly foreordained to sanctification as they have been chosen for conversion. This means that true and final apostasy is impossible.

Jeremiah 32:40. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me.

Philippians 1:4-6. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 5:23-24. May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.

2 Thessalonians 2:13-17. But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter. May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.

Hebrews 13:20-21. May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

1 Peter 1:3-5. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade – kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.

Other Passages The following lists some of the other biblical passages related to the preservation of the saints. Some of them are more directly relevant to the topic than others, but all of them support the doctrine.

Psalm 17:8-9. Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings from the wicked who assail me, from my mortal enemies who surround me.

Psalm 37:23-24, 28-29. If the LORD delights in a man's way, he makes his steps firm; though he stumble, he will not fall, for the LORD upholds him with his hand….For the LORD loves the just and will not forsake his faithful ones. They will be protected forever, but the offspring of the wicked will be cut off; the righteous will inherit the land and dwell in it forever.

Psalm 73:1-2, 23. Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold….Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand.

Psalm 121:3, 7-8. He will not let your foot slip – he who watches over you will not slumber….The LORD will keep you from all harm – he will watch over your life; the LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.

2  Samuel 23:5-7. Is not my house right with God? Has he not made with me an everlasting covenant, arranged and secured in every part? Will he not bring to fruition my salvation and grant me my every desire? But evil men are all to be cast aside like thorns, which are not gathered with the hand. Whoever touches thorns uses a tool of iron or the shaft of a spear; they are burned up where they lie.

Isaiah 54:10. Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed," says the LORD, who has compassion on you.

Jeremiah 31:3. The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: "I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving- kindness."

Matthew 18:12-14. What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost.

Matthew 24:24. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect – if that were possible.

Luke 22:31-32. Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.

John 14:16-17. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.

John 17:9-12, 20. I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name – the name you gave me – so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled….My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message.

Romans 5:9-10. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!

Romans 11:7. What then? What Israel sought so earnestly it did not obtain, but the elect did. The others were hardened.

Romans 14:4. Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

Romans 16:25-27. Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him – to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.

1 Corinthians 1:8-9. He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

1 Corinthians 3:14-15. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.

1 Corinthians 10:13. No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

2 Corinthians 9:8. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.

Ephesians 5:25-27. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

2 Thessalonians 3:2-5. And pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men, for not everyone has faith. But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen and protect you from the evil one. We have confidence in the Lord that you are doing and will continue to do the things we command. May the Lord direct your hearts into God's love and Christ's perseverance.

2 Timothy 1:12. That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.

2 Timothy 2:18-19. …who have wandered away from the truth. They say that the resurrection has already taken place, and they destroy the faith of some. Nevertheless, God's solid foundation stands firm, sealed with this inscription: "The Lord knows those who are his," and, "Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness."

2 Timothy 4:18. The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom. To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Hebrews 9:12-15. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God! For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance – now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.

1 Peter 1:8-9. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

2 Peter 1:10-11. Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

1 John 2:24-25. See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he promised us – even eternal life.

1 John 2:27. As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit –  just as it has taught you, remain in him.

1 John 5:3-4. This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.

1 John 5:11-13. And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.

1 John 5:20. We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true – even in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

Jude 1, 24-25. Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James, To those who have been called, who are loved by God the Father and kept by Jesus Christ….To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy – to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.

ARMINIAN OBJECTIONS

There are several kinds of objections against the biblical doctrine of the preservation of the saints. Here we will summarize the theological, biblical, and ethical objections. They do not come from only Arminians, but also Catholics. Although all of the following objections have already been answered in some way in the previous sections, here we will briefly but directly address them to remove remaining misunderstandings about the doctrine.

Theological One theological or philosophical objection against the preservation of the saints is that it undermines human free will. The doctrine implies that a believer is never "free" to decide to undo his own faith and salvation.

To this, we respond that the objection is right in that the believer is never free to decide to undo his own faith and salvation. But it is a pointless objection unless man indeed possesses such freedom from God's control. In the study of biblical soteriology, we establish from the beginning to end that there is no such thing as human free will, in the sense that man is never free from God, and that God always possesses and exercises complete control over the will of man.

This does not mean that man's will is never involved. Conversion, sanctification, and other aspects of man's salvation often involve his will. The question is whether his will is ever free from God's constant, absolute, and precise control. We contend that it is biblically false and metaphysically impossible for man to be free from God in any sense. The objection from free will thus cannot really apply to the Christianity of Scripture, since it rejects free will, and in every aspect of salvation, including sanctification and preservation.

Of course, objections related to human "free will" come up not only when we are discussing the preservation of the saints, but also when we are discussing any other item in biblical soteriology. However, since free will is unbiblical and false, this means that those who affirm free will is mistaken on every item in soteriology, and this is indeed what we find with the Arminians and Catholics.

Moreover, since God has permanently transformed the nature and the disposition of the elect in regeneration, a true believer will never want to undo his faith and salvation.

Biblical There are a number of biblical passages that command Christians to pursue righteousness and shun wickedness. Some of these passages are so strong in expression and contain warnings so ominous that some people misinterpret them as saying that it is possible for a true believer to lose his salvation. For example, Hebrews 6:4-6 says the following:

It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.

First, whatever the passage means, it does not say that the elect will in fact renounce his faith. Let us assume that the passage is indeed saying that if one falls away from faith after reaching a certain stage of spiritual development he would indeed lose his salvation. This does not challenge the doctrine of preservation – in fact, we may heartily agree with it. If the elect sincerely and permanently renounces Christ, then he loses his salvation. However, we have already read a number of verses saying that this will never happen, that the true believer will never sincerely and permanently renounce Christ, and the above passage says nothing to contradict this. John says that those who depart from the faith have never been truly with the faith.

Second, several verses later, the writer explicitly states that what this passage describes will not happen to his readers: "Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are confident of better things in your case – things that accompany salvation" (Hebrews 6:9). To paraphrase, he is saying, "Although we are talking this way, I am sure that when it comes to salvation, this will not happen to you."

Third, we must remember that God uses various means by which he accomplishes his ends. For example, although he has unchangeably determined the identities of those who would be saved, he does not save these people without means. Rather, he saves the elect by means of the preaching of the gospel, and by means of the faith in Christ that he places within them. God uses various means to accomplish his ends, and he chooses and controls both the means and the ends.

Accordingly, just because we are told that the elect will persevere in faith does not mean that God does not warn them against apostasy. In fact, these scriptural warnings about the consequences of renouncing the Christian faith is one of the means by which God will prevent his elect from apostasy. The reprobates will ignore these warnings, but the elect will heed them (John 10:27), and so they will continue to work on their sanctification "with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12). Concerning the words of God, Psalm 19:11 says, "By them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward."

Ethical One of the most common objections to the preservation of the saints states that if it is true that the believer cannot lose his salvation, then this constitutes an implicit license to sin. It seems the Christian may sin all he wants, and still remains secure in Christ. However, the true Christian does not wish to live in sin, although he may occasionally stumble. The true believer detests sin and loves righteousness. One who sins without restraint is not a Christian at all.

The doctrine of preservation does not say that anyone who makes a profession of faith in Christ is then saved and will never be lost, since his profession may be false. Rather, the doctrine teaches that true Christians will never be lost. They will never permanently turn from Christ, although some of them may even fall deeply into sin for a time.

A true Christian is one who has given true assent to the gospel, and whose "sincere faith" (1 Timothy 1:5) becomes evident through a lasting transformation of thoughts, speech, and behavior in conformity to the demands of Scripture. John says that one who is regenerated "cannot go on sinning" (1 John 3:9). On the other hand, a person who produces a profession of Christ out of a false assent to the gospel may last "only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away" (Matthew 13:21).

CONCLUSION

The doctrine of the preservation of the saints teaches us that true believers will never be lost; they will never truly and finally abandon the faith. This is because God has sovereignly foreordained their complete salvation before the foundation of the world, and because he powerfully preserves them after their conversion. After regeneration, the Spirit of God continues to work within them, powerfully causing them to strive for true knowledge and holiness.

Nevertheless, it does not mean that the elect remain perfectly sinless and obedient throughout their spiritual walk; rather, at times they may even fall into serious sins. However, the immutable eternal decree of God, the atonement and intercession of Christ, and the operation of the Spirit in the believers ensure that they will never finally fall away.

As for the reprobates, although some of them may profess the faith for a while, their profession is false and hypocritical. God has never foreordained them to salvation, but have foreordained them for destruction. Rather than sending his Spirit to powerfully work in their hearts, he hardens their hearts by a spirit of disobedience. Of course, this means that there is no spiritual life or power in them to cause them to persevere in true faith, so that they easily fall away even from the false profession by which they claim to embrace the gospel.

The biblical doctrine provides the people of God a strong and infallible source of comfort and assurance. It warns them against false profession and self-deception, and it allows them to biblically and realistically approach their own remaining sinfulness and imperfections.

This leads us to the related topic of assurance. The biblical doctrine of the preservation of the saints provides a legitimate foundation for the assurance of salvation. It is an assurance based on truth, fortifying their minds against oppressive doubts concerning their relationship to Christ.

Vincent Cheung, The Author of Sin (2014), p. 72-97.

[ruminativerabbi]

Justice in Minnesota / Injustice in Paris

A native of Lod, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi was one of the greatest scholars in the Land of Israel in the first half of the third century BCE. Not too much is known of his family other than that he had a son named Joseph, who later grew up to become a rabbi like his father and to marry the daughter of Rabbi Judah, Patriarch of the Jewish community. But before Joseph grew to adulthood and achieved rabbinic ordination, it once happened that he fell terribly ill and sunk into a kind of coma during which he had vivid hallucinations. It lasted for days, but eventually he came out of it and, when he did, his father asked him what he had seen in the course of those hours spent in hallucinatory delirium. “I saw a topsy-turvy world,” Joseph reported, a crazy place in which things were the opposite of what they really are: “the things that belong on top were all on the bottom and vice versa—the things that belonged down below were all up on high.” Rabbi Joshua listened carefully to his son’s report about the olam hafukh, the topsy-turvy world that had been so prominently featured in his comatose dreamscape. And then he gave his considered, now famous, answer, “My son,” he said, that wasn’t hallucination, it was insight, because there, in your protracted dream, “you saw things as they truly are in this world.”

For twenty centuries, students of Talmud have been discussing what Rabbi Joshua could have meant. But now, just this very week, the secret has finally been revealed: Rabbi Joseph must have been dreaming about France, my new candidate for the most topsy-turvy nation in the world, a place where criminals bear no responsibility for their deeds, where murder is not an actionable crime, where voluntary drug use can relieve even the most vicious criminals of any responsibility for their crimes, and where the fully intentional murder of an elderly Jewish physician, a woman whose entire professional life was devoted to helping others, can be deemed an unfortunate mishap, an inconsequential accident unworthy of adjudication in the courts. These would have constituted a shocking turn of events to consider in the course of any week at all. But coming in the course of the same week in which the American justice system showed itself capable of convicting a veteran police officer who was deemed responsible for the death of a citizen in his custody, it was especially hard to swallow.

I am thinking, of course, of the decision this week by the Court de Cassation, France’s highest appeals court, to accept a lower court’s decision not to try Kobili Traoré, 31, for the 2017 murder of Sarah Halimi. Ordinarily, this would not be a subject for discussion at all. The crime was as horrific as it was brutal. The details themselves, including the identity of the perpetrator, are not in doubt: Traoré, a neighbor of Mme. Halimi, forced his way into her apartment and beat her so severely for a full thirty minutes before shoving her out a window of her third-story apartment that one of the few details that remain unresolved with respect to the crime is whether the victim was already dead when pitched out her own window to crash-land on the street or whether she died upon impact. Nor is the motive for the murder in any sort of doubt: Traoré, an immigrant to France from Mali in West Africa, was motivated, to quote his psychiatric evaluation, by a “frantic outburst of hate” directed towards his victim because of her Jewishness. As she shoved her out the window, he was heard to have called out the Arabic words Allahu akbar (“God is great”) and “I have killed the devil.” More specifically, it seems that Traoré was particularly enraged by the daily sight of the mezuzah affixed to the outer doorway of Mme. Halimi’s apartment, its mute presence reminding him daily that he was forced to live under the same roof as a Jewish woman.

So if neither the details of the crime nor the identity of its perpetrator are in doubt, why would the Court de Cassation have confirmed a lower court’s ruling forbidding the government from putting Kobili Traoré on trial? The answer, they said, is simple: according to French law, “a person is not criminally responsible [for his or her own deeds if those deeds were done while their doer was] suffering at the time of the event from [the kind of] psychic or neuropsychic disturbance that eliminate [the possibility of] discernment or control” and which that person might otherwise have brought to bear to rein in his or her behavior. For Americans, that too sounds like a familiar concept: we too do not put mentally ill people unable to distinguish right from wrong on trial. Indeed, the famous outcome of Durham v. United States in 1954 to the effect that a defendant can avoid conviction if it can be demonstrated convincingly that the “unlawful act was the product of mental disease or mental defect” could hardly be more well known in our country.

But Kobili was not mentally ill in the way the term is normally used. Instead, his mental state—including his rage against his victim because of her ethnicity and faith and his willingness to express that rage brutally and sadistically—had been brought on by himself through his intense use of cannabis. And so the court concluded that Mme. Halimi’s murderer could not stand trial for his deeds because he had self-stupefied before entering his victim’s apartment. The moral of the story: if you are planning to travel to France to murder someone, be sure to pack your bong along with your gun and your ammo!

It has been a difficult decade for the Jews of France. Many will remember the 2012 murder by an Islamic fanatic of three children and a teacher in a Jewish school in Toulouse. And it was just three years later, in 2015, that Amedy Coulibaly entered a kosher supermarket in Paris with the specific intention of murdering the four Jews he killed there because of his hatred of Jewish people. And then, just a year after Mme. Halimi was murdered, a different elderly woman, Mireille Knoll, was also murdered—she was stabbed to death—by a madman who targeted her specifically because of her Jewishness. Those cases, it is true, were duly prosecuted and the defendants found guilty. But, even so, this week’s decision by the Court de Cassation, in effect excusing Mme. Halimi’s murderer from prosecution because of his voluntarily, intentional, and—it turns out—exceptionally well-timed drug use, was something that struck many onlookers as bizarre and more than slightly menacing.

The responses to the court’s decision have been angry. One of the public prosecutors on the case referred to the court’s decision as a gift of “complete impunity” to the murderer. Shimon Samuels, director for international affairs of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, wrote that the court’s decision “potentially creates a precedent for all hate criminals to simply claim insanity or decide to smoke, snort, or inject drugs, or even [just] get drunk, before committing their crimes.” Even Emmanuel Macron, President of the French Republic, got into the act, calling for a swift change to the law to avoid the possibility of murderers going free after claiming that their own intentional drug use rendered them incapable of understanding the gravity or consequences of their own deeds. “Deciding to take narcotics and then going ‘like crazy’ should not in my eyes remove your criminal responsibility,” the President said clearly and unambiguously.

But future changes in the law will come too late to bring Sarah Halimi’s killer to justice. And that too seems to be universally understood by all concerned parties in France and abroad.

There is something logical and just about the basic notion that people unable to understand the consequences of their own actions should be treated kindly and mercifully by the criminal justice system. We treat children differently than adults in that regard, and for the same reason. As well we should, too—I don’t think anyone is arguing against that principle, which pertains not only in the U.S. and in France but in all enlightened countries of the world, nor would any normal person. But to extend that thought to include people who intentionally drug themselves to the point at which they can argue later on that they should not be held responsible for their own actions—that seems to me like the extension of a logical idea into the realm of true craziness. Kobili Traoré murdered Sarah Halimi because he found her existence as a Jewish woman offensive to the point of being unbearable. And, yes, he acted on his deeply anti-Semitic beliefs in a way that he might have not done had he not been high. But to conclude that the man should reasonably escape prosecution, conviction, and punishment because he willingly set himself outside the boundaries of culpability and responsibility through drug use—that seems to me to skate far too close to excusing the basic principle upon which all just criminal laws lies: that people who can tell right from wrong should be obliged to take responsibility for their own actions.

Sarah Halimi will rest in peace because she lived a decent, good life. She was the mother of four and a former physician, an older woman living a peaceful life in retirement. Why shouldn’t she rest in peace? But that her murderer will apparently legally avoid having to take any responsibility for her death—that seems to me to constitute an outcome wholly at variance with the facts of the case under consideration. I believe that justice was done for George Floyd this week in Minneapolis. I wasn’t sure how things would turn out, but the bottom line is that the basic principle that individuals, even police officers, must take responsibility for their own actions was upheld and affirmed. It’s too bad Paris isn’t in Hennepin County, Minnesota!

[wisdomrays]

BASICS OF ISLAM :Inviting others to Islam.Part4

- IX -

The people of guidance should be generous, open-handed and benevolent. 

They should be ready, willing and decisive to spend everything they have in His cause while going on the path of serving God. To win the hearts of people they should make their generosity a means, a vehicle. Whenever generosity is mentioned, Khadija, the wife of the Prophet, comes to my mind. She was born before him and passed away before the Prophet. When she met the future Prophet, she was a noble and prosperous businesswoman, organizing trade caravans to other countries whereas he did not have anything in terms of worldly wealth. However, this woman of great insight perceived the great potential in the future Prophet and proposed to him. She had a nature suited to becoming the wife of the Prophet. When Prophethood was given to him, she was the first to acknowledge him, without any doubt, and put the whole of her wealth at his disposal, in the way of God. Nothing was left from this wealth during the boycott imposed upon the Muslims by Quraysh in Makka. At times the Prophet could not find anything to eat and was all but fainting with weakness because there had been nothing at home for days. During that time, umm al-mu'minin (mother of believers) Khadija became ill and as there were no means to procure treatment, she passed away. In generosity, the ultimate is to give oneself, to be consumed.

Abu Bakr was one of the richest tradesmen in Makka, but as one of the good examples of generosity, he used and spent all his wealth in the way of God, and nothing was left to him and his family. He used to distract his aged father by putting pebbles into the money bag, while spending the pieces of gold in the way of Islam. For this reason, even when he was elected the Caliph, he was one of the poor and earned his living by milking other people's sheep.

'Umar and his family subsisted on a few dates, as did the poorest in Madina. That suggests that he too used up everything he had in the way of God.

The Companions of the Prophet competed with each other in acts of generosity and altruism on behalf of Islam. Their sincere generosity won hearts and minds to Islam, and the number of entrants to the faith grew with the gathering force of an avalanche. In this as in all matters, the Companions took their cue from the Prophet. One day, one of those on the brink of entering the faith who had yet to do so, went to his tribe and said: 

"O my tribe! Go and surrender to that person, for he is the Prophet of God. If he had not been a Prophet, he would not have been so generous, and feared for his sustenance. This person gives immediately whoever wants whatever."

Every spiritual teacher young or old, should try to enter and conquer the hearts of people in this way. If one gains the heart of a person by spending all he has, he will be considered to have gained a lot and lost nothing. For the generous will open the gates of Paradise. So, one should open the ways that lead to such gates in this world so that there are many to accompany one to Paradise in the other world. Those whom you treated with generosity in this world will be in a state such that if one day they happen to face a choice between human-improvised way of life and Qur'an-enjoined ways, they will choose the Qur'an and the Prophet and so come to submit, to surrender, themselves, wholly to God.

Those who are first to enter the Paradise will not be scholars or preachers, lecturers or teachers, rather those-whoever they are, whether big businessmen or small, or ordinary workers, disposing large incomes or small-who spent their wealth and lives on the path to spread the Truth; generous, open-handed, benevolent and altruistic Muslims, profoundly attached and devoted to God alone. For it is they who were able to distinguish rightly and accordingly it will be said of them: they gave to their Lord what is transitory and perishable and received what is permanent and everlasting.

- X -

Today we witness and experience an awakening of consciousness in all walks of life such as we have not experienced for almost twenty years. 

In the past it was really difficult to find so many believers in the field of higher education as there are today. This is a sheer blessing of God. However, now, not individuals but the masses stand as the owners, protectors or patrons of services to Islam. We experience a time when even some of the most obstinate people have come to soften their attitudes to Islamic matters and even begun to consider them as feasible. Therefore, at such a time, it is incumbent upon us to develop, employ and evaluate new methods and approaches, provided that we do not depart from the essence and spirit of the truth. Otherwise, it is likely, indeed certain, that we will, as others have, fail to realize the conditions of the time and so lose relevance and effectiveness. We take refuge in God from falling into such a state. We must, as we need to do, adapt to the new ways and developments that the present age presents to us. It should be remembered that the slower we are to adapt, the slower we shall be in reaching the target.

We may conclude with a point that is general and valid for all, that those who take on spiritual guidance should know and realize the conditions and requirements of their epoch, and base their ways of working on these fundamentals. While others are returning into space and shuttling between far new horizons, it is obvious that we will get nowhere by taking people to unsophisticated ways, dark places or underground, in order to teach them something.

- XI -

Understanding group psychology, using appropriate ways to facilitate the joining and progressing of new people is also important. 

With some people there are things you speak of but cannot make understood for years. Make such people aware of the development and progress of particular services and institutions, get them to see and meet the others who are working sincerely, whole-heartedly and with great zeal, let them feel the value and atmosphere of cooperation, solidarity and mutual help in collective work. Such direct witnessing may prove more influential than mere telling. However, the Islamic services and institutions should be presented without discrimination and prejudice, without any sense of exclusivity or belonging to a narrow grouping or party. Such visits and demonstrations can influence and reinforce the people's power of determination in such a way that they may jump the interval of years on one occasion, and be ready to stand on the same line as yourself, shoulder to shoulder. This is true of both individuals and groups.

Thank God that such institutions are now great in numbers, both to hearten the believers and to dishearten the enemies of Islam.

[rosheendubh]

Me goofing around with horrid photo edits...

Scene—some deep cavern on some planet somewhere in some quadrant/sector of the galaxy...

*Rhyanon ferch Garwyn (daughter of the Danu and Fomori, survivor of the massacre of Geis, planet in the outer Rim Worlds-The Deep)—wherein, a wormhole rediscovered with the fall of Coruscant, opens a portal across light years—The events of Geis, prompted by Palpatine’s ceaseless quest to find the ultimate tool of dominion, in an ancient/advanced technology that can dissolve/transcend the limits of matter/space/time, requires a key to uncovering it’s existence—on the eve of the FirstDeathStar’s demise, Imperial intelligence enacting first contact, enlists the unsanctioned aid of Reaver raiders residing on the other side of the wormhole, to apprehend, and destroy any opposition, to obtaining the source of the sought after key to locate/control said ancient treasure of mastery—a technology of Keltia’s advanced bio-kinetic and psionic traits inherent in the myriad peoples of Danu/Fomor/Coroniad populating the Keltic star systems—in the resultant slaughter and planetary destruction that targets Rhyanon’s sister, Rodon, and leaves Rhyanon a hostage to the Imperium, a girl barely into adolescence, child of Keltia, comes of age, trained as a courtesan and healer in service to the emperor, with the powers unique to her people, what’s understood as the Force, her people have utilized for millennia as Druid/Ban-Druid, a meta-physical aspect of evolution kin to all sentient beings in varied ways-Rhyanon able to manipulate the very molecules of genes enhanced by nanotech, mind altering the matter of life, a property Palpatine hoped to exploit, and extend his own life against the inevitability of time-with his death at Endor (not slain by Luke, but by another occupant from that far-distant quadrant across the wormhole, Sorsha ny Galida, pilot and assassin of the Hashisayan, sent in vengeance for the massacre of Geis, who takes up service with the Rebellion in the years leading up to Endor, becomes Luke’s lover for a time, her duty to slay Palpatine ends her own life as well, allows Luke to rescue his father, and leaves with a searing loss and bitterness at Sorsha’s death...no sanitized/Tolkien version of space opera, but the Game of Thrones version of space opera...sex/death/angst/Ewoks Sacrificed to the Sith, you know, that kind of thing...also, Anakin survives, but as Sith-though not wholly dark anymore-Limb regeneration restoring his mutilated body from years before, restoring damaged organ tissue as well/ liberating him from the machinery that had twisted his soul/in his own conflicted soul, he seeks solitude for a time, meshed in Sith mysteries, later emerging to take up the faltering Imperial hegemony in a galaxy quickly changing with the shifting tides of power and alliance wrought by the wormholes discovery—also, I sort think Jorah would make lovely, older-Seasoned Anakin/humanized DarthVader...), and the later occupation of Coruscant, Rhyanon, now free, but stranded from her home system, escapes Coruscant to a forgotten planet called Dathomir, where she spends 4 yrs amongst the ‘Witches’, and endearing herself to the aged garrison of stromtroopers who’ve largely settled themselves almost the indigenous civilians, attempting to design the specs of a cruiser able to withstand the stresses of inter-space travel via wormhole so she might r/t her home—timeline is a generation the after the fall of the CurtainWall, under the reign AeronAiobhell, and the war of the 3 Star systems of the Formori/Coraniads/Danu, which results in establishing contact with the long lost Terran Confederacy-when NewRepublic scouts uncover the forgotten base of Dathomir, Luke/Leia/Han arrive to investigate, and resulting ultimate conflict, Luke ends up pursuing Rhyanon as she attempts to flee off-planet, only to get shot down, and then sparring with said Jedi that he only just manages to subdue/apprehend her to custody-her background get revealed eventually with her origins/controversial association with Palpatine/her involvement with Imperial machinations/healing talents a useful propaganda piece to balance imperial charity with oppression/her pursuit of those who’d murdered her sister years before/knowledge of the wormhole and Keltia/affiliated star systems beyond...

*Luke, Leia, Han—way alternate canon involving Star Wars up through original Zahn trilogy, and absolutely nothing of NJO, other than Dathomir...NewRepublic and Imperial conflict abounding...and the Jedi legacy is more kin to how I’d envision a neo-Samuri warrior-philosopher-scholar class/w/o any sort of strong, centralized organization, but a loosely affiliated branching of individuals adhering to a central ideology of practice and belief, where Light and Dark, as Luke comes to realize, are complimentary and opposing forces at once, both necessary in a dynamic, variegated reality of existence...

*Some twisting of StNG—the new Picard series with Firefly/Serenity after the events following the discovery of Miranda, leaving RiverTam with one more secret embedded in memories—planets inhabited by colonizers of Earth that Was/Old Terra to the Kelts, like New Cordova—based off an interstellar version of al-Andalus, desert planet/glittering cities/enlightened Islamic philosophies combined with Hindu pantheism—why not?

*chimersized hybrid creature of genetic engineering/biomolecular and cyber-temporal existence-Reavers/Experiment of Miranda/Clone Wars had been previous failed examples of/Empire  again aspires, under Thrawn, to enhance and perfect these experimental creatures shaped out of matter and time w/with micro-psionetic talents and technologies kin to certain sentients—Rhyanon and her lineage in particular, amongst other humanoid life...creatures grew dangerous/uncontrollable to existing technologies b/c of arcane/mutated sequences coded into their cyber-genetic makeup, but if they could be harnessed once more, would offer a matchless weapon to establish dominion across the Star-systems

—Bases on theory of 13Treasures of Prydain/4 Treasures of Ireland—Weapons of Lugus/Cauldron-Grail-Cosmic Tree some sort of nexus of existence between time and matter and space, touched by mind and flesh

—Gathered In subterranean/nebulous world of an ancient gas giant dissipating into cosmic forces slowly, A web of light around a sphere or a plexus of darkness/a well of shadow/power source of some kind/gathered cooperative onlookers-Han/Leia/Luke/Picard w/new crew/Mal/The Operative dude/Simon/River ‘n crew, all gaze in astonishment at the ethereal amorphous quantum entanglement-Rhyanon approaches to Luke’s alarm and her answering reassurance sensing the key to what they’re seeking lies in reaching into that atomic cluster feeling its currents resounding in her mind/River mentions this was the missing puzzle piece in her mind/the last secret of Miranda/mutters a puzzling lyric of *7 above and 7 below, 3 and 4 and 3 once more, 12 there were in warp and weft, till all dissolved and nothing’s left*/looks at Rhyanon bright/steady/*Can you see it* It’s not me they need-you’re the key they’re after/Rhyanon puts her hands about the coruscating globe of cloud and light and dark/rivers of light shimmer and steam through her veins/tracks of the nanotech enhancing inherent ability sequenced into her neural plexus as a child/at her contact an eruption of light blossoms like a lotus into a thousand branched tree formed out of a cone of darkness and well swallowing and emitting light and shadow simultaneously/Yana at its core/strands and shards of scintillating electromagnetic spectra flowing through and about her person/suspended off the ground by the rivers of light stream outwards in a dancing array that loops and weaves around the gathered company/touching flesh/sampling of matter and spirit/eliciting varying reactions of delight/awe/astonishment/suspicion/resignation or wary caution/Leia in wonderment/face aglow seeing Han’s eyes light up as he tries slapping away a glittering sparkle flitting about his nose/*What is this.*/Simon-hushed reply as he watches River dance about the forest of branching threads like a mystical sea creature or a bird taken wing amongst droplets of a rainbow, her laughter joined by Kaylee who keeps knotting photonic loops about his shoulders and send up a silvery thread in a spiral bringing them together in an embrace he only hesitates for a moment, halos surrounding them, Merging and splitting and merging again/Operative dude watches River in awe, saying at the same time Simon utters/*The mind-/-of a god/Luke finishes for them/his own mind familiar with the heightened awareness to realms felt and sensed but not seen/but what this anomaly opens is something beyond even his own expanded awareness/bound to Rhyanon before this and acutely aware of the Other—ethereal and ancient power flowing and flooding her sense—not drowning her/too much of her own consciousness keeping this otherness that seems to understand the vehicle of her soul as a medium/channel of communication/she looks on him with a gaze like a thousand suns/he approaches her drawn to rippling purity as she turns like a leaf or floating seed on wind/strands of light shifting to place her gently to the dark floor/palm raised to his/hands encased in light/enchantment in his eyes, alight like fire beneath the vast depths of ocean worlds/*I saw the summer stars fall in your eyes once/*to which he says/memories touching him from beyond a single life/and I promised you a palace in the heavens/the auras of light about each their forms melding and rising into a into a spiraling dance of motion and impossible beauty/*creatures of light we are, not this crude matter/he hears as their lips meet, he hears his old Master’s words even as River’s sweet clear voice, reach out into the glittering void they all inhabit/*We’re Children of Earth and Starry sky*/twirling about the ribbons of light curving about her leaping and spinning form as she circles the Operative with a laugh, aims a strand of winding brilliance to Inara and Mal/her smile a divine blessing as Picard, with the lovely android who shares in her own way of biology and technology coalesced into something novel and familiar, reshaping life’s elemental foundations, quotes an old poem of Earth that Was—still is apparently—*Blake quote*—infinity in a grain of sand/eternity in an hour/Leia*Like the stories across so many sentient cultures, of gods that 

[toonpunk-game]

Fluff Updates: Part 1

So the long and short of it is that having my own website for toonpunk documentation was a little more trouble than it’s worth. But, since I wrote all this fluff and have nowhere else to put it, I’m going to begin steadily dropping a bunch of it onto Tumblr over the next few days in case anyone wants to read it. Let’s begin with the most important sci-fan conceit of the setting: Ink.

The Ink

WARNING: this section has a lot of technical terms and is probably not strictly necessary for the average toonpunk. We have included this article in this manual primarily for the benefit of new arrivals to the world who may have some lingering questions about the basic physics of ink. TLDR, it does weird stuff and if you draw something with it then the drawing comes to life. The rest of you can just keep on movin by.

If you want to talk about the state of the world, you have to start with the Ink.  The most incredible discovery in human history, it has aggressively challenged human understanding of nearly all scientific and philosophical fields: physics, biology, theology, economy, architecture, art, and war—these, and many more, were all redefined from the most basic level, by elemental ink. Elemental Ink appeared in the world, spontaneously and inexplicably, on February 22nd, 2042. This event is now memorialized as “I-day”, and it was more important than can be succinctly described.

Prior to I-day, “ink” referred to a wide variety of fluids which were used for writing, drawing, or otherwise discoloring paper. However, on I-day, every single instance of every form of ink in the known universe spontaneously collapsed into a new elemental molecule: and immediately, the ramifications were immense.  Despite large-scale atomic fusion spontaneously occurring across hundreds of billions of instances, no energy was at any point released from this action, and no cause was ever determined. Perhaps even more remarkably, attempts to create more ink using the previous methods resulted, instead, in the creation of this elemental liquid. With this, the fundamental rules of physics were abruptly abolished.  

Today, ink is the most dangerous and valuable liquid on the planet, though it does not outwardly seem so. At a glance, ink is a room-temperature liquid, which can come in a variety of different colors; and there is nothing particular about it which reveals itself when frozen or boiled.  However, in specific conditions it manifests incredible properties which are unprecedented in all other forms of matter. When describing these, it is easiest to depart from the prosaic and instead enumerate these as a simple list.

-Ink can be created from any mixture of water and certain pigments. Mixing these pigments with other liquids, or naturally colored liquids together, will not yield result. Upon reaching a viscosity comparable to that of human blood, the mixture will spontaneously and instantly collapse into an elemental liquid in which no other component molecule can be identified. This fusion does not create any form of energy—light, sound, force, heat, or otherwise.

-The complete list of ink-yielding materials is long and complex, but the Interplanetary Ink Ministry takes pains to make sure it is as widely-disseminated as possible. These include the skin of some animals, the flowers of some plants, and certain minerals—all of which have been culled to near-extinction in the last 200 years. Production of these materials is strictly regulated, and the knowledge of the relevant processes is jealously guarded. Any unlicensed attempt to manufacture these materials is greeted harshly: in the UCAS it carries a minimum federal penalty of 50 years in prison; and in Russia and China, it almost always warrants death.

-If a stagnant body of ink is left in contact with a body of any other inorganic substance equal to or greater than its own size, the ink will begin to “dry up”: at a rate of approximately 1 milliliter per 3.6 seconds, the ink will spontaneously transform into the surrounding material. Ink does not have this effect on highly-hydrophobic surfaces, or while it is moving—which means that it has to be carried in chemically-treated containers to avoid going solid while inside.

 -The most remarkable thing about ink is its conduciveness to life: ink can, on its own, reproduce most of the functions and behaviors of living organisms. Whenever ink is pressed against sufficiently thick paper by organic human hands (or an instrument being wielded by such) and used to draw something which the artist has imagined as a living being, then the ink will (again at a rate of 1ml/3.5s) begin to rise off the page—and will materialize into a full-scaled wholly-living version of whatever was drawn, which can operate indistinguishably from other life.

Ink is able to form limbic, vascular, and neural structures of incredible complexity. Bodies made of ink can be so large that ordinary biological structures of a similar scale would collapse underneath their own weight; and they can repair themselves so rapidly that they are, for all intents and purposes, impervious to aging. It does all of this despite individual molecules of ink being indistinguishable from one another on all levels except coloration. “Inkmen” such as these now account for approximately 70% of all sapient life in the solar system.

-Whenever the ink begins rising, it does this by spontaneously manifesting new elemental ink particles, which were not at any point particles of a different nature. This phenomenon explicitly defies the conservation of energy—which, until I-day, was an immutable principle of the universe.

-Perhaps the most mind-boggling, and certainly the most controversial, of the ink’s properties is its omnipresence: elemental Ink can be found in almost every single molecule of matter in the observable universe.  In human blood, this is highly concentrated, at roughly one part per hundred; and in most other materials it accounts for between .04% and .6% of their total composition. In sand, correctional fluid, and rubber, Ink cannot be found at all. There is no rational reason for them to be entirely ink-free; most particularly since Ink is readily available in the materials from which these examples are derived.  How the Ink determines “sand” from “earth” or “rubber” from “latex”, scientists have not yet determined.

It is unknown if its omnipresence was immediate upon the arrival of the Ink into the world, or the product of some form of rapid propagation after I-day; but since then, innumerable theological and philosophical arguments have sprung up around it.  Ink has been the subject of numerous theses on determinism, and the existence of a Supreme Entity, and the interconnectedness of things within the universe.  Numerous faiths, movements, and other schools of thought have arisen around the facts as they are presently understood.  To some, Ink is proof of, or perhaps the body of, a God or godlike entity; others speculate that it is the product of another dimension, which experienced singularity with our own; others still believe that it is the living body, or a remnant of, some far-off alien species.  The past 200 years of scientific analysis have brought us no closer to understanding the true nature of Ink, or its place in our world.

 INK AS A LIFE FORM

The many remarkable properties of elemental ink can be observed in its status as a vector for organic life. In the anatomy of certain inkmen, you can witness its ability to replicate biological structures; its ability to produce those on a scale previously thought impossible; and the arbitrary, vexatious nature which has lead so many to attribute it some divine character.

First, the basics: whenever Elemental Ink is used to draw something, the thing being drawn will, upon completion, come to life—ripping itself off the paper and asserting itself into three-dimensional space.  The length of this process goes at a rate of about 1 milliliter every 3.65       seconds, so it increases with the size of the being in question—with sea monkeys taking just over 3 seconds, and a human (or roughly human) sized creature taking about 8 hours. That’s the simple things out of the way.  

There are many other rules which govern the lives of inkmen—which drawings will and will not take on their own lives, and how they live afterwards. Most of these rules seem to be completely arbitrary, with no discernable causality; so we shall simply list them here.

-Only human beings can create inkmen. While inkmen can manipulate Ink into various short-lived inanimate forms, it is uniquely resonant with human beings; and any time an inkman attempts to create life, the result will either drop dead within seconds, or be nothing at all.

-An inkman must be “complete” in the eyes of the illustrator before they come to life. No matter how long it takes for an inkman to be completed, a drawing will not manifest any signs of life until the artist definitively and truthfully considers it “done”. It will ignore the professed opinions of other humans if they disagree with the artist’s; and it will ignore the artist’s statements as well if they are untrue.  If an artist dies before completing their work, then their drawing will never come to life. The fact that the Ink can tell one artist from another, and correctly gauge an artist’s feelings on their own work, indicates that Ink has some form of enormously complex psychosensitive property. Many attribute this to the very will of God.

-Only a single instance of any given inky being may exist in the universe at any given time. No matter how often or broadly they were depicted, or how many copies exist of said depictions, there may be only one. The depiction that comes to life will always be the one which has been seen by the largest number of people.  If multiple identical instances of a depiction exist—IE through photocopying, or mass printing—then all of these will “share” a view count; and whichever one is located at the point with the highest concentration of elemental Ink surrounding it will be the one that yields an inkman. An inkman’s most popular depiction is generally called a “homepage”.

-If an inkman is killed, they will—at the very instant of their death—immediately be reborn from their homepage, exactly as they were the first time. No inkman has ever been medically resuscitated after death—though if this is because of insufficient medical technology, or the “only-one” rule, nobody has yet been able to conclusively demonstrate.  Their new incarnation will have no memories of their time in the real world—effectively “resetting” them to exactly how they were when first incarnated. The existential implications of this are best not discussed anywhere at any time.

-The personality, cognitive capacity, and behavior of an Ink-based life form is defined by how much “thought” their original creator put into them. Characters with detailed stories and psychological profiles will express these after entering the real world; and will generally perform to the standards of intelligence assigned to them by their creator. However, their memories and experiences will always be those they had at the time of their homepage: any changes or knowledge received afterwards will not appear in the real world. A character with very little thought put into it will emerge completely uneducated, like a newborn baby, and will require extensive early-life care mirroring that of an organic human child.

-Inkmen will only come to life if their homepage is 90gsm thick or greater.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  

  -A drawing will only come to life if it is “original” in the mind of its creator—that is to say, it is not a representation of a real living being, or of an existing character: political cartoons, nature sketches, and portraits may be drawn at leisure, and will never animate. Strangely, and infuriatingly, the ink’s ability to sense artist intention comes into play here: in numerous clinical trials where artists attempted to draw real people, it has been conclusively determined that no amount of physical deformation or difference in the subject’s depiction can trick the Ink into animating it: everything from “George Washington with a laser eye” to “Sylvester Stallone except he’s a giant amorphous blob of sludge” all yielded no result: an Inkman will only come to life if it is, in the mind of the artist, an entirely separate entity from any extant real or imagined creature.

-It is worth noting that, in one trial, two artists who were commissioned to draw an obscure deep-sea life form (which they believed to be wholly fictional) were able to create animated versions of it which existed simultaneously. Curiously, entities which are physically identical but distinct in the minds of the creators—such as clones, body-snatchers, or shape-changers—can also manifest simultaneously. This discovery directly spawned a cottage industry of “Idiot artists”—people who are kept isolated from birth and permitted no knowledge of the outside world except how to draw. These idiot artists would then be commissioned to reproduce real animals or people, for whatever reason. Despite being a violation of many human rights, this is still a thriving business in certain uncivilized parts of the solar system.

The so-called “originality mandate” has also frustrated many attempts to mass-produce inkmen as soldiers: in the aftermath of I-day, several governments commissioned artists to draw entire armies, but then the discovered that it was virtually impossible to have them adhere to a single physical and mental template: drawing many people with limited variation between them, and thought spent on them, meant that the finished inkmen were uniformly too simple-minded to form coherent thoughts—much less effectively act on a battlefield.

-Inkmen do theoretically exist as they were the mind of the artist, and can theoretically grow to be any size; but in practice, this is often confounded upon their introduction to meatspace. The largest inkman on record—the Sūpāgyarakushī no Kyodaina Josei o Taberu from the popular shonen anime Ginga ga taberu Porineshia no Josei—is a mere 600 meters tall, despite having a canonical height of 1.4 billion light-years; while the average height of kaiju, mecha, and similar monsters is between 300 and 500 meters.It is believed that this is because despite understanding the numerical immensity of their creations, the human mind is incapable of truly visualizing things on that scale—this phenomenon, known as “Cheese’s Principle of Cognitive Limitations”, is responsible for the lack of cosmic-scale inkmen.

The Cheese Limitation Principle also makes itself felt in several other ways. In 2048, the Chinese government commissioned the illustration of a hive-being—that is to say, a being with a single mind spread over many bodies—to begin replacing its police force.  While such a being was drawn, and successfully incarnated, they discovered to their chagrin that it was only capable of occupying about 30 bodies simultaneously—again, because the artist had failed to properly grasp the scale of their creation.  The largest hive-being on record is a cluster of about 200 fist-sized ants who communicate entirely through shrieks.

-Inkmen, after being born, do not need to eat, sleep, or drink to remain alive. However, many of them still do so because it is psychologically beneficial to maintain the semblance of normalcy. Inkmen do, however, require a steady influx of elemental ink: it is possible for Inkmen to “dry out” if they go too long without ingesting ink—if they do so, their bodies literally crumble to dust; and over the course of approximately 8 hours, they suffer the most horrifying and protracted form of naturally occurring death known to exist. While they do not technically need to breathe, clinical trials have shown that inkmen which were breathing creatures in their homepage are incapable of taking advantage of this fact: they will continue breathing due to their psychological urge to, even though It is unnecessary.

-All inkmen, even those specifically designed to give birth, are entirely incapable of organic reproduction. The only way one can be born is if they are drawn.

INK AS A MATERIAL

Even if Ink were not conducive to life, it would be an incredible material: for it, by itself, enabled the industrial revolution that brought mankind where it is today: ink, unlike any other form of matter, has a naturally replicative property: in a vacuum, a body of elemental ink will grow over time. That is to say, its component molecules will reproduce themselves indefinitely, without requiring energy or matter to continue the process. This by itself is remarkable; but what truly made ink indispensable was its elimination of “scarcity”.

Up until I-day, human ambition was in many industries limited by scarcity—the idea that certain materials existed in fixed quantities, and could not be renewed into a usable state without compromising existing infrastructure. These included natural resources like coal, petroleum, and iron—all of which were at one point easily available to commercial buyers, but became increasingly expensive over time as the total amount was depleted. Shortly after I-day, however, the concept of scarcity was rendered obsolete by the discovery of Ink’s other amazing property.

Before Bloody March had even ended, several independent laboratories hit upon the same remarkable discovery: ink not only replicated, it assimilated: if an amount of elemental ink is kept in physical contact with a larger quantity of any other material, the ink will undergo spontaneous molecular metamorphosis at a rate of roughly 50 milliliters every hour—and it will do so until it reaches equilibrium with the material. Spectacularly, it does this without any observable exertion of energy—while replicating a similar process through conventional means would require a truly enormous amount of power. This, combined with Ink’s ability to replicate itself, meant that any material in the universe could be reproduced into perpetuity, given sufficient time and space.

Soon afterwards, the first Ink Additive Manufacturing machine was developed, with several similar technologies following suit. While the precise method varied, the idea was the same: quantities of precious materials—oils, minerals, chemicals, and so on—would be placed in a mechanical assembly, and immersed in Ink until the material was duplicated; and then the process was repeated.  The ability to quickly and effectively produce large quantities of materials with nearly no labor cost absolutely revolutionized industry and economy all across the Earth—material scarcity was replaced with time scarcity.  The modern supply chain is shaped more by production and transit time than by material acquisition: while readily-available metals made the modern megabuilding possible, many arcologies—such as Saskatoon’s Overside, or the Chinese Ring—have been under construction for decades or longer, and will be for several more.

Strikingly, ink’s assimilative effect exerts itself over human beings. While most animals are not often exposed to it for long enough, humans have a very high Blood-Ink Concentration, at 1%; and over the course of their lives, this will affect their physiology in many ways. First and foremost, ink replicates human cells almost as quickly as they decay, preventing cellular breakdown for almost a century. Since I-day, the average human lifespan has increased to about 200 years—a sharp increase from the 80 year lifespans common before then.

More than that, though, ink often emulates the most prevalent exterior tissues in any given body—usually fat or muscle.  Upon reaching adulthood, many humans will find that the ink inside them emulates their most prominent features—often leading to unusual concentrations of bone, muscle, or fat. While these are usually benign, they can be quite unsightly, and such features were entirely unheard of prior to the advent of Biomodding. Over time, humans invariably end up looking rather “cartoonish”, to use a somewhat sensitive word. As such, cosmetic surgeries and ink-reducing liver implants are fairly common among many strata of society.  In 2054, inkish philosopher Blot Thought remarked that “the presence of ink in human bodies has blurred the line between creator and created…so that now we might all be one tremendous comic book and never know.”

Colors and the Common Person

The human eye can see roughly 7 million different colors, and computers can recognize over twice that many. At one point, you could see almost all of them in stores; but today, commercial products are limited to an extremely narrow band of colors. In 2061, the IIM issued the Safety and Liability in Commercial Colors bill to combat the danger of bootleg ink. The SLICC proposed guidelines for the classification and control of commercially-available pigments. Within 3 weeks of its creation it was ratified by 136 countries, including all 4 superduperpowers. Underneath the SLICC, color was removed from almost everything except for plastics and certain metals. The entire labyrinthine text can be viewed online from numerous sources; so WHEE will instead use this space to highlight several of the resultant adjustments to everyday life. WHEE hope that this will ease your transition into the grey cutthroat hell-world of today.

      Dyes

In SLICC nations, the vast majority of clothing dyes are Type-2 controlled substances. In most countries, that means their ownership is regulated—requiring both an in-depth background check and additional federal approval to be distributed on a per-case basis. This means that for most people, dyed clothing is squarely out of their tax bracket. Instead, modern apparel relies chiefly on natural tints—on the subtle differences between fibers’ natural colors. More than this, clothes rely on expressive and impractical cuts to distinguish themselves. The majority of leisure garments for both men and women consist of two parts: a thin layer of under-cloth to protect the skin, and then a thicker layer to express the sensibilities of the wearer. Common over-clothes include lattices, wicker-weaves, cords, or knots.

Dyed clothes are more common among the upper and middle-upper classes of most SLICC countries. However, in many cases it’s not worth the trouble: in the UCAS, for example, you have to undergo a background check, a psych eval, and provide proof of your residence in an area with an annual crime rate of less than 2%. Even after all that, law officers may stop you and demand to see your license to wear dyed clothing—and detain you if your papers are not up to snuff.

      Paint

Paint, like dye, was made a controlled substance under the SLICC. The biggest victims in the commercial sector were building and vehicle decoration. Home and vehicle cosmetics had to be rebuilt from the ground up: wallpaper, solid paint, and many kinds of upholstery were controlled and curtailed over the next century. For a long time, many people were simply unable to get those things; and the ‘beige rooms’ of the mid-2000s are fondly recalled by contemporary decorators.

By the 2080s, most people had adopted alternative solutions. In wealthy homes, interior decoration was dominated by a focus on earthen tones and natural materials—something which was made much easier by IAM flooding the market with gold, furs, and precious stones. Elsewhere, interior coloration relied on polarized film which only reflected specific light bands: this film could be drawn taut over flat surfaces to create the same effect as paint. In poor areas, the same function was filled by simple colored lights.

Today, the epitome of wealth in fashion is the tie-dye: a distinctive color pattern where many bands of color circle and mingle with each other. While this effect can be replicated with film, genuine tie-dye is extremely expensive and tightly-controlled. In almost all cases, it is exclusively reserved for wealthy friends of the government.

[oracleofthegods-archive-blog]

@r1trigger

She has never felt the heat madness before, never seen the visions that twist the mind and dangle illusions of imaginary places and people before her eyes. Promises, threats, of the things she wants the most, and often, the things she wishes she could forget. Some days she sees the Chancellor beckoning her home, to a cave she lived most of her life in, welcoming her to the dark chill away from the sun and into the comfort of soft blankets instead of the coarse sand; some days, she sees death in the form of the gods she had been forced to worship, hands reaching for her, cruel smiles twisting their faces and promising her a drawn out demise.

Most times, she cannot decide which is worse.

There are times, though, when she sees water, fruit, plants, things she has heard of but never seen, images made up in her mind as a child and held fast to as she grew older. She did not know what these plants looked like, and when she stumbles gratefully into these pockets of paradise, only to find them nothing more than pits of sand and despair, she realizes that she still does not know what they look like. It is in these moments, when she has fallen to her knees and is holding the sand that should have been water, watching it drain through her fingers, that she realizes she truly does not know the world she had been kept away from.

Her entire life had been spent tucked away from the harsh light of the sun, only allowed outside once every twenty-eight nights. “The full moon keeps you untainted from the scourge of our world,” the Chancellor used to tell her as he would guide her to stand beneath the moon that she has been named for. He took her to where people gathered to see her. Her, somehow made mythic to these people who were told only the same things she was: She is pure, she is untouched by the disease, she is to be protected – she does not know what any of this means, or why; she has only been told that the people who stand before her, so far below her that she cannot make out how many individual faces have come to see her yet again, how many new faces have shown up, how many have been lost since the last full moon – she has only been told that these people are sick, unable to be saved, and that she is important to them.

When she was younger, his answers satiated her curiosity surrounding her entrapment, and she believed what he told her of the gods and their touch keeping her from getting the sickness. Fear had been instilled in her by the man, poisoned her mind and wrapped barbed tendrils around her heart, and so tightly had she once clung to the Chancellor as a child, as she grew into adolescence, afraid of the world and the sun and the sickness. What lay beyond the walls of her chamber frightened her once. Fear kept her skin soft and her heart bent towards the men who held her captive. They told her it was to keep her safe, and safe she was, though she did not realize that she was not free.

It was not until the full moon at the beginning of her fifteenth planting season that the idea of freedom was a thought she allowed herself. Spurred on by a singular woman in the crowd standing below, the words, “Let her go free!” echoed up the canyon walls and into her ears, surprising her in ways she had not thought possible. Quickly she had been rushed back to her room, but already it was too late, the idea had already started taking root in her mind. She could not speak it aloud to the Chancellor as he helped her back behind the heavy door with multiple locks, white dress gripped tightly in her fist to keep from tripping on it as she walked. She could not ask him about what the woman had shouted, could not ask about the world beyond, and she doubted that the woman herself would survive to see dawn. That night found her awake, listening to the silence of her chambers as she imagined the people below pointing out the woman to the executioners. The fate of those who questioned the Chancellor was well known. She would be no exception.

So wholly had she believed what she had been told of the gods and her purity, that she didn’t question the way he ran things. She didn’t like the death and the murder, the strict hand with which he kept his rule, but at the time, she convinced herself she understood it. This was for the protection of her and the people who lived there, a firm hand in a harsh world. It was only to be expected. Her thoughts of the world beyond her walls were limited in scope, with no desire to leave the safety of her home. And yet, that one woman’s words resounded in her ears, working into her mind, until it was all she could think about.

Within the year, she had made her first escape attempt. She had thought it was well planned, but in truth, it was clumsy, and very quickly was she caught. The Chancellor reprimanded her sternly, frightening her into a corner. She had never seen him so angry, his eyes so dark. He shouted, he raised his hand as if to strike her, then calmed himself. Reassured her that she was safe here.

“You must stay with us, darling,” he had said, gently holding her face between his hands. “Only we will keep you from harm. Others would hurt you, abuse you. The world is not a kind place to one like yourself.”

A nod, a promise not to leave him again, and he left her alone. She allowed herself to cry when she heard the heavy locks sliding into place.

He assigned her a new permanent guard after that. A woman older than her named Crowe who looked at Luna with something akin to understanding. Maybe pity. Was she here against her will? Or was she loyal to the Chancellor? Luna wanted to trust her, but she was wary of her. Didn’t let her get close. She continued to think of a way to escape.

Her second and third attempts went only slightly better, each time learning something new about the route to get out, but getting caught each time. They let her out a couple times a day to move around, to walk, to hold her head high the way the Chancellor instructed her to while others would lower themselves to their knees or bow their heads at her passing. She learned the layout of the twists and turns of the caves, where the bigger rooms were, which hallways seemed the busiest. The small paths that were rarely used branching off the main ones. Which guard walked where, when the shift changed, the busiest times of the day. She began committing it all to memory with each day that passed.

She only hoped Crowe didn’t notice how her eyes moved around the rooms, how she studied every detail of the place with careful scrutiny. It wouldn’t do for someone as close to the Chancellor as she was to report something like this back to him. She wanted her next escape to be the one that worked.

Her fourth attempt was almost successful, somehow managing to slip past Crowe, to make her way through the shadows of the winding halls, ducking into small coves and empty rooms when someone got too close. The light of a sliver moon beckoned her to the outside of the first exit she found – and when she was caught, it ended in the worst punishment yet. Whereas before she had understood the tight grip the Chancellor kept on the people here, she now found herself victim to it, and she didn’t understand it any longer. She resented it. She resented him.

“It is for your own good,” he had spoken softly to her, one finger turning her face towards him, and she wished he’d meant the locks on her door, or the collar he’d fastened around her neck. Instead, he meant the bindings on her wrist holding her against the wall, her back bare and exposed to the people in the room.

“It pains me to do this, darling,” he said with what might have sounded like sympathy, but it was lost on her ears when the first strike came, the sharp crack against her back breaking skin. She cried out sharply and tried to move away, neck straining against the leather around her neck and wrists, but it was too tight. She pulled, but she couldn’t move. “But you have disappointed the Gods.”

In the time between the first strike and the second, when tears stung her eyes and her jaw clenched tightly against the pain, she imagined that, if this had been happening when she was younger, she would have been begging forgiveness, promising to never to do it again. Luna of even just two years ago would have been reaching for the Chancellor and swearing it would never happen again, that she would be good, she would stay put. Now, she said nothing, promised nothing, the only sounds from her the sharp cries of being struck five times against her back.

“You need only listen to us.” His words were soft against her ear, threats dripping from his voice, as he removed the straps around her wrist and helped lower her to the blankets, lying her on her stomach to keep the fresh wounds from touching anything. He brushed her hair back, looked down at her with a look she’d only seen him give to traitors. “You could have avoided this, and I trust you will in the future.” He watched her, waiting for her to agree. She merely turned her head away from him, trying not to whimper from the pain that simple motion caused.

Crowe came in later to help clean the blood from her back and wrap bandages around her. Luna had wanted to tell her how much she hates the Chancellor now, not knowing how he could hurt her in this way when once he had promised that only he could keep her from harm. She may have blamed the gods, but they had never felt as distant from her as they did now. Tears stained her cheeks, her lips trembled, and as she inhaled sharply with each press of cloth to the wounds, she swore she would escape. There was no room for argument in her mind that she brought this on herself, that this was her own doing. She deserved freedom, and the Chancellor refused it to her. Her only crime was getting caught.

Next time, she wouldn’t.

And next time, she didn’t.

At least, not by the Chancellor.

The sun beats down on her, frying her skin and draining her of all her energy. The sand coats her mouth, and she tries to cough to get it out, but each inhale brings with it more sand, more dry air. The oases offer nothing but mirages, and her throat aches for water, even if it’s hot. At the Citadel, she had water and shade, as much food as she could want and no exposure to the harsh elements of this world. The Chancellor kept her protected from this, and-

“No,” she says aloud, forcefully, voice cracking. She wouldn’t allow herself to follow that train of thought. It’s been just over two years since her last escape attempt, yet even now, the mere thought of going back to the Chancellor, asking to be let back in, knowing that the punishment awaiting her may be worse than what she has already endured – it’s enough to make the scars on her back ache. They had never healed well, twisting with scar tissue, forming jagged lines over her spine and shoulder blade, and there were some nights when they would throb terribly. She’d been assured they weren’t infected, but they hurt even after they healed.

And there was no guarantee they wouldn’t do more to her than that if she went back. No, she would sooner die under the sun’s burning gaze than go back there.

And die she might, if she can’t find some sort of reprieve. She hadn’t known what to expect from life outside the Citadel, had only seen glimpses of neighboring towns under the moonlight, too dark to see far enough to know what was out there, and nighttime disguised the heat and the sand as something much calmer than it is. So long has she been sheltered and hidden away from anything that could hurt her – save the Chancellor himself – that she could feel her skin baking in the heat, her lips cracking and bleeding, eyes painfully dry.

It feels impossible to fight the weariness in her limbs. The Chancellor has most likely sent hunters after her, to track her down and bring her back, and even that thought can’t inspire her to go faster. Beginning in the night was easier. She had wrapped a blanket around herself and found warmth with her movements. Staying warm in the cold nights was simpler. Yet as night waned and gave way to the sun, she shed the blanket, finding its heat unbearable on her skin. She walked only in her long dress, lightweight and billowing in the wind, but even that felt like too much, and yet also not enough. Too hot, but not protected enough, and she had done this wrong.

She does not know how to survive this world, and she will die because of her desire to leave. ‘At least I will die free,’ she tells herself as she struggles another step forward.

The collar still around her neck drags her down further, feeling heavier than the thick leather and metal rings actually are. The metal is hot and burns her neck, the leather chafes and rubs her skin raw, and it feels another struggle towards freedom she swears she is losing. Everything binds her back to the Chancellor, and each step is harder than the last, but she persists, she must move forward.

She must.

She must.

It’s a losing battle against the heat, but she will win against the Chancellor. She will be found dead, or, by some miracle, she will find a safe haven and get away from him forever. Either way, she will die free and away from her captivity.

She hopes for safety. Real safety. But in truth…she doesn’t even know if there is anyone else out here. The Chancellor spoke of outsiders and other people that would do her harm, but not once had she seen any visitors, no one coming in from beyond their borders, except from the neighboring towns. And in the time she has been wandering here, she has seen no one. What if the world is dead? What if they are all that’s left, and she has abandoned the only safety to be had simply because she let the idea of one lone woman shouting for freedom get to her?

And now she, a woman revered by her people, held high before them as a symbol of hope for the future, for purity from the sickness, has selfishly left them behind?

She stops and looks back to where she came from. Already, the wind has blown her tracks away and she can’t see any sign of the Citadel in the distance. The horizon is bare, sand meeting sky in ever-shifting dunes, kicking up the occasional small sandstorm, but no traces that she had even passed. No sign of how far she has gone. Even if she turns back and tries heading home, she is lost, no guarantee that she would ever make it. For a moment, panic grips her.

Perhaps somewhere in the back of her mind, she had thought that she may have had that option open to her. No matter how she resisted going back, swearing not to endure anything more at the hands of the Chancellor, at least it had been an option in her mind. But now, it isn’t.

Were her eyes not so dry, tears might have stung them at the sudden feeling of loss.

“No,” she says again, softly, shaking her head. “I will die free.”

Trying to take steadying breaths, but ending up coughing, she turns back towards whatever path she had been walking away from the Citadel and keeps on. Keeps going forward. One step in front of the other, bare feet tender and sore and aching, but still she presses on.

Until she can no longer move. She is a long way from the Citadel, and there is nothing but sand and sun before her. The day is beginning to wane, but it will not come soon enough, will not bring water with it. Only the cold, and she has left her blanket far behind her. So meticulously did she plan her escape from the Citadel, but with no idea of how to make it through the world. And now she will fall victim to it.

Her feet refuse to go any farther. Her knees buckle. She collapses to the ground. 

The sand is rough against her face, the sun hot against her skin. She has enough energy to pull part of her ridiculously long dress up to cover her mouth and nose. It isn’t beautiful, the way the Chancellor had always made her life out to be; her death is ugly. Burnt and dry, weak and breathless. But it is on her terms.

Her eyes are heavy, growing more so with each blink. Vision blurring against the dimming sky.

There is nothing here except for her. Isolated. Alone. Dying as she lived, yet this time free.

Perhaps that’s beautiful.

She exhales once more. Lets her eyes linger closed before opening them again.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Another blink, and maybe this will be her last. It’s peaceful, in a way.

Nothing.

The wind tousles her hair. It’s the gentlest thing she’s felt since she left. Maybe the world isn’t so harsh after all. Maybe it has some softness. She just had to look for it.

She attempts a smile, and her lips crack, blood dripping down her cheek.

Beautiful.

Silence.

Stillness.

And a silhouette against the darkening sky.

Is it him?

Fear curls slowly in her chest. Is it the Chancellor? Crowe, maybe? One of their men? She had hoped her life would be ended by now, and yet she has been found. Somehow, they tracked her. Found her. They’re taking her back.

“No,” she whimpers, her voice weak. As strong hands try to turn her over and sit her up, she raises her arms to block them. She has no energy left to fight, but she will not go willingly. She pushes at the figure, so much sturdier than she is, even at her best, and their arms grip her tightly. She tries again, tries pushing away, barely managing to find her legs enough to resist the other person.

“No,” she says again, but it is a cry of desperation. She can’t fight. She can’t win. She reaches for their face, maybe to take an eye out, but instead she finds goggles and a scarf covering their face. She grabs anyway, pulls, attempts to dig her nails in, though her grip is weak.

The scarf slips from their face, and she still can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman, or maybe one of the Gods come down to inflict punishment upon her. “Don’t take me back there,” is the last words she can work past her dry lips before her energy gives out on her. She cannot move.

She cannot fight.

There is no more resistance.

All she hopes is that, whoever this is, sees her die before getting her back to the Citadel.