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tptruepolitics · 4 years ago

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LGBT Thoughts

Netflix has recently decided to push transgender ideologies in their Babysitters Club series – a show directed at adolescent girls. While Netflix – an independent company that should only have to answer to itself and its shareholders – is perfectly within their rights to air such shows, the fact remains that this is a deeply damaging topic to be showcasing to the most vulnerable and malleable among us. I think it’s time we finally address the enormous elephant in the room: the LGBT community. Here I will break down my thoughts on their rights, their roles, and their realities in our society.

For much of history, there have been documented incidences of same-sex encounters. Even the Bible makes reference to same-sex relations numerous times. The word sodomy is actually originated from one such text from Genesis in reference to the city of Sodom. Shakespeare is even rumored to have been gay by some scholars. However, for most of human existence, these individuals were forced to live in secret – outcasts of society, ostracized by their own people. To be perfectly fair, religious extremism has only contributed to the past 2-4 thousand years of ridicule. Before that, it was still frowned upon (at best) by most cultures simply because it went against the laws of nature. Male and female animals and even plant parts reproduce in union with one another. There are no same-sex reproductive organisms to my knowledge (correct me if I’m wrong). There are asexual organisms that reproduce by themselves, but certainly no major animal species that reproduce in any extraordinary way. There is a certain species of bird, I believe, that lives in Hawaii (once again, correct me if I’m wrong) that sometimes chooses a same-sex partner for life in the absence of a proper mate, but this is certainly an exception, not a rule. To add, they do not reproduce together.

But what does all this mean for humans? How should the “laws of nature�� or even God’s laws apply to humans in this age of constant progressivism and an increasing detachment from religiosity that we call secularism? Well, thankfully, in our country and many around the world we are allowed the freedoms to live our lives as we see fit as long as they don’t infringe on the rights and liberties of others. So, if someone chooses to live outside the bounds of religious or natural laws, they certainly should be allowed to, as long as they are minding their own business. This concept of allowing homosexuality was highly contested up until the late 20th century, and is still somewhat contested today in 2020. The original founders felt that upholding moral and ethical truths in our school systems were an integral part of maintaining our precious union. As a matter of fact, the often-misrepresented “separation of church and state” clause did not mean that religion could not be learned about in schools, but that the federal government had no right to establish a State religion (capital S). Most of the founders actually encouraged religious teachings and values in schools. The more modern interpretations of the separation of church and state are due to an influx of not only secular ideologies, but also religious beliefs that were not prevalent during the time of our founding. While I am a firm believer that no harm can come from learning about religious values in schools, in this age of progressivism it is reasonable to note that certain contentious religious principles need not be forced upon others. This would be a clear infringement of the separation of church and state.

So, to get specific, let’s talk homosexuality. A common misconception in the eyes of secularists is that the Church (I’ll speak specifically about Catholicism here) preaches that homosexuality is a sin – that simply being gay is a sin against God. Well, this isn’t true. The Church expressly teaches that acting out homosexual fantasies is a sin. Let’s say, you are a man who is attracted to other men, but in your devotion to your religion, you find a woman whom you love, marry her, and live your life without having sex with another man. Is this man sinful, because he finds men attractive? Of course he is not! When you feel like strangling someone, but then you calm down and don’t, are you guilty of murder? No. So, simply being gay is not a sentence to Hell. As a matter of fact, even in the eyes of the Church, acting on your homosexual impulses isn’t a death sentence. There is reconciliation and forgiveness in the eyes of the Lord. If you confess your sin and repent for it, you are seen as forgiven. Not to mention, there are people who sin in every aspect of life: liars, swindlers, thieves, murderers – and I’m not even just talking about big sins. Small sins add up, and if you are not repentant of them, you are not any more likely to get to Heaven. However, I will paraphrase this, but I believe there is a Scripture saying that says you will be judged by your worst qualities. So, if you work hard your whole life to be a good Christian, and your only flaw is that you are a wonton whore, a light will be shown on this most vulnerable area.

You might be thinking to yourself, “but it’s a genetic mutation that causes some people to like members of the same sex. God would not have built natural urges in us if he didn’t want us to act on them.” Well, that’s just ridiculous. We have natural urges and desires that are built into us that we are meant to fight off all the time: anger, greed, and jealousy to name a few. Lust is just one more urge that is built into our nature, and it happens to come in all shapes and sizes. Our animalistic desire is not only to have as much sex as possible, but to have it with as many things as possible. Evidence of this is your dog, if you have one. Dogs will regularly hump humans due to a natural urge they have. Should the dog be doing this? Should humans all of a sudden be accepting of bestiality? Maybe don’t answer that one. Now that I’ve gotten a bit off topic, I’ll try to bring this all back. Yes, acting on your homosexual desires is a sin in many Christian churches. However, your homosexuality does nothing to harm me or my church, and as such, I believe firmly that if you wish you act on those temptations, you should be legally allowed to.

Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual peoples should not be deprived of their right to happiness, which can include uniting themselves in lawful union. That being said, I would like to advocate for an alteration in the name of the union. With the full rights, advantages and privileges of a married male and female couple, I would like to revoke the name “gay marriage” and return to the previously used “civil union” terminology. Marriage is a religious term that has been secularized over decades to include all unions whether inside or outside of a church between a man and a woman. I propose that all unions made outside of the boundaries of a religious ceremony be labeled civil unions, reserving the term marriage to those unions made within the boundaries of a religious ceremony. Civil unions will differ from Marriages in name only as to lay to rest the disagreements of many over this divisive issue. Thus, men and women, women and women, and men and men united solely by a judge will no longer be “married” but “united”. Those churches that allow gay marriages in their communities are by no means precluded from including them or precluded from calling them whatever they wish. However, legally, in the eyes of the state, a same-sex couple “married” in their churches will be viewed as “united” under the law. This is a semantic issue, as opposed to a legal issue. The semantics are clearly important on this issue and have been increasingly becoming more important as time goes on. I may not feel it is right to legally prevent people from enjoying their lives in whatever manners they please, but I do feel it is within my purview to define terms in order to ease tensions.

With regards to the transgender community, I have immense sympathy and respect for your feelings. Feeling like you don’t fit into the gender roles that your biology dictates can be frustrating, confusing and upsetting. I know. During my high school years, I often noted to myself that I had feminine characteristics that I didn’t understand. In some ways, I felt that I didn’t share many of the masculine interests of my friends. However, because I was surrounded by many fine men who were very accepting of my differences, I never felt that I didn’t belong with them. Here is the reality of the situation. Many people are not surrounded by these positive influences, and thereby feel that they need to re-identify themselves in order to fit into their social environments. This is not the case. Acceptance, toleration and understanding are the keys to solving this problem. Our attention with regard to the gender debate should be redirected towards Gender Stereotypes. At one point, I was under the impression that we were heading in the right direction. In a very enlightening high school class, I was challenged to think about what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. When I did this, I came up with many gender stereotypes that not only did not describe many of my peers, but also did not describe myself. Instead of concluding that I did not belong to my gender, however, I concluded that the stereotypes were the crux of the inconsistencies. At one point in history, gender roles were necessary for survival – the strong (men) went on the hunt, and the tender (women) cared for the children. They were important distinctions. This is not the case anymore! Over time, as technology and society developed to the point where strict gender roles were no longer necessary, women’s rights and roles in society began to change. This was a good thing and is a testament to how incredible our society has been for the less advantaged. These roles still play a part in our daily lives and still affect who we are, but they do not define us exclusively. Take Apples for example. The stereotype of an Apple is a red, juicy, sweet fruit. However, there are apples that are yellow, juicy and sweet. There are also apples that are green, juicy and tart. Is the yellow apple a mango now? Is the green apple a lime? No, their genetics limit them to the fruitful existence that they are. Nevertheless, biology dictates what type of fruit they are and not their characteristics; their characteristics don’t change the underlying biology.

To solve the issue of gender, some people on the progressive aisle have attempted to remove gender. I instead propose to remove the stereotypes/roles! This of course leads to inconsistencies in the Pride movement as a whole. For example, an exclusively lesbian woman might marry another woman who decides later that she is a man. Is this first woman heterosexual now, or should she be upset and betrayed and break off the marriage? Are you confused yet? This removal of gender is not only confusing to adults, but it’s confusing to children, and for them, it is dangerous. When you pose a child with the option to choose his/her gender identity, they will ask you what the differences are. Your response will undoubtedly be gender stereotypes. You are doing no one any favors by perpetuating these gender roles. The child will treat this as something fun, like a game. However, once you begin to treat it as something serious, the child will begin to treat it seriously. This is what major networks and schools and parents are beginning to do. Once you begin to treat your child as if they are not their biological sex, they will begin to accept that reality, more so to please you than anything else. This could have unimaginable consequences on their sense of self later in life, which could lead to self-esteem issues, learning disabilities, depression or worse. And making life-altering changes to your children i.e. long-term gender therapy, hormone treatments, or surgeries could permanently hurt them mentally and physically.

Conversely, if your little boy tells you one day that he is a girl, tell him, “No, you’re not a girl, you’re a boy. As a boy, you can be whoever you want to be, like whatever you want to like, and all of those characteristics will make you who you are.” If you tell your little boy that, there is an increased likelihood that he will have a more accepting view of others who are different from him, and will have a more positive outlook of himself. You can be a man who loves to sew, wear frilly clothing, and fixes his own car. You can be a woman who lifts weights, works on a construction site, and watches soap operas. They are not mutually exclusive. This also includes those members of our communities that wish to fully engage in their historical gendered roles. Women, who want nothing but to read, write, sew, be homemakers, and do the multitude of other activities that are considered feminine, should not be shamed into thinking that their choices are not valuable, are backwards, or are in anyway damaging to womanhood. Women who have no interest in science should not be shamed into believing that their lives are a waste and that they are giving in to the patriarchal oppression of women. This is not productive. Similarly, this standard applies to men, who should not be shamed into thinking that jobs that only use their hands are not worthy of respect because they do not require a college education. They should not be shamed into the common misconception that men are brutes, only caring about power and control. Men who are not interested in fashion design or cleaning are not uncreative or lazy. All humans have different interests and strengths.

The characteristics we have as human beings are largely taught to us. Generosity is taught, openness is taught. Negative things, as well: greed, sloth – they are learned. Selfishness is a learned characteristic. As a society, we have failed our younger generations. Parents, teachers, the government, and the media have all failed. To teach a child that they are so important that they have the ability to defy nature and choose their gender breeds self-centeredness and pride beyond compare. How selfish of us, how pompous! We are not that important. We are not able to create our own meaning. Our meaning is a gift bestowed upon us by a higher power. Who or what that higher power is, is for each and every man and woman to decide on their own, but a society based on the premise that they determine their own worth is doomed to fail because it is founded on the ideal that the self is the most important entity. This is not to contradict our founding principles concerning the individual. Those principles concern how government should act in relation to its people. The concept of self-importance, to which I’m referring, concerns how individuals view themselves and act in spite of the government.

So, no, I don’t think that Netflix or schools should be teaching students, especially against the wills of their parents, that being a boy when you’re a girl or vice versa is acceptable. We should not be teaching children that biology can just be ignored. If we allowed this aspect of biology to be ignored, other aspects of biology may be ignored in the future (like age!). Nor do I think that sexual preference should be celebrated in public schools. This goes against the separation of church and state in a different manner, because teaching children that their religious observances of sin are incorrect is a direct interference with the practice of a religion. This would be a world where secularism becomes the state religion and that would be no more acceptable than some form of theism. Have no shame for who you are, but don’t put down other peoples’ views to make yourself feel better. Respect should be taught of all our children before they leave the home for school.

Here is my final message. Acceptance of self, love of one another, and understanding of our differences, should reign supreme.

#lgbt #lgbtqia #lgbtq #netflix #religion #marriage #gender #gender stereotypes #gender roles #transgender #same-sex #nature #respect #understanding #acceptance #secularism #civil unions

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thesethingsofours · 4 years ago

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Parents are the Worst.

I recently began listening to Nice White Parents, a new podcast hosted by self-confessed nice white parent, Channa Joffe-Walt. It’s produced by the people in and around Serial, This American Life, S-Town and The New York Times. If you are familiar with those titles, you’ll know what to expect – in-depth, considered analysis of a heretofore, under-exposed social issue, executed with an East Coast progressive liberal stride; a pleasingly audible, irreverent gait and the swagger of emotional intelligence and self-aware humility. Through research, interviews and attaching herself to the Brooklyn School of International Studies for several years, Joffe-Walt tells the story of the New York Public school system and its apparent failure to meaningfully integrate itself since Brown v Board of Education made racial segregation illegal over 65 years ago.

In episode 2, Joffe-Walt tracks down and interviews some nice white parents from around the time the school opened in 1963. These people had written letters encouraging the school board to erect the school building closer to their own neighbourhood (and consequently further away from the darker-skinned families it was more likely to serve). They expressively emphasised their wishes to send their kids there and virtuously aid the process of integration, which they believed to be morally imperative.

But apparently, none of these letter writers subsequently sent their kids to that school. It remained, as anticipated, a predominantly non-white school. Laid alongside the tense machinations of the contemporary school’s invasion by a large new cohort of white parents and their issue, Joffe-Walt’s hypothesis is that white parents have always held liberal aims, and the clout to impose them, but do so with little consideration for their non-white counterparts or any real commitment to seeing through the incumbent practicalities. From the outset, this natural conclusion is persistently hinted at, not least from the podcast’s deliberately provocative title. Perhaps, on an individual level, this hypothesis contains some truth.

However, as the story extends, the blame gains weight and the theory mutates into a generalised accusation. Responsibility for the mediocre state of New York’s (and by implication, America’s) public schools is explicitly laid at the pale feet of white parents. It's an exposition of what is often described as “White Guilt” and its corresponding effort at contrition (i.e. the guilt felt from the inherited sin of one’s ancestors’ oppression of non-white people, primarily through slavery). While White Guilt might have its conceptual uses for a few people to come to terms with idea of race (although even there I am sceptical), its value as a wider social narrative is deeply unconvincing, and potentially damaging. Nice White Parents does a good job showing why.

In the podcast, anecdotal evidence is drastically extrapolated to justify White Guilt. Unless backed up by unequivocal data, it is inherently flawed to base so much on interviews with a handful of people in their 80s about a letter they wrote in the 60s, and (in episode 3) a now middle-aged woman about her perception of school when she was 13. Equally so is to use the example of a single New York school to imply that nice white parents are universally responsible for all the failings of American public schooling. A quick empirical comparison with countries unburdened by America’s racial psychosis would almost certainly reveal this argument to be fundamentally false. I hazard to suggest that Joffe-Walt set out, either consciously or subconsciously, to prove the theory of Nice White Parents, and has therefore fallen into the trap of verification bias.

Of course, the truth is likely to be far simpler – green, cheddar, dead presidents and moolah (which middle-aged white people in American disproportionately possess). Better schools arrive from broad, deep and perpetual community investment – from good, affordable housing and well-paying jobs to well-paid teachers and decent facilities. That means higher taxes on the wealthy and better provincial management. If a completely non-white school district received $50 billion to invest in their community with educational improvement as its ultimate goal (that or the abolition of private schools), I suspect the idea of nice white parents would quickly evaporate.

It is plainly a damaging distraction to focus on the role of supposed-predisposed-racism of well-meaning, middle-class people, who simply want the best possible education for their children. Instead, the message for the “hereby accused” should be to use their numerical majority and voting power to advocate for systems that would reduce inequality, regardless of race. In this respect, it strikes me that wealth is a sacrosanct subject in America, something that one can never apologise for having too much of. Quite the opposite – the culture is built on celebrating those who hoard capital. Is it possible that Americans are taught never to apologise for having money, so those who see something wrong develop other issues, such as race, for which they can atone?

More deeply, the podcast reveals how the White Guilt narrative is in ideological conflict with the very wrong it is supposedly trying to right. Taken to its conclusion, it inevitably reinforces the idea that white people are innately superior, and race is the primary determining factor for success in American life. In the context of the podcast, it is applied to suggest that New York public schools are destined to fail their students unless white kids and their parents get involved. It is gloriously ironic that condemning the influence of white parents on public schools serves to reinforce the supposed inferiority of non-white participants in the education system… because of their lack of whiteness. At the end of episode 3, Jaffe-Walt lays this out:

Nice white parents shape public schools even in our absence, because public schools are maniacally loyal to white families even when that loyalty is rarely returned back to the public schools. Just the very idea of us, the threat of our displeasure, warps the whole system. So “separate” is still not equal because the power sits with white parents no matter where we are in the system. I think the only way you equalise schools is by recognising this fact and trying wherever possible to suppress the power of white parents. Since no one is forcing us to give up power we white parents are going to have to do it voluntarily, which, yeah how's that going to happen? That's next time on Nice White Parents…

(Consider replacing every mention of “white” in this excerpt with “affluent”. Would that not feel infinitely more true?)

In fairness, the honourable, “anti-racist” intention is clear – in order to defeat “white supremacy” white people need to accept their inherited and systemic superiority and eliminate it. Sadly, any idea centred around race – whether malicious or well-intentioned – is bound to collapse under even the slightest pressure. To be truly anti-racist is to recognise that race itself doesn’t exist (other than as an abstract concept that, having infected people’s perceptions after four centuries of concerted, localised propaganda, must be eradicated). Race has no basis in science or nature; it cannot be quantified in any reasonable, measurable way. Simply, it is a lie; invented to excuse the exploitation of others for the purposes of wealth-generation. To base one’s actions on it in any way is to take a leap of faith into a void with no landing. Race is a malignant, empty God; belief in which is destined to lead to malignant, empty behaviour. “Racism” and “Anti-Racism” (as it is currently understood) are therefore both empty, malignant religions, practiced in service of a non-existent deity.

Notably, there are still two episodes to go (released August 13th and 20th). Either might serve to recover some balance. But by episode 3, the stage is not only set for this conclusion to be drawn, but the 1st Grade nativity is in its final scene and the wise men are long since gone.

All that said, if you let the incessant racialization of all things drift past you rather than choking on it, as plain entertainment – storytelling rather than journalism – it’s still an engaging listen; well-constructed and convincingly told. Furthermore, on a non-racial level (if you can somehow listen beyond it), the podcast does have some value, since it reminds me of something I have long half-joked about – that parents (of all stripes) are the worst.

Aside from the obvious, complex Freudian reasons, on a socio-political level, when a choice arises between a laudable, achievable change and putting one’s own children at a perceived disadvantage in order to effect it, a parent will choose its child’s advantage almost every time. No matter their colour, few parents will sacrifice their own child’s prospects – even minutely – to advance the hypothetical children of someone else, or society more widely. Parents are company directors whose primary obligation is to their miniature, genetically-derivative shareholders – they’ll only vote for large-scale change if it is net-profitable or government-imposed.

And of course, parents should pay their kids the maximum dividend. Who else will? A parent is legally and morally obliged to do the best for the young life they are charged with defending. And therein lies the joke. Parents are the worst only because they are ubiquitous. They created you, me and everyone else. We all had them, and most people end up being one. It is therefore less of a criticism than an inevitable, evolutionary truth – just one we should probably be more honest and upfront about. Unknowingly, underneath (and in some ways, because of) its misguided, exhausting racial handwringing, Nice White Parents just about makes this point.

Listen to Nice White Parents here or wherever you get your podcasts.

#nice white parents #podcast #parenting #education #race relations #critical thinking #review #podcast review #npr #this american life #new york times #capitalism

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lysergicdialectic · 5 years ago

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Matt Christman on his satori moment and prestige TV

Excerpted from “Better Call Saul? More Like Worse Write, Paul,” April 26, 2020, and lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Hello friends. So yesterday—I don’t know if anyone watched the stream I did yesterday—I was kind of tripping balls. And at the end of it, after I finished recording, I sat in my little back area, my little fenced-in area, and I looked up at the sky for a while. And wouldn’t you know it, I ended up having one of those legitimate, full-blown satori moments. Actual enlightenment, actual transcendence, like bloop. One second, one with the universe. Whatever you want to call it—ego death, blah-blah-blah—I was there.

I had a moment of complete identification and oneness with the universe, and then of course, the second it was over, I came back into my body and became reincarnated, reembodied as me. And of course, I started falling away from that moment as the rock started rolling back down the hill. I was Sisyphus, and I got to walk down it. And the thing about Sisyphus is, Camus says you must imagine Sisyphus happy. That’s one of those things that just sounds like a zen koan

I understand it now, because happy Sisyphus is the one who gets to the top of the hill as often as possible because being on the top of the hill is fun, and walking down the hill—it's not as fun as being on the top of the hill but it's a lot more fun than pushing the goddamn rock up the hill. So you just gotta increase the circuits. You can't keep pushing the boulder up one long gradient, which is what most people do and what we're cursed to do because of our material realities that constrain us and chain us . . . . As I was coming back to my body and I was going down the hill and falling away, the first word that came into my mind after—because obviously in that time and space there's no words because language is obliterated. It's not needed because you are one; there's no need to translate. As soon as I came back to my body, the first word, it was an image in the sky of a crashing wave and the word Yes. And I realized that a lot of the stuff I've been trying to get my head around, in terms of spirituality ad theology and questions of body and mind and all these things that I've been working on in my head, and I feel I've been making progress but I've been struggling with—the word Yes cut through a lot of it and it created a symbolic order that allowed me to make sense of everything I've been trying to get my head around. And since my specific orientation as age, race, gender, class background, language, culture, all that stuff—when I heard Yes, the first thing I thought was the end of Ulysses. And all of a sudden, I had one moment of thinking "Oh, that's what it's like to have read Ulysses," and then I was like, "Oh wait a minute," and then I thought, "Oh great, now I don't have to read Ulysses." But then I realized: I have to read Ulysses now, even if it's bad, even if it's a slog, even if it's whatever, because it will remind me of that moment, and doing it every day will remind me of that moment and keep me living in a way that gets me there, or gets me closer to it. It will inform my actions and it will inform my behavior toward the people around me, and it will make them turn toward that sound. So I'm going to start reading Ulysses.

Like I said, it doesn't matter if it's good or not. It doesn't matter if it's worth it. What matters is reading it. The reason that I'm thinking within these terms is, I did a tweet that got a lot of people mad about Better Call Saul, because I said that Better Call Saul, in my opinion, suffers from trying to be a prestige TV show, given the ingredients it has. You've got Saul Goodman here, played by Bob Odenkirk, a great character we all love, and we've got these great people behind the casts, great cinematography. And it ended up being the show it is, with its basically copying the rhythms of Breaking Bad and becoming a Breaking Bad explicit prequel filling in all these gaps of Where'd Hector get his bell? and things like that. That's inevitable as soon as it had to fit the format of a prestige show. As a prestige show, it probably is great. I've watched enough of it. Yes, it fits all the terms that we discuss when we talk about prestige television. Yes. I would say it's as good as Mad Men, it's as good as Breaking Bad or even better, it's as good as The Sopranos, whatever you want to say. Fine. It's good. But it's good in the context of a television show. I've written about prestige TV and I've talked a lot about it, and I was trying to articulate something that I've never actually been able to explicitly say in a way that I felt like I was saying what I meant, let alone if other people understood it. What I realized with this mental Ginsu now to chop everything up that I encounter is, my problem with Better Call Saul is that it is a product of the demiurge. Better Call Saul, like all prestige TV, is a product of the demiurge. Art is an attempt to reach the etheric plane. Art is always an attempt to strike at the heart of the universe, to strike God and become God. Everything attempt at art is that, in some small way, the way that the person making it can do or try to do. It's the urge to do it. But then, there's the reality, the embodied reality of being a person, being a body that has needs. Those material needs that shape the world and limit us, that's what the Gnostics talked about. That's what the demiurge, the evil god who creates the material world that is illusion below the spiritual realm. In this case, if we're talking about art, in an objective sense, television is a more degraded form of art than literature by the very simple fact that it is more commercial. And you might say, "Well, Stephen King makes a lot of money." No. What I mean by that is, the writing of a book and the publication of a book are relatively capital unintensive. Making a television show is much more, by exponential numbers, more capitally intensive than a book, which means that whatever art is in it has been constrained by being a product of a commercial enterprise. That means that television can be good. Every show could be fun. You should enjoy every program you watch. Either stop watching it if you can't find yourself enjoying it, or find something about it that speaks to you. Everything should be enjoyable, artistically. And if it isn't, find something that will, something that you can work it. Some things aren't going to work because the talent of the people involved, the amount of resources put to it, the amount of commercialism leavened within it, it's going to hit you and make it hard. That is why I see Better Call Saul, and I go egh because it just reminds me that we're all praying to this degraded version of art. And the reason we are is because we have been immiserated culturally. Capitalism has done that to us. That's not something you can argue. Our tastes are more broad, and poptimists like to say, "You're being a snob." But I'm recognizing a goddamn reality here, which is that there's a structural difference between art depending on how much they are required to make money, the degree to which a piece of art needs to make money to be worth the endeavor leavens its individual artistic expression because it has to be translatable to the largest possible group. The art, in translation, gets lost. And that's fine. You can find the sparks. You can find the things you like in anything, including Breaking Bad. But because we have lost free time, we've lost energy, we've lost the ability to take a small moment and treasure something and really dig into it, that we need our entertainments to go down easier. They have to be absorbable because we don't have the energy, the mental or spiritual energy to sit with anything because of where we are, because of how degraded our conditions are, because of our bodies essentially. All these institutions—capitalism, feudalism before it, slave labor—every class order created was created to manage the issue of keeping bodies alive, basically. That creates our structures. It creates our economic structures, it creates our art, it creates our culture, it creates our personalities, it creates our religions, it creates our ideologies, it creates everything. It creates this computer, it creates this phone. It creates this shirt, and it creates the systems that create the hyperexploitation that goes into making this shirt, the gunpoint slave coltan mining that makes this phone. Those things are all necessary to the degree to which they allow for the human bodies to be restored.

Then there is the temptation to seek pleasure, and pleasure always comes at the expense of someone else. Pleasure always comes at the expense of us—always. All pleasure is at the expense of others and at the expense of ourselves—karma. And so these institutions get warped. "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made." What that means is, the crookedness is the fact that we have bodies. That's not a sin, it's not bad—the Christian thing is another mistranslation from the initial true divining of reality. The material world gets in the way, and it gets baffled, and so Christianity gets muddled up with all this stuff. When you say, "The body creates this world," it's not bad—it's inevitable. It's inherent. We have to deal with it. We have to create a society that minimizes suffering by spreading pleasure out as broadly as possible, not concentrating on any individual because doing so creates a situation where you cause misery to all the people whose exploitation goes into the pleasure of that one person, and that one person's pleasure is fleeting. It's going away. They're going to face the flames of judgment, which is the coming of death, with the terror of hell in their heart. There's no stopping it. And so no one has gotten any sort of benefit out of that arrangement.

We have to have some suffering and pleasure just to keep the bodies going, but it should be spread out. That's where the dialectic comes in. Somebody said, "Go back to Marxism." I'm sorry, but this moment made me realize that these are nesting series of thoughts, ideologies, and structures, and guess what? Nesting in here is dialectical materialism. Maybe Gnosticism or Buddhism or something or The Dark Tower or I was talking about Infinite Jest the other day and maybe Ulysses, those things help structure your thoughts and make it easier for you to behave in a way that reduces suffering. But then you need structures within other people, amongst people in the social realm of economic production and political economy, that need to serve those ends as well. Dialectical materialism is the drive toward that. It is the drive toward a world where everyone is free of the bodily temptations and distractions to reach full enlightenment. When people talk about "fully automated luxury space communism," there's a lot wrong with that notion. But the truth thing that's reckoning with is that the only way for universal human enlightenment—which, if enlightenment is the individual goal, as it well should be, then presumably it is the universal goal for all humans—then you need some sort of taming and instrumentalizing of technology toward the goal of human enlightenment as opposed to the dark singularity we're moving toward, where the machine takes over and totally annihilates human spirituality and turns us into machines. We don't want that. It requires a lack until you get to the top, and you don't get there and stay there. It's a process. You go back, and you come back. And you go back and you come back. It's pushing the fucking boulder up the hill. That's why it's compatible. If we want that version, universal enlightenment, then it requires, in my view (and I am wrong, at some point in time in the future I am wrong. I think I'm right now. I have enough history around me and I think I'm smart enough and compassionate enough together to figure out broadly what's right. More specifically, as it gets drilled down, I don't have the information or the intelligence to specifically answer technological questions, social questions, whatever. Broadly, I think I'm right, but I'm not right forever. At some point in the future, at some point in space time, everything I think is going to be wrong. Every single thing, and that's true of you too. Every human being. Every single thing you have ever thought, every decision you've ever made, has been wrong. We are all, in fact, the sum total of our wrong choices. This is all a way of saying you can enjoy Better Caul Saul. To enjoy Better Call Saul, of course, it doesn't make sense to watch it if you're not going to enjoy it. Watching it to get made at it, you're getting pleasure somewhere else. And at the end of the day, the pleasure's at others' expense because what are you going to do? You're going to go online like I have a million times and kick people in the dick and say, "Ha! Fuck you. This show is stupid, and you're dumb for liking it." That's the pleasure I get out of it, and that's at someone else's expense as all pleasure is.

What makes a decision right or wrong? It's not defined until afterwards. It's only retrospectively known because all time has already happened. Everything has already happened. Everything has already happened. And when I say everything, I mean not just in your life, I mean the lives of all beings to exist or ever will exist. So you can enjoy Better Call Saul, but you see the way people are defensive about the show and see the way they get mad about it—and even if they're not mad, the way they insist on its greatness. It's because they have decided that instead of acknowledging the lack at the heart of prestige as a concept, instead of saying, "Aw, this is sad that now we have to get our real artistic nourishment from something this banalized"—It's banalized! It has to be, because it's commercial. It has to be banalized—"I have to try so hard to squeeze meaning out of it not for my enjoyment of the show but to convince other people and myself that watching this is actually good." It's not necessarily bad. It's not going to doom you to like it in that way. But it implies attachment to something that is degraded without acknowledging and recognizing the degradation. And without the ability to recognize the degradation, you cannot act in a way in your life to move away from degradation in your interpersonal relationships, in your preferences, what you do with your time, and what you think politics should be and how you should act on political beliefs. If prestige TV is good enough, then why do you need to change anything?

So commercial art is bad?

No. No art is bad. Every individual's relationship to a piece of art is completely individualized, and it's a result of translations. All art is translation. All existence is translation—your brain literally translating to you through language what is happening to it, first in senses, then in symbols, then in words: words to yourself and then words to others. At every level, the translation breaks down. There is loss between every level of translation. By the time you're trying to express an idea through art, you're way down here. You're so degraded. But if you're talented enough and enough people see it and you're collaborating with others and you make something together, because collaboration, depending on the art form and the project, helps signal boost and bring together individual insights and individual talents, and it creates something.

There's something to it. There's a spark to all art. It's just either the talent was not there to express it fully, or it was a piece of cynical dogshit. But even the cynical dogshit will have things in it that might be enjoyable. You can watch a piece of cynical dogshit with the right frame of mind and enjoy it. The danger is when you mistake the shadows for the figures, and that is what prestige television does. If we just accepted, "Yeah, TV, it's the idiot box," the shows could be the same, have the same stuff, and it would be fine. But a culture that requires television to be good is one that has not acknowledged its barriers . . . .

Plato's stuff, I never really got until now. Now I get it. Gnosticism, I never really got. I feel like I get it. And of course I get it less now than I did yesterday, and I will get it less tomorrow than I do today. My task is to get back, to remember that moment, remember what I knew then, and try to find it again. The way to do that is by daily acts by the Eightfold Path, by the Path of the Beam. What that really means is not just I'm going to say, "Epic path of the beam," when I see a fucking Stephen King reference. It means my every action informed by the knowledge of what is there—the imminence behind reality, the real universe beyond the demiurgical one—and then trying to get there. That means these reading projects are not about learning something. It's about re-learning something, because you don't know anything. You only have echoing, clanging notions in your head. A lot of them contradict each other. The only way to thread them together in a way to make them useful is to sit with them. And that is not something that anything we do encourages. Not something anything in our culture encourages, is sitting with these questions. Existential materialism, whatever you want to call it. Gnosticism, whatever you guys want to say . . . .

Gnosticism says this is a degraded shadow realm. It is. It's a degraded shadow realm of material reality, but we have to work with it. How do we work with it? How do we thread it? How do we push it in a direction that leads toward the chance for as many people as possible to achieve transcendence and direct it back to themselves in the future and to everyone else who can hear them in their lives and people around them? It's by resolving contradiction, because contradiction is at the heart of existence. No and yes. The universe is yes, and it's always there. It is outside of space and time. The world is no, and we are all—every person, every being in the universe, every photon, every chain of chemicals, anything—those things are all no's. Those are different levels of rejecting. And the thing is, there aren't that many of them. But there doesn't need to be, because yes exists outside of space and time. It is the accumulation of no's over this endless expanse, they are accumulated in actual reality, this world. And you've gotta get back to yes.

I say that and you hear it, and it's like, "What does that mean?" And for me, these words, "getting back to yes," they're freighted with my memory of this experience. You are only hearing my words retell it, which is fraudulence, as Nietzsche points out. All language is a lie. All I can do is use my talents—to such extent that they exist—and my will, my morality, my intellect, to try to push in the direction of the good.

So that's Better Call Saul.

#matt christman #better call saul #diamat #dialectical materialism #prestige TV #capitalism #marxism #LSD #chapo #chapo trap house

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vyrerus · 5 years ago

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5.2 Story Impressions

Spoilers ahead for 5.2 MSQ and Ruby Weapon sidequest.

Well, a new ultima weapon huh? How’d they pull that one with the heart thingie from the first one? I guess maybe with Proto-Ultima parts and such from Azys Lla? Like that capital ship is still there stranded, but I’m sure they sent some dropships back to the homeland, maybe?

Ah yes, I’m the only one who can stop it, despite knowing quite intimately that Estinien was capable of destroying its prototype single handedly. I bet if they’d get him to team up with Gaius and Raubahn, and idk, fucking pull Merlwyb and Mistbeard out of retirement... bring Kann-e-padjali lady and her brethren as healers. Yeah, you can get it down. It’s not like it can temper people. You don’t even gotta wrangle the new primal task force, hot highlander knight and Fordola or anything. Jeez!

Ok fine, I’ll fight the FF7 reference... AFTER I GO CHECK ON THE MSQ!

Ok, they’ve got the right rock now, they’re certain. The shape kinda reminds me of a Soulstone from Diablo 2. It’d be much more realistic to assume video games from the past influence video games of the future, but I like to think this is another shared cross-culture humanity tale, like The Flood. Soul stones man.

Hmm, Alisae is all, “I hope you don’t have to make a choice between fighting the ultimate weapon and helping out here.” Hmm, either it’s a one off plot joke or foreshadowing for whenever we get to fight Emerald Weapon. I’ll go with the latter.

Everybody mad that crystalline catboi ain’t been sleeping... but do ya think they’re also making him bathe? Does he even sweat and get stinky anymore, being half golem?

I wonder what the response was for, “Why not Alphinaud?” Hmm, maybe Mattoid can tell me.

Chap with an axe beat ya to it, huh? *flashback to Heavensward* Yeah, we in for some bullshit. I just hope this set of bullshit doesn’t involve Alisae getting shot with a poisoned arrow.

I kinda wish the WoL had called out the Ardbert puppet body for what it was, right then and there. If Elidibus couldn’t beat us in Zenos’s body, then he sure as hell can’t beat us with an i80 weapon. I know the masses are dumb, but c’mon, we’re the savior, and they all know that the bodies of the old First WoLs were stolen and Sin Eater’d, explain and relate it to that. Just drive the puss from the wound now. Oh jeez, of course we’re not going to do what we should do... it wasn’t in the script.

Huh, does the purple bun insinuate that the pink haired bun is dildoing herself with her staff and imagining that it’s the WoL >__> now I feel bad for not paying super hard attention to these Buns when I did the MSQ. I blame Emet Selch for stealing the show from every zone! Except like, Lakeland.

Hmm riddle of the Sphinx? But that’s not a Sphinx.. it’s a wolf, owl, snake thing...

Hmm was this ancient Bunny lady with the echo a WoL of the past or were they a person strong in the Echo raised to the station of an Ascian? Like did they help to create the Ronkan civilization? I have many questions!

Aww, Runar is sad... but also hey, this moment has a lotta meme potential if you’re perverted and shipping your WoL with Yshtola.

I thought you were supposed to be good at this... actually I never thought you were good at this. Like, the first time we met you said you didn’t mean any harm, but you lead me on a chase and attacked me with swarms of gargoyles ya white robed wimp! Get out of that body and fight me like a SORCERER OF ELD!

Ryne thinks the Tempest is otherworldly hehe. Cute kid. :)

Wheat is sharp? How I be feeling it through my full metal gauntlet? :O Holy shit what are the people’s stomachs like on The First?!

Uriangesus! Uh oh, his soul be straining... Thancred’s too. Oiiiii veiiiiiii

Awww, sad lonely immortal whale :( I wanna give him a hug.

I just got told to go quietly... but I don’t care enough about Ryne or think she’s cute enough to actually sway me... oh well, fishing trip with the other old men.

Aww man, another remix for Sastasha.

My friend said I should do this dungeon with Trusts, but I still don’t want to use Trusts.

Sea mobs and other shenanigans. Seems like a pretty cool place. Huh, the Sahagin are turning crystals into animals... seems like we’ve found the mother load. Should be able to get that rock to work right now!

Sahagin Queen is Thicc. I said this. I got no comms because of saying this. Q.Q

Hmm, so according to these holograms they had to do what they made the beastmen tribes do for the first rendition of Extreme primals back in the 2.1+ days. Does that mean these fellows who designed Hydaelyn designed her to specifically rip out Zodiark’s heart, as to not kill the original Elidibus( you know the whole, her attack enervate the target, sundering it rather than destroying it that Emet Selch was on about)? Hmm.... is the WoL the original Elidibus or Venat? Will Yshtola ever get his thing working, or does it only respond to the WoL?

Hmm ok, so we’re not technically tempered? but what is the blessing of light exactly then? And how does Elidibus expect these WoL Juniors to ever even want to kill us? Hmmmm, I don’t think they really thought this plot thread through.

Another silently nodding joke. Teehee.

Man, it may be because I’ve been awake for 26 hours due to work, and a meeting at 12, but it really feels like the game is telling me to take a break too! I guess RL me fits right in with all these busy body heroes after all!

I feel like it should be Cyella that shows up, but I understand they had to make it any of the NPCs because of the playerbase nature to only do one job/role and not do any of the sidequest. At least they let us pick!

Zenos having a dream while robed dude with Asaheeeee or whatever that little bimbo’s name was that was Yotsuyu’s half brother’s voice muses about what that means. Mutters stuff about Emet-selch. There were a lot of Emet-selch name drops this patch.

Ok, time to finally kill Ruby Weapon.

Oh, that was easier than expected, but I still got killed by the quicksand. Whoops.

Also holy shit, did the pilot go crunchy crunchy for that to happen?! I mean I love callbacks to Nael, but holy shit... will I still find out who the pilot was?

Aww, Au Ra orphans. Raens at that. Huh. Daddy van Baelsar... huh... well he is certainly manly enough.

When’s Cid gonna cough up blood?! I was worried for nothing!?

Ok time to do Eden... *looks at clock* nevermind. It’s time for work again. Being a functioning member of society while trying to maintain my some semblance of my hikikomori habits is hard. And my old raid lead has is already beating Savage without me now too. OTL Well, I’ll have more time to work on my Sarg character, so there’s that.

#FFXIV #Spoilers #Long post #Ruby weapon #5.2 #MSQ

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malecsecretsanta · 5 years ago

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Merry Christmas, @mysteryuntamedmind!

I loved this concept, it was a joy to write, I hope you like it!!!

Read on AO3

*****

Lights Up The Skyline (To Show Where You Are)

There were many things that were common undertakings for those who had not yet manifested their soulmark. Indeed, it was fashionable for one to go on a grand tour upon one’s majority if they had not already found the manner in which they would find their soulmate. For, of course, the manner in which one’s soulmark appeared was equally as important as what the mark actually was. Whatever one was doing when their soulmark appeared was a portent: a direction, gifted by the universe to help the person pursue whatever life path would bring them to their soulmate. No matter what Alexander Gideon Lightwood did, nothing made his mark appear. He did his best to cling to hope, and, at the age of thirty, became extremely adept at maintaining his patient façade in the face of his devastatingly unmarked skin.

His siblings had gotten their marks in years ago, and Alec had been there for all of them. He had seen the magic of the colours slowly shifting to the surface of someone’s skin, and the inevitable joy as the person saw the mark of their soulmate. Jace’s soulmark had appeared one day when he had been playing piano in the early morning in the drawing room at Lightwood Manor.

(Later, Jace would explain why it was then that the mark appeared. As, for most of Jace’s life, piano had been a requirement, if not a weighted responsibility, attached to heavy strings of disappointment and punishment should his performance be less than exemplary in any way, but that morning, when the sun was shining in through the windows, Jace had been composing. It had been a new song, one for himself, and for the tentative, fragile happiness he’d found as the Lightwood’s ward. It was then, when his intention behind the piano had been of his own design, that the music was enough to call forth his soulmark.) (That was also why, when the crew had taken on a prize ship and found a piano forte in the hold, Alec had commanded it be taken to his quarters as the captain of the ship. He had then committed the sin of permanently affixing the piano to the wall of his cabin by whatever means necessary, but the reduced space and the lack of privacy that came from Jace’s frequent use of the instrument felt like no sacrifice whatsoever in the face of Jace’s happiness and his pursuit of his soulmate.) Isabelle’s mark had come from a distinctly more unorthodox venture, but Alec could only be grateful for that as well, as it was the event that had set Isabelle on a path that allowed her to accompany him out to sea. Alec was selfish enough to be honest with his happiness that he would never have to learn what it felt like to spend long months at sea without the company of his beloved siblings. Indeed, Isabelle was unsurpassed as a surgeon, never impeded by the limited supplies, equipment or surroundings. More than her sheer skill and ability, she had the vibrant, easy charm that made for a truly commendable bedside manner. It led to her being the ship confidante, as crew would come to her with everything from relationship trouble to medical advice for itching nethers. It was nearly unheard of for a woman to be a surgeon, and even more unheard of for a woman to be on a ship, but, of course, Isabelle’s soulmark had come in the day that she had been wading through Alec’s old clothes. Together, they had managed to locate some of Alec’s clothing from when he had been young and before he had gained the majority of his height. The plan had been to keep the clothing for Max, but Max had years before he would grow into the clothes, and Isabelle was determined to go to university. She had done whatever it took to gain entrance - whether it was bribery, extortion, or simply asking favours from tutors who were willing to shirk the system in her favour. Isabelle Lightwood was hardly about to let something as foolish as her womanhood keep her from pursuing her dreams of further education. With Alexander’s help, she had cut her hair and learned about the current men’s fashion from the city. She had taken Alexander’s basics and staple pieces, and created a disguise good enough to go into the city and buy new clothes that were more fitting with the current style. It had been that first day, when her new clothes had been delivered and her disguise was complete that her mark came in. She had been standing in front of the mirror, making sure that her appearance was as flawless as it always was, no matter what her intention was, and then there had been that familiar light, the bloom of colour, and Isabelle’s path was set. Her mark had come in to encourage her in her plan to sneak into university to attend medical school - not that she had needed any encouragement: she was determined enough on her own, but even so, the universe had seen fit to push her down that path to keep her on the trail to meet her soulmate. Alec had no such luck. He had nothing. There had been so many moments, when he had hoped. Days when he had practically run home, desperate to strip his clothes off and inspect his skin, hoping for any hint that a soulmate would await him, somewhere. He had first thought, perhaps, he would be deemed worthy of a soulmate when he first accepted his commission into the navy. When that had proved fruitless, he had once again managed to find hope when he’d gained his first captaincy. Upon the realization that professional success was not the way to meeting his soulmate, Alec had turned to personal matters. He had been hesitant, at first, in choosing to express to his siblings the direction of his romantic inclinations, but he had been clinging to the hope that perhaps in speaking this truth aloud, he would prove himself to be worthy of a soulmate. His siblings had accepted him with open arms, embracing him in love and support. The universe had not been nearly as kind, and Alec’s skin had remained painfully unchanged. There were the secret things as well, the dangerous, inadvisable things that Alec had undertaken as his desperation grew. Alexander had a reputation for steadiness in the face of adversity, and a distinct propensity towards bending to the pressures of societal propriety. In public, at least. Despite what would be said should he ever be found out, however, he could not help his explorations of his desires. When he was younger, he had kept his silence about such things, laying more importance in the social capital of his family name than in his own personal happiness. Watching his siblings pursue their paths, encouraged by their soulmarks, had moved something within Alec. On his best days, it was inspiration: courage, burning within him, pushing him to step out of the strict lines of expectation and towards something more of his own making. On his worst days, it was envy. Bitter and dark, turning his blood into tar. The last thing that Alec wanted was to begrudge his siblings their hard-won happiness. However, there was nothing in that truth that could do anything to dull the echo of the hollow ringing within him. What must he do to be worthy of his soulmate? What was left that he had not already done? Alec had still been young the first time that he had allowed himself to reach for his own pleasure and admit to the truth of his yearnings. He had lain naked in his bed, slowly exploring the fantasies that he had previously denied himself. He let himself dream of the touch of another man, of what it would feel like to be touched by someone other than himself, to reach out and find answering masculinity, echoing his own wants. The weight of the thought had felt like comfort and recklessness, existing in some strange clash of equal and opposite, burning like a storm in Alec’s chest. He had taken his time, learning the feeling of his own body, responding to the truth of the shape of his love. After, when Alec had caught his breath, he had been nearly certain that it had been enough. He could feel a difference within himself. Some fundamental component of his being had shifted, as if some gear that had previously been half a click out of rhythm had slotted into place. The sweet, sated relief of his afterglow was only matched by the dull, mouldering disappointment as he stood in front of the mirror, searching for any speck of the soulmark that he would not find. So Alec had tried again. He had tried with ice, lace, leather and metal. He tried candle wax and oysters and champagne and honey. He slipped out to illicit meetings. He joined card games and joined fox hunts, all in the company of those who also had proclivities of a certain persuasion. He had even abandoned his family for a season, telling them he was going to help a friend prospect a new shipping route, when instead he slipped out to the city in the dark of the night. What followed was a few months of every flavour of exploration that Alec could conceive of. He attempted teaching and business, as well as gambling, servanthood, and every manner of apprenticeship that he could find for himself. He spent a nights in opium dens, and boxing rings, and still nothing changed. He had found a natural aptitude towards hunting and trapping, stemming from his nearly instinctive excellence with a bow. He had hoped that perhaps his skill with archery would be enough, but even when he shot a hare at two hundred paces, his skin stayed the same hateful pale as it always had been. Now, as Captain of his own ship, and well-respected as a seaman and a leader, Alec found his life was a surface vision of success. Alexander, however, was nearly thirty, and in the quiet of the night, in the privacy of his own mind, it was devastatingly easy to admit that he was inescapably succumbing to defeat, and that the last dregs of hope were failing flickers that could only be seen when fair winds blew on the sunniest of days. *** Alec, Jace and Isabelle had weathered many things together, and when Max was finally old enough to join them at sea, they had met the opportunity with unconditional joy. None of them ever suspected how everything would change with a single storm. Alec did not see when Max was washed overboard, but as soon as he spotted the familiar form being tossed among the waves, Alec had no hesitation in leaping from the ship and into the dark, churning water. The ocean was unforgiving, but Alec was determined. He dove into depths, and finally spotted his younger brother, sinking steadily towards the ocean floor. Alec’s chest hurt from holding his breath, and he knew he only had enough air to either reach Max, or swim back up to the surface. For Alec, it was never a question. Swimming hard, Alec ignored the fire in his eyes, the pain in his ears, the way that his body was screaming for air. The only thing that mattered was reaching Max. Alec’s hand had barely closed around Max’s wrist when the world lit up, bright with lightning. Suddenly, Alec felt as though he could breathe. Max’s eyes opened, glowing bright in the dark water of the ocean. Both of them were lit by the bright shifting turquoise of an untouched lagoon. When they looked, the light was coming from a soulmark, shining clear from Alec’s arm. Once they returned to the surface, they were quickly rescued by the crew and sent to Izzy to be checked out. Once she had declared them uninjured, she prescribed rest, which they easily agreed to. Alec never would have let himself fall asleep if he had known that when he woke up in the morning, his soulmark would be gone. *** Lightning shot across the sky and thunder was loud enough that the windows rattled, and Isabelle could feel it through the floor. She sighed and forced herself to finish the explanation of the diagram on the page before marking her place and putting away the medical journal. She knew she would not be able to focus well enough to make it worth reading if the storm was going to be that loud. She was placing the book in its place on her desk when the realization caught up with her. A storm. Lightning. She dropped the book and went running, desperate to find where Alec was. She called for him, and there was no answer, and when she opened the door to his room it was empty. A sick feeling of dread filled her. “Alec!” She shouted again, even though she knew there would be no answer. She ran to the stairs, and found Simon halfway up them, ink-stained from whatever his latest missive was. “Isabelle? What’s wrong?” “Alec is missing.” She said grimly, before running past him to reach the main room. Clary and Jace were curled up together on the couch by the fire. They looked up as Isabelle clattered to the bottom of the stairs in her hard-soled boots. “Isabelle?” Clary asked. The look of Isabelle’s distress was enough to have Clary untangling herself from Jace’s embrace and moving to stand. “What’s wrong?” “Has anyone seen Alec?” Isabelle repeated her query. Understanding dawned on Jace��s features and he stood abruptly. “The storm.” Isabelle nodded, solemnly. Clary looked between them, clearly not understanding why it was a matter of such urgency, but the clear depth of their consternation was enough for Clary to move past her desire for questions regarding context, and to focus on the clear goal of finding the oldest Lightwood. “I saw him get a dinghy out earlier today, but with the storm that’s come in, I’m sure he’s back by now.” Her words caused Isabelle and Jace to go pale. “We have to go,” Isabelle said, and the terror in her eyes was obvious. “We must find him, and we must go now.” No one argued. It took a few short minutes for everyone to gather their things and clothes appropriate for the journey at hand, but every moment spent was another moment of fear and worry, building in the hearts of everyone. They rushed out to the docks, which had been abandoned due to the wild winds of the raging storm. It took all of the skill that they had to find their own dinghy they would be able to take out for their rescue mission. Simon even decided to stay on land, sensing that this was a mission beyond his skillset. He was determined not to be a hindrance when speed and competence were clearly the top priorities. He helped them into the small boat and then passed over the long length of rope they’d brought with them, just in case it turned to the worst, and they were forced to go diving as part of their search. The waves rolled and the sky cracked, and Isabelle, Jace, and Clary rowed steadily outward to sea. *** Alec stared at the oncoming clouds, finding a strange sense of peace. There was a hollowness within his chest, but it was lined with surety. This was his choice and his chance. His entire life had been failed attempts to get his soulmark to manifest. Now, when the closest thing that he’d ever seen to a glimpse of it had come from the night he was beneath the wild waters of a storm, too far into the depths to ever reach the surface, it seemed as though his only option left was this. The first drops of rain hit Alec’s face. He pulled the oars into the boat, securing them beneath the seats of the dinghy. The wind picked up, the boat began to rock in the waves, and Alec found the length of rope that he’d packed. He contemplated it, knowing both why he had brought it and also why he hesitated. The light, magical, turquoise blue that had lit up on his forearm that fateful day had only appeared when Alec had gone beyond his means to return. The other variable present that night had, of course, been Alec’s youngest brother Max, fallen overboard and sinking fast, no longer even fighting to swim. It was not a variable that Alec would allow to be recreated. Not for anything. If his soulmark only appeared when his family was in danger, then Alec would absolutely prefer to stay as he was, with his hatefully pale, unmarked skin. There was a wave large enough to nearly tip the dinghy, and Alec made his decision. He knotted the rope to a cleat on the side of the dinghy then tied the other end around his ankle. This way, even if he was not successful, if his sibling had to go searching for him… if they found him lost to the sea with the rope around his ankle, Isabelle would at least know that he did try to return. (He could not truthfully say that he would try to return to the surface, if he was honest with himself, but he was pragmatic enough to allow himself that option. Should everything go wrong, and his mark not appear, he would give himself the resources to at least attempt to save himself, even if he was not entirely certain he wished to continue on as he was.) With the rope knotted securely to his leg, the only thing left for Alec to do was to wait. The wind picked up and the storm grew in power, the sky dark and grey as ashes. When the boat nearly capsized, Alec fought his trained responses and let himself be taken over the side and into the water. The salt burned as Alec forced his eyes to stay open, and the current quickly pulled Alec down into the depths. His lungs burned and his ears hurt as he plummeted deeper into the darkness of the ocean. Alec searched, looking desperately at his skin, for any sign of his soulmark. He struggled in the water, fighting with the confines of his shirt, cursing himself for not stripping naked before he’d leapt into the water. His vision was blurry and painful, but his skin remained the familiar, dull, pale tone that it had been all his life. Alec tore at his sleeves, finally managing to get his shirt off even as he fell deeper into the water and farther away from his ability to reach the surface, and there was nothing. No blue glow of a name that Alec had waited his entire life to see. The pain in his ears reached a piercing weight, Alec’s lungs were burning, and he had no mark to show for any of it. He fell into the dark of the ocean and screamed. There was no sound, no effect at all except for the salty water to flood his mouth. Alec’s mind understood the consequences of his actions but his body still fought, and he swallowed, the burning sting of the saltwater entering his lungs, phosphenes creeping into his vision. Through the panic of survival that had flooded Alec’s body, he forced himself to search, one last time, for any trace of his soulmark. There, just as his vision went dark, the bright, luminous blue once again lit up on his arm. Alec tried to fight, struggling anew, attempting to see the mark clearly, but it was too late. He could no longer fight the pull of the water and sank into the sea. *** When Alec next opened his eyes… he was still underwater. The horrifying pressure was gone from his ears and the salt-sting was absent from his eyes, and even though he was somehow deeper into the depths of the ocean than he had ever been before, he had no trouble at all drawing breath. He groaned, and even that sound could somehow be heard through the water. Alec frowned in confusion and sat up, hissing at soreness caused by the motion. It was only soreness though. The stiffness of muscles that had been worked too hard but would easily recover with a day of rest. Alec had no idea how he was still alive. He stared at his hands for a while, then looked at his arm. The beautiful blue glow of his soulmark was vibrant against the white of his skin, and Alec let out a joyful shout, somehow in shock that his dream had come true. All of his decisions, any risk he’d ever taken, it was all worth it for it to end with him arriving in this moment in existence. Gently, he traced the mark with a fingertip, utterly entranced by the way the turquoise light of his mark seemed to shift with the ocean around him. He was so focused that he jumped when a hand settled on his shoulder. Alec turned, eyes wide, and was met with the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen in his entire life. The man before him was singular, with shining, dark hair that was just long enough to start floating in the water around him and well-formed muscles, flashing golden, cat-like eyes. His skin that seemed to shimmer and sparkle even as Alec watched. “Do forgive me,” the man said. The man’s voice was warm and welcoming. Alec nearly wanted to weep with joy from the sound of it. “I had wished to be here when you woke,” the man continued, “I apologize for causing any distress.” Alec shook his head, wanting to wave away any idea that he could possibly be distressed in any fashion by the situation he had found himself in. “Who are you?” Alec asked, reaching out, though not yet allowing himself to touch. The man looked amused, raising an eyebrow and smiling indulgently, glancing pointedly at the way Alec reached out, and the ever-so-small space between Alec’s fingertips and the man’s own chest. “I call myself Magnus Bane,” the man said, “I am not certain if you can read the mark on your arm, but–” “You’re my soulmate,” Alec said, summarizing the situation succinctly, but sounding dazed with awe at the same time. Magnus smiled again, and it lit up his entire face, his white teeth flashing brightly in the dark of the sea water. “It would appear to be so,” Magnus said in agreement, before finally taking pity on Alec and moving forward so that Alec’s fingers touched skin. Magnus had less hesitation in reaching out, first running his hand along the soulmark on Alec’s forearm and then moving to catch Alec’s chin in his hand. “What is your name, soulmate?” Magnus asked, kindly. “Ah– Alec.” The reply was a stuttering mess, but Alec was too entranced by the golden colour of Magnus’ eyes to notice. “Alec, or Alexander?” Magnus asked, and Alec shook his head as much as he could without dislodging Magnus’ grip on his chin. “Either– I don’t. It doesn’t matter,” Alec said, blinking up at Magnus, smiling and besotted. Magnus laughed and leaned forward to kiss Alec on the forehead, “well then, if it does not matter, I suppose I shall have to use both until a preference arises.” Magnus pulled away and looked Alec in the eye, and it seemed that it took only the merest second for all of the joy and humour to drain from Magnus’ countenance. “Alexander,” Magnus said softly, “my love. You should not have been down here. If I had not found you in time, you would have died. What possessed you to go out in a ship like that during a storm like this?” “I had to find you.” Alec said, unrepentant. He’d known the risks of his decisions, and if it had led to him being here, he knew he would never be able to find it within himself to regret. Magnus sighed and looked deeply, incredibly sad for a long moment. “I am sorry, then, that you felt you needed to come looking.” Fear flooded Alec at Magnus’ words. “Are– are you going to send me away?” He could not imagine anything worse than that. Terror flooded his mind, giving him images of Magnus explaining the reason Alec nearly had to die was because Magnus did not wish for a soulmate, or that Alec was somehow some kind of mistake. “Hush, my love,” Magnus’ voice broke through the mounting worry of Alec’s imaginings. “I would never, ever send you away. I have never been more happy than to find out that you have made your way to me.” Magnus’ other hand came up to stroke though Alec’s hair which was floating freely in the currents of the water. “Do not fret about such things,” Magnus said, “I have a soulmark as well. I have lived for a very long time without one, but now that I have, I would be very cross if I had to give you up.” Magnus looked at Alec and then kissed him on the forehead again. “Please, my love, Alexander. Know that you are wanted. I have never wanted anything more, in all my years of life.” Alec looked up at the gorgeous gold of Magnus’ eyes, and he had no end to the questions he wanted to ask, but with every strange, impossible breath that he took in this strange, underwater place, Alec knew that he would have time to ask any question that he could think of. For the moment, there was truly only one that was important. “Am I dead?” “No,” Magnus said, looking somehow both charmed and heartbroken at Alec’s question, “no, you are not dead. You are as alive and hale as you were when you rowed out here this morning.” Alec glanced down at his leg. The rope line that was attached to the dinghy was still tied around his ankle. “Is the storm still going?” Alec asked. Instead of a reply, Magnus’ eyes seemed to turn a brighter gold, and Magnus pulled his hand out of Alec’s hair and made some manner of incomprehensible gestures that Alec had no hope of being able to follow. “The storm is gone now,” Magnus said, once he was finished. “Did you– did you send it away?” Alec asked. Magnus simply smirked and raised an eyebrow. “Surely these are not truly the questions you had in mind for me.” Alec paused, considering Magnus’ words before he nodded in agreement. “Will you disappear again if I go back above water?” Magnus shook his head no. “Now that we have met, the bond is forged between us. It will allow us to accompany each other anywhere.” Alec wanted to smile, but instead he glanced upward. They were deep enough into the ocean that Alec could no longer even see the surface. “My - my siblings. If they noticed I was missing, they would have gone looking for me, no matter what the weather.” Magnus looked up and then back to Alec, before reaching out to take Alec’s hand. “No one else entered the ocean during the storm.” Alec had no idea how Magnus could possibly know such information, but at the same time he believed entirely that what Magnus was saying could only be true. “You wish to go see them,” Magnus said, looking at Alec carefully. Alec nodded. “They– they’ve been worried about me.” “With good reason,” Magnus said, sounding thoroughly unimpressed. “It was the only way I knew how to find you,” Alec protested, looking up at Magnus. “For that I truly am sorry,” Magnus said softly, not engaging with Alec’s defensive stubbornness. “I promise it will not be that way in the future.” “Because we have the bond now?” Alec asked, wanting to make sure his understanding of the situation was accurate. “Yes,” Magnus said, confirming Alec’s guess, “but also because I did not know before, what it would be like, and now that I have realized– now that I have felt even a fraction of the love you hold in your heart, I will never, ever leave your side unless I have no other options.” Alec stared, unsure of how to respond to such a sentiment. Magnus smiled again, then made another gesture, eyes glowing that incredible, molten gold colour. Once he was finished, he reached for the rope tied to Alec’s ankle. “Come along, then. I suppose it’s time for me to meet your family.” Alec moved then, guiding Magnus’ hand from the rope and to Alec’s own grasp, tangling their fingers together and squeezing tightly. “They will love you, just as much as I do,” Alec promised. Magnus leaned in and kissed him softly, properly, drawing their mouths together in a soft, lush, endless kiss, that still somehow managed to be over in less than a breath. “I look forward to it, Alexander. Now, take me to meet your family.” It took Alec several moments to gather his wits back, even after Magnus pulled away. He knew they did need to return to the surface as soon as possible, as his family would be searching for him. He wanted to kiss Magnus again, but he did not trust himself not to get lost in kissing Magnus for the rest of eternity in this beautiful, magical, impossible place beneath the sea. Alec compromised by pressing a kiss to the soft skin on the back of Magnus’ hand. “You are my soulmate, Magnus,” Alec said softly, “I shall take you up to meet our family.” Magnus looked sad and also wholly, unconditionally happy. “That sounds perfect, Alexander.” He squeezed Alec’s hand, “That sounds perfect.”

#mysteryuntamedmind #malecsanta19 #*fics19 #*gifts19

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mllemaenad · 6 years ago

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'Imagine your children growing up in such a world. If a mage asked it of you, you would have to give him your daughter, not knowing what his plans for her might be. You could not resist him, and neither could she.' - Sorry, this line particularly came to my attention because take away magic and this? Is exactly what happens in the Tabris origin. And to that one Orlesian merchant in Denerim in DA:O. And probably to any number of peasant/elven girls at the hands of nobles every day across Thedas.

No need to be sorry. :)

You’re right. Absolutely.

The thing is – take this in context. This is an answer written by a grand cleric to a nobleman who seems (we don’t have his side of the conversation, obviously, so we can only infer from the substance of the reply) to have been challenging the Chantry’s treatment of mages. If you look at it like that, then what the grand cleric is describing is what happens to almost every mage child in southern Thedas.

Armed men come to your door and take your child away. You have no right to say no. And you have no idea what they’re going to do with them. They may take your child to a Circle across the sea. They may murder them. They may make them Tranquil. They may rape them, beat them, torture them. Maybe you’ll be lucky: maybe your kid is Vivienne or one of the Warden mages. Maybe they’ll do okay.

But you don’t know. And you can’t tell the Templars to go away; that they can’t have your child. They live in a world where this happens to parents every day.

It’s almost too much to imagine. The Circle, the Templars, they’ve shaped my life. I was no more than twelve when they came for me. My mother wept when they fixed the chains to my wrists, but my father was glad to see me gone. He had been afraid, ever since the fire in the barn. Not just afraid of what I could do, but afraid of me, afraid my magic was punishment for whatever petty sins he imagined the Maker sat in judgement upon.

– Anders (short story)

Anders’s mum couldn’t say no. Maybe she wanted to. At bare minimum, it sounds as though she didn’t want to lose her son forever. But that’s what happened. Little Ella is desperate to get back to her parents, because the Templars didn’t even tell them where they were taking her – and when we encounter her, a Templar is threatening her with Tranquillity and strongly implied sexual assault.

Wynne gave birth to a healthy baby boy, whom she was allowed one day with before he was taken into Chantry custody. The child, who was names Rhys, was taken to Lydes and from there transferred to the White Spire in Orlais when it was discovered that he, too, was a mage.

– World of Thedas I

They kidnapped a newborn baby and took him to a different damn country. It took decades, and fighting an archdemon, for Wynne to even get the chance to find him again.

Dulci de Launcet was lucky: she’s a noble, so she at least had letters and some general idea of where her kid was, but she hadn’t laid eyes on her son since he was six.

Yeah. Good fucking job, Chantry. You really solved the problem of powerful people coming to your door to abduct your children.

But while, yes, given the context of the letter I think the irony is best understood in relation to mages, I definitely think it can be expanded upon:

The demon had impersonated the human man who had bought her from the slavers that took her in after her father died. She’d had no idea back then who those kind men really were, only that they offered her food and a warm bed to sleep in. Then an even kinder man came to take her from them, and she found herself in his luxurious home and thought herself the luckiest girl in the entire alienage.

How very naive she had been. Count Dorian, as she learned her new master’s name to be, had been in search of an elven whore he could keep as a pet, something he could put in a pretty dress and bring with him on one of his many trips to the capital, like baggage.

– Dragon Age: The Calling

Ah, look. The exact scenario Grand Cleric Francesca was fear-mongering about. A little girl abducted, enslaved and sold to a nobleman who abused and tortured her. Yes, a mage-child as it happens, but that wasn’t apparent at the time. Fiona was vulnerable because she was an elf – an orphaned elf considered expendable by society.

“What they wish is irrelevant.” Celene turned and stalked away from the window. “I am already fighting a war on two fronts. I cannot be seen to fight a war on three.”

“Then don’t.” Briala rose, putting herself in Celene’s path. “Give them justice.”

“A lord for the death of an elf? I … damn this thing.”

With a quick jerk, Celene tore her mask from her face. Her face was flushed beneath, her eyes red from another night of little sleep. “Shall I declare the elves equal citizens before the Maker and the throne as well, while I’m at it?”

“Why not?” Briala took her own mask off, stealing a quick moment to steady herself. “Unless you don’t believe that, and I’m just a jumped-up kitchen slut you haven’t tired of yet.

– Dragon Age: The Masked Empire

Or here: a revolt that ends in genocide, and that begins because it is unthinkable that they arrest a nobleman for murdering an elf. The victim’s name was Lemet. He was killed shielding an eight-year-old boy who threw a rock at a carriage. And the boy said he did it because his mother had been murdered by Orlesian nobility:

“They killed my mother,” the boy said, pulling against Lemet’s grip.

“Be quiet.” Lemet looked back at the coach and heard its joints creak as the guards jumped down to the street. The driver would want to have that oiled, some part of Lemet’s mind noted.

“They can’t come down this street after what they did to her,” the boy insisted. “They can’t!”

– Dragon Age: The Masked Empire

Or this, where soldiers rob, rape and murder their own citizens in the midst of a civil war:

“Two days ago, Lady Seryl’s men rode in and cur down every man and woman working the fields. Killed our guards, killed everyone in the village square. When they finished killing the other soldiers, they fired arrows out onto the water, killed most of our boys in the boats. They took all the food they could find. They spent the night.” A collective flinch splashed across the crowd. “Said we had been assisting enemies of the throne, that this was a lesson to anyone who’d help Gaspard’s men.” At the last, his voice broke. “My lord, I don’t even know who Gaspard is.”

– Dragon Age: The Masked Empire

Or the serial killer who is repeatedly allowed to walk free because he’s a magistrate’s son, and he targets elven children. Or the elven boys who fled to the Qun because a guard raped their sister – no one would arrest him, so they took matters into their own hands.

And yes, of course, you see the exact same thing in Ferelden in the alienage.

I’m sure everyone feels so much safer now they’ve locked up all the mages.

Orlais’s crimes don’t excuse Tevinter’s. That’s where they went wrong with Dorian’s … painful dialogue on slavery. You can’t point to the horrors of Orlesian society and therefore suggest that the Tevinter slave trade is not that awful. It doesn’t work like that. What you can do, though, is say that Tevinter’s crimes don’t excuse Orlais’s – particularly when they tend to do exactly the same shit:

Slavery still thrives in Thedas, even if the trade has been outlawed. Who hasn’t heard the tales of poverty-stricken elves lured into ships by the prospect of well-paying jobs in Antiva, only to find themselves clapped in leg-irons once at sea? And humans fall prey to this, too.

If they’re lucky, they end up in Orlais, which has only “servants.” Most nobles treat them decently because they are afraid of admitting the truth. Orlesians go to great lengths to maintain the fiction that slavery is illegal.

Of course, the greatest consumer of slave labor is the Tevinter Imperium, which would surely crumble if not for the endless supply of slaves from all over the continent. There, they are meat, chattel. They are beaten, used as fodder in the endless war against the Qunari, and even serve as components in dark magic rituals.

—From Black City, Black Divine: A Study of the Tevinter Imperium, by Sister Petrine, Chantry scholar

– Slavery in the Tevinter Imperium

Fiona is not an anomaly: Orlais kidnaps and sells people into slavery, too.

And this makes sense. Fantasy always draws on the real world, even if they mix and match the cultures and historical periods a bit. So, just like in the real world, you generally have to take anything the wealthy and powerful say with a grain of salt.

The Chantry has a very specific, empire building, agenda. It makes much of problems that aren’t really problems (demons and abominations are not widespread threats, and both are poorly understood); it pins the blame for actual crises on oppressed groups (the Blight is in no way the fault of this random peasant mage from Antiva); it uses racism and religious intolerance to create in- and out-groups (elves [and dwarves, but we haven’t conquered them yet] are degenerate heathens who are preventing the Maker from returning).

As much as I love Dragon Age, what Bioware does sometimes that is … uncomfortable … to use a mild word, is that it lets the powerful rule the narrative. Inquisition is worst at this, because it presents strong voices for people like Cassandra and Cullen, who stick fairly close to the party line. And then it takes characters like Varric and Sera, and distances them from their own cultures … which is fine for individuals but awkward when we’re not letting Briala or Fiona say much either – and where the fuck is Sigrun? No one’s spoken for Orzammar’s casteless since Awakening. But it’s there, to some extent, in all the games.

So the point, always, is that mages and Circles are misdirection. Mages are scapegoats in the Chantry faith who are held responsible for all the bad things, and represent a pretend evil nobility that the Orlesian Chantry is keeping under control.

But the actual problems of this fantasy world are more or less the same as the problems of the real world: powerful nations dominate the continent and force others to bow to their whims and adopt their culture, because empires are just shit; the rich and powerful hoard all the rights to themselves, and can do damn near anything to the poor – particularly where the poor are part of a marginalised group.

What Orlais doesn’t want people to realise is that they are Tevinter. It was never the mages that were the problem, it was the absolute power the Tevinter magisters held over their slaves �� a power now held mostly by the Orlesian nobility, who use it in pretty much the same way. Not exclusively, no: of course the nobility of other nations can be, and bloody are, evil fucks. But even there, the Chantry view helps to obscure the truth: you should be scared of empires and those who rule them. Much more scared than you are of a possessed mage.

#dragon age #Anonymous #cw: violence #cw: abuse #cw: rape #chantry critical

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quranreadalong · 7 years ago

Text

#113, Surah 20

THE QURAN READ-ALONG: DAY 113

Let’s see... where were we, again? The pharaoh is dead, the Jews are out of Egypt, and Allah is telling them how awesome he is. Right. 20:81 is where we’re starting. Allah tells the Jews not to transgress the limits he has set up for them, lest they face “My wrath”, which seems bad. But 20:82 is relatively good in comparison, saying that he is “relenting” towards those who believe and do good and pray for forgiveness etc.

Anyway, then Allah asks Moses (while he is up on the mountain getting the Ten Commandments and such) why he’s gone away from his people. Moses says that they’re still nearby, at the bottom of the mountain, he just wanted some alone time with Allah. But Allah informs him that something has happened while he’s been away.

He said: Lo! We have tried thy folk in thine absence, and As-Samiri hath misled them.

...wait, who the hell is As-Samiri? We’ve seen the golden calf story before a bunch of times, but this guy hasn’t been mentioned until this ayah. Did we pick up some Samaritan guy offscreen? A little help here, Ibn Kathir...?

Muhammad bin Ishaq reported from Ibn `Abbas that he said, "As-Samiri was a man from the people of Bajarma, a people who worshipped cows. He still had the love of cow worshipping in his soul. However, he acted as though he had accepted Islam with the Children of Israel. His name was Musa bin Zafar.''

Yeah that was the opposite of helpful, thanks. I have no clue who the supposed cow-worshipers of “Bajarma” are supposed to be. A footnote in al-Tabari’s history says it was in what is now northern Syria or Iraq. But then how the hell did he end up traveling with Hebrew slaves out of Egypt and into Israel?! Lo! Let us look at another opinion, please. The Jalals and several others translate his name as “the Samaritan”, as in someone from Samaria in the modern-day West Bank, which seems far more plausible... until you realize that Samaria does not yet exist in this part of the Biblical timeline, as the Hebrews have not gotten to the Promised Land yet. Uh...

Well... let’s assume that Mohammed didn’t quite understand the admittedly complicated timeline and assume he meant “the Samaritan”. Who is this guy and what has he done? Moses stomps back into camp and demands answers. His people tell him that the Samaritan told them to melt down all their golden jewelry, and then...

Then he produced for them a calf, of saffron hue, which gave forth a lowing sound.

Then he... uh... made it into the shape of a cow, which mooed. Damn impressive, really, especially given that they’re in the middle of nowhere. Quite hard to hand-shape molten gold! But why would “the Samaritan” do such a thing? Well, I do believe there is an answer for this. In the Book of Hosea, chapter 8, we read the following:

They have set up kings, but not by Me; They have appointed princes, but I did not know it. With their silver and gold they have made idols for themselves, That they might be cut off. He has rejected your calf, O Samaria, saying, "My anger burns against them!" How long will they be incapable of innocence? For from Israel is even this! A craftsman made it, so it is not God; Surely the calf of Samaria will be broken to pieces.

Remember in the history lesson I talked about Jeroboam and how he made golden calf idols? And remember also how Samaria was the capital of Jeroboam’s kingdom? Yeah, that’s what this is about. Now, uh... according to the Biblical timeline this happened like 500+ years after the Moses story, but this clearly seems to be where Mohammed got the idea about “a Samaritan” making a golden calf idol from, even though this person is not present in the Exodus version, nor are Samaritans a thing yet.

An unanswerable question is whether Mohammed intentionally spliced these unrelated stories together or if he just got confused and thought they were about the same incident. The latter is certainly possible, as he’s done such things before, but there’s evidence for the former as well. In the Exodus version, all of this is instead done by Aaron, Moses’ brother. Aaron is later forgiven for it, but the change seems intentional. Mohammed wasn’t a fan of character flaws in holy men and tended to write many of the prophets’ “moments of weakness” out of the Quran’s narrative.

...but it’s equally likely he was just confused. The whole history of Israel/Judah, like the stuff from Kings and Chronicles, is totally skipped over in the Quran so I don’t think he knew much about it, and it’s totally possible he heard “Samaria built a golden calf” and assumed it was about this story. Idk!!

Anyway, the golden calf was, of course, not a real god. Unlike his complicit counterpart in the Exodus version, the Quran’s Aaron tells the Hebrews to stop it, but they ignore him because Moses isn’t there. When Moses hears about this, he gets angry at Aaron for not stopping them, but again Aaron pleads for forgiveness. Neutral if non-Biblical. Relenting, Moses then turns his anger on the Samaritan gentleman in question, asking what the hell he thought he was doing. He cryptically replies in 20:96:

I perceived what they perceive not, so I seized a handful from the footsteps of the messenger, and then threw it in. Thus my soul commended to me.

Tafsir authors think that this refers to the Samaritan seeing Gabriel riding his horse, then scooping up the dust on which the horse had trodden, and throwing it into the mix. Thus the magic mooing, I guess? I dunno. The Quran doesn’t really specify what he “perceived” or what he “seized a handful of” or who the “messenger” is, so that guess is as good as any.

I did notice that the Babylonian Talmud records a story in which Satan appears in the Jews’ camp, sending a storm to confuse them while Moses is on the mountain, trying to convince them that Moses was dead by showing them an “image of Moses’ corpse in a cloud”. I have no idea if that’s even remotely connected to this story or not, but at least there’s an idea of some otherworldly being being present at the time.

Regardless, Moses essentially gives the Samaritan the punishment of being an untouchable, and tells him that he’s gonna wreck his dumb cow statue.

(Moses) said: Then go! and lo! in this life it is for thee to say: Touch me not! and lo! there is for thee a tryst thou canst not break. Now look upon thy god of which thou hast remained a votary. Verily we will burn it and will scatter its dust over the sea.

Here’s the thing about the Samaritans. According to them (some still exist, not many though; forced conversions to both Christianity and Islam greatly reduced their numbers), they are simply descendants of the fallen Kingdom of Israel. They follow the Pentateuch, just like “regular Jews”, but do not follow the other books of the Bible. There are a few differences between their version and the “regular” version, but most of it is the same. (As I said in the history lesson, it seems that while the bulk of the Pentateuch was completed in the first post-exile century, editing of the text continued for centuries. The editing produced thousands of grammatical differences between the two, though the stories themselves are virtually identical with one exception.) So it seems that after the exiles returned from Babylon, their northern neighbors took on their holy book without much religious strife.

But problems began to develop between the two. The issue that seems to have precipitated this feud was the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem. The Book of Ezra casts them in a very negative light, saying that they clashed with the returned exiles and tried to stop the new temple from being built. This was because the Samaritans already had their own holy site, called Mount Gerizim, which was in Samaria--in the modern-day city of Nablus. And they weren’t interested in Jerusalem taking its place. This is, in fact, the main difference between Samaritans and Jews: the emphasis on Gerizim or Jerusalem, respectively. According to Ezra, the Samaritans delayed the completion of the temple for nearly 40 years, and the relationship between the two communities was permanently damaged.

As such, other parts of the Bible (written by the returned Judean exiles) give the Samaritans a rather unfavorable origin story. It says that they are not Israelites by blood--that they are polytheists who were brought in to Israel by the Assyrians to replace its native population. (For what it’s worth, judging by genetics, the Samaritans are descended both from native Israelites and resettled people brought in by Assyria, so both are kind of correct.) While Jews still begrudgingly acknowledged that the Samaritans followed essentially the same religious rules as they themselves did, they were labelled not fully Jewish. Intermarriage with Samaritans was banned and from then on the communities became quite separate, with Samaritans regarding the Jews as mistaken and the Jews looking down upon the Samaritans as lesser. Thus the story of the good Samaritan in the Gospels and the general idea that they should not be engaged, etc.

So I guess Mohammed turned this into their original sin or something even though Samaria didn’t exist then?? Anyway Allah is god etc and that’s the end of this very dumb story. We’ll stop there.

NEXT TIME: Doom, doom, Iblis, doom

The Quran Read-Along: Day 113

Ayat: 19

Good: 1 (20:82)

Neutral: 17 (20:83-99)

Bad: 1 (20:81)

Kuffar hell counter: 0

⇚ previous day | next day ⇛

#quranreadalong #taha #surah 20

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sareally · 7 years ago

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What’s my sin? “You’re ruining our family. Hindi ka ganyan.”

By: Ginny Puno

These words have changed myself dramatically. It has been hard for me to talk about this specific instance in my life. However, when I was asked to discuss a phrase or sentence that significantly affected my identity today, I could not help but recall these striking words uttered by my mom. In tears, she tells me, “You’re ruining our family.”

To put things into perspective, my mom told this to me when I was a third year high school student – still trying to figure out who I was in this world. With the growing availability of media at this point in time, I can say that my discovery of myself was also shaped by the information I was exposed to. As someone who was extremely fond of YouTube, I had come across certain viral videos of people coming out to their parents in a creative and touching way. Similarly, I was growing to like even more gay personalities like Tyler Oakley, Joey Graceffa, and Hannah Hart who proudly flaunted their sexual orientation. Even in the environment I was working in, I would see that most of my peers had developed an acceptance of homosexuality. More and more lesbian couples emerged within my school, people started developing their own “girl crushes”, and I would hear more frequent discussions on homosexuality. With all this considered, I started to question my own sexuality too.

Long story short, these events led me to having my first relationship with a girl and for some strange reason, my parents found out about it. This leads us to my mom accusing me of destroying the family. It boggled me at that time to think that my self-exploration was destructive to my family - that my own efforts in trying to figure out who I really am were in fact detrimental to my own family, whom I love and care for.

This experience still brings numerous questions to my mind today. It makes me question if it really was a conscious decision for me to identify as a cis-gendered female or if this was simply brought about by my fear of losing my family. I am certain that there is no greater love I possess than my love for my family. Did this, then, get in the way of me truly knowing myself? Of me truly discovering who I was at my core? This internal struggle I’m experiencing further stresses how my parents have become identity agents in my life. Identity agents are defined as individuals who participate in the formation of a youth’s identity. Through the entire process of trying to make sense of this new relationship I was in, it became even more evident to me how my parents were my identity agents. Upon learning that I had expressed my attraction towards the same sex, my parents could simply have let it slide. They could have let it go. However, they didn’t. They saw this new development as a threat to my overall identity. When I would ask them to explain to me why they expressed so much disdain, they would bring up issues on religion – saying that what I was doing was a grave sin against the Lord.

Ever since I was little, my parents have instilled in us this appreciation for religion. We would go to mass as often as we can and not simply reach the bare minimum of attending mass every Sunday. My father would force us to go through the sacrament of confession every month, even if we didn’t want to. From these instances alone, I see that my parents want me to grow up to be a religious person – swearing by the Bible and its teachings. Part of the identity they were forming for me was a Roman Catholic girl who would do anything for and by the church. I would say that I still aim somewhat religious and I still actively practice my religion. However, when I realized that the church was hindering my self-discovery, I started to question this. I started to ask, “How would such a religious and ‘holy’ institution shun me for simply expressing my love for someone?” I knew that I was doing nobody harm by being with my significant other at the time. I was simply acting on whatever feelings I had possessed. So, what is my sin? Here, I was faced with individuation.

Individuation is an important milestone in the development of adolescents. Individuals slowly let go of their strong attachments to the teachings of those perceived to be above them, like my parents or the church, and they start to see value in the formation of their own opinions and criticisms. My own assessment of the situation, especially with how my parents introduced me to the church, has led me to be more knowledgeable today. Without undergoing this event in my life, I would probably not question the church and its functions. Now, however, I do see that even the church system is flawed. That even issues like capitalism and corruption can penetrate such a holy organization. Going back, the way I was at the brink of losing my privilege to be worthy of love and acceptance simply because I chose to love someone of the same sex allowed me to question my parents and the church.

It is important to note, however, that although individuation is necessary, it can still be destructive if not carried out properly. There is a way to have healthy individuation in relationships – which I also realized at that time. Individuation does not end with concepts of rebellion or individuality alone, it must be paired with connectedness for it to be helpful in the growth of an individual. In my case, although I did question my parents, I did see their point. Aside from religious concerns, my parents also brought up some other issues on my young age, my limited environment, and “trends” and this allowed me to also question if my feelings were valid. Of course, I still asserted my own views, however, I still saw the value in respecting their side of the story. This consideration of their ideas against my sexual orientation helped me further assess myself. I now identify as straight, however, this does not invalidate the fact that I did feel what I felt and that I used to be bisexual. Although I identify differently now, I always go back to my experience as someone who was bisexual and I have used this to further understand the sentiments and struggles of other people.

Along with the words my parents had against me having a different sexual orientation were questions. “Hindi ka naman tomboy, bakit ka ganyan?” another interesting phrase I heard from them was, “Diba crush mo si James Reid? Paano nangyari ‘to?” I realized that gender stereotypes are not limited to just male or female stereotypes. Even with the members of the LGBT community, there are stereotypes that hinder them from expressing themselves freely. Just because I did not act, dress, or look like a boy, my parents immediately put the possibility of me being anything other than straight out of the picture. I am also, admittedly, a very “kikay” person who was fond of things normally perceived as girly. However, this should not limit me as someone who would be straight.

Another popular example that shows this was how Pia Wurtzbach stated, in an interview, that she would love for her son to be gay so that he could do her hair and make-up. Moreover, Moira de la Torre’s song entitled “Titibo-tibo” talked about how the persona in the song acted like a boy and this was immediately associated with the term “tibo”. As someone who did not fall under a certain stereotype as bisexual, it was hard for me to fully express myself as such. I knew that because I did not fall under certain physical qualifications, I may be questioned on my sexual orientation – and this is exactly what happened with my parents. It is important, then, to educate people to be more accepting to allow for authenticity to prevail.

Additionally, I believe that the propagation of social media and the internet has allowed for these stereotypes to dominate certain cultures. Although social media is a great platform for educating oneself on our modern world, we must also be careful to filter out the things we see. For example, my parents are also increasing their personal usage of social media. With this, they are exposed to even more members of the LGBT community and have learned more on this topic. However, instead of teaching them to be more accepting, certain portrayals of the LGBT community online have led them to further stereotype people and to box them within certain definitions. My mom, for example, is very fond of humorous gay comedians online and is fond of watching videos on Facebook of gay individuals dancing, doing splits, and doing death drops. However, this has limited her to seeing gay men as just feminine, when in fact, there are gay men who do not possess feminine qualities.

Although it is true that social networks have brought about various platforms for people to express themselves, it will only be effective if we educate ourselves as much as we can, and this includes going beyond what is said online and experiencing the real world. I have realized that the beauty about gender expression and identity is that it can never be put into a single definition. We live in a day and age where people are realizing more and more about themselves and are not afraid to break away from the definitions set by society. Similarly, I have undergone this entire process of discovering myself and building my identity. I know that there are some people who do not believe that sexual orientations can change, but I’ll be proud to tell them that that is not the case. Here, we go back to the importance of connectedness in healthy individuation. This calls for us to not end with critiquing and questioning things, but with creating healthy discourse and listening to multiple sides before arriving to a conclusion. Hopefully, more and more people can engage in these kinds of conversations for us to be able to build a healthy and accepting world.

SOURCES:

Schacter, E., & Ventura, J. (2008). Identity agents: Parents as active and reflective participants in their children’s identity formation. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 18(3), 449-476.

Moore, S. & Rosenthal, D. (2007). Gender, sexuality and romance. In Sexuality in Adolescence: Current Trends (Ch. 6 pp. 132-155). New York, NY: Routledge.

Grotevant, H., & Cooper, C. (1985). Patterns of Interaction in Family Relationships and the Development of Identity Exploration in Adolescence. Child Development, 56(2), 415-428. doi:10.2307/1129730

#module3

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confrontingbabble-on · 7 years ago

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“When organized religions were first developing, there were already an ample number of reasons for conflict, such as land, capital, and the greed that fueled selfish desires to accumulate more and more. But religions made wars very personal. If two groups went to war over religious differences, they weren’t just fighting for their material belongings and land; they were fighting for their sacred beliefs. Religious differences have also intensified many wars that were started for reasons that had nothing to do with religion. Religious beliefs were bound to become more and more extreme, dogmatic, and important to people, especially as governments used them in attempts to justify exploitation and murder.

It can be hard to believe people still kill each other over religion and the interpretation of religious texts written thousands of years ago.

The religious myths most people cling to stem from Abrahamic texts. The Jewish people have the Torah. Christians have their Bible comprised of the Old and New Testaments, and adherents of Islam have the Qur’an. All of these texts are filled with myths. Some parts of the New Testament and the Qur’an are considered historical, because there are physical remains (from buildings and monuments) that show they existed. But the Bible’s ideas about creation and the history of the universe are mythical

Parts of these Holy Books are very removed from reality because they were written so long ago. Individuals who believe every story in these books is nonfiction are called biblical literalists. However, most religious people are not biblical literalists; they believe in some of these myths and reject others.

But it’s likely the people who wrote them believed everything they were writing was true, and they wanted everyone else to take what they were writing as literally as they did. If you believe, praise, endorse, or promote the entire Bible, Torah, or Qur’an, you should be aware you are promoting unscientific claims, violent, patriarchal, and hateful scripture, and a few positive, peaceful platitudes that contradict the more hateful parts.

I believe it is best to study and analyze these books for their individual parts for these reasons but it’s nonsensical to pick and choose passages we like and pretend like the rest don’t exist.

2.8 Immorality, Myth, and Contradictions in Religious Texts

The problems with these texts are not exclusive to the myths. Rejecting science is dangerous, but many of these documents also promote hate and various conflicting ideologies. The Old Testament and the Torah, despite what most believe, promote immorality, slavery, patriarchy, indiscriminate violence (especially targeted at “Israelites”), and the domination of children.

The Christian Bible even provides grotesque rules on slavery...

The Bible also prohibits women from teaching, asserting authority over men, talking too much, and asserts that women are inherently sinful...The Bible also contains very primitive, puritanical, and oppressive rules about menstruation...

Jesus is one of the very few consistently moral characters in the Bible. He acts nobly and selflessly at times and supports the poor in the book. But even Jesus acts immorally at times as well. In several parts of the Bible, he condemns people to hell for not believing in him. There are several similar verses throughout the Bible in which Jesus condemns people to hell, and the concept of hell and eternal suffering are also concepts created by Jesus according to the Bible. The Old Testament and the Torah do not mention hell, but Jesus does many times.

The interpretations of God in the Christian Bible are also very inconsistent. God is described as extremely violent and unforgiving in many passages of the Bible and as very benevolent in others. Most often, however, God is portrayed as a very immoral, removed, selfish being, and these parts of the Bible have been used to justify very violent, vile acts.

Another example of immorality in the Christian bible can be found in the Book of Job. In it God argues with Satan (I am not sure why they are on talking terms) about the loyalty of Job who is described as a very faithful, religious, and righteous person. Satan argues that Job is only so faithful to God because he has a good life. God disagrees, so as a test, God tells Satan to kill Job’s children and destroy his possessions to see if he will remain loyal. Job, as God expected, remains faithful to God and continues to pray and not curse Him, despite his losses. As a reward, God gives him twice the possessions he had (because that is what really matters, of course). God also gives him two new daughters who were surely just as nice as his previous, murdered children. In this story, God has ten children killed just to prove Satan wrong, which he doesn’t even succeed in doing. According to this story, even if you obey God, he may still punish you.

...biblical scholar Raymund Schwager has pointed out that “There are six hundred passages of explicit violence in the Hebrew Bible, one thousand verses where God’s own violent actions of punishment are described, a hundred passages where Yahweh expressly commands others to kill people, and several stories where God irrationally kills or tries to kill for no apparent reason.”

Violent, hateful dogma and corrupt powerful clergy aren’t exclusive to Christian, Islamic, or Judaic communities. Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism have also been used as excuses to commit heinous attacks on innocent people, despite the fact that their religious texts are more peaceful. For example, Buddhist monks like Phra Kittiwuttho have stated that killing communists is not against Buddhist principles and extremists monks have led fatal attacks on Christians and Muslims in Sri Lanka. Anti-Muslim riots led by the Bodu Bala Sena or “Buddhist Power Force” created by Buddhist monks broke out in Sri-Lanka in 2014 where 70% of the population is Buddhist and 10% Muslim. 10,000 people were displaced, hundreds were made homeless, and at least 4 were killed. The Sri Lankan government ordered news stations to censor their coverage on the riots to avoid being implicated. The government of Myanmar (formerly Burma) has done the same for many years. 87.9% of its population Buddhist and just 4.3% is Islamic. Violence flared in August 2017 with 2000 to 3000 Rohingya Muslims killed by the government forces in Rakhine state alone in three days.4 Muslim women, children, and infants have been also been raped and killed by the state forces of Myanmar. Radical, fundamentalist Hindus in India have also massacred Muslim minorities a number of times, such as in Gujarat in 2002 (during which young girls were raped, burned, or hacked to death, 2000 Muslims were killed, and Chef Minister Modi along with Indian police encouraged the violence) the Bombay riots in 1992, the 1987 Hashimpura massacre, the 1983 Nellie massacre, and in Gujarat in 1969, in which police planned the violence.

We know so much more about the world because of the countless advancements in science we have made since religious texts were written. We have the ability to shape our own futures and we ought to. Most people would agree the inequities and suffering on the Earth right now are palpable and we need change. But most of us are religious and have been for some time. So why would God allow so much suffering if God is both benevolent and omnipotent as most religious texts claim? This is sometimes referred to as the “problem of evil,” and it is a very significant topic that will be discussed in the next section”

Read in full...https://toolsofcontrol.com/2017/09/04/immorality-violence-myth-and-contradictions-in-religious-texts-puritanism-backwards-religious-views-on-sex-contraception-abortion-homosexuality-marriage-and-rape-by-clergy/

#atheist #agnostic #secular humanist #skeptic #Religion #Christianity #religious insanity

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foolish-sunbeam · 7 years ago

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Club Proof (Intro)

Written to the song: Nothing Holding Me Back by Shawn Mendes

Genre: Angst (future smut/fluff/trauma/etc)

Word Count: 2K

Pairing: Wait and find out!

“Jiae, please don’t tell me you want to go THERE again!” Your voice cracked as your best friend stood in your door way with two to-go cups in her hands and a smirk that promised wickedness. “We almost got kicked out last time!” There was a soft whine to your voice, whether due to annoyance or actual concern was inconsequential. You already knew you would go- how could you deny Jiae anything? It had been nearly ten years and she still had to only suggest, and you would find yourself doing the thing.

“Y/N, I promise we won’t cause too much trouble tonight, I just want to poke around again. Are you really going to make me go by myself?” Her dark lips pursed as the to-go cup was thrust from her left hand into your own. She carried herself with confidence, even when making herself at home in your new apartment somehow, she managed to fit into the surroundings flawlessly. “Besides… I heard Taehyung is going to be there tonight...” Though her voice trailed off your spine stiffened at the name. She didn’t lift those baby blues to you but there was no doubt that on her face was one of her signature gotcha grins.

“Dammit, fine.” You grumbled and closed the door, making your way to a seat at the table beside her. Carefully you sipped your drink, testing the temperature. Finally, you made a vague gesture for Jiae to continue with her proposition. “Tell me what you want us to do…and I’ll see if I’m game.”

By the end of Jiae’s monologue, you couldn’t help but feel a rush of excitement at the idea. The premise was ridiculous of course (Jiae thought that the bouncer wouldn’t recognize the pair of you if you wore higher fashion than usual), but you had to admit you had always wanted to get to the backroom of Club Proof. You both knew the risks and the rumors, a well-organized group of young mafiosi oversaw the whole establishment and- if you were one to believe gossip- half the city. It hardly mattered to your friend though, Jiae was wild and undisturbed by the idea of rubbing elbows with gangsters; this being the reason for why you had found yourself is many precarious situations. For all her charm and brilliance Jiae felt no fear, or rather lacked the sense to fear, and she didn’t hesitate nor think through possible ramifications. Your best friend simply DID.

“You think Taehyung’s going to be spending time with…them?” Your eyes narrowed, a small crease forming between your brows as you gave your friend a once over. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Her eyes didn’t quite lift from her cup, a finger lazily trailing over the rim of her drink before she spoke in the same dulcet tone that could soothe the rage of any fearsome beast- it was a perfect ploy at innocence, you would know, she’d been working on it for the better part of a decade. “Oh, it’s nothing concrete Y/N! Please don’t worry, I am sure Taehyung is being safe.” Those lashes fluttered a moment in a nervous tick you’d learned years prior before she flashed a brilliant smile. Jiae was all sharp edges, but that smile was soft and concerned. For now, you resisted the urge to press the point. You could ask Tae yourself…tonight. At Club Proof.

The magnitude of what you had agreed to hit suddenly. An intense uncertainty settled in the pit of your stomach as the possibilities began to work through your mind. “What happens if we get found out, Jiae? My dad’s not exactly on friendly terms with the criminal community?” The question was moot. Even though your father oversaw a large organization in Japan, and he worked on specialized surveillance to track possible criminal activity, he probably wouldn’t hear about this. He would have to be involved in your life to care, and currently he wasn’t. Regardless of her answer you knew that you would go. If not purely out of concern for your best friend and what could happen if Jiae went alone. A shudder traveled up your spine as you thought about the last time she had almost gone forward without back up…meeting a ‘source’ without an escape plan was reckless, and yet she had gotten desperate. She had planned on going, but you intervened and both of you knew now the meeting had almost resulted in her disappearance (or worse). After all, the police had found the body of a young woman matching Jiae’s description murdered the next day…

She was lucky to have you; the thought was dispassionate and entirely in the voice of your father, but you shook it off quickly. You were her best- and possibly only- friend. You would always protect her.

“If you don’t want to come just say it,” Jiae mumbled and leaned back in the chair. Her pale hand shoved through a mass of red curls, her eyes closed, and a small groan left her before she opened those blue orbs and sat forward. “I have a theory about the sudden outbreak of petty crime and I need to get close to The Wings.”

The cringe was reactionary, and you couldn’t control it. Using their name was dangerous, even in the safety of your own home there was always a risk that someone had burning ears. Someone was always listening. The Wings was an organized group of men and women that did everything from loans to drugs to weapons to corporate espionage; of course, this was all conjecture, and nothing had ever been able to stick but it was an accepted truth. The Wings was a family run syndicate, and two brothers were the head of the Bangtan branch. The Bangtan ran the whole operation and the brothers had only been glimpsed once or twice during the last time you visited Club Proof but with Jiae’s inability to keep a low profile there was little you could make out about the two men. Well, other than they were tall and inhumanly attractive.

“Can I ask why we are doing this? I know you well enough to know that petty crime isn’t your scene. Plus, I doubt your Editor okayed a story that involves Bangtan.” You said casually and finished off your drink, a warm smile curved your lips. “You can tell me anything, Jiae.”

The quiet that filled the room was sudden, and unexpected, as Jiae looked at her hands with unease. You were about to tell her to forget it when her eyes lifted, pools of tears threatening to spill over. “I think my dad works…worked for them, Y/N. What if I’m a deviant by blood?”

Tugging at the hem of your black dress you gave yourself a once over in the full-length mirror resting against the hallway. The dark leather was a second skin, allowing for your figure to be entirely on display with cute little peekaboo cut outs along the sides and across your back. A deep maroon mesh crossed over your barely covered breasts, giving an accentuation to their swell they didn’t need. Even though dresses weren’t your style, you had to admit this number made you look Fuckable with a capital FUCK. Leaning down you fixed the fishnets that traveled up your legs, onyx suede ankle boots showed off your height without too dramatic of a heel and with mussed hair you were about to start singing about how much you were feeling yourself. “Jiae are you ready?”

A small shuffle and then the door opened, you couldn’t help but smile. Your best friend was considerably shorter than you, here wild mass of hair was hopelessly pinned in a style only someone so odd could pull off. Her makeup was soft except her lips were black; the contrast added an interesting play on her young features. Like you Jiae wore a dress that was indecently short, however, the color was a crimson and just a few shades darker than her own hair. The bodice of the dress was a corset style which added to the ‘pay to play’ look that Club Proof was known for. She shifted awkwardly for a moment trying to get used to the heels she wore, knowing she would rather wear flats you rolled your eyes and chuckled. “Ugh…okay. What do you think?”

“I think we look like bait.” You murmured in complete honesty, allowing the seriousness settle in.

“Perfect!” She cooed and grabbed your hand, heading out the door. “I love a good hunt.” Jiae hummed, and you gave a small sigh before following along. Hoping the night didn’t end in anything too dramatic- but who knew?

The scent of cigarettes and sex was jarring as you stepped into Club Proof. Your hand wrapped around Jiae’s wrist and stopped for a moment. These walls held a whole different kind of world within them and it always took a moment to get used to the change.

Women danced on platforms, their barely clad forms moved in a deliciously provocative way as they worked the runway between the booths and the floor. Everyone held an air of salaciousness about them, even as you brushed past strangers you couldn’t entirely shake the dull intoxicated feeling of being in this pocket of sin. “Let’s get a drink,” your voice was soft as you scanned the floor hoping to see Taehyung.

“Yeah, yeah.” Jiae smiled agreeably and lead you to the large U-shaped bar; however; there was a new face behind the bar and that set off tiny warning bells. Jiae, as usual, seemed undisturbed. “Hiya gorgeous, can I get two fingers of vodka for my girl and I?” Lashes swept low over her cheeks and you hand to force yourself not to roll your own eyes at her overtly suggestive nature.

“Mmm, the two fingers are going to be shared?” Dark eyes trailed from you to your friend, the implication not being lost on you either, but as you went to protest the idea you were here as an intimate pair, Jiae’s fingers slid around the back of your neck and brought you close. Her dark lips brushing along your jawline, you might have been distracted by the action, but the bartender was enthralled.

“Did you hear him, Y/N? What sort of lechery makes that thought even occur?” Jiae purred prettily and then let you go, allowing for a soft laugh to escape. The barkeep’s lips twitched briefly before a laugh of his own rumbled out. Sucker, you thought with a smile, she had him. “Oh, you have a sense of humor? Wonderful! Mm, what’s your name?” Jiae said breezily and gave the man her undivided attention, ‘curiosity is going to get you killed’ you desperately wanted to remind her, but his laughter died out quickly and the two drinks were handed out.

As you grabbed yours the dark eyed man looked from your friend to you and did a full once over. His eyes narrowed slightly, his smile seeming to take on a sharper edge. “Be careful ladies, if you need anything feel free to ask… Just make sure you can afford the question.”

“Noted.” You said tightly and turned away, your legs carrying you to a booth. As you slid in you begin to speak but noticed that Jiae wasn’t with you, instead you were sitting alone with a drink and a pit in your stomach. “Fuck!” You hiss out angrily, you didn’t consider anyone would hear you over the music, but someone did.

“Y/N?” A deep voice growled up from behind and you swore again, much softer this time, before turning to meet the dark eyes of Kim Taehyung. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

a/n: Hi there! So, I know this isn’t the longest piece of writing ever, but it is an introduction to a story I’ve been playing with for a while. I’m going to be introducing more characters and developing the whole world over a mini series, and hopefully you enjoy it. Special shout out to @moonchild-taetae because always <3

#bts #kim seokjin #min yoongi #Jung HoSeok #kim namjoon #park jimin #kim taehyung #jeon jungkook #bts trash #bangtan #bts angst #series starter

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esamastation · 7 years ago

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Vincent in VHD... thing, snippet

"Let me tell you a story, stranger," the Elder speaks, approaching the dark haired man slowly.

"We are the village of the Barbarois – outcasts and mutants and freaks. This is where, many a century ago, those that society discarded gathered, to be alone together, than apart in the world that so loathed us."

He motions around them, to the village carved into stone. It looks impressive at first glance, like a temple with it's many vaulted doorways leading deeper into the mountain, with the carvings in the rock and machinery over head. The village isn't entirely enclosed – it's pored instead into two jutting peaks, covering almost entirely the sharp ravine that cuts right through the mountain, though whether it was natural or shaped so by tools, is hard to tell.

From the many door ways, windows and peek holes, demons and monsters and mutants watch them. Women with snake's bodies, kids with lizard's limbs, men with more legs than they should... There are people who look like they were made of living shadow, others that seem to be covered in moving hair, there are werewolves and hags and creatures that don't even have name.

"We cloistered ourselves here, where humans would not live, where we'd be free of censure," the Elder continues. "We carved out living out of crude rock and we made a home for ourselves where others would not come. Where we would be safe. There weren't many of us, a mere couple dozen, but we made out way of the world. Anyone would respect that, I think?"

The dark haired stranger says nothing, watching him without expression.

"That was five thousand years ago, when the Nobility started waning and humanity rose to fight monsters," the Elder says and looks away bitterly for a moment. "And for most of those long, long years we've been secluded, with only ourselves to rely on, only our selves for company. And they were good years. Harsh, but we were safe, we were at peace. We could... procreate without judgement."

The stranger's eyes narrow now, watching him warily.

"Thousands of years of seclusion has given us strength like no other," the Barbarois Elder continues. "We have honed our abilities – our demonic bloodlines have risen to sharp peaks of power. Our best manipulate elements as if they were born to them, our best live in shadow like it was mere air to them. Our best can surpass even the strength of Nobles!"

Now there is sound other than the Elder's speech – nervous and tense cheers from the hidden archways and doors around them, as the half hidden people of the Barbarois speak their agreement. The Elder nods, proud and satisfied at the people, and then he turns back to the stranger.

"We, the Barbarois, are strong," he says proudly. "Not even the, tch, new Revolutionary Government the humans set up in the old Noble Capital can touch us. But strength like ours isn't managed by nothing. Nothing springs from void – everything must have a base. And we've had ours, we've perfected it. Now, it is time to add something new."

The dark haired man he's talking to closes his eyes for a moment, his lips thinning in displeasure. "That's why you summoned me here?" he asks slowly, his voice like gravel. "To be a breeding stock?"

"You," the old man says, looking at him almost covetously. "Whatever you are, you are strong. I can taste the presence you put off, a true demonic aura! We've long lost ours, you see, in our program of enhancing select traits some things had to be sacrificed. I can't say any of us is a true demon, not any more, the bloodlines are far too blended – but you... you are a demon, no, not merely a demon. You are a greater demon, aren't you?"

He moves closer to the stranger and the dark haired man opens his eyes sharply. The glow in the shadowy darkness of the Barbarois village – and the old man stops, nervous.

"Please, Great One, lend us your power. Share it with us, so that we may prosper and grow strong!" the Barbarois Elder says. "You're a monster like us, surely you understand our blight? In a world that hates and despises us for our very existence, we must be strong or we might perish at the hands of those who would rid this world of things not like them. Surely... surely you understand."

The stranger says nothing and the silence that follows the elder's passionate speech is tense and uneasy. In that silence, the demonic presence wrapping around the dark haired strange seems to swell and pulse, licking at the air around him, making it seem thick with malice.

"No," the stranger then says and pulls out a gun. "I think not."

Vincent Valentine had been asleep when he'd been summoned. It had been one of his longer stretches of sleep; judging by his stiffness upon waking up where he wasn't supposed to be, it might have been centuries since he'd gone to his most recent stone coffin, to wait for the world to pass him by.

That is more or less what he does now. The world has already left him behind long ago, centuries ago, maybe millennia, back when he'd buried the last of his old companions. He hadn't made the effort of making connections after that – knowing he'd eventually just loose them too. There was no point to inviting such pain.

When there is no one and nothing to hold you to the present, time moves faster – which is just as well. It would take the end of the planet to erase his now meaningless existence on it's now seemingly vacant surface, and the sooner he gets there, the better.

Though of course the planet isn't vacant. The times he glimpsed it between bouts of long sleep Vincent had seen it grow and recover and by now it is flourishing. Where there had been empty plains, forests and orchards and endless farm fields now grow. Where before there had been mere ramshackle villages trying to scrape a living out of the parched earth, there are now cities full of life – and flowers.

It is everything Avalanche could have hoped for. Vincent can appreciate it too in those terms, as ancient dream come true. But it is hardly reality to him.

His reality is a world ravaged by cruelty and malice, his reality is a small handful of people who'd reached for him in the darkness and pulled him out of it with their, then, foolish optimism and determination. His reality... is buried long ago into graves that had by now been lost, along with histories of those who'd been buried in the. No one remembers Avalanche, or Cloud Strife – they don't even recall Sephiroth, or ShinRa. Even the Meteor is ancient history now, perhaps a mere myth.

Vincent sleeps and pretends he too can forget – until he's woken by the feeling of his body being torn apart by a feeling he can't recognize – but the beasts within him can, waking from their slumber in rage and irritation.

Summoned..., they growl at him. Who dares, who dares, who DARES...

And they remember their reality before him. The howling void of what Vincent can only interpret as being Hell, where they'd been before Professor Hojo had started tinkering with summoning materia to further his experiences. Some had been there for eons, others for only handful of years – all of them, in their own way, had been suffering. That had been an existence of endless pain and burning. Punishment, maybe, Vincent used to think. That was what the classic hell was, after all – punishment for sinful souls.

Some of them – like Galian Beast and Chaos – had been summoned countless of times, and they remember the fury of it every time. The tearing agony of moving between dimensions and realities and the outrage of being commanded by beings they saw lesser than them. The others, Death Gigas and Hellmasker, both much younger souls than the demons, knew less by experience, but they'd been together for long time now – stories and experiences had been shared.

Before Vincent, the Galian Beast had oft been summoned to do meagre, meaningless tasks like slay humans, or to fight in wars that weren't his. Used as little more than attack dog and tool, he'd both enjoyed it for the destruction he could wreck and hated it for the humiliation it was every time.

Chaos, a much older and much more powerful demon, had it worse still. He'd been summoned to share his power, more often than not – to imbue demon's aura on objects or weapons. Sometimes he, like Galian Beast, had been summoned to perform tasks, but more often it had been to cast curses, to grant power, to grant wishes as if that was one of his powers. A tool for finer purpose is still a tool.

In Vincent they have a prison they can't escape and they hate him for it – but in Vincent they also have a respite and in their own way they appreciate it. Trapped in their host, they cannot be summoned to do menial tasks and lower themselves to command of creatures so much lesser than them. In Vincent, they were imprisoned – and free.

Or so they thought.

The summoning tears Vincent apart and his demons' outrage wraps him like a cloak, thick with malice and fury.

- - -

So I started writing the hopefully eventually Vincent x D thing but I’m not sure about how I like this approach, so, here’s half of the chapter and depending on how people like it I’ll post the full first chapter on ao3 or just scrap it and try another approach.

Now on ao3

#fanfiction #vincent valentine #vampire hunter d #barbarois #mentioned breeding programs #for mutants demons and such #barbarois are a fun bunch

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beinformedlivetransformed-blog · 5 years ago

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Jesus is saving the world and He’ll restore everything when He returns...you’re not the Saviour, Anna.

This is something I hear from some conservative evangelical Christians when I share about making intentional decisions in the everyday concerning caring for the creation, e.g. composting, thinking heaps before buying anything (do I really need another...? Can I just use...? Can I fix...? Can I buy this second hand?) and researching brands to make sure they’re to a certain standard of ‘ethical’ if I do decide to, washing things before I recycle, donating to organisations that work in animal welfare, etc.

I believe there are (at least I can see) two key underlying theological assumptions/misunderstandings/gaps behind these words.

1. That in this period, while we, as God’s people, wait for Jesus’ return, all that’s important is ‘saving people from sin’ (i.e. evangelism).

First off, I fully believe in the priority of evangelism. Because of this, I have given up paid work as a teacher and joined a faith-based organisation, where financially I’m receiving less than half what I could earn, that allows me to spend the time I would in a full-time vocation doing evangelism amongst uni students on campus. Our Lord Jesus knew the time was short and so, throughout His teaching, His miracles/signs, His parables, He proclaimed and always sought to challenge a response in the form of “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near” (Matthew 4:17). Hence He calls His disciples to follow Him and tells them “I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19). The call we should prioritise is “Repent! God’s kingdom (and judgment) is coming!” And we have also received the call to fish for men with Jesus’ eleven disciples (Matthew 28:18-20). However, a great sad thing has happened to us when we do call others - we focus so much on one side of the coin, we forget the other. We tell people what Jesus has saved us from - we stuffed it up, we’re broken, we’re in need of saving from God’s right anger, and He swallows up the consequences of that by His death and resurrection - but we don’t tell them what He has saved us for. ‘Repent’ means ‘to have your thinking changed’. When Jesus declared that the kingdom is at hand/near (Mark 1:15), He was saying that a new world order is coming, and He has brought its beginning. We can choose to join in this new world order, or to continue in our old ways, and perish with it. To join into this new world order means we hear the call to ‘repent’ and we listen to what this entails, and we keep listening (Mark 4:1-20), to what Jesus has to say about living the new way (some examples are given by Jesus in Matthew 5-7). Listening means taking action/responding with a life of repentance (Luke 3:3-14; Luke 18:18-25; James 2:14-26). This is the pattern by which we live transformed lives, as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1-2). In other words, every saved person is saved for the purpose of “obeying everything that I have commanded” (Matthew 28:20) and when we call people to salvation, we are to “teach them” (Matthew 28:20) this. It means teaching, and modelling, what it means/looks like to bring everything under the lordship of Jesus (because “all authority in heaven and on earth have been given to me [Jesus]” (Matthew 28:18). We often teach people too simplistic a message about salvation. We focus on the ‘spiritual’ and not the physical. We focus on the ‘ticket to heaven’ and not the ‘what does it looks like to be and become a person that belongs to the kingdom of heaven’. Two sides of the same coin. The one is as important as the other. And I want to use John Stott’s words concerning the care of creation in this:

“...just as our understanding of the final destiny of our resurrection bodies should affect how we think of and treat the bodies we have at present, so our knowledge of the new heaven and earth should affect and increase the respect with which we treat it now. What then should be our attitude to the earth? The Bible points the way by making two fundamental affirmations: ‘The earth is the Lord’s (Psalm 24:1), and ‘The earth he has given to the human race’ (Psalm 115:16)...For the earth belongs to God by creation and to us by delegation. This does not mean that he has handed it over to us in such a way as to give up his own rights over it, but rather he has given us the responsibility to preserve and develop the earth on his behalf...God intends our care of the creation to reflect our love for the Creator.”

from The Radical Disciple: a look at eight characteristics of Christian discipleship, which are commonly neglected yet deserve to be taken seriously, pp. 56-57, 65

John Stott, a very well-respected evangelical theologian, understands that redeeming how we relate to God’s creation is part of our discipleship (the other side of the coin of salvation, what we’re saved for). He understands that our neglect of it is a sign of us not understanding how to relate to God as Creator, our next point.

2. That we have lost our connection to God’s world (which is a consequence of sin) and see no need to restore that connection now, because we don’t understand/teach God as Creator.

In Lionel Windsor’s, a lecturer in New Testament at Moore College in Sydney, little book Is God Green?, he does an amazing job of presenting the issue from a biblical theology perspective, i.e. explores the issue of creation and our relationship to it through the storyline of the Bible. In his third chapter titled “The broken image” he says the following:

Here [in Genesis 3:17-19], humanity’s relationship with the earth itself is cursed. God curses the ground because of the sin of the human being. Adam ends up living in a state of war with the world God has made. Of course, that’s what happens when people made in the image of God stop acting in the image of God: when God’s rulers stop ruling the world properly under God, when God’s rulers try to rule their own way...when we think we know what’s right and wrong despite God’s ways...our world is in mourning, because we, its rulers, have turned our backs on the creator by not living for him, but living for ourselves, worshipping what we can get out of the world. As a result, we hate each other, we are greedy...

from Is God Green?, pp. 31, 34

Did you catch that? Not relating to the world as we should (representing God as Creator to it) is not living out our image of God. As per point 1, you and I are saved for a purpose: to live our what we are meant to be! To be the image bearers of God to a dying world! We know God as Saviour (and this is the doctrine of God we constantly focus on in our churches)...why do we not know God as Creator? We need to spend time growing in understanding what it means, what it looks like to relate to, and thus reflect, God as Creator to others and the world. If Jesus came to restore our relationship with God, other people and the world, why do we only talk as though the first two matter in our discipleship? At a conference recently, hosted by A Rocha Australia, Lionel Windsor applied this thinking to Colossians 3:1-10. He asked “What would putting off greed look like?” We are supposed to act now according to who we are (even as we wait for God to fix everything). He pointed out that this actually has applications that are directly concerning restoring our relationship with the creation: not wanting more than we actually need, taking care of what we have, not living only thinking of what we can gain...it’s only a next step turning this into application: avoid buying palm oil products (mostly junk food like instant noodles that we don’t need) which comes from unsustainable farming and rapid destruction of forests that are homes to many wildlife, avoid fast and cheap fashion which come from sweatshops where other humans are paid wages that cannot sustain life, and rapes the environment to the point of destruction (check out this satellite image of the Aral sea as a result of growing cotton for the fast fashion industry), rather than swapping out for the next/latest iPhone or coolest gadget upgrade every couple of years, seek to care for and repair what you have for as long as you can...

The fact that we don’t often think about such applications shows how unrepentant our minds are - how unchanged we are by the gospel shaping all areas of our life here and now. But it also shows how unchanged our state of relationship with the creation, as described by Lionel Windsor in the excerpt above, is. Jesus has saved you for a (re)new(ed) way of thinking about and living out your relationship with the creation.

Andrew Shepherd, who also spoke at this recent conference, said that before we can think about stewardship generally as part of our discipleship, we need to contemplate the beauty of the world God has made...this will help us understand God as the Creator. We cannot just see things as what they can do for us. Surely, we teach each other in Christ to not see people this way. Why don’t we teach it about the creation/the natural world? God as Creator means that both humans and living creatures and things have intrinsic value (they are fashioned by Him; they echo His glory; they declare His creativity). He said we need to move out of thinking of the world as an “extractive economy” which ultimately cheapens the creation and thus cheapens God as Creator. In fact, our economic cheapness (we like to buy what’s cheapest) is an indication of how far we have gotten. “Economic mismanagement and ecological degradation are very tightly related.” “We need to see and read Scripture as embodied [his emphasis] in Jesus and redeem this for our embodied lives.” Some examples he gave of how to do this (learn what it means that God is Creator and contemplate the beauty of the world God has made):

- Read the Bible communally as much as possible, and in its entirety, and do so outdoors

- Draw your learning of God’s word more broadly from global Christians, not just Western Christians who inevitably fall into a “capitalist” thinking about economics and ecology (I was chuckling a bit to myself here, as I sadly recalled an audiobook Andrew was listening to written by Wayne Grudem called The Poverty Of Nations: A Sustainable Solution which was incredibly disappointing in how much a capitalist and disempowering mindset was posited about people and right relationship to things)

- Let your actions come out of joy from and love for God as Creation and the creation, not guilt and obligation

I wish I could unpack more of these applications, but I’ve already babbled on long enough. If you’ve gotten this far, you are very patient! But I guess some of you probably want a summary because the above got a bit too much. So here it is: Yes, I wholeheartedly believe and am so thankful that Jesus is saving the world and He’ll restore everything when He returns. This was always God’s intention (Colossians 1:15-20; Ephesians 1:10). I am not the Saviour (also very thankful for this). However, this doesn’t imply I do nothing as I wait for that day. In fact, that is not God’s intention at all. Part of His salvation plan for the world is for you and me, who are now in Christ, to put on the new self (in the image of Christ - the perfect image bearer of God, which we are meant to be, and now called to be). This new self basically looks like an ongoing renovation until He returns: a restoration of relationship with God, with other people, and with the created world. We lack ‘creativity’ or ‘scope’ in understanding this ongoing renovation which requires our action because of our limited teaching and understanding of God in all of His ways, including God as Creator. We need to redeem and grow in our understanding of this by starting to read God’s word in its entirety, with others and outdoors, within the creation, learning from a global community of Christian thinkers (many in the majority world understand restored relationship to the creation in Christ much more than we do), and actually letting our thinking flow out in practising sustainable consumption and reverence and concern for animals and other living things. This is not because I think I can make a huge difference as one person, but because I am ultimately accountable to God, my Creator and Saviour, for how I live in light of what I know of Him.

I would love to hear your thoughts on my theologising.

#thinkingrightly #bible #consumption #sustainability

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moviegodsandgoddesses · 6 years ago

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I wanted to share my experiences of visiting two Louisiana plantations recently, especially in lieu of the fact that this year marks 50 years since the release of “Slaves”, the controversial and under appreciated 1969 film about slavery. The film itself was made at the Buena Vista Plantation near Stonewall, LA., about 250 miles north of New Orleans near Shreveport. I hope to make a trip to that plantation later this year to document it for my blog.

In the meantime, however, I recently enjoyed a visit to New Orleans and had a great day trip from Grayline Tours which visited two plantation sights. Here’s what I saw.

On the way to Whitney, on “River Road”, we caught a glimpse of the Evergreen Plantation which was used for some scenes in Tarantino’s film “Django Unchained.”

Evergreen Plantation

Whitney Plantation

I was very impressed with the narration and poignant documentary memorials at this site. When you arrive they give you a lanyard with a slave’s name and story on the back. You immediately feel connected to the scenes which are about to unfold. Unlike Buena Vista, Whitney Plantation, which is located on what the locals call “River Road” in the lower part of the state, was a sugar cane plantation. Buena Vista, which is located farther north, was a cotton plantation, as depicted in the movie “Slaves.”

At Whitney the sugar cane was harvested generally between October and January, but it was basically a year round ‘factory’, as our guide described it. The sugar cane was also processed on the plantation in a process called ‘The Jamaica Train”. Sugar cane was soaked, then pounded, then finally granulated into it’s final form. All of the working and cutting and harvesting of the sugar cane was done by slaves. The Whitney includes some of the original slave cabins, which housed anywhere form 14-25 people at a time. The slaves were allowed to raise chickens and grow other vegetables to feed themselves. It was a hard life and dangerous in so many ways – including not only overwork, but injury by all the dangerous tools used to harvest the sugar cane.

Besides some very touching statues of slave children, the Whitney includes some amazing memorial walls listing hundreds of peoples names – usually just first names, because that’s all we know about the people who lived here for generations in slavery. There are also brief stories engraved on these memorials as well of the heart-wrenching existence these people endured.

There is also a special monument to a slave uprising in the area, and also another section for the slave children, documenting some of their memories and also their names. There is also dreadful plantation bell which was rung through the day to keep all the slaves in time with their tasks or meals. People on our tour rang it in passing in memory of one of the slaves. There are also some slave ‘pens’ at Whitney which used to be located all around New Orleans, where the slave trade was constantly in motion. New Orleans was the capital of the slave trade. You can step into one of these pens and see the places were cuffs and chains were hooked.

Whitney was used as the location of the Academy Award winning film “12 Years a Slave”. It also has an oak tree path in the front of the house. We toured the first and second floor. It was rather modest and small to what you generally thing of a ‘plantation’ house.

My impression of Whitney is that this is a ‘must-see’ for anyone. Just like places like Auschwitz, which is also initially hard to visit, it is a place and an experience which really makes you appreciate and understand the harsh realities of what happened in the context of the time.

Oak Alley

Onto the next plantation! Now I had seen Oak Alley many years ago, but they have done a better job now of displaying and explaining the slavery side of the plantation. Of course Oak Alley is known for it’s incredible big house, and the 300 year old oak trees which dominate the path towards the Mississippi. This plantation has been seen in many films, including “Interview with a Vampire.” The front of the house brings to mind the ‘moonlight and magnolias’ of the Old South in all its romance.

However, now the sight does show and document several of the slave stories from this plantation as well. There are several cabins which still stand, and the plaques explains the difference between the ‘house’ slaves and the ‘field hands’, which were the lowest of the slaves. It also tells specific stories of certain slaves, by name, and what happened to them on this plantation. On display are also chains and an especially grotesque-looking collar which would make it impossible for someone to try to escape.

To read the actual accounts of slavery is really the only way to really understand what went on. Accounts vary from person to person. Many masters were brutal while others were more gentle. Some slaves immediately fled the plantations after the Civil War while others lingered behind or stayed, either because of circumstance (wage labor) or merely considered the plantation and the masters family their own home. So many women were raped or brutalized and so many families were torn asunder. Slavery did damage to not only slave but slave-owner as well as the unlimited power these men (and women) had over others truly turned many of them into sadistic brutes. So many stories to tell.

I highly recommend the below books, as well as Frederick Douglass personal narrative.

When I Was A Slave (from the Slave Narration Collection)

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (“Slaves” is a look remake of this novel)

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs (one of the more harrowing true life accounts you will ever read)

Celia, A Slave by Melton A McLaurin

I’ll end with a quote from Harriet Jacobs riveting personal account from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Harriet hide in a crawl space above her grandmothers house for 7 years before she made her escape to the North!

THE TRIALS OF GIRLHOOD

DURING the first years of my service in Dr. Flint’s family, I was accustomed to share some indulgences with the children of my mistress. Though this seemed to me no more than right, I was grateful for it, and tried to merit the kindness by the faithful discharge of my duties. But I now entered on my fifteenth year—a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import. I tried to treat them with indifference or contempt. The master’s age, my extreme youth, and the fear that his conduct would be reported to my grandmother, made him bear this treatment for many months. He was a crafty man, and resorted to many means to accomplish his purposes.

Sometimes he had stormy, terrific ways, that made his victims tremble; sometimes he assumed a gentleness that he thought must surely subdue. Of the two, I preferred his stormy moods, although they left me trembling. He tried his utmost to corrupt the pure principles my grandmother had instilled. He peopled my young mind with unclean images, such as only a vile monster could think of. I turned from him with disgust and hatred. But he was my master. I was compelled to live under the same roof with him—where I saw a man forty years my senior daily violating the most sacred commandments of nature. He told me I was his property; that I must be subject to his will in all things. My soul revolted against the mean tyranny. But where could I turn for protection?

No matter whether the slave girl be as black as ebony or as fair as her mistress. In either case, there is no shadow of law to protect her from insult, from violence, or even from death; all these are inflicted by fiends who bear the shape of men. The mistress, who ought to protect the helpless victim, has no other feelings towards her but those of jealousy and rage. The degradation, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out of slavery, are more than I can describe. They are greater than you would willingly believe. Surely, if you credited one half the truths that are told you concerning the helpless millions suffering in this cruel bondage, you at the north would not help to tighten the yoke. You surely would refuse to do for the master, on your own soil, the mean and cruel work which trained bloodhounds and the lowest class of whites do for him at the south.

Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows. Even the little child, who is accustomed to wait on her mistress and her children, will learn, before she is twelve years old, why it is that her mistress hates such and such a one among the slaves. Perhaps the child’s own mother is among those hated ones. She listens to violent outbreaks of jealous passion, and cannot help understanding what is the cause. She will become prematurely knowing in evil things. Soon she will learn to tremble when she hears her master’s footfall. She will be compelled to realize that she is no longer a child. If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse. That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave. I know that some are too much brutalized by slavery to feel the humiliation of their position; but many slaves feel it most acutely, and shrink from the memory of it. I cannot tell how much I suffered in the presence of these wrongs, nor how I am still pained by the retrospect.

My master met me at every turn, reminding me that I belonged to him, and swearing by heaven and earth that he would compel me to submit to him. If I went out for a breath of fresh air, after a day of unwearied toil, his footsteps dogged me. If I knelt by my mother’s grave, his dark shadow fell on me even there. The light heart which nature had given me became heavy with sad forebodings. The other slaves in my master’s house noticed the change. Many of them pitied me; but none dared to ask the cause. They had no need to inquire. They knew too well the guilty practices under that roof; and they were aware that to speak of them was an offense that never went unpunished.

*****

A PERILOUS PASSAGE IN THE SLAVE GIRL’S LIFE.

……I have told you that Dr. Flint’s persecutions and his wife’s jealousy had given rise to some gossip in the neighborhood. Among others, it chanced that a white unmarried gentleman had obtained some knowledge of the circumstances in which I was placed. He knew my grandmother, and often spoke to me in the street. He became interested for me, and asked questions about my master, which I answered in part. He expressed a great deal of sympathy, and a wish to aid me. He constantly sought opportunities to see me, and wrote to me frequently. I was a poor slave girl, only fifteen years old.

So much attention from a superior person was, of course, flattering; for human nature is the same in all. I also felt grateful for his sympathy, and encouraged by his kind words. It seemed to me a great thing to have such a friend. By degrees, a more tender feeling crept into my heart. He was an educated and eloquent gentleman; too eloquent, alas, for the poor slave girl who trusted in him. Of course I saw whither all this was tending. I knew the impassable gulf between us; but to be an object of interest to a man who is not married, and who is not her master, is agreeable to the pride and feelings of a slave, if her miserable situation has left her any pride or sentiment. It seems less degrading to give one’s self, than to submit to compulsion. There is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except that which he gains by kindness and attachment. A master may treat you as rudely as he pleases, and you dare not speak; moreover, the wrong does not seem so great with an unmarried man, as with one who has a wife to be made unhappy. There may be sophistry in all this; but the condition of a slave confuses all principles of morality, and, in fact, renders the practice of them impossible….

THE NEW TIE TO LIFE.

…I had not seen Dr. Flint for five days. I had never seen him since I made the avowal to him. He talked of the disgrace I had brought on myself; how I had sinned against my master, and mortified my old grandmother. He intimated that if I had accepted his proposals, he, as a physician, could have saved me from exposure. He even condescended to pity me. Could he have offered wormwood more bitter? He, whose persecutions had been the cause of my sin!

“Linda,” said he, “though you have been criminal towards me, I feel for you, and I can pardon you if you obey my wishes. Tell me whether the fellow you wanted to marry is the father of your child. If you deceive me, you shall feel the fires of hell.”

I did not feel as proud as I had done. My strongest weapon with him was gone. I was lowered in my own estimation, and had resolved to bear his abuse in silence. But when he spoke contemptuously of the lover who had always treated me honorably; when I remembered that but for him I might have been a virtuous, free, and happy wife, I lost my patience. “I have sinned against God and myself,” I replied; “but not against you.”

He clinched his teeth, and muttered, “Curse you!” He came towards me, with ill-suppressed rage, and exclaimed, “You obstinate girl! I could grind your bones to powder! You have thrown yourself away on some worthless rascal. You are weak-minded, and have been easily persuaded by those who don’t care a straw for you. The future will settle accounts between us. You are blinded now; but hereafter you will be convinced that your master was your best friend. My lenity towards you is a proof of it. I might have punished you in many ways. I might have had you whipped till you fell dead under the lash. But I wanted you to live; I would have bettered your condition. Others cannot do it. You are my slave. Your mistress, disgusted by your conduct, forbids you to return to the house; therefore I leave you here for the present; but I shall see you often. I will call tomorrow.”

He came with frowning brows, that showed a dissatisfied state of mind. After asking about my health, he inquired whether my board was paid, and who visited me. He then went on to say that he had neglected his duty; that as a physician there were certain things that he ought to have explained to me. Then followed talk such as would have made the most shameless blush. He ordered me to stand up before him. I obeyed. “I command you,” said he, “to tell me whether the father of your child is white or black.” I hesitated. “Answer me this instant!” he exclaimed. I did answer. He sprang upon me like a wolf, and grabbed my arm as if he would have broken it. “Do you love him?” said he, in a hissing tone.

“I am thankful that I do not despise him,” I replied.

He raised his hand to strike me; but it fell again. I don’t know what arrested the blow. He sat down, with lips tightly compressed. At last he spoke. “I came here,” said he, “to make you a friendly proposition; but your ingratitude chafes me beyond endurance. You turn aside all my good intentions towards you. I don’t know what it is that keeps me from killing you.” Again he rose, as if he had a mind to strike me.

But he resumed. “On one condition I will forgive your insolence and crime. You must henceforth have no communication of any kind with the father of your child. You must not ask any thing from him, or receive any thing from him. I will take care of you and your child. You had better promise this at once, and not wait till you are deserted by him. This is the last act of mercy I shall show towards you.”

I said something about being unwilling to have my child supported by a man who had cursed it and me also. He rejoined, that a woman who had sunk to my level had no right to expect any thing else. He asked, for the last time, would I accept his kindness? I answered that I would not.

“Very well,” said he; “then take the consequences of your wayward course. Never look to me for help. You are my slave, and shall always be my slave. I will never sell you, that you may depend upon.” ….

Visiting a Southern Plantation 50 Years after the release of “Slaves” I wanted to share my experiences of visiting two Louisiana plantations recently, especially in lieu of the fact that this year marks 50 years since the release of "Slaves", the controversial and under appreciated 1969 film about slavery.

#Dionne Warwick #Harriet Jacobs #Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl #Oak Alley Plantation #Plantations #Slavery #Slaves #Stephen Boyd #Whitney Plantation

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ruffoverthinksthings · 8 years ago

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To continue with what the villains would do with their enemies if they taken over idea. What about EQ, would she settle for keeping her in a glass box or permanentLoy scarring her appearance? Would Frollo reign supreme in France or Gaston gets Belle as his wife? Will La ever get to kill Jane and marry Tarzan? Mozenroth and Nasira be Jafar's seconds?

On the Evil Queen, Frollo, Gaston, La, Mozenrath, and Nasira:

The Evil Queen wouldn’t probably want to put Snow White into another eternal slumber given how well that worked out the first time around. With Auradon being much larger than her original dominion, and all the new, attractive people going around that would have had her Magic Mirror giving her the “Top 100 Fairest Of Them All“ than just “The Fairest Of Them All” (largely attributed to all the multi-cultural standards for beauty, and the many different types of physical attractiveness in general), she would have to wreak her insecurity-driven vengeance on everyone else in a very different fashion.

She would LOVE to make hag potions for everyone, but even with the abundance of natural resources in Auradon and the resurgence of large-scale production and refinement of magical reagents, it’s still incredibly unfeasible and ruinously expensive to make everyone more attractive than the Evil Queen uglier than sin.

(No will admit this to her face, but the Isle has also done her no favours.)

So instead, she has the commoner’s water supply poisoned (in a sense) with a very basic concealment potion that turns its drinkers into people who are incredibly average, non-descript, and unimpressive in any way, shape or form. To help with this, she puts on a gigantic tax on cosmetics, beauty treatments, and high fashion, to the point where the industries that do survive the hellish disincentives and fees will only be able to survive by catering exclusively to the Evil Queen an, and attending to her every whim and whimsy, while leaving the rest of Auradon to be completely plain, and though not ugly, certainly nothing to write home about, either.

Snow White in particular might be the recipient of a specially made hag potion, OR Evil Queen could just go with full-on irony and force her to market and endorse all of Evil Queen’s personally branded beauty products that make you slightly more attractive (relative to how it used to be, before the villains rose up again), are ruinously expensive to most people, and require constant, religious application to maintain their effects whilst avoiding the side-effects.

On a related note, they sell like hotcakes.

Frollo wouldn’t be let evenREMOTELY near any sort of church or religious institution after thegiant debacle where he set fire to France because he couldn’tcontrol the fire in his pants, but what he CAN do is go into politicsand create Auradon’s very own version of a Religious Far-RightMovement, claiming all sorts of nasty things about the current,legitimate religious institutions, sustaining and growing his numbersthrough a mix of the hellish conditions that villainous rule willusher in, feeding on people’s worst impulses and the need to havesomeone to blame it on other than themselves, and of course,dissatisfaction with the current government and the need to feel likesomeone is in control and there’s some form of sense and order init, no matter how illogical and wholly dependent on blind-faith itis.

Of course, in reality,Frollo’s new “church” would be rife with self-serving abuse andscandal, largely of the sexual and monetary variety, but his “flock”will likely be so desperate to hold on to their only lifeline in aworld in the midst of several crises that they’d ignore themto outright defend their “beloved leader,” much like victims ofactual Stockholm Syndrome.

Gaston wouldn’t get Belleas his wife, seeing as he now has a vastly improved pool ofdating choices that in his opinion are much more superior to Belle inevery single way. That he only ever chased her was as a consequenceof him being the only woman to ever refute him, and Gaston is a manthat is relentless in his pursuit to make everything and everyone fitin his world view where he is the best at everything, the most loved,and the most powerful.

He’ll be the most harmlessof the villains seeing as Beast is already universally hated, andwould likely spend most of his time charming and wooing a mix of golddiggers, women seeking short-term flings, or women who are REALLYdesperate for a powerful, stereotypical “male” partner to “save”them from the insanity that is villain rule.

Lawon’t get to kill Jane then marry Tarzan, because like Gaston, shehas a much larger pool of potential mates to pick from and while noKings of the Jungle, the US Navy Seals, the best of China’s Army,and the Demi- or Quasi-Gods of Greece certainly aren’t nothing tosneeze at, either. She would likely abandon Tarzan, especially seeingthe way he’d be captured and humiliated by Clayton, and just golook for someone else who isn’t weak enough to fall prey to herfellow villains.

Mozenrathand Nasira wouldn’t be Jafar’s seconds. Far from it.

Afterseeing what happened to Jafar during his time in the Isle, and hisfailure to do much of anything until Maleficent does all theactual work and then he can ride on her coattails, alongside with herexperiences with all the men and women of the Isle, Nasira would findherself wanting to take over and rule over her own dominion thanshare it with her brother who she now sees isn’t as strong,cunning, and ruthless as she once thought him to be.

Mozenrathalso wouldn’t want to be under someone else’s boot after hisentire career serving Maleficent, La, and many other aspiring butultimately failed overlords and rulers of the Isle. I assume he wouldfind some way to get his magic back without paying an arm for it(hehehe), and once he does have some semblance of power, and possiblya new, living army after manipulating the volatile and vulnerablemasses of Auradon, would also seek to find his own kingdom to rulethan be content with Jafar’s second’s, which are in turnMaleficent’s third’s.

(Rememberthat in my previous answer, Jafar is essentially Maleficent’s ChiefOperations Officer, doing most of the actual work of runningand ruling an oppressed realm.)

Thiswill lead to a really interesting scenario wherein these three are inconstant conflict over control of Agrabah, with what are essentiallythree criminal cartels/dictatorships controlling and specializing insome form of organized crime or essential basic service (like themarkets and merchants), unable to really do much of anything becauseMaleficent is too powerful, and also has many activities much morerelevant to her interests than giving one of her lackeys more powerand control than she is comfortable with.

“Yougive them an entire city, and they want to take over the wholeworld,” as she would say.

Alternatively,they might rule over their own independent parts of the desert orelsewhere, as I can definitely see the current capitals fracturing aspeople flee from the worst of the villains, become nomads, or attemptto build their new cities, which are sadly easy fodder for the lesservillains to take over and rule.

It’snot Agrabah, certainly, but with the current state of thingsand having been on the Isle, the lesser villains are perfectlycontent with ruling over something.

Compromiseis one of the key values to surviving on the Isle, after all.

#descendants #Disney Dictatorship 101

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