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tobie-van-heerden · 4 months ago

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A further look at "Yahweh" and “Yahushua”

Distinguishing the Seed of Truth from the tares sown by the enemy

You shall not be lifting the name of Yâ-hwéh, your Mighty Ones, to falseness, because Yâ-hwéh shall not be clearing from guilt one who is lifting His name to falseness: [Exodus 23: 7]

Ever since learning that the KJV substitutions “the LORD” and “GOD” are not the name of Who we worship, many wonder how to distinguish the true names of our Sovereign and Savior from so many renditions that are circulating today. He said we shall recognize those teaching the Truth by their fruits. He also said that His pupils would be characterized by their love. So by this same love here we give you the good fruits of others’ research and study collected on this subject, and provide you conclusive good evidence to support that these names are indeed the best way to transcribe and transliterate the saving name of our Deliverer. We believe that everyone has an inalienable right to make an informed decision on whether to believe on His true name. But understand that this is a compilation of good information from various scholarly sources, and most likely not one of those individual sources is in total agreement with everything in here.

Yâ-hwéh\ēŏ-hwĔ\ – hwhy in paleohebrew, is known also as the “tetragrammaton” due to its having four letters. יָהְוֶהis how it should be rendered in vowel-pointed Aramaic square script. The evidence for this is found below in this document. We choose to transliterate this יָהְוֶהinto the modern Latin alphabet as “Yâ-hwéh”. Except for the hyphen, this English transliteration is also a letter-for-letter transcription, which also makes it easier to see where it came from. We inserted the hyphen in order to prevent anyone from applying English phonetical rules and think the first h might be silent or just a phonetic modifier to make the first “a” become a short ŏ. The spelling of this name in any language should be whatever makes it most likely to accurately reproduce its original pronunciation as it is in Hebrew. Thus, in Spanish, it would be “Iâjuéh”, because salvation is by calling on His correct names, not by spelling it a specific way.

The internal linguistic evidence

Yāhwéh is the causative imperfect (present/future) of the verb a verbal root “to be”, that usually shows up in Hebrew as *hwy. It is a verbal root developed from the third person pronouns, *huwa and hiya (masculine and feminine) [An asterisk before a word indicates an undocumented reconstruction (hypothetical)]. The grammatical form of Yāhwéh is the third person masculine singular of prefix conjugation. The yā- is the third person masculine singular prefix. The rule in Masoretic Hebrew is that its short “a” vowel would become vocal shewa (ְ) when it is distant from the accent. To get an earlier vocalization you have to depend on the Greek Septuagint. They vocalized proper names the way they pronounced them in the 3rd Century BCE. Thus, some linguists have reconstructed the name of Yāhwéh with a short “a” vowel (patach ַ) in the first syllable as yahwéh because it is in a closed syllable. We however have determined it to instead be a long qamatz ā (ָ), with a short “o” sound, as in “hot”. To get this earlier vocalization you have to depend on the Roman epigraphic evidence (see below). We have noticed the fruits of the Spirit to be present when pronouncing it with a long qamatz ā (ָ), and them to be conspicuously absent when using the short “a” vowel (patach).

The final syllable of yāhwéh, -éh is normal for the imperfect indicative form (present-future or past continuous). A form like yāhwéh developed from *yahwiyu. This development of -iyu to -éh is thoroughly demonstrated for the verbal system in general. This long form yāhwéh is the causative stem (hifîl) of the verb “to be” and it is present/future (imperfect) meaning “He causes/will cause to exist.” The hifîl form needs not imply a U or O vowel in the original pronunciation of YHWH (debunking the false versions “yahuweh”, “yahuah”, “yahowah”, “yaohu”).

Epigraphic evidence

The internal evidence from the Hebrew language is strong and confirms the accuracy of the Greek transcriptions. Greek transcriptions of the pronunciation of YHWH in religious papyri have been found in Egypt. The best of these is Iäouiēe (London Papyri. xlvi, 446-482). Clement of Alexandria said “The mystic name which is called the Tetragrammaton … is pronounced Iaoue, which means ‘Who is, and who shall be.’” IAOUE is how this teacher of Origen pronounced YHWH - in which I and the diptong OU probably represent the semivowels Y and W not found in Greek. We believe the AO to also be a diptong to represent the English short “o” sound of the long qamatz ā (ָ), since the Roman “IOUE”, commonly evolved to “Jove” and transferred to Zeus/Jupiter is spelled with an O. If it had been a short “a” patach sound, it would easily have been transliterated to “IAUE” instead, and we would have had “Jave” as its remnant.

What about “Jehovah”?

This name, Yāhwéh, which He told Moshéh was His name forever and His memorial for all generations, has been censored by “Yehuwthíy” scribes since the times of the Maccabees and substituted in their speech and in their writings, including their scripture transcriptions (e.g. the Masoretic Text) with “’Athonâ´y ’Elohíym” as it is documented in their Talmud and traditions to do. The addition of vowel points into their Aramaic square script scriptures came after the inception this errant doctrine, and their method of enforcing it was by inserting the vowel points corresponding to ’Athonâ´y into YHWH if it were found written before ’Elohíym, or vice versa, inserting the vowel points corresponding to ’Elohíym into YHWH if it were found written after ’Athonâ´y, to have every reader read “’Athonâ´y ’Elohíym” instead of either “Yâ-hwéh ’Elohíym” or “’Athonâ´y Yâ-hwéh”. They avoided the very short a vowel in this borrowing because it might have led the synagogue reader to make a mistake and pronounce the correct first syllable of the Pure Name, namely -yā. The vocalized form one finds in the Hebrew Tenákh is usually Yehôwāh (the other being Yehôwīh),which evolved into the form Jehovah with the evolution of the “I” into a “J” and the changing of the Latin “V” letter from a “U” sound to a “V”. Yehôwāh/Jehovah is nothing but an artificial ghost word; it was never used in antiquity. The synagogue reader saw Yehôwāhin his text and read it ’adônai. But Christian scholars of the Middle Ages (e.g. Galatinus) saw these scribal lies and fell for them, resulting in the false name Jehovah, fulfilling YirmYâ´huw 8: 8-9 –

“How can you say: “We are wise ones, for the Towrâ´h of Yâ-hwéh is with us!” When look! The lying pen of the scribes made it for the Lie? The wise will be shamed, they will be dismayed, and they will be trapped, look! Since they rejected the Word of Yâ-hwéh, what wisdom do they have?”

Yâhuw/Yâhu\ēŎ-hoo\ – whyorhyin paleohebrew, appears as יה or יהו in the Aramaic square script. Both of these are identical in pronunciation in every instance, and should be rendered יָהֻ or יָהוּ in vowel-pointed Aramaic square script. Both of these appear as parts of personal names, called “theophoric components”, as prefixes and suffixes, but the יה appears only as a suffix. Other times יה appears alone or precedinghwhyas a “praenomen” (forename), which identifies the Son specifically in Tenákh. These theophoric components, pronounced YÂHU (i.e., -yāhû, in such names as Hizqîyāhû [Hezekiah]), are the normal shortened form of a verb like yāhwéh, that is, the preterite or jussive short form of this Verb. The short form has two functions: past tense (preterite), “He caused to exist,” or jussive (third person command), “May he cause to exist”; however don’t try to translate it within a personal name: e.g. Yâhuwtsâthâ´q should be translated “Yâ-hwéh’s righteousness”. Another example of this short form/long form relationship is the verb “to do obeisance”, which in the imperfect is yiŝtahawéh, while the shortened form (for preterit or jussive) is yiŝtáhû. In other words yiŝtáhû is to yiŝtahawéh as yáhû is to yāhwéh.

What about “Yeho-” and “Yah”?

In accordance with Jewish tradition, these short forms of His name also got adulterated by the censoring pen of the Masoretic scribes, and only got the proper vowel points in the Masoretic text when יָהוּ appears as the suffix theophoric component of personal names. Otherwise, the vowel points for ’Elowāhh got inserted resulting in Yehow- (יְהוֹ) prefixes and the Yāhh(יָהּ) scribal lies. They reasoned that when reading aloud theophoric component prefixed names, a beginning reader might stop after reading YÂHU… and violate their tradition to “take the name in vain”. It is documented in the Midrash on Psalms that they knew this was a partial incomplete name, so using it did not violate their human commandment to not say His name. Nonetheless, the Murasu text written in Nippur in the fifth century BCE did write YÂHU- as being the prefix theophoric component of personal names.

Yâhuwshúa`\ēŎ-hoo-shOO-ă\ – ($why in paleohebrew orיָהוּשֻׁעַ in vowel pointed Aramaic square script is the true name of the Son, the Lamb of the Mighty One, the Anointed. Its prefix theophoric component is -יָהוּwhich is pronounced YÂHU, as explained above, debunking the false versions “yahshua”, “yehoshua”, “yaohushua”, “yahuashua”, or “yahwehshua”. It was in the post-exilic period that many names on this pattern were shortened, like the aforementioned errant “yehoshua” to “yeshua”. Though this might have been acceptable by those societies that did it, it continues to be a corruption of the pure original names, and violates the third commandment (quoted at top) just as using the modern variations such as “Jesus” do.

Some scholars are not sure of what the second element שֻׁעַ- of the name Yâhuwshúameans. They think it might mean noble, or help, or something like that. It is the word שועShU (shin, waw, ayin) [see Strong’s #7769-7774] and apparently not the root ותעWTh(waw, tha-ayin), which is the original of the verbs “to save” [Strong’s #3467] (This debunks the errant “yahuwsha”). Unfortunately the Strong’s Concordance errs on this specific point, thinking it is #3467. Examining Strong’s entries 7769-7774, the meanings of Shúwa, the word from which the element –shuacomes, are: a shout (halloo), opulence, riches, wealth, independent, noble, free, and generous. Due to these, we understand the translation of Yâhuwshúa to English to be “Yâ-hwéh is liberation (deliverance)/ wealth”, a message which incorporates the Glad Tidings and our hope, and which is in agreement with Romans 10:12-13 –

¶ For about this, there is not a difference between a Yâhuwthíy or a Greek, for the same Yâ´hu[E1], the Sovereign of all of them, is Shúa` (riches, deliverance) for all of those who invoke Him, since:

“…everyone who shall have called on the name of Yâ-hwéh, he shall be rescued!”

This is the same name Moshéh named Howshë´á the son of Núwn for this reason, that the people might listen to him like the Anointed One [Letter of Bar-Nâvíy 12: 8-9[E2]]. Proof that this is the same name is found in the fact that whenever Yâhuwshúa the son of Núwn is mentioned in the NT, his name also got distorted and evolved to “Jesus” in the KJV. We also find this name as the name of the Branch foretold in ZkharYâ´hu 6: 11-12. The Munster book of Hebrews reportedly also uses יהושעfor the name of the Anointed One, and even the Strong’s Concordance in entry 3091 admits this is the Hebrew rendering for His name (Greek #2424).

The Kingdom is being offered to you

So now with all this linguistic and epigraphic and scriptural information as evidence, ignorance disappears and the decision becomes whether to go against the flow and believe on His true name, or to deny Him and go into rebellion. Remember Yshá`Yâhuw 1:18-20 on what the consequences are of either way:

Let’s walk, now, and let us reason together,” says Yâ-hwéh, “Though your sins are like the scarlet insects, they shall be white as the snow; though they are red as the crimson worm, they shall become like the wool. If you are consenting and you heed, you will eat the goodness of the Land; But if you refuse and you rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword, because the mouth of Yâ-hwéh has spoken it.

Our advice: Choose life!

From YahwehYahushua.org

#Yahweh Yahushua

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anomellee · 2 years ago

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[continued]

[page 2]

In concert with this, western corporate media, increasingly captured and state-adjacent, are in open breach of Article 20 of the ICCPR, continuously dehumanizing Palestinians to facilitate the genocide, and broadcasting propaganda for war and advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, and violence. US-based social media companies are suppressing the voices of human rights defenders while amplifying pro-Israel propaganda. Israel lobby online-trolls and GONGOS are harassing and smearing human rights defenders, and western universities and employers are collaborating with them to punish those who dare to speak out against the atrocities. In the wake of this genocide, there must be an accounting for these actors as well, just as there was for radio Milles Collines in Rwanda.

In such circumstances, the demands on our organization for principled and effective action are greater than ever. But we have not met the challenge. The protective enforcement power Security Council has again been blocked by US intransigence, the SG is under assault for the mildest of protestations, and our human rights mechanisms are under sustained slanderous attack by an organized, online impunity network.

Decades of distraction by the illusory and largely disingenuous promises of Oslo have diverted the Organization from its core duty to defend international law, international human rights, and the Charter itself. The mantra of the "two-state solution" has become an open joke in the corridors of the UN, both for its utter impossibility in fact, and for its total failure to account for the inalienable human rights of the Palestinian people. The so-called "Quartet" has become nothing more than a fig leaf for inaction and for subservience to a brutal status quo. The (US-scripted) deference to "agreements between the parties themselves" (in place of international law) was always a transparent slight-of-hand, designed to reinforce the power of Israel over the rights of the occupied and dispossessed Palestinians.

High Commissioner, I came to this Organization first in the 1980s, because I found in it a principled, norm- based institution that was squarely on the side of human rights, including in cases where the powerful US, UK, and Europe were not on our side. While my own government, its subsidiarity institutions, and much of the US media were still supporting or justifying South African apartheid, Israeli oppression, and Central American death squads, the UN was standing up for the oppressed peoples of those lands. We had international law on our side. We had human rights on our side. We had principle on our side. Our authority was rooted in our integrity. But no more.

In recent decades, key parts of the UN have surrendered to the power of the US, and to fear of the Israel Lobby, to abandon these principles, and to retreat from international law itself. We have lost a lot in this abandonment, not least our own global credibility. But the Palestinian people have sustained the biggest losses as a result of our failures. It is a stunning historic irony that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in the same year that the Nakba was perpetrated against the Palestinian people. As we commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the UDHR, we would do well to abandon the old cliché that the UDHR was born out of the atrocities that proceeded it, and to admit that it was born alongside one of the most atrocious genocides of the 20th Century, that of the destruction of Palestine. In some sense, the framers were promising human rights to everyone, except the Palestinian people. And let us remember as well, that the UN itself carries the original sin of helping to facilitate the dispossession of the Palestinian people by ratifying the European settler colonial project that seized Palestinian land and turned it over to the colonists. We have much for which to atone.

But the path to atonement is clear. We have much to learn from the principled stance taken in cities around the world in recent days, as masses of people stand up against the genocide, even at risk of beatings and arrest. Palestinians and their allies, human rights defenders of every stripe, Christian and Muslim organizations, and progressive Jewish voices saying "not in our name", are all leading the way. All we have to do is to follow them.

[page 3]

Yesterday, just a few blocks from here, New York's Grand Central Station was completely taken over by thousands of Jewish human rights defenders standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people and demanding an end to Israeli tyranny (many risking arrest, in the process). In doing so, they stripped away in an instant the Israeli hasbara propaganda point (and old antisemitic trope) that Israel somehow represents the Jewish people. It does not. And, as such, Israel is solely responsible for its crimes. On this point, it bears repeating, in spite of Israel lobby smears to the contrary, that criticism of Israel's human rights violations is not antisemitic, any more than criticism of Saudi violations is Islamophobic, criticism of Myanmar violations is anti-Buddhist, or criticism of Indian violations is anti-Hindu. When they seek to silence us with smears, we must raise our voice, not lower it. I trust you will agree, High Commissioner, that this is what speaking truth to power is all about.

But I also find hope in those parts of the UN that have refused to compromise the Organization's human rights principles in spite of enormous pressures to do so. Our independent special rapporteurs, commissions of enquiry, and treaty body experts, alongside most of our staff, have continued to stand up for the human rights of the Palestinian people, even as other parts of the UN (even at the highest levels) have shamefully bowed their heads to power. As the custodians of the human rights norms and standards, OHCHR has a particular duty to defend those standards. Our job, I believe, is to make our voice heard, from the Secretary-General to the newest UN recruit, and horizontally across the wider UN system, insisting that the human rights of the Palestinian people are not up for debate, negotiation, or compromise anywhere under the blue flag.

What, then, would a UN-norm-based position look like? For what would we work if we were true to our rhetorical admonitions about human rights and equality for all, accountability for perpetrators, redress for victims, protection of the vulnerable, and empowerment for rights-holders, all under the rule of law? The answer, I believe, is simple-if we have the clarity to see beyond the propagandistic smokescreens that distort the vision of justice to which we are sworn, the courage to abandon fear and deference to powerful states, and the will to truly take up the banner of human rights and peace. To be sure, this is a long-term project and a steep climb. But we must begin now or surrender to unspeakable horror. I see ten essential points:

Legitimate action: First, we in the UN must abandon the failed (and largely disingenuous) Oslo paradigm, its illusory two-state solution, its impotent and complicit Quartet, and its subjugation of international law to the dictates of presumed political expediency. Our positions must be unapologetically based on international human rights and international law.

Clarity of Vision: We must stop the pretense that this is simply a conflict over land or religion between two warring parties and admit the reality of the situation in which a disproportionately powerful state is colonizing, persecuting, and dispossessing an indigenous population on the basis of their ethnicity.

One State based on human rights: We must support the establishment of a single, democratic, secular state in all of historic Palestine, with equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and, therefore, the dismantling of the deeply racist, settler-colonial project and an end to apartheid across the land.

Fighting Apartheid: We must redirect all UN efforts and resources to the struggle against apartheid, just as we did for South Africa in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s.

Return and Compensation: We must reaffirm and insist on the right to return and full compensation for all Palestinians and their families currently living in the occupied territories, in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and in the diaspora across the globe.

[page 3] Truth and Justice: We must call for a transitional justice process, making full use of decades of accumulated UN investigations, enquiries, and reports, to document the truth, and to ensure accountability for all perpetrators, redress for all victims, and remedies for documented injustices.

Protection: We must press for the deployment of a well-resourced and strongly mandated UN protection force with a sustained mandate to protect civilians from the river to the sea.

Disarmament: We must advocate for the removal and destruction of Israel's massive stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, lest the conflict lead to the total destruction of the region and, possibly, beyond.

Mediation: We must recognize that the US and other western powers are in fact not credible mediators, but rather actual parties to the conflict who are complicit with Israel in the violation of Palestinian rights, and we must engage them as such.

Solidarity. We must open our doors (and the doors of the SG) wide to the legions of Palestinian, Israeli, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian human rights defenders who are standing in solidarity with the people of Palestine and their human rights and stop the unconstrained flow of Israel lobbyists to the offices of UN leaders, where they advocate for continued war, persecution, apartheid, and impunity, and smear our human rights defenders for their principled defense of Palestinian rights.

This will take years to achieve, and western powers will fight us every step of the way, so we must be steadfast. In the immediate term, we must work for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the longstanding siege on Gaza, stand up against the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank (and elsewhere), document the genocidal assault in Gaza, help to bring massive humanitarian aid and reconstruction to the Palestinians, take care of our traumatized colleagues and their families, and fight like hell for a principled approach in the UN's political offices.

The UN's failure in Palestine thus far is not a reason for us to withdraw. Rather it should give us the courage to abandon the failed paradigm of the past, and fully embrace a more principled course. Let us, as OHCHR, boldly and proudly join the anti-apartheid movement that is growing all around the world, adding our logo to the banner of equality and human rights for the Palestinian people. The world is watching. We will all be accountable for where we stood at this crucial moment in history. Let us stand on the side of justice.

I thank you, High Commissioner, Volker, for hearing this final appeal from my desk. I will leave the Office in a few days for the last time, after more than three decades of service. But please do not hesitate to reach out if I can be of assistance in the future.

Sincerely, [signed] Craig Mokhiber

Dear High Commissioner,

This will be my last official communication to you as Director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

I write at a moment of great anguish for the world, including for many of our colleagues. Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the Organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it. As someone who has investigated human rights in Palestine since the 1980s, lived in Gaza as a UN human rights advisor in the 1990s, and carried out several human rights missions to the country before and since, this is deeply personal to me.

I also worked in these halls through the genocides against the Tutsis, Bosnian Muslims, the Yazidi, and the Rohingya. In each case, when the dust settled on the horrors that had been perpetrated against defenseless civilian populations, it became painfully clear that we had failed in our duty to meet the imperatives of prevention of mass atrocites, of protection of the vulnerable, and of accountability for perpetrators. And so it has been with successive waves of murder and persecution against the Palestinians throughout the entire life of the UN.

High Commissioner, we are failing again.

As a human rights lawyer with more than three decades of experience in the field, I know well that the concept of genocide has often been subject to political abuse. But the current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate. In Gaza, civilian homes, schools, churches, mosques, and medical institutions are wantonly attacked as thousands of civilians are massacred. In the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, homes are seized and reassigned based entirely on race, and violent settler pogroms are accompanied by Israeli military units. Across the land, Apartheid rules.

This is a textbook case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine. What's more, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault. Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations "to ensure respect" for the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel's atrocities.

Volker Turk, High Commissioner for Human Rights Palais Wilson, Geneva

Full letter

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barilleon · 2 years ago

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Three "P"s for Writing NPCs

I’ve been thinking a lot about NPCs, especially within the context of fifth edition (which is where most of my freelance time is spent). Much like a playwright, adventure writers have multiple audiences. The playwright is writing for a director, actors, and eventually the play’s audience. An adventure writer is writing for the game master and the table of players that the GM is running for.

We want a character to be memorable, but so much of that memorability for players won’t have anything to do with us. It’ll be in the voice the GM uses, potential quirks or mannerisms, or a situation created by the die.

For example, one of the most defining features of Knives Out’s Benoit Blanc is his voice, which is all in Daniel Craig’s portrayal. The original screenplay had something else in mind entirely.

Like a playwright, our job as adventure designers is to understand our NPCs as smaller parts of a larger machine. They serve a purpose and are grounded in the reality of the world we’ve built. But they also have to have some kind of pull to them that compels a GM to use them in the first place.

Now, an actor will spend hours upon hours reading through a script, highlighting lines and analyzing their beats and subtext. A GM won’t do that. They need to embody multiple characters in a session, so hey don’t have the time to do a bunch of dramaturgical work to understand every NPC in the adventure.

I say let the GM handle things such as mannerisms, personality, and quirks of speech. As writers, we should be giving our NPCs three things:

A Purpose

A Place

A Pull

Purpose

This is the most important, in my opinion. If an NPC doesn’t have a purpose in the story, they become frivolous, and they’ll likely slow down play. Here are some examples of game-related purposes:

Giving a quest

Teaching a skill

Offering aid

Acting as an obstacle

Showing your players what to do by example

You can also give your character more narrative-focused purposes as well, like:

Reinforcing a theme

Acting as a foil for a PC

Forcing your players to consider their actions

Illustrating consequences of a potential course of action

The best NPC I’ve ever written was S.A.M. for MCDM’s The Workshop Watches (which you can read for free!). S.A.M.’s purpose was very clear, considering it’s not just an NPC— it’s also the dungeon!

S.A.M. acted as the major obstacle for the party throughout the adventure. But on a narrative level, S.A.M.’s questioning of the party’s actions is meant to call the players to do the same. S.A.M.’s arc as a SMART Lab-turned-bipedal robot reinforces the theme of the adventure: how do we define personhood, and what rights are inalienable to those who have it?

Place

A “place” in the story is how the character is grounded in the world. A good character fits into the world you’ve created, because the circumstances of that world have allowed that character to exist in their current form. This connection to the world helps inform the NPC’s decision-making process.

D&D 5e often uses the “Personality, Ideal, Bond, and Flaw” system to give an NPC a place. When players pick up on one of these four traits, they can leverage them to get what they want from an NPC (thereby fulfilling the NPC’s purpose).

S.A.M.’s place in The Workshop Watches is as a curious observer. It does not understand itself or the outside world, and therefore it is bound to make a lot of well-meaning but deadly mistakes.

You can think of the “place” as the stakes this NPC has in the current story. Your NPC might have a son who is fighting in the current war. Maybe they’re a farmer who resents the culture of adventuring that has made their home too volatile to grow crops. Maybe they don’t care if it’s a noble king or a tyrant or the Devil Himself who sits upon the throne so long as they have enough food to take home to their dog.

Pull

“Pull” is something that makes the GM interested in digging into this character. I’ve found the more invested I am as a GM in the NPC I’m playing, the more my players respond to that character. Also, since GMs are players too, as writers we should make NPCs that they are interested in playing.

So how can we make an NPC that excites a GM? What is the “pull” that’s going to work for this?

I like to use the word pull because the thing that grabs me most about a character is tension. The character may want something that conflicts with their place or with their purpose. S.A.M.’s purpose is to stop the party from getting to the deepest part of the lab, but S.A.M. also wants to be helpful and make new friends (who just so happen to be interested in exploring the lab). S.A.M. wants to go out and see the world, but its place is in the lab. It doesn’t know how to exist in the world. It doesn’t understand basic concepts like, “people die when they are killed.”

One character I loved in Waterdeep: Dragon Heist was Fel’rekt Lafeen, a good-aligned drow gunslinger who serves in the mercenary group Bregan D’aerthe. In Fel’rekt’s story I saw a trans drow who had found his family in the mercenary group. He is fiercely loyal to his found family, but sometimes his job causes him to act against his alignment, something he resented. As a transmasc dude, the themes around Fel’rekt resonated with me, which is, I believe, why players at my table always end up taking a liking to Fel’rekt. I was pulled to his story, and it makes him seem more real in my eyes and my players’ eyes.

Using This as a GM

When I run a major NPC for my tables, I take note of that NPC’s Purpose, Place, and Pull and use them to build out the parts of the character that are my responsibility to build. These responsibilities include creating mannerisms, voice, and speech patterns and improvising their decision-making.

I run S.A.M. like a stereotypical robot: stilted speech with alien inflection, no contractions unless it learns them from the players, and a large vocabulary from the corpus of academic texts it must have been trained on.

One of the quirks I give Fel’rekt is mirroring (something I do with my guy friends). He is always trying to mirror the mannerisms of the other men of Bregan d’Aerthe. He uses expressions he learned from Jarlaxle and his friend Krebbyg. I always describe him doing the same or similar actions as any of the drow he happens to be with. One day when I run Dragon Heist I hope he’ll find a player character to bond and look up to enough to mirror.

Final Thoughts

There are a few other tricks we, as writers, can communicate our NPCs without entirely stepping on our GM’s toes or making them read a ton. Good character art is one of them. Character portraits are just as much a tool for GMs as words.

I try to write art briefs for character portraits that will communicate personality just as much as appearance, which was the case for Bard-Core Brawlers. The portraits for Trifling, the all-girl punk band, showcase the individual styles and personalities of the band members. And Leonardo Boia knocked it out of the park; these pieces help focus my portrayal of the characters just as much as the descriptions I wrote.

Another thing I’d like to see in NPC writing is barks! Like video game barks. Open your NPC’s section with a short quote, maybe an opinion they have on their place or something that demonstrates their pull. I really like how some of the abilities in MCDM’S Flee, Mortals! packets have names that could effectively be used as barks. Queen Bargnot’s abilities have names like “Get in here!” and “What are you waiting for?” This signals to the GM that the queen says these things when activating these abilities, which is delicious flavor baked into the stat block.

#ttrpgs #dnd5e #my blogs

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gwendolynlerman · 4 years ago

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Languages of the world

Tongan (lea faka-Tonga)

Basic facts

Number of native speakers: 187,000

Official language: Tonga

Also spoken: Australia, New Zealand, United States

Script: Latin, 17 letters

Grammatical cases: 0

Linguistic typology: isolating, VSO

Language family: Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, Oceanic, Polynesian, Tongic

Number of dialects: -

History

19th century - Tongan is first written

1817 - first grammar and dictionary

Writing system and pronunciation

These are the letters that make up the script: a e f h i k l m n ng o p s t u v ’.

Vowel length is marked by a macron. Stress is usually placed on the penultimate syllable.

Grammar

Nouns are not marked for gender, number, or case.

There are three articles: nonspecific indefinite, specific indefinite, and specific definite. Possessive pronouns are either alienable or inalienable.

Verbs are not conjugated.

Dialects

There is no dialectal variation, but there are three registers—ordinary, honorific, and regal—which differ in the choice of words.

#langblr #tongan #lingblr

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zephyronthewind · 3 years ago

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If you, like me, are concerned that the supreme court will overturn Roe v Wade no matter what, I suggest to start contacting your state senator now to try and get state- level protections in place before the overturn happens.

You can find your senator here, and I have a basic script with links for statement support below the cut. Anything you need to personally punch up is in all caps

I know emails are scary, but they'll get there faster than paper letters, and we need to be swift on this

Dear Senator LASTNAME,

This email is concerning the potential overturn of reproductive rights on the federal level, specifically spurred by the leaked draft of the Supreme Court planning to overturn Roe v Wade (https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/read-justice-alito-initial-abortion-opinion-overturn-roe-v-wade-pdf-00029504). In the wake of this shocking upheaval, [HAVE YOU OR A LOVED ONE BEEN AFFECTED BU THIS] leads me to urge you to introduce state level protections for abortion. This matter is not about the sanctity of life, but about the bodily autonomy and safety of pregnant people.

To put it succinctly, bodily autonomy is the inalienable right that makes it impossible to force someone to donate blood, a kidney, or other such medical donations. This right is protected for both the living and the deceased, even when the recipient of the donation would die without it. This right extends to pregnancy (https://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm). The argument of if a fetus is alive or not at the time of an abortion is a non-issue: the fetus is impinging on the person's bodily autonomy.

It also has been proven that abortions being illegal does not stop people from having abortions, but instead makes them more dangerous for the same group of people who would have pursued them legally (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/abortion). The lack of legality creates secrecy, desperation, and fear that leads to a higher death rate, when the same procedure done in a legal setting is safe and easy to recover from.

This issue [WHY IS IT RELEVANT TO YOU, HOW WOULD NOT HAVING LEGAL ABORTIONS HARM YOU OR A LOVED ONE]

With all this in mind, I urge you to prepare for the potential overturn of federal protection of abortion by creating state level protections. Thank you for taking the time to read this, I look forward to receiving your response.

Sincerely,

FULL NAME

ADDRESS

#roe v wade #supreme court #email your senator #abortion rights #reproductive rights #email template #contact your senators

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everythingissomewhatrepaired · 4 years ago

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"Good Morning Midnight, It's Christmas" Thanks as ever to the glorious patrons. If you would like to join them for previews, directors commentary, other good stuff "pay tree on dot com slash tomor Judy". Links to the songs in the comments.

Here is the script for accessibility (including song links): Everything is somewhat Repaired: Underrated Christmas Hits.

It's the festive season and I don't want to write about trans politics. Here are some songs.

Girls Rituals - All I Want For Christmas Is You Did you think the Mariah Carey version could use more distorted drums and a synth lead that sounds like a rat playing the rat bagpipes? So did I! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3cDaqiDo0Q

Things fall apart by Christina I can't think of a song that has a more romantic pessimism. So we trimmed the cactus with my earrings that we'd meant to pawn There wasn't any snow But there was rain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuhvjgKa2xY

Glam Rock churned out tons of Christmas records but The Sensational Alex Harvey Band is taking home the prize for most dead cops in a christmas song with "There's no lights on the christmas tree mother, their burning big louie tonight" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O71jKCqpnU

Molly Noise's Fairytale of New York remix, but just as Kirsty Maccoll is about to say "that swear" it cuts to Margaret Thatcher: "Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay." https://twitter.com/ImPureNoise/status/1467825809486499845

Happy Holidays, Stay Safe, Love xx

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imagineclaireandjamie · 6 years ago

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HRH?💏😍💔😥

Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.)Part XXIII: Rarer

Claire’s teenaged fingers had been nicotine yellow when the King – her uncle – told her that she needed to manage her reputation. A shamed and orphaned royal for whom money could no longer buy silence, Claire had been brought to London quietly after her boarding school declared no more. To prevent a scandal, a cover story had been constructed. She would never forget the disappointment in his voice when he explained, “Your future rides on it.” She had been different then – lashing out against loneliness and authority in the senseless, minor ways that seem significant only to a teenager.

And while her indiscretions had been charming when there was still time for an heir – a real heir, her Uncle Lamb’s progeny – they were not when she was lined up to succeed him to the throne. At that time, her youthful dalliances had made her The Accidental Queen and The Party Queen. Newsink had made it so, and a nation had laughed, picked her apart.

Now she was something different. Her new monicker, designated by a headline, had been brought to her attention just as Mrs. Fitz’s calming influence had taken hold, and she was quiet. As she finished straightening her jacket and pinning to its lapel the brooch her Uncle Lamb had given to her for her seventeenth birthday (“a hummingbird, a free spirit for my free spirit,” he explained), one of her staff entered her bedroom suite with the paper.

The Harlot Queen. Newsink again had made it so.

“Ye dinna need to read that… that… rag,” Mrs. Fitz said, giving the newspaper’s bearer the kind of look that quite possibly could kill in an alternate dimension. Despite Mrs. Fitz’s firm protestations, Claire took the paper. She looked utterly happy in the photograph that they had chosen, and she recognized it from Frank’s private cache of holiday snapshots. He was holding her hand tight, half of his body out of the frame. Her hair was loose and she was wearing sunglasses, ones that did not really fit her and were constantly slipping down her nose. She remembered arguing with him endlessly on that holiday – nothing was ever quite right, really. Her eyes scanned over the article, picking up bland bits here and there about her ring, a biographical sketch and dashing, quite young portrait of the uniformed suspect – Colonel James Fraser, discredited war hero from a small town, about whom little was known save that he was never quite right after the war according to acquaintances.

“Came back from the war completely mad, but you canna blame the lad. Word is that they tore him up in that war camp – tore him up good, disfigured him. It doesna surprise me that the poor chap turned on the hand that fed him.”

Claire’s stomach soured as her heart sank.

This was what she had wanted to prevent.

“Leave then,” Fraser had said to her, his eyes flashing when she told him that she was going to take them public before someone else did.

Disfigured him. Completely mad.

She wished that she had a way to contact him. To have the time to reach out, to explain that she was doing this to make it better, to redirect the spotlight. He didn’t understand what it meant to be in the spotlight like this, to have millions of pairs of eyes scrutinizing, judging. Absently, she prayed that the first edition of this particular printing had not made it around the jail before he was whisked away. Perhaps he hadn’t even had an opportunity to see it.

She kept skimming. Then, there in the center of it all, was a quote from Frank. It was a monologue transcribed as truth by a man with ambitions that were decidedly political, not as the ranting of a disgraced, disgruntled lover:

“It makes me worry about her health, really. She was erratic in the final days of our engagement before she gave that dreadful, meandering speech. She frequently slipped away to the stables, and I attributed it to the fact that she could not bear the weight of the crown that rested so easily atop the King’s head. However, now I fear that she was being manipulated by someone – or rather some scoundrel – on her staff. Groomed for him to accomplish some ends. Would I forgive her for what she has done for me? Of course. Do I have concerns about her judgment? I cannot answer that for a nation. However, I can pose an alternative question. Who among us would not have such concerns? This nation, this continent, has seen more than its fair share of what misplaced trust can bring.”

Claire did not taste bile or see red. Instead, she carefully folded the paper, set it on the side table, and stood. “Are we ready?” she called to Mrs. Fitz. When the woman nodded, Claire responded in kind with a tight little tilt of her head towards the newspaper. “Throw that in the fireplace. Find every copy. I do not want to see a single trace of the bloody thing when we are finished with this.”

Again, Mrs. Fitz nodded. By the time the instruction was firmly given, Claire was already gone. One room over, she had taken a seat on the couch where she had delivered the first of her Christmas addresses to the empire for which she was Queen. She inspected her fingertips. They were pink, scrubbed, filed, and polished a her-nail-color-but-better neutral.

Claire swallowed, fixed her eyes on the cameraman, and nodded.

7:58 a.m.

She felt as though her entire life was about to change, though she knew that it already had.

She turned her hands over, studied them. She had expected her palms to sweat, to go clammy, for her fingers to tremble. But she was dry, still. She laid them to rest on her thighs, crossed her legs at the ankle, watched the cameraman do some last-minute fussing with the lens on his equipment. When the lights clicked on, she didn’t even blink, just lifted her head.

7:59 a.m.

She brushed a curl back, not out of nerves, but for the mere fact that it had been tickling her cheek. It had been a firm refusal when she declined some sort of helmeted, serious chignon. If she was going to expose herself on television, she figured she might as well really go for it.

8:00 a.m.

“Yer majesty, on three,” the cameraman said, his voice smooth. The countdown was hardly over when she started.

“On this day, I am taking the opportunity to speak to all the peoples of the British Commonwealth and Empire, wherever they live. I speak to you today from my home in Edinburgh before I depart for the Highlands, which I have come to hold so dear. My priorities as Queen are to secure for my people the inalienable rights of health, happiness, security, and freedom. They have always been so, and they will always remain as such. It is from this important business that some seek to distract this great nation.”

She paused, catching her breath for a beat.

Fraser.

That headline.

The article.

She prayed that he had made it, that he was far from all of this.

“I assure you that despite the cluckings of small men, I am well and truly in possession of all of my faculties. You see, some weeks ago, I made a decision. It was a the type of decision that was unheard of, not just for a queen, but for a woman. I decided that I would not put my happiness or myself last. In that vein, I ended my engagement to Frank Randall.”

She paused a second time, fought the urge to wet her lips, and leaned forward.

“I did so in the service of finding something rare. Based on the examples set for me by the King, my parents, and their parents, I knew that love was dear, but I had not experienced it. Never with Mr. Randall or any other man. But I have found that now. With a man – a solid one, someone captivatingly different, one who I was bound to through no particular effort or ingratiation on his part. When I met him, I felt a connection more profound, more fundamental than any I had ever felt.”

She was beyond the point of no return, and she knew it. Fraser had taught her to save herself, not to need saving. Now, she would save him.

“His name is Colonel James Fraser. He served this nation at a great personal sacrifice, he has served his Queen. He has no agenda other than to love me, and at a great personal cost. It has been at the cost of his privacy, his honor, and his dignity. And by loving me as he does, he has now been accused of doing something ugly, of being something ugly. Of being a thief who stole brazenly from the Crown. He stands accused of taking a ring that is dear to me and that is made of stones that were dear to my uncle and that have been in my family for as long as any historian can trace. He did not do it.”

Having long forgotten the script, she swallowed, spoke from the heart.

“While I was with him, I left the ring in a certain place where it was discovered not on Colonel Fraser, but someone related to him. Now, a horrible misunderstanding has caused an innocent man – Colonel Fraser – to be ripped away from his job and family, and to be put into an Edinburgh jail. While some seek to use the Crown for fame or glory, Colonel Fraser was prepared to forsake both, to sacrifice himself for me. Because he loves me. And because I love him – because what we have is rarer than the gold or gems he was wrongly accused of taking – I sit here now, speaking to you from the heart. As Queen and as a woman.”

She could feel the twist in her stomach, the throb in that heart that produced the words her mouth spoke into the public space where their relationship now lived.

“Colonel James Fraser is a good man, better than the small, insignificant man who has attempted to smear him and to smear me. Do not harbor small-minded conclusions about Colonel James Fraser or the man he is.”

Enough. It was enough.

What was rare was sacred, private. She was a Queen, but she was also Claire. She would never not be both.

And so she concluded, “Although I have found the great love of my life, I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service, and to the service of our nation. God help me to make good my vow, and God bless all of you who are willing to continue to share in it.”*

When the lights switched off, she rose. Her palms were still dry as she turned to Mrs. Fitz.

“Get him a message. I am going to our place. He will know.”

* the first sentence of the speech and this *’ed part were adapted from Queen Elizabeth’s 21st birthday speech, which you can read here, if you’re so inclined

#crookedfestivalalmondknight #;mod kate #HRH #Her Royal Highness AU #royal au #jamie x claire #Part XXIII

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grindskull · 6 years ago

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Shit that fucks me up #1 - Toxic Masculinity and being a “man”

Gotta have some way to organize my random thoughts here. I’m going with the obvious thing - Shit that fucks me up (STFMU). This is about me and my experiences. It is not my intention to discredit or question other human experiences. Sharing in the hopes of connecting with others who may have feel similar in their own skin. There are things here that others may define as triggers so read at your own risk (rape, abuse, and this fucking world). ---

Here is me being vulnerable. I am putting myself out there by discussing masculinity and how I often do not identify with the larger concept of “being a man” in any positive way. You can call it toxic masculinity if you prefer. It’s acceptable shorthand for something that is just as nuanced and difficult to wade through as anything gender related. I read this article on The Atlantic yesterday and there were some things that really resonated with me and my experience as a man/male (he/his/him). You can read it here (sorry there is a pay wall if you read more than 4 articles a month) but I will also be quoting some of the article below. If you have time to read the article I’ll wait. It’s a bit long (many articles on The Atlantic are) and kind of academic at times. It’s okay if you don’t agree with everything in the article. Just read it. Done? Okay let me set the stage a bit for how this shit fucks me up. ---

I’m male. I have always identified as a male/boy/man in my life. Unfortunately my experience with other males/boys/men has been mostly negative. It started at an early age when I had a hard time connecting with other boys my age. I was not interested in typical “male” interests like sports, violence, competition, and achievement. I had few (usually 1 or 2) friends at any one time and they typically had some kind of unhealthy power dynamic over me where I was subservient to my “friend” in some way. I have some thoughts on reasons why this happened. The short version is I lived in poverty (often extreme) and I was searching for help and support in order to survive. At home I had abuse (mental, physical, verbal), drugs, addiction, and neglect. It was not a safe place to be so I did whatever I could to not be there. It was not unusual for me to eat maybe one meal during the day (typically what I could get from others at school or their home). Winter was the worst as we often did not have heat. Some of my “friends” used this as a way to hold power over me and make demands of my personality, time, and attention. Imagine finding yourself in this situation - you have to actively work to not be yourself in order to appease others for your very survival. Of course as a youth I didn’t identify it this way - my “friends” were just bossy or demanding. All of my male role models were basically assholes who did not give a fuck about anyone except themselves. This was a huge part of the 80′s zeitgeist in popular culture at the time as well. In some ways nothing has really changed. “... when asked to describe the attributes of “the ideal guy,” those same boys appeared to be harking back to 1955. Dominance. Aggression. Rugged good looks (with an emphasis on height). Sexual prowess. Stoicism. Athleticism. Wealth (at least some day).“ Under this common definition of “masculinity” I do not see myself. I am loyal, honest, caring, and sweet (to those I love). I love my body though I am non-athletic and have been most of my life. I am an attentive and talented lover but I have had very few sexual partners in my life and never saw them as moments of “conquest”. I was dirt poor most of my life but now live comfortably in my own home with my long term partner. So while not “wealthy” it is far beyond anything I could have imagined I would have in my life as a boy. Stoicism I have down. That one was easy. For me it’s just a nice way of saying “I have completely disconnected from my emotions and not having feelings or emotions is the best way to be a man”. I believed that for a very long time - it’s only in the past 2-3 years I have begun the work of breaking that down and reconnecting with my own emotions. It’s all tied up in trauma, depression, and anxiety so it takes a bit of fucking work but it’s very much worth it. If you are a man/male who thinks it is normal to not have emotions (or that emotions make you feminine/weak) please listen to me - THAT IS BULLSHIT. YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELF TO HAVE EMOTIONS.

“... young men described just one narrow route to successful masculinity. One-third said they felt compelled to suppress their feelings, to “suck it up” or “be a man” when they were sad or scared, and more than 40 percent said that when they were angry, society expected them to be combative.“

Emotions are not weakness. You are not weak for having them, feeling them, or connecting with them. There is great strength in connecting with yourself and understanding your emotions. Don’t let anyone tell you different. They are delusional at best and actively trying to harm you at worst.

“While following the conventional script may still bring social and professional rewards to boys and men, research shows that those who rigidly adhere to certain masculine norms are not only more likely to harass and bully others but to themselves be victims of verbal or physical violence. They’re more prone to binge-drinking, risky sexual behavior, and getting in car accidents. They are also less happy than other guys, with higher depression rates and fewer friends in whom they can confide.”

---

How did we get here!? Have men always been this way? What about the good ole masculinity of ye olden times? It was a simple time where men were men right? A man’s man? “According to Andrew Smiler, a psychologist who has studied the history of Western masculinity, the ideal late-19th-century man was compassionate, a caretaker, but such qualities lost favor as paid labor moved from homes to factories during industrialization. In fact, the Boy Scouts, whose creed urges its members to be loyal, friendly, courteous, and kind, was founded in 1910 in part to counter that dehumanizing trend. Smiler attributes further distortions in masculinity to a century-long backlash against women’s rights. During World War I, women proved that they could keep the economy humming on their own, and soon afterward they secured the vote. Instead of embracing gender equality, he says, the country’s leaders “doubled down” on the inalienable male right to power, emphasizing men’s supposedly more logical and less emotional nature as a prerequisite for leadership.”

Take a minute to read that and really take it in. Like many things in the US (and the world) the effects of industrialization and war shaped our current version of accepted masculinity. More specifically the leaders of this country (and leaders in other countries) used their positions of power to strengthen men and this new masculinity in our institutions. Then we were taught that this was the “right way” to “be a man”. FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

“Today many parents are unsure of how to raise a boy, what sort of masculinity to encourage in their sons. But as I learned from talking with boys themselves, the culture of adolescence, which fuses hyper-rationality with domination, sexual conquest, and a glorification of male violence, fills the void.“

Here we have the core of what I experience as a man when it comes to the current socially accepted version of masculinity and why it fucks me up. I don’t identify with any of this shit! It does not feed me. It does not make me feel fulfilled and happy. It doesn’t make the world better for anyone it simply dehumanizes us all.

“In a classic study, adults shown a video of an infant startled by a jack-in-the-box were more likely to presume the baby was “angry” if they were first told the child was male. Mothers of young children have repeatedly been found to talk more to their girls and to employ a broader, richer emotional vocabulary with them; with their sons, again, they tend to linger on anger. As for fathers, they speak with less emotional nuance than mothers regardless of their child’s sex. Despite that, according to Judy Y. Chu, a human-biology lecturer at Stanford who conducted a study of boys from pre-K through first grade, little boys have a keen understanding of emotions and a desire for close relationships. But by age 5 or 6, they’ve learned to knock that stuff off, at least in public: to disconnect from feelings of weakness, reject friendships with girls (or take them underground, outside of school), and become more hierarchical in their behavior.“

I’m not going to get into the topic of my own father (that’s another post in this series for sure) too deeply but I will say I completely identify with these ideas. Emotional distance, only expressing anger, telling me having emotions was weak. This was reinforced societal norms throughout my youth through today. Don’t talk about your problems or feelings. Ball them up inside. Wall yourself off from the world. Connections = weakness that others will exploit. You must control every situation and hold power over others. FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

---

So when did I wake up? When did I start to see through this shit in some way? When my younger sister was born. It was really obvious to me that she was treated in a different way and expectations of her as a girl/woman were not the same as the expectations others had for me. Mostly I just saw the negatives in this. It took me time (and lots of communication and experiences with my partner and others) to recognize the root of this was more fucked up socialization.

“Girlfriends, mothers, and in some cases sisters were the most common confidants of the boys I met. While it’s wonderful to know they have someone to talk to—and I’m sure mothers, in particular, savor the role—teaching boys that women are responsible for emotional labor, for processing men’s emotional lives in ways that would be emasculating for them to do themselves, comes at a price for both sexes. Among other things, that dependence can leave men unable to identify or express their own emotions, and ill-equipped to form caring, lasting adult relationships.”

Read this carefully. Nobody is responsible for your emotional well being but you. If you are a male/man this is especially true - females/women are not responsible for managing your emotions and your reliance on them to take care of this is a form of abuse. They are not responsible for your emotions. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN EMOTIONS.

It can be really hard to see this. It was a blind spot for me for way too long. Don’t let it be one for you. Connecting with and taking responsibility for your emotions is one of the biggest things you can do to improve yourself as a human being. If you are sad you can cry. If you are happy you can laugh. You have a wide range of emotions and they don’t all lead to frustration or anger.

“As someone who, by virtue of my sex, has always had permission to weep, I didn’t initially understand this. Only after multiple interviews did I realize that when boys confided in me about crying—or, even more so, when they teared up right in front of me—they were taking a risk, trusting me with something private and precious: evidence of vulnerability, or a desire for it.“

---

Okay so putting aside all of the reinforcement we get from our parents and institutions and our lack of emotional vulnerability why do we all buy into this dumb shit? Who convinced us all this is what masculinity is? And why do we listen?

“What the longtime sportswriter Robert Lipsyte calls “jock culture” (or what the boys I talked with more often referred to as “bro culture”) is the dark underbelly of male-dominated enclaves, whether or not they formally involve athletics: all-boys’ schools, fraternity houses, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the military. Even as such groups promote bonding, even as they preach honor, pride, and integrity, they tend to condition young men to treat anyone who is not “on the team” as the enemy (the only women who ordinarily make the cut are blood relatives— bros before hos!), justifying any hostility toward them. Loyalty is paramount, and masculinity is habitually established through misogynist language and homophobia.”

Sounds familiar right guys? Don’t kid yourself. This is what being a man looks like in almost all situations in which we feel “safe” to express our self right? You are either with us or against us. Anything different or anyone questioning this behavior must be “othered” as they are clearly not “on the team”. FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

This was my entire experience as a youth. As someone who did not fit into this group (nor wanted to) I was immediately “othered” and deemed a “pussy” or “fag” or “homo” or “weirdo”. My friend group reflected this - mostly others who also were “not on the team” like women, gays and lesbians, and men who also did not identify with this version of masculinity. Which just made it easier to group us all together and identify us as the enemy.

“Just because some young men now draw the line at referring to someone who is openly gay as a fag doesn’t mean, by the way, that gay men (or men with traits that read as gay) are suddenly safe. If anything, the gay guys I met were more conscious of the rules of manhood than their straight peers were. They had to be—and because of that, they were like spies in the house of hypermasculinity.” Without the ability to connect with and express my emotions I often reacted in anger. I started fights. I got violent (with words and writing mostly). I returned this “othering” and treated them all as the enemy. I had other reasons for this (being abused by men as a boy) but at the crux of the issue I had no trust for men. This helped me connect with women and my gay friends as they also experienced this distrust in similar (and different) ways.

Years later I found myself in a job where I managed a group of men (100 or more at any time) working as a team (video game industry) and totally unable to connect with any of them as a human let alone a man. It was at this time that I realized this was a problem beyond my own experiences and when I started to understand my own participation in this system.

I tried to question things as they came up. I tried to hear my teammates and help them navigate this murky sea of masculinity to find their own place in it. Most people didn’t want to participate. They learned to keep their mouth shut if I was within earshot of their typical “bro talk”. They learned to act differently around me so as not to incur my wrath (using my anger and position of power to punish them for being sexist, racist, or intolerant). I felt powerful and I tricked myself into thinking I was making a difference. I was wrong.

---

“Recently, Pascoe turned her attention to no homo, a phrase that gained traction in the 1990s. She sifted through more than 1,000 tweets, primarily by young men, that included the phrase. Most were expressing a positive emotion, sometimes as innocuous as “I love chocolate ice cream, #nohomo” or “I loved the movie The Day After Tomorrow, #nohomo.” “A lot of times they were saying things like ‘I miss you’ to a friend or ‘We should hang out soon,’ ” she said. “Just normal expressions of joy or connection.” No homo is a form of inoculation against insults from other guys, Pascoe concluded, a “shield that allows boys to be fully human.”

It wasn’t long before my “making a difference” spread into our hiring, training, and management of the team. I brought in women who wanted to work in the game industry. I tried to shut down any of the bro culture bullshit that came up and used it as an opportunity to teach other men why it was fucked up. It worked for some (maybe 5-6 people out of hundreds) but the majority either quit or tried to get me fired. Most did not change their behavior in any way.

The women said they knew what they were getting into. I don’t believe they knew what it was like to actually be in the middle of the situation. I assume women in the military probably have a lot of experience like this. In short - it’s fucking toxic and disgusting. Like other males/men they too have to fall in line and “become one of the boys” or risk being antagonized and ostracized for being “different”. It’s Lord of the Flies. It’s fucking mob mentality. It’s masculinity at it’s absolute worst. And this was in a “progressive” creative city working for a small company with a woman CEO. Men simply don’t give a fuck and it’s almost always easier to go with the flow. FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

My first experience with a trans individual in a work setting occurred was while I was managing this team. One of our long term employees made the transition and I had to watch how they were treated by the “bros’. Jokes were made, memes were shared, snickering and fucked up behavior was rampant. I had to talk to, discipline, and fire many individuals. These were men I thought were “on the team” and working to be good examples of masculinity. I should have known that was just part of the act - their way of surviving and showing subservience to me as a man in a position of power over them. My trust was further eroded in masculinity.

Putting yourself over others is not power. It is dehumanization and it stems from hate. We can be different without being better or worse than someone else regardless of who they are. Not everything has to be a competition. It took me way too long to undo the damage done to me by these ideal of toxic masculinity. You can do it too - you just have to start today.

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Beyond the negative effects this version of masculinity has on us as males/men it also fucks up our interaction with women and sexual partners and it’s certainly done so to me. I’m actively working on unfucking my fucking and aware that many of my heterosexual ideals of sex stem from the same shit I have been actively fighting against most of my life. Connecting emotionally with your sexual partner takes things to a completely different level.

“It’s not like I imagined boys would gush about making sweet, sweet love to the ladies, but why was their language so weaponized ? The answer, I came to believe, was that locker-room talk isn’t about sex at all, which is why guys were ashamed to discuss it openly with me. The (often clearly exaggerated) stories boys tell are really about power: using aggression toward women to connect and to validate one another as heterosexual, or to claim top spots in the adolescent sexual hierarchy. Dismissing that as “banter” denies the ways that language can desensitize—abrade boys’ ability to see girls as people deserving of respect and dignity in sexual encounters.”

This is the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear the term “rape culture”. As men we are taught that to be masculine is to claim “wins” in sexual conquest. Sex is property and we can collect it. Even if it’s with our long term partners or spouses. Ever tried talking to men about this? Ever questioned others on how it’s fucked up? You probably heard about how it’s all in jest. Just a joke! I’m just joking! “When called out, boys typically claim that they thought they were just being “funny.” And in a way that makes sense—when left unexamined, such “humor” may seem like an extension of the gross-out comedy of childhood. Little boys are famous for their fart jokes, booger jokes, poop jokes. It’s how they test boundaries, understand the human body, gain a little cred among their peers. But, as can happen with sports, their glee in that can both enable and camouflage sexism. The boy who, at age 10, asks his friends the difference between a dead baby and a bowling ball may or may not find it equally uproarious, at 16, to share what a woman and a bowling ball have in common (you can Google it). He may or may not post ever-escalating “jokes” about women, or African Americans, or homosexuals, or disabled people on a group Snapchat. He may or may not send “funny” texts to friends about “girls who need to be raped,” or think it’s hysterical to surprise a buddy with a meme in which a woman is being gagged by a penis, her mascara mixed with her tears. He may or may not, at 18, scrawl the names of his hookups on a wall in his all-male dorm, as part of a year-long competition to see who can “pull” the most. Perfectly nice, bright, polite boys I interviewed had done one or another of these things.”

Let me be clear in case you are confused. This shit isn’t funny. Laughing at other people’s misfortune is a long standing human tradition yes - and it still dehumanizes everyone involved. That doesn’t make me laugh but maybe you are still amused? Why?

“At the most disturbing end of the continuum, “funny” and “hilarious” become a defense against charges of sexual harassment or assault. To cite just one example, a boy from Steubenville, Ohio, was captured on video joking about the repeated violation of an unconscious girl at a party by a couple of high-school football players. “She is so raped,” he said, laughing. “They raped her quicker than Mike Tyson.” When someone off camera suggested that rape wasn’t funny, he retorted, “It isn’t funny—it’s hilarious!”

The classic toxic masculinity force field present in my life has been the “just joking” phrase with the ultimate no consequence phrase “it’s hilarious!”. Say something you don’t want to manage the consequences for? Just a joke! People still question you or your morals after saying some heinous shit? No.. it’s cool... it’s hilarious! You just gotta laugh! FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

“Hilarious” is another way, under the pretext of horseplay or group bonding, that boys learn to disregard others’ feelings as well as their own. “Hilarious” is a haven, offering distance when something is inappropriate, confusing, depressing, unnerving, or horrifying; when something defies boys’ ethics. It allows them to subvert a more compassionate response that could be read as unmasculine—and makes sexism and misogyny feel transgressive rather than supportive of an age-old status quo. Boys may know when something is wrong; they may even know that true manhood—or maybe just common decency—compels them to speak up. Yet, too often, they fear that if they do, they’ll be marginalized or, worse, themselves become the target of derision from other boys. Masculinity, then, becomes not only about what boys do say, but about what they don’t—or won’t, or can’t—say, even when they wish they could. The psychologists Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson, the authors of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, have pointed out that silence in the face of cruelty or sexism is how too many boys become men.

I feel like I may have already gone too far into this dark hole of shit that fucks me up around toxic masculinity. I hope I didn’t lose you. I hope you have questions and thoughts about how this impacts your life. Perhaps ways that you make a change today to fight against this bullshit. You may be asking yourself “what can we do!?” At the end of the day its up to males/men to change this culture. It’s not about self-hate or self-abuse. We gotta name this and own it. We need more men to step up and say ‘It doesn’t have to be like this”. Our collective mental health requires us to be more flexible and connected to ourselves and emotions. We need to find ways to deal with our anger, frustration, and desires in ways that don’t hurt ourselves and others. We need to teach ourselves (especially youth) that it isn’t enough to only talk about things we shouldn’t (and hopefully won’t) do.

If this shit fucks you too you can do something about it. Start with yourself. Question these things when they come up. And not only when you feel “safe” to do so. Do it consistently in ways that are non-confrontational (they will probably lead to confrontations with most men anyway - sorry). Be okay with not always “winning’ in these situations. You’ll be surprised who you might connect with in the process. Hopefully one of those people will be yourself.

#mental health #masculinity #shit that fucks me up

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linguisten · 6 years ago

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Ngarinyman

Linguistic Diversity Challenge — Regional Edition Post # 11 / 12: Australia

What is the language known as to linguists, and by the speakers themselves? Agarinman, Ainman, Airiman, Bilinara, Engarinmán, Hainman, Heineman, Hyneman, Nariman, Narinman, Ngaiman, Ngaimmun, Ngainman, Ngainmun, Ngarinman, Ngarinmany, Ngarinyman, Ngarnman, Ngraimun, Ngrainmun, Ngrainmunynhgahri, Ngrarmun

Where is the language spoken? Ngarinyman country traditionally extends across much of what is now called Judbarra/Gregory National Park, it includes areas such as Bullita, Yarralin, Lingara, Limestone Gorge, Bulla, Amanbidji, parts of Victoria River Downs, Humbert River, east Baines River and the Wickham River. (Widijburru et al. 2010:11). Northern Territory, Australia

How many speakers does the language have? 50 or less, most of them bilingual; the speaker community is shifting to Kriol or English; the language is moribund

What are some of the languages relatives and is it part of a contact area? Pama-Nyungan >> Desert Nyungic >> Ngumpin-Yapa >> Ngumpin >> Gurindjic >> Ngarinyman

Is the language written? If it is, with what script? usually not; if so, Latin script / IPA is used

What is the language like grammatically? No dominant word order; case-marking (10 cases); split ergative language; inflecting verbs and coverbs; tense; 17 consonants and 3 vowels; stress on first syllable; alienable/inalienable possession. [Ethnologue]

What is the language like phonologically? fairly small inventory, typical set of nasals and stops, distinctive vowel length, no tone

youtube

What made you choose the language? It was the field language of a friend of mine

Resources:

https://www.ethnologue.com/language/nbj

https://collection.aiatsis.gov.au/austlang/language/c27

https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/ngar1235

https://wals.info/languoid/lect/wals_code_ngy

http://endangeredlanguages.com/lang/2557

http://www.language-archives.org/language/nbj

https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/ngarinyman-english-dictionary/

https://phoible.org/inventories/view/2858#tipa

#Australian languages #Aboriginal languages #ngarinyman #linguisticdiversitychallenge #linguistic diversity #linguistics #languages

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ayearinlanguage · 7 years ago

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A Year in Language, Day 315: Rapa Nui Rapa Nui is an Austronesian language, specifically of the Polynesian branch and, even more specifically, of the Eastern Polynesian branch which also includes Hawaiian, New Zealand's Maori, and Tahitian. It is spoken on the island of Rapa Nui, better known to the world as Easter Island. Consistent census is not taken from the island, and estimates of speakers range from as high as 2,000 (around half the island's population) to just 800 or less. Rapa Nui is fairly standard by Polynesian standards; a small sound inventory (just 10 consonants), analytic grammar, a distinction between alienable and inalienable possession etc. The language has undergone significant influence from Tahitian and Spanish in recent years (Chile being the country that claims the island) and there is sadly little record of older pre-colonial forms of the language. There is a small corpus of written records presumably in Rapa Nui. I say "presumably" as these texts, written in the Rongorongo script, remain undeciphered.

#A Year in Language #Rapa Nui #AYIL #language #linguistics #day 315

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theblessedheart · 6 years ago

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Throughout history, cannabis has been used for religious ritual and healing. I am a firm believer in the power of Cannabis.

We have freedom of religion. A constitutional right. We should be able to use this healing plant to heal ourselves as we choose. Mind, body, spirit

. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Three examples of the "inalienable rights" which the Declaration says have been given to all humans by their creator.

From Taoism to the Church of the Universe, Scriptures in the Bible, Paganism, Rastafarianism, even the Quran and Ancient Hindu and Buddist scripts converse about using cannabis.

#cannabis #religion #spiritual #healing #constitution #declaration #freedom

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hardynwa · 2 years ago

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Supreme Court Blasts Citizens Over Critics Of Recent Judgments

The Supreme Court of Nigeria slammed some Nigerians on Saturday for "venting convoluted anger" in the aftermath of its recent pronouncements, which affirmed a former Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Godswill Akpabio, and Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, as All Progressives Congress senatorial candidates in the February 25 elections. According to The Punch, the Supreme Court's Director of Press and Information, Dr. Festus Akande, issued the warning in a statement titled "Be mindful of unwarranted attacks on judicial officers." The Supreme Court warned purveyors of such attacks on the judiciary and Nigeria's Chief Justice, Justice Olukayode Ariwoola, particularly the US-based Professor Farooq Kperogi and Progressive Minds Forum, to stop and redirect their energies to political parties that "fail to organize themselves well.” It is disheartening, according to Akande, to learn that some individuals and groups of people who should know better and even assume the revered positions of role models to a larger proportion of the citizens are now, sadly, the ones flagrantly displaying ignorance and infantilism in the course of defending the indefensible. Farooq Adamu Kperogi, who described himself as a Nigerian-American Professor, decided to plunge into an abysmal pit of irredeemable ignorance by venting convoluted anger on Supreme Court Justices to please his paymasters in an ineptly scripted toxic article. However, we have repeatedly stated that Judicial Officers are not political office holders or politicians who should be dressed in such robes. As a result, our silence must not be misconstrued as weakness or cowardice. Certainly, every Nigerian citizen has an inalienable right to express his or her opinion without hindrance; however, even when exercising such a fundamental right, we must exercise caution in order not to infringe on the right of another person. Even in a state of emotional disequilibrium, we should be reasonable enough to choose decent words in communicating our grievances. Meanwhile, as reported earlier, the current crisis rocking the main opposition party, PDP took another dimension on Friday as Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, criticized the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Sen. Iyorcha Ayu, for the campaign error he made in Kano State, saying, "PDP has brought us shame." Read the full article

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the-hem · 3 years ago

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Introduction to the Sarva Sara Upanishad “The Exploration of the Mysteries of the Essence of the Almighty.”

The Sarva Sara Upanishad is thought to have been written in the first millennium BCE. It is numbered 53 of 108.

It is considered one of the “glossaries” like the Muktika Upanishad, which reveal the language and definitions of Turiya, the Cosmic Formula God uses to order the creation.

The closer the Glossary comes to second nature, that is, an imprint upon the mind, the fewer the distinctions the one will make between soul and Soul, self, selves and Self.

The goal is not to run amok like a long-haired hippy high on pot screaming “We are all one!” nor to find the unity within diversity. That is rubbish. The objective is to end all bondage to illusions, delusions, opinions, sound-bites, talking heads, politicians, religious whackos and come to know the phenomenal world on its own merits. As God made it, not as you see it.

In the Sari Raka, we learn we are made in God’s image, what we make of ourselves depends. In the Sarva Sara Upanishad we get a few clues on how to pattern ourselves after Him more closely.

In Vedanta, the “Science of the Eternal” within which the Vedas, “accumulated knowledges” are studied we find the Upanishads, or methods of binding the truth to the untamed self.

The process as we will see is said to be similar to how God binds Himself and His will to all phenomenal matter and energy called “Turiya”. Turiya is an equation, a kind of metadata that tells every particular, of the certain and uncertain type how to make and support life. All of this we see and enjoy around us is deliberate. It was not the result of some silly random cosmic event, it was planned, and is continually planned according to this unseen formula for existence.

Existence, Bliss, Knowledge Absolute is the ACME of existence, what we call the Avyakta or axiom of the universe. I won’t dive into a screen rant about our apparent axioms for our lives which include the legal use of weapons, bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, pollution, waste, corruption, Republicans and Dems, Jews and Gentiles, all troublesome rubbish we have chosen to treat as if they are inalienable, can’t be changed, are facts of life, here to stay and they are not.

They are figments of our imaginations, balls and chains put on our ankles quite willingly and that is how they must come off. Willingly,

All that exists is by the sufferance and Grace of the Almighty God who is capable of minding His Affairs quite well on His own, and have some scary good news for you, so are you.

The goal of the Sarva Sara is to reveal more about this. Here begins the Upanishad.

1. Om. What is Bandha (bondage of the Soul) ?

What is Moksha (liberation) ?

What is Avidya (nescience) ?

What is Vidya (knowledge) ?

What are the states of Jagrat (waking), Svapna (dreaming) , Sushupti (Dreamless sleep), and the fourth, Turiya (Absolute) ?

BONDAGE is the same as idolatry. Any time one slaves to a master that calls himself a little god, a huge know it all, beyond reproach no matter how reprehensible, this is called bondage.

MOKSHA is achieved through meditation. During meditation we turn the faucet off and train the body, mind, and soul to listen without any filters to the phenomenal world. The end-point of meditation, success, is when we realize the miracle is spontaneous, easy to grasp, is without qualification. All sin happens once the miracle is traded for bondage. This happens because of what is called Avidya, “delusion”.

AVIDYA is not when you put your hand on the burner when you’re two years old, can’t read or write, or can’t ride a bicycle without training wheels. Avidya is when you choose to believe in something that lacks evidence, has no merits, or is self-serving and you choose to ignore the consequences to others around you.

Avidya is repulsive.

We’ve all done it, some here some there, some do it all day long. Avidya must be cured using the study of the Script by one and all if this world is to survive and make progress. As we are seeing Turiya is not enough on its own. Humanity has to pull its weight, be ethical and responsible; it must flourish with respect to itself and the definitions God has established for life on this world. No more, no less.

Vidya, “Utter Knowledge” is how this is done.

Discussions about the Four States annoy me so we will skip the details, but we must mention how they cause and uncause reality. First is God and His Consciousness. Without this, we have nothing. Then comes our unconscious state when the soul and body are united but the mind is not present. Then comes the dreamer who drifts through a gossamer reality but wakes up and knows the difference between it and the real world.

There are clear differences between dreams and the waking world, even the dumbass can tell you this. Whence comes delusions about resurrections and blood sacrifices and eternal golden castles in the sky no one has ever, ever, never and always seen?

Why the wars, rhetorical and physical over what is naught but delusion? What power does this vision of paradise and its weird courtyard have over us that we cannot grow up out it as easily as the dreamer wakes up every morning?

Let us continue to study the Upanishad and find out what manners of stimulation and pleasure we acquire through the faculties that layer and heap upon and burden the mind but have no weight or substance to them at all.

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