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licorice-and-rum · 7 months ago

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More Snape Slander guys!!!

Lol, I truly, really love having a reason to add to my already 15-pages-long rant of Snape Slander, so let’s go:

Okay, I’m going to be posting this as a different post but this is an answer to some arguments that someone made in this post (I’ll tag them below, I just hate to have repostings on my profile - or, if any kind soul could tag them I'd appreciate, this is their post, read at your own discretion [it's terrible, though], I really need to get some sleep rn). If you’re interested in reading more about my not really favorable view of Snape, there’s also my character analysis here.

So let’s begin, shall we (oh, and by the way, I am as educated as you were with me)?

Interesting that you think that my post is bullshit, love, because I think your arguments are ludicrous, to say the least. I wasn’t going to bother with a response but I think it’s only right I add some critical skills and point out that many of your points are already taken care of in my original post – something you’d know if you had read it and understood it.

Anyway, your whole argument is based on the fact that no legal system would consider Snape guilty which… okay?

Because the judiciary system is completely fair and absolves only people who should be absolved. It is not at all used as a political tool to advance the very corrupted system we all live in, as noted by the contrast between the speed with which the ICJ issued Putin’s prison mandate but delayed Netanyahu’s prison mandate for months. It’s not like most of the people locked up in jails in America are black and poor despite the criminality rates showing white men as more likely to commit crimes such as rape, child abuse, kidnapping, and feminicide.

It’s not like every and each judiciary system serves a capitalist political agenda. A very white, patriarchal, European political agenda.

And about that, which judiciary system are we talking about? Mine? Yours? The UK’s? The International Court of Law? The wizarding world's? Because of course, there’s a difference between all of them and even if you’re right, what does it proves? What does it prove that a white, fascist man with connections to the most privileged in the society (rich purebloods and Dumbledore at the same time btw) would be absolved of his crimes in a system that also privileges him?

Because it does privilege him of course: we’re talking about a system of oppression that is ingrained in the wizarding world, why would it be any different from the real world? Snape was fighting for the maintenance of a system that is corrupted (and this also includes the judiciary btw) and to keep on the status quo, especially when he was a Death Eater but also when he was on Dumbledore’s side.

He might not have been targeting muggleborns as he once was when he was young but changing his choice of victims doesn’t change the fact that he’s using his societal privilege to continue the oppressive system and cycles of abuse he upholds so perfectly since he was a kid. A fucking role model, to be honest.

I mean, using his teacher position to condone bullying and terrorize children, who are a social minority and are in a position of vulnerability in relation to his place as a professor? Ring any bells?

And don’t come with me with the “but he saved them all the time” argument. He took on that role because he wanted to, he did it because he chose to, and as a professor, it was his responsibility to care for his students’ wellbeing (not that he does much besides keeping them alive for enough time to traumatize them on his way out). I imagine what a role like that would entangle in a magical school where children have potential guns in their hands all the time – sounds a bit like a security hazard to me even without the whole genocidal maniac persecuting one of them, to be honest. It’s like a parent wanting laurels for actually doing their responsibility, it’s shameful.

Or, I don’t know, using his higher position in the social hierarchy to expel the only competent teacher of the children he was supposed to look out for because of his lower societal status as a werewolf and continuously using that to make them feel bad in Order reunions, over and over again using his privilege as a non-werewolf as a tool to express his well-placed resentment?

The legal point of view is the real bullshit.

“He paid his debt to society” and now he’s free to do whatever the hell he wants because he chose to take vengeance on his ex-best friend’s murder (that he also had a hand in) even if it means that he gets to use his privilege against others exactly like he did in the past – just not on muggleborns because last time he did it, his feelings got hurt. But *these new marginalized people* he can beat up because that’s not the same thing at all.

You say that “redemption within society isn’t about changing your ideology” but forget to question why. Is it perhaps because the people who are actually let go always seem to be the fascist one who upholds what capitalism needs them to uphold? In contrast, of course, with the people who actually do the right thing regardless of legality and are persecuted their whole lives because of it.

Plus, you don’t take into account what is the effect of it, right? Why should we ever worry about someone’s ideology if they paid their time? It’s not like their ideology reflects on what they think and how they act in and affect society. It’s not like it can do any harm by perpetuating and encouraging these beliefs by, I don’t know, taking a racist education and using it to argue in favor of colonization and occupation of non-white countries because your group has been victimized by the same people that think you and those non-white communities are garbage, or taking on a job that involves children and condones bullying and slurs being thrown at the marginalized kids of his school.

Of course not.

And you say that “the system Rowling portrays isn’t fascist because it lacks the economic and social foundations to support that definition” but forgets also that it doesn’t really matter whether is a bad or good representation because it’s still a representation of it. You can’t smell smoke, feel your eyes burning, suffocate on it, and say there isn’t a fire because you technically weren’t burned.

It's like denying there was a State coup in Brazil in 2016 because the impeachment had “legal ground” (which it didn’t by the way): it’s a lazy attempt to grasp at technicalities to escape the very obvious truth that, regardless of the argument (or, in this case, the literary representation) being good or bad, the facts remain the same.

And the fact is that Rowling wrote the Death Eaters as an analogy to fascism (nazism, actually, but let’s use the general term), and as such, most of the fandom interprets it and internalizes it that way. Thus, her negligence of the societal and economic portrayal (although I would question the need for an economic portrayal in a children’s book) does nothing to further any argument at all, not when the truth is that it doesn’t matter that the portrayal is lacking: it’s enough to be understood as such by the masses and thus it becomes a moot point to make.

Severus and every single Death Eater is a fascist because they propagate, believe in, and are violent in the name of fascist ideology. That their group is not represented as a populist movement or that the wizarding world is not on the brink of its economic collapse to sustain that populist background is of little consequence to the average reader and their interpretation of the problem.

Plus, fascism is a concept that should apply to any social variation of the same movement. You sound like my college professor saying my class should call Bolsonaro a fascist because fascism is a concept used in a very tight set of rules – which is bullshit.

Although I had already taken all that into consideration in my previous post. You’d know that if you knew my arguments.

Now, you said that “redemption is about regretting what has happened and paying for it” and that’s interesting because, you see, that’s not what it is at all, not in every legal system, nor when we’re talking about narratives and writing.

In Brazil’s legal system, for example, our judiciary system is about social revitalization. Prison is not a place we send someone as a punishment, it’s not about paying a debt to society or being punished for what they’ve done. It’s about giving them the tools to not repeat their crimes once they come back to society, and that’s not a test Snape would be passing anytime soon because redemption from being a fascist would be to let go of fascist views.

In writing, on the other hand, an author has certain control over their character, which means that their portrayal is the author’s responsibility. A Redemption Arc is not about judging someone’s actions and applying a penalty, it’s about allowing your character to develop substantially throughout the narrative. They need to go from what they are in the beginning to a better version of themselves throughout the rest of the story and that’s certainly not what happens to Snape.

Again, refocusing your bullying to fit other vulnerable groups does not equal betterment in any way, shape of form.

Oh, I really love this one: “His ‘sentence’ was 17 years of self-imposed prison and life-threatening service, which is far more than any collaborator with a terrorist group would face in any real-world court.”

Seventeen years of which exactly 14 of those he spent being a professor in the most important schools of magic in the UK, being respected by his community, well-fed, having a probably copious amount of galleons in his bank account to do whatever the hell he wanted to, and still wallowing in his own misery and self-imposed (as you kindly pointed out) emotional torture living in his childhood home to go back to a castle and bully children at his leisure instead of bettering himself as a human being and actually putting some work towards self-improvement as to not, I don’t know, perpetuate cycles of abuse that ultimately led him towards that mess of a life he got for himself.

You’ll excuse me if I don’t find his journey that impressive from where I’m standing. He made his bed, he can sleep in it or try to do something about it. And, to be honest, I have little to no respect for people who do nothing about their own misery.

Then, he used three and something of those doing something useful but ultimately a sorry attempt at a Redemption Arc. Snape’s big, bold actions in the name of his love for Lily are not something I see as useless, they’re pretty heroic but it doesn’t matter because that’s not what my character analysis is about.

What I try to bring to light (and what you sincerely lost in the reading) is that there is no Redemption Arc for a fascist unless they are no longer fascist at all, and even so, there is some degree of immorality in portraying them as redeemable at all. But if you’re gonna attempt it, you need to be responsible and actually redeem them, ideology and all.

We’re talking about a book, a narrative that will be read by thousands of people, that will be example and insidiously have an effect on how people see the world. Condoning fascist ideology because they don’t persecute *this specific vulnerable minority* anymore (ignore that they do persecute others btw) and did some heroic things for the “good side” because they felt wronged by the “bad side” and not really for basic human decency is not impressive. Or worthy of praise.

Or basis for admiration.

And as for your account on “In any real-world war, he would not only have been honored and considered a national hero—he’d have a hundred movies and documentaries made about him. He’d be an icon.” – so do countless others who are not even remotely deserving of any kind of admiration or having their memories preserved in that sense.

I should know, the number of novellas and documentaries and songs and History lesson materials and street names in my city alone that are homages to “national heroes” that “helped” the poor people or some other minority while massacring indigenous peoples, selling out our land to big corporations and the agribusiness, censored and persecuted artists and journalists in their time, and so on are actually crazy in Brazil.

National heroes are only national heroes because they serve the political narrative our system needs them to serve, darling, otherwise, they are forgotten and even villainized, make no mistake of that.

“Politically, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to call a working-class boy a fascist when he ends up in a nest of far-right extremists simply because they’re the only ones who treat him well”

Interesting that you should mention Snape as a working-class boy – like class traitors don’t exist? Granted, the expression is mostly used to define cops but that’s no different, although I would call it a bit hypocritical of you to use Snape’s class to defend him when you accuse (rightfully so, of course) Rowling of not portraying well the economical part of fascism.

And “the only ones who treat him well”? Really? Lily apparently doesn’t exist in your reality. Or better yet, you’ll tell me she’s not a good friend and didn’t treat him well enough and all the misogynistic gross and stupid points snape apologists make when you’re scrambling to save your fave? Please, if that is it, spare me.

Oh, and by the way, the part you didn’t read at all on my very thorough analysis:

“The truth is, even with all the undeniable good Snape did as he worked as a spy, he was a Death Eater for his conviction, and at the end of the day it doesn’t matter why he chose to become one.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter that he was neglected and abused by his parents, or that he was bullied in school, or that his crush didn’t reciprocate his feelings: he still became a Death Eater, he chose to become one. And that is unforgivable. It is unforgivable because it means he supported and actively worked for a system of thinking that ridiculed, persecuted, tortured, and murdered hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people. He advocated for a political view that has no regard for human life, that perpetuates the abuse he suffered firsthand — just in a slightly different direction. He didn’t just not break his cycle of abuse, he actively perpetuated it. Advocated for it.

And don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying here that the abuse Snape went through isn’t important at all: there is definitely something to be said about the preying of supremacist groups for young isolated men who feel left out and emasculated. But that doesn’t mean Snape gets to be absolved for his own choices because that’s what they were: his choices. He chose to become a Death Eater, he chose to uphold the cycles of abuse he had been a victim to not long before, he chose to protect it even in the face of people — good people — telling him that it wasn’t a good thing.

That’s my point, actually: Snape may have been preyed upon by the blood supremacy ideology as a teen but at some point, he chose to be influenced by it more than by millions of other influences around him. He wasn’t completely isolated or ignorant of the world to the point that the only influence he could possibly choose was the blood supremacy one, no: he had people telling him the contrary and still chose to follow blood supremacy. So, no, it’s not forgivable that he chose to become a Death Eater because he did know better than that, his very friendship with Lily proved it.”

Oh, and let’s be very real here: “the rich, left-leaning aristocratic kids bully him for not meeting their social standards”

First of all, I brought the Marauders into my analysis as little as I could because I could destroy Snape’s character without even needing them. Now, if bullies like James and Sirius are actually better in their “social standards” (human decency is more like it, actually) as you so nicely put it, then I have no idea why you bother to defend Snape at all. I don’t have time, nor patience to explain that believing people are equal and deserve equal respect is the most basic thing you can do as a human being and if Severus doesn’t even manage that, his class or trauma has little to do with it, his character on the other hand...

Many people have trauma, as I already pointed out, and many people were lulled by fascist ideology but not all of them chose to give in to it. His choice is his responsibility, don’t ever deny that or fool yourself into thinking it’s some kind of forced brainwashing. It isn’t, and even if it is, it doesn’t matter as much as the fact that he’s an adult who should know better than to condemn people to die or think less of them because of things they cannot control.

And even entertaining you're crazy notion that Snape's not actually a fascist (he is) it doesn't really matter if he believes it if he joins a group that advocates for it.

Plus, you should really start thinking about what kind of idiotic ideology you tolerate just because of “trauma”. Fuck him and his trauma, I couldn’t care less if Snape was bullied because he lacks human decency because the truth, so eloquently put by my fellow countryman, is that “a fascist’s hat is a hammer; all suffering is not enough; and the swastika has to be hit until it turns into a pinwheel.” And by lovely miss Lyudmila Pavlichenk: “Not men, fascists.”

And yes, I think anyone left-leaning is better than anyone in the far-right any time of the day, not really sorry if I actually understand politics and how important it is to preserve the lives of people in a system that is designed to leave them in an indecent condition. A system that Snape fought to preserve ideologically and politically for the earlier years of his life without so much of a written recognition of the real garbage it all is.

Plus, let’s be very clear again, I wasn’t talking at all about the Marauders when I criticized Snape. You brought them into the discussion, not me. I could very well cite other characters who are not as terrible as Snape or bullies like teenager James and Sirius (and I’m gonna ignore that you included Peter and Remus into the ‘aristocratic’ and ‘rich’ context because I don’t think even a Snape apologist would be that idiotic although your hashtags beg for me to think otherwise), and still manage some fucking human decency despite their traumas.

Garbage is that you think, at fucking 28 years old, that fascist ideology is somehow tolerable, or that the legalities of some situation actually account for something other than the political structure of the system, or that admiration equals the deserving of it. Bullshit is you thinking that you can actually beat me on technicalities and that you believe advocating for tolerance over the intolerable is somehow admirable, is to be naïve enough to think the legal system doesn’t obey a political agenda and therefore benefits whoever is on the winning side, which to Snape was both during the two times he was a spy.

He was the one who had nothing to lose, darling. He had no family, no one that he cared about, no one who could even stand him, no one who would mourn him - all through his own merit by the way. And to be honest, no one to pity him either. It's pathetic that that is the truth because he chose so, that the only thing that "saves" him are a few memories of an abusive friendship.

He was nothing to be admired and never evolved as a human being. He gave himself to a cause that kept him commode most of the time and acted only out of the fact that he was wronged by the other side. The fact that if it had been Neville who was chosen he would never have turned is shameful as a human being, the fact that he only kept his students alive but never really took into account their wellbeing is shameful as a professor, the fact that he hated Harry because of all of it is childish and unbecoming for an adult, the fact that he bullied children is shameful as an adult.

And none of that was redeemed because he was a spy. He could be a spy and a fucking decent person. But he wasn’t, and he wasn’t by choice, so fuck him.

And, to end with this tiresome and, honestly, easy as fuck to refute, tirade of useless arguments, “What I’m saying is that I don’t give a damn about moral niceties.” – Clearly. Just as clear as your ignorance of what “moral niceties” really mean in this context.

PS: look, 22 pages now! I’m expecting more to be added…

PS2: Tbh, you'd think this person thinks the only people to ever fight Voldemort were the Marauders for all they seem to argue

PS3: This person really confirms everything I know about the relativism of European people for dangerous and prejudiced political views.

#snape slander #harry potter #harry potter analysis #the marauders era #marauders era #snivellus #fuck severus snape tbh #fuck snape apologists #Snape is trash #bookworm #harry potter marauders #james potter defense squad #sirius black defense squad #Dumbledore defense squad #tbh I lost my patience there but fuck it #they deserved it #eat the rich

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yourreddancer · 18 days ago

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Urgent Message From Meidas…Trump Declares War

Ben Meiselas and MeidasTouch Network Jun 8 By Ben Meiselas

The President of the United States has issued a war declaration against Americans. This is not hyperbole. It happened.

Last night, Trump issued a memo invoking 10 U.S.C. § 12406 to “federalize” the National Guard.

Trump’s memo says he is starting with 2,000 federal troops in Los Angeles but reserves the right to federalize more National Guard troops and to use soldiers from other branches of the military against American citizens, pursuant to the discretion of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Pete Hegseth posted that he is ready to send the Marines against Americans. He says the Marines are just waiting for his order to attack.

Let’s talk about our plan.

We knew this day would come.

We’ve been preparing you for this for months now.

We knew how it would go down.

Trump would use ICE to sow chaos and unrest and then claim there was an “insurrection” that required him to invoke the Insurrection Act and declare martial law.

To be clear, Trump has not yet declared martial law nor has he invoked the Insurrection Act, which is under a separate statute, 10 U.S.C. § 253.

But he will invoke that soon, I have no doubt.

So we need to have a plan.

The statute Trump used to unlawfully federalize the National Guard last night was 10 U.S.C. § 12406, which requires that there be an invasion by a foreign country, a rebellion, or an inability for the President to execute laws—and it also requires that the President act through the governors of the states to federalize the National Guard.

Clearly, Trump’s invocation of 10 U.S.C. § 12406 was unlawful.

Nonetheless, as I write this, he is unlawfully commandeering the National Guard against people in America, and they are threatening to attack Americans with the Marines.

The Trump regime is truly a group of sick and disgusting thugs and war criminals. They do not deserve a scintilla of respect. They have brought shame and dishonor to our country.

So, what is our plan?

First, never normalize the regime’s behavior.

Don’t mince words. Don’t appease. Don’t call them an “administration.” Call them thugs. Call them fascists. This isn’t a democracy anymore. Accept that fact, and prepare to fight for democracy back.

We don’t have our freedoms anymore. Accept that fact. Prepare to fight for your freedoms back.

The regime, run by perverts, has perverted our flag and ripped our Constitution to shreds. Accept that fact. And fight for it back.

The Supreme Court is supremely fascist. It is run by fascist enablers. Do not expect they will ever do the right thing. Accept that fact. Accept the truth. Then find your power.

Second, fight the regime like your life depends on it. Because it does. But for me, the concern for my own life is far less important than that of my daughter. We are fighting not just for ourselves and our loved ones and our communities—we are fighting for future generations. My support is only for peaceful protests and peaceful fighting. Non-violence.

As a student of Gandhi and MLK, I believe peaceful disobedience is the path to discuss. Resist the urge to fall into traps the regime is deliberately setting to justify their violence.

Third, stay united. Do not let the regime divide us. They will throw everything at us. They will try to scare us. They will threaten our lives. They will bribe, pick off, entice, coerce, threaten, attack, or do whatever it takes to break up our unity and will.

Our team has been threatened by Trump supporters with a barrage of threats over the past 24 hours. Nothing will slow us down or stop us.

I am sure the regime will try to shut us down and arrest us. They don’t scare us.

Fourth, recognize your skills. You don’t need to be everything to everyone. Focus on what you are good at. Case in point: we are good at news and media. We have built the biggest news network in the United States. With the platform we built, we will amplify the work of all the community organizers and leaders of the protests.

We are in communication with all the groups leading the protests. We have Meidas Mighty embedded in the protests. We have sources everywhere. We will amplify what is really happening on the streets as American media covers it up.

We are the media now.

Fifth, think ahead and make connections. Recognize the patterns and practices at play.

Next weekend is June 14, when Trump is having a military parade for himself with tanks and missiles rolling through D.C.

What else is happening on June 14? Yup, you guessed it.

The No Kings Protest, where millions of Americans will protest Trump, is going down on June 14.

Trump wants full dictator power on dictator parade day, and he wants to be able to shut down the protests across the country on the No Kings Protest day.

In my view, this explains the recent escalation.

Sixth, remember why you are doing this. It’s not because you “hate the regime” for some abstract reason or because they are “the other side.” They are attacking you personally—and your family and your freedoms. That’s why we despise them. That’s why we fight. They want us to live in their grotesque and filthy cult-worship world that promotes depravity and hate and where they throw away logic and common sense and science for their Führer.

Seventh, don’t be afraid of letting people know what your values and principles are. Be proud of it.

You’re damn right I want everyone in America to have free healthcare, free education, and wages where they can easily afford a nice home. I support saving our environment, believe diversity is our strength, know empathy is a good thing, and believe we should never bully or punch down on marginalized communities.

Eighth, I make you this promise: if you stay in the fight with us, we will win.

Don’t give up now. Trump’s latest move shows his desperation, not strength. It shows paranoia.

These protests in L.A. were not all that big. There was some unrest, which was provoked by ICE. Some of these protests were in the hundreds—and Trump sent thousands of National Guard troops. Trump and his regime showed their cards. They are thirsty for this disorder. They are weak and pathetic. They are little. Don’t be scared. We’ve got each other!

Let me leave you with this: your subscription to the MeidasTouch Substack has built the MeidasTouch Network into the biggest news network in the United States.

We’ve beat all the cable news networks, including Fox, with this people-powered platform.

We now have the largest microphone, thanks to you, to get all the info out about the protest.

I’ve told you this would be a special summer. I’ve called it Democracy Summer. The regime has no clue what the power of the people really looks like. We will show them all—peacefully—what real power looks like.

We are putting out an urgent call for anyone who is not subscribed to the MeidasTouch Substack to subscribe now. You can also gift subscriptions to people if you are already subscribed.

Now is the time we have to grow the MeidasTouch Network bigger. It’s an existential moment.

We must expand our lead over Fox News and Joe Rogan before they catch up.

We must be the biggest distributor of news out there to get out the truth.

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iloveabunchofgames · 2 years ago

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#JakeReviewsItch

Aerannis

by ff

Price (US): $4.99

Included In: Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality

Genre: Action

Pitch: A stealthy action-platformer with a 32-bit pixel aesthetic about a pink-haired assassin in a purple-drenched, matriarchal future.

My expectations: It's incredibly hard to stand out in the crowded world of indie, pixel-art metroidvanias. I hope that's the only reason I've never heard anything about Aerannis. If the game matches the quality of the screenshots, this could be something special.

Review:

Reviewing a different indie game every day can be exhausting (see: most of the reviews on this page), but then, out of nowhere, comes a game like Aerannis.

Aerannis claims to be a game like Metroid or Castlevania, and I can see the connection. It’s a side-scrolling platformer where new powers are acquired, which can be used to reach previously inaccessible areas, but that’s only a sliver of the pie.

Most of the action takes place in discrete, linear stages. Some focus on fast-paced jumping and shooting, along the lines of Metroid or Mega Man, while others are strict stealth challenges. Most often, they’re a blend of the two—stealth is the safest approach, but a quick trigger finger is usually a viable alternative when things go bad. Just don’t expect to make it through a fair fight without taking some hits.

Aerannis ate most of my day, and if I hadn’t forced myself to stop and write this review, I wouldn’t have quit until I reached the end. It’s a successful blend of genres, with terrific variety and style, and it hates bigots who think we can’t tell the difference between feminism and fascism.

+ An incredible blend of stealth and action. I haven't even mentioned the boss fights! + Looks great, sounds great. + I'm hesitant to comment too much on the story since I haven't finished the game, but I can't wait to see if it answers all my questions. If it ends up with some kind of both-sides, horseshoe-theory garbage, I'm coming back and re-writing this whole review, but I think it's commentary on fascism—whether it's addressing litigious transphobes or the Bush administration—is going to land on the correct side. + New abilities, new environments, new enemies, and new types of stages give the game fantastic momentum, hour after hour.

– Despite nailing a million little details throughout its enormous world, there are a few basic oversights that really bother me. The main character should have one more animation pose when launching into a jump. There's a stamina bar that recharges after dashing, but it's this teeny thing way off in the corner—it should make a noise when it's full, or the character could blink, or anything that would let me know she's ready to dash again. Switching between different types of grenades through a radial menu makes the character walk left and right. – Navigation. Characters tell you where to go next ("west of here"), but if you don't retain that dialogue, good luck making sense of the pause menu's clue ("go to the office"—okay, but which office, in which city?) Fast travel locations are often in weird spots. The radar's useless. The space between action levels provides a nice reprieve and good world building, but a map would have been nice. – Could probably stand to be an hour or two shorter. I can't think of a specific section I would cut—none of it's bad—but i know some of these rooms could go, and I wouldn't miss them.

🧡🧡🧡🧡🤍 Bottom Line: Play the danged game. This isn't "good compared to most of the Itch games I play." It is good. Play it. Buy it for your friends. Jumping, shooting, sneaking, and making fun of bigoted fascists—Aerannis has it all.

#JakeReviewsTwitch is a series of daily game reviews. You can learn more here. You can also browse past reviews...

• By name • By rating • By genre

#JakeReviewsItch #Computer Games #Video Games #Itch.io #Reviews #Aerranis #ff #Pixel art #Indie game #Metroidvania #Exploratory action #Stealth Game #Trans rights #Platformer #Snowflake #Pink hair #Assassin

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wxlfbites · 4 years ago

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The Church of Satan

I can only imagine the amount of criticism and hate I'm going to get for this, so I just want to preface this post by saying that in 2015 I considered myself a LaVeyan Satanist for a while. I was a teenager and felt like what I was reading was exactly how I felt, it gave me a sense of justification for the views I had. I am not just some random, misinformed individual who only read anti-satanism propaganda. In fact, I've still actually never read anti-satanism propaganda. My opinions have been formed based exclusively on what I've read on the Church of Satan's own website. These are of course, my own opinions and people are allowed to disagree... I just think it might be something to think about if you're considering becoming a satanist.

THIS WILL BE AN EXTREMELY LONG POST

Firstly, I'm addressing the membership the Church of Satan is now implementing. ~ While the Church of Satan says that you do not need to become a member in order to consider yourself a satanist, it is clear that they encourage you to do so. It has registration and payment based memberships that allow you access to confidential information, rituals, and online chat groups you are otherwise not entitled to. Their website claims these memberships have always been in place, but I do not remember any such kind in 2015. ~ It is their policy that affiliated members are discouraged from exchanging member-exclusive information with non-members. They also express that if you are a non-member of the church, you should not expect members to keep up extended exchanges or promotion of your wares. Further, your membership is subject to rejection and retraction at their discretion and they openly state that when you apply for a membership, they gather information on you to ensure you are someone safe and trustworthy to allow in. ~ Whether or not it is intentional, they use guilt tactics in order to persuade people into becoming members. To quote some of these phrases on their own website: "Those who proudly carry our red cards identifying themselves as members have the strength and dedication to implement the tools traditionally associated with Satan". "Look to your other possessions and expenses (most people spend far more than this on general entertainment) and we’re certain you can do this if it means something to you to become a member." "We’ve discovered that most individuals can muster these funds if membership is something they truly desire." ~ They describe your membership card as a key that you must show and scan to other members to prove your affiliation. They make a few references to the underground secrecy that members may or may not choose to maintain, and so to protect their identities as members, these... calling cards if you will.. are used to discretely confirm ones membership in the Church. ~ They do not tell you where the money for your registration fee goes. In fact, they say: "That is up to the administration. It will be applied to whatever is most required at the time it is received. If you feel the need to know in more detail, then don’t join." Implying you don't have the right to know exactly where your money goes? ~ Their membership application includes inappropriate questions that no organization, religious or otherwise, should ever ask. These include: " Are you satisfied with your sex life? Describe your ideal of a physically attractive sex partner." "How many years would you like to live?" "In what organizations do you hold membership?" "Are you a smoker? If so, to what extent." "Do you drink alcoholic beverages? If so, to what extent? State preferences." " Secondly, how does satanism compare themselves to other religions and philosophies? ~ The Church of Satan declares themselves to be "a formidable threat to those who would halt progress in the name of spirituality and theism of any sort." "We are a group of dynamic individuals who stand forth as the ultimate underground alternative, the “Alien Elite.” ~ They state things like "Our members and officials will not serve as teachers nor as entertainers—we have neither the time nor the inclination.", "It is our policy not to spoon-feed information to students who are too lazy to do research." and "Your schedule is of no importance to us." so it's no surprise that the satanic texts they do not provide in full on their website, including the Satanic Bible, - which is there main text and one they highly encourage you to read - cost money. ~ They believe themselves to be the only form of satanism, stating: "People who believe in some Devilish supernatural being and worship him are Devil-worshippers, not Satanists.", "Anton LaVey was the first to define Satanism as a philosophy, and it is an atheist perspective." and “Theistic Satanism” is an oxymoronic term and thus absurd." ~ Statements like: "we stand in opposition to theist religions and their

inherent hypocrisy.", [regarding the word Shemhamforash] - "So, Satanists use it for traditional blasphemy’s sake.", [regarding someones question about their experiences with demons] - "Satanists do not believe in demons or other supernatural beings, nor do we believe in spells. Seek help from local mental health professionals to assist you to get over these delusions.", "We Satanists are all anthropologists to some degree and can find that not upsetting people who think in such simplistic and erroneous terms of “belief equals goodness and truthfulness” might be worthwhile to smooth the proceedings in which one is involved. Trying to teach them that they are mistaken in such a belief may not be worth one’s efforts." are pretty much self explanatory as to the lack of consideration satanism has for other religions as being true for others.

~ This statement: "Knowing this, if you choose to affiliate with any pseudo-Satanic or anti-Satanic groups, you may well find yourself disaffiliated from the Church of Satan. Forewarned is forearmed." might sound harmless at first glance, but this kind of reminds me of an isolation tactic where cults discourage their followers to read or engage with opposing or differing opinions because it might open their eyes to the truth of things?

Finally, here are some statements that I personally don't find are morally or ethically okay?

~ In terms of kids worrying about their parents approval the Church says: "Satanism teaches that, so long as you live with your parents, you are in “their lair” and must show them respect". Which... is literally the same shit abuse victims hear all the time..... (example "you live in their house, they're your parents and you should love and respect them no matter what")...

~ "There can be no more myth of “equality” for all—it only translates to “mediocrity” and supports the weak at the expense of the strong." is a statement I just .... wish I were making up at this point.

~"The emotional drive to “change the world” is a common stage of early adult development typically beginning around age 16 and lasting until around age 24. Usually, individuals who become aware as to how the world actually functions—rather than being lost in a fantasy wherein they will be some sort of savior figure—come to realize that idealism (such as changing the world) is less important than the principle of getting what you want for yourself.",

Also! Um.. they are fully aware and okay with people who uphold discriminatory political views....

To quote their website regarding politics: "Our members span an amazing political spectrum, which includes but is not limited to: Libertarians, Liberals, Conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, Reform Party members, Independents, Capitalists, Socialists, Communists, Stalinists, Leninists, Trotskyites, Maoists, Zionists, Monarchists, Fascists, Anarchists, and just about anything else you could possibly imagine."

And to justify this, they say: "Members who demand conformity from other members to their particular political fetish are welcomed to depart.”, "For a Satanist to expect, much less demand, consensus on any given issue, beyond basic advocacy of individual liberty within local laws, is an enterprise which is probably as masochistic as it is insane.", "Some naïve idealists seem to think that the Church of Satan as an organization risks irrelevancy if it does not become an advocate of certain political positions—usually their own pet issues which are assumed “must” be shared by other Satanists. This fear is based upon the assumption that the Church of Satan needs to change the world or risk “fading into obscurity.”

Again, all of this information comes directly from the Church of Satan website itself. It it not "propaganda". It comes from their own mouths. You're free to disagree with my interpretation and views of the above. But if you do agree, I'd love to know.

The things above make me uneasy. They give me huge cult vibes and are actually disappointing to read as someone who once considered themselves a satanist. As an omnistic pagan now, I do believe that all religions hold truths within them and can say that there are certain things within satanism I do agree with. But overall, I feel like calling satanism a religion is a stretch and should be joined with caution if it's something you are really interested in. I am only one person, I can't tell anyone what to do. But if you were considering becoming a satanist but hold values and views that the things in this post opposed or were opposite to, then maybe satanism isn't right for you. It's definitely not right for me.

I hope this post was educational at the very least. I hope that it might help people make a decision either way if they were interested in joining the Church.

#the polymorph chronicles #satanism #the church of satan #religion #satan #satanic #spirituality #philosophy #satanist #paganism #pagan #eclectic pagan #omnism #omnist

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nicklloydnow · 4 years ago

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“The status of the embryo in the first trimester is the basic issue that cannot be sidestepped. The embryo is clearly pre-human; only the mystical notions of religious dogma treat this clump of cells as constituting a person.

We must not confuse potentiality with actuality. An embryo is a potential human being. It can, granted the woman’s choice, develop into an infant. But what it actually is during the first trimester is a mass of relatively undifferentiated cells that exist as a part of a woman’s body. If we consider what it is rather than what it might become, we must acknowledge that the embryo under three months is something far more primitive than a frog or a fish. To compare it to an infant is ludicrous.

(…)

That tiny growth, that mass of protoplasm, exists as a part of a woman’s body. It is not an independently existing, biologically formed organism, let alone a person. That which lives within the body of another can claim no right against its host. Rights belong only to individuals, not to collectives or to parts of an individual. (“Independent” does not mean self-supporting — a child who depends on its parents for food, shelter, and clothing, has rights because it is an actual, separate human being.)

(…)

It is only on this base that we can support the woman’s political right to do what she chooses in this issue. No other person — not even her husband — has the right to dictate what she may do with her own body. That is a fundamental principle of freedom.

(…)

The anti-abortionists’ attitude, however, is: “The actual life of the parents be damned! Give up your life, liberty, property and the pursuit of your own happiness.” Sentencing a woman to sacrifice her life to an embryo is not upholding the “right to life.” The anti-abortionists’ claim to being “pro-life” is a classic Big Lie. You cannot be in favor of life and yet demand the sacrifice of an actual, living individual to a clump of tissue. Anti-abortionists are not lovers of life — lovers of tissue, maybe. But their stand marks them as haters of real human beings.”

“Some of Rand’s first and most important remarks on abortion are found in a lecture she delivered in December 1968 at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston, entitled “Of Living Death.” In this lecture, she draws a stark contrast between her secular, individualist philosophy and the religious philosophy of the Catholic Church, and on this basis critiques the Catholic opposition to birth control and abortion.

In Rand’s view, human beings have a fundamental moral right to pursue their own individual lives and happiness. For this reason, they do not have an obligation to serve some alleged higher goal or plan. To suggest that a woman has a “duty” to undergo childbirth amounts to treating her not as an individual human being with personal values, but as a “brood-mare,” and — especially when she is forced to undergo risky childbirth — as “a screaming huddle of infected flesh who must not be permitted to imagine that she has the right to live.”

(…)

For this reason, Rand had contempt for opposition to abortion in the name of the “sanctity of life.” Here again in “Of Living Death,” she explains why only the individual woman (and not the embryo or fetus) has a right to life:

An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not yet living (or the unborn).

Abortion is a moral right — which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body? The Catholic church is responsible for this country’s disgracefully barbarian anti-abortion laws, which should be repealed and abolished.

(…)

Many conservatives oppose abortion in the name of “personal responsibility,” but this is a sham. To prevent a woman from ending an unwanted pregnancy is to deprive her from taking control of her own life. “The task of raising a child,” Rand observes, “is a tremendous, lifelong responsibility, which no one should undertake unwittingly or unwillingly.”

For Rand, abortion rights protect women who decide not to undertake the responsibility of raising a child. In “The Age of Mediocrity,” her 1981 critique of the Reagan administration’s appeasement of (in her words) “militant mystics,” she explains how this right protects women who want to lead real human lives, rather than endure a state of “living death”:

As I have said before, parenthood is an enormous responsibility; it is an impossible responsibility for young people who are ambitious and struggling, but poor — particularly if they are intelligent and conscientious enough not to abandon their child on a doorstep nor to surrender it to adoption. For such young people, pregnancy is literally a death sentence: parenthood would force them to give up their future and condemn them to a life of hopeless drudgery, of slavery to a child’s physical and financial needs. The situation of an unwed mother, abandoned by her lover, is even worse.

Rand suggests that those who would condemn a person to the “horror” of this life of drudgery are motivated “not [by] love for the embryos, which is a piece of nonsense no one could experience, but [by] hatred, a virulent hatred for an unnamed object.”

(…)

Because Rand thought that most opposition to abortion rights was motivated by hatred, not by any genuine concern for human life or individual rights, she did see the abortion issue as a kind of “litmus test” for judging political candidates.

In her 1976 “Last Survey,” she urged her readers not to support Ronald Reagan’s nomination as the Republican candidate for president because of his opposition to abortion rights. In response to another question about abortion that year, she said of Reagan: “If he doesn’t respect that fundamental a right, he cannot be a defender of any kind of rights.”11 In a separate comment on the 1976 Senate election in New York State, Rand remarked on James Buckley’s anti-abortion platform:

Anyone who . . . denies the right to abortion cannot be a defender of rights. Period. . . . What they have in mind is to enslave every human being who is alive enough to have some kind of sexual life — to enslave him to procreation like the lowest kind of farm animal, lower than that because when farm animals are bred, the breeders at least take care of them. . . . But here you make young people, people in love, slaves to involuntary procreation, and you don’t tell them what to do about it. . . .

Religionist conservatives are out to destroy the two-party system in this country, they are out to destroy the Republican Party. Now the Republican Party, like any “defenders” of free enterprise all over the world . . . is very busy trying to commit suicide. . . . [T]he religious conservative[s] . . . are pure fascists. They are not even for free enterprise; they are for controls, and what’s worse, they are always for spiritual, moral, intellectual controls. Oh yes, they might leave you some freedom to work for a while; it’s intellectual freedom that they want to cut. . . .

An “ally” . . . who comes close to you, but starts from opposite premises is much more dangerous than a mild enemy. I would vote for a liberal over Buckley any time.12

She maintained this position during the 1980 presidential election as well. She said that even though she would often vote Republican, she would not vote for Ronald Reagan because of his deference to religious conservatives and opposition to abortion:

I regard abortion as probably the most important issue, because the anti-abortionists have such evil motives. Because they have no interest in human beings, only in embryos; and because they want to tie down a human family to the reproduction of . . . an animal farm. . . . That’s what a creature like Reagan [wants]: . . . he comes out . . . for . . . his right to dictate to young people what they’re going to do with their life; are they going to have a chance at a career or are they going to be breeding animals? I cannot communicate how despicable that is.”

“A “right,” as Ayn Rand observed, is “a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.”43 The purpose of this principle is to identify the fundamental actions that an individual must be free to take to live as a human being—actions such as living one’s life as one sees fit (the right to life), acting on one’s judgment (the right to liberty), keeping and using the products of one’s effort (the right to property), and expressing one’s ideas (freedom of speech). A person’s rights, when recognized and protected, enable that individual to act free of forcible interference from other people.

(…)

The campaign against abortion rights does not take place in a political vacuum. A woman’s right to control her body connects logically and legally to our other rights, including those in the economic sphere. The antiabortion movement threatens to undermine all rights by demanding false rights for embryos and fetuses.

Most obviously, laws restricting or banning abortion directly violate a woman’s fundamental rights. Such laws violate her right to life, not only by threatening her with death and disability, but also by barring her from living a life of her own design. They violate her liberty by preventing her from controlling her own body and seeking abortion drugs and services in a free market, as well as by imposing criminal punishments if she seeks or obtains an abortion. And they violate her right to pursue her own happiness by forcing her into unwanted pregnancy and motherhood.

Moreover, antiabortion laws directly infringe economic liberty. Such laws forbid voluntary economic activities and exchanges, such as a doctor providing abortion services or a pharmacist selling abortifacient drugs. They also infringe the rights of drug companies to research, produce, and sell drugs that might abort or harm an embryo or fetus. Some abortion bans, particularly those based on “personhood” from fertilization, would likely have even further-reaching effects, such as outlawing the birth control pill and the intrauterine device (IUD) because their use might prevent the implantation of a zygote in a woman’s uterus. The most common fertility treatments would be outlawed, too, because they involve the creation of multiple embryos outside the womb, only some of which are implanted.45 In short, antiabortion laws violate the rights of individuals to produce and trade.

Bans on abortion compound these rights violations by imposing criminal penalties on abortion seekers and providers.46 Under “personhood” laws, these penalties would be draconian: Every abortion, even in the earliest stages of pregnancy, would be premeditated murder, on par with killing an infant or any other person. So a woman who has an abortion could face criminal prosecution and punishment, possibly including a lengthy prison sentence or even the death penalty. A woman’s boyfriend, husband, friend, or doctor who assisted her likewise would face criminal prosecution. This concern about criminal prosecution is not merely hypothetical. Recently, an Idaho prosecutor pressed felony charges against Jennie Linn McCormack for taking the abortion drug RU-486; a judge granted her a preliminary reprieve.47 In 2010, a 21-year-old Australian woman faced seven years in prison for taking RU-486, while her 22-year-old boyfriend faced three years for helping her obtain it (a jury found the couple not guilty).48 In 1975, U.S. physician Kenneth Edelin was convicted of fetal manslaughter for performing an abortion for a 17-year-old girl, even though the girl’s mother begged for the procedure for fear that the girl’s abusive father would harm her upon discovering the pregnancy.49

In addition, antiabortion laws establish dangerous precedents for sweeping rights violations in other spheres of life. For example, laws based on the premise that abortion is “socially destructive” or “harmful to women” violate the woman’s right to seek medical care based on her own best judgment. In so doing, they sanction other paternalistic laws, such as forbidding overweight people from buying certain foods deemed unhealthy by the government, or requiring everyone to purchase health insurance. Laws restricting abortion coverage in insurance policies do not merely violate freedom of contract but also encourage even more political wrangling over costly health insurance mandates.50 Similarly, if politicians are entitled to force a waiting period on women seeking abortion, then what is to stop them from enacting waiting periods on any activity, from buying a gun to selling stocks? Requiring abortion providers to include unscientific and other disputed claims in counseling violates their freedom of conscience and professional ethics—and encourages politicians to demand warnings for other goods and services that some people may oppose. In short, restrictions on abortion pave the way for countless other rights violations.

However, the antiabortion crusade threatens rights in an even more fundamental way—by demanding laws founded on religious beliefs rather than observable facts. Claims of divine commands, including the supposed “rights” granted by God, are nothing more than arbitrary, baseless assertions: There is no evidence for the existence of a God, let alone for any morally binding edicts from such a being. Any laws based on religious stories and dogmas will necessarily clash with the objectively demonstrable rights of individuals and the laws that properly protect those rights. Consequently, the antiabortion movement, particularly in conjunction with the broader “social conservative” agenda of the religious right, poses a grave threat to all our liberties.

If abortion should be outlawed because some people imagine that God imbues the zygote with the right to life at the moment of conception, then our whole system of laws could be rewritten to reflect popular tenets of Christianity—and individual rights would be systematically violated in the process. For example, if, as the Baptists claim, devout Christians should eschew alcohol, then perhaps alcohol should be banned across America, as happened under Prohibition—rights of property and trade be damned.51 Because Jesus regards lust in the heart as adultery (Matthew 5), perhaps pornography should be banned—a goal Michele Bachmann has already endorsed—even if that violates the rights of contract, expression, and voluntary association between consenting adults.52 Any claimed right to ban activities or goods on religious grounds necessarily clashes with our actual rights of property, contract, and speech.

(…)

Properly understood, individual rights are moral principles arising from facts about the requirements of human survival and flourishing in society. Those facts can be observed and understood by every person who chooses to observe reality and think. The recognition and protection of rights enable individuals to live together peacefully in a society, each pursuing his own life and happiness while respecting the equal rights of others. In a free society, each person may believe whatever he wishes and act on those beliefs, but he may not force others to conform to his religious faith or otherwise violate their rights.

The lives, health, and happiness of millions of American women depend on legal abortion. A woman’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness entitles her to seek an abortion if she deems that her best course, because every woman is an individual human person, whereas a fetus is not.

To establish and maintain a free society, we must recognize that our rights logically entail one another and stand or fall together. To fight for liberty, we must reject baseless and contradictory notions of fetal rights, and we must protect women’s rights to their bodies. All of our liberties depend on it.”

“Try as I might, I could not find a single influential libertarian exerting their influence on behalf of the freedom of the women of Texas. Despite the Texas government’s extreme coercion and its egregious violation of their most basic personal freedom. Despite the majority of libertarians who say they are pro-choice. Despite the Party’s own platform and stated beliefs.

I would like to be wrong. Please let me know if you see any influential libertarians in the media protesting the Texas outrage. Or marching in the streets on behalf of women’s reproductive freedom.

But if I am understanding all this correctly, I have to conclude that a libertarian is someone who will defend a woman’s right not to wear a medical mask during a pandemic, but inexplicably holds that choices about her body, her health, her economic situation, and her entire life trajectory, belong to the government. Let freedom ring?

Maybe it’s time to fix what’s wrong with libertarianism.”

#any rand #Leonard peikoff #objectivism #abortion #Texas #roe v wade #libertarianism #liberty

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thebrokenblackman · 5 years ago

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KRS-One - “Ah Yeah!” Critical Analysis by Hakeem Ture

“If hip hop has the power to corrupt young minds, it also has the ability to uplift them.” - KRS-One

The musician is a natural master of vibration and emotion. Many musicians have been able to make us dance. Many have been able to draw on relatability because nobody is the only person like them in the world. Perhaps some have even made us cry or provided soundtracks for intimate moments. Only few musicians have taken on the task of socially and historically educating their listeners through their music.

Even fewer have been able to combine the mastery of teaching with mastery of rhythm. Those who do this become legends like; Nate King Cole, B.B. King, Nina Simone, Bob Marley, Chaka Khan and Fela Kuti’ and their influence lives throughout generations. In 1995 Krs-One released a self-titled album that came in the sunset of his reign. His career would mirror the sepia filter of the album cover.

This album had dominant auras of militancy and rebellion that Krs-One fans had not heard since Boogie Down Productions - Criminal Minded. Krs-One was able to both appease his day one fans and gain the younger generation of Hip Hoppers who were listening to artists such as: Nas, Redman,Das Efx, Tupac, and A Tribe Called Quest. The message and timing of this album may have been divine. Let us look at the historical events of the year(s) Krs-One was creating this album in. In 1994, the United States congress had successfully completed the first step of becoming fascist by Voting to Censure Dr. Khalid Muhammad, National Advisor of the Nation of Islam. Bill Clinton and Joe Biden led Democrats to pass the The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and effectively fueled the prison industrial complex. South Africa held it first election since intergrating with the apartheid government and Invisble Man author Ralph Ellison had passed. Hip Hop was the soul vehicle of expression to protest the genocide that had been going on and KRS One was one of its leaders. The youth looked toward this leader to deliver an album reflective of their mindstate and he delivered.

Imperative of a classic work of musical art, this album is composed of multiple great songs, but in my opinion the cornerstone song of the album is undeniably “Ah Yeah”. In this song he masterfully uses three 16 bar verses to empower and mobilize his listener much in the same way Dr. Khalid Muhammad did. This track starts with the establishment of an a capella warcry. He writes in response to western power’s having done such an incredible job destroying the rebel instinct that Afrikan people possess by publicly shaming our leaders and traditions. These lyrics are him trying to raise the psyche of a fallen warrior class and put revolt back in its holy place as opposed to the negative connotation that has been applied by the white power structure. He essentially made a chant-like hook with an underlying message of “This is your enemy, This is how to handle him, and THIS is okay”. The aim focuses on redirecting the accumulated anger of a traduced peoples that is often mistargeted toward self so that we may be collectively progresssive.

He bellows:

“Ah yeah, that's whatcha say when you see a devil down

Ah yeah, that's whatcha say when you take the devil's crown

Ah yeah, stay alive all things will change around

Ah yeah, what? Ah yeah!”

Then comes the establishment of an eerie bass line. This song structure is familiar to fans of his earlier work. It was what they were longing for. For a few albums he took the perspective of being in the classroom or office as opposed to in the battlefield with his men. He had returned to fight with us like Haile Selassie. Immediately he establishes a dual level of respect. One with his men and one with his deterrent.

“So here I go kickin' science in ninety-five

I be illin', parental discretion is advised still

Don't call me nigga, this MC goes for his

Call me God, cause that's what the black man is

Roamin' through the forest as the hardest lyrical artist

Black women you are not a bitch you're a Goddess

Let it be known, you can lean on KRS-One

Like a wall cause I'm hard, I represent God”

In the first 2 bars of the preceding excerption he lets us know he intends to drop some knowledge, but it will not be filtered for political correctness or comfortability. The following 2 bars he establishes both a tone of encounterment and identity. Then he goes on to explain from which direction he came much like Saint Maurice's appearance upon the plagued people of Europe to let them know he has navigated and he is no spook. He goes on to talk to his listener and the most important of them, the women.

In 1994, fresh off a press tour on which she gained popularity from criticizing Bill Clinton, Sister Souljah published her first book that was heralded by black scholars and youth alike entitled No Disrespect. Her Influence was cemented in the minds of black youth and played a huge role in raising generational consciousness by dealing with topics like “how the black woman is viewed by black men” and “the black woman’s role in repairing the black family structure”. She had solely been awarded leadership duties by a disregarded demographic in a scapegoated culture and was handling it with the grace of Misty Copeland. Her and the women she raised to consciousness needed the camaraderie of Krs One. He goes on to sell to himself:

“Wack MC's have one style: gun buck

But when you say, "Let's buck for revolution"

They shut the fuck up, can't get with it

Down to start a riot in a minute

You'll hear so many Bowe-Bowe-Bowe, you think I'm Riddick

While other MC's are talkin' bout up with hope down with dope

I'll have a devil in my infrared scope,”

In the first five bars he addresses the enemies of the oppressed people within the oppressed people. These “Wack MC’s” are the Uncle Toms’ and Judas of the rebellious, afro-centric movement that is Hip-Hop. He says they lack discipline and do not have the self awareness to rescue themselves. In comparison with himself who uses that energy toward an ultimate goal, Independence through revolution. In the succeeding excerption KRS briefly displays the cognitive processing and coping mechanism of a warrior:

“WOY

That's for calling my father a boy and, klak, klak, klak

That's for putting scars on my mother's back, BO

That's for calling my sister a ho, and for you

Buck, buck, buck cause I don't give a motherfuck

Remember the whip, remember the chant

Remember the rope and

You black people still thinkin' about voting?

Every President we ever had lied!

You know, I'm kinda glad Nixon died.”

Throughout the preceding excerption KRS skillfully uses onomatopoeias to create a setting for his listener. There is a battle going on. Shells casings are falling to the ground and bullets are flying from high caliber weapons. He is in the thick of it and then an enemy approaches him. He musters the courage to engage with his assailant by remembering the suffrage the morals of his enemies’ elected nation-state has caused his ancestors. Then he rejoices in the death of one of their leaders, Richard Nixon.

In the second verse Krs-One addresses an age-old topic of discussion for spiritual people that was brought forth to the Afrikans of today by Noble Drew Ali, “The Prophetic Soul”. This belief dates back to ancient Buddhism in the caves of Asia taught to us by Dr. Ivan Van Sertima in his book “African Presence in Early Asia”. This belief entails that all the prophets of the world including but not limted to; Adam, Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, and himself were the same soul being reborn until its mission is completed.” Krs-One puts himself and a couple others in this divine line of being.

“This is not the first time I came to the planet

concern every time I come, only a few could understand it

I came as Isis, my words they tried to ban it

I came as Moses, they couldn't follow my Commandments

I came as Solomon, to a people that was lost

I came as Jesus, but they nailed me to a cross

I came as Harriet Tubman, I put the truth to Sojourner

Other times, I had to come as Nat Turner

They tried to burn me, lynch me and starve me

So I had to come back as Marcus Garvey, Bob Marley

They tried to harm me, I used to be Malcolm X

Now I'm on the planet as the one called KRS

Kickin' the metaphysical, spiritual, tryin' to like

Get with you, showin' you, you are invincible

The Black Panther is the black answer for real

In my spiritual form, I turn into Bobby Seale

On the wheels of steel, my spirit flies away

And enters into Kwame Ture”

In the beginning of the third verse he briefly continues the theme of possessing The Prophetic Soul but now, he does not speak from a perspective of being the people who had the soul. He speaks from the perspective of the soul. This soul is traveling and looking for a host. In the first two bars he speaks of how he was able to travel without detection from the government’s surveillance. Then, he goes on to finally choose a host that is relevant to the demographic of people it intends to reach. This host is stylish and his image is relatable, so the people will be receptive of his message through familiarity.

“In the streets there is no EQ, no di-do-di-do-di-do

So I grab the air and speak through the code

The devil cannot see through as I unload

Into another cerebellum

Then I can tell em, because my vibes go through denim

And leather whatever, however, I'm still rockin”

After the prophetic soul latches on to the host, KRS-One, it manifests purpose with grassroot organization and motivational speaking. Being KRS-One founded the Stop the Violence Movement in 1988 and was solely responsible for mobilizing many of the most influential Hip Hoppers against Gang Violence and Culture he had plenty of knowledge to give on the topic.

“We used to pick cotton, now we pick up cotton when we shoppin'

Have you forgotten why we buildin' in a cypher

Yo hear me kid, government is building in a pyramid

The son of God is brighter than the son of man

The spirit is, check your dollar bill G, here it is

We got no time for fancy mathematics

Your mental frequency frequently pickin' up static

Makin' you a naked body, addict and it's democratic

They press auto, and you kill it with an automatic”

Too often credit for the creation and establishment of a culture or society is given to one person as opposed to being evenly distributed amongst the support structure. How many times have you been taught the legacy of all the men that signed the declaration of independence? It is likely that you’ve only been taught about Thomos Jefferson. Just like there would be no Fidel Castro without the parallel influences of Che Guevara and Camilo Ceinfuegos there would be no Hip-Hop without KRS ONE. Perhaps without his tenacity, passion, and will it would have been infiltrated and exploited before it reached its full maturity. If that would have happened America would not have its current number one export. In his prime most consumers who listened to his message and gazed upon his image said “OH NO!” from fear of what they could not understand. Today, we look at his legacy of art and effort and cant help ,but smile and yell “AH YEAH!”.

“If hip hop has the power to corrupt young minds, it also has the ability to uplift them.” - KRS-One

He bellows:

“Ah yeah, that's whatcha say when you see a devil down

Ah yeah, that's whatcha say when you take the devil's crown

Ah yeah, stay alive all things will change around

Ah yeah, what? Ah yeah!”

“So here I go kickin' science in ninety-five

I be illin', parental discretion is advised still

Don't call me nigga, this MC goes for his

Call me God, cause that's what the black man is

Roamin' through the forest as the hardest lyrical artist

Black women you are not a bitch you're a Goddess

Let it be known, you can lean on KRS-One

Like a wall cause I'm hard, I represent God”

“Wack MC's have one style: gun buck

But when you say, "Let's buck for revolution"

They shut the fuck up, can't get with it

Down to start a riot in a minute

You'll hear so many Bowe-Bowe-Bowe, you think I'm Riddick

While other MC's are talkin' bout up with hope down with dope

I'll have a devil in my infrared scope,”

“WOY

That's for calling my father a boy and, klak, klak, klak

That's for putting scars on my mother's back, BO

That's for calling my sister a ho, and for you

Buck, buck, buck cause I don't give a motherfuck

Remember the whip, remember the chant

Remember the rope and

You black people still thinkin' about voting?

Every President we ever had lied!

You know, I'm kinda glad Nixon died.”

“This is not the first time I came to the planet

concern every time I come, only a few could understand it

I came as Isis, my words they tried to ban it

I came as Moses, they couldn't follow my Commandments

I came as Solomon, to a people that was lost

I came as Jesus, but they nailed me to a cross

I came as Harriet Tubman, I put the truth to Sojourner

Other times, I had to come as Nat Turner

They tried to burn me, lynch me and starve me

So I had to come back as Marcus Garvey, Bob Marley

They tried to harm me, I used to be Malcolm X

Now I'm on the planet as the one called KRS

Kickin' the metaphysical, spiritual, tryin' to like

Get with you, showin' you, you are invincible

The Black Panther is the black answer for real

In my spiritual form, I turn into Bobby Seale

On the wheels of steel, my spirit flies away

And enters into Kwame Ture”

“In the streets there is no EQ, no di-do-di-do-di-do

So I grab the air and speak through the code

The devil cannot see through as I unload

Into another cerebellum

Then I can tell em, because my vibes go through denim

And leather whatever, however, I'm still rockin”

“We used to pick cotton, now we pick up cotton when we shoppin'

Have you forgotten why we buildin' in a cypher

Yo hear me kid, government is building in a pyramid

The son of God is brighter than the son of man

The spirit is, check your dollar bill G, here it is

We got no time for fancy mathematics

Your mental frequency frequently pickin' up static

Makin' you a naked body, addict and it's democratic

They press auto, and you kill it with an automatic”

#krs one #krs1 #hip hop #90shiphop #boombap #african art #African American Art #african history

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recentanimenews · 6 years ago

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An Explorer's Guide to the Wonderful World of Visual Novels

Visual novels! Once decried as a “niche” by the masses, they have slowly but surely wormed their way into video games as a whole. Persona became a visual novel, then Fire Emblem. Now Saya no Uta, Gen Urobuchi's disturbing cult “classic” (?!) is available on Steam to stumble upon. There are fewer barriers than ever before to experiencing this varied, historic and often misunderstood medium.

But where to begin? Some visual novels are very long. Others are quite lewd. A number of them (even the ones people love) front-load their most boring material at the beginning, and save the best moments for the last hour of what can be twenty or thirty-hour games. Picking up Saya no Uta without being primed for the extremes of the medium is a recipe for despair. But don't be afraid! Many of the best visual novels being made today are only a few hours long, encompass many approaches and genres, and are acceptable for all ages. In this piece I will lay out a path that you, dear reader, may follow into the thickets. Some things to keep in mind:

1. Every one of the games featured here is legally avaliable in English. If you know Japanese and are willing to spend some money, feel free to experiment on your own!

2. The games featured here range from appropriate for teenagers, to appropriate for mature audiences. Content warnings will be marked as needed. That said, almost none of these games feature the kind of graphic sex you'd see in old-school titles like Fate/Stay Night; the exception is the final title, included for completionism, which is truly sordid and not appropriate for anybody (but I like it).

3. While I've had some experience with the medium, BL and otome games are huge blind spots of mine, so I won't embarrass myself by pretending expertise! If you're interested in exploring those fields, I've heard good things about Code: Realize (get the collector's edition with the extra content!), Hatoful Boyfriend and (if you're OK with some NSFW material) Coming Out on Top.

With that said, let us being our journey!

SHORT AND SWEET:

These games last about two to three hours, but will stick with you longer than that. Don't assume these are “beginner games” simply because they are short! I could argue that collectively, the three titles here are the best on this list.

Butterfly Soup is Brianna Lei's follow-up to her cult success Pom Gets Wi-Fi. It's free! It's also one of the most acclaimed visual novels ever by the mainstream games press, scoring praise from folks like Patricia Hernandez and Steve Gaynor. As for what it's about: it's the story of four girls on their high school softball team, two of them are in love, and there are many funny jokes. I found the ending to be abrupt, but if you're looking for good vibes and some much-needed encouragement to stay true to yourself, I highly recommend this game. Plus it references Matt Mullholland's excellent “My Heart Will Go On” performance, which earns it extra points in my book.

Content warnings: Brief depictions of parental and physical abuse (no visuals!), ableist slurs.

We Know the Devil is “what if Kelly Link wrote Revolutionary Girl Utena?” Plenty of anime and games channel that energy (my beloved What A Beautiful visual novel series among them) but few do so as succinctly and distinctively as Aevee Bee, Mia Schwartz and their team do in this game. The result is a punk, unsettling take on magical girl stories set in a Christian summer camp, featuring sneaky world-building and some striking body horror. You'll feel for the cast and their struggles, and cheer in the True Ending when everything goes completely off the rails.

Content warnings: Psychological and body horror, alienation of queer youth in a religious setting, freaky music.

youtube

EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER is a game about gay antifascist folks fighting fascists across the desert while riding giant robots made of meat. It's the equivalent of a zine you'd pick up at a fair, willing to dive into messy topics most games shy away from and wholly uninterested in sanding away any rough spots. The music is great too! Play this game if you want to beat up Nazis in a giant meat machine called ROOTS AMONG ASH.

Content warnings: Body horror, mentions of self harm and abuse, suicidal ideation, alcohol, gender dysphoria, loss of bodily autonomy, apocalyptic ideation. For mature audiences!

NICE AND MEATY:

These games are a good bit longer, ranging from five to fifteen hours to beat. If you enjoyed the earlier entries and want more, try some of these!

The House in Fata Morgana is a bonafide cult classic, a game made by a small studio that earned itself a legion of die-hard fans in the visual novel space. At first glance it's an entertaining genre pastiche, four tales of doomed love centering around a cursed mansion. But read past the first four chapters, and suddenly the real story comes to the fore—the tale of two ordinary people and a love that lasts for centuries. Fata Morgana takes some huge swings, tackling societal oppression, intersexuality, recovering from past trauma and learning to move on from those who have wronged you without having to forgive them. Its success at landing these swings likely depends on the reader, but I found Fata Morgana's heart to be in the right place. Couple that with one of the best soundtracks in video games, and you have an experience that is worth it even at 0% off.

Content warnings: incest, domestic violence, racist and sexist remarks, psychological manipulation, homophobic and transphobic remarks, sexual assault, child abuse. For mature audiences!

Heart of the Woods is, as of yet, the most ambitious game made by Studio Elan. It's a supernatural mystery where two adult women travel to a small town in the cold and dark to investigate some strange occurrences. What they find leads to unexpected romance, but also incredible danger. Heart of the Woods is sweet, it's funny (Tara is hilarious!) and as has come to be a running theme in this piece, the music is excellent, courtesy of Sarah Mancuso and Kris Flacke. Heart of the Woods is a game made by people who clearly have a lot of affection for visual novels as a medium, but had enough discretion to snip out the bits they weren't fond of. It also comes with a plethora of accessibility options, allowing you to customize everything from the text to the music to your needs.

Content warnings: Parental abuse, alcohol, light horror elements, some sex scenes you can enable with an optional R-18 patch. For mature audiences!

youtube

As for Seabed, it's... yuri ASMR? It's difficult to describe, as the appeal of this one for me isn't so much the story—which is intriguing, but very slow-paced—as it is the feel of it. Everything from the music, to the sound effects, to the text, contributes to a languid feeling unlike every other game in the medium I have played. Seabed won't be for everyone, but few titles match its distinctive atmosphere.

Content warnings: alcohol, partial nudity. At least one sex scene that isn't too explicit by the standards of the medium. For mature audiences!

THE DEEP END:

These games range in length from fifteen hours to fifty... and beyond! If you're looking for the experience your Japanese-speaking friends fell in love with back in the days of fan translations and frantically searching online for information on Type-Moon properties, this is it!

Imagine that you have an idea for a great Japanese TV-drama, but you decide to make it as a visual novel instead. Wanting to produce as authentic an experience as possible, you hire actors and have them act out every scene in your script as you take multiple photographs depicting every twist and turn in the plot. Imagine the sheer amount of time and labor it would require. Then multiply it by five, let the player switch between these narratives with the ease of hitting a button on a gamepad, and tie them together into a vast meta-narrative. That's 428: Shibuya Scramble, one of the most ambitious visual novels ever created and a game that was famously awarded a score of 40 by the Japanese games rag Famitsu. Despite having an enormous and complicated script, it was localized into English just a year ago. Don't miss out on this bizarre and fascinating video game! If you're a fan of the Yakuza series, you'll be right at home with 428's brand of lunacy.

Content warnings: Violence, drugs, alcohol, some bad language.

Umineko: When They Cry is a lot. A gonzo mystery story that starts as a riff on And Then There Were None, it swiftly mutates into a hundred-hour game of four-dimensional chess. It was made by a small team, scored by the music of the gods, and is fully committed throughout to its brand of sentiment, metaphysical rambling and extreme horror. Some might say that Umineko is overwrought, but that is the point: the game is memorable for its excess, not despite of it. If you're looking for a taste of the full VN experience, complete with shocking twists, a weird obsession with trivia and far too many words, this is the most authentic you can find that's appropriate for all audiences. Please play with the original art! It's charming.

Content warnings: Parental abuse, blood and gore, people getting killed and suffering fates worse than death at the hands of witches (???). For mature audiences!

And now we come to [NSFW] Wonderful Everyday, everything your anxious friend told you about visual novels. It's not just that Wonderful Everyday has sex scenes, it's that it takes less time to list what triggering and problematic content is not in the game than what is in it. It references Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Cyrano de Bergerac. The game isn't afraid to take huge, unexpected shifts in tone and aesthetic in order to scare or destabilize the player. You might be wondering: why recommend a game like this, which many would find morally abhorrent? All I can say is that Wonderful Everyday is the game that convinced your Japanese-speaking friends to read Wittgenstein. It's a cult classic, a title unavailable in English for years that came with the highest praise imaginable: that it was a profound work of art, that it would change your way of thinking forever. After finally playing through the game two years ago, my feelings were more mixed; but there's no mistaking that few games better personify the visual novel medium's eccentricities, indulgences or shoot-for-the-moon ambition than this shaggy, gross, but fascinating video game.

Content warnings: suicide, psychological and body horror, multiple variants of sexual assault, extreme bullying, extreme violence, bestiality (thankfully cut down for release in the US!), a transgender character who is handled in a pretty specious way. Many graphic sex scenes. For very mature audiences!

There's even more great titles out there that I couldn't fit on this list! The high stakes and interface-shattering plot twists of 999. The countless games being made in engines like Ren'Py, Choice of Games and Twine. South Korean visual novels like Nameless and Mystic Messenger. No matter what kind of person or reader you may be, there is a visual novel out there somewhere for you. I wish you luck in your endless journey of discovery!

Are you a fan of visual novels? Do you have any (safe for work, if possible) recommendations? Please let us know in the comments!

---

Adam W is a features writer at Crunchyroll. When he isn't eagerly awaiting the announcement of the Girls' Work anime by Type Moon, he sporadically contributes with a loose coalition of friends to a blog called Isn't it Electrifying? Follow him on twitter at: @wendeego

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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allanamayer · 6 years ago

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Libraries and room rentals.

I was at a bit of a loss to contribute to the fiasco that is public libraries letting hate groups book their rooms. Mainly because the most important things have already been said:

But, since that blog post went up, something new happened! All credit goes to the law librarian @Jenifesto on Twitter - I saw the case via Sam Popowich:

h/t to law librarian extraordinaire @Jenifesto who actually found the case. https://t.co/DAukfygjUu

— das Gespenst des Kommunismus (@redlibrarian)

October 19, 2019

If you don’t feel like reading CanLii (and really, who does) there’s also an Ottawa Citizen article from September, when the decision came down:

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/court-upholds-librarys-decision-to-cancel-screening-of-controversial-film

The main points here are: community room rentals are not part of a “library’s core service” and therefore not subject to the same kind of scrutiny that a public institution fulfilling its mandate might normally be. What that apparently means is that a library can book or cancel room rentals at its complete and total discretion, beholden to none.

That means public libraries can write their own room rental policies, adhere to or change said policies at will, and basically ignore anyone who asks them to do otherwise.

In this particular case, OPL cancelled a booking (a film screening) based on a clause in their own room rental policy, which says they have discretion to cancel based on whether an event will or likely will promote hatred. Of course, libraries can reserve the right to cancel any booking at their own discretion, not subject to appeal, etc., if they want to - they can write that into their policies at any time. It will certainly save you the legal fees & committee time on writing the rest of it.

It’s important to note that by OPL's own standard the “will or likely will” was fairly cut and dried given that it was a film screening. You know the full content in advance, you can judge pretty quickly (as the article says, a 30-second googling) how it’s gonna play out. So, this case neatly sidesteps the “What if a convicted Nazi is making the booking? He might not say anything hateful while he’s there! He might not even be a Nazi anymore!” question of the TPL memorial service last year. If your library has a very specific policy written to delicately handle nuance and appear equitable and legally-adherent, rather than a solid “We unilaterally determine your eligibility, period” statement, you may run aground of some of these things.

Were room booking policies before last month written as though room booking is a core library service and therefore subject to the public policy of being open and equitable to all? Yes, they certainly were. Is TPL’s definitely boneheaded and possibly bigoted refusal to hurdle themselves over on to the right side of history a bit silly given this new ruling? Yes, it certainly is.

It’s commendable that a library considers itself to be working to support freedom of expression even in areas where the law does not dictate it do so, but it’s also 2019 and Nazis are everywhere - a very clear and detailed understanding of freedom of expression and its specifics exemptions & Charter overrides is required if you’re going to Do That Work. Some libraries are making it abundantly clear that they’re either ignoring that requirement, or they’re using a semblance of ignorance to pursue a hateful agenda. There really are no excuses at this point: they all have lawyers, and those lawyers all know how to research. The decision to err on the side of “Don’t get sued by fascists” seems particularly chickenshit given TPL is the largest library system in North America and can marshall the resources and support required to fight that fight on behalf of every smaller library, setting a useful and meaningful precedent that will go a lot further than the minor decisions of the many boards and committees their executives sit on. But no matter: Ottawa Public Library did it, and wouldn’t you have it, that handy little decision is going to become inordinately useful to crafting policies from here on out.

TPL's extremely conservative stand has actively damaged its relationship with its patrons, which is extremely irresponsible for whoever is doing the decision-making. Of course, they’ve fully Barbara-Streisand-ed themselves now and are doubling-down on their bad decisions, so there’s nothing to be done about this particular event. But the media shitstorm that’s raining down on them right now is also a precedent of its own, and hopefully smaller libraries can learn from this mistake.

----

Now that the major point is out of the way, let's discuss some interesting tidbits.

What might your library do if you wanted to support and uphold freedom of expression in ways that don't benefit Nazis? Well, there's always teaching yourselves (staff) and then others (the public) about Charter rights! Programming around what does and does not constitute hate speech might be a bit touchy, especially for sharing explicit examples with a variety of audiences, but it's well worth an attempt.

If you can't bring yourself to that level of ambition you can always program and educate more generally. You can teach people how to express themselves and where to do so - online, in petitions, with letters to their elected representatives, by organizing into groups, with press releases, with posters, with self-publishing, with zines!

The other big exception to freedom of expression is defamation. There is LOTS to be learned by everyone here, from the basic definitions and existing court cases to the ongoing issues with SLAPP lawsuits and jurisdictional leniencies. What are some cases where potentially defamatory messages were protected because they were a matter of public importance? How can people protect themselves from SLAPP lawsuits while still speaking on issues of public good? Can the library hook people up with legal help?

These are things that Nazis may benefit from too, but it can't hurt to educate the populace at the same time.

You can also avail yourselves of your Section 15-2 rights to provide affirmative action - to not just provide spaces and services free of discrimination but to offer special amelioration of the conditions of disadvantaged individuals. That means safe spaces! Women-only groups! Cultural meetups! Trans meetups! Support for youth experiencing discrimination! An accessibility advisory group!

Another thing I just want to duly note is that room rentals and their subsequent cancellation are not censorship. Libraries are not the only places that allow public events, and refusing library space to a group doesn't mean they can't find it elsewhere. There is no denial of freedom of expression if a library says "Nah, no thanks," although if you hold out until the last possible moment and make it impossible for them to rebook elsewhere on the same date, they might have a contractual issue to take up with you. So, please don't dither about and then end up in that situation.

If you find yourselves in the position of only finding out quite late the kind of things that have been booked, you can head this off at the pass by making your room booking more stringent and requiring more information from applicants. They may of course mislead you but then you can probably sue THEM so it's fun all round.

Okay okay in all seriousness, only a few rather large and privileged libraries have space for rent anyways, but it can be challenging to find staffing and resources to really vet your bookings. It will be impossible to weed out violent and hateful applicants 100% of the time. There is never a solution that doesn't negatively impact other groups in your community, from not offering rentals at all to requiring stringent application information. Even OPL wasn't able to screen applicants adequately until there was a public outcry.

Given that this is going to keep Being A Thing now that fascists nationwide have cottoned on to the concept, you had better prepare for swift response to the organizers' own public announcements. You will find out from a Facebook event or from a Twitter DM from a concerned citizen. You will need to act quickly and decisively and thank those who inform you, and apologize for the limited resources that did not allow you to know sooner. You will need to hold a public messaging line and not budge. You will need to reaffirm your library's number one priority is the safety and security of your most marginalized and vulnerable community members. And you'll need to walk the talk, too, by having other examples and evidence of that support. You will need to trust your public and work with their eyes and ears as your guides, listen to and learn from their concerns and perspectives - not scowl and turn aside when they try to make your work better.

Oh yeah, and under no circumstances should you try to pay people off. Don't do this.

I got a msg from TPL space rentals telling me the City Librarian wanted to reimburse the booking fee for the launch of #IPromise as a "gesture of goodwill." You can't pay me to accept your empty gestures and superficial goodwill. #TransRightsAreHumanRights pic.twitter.com/ZVN6Neyoci

— Catherine Hernandez (@theloudlady) October 25, 2019

#libraries #public libraries #policy

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genetixtra · 2 years ago

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Rules

Semi-selective. I will only write with mutuals for the time being, though this is up to my discretion! OoC and other certain interactions (questions/asks/memes) don’t require being mutuals, so don’t be shy. Roleplay in the form of chat, asks, short-form, and long-form (para and multi-paragraph) are all welcome.

You— as in the mun, not character— must be 18+ to follow/interact. I am not comfortable playing with minors (your character can be any age).

This blog will not participate in NSFW/smut interactions. Please respect this.

Excessively long posts will be hidden behind read mores or otherwise trimmed down. While I appreciate it if you also do this, I can also trim our threads if you don’t know how or cannot for any reason!

I use the BETA editor!

Canon, OCs, and crossovers OK! Verses/interactions/AUs will be tagged accordingly so you (& I) can keep track!

No bigotry/hate speech/discrimination. If you are a TERF, SWERF, racist, transphobe, homophobe, fascist or neo-nazi, antisemite, or in any other way a bigot or purveyor of hateful beliefs, you will be blocked. Sorry not sorry.

IC =/= OOC. I am NOT my character, and my character is NOT me. Assume all posts are in-character unless otherwise stated with the ooc tag (::out of mind::) or with indication of OOC. The actions and beliefs of the character do not necessarily reflect my own at all times.

Politeness. Don’t be rude/hateful/harassing to me OoC. It won’t go well, I assure you. Do not hound me for replies excessively (you can remind me though! That’s always okay! Just not aggressively!) I work a job during most of the week, so I might be slow, but I promise I try to get around to things ASAP! ♡

Don’t metagame or godmode. Just don’t, everyone involved should be too mature for that. If you want something to happen, let’s talk it out! But unless that happens, my character is mine, and yours is yours.

Tagging/Trigger Warnings: I will do my very best to tag and TW all content that I can for the comfort of partners and readers alike. This blog is willing and likely will cover dark topics. All threads containing sensitive topics will be hidden behind read mores. But, if you need anything specific tagged, please do not hesitate to shoot me a message! I will absolutely make sure to tag them for you. I highly encourage discussing and agreeing on boundaries and limits prior if you are interested in RP, and I will happily adjust my writing to meet them! Consent is absolutely critical and to be respected.

I don’t have exclusives. I will follow multiples of the same character, and they will be treated separately!

Safety. I love communication, and am happy to solve problems OOC as politely and patiently as I can. However, if you push boundaries beyond reason (harassment, ignoring boundaries, being excessively rude/pushy, or hurtful), I reserve the right to drop threads/play. If you push further, I reserve the right to cease any and all communication with you. You deserve respect and so do I, and I strive to ensure that, at least on my front, everyone gets it.

#Rules #:: out of mind ::

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grydyne-ze · 3 years ago

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Number listed above: 1-866-OUR-VOTE

I’ve worked as a clerk in several elections, and everyone should know that in every polling location, there are posters with phone numbers that will reach REAL poll inspectors who can arrive at moments notice if the situation is drastic enough. Election workers, especially the location’s election judge, are all heavily vetted and trained on how to keep the polling location neutral. Most of them will gladly help you if you feel your voting rights are being compromised. If you feel as though the poll workers at your chosen voting location are not making an effort to protect you, or are actively allowing you to be intimidated, do not stand by and let fascists get away with scaring you and others into voting a certain way. There are enough people dedicated to doing the right thing as election workers that you can always find someone who is willing to help.

Here are some important things to make note of, just so you can protect yourself and others.:

1) Electioneering is prohibited within a 200 ft radius of the entrance to a polling location. What this means: anyone or anything promoting a specific candidate is not allowed within 200 ft of the entrance of the polling location. How do clerks enforce this? We manually measure and mark that distance, and post people outside to check and make sure that rule is being followed. Electioneering can also include any kind of button, sticker, shirt, hat, tattoo or any other visual representation of a specific candidate. Yelling a candidate or party name, playing their name over speakers, talking about anyone on the ballot, or making repeated comments about specific parties is prohibited in this radius. Voters are asked to remove any election related attire or cover any political articles before stepping in to the building, as these are against the rules.

2) Recording of any kind is prohibited within a 200 ft radius of the entrance to a polling location. What this means: Don’t have your phone out. Unless you are calling the phone numbers on a poster asking for a poll inspector to examine the location, or there is an emergency and you are calling for emergency services, DO NOT. USE. YOUR PHONE. If you want other people to follow the rule, make an example. If you have an assistive device please let the clerks know as you come in that you are using an assistive device so they don’t misunderstand. If there is information you need to remember, write it down on a piece of paper before you go in, or print it and put it inside a pocket or bag to keep it from breaking the rules.

The point of this rule is to not let people record you or others in an attempt to intimidate or otherwise threaten you by using the footage against you. If you notice something suspicious, discretely let an election worker know and they will check to make sure nobody is recording audio, video, or taking photographs.

Do not forget. Put your phone away! Let an election worker know if someone is recording, and if you feel comfortable, gently remind others not to have their phones out.

3) Poll inspectors MUST be cleared with the county. They are hired by official election departments to be impartial and report any infractions. We may not know specifically who they are but a judge will know if they are supposed to be there based on the organization they work for and how they behave. Many official poll inspectors will be doing rounds and checking multiple nearby locations, making reports on each precinct. Election workers have the right to ask unofficial self-appointed poll inspectors to vote and leave the premises as quickly as posible. I’ve seen it happen. We have specific security for this. People are NOT allowed to just barge in and declare themselves a poll watcher. There’s actual paperwork they do.

4) Firearms are prohibited from the polling location. This one’s scary, I know. I live in an open-carry state, so sometimes people are nervous or confused about where a concealed or unconcealed firearm is or isn’t allowed. Firearms are absolutely NOT ALLOWED inside ANY POLLING LOCATION. The only person who should have a weapon is official poll security, and sometimes they don’t even carry a weapon. If you see someone approaching the building with a weapon, do not engage with them. In an emergency, run and hide if you need to, and focus on protecting yourself first. I haven’t seen it happen, I’ve mostly seen gun lovers huffing and puffing at the door when we tell them to go put away their firearms, but they’ve always complied. If someone doesn’t comply then they KNOW they are in the wrong, and they are purposefully intimidating other voters. These people are arrested and put on trial for doing this.

Feel free to add more important info if you have it, fellow election workers.

TLDR; Put away all political stuff before getting to the polling location. Keep your phone in your pocket, bag or vehicle unless you need it for medical reasons. Randos are not allowed to waltz in and declare themselves “poll watchers”. Guns and weapons are not allowed anywhere near the polling location.

BTW! Every polling location should be equipped with accessible polls. These are polling computers that come with headphones and have screen reading options and braille around or on the buttons.

Know Your RIGHTS

#elections #voting

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kevin-the-bruyne · 7 years ago

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I really wish I could support Croatia more but with this whole singing a fascist’s song thing and rakitic’s bigoted comments I feel like I can’t fully love them.

please keep using your discretion because i know zero things about balkan history but here are my thoughts:

1) You should really forgive Rakitic, neyvenger has already explained that his comments were old and he since then has apologized for it. It would still make it wildly uncomfortable for any queer teammate of his to come out but without systemic homophobia keeping players in the closet Rakitic’ comment which has been retracted is really not adding much to the general machismo culture in men’s football (in other good news MLS does have an out gay player: Collin Martin)

2) The other point is harder to address since there’s too many things I don’t know. That post never mentioned if the song itself was fascist or if it was the singer. Since the war was so recent, I don’t know if the song was important enough to general independence sentiment that they keep the song but reject the singer. I don’t know if the players know that the singer is fascist. I know it seems weird that you wouldn’t know what’s happening in your own country but trust me, i live in the US on a visa and i listen to plenty of Bangladeshi artists without the slightest clue on what they’re doing. On a good day, I would know about really important political news but even not then.

The thing that I’m going on though is Lovren. We’ve seen his documentary, we’ve seen how soft he is. There’s just something in me, coming from a country whose independence was also recent, whose parents also were displaced from their homes (before my birth) - i just find it so incredulous that Lovren, actual refugee child, would be fascist. I mean people are weird, so it’s not like it’s impossible…but I just can’t picture it…

Again keep using your discretion and what is acceptable to your own morals but then France’s history with Haiti and the lack of reparations till present day should also really make you sick to your stomach.

#anon ask

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starwarsfandomh8speopleofcolor · 8 years ago

Text

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

review with spoilers

SPOILERS FROM HERE ON, READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION

Finn: was it necessary to have him get hit by literally every fucking character!? The ONLY ones who don't hit him or physically cause him any pain or inconvenience are Rey and Poe (and lbr it's possibly because they only have like .2 seconds of screentime together). His loyalty to Rey and how much she matters to him is amazing but it'd be nice if she remembered his existence at any point in time (i think she doesn't mention him once while she's trying to god fucking save kylo ren ew), but their reunion was AMAZING.

Poe: OOC much? He's nice and caring! Not a hotheaded ass who doesn't follow orders - where's his respect for Leia? Where's Leia's respect for him? What the fuck was Rian doing implying god damned DAMEREY AT THE END OF THAT MOVIE!? I mean, all through the movie he made it OBVIOUS that he hates finnrey. At least he seems to dislike reylo, too, but as my mom would say mal de muchos consuelo de tontos.

His first scene with General Ugh? Amazing and the most in character thing he did in the movie!

Paige: only there to be killed, but i think that much was obvious. I'll use this space to complain about the fact that ALL the graphic deaths of the movie were of people of color. Paige Tico, Jessika Pava (or I think it was her, we saw her face .2 seconds before her x-wing was set on fire), a random black man from the resistance who says one line before he dies.... Like I get it! THE FIRST ORDER HATES MINORITIES AND WANTS THEM DEAD YOU DON'T NEED TO SHOW US THAT GRAPHICALLY WE G E T IT. It was also painfully clear that everyone on TFO was white, which is why I think it was on purpose - if this movie made one thing clear was that they are the bad guys, plain evil. Definitely parallel irl fascists.

Kyle: let's rule the galaxy together; Rey: you're choosing a path I can't take. Vader: i'll overthrow him and you and i can rule the galaxy together (blah blah); Padme: you're going down a path I can't follow. Reylos: lose their shit. As if:

the first half of the movie wasn't full of luke and leia and kyle and rey parallels - ya know, who are siblings. looks like Rey Solo will be canon?

their force bond wasn't made as part of a ploy by Snoke

the next thing that vader does after telling padme that wasn't to physically assault her like talk about abuse apologist assholes ffs.

I'm SO MAD that the spark line wasn't spoken by poe! It was said by the white lady with the purple hair (i wanna punch her in the face t b h)

Let me make one (1) comment about a white character: are you telling me that Luke Skywalker, the ONLY PERSON IN THE GALAXY who doesn't hate Vader, who thought there might be REDEMPTION for him, would even 'fleetingly consider' striking down his TEENAGED, SLEEPING NEPHEW WHO HADN'T DONE ANYTHING BAD YET? just make it clear that you just wanna jack off to kylo ren and go. His trick at the end was A+ though that was the first time I see people clapping in the cinema, definitely the best force trick in all the movies tbqh

Finnrose kiss (rose kisses a very startled finn): they knew each other for less than a day but at the end Rose says she loves him? mmmmmmMMMMmM. And later on Rey and Poe shily smile at each other like 'im poe' 'im rey' 'i know' (me: 'kiss my ass'). This man (rian) HATES finnrey. @ JJ don't disappoint i beg u. (btw no hate to finnrose, i dont particularly care about it but the whole thing is sketchy u know). Finnrey's reunion, their beautiful hug at the end, though, tells me that ?Maybe we’re gonna turn Star Wars into Star Telenovela? Whateverrrrrrrr. I wouldn't hate a finn v rey v rose love triangle, but I fear how it'd be delivered.

This whole movie is the longest in the franchise and the majority of it happens in the course of like...12 hs at most? It’s really inconcistent.

Rose was an awesome character! I’d have preferred it if she hadn’t been introduced this way (no need to kill his sis on screen damn, she would have been in that stair and she would have seen Finn anyway), but she’s really smart and kind.

Finn is the gift that keeps on giving! AND HE DESERVES BETTER THAN THIS SHIT DIRECTOR HAVING HIM SLAPPED AND STUNNED LEFT AND RIGHT! by Phasma (who he later kills but ok), by those officers in the casino, by Rose...

Poe, as I said, was out of character, but I’m not sure I agree with the people who say he was sexualised by Leia and Holdo? Like maybe the subtitles lied but they only said they like him? Did Holdo mistreat him? yes. Did he deserve better from Leia than getting slapped and later on stunned? Yes! (but lbr that was ooc from leia too, she didn’t hit han when she was younger and more impulsive *ahem* and they spent their whole time fighting, but nah let’s demote my commander because he saved us from certain death).

Btw why should I care about Holdo? we didn’t know her and she treated other rebels like shit so....yeah she and leia were friends but WHERE was it stablished!? AND WHY WASN’T THE SPARK LINE ORIGINALLY POE’S! I CAN’T BELIEVE HE GOT IT FROM HER!

best part of the movie: REYLO IS NOT CANON WOOHOO, I had read that they basically made out on screen wtf, reylos are on crack. That’s what drove me to tell y’all to go watch it right after I left the theather The only thing rey does is to call him a monster many times and then go to him when she gets a force vision of him turning to the light (which doesn’t happen btw). They do fight together but later she tries to kill him again so.

I thiiiink I'm not forgetting anything but if you've got any questions or wanna add something send it in with a spoilers warning for the other mods, thanks!

Mod A.

#tlj spoilers #the last jedi spoilers #mod a.#anti reylo #anti kylo ren #txt

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orbemnews · 4 years ago

Link

Gucci is Staying in Trump Tower The day President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were inaugurated in Washington, D.C., Melania and Donald Trump stepped off Air Force One in South Florida, bound for the confines of the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach. He wore a typically boxy suit of indeterminate origin. She wore an orange and blue, boldly patterned $3,700 Gucci caftan that came with as much symbolism as the famous “I really don’t care, do u” jacket she put on back in 2018 on a trip to visit children at a border detention center in Texas. With its relaxed lines and orange hexagons recalling a David Hicks carpet, the new dress telegraphed the idea that Mrs. Trump was entering into a new role as a person of leisure, seemingly without a care. It also was a worldwide advertisement, unwitting or not, for a brand that has substantial ties to the Trump business. For the past 14 years, Gucci has leased 48,667 feet at the base of Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan, making it the building’s biggest commercial tenant. Other companies that leased space with the Trumps have downsized their spaces or not renewed their leases. One is Nike, which in 2018 shut down its Niketown location at 6 East 57th Street — a building around the corner from Trump Tower that the Trump Organization has a 100-year ground lease on — and opened a new flagship, the so-called House of Innovation, five blocks south. (A spokeswoman for Nike then declined to address to Forbes whether the move was political.) In 2019, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China decreased its presence in Trump Tower. Tiffany, which temporarily took over the Niketown space in 2018 while its flagship was being renovated, is not renewing its lease next year, Bloomberg recently reported. But in 2020, Gucci renegotiated and extended its lease, according to two people with knowledge of the deal, both of whom requested their names not be used because they are not authorized to speak about it. The luxury company received a reduction in rent in exchange for agreeing to extend its lease beyond 2026. Trump Tower got to keep a highly desirable tenant: a brand that has boomed since the designer Alessandro Michele took over creative direction in 2015, whose presence in the building helps counter the idea that its namesake is nothing more than a “poor person’s idea of a rich person,” in the words of Fran Lebowitz. The players involved, however, are not talking about it publicly. Four days after receiving a detailed list of questions about the deal, a representative for Gucci called to say that a statement was on its way within the hour. A little more than an hour later, the representative called back to say the statement would not actually be arriving after all. The Trump Organization did not respond to two requests for comment. One possible reason: According to the person who has seen the new lease, Gucci required people at the Trump Organization to sign confidentiality agreements regarding its terms. Still, the deal was worth it to the Trumps for reasons that extend beyond symbolism. Numerous luxury brands occupying prime Manhattan retail spaces have renegotiated leases during the coronavirus pandemic as foot traffic dropped off. Others have simply subleased their spaces. That was what Ralph Lauren did at its Fifth Avenue location last November, renting 28,300 square feet to the fast fashion retailer Mango for what the Real Deal reported was $5 million — which is $22 million less than Ralph Lauren pays for it. In recent years, revenue from “The Apprentice,” Mr. Trump’s former reality show on NBC, dried up. Debt payments across the Trump business are coming due. That has turned the retail space in and around Trump Tower into a lifeline, becoming what Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner wrote in The New York Times last January is likely his empire’s most dependable and “greatest long-term money producer.” A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2012 related to the Trump Organization’s finances described Gucci as taking a 20-year lease back in 2006. Gucci paid $384.40 per square foot each month in rent. This amounts to an annual base rate of $18.7 million and accounts for about two-thirds of the total $29.53 million the Trump Organization earns annually from its commercial tenants there, according to the filing. Gucci’s discretion notwithstanding, it’s far from clear that news of the renegotiation might affect sales. The fashion industry tends to be politically liberal, but sometimes business is just business and aesthetics outweigh politics. Oscar de la Renta bounced between first ladies with diametrically opposed worldviews. James Galanos pledged his allegiance to Nancy Reagan despite the catastrophic neglect of AIDS by her husband’s administration. In 2019, Bernard Arnault, whose company LVMH owns Tiffany, was joined by Mr. Trump at a Louis Vuitton factory in Texas and posed with him for photographs. But Mr. Trump’s divisive behavior, especially since the pandemic began and the election, has bolstered the resolve of activists denouncing him. Brands are more sensitive than ever to the threat of boycotts. Companies including Nike and Twitter have aligned themselves with the Black Lives Matter movement. The latest incarnation of Gucci was more racially inclusive than most high-end fashion brands. Shortly after Mr. Michele became its lead designer and began doing away with an haute and self-consciously snobby aesthetic for an ironic, referential style that could perhaps be described as Etsy Luxe, the company did an ad campaign with all Black models. But it has also misstepped. In 2017, it was called out for releasing a jacket that looked remarkably like one designed decades before by Dapper Dan, a.k.a. Daniel Day, a Black couturier in Harlem. In response, the brand reached out to him, placing him in an ad for its men’s tailoring and collaborating with him on a luxury boutique. Soon after, it announced an initiative called Gucci Equilibrium, intended in part to improve diversity and inclusion in the company. But in 2019, Gucci pulled an $890 sweater criticized for evoking blackface from the market. And its leadership team, along with that of its parent company, Kering, remains dominated by white men (Kering does have one Black board member). Although the decision by Gucci executives to renew the lease at 725 Fifth Avenue came before protesters with confederate flags stormed the Capitol back in January, Mr. Trump’s associations with white supremacists was hardly unknown in 2020, said Kailee Scales. Ms. Scales is the former managing director of the Black Lives Matter Global Network and a principal at ThnkFree Global Strategies, a boutique company that guides brands such as Amazon and Sprite on marketing strategies involving social justice issues. “This is a time,” she said, “where brands, organizations and individuals around the world are reckoning with racial equity and working to address and dismantle the systems that led us to witness one of the most horrifying moments in history — the murder of George Floyd.” Consequently, she said, it was “an odd choice” for Gucci to continue to intrinsically link itself to a man who has “blatantly refused to disavow white supremacy” and “built political equity by promoting racist birther conspiracy theories.” Ms. Scales’s opinion was shared by Shannon Coulter, who started the “Grab Your Wallet” campaign, which organized boycotts against SoulCycle and New Balance after people with ownership stakes at those companies donated substantial sums of money to Mr. Trump’s campaigns. In an interview, Ms. Coulter said that she had intentionally left Gucci and Nike off the boycott list. “We were pretty generous because we knew they had signed leases before his campaign,” she said. The decision by Gucci to renew in 2020 was something altogether different. “It’s disgusting,” she said. “They are essentially doing business with a white supremacist. That’s what that decision means.” Still, few people directly involved with the fashion world seem eager to address the possible controversy. Editors such as Samira Nasr of Harper’s Bazaar, Nina Garcia of Elle and Anna Wintour of Vogue have positioned themselves as stewards of racial justice. But they also rely on Gucci for advertising. Representatives for them all declined to comment. Mr. Day did not respond to a request for comment. Jeremy O. Harris, the author of “Slave Play,” has had a contractual relationship with the house since November 2020. In general, such arrangements involve wearing a brand’s clothes at public appearances and getting to keep them afterward. “I take a lot of pride in my relationship with them, having met the people and seen how they really listen and are trying to change,” he said in an interview last Friday. And “while there are few real estate moguls who have risen to the level of semi-fascist leader like Trump, from what I do know, they are pretty much all deeply compromised people.” Still, Mr. Harris acknowledged, “this is complicated.” Luckily, he added, “I really only go to the Wooster Street store.” Ben Protess and Vanessa Friedman contributed reporting. Source link Orbem News #Gucci #staying #tower #Trump

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saeculorum-amen · 4 years ago

Text

“For they are quick and ruthless punishers.”

Theology as a rule doesn’t make sense out of context; it’s dangerous, say, to take a statement about God and to translate it into a context where what one means by God isn’t the same. The way you respond to the problem of evil, to be sure, is going to land differently if you assume that God is in control of everything that happens, or if you assume that everything that happens occurs in God’s sight. These webs of meaning are especially precarious because they speak to core things we feel, to inward meaning and the secret longings of our hearts. They are always bound to refer to things no one else can know, and yet to things we deeply treasure.

Theological Accountability

I am the sort of person who tends to have a hard time holding up my way as the only way, or as holding some kind of absolute truth, but I know, somewhere, that it’s important that it be true to me. As a priest, I spend a lot of time trying to speak across differences in maps of meaning, and to invite others to expand their experiential knowledge of the numinous. I think about how the theological statements I make are going to land with people with very different assumptions to my own; and even if I’m consciously aware that I’m disturbing the ground around the roots, I endeavour not to do violence to someone else’s beliefs and experiences unthinkingly.

I feel a sense of accountability, too, from a place of integrity. I move in a fairly secularized world, and have good friends of very different faith traditions, and of no faith tradition. My own formation took a circuitous path, coming to Christianity finally, but not inevitably. I don’t think I ever stopped being a secular humanist, say. There are domains of my life where my religious sense of myself is still actively being shaped by experiences that don’t quite seem to fit. I feel like I owe it to myself to be able to explain my theological reflections to the 17 year old I once was who spent her summer anxiously reading the Bhagavad-Gita. That’s the kind of wholeness I try to live with.

Integrity and Image

I bounce around between images of God, and while there are core images I return to again and again, there are also so many areas where I am open to being surprised, to being challenged. It’s important from time to time, say, to sit with the question of whether God intervenes in the world, if only because so many people in the world have a clear answer to that question that I don’t think I ever could.

The image of God cannot be stable because God leaves nothing out, while our way of knowing is so excruciatingly dichotomous. We know things by leaving things out, by separating them from one another. God exists as this indivisible experience somehow just beyond our grasp. We acknowledge a wholeness, but can speak clearly only about a part — and even then we are approximating, we are amplifying, we are reducing, and otherwise not representing accurately the God we have encountered.

I gloss God sometimes into the universe (panentheism) or the thing in which the universe resides (pantheism), because these images are so readily accessible. They are stored deep in my mind and have been explored again and again in my soul. There have been so very many times when I needed to be able to talk about that aspect of God, that glimpse of the greater truth. That’s the God that I know exists, that must exist. If we are the universe experiencing itself, then that God is the unknowable quine of our being, the inescapable fixed point of beingness itself. I find that an easy God to translate to, and a God I’ve intuitively needed to know at many points in my life.

So I ask myself questions about my theology in terms of this God who isn’t quite the God I have faith in, but is perhaps a fragment of the same. What would the implications be of this reflection or that, if that is the God of which they speak?

Leaving Nothing Out

The nice thing about this image of God is that it draws us back again and again to God as that which leaves nothing out, the God of what is indivisible, and the God of everything. That’s a God I do believe in, even if the universe isn’t the starting point for my faith. It’s a God that I have found I can talk about with a lot of people of other faiths and of no faith; it’s a God I hear people talking about when I read their theology, when I listen to their myths.

This is the God of the tree whose roots and branches are knotted into one: where some nutrient makes its way into the roots and rises up through the stem and the branch to emerge into the leaf it was meant to be a part of. There, it unfolds in the fullness of its strength to experience the shining sun. Having done the work it was given to do, it becomes beautiful, and at last seems to become separated from the tree. Upon the ground it decays, with the help of fungus and caterpillar and time, and in the myriad products of its decay, enters the roots once more.

God does not prize one moment over another, calling the moment when the leaf appears to be dead better or worse than the moment in which it has not yet appeared. God does not leave out the tough bits, as though we could shuttle off inconvenient images to some other universe. Wholeness and connection seem to permeate everything.

Against Selection Criteria

This image reminds me to resist developing fitness functions, discrete predicates for what can be a part of the Holy and what cannot. I sometimes catch myself writing sermons that seem to serve some kind of moral therapeutic deism, and I know when that’s happening because I hear the words but what about echoing in response to every too-tidy point I wish to make. Sometimes we have to make the too-tidy points anyway, because they point to something we have no other way to access, and must access. (Must is always a word about morality, as here.)

The moment you give in to that particular God, the God who serves the convenient ends only (and even my God-of-the-universe images do, from time-to-time, do exactly that), you have a problem. Having decided not only that you are eliding something right now, but that something can be elided altogether, you have let go of everything transcendent about God, and everything unknowable, and given up on wholeness as a possibility.

Struggle and Myth

There are, though, things in the world, and forces at work which are part of the whole even if they are not something you’d like to be a part of God. These things are invariably a part of us, but in a way which can be just as elusive. If you have any exposure to Social Justice discourse, but particularly that which is situated religiously, you will have met some of these forces, these distributed problems of evil for which we must account.

As I watched insurrectionists storm the US Capitol earlier this month, I felt the immediacy with which they were venturing into a highly symbolic and mythological struggle with these forces. They were sure they were struggling with forces which were outside of themselves and intruding in on them, and in a very classically fascist sort of way with forces which were outside of the true country, and intruding in on it: things antithetical to the collective identity, and violating the collective will. Yet with their association with movements which call for violence to meet the unruly, they were courting encounter with a sort of god (lowercase) of their own making, although it did not immediately materialize: the crushing boot of the State, indifferent to mercy.

This was an attack on outsider gods, on powerful forces which are identifier with the Other, in order to maintain or reestablish the integrity of the homeland. Yet the powerful forces they would themselves constitute eventually and inevitably came to find them, in the form of mass arrests and indictments. Exactly the thing many of them hoped for, but being visited upon themselves for their own violations of the integrity of the motherland, the household.

The Inevitable Gods

I think a lot about gods like these, too: plural, lowercase. Like the gods a Jungian might find in mythology (this talk is an excellent starting point), I think of these massive, experiential patterns in us. Things which we cannot grasp fully or communicate easily, because they are alive and dynamic, much as God, above. They are a whole force which moves in us and moves in the world. We seldom act in direct and knowing service to them, but we have our moments where their acting upon us is experienced as fate.

They are like how I, as a Christian, think about faith and prophecy: as things inevitable. Emergent patterns and properties which take on a life of their own over a large scale. The prophet is one who looks out at the dominos lined up in the world and is able to say that the last one will fall, while anyone else would point out that not even the first one has yet fallen. A prophet’s way of seeing the world does not leave things out even if they wish it were otherwise. (Ask Jonah how it goes when the world surprises a reluctant prophet.)

These many gods live with us, archetypal patterns in our minds which emerge there through a process not entirely unlike that by which they emerge into the world. We act, day by day, and we experience the results of our actions. We watch the people around us, and the ways of the world are slowly revealed. Over time, the unwitting results of our actions is to create in the world around us a tangible, felt presence of the gods within.

I find this image of the gods is exquisitely present in the song “Pray Your Gods” by Toad the Wet Sprocket.

Pray your Gods who hold you by your fear For they are quick and ruthless punishers

These are those forces which arrest us in our hearts, and also those things which we create in the world who will immediately make their presence upon us known should we challenge them. This is hubris, which is an affront to the gods, and forces them to make their power known — as opposed to hamartia, which is sin, which is missing the mark (as in archery), or a simple error.

These are the gods who will quickly punish them if we beg them to show us their power, by challenging them.

Pain and Passion

All this swirls in my mind as we begin to contemplate Holy Week, and draw ourselves to that familiar and challenging story of the Passion.

There is, you know, no one, decisive moment in the story of the Passion. There’s not one bad person, one bad group, one thing which had it gone differently would have been able to derail the whole thing from its trajectory. It was prophecy. It was a thing inevitable. It was how it was always going to go, how it was bound to go, because of these gods in the world.

Pilate, the Crowd; those who pierced Christ’s side, and those who offered him bitter wine; the legs broken, the moment of arrest. However profound and how acutely we might feel the intensity of these moments, they were individual contributions and individual contributors to the realization in the world of a god which dwelled everywhere. This is a god which reveres power, which sees power over life as the ultimate security, and which indulges in capricious cruelty so long as there are no consequences.

Nobody had to set out to do that god’s work, and even Pilate, who was in the position by virtue of his life and station to recognize the dynamics of power at work, felt helpless to stop the inevitable. Maybe he even was.

Christianity points a finger defiantly at that unnamed god at work in the world, and shouts to us: that god can be beaten.

Gods can be Beaten

We tell ourselves that death is not the ultimate power, and that those who love their life will lose it. We know in our hearts that those who seek victory through violence will find their victory fleeting. We declare that those who live for the eternal and transcendent, rather than being trapped in the tangles of this unnamed god of scarcity and fear and violence, will not be disappointed.

That god can be beaten, and part of how this resurrection is accomplished is to demand that we situate ourselves in that experience. The experience of the crowd which shouts crucify him!, not to show us how we would passively go along with a crowd, but to let us inhabit, and overcome, the patterns in our mind which go along with such things. For our very souls to be immunized against joy in cruelty, and to begin to form a connection between violent power, and the loving innocence of those upon whom it is visited. The fragility of a life destroyed, and the preciousness of each person.

Becoming Whole

Christianity asks us to look at ourselves and leave nothing out, not because it will immediately be vanquished, but because we live in a world in which these forces still move. If we will not allow ourselves to see how these dynamics may swirl around us, we will miss out the little and large ways in which we constitute the unnamed god of evil in the world around us. We do. We surely do. None of us is exempt.

We do not declare that it does not exist, nor that any of us are free and pure. We call, instead, for integrity and wholeness in the face of the certainty that the gods are out there and also in here, and do not deserve our unwitting devotion.

If we can only tolerate the nice things, and the nice images of ourselves, we are missing out on the wholeness of God, and we are bound to passively reproduce the gods that the world has formed in us. We may be nice enough, but allow our lives to be enlisted in the service of unseen cruelty everywhere in the world, or in our own back yards. This happens whenever we are sure that the problem is out there, or that it can be cured simply by alienating from us some part we find unsavoury, which is nonetheless contained by the whole.

#christianity #theology #jungian psychology #archetypal psychology #gods #god #holy week #integrity #theological reflection

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recoveryoutloud · 5 years ago

Text

black lives matter, always.

TRIGGER WARNING | Covered in this post:

police brutality

murder, abuse, assault

racism

Hi.

I haven’t been writing recently, but I’ve found myself drawn to the keyboard recently with a duty to use my platform, no matter how small, to speak up about what has been happening in the world.

I will forever stand by the side of the black community.

I will forever condemn the police and the judiciary system for the incessant and atrocious racism that runs through its very core.

I will never let anyone tell me, or anyone else, that Derek Chauvin was not a murderer.

Before I really get into this, I need to preface: I am an asian woman. I recognise that even as a person of colour, I benefit from privileges that aren’t afforded to black people purely because of my skin colour (I am not black). I am far from perfect and have definitely caught myself unintentionally feeding into racist biases that our society has cultivated over centuries. But I keep learning and correcting my mistakes, and that is what we have to keep doing within ourselves, our homes and our communities.

Now, I would like to again acknowledge that I still have a lot to learn about the injustices that black people face and I am in no way educated enough to be telling anyone what is and isn’t right (other than the blatant racism that has not ceased to plague our world), so please do not take my words as hard facts and do your own research. I also do not want to speak over black voices, but I do want to amplify them. Please share your experiences and call me out if I have made any errors.

For those of you who are sat quietly behind your screens, reluctant to comment on the issue at hand, shame on you. Silence is compliance. Silence in violence. The black community does not need you to sit complacently and watch as their friends and family be consistently targeted and assaulted by police. They need you to speak up, to stand up and to fight. If you are not using your platform, no matter how big or small, then what are you really doing? I understand that one does not need to share what they are doing in order to prove that they are helping, but right now (and always) there is strength in numbers. Let’s call out systematic racism and hold cops accountable. Let’s use our voices and this real estate on social media to actively seek change.

George Floyd did not resist arrest, he did not do anything even remotely violent or suggestive of violence. George Floyd was an innocent man, a father, suffocated and murdered by a white police officer while his three colleagues watched George die. When someone puts their knee on top of your neck and directs all their weight onto that knee, pinning you down onto the ground for eight minutes and 46 seconds, that is murder. That is a restraint and technique that shows the intent of murder. No matter what a preliminary autopsy says, no matter if they are trying to blame George for his own murder, his death was no accident. Derek Chauvin worked alongside George Floyd for 17 years, yet felt no remorse when he suffocated an innocent man. Derek Chauvin has been accused on numerous accounts (12) of police brutality. He shot Leroy Martinez in 2011, Ira Latrell Toles in 2008, Wayne Reyes, and three other people while chasing a car in 2005. In no way is this man worthy of a third degree charge. Raise the degree. This was not manslaughter, this was pure, intentional, brutal murder committed by a heartless, racist white man. There are no ways to excuse Chauvin’s actions. Give him a life sentence.

It does not stop there. George Floyd’s murder was the tipping point in the Black Lives Matter movement over the past couple of years. With dozens more killed and wrongfully arrested purely on the basis of their dark skin colour, and we must not forget their names. What is evident here is how White America has disguised the old-fashioned discrimination they claimed to have fixed (or at least improved) after the Civil Rights movement has just morphed into a sneaky form of discrete discrimination that is simply swept under the rug by government officials and society. No longer can I, as an ally, stand down.

In the recent protests, the media has spun the story to make it appear as if looting and chaos was the result of the BLM movement, was the result of the actions of black people. NO. I do not understand how you can turn a blind eye to the hundreds of videos from the protests showing the instigation of violence by police officers, but beat and shoot a man to death while he was jogging (Ahmaud Arbery). Jared Campbell pepper sprayed a 10 year old girl. Another cop forcefully took off a woman’s hijab during the protest. Countless other cops were caught on tape telling each other to illegally turn off their cameras so they could get away with violence. Videos circulated of peaceful protestors sitting on the road before a swarm of police in protective gear fired tear gas into their faces and beat them down onto the ground, shooting rubber bullets when necessary. Live streams captured many, predominantly black people being assaulted by police officers both verbally and physically while they walked the march. NYPD ran into a group of protestors with their vehicle. And still, you say not all cops are bad?

All cops benefit from the same racist system, and if 100 cops are bystanders while 10 abuse their power to reflect their racist prejudices, you have 110 bad cops. All cops are bastards.

Please, if you are a citizen of the United States over the age of 18, vote Trump out. Trump’s tweet announcing that he authorised the military to shoot down protestors was a direct quote from a lynching campaign in 1968, proving that genocide is being cultivated within the walls of the White House. Do not let this bigoted, fascist, KKK supporter rule your country for another 4 years. Enough is enough.

Black Lives Matter.

On another note, with Pride month starting today, it is important that we continue to spread the message of the BLM movement. Don’t ignore the pleads of the black community, a community who built the gay rights movement and led the stonewall riots, just so you can party. Marsha P. Johnson and Storme Delarverie, a trans woman and a lesbian respectively, gave us (the LGBTQ+ community) our rights. So pay some respect and keep the memory of those brutally murdered by the racist justice system going.

Say their names: George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Samuel Dubose, Sandra Bland, Walter Scott, Terrence Crutcher, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Samuel Dubose, Sean Reed, Michael Brown, Stephon Clark, Dante Parker, Anthony Baez AND SO MANY MORE.

Black Lives Matter.

#roo

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whatbigotspost · 8 years ago

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Do you really think manspreading is an issue or are you just making money off of dumb and gullible people? I can be discrete if you'd like to answer in a PM.

2/3 Also I fully support your right to disagree with people because that is the beauty of democracy, but why block people? Isn’t that a fascist tactic to silence dissenters? Would you rather talk to people you disagree with or just silence them? I’m just not familiar with that kind of mindset and would like you to explain why you think it is an efficient means to achieve the goals you have set for yourself and your movement.

3/3 I do respect the fact in your “required reading” you mentioned that “Do with your own blog what you want with your own content”, and that you can’t force people to agree with you. Kudos and respect to you for that

__________

Hmm. I don’t need discreteness, so let’s do this thing.

You’re kind of all over the place. Let’s clarify something right off the bat, it’s utterly laughable for you to assume that I make money off of this. How popular do you think this blog is…better yet, how do you think people make money off of Tumblr at all? Let me know so I can get in on that. I don’t think it’s really a thing and if it is, I am no where near being in that stratosphere of popularity.

I block people for lots of reasons…(that I don’t HAVE to defend to you, btw) but first among them is that they are being hateful, belligerent, harassing, or flat out dismissing people’s basic rights. I don’t need to engage w/ that shit. That’s one end of the spectrum, and at the other is blocking people just because they’re fucking annoying to me, which I also do and don’t apologize for it.

You do understand that blocking someone is not silencing them, right? This isn’t that deep and yet it seems like every 6 months or so I have to re-tread this tired subject. Blocking someone is just not giving them the space to make their voice heard ON MY BLOG. IN MY POSTS’ NOTES. OR IN MY INBOX. Their own blog and posts? That’s where their voice belongs.

I’m setting a simple boundary around my own space. They can do the same to me if they want. It’s not that big of a deal. (And as you noted in your third message, I get that anyone who wants to post bigoted stuff can feel free to do so on their own page. Idgaf what they do there, even if I vehemently oppose whatever garbage they’re spewing.)

It’s worth noting, I don’t like, automatically block differing views. People who come at me with opposition or questions in a respectful way are fine…people who are actually wanting to engage in good faith. But people who are all “I’m an egalitarian anti sjw, white pride blah blah blah blah.” NO. Like, really, when have you seen a productive dialogue happen on a social media platform between two people of exceedingly disparate views? That’s a unicorn. (I’m not saying people can’t educate/engage productively in general, but that ain’t happening between me and some rando hate monger online. I don’t have the patience or time for it.)

[Site note: Next, why is it so hard for privileged people to understand that if you are a member of an oppressed class, you ALREADY KNOW what the oppressors think/feel/are/do. Like, as a woman who was raised in the patriarchy, I already know allllllllllll about men. (Just as I know as a white person who has listened to POC that they already know alllllllll about whiteness.) It’s the dominant shit in our history books, TV shows, magazines, novels, music, movies, politics, policies, laws and legal systems. So yeah, I don’t *really* need to hear much more from dudes. So I’m not missing much by blocking sexist assholes. And POC don’t need to hear much more from white folks…but like, as a white person, I stand to learn/grow immeasurable by prioritizing black voices.]

ANYWAY…do I think mansplaining is a giant societal plague, top tier issue #1 that I’m going to organize a protest against tomorrow? No. Do I think it’s a microaggression that affects me all the fucking time? Yes. Read up on microaggressions. They’re a thing. And I’m capable of caring about both big systemic issues AND small, daily, personal issues, like microaggressions simultaneously.

Next, I suspect you have only a nascent grasp on fascism and you’re basically trying to make a bold claim to cast me in the same light as the political figures I oppose. And also probably imply I’m a hypocrite, but I maintain there’s nothing in conflict between me being anti fascist and blocking bigots. Let’s take a step back for a moment…

This may shock you, but I actually wield next to zero power in our society. (I know, I seem like a force to be reckoned with, I get it, thank you.) But truth is, I’m an every day PERSON who spends a couple hours a week reblogging and publishing submissions of “what bigots post.” I’m not a political leader, or a party, or a power structure, or even a group of multiple admins.

Me refusing to engage with people who are rude, violating my boundaries, spewing hate speech, or even just annoying me is NOT fascism or fascist ideology. (It’s laughable to have to type that statement.) Here’s the 14 defining characteristics of fascism, which has been a popular resource lately because, for those of us in the US, it’s frankly terrifying to read. I’d challenge you to find even one of these characteristics that I really am remotely involved in. In fact, most can see I try to promote the opposite of them.

Refusing to be subject to harassment and abuse online isn’t silencing. And it certainly isn’t even fascism. And to further answer your question about why I see blocking as, “efficient means to achieve the goals you have set for yourself and your movement” …I don’t. It has nothing to do with being efficient on advancing concepts of social justice and everything to do with self care and self preservation and letting me live my damn life.

#long post #hate

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