incaseyouneedhelpremembering

[incaseyouneedhelpremembering]

14

The book Speak, Okinawa by Elizabeth Brina spoke to me in that I believe I also often fail to appreciate the small ways my mother shapes me into who I am. In the memoir, Brina speaks of the ways she mistreated her mother throughout her life, and the ways she came to distance herself from her heritage. This reminded me of the ways in which I would push back against my mother. When I was young I had almost no real understanding of racism. It embarrasses me to say this, but the concept genuinely didn’t exist to me for quite some time. Not because I didn’t know it existed, but because I didn’t know it was still a thing. At my elementary school, it was very plainly taught that after the Civil Rights Movement, racism was over. That was the end of the story. And that was my belief for an unfortunate chunk of my childhood. It became a pressing issue one day at the park. I was trying to play with some nearby kids. They were very upfront about the fact that they wouldn’t play with me because I was black. (I’d like to applaud the parents there honestly. We couldn’t have been too much older than four or five and they got the memo. That is highly efficient racism right there). I naively stated that “Dr. Martin Luther Kings said” etc. My mother witnessed all of this, and she was furious. She immediately pulled me away and brought me home. I think this was the point where she decided that she would get it through to me one way or another that racism was still very alive and well. The way she went about that was just by saying the foulest things about white folk. She wanted to make sure that I would never be put into a situation like that again. While I can appreciate the attempt, as a child it just seemed to me like my mom was a super racist. Not going a week without making absolutely sure that I knew white people weren’t trustworthy or were all racist and that I needed to watch out. Her mindset may have also been spurred on by my grandmother who experienced segregation growing up. She also has a terrible fear of big dogs, and I didn’t feel the need to pry as to why. All that being said, it didn’t work. When I was young, I went to a practically all white school and the white kids there were nice. Never mind the fact that almost all of my close friends were also people of color or that the one white friend I did have stopped hanging around me after his dad saw me. None of that mattered because I didn’t want to see it. To this day I don’t know what really opened my eyes to what my mom was trying to do. I still don’t think she went about it the right way either, but as I get older, I have been forming a greater appreciation for the anxiety she must have felt all those years ago when I proclaimed racism over. 

[incaseyouneedhelpremembering]

Unlucky

Peer Review (Skye) 

This may be unique to me, but I did not find the nature of their relationship disgusting purely on the grounds that it is interspeicial. The innate repulsion we feel at the sight or description of such a thing in the media we consume stems from, or at least I think, our current understanding that humans are the only creatures alive on the planet capable of consent. When reading Bloodchild I didn’t get the same knee-jerk reaction as I would typically have at the thought. This may have been due to the fact the Tlic are the ones who put humanity into subjugation. I find it hard to believe that a human could take advantage of any member of the species given their status in society and their physical inferiority. Since the two species were more or less on the same playing field in terms of intelligence, my disgust mainly stemmed from the abuse the humans faced at the hands (tendrils?) of the Tlic rather than their biology.  

[incaseyouneedhelpremembering]

Twelve

A long time ago we had a discussion about the nature of satire. From what I understand, satire is the intentional exaggeration of something to highlight its innate ridiculousness. If that definition is correct, then I can confidently say that I hardly know anyone who uses that word right. I mean this with complete sincerity when I say that people tend to use “satire” as a shield for overtly bigoted rhetoric. This experience may not be unique to me, but I feel it’s worth sharing anyway. At the school I went to, it was normalized for white people to make racist jokes aimed at literally anyone but themselves. The only comparison I can make is to imagine you had a school filled with about three hundred or so teenage Uncle Ruckuses. More often than not, criticism for this behavior was met with dismissal. “It’s just a joke,” “It wasn’t that serious” or other excuses of the like. Now while I don’t believe anyone has particularly pointed to satire as their reasoning for open racism, I feel that it spoke to a similar misunderstanding of what a joke is. I believe anything can be made into a joke. I feel that humor can genuinely bring light to a topic that would’ve otherwise been overlooked. My problem arises when the target of the joke is the victim of an injustice rather than the perpetrator or system that the perpetrator works within. It is startling to look back on my middle and high-school days and think of how many jokes about black people being the victims of police brutality were told. Not jokes criticizing or exaggerating said crimes, but jokes at the expense of black people. It was almost never a different kind of joke either. The same punchline that went along the lines of “black people do crime” and that’s about the depth of the joke. I think I’d like to go back to Uncle Ruckus for, what I believe to be, a good example of satire and humor. (I am continually disappointed that there were no classes where we could watch the Boondocks and study it). There was a episode where Ruckus became an honorary police officer. Despite this, he was still viewed as a threat and shot with rounds of pellets, all the while thanking the officers for their diligence. I genuinely could not think of a better joke at the expense of black conservatism. He was literally thanking the police as they riddled him with pellets. That is a naturally absurd situation and is incredibly unlikely to occur in real life, but it perfectly sums up the cognitive dissonance that must occur to be black and conservative in America. You need to be able to look at the systems standing against you and then shake their hand. After all these years this still stands out as a shining example of well-done satire in the media and all the while still telling a joke about a serious topic.  

[incaseyouneedhelpremembering]

Eleventh

I want to continue my thoughts from the last post. There is one more piece of cruelty from Jimmy that I believe is worth highlighting. Jimmy spends the majority of the book in a flashback. The world has long since been brought to ruin by Crake and Jimmy is simply living in the aftermath. Crake created a new type of organism that Jimmy dubbed the “crakers”. Crake tried to engineer the perfect being so that the world would be free of all the corruption of humanity. Jimmy is now left to “guide” the crakers as they maneuver through the world. He gives them stories of the world before and has essentially deified Crake as well as Oryx, who was their caretaker for a time. What I find disturbing is one of the mannerisms Jimmy displays in front of the crakers. He will tell them that in order to communicate with Oryx, he needs to look into his watch, and she will speak to him from there. Oryx, Crake, and the majority of humanity are dead by this point, so Jimmy’s word is effectively gospel. What’s disturbing is that one of the men who trafficked Oryx as a child did the same thing. Jimmy is, hopefully thoughtlessly though that really isn’t better, using that as a sign that he is speaking with Oryx. I truly lack the words to convey my confusion at how he could’ve thought that was a decent thing to do by any stretch of the imagination. 

[incaseyouneedhelpremembering]

Tenth

Jimmy from Oryx and Crake could have been one of the greatest villains of any story if he wasn’t so stupid. I feel I only need to highlight two moments to really get this point across. His lack of self-awareness genuinely borders on maliciousness. Firstly, there’s his interaction with Oryx. He was there when Crake printed out the picture of Oryx’s abuse. How Jimmy could ever think he could be on speaking terms with her after also partaking in the consumption of that abuse is beyond me. One day, he’s grilling her for information. Trying to pry all the details about her experiences being trafficked as a child, so he can live out childish revenge fantasies against the men who did it. Unable to even consider that he is currently making her relieve these traumatic experiences over and over for the sake of his daydreams. Then, she makes a small comment. She says, “everything has a price.” Jimmy has the audacity to tell her, smugly, “well I don’t have a price.” Slight paraphrasing, but that is the crux of his joke. I genuinely believe he was completely blind to who he was talking to, but it is still uniquely awful to say such a thing to a person who had been trafficked. 

[incaseyouneedhelpremembering]

Ninth

I’d like to speak on another short story from The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. This one being “Eula.” I found this story incredibly frustrating. It details the struggle of a queer woman and her love affair with a closeted woman of faith. For literal decades, they had been having a sexual relationship, however, Eula refuses to view what they have as genuine. This would not have bothered me so much if one of two things occurred. One, Caroletta realized that Eula would never really accept her or what they had, and she moved on. Two, Eula opened her mind at least a little. Neither occurred. I was left with the distinct impression that they were both going to die and never figure it out. It was very disappointing to read as it left me with no closure. I felt as though I had read a story with no ending because for all intents and purposes I did. There was no light at the end of the tunnel. The damage done to Eula was permanent. She could never see what was right in front of her no matter how much time passed and no matter how badly Caroletta wanted to make things work. Though unsatisfying, I shudder to think just how many women in real life have gone or are currently going through something similar and they have no resolution to speak of either. 

[incaseyouneedhelpremembering]

The Eighth

Peer Review (Kha) 

I would like to say that I wholeheartedly agree that the nature of separation as a strength is strange. In my personal experience, it has been my willingness to speak to people who are different than me that has allowed for the expansion of my mind. There have been many points in my life where someone will give me a perspective on something that I genuinely don’t believe I would have ever thought of. I find that an incredible thing. That so many people can view the same thing, and all come to wildly different conclusions based on their life experiences and beliefs. I try my best to keep my mind open to all perspectives, not simply to hear the voices of many, but to grant myself knowledge that I would have otherwise built-up fences against. The same fences that the neighbor in the story wished to build. To block off any opportunity for self-improvement and greater understanding is a miserable thing. 

[incaseyouneedhelpremembering]

TW Suicide 

Above is a reference to the story All the Things I Never Told You by Celeste Ng. In it a girl has pressure and expectations heaped on her by both of her parents. She has a mental breakdown and paddles herself to the middle of a lake. She makes a promise to make everything right by the time she swims back to shore, but she doesn’t make it. As someone who is currently studying to become a doctor, I can understand how the weight of those expectations broke her. She never lived for herself and when she finally decided she would it was far too late. I find that incredibly tragic. I remember somewhere someone said that the sign of a good story is that it makes you feel. I’m not sure where this book ranks for me, but I am certain it was a different day after finishing it. 

[incaseyouneedhelpremembering]

Sixth

Earlier I spoke on an experience where I would only ever draw white characters as a child. It never even struck me as odd growing up that the majority of black characters that I’d see were relegated to the sidelines. So, while growing up, I just assumed that any art worth making had a white person as the lead. Thinking back on it now, I can’t exactly say I’m surprised. I grew up in a relatively pro-black environment. All of that energy stemming from my mother though. Since I spent a lot of time around my grandparents, I feel that much of my identity as a black person was molded by them. My grandmother doesn’t speak about black people or black issues unless you ask her about it. Then the floodgates open and she’ll have a million different stories about the ways she’s been treated and how I need to navigate the world to survive. My grandpa nicknamed his sister “Blackie.” He is also black I should say. I can’t quite get a read on how he views our race. He doesn’t seem particularly ashamed of it, but I can’t find any pride there either. I remember a story he once told me. He said that when he was a child, he had a very light-skinned uncle. That uncle made him call him “sir” because he didn’t want anyone to know my grandfather was related to him. Additionally, his father had blue eyes. As a result, every baby born up until my generation was checked. They were hoping, that maybe, just maybe, that baby would have those pretty blue eyes too. So, I don’t find it all that surprising that I wasn’t particularly in tune with my blackness as a child. This all sort of ties into The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. I felt a particular connection to a character named Pecola Breedlove. She wished she had blue eyes too. The same way I did. I imagine the desire for them would be different. I don’t have the same pressure of beauty that most women have to live under. I just thought they’d make me stand out a little more. I believed my natural eye color wasn’t enough to gain attention or acceptance on a wider scale. It is somewhat ironic in a sense. Even then, though incredibly misguided, there was some small understanding that there was something of a structure holding me back. I felt as though my blackness was dull. That the only way to achieve notoriety, or at least some shortcut to it, was to have a greater proximity to whiteness. I don’t believe I’m in any place to brag on that considering the circumstances, but I will say that I find it fascinating that my opinion on the matter has not significantly changed after all these years. I do still believe that proximity to whiteness will grant people a leg up in society. The only difference now is my willingness to perpetuate and participate in that structure. 

[incaseyouneedhelpremembering]

5

Potential TW for child abuse. 

Not too long ago, we read a book called Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. It’s a good book, you should read it. With the above warning in mind of course. It came out of nowhere when I first got to that part. I think it may actually be what I want to talk about in this post. For starters, the story follows Jimmy. He’s an idiot. Very little if any self-awareness. As our instructor pointed out many times, it took the end of the world to get this man to self-reflect in any capacity. Jimmy’s best friend is Crake. I don’t know what Crake is, but he isn’t normal. There is clearly something different about the way he thinks and not in a good way. He has an uncomfortable comfortability with death and destruction. Additionally, suffering. I feel this comes to the forefront when Crake goes out of his way to buy CP. He does this casually. As a hobby. With Jimmy getting high in the background. On just another regular day of viewing elicit material with minors, Crake notices one girl staring directly at the camera with disdain for the viewer. This is Oryx. Crake is so aroused by the acknowledgment of his depravity, that he rewinds, screenshots, and prints the image of her looking back. He keeps this image well into adulthood. While this is awful enough, it soon becomes clear that this is repeat behavior for him. Crake works at a facility with open prostitution. Something about not allowing the workers to get distracted by sexual urges or romance. You can send a request for the exact kind of person you want to spend the night with. Crake takes the picture of Oryx and tries to get someone who looks just like her. I’ll touch upon that in a moment. He later clarifies that there is a limit on how young a person you can choose. Firstly, he took a picture he screenshotted from CP and asked for someone who looked just like that. That’s horrifying in and of itself. Secondly, his understanding of the age limits heavily implies that at multiple points he tried to request very young people. Crake’s behavior is never directly touched upon. These are just things that he does, and we are to understand that that’s just who he is as a person. Jimmy never seems to notice this either. He can hardly notice anything not currently stabbing him in the throat, but that’s hardly the point. What I mean is that Crake could be anybody. Crake was always such a vile human being. He always had these signs of the kind of person he really was, and he wasn’t really trying to keep quiet about it. I find the idea that he could so easily access society and steadily rise to the top without any perceivable opposition truly terrifying. I didn’t even touch on the fact that he actually met Oryx later on when she was an adult and the disturbing ways that he tries to exert his power over her. I struggle to call the man unwell because I’m worried it would in some way absolve him of his deeds. All this to say that I find Crake a truly disturbing individual and that is completely separate from his human experimentation and mass genocide. 

[incaseyouneedhelpremembering]

Above is an image of peach cobbler. It relates to a short story in a larger collection called The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. The short in question is called "Peach Cobbler". This story had a very unique antagonist, the main character’s mother. Though calling her the antagonist may be overreaching. She’s more like a hater in all honesty. It feels as though at every point she can, she is wishing for her daughter’s downfall. The mother seems to take an odd pleasure in the idea that her daughter may be stuck in the same cycle of dissatisfaction and disappointment that she is. She also seems to take great gratification in the idea that she could, at any point, ruin the lives of a select few people with the mere utterance of a few words. I find her to be an interesting character. Maliciousness such as hers should be studies I feel. I suggest reading the story for yourself so that you may get a sense of what I mean. Or maybe you’ve come to a different conclusion altogether. 

[incaseyouneedhelpremembering]

Third One

I have made a number of lapses in judgement. We’ll see how that treats me. Anyway, some time ago we read the story Bloodchild by Octavia Butler. I found it to be a very interesting read. The story detailed a relationship between a young boy and a slug alien. Said alien was the member of a species that had complete control over the human race. The dynamic between these two characters has occupied a tremendous amount of my brainspace throughout this past semester. The slug aliens, known as the Tlic, practically treat humans as second-class citizens. Human males in particular serve as little more than breeding stock on a practical level. The author said she believed the work to be a love story on some level. I’ve been struggling to decide how I feel about that. On one hand. I can believe that on some level what the characters feel for each other is genuine. On the other hand, my own beliefs concerning healthy and balanced relationships bars me from seeing anything other than abuse. The alien slug, she has a name, but I feel the fact that she is indeed an alien slug is important, physically assaults the boy on more than one occasion. It is also hinted that that is not an uncommon occurrence. Additionally, refusal to incubate her eggs is not really an option. The process can be fatal, like any pregnancy, so if he refuses another person in his family will be chosen anyway. Finally, from my perspective, it seems the boy has been groomed. He views the incubation process as something of an honor and a benchmark in the relationship between him and the alien slug lady. Therein lies the horror of the situation for me. I can see how he may have feelings for her, but I can’t shake the disturbing undertones. Nor overtones for that matter. 

[incaseyouneedhelpremembering]

Post 2/Two

I am currently enrolled in an intro to lit class at Xavier. I think it’s one of my favorite classes that I’ve taken in my entire life. The format largely consists of us sitting with our desks in a circle and discussing. That is all. Not to say that our discussions are aimless. They are typically centered around literary works, shockingly enough, and their connection to ongoing issues society faces. One of these works was a memoir by the name of “Speak, Okinawa”. The discussion surrounding the book largely centered around the topic of what it means to be a minority and how that changes the way you navigate the world. The part that most connected with me was when Elizabeth, the author, wrote on how she would beg for blue contacts and dyed her hair blond. My experience with this type of self loathing was far more unassuming, but still worrisome. When I was young I loved to draw. I would doodle all the time. However, when I would draw, I’d almost never draw black characters. I’m black by the way. Anyway this never struck me as a problem growing up. Didn’t even cross my mind. When I was young it was simply a fact of life that white people were the main characters. Oop 200 word limit. I’ll continue this thought another time. Until then.

[incaseyouneedhelpremembering]

The Millionth New Beginning

I do believe this is the way to begin my newest project going forward. This blog will serve to complete a grade for class but will also be a personal place to empty my thoughts.

In case you were wondering, I titled this first blog this way as a small inside joke with myself. Whenever I make a new world in a video game, I'll often title it "The New Beginning", "Another New Beginning", "The Newerest Beginning", etc.

Anyway, I was told that I would be allowed to post whatever I wanted as my first blog as long as it was "within reason". I'm going to hope that demonology in the Abrahamic faith is within reason.

Ever heard of Abaddon? I had. From the Binding of Isaac. There he went by the name Apollyon which is just the Greek name for Abaddon. In the Old Testament of the Bible, Abaddon was simply another name for the destruction that awaited those who went to the abyss. Abaddon's name literally means "destruction" or "doom". In the New Testament, however, he becomes personified. No longer is Abaddon merely another name for Hell, but he becomes the "Angel of the Abyss". Ruling over Hell and commanding a legion of locusts who will bring suffering to those without the mark of God during Armageddon.

I personally find all of this interesting because I was raised to believe that Lucifer/Satan was the ruler of Hell. Most of my family believes this to be the case as well which I find interesting. I should probably mention that I do not practice Christianity, Islam, nor Judaism. I've taken it upon myself to read the Bible (New and Old Testaments), and the Quran because I thought it'd be funny. The idea that the only one in my family who actually read these texts beginning to end was the only atheist is very amusing to me. I feel that I could go on endlessly about the revelations that reading the Bible has brought me, and I very well may later, but as for right now I think this is a decent enough stopping point.

To anyone who has read this far I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to hear my ramblings. I hope you stick around for more. Not all of them will be Bible related. Just about whatever comes to my mind. Thanks again and have a blessed day for however much a blessing from an atheist is worth.